The most important outcome of the midterms is the Democratic victory in the House of Representatives. Those who fear Trump is an authoritarian leader who poses a serious threat to constitutional democracy can take some comfort from the fact that Trump and his Republican enablers will now be checked in the House. Yet now is no time for liberal self-congratulation. For the Republicans strengthened their hold on the Senate. Trump is still strong, and angry. And there is much havoc he can still wreak on our democracy, especially on the most vulnerable among us. And he could still win in 2020.

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How should the Democrats move forward with an eye toward 2020 and beyond? There are no easy answers, and in the weeks and months to come many answers will be debated. Democrats scored most of their victories in more or less liberal suburban and urban areas where Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and experienced defeat in much of Republican “red state” America, and especially the rural areas, where Trump won in 2016. Do the Democrats need to do better in these conservative, “red” areas? Certainly. Should Democrats attempt this by running candidates who play to the right and appeal to elements of Trump’s base? Many pundits are already stepping forward to urge this. I disagree. And the case of my home state of Indiana is instructive.

One of the most striking Democratic losses on Tuesday was the resounding defeat of the incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly by conservative Republican Mike Braun. Donnelly, a conservative Democrat, confronted serious obstacles. He faced an opponent actively supported by fellow Hoosier Mike Pence, and by Trump himself, and he faced an onslaught of vicious, anti-immigrant, anti-liberal, red-baiting ads.

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The worst features of Trumpism dominated the Indiana Senate race. How did Donnelly respond? By emphasizing his closeness to Trump and the fact that he voted with Trump over 60% of the time, and by campaigning not against his rightwing attackers but against the left of his own party, running his own anti-immigrant, anti-liberal, and red-baiting ads.

It was a destructive and cynical calculation that severely compromised Donnelly’s integrity. More importantly, it was an abysmal political failure. Indiana voters drawn to Trumpism demonstrated on Tuesday that they strongly preferred a real, unadulterated Trumpist to a Democratic facsimile. And so Donnelly lost. First his soul, and then the election. A significant Democratic defeat.

Democrats lost big in Indiana. But some electoral losses can be seen as ethical and even political victories. And so I turn to Indiana’s ninth congressional district, and to the effort of Democrat Liz Watson to unseat one-term incumbent Republican Trey Hollingsworth. Full disclosure: I strongly supported and worked for the Watson campaign. And Watson lost, with Hollingsworth winning over 60% of the vote.

In a way, the electoral margin underestimates the power of the loss. For while Watson campaigned tirelessly for months, holding town halls in every county in the district, Hollingsworth did virtually nothing. He held no town hall meetings, and he refused to debate Watson even once. One of the richest men in Congress and a beneficiary of all of the Trumpist support thrown to Republicans in the state, Hollingsworth demonstrated a cynical contempt for the competitive elections and public accountability that are the hallmarks of constitutional democracy. And he won.

The Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans

Hollingsworth’s victory is a devastating blow for Indiana liberal Democrats, and it underscores just how stacked is the deck against Democrats in the state, who confront a trifecta of serious obstacles: gerrymandered districts profoundly favoring Republicans; garden-variety Republican voter suppression; and a general electorate demographically inclined towards and seriously mobilized by the right.

At the same time, while the Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans, the Watson campaign demonstrates the potential for something better. Watson ran a grassroots, issue-based campaign that refused corporate Pac money and relied on small donations; she had the strong support of unions and a wide range of liberal groups; she drew national attention, receiving endorsements from virtually every important liberal Democratic group, and the strong support of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and a range of congressional progressives; and she ran with integrity.

Unlike Donnelly, she refused to turn on her own base. Instead, she tried hard to expand that base. Watson lost, indeed by roughly the same margin that Donnelly lost. But while Donnelly inspired widespread disillusionment among liberal Democrats, Watson inspired hope, in the promise of citizen activism, and in the possibility of a better Democratic party.

I am no Pollyanna. Watson lost, and it stings. And her loss itself is obviously not “proof” of the merits of her campaign. But democratic politics is a long game. Defeating Trumpism was always at least a two-election proposition, and creating a new progressive majority that might actually move the country forward will involve many elections. And victory in southern Indiana was always a steeply uphill battle. What Liz Watson accomplished in Indiana’s ninth district is a start in that state. Indeed, I can only hope that the extraordinary investment of her campaign in grassroots mobilization, and the many lessons learned, will lead her to run, even more strongly, in 2020, hopefully on a Democratic national ticket that can propel even Indiana’s ninth back into the “D” column.

All the same, we can take heart from the fact that the kind of campaign that Watson ran in Indiana was even more successful in other important “red states” that offer more immediate fertile ground for liberal Democrats. As I write, the Georgia race for governor is too close to call, and liberal Democrat Stacey Abrams could still be headed for a runoff against rightwing, voter suppressor Brian Kemp.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Beto O’Rourke: unabashedly liberal. Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

And in Florida too the race for governor is still very close and could yet see Andrew Gillum’s bid go to a recount. Both of these candidates might turn out to be losers in the election. But both campaigns are extraordinary successes in a broader strategic sense. For in the face of vicious racist Republican campaigns vocally supported by Trump, of real voter suppression, these two African Americans ran vigorous, broad-based liberal campaigns in “red states”, and by mobilizing many base voters came at least within a hair’s-breadth of victory.

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This is even more true of Beto O’Rourke’s Texas Senate campaign against Ted Cruz. O’Rourke ran an unconventional, unabashedly liberal campaign, against great obstacles, in perhaps the “reddest” state in the country. While Joe Donnelly – running in a midwestern state bordered by Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio – loudly denounced “illegal immigration” and supported Trump’s border wall, O’Rourke, a resident of El Paso, stood on the Texas border with Mexico and denounced Trump’s restrictive immigration policies and his xenophobic rhetoric. And he won 48% of the vote. This is likely to have a huge impact on both the future of Democratic politics in Texas and Democratic thinking more generally.

There were many victories on Tuesday.

Many more victories will be necessary, at every level of politics, in 2020 and beyond, if the Democrats are to succeed in rebuilding a new progressive majority. But some of the most exemplary campaigns might turn out to be ones that failed to win the election, but succeeded in pointing the way to the future.

It is sometimes said in sports that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. As all athletes know, this is at best a half-truth. For the primary reason to play the game is to win. But sometimes playing the game well and losing is the best way to inspire one’s team-mates, and one’s supporters, and to better prepare yourself to win the next time.