Des­pite his bumpy first 90 days, Trump can claim cred­it for boost­ing GOP turnout to healthy midterm levels. The pres­id­ent isn’t par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar in this dis­trict—Re­pub­lic­an polling pegged his fa­vor­ab­il­ity just slightly above wa­ter—but he helped rally the rank and file. He can now boast that he stopped Os­soff from get­ting a quick tick­et to Con­gress. All told, it doesn’t look as if many typ­ic­al Re­pub­lic­an voters—even those who don’t care for Trump—were in­clined to vote for a Demo­crat to send a mes­sage.

If there’s any­thing that should con­cern Demo­crats, it’s that they know what they’re against but not what they’re for. They’ve mastered the art of mo­bil­iz­a­tion in the age of Trump, but are still strug­gling to per­suade win­nable voters. Os­soff’s cam­paign ads struck all the right notes, por­tray­ing him as a fisc­al con­ser­vat­ive and a prag­mat­ist who’s tough on na­tion­al se­cur­ity. But on the stump, Os­soff nev­er ar­tic­u­lated much bey­ond bland Demo­crat­ic talk­ing points.

With their pumped-up base, Demo­crats should have a pro­duct­ive midterm elec­tion. But to cap­ture a House ma­jor­ity, they’ll need to pick off Re­pub­lic­an-friendly seats with can­did­ates who can re­as­sure GOP-lean­ing voters with a mod­er­ate mes­sage. Bal­an­cing the en­ergy of the pro­gress­ive act­iv­ists with that sort of prag­mat­ism won’t be an easy task. It can get Demo­crats close to a ma­jor­ity, but like Os­soff, they could end up fall­ing short by only be­ing part of the Trump op­pos­i­tion.