LAST week, America's Democrats delivered one of the most lopsided midterm election results in modern memory. They took the House of Representatives with more than 250 seats and captured the Senate. One of them even won a Senate race in Texas. In Manila, some liberals are already asking the hopeful question: If it can happen there, why not here in 2028?
It is a fair question with an uncomfortable answer. The Philippine liberal bloc cannot copy what the Democrats did because it is not playing the role they played. Before borrowing the blue wave, the liberals (the Yellows and their extension, the Pinks) need to be honest about what they have become.
Liberal democracy is rule by the people plus the limits on that rule. Citizens elect representatives, but those decision-makers are constrained by the principles and political institutions of liberalism from abrogating the rights of individual citizens. Think courts, a free press, minority rights, checks and balances, and pluralism (the idea that society has many legitimate interests that must be balanced).
On the other side of that is populism, which is harder to pin down, but the most common scholarly definition comes from Cas Mudde: a thin-centered ideology organized around a cohesive conception of the people and its general will, set against a corrupt elite. Because it is "thin," it attaches to both “left” and “right” politics. Populists tend to frame politics as an existential battle of friend versus enemy.
So, the Democrats won because they were the out-party at a moment when voters were angry with those in power. Exit polls put Trump's approval rating near 38 percent, the lowest for a president in midterm. Voters wanted to punish the government, and the Democrats were the obvious vehicle for it. And here, the leader has crossed the X line on several readings by various survey firms.
Voters punishing government is the engine of every opposition wave. It is not a slogan, a color, or a social media campaign. It is a clear line between the people running the country and the people promising to replace them. Angry voters need somewhere to go, and the opposition has to be unmistakably that place.
In the Philippines, that line does not run through the liberals. It runs through the Dutertes and Duterte-aligned candidates. Why? Because the liberals, after decades of rejecting Marcos, are now in bed with one.
Since the UniTeam collapsed, Vice President Sara Duterte's camp has become the real opposition to Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration. Her Senate allies sit in the minority. She accuses the government of trying to eliminate dissent. She announced her presidential bid in February, and she leads in almost every early survey.
The liberals sit on the other side. Sen. Risa Hontiveros holds a majority leadership post. Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan, the bloc's 2025 standouts, serve in a Senate led by a Marcos ally. Their main target is not the president, but his estranged vice president. Supporters will say they still act independently on some issues, but on the fights that define this era, they have stood closer to Malacañang than against it.
The media still calls them "the opposition" out of habit. The label dates to their fight against Rodrigo Duterte and to Leni Robredo's 2022 run against Marcos. Habit is not a strategy. If public anger at the administration grows bigger and louder up to 2028, it will not flow to its allies. It will flow to the people who have spent years opposing it.
Even setting the label aside, the structure of Philippine politics works against a liberal wave.
What the United States has, in effect, a two-party contest. Discontent has one place to go. The Philippine presidency is won by plurality, with no runoff. A three-way race between a Duterte, a Marcos-backed successor, and a liberal reward whoever has the most solid base. Right now, that is Sara Duterte.
Then there is the candidate problem. Robredo, the only liberal who polls close to Sara Duterte, has said she will not seek national office. Even so, one survey had Sara Duterte ahead of her, 43 percent to 34 percent. Hontiveros, the bloc's most likely standard bearer, ranked fifth of six in one early poll. Names like Mar Roxas have been floated, but none has caught fire. The bloc promises to name its candidate by early 2027, barely a year before the vote.
Philippine elections also run on personalities and local machinery more than party brands. The Democrats could lean on a national party with roots in every state. The liberals have nothing comparable at the barangay (village) level. And the administration will have the current barangay leaders in place for 2028 with the cancellation of the barangay elections and a gift of five years’ extension. Surely, people can see through it.
None of this means the liberals are finished. The 2025 Senate wins of Aquino and Pangilinan proved they can still win nationally. One survey even showed a Robredo-Tulfo tandem edging a Duterte-Marcos pairing: 44 percent to 40 percent. A broad, popular ticket can compete.
But look at what that path requires. Antonio Trillanes IV has openly urged Marcos loyalists and the "Kakampinks" to unite against the Dutertes. Hontiveros herself has said she does not yet know whether the “opposition” needs the president's camp to win. That is the honest shape of their best strategy: a coalition with the administration against its main challenger.
That may be a legitimate choice. Many liberals see a Duterte return as the greater danger, and they are entitled to that judgment. But it is the strategy of a governing coalition defending its ground, not of an opposition riding public anger. It is the opposite of what the Democrats did.
The lesson from America is not that liberals win. It is that oppositions win when voters believe they are the real alternative to those in power. The Democrats earned that belief by standing clearly against the administration.
The Philippine liberals have two honest options. They can break with Marcos and argue that they, not the Dutertes, are the true alternative; or they can embrace the alliance and campaign as partners in government. What they cannot do is borrow the language of opposition while sitting with the majority. Voters can tell the difference, and in 2028 they will.
