“The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart hailed Democratic election wins this week as “amazing.” But in almost his next breath on the latest episode of “The Weekly Show” podcast, the comedian then stingingly asked: “How will they squander it?”

“How will they piss this away?” Stewart asked his guests, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Hayes suggested “thermostatic public opinion” when “one party has the White House, the other party tends to do better in the off-year elections,” and the unpopularity of President Donald Trump were two factors that contributed to this week’s victories, but are things that Democrats ultimately have no real say over.

“The third layer is candidate recruitment, messaging, campaigns,” Hayes said, which is where Democrats can either “screw it up” or “build on it” and “I think they did a lot that was right” in the 2025 elections, he argued.

Stewart, though, later declared: “I think the Democrats are still a mess. I truly believe they’re a mess because there is, what this shows to me is, again, there is this underlying potential energy within the United States of America that is much larger than I think any of us could have imagined.”

“Channelling that energy directionally will be the challenge for whoever wants to harness it,” he added. “I still don’t believe they’re doing that.”

Plouffe noted how “a year is a long time” in politics and predicted the “atmosphere should be just as good if not better for Democrats” when it comes to the 2026 midterms.

Watch from the 5-minute mark here: