Tuesday’s election results sustained my belief in democracy. Gas prices and the war in Iran may have been the catalyst for the blue tsunami, but the election was much bigger than that. The American people rejected encroaching authoritarianism, incompetent cronyism, and unprecedented corruption. If Republicans don’t get that message, they will suffer another miserable election cycle in two years — and they might anyway.
If the election was just about high prices, we would have seen something like 2022 in reverse or maybe 2018. Instead, we saw voters of all persuasions reject Donald Trump and MAGA. We don’t have the turnout information yet, but a back-of-the-napkin analysis indicates that Democratic turnout may have reached 60% or more and GOP turnout was 55% or less. In other words, Democratic turnout was about six points higher than 2018 and Republican turnout was at least three points below 2022 or 2018. Unaffiliated turnout was probably bumping up against 50% instead of 45% and they overwhelmingly rejected Republicans.
The swing toward Democrats was not just a rejection of Trump. It was a rejection of Republicans. Voters knew who Trump was when they elected him in 2024. They knew he was shady and performative, but they expected a GOP Congress to hold him in check.
It didn’t. Instead it enabled his worst instincts. Republicans looked the other way at blatant corruption like the Trump family’s crypto scam. They covered up the Epstein files after MAGA spent years claiming Trump would release them. They refused to check him on his foreign policy when only the cult seriously thought that threatening our allies earned their respect. They didn’t reel in his tariffs even as they drove up inflation after it was finally coming back to earth. In short, the Republican Party proved itself to be weak, pandering, and ineffective. They turned their back on most voters out of fear of angering MAGA.
Even Thom Tillis, who is trying to fashion himself as critic-in-chief of the GOP, refused to blame Trump. All these problems were caused by bad advice from “advisers,” as if Trump lacks agency. Even if that were true, Tillis and the GOP confirmed all those people giving him bad advice and, for the most part, refused to hold them accountable. Republicans lost the respect and trust of the American people.
The voters aren’t blind. They saw a Congress that failed to act and a president who governed by fiat. They watched a multi-billionaire run roughshod over the federal government without results while their pocketbooks continued to suffer. They saw Trump cronies getting rich. When the president bragged “We’re making a freaking fortune” off gas and oil revenues, everybody knew they were fueling those profits for corporate CEOs. They also knew that Trump and the gas and oil companies were profiting from a war that was costing them money.
In North Carolina, Republicans haven’t been any better. They took three years to pass a budget because of fights among themselves, leaving teachers and state employees in the lurch as prices rose and their paychecks didn’t. And while they weren’t passing a budget, Republicans were rigging the system to favor them. They stripped power from a governor who won by the largest margin in decades. They redistricted Congressional districts in the middle of a decade in an effort to diminish African American representation in the ancestral home of the state’s Black voters in eastern North Carolina. They’ve shown little respect for voters and a level of arrogance that was begging for a rebuke.
Right now, Democrats have an opportunity. They weren’t just elected by a Democratic surge. They were elected by independent voters who voted overwhelmingly for them but have supported Republicans in the past. They were elected by Republicans who have lost faith in their party and voted by staying home on Election Day or took a gamble on Democrats either in hope of moderation or an angry “FU!” to their own party.
For the next two years, Democrats’ focus needs to be on finding the issues that animate all of those constituencies. They should stay laser focused on making the cost of living more reasonable and restoring faith in government. Raise the minimum wage, find an end to the Iran war, and do something to reduce the cost of health care. On the corruption front, they should ban stock trading by members of Congress and institute pardon reform. Let the people know that you hear them and that their complaints are legitimate.
And the new government should confront the tech barons stealing and exploiting the knowledge and skills of all Americans. Learn from the free trade deals of the 1990s. Make sure every American benefits from the new economy that’s going to shape our future. Don’t leave large swaths of the country behind while we create the type of wealth that we haven’t seen since the Gilded Age.
Democrats have the opportunity of a generation. They can rebuild a big tent that includes both the Mamdanis, AOCs, and El-Seyeds and the Coopers, Talaricos, and Hamiltons. They need to find the Venn diagram where their interests intersect and keep the focus mainly there. There will certainly be fights and disagreements over the details but they can take place under a framework that delivers for the greatest number of Americans.
That said, I’m also realistic. I totally expect Democrats to screw it up within a few short years. Politics is driven too much by ego, arrogance, and self-interest. But for just a few more days, I’m going to dream of an America where people can come together to solve problems, fight corruption, embrace democracy, and build a more perfect union. Don’t interrupt me with reality.
You may be under stating the backlash against corruption and depravity. Yes, affordability was a big deal, but I’ve talked to several unaffiliated voters who are disgusted by the GOPs indifference to any semblance of morality.
Thomas,
Aman, Awoman, to all you write. And you're probably correct arrogance or petty self-interest may bite the Ds in a few years. But right now there is a coalition that could last a long, long time. In a representative democracy the people, given the opportunity, will accept repression, suppression and enforcement of selfish ideologue mandates only so long, thank God!