Tuesday’s results

Several things became clear in the wake of Tuesday’s Democratic sweep across the country. Mike Johnson’s days as Speaker of the House are numbered, and Donald Trump is going to face an entirely different reality a year from now.
The red shift that we saw across the country in 2024 has vanished and then some. Voters turned out in remarkably high numbers for an off-year election, and they sent a very clear message that the GOP agenda of tax cuts and pardons for billionaires isn’t going to cut it. Tuesday’s results suggest that the Democrats are in the strongest position in years to retake control of Congress in the mid-terms.
At a time when the Trump administration is misusing federal resources to blame Democrats for the federal government shutdown, voters turned out in huge numbers to support Democratic candidates. Democrats won governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia by hefty double-digit margins. No state has been hit harder by the shutdown than Virginia, and they voted for the Democrat by a nearly 16-point margin. Democrats now totally dominate their state legislature.
And in California, voters overwhelmingly approved a proposition that will allow Democrats there to redistrict in response to the push by Trump to gerrymander additional seats in places like Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina in hopes of maintaining control in a House that lets Trump break every law on the books.
None of that should be a surprise. Americans across the country have seen enough of the Trump administration’s daily abuses and a GOP-led Congress that has prostrated itself to a would-be dictator. Americans have seen Trump, out of sheer cruelty, order our own military to pull fellow citizens in Chicago, including children, from their beds, zip-tie them and toss them into the street in the middle of the night.
They have seen Trump, for pure politics, order the cutoff of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding in order to punish poor people, mostly children and the elderly, by denying them food. This, despite the fact that Congress had funded a contingency account to finance the program even during shutdowns. When a judge ordered Trump to continue the funding, he posted that he wouldn’t comply.
During a shutdown, Americans have seen Trump and Republican leaders refuse to even meet with Democrats to discuss an extension of the enhanced premium tax credits which helped make health insurance far more affordable for millions of American families. Instead, Trump busies himself tearing down the East Wing of the White House and remodeling the Lincoln bedroom bathroom, complete with a golden commode. It’s like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Trump won in 2024 by promising he’d end the war in Ukraine and bring down the price of groceries on Day One. Instead, he implemented tariffs that have pushed prices for goods higher, with many more increases to come beginning in January. Job creation in the U.S. has come to a screeching halt, especially in manufacturing, where the U.S. has lost 78,000 jobs since Trump took office. The U.S. is likely headed for recession largely due to Trump’s erratic policies.
Trump promised his tariffs would force countries to the table to negotiate new trade deals on American terms. But foreign leaders quickly realized Trump was all ego. They’d gift him a crown or an airplane, and he’d claim a big victory with whatever kind of lip service they cared to offer. As for actual trade deals, the Trump administration hasn’t finalized a single one yet. And don’t hold your breath for the details any time soon.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine rages on and Trump acts powerless to push back against his handler, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
What Tuesday proved more than anything is that the American people want the Democrats to fight back against the horror show they’ve witnessed during the first ten months of the Trump administration.
Democrats need to step up the pressure over the next year, while focusing on the fundamental economic inequality which Republicans are working desperately to enshrine.
The Republicans have made it plain. They’re building the next Gilded Age, complete with golden toilets, glittering ballrooms, and unaccountable billionaires pardoned of every crime.
Mar-a-Lago’s recent “Great Gatsby” party couldn’t have set that tone any better. Trump wants an America for his cronies and pals, while the rest of us can live off the crumbs they drop on the floor.
On Tuesday, Americans said no way. We predict they’ll state that even louder come 2026.