The impulse to call the 2026 midterm elections a repudiation of Trump and Trumpism is the best summary of a night of historic firsts. As a lifelong Southerner, seeing Georgia and Texas go blue, it’s what I’ve always thought, which is the South is in play if parties devoted infrastructure and funding to the South.
In my past writing, I’ve written that Trumpism is the tyranny of the minority, and in a way, America rejected that tyranny-realizing finally that it was time for actual governance over petty grievances and culture wars.
Republicans have spent the last few decades building out a way to maintain power while being a minority opinion. They have stacked the Supreme Court and federal judgeships. They have gerrymandered districts so that they stay the party in charge. And all of it failed spectacularly on Tuesday.
Now, there is something on the backs of Democrats, which is they need to deliver affordability in healthcare, housing, gas prices, and make a real change to the reality of Americans seeing inflation and economic anxiety impact their daily lives. Democrats don’t just get to sweep into power and change nothing. The onus is on them to write legislation that will solve problems and increase affordability of life.
The rejection of Trumpism ends a ten-year affair with grievance, petty nicknames, and corruption. It is the first step in ending the trainwreck for America that Trumpism has been. Project 2025 has made food safety a thing of the past. Project 2025 has made USAID no longer a thing. The extremism of Trumpism has real effects, including the cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP. America has tried out the extremism of Trumpism and rejected it. Instead, America wants to try out new moral leadership with a Democratic lens.
The long-term impact of the oversight the Trump administration will finally get also makes those of us who’ve seen the corruption very happy with this turn of events. Much like W Bush’s corruption led to Obama’s presidency, Trump’s corruption may usher in a Democratic mandate that could potentially change the direction of the country.
Democrats must deliver on their promises or be voted out again. There’s a promise of America that Obama espoused that millennial Democrats repeated. The idea is that Democratic leadership has the capability to change individual’s lives and that’s what makes it a movement worth investing in.
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