Everything has changed. From the moment we started counting the votes, everything we thought we knew about politics in America was rendered obsolete. Consider:
1. Everybody said money rules politics.
If Dems had won the House but lost the Senate, they’d still be saying it. Tuesday would have merely marked a passage from the Age of Trump to the Age of Musk.
But then the party that was overwhelmingly outspent won anyway. It’s happened now in three of the last six federal elections. (We twice outspent Trump by 50%. Republicans outspent us Tuesday by 60%.)
The worst effect of money on American politics is not that it tilts the field to one party or the other, but that it mortgages both parties to the rich and to the past.
Tuesday we all learned that, in politics as in life, money isn’t everything. Democrats may even see that in our corrupt bargains with big money, we give way more than we get.
From Bill Clinton on, Democrats outraised Republicans in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Yet in the Age of Trump, moguls in both locales proved conclusively they’re really not that into us. So it’s time for Democrats to stage a very public divorce and declare their independence.
2. It was a HUGE victory for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In fact, Democrats fielded the most diverse and, not coincidentally, the strongest slate of candidates in anyone’s memory.
This embarrassment of riches was a direct result of DEI: Keisha Lance Bottoms, first Black woman ever to govern a state; Chris Pappas, first openly gay man elected to the Senate; Abdul El-Sayed, first Muslim senator; two Jewish guys, Jon Ossoff and Josh Shapiro, crushing it in Georgia and Pennsylvania; Peggy Flanagan, first female Native American senator; Josh Turek, who overcame daunting disability; pastor Adam Hamilton, seminarian James Talarico; logger Troy Jackson; pediatrician Annie Andrews. E pluribus unum. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
It was a classic showdown: liberal diversity, equity, and inclusion vs. MAGA sexism, racism, and cronyism. Led by dear leader, Republicans scavenged a sad-sack crew of mostly white men, all looking like escapees from a minimum-security prison.
They anointed these losers under the same rules by which Trump picked his cabinet and Pete Hegseth purged the Pentagon, and with much the same result. (“Republicans: they don’t send us their best.”) Then, in the year’s most delicious irony, we mopped the floor with them.
Democrats should take their own hint and start reminding people: diversity, equity, and inclusion are indispensable tools, cherished American goals, and words we should speak with pride.
3. It’s just days since the election, and already we hear the word “woke” a lot less.
Alleluia! For too long, centrist political and media types have parroted the Fox News line that wokeness kills Dems.
Let me be clear. Progressive culture warriors would do everyone a favor by approaching the tender issues of social and cultural change with greater humility and greater respect for their intended students. We should let them in on a secret: the best way to teach morality is the hard way — by example.
But listening to James Carville, the Drunk Uncle of CNN, you’d think the Democratic Party had been taken over by a klatch of woke Harvard English professors rather than a phalanx of corporate lobbyists.
Still, if Democrats turned the volume down on cultural issues, but spoke no louder about the maldistribution of wealth, income, power, and opportunity, they’d still lose.
Conversely, if they embraced an agenda of political reform and economic populism, and went right on talking the way they do about cultural issues, they’d still win.
On Tuesday, Republicans bet the farm on anti-woke culture wars. Meanwhile, Democrats ran hard on a message, if not yet an actual agenda, of political and economic reform. Republicans massively outspent them and still got their doors blown off.
In short, this was Tuesday’s powerful message to Democrats: forge a strong political and economic reform agenda, and you can govern for a generation without leaving anyone behind.
4. In the weeks and months ahead, you’ll hear less about the “toxicity” of our political culture.
In this year of Talarico, nice guys finished first.
This is such a foreign concept to the MAGA crowd, it will take them some time to absorb it. But Republicans in Congress will soon sound like they all just graduated from charm school.
On Tuesday, we glimpsed the “kinder, gentler nation” Bush the elder once mused about. He may have been on to something. It turns out we don’t hate each other nearly as much in real life as we do on cable television and social media.
If you don’t think so, try this exercise: block out all the media-filtered images of the American people now living rent free in your head. Replace them with ones of people you’ve actually met. Take a minute to reflect and you’ll see most people are open-minded and good-hearted.
It’s great news. To believe in democracy, you must believe in the goodness of people. To do that, you just have to trust your firsthand experience of who the American people are over the dark, distorted images of corporate media journalists and social media trolls.
5. For decades, we’ve been told how polarized we are.
From now on, we’ll hear less of that, too.
On Tuesday, American politics’ tired trope of red states vs. blue states took a beating. Let’s hope it’s fatal. For too long it has lured Dems into abandoning states they could have won while making us all think we have less in common than we do with people who simply live elsewhere.
Except for three or four deep red holdouts, this election showed a country more purple than Prince. Pundits can quit worrying about the next census putting the Electoral College out of Democrats’ reach. It’s not going to happen.
Trump’s endless display of greed, hatred, and ineptitude forced open even a few MAGA minds. In his nasty, demented way, you could say he brought us together. Dems will now have to keep us together. It’s no easy trick, but political conditions are finally right for it.
6. Centrists are always whining that radical leftists are spoiling their chances to govern.
It’s part of the “blame the English professors, ignore the PACs” strategy of politicians and pundits, all of whose bread is buttered on the same side.
The New York Times ran a post-election story explaining how the real heroes of 2026, the moderate Dems, are rushing to Washington to help Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries put down any leftist insurrections.
The easily spooked mainstream media obsessed all summer and fall about a mere eight DSA-backed Dems running for seats in the 435-member House. It was late September before they noticed a pastor, a seminarian, and a man who talks like a lay minister making history in states no Democrat had won in decades.
They further failed to notice how alike moderates, radicals and voters all sound. In the Times piece, an avowed moderate called herself a “practical populist.” Well, aren’t we all? It’s a tag ministers and socialists, ranchers and farmers, factory workers, cops and docs can all wear with honest pride.
This election proved that just beneath the surface of our supposedly divided nation lies a hidden consensus. Ninety percent of Americans want to clean up public corruption. Seventy percent want a living wage, universal health care, and an end to foreign wars. Nearly as many want to stop climate change and slow the spread of data centers. One even feels consensus forming on such tender issues as Gaza and the best way to support transgender people.
Republicans blindly backed Trump on the war in Iran and are deeply at odds with majority opinion on nearly every other major issue. It’s a bad look in a democracy and, as of Tuesday, America still has one.
Forget MAGA. Democrats need to get bipartisan with themselves. It shouldn’t be hard. Our divisions used to run a lot deeper. Fathers broke from sons over Vietnam; divisions over civil rights ran so deep that white Democrats in the South all left the party.
By any historical measure, our present differences are microscopic. Do we want Medicare for All or a public option? How high must a living wage be? If we can just keep the PACs out of the room, we can quickly and easily work them out.
This is our urgent task: working out our differences so we can put a blueprint on the table showing all Americans how we’d solve the hard problems they face.
Our fondest hope going into Tuesday was to put Trump under some sort of congressional house arrest, but something far bigger happened: a great reveal of a nation neither toxic nor polarized, and a democracy that is most certainly not dead. We must rise to the occasion.
Source: ctnewsjunkie.com
