Story and photos by Pete Shaw
The Democratic Party’s “Blue Tsunami” in the recent midterm elections saw this most recent iteration of the Republican Party burned to the ground and salted over. A message was sent, and while the details of that message will take some time to determine, what is clear is that a vast swathe of people from many walks of life have had enough of what the Republican Party and Trumpism have given them. It feels like the greatest elctoral sea change in the United States in my lifetime. The retribution dealt at the ballot box was more than even the most die-hard Democratic Party operative could have predicted, a necessary purging following an all too long night of being force fed cheap swill in a dark corner of a cruel, brutal, and stupid basement.
Among the big words of the night were affordability and Iran. The latter speaks for itself, a war of aggression and choice by a dupe of a man whose potency in the days leading up to Election Day was reduced to flaccid comments about candidates’ asses and a pool that reflected his and his MAGA movement’s narcissistic and ignorant rot. The results of this would-be one week war that began in late February and for the second time in less than a year obliterated Iran’s military, predictably bled into the US economy. As did Donald Trump’s tariffs.
While the usual suspects of professional economists and pundits told people things were going great, most of those people wondered for whom. A rising stock market may be lovely for the Jeffrey Epstein class, but not so much for those who block off time each week for clipping coupons and praying their dollar stretches to their kitchen tables, medicine cabinets, and furnaces.
At least for the moment, most of the traditional Republican schtick of leaning hard into racism and other assorted bigotries has become a tired act. You can blame Black, Brown, Indigenous, Muslim, vegan, and houseless people, and whomever else you want to target as anti-American, but at some point the reflexivity of that term falters and fails, revealed as vapid when people are having trouble making ends meet and see no solutions offered beyond drinking raw milk and tanking up on testosterone.
I could pick from bushels of examples, but I’ll choose Michigan Senator-elect Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He found a clear rebuke, one that was echoed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates (El-Sayed is not a DSA member) and would have long ago been embraced by the Democratic Party if it actually cared about working class people beyond rhetoric. As a child of the 1970s who saw the vitriol directed against folks from the Middle East during the long lines at gas stations during the Carter Administration, the US hostage crisis in Iran, and the dehumanizing depictions of Arabs–a term about as useless as Asian–in popular culture, all put on steroids after the attacks on September 11, 2001, I never considered that the well of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment would run dry enough to result in a Muslim being elected a senator.
The anti-American slur was leveled at El-Sayed for, among many things, being Muslim, and for opposing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and the US bipartisan support for that genocide. He batted this away in a manner reminiscent of Roger Federer in his prime, always going on the offensive, ignoring the charge and staking his flag to his and many others’ masts. Whatever one thinks of the term–and if being anti-American means opposing empire, white supremacy, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ+, capitalism, and so on, then count me in–El-Sayed rendered it impotent and then turned it around by implicitly asking if the term encompassed making sure people had healthcare, food, shelter, clean water, and other should-be baselines of a civilized people. And while he expressed his embrace of capitalism, albeit a kinder and gentler one, this was at least a step in the right direction. El-Sayed did something few Democrats do, but should immediately make part of their platform: he stood up to the bullies. When they go low, kick them in the nuts.
The Republican carnage in this election was amazing, and it will be being counted for years to come. The political calculus in the South changed overnight, and it appears the Republican Party’s iron grip on the region, almost entirely founded on anti-Blackness, has been shredded. For the past 20 years I’ve been hearing that this was the year the Democrats would win a statewide election in Texas. This year they finally did, winning both the gubernatorial and Senate elections. as well as the State House of Representaives. For good measure, the Democrats also took over the state Attorney General, the Texas Board of Education, and many judgeships.
What may prove the biggest development is the Democratic Party controlling enough states at the gubernatorial and legislative level that if Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin decide to join the National Popular Vote agreement, there will be enough states signed on such that their 283 electoral votes, pending court battles, will go to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. In short, it will upend the anti-democracy electoral college.
Even as the Republican Depression of 2008 set the stage for this country’s first Black president, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime, I am probably even more astonished that a Black man may become senator from Mississippi. I’d be less surprised if my cats started singing “Mississippi Goddam.” All over the country, once-perceived impenetrable walls fell under the wrecking ball. People elected the first Indigenous woman governor and the first Indigenous senator. When Alaska finishes counting its ballots, we may need to find a less awkward phrasing for “two first Indigenous senators.” Georgians elected the country’s first Black woman governor. Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Washington, and Wisconsin elected trans lawmakers for the first time, and in Delaware, Montana, and Minnesota, trans lawmakers won re-election.
Candidates of Somalian descent, whose ethnicity has been under relentless attack by the Trump Administration and its craven fascist handmaidens, went out and won nine elections. Latino voters, with whom Trump had made inroads in 2024, dumped the Republican Party like a rank sack of garbage, although to be fair, so did many other non-white folks.
AIPAC, the lobbying group that supports and promotes the genocide of the Palestinian people, had a rough election day. It was so bad that it will no longer be signing its checks under AIPAC, but rather the United Democracy Project. And while it still has the vast majority of Congress in its pocket, we have finally reached a point where its name is poisonous, and slapping a candidate with the label of being an AIPAC bootlicker will often prove detrimental to their chances at winning an election.
The list goes on.
However, there clearly is still a lot of work to do. As the fellas say, until all of us are safe, none of us are safe. Across the border in Washington State, and in Colorado–both “blue” states–anti-trans measures were on the ballot, as they were in Arizona and Nebraska. All won approval. These are particularly noxious as they compel schoolchildren to have their genitals checked to make sure they do not pull a fast one on the K-12 sporting world. Never mind that there is no science showing that trans athletes are bestowed with unfair advantages, or that the number of trans athletes can probably be counted on a few hands. Isn’t there just something creepy about passing an initiative that endorses behavior right out of the Epstein files?
Tuesday night’s bashing was a long time coming. It was very much the result of years of organizing and agitating and urging and cajoling and all other manner of pushing people beyond the idea of change as only a campaign slogan.
But this election will not change anything if people do not get active and bend the Democratic Party to their will. The likely next Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, is on record opposing Medicare for All even as a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found 2/3 of the US public support a taxpayer based national health insurance, as do many of Tuesday night’s victors, including El-Sayed.
It’s funny what an election like this can do. The morning after the ass kicking found voters feeling their oats, many already moving on to demanding a change in the Democratic Party’s leadership. Jeffries, perhaps recognizing a threat to his ambitions, signaled Democrats would look into other options beyond obsequious fealty to the private insurance companies that have put so many people’s health in a stranglehold. Representative Pramila Jayapal, the chief sponsor of a Medicare for All bill, said she intends to bring a vote to the floor of the House next year. I have zero doubt that numerous Democrats who shill for private insurance companies will complain about wasting time on voting on a bill that will not pass, but we should work to put them on record and let them face primaries based on that record. If they don’t want their constituents to have healthcare, then their constituents should tell them to find another job. If the Republicans want to oppose it, they can face their constituents and explain why they find people dying preferable to insurance companies’ profits.
Obviously, there are many other issues. Climate change, ICE snatching people off the street and tearing apart families and communities, data centers, the military industrial complex–these and so many more will require people organizing, organizing, and organizing, and creating solidarity among these fights so that we reach a point where regardless of party affiliation, as my Friend Ahjamu Umi would say, we bring the people who would rather profit off of the catastrophic results of these things to their knees.
Frederick Douglass famously said that power concedes nothing without a demand. I have never encountered a contradiction to this. Over the past two years, there have been a few No Kings rallies, the one in march gathering over 8 million people. It is heartening seeing so many people gathering. And by so many I as much mean the tens of thousands who gathered in Waterfront Park in Portland as I do the five people I saw on a corner in Olympia a few weekends ago. But from none of these did I hear any demands or threats of consequences if those demands are not met.
It’s more than nice enough to gather in numbers and march and shout and meet like minded sorts, all geared toward reminding Donald Trump, or anyone, that dictators are not welcome here, wherever that may be. It is always good to be reminded you are not alone. But why not have a clear and stated idea of what we demand, and get organized enough to make those demands stick?
Voting is a tactic, and it is one I always suggest people use. But for too many people, even if for good reasons, it is an end. No matter, if all one does is vote and then wait around until the next election, then the franchise is but a devil’s gift. One of our biggest hurdles is getting people to see that each election is a new beginning toward building more power, that politicians and political parties are nothing more than tools toward creating the more just world we want to see. The real work lies beyond the ballot box, in educating and organizing people to agitate and make change, and in furthering solidarity among working people, to bend the system to our will, not that of the 1%.
Today is as good a day as any to find a group working on an issue or issues that strikes your fancy, interest, or passion at whatever level you feel comfortable, or even slightly uncomfortable. Finding one is not going to be a problem. Rather, choosing among the many makes one realize just how limited one’s time and energy are. And as I always tell folks, you’ll lose. Like many times. You’ll wonder if this is how fans of the New York Jets feel. (Yes.) But every so often–more often than the people in power want you to believe, you will win, building off of those losses. (Unlike the Jets.) And you will have a good time of and through it all, and you will meet good people, or at least, people of like conscience. (No comment.)
My Friend Walidah Imarisha talks about how before we reach the future we must imagine it. What if we imagine a future No Kings rally where tens of thousands of people–hell, millions–organized a community picnic with an undefined end? Present the demands, present the consequences should the demands not be met, and then fire up the hibachis and share some food and conversation?
Why not?
Harry Bridges, the founder of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), was once asked what it would take to bring a single-payer, universal access–essentially, to acknowledge that healthcare is a human right. He had a very simple answer: on Monday, nobody show up for work. Do it again on Tuesday. By Wednesday you will have your healthcare.
Now that is a demand.
