My first indication of good news Tuesday night was my son’s text at 8:35 pm: “We are winning everything!!!!” I had been cleaning the apartment, too nervous to watch the returns, knowing that this midterm election meant the difference between authoritarian consolidation or democratic pushback. Reading online that Dr. Annie Andrews was about to pull off the upset victory in the South Carolina U.S. Senate race against Darline Graham, the sister of the late senator, served as the first indication that the “winning everything!!!!” tweet was for real.
After 2022, when our New York governor Kathy Hochul barely defeated a Trump-supporting GOP challenger (who is now busily defanging the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of industrial and agricultural polluters), I worried even about the governor’s race this year. I watched the polling place across the street, looking for signs of robust Election Day voting. There wasn’t, mainly because people in my neighborhood voted early. And I needn’t have worried, because Hochul won by 20 percentage points, and it looks like Democrat Cait Conley flipped a nearby suburban district where two-term Republican Congressman Mike Lawler had managed to hoodwink voters into believing he was a moderate until he ripped the mask off after the ICE killings in Minneapolis and started forcibly removing constituents who disagreed with him at town halls. Mike Lawler will no longer be abusing his constituents.
But the contest I’m happiest about — the most significant sweeping out of tyrants and thieves — took place in Texas. During the campaign, I wrote about my respect for and support of Democratic Senate candidate, now Senator-elect, James Talarico. I’m heartened by the victories of him and Adam Hamilton in Kansas, a minister, as they both assert the role of faith communities in defending democracy and human rights, in contrast to the Christian Nationalism that seeks only to identify and punish those who do not conform to their narrow vision of Christianity. The surprise victory of Gina Hinojosa for Governor of Texas and Vicki Goodwin for Lieutenant Governor — defeating the long-serving Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick — promises more support for public education and a rollback of book bans. Texans, and Texas schoolchildren in particular, will soon be able to read freely again. Teachers will no longer be forced to post the Ten Commandments in their classrooms or teach Bible stories more appropriate for Sunday school. Consider that the proper separation of church and state, enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, comes via an election in which Texans chose a seminary student and youth pastor, Talarico, over the lying, corrupt serial adulterer Ken Paxton. Texas voters who support a multiracial democracy have suffered for a long time, and I am deeply appreciative of how they stood up against ridicule and threats to vote unequivocally for their values. I urge you to read my account of the No Kings! rally in Houston to see how people organize and speak out in a far more difficult environment than New York City. And of course, my respect and gratitude to the candidates themselves, who put themselves in the spotlight knowing they would have to endure a grueling campaign and nasty attacks.
Now that the election is over, save for a handful of uncalled races, we can think about how the legislature can push back against a would-be dictator of a president. Along with undoing the worst of his policies — restoring cuts to Medicaid, health care subsidies, and SNAP; abolishing the ICE Gestapo and implementing the kind of meaningful immigration reform embodied in the 2024 bill that Trump torpedoed; revoking the illegal tariffs; ending his war of choice in Iran and enforcing sanctions against Russia — the new Congress must hold individuals accountable for the harm that they have caused to the people they targeted. They must also hold corporations and their executives accountable for the bribes they paid (and likely passed on to customers and workers in the form of higher prices and lower wages) and the business deals they made with Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin himself. I’m not sure impeaching Trump himself is the way to go, especially since we’ll end up with white nationalist “heritage American” proponent J.D. Vance as president instead, but impeaching and removing the traitors, fascists, incompetents, and crooks in his cabinet would be a good start. When those we’ve elected to power violate laws, enrich themselves at our expense, shoot people in the streets, and betray our allies and we, like the people of Hungary earlier this year, successfully push back in elections despite the tilted playing field, we can’t let bygones be bygones. We must think of the future, but we must also address the mistakes of the past that brought us to the brink.
