For years, we’ve been drowning in it. A fire hose of venom, absurdity and cruelty, aimed at us every morning from Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers. The news kept getting bleaker and bleaker, and somewhere along the way, many of us went numb.
Then came Tuesday night, and the fire hose turned around.
House seats. Senate seats. Governorships. State legislatures from coast to coast. It was hard to keep up. Every time I refreshed my screen, there was another win, and I realized I was grinning in a way that almost seemed lost to me.
I haven’t felt this way since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s the feeling of winning again, and winning big, and historically, and of being proud. Proud to be an American. Proud to be a Democrat. It’s been so long since I could say that without a knot in my stomach or a lump in my throat.
The last few years have been a grueling grind. On trips to Europe, I felt a kind of embarrassment I never expected to feel. When you told people you were American, you could see them pause and wonder, “Are you one of the Trump people?” We were getting pounded, over and over and over again, watching our democracy shredded in real time and wondering whether anything could stop it.
Trump ran over everything in his path.
But on Tuesday, he hit a wall. And pretty damn hard.
In the final days of the campaign, he held 28 rallies, pleading with the faithful to vote as if he were on the ballot. Here’s the thing about that plea: the people in the arenas weren’t the only ones listening. Everyone else heard it too. They took him at his word. They treated the election as a referendum on him, and they voted, overwhelmingly, against him.
And those people in the rally? They stayed home. Hopefully, they’ll bury their dimwitted heads forever.
The margins in some of these races were stunning. James Talarico’s victory in Texas still feels like science fiction. Texas! And a Democratic governor to boot — a king-size Texas boot. Then there were Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas. States that many had written off, turning blue before our eyes. The red this time was not for GOP wins, it was a flashing red of warning.
And seeing it all in black and white is something else entirely. When people are given a real choice and a reason to show up, they will show up.
There was a lesson for the billionaire class, too. Elon Musk poured his fortune into Ohio and Texas, and it didn’t buy him a damn thing. He got booted like an illegally parked Tesla. There is something deeply satisfying about watching money lose to ordinary citizens who stood in line, filled out a ballot and did their civic duty. No amount of cash can match a country that decides it has had enough, of Trump, of Musk, of grift and grab and gild and greed.
If you cast a vote on Tuesday to push back against authoritarianism and tyranny, I suspect you feel what I feel today. Relief, certainly. But also something that has been in short supply: hope. Oh and immense joy. Such joy. An overwhelming sense of joy.
We the people spoke. And in speaking, we may have just saved our democracy.
Now, let’s be honest about what comes next, because it’s a mountain on the scale of Mt. Everest.
There is so much to fix. So much to protect. So many people who need help, from families squeezed by rising costs to communities that have watched their institutions weakened and their rights put at risk.
Democrats have their work cut out for them, and God knows they haven’t always been good at seizing moments like this one. Voters didn’t hand over power as a gift. They issued a mandate, and mandates can be squandered. The party’s job now is to govern with urgency, competence and a spine, and to deliver for the people who showed up.
But that’s for tomorrow, and the next day, and the long months ahead.
For today, let’s allow ourselves some of that joy. We finally landed a big swing at Donald Trump’s bulbous head, and it connected with a giant whack. Take a moment to feel this victory. This almost David vs. Goliath win, only now, we are Goliath.
For the first time in a very long time, I feel freaking proud to be an American again.
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