Midterm Shellacking
As I drive around New York City, I often notice long lines forming on sidewalks. Most often they are young hipsters responding to an Instagram trend and lining up for a bagel, cupcake, pizza or some useless fashion accessory. You also often see older people lining up with shopping carts and grocery bags outside a church or a non-profit for a handout of food and other essentials.
Every Wednesday a church opposite my office in Brooklyn, hands out fresh produce and canned goods. A line begins to form early and winds round the block.
On BBC I saw a news report which showed cars lined for miles waiting to pick up free food from a church in North Carolina.
This is a recent phenomenon, exacerbated over the last few months. Soup kitchens have always existed to feed the hungry and the homeless in this wealthy country. One could tell from observing the people lining up now, that they are not homeless and most likely come from some established means.
As I exited the polling station a week before election day, there was already talk in the press from pollsters about an imminent “BlueWave”. Some were using the term “BlueNami” and as I was closely watching the senate races in Michigan, Georgia and Texas where upstart Democrats were gearing up to make history, there was clearly a great sense of hope.
Having suffered whiplash in 2016 and 2024, I was not so sure how things would pan out. My faith in pollsters and polls was at an all-time low. While the numbers and metrics on early voting looked encouraging, talk about Republicans “don’t poll” and they only vote on election day, did dampen my enthusiasm.
With astronmical gas prices, SNAP (food assistance) benefits decimated, Health Care costs soaring, inflation taking its toll on the basics, interest rates making home ownership untenable, personal debt at an all-time high, the economy was clearly in freefall.
And then you saw trillions of dollars being spent on an AI golden goose, promising to ravage the land with data centers. The oligarchs were flaunting their wealth and fawning over a president who was enriching himself and his family without shame. Billions were being spent from the treasury to support a war that was making things worse for the whole planet. Billions more were being asked to finance the Genocidal machinations of a morally bankrupt Israeli government.
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In this scenario a blue wave seemed quite possible. The young people were hurting, watching their country descend into chaos with ICE raids and detention camps, harking back to a time many thought we would never go back to. The senseless murder of unarmed protesters in Minneapolis had struck a nerve. Images of a leveled Gaza could not be unseen. Attacks on the most vulnerable population of our society, as being seen as the unraveling of our gendered social order, was just not making sense to anyone, while planetary problems of climate change were being ignored. And then they wanted to broadcast a state sanctioned execution on a live stream.
Congress had become a rubber stamp operation to a mad king’s whims, whose preoccupation with building memorials unto himself and gilding the White House all the while being tone deaf to the suffering of the people, had become insupportable.
On November 3rd 2026, a blue wave crashed with the force of a Tsunami, with women candidates leading the way. Despite the millions poured into running hate campaigns and playing on people’s fears and prejudices, citizens spoke from their heart. The untold amount of money spent on advertisements barking, Democrats are for “They and Them” and Republicans are for “You” died in a whimper. It was too old for 2026. Presidential babble “your son goes off to school as Timmy and comes home as Tammy” didn’t sway anyone with a brain. Hate targeting faith and family backfired as it always should. Elon Musk’s cesspool of ill-gotten money was washed away into the sewer.
The president obliged by calling into the New York Times and saying he would accept the results and concluded that the loss was solely because he was not on the ballot. His bellicose pronouncements about fraud in elections and how he would not accept results if his candidates did not win, turned out to be just hot air. The emperor without clothes refused to face a mirror. No surprise there.
So now that the people have spoken what comes next.
This victory clearly gives the Democrats some teeth. Whether those teeth are used for biting or chewing is a choice that will be before the committees that will oversee the executive. Letters requesting oversight can now be turned into subpoenas forcing accountability. The blatant corruption can be investigated and the guilty censured. Confirmed officials could be impeached for dereliction of duty. Funding Israel and its military will be a sticking point for centrist Democrats and Republicans and would have to be reckoned with as many who voted will be watching.
Then the elephant in the room would have to be contended with. Will the shift in power reign in the worst instincts of an unhinged president or will they exacerbate them, is a question no one has the answer to. Will the lame duck president resign to more home renovations and find new golf courses to destroy, or will he start new wars — it’s anyone’s guess.
Should the man who engineered a coup against his own government be impeached for a record third time and will that really amount to anything useful other than theatrics, is another formidable question that will face the new members.
While no new bills will be turned into law in any great hurry, some much needed regulation will come into play. Breaks will be put on the AI juggernaut that promises to hang humanity on the precipice of extinction. USAID would need to be restored and the culprits who destroyed it should be held accountable. All the appropriated funds that were clawed from PBS, CPB, NPR, NEH, NIH, NEA and various other institutions that make America great, hopefully will be restored. Most of all, the rising cost of health care and groceries would need to be front and center, if we are to expect a real reset in 2028.
While the pendulum always swings, it has not swung this decisively for some time now. I hope this means something and I hope the Democrats can make sure the breadlines cease to exist or they will. As we see all around the world, Generation Z is watching, and they do not go quietly into the night.
In 2020, Joe Biden proclaimed often during the campaign that the election was a battle for America’s soul. This one was clearly for its heart.
