Victory with a Caution Label: What Voters Just Said

A big Democratic night With historic warning, Democrats ran the table in the year's biggest races, according to the Associated Press. Abigail Spanberger won Virginia's governorship over winsome Earl Sears. Mickey Sherrill captured New Jersey. Democrats swept three Pennsylvania Supreme Court seats and blue sided ballot measures carried from Maine to Colorado. AP's voter survey says cost and the economy dominated. New York City also elected Zoran Mandani, its first Muslim and the youngest in more than a century mayor. Republicans tied themselves to Trump. Later, he claimed online Trump wasn't on the ballot and shut down, explaining GOP losses. Celebrate, sure, but off years are noisy. The parties that look invincible in November often find gravity in the midterms, history says caution. In 1997, Republicans had a good off year in Virginia and New Jersey. In 1998, Democrats gained House seats. In 2013, Democrats took Virginia. In 2014, Republicans flipped the Senate. In 2001, Democrats won the off year governors. In 2002, Republicans posted rare midterm gains. Sometimes signals align. 2005 led into 2006 Democratic waves and 2017 led to 2018. But there's no straight line to 2026. The smart move now is to turn last night's energy, if you're a Democrat, into visible policy gains that voters feel on prices, safety and service. What's the real message voters were sending election night this week? It was in fact, we're kind of tired of Trump. We want to vote anything that doesn't have a Trump or a MAGA or a GOP label. It was a great night. Democrats doesn't mean they'll necessarily take over House next year, especially if you know whose thumb is on the scale telling election supervisors what votes to count and which ones not to count. Let's dig a little deeper here. I don't want to go overboard with this whole idea that elections and off years are meaningless. They are meaningful. They can sometimes suggest a real momentum change. And let's not forget, it's not just that the Democrats won't last night they won by some significant margins. A lot of people were anticipating the New Jersey governor's race to be quite close. In fact, it wasn't close at all. It was pretty much a blowout there as well as in Virginia. Other other lessons learned here. We still live in a democracy where the quality of candidates matter. And by most accounts, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, who, who is the current lieutenant governor, was a dud of a candidate, said kind of crazy, odd, weird, stupid things. Frequently. The party wasn't really excited about her and no surprise there whatsoever. But I also think it is important to note as other observers have, the fact that the no Kings Day protest was the largest recorded protest since 1970. Earth Day does show there is true anger percolating in, in the Democratic base in America. It's always good for your political team if your voters are angry and there's bipartisan consensus on that. Ted Cruz has warned the Republican from Texas has warned his fellow Republicans to watch out, to not underestimate passion. Republican party activists now have and Republican Democratic activists have and Democratic base voters. He's reading the tea leaves of what came out of this no Kings Day just a few weeks ago. And when you factor that in with these most recent election results from yesterday, it's not particularly looking good based on conventional metrics. Now, the huge wild card here that no one really knows is next year in close battleground congressional district, will the United States federal government send in troops to monitor things but potentially do it in a way where they scare away Democratic votes? Now that would have seemed like sort of bizarre conspiracy mongering 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even a year ago. But no serious person can underestimate the potential of that happening in 2026. We've seen highly selective and questionable uses of the United States military against Americans on American soil. It's happening all over the place this year, whether you're looking at Chicago or California elsewhere. There's no reason to think that this will not be done strategic and in a targeted manner next year, the week of the election in certain key precincts. If that's the case, none of these other issues, historical trends, passion might matter. It may be that in this case the incumbent Republicans, the current GOP majority in the House can stay because enough votes can be manipulated. So we'll be keeping our eyes on that right here on filter other big messages that came out. All of these candidates who won and won big ran on the platform of we're trying to make the economy more affordable. Now, interestingly, some of them ran as centrist, even right of center Democrats. Some, as the case of the New York City mayor elect, ran on a much further left platform, actually embracing the term Democratic socialist. And he was the only high profile figure to do that. That's a pretty rare thing in the United States politics. So what are we to make of that? Certainly the Republicans had a disappointing night. Now you could say, well Virginia, certainly New Jersey has historically a very Democratic state, but there was tightening of the polls going into this race and, and it ended up not even being close, with Sherrill winning big in New Jersey and Spanberger having a very respectable, very huge showing and arguably both won in landslides, if you look at the typical definition of a landslide being 10 points. So very, very strong night for Democrats. Can they build on that? Can they demonstrate to voters that they actually buy into this idea? They that they should focus on economic matters, not broader cultural issues, and deliver some kind of meaningful results? Now, it's very hard in politics and government to show results in a year, and by the time these people are sworn in until the next Election Day, it's going to be less than a year. But it is enough time to reposition at least the party in some states, in the minds of some voters. So it could very, very well make a huge difference.