WBUR: Democrats won big. I hope they're ready for what comes next
THIS SHOULD STAND ALONE FOR THE ISSUES IT RAISES!
IT IS TRAGIC THAT THOSE WHO CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE MORAL
DEPRAVITY IGNORE THE HATE THEY EMBRACE!
IN MASSACHUSETTS, A WEALTHY TRUMPER BLABBED SUPERFICIAL
RHETORIC ABOUT HIS OVERSIMPLIFIED SOLUTIONS....DID ANY SINGLE
MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN CONDEMN ICE GETAPO THUGS INJURING,
ABUSING AND KILLING INNOCENENTS? PARENTS REPORTED THAT ICE GESTAPO
THUGS KIDNAPPED THEIR CHILDREN AND ICE PRETENDS THEY WERE
"UNACCOMPANIED" ?
ICE GESTAPO THUGS ARE USING UNMARKED VEHICLES TO RUN DOWN
PEOPLE....HOW IMMUNE CAN REPUBLICANS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS BE?
THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICS! THIS IS ABOUT MORAL DEPRAVITY!
Democrats won big. I hope they're ready for what comes next
Turns out there is a floor below which Americans will not sink.
We drew the line at smearing as a liar an Ohio physician whose stepfather was indicted for raping her as a child. We rejected the racist characterization as a jihadist of a Michigan-born Rhodes Scholar of Egyptian heritage. We recoiled at the perversion of a Texas educator’s empathy for gay and trans youth into a penchant for pedophilia.
Dr. Amy Acton will be moving into the governor’s mansion in Ohio. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is now the U.S. senator-elect from Michigan. And come January, former middle school teacher James Talarico will represent Texas in the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress.
Democrats are entitled to a moment to celebrate the magnitude of this rout. Kansas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1932. Maine put to rest the fiction that Sen. Susan Collins is a Republican “moderate.” South Carolina, a state President Donald Trump won two years ago by nearly 18 points, scoffed at sending the untested sibling of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham to the U.S. Senate.
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The victors have earned a moment to savor those wins. Note: one moment, not two.
Hatred and lies lost in this ugly election cycle, but make no mistake, the misogyny, bigotry and fearmongering that fueled them have retreated only as far as the muck that spawned them. Trump and Vice President JD Vance will be in the White House for another two years and they won’t waste any time licking their wounds.
Do we doubt that the financial self-dealing of the Trump family will only accelerate? That the pace of Trump’s retribution campaign against his political opponents will quicken? How soon before he pressures one or more U.S. Supreme Court Justices to retire during the lame-duck session so he can extend the reign of ultra-conservatives on the nation’s highest court?
Democrats need to focus. This is no time for academic debates about the relative value of radical and incremental change, no time for distracting dreams of yet another impeachment trial. There is an urgency in these election results. About the cost of living. About economic inequality. About authoritarianism. About extrajudicial killings masquerading as foreign policy and immigration control.
Democrats need to focus. This is no time for academic debates about the relative value of radical and incremental change, no time for distracting dreams of yet another impeachment trial.
The voters are not merely rejecting Trumpism. They are calling out a Congress and a judiciary that have ceded their constitutionally mandated authority to rein in a reckless executive branch that is pursuing policies that have exacerbated the already historic gap between the haves and the have-nots and that have broken new ground for gratuitous, lawless cruelty.
There are squalid ICE detention centers to be shuttered, federal funding to be redirected from a feckless war in Iran to the fight for survival in Ukraine, and a domestic health care system that has been eviscerated by the incompetence and malign intent of the Trump administration.
There are tariffs to be revoked and relationships with allies to be restored. There are ethics rules to be enacted immediately to outlaw the corrupt practices that have enriched Trump and his cronies, and undermined decades of environmental regulations that protected our right to clean water and unpolluted air. There is unglamorous but crucial campaign finance reform to be passed that will spare us another $10 billion spending spree in future midterm elections and that will impede the ability of billionaires to shape national policy and impact national and international security. Yes, we are looking at you, Elon Musk!
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Americans cannot afford the internecine warfare that so often characterizes dealings in the Democratic party. Let the name Haley Stevens echo through the cloakroom on Capitol Hill as Democrats choose their leadership team in January. The eleventh-hour decision by the lame-duck congresswoman to embrace Trump-endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over El-Sayed in the Michigan U.S. Senate race squandered any future Stevens might have had in politics. That Stevens lost the primary to El-Sayed apparently did not deliver a direct enough rejection to her ego.
Entrenched Democrats in Congress take note: governance is not about you; it’s about us. We send you to Capitol Hill in our stead. Some of you will just have to recognize that this seismic election has a message for you, too. The voters want to shake things up. We want new leadership. Yes, we are looking at you, Sen. Chuck Schumer!
Despite billions of dollars spent, congressional district lines hastily redrawn, and judicial challenges to election integrity mounted, this week the American people spoke in the unambiguous voice of moral revulsion. Trump has gone too far; we have had enough. But midterm elections, no matter how dramatic the results, are no guarantee of the future. Only six years elapsed between the Democrats’ momentous post-Watergate victories in 1974 and the election of President Ronald Reagan, after all.
All we have is now. That is all we ever have. Democrats, be bold.
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Eileen McNamara is an emerita professor of journalism at Brandeis University. The author of a biography of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, she won a Pulitzer Prize as a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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