Saying No (Loudly) to Trump
The Blue Wave victories in so many elections across the nation this week are significant—not just because Democrats won in many races, but because they won those races decisively and on a raft of issues.
Results like these seem to reflect not just voter anger on one hot button issue, but on many issues, from immigration to the economy, to voting rights, to redistricting. And that bodes ill for a Republican Party that, as Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times said, “has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago.”
Consider the huge wins for governor in Virginia and New Jersey—both, as it happens, won by more centrist Democratic women, and each at or near landslide proportions. (For the geeks: a landslide victory generally is thought of as a win by 15 percentage points or more.)
The stunning mayoral win in NYC by Democrat Zohran Mamdani may seem an outlier, coming as it does from such a heavily Blue place as the Apple. But it also reflects a surge in support by Democrats for non-traditional candidates who can shake things up while adhering to left-of-center party orthodoxy.
In New Jersey Democrat Mikie Sherrill beat Trump clone Republican Jack Ciatartelli 56.2 percent to 43.2 percent (a 13-percent margin). In Virginia, it was even more of a trouncing: Democrat Abigail Spanberger walloped incumbent GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears 57.5 percent to 42.3 percent (a 15.2-percent margin).
Each of the losers hitched their wagons to Donald Trump—who, for years now, has been a bloated, trash-talking drag on so many down-ballot races, yet who never seems to lose his appeal (at least in public) to GOP party leaders.
That may be changing.
As Bouie noted: “Supporters of the president might pooh-pooh these results as unrepresentative. This isn’t a presidential electorate, they might say; there are different circumstances. But New Jersey and New York City both had high turnout for off-year elections (Virginia had a slight increase). In other words, it really is the case that Trump specifically, in his capacity as president, inspires ferocious energy and opposition against him among a large part of the voting public.”
Such ferocity is grounded in the growing realization that “both Trump and his administration are less interested in helping ordinary Americans than they are in fulfilling their idiosyncratic program of austerity, pain and deprivation. They are all stick, no carrot.”
The Orange Pustule did not do himself any favors in his post-election hissy fit when he blamed the GOP disaster on the fact that “Trump wasn’t on the ballot.”
This is a narcissist’s way of saying: “Don’t blame me; you fucked up.” But in fact, Trump was on the ballot, figuratively, all across the country and all across the country great swaths of voters rejected him and his repellant policies.
Not a great look when the economy is tanking, when we are in a record government shutdown and when Trump goons still are grabbing people off the streets, channeling awful images of Nazi thuggery in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Added Nate Cohn in The Times: “There’s no guarantee that this track record of Democratic success will continue next fall, but there’s pretty good reason to think the midterms will go well for Democrats . . .”
Provided, of course, Trump doesn’t try to thwart the midterm elections by declaring martial law, or some other bullshit, claiming the country is in riotous turmoil that requires his strong, authoritarian hand.
But given the voter attitudes on display this week, that’s gonna be a much harder sell—to the public, the courts and even to Congress—as the months go by into next year.
Then, of course, there are those Epstein files.
Frank Van Riper is a Washington, DC-based documentary photographer, journalist, author and lecturer. During 20 years with the New York Daily News, he served as White House correspondent, national political correspondent and Washington Bureau news editor. He was a 1979 Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
