As early voting begins, there is a reason these 2026 midterm elections must be a tidal wave of Blue.
Not only must we restore Democratic leadership to both the House and the Senate. We also must elect governors, state representatives—down to even the fucking dog catcher—to create herd immunity against the plague of Donald Trump’s treason, bigotry, cruelty, ignorance and greed. This plague already has sundered the Republican Party, turning it from a viable political entity into a malignant cult of sycophants and spineless enablers worthy of neither support nor votes.
During the Vietnam War, the idea of destroying a village in order to save it enjoyed a terrible, brutal currency. It did not work. Today, however, the idea of destroying what the GOP has become in order that it regenerate itself into what it once had been, seems not only self-evident, but Socratic.
Herd immunity “occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or vaccination, that the communicable pathogen cannot maintain itself in the population, its low incidence thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity.”
“Once the herd immunity has been reached,” says Wikipedia, “disease gradually disappears from a population and may result in eradication or permanent reduction of infections to zero if achieved worldwide. Herd immunity created via vaccination has contributed to the reduction of many diseases…”
Sound familiar? Back when we were civilized, it’s what we did to eradicate—yes, eradicate—measles, one of the most contagious deadly diseases on the planet. That is, until Trump appointed a worm-brained former heroin addict, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to be secretary of HHS to spread his anti-vax idiocy over the federal health bureaucracy.
Result? Measles is back in America—and spreading.
Among the sentient, Donald Trump’s misfeasance and malfeasance already is known—there’s more than enough to impeach the SOB yet again. But that would be a waste of time and a diversion. (Been there, done that—and see where it got us.)
Leaving aside hobbling the U.S. economy—the bread-and-butter issue that is poised to bring down his party next month—the real tragedy of Trump is how he has diminished us as a nation on the world stage. To a generation that can remember the post-World War II Marshall Plan and Food-for Peace programs, Trump’s destruction of USAID at the urging of his odious toady Elon Musk, will live in infamy for the incontrovertible suffering and death it has caused among the world’s most needy.
All in the name of “government efficiency” that has proven to be bullshit.
But that’s not the worst.
“Donald Trump, meet Neville Chamberlain,” The New York Times’ Tom Friedman wrote this week. “When future students search online for ‘sellout,’ ‘appeaser’ or ‘traitor to his country’s core values,’ their two pictures will come up first, side by side. And deservedly so. At least Chamberlain [Britain’s pre-World War II prime minister] was trying, in what proved to be lethally misguided fashion, to avoid a world war. Trump is trying to avoid losing a few seats in Congress—and is likely to be no more successful in achieving his goal than Chamberlain was in achieving his.
“I have never believed that Trump was somehow an agent of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, or in his pay.” Friedman went on [n.b.: I agree on the latter; not on the former.] It is much worse. He simply does not cherish democracy. He cherishes money. And he has no problem selling out the first for the second … There is simply no core American value Trump will not sell out. Desperate to lower diesel prices, which are hurting Republicans in the midterms, Trump actually made a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, even though it offers a potential windfall for the Kremlin so it can bomb Ukraine harder … .”
Even spineless Republicans in Congress think this stinks. Ukraine, invaded by a Russian tyrant bent on dominion in Europe, has defiantly, heroically repulsed Putin and the Russian army for years. But now it may be on its last legs—and Donald Trump does not seem to give a rat’s ass.
But we do. Now, during early voting and in two and a half weeks on Election Day, comes an election that will define our history for generations. A wave of national revulsion over Trump and the plague he has caused is growing. But it still requires every single thinking American to vote.
This is not an election anyone can sit out. For herd immunity to work, there first must be a herd.
