The Democratic Party has ample cause for celebration. Exceeding optimistic expectations for the midterm elections, they not only recaptured control of the Senate—widely considered a reach a couple of weeks ago—they may wind up with 56-to-44 dominance. Most governors and state houses, assumed by most analysts to be permanently consigned to the red zone, flipped from majority GOP to majority Democrat. Mississippi, the most Republican state in the Union, may wind up with a Democratic senator when the razor-thin near-tie vote is finalized. This was the biggest repudiation of a sitting president since 1974, when voters sent a giant eff-you message to the Republicans two months after Watergate forced Nixon to resign.
Repudiation, however, was all this was. It was not, and could not be, an endorsement of Democratic policies. Could not, because Democrats didn’t nationalize these races around a Contract with America-like list of promises and commitments, as GOP leader Newt Gingrich did to great effect in 1994.
Democrats didn’t promise anything. Wisely—the results speak for themselves—they refused to articulate policy planks and thus avoided attacks over specific issues. Also wisely, they got out of the way when Donald Trump, aka He Who Must Not Be Ignored, insisted on making the 2026 contests a referendum about his unpopular self. For Democratic pols, watching Trump’s approval polls plummet to a record-low 32% in the Reuters-Ipsos survey the day before Election Day must have felt like a gift from God.
The problem for voters, and thus the Republic, is that these results will create a Grand Canyon-wide gap of expectations between a furious electorate that demands immediate improvement in its material conditions and a victorious party likely to interpret its electoral sweep as a blank check.
Voters, no one disagrees, were primarily driven by what has become known as “the affordability crisis”: high prices, low wages. They blamed Trump for (1) starting a war in the Middle East that sent energy and thus other prices soaring, thus (2) spending billions of dollars that would have better spent here at home, and then (3) not caring about their pain, not pretending to care and, instead, repeatedly bragging that he didn’t care. It was the Jonestown of political suicide—stunning in scale, pointless beyond belief, totally avoidable.
If the U.S. were an actual democracy, i.e. a system that permitted more than two center-right parties, the mandate of the will of heaven would be clear to Democrats: acknowledge Americans’ economic pain, announce a credible plan of action to cut prices and increase wages, and get to work. Part of this would involve, as Vice President JD Vance acknowledged the day after the midterms, ending the Iran War, i.e., admitting that we lost and begging the Iranians for terms. Another part would mean eliminating most foreign aid, especially to monstrous abominations like Israel. Democrats, after all, didn’t promise anything—so they should take their cue from the angry voters who brought them to the big dance.
But—again—that’s the rub. Democrats didn’t promise anything. They can objectively be forgiven (but won’t be by the voters) for doing their thing their way. We promised not to be Trump, they’ll say, and look! We’re not Trump. We promised to hold Trump and his cronies accountable. Tune in! We’ll have more House Oversight and impeachment hearings than you ever could have dreamed of!
There’s nothing wrong with accountability. We deserve hearings on Hegseth’s boat assassinations of Venezuelan fishermen and a full release of the Epstein files. We need to know about the Trumpies’ crypto grifts and international real estate scams and who’s behind blowing up that school full of kids and teachers in Iran.
But history as well as post-election statements make clear that investigations and subpoenas are about the only thing voters want and Democrats are willing to deliver. When it comes to the big stuff, the economic priorities voters clearly articulated, nothing will fundamentally change, as Joe Biden told donors the year before he was elected.
Democrats lost the 2024 presidential campaign in large part because Kamala Harris refused to repudiate Israel as it was committing its genocide in Gaza. They won’t repeat that mistake—no Zionist or Zionist-adjacent Democrat will be nominated, much less elected president, now that Democrats almost universally consider Israel to be an apartheid pariah state. Yet they’re still in bed with Ukraine.
Most Americans still support aid to Ukraine, but those approval numbers are steadily falling. That trendline will continue as stories like the recent discovery of a Zelensky regime torture chamber near Kyiv, run by the neo-Nazi government soldiers Ukraine’s supporters pretend do not exist, and books like “Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine,” written by former New York Times war correspondent Stephen Kinzer and put out by a major publisher, expose the pro-Ukraine propaganda machine.
Ever eager to live in the present rather than the near future, and to keep the military-industrial hellbeast well fed as long as possible, Democrats are scrambling to increase shipments of U.S. taxpayer money and weapons to Ukraine in the Congress they’ll dominate in the new year. Whatever you think of Russia and Ukraine, this is not what the American people voted for.
So will go the next two years. Democrats will revert to their go-tos: wars, identity politics, lawfare. Life, however, will not get better for the average American. So, by 2028, Republicans will still be able to make a populist pitch that they know better and, in any case, whatever happened or didn’t happen is the Democrats’ fault. Democrats will point out that, without the White House in their hands, they were unable to enact legislation. Which is true, but the last thing citizens will be in the mood to listen to will be more excuses.
Setting the stage for another entry in the cycle of Americans getting angry, lashing out at the incumbent party, flailing back and forth every two to four years.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)
