When I got up the morning after election day in 2016, my stomach knotted in dread. There was no upside to the Necrotic Toddler (as a friend of mine calls him) winning office, none. And the subsequent decade confirmed that. It wasn’t just his utter vileness — if there’s ever been a human being with no redeeming qualities, he’s it — but the degree to which Republicans rallied round and worshipped him as their golden calf.
Not that this surprised me. Living in the very red-state Florida Panhandle — my congressional district sent Matt Gaetz to Washington — I’d seen how desperately many of my neighbors longed to turn back the clock to the days before civil rights marchers and feminists took away “their” country. When Reagan won, they thought their victory was beginning; when Clinton, a Baby Boom liberal, got into office in 1992, they were apopleptic at being denied.
George W. Bush, like Reagan, offered them fresh hope, only it was an uglier hope. After years of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, everyone was much more open about how they wanted mandatory Christianity, white supremacy and a big, authoritarian nanny state that could lock people up without trial and spy on everyone. The same right-wingers who’d celebrated when G. Gordon Liddy in the 1990s gave advice on shooting federal agents in body armor decided that when they were in charge, obedience to the state was the prime directive.
So the ugliness of the Toddler era has not surprised me, but it has constantly horrified me.
Waking up last Wednesday was the opposite of that. Texas state government turned blue. A majority of state governors will be Democrats. Democrats will have the majority in the House and the Senate. First black woman governor. First Latina governor of Texas (as someone put it elsewhere “You drop Greg off at the governor’s office. When you come to pick him up, he’s a girl named Gina.”). First Native American governor. And a lot of remarkable men. Vivek Ramaswamy, who thought smearing a woman sexually abused by her stepfather was a winning campaign tactic, bit the dust (points to Amy Acton, Ohio governor-elect, for refusing to take his concession call).
It’s all the more remarkable because it was completely impossible. Political bloggers whose judgment I trust have been saying for several years that flipping the Senate wasn’t going to happen, not this year nor 2028. Too many Dems up for re-election. Too many Republicans in safe seats. The math was against us.
Texas? Sure, James Talarico might seem popular, but this was Texas. Dems making serious progress? Don’t kid yourself.
There were all the ways the Toddler might interfere with the process yet again. There were techbros spending millions to support Republicans. There was the simple fact that past predictions of a blue wave hadn’t panned out, to the point polling seemed irretrievably broken. Maybe it would happen again.
It didn’t happen again. And everyone who writes about or analyzes politics should learn from it: more is possible than we think.
Of course this isn’t the beginning of the end; as Churchill said, it’s the end of the beginning. The Toddler is still in the White House; after a couple of days of stunned silence, he’s come out swinging. Which is typical for him because his tiny excuse for a brain cannot accept “you didn’t get what you want.” Every time he’s thwarted, he finds some other way to push the boundaries and attack. Of course, if Republicans had kept control of Congress, that would inspire him to push the boundaries too — that’s what he does. He’s already screaming that nobody better try impeaching his wonderful staff just because they’re corrupt crooks — that would hurt his fee-fees and he won’t stand for it!
Appointing Stephen Miller, the odious architect of his deportations policy, as his Chief of Staff is a way to show he’s not backing off, not changing, not bending. Typically for the Toddler, it’s also a stupid move. As pundit Rebecca Solinit says, in Facebook, Miller’s already influencing administration policy so giving him a promotion won’t change that. “But now he’ll be a lot more visible and he rivals JD Vance or may be the one person who exceeds Vance in unlikeability. At a time when Trump would be wise–but he will never be wise–to chart his course strategically and ruffle as few feathers as possible, Miller wants war and conflict and the infliction of harm and will make more enemies at a time when his opponents are far stronger than they were the last two years, when the administration got away with many outrages. He’ll make the hate at the heart of the administration more obvious and therefore more easy to oppose.”
And opposition works. The first two years, the Toddler got a lot accomplished because many people and institutions folded and collaborated in advance. That may change. Already the people in his orbit are playing the blame game as to who screwed up. Several of them are running for the exit like Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department official who complained civil-rights legislation is racist against white people (let us pause to mock Haley Stevens, the former Democrat who thought the winning move was jumping in through the exit). The Toddler will keep throwing his weight around, but he has a lot less weight.
I have no idea what the specific path forward is. Fortunately with so many Dems in office at so many levels of government, I think we have the option to try lots of things. Investigations. New regulations. Stuff that actually helps people, as Zohram Mamdani is doing in New York. Spotlighting the Toddler’s corruption and his loyalty to Putin. Simply not being Republicans: the new Texas attorney general has announced he’s dropping ex-AG Ken Paxton’s efforts to sue out-of-state doctors who mail Texans abortion pills.
Nothing about this spectacular election guarantees things can’t flip back. But there’s a lot Dems can do to keep the Republicans shrinking into irrelevance. And no matter what, we must remember, victory is always possible, even if it doesn’t look like it.
Booyah!
