Looking Back, and Ahead

On Sept. 11, 2023, I wrote a blog under this headline: “GOP: Please Nominate Trump.”

I wanted Trump to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential candidate because he would be so easy to defeat, and also because he would take down GOP House and Senate candidates with him. I predicted a blue tsunami – Democratic control of the presidency, House and Senate – and I kept on predicting it right up to Election Day.

And obviously I was wrong. It didn’t happen. The opposite did. Republicans won it all.

But I stand by my reasoning for those predictions, and I’ll use the same reasoning now to predict the same result for the 2026 midterm elections that I predicted for 2024: a blue tsunami with Democrats taking control of both houses, even if Trump’s plan to rig the election by extreme gerrymandering works.

The reasons that I was so far off with those predictions in 2023 are contained in the words I wrote then:

“I want people to be forced to look at him and see him clearly for what he is. Right now the news media is focusing on horserace stuff: who’s winning, who’s losing, who wants to be vice president, who has a chance, who doesn’t, why…

“But once we get down to a two-person race, the media will focus such an unmercifully bright spotlight on Trump that decent Republicans will have no choice but to face up to who he is, and what he is. When that happens the unfairness of the College of Electors will not matter. Americans will turn out in numbers more overwhelming than ever before to throw the bum out. … I have more faith in the American people than to believe they would even come close to electing a thug like Trump.”

But then they did, so what happened?

Two things.

First, I assumed the legacy press would do its job, but it didn’t. Remember the Trump-Biden debate? Trump came across as vibrant while he filled the airways with a string of baldfaced lies, and Biden came across as old. That night, and long afterward, the press focused on Biden’s weaknesses, and largely ignored Trump’s constant barrage of provable lies, his growing affinity for fascism and a dictatorship, and, most importantly, Project 2025.

About that project: The press had known for a long time that the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and more than 50 similarly minded groups had spent years writing a plan designed to replace our democracy with a dictatorship. Trump said he had never heard of it, though, so the press pretty much left it alone after that, focusing instead on Biden’s foibles. (Once elected, of course, Trump hired the project’s lead authors to help him implement it.)

Second, I assumed Democrats would be so outraged at Trump they would vote in droves, but they weren’t outraged and they didn’t vote. Harris lost the popular vote by nearly 2.3 million votes, but 9 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. Had they voted, and assuming they would have remained Democrat voters, she would have won by nearly 8 million votes. That would have exceeded Biden’s 7-million-vote victory over Trump, and Biden’s victory was considered a “stomp.”

And consider: Trump’s opponent could hardly have been weaker. Harris had four strikes against her from the beginning. She is Black, she is a woman, she had no time at all to prepare for a race she did not expect to be in, and she was never a formidable candidate to begin with. When she was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination, she polled a steady 3 percent. Considering all that, she did well.

My optimism for a blue tsunami is based on the plain-to-view fact that times are changing, and the reasons that allowed Trump to defeat Harris don’t exist any longer. They have even reversed. The legacy press is showing signs that it is coming out of its slumber and beginning to report Trump as he really is, a corrupt, criminally mentally ill, democracy-destroying dictator who cares only about himself. We the People already see that, clearly and unmistakably, as evidenced by the millions of energized people who turn out all over the nation week after week to express their disgust with Trump and publicly oppose him.

So, the press will improve, the people will vote, a Democratic Congress will result, and Donald Trump will become a crippled and pathetically weak lame-duck president – for as long as he lasts, which I doubt will be long. How long do you suppose it will take a Democratic Congress to impeach him, especially with all the choices it will have?

The organization Impeach Trump Again has released a formal impeachment resolution that features 17 impeachable offenses he has committed, the most recent of which was his mobilization of military forces into the streets of Los Angeles, in which the organization says he trampled on the US Constitution, the rights of peaceful protesters, the constitutional authority of the state of California, and the rule of law. It lists other impeachable offense as illegally kidnapping, detaining, and removing U.S. residents; illegally and unconstitutionally removing US residents, migrants and asylum-seekers to foreign prisons; unlawfully attempting to deport immigrants for peacefully protesting; unconstitutionally usurping Congress’ powers; defying court orders and unconstitutionally usurping judicial authority; abusing his power to seek retribution against perceived adversaries; co-opting and dismantling independent government oversight; unlawfully imposing tariffs; receiving foreign and domestic emoluments; unconstitutionally usurping local and state authority; abusing the emergency power; abusing the pardon power; corruptly dismissing criminal charges against Eric Adams; depriving citizens of their birthright; blocking efforts to secure U.S. elections; planning the forced removal of Palestinians from Gaza; and engaging in unlawful, corrupt practices during the 2024 presidential campaign. Really, how long do you think a Democratic Congress would put up with that?

More reason for optimism: Many of the people who elected Trump see that he has betrayed them, and they are not likely to vote any of his bootlickers into Congress. Rural people, farmers, small businesspersons, veterans, women, Black people, Brown people, people whose lives depend on Medicaid and SNAP, people who believed him when he said he would fix the economy but instead see him ruining it, nationalists who believed him when he said he would stay out of foreign wars and then bombed Iran, the tourism industry, which because of Trump expects a 9.4 percent drop in international visitors and a 20.2 percent drop in Canadian visitors — all these folks and others are seeing him and his bootlickers for what they are, and are bound to join us in drumming them out of government.

And don’t forget his criminal record, which, in the light of all else, will be considered more next year than it was in 2024. Before he was elected, he was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, 40 felony counts under the Espionage Act, 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiring against rights.

And those are just the federal charges. In Georgia he was charged with 13 counts including racketeering, forgery, perjury, filing false documents, making false statements, and more. In New York he was convicted of financial fraud, but he bragged that the conviction was abandoned after he appealed, but that’s only a half-truth. The amount he was ordered to pay was ruled exorbitant, but the fraud conviction stands. Also in New York, a federal judge convicted Trump of defaming the character of a woman he had been convicted of sexually assaulting (the judge called it rape).

Finally, look at what Trump has done since he took office that Americans are certain to oppose.

Knowing his poll numbers are atrocious – his overall popularity has dropped to under 40 percent and all his individual projects are under water — he is openly trying to rig the 2026 election for Republicans. He’s bludgeoning red state legislatures to gerrymander congressional districts in time to guarantee that MAGA Republicans will win regardless of what the people think. He doesn’t care that 75 percent of Americans believe that partisan gerrymandering is a major problem and only 9 percent believe that it should be legal. He doesn’t care because cheating is his only hope now. That’s pure corruption in our nation’s very highest office, being openly and shamelessly displayed.

He’s also unashamedly doing everything he can think of to keep people from voting, especially Black and Brown people, and people who live in Democrat-leaning cities. He wants to prohibit mail-in voting, replace voting machines with paper ballots, limit voting hours, put some areas’ voting polls in hard-to-get-to places, or places with limited parking, or whatever else would keep those people home.

And don’t forget his biggest problem of them all: the Epstein files. Even some of Trump’s most ardent fans are demanding to know what’s in those files. During the presidential campaign he promised to release the files if he were elected, but since he learned his name is in them — “multiple times” — he’s doing everything he can to distract our attention and keep them secret. The implication is that the files contain evidence he participated with convicted serial child molester Jeffrey Eckstein in seducing little girls. How many among us would openly support a pedophile for president, or support anyone who supported one?

Trump has to cheat, bend rules, break rules. To be openly corrupt. He has no other choice if he wants his toadies in Congress to remain there after next year’s election.

So yes, I can see the dawn breaking. We will win the 2026 midterm election and reverse history. And all we have to do is refuse to give up, keep turning out, and vote.

I’ll close this blog with the same words I closed that 2023 blog with:

“So please, Republicans. Give us Trump. Don’t back down on us now. Show us who you really are.”

A FEW RELATED RESOURCES curated by the folks at GrowPurpose.com