It’s Celebration Time!

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here now. Tuesday’s election was a smashing. A stomping. A beautiful clobbering.

The results amounted to a loud rebuke of Donald Trump’s first year back in office. As Robert Hubbell put in his Today’s Edition Newsletter, “On Tuesday, we passed the test in every imaginable way. We exceeded high expectations. We changed the electoral landscape. We delivered a statement that cannot be ignored by Trump, his enablers, or the corporate media.”

Bottom line: It truly is celebration time, both for Democrats and democrats.

You’ve read all the results of Tuesday’s election, but it’s fun to read them again:

New York City: Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim and democratic socialist, defeated Andrew Cuomo in a landslide – 50.4% to $41.6%. Mamdani was expected to win, but not by that much, and not with more than half of the total vote.

California: Californians voted by a nearly 2-to-1 margin – 65% to 35% — to redraw the state’s maps to yield as many as five House seats for the party next year. Trump’s chief propagandist, Karoline Leavitt, said the election was “rigged” and “fraudulent,” but that mammoth margin makes her look plain down foolish, more foolish than ever.
New Jersey: In what was expected to be a nail-biter, Democrat Mikie Sherrill bludgeoned Republican “Trump of Trenton” candidate Jack Ciattarelli 56.2% to 43.2%.

Virginia: Democrat Abigail Spanberger pounded Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, 57.2% to 42.6%, to become Virginia’s first female governor.

Also Virginia: Democrat Jay Jones was elected attorney general despite his past incendiary text messages and having been caught driving 116 miles an hour on a Virginia highway. Despite heavy negative advertising from his opponent, Republican Jason Miyares, Jones won 52.5% to Miyaras’ 47.1%.

Maine: Voters rejected a Republican-sponsored ballot measure that would have eliminated two days of early absentee voting, required photo identification in order to vote, banned prepaid return envelopes for absentee ballots, and limited drop boxes. They also approved a measure that will enable families to try to get a troubled relative’s guns taken away.

Pennsylvania: Voters granted new 10-year terms to three Democratic justices on the state’s supreme court. That matters because this court, the highest court in the most important swing state in the country. will have a liberal majority during the 2028 presidential election.

Detroit: Democrat Mary Sheffield became the city’s first female mayor, and the first new mayor in a dozen years.

Charlotte: Two Democratic women won seats on city council and the school board that have been held by Republicans seemingly since forever.

Georgia: In an upset, Democrats ousted two Republican members of Georgia’s utility board, a statewide commission that hasn’t had a Democratic member since 2007.

Cincinnati: Incumbent Democratic Mayor and Indian-origin Aftab Pureval slammed JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, 78% to 22%.

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And on, and on, and on it goes.

To sum it all up, and again quoting Hubbell, “Americans voted for democracy, decency, the rule of law, and people before party and profits. They voted against kings, creeping authoritarianism, corruption and deceit.”

One real possibility we all can hope for, and expect, is that MAGA Republicans will read the handwriting on the wall, see that Trump is reducing their chances to be re-elected (or elected), and start turning against him to save their own skins. It will take only a very few, and Trump will be impeached – for any number of reasons.

We all can help that along by contacting our senators and representatives and letting them know how we feel, and there is a new, super-simple way to do it. Click on democracy.io, fill in your address, and it will show you three names: your two U.S. senators and your House member. Click on whomever you wish to contact and write your comment in the box below the names. It really is that simple.

And it is effective. The leaders of Indivisible are former aides to congresspersons, and they say that contacting your representatives is one of the most powerful actions you can take.

So yes, it’s celebration time. The victories on Tuesday were so overwhelming and widespread that it would be impossible not to celebrate. So let’s take a couple of days and enjoy ourselves, but after that we must redouble our efforts to defend democracy. We must keep on turning out in ever-increasing numbers to No Kings rallies and town hall meetings whenever and wherever they exist.

And we certainly must not get big-headed and think because Tuesday’s vote was so nearly perfect for our side that we can relax. Nate Cohen, The New York Times’ chief political analyst, points out that although Democrats did much better than the polls suggested — in New Jersey they underestimated Democrats by 10 points and in Virginia by five points – it continues a pattern of polls underestimating Democrats in recent off-year elections, while badly underestimating Republicans when Trump is on the ballot., as he will be, figuratively anyway, in next year’s midterm elections.

So believe it. We are winning. And if we keep our heads out of the sand and redouble our efforts, we will win again – big time.

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