Well, Tuesday was fun. Unless you’re Donald Trump.
For months, Democrats moaned about what lost, little lambs they were, searching for a breadcrumb trail back to political relevance in Washington.
Should we go left? Baaa. Should we take a middle path? Baaa. Should we go — oh no, don’t go right! Big Bad Wolf. Ba ba ba!
Election day comes along and — bam! — victories in New York City, California, New Jersey and Virginia prove there’s still life left in this ol’ political bag of wool.
“I’m not a member of any organized political faith,” the early 20th-century humorist Will Rogers famously said. “I’m a Democrat.”
Turns out the only thing the party of opposition needed was a tone-deaf president to confirm just about everything they’ve been saying. The man in the White House certainly obliged.
Is Trump in this just for the rich?
Cue the Mar-a-Lago theme party, Great Gatsby meets Florida man, as people form modern-day bread lines around food banks because of the government shutdown and SNAP cutoffs.
Does the president care about Americans?
Cut to Trump’s social media to see a meme depicting the president piloting an airplane over the country, literally dropping a load on America.
Are there any limits to the president’s contempt for rules that apply to the rest of us?
Bring on the bulldozers to tear down the White House East Wing.
Democrats couldn’t ask for a better foil than Donald J. Trump, and the results of off-year elections Tuesday are an early indication that Americans may be recovering from their swoon for the Oval Office pitchman.
OK, maybe Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina is a nice out-of-touch accent note, yelling at airport security staff when they failed to arrive at her car ready to carry her on their shoulders to the boarding gate.
Meanwhile, the rest of us wonder whether our flights will win the shutdown lottery as the FAA cancels 10% of air traffic because controllers (checks notes) just can’t take it anymore.
Here’s my big takeaway from Tuesday.
Results in California, New York, New Jersey and Virginia show that Democrats do not need a unified field theory of politics. They need to be Democrats, in all their disorganized glory.
Centrist, where being a centrist matches what the voters want. Socialist Democrat, where the voters want that — whatever it turns out to be.
It’s an all-of-the-above lesson, and the more of it the better. Find good candidates who represent their districts and support them.
Whether it’s Zohran Mamdani’s plan for free buses and day care in New York City, or Mikie Sherrill’s pledge to declare a utility bill emergency as governor of New Jersey — the takeaway is that voters do not want a brand.
They want solutions.
A political movement starts from the bottom up. Voters are seeing firsthand what top-down ideology looks like, as Republicans either run for cover or tuck under the MAGA king’s golden umbrella.
Yes, Abigail Spanberger’s win in Virginia was driven by federal layoffs and the shutdown.
But her voters understand that it’s the Republican my-way-or-the-highway strategy piled on top of DOGE cuts that trapped us in the nation’s longest government shutdown.
The demand for government that works is right in front of us. It’s in Annapolis, where voters set off a Jared Littmann landslide into the mayor’s office because he promised to make government responsive and effective.
Competence as a winning strategy.
It’s in Gaithersburg, where voters rejected calls for rent control and developer mandates to give Jud Ashman a third term as mayor to address housing affordability with zoning.
Understanding how things work makes a difference.
And it’s in Boston where Mayor Michelle Wu won a resounding endorsement to move forward with her aggressive climate and housing plan through a new City Council supermajority.
Homegrown solutions.
Let’s say it again. Voters want fixes for their problems, not empty slogans.
Trump’s presidency has been a slog, and we’re not even at the end of the first year. Every day, you wake up only to be gobsmacked by his latest shamfuggery.
Is he accepting another airplane as a gift from a foreign potentate, or is it another crown today?
Who’s the trade war enemy now? First, it was China, then it was Canada, then it was everybody except Argentina. Now the president has reset tariffs on goods from China.
Immigration agents in combat fatigues are chasing preschool teachers, and the federal prosecutors who are not getting fired try to send sandwich throwers to prison.
Trump will be on the ballot in Maryland next year, just as he was in California, New Jersey, New York and Virginia.
But the Democrats who win — it’s almost always Democrats in Maryland — will do it by focusing on solving problems: housing, insurance, food, jobs and affordability. Throw transportation, climate change and the Chesapeake Bay in there, just for good measure.
Gov. Wes Moore and state lawmakers can decide to twist themselves pretzely and go after the lone Republican U.S. representative from Maryland, the ever-toady Andy Harris.
Trump will be the backdrop, for sure.
The right choice is to ignore him when you can, fight back when you must, but get on with the business of solving problems at hand without him.
No one can predict the future.
It might be war with Venezuela before Thanksgiving, or Ozempic for everyone at Christmas — unless you’re on Medicare or Medicaid.
The next act in this threepenny opera is the midterm elections. Expect chills, thrills and that sinking feeling you get when you hear water running somewhere upstairs.
Here’s one thing I confidently predict.
We may not have reached the middle, and there sure ain’t gonna be no intermission.
But we may, just maybe, have reached the end of the beginning.
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