It’s just past 5 a.m. here, and a chilly dawn will soon break over metro Detroit. My car sits in the driveway with its windows covered in a thin sheen of early November frost. The Tru-Tone outdoor Christmas lights are up and glowing warmly in the bushes. That makes me happy.
Somewhere – perhaps in what’s left of the White House, or maybe at his gilded bribery palace in Palm Beach – Donald Trump is fuming this morning. That also makes me happy.
It’s a good morning. No, it’s a great morning.
On Tuesday, America loudly and righteously told Trump and his repulsive MAGA political and cultural movement to go fuck themselves. The election results were the fabled Blue Wave, a year later than needed but finally arrived.
It was a bad night for the nation’s sadistic meatheads. Tuesday was a referendum on Donald Trump, and he was soundly rejected.
The Democratic Party, a wobbly coalition of wonderfully maddening and competing allied interests, enjoyed major victories nationwide on Tuesday. The big one was sharp young Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim immigrant, handily beating Andrew Cuomo, a Trump-endorsed nepo-baby sexpest, to become mayor of New York City. Mamdani’s million-plus votes are the most since John Lindsay in 1969. Holy shit.
California overwhelmingly approved Prop 50 as a devastating countermeasure to MAGA gerrymandering efforts.
Maine rejected a voter suppression law.
Colorado voted to tax rich people to pay for school breakfast and lunches in all public schools.
Pennsylvania voted to keep its state Supreme Court in Democratic hands.
Mikie Sherrill was elected as the first female Democratic governor of New Jersey.
Abigail Spanberger was elected as the first female Democratic governor of Virginia.
And speaking of Virginia and New Jersey: Every. Single. County. Shifted. Blue. Read that again.
The Virginia result comes after the Republicans tried to make the election an anti-trans referendum and failed amid the wider government shutdown crisis that especially affects Virginia. Spanberger campaigned by tying her opponent to Trump.
It’s an easy lesson: Do not abandon any part of your coalition. Fascists can never be appeased. They will always demand more sacrifices because conservativism cannot exist without enemies to be feared and crushed, which is all they offer instead of policy to improve people’s lives. Trans people and the rest of LGBTQ, non-whites, women, Jews, trade unionists, socialists – the Right wants all of them dehumanized, stripped of rights, deported, put in camps, even ovens. And it’s the same litany of people that the Third Reich went after. MAGA is normalizing this evil.
Appeasement is for the weak. It’s morally and intellectually bankrupt and makes you dishonorably untrustworthy. There is no compromise with political movements that seek to remove people from society and from the protection of the law. Giving them Czechoslovakia in 1938 didn’t stop the coming world war and giving them trans people or anyone else today will not sate their thirst for cruelty and white nationalism.
That said, today is hopeful.
Young voters came out in force. They’re the ones that face a much bleaker future under the remnants of the increasingly fascist neoliberal order. Like the young people at every critical moment in history, they are going to save the world from permanent Night. Tuesday was a big step toward that reckoning. The billionaires couldn’t stop the kids. The ruling class saw the limits of its power. Beating and tear gassing peaceful protesters, priests, old people, children — turns out that’s not a broadly popular policy despite what Nazis chirp about on Twitter.
It’s been a while since I woke up optimistic. I’d forgotten what it feels like to win. As a lifelong Cleveland Browns fan and cynic, winning isn’t in my DNA, and coming later in life to Leftist politics hasn’t exactly been akin to joining peak Tom Brady’s New England Patriots in the win-loss column. My existence has always had a distinct Lucy-pulling-the-football-from-dumbass-Charlie-Brown. That’s grown worse the past several years. But not this morning. I feel good, and I’m not even stoned (yet).
I am going to continue to feel good despite knowing what’s coming.
The Trump regime, in the midst of using starvation as a political weapon against its enemies, will almost certainly spend the rest of this week and beyond insisting without evidence that every Democratic victory was achieved via cheating and fraud. In other words, it will lie and it will declare that everything will be investigated. It will lie more. Lather, rinse, repeat. And it lies because there’s been zero accountability for its rampant dishonesty. Trump, the most insecure human being in history, probably will have some people murdered or launch a war because his feelings are hurt.
We’re also going to have to endure a wave of centrist “nothing can ever get better” think pieces from Ivy League nerds whose first instinct after every victory on the Left is to piss on it. “Here’s why Dems winning is always bad for Dems and helps Trump.” “Dems still need to shovel trans people into the incinerator to win in 2026.” “A socialist won, but here’s why Dems need to embrace fascism.”
You know exactly what names will appear over those columns and blogs. Fuck them, too.
Tuesday was good. The Fox News talking heads were reduced to chittering about how the Supreme Court can maybe help Republicans in the future, which I’m sure the corrupt top court will do but it’s a sign that the establishment Right is reduced to its nuclear options: Blatantly illegal court orders, the DoJ targeting the president’s enemies, and gaming elections while claiming any Democratic victory was achieved only by fraud and treason and Satan.
Every accusation is an admission.
MAGA is a minority of a minority. A loud, nasty, cruel, and supremely stupid one, but they are not the majority. We out-number them. On Tuesday, we won a national victory. Better things really are possible.
Perhaps Tuesday was the high-water mark of Trump’s neo-Confederate movement, and the roll-back has formally begun.
There’s more and more resistance to Trump’s masked goons in the streets. While they, and he, can and will cause more problems and fuel more anger and frustration, the tide is turning. Certainly, more tragic and dark days are in store. The regime will not go down quietly. But they are not invulnerable. The myth of Trump’s permanent imperial inevitability was shattered.
It’s also probably also pollyannaish of me to think this, but Tuesday should be a massive Bat Signal to Democrats to fight back, hard. Trump and MAGA are much feebler than we realized. Yes, they can cause devastation, but they are enormously unpopular. We can and will beat them at the ballot box, in the courts, and on the streets.
Unfortunately, we’re unlikely to see our mainstream media start lecturing Republicans that they need to move to the Left. That sort of scolding is reserved only for Democrats, who get told to move to the center (which is actually on the Right in America). The Dems that campaign to the center mostly lose.
Americans want to be able to better afford basics, like food and rent. They want a paycheck with the power it used to have. They want to be able to buy homes. They want their kids’ schools to be decent and safe. They want mass transit in the cities, and for public services to not be starved of funding so Republicans can out-source them to their private-sector donors. Americans want the masked secret police to go away. They want politicians and business to follow the law. They want due process for all. They want income inequality to be reduced. The working class wants dignity. They want the goods and services their taxes are supposed to pay for rather than being spent on bombs and missiles for Israel to sustain its Gaza genocide.
They want compassion and empathy and science and medicine and trustworthy institutions. They do not want to be machine-cog serfs that exist to further enrich a cabal of racist assholes.
They are tired of the bullshit. They proved that with their votes on Tuesday.
Of course, one day of voting isn’t enough. There’s a lot of hard, expensive work to be done. Some battles will be lost. We are still surrounded by ignorant, credulous brutes with hateful hearts and smooth brains – and many of them are in power. There’s a real chance of violence in the streets. There’s a chance Trump may try to halt next year’s midterm elections because it’s evident they will be a MAGA bloodbath, and once he’s ousted from power, he faces prison. As do his cronies. They fear real justice and accountability.
But on this brisk Wednesday morning in November, let’s enjoy the moment for a few hours before getting back to the fight. More days are coming like today. Corks will be popped. We will dance in the streets, we will sing and we will cheer until hoarse, tears in our eyes that the nightmare is over. The American First and Second Estates awoke today fearful of the Third Estate. Rightfully so.
Hope is back, baby. Let’s not fuck it up.
PS: Release the Epstein files. Free Palestine. Fuck AI. Protect the Dolls. Stack the court. Go Buckeyes/Beat Michigan.
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Unpaid Bills 
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