SHORT-TERM MEMORY

Remember the Midterms? It Sure Seems Like Congress Doesn’t

Voters demanded sweeping change in the midterms. Washington is already pretending it never happened.

Opinion

Remember last week’s election? The one just a few days ago? The one representing a massive earthquake in American politics?

Well, the president doesn’t. The GOP on Capitol Hill doesn’t. And many Democrats don’t seem to. And a whole bunch of pundits don’t.

Despite results that marked the biggest electoral shift in House races since the mid-1970s, with the victories of countless candidates whose message was a promise of change, a condemnation of corrupt leaders, a corrupt political system, and a rigged economy that offers ever greater riches for the rich and a smaller and smaller piece of the pie to most of society… despite all that, we are seeing denialism on an epic and dangerous scale.

Trump has elevated the worst of his aides. His team, including DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche, have all promised to double down. Republicans in the House of Representatives have elected the troglodyte, college wrestling scandal-tarnished dimwit Jim Jordan to be their leader—and, for good measure, blocked an impeachment effort against Hegseth despite the strong case that he has committed manifold high crimes and misdemeanors. Oh, and 11 Democrats missed the vote—some of them apparently stuck in traffic.

Big money corporate Dems are flexing their muscle to retain caucus leadership in the Senate and the House. They say they want to fight corruption, but don’t renounce the cash they take from special interest groups like AIPAC or from special interests in the tech sector, the shadowy world of crypto, or other corners of the plutocrativerse.

Talking heads making a living in the smoldering ruins of what was once mainstream media are dependably reading talking points that serve those to whom access means their jobs. One by one, Republicans and GOP-lite centrists reject the idea that Democrats—despite massive wins in the House and Senate, winning control of governorships overseeing 75 percent of the U.S. population, victories in statehouses, victories in courts, victories in key referenda—won a “mandate.”

If that was not a mandate, what is?

They say it was just a rejection of Trump, not an embrace of Democratic policies. Really? Calling out corruption and saying you are going to undo it, protect against it, and hold people accountable for it is not a policy? Promising to get big money out of politics is not a policy? Calling for foreign policy that is not debased by illegal wars, extra-judicial killings, rejecting our allies, and supporting war criminals does not suggest a clear change in direction? What about the fact that a significant majority of voters, when polled, seek health coverage for everyone and fairer taxes that require billionaires to pay their fair share?

That is a clear agenda that received massive support from voters.

Further, establishment Democrats and moderates seem to want to minimize the fact that their formula for winning—compromising with right-wing extremists, seeking bipartisanship from guys like Stephen Miller, who gives off the vibe that he wants to jail and deport anyone critical of Trump or non-white—was rejected. We were always told by them that, to win in purple states, Dems had to tuck their tails between their legs and pretend they were Turning Point voters who also would like a few more people to get Medicaid coverage. We were told that it is best not to be confrontational with the right, or to call them out for their support of the most corrupt president and the most morally bankrupt policies in American history.

But that’s not what happened. Progressive Democrats—real progressives—won big victories in purple and red states from Maine to Michigan to South Carolina to Ohio to Georgia to Texas to Mississippi and on throughout the Midwest and Plains states and onto the West Coast. Others like Senators-elect James Talarico and Adam Hamilton, while rejecting the cartoonish cultural caricatures of Democrats promoted by Republicans, called for a strong rejection of Trump, corruption, the restoration of vital social services, fixing what is broken in the economy and ending illegal wars and the embrace of monsters internationally. (In other words, an agenda that, if taken big point by big point, would be defined as progressive by the standards of the past decade.)

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As Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, put it, what mattered to voters was not whether old categories applied but rather whether candidates supported “fight or flight.” In other words, she’s a so-called moderate who recognized that, even in a purple state like Michigan, people were fed up and demanded change, a new political agenda that would put their needs first. That is why she joined Bernie Sanders in rejecting the idea of the coronation of Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader, and called for candidates to present a real hard plan that would reveal just how they were committed to change.

Before the election, people said it would be a change election. In the wake of the election, it became clear that it was a CHANGE!!! election. This is, of course, a threat to those who profit from the status quo. It is a threat to the inertia that is, as Henry Kissinger once said, the most powerful force in Washington. It is a threat to both Trumpists and Dems sponsored by entrenched powers that want to stay comfortably entrenched.

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But it is what happened. It is what the people want. It is what a new generation of voters and those who have been abused by this president, this administration, their party, and the current system in the U.S. demand. And it is what they will continue to demand even as those in positions of power scream and kick and lie about what is happening.

It is now up to political leaders to determine whether they are willing to become agents of this change or whether they wish to become victims of history, cast aside because they could not see what was screamingly, unmistakably and, I might add, gloriously obvious.

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David RothkopfChief Global Affairs Columnist

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