A Punch in the Face
Tuesday's Democratic blowout demonstrated that the wannabe king is growing weaker while the public's anger is growing stronger
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker got real about what it would take to stop Donald Trump’s abuse earlier this year: “Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only: a punch in the face.”
Well, across America on Tuesday, voters gave this bully a punch in the face by electing Democrats by wide margins. They told him loud and clear that they are tired of his utter indifference to their needs and his actual responsibilities to serve the people and protect the Constitution.
But, the thing is, not only does a bully often need more than one punch in the face to get the message, a deluded wannabe king and extreme narcissist is particularly adept at withstanding blows through self-delusion and by blaming others.
As much as I’d like to imagine Tuesday’s victories will change the political trajectory and convince the regime to slow the abuse, end the shutdown and begin pursuing actions that actually address affordability and the struggles of everyday Americans, we shouldn’t be naive.
The story of Trump is that the worse it gets for him, the more obvious it is that he’s losing, the more desperate and extreme he gets. That means we can’t sit back and relax, counting the days until the midterms and a beautiful blue wave. We need to maintain our sense of urgency—our awareness that America is facing a five-alarm fire. We have to speak out against both the Arsonist-in-Chief and his accomplices applauding an assisting the destruction.
The strong Democratic victories on Tuesday in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi—in races ranging from governor, mayor and state supreme court justice to utility regulators, city council members and other state legislators—tell us that the anger in America and the hunger for change is real.
They also tell us that the No Kings protests last month were not just an aberration or an unreliable sample. In addition to the seven million or so Americans that took to the street, many millions more would be motivated to express their feelings at the ballot box, even in an off-year election.
You will read and hear punditry insisting that we shouldn’t generalize from this election to the midterms or beyond. I agree that much can change in the next 12 months: The work needs to continue every day to build the citizen movement that can express itself in general street protests, economic boycotts, labor strikes, defending our friends and neighbors—and the traditional blocking and tackling to support candidates who will fight back.
We can’t turn away, but rather must speak out as the Trump regime escalates the abusive actions of its federal agents and pursues policies for the rich that make everyday Americans poorer, hungrier and unhealthier.
But I think we can take heart that the combination of Trump’s cognitive decline, extreme corruption and sadism, insulation from critics and criticism, delusions of economic success, indifference to the needs of real people and sick hunger to be an authoritarian king make him weaker and weaker.
Think about it:
He couldn’t have been happier that he was gifted a fake gold crown by the South Koreans, indifferent to the symbolism.
He thinks his demolition of the East Wing and planned erection of a massive Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom—funded by kowtowing billionaires and businesses seeking government support—makes him look all manly and powerful. Yet he fails to grasp that he looks like a pathetically out-of-touch Marie Antoinette telling the starving people that they can eat cake (and we all know how that ended up for her).
He continues to ridiculously lie that the prices at grocery stores are going down, his tariffs are generating “trillions" and the economy is doing great—still convinced of his own omnipotence and ability to hypnotize people into believing him. But that act is wearing thin and will grow thinner—even for some of his cultists—as they struggle to hold onto their jobs and pay for food, healthcare and the basics of life.
He also reveals his desperate need to be insulated from reality and treated like a dictator when he praises Chinese President Xi Jinping for being surrounded by frightened officials who refuse to speak. “I want my Cabinet to be like Xi’s,” he said, adding admiringly, “I’ve never seen men so scared in their lives.” Trump may have thought he sounded amusing—and his sycophantic Cabinet in attendance laughed—but his weakness couldn’t have been more obvious.
Trump may be convinced that he will avoid the consequence of his activities with sex trafficker and sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein. But House Speaker Mike Johnson—who has delayed over six weeks swearing in Adelita Grijalva, Arizona’s newly elected congresswoman—will eventually have to fulfill his duty. She has already said she will be the 218th vote needed to force a vote on the release of the Epstein files.
There have been days that I worried most Americans are not paying attention, that they have either tuned out or normalized the reality of Trump’s cruelty, corruption and madness. But Tuesday’s results provided a powerful reality check that more and more Americans have had enough with the Trump agenda and the feckless Republican Party that has abandoned the real needs of people.
In a sane world, a growing number of Republicans would recognize that they were running out of time to repair the damage with their voters. Here’s how the say-anything Mike Johnson summarized the election on Wednesday: “What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results.”
Uh-huh. Let’s see how that works out for Johnson and his party in the year ahead as conditions worsen and Trump’s self-serving indifference to suffering continues. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his supermajority may have given Trump near-total criminal immunity, but that doesn’t mean he’s immunized from the wrath of voters.
One White House insider admitted anonymously to Politico that “people don’t think he’s lived up to his promises,” that Trump “won on lowering costs, putting more money back into people’s pockets. And people don’t feel that right now.”
But don’t expect Trump to tell the truth about his failing economic policies. A Trump spokesman, speaking on the record, rejected the anonymous insider’s view and insisted “the Trump administration remains laser-focused on putting Joe Biden’s inflation crisis firmly behind us.”
Trump has succeeded by following Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ playbook: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” But I am increasingly hopeful that Trump’s circus act is wearing thinner and his lies are becoming more transparent as everyday struggles grow harder and life becomes more unbearable for many Americans.
It will be a long time before Trump cultists abandon their dear leader, if they ever do. But Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger won independent voters in Virginia by 19 points and Governor-Elect Mikie Sherill won independents in New Jersey by 13 points. In both cases, Independents represented about a third of their state’s electorate, disproving the GOP dismissal that they won because they are blue states.
And more, while Trump had made progress with Latino voters in 2024, both candidates won Latinos by a 2-1 margin. In Passaic County in North Jersey, which is nearly half Latino and was won by Trump last year, Sherill won it by 15 points. In fact, according to exit polls, she flipped three counties with sizable Latino populations that Trump won last year.
People are paying attention.
And that includes younger voters, particularly in New York City, who were inspired by the promise of the 34-year-old mayoral candidate committed to ending the Cuomo dynasty, fiercely opposing Trump, taking on the oligarchy and ushering in a different kind of politics. According to exit polls, 70 percent of voters under age 45 voted for Mamdani, and two-thirds of them were voting for mayor for the first time.
Over the next year, the White House bully and wannabe king needs more punches in the face. And, as long as he continues to believe that he’s fighting-weight rather than a bloated weakling surrounded by yes men, the easier it will be to land punches.
One programming note: I will be hosting a Substack Live conversation with the astute Jonathan V. Last, editor of The Bulwark, today at 1 PM ET. I hope you’ll join us.
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“Rebellion is born when rulers forget they are meant to serve.” - Confucius
You omitted one amazing election: A Democrat was elected mayor of Kalispell, Montana. As a friend in Montana says, "Buckle up, Zinke!" Mike Mansfield momentarily stopped turning in his grave.