Perhaps I am falling into a pattern of pessimism but I am concerned about the conclusions the Democratic party leadership will come to as a result of the historic midterm results.
As a general rule, after most every election, no matter how close the actual count, the victors will attempt to torture the numbers until they say there is a clear mandate for the winner. While the reich-wingers are more egregious with this sort of thing in my experience, non-Progressive left-wingers will try it to varying degrees of success.
This was not in total, a close election. Several of the individual races were quite close but any realistic meta analysis must acknowledge that the voting populace left little room for ambiguity. Those who chose to vote largely said no to war, no to pedophilia, no to inflation, no to abusing our allies, no to public health endangerment, no to prioritizing data centers for power and water and no to a slew of other things
That leads me to what I think is a pretty obvious conclusion. The midterm election was an absolute hate letter to the GOP. The things we said “no” to are things that we generally associate with the GOP.
What the results were NOT, is a love letter to the Dems. It was also NOT an endorsement of the status quo of the recent past. It was very specifically a repudiation of the concept of accountability avoidance for the politically connected while the rest of us are held to account for most every infraction no matter how minor.
Those to whom I speak, want the law to apply to everyone. We do not want to simply “move on” from past insults to democracy. We don’t approve of what has been done architecturally, culturally, fiscally, medically or environmentally. The Dems do not have a mandate to do nothing. They do not have a mandate to gently admonish those who devastated our ability to project soft-power.
It is my personal opinion that the DNC and Democratic party needs new leadership. The moderate/conservative attitudes of Schumer, Jeffries et al are at odds with what I am hearing. Schumer in particular needs to step aside but, I have neither seen nor heard anything from Jeffries that leads me to believe he will listen to anyone who is not a major donor. I would love to be wrong.
If over the next couple of years there is no clear and obvious accountability for members and supporters of the current administration, the next election will be just as historic and not in a good way.
