We’re on the cusp of making history
Photos by Nate Sawyer on Wikimedia Commons and James Talarico for Texas
The long and painful wait following the cataclysm of 2024 is finally over. It is Election Day in America once more — offering us the first real opportunity to correct the mistake we should have never made two years ago.
Today is not a symbolic protest, fundraising event, or strongly worded letter, but a real chance to take our country back from those who have left us behind at every possible turn. The day future generations will look back at and remember as the moment we finally turned the page on this dark chapter.
With luck, and a decisive performance at the ballot box, the next Congress will get back to work on our behalf, and most importantly, place essential checks and balances on the Trump regime and the billionaire oligarchs who have pulled the strings for far too long.
While every race matters in every state, from school board members all the way to governor, the US Senate ultimately stands out as the main prize up for grabs — with Democrats in position to capture the legislative chamber Donald Trump relies on to rubber-stamp his agenda, his cabinet members, and his federal court nominees.
While the time to rebuild in proper might have to wait until 2028, a blue wave tonight will at least put a stop to the generational damage the felon president is wreaking upon our futures with each passing day he remains unopposed in Washington.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (soon-to-be minority leader) has even come out and said it himself: a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress would mark the end of the Trump administration as we know it.
If we want to save our country, we have to seize this opportunity.
Chances are the overwhelming majority of people reading this newsletter have already voted, either through early in-person voting or vote by mail. Nevertheless, everyone knows someone else in their lives who either hasn’t voted yet or has never voted, including those who erroneously believe their vote doesn’t matter, or that “both sides are the same.”
We have to remind them — our family, our friends, and our coworkers — that they’re unequivocally wrong about this, and get them out to the polls to vote.
Let’s face it, if either of those points were actually true, Elon Musk wouldn’t be spending hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle trying to buy select candidates up and down the ballot. Likewise, if our votes didn’t matter, the Trump regime wouldn’t have spent the past year and a half battling the courts with illegal schemes to suppress turnout and shut down vote by mail.
Billionaires and their bought politicians are doing everything they can to thwart progressive grassroots movements across America because they know their unchecked power over all aspects of society is finally about to come to an end.
In Texas, where James Talarico aims to flip the Lone Star State blue for the first time in nearly four decades — running for a Senate seat that hasn’t gone to a Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson — the Epstein class has shattered campaign-spending records to keep him out of office.
“In the final days of this election, they are coming at us with everything they’ve got,” Talarico warned ahead of Election Day. “They have already spent more than $300 million to try and stop us. They’re scared.”
“They see what we see: that we’re about to win. On November 3rd, we’re going to deliver a crystal-clear message to the world’s first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale.”
Sherrod Brown, who is running for US Senate in Ohio, which would mark another historic red-to-blue flip in a former Republican stronghold, echoed the same core message in his closing pitch to voters.
Ultimately, this isn’t an election between left and right, but top versus bottom.
“Corporate profits have soared, executive salaries have exploded, [and] the average CEO makes 300 times more than what the average worker makes,” he stressed. “You can’t sustain a democracy when a few people are getting richer and everyone else is struggling.”
“We can’t survive as a nation that way.”
And while Elon Musk and the rest of the billionaire class keep pouring unfathomable amounts of cash into these races to preserve their rigged system, Donald Trump and his sycophants have once again turned to sowing racism, division, and paranoia in an attempt to salvage their poll numbers — intentionally appealing to the worst aspects of American politics.
Tearing our nation apart for their benefit.
Nowhere is this more true than in the Michigan Senate race, where epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is fighting to transform our corrupt for-profit health care system and put an end to Trump’s warmongering foreign policy.
Without merit, the president has repeatedly likened El-Sayed to a violent jihadist terrorist who will have to be screened with “metal detectors” every day he goes to work — presumably all because of his name, darker skin, and Islamic faith.
Spreading this kind of racially motivated defamation is another unforgivable use of the president’s office; one voters must punish this Election Night. No matter how you might feel about El-Sayed and his policy proposals, this dangerous and hateful messaging is beyond deplorable.
But above all, it highlights Republicans’ growing weaknesses ahead of the most consequential midterm election of our time. They cannot compete in a battleground of logic and ideas, so they choose insult and slander instead.
Needless to say, it’s not the kind of move someone makes who believes they’re ahead.
“You seen the campaign against me,” rebutted El-Sayed, speaking from a Christian church in Detroit. “I want to talk about gas, groceries, and seeing a doctor; they want to talk about me, my name, and my faith.”
“Me, my name, and my faith are not the reasons you can’t afford gas. Not the reason you can’t see a doctor; not the reason our air is poisoned or our water is putrid.”
“The president can’t seem to keep my name out of his mouth; I don’t even think he knows how to say it.”
“So I’m trying to make it easy for him — after Tuesday, you can just call me Senator.”
And it’s glaringly obvious why Trump and his down-ballot henchmen refuse to engage their opponents in good faith. In 2024, the president promised to lower prices on day one, bring peace across the world, release the Epstein files, and release a more affordable alternative to the Affordable Care Act.
Fast forward to today, and we’re trapped in an illegal war against Iran of the president’s making; tens of millions of Americans have either lost or are at risk of losing their health insurance thanks to Republicans’ ACA and Medicaid cuts; hospitals are closing; inflation is soaring; jobs are disappearing; and not a single pedophile named in the Epstein files has been brought to justice by this administration.
To top it all off, masked men employed by the federal government are kidnapping our neighbors and murdering American citizens in broad daylight.
It’s a sick joke that anyone ever fell for this so-called agenda, which was always a convenient front for this president’s criminal enterprise.
But ultimately, this election isn’t just a referendum on the many cruelties of the Trump administration — it’s the first step towards building an America and an economy that works for everyone.
With majorities in both chambers of Congress, the next generation of progressive leadership can lay the groundwork for establishing universal health care, restoring national reproductive rights, making the rich pay their fair share, overturning Citizens United, tackling the climate crisis, ending America’s forever wars, and ending partisan gerrymandering in every state.
In Maine, where Troy Jackson intends to unseat Susan Collins — Donald Trump’s favorite ‘concerned moderate’ senator — the Democratic former logger and labor organizer remains hopeful that the next Congress can start delivering wins for working people on day one regardless of the president’s interference.
“If you look at the people that are running across this country that look like they’re going to win tomorrow, I think there’s an unbelievable group of people that we can actually get things accomplished with,” Jackson told supporters.
“And not get back to where we were before Trump, but push the Democratic Party in a way that I’ve been waiting for, for so damn long, to actually fight for things we should already have right now.”
Indeed, the Democrats running to flip Congress this election are an inspiring group of community leaders with an incredible outlook on America’s future — offering a stark contrast to the division, ignorance, and ineptitude offered by Trump and his allies.
Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Mary Peltola in Alaska, James Talarico in Texas, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Josh Turek in Iowa, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, Juliana Stratton in Illinois, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan — Democrats are polling competitively in every state, and with your vote, a blue tsunami can get America back on track after two shameful years of one-party leadership under a sad and broken man.
The latest polls and incredible early vote turnout are certainly promising, but as we all know by now, the sore losers sitting in Congress and the White House will do everything in their power to contest the results, so to borrow a phrase from the other side, we really need to make today’s result “too big to rig.”
And as James Talarico likes to say: “We have to leave it all on the field.” It’s time to come together and take back our country.
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