Americans voted for change. Delivering it is up to Democrats, and to us.
As I watched the results come in from Richmond on Tuesday night and saw Sen. Mark Warner’s race called, I knew Virginia had come through, again. What I didn’t know yet was that the rest of the country was right behind us.
American voters delivered a flat-out rejection of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. It wasn’t a close call. Many are calling it a blue tsunami and hoping it marks the beginning of the end of Trumpism.
Democrats won control of both the House and Senate, flipping dozens of GOP House seats and seven Senate seats, including deeply red Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, plus battlegrounds North Carolina and Maine, where Republican Susan Collins lost, ending her nearly 30 years in the Senate. In the House, Democrats have won more than 250 seats and could approach 260. That’s a majority they haven’t held since the early ’90s. At the time of publishing, votes were still being counted.
In Texas, James Talarico defeated Trump’s pick, Ken Paxton, to become the first Democrat to win statewide in more than 30 years. And Democrats toppled three-term Gov. Greg Abbott, electing Gina Hinojosa, the state’s first Latina governor.
It was also a night of historic firsts. Abdul El-Sayed became the nation’s first Muslim senator and Chris Pappas the first out gay man elected to the Senate. Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman ever elected governor in U.S. history, and Deb Haaland the first Native American woman elected governor. A record 100-plus Democratic women won House seats. And in six states, voters elected their first transgender and nonbinary state legislators, following in the footsteps of Virginia’s own Danica Roem.
The why isn’t a mystery. Americans are furious over the Trump-initiated U.S. war with Iran, rising gas prices and broader economic anxieties. I’d add that voters are fed up with a president whose administration has devoted at least $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars to vanity projects, according to the Center for American Progress. And when he was asked whether Americans’ finances were motivating him to negotiate an end to the war, he said, “Not even a little bit.“ Americans were listening, and on Tuesday, they answered back.
Virginia Held The Line
Last year, Virginia returned to being a blue state when we elected Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi, and Attorney General Jay Jones. This week, we doubled down.
Mark Warner’s race was the first Senate contest called on election night, giving him a fourth term. Elaine Luria took back her old seat from Jen Kiggans in the 2nd District. And Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor unseated Rob Wittman, who has held the 1st District seat since 2007, in a district stretching from the Northern Neck to Henrico. She won by fewer than 10,000 votes out of more than 400,000 cast. Yes, every vote matters.
Virginians also approved all three constitutional amendments, enshrining reproductive freedom, guaranteeing marriage equality, and automatically restoring voting rights to people after incarceration. I’ve never been prouder of my home state.
In fact, I haven’t felt this combination of joy, relief, and hope since the 2020 election, and I think I’m still a little in shock. I went into the midterms carrying the fallout of Election 2024. Watching the results come in restored my faith, not just in Americans, but in humanity.
To everyone who voted, knocked on doors, made calls and got out the vote: congratulations. We earned this.
But in some ways, we’ve been here before. In my 2020 election retrospective, I wrote that if Biden won, there would be no grand celebration on my part: just relief, and then the hard work. Four years later, Trump was back in the White House.
That’s why I’m clear-eyed about what has to happen for this to truly be a new chapter. Here’s what I’m asking of Democratic leaders, and of all of us, over the next two years:
Don’t Play It Safe
This is a one-shot deal. Democrats have been handed an unprecedented opportunity to turn this country around, and the worst thing they could do now is treat it like business as usual.
The pressure is already building. On Wednesday, the progressive group Indivisible called on Senate Democrats to replace Chuck Schumer as their leader. The group pointed to a late-October NBC News poll in which just 13 percent of voters viewed Schumer positively. And the newly elected Democratic senators from Michigan, Kansas, Illinois and Maine have all said publicly that they won’t back him as majority leader. Over in the House, Hakeem Jeffries is positioned to become the first Black speaker, though his support is wide but not necessarily deep. A handful of progressives haven’t committed to backing him.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it plainly the day after the midterm elections: “this country has elected a new generation of leadership,” and the left must keep its “foot on the gas.”
To be fair, not everyone agrees. Moderates worry that bold ideas like Medicare for All, government-run health insurance for everyone, will cost them in swing districts. There’s a real reason for that caution: the AP’s survey of voters found the Democratic Party only slightly more popular than the GOP. Just under half viewed it favorably. In other words, voters didn’t suddenly fall in love with Democrats on Tuesday. They fired Republicans.
I understand the caution, but caution is also how we got here. In June, the Heritage Foundation boasted in a fundraising email that over half of Project 2025, its 900-page policy guide for an ultra-conservative, Christian nationalist government, is now in place. Undoing that damage won’t happen with timid half-measures. It requires urgency, courage, and bold action from leaders who actually want to fight.
Use The Power You Have
If Tuesday proved anything, it’s that showing up works.
As I’ve written before, apathy is a huge part of how we ended up in this nightmare. In 2024, more Americans stayed home than voted for either candidate. This time around, people woke up. Now we have to stay awake.
Many dismiss protest as performative. But this year, we witnessed what happens when people come together and take action for their country.
Hungary ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power. In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to a student-led movement that spent two years protesting his government. Brazil re-elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) in a comeback rebuke of Flávio Bolsonaro and the far right. And here in the U.S., No Kings organizers held thousands of rallies, marches, and block parties nationwide to get out the vote. Different countries, same lesson: Organized people can beat established power.
At the 2017 Women’s March, then the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, I realized that rights come with responsibility, and that anyone can be an activist. Being apolitical changes nothing; it only strips you of your power. Politics shapes every aspect of your life: how you live, love, work, and play. So find your way in, no matter how big or small, and try to make it a daily habit.
Get Big Money Out Of Politics
In this year’s midterm elections, Elon Musk gave a record-shattering $474 million to political groups backing Republicans.
That’s more than any donor in history has given in a single election cycle, apart from candidates funding their own campaigns. And it only counts what he disclosed. The biggest share, about $212 million, went toward helping Ken Paxton beat James Talarico. Paxton lost anyway. Not even half a billion dollars could buy what millions of ordinary people gave freely: their time, their voices, and their votes.
But we can’t count on that every time. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates to unlimited spending, it’s given ultra-wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups outsized influence over our democracy. The rest of us can support state ballot initiatives that limit corporate power and public matching programs that multiply small-dollar donations.
Overturning Citizens United is a long haul. In the meantime, our purchasing power is one of our most effective tools to fight back. After Amazon donated at least $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, I stopped ordering from them. It’s been two years now.
When we stop buying from companies that pour millions into super PACs or hide behind dark money groups, we stop enabling the problem and start being part of the solution.
Hold Them Accountable
Democrats can’t just talk about accountability. They have to enact it.
For years, they’ve missed countless opportunities to hold Trump and the Republican Party responsible for corruption and wrongdoing. Now they have subpoena power, and Democratic leaders are already signaling plans for a long list of Trump investigations.
No one is above the law, including the president. Trump is the first US president convicted of felony crimes. This summer, in a separate civil case, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal of the $5 million verdict finding he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll.
Last month, House Judiciary Democrats also released a 50-page report on his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, detailing accounts from 11 women, including a new rape allegation the White House denies. If those allegations are proven and the law is applied equally, he and the people who enabled him belong in prison. I’m not naive about how unlikely that is, which is exactly why the pressure must be relentless.
Epstein’s survivors and all victims of sexual assault, racism, and hate crimes have waited long enough. Congress now has the power to act, and it must do so immediately.
Fight For Truth
Here’s a detail about that Epstein report you may have missed, because most of the media missed it too. The independent newsletter Popular Information called it a media blackout: of 25 major news outlets it reviewed, 20 published no substantive reporting on the new rape allegation, and 13 didn’t cover the report at all, including the AP, NPR, CNN, and The Washington Post.
We cannot fix a country where we don’t agree on what’s true, or where the truth doesn’t get told. I’ve written about how irresponsible journalism threatens our democracy, and it bears repeating. Fox News settled Dominion’s lawsuit for $787.5 million over US election lies, yet remains one of the most-watched news channels in America.
As a creative director working in branding and advertising, I know how persuasion works. Repetition builds belief, whether it’s a product, person, or myth, and a lie told often enough starts to feel like a fact. It’s how the Confederacy became one of the most powerful brands in American history. And it’s how The Apprentice sold millions of Americans a self-made billionaire who never existed. NBC’s former marketing chief later apologized for helping create a monster, one who ended up in the White House twice.
The good news is that repetition works both ways. The truth, told loudly and often enough, can break through too. It’s why I keep writing.
The long-term antidote is education. We need to reinvest in civics, ethics, media literacy, and critical thinking so Americans can recognize propaganda when they see it, starting in our public schools. We can pay for it with the billions we’re spending on senseless wars. A country that can’t tell truth from lies can’t govern itself. Education is how a free people stays free.
End The Patriarchy
It’s 2026, and women are still not equal under the U.S. Constitution.
In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, despite an arbitrary deadline. Before leaving office, President Biden declared it “the law of the land,” but without official certification, its status remains in limbo. As a result, women lack explicit, permanent constitutional protection against sex-based discrimination. A Democratic Congress can, and should, resolve that.
The consequences of the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade have been devastating. After Texas banned abortion, sepsis rates for women hospitalized while losing a pregnancy in the second trimester jumped more than 50 percent. Infant deaths in states with abortion bans have risen above expected levels, and researchers are tracking a possible rise in deaths during and after pregnancy. Some patients have even lost access to essential medications for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, all because those drugs can cause a miscarriage.
For centuries, men have written the laws that govern women’s bodies. Virginians just showed what happens when voters take that power back. Reproductive freedom is in our state constitution. It must now become the national standard.
Meanwhile, misogyny is surging. That’s no surprise, with Trump’s toxic machismo setting the tone and being normalized for far too long. Think of the kids who have grown up with him and the manosphere influencers who echo him. We’re overdue for a healthier evolution of masculinity, and men must lead the way. With a record number of Democratic women heading to Congress and to governors’ mansions, let’s make sure they’re not doing this work alone.
What Comes Next
It’s been a long two years and an even longer decade. There’s so much more to be done: universal healthcare, affordable housing, gun safety, repairing trust with our allies, protecting our planet. It’s going to take years, possibly generations, to undo the damage of the most corrupt administration of our lifetime.
So here’s my ask.
Democratic leaders: deliver results, swiftly. Don’t squander this opportunity.
And to the rest of us: don’t confuse relief with a finish line. It’s a starting point. Call your representatives. Attend town halls and city council meetings. Boycott the companies bankrolling this administration. Support local and small businesses. Vote in every election, including the ones nobody talks about. And spread the word that we the people have the power.
Elections don’t deliver change. People who keep showing up do.
Main image: Mural by Humble in Manchester
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