The 2026 midterms was the most sweeping, overwhelming wave election in 50 years. There is no question that a truly astonishing number of voters were disgusted with the policies of a president who they had handed a narrow, consequential win only two years before. This is, as political scientist Julia Azari says, a “general rejection” of the Trump administration and everything it has done.cAfter that, though, as Azari notes, things get a lot murkier. Many people were clearly angry at Trump’s illegal war of choice in Iran and its effect on gas prices. But when you look at fiftyplusone’s presidential approval aggregate, there’s no clear large drop in Trump’s numbers in February, when the war started, nor really one as gas prices spiked. Instead, there’s a long steady decline, suggesting that the war was less the one thing and more just one aspect of…everything.
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Everyone hates Trump
That everything appears to include Trump’s dreadful farm policies, which powered rural white defections, and/or kept rural white voters at home. It definitely includes Black voter determination to show up in unprecedented numbers to fight for their voting rights after the Supreme Court gutted the voting rights act and red states governments attempted to use gerrymandering to reinstate Jim Crow. It includes a 211% Hispanic voter increase over 2022 as Latino voters rejected the Trump administrations fascist ICE deportation war on them and their communities. It includes a disgust with Republican corruption—epitomized by the ludicrously venal Ken Paxton, who managed to lost his deep red Senate seat by 12 points, and whose high profile race was probably a key factor in the state turning entirely blue at every level of government.
It certainly included the sense that Trump and the Republicans are the party of rich assholes who want to screw average Americans—epitomized by uberwealthy Nazi Elon Musk’s half a billion dollars in GOP spending and Kansas Senator Roger Marshall’s history of miserly, usorious debt collection at his obstetrics practice. And voters also in some cases were motivated by sheer repulsion over Republican’s disgusting bullying and cruelty—iconically symbolized by Vivek Ramaswamy, who lost the deep red OH governor’s race by 8 points to Amy Acton after he tried to stigmatize her for being a survivor of child sexual abuse.
There were, in short a lot of reasons to hate Trump and his orange basketful of Republican deplorable goons and creeps, and everyone and anyone could pick from the list. The result was overdetermined—which is how you get a massive 13-point Democratic win.
Every mandate, or none
The win is unambiguously good, and a clear rebuke to a fascist presidency. But beyond that, it’s so overdetermined, it’s hard to settle on any single clear mandate or priority.
Many progressives have argued that the huge victory means the American people want Democrats to hold Trump accountable for his endless crimes and to obstruct his entire agenda remorselessly. Other Democrats, though, like Senator-elect Adam Hamilton in Kansas, said he’d be “disappointed” if Democrats focus on investigating Trump. “The bigger priority for me, and I think for most people in America, especially people living paycheck to paycheck, is ‘please help us with the cost of living,’” he told NBC.
Michigan Governor elect Jocelyn Benson says she has a mandate “to lower costs, to grow our economy, to improve our public schools, and get things done.” Governor Elect Gina Hinojosa of Texas said that she took the election to mean that “People are tired of the divisions, of the fighting—tired of the culture wars.” Many Democrats believe that they have a mandate to end the Iran war, though it’s not exactly clear whether voters understand that we have lost the war, nor what they will think if we end it and that becomes obvious. Given Hispanic turnout, is there a mandate to abolish ICE? Given Black turnout, is there a mandate to end the disenfranchisement of Black people—throughout the South, throughout the country, and, notably, in Washington DC?
The good news is that the huge Democratic win means that Democrats have an opportunity to interpret their mandate in a range of ways and do a range of things. Committee chairs in the House and Senate can hold hearings and demand accountability. The chambers can pass ACA subsidies and dare Trump to veto them. Blue states with new trifectas can pursue abortion rights, raise minimum wages, and work on affordable housing. Let a thousand mandates bloom!
You’ve got to crush the fascists
I would like to see minimum wage hikes, abortion rights defended, an end to the Iran War, improved public schools, administration officials held accountable, concentration camps liberated, reparations for communities targeted by ICE, and much more. Trump has relentlessly assaulted our Constitution, our people, and our world. There’s a lot to do.
I think it’s important to keep in mind, though, that, whatever mandates there may or not be, whatever popular policies are passed or not, Democrats, and the rest of us, also need to be focused on relentlessly crushing the fascists
Some crush-the-fascists policies will be pretty popular, and can be linked perhaps to mandates—impeaching Hegseth after he lost a wildly despised and illegal war is a no-brainer. Other measures, though, are harder to tie directly to the election.
The Supreme Court, for example, is never on the ballot, and the overwhelming evidence from decades of electoral outcomes is that voters just do not prioritize control of the Supreme Court when they vote. Nonetheless, much of our current nightmare—the effort to restore Jim Crow through gerrymandering, the elevation of the president above the law, the solidifying of oligarchy through campaign finance deregulation, the elimination of due process and the enthusiastic embrace of torture as federal policy, the removal of women’s right to bodily autonomy—has been orchestrated not by Trump, but by the Christofascist court, which shares Trump’s racist authoritarian goals even though it sometimes differs on methods.
Democrats absolutely have to expand the court and bring it in line with small-d democratic values, whether or not voters give them a mandate, because if they do not the Court will simply veto their priorities and continue its work of emptying out democracy in the name of white supremacy and Christian dominance.
Similarly (as I mentioned above) enfranchising DC is imperative, both because the Senate gives Republicans massive structural advantages which cannot be negated by one plus 13 year, and because the GOP has made it clear that they will turn the District into an armed encampment and punish its residents whenever they are in power without statehood. And both of these moves will require eliminating the filibuster—which is also vital if Congress is to regain its status as an equal branch of government.
Again, virtually no one thinks these changes were top of mind for voters, just as no one thinks that trans rights motivated the blue wave (both because voters say it’s not a top issue and because many Democrats disgracefully backtracked on trans rights.) But in order for voters to express their displeasure, you need to have a democracy, and that means shoring up democratic institutions—a Court that will protect the Constitution; a Senate that is amenable to the will of voters every year, not just in an overwhelming D +13 environment; a polity that protects the rights and dignity of marginalized minorities, rather than targeting them to build fascist power.
Julia Azari, who I quoted above, has thought a lot about how mandates are limited and amorphous. Shortly before the election she wrote that in the event of a wave
“voters are not handing [Democrats] a set of instructions. They are entrusting them with power. Elected officials in turn need to take ownership of what they choose to do with that power, following not the mandate of the election but the imperative of the rule of law.”
And I’d add, the imperative to crush fascism before it regroups. Joe Biden didn’t, which is one big reason why we are in hell. We need to learn from that and do better.
“Crush fascism before it regroups.” A brilliant recap of the most important lesson from our recent history.
As Conan the Barbarian himself said, crushing fascists is what is best in life.