Did it matter that 7,000,000 people turned out for last month’s No Kings Day? If you ever wondered whether all of our recent protests, vigils, and rallies were having any effect, Tuesday’s election should remove all doubts. Tuesday was like a warm spring breeze in the midst of a cold dark winter. With landslide victories in Virginia, New Jersey, NYC, and California, voters delivered a clear anti-authoritarian message. Most impressively, many young male and Hispanic voters who voted for Trump in 2024 voted for Democratic candidates this time around. Turnout was also impressive, with Zohran Mamdani garnering more votes than any NYC mayoral candidate since John Lindsay in 1969.
Turning to younger candidates, focusing on affordability, and running progressive candidates in some regions while running moderates in others seems to have paid off. These election day landslides follow on the heels of a series of national opinion polls showing Sauron’s Trump’s popularity sinking to its lowest level ever. One hopes all of this will strengthen the spine of national Democrats, and encourage other Blue states to follow California’s redistricting example. It also bodes well for next year’s midterm elections— should they in fact be allowed to occur.
We have good reason to feel momentarily optimistic. What we do does matter. We are in the initial stages of building a movement that has the potential to prevail. But there are still many dark days ahead. We are less than one year into Trump’s term with three more to go. He will do everything he can to further his agenda over those years—criminalizing his enemies, militarizing policing, having his masked gestapo seize people off the streets, making it harder to vote, wrecking the public health and university systems, fraying the social safety net, promoting racism, demonizing trans people, muzzling the press, corruptly enriching himself and his cronies, and cutting off funding for Blue cities and states. He will especially do everything he can to see that Zohran Mamdani fails as mayor.
So let’s not get over our skis. Tuesday was a great day and a breath of fresh air. Remember to breathe. But after taking a few moments to bask in the afterglow, remember our hardest days lie ahead.
Together, let’s vow to steel our resolve and go the distance.