Back in business
America gave Donald Trump a bloody nose. On the first big election night since Trump swept back into power, the results were better than Democrats could have dared hope. Zohran Mamdani stormed to a convincing victory over the Trump-endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the race for mayor of New York, America’s biggest city. Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia by double digit percentages, far outpacing Kamala Harris’s performance against Trump a year ago this week. It marks the first time that Democrats have won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since 1961. The blue wave kept coming. California voters approved new congressional district boundaries as Democrats seek to fight back against Republican redistricting efforts ahead of next year’s battle for the House of Representatives. Democrats retained three crucial seats on the Pennsylvania supreme court. In the Virginia state legislature, House Democrats flipped 13 seats for their biggest majority in nearly 40 years. “Tonight was an earthquake election in Virginia,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
The results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower. His authoritarian grandstanding is a show of weakness rather than strength. From ICE raids and tariffs to his $300m White House ballroom, his presidency is deeply unpopular. Are you better off than you were a year ago? Voters said no. Tuesday’s elections also demonstrated that when Trump is not on the ballot – but his record is – voters do not turn out for him. Republicans such as Winsome Earle-Sears of Virginia, who tried to copy Trump’s anti-trans attacks on her opponent, found to her cost that the president is inimitable. Democrats will savour it as the night they got back in business.
It has been a thoroughly miserable year for a leaderless party struggling to outmanoeuvre a man who constantly throws the chessboard in the air. Morale has been at rock bottom. The party has been missing in action.
Source: The Guardian
Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji.
