How to ride a blue wave
It's a good day in America.
Donald Trump and his policies lost yesterday's elections across the country spectacularly. The MAGA coalition broke apart badly. Voters who believed that the Epstein files would be released, that America would stay out of Middle East wars, that prices would come down or that the worst of the worst would be arrested and deported realized they'd been lied to. Politicians who'd supported the President through his first and second terms lost their jobs.
The internet reports today that Democrats have won, but that's wrong: Trump lost. His populism turned out to be false. His corruption ran too deep. That's what the country voted against.
Recognizing that is essential to riding the "blue wave" that brought new people to power in Washington and in statehouses across the country.
There'll be plenty of drama in the next few months. The new Congress won't be seated until early January. The President promised to respect the results, but of course that will turn out to be a lie as well. I predict skulduggery, confidently, but I am also optimistic that the courts and public opinion will stand against it.
When the new governors and new state legislatures are seated, when the new Congress convenes next year, it's essential that they govern like they mean it.
Certainly, it's important to investigate corruption, to expose law-breakers and grifters and thieves. But it would be a terrible mistake to concentrate only on subpoenas and hearings.
We need to pass laws and send bills to the President's desk that reflect the needs and interests of the American people broadly.
Fix the tax code! Restore the top marginal income tax rates of the 1970s, before Reagan's "trickle-down" turned into an upward flood of money to oligarchs. Do the same for tax rates on huge estates at death. If your parents amassed thirty million dollars in their lives, the tax code should return a meaningful fraction of that wealth to society rather than creating an idle rich class of inheritors.
We can have nice things. We just need to pay for them.
Offer Americans an off-ramp from ruinously expensive private healthcare. Most insurance policies are underwritten by employers today – let them opt into Medicaid coverage for willing employees instead, dramatically reducing their benefits costs while still covering government's real costs in care delivery.
Get big money out of politics! Corporations aren't people, and billionaires aren't better or wiser people than anyone else merely because they were struck by a lightning bolt of freakish wealth. Strictly limit the activities of PACs, eliminate dark money altogether, strip away the unfair and unequal access that the rich have to policy-makers.
Think about the future of America, who we want to be, who we need in the country to get there. Pass meaningful immigration reform. Offer hard-working people from other countries a reasonable and predictable path to residency and citizenship. Establish sensible guest worker policies that make undocumented status, illegal border crossings, unnecessary and unwise.
We need to send every one of those bills – and more – to the President's desk.
Yes, he's declared he'll be "Mr. Veto" in the lame duck period of his second term. Make him do it! Demonstrate clearly to the American people the real choice in the 2028 election: Trump corruption and xenophobia versus policies and programs that serve the real interests of Americans.
It's impossible to say for sure what will happen over those two years. But there's at least a reasonable chance that the shattering of the MAGA coalition pulls some Republican legislators back toward integrity and the interests of their constituents. We may see a bill or two that is veto-proof. And whether that happens or no, we will be charting the right path for the years post-Trump.