Riding on the public’s pervasive economic anxiety and widespread fury and fear of Donald Trump’s trashing of American democracy, the Democrats won big from coast to coast yesterday.
Virginia voters elected Democrat Abigail Spanberger to be their governor by a 14-point margin over her Republican opponent. They elected a full slate of down-ticket Democrats, too, including their attorney general candidate whose years-old tweets would have defeated him had state voters not been furious at the presumptuous misrule of Trump.
New Jersey voters elected Democrat Mikie Sherrill to be their governor by a 13-point margin over her Republican opponent. Pennsylvania voters returned all three Democratic state Supreme Court justices—who’d rejected Trump’s machinations to skew their state toward MAGA injustices—by 20-point margins. Georgia voters ousted two Republican members of the state’s Public Service Commission in favor of two Democrats—the first Democrats to win statewide nonfederal offices in decades.
New Yorkers Say Yes to Mamdani for Mayor
But the biggest story of the night was the unambiguous victory of Zohran Mamdani, the state assemblyman and democratic socialist who gained national prominence while campaigning on a message of economic populism and facing off against Trump. Mamdani beat former governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo, 50.4 percent to 41.6 percent. The 8.8-point lead meant that even if Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa had dropped out and sent his
7.1 percent to Cuomo, Cuomo still would have lost.
It’s encouraging on many levels: New York City didn’t submit to a campaign of flagrant bigotry from disgraced two-time loser Cuomo; Americans, particularly young ones, can still be politically inspired by a good candidate with a good message; and, not least of all, a bunch of MAGA billionaires flushed millions and millions of dollars down the toilet losing to a brown, Muslim democratic socialist. According to Forbes, no fewer than 28 billionaires donated at least $100,000 to stop Mamdani, including Daniel Loeb, Barry Diller, Steve Wynn, Reed Hastings, and Alice Walton. Terminally online hedge fund manager Bill Ackman donated $1.75 million, while failed presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg donated $8.3 million, all to no avail.
California Democrats Win Redistricting Measure, Prove That Resistance Works
On the other side of the country, Democrats won a redistricting measure, Prop 50, which whittles down Trump’s gerrymandering scheme. Redistricting in California will partially offset Trump’s gambit to immunize himself from voter anger in the midterm elections by cheating his way to more House seats.
The win, combined with several mid-cycle surprises, has weakened Trump’s shield against accountability for his unpopular reign, although the Supreme Court really holds the key to whether we’ll have something approaching legitimate elections next year. Gov. Gavin Newsom deserves a lot of credit for leading the resistance to the Trump gambit, and pulling even reluctant Democrats into the battle. It should be a lesson for the whole party across a host of fights.
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