I’ll leave the in-depth analysis of the midterm election tsunami to others who are smarter than I am.
I’ll leave the gracious-in-victory expressions to others with better diplomatic skills. We reunited as a nation after the Civil War; surely we can reunite after the past decade of ugliness.
For now, I’ll simply raise a glass of nonalcoholic liquid, since I quit drinking a few years ago, to these people and principles:
Erich Bridges
This is for Renee Good, Alex Pretti and Lorenzo Salgado, shot dead on the streets of Minneapolis and Houston for peacefully resisting ICE or, in Salgado’s case, trying to get to a construction worksite so he could support his family.
This is for the 56 others (at least) who have died in ICE custody since January 2025 — beaten, humiliated, denied basic medical care, starved, left to die in their own waste without due process or access to legal representation.
This is for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been snatched off the street, from their jobs or from schools, disappeared into the ICE gulag and deported, sometimes to third countries thousands of miles from where they were born.
This is for the legally resettled refugees — Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans, Cubans and many others — who face deportation to places where they could be persecuted and killed, who dwell in the shadows, who peer fearfully from behind curtains to see if ICE is coming for them.
This is for the millions of families who can’t afford food, gasoline, heat or rent because Donald Trump launched a pointless war and imposed economically suicidal tariffs.
This for the thousands of farmers going out of business because they can’t afford the diesel fuel to run their tractors.
“This for the thousands of farmers going out of business because they can’t afford the diesel fuel to run their tractors.”
This is for the tens of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs to mindless, destructive government budget cuts by DOGE, Elon Musk and Russ Vought.
This is for the Muslim citizens who have endured years of hatred, slurs, lies and conspiracy theories spewed out by the likes of Trump, JD Vance, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott and a host of so-called “Christian leaders.”
This is for the untold thousands of mothers, children and poor people in developing countries who have died because Trump, Musk and Marco Rubio strangled USAID, one of the most effective tools of American humanitarian aid and soft power in our nation’s history.
This is for the millions of military service members struggling under the boot of a psychotic, racist, misogynist, Christian nationalist “secretary of war” who belongs in a straitjacket, not in the Pentagon.
This is for the children needlessly dying of measles because we have an HHS secretary who doesn’t believe in child vaccinations.
This is for the people of Ukraine, bravely fighting for their lives and their nation after nearly five years of unprovoked invasion by Vladimir Putin, Trump’s best buddy.
“This is for Betsy Peak, born into slavery in 1845 in my home state of Georgia.”
This is for Betsy Peek, born into slavery in 1845 in my home state of Georgia. She is the great-great grandmother of Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was elected last night as the first Black female governor anywhere in America. Betsy, I hope you are smiling, wherever you are, and I promise to bring flowers to your grave next time I go home.
This is for all the Black, Latino, Asian and other Americans of color who have been smeared, degraded and dehumanized over the past decade because MAGA and white supremacists thought they could permanently derail your struggle for equality and justice.
This is for democracy and free elections.
This is for the rule of law.
This is for basic human decency.
I’m under no illusion that the midterms show a new outpouring of support for Democrats, despite their huge political gains. Americans generally remain at least as disillusioned with ineffective Democrats as they clearly are with corrupt, authoritarian Republicans. Many citizens voted on affordability and their pocketbooks, period.
I’m also under no illusion that the Blue Wave marks “the end of the Trump era,” as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared when the Republican bloodbath became clear on election night. We have two more miserable years of Trump in the White House to get through, and God only knows how much more damage he will cause to America and the world. The damage he already has caused will take a generation at least to repair.
MAGA is not dead — yet. Trump is on the way out, but Trumpism is alive, if not well. Vance, Rubio and others, no doubt, are plotting even now how to rebrand it and build some new monstrosity from the smoking wreckage. Plenty of zombified true believers will follow them.
But this is a day for new hope, after a decade of political and social darkness The enemies of American democracy as we have known it have been defeated, at least temporarily. Let’s hope millions who wittingly or unwittingly supported them will wake up at last. We’ve survived worse and come back together.
But to the enablers of tyranny, the cynical fellow travelers, the grifters, the politicians and government officials who have brazenly undermined and ignored the rule of law, I say this: Lawyer up. Accountability and justice are coming for you.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.
Related:
Payday for MAGA | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
Understanding the blue tsunami of the midterms | Analysis by Edmond Davis