Did you feel the earth shake Tuesday?
President Trump certainly did. The Democrats’ coast-to-coast election landslide left him fuming that Republicans would have done better if only he were on the ballot.
Maybe he wasn’t, but his policies were a central issue almost everywhere Americans voted. His attempt to influence New York City’s race for mayor, contests for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and the California redistricting referendum all backfired.
A midterm blue wave
The Supreme Court retention elections in Pennsylvania, where three Democratic incumbents won, were also part of the impressive blue wave. So were two normally obscure seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, where a backlash over six utility rate increases in two years ended two Republicans’ careers. (Sadly, Florida’s own rate-jacking Public Service Commission is appointed by the governor.)
In Virginia, where federal workers are a major constituency, the Democrats kept and enlarged their control of the General Assembly.
A common theme was that the voters are fed up with business as usual and how the same old people seem to control all the levers of power.
That was especially true in the election of a young Muslim mayor who energized voters in the world’s second-largest Jewish metropolis.
Zohran Mamdani did that despite losing two-thirds of the Jewish vote, according to estimates. His victory ought to offer a lesson for U.S. foreign policy, which for too long has ignored the truism that friends don’t let friends drive drunk.
A lingering question is whether Democrats will fully grasp the significance of Mamdani’s election, which he owed primarily to voters under 45.
The minority vote
Older voters chose former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran an uninspired independent campaign after losing the Democratic primary.
Defections by Black, Hispanic and younger voters notably disappointed Democrats nationwide last year. Mamdani did well with all of them, in the city’s highest vote turnout since 1969.
It is important that Mamdani won in essentially the same way Trump has twice won the presidency: by convincing voters he’s a change agent who cares about their economic well-being.
“For most New Yorkers who hit the polls, questions about Mamdani’s attitude toward Israel — and even concerns about antisemitism — paled in importance beside affordability,” remarked the Forward, New York City’s venerable Jewish newspaper.
This holds a message for the seriously outnumbered and demoralized Democrats in Florida, where an FAU poll found half of respondents thinking of leaving the state and half of those say it’s because it costs too much to live here.
There are legislative and congressional seats to be won next year with a relentless focus on why Florida is so expensive and what the ruling party has or hasn’t done about it.
Mamdani’s burden
Trump’s actions have belied his promises. Mamdani’s problem will be delivering on his promises in a city where the state capitol has a tight hold on the treasury and on transportation and while an embittered and vengeful president threatens to punish the city by withholding as much aid as he can.
Mamdani will need help from a united congressional delegation, which brings up another big loser in Tuesday’s election.
That’s Chuck Schumer, New York’s senior senator and Senate minority leader. He refused to the end to endorse his party’s nominee for mayor and refused to say how he voted. That isn’t leadership.
Like some other Democrats, Schumer was spooked by Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s conduct and perhaps more so by his self-identification as a democratic socialist like Sen. Bernie Sanders. It would appear, though, that the Democrats’ core constituencies aren’t nearly as obsessed with labels as its own leaders and enemies are.
Back to Cali
It’s problematic to applaud the outcome of the redistricting referendum in California, where two-thirds of voters approved a gerrymander that’s explicitly designed to unseat five of nine Republicans in the state congressional delegation.
That too was a rebuke to Trump and the Republican legislators in Texas, the next largest state, who had complied with his demand to create five more Republican-voting districts in an attempt to control the House after the 2026 election.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called for the gerrymander, fought fire with fire. In Texas, Republicans went low, and so did Newsom, who’s now the leading unannounced candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Going high wasn’t an option, even if it meant temporarily bypassing, for the next three cycles, the model California provision that entrusts redistricting to an independent commission.
Naturally, Republicans are suing. Their prospects are poor in light of the Supreme Court’s cop-out refusal to recognize, much less overturn, a political gerrymander.
In Trump’s America, what goes around comes around.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
