They came out in droves. Fired up and resisting. Democrats. Independents. Moderate Republicans. Women. People of color. Gay, straight, old, young. They braved cold air, rain and long lines in some places, and the message they sent to Donald Trump is a bigly FUCK YOU! Fuck you and your ignorance. Fuck you and your intolerance. Fuck you and your sexism and your pussy-grabbing. Fuck you and your racism. And fuck you for spooning with Vladimir Putin in your bed of treason.
It wasn’t just a landslide in Virginia, New Jersey and Washington. We witnessed a resounding repudiation of everything Trump and Trumpism stands for. Myriad candidates achieved historic victories across America’s economic, racial, social and sexual tapestry: LGBTQ (Jenny Durkan, Zachary DeWolf, Andrea Jenkins, Tyler Titus and Danica Roem), blacks (Jenkins, Brendon Barber, Wilmot Collins, Jonathan McCollar, Melvin Carter, Booker Gaynor, Vi Lyles, Yvonne Spicer, Sheila Oliver, Mary Parham Copelan, Justin Fairfax), Hispanics (Hala Ayala, Cathy Murillo, Janet Diaz and Elizabeth Guzman), women (Laura Curran, Joyce Craig and Asian-American Kathy Tran) and Ravinder Bhalla, a Sikh.
And, voters in Maine defied their right-wing loon of a governor, Paul LePage, by making that state the 19th to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
Given the grim omen of last night’s humiliating drubbing, Republicans are waking up today terrified of what’s to come in the 2018 midterm election and in 2020. Frightened and frustrated that they can’t campaign with Trump because he’s political kryptonite, and can’t run on Trumpism without Trump. They’re facing their gloomy reality that they can’t win with him and they can’t win without him.
It took moderate Republicans and independents just 10 months to join Democrats in rebuking Trump and his chaos presidency. A presidency that’s stained the office and divided the nation; normalized indecency, incivility and intolerance; mocked science, facts and truth; pissed on the Constitution; disrespected the rule of law; legitimized neo-Nazis and white-supremacists; alienated our allies; emboldened our enemies; and threatened our national security. It’s hard to imagine how the GOP can survive next year’s election, let alone three more years of Donald Trump.
Tuesday’s election results, combined with the president’s historically low approval and the RussiaGate cloud that ominously looms over him and his administration, may finally be the Trump tipping point for the party’s leadership. If I were a gambling man, my money would be on Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and perhaps even vice president Mike Pence hurriedly chatting these next few days about how they can kick into high-gear the process of removing this cancer from the White House.
