It Hasn’t Been Popular to Lib Out for Quite Some Time. I’m Giving You Permission.

Politics For the First Time in 18 Years, It’s Safe to Lib Out You can have a little Liberal Millennial Optimism, as a treat. By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Scaachi Koul? Nov 04, 20262:10 PM The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. This morning, I arose to texts from nearly all the women I know in America: “Woke up this morning and jerked it.” In synchronicity, we all granted ourselves the gift of a hard-won orgasm. What better way to ring in the Democrats’ historic landslide victories across the country in the midterm elections than stretching out in your bed and immediately ruining No Nut November for yourself? It’s what FDR would have wanted. Maybe the rest of the country saw how New York was basking in a Socialist Mamdani Summer and they wanted in. As the polls began to close last night, it was clear that Democrats were primed to sweep. Before the clock struck midnight, it was clear that Democrats would soon control both the House and the Senate. Key races in states that usually go red all went to the Democrats, and sometimes by inconceivable margins. Georgia senator and governor, Texas senator and governor, North Carolina senator, South Carolina senator, Maine senator, Kansas senator, Michigan senator, Ohio senator and governor races have all gone blue, in states that have often reliably voted right of center. Longtime Republican figures like Susan Collins, Greg Abbott, Mike Rogers, and Ken Paxton all lost to newer Democratic candidates like Troy Jackson, James Talarico, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s pectoralis major. It seems like soon, we’ll get to forget who Lauren Boebert ever was. Yay! The election results tell us for a fact that woke is back and woker than ever. After Trump and his ilk of Republicans dismantled DEI programs, rolled back Title IX, and flooded the street with masked ICE agents, it has felt like progressivism was dead. But now look at us. We’re hooting and hollering because Texas is now represented in the Senate by a guy who sounds like Mr. Burns when he gets too many medical treatments and keeps offering everyone his love. Even the markets are responding—the Dow shot up 1,500 points the morning after the midterms. (Well, Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX didn’t seem to benefit. More reasons to jerk it, perhaps.) On Twitter—which is what we’re calling it again, we don’t have to call it X because no one can make us do that anymore—everyone is taking repeated victory laps over the Return of Woke. There are celebrations of the return to stated pronouns, brands will have to do queer activations during Pride month again, everyone will get gender-affirming care for free, and Bud Light is legally required to cede the company to Dylan Mulvaney. The Republicans have never seemed weaker, but more urgently, the Democrats have never seemed so strong. In his victory speech last night, El-Sayed took the time to, graciously, beak the vice president. “J.D., habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January,” he said. A Democrat not backing down from being mean to the powers that be? Unprecedented! It hasn’t been popular to lib out for a long time. The last time we safely felt mainstream Democratic optimism was during Barack Obama’s reelection: It felt like the whole world was soundtracked by Kimya Dawson songs and we skipped to our barista jobs in mustard-yellow lace-up loafers and sideswept bangs and played a ukulele on our lunch breaks. Everything felt possible and our pain felt so much more solvable. All our Instagrams were draped in sepia—grid posts only—where we celebrated latte art and selfies of our knocked knees. Then Donald Trump won in 2016. Kate McKinnon cried and played the piano as Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live, and it was the Democrats’ last communal moment of earnest sincerity. In the decade since, we’ve had a decimation of public discourse through grab-her-by-the-pussy politics, new unwinnable wars, even greater attention on the world’s most controversial genocides (aided by American tax dollars), and a boom of ICE-sanctioned murders and deportations. The midterm results are far from a panacea for the moral crimes of the recent past or near future, but they are significant and fortifying. And you know what? You can have this. It’s been a really hard decade. This week, it’s your time to lib out. Lean into the safe, loving embrace of putting one of those “IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE LOVE IS LOVE KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING” signs in your front lawn. Get that pussy hat out of the closet. Rewatch New Girl. Maybe this is the year we all find Joseph Kony. Blexas is real! You can have a little Liberal Millennial Optimism as a treat. The last time we had any potential of libbing out was the 2020 election when Trump lost against Joe Biden. That win was undercut by a raging pandemic. Biden’s victory felt like a placeholder for something more powerful, just another centrist Democrat barely eking out a win against the most charismatic and terrifying Republican president since Ronald Reagan, and at least he had a nice head of hair. These midterm results will herald in plenty of work to try to undo the profound damage of the last two years, never mind the destruction of Trump 1.0, but it’s a robust and undeniable win for a party that’s struggled to gain any traction since Obama freaked everyone out with his tan suit. Talarico, a sweet little dorkass the Republicans kept calling gay, leading by 12 points in Texas? Lindsey Graham’s sister losing South Carolina so it flips to the Democrats for the first time since since the early days of Strom Thurmond, who would absolutely fucking hate all of this?? Susan Collins having to find a new job at 73??? We used to dream of days like this. It’s easy for younger millennials and Gen Xers to roll their eyes at this forthcoming phase of Woke 3, but newer voters have mostly lived in a world where the r-word has returned as a viable slur, and “snowflake” is a common, almost routine insult to lob at an ideological opponent. These kids have never libbed out before! They’ve never screamed “FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT!!!” down a dorm hallway like Stupid Paul Revere, confident that the world was changing for the better, never to backslide again. They’ve never listened to the Lumineers on a (RED) campaign iPod Nano! Gen Z and Gen Alpha deserve a glimmer of it, a reminder that they can lib out even harder as they inherit the earth. Imagine what’s possible in a presidential election! But rest assured that this version of libbing out is different from the ones that came before it, because this version is its most aggressive permutation. The Democrats have swept, but they’re not letting up on the losers; El-Sayed’s victory speech going after Trump and Vance was just one example of the Democrats being righteous winners. Vivek Ramaswamy’s concession call to Amy Acton went to voicemail. Why play nice after he dogged her with ads using her estranged mother, claiming Acton had lied about her childhood sexual abuse? In Mississippi’s Senate race, Democrat Scott Colom is leading by a handful of votes and is confident he’ll win. In response to his incumbent opponent saying she believes she’ll win again, he offered simply, “Bless her heart,” which is a very Southern way of telling someone to eat shit and die. Even Chuck Schumer has been gloating. The schadenfreude about Republican failure and semi-personal suffering is what makes the potential for Woke 3 so delicious. Millennial optimism faltered around the same time Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama were telling us to take the high road. We’ll never lib out like we did in 2008; our collective cynicism might prevent us from ever reaching those heady heights again. What we can have instead is a more potent, more productive, more demanding form of libbing out. If the last decade has taught us anything—and Jesus Christ, I hope we’ve learned something—it’s that there’s no end to the work of beating back fascism and cultural conservatism in government. Libbing out isn’t a destination, but a well-earned stopover in the work of making a kinder, more equitable world, perhaps not run by this guy who is obsessed with butts. It’s a lesson for the Democrats too, that Americans will vote for you if you offer them something to root for without throwing Palestinians or trans children under the bus. Voter turnout across the country was up, especially amongst left-leaning voters. Democrats have two years to prove themselves again—and they will, indeed, have to prove themselves again, all this celebration notwithstanding. There’s so much work to do, so much chaos and destruction to try to undo, and still a few months before the newly elected can take office and start shaping their states and districts. Plenty of time for all that! For now, plug your wired headphones into your iPhone 6S, press play on the Hamilton soundtrack, and order as many avocado toasts you want. Give yourself the gift of libbing the fuck out. Democrats Politics Millennials 2026 Midterms