The Great Democratic Catharsis Is Upon Us

Politics Democrats’ Catharsis Election After a dystopian decade, Democrats finally, fully got to stick it to the man responsible. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Democrats finally had the night they’ve been fantasizing about since the dawn of the Trump Era: A blue tsunami, and a broad and sweeping repudiation of the president. For a decade, Democrats have been in a cycle of hope and crushing disappointment over a series of dreams, to the point where doubt had crept in that any would ever materialize. Tuesday night, a shocking number of those dreams came to fruition. It is the rout they’d convinced themselves they’d never see. As of this writing, Democrats have comfortably retaken control of the House of Representatives and flipped seats deep into Republican territory, likely giving them the biggest majority since the one ushered in by the 2008 election. Democrats have won the Senate majority by flipping seats in Ohio, Maine, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa. Let me repeat something in there: Democrats have won a Senate seat in South Carolina. Let me repeat another thing: Democrats have turned Texas blue, one of the ultimate Democratic fantasies of the 21st century, up and down the state ballot. Democrats literally beat Maine Sen. Susan Collins, in an election. None of these races were all that close, and those were just the chief battlegrounds. (One race that does remain close, as of this writing: Mississippi, which is too close to call. Mississippi!) It was a merciless elsewhere. Democrats Roy Cooper and Jon Ossoff won their Senate races in North Carolina and Georgia, respectively, by roughly 20 points. (Georgia also elected a Democratic governor. And lieutenant governor. And attorney general. And secretary of state. And … you get the picture.) In North Carolina, Republicans gerrymandered their congressional map with the goal of leaving Democrats only three seats. Democrats may well take nine—and the map now qualifies as a “dummymander.” Republican Vivek Ramaswamy disgraced himself en route to a loss of the governor’s race in Ohio. It is a midterm result shaping up to be more than Democrats’ 2006 wave election or Republicans’ 2010 romp, but something closer to the truly historic watersheds: the 1994 Republican Revolution, or the 1974 post-Watergate reckoning. And it’s the result that the Democratic brain has cautioned itself against believing after the shocks of the last decade. For most of Trump’s first run for president, the broader attitude among Democrats and Republicans alike was best summed up in tweet from the late Lindsey Graham. “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” Graham posted on May 3, 2016. “And we will deserve it.” Then Trump won. A series of modest highs for Democrats, and low lows, ensued. Although Democrats took back control of the House in 2018, they couldn’t breach Trump’s strength in red states in the Senate, and lost Senate seats on net. The 2020 election, while a Democratic presidential victory, was a squeaker, with wildly errant polling giving Democrats the false impression that they might win in a landslide. Trump’s effort to overturn that election result, climaxing with a riot in the United States Capitol, felt like the moment that could put an end to his political ambitions. And then Trump won the 2024 election with a broad and diverse coalition, with dramatic pickups among young and minority voters. It wasn’t just that the thorough and complete rebuke of Trump that Democrats had thirsted over—couldn’t understand why it wasn’t happening—seemed more distant than ever. It looked like Trump had remade the Republican coalition into one that could break the back of the Democratic Party. And then, in two years, Trump broke the back of his own coalition. He pressed every wrong button at every opportunity. He launched a war against Iran without consulting either Congress or the American people. (In fact, if those who don’t pay regular attention to the news likely weren’t even aware it was under consideration until the depletion of the American arsenal was underway.) He used tariffs to hammer businesses and raise prices while currying favor or meting out punishment to foreign leaders over personal slights. He made his top issue—immigration—a liability by siccing paramilitary troops on minority communities. He has spent his second term as president doing everything except the central thing he was elected to do—address the cost of living—while enriching himself by billions of dollars. This wasn’t an election about his manners. But his manners, his behavior, his monuments to himself, and his rantings all don’t have the same old whimsical charm his voters think the economy is trash. Especially after 10 years of this shit. Democrats were scared to hope for this. Even as the polls told them it was possible, they spent weeks or month anxiously questioning the extent to which election forecasts were underestimating Republicans. That impulse was borne of political trauma. It wasn’t just Trump’s regular overperformances, it was the other misses of white whales over the course fo the years. Susan Collins outperformed her polling by double digits in 2020, after never leading a poll all year. Democrats believed they had Lindsey Graham on the ropes in the 2020 South Carolina Senate race, and lost by 10. Tight Senate polling in places like Kansas, Iowa, and Ohio have always proven illusory. The list of close calls for Democrats in the Trump era thwarted by the resilience of MAGA voters goes on, and on, and on. On Tuesday, though, it all happened.