Portside

Well, that was some night. My initial morning after take is that we can thank several people for this victory. First of all, there are the scores of millions of voters that have rejected Trump-MAGA and all its works. The coalition that won last night is the broadest left-center coalition in nearly twenty years, since Obama's victory. Nationally, it wasn't even close. And this time, the left has truly come out of the closet, with democratic socialists establishing themselves as a legitimate part of the U.S. political scene. In Southeast Michigan, two members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Rashida Tlaib and Donovan McKinney, will both take their places as members of the 120th Congress.

It might even be broader than Obama's coalition. Who would have thought we'd be spending the morning after watching a razor-thin race for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, of all places, with Scott Colum, the Democrat, being on the verge of becoming the first Black Senator from that state since Reconstruction? (As I write this, Colum leads by a mere 65 votes.) Or that a Black woman and former union organizer, Angie Nixon, would come within 2.9% (238,761 votes) of winning a Florida Senate seat? Or that Georgians would not only reelect Jon Osoff, but make Keisha Lance Bottoms the first Black governor, and first Black woman governor, of Georgia?

To call last night a stunner would be to resort to a cliché, but the defeat of Islamophobia and the election of Abdul El-Sayed to the U.S. Senate with a 52.5%-45.5% victory leaves us with few other words to describe what we've just done. (Jacob Kornbluh, writing in the Forward, cites a Mercury Public Affairs survey of Michigan Jewish voters that voted before Election Day. That survey found that El-Sayed won 60% of the early Jewish vote.)  Oh, and in case you missed it in all the hoopla, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D MN-5) won reelection with 76.5% of the vote. That's a slightly bigger margin than the 75.2% she won two years ago.

This is also, make no mistake, a victory for the Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate. I think Zohran Mamdani's victory last year had a chastening effect on Hakeem Jeffries, who essentially nationalized Mamdani's "affordability" agenda campaign, which became a core policy element of the Democrats' House victory. And Chuck Schumer can also be credited, even though he mostly just seemed to stay out of the candidates' way. But this included not allowing Islamophobia and differences over Israel-Palestine to become distractions and obstacles to success. This was a hard won lesson from two years ago. Whether he wants to become Senate Majority Leader or retire with his victory in hand is probably a decision that is his alone to make. I know we're still hearing voices that want to throw mud at success with a campaign to thwart the ascension of Jeffries to the post of Speaker of the House, which would make him the first Black person to hold that position. Such opposition is of the kind of fake "progressivism" that is not at all progressive. It not only radically misreads the moment, but fails utterly to see that it was Black people that were a cornerstone of the Democratic victory.

Black women were among the standout victors in this race, and they are part of the women-driven aspect of this victory. It's not just Bottoms, but the 61% of Illinois voters that sent Juliana Stratton to the United States Senate yesterday. She joins Tammy Duckworth to make the first all-female U.S. Senate delegation from Illinois. As for Bottoms and Osoff, we can thank Stacey Abrams, that brilliant organizer and novelist, for all her work over the years in spearheading the recreation of the Georgia electorate into a progressive one. This was surely a demonstration of the enormous political power, in the 21st century, of Black women, who are part of a much larger women-driven progressive politics that we'll be seeing more of in the coming years. We can start by noting that Amy Acton crushed the dedicated misogynist Vivek Ramaswamy to become the first female governor of Ohio.

And the hits keep coming. William Lawrence, the founder of the Sunrise Movement, unseated a Republican incumbent in the 7th CD of Michigan. Democrats won a trifecta in Michigan, with majorities in both houses of the legislature, as well as the governor's seat, which Jocelyn Benson won by nine points. Gina Hinojosa's seven point victory over Greg Abbot in the Texas governor's race is not only historic for resulting in the first Latina governor of that state, but Governor-elect Hinojosa has a majority Democratic state legislature to work with, to boot. What I'm interested in learning over the next few days is about the Democrats that unseated House and Senate Republican incumbents yesterday. Learning this will give us an interesting window into how to proceed in the next election, the campaign for which is now a few hours old.

Sherri L. Barnes, my wife, has for years been asking, "where is the Christian left"? The answer came yesterday from Texas, whose voters put James Talarico in one of that state's U.S. Senate seats, thereby dealing Christian nationalism a severe blow. His victory speech was one of the best of the night (but Osoff's was pretty good, too), lighting a path for an ethics that puts the Christian Nationalist "empathy is a sin" doctrine in the shade. It came yesterday from Kansas, where Rev. Adam Hamilton, the pastor of the largest Methodist congregation in the United States, won a convincing victory in that state's U.S. Senate race. They will join Georgia's Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Atlanta pulpit in a new, rejuvenated U.S. senate.

We don't yet know the full size of this victory. But it's large enough and convincing enough to effectively end Donald Trump's rampage against the Constitution and the American people. (As I write this, Trump is spending the day after his party's stupendous loss chattering and mumbling about his beloved vanity ballroom. It's a true Marie Antoinette moment.) But it's of even bigger significance than that. While nothing's ever sure in politics, with victories for democratic forces in countries ranging from Brazil to Serbia, it does seem like the authoritarian wave, both here and internationally, has been curbed, if not halted.

We can talk about what's next in the coming weeks and months. But right now, to my mind, the appropriate thing to do is to both savor and learn from this victory. There are a lot of lessons to be learned as this new coalition (and it is a new progressive coalition) prepares to take power over the legislature and the purse of the nation, as well as reshaping state politics from coast to coast.

[Geoffrey Jacques is a writer, poet, and critic. He is a Portside Book Review moderator.]