Perhaps Americans aren't so crazy

Look, I’ll level with you. I’ve been pulling my hair out daily watching the absolute bonkers bad news coming out of the Trump administration. Every morning feels like opening a box of chocolates and figuring how you do know what you’re gonna get. A bunch of rotten chocolate, just coming in different sizes and flavors. So when Tuesday’s election results started rolling was feeling a lot better about things. It was relief. Finally, some good news. The blue wave is real (let’s not blow it) and it turns out voters aren’t fooled by the Orange Menace’s erratic governing by tweets.

Democrats absolutely crushed it in Virginia and New Jersey, with Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill winning by huge double digit margins. Zohran Mamdani won in NYC and turnouts we haven’t seen in decades. He declared in his victory speech, “This city is your city, and this democracy is yours, too.” Turns out when you give voters a choice between more chaos and someone promising to actually fight for regular people, they will indeed choose wisely.

There are many factors you can look at, but you can argue Trump won the 2024 election because Americans wanted cheaper eggs. And when things look bad blame the people in office. That’s it. That’s all people wanted. Instead, what they got was a crappy season of “The Apprentice: White House Edition” except this time nobody’s has a chance to even be on the show except billionaires like Elon Musk. It’s been pay to play, plus eggs cost more.

Then you have the daily nightmare circus. Masked ICE goons in tactical gear roughing up preschool teachers and delivery drivers while Trump demolishes parts of the White House to build a golden ballroom for his literal golden showers. He even tweeted his golden bathroom, because well of course he did.

His tariffs make inflation worse. We have the longest government shutdown in history leaving federal workers out to dry. And through it all, Trump today was out there talking about hanging out with Saudi princesses who “have a lot of cash” and don’t worry about money, while simultaneously pretending he cares about grocery prices. It’s highly doubtful he’s ever been inside a grocery store.

This is the disconnect that’s been making me want to scream into a pillow every single day. We have leadership that caters to the top 1%. People who can drop millions on crypto schemes and ballroom renovations, while the rest of us are doing mental gymnastics at the checkout line trying to figure out if we can afford both chicken and vegetables this week.

The Trump show has been all spectacle, zero substance. Soldiers on the streets. Arbitrary tariffs announced via Twitter at weird hours and likely sitting on the toilett. Bizarre policy decisions that seem designed for cable news drama rather than actually helping anyone. It’s governance as performance art, except the audience is suffering and the critics are giving it zero stars.

About 6 in 10 voters said they were “angry” or “dissatisfied” with how things are going. No kidding! Trump’s approval ratings are in the gutter, and exit polls showed that over 90% of people who disapproved of him voted Democrat. That’s not just changing the channel, that’s canceling your subscription and demanding a refund.

Remember all those think pieces about how Trump had permanently realigned politics? How working-class voters were now forever Republican? Yeah, that aged like milk sitting in a burning Tesla. When prices went up while Trump’s off partying like 1925, they bounced. Democracy is like a streaming service, people cancel when the content doesn’t deliver.

Democrats won by tying their opponents to Trump’s reality TV presidency, and voters responded by hitting the eject button in massive numbers.

What we desperately need, and what Tuesday’s results suggest voters are hungry for, is leadership that actually cares about the 99%. The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be the future we can look forward to. Will Trump keep catering to the ultra-wealthy while pretending to care about everyday Americans? (Spoiler: yes.) Will Democrats offer real solutions for working people or just run on “not Trump”? Will voters keep demanding leaders who actually give a damn about the 99%?

Tuesday’s elections gave me hope for the first time in months. American voters aren’t crazy, they’re just exhausted from the daily chaos and ready for leadership that serves them instead of the donor class. The Trump administration wanted to make politics into must see TV, and they succeeded, except everyone’s hate watching and taking notes for the next election.

As Zohran Mandami said it in his victory speech, delivering a direct challenge to the president: “So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you’ll have to get through all of us.” That’s not just good TV, that’s the sound of voters who’ve had enough of the show and are ready to change the channel. And honestly? After months of screaming “Are you kidding me?” to myself on a daily basis, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.