Since Trump’s second term began this past January, every day has had its own “big” news. Day after day, week after week, Trump has bombarded Americans with unprecedented actions, unlawful power grabs, cuts to government agencies by Elon Musk’s DOGE, extreme tariffs on allies and foes alike, support of dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a temporary freeze on support for Ukraine, extreme cuts to renewable energy programs, cutting off America’s leadership in soft-power, ceding America’s competitiveness in renewable energy (and so much else) to China, refusing to fund SNAP benefits to 1 in 8 households in America who need food assistance, unleashing ICE to arrest and deport immigrants without due process, involving the National Guard in domestic matters against the wishes of states and cities, and the hundreds of other ill-conceived ideas that have collectively threatened the nation’s democracy as well as its global economic and political leadership.

Add to that inflation has gone up, not down as he promised, and jobs are harder to secure. In short, voters’ lives are worse, not better, under Trump.

Tuesday’s elections demonstrated the disapproval of Trump expressed in numerous polls was not “fake news.” Democrats won in election after election with higher-than-expected turnouts and by larger margins. It was a day packed with really big news.

In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, 34, won the race for mayor by a wide margin over Trump-backed and fellow billionaire Andrew Cuomo. Democrat Abigail Spanberger will be Virginia’s first female governor, while Mikie Sherrill will be New Jersey’s new Democratic governor, winning by a wide margin in a race that polls not long ago predicted would be down to the wire.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom won a big victory in that state’s redistricting measure, which voters supported by a 2-1 margin.

In Maine, voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure by a Republican legislature that would have added voting restrictions (requiring a photo ID), while also approving a measure championed by Democrats that allows families the ability to confiscate a troubled relative’s guns.

In the Virginia state legislature, House Democrats flipped 13 seats for their biggest majority in nearly 40 years.

In Pennsylvania, voters re-elected three Democratic justices to the state’s supreme court for 10-year terms — a rebuke of the Republican Party’s nationwide effort to defeat them.

Detroit elected its first female mayor, a Democrat, and the first new mayor in a dozen years, and, in an upset, Democrats ousted two incumbent Republican members of Georgia’s utility board — a board that hasn’t had a Democratic member since 2007.

As Gov. Newsom said after results of the election were clear, “What a night for the Democratic Party, a party that is in its ascendancy, a party that is on its toes, no longer on its heels.”

YES, BUT…

Though the elections provided welcome relief and optimism for Democrats, warnings about reading too much into a few select races were everywhere.

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos opinion poll last week found 68% of Americans think the Democrat party is out of touch, a bit worse than the 63% who think the same of Trump.

In an analysis by David Smith of the London-based Guardian, he writes that “progressives and moderates were both given fodder to make a case that they have the antidote to Trumpism. The reality, of course, in a wildly diverse country of 50 states and 340 million people, is not one or the other, but all of the above… The Democratic party is a glorious melee of different constituencies and viewpoints in contrast to the brittle monoculture of the Trump cult. (Italics added.) What unites it ahead of next year’s midterms is a desire for fighters rather than folders and for a relentless focus on the affordability crisis even as the president flaunts power and wealth.”

Smith asked New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whether Mamdani or Spanberger was the future of the Democratic Party and she gave an apt answer: “At the end of the day I don’t think our party needs to have one face. Our country does not have one face. It’s about all of us as a team together, and we all understand the assignment. Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible.”

RURAL CONSERVATISM

In another apt analysis, Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor rejects the Republican narrative that Mamdani’s election accelerates a clash of civilizations — with Mamdani’s socialistic ideas in urban America colliding with Trump’s nationalistic fervor. Rather, Tharoor argues, “it’s of competing visions of the world — one anchored in Trump’s angry nationalist project and the other in Mamdani’s global city… Across the world, liberal mayors of major cities find themselves at odds with the nationalist politics of their hinterlands.”

The point to ponder is why Trump’s angry and demeaning style of politics appeals to so many in the nation’s heartland and elsewhere. Certainly, Trump’s style appeals to those who feel disenfranchised — white males without higher education, in particular, are upset with those with more education, immigrants taking jobs, women in the workplace, and more. But it’s also key to understand they wanted to believe Trump’s promises to make things better.

Trump promised, as economist Paul Krugman said, “to not just reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many believed him…. Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan. Instead, he imposed tariffs and began deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices… Pretty clearly, many Americans now believe they were lied to. My guess is that this is especially true for Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump believing he would deliver prosperity and are swinging back hard to Democrats now that he hasn’t.”

Krugman makes another revelation that rings true about extremism in the two parties. “You know which party is out of touch and riddled with extremists? The GOP. If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans,” from an obsession with transgender athletes to the imagined menace of illegal aliens. Turns out, Krugman writes, what Americans don’t like is “the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the streets.”

“And if we’re talking about extremists within the party, well, Democrats have people like Mamdani, a mild-mannered guy who says he’s a socialist but really isn’t. The Republican Party, by contrast, has been largely taken over by outright fascists, and is facing a major outbreak of antisemitism.”

In the end, Trump’s assault on the truth, rejection of science, objection to limits of presidential power, his willingness to prosecute anyone who stands in his way and silence others, and his threats to our democracy may have already tested the patience, and credulity, of too many Americans. And because the GOP has become a party beholden to Trump, its future is wound tightly to him.

It’s too early to discount Trump’s potential resurgence, as he has defied the odds before, but if truth prevails and voters tire of Trump’s lies, the question Republicans are surely asking after Tuesday’s election is how far will the party fall with him?

Angelo Lynn