If you follow American politics, you've probably gotten a bad case of whiplash trying to keep track of the wild swings of opinion over the last decade.
About the only sure things that can be said about the election results from yesterday is that New York City remains Democratic, New Jersey continues to tease Republicans but ultimately disappoints them, and the D.C. suburbs in Virginia continue to dominate what is still essentially a red state.
“Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year," a Democratic strategist told Politico.
Oh, really? Off-year elections always favor the party out of power, yada, yada, yada. This is not your granddaddy's electorate. It's not your daddy's electorate, either, nor is it your older brother/sister's electorate. History is meaningless when it just makes stuff up as it goes along. There is no precedent for what's happened over the last 15 years in American politics.
We have become unmoored from our electoral past. From here on out, history is actually an impediment to our understanding of what's happening on the ground in America. These wild swings from one party to the other, one ideology to another, reveal a desperate people searching for answers, and they're willing to take a flyer on anyone and any party that can identify their unease with life in 21st-century America.
Like Zohran Mamdani, they don't even have to make realistic promises to the voter. Almost anyone with any sense can see that Mamdani's agenda is unworkable and unattainable. That may be the only thing that saves him in the end. Not enacting his radical agenda may be the best re-election strategy he's got going for him.
Related: Did the Right Help Elect Mamdani?
The left is celebrating. It's their Sally Field's moment in the sun at the 1985 Academy Awards: "You like me! You really like me!" Actually, it's more like Will Smith slugging Chris Rock onstage at the 2022 Academy Awards. Voters delivered a blow to Republicans, slapping them down and letting them know they have to do better or else.
The 2025 off-year elections are not an omen ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, and certainly not the 2028 presidential election. The results are a snapshot of what America was feeling when they entered the voting booth or mailed in their ballot. That's how elections have gone in the last decade, and there's no reason to think 2026 or 2028 will be any different.
What voters are feeling should trouble Republicans. The Democrats are about to launch an "affordability" offensive, claiming that the inflation baked into the economy as a result of the Democrats' wild spending spree to assist the U.S. in "recovering" from the pandemic can be rolled back, and we can have the first Trump presidency prices again. The $5.2 trillion Joe Biden, with the full and unanimous support of Democrats in Congress, spent to reward his friends and punish his enemies is still bedeviling the economy.
The only thing that will take voters' minds off of prices is going to be the incompetence and ineptitude of Democratic mayors in big cities whose policies are likely to trigger a mass exodus from major metropolises.
Having voted for this bloody collision between dreams and reality, New Yorkers have entered the Olympic contest for America’s worst mayor. The competition is tough. Far-left leaders in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland have shown just how badly their policies work, yet none is willing to change.
These mayors are all Democrats, and they aren’t outliers in today’s party. No party leaders have denounced them. Some have openly supported them and will be saddled with those endorsements in future elections, after the costly programs fail, crime rises, and taxpayers flee to welcoming jurisdictions. Republicans will make sure national Democrats are tagged with those failures.
The Democrats’ move to the left is not confined to one city or state. It’s a broad movement that could threaten the party’s hold on centrist independents. In city after city, Democratic mayors support open borders, sanctuary city status, lax policing, no cash bail, weak punishment for criminals, onerous regulations and heavy taxes on anyone who can pay them. They are politically indebted to teachers unions, who have saddled taxpayers with expensive K-12 schools (almost $40,000 per student in NYC), eliminated competition and trapped families in these failing institutions, unless they move.
Trying to predict how the results from the 2025 off-year elections will play in 2026 or 2028 is a fool's errand. Too much can happen, both at home and abroad, to hazard a guess.
Republicans' best bet is to sit back and allow Democrats to self-destruct. Otherwise, they can pray that the Democrats' disarray and internecine warfare will fatally weaken them for 2026.
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