Landslide Swaps One Set of Bosses for Another

Voters handed Democrats a House popular-vote margin of over 13 points last Tuesday, the largest in 50 years, and the people who cast those ballots are now being told to wait while the new managers get comfortable. A week on, 17 House seats still haven't been called by NBC News' Decision Desk, the Mississippi Senate race is too close to call, and Alaska hasn't produced a Senate result. The count drags on. The people who voted already did their part.

Who Was Actually Angry

Start with the people who say what drove this. Democratic consultant Chuck Rocha put it plainly in the New York Times: "Latinos aren't a monolith. But we are monolithically irate about how hard it is getting to stretch a paycheck." NBC reported Republicans took massive losses over high gas prices, inflation and opposition to the Iran war. Vice President JD Vance, the day after the midterms, said: "the reason we lost is the war." Rent, fuel, groceries, a war nobody asked for. That's the real platform. No party wrote it.

Some winners barely had a campaign at all. LaKesha Womack won in North Carolina's 14th District spending about $56,000, after being served with a felony warrant in October for allegedly failing to return a rental car in 2019. Teresa Benitez-Thompson in Nevada's Second District and Zack Mullock in New Jersey's Second District also won with little money. The machine's money didn't decide it this time. Anger did.

The Mechanics of the Gerrymander

Republican mid-decade redistricting, which Trump and the GOP hoped would net more than a dozen seats, fell flat, and the GOP lost seats in some states it had carved up, like North Carolina. Democrats answered with a redistricting push in California. A similar Virginia measure was struck down by state judges. Both parties redrew maps to pick their own voters, and judges decided which maps survived. Meanwhile the Supreme Court's April Louisiana v. Callais decision weakened Voting Rights Act protections, and Black turnout surged anyway. People voted into the teeth of a ruling designed to blunt them.

What They're Promising Next

Democrats won new state trifectas in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Minnesota. Their stated plans: Democrats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin plan to try to raise minimum wages to $15 or $20 an hour, Democrats in Arizona and Texas plan to target school voucher programs, and Medicaid expansion could be a priority in Texas and Georgia. Plans, not laws. Even in states where Republicans keep at least one legislative chamber, namely Georgia, Texas, Iowa and Ohio, those promises face a veto from the other side.

The party's own senators are already hedging. Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned: "I have already heard some Democrats accept defeat before we even tried fighting for progress. That breaks faith with the people who sent us here." CNN reported several Senate Democrats aren't committed to voting for Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer next month. The fighters want Trump dared to veto a minimum wage increase and a congressional stock-trading ban. The cautious are folding before the vote.

Corruption Hearings and the Same Old Ladder

Foreign Policy's Casey Michel wrote that voters cited corruption as their leading concern for the first time in living memory, and possibly in U.S. history. His prescription runs through hearings, subpoenas and committee investigations, then an Anti-Corruption Bureau and constitutional amendments. Incoming House Oversight chair Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said Democrats are "already" looking at former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. NBC reported Democrats have spent two years compiling questions they'd like to ask Elon Musk, preferably under oath.

So the remedy for rule by the powerful is another set of powerful people holding committee gavels. Nancy Pelosi, the previous speaker, said Hakeem Jeffries will "win very conclusively" in the speaker race and is "a unifier." Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the incoming class "a mandate for change." Mike Johnson stepped aside from leadership. Stephen Miller became chief of staff Monday. Trump, meanwhile, is casting doubt on the results days after saying he was "absolutely willing" to accept the losses.

The seats change hands. The gavels change hands. The people stretching a paycheck are still stretching it.