last updated November 8, 2026Comments? Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net
Episode #1069: Wave, Tsunami, Rout
First Broadcast: 11/9/26
Good news, everyone! In an epic victory that surpassed even many Democrat's expectations, Democratic candidates won elections up and down the ballot across the country on Tuesday, and by the end of the night they had won sizeable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a majority of governorships that were up for grabs, in addition to many other state and local races. In the process, Democrats flipped 4 governor's offices, as well as 43 seats in the House and 7 seats in the Senate, which could end up being 9 Senate seats when the vote counting finally ends. James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton and Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott in Texas; Abdul Al-Sayed defeated Mike Rogers in Michigan; Eileen Laubacher defeated Lauren Boebert in Colorado; Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio; Troy Jackson defeated Susan Collins in Maine; and Kathy Hochul defeated Bruce Blakeman in New York, among many elections nationwide, in what was broadly interpreted as a mass rebuke of the cruel, ineffective, and corrupt policies of the second term of Republican Donald Trump's presidency. Examples of the depth of this revolt were too numerous to count: Democrats won Senate seats in both of the Carolinas; a Democrat won a Railroad Commissioner seat in Texas; a 19 year-old Democratic student at Arizona State University won the Maricopa County Clerk race in Arizona; and an openly gay Ukrainian-born Democrat defeated a three-term incumbent Republican in the 5th Congressional district in Indiana, a district that Trump won by almost 17 points in 2024. This collection of victories could lead to all sorts of good things--a check on Donald Trump's fascist vision of the presidency probably being the most urgent--but perhaps the most consequential outcome could be the passage of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact by enough state governments to put it into effect, which would mandate states that make up a majority of votes in the Electoral College to pledge their votes to the national winner of the popular vote of the Presidential election, which would effectively bypass the Electoral College without needing to abolish it, and prevent any outcome like the ones in 2000 and 2016--where the winner of the popular vote did not become President--from ever happening again, or at least as long as the compact doesn't get repealed in any of the states that have passed it in the meantime. Is this the first nail in the coffin for Trump and his cult? I don't know, but if Democratic voters can keep up this enthusiasm in 2028 and beyond, then we have a real shot at becoming a functioning democracy again, and I, for one, am looking forward to it!
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last updated November 8, 2026
Comments?
Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net