Alan Zendell, November 5, 2025

The Democrats and everyone else who abhors Trumpism scored a great victory yesterday. It was the best outcome they could have hoped for. It sent a clear message that voters who are not extreme ideologues see through the charade that is Donald Trump. The less clear message is that despite yesterday’s success, this was only one battle, and the challenges of the next twelve months until the 2026 midterm elections are daunting.

Drawing on personal experience, the best way I can describe what Americans who care about preserving our Constitution are facing is that it’s like deciding you need to lose forty pounds after years of abusing your body, and waking up one morning to find that you’ve shed ten pounds. You’re elated until the reality sinks in that you still have thirty stubborn pounds to go.

Virginia has been a purple state since the turn of the century, but Abigail Spanberger won the Governor’s race by fifteen points. That’s the definition of a landslide victory, which in part was a reaction to outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin’s commitment to MAGA. Does that mean Virginia is now blue? No. It means that Virginia, which is home to 300,000 federal employees and twenty-seven military  bases including the Pentagon, Quantico, and Norfolk, and more than 600,000 veterans are angry about Trump’s attempts to dismantle the federal government and his view of the proper role of the military. It also means independents and moderates of both parties are furious with Republicans’ attempts to make Obamacare so expensive that most of the nearly 400,000 Virginians who rely on health insurance through the Affordable Care Act will not be able to afford the premiums. And then there are those nasty food stamps.

In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill won the governorship by thirteen points, not quite a landslide, but highly significant in that it reversed gains made by Trump in 2024. That’s extremely important, because the 2024 gains in reliably blue New Jersey threw a real scare into fans of democracy. It’s also extremely important that both Sherrill and Spanberger are women who outperformed Kamala Harris’ 2024 results. Does that mean America is ready to embrace a woman as president in 2028? No, but it silences those who are certain a woman can’t win. Not only is Spanberger the first woman ever elected Governor of Virginia, but Ghazala Hashmi, who won the Lieutenant Governor’s race by eleven points is the first Muslim woman to win statewide office in Virginia.

As a former New Yorker, I am as shocked as anyone that Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist Muslim won a mandate-level victory in New York CIty’s mayoral race. One could argue that after the scandals incurred by outgoing mayor Eric Adams and the fact that Mamdani’s strongest opposition came from Andrew Cuomo who resigned as Governor in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal made Mamdani’s victory easy. But that would be naïve.

Mamdani ran a a grass roots campaign that addressed the most important issues New Yorkers have lived with for a century. Most people simply can’t afford to live in New York. The city kept kicking its housing crisis down the road with tactics like rent control, but it was clear to many New Yorkers that the status quo was unsustainable. Whether Mamdani can deliver on promises like affordable housing and free public transportation remains to be seen, but he demonstrated that focusing on those issues wins elections.

To reinforce Mamdani’s victory, Trump threatened that all but the minimum necessary federal assistance will be withheld from New York, including a transit tunnel under the Hudson River that is critical to easing congestion in the city. And since Mamdani’s election was a clear rebuke of Trump, the president immediately posted on Truth Social that the election must have been rigged.

California voters spoke, too. While Trump has made California the symbol of every progressive idea he despises, there has always been a strong minority conservative streak in California politics. While it’s not surprising that voters approved Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting map in response to Trump pressuring every red state to maximize gerrymanding for the 2026 election, a margin of victory of two-to-one sends a powerful message. Average Americans, regardless of their politics, are horrified by the way ICE is approaching  our immigration crisis, looking more every day like the embryo of an American Gestapo. And Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles galvanized California and every other state Trump threatened with military occupation.

Yesterday’s elections were a clear wake up call – to Republicans, that Trump’s autocratic leanings and attacks on our Constitution are not invulnerable, and to Democrats that it’s time to select a charismatic leader and start fighting Trumpism at every turn. They have a long way to go before they can justify feeling optimistic, but there’s no longer any excuse to roll over and play dead.