Thinking About the Midterm Election

State Auditor Rob Sand speaks Oct. 25 at a rally in a Democratic campaign office. Disclosure: I was a volunteer canvasser for the county party and was thus at the rally. Spoiler alert: Sand won. Image by me,

The power of the blue tsunami in this month’s off-year election wasn’t all that surprising to those who were paying attention to polls. Yet, polls aren’t always correct, and it didn’t happen until it happened.

State Rep. Josh Turek. 
Official state portrait.

Iowa has, for a decade or so, been turning deeply red. Our entire Congressional delegation, for example, is not just Republican, but pretty far right GOP. And then Nov. 3 happened. It was a close race, but Democrat Josh Turek will be our new senator next year, not Rep. Ashly Hinson. Hinson’s seat will go to Democrat Lindsay James. Next year, three of our four House members will be Democratic women, compared to our current all-GOP representation.

We will also have a new Democratic governor and attorney general. The blue tide didn’t lift all boats—we will still have a Republican secretary of state and secretary of agriculture. Voters also passed an anti-tax amendment that I fear will hobble future state government.

Still, deep red Iowa looks far more purple today. And Democrats had an astoundingly good night nationwide, sweeping races in unexpected places, taking control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, growing the number of Democratic governors.

President Trump told voters to pretend he was on the ballot. That idea motivated the majority of Americans who have grown tired of the loutish, loud, listless orange one—the midterm electorate did vote mostly against Trump and the MAGA movement he inspires.

So, OK. But the remarkable turnaround leaves me with some trepidation. What comes next? Trump is still president, and a wounded Trump is an angry, vengeful, spiteful Trump. He’s been stealing what he can for two years, but is likely to up the ante as his time grown shorter.

The guy who will be remembered, I’m hopeful (because who knows who gets the job next), as our worst president in history has done a lot of damage. His choices for his lieutenants show the weakness that plagues many authoritarian regimes—if loyalty is the only metric that underlings are judged by, then competence in general severely declines. Sycophants are rarely the brightest among us.
 

White House image. Their caption: President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks alongside the last piece of steel used in the construction of the White House Ballroom during an event with workers from Clark Construction, Wednesday, November 4, 2026.

And the swing in the electorate in this election represents a disorienting volatility in the electorate in recent election years. I fear American are a tribe with a short memory. We constantly consume, rewrite and reinterpret our own narrative. In one way, that’s a positive aspect of our national character—we’re not a nation that constantly refights ancient battles. Yet, it’s not healthy to so easily forget, either.

Think about the “stolen” election of 2020. It clearly wasn’t—multiple, credible sources show that Trump lost to Biden that year because the electorate was tired of Trump and his nonsensical, inarticulate response to the pandemic that year. And then there is the “mandate” that Republicans insist Trump got when he did win the 2024 election. The fact is that Trump received less than half the votes. It was still the largest plurality of votes that year and it did lead to a by-the-rules Electoral College win for Donald, but it was a narrow, close win and hardly a mandate.

State Rep. Lindsay James.
Official State Portrait.

I can’t help but think that the past two decades have seen the decline of traditional news media sources at the same time social media has risen. And the reward system of our social media sites favors emotional, angry content that grabs attention. Collectively, our attention span has been also eroded, to the detriment of our ability to self-govern.

I am politically a moderate liberal, and yes, despite originally being a Republican when I started voting in the 1970s, I’m now a Democrat. So I’m happy with the results of this mid-term election.

But I am also disturbed by it—the electorate that created the blue tsunami also returned the worst president in U.S. history to office two  years ago. Yes, I know there was deep distrust of Kamala Harris in 2024, but a President Harris would never have been as delusional nor incompetent as the orange crime family head who occupies and desecrates the Oval Office right now.

So, how do we begin to fix this mess? How does the electorate calm down a bit so the swings aren’t so wild?

Partly, we’re reacting to wild times—sometimes great political changes of the past, the start of the Progressive Era or the rise of FDR, are related to what’s going on. And what’s going on for the middle class in America in recent years in terms of stable jobs disappearing or the reality that the rich few are managing to siphon off all the wealth—well, it feeds the mess.

Taxing the rich won’t solve our problems, but it would help restore some balance.

As for our addiction to unreliable sources? I don’t see any easy fix to that, except it would be nice if we recognized and talked about that problem. And maybe funded PBS and NPR again since the private sector is increasingly unwilling to support good journalism.

So, hooray, it was a good election night. Yet I still feel like I’m suffering through a long-running national nightmare.