On Tuesday another historic election will happen in this country. It is imperative that those of us who reject the ugliness of Trump and MAGA turn out in massive numbers to overwhelm any effort to undermine the electoral process and any desire to extend the madness of this Trump era. Congress must be flipped, if there is to be any check on Trump in these last two years.
There is an excitement in the air about what is possible. Suddenly the prospects of winning seats in Texas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, in Georgia, Iowa, and Kansas makes it feel like the country is finally turning a corner. For whatever reason, high prices at the pump and the grocery store, the cruelty of immigration policies or the corruption that engulfs Washington, D.C., Americans seem to have had enough.
Perhaps it is a revelation that their hatreds have brought harm to their doorsteps.
No matter the reason, Tuesday must be an historic day.
Now there are rumblings that signal a storm isn’t too far off: the DOJ deploying election monitors across all fifty states, filing lawsuits in California, election deniers strategically positioned in states throughout the country, the mess in Alaska, etc. Some Democrats wringing their hands over progressives and the criticisms of Israel; in Michigan, Haley Stevens declaring that she will vote for Mike Rogers over El-Sayed because of it all; James Carville imagining what he takes to be nightmare scenarios where Democratic Socialists hold the House of Representatives hostage.
And then there are the polls. They can be wrong about the state of play – especially when it comes to the Senate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/10/31/4-ways-polls-could-be-wrong-or-right-about-who-will-win-senate/
But I am reminded of something that the late Bob Moses, the famed SNCC organizer and mastermind of Freedom Summer, once told me. It was a lesson about the promise and defeat of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and about the pitfalls of elections as the aim of movements. In his quiet way, he said, “Eddie, movements mustn’t place too much faith in elections. If you win, your success demobilizes the movement. If you lose, the defeat deflates and demobilizes the movement.”
This was a hard lesson learned, given what happened after the betrayals in Atlantic City in 1968.
Why am I bringing up that lesson now? Whether there is a blue wave or not, we still have much work to do in this country. If the Democrats win the House and the Senate, many will have much to celebrate, but winning an election will not solve the problems unleashed over the last ten years. We must tap the root and confront the source of our current troubles, if we are to get off this damn hamster wheel.
That will entail holding Democrats to the fire, too.
And if the midterms offer a different result, and these madmen and women hold on to the House and/or Senate, we cannot fall into despair and resign ourselves to a kind of helplessness. We still have work to do!
Bob Moses imparted that lesson quietly as we walked among Princeton’s buttonwoods and white ash trees. Perhaps a memory deepened the sadness in his eyes as he spoke. Elections are critically important, but they can easily disappoint.
Let’s do what we need to do on Tuesday. But let’s not believe that all will be saved or go to hell because of an election. That fate rests in what we do in the days, months, and years to come.
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