Here we go by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I woke up yesterday morning, Election Day, accompanied by thoughts of Tucker Carlson hosting Holocaust denier and all around-piece of sh*t Nick Fuentes and what the implications of that are. With that as the starting point for my day, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bear watching the election returns come in. We all knew that we needed not only to win, but to win with wide margins. Over the course of the day, I listened to various pundits opining on how bad it would be if those margins weren’t large. There was much concern that it could be a squeaker for Mikie Sherrill.

So when evening rolled around and the polls on the East coast closed, I tentatively peeked at a couple of reports, thinking I wouldn’t stay if it didn’t look good. Needless to say, I stayed. As the night wore on, relief started flooding my body. It was words like “landslide” from Norm Eisen, who knows a thing or two about these things, that buoyed me. And, as Jim Acosta said in the same conversation, “One person, one vote, still makes a difference in America.” “The state of our democracy is resilient.” That’s Norm Eisen again.

I switched over to MSNBC, taking any opportunity to spend time with Rachel Maddow. Two things are foundational today for Democratic candidates, she said: “We’re going to show up for working people and we’re going to show up in the fight against fascism.” Nicolle Wallace, wearing a white sweater with “Democracy is not a spectator sport” written in cursive across it, said, “It would have been catastrophic for the brand if Cuomo had won.”

“Usually,” said Lawrence O’Donnell (one of my heroes), “voters are given a choice. This time, they were given a job.” The people in the line outside the polling place in Sacramento—the very long line—clapped and cheered when asked how they felt about being there. The local reporter asked a man about bringing his children with him. Unknowingly echoing Lawrence, he shrugged and said, “It’s our job. We had to come.”

On her regular Monday night show, after going through how terribly Trump is doing in the polls, Rachel shared her favorite new polling question: Do you consider yourself a supporter of the No Kings protest movement? For context, she went on, they also asked people in the same poll if they consider themselves to be a supporter of the MAGA movement.

The answer to that one is 30%, fallen by six points in the last six months. The answer to the first question? “43% of this country say they consider themselves to be a supporter of the No Kings protest movement.”

My first reaction was disappointment. I wanted 60%. But Rachel is wiser than I. “Not only,” she said, “does the base of support for the No Kings movement dwarf the base of support for MAGA in this country, but in terms of absolute support, that’s just huge. 43% of this country—that’s 147 million people. That number’s just stunning to me… I don’t know what terrible numbers like these for Trump, and terrible numbers like these for his MAGA movement, are going to mean for tomorrow’s election.”

We found out. It’s not just all the wins. It’s the margins. Spanberger by 15 points. Sherrill by 13 points. Mamdani got over 50% of the vote after Trump, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk did last-minute endorsements of Cuomo. Democrats held onto their Supreme Court seats in Pennsylvania. Maine rejected restrictive changes to state election law but passed a red flag law by 20 points. CNN and AP called a win for Prop 50 right as polls closed in California. “Shellacking” was a word I heard more than once. Also, “blowout” and “blue wave.”

I stayed up way too late, but it was such a relief to have an entire evening of positive news that I didn’t want to turn it off. It’s been a very long year for all of us. We’ve taken what comfort we could in the small victories, the growing by the millions protests, the lawyers bringing the cases against this corrupt government, the members of the judiciary who still honor their oath to support and defend the Constitution, the independent journalists and historians and politicians (I’d be lost without Substack) who haven’t bent the knee. Hell, I’m even proud to be a member of Costco. But yesterday—ah, that was something else.

Waking up this morning was a whole lot different. We’re back in the game. Or maybe it’s game on. Whatever it is, here we go.