On election night 2024 in Texas, I witnessed something I thought I would never see: the state of Texas turning blue. Not completely — but unmistakably. James Talarico won his Senate race. Gina Hinojosa, a Latino woman, became the state’s first Hispanic governor. The Lieutenant Governor is also female. And I was there.
I had moved my voter registration to Texas from Illinois years ago, hoping the influx of Midwesterners and Californians might shift the political landscape. “Let’s purple it up,” I said to my spouse, as we changed to Texas drivers’ licenses and voters’ registrations. [In all honesty, since my husband’s birthday is in March, he had to renew his license then so we could drive legally back to Illinois whenever, so that was also a factor.]
I had contributed financially to Talarico’s campaign. I did what I could from far-away Illinois. I was invited to his primary victory party. On election night, I cast my ballot — twice, due to a ballot issue that left me with a provisional vote alongside my official one, something that had to be straightened out.
RIP my 2024 Anniversary Edition Prius.
We drove a 52-mpg Prius from Illinois to Texas instead of taking the family Hyundai because gas was so expensive. In 2024 we drive a car that was totaled in Okmulgee, Oklahoma during a tornado, with pieces twist-tied to keep them from flying off. I knew I would feel eternal guilt if there was even a slim chance that my inability to vote put Trump back in power. Driving a wrecked vehicle for 6 and 1/2 hours was the least I could do to try to prevent DJT from winning and driving the national car into the ditch. I tried to warn people with BEE GONE in 2019. Character matters and past performance, as Bob DeJonghe once told me, is the best predictor of future performance. And DJT’s past performance on so many fronts was abyssmal.
In the end, as many have said, Trump’s oft-repeated refrain that people should vote as though he were on the ballot is what occurred and the result was a resounding blue vote. Gas prices are brutal: one source said $22 a gallon in Alaska. That detail matters, because it’s real, unlike the overblown hype about transgender athletes playing women’s sports or any other issue designed to distract from the never-ending corruption and dishonesty emanating from the White House.
Unaffordability. Families struggling to pay their bills and fill their gas tanks while the rich get richer and DJT prattled on about his reflecting pool, his heli-pad and his ballroom. Read the room, Donald. Connect with the lives people are actually living. Politicians argue about abstractions while the GOP obsesses over trans-gender surgeries— something that affects .06% of the U.S. population.
A classic Howard Dean sweatshirt from the 2004 campaign, which resonates today.
This moment didn’t come from nowhere. It’s the culmination of decades of political work — from Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy in 2004 to Obama’s 2008 campaign. I documented Obama’s night in Grant Park, watching history unfold with people like Oprah in the crowd. I wrote down everything that night for the historical record ending up with two books on Obama (“Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House,” Volumes I and II). History matters.
Texas represents a seismic political shift. Younger voters, disaffected Republicans, diverse communities tired of being taken for granted, immigrants incensed by ICE— they showed up. They voted for change. And they voted for something specific: a politics rooted in love and unity, not hate and division. James Talarico’s victory speech captured this. I transcribed it from my television screen that night — not verbatim, but the essence of what he said:
“We won because people are tired of politics as blood sport. They’re exhausted by the noise, the corruption, the endless grifting. They want their government to work for them, not for the wealthy and the connected. We won because love is stronger than hate. Unity is stronger than division. And ordinary people, when they show up, can change everything.”*
That’s what resonated. Not partisan rhetoric. Not policy speak. A simple, human assertion: love wins.
But here’s the fury underneath: We have been watching the systematic dismantling of regulatory agencies. We are seeing unqualified people appointed to positions of immense power. Measles cases climbed to 5,000 under RFK, Jr., while Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche pucker up for DJT. We are watching a president openly court authoritarianism while the Republican Party — the party of Lincoln, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility, of institutional restraint — genuflects. What is wrong with this picture? Everything. Admit it and let’s fix it, together, as the UNITED States of America, not the divided nation that Donald J. Trump has created to gain power and wealth for himself and his cronies. I once thought John Edwards was an honorable candidate who would make a good President. I was wrong. I admit it. MAGA voters, admit that you were conned and let’s move on to better days, if we can.
The New York Times published an analysis that framed this moment as a “Suez Crisis” for America: the end of American global leadership, the fracturing of key alliances, the betrayal of long-time allies, a war of choice without transparency or justification, a nation in visible decline. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not partisan rage. That’s documented reality. The institutions that held this country together are corroding. A significant portion of the electorate and perhaps a majority of the Supreme Court seemed to decide that autocracy is preferable to the messy work of democracy.
Texas’s shift — imperfect, incomplete, but real — represents something else: the possibility that people will choose differently when given the chance. Give them good candidates of character who want to work FOR THE PEOPLE, convince elected officials in their eighties and nineties (I’m talking to you, Chuck Grassley) to step aside for the younger generation, and vote for those who have demonstrated that they will deliver on their promises and are not just promising things they don’t have any intention of trying to achieve.
EARLY SKEPTIC
I couldn’t help but remember the poem I wrote when I was 16 entitled “Words:”
“If fewer words were spoken, If fewer words were said, If deeds, alone, were the mark of a man, not the ‘catch’ of an eloquent pledge. If fewer words were spoken. If fewer words were said. If, for all the fake forensics, there were simple words, instead. And a man stated just what he started to state. Without false fuss or further ado. If you weren’t a politician, I’d probably listen to you.”
(A skeptic, even then, about candidates who promise to keep us out of Forever Wars and then start one without thinking it through beforehand, with an incompetent at the helm of the newly-dubbed Department of War.)
Davenport, Iowa, demonstrators on 6/14/2025.
I watch the Sunday morning news shows— Meet the Press, Face the Nation, George Stephanopoulos. I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Austin American–Statesman, the Chicago Tribune, the Quad City Times, Adam Kinsinger’s Substack. I try to watch Fox News. I read the GOP talking points in Texas and to say they were slanted is putting it mildly.
I am documenting these moments because someone needs to. History is being written in real time. Future generations deserve to know that some of us saw it clearly all the way back to the Trump of the seventies (including niece Mary Trump), and said: “This is wrong!” Some of us tried to fix it before it got so bad that it might be UN-fixable. The vote is still out on that last topic, but I hope the Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg days of obeisance are over. We’ll see, because 2 years remain with the lamest duck of lame ducks still rattling on about windmills and men’s butts. (God help us all!)
Whatever happened to lines that were not to be crossed, like tearing down the East Wing of the White House without approval or permission? How about the intentional destruction of the Kennedy Center? There are unwritten rules of decorum and tradition. Until DJT, our presidents, by and large, abided by those unwritten rules of civility and compassion. Let’s bring those days of the GOP back, since MAGA has effectively sealed the fate of the former Republican party. A reversal of course is indicated if we wish to continue to have two parties that are elected to serve “we, the people,” not themselves. Whether we can undo the image of “barbarians at the gate” that presidents like George Herbert Bush worked so hard to undo in places like Africa with aid programs? Debatable, but at least let’s quit insulting other countries and whining about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ordinary people, when they show up, can alter the trajectory of a state. Texas. Iowa. Nebraska. Alaska. Mississippi. Georgia. [We are voters, hear us roar!] Let’s not let racists from South Africa be in charge of key components of our U.S. defense systems (follow India’s lead re Musk; they’re not allowing him in) and stop giving sweetheart government deals to the World’s Richest Man. Musk is willing to buy elections with his trillions. DJT offered to give voters a $5,000 bribe if citizens voted for his hand-picked candidates. There were earlier cash pay-offs that Musk underwrote. Don’t let these things happen in the United States of America. Why is Elon Musk being allowed to do any of the things he has done, the most egregious being shutting down Starlink so that Ukrainian drones literally fell from the skies?
It is time to undo the MAGA mistake. It is going to be a long 2 years with Steve Miller ( an extra in a Hitler documentary for a future change of career?) in charge. At least the Democratic victory was so astounding and impressive that we shouldn’t have to hear Trump whining about it being “stolen” for the rest of his time in office, as he has done ever since Biden defeated him in 2020.
GOALS
Repeal “Citizens United” to get the obscene amounts of money out of political campaigns. Raise the minimum wage. Support unions that also support the working man. Straighten out the broken immigration and health care systems in the United States. Support the USPO and public schools. Give teachers and students a break with decent wages for educators and free college tuition at state institutions natwionwide for students. Give women control over their own lives and bodies. Show compassion towards all; don’t delight in the exercise of unbridled cruelty as sport. Restore trust in our nation (if we can). STOP THE MADNESS!
Here’s what the New York Times said about this historic night:
Texas may never be the same.
Democrats shattered the 32-year-long Republican grip on statewide offices in what had been, until Tuesday, the nation’s most populous conservative state.
James Talarico’s victory over Ken Paxton, a scandal-scarred Republican candidate, in the U.S. Senate race was only the beginning of a series of seismic victories for Democrats on Tuesday in Texas.
Gina Hinojosa made history with her defeat of Gov. Greg Abbott, the third-term governor and political powerhouse who, just a few months ago, appeared to have a lock on winning a record fourth term. She becomes Texas’s first Hispanic governor.
In one night, the state was transformed.
“Talarico is a symbol. Gina is an earthquake,” said Garry Mauro, a former Texas land commissioner who was among the last Democrats to win a statewide race, in 1994. “It’s a tsunami. The world has changed. The political maps will never be the same again.”
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