‘A historic beatdown’: Americans take back their country in rebuke to Trump

This is a special election edition of How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Sign up here to receive future editions in your inbox.

New beginnings

Landslide. Tsunami. Earthquake.

In this historic night, Americans took their country back, making epic changes to the political map, putting blue back in places that had been solid red for decades. Everyone I knew was almost afraid to hope, auspicious though the polls and other signs were, afraid to set themselves up for disappointment, and then last night came report after report of almost unbelievable victories, the Senate retaken, the House retaken.

It is a profound repudiation of Trumpism, helped along by Trump’s unerring ability to pick truly despicable candidates from Texas’s criminal Ken Paxton to Ohio’s creep Vivek Ramaswamy to South Carolina’s inane Darline Graham.

In that it’s the end of something, and when the celebration is over, it’ll be time to remember it’s the beginning of something, of rebuilding this country in all the ways it’s been broken and corrupted. So tonight there was a finish line, and tomorrow or the day after it’ll be our starting line.

- Rebecca Solnit, author and Guardian US columnist

America isn’t for sale

As it turns out, not everything has a price tag. Elon Musk spent nearly $190m blanketing the state with ads against James Talarico. But his attempts to depict Talarico as an unhinged extremist wasn’t enough to convince a majority of Texans to vote for Ken Paxton.

A similar story played out across the country. Donald Trump deployed hundreds of millions of dollars through Maga Inc to boost candidates such as Darline Graham in South Carolina, Mike Rogers in Michigan, and Michael Whatley in North Carolina.

It didn’t work.

Tuesday night demonstrated the limits of big money’s influence. It’s a hopeful sign for US democracy.

- Judd Legum, founder and author of Popular Information

Listen to the south

“The south got something to say!” Those were the now iconic words of André 3000 of OutKast in 1995 who thought the south was being overlooked and disrespected.

On Tuesday night, three decades later, the message from the south was loud and clear.

Among the notable races, Democrat Dr Annie Andrews won the Senate race in South Carolina, a seat held by Republicans since 1998; Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms won Georgia’s gubernatorial race to become the first Black woman to be a governor in the US, and Democrats won both the Senate and the governor’s races in Texas.

One of the big stories of the midterms is that the south is no longer solid Republican territory. The southern strategy has a term limit, and the region’s diversity is now paying political dividends for the Democrats.

- Charles Blow, author, political analyst and contributing writer to the Guardian

Democrats on the clock

The bad guys lost.

In a historic beatdown, Democrats took control of the House and Senate by flipping states that were considered impossible, such as South Carolina and Texas. This was a rebuke of Maga’s corruption, incompetence and greed resulting in record-high gas and grocery prices and a loyalty to broligarchs over workers.

However, this wasn’t a realignment. This is a rental for Democrats, who are also on the clock. The American people have sent the strongest message in years: the politics of restoration are over. We demand the politics of transformation.

As Democratic senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed said in Michigan on Tuesday night: “Alhamdulilah.”

- Wajahat Ali, editor of The Left Hook and co-host of The Democracy-ish Podcast

Blazing trails

On Tuesday night, we witnessed political history with a series of firsts that warmed my jaded heart.

Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman to be elected governor in our country’s history. Texas elected Gina Hinojosa, its first Latina governor. Dr Annie Andrews won the Senate seat in South Carolina, the first woman to do so. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota will head to Washington DC in January as the first Native American woman elected to the US Senate. And Deb Haaland of New Mexico will become the first woman Native American governor.

Voters entrusted their future leadership to brilliant, fierce, capable women. And as the mother of a brilliant, fierce, capable 12-year-old daughter, how can I not revel in the power of these historical firsts?

Tuesday’s result wasn’t just an indictment of Donald Trump and his lackeys for their chaos and corruption. It also showed that Americans still believe in the beauty and nobility of progress.

- Katie Phang, independent journalist, trial lawyer and political analyst

Want to hear more from our contributors?

Follow them on Substack: Stacey Abrams, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein, Mehdi Hasan, Bernie Sanders, Rebecca Solnit, Katie Phang, Judd Legum, Wajahat Ali, Margaret Sullivan, and Charles Blow.