We are currently undergoing a major realignment, perhaps as significant as the one that began in World War I and culminated with the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the status quo that Americans have lived with all their lives. In that earlier shift, Democrats abandoned their conservativism and became a liberal coalition of working-class people, labor unions, ethnic minorities and marginalized identity groups, while Republicans embraced big business, libertarianism and an aggressive, militaristic, materialistic posture toward foreign policy.

In the years following the 9/11 attacks, who could have imagined that — at least in their rhetoric and campaigning, if not in actual governance — Republicans would identify themselves as isolationists and even protectionists supporting late-19th-century-style tariffs, while Democrats, epitomized by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, articulated a hawkish Russophobia marked by the leveraging of Ukraine into radical NATO expansion, and were even willing to lose the 2024 presidential election over their unwillingness to stop arming Israel as it committed genocide in Gaza? Yet here we are.

This has populists of the left and right wondering if it is time to leave their respective big-tent major parties — both of which barely tolerated them in exchange for their votes — and form a unified populist front organized around a simple proposition: America and Americans first?

We’ve seen intriguing hints that a united populist front may be possible. Twelve percent of those who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries voted for Donald Trump in the general election. Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — figures to the left of the Democratic mainstream — to his administration. Young men in particular shifted from Bernie in 2020 to Trump in 2024.

Let’s set aside, for the next few hundred words, the question of whether left-wing populists, primarily motivated by economic inequality, can not only make common cause with but actually work on an ongoing basis — perhaps even in a new major political party — with right-wing populists who are, in large part, more worried about losing what they perceive as the country’s cultural and ethnic identity to immigration.

When you’re in a lousy marriage, as populists of both stripes are with the Democrats and Republicans, the first step should not be to search for a new boyfriend or girlfriend but rather to consider whether you’re willing to go through the pain of a divorce to the extent that anything — even being alone — would probably be better. By that standard, populists really should consider ditching the big two, because they are not understood and never will be.

In a recently published conversation, “the economist Natasha Sarin and the Bulwark editor Catherine Rampell examine the strange disconnect between how the economy is doing and how Americans feel about it,” as The New York Times put it. First, they note that consumer confidence is in the toilet. Then they wonder aloud about the fact that public opinion of the economy is worse than during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, even though, by most conventional measures, it has improved significantly since then. “Why do people say this economy is so terrible? Why do they hate it so much?” Rampell muses.

She doesn’t really know. “I don’t think that the economy is actually in the trash, despite those consumer sentiment numbers we were talking about,” Rampell continues. “People say that they hate this economy, that it sucks, that it’s worse than the financial crisis and the Great Recession. I do not — again, I do not think any of that is true.”

Allow me to introduce you to the Rall Economic Indicators.

First REI metric: Can I find a job?

Seventy-two percent currently say this is a bad time to look for work.

Answer: No.

Second REI metric: Can I pay my bills?

Twenty-seven percent currently fall short.

Answer: No.

Third REI metric: Can I save money for the future?

Sixty-two percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

If two out of three REIs exceed 50%, the economy officially sucks.

The first step toward never solving a problem is refusing to admit that it exists — or never seeing it in the first place.

The great mushy moderate middle blob that controls economic thinking in Washington and mainstream media can’t address populism because they don’t understand where populists are coming from.

Economic populists are individuals. Unlike a business with high access to credit at reasonable interest rates, American consumers who lose their job and/or suffer through years of watching their wages eaten away by inflation can’t write off a bad quarter or easily pay off their accumulated debts if and when things turn around. Millions of Americans still haven’t financially recovered from the Great Recession and never will.

For most of the people who have come around to the idea of putting America first, the U.S. economy is not an infinitely growing postwar machine that will generate wealth for everybody but rather a finite set of resources and a zero-sum game in which every job that goes to an H-1B visa holder from another country is one that won’t go to them, their child or someone they know or care about. This scarcity mentality — whether fair or not (I happen to believe that it is fair) — is inherently incompatible with the worldview of the two major parties, for whom your individual problems are your concern, not theirs.

Which brings us to the question, as promised, of a left-right alliance among populists. There is plenty of common ground; most Americans readily agree that we shouldn’t be sending billions of dollars to other countries when so many Americans are suffering here at home and the nation’s infrastructure is in such woeful condition.

As in any alliance, the concern is about the differences that might tear apart a Populist Front down the line. Could left-wing populists make peace with their right-wing counterparts who openly espouse nativist and even xenophobic views? Could the right embrace the social-welfare spending and retraining expenses that would help displaced American workers, rather than focus on debt repayment or deficit reduction?

Significant parts of the American electorate are starting to consider not whether it’s time to get divorced but rather who their new partner will be and whether they will be able to make their new marriage better than the last.

Written by Ted Rall

Official website; https://x.com/TedRall

But maybe one can detect, here and there, echoes of the Americans of 250 years ago.

Not in ordinary political rhetoric, however. There is support in polling evidence for one economist’s observation that “2026 marks the worst Americans have ever felt about the economy, their personal financial situation, and government economic policy, and the records go back to 1960.” Reporters are hearing variations on that theme in voter interviews.

But when you look at economic indicators, there’s little basis for such complaints. Inflation and gasoline price increases are lower than at this point four years ago, unemployment is at historically low levels, and stock prices — and remember that most Americans are directly or indirectly investors — are near record highs.

The American patriots of 1776 had their economic complaints as well. The economy then was so different from today’s that it’s impossible to make dollar-to-dollar comparisons, but in terms of calorie consumption, the North American British colonists were probably the best-fed people on earth in the 18th century. Meat was plentiful, famine was unheard of, property ownership was widely dispersed, and the total population was doubling in less than 35 years.

The North American seaboard and western Europe were then, unknowingly, on the threshold of a new economic era. Before 1800, the world’s economies never grew much, and when they did, as the British clergyman Thomas Malthus pointed out, increasing population gobbled up the gains.

But just as Malthus was writing, technological advancements and free markets on both sides of the Atlantic started producing huge economic growth, tracing almost a straight line upward on the graph. That Americans have come to expect low-inflation economic growth is evidence of great historic progress, which voters have come to take for granted.

Complaints about taxation without representation were less about economic burden than they were, as I have argued in this space, about broken promises. The Parliament in London, which had mostly left them alone, was taxing their stamps and their tea. Similarly, economic complaints in 2026 reflect broken promises: President Donald Trump promised to subdue inflation, but his sometimes whimsically imposed tariffs and his never-much-explained offensive against Iran have raised prices instead.

Complaints are rife today, on all political sides, that our politics is divisive and coarsening, rending our nation into hostile camps. Of course, some of this is definitionally true. Elections are an adversarial process — one candidate wins, and the others all lose. Sometimes competitors go too far.

Examples this year include Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s long-estranged mother calling her a liar, and an ad by backers of Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed blaming higher grocery costs on U.S. aid to Israel for “killing Palestinians.”

But politics has divided Americans along cultural rather than economic lines not just recently but over the very long run, for the very good reason that America has always — and not just in some recent decades, as “progressive” rhetoric suggests — been characterized by cultural variety. The signers of the declaration grew up in colonies founded by Calvinists, Anglicans, Catholics and Quakers when Europe was just recovering from two centuries of hugely destructive religious wars.

The idea that they could be consolidated into one political unit was advanced by the most internationally famous colonist, Benjamin Franklin, in his Albany Plan of Union in 1754 and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence 22 years later. The Constitution that Franklin and George Washington endorsed in 1787, as amended in 1791, took care to ban religious tests for office and guarantee the free exercise of religion and freedom of the press.

That doesn’t mean that cultural issues are easily settled or cultural divisions quietly bridged. Nineteenth-century Americans identified their different attitudes toward slavery as rooted in the differences between Roundheads and Cavaliers in the English Civil War in the 1640s. Those divisions over slavery produced a Civil War in which 600,000 Americans died in the 1860s.

Twenty-first-century Americans have been divided on cultural issues such as abortion, on which divisions in opinion have persisted, and same-sex marriage, on which millions of minds have been changed. Differences on transgender issues — should the government pay for transgender surgery for prisoners? — divided the two parties’ nominees for president in 2024.

The differences between the two parties can test this culturally diverse nation’s political mettle. But differences within each of the two political parties can shape the future of political debate and public policy. Such differences have been lurking in the political background in recent years and have come to the fore in this campaign year.

Since its founding in 1854, the Republican Party has drawn its core support from people who see themselves, and are seen by others, as typical Americans, even though they have never constituted a majority of the nation’s diverse population.

The question going forward is whether its support will continue to be centered on non-college graduates spread around the edges of and between the 50 or so major metropolitan areas with populations of 1 million or more, where half of Americans live.

The Democratic Party, since its founding in 1832, has been a coalition of those not considered, by themselves or others, to be typical Americans, but who, taken together, can form a national majority.

This year has exposed a divide between the Democratic Socialists of America and others who oppose American support for Israel — and, in some cases, its very existence — and those, Jewish and otherwise, who support Israel. That divide is most visible in Michigan’s Senate race, where El-Sayed, unlike Democratic candidates in other states targeted in 2024, has not polled well ahead of Kamala Harris’ benchmarks.

The results of Tuesday’s elections will tell us much about the political struggles and policy vectors of the next few years. But they also seem likely only to set the stage for some serious and perhaps as-yet-unpredicted changes in our politics in the decades ahead.

Written by Michael Barone

Official website; https://x.com/MichaelBarone

According to a New York Times investigation published Wednesday, top Peltola aides in the summer of 2025 told a staffer to find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as possible. Dan S. Sullivan is Alaska’s Republican senator, and a second Dan Sullivan on the state’s four-candidate general election ballot could confuse enough voters to cost him the seat. This spring, a retired teacher from Petersburg named Dan J. Sullivan filed for the Senate as a Republican. He has long supported Peltola and other Democrats.

In an Alaska Superior Court order in his ballot case, he asked to appear on the ballot as “Sullivan, Dan,” exactly as the senator had already qualified. When the Division of Elections asked both men how their names should appear to avoid confusing voters, he first asked to be listed as “Dan S. Sullivan,” using the senator’s middle initial, before settling on “Dan J. Sullivan.”

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement. The Times reports that the text messages tell a different story. The effort, called the “ballot composition project,” involved Peltola’s then-chief of staff, senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and a lawyer at the Elias Law Group. A Democratic operative from Ohio named Jerid Kurtz traveled the state under a fake name, pitching would-be candidates over beers, while Peltola’s aides asked for updates on “our friend.”

The Sullivan scheme was only one piece of it. When a progressive Democrat named David Leslie landed on the general election ballot and threatened to pull votes from Peltola, Kurtz met with him at a Fairbanks cafe, and Leslie soon dropped out. His exit opened the slot for Gerald Heikes, a Republican drywall contractor the Times reports was also recruited into the race. Peltola’s aides even floated creating a MAGA party to lure conservatives onto the ballot, and the DSCC’s director of campaigns texted back, “Smart.” When a court kept the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot, two Peltola aides and a DSCC staffer reacted in a group chat with heart emojis.

Imagine the National Republican Senatorial Committee had hunted down a second Mary Peltola, sent an operative around Alaska under an alias and nudged a Republican off the ballot to make room for a spoiler. It would lead every newscast in America. Democrats would call it election subversion, the Elias Law Group would be in court by lunch, and “threat to democracy” would appear in every third paragraph. The Times checked a box in reporting this, but most of the rest of the national press will let it pass quietly.

Much of the press considers stopping Republicans a righteous cause — and righteous causes excuse a great deal. Only Republican dirty tricks draw the outrage. Democrats also spent millions of dollars in 2022 boosting weak candidates in Republican primaries while warning voters those very candidates would end American democracy. The press covered that as clever strategy, too.

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has now sued to block certification if the other Dan Sullivan costs the senator the race. Election law experts call the suit dubious because the Constitution leaves the administration of elections to the states and the election has not even happened yet. As a former elections lawyer, I agree that the federal lawsuit, as currently presented, is a weak case. In fact, the Justice Department is not even citing a federal statute as proof of standing, just preamble text in legislation.

The voters of Alaska should take action instead. Democrats say democracy is on the ballot, but the Democrats are the ones trying to subvert it. Peltola wanted lying to the electorate treated as a crime. The Alaska Supreme Court has already ruled that the other Dan Sullivan can stay on the ballot. Alaskans can still render their own verdict next week, knowing that the candidate who wanted to criminalize misleading voters had a staffer combing the voter rolls to do just that.

Written by Erick Erickson 

Official website; https://x.com/EWErickson

Lula ended up winning — a remarkable result, given that he had trailed Bolsonaro by 2 million votes in the first election round a few weeks prior. Never in modern Brazilian history has a presidential candidate who came in second in the first round of voting won in the runoff.

But that’s not the worst part. Bolsonaro objected to the results and declared his intention to have the election investigated, whereupon Senhor Presidente Lula called for Bolsonaro’s arrest and demanded that he surrender his passport.

How very democratic. This is the way a politician behaves when he is confident about his victory, right? He immediately orders the arrest of his opponent?

Bolsonaro knew what was coming; his father was arrested by Lula and is currently serving a 27-year sentence. He apparently reached out to his contacts in Argentina and here in the United States (Secretary of State Marco Rubio is said to have played a role in Bolsonaro’s escape). According to Reuters, Bolsonaro, his wife, Fernanda, and their two daughters crossed (passports in hand) into the Misiones province in Argentina late on Tuesday, Oct. 27, and boarded a private jet that took them to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and then on to Miami, Florida. Although Argentinian President Javier Milei has not released an official statement, Bolsonaro publicly thanked both President Donald Trump and Milei upon his arrival in Florida. The Bolsonaros will be given visas to stay in the United States.

Trump weighed in on the matter, saying, “It looked like another rigged election, frankly. I didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world. Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked really bad to me.”

Right on cue, here came America’s left-leaning legacy media. An NBC News post on X Tuesday read, “Although Brazil’s presidential election took place more than 4,000 miles away, the baseless conspiracy theory that it was stolen raced through the American right-wing media.”

We’ll let the investigative process (such as it is) play out in Brazil. But allow me to remind you of just a few of the events our media have told us were “baseless conspiracy theories” in recent years:

• That COVID-19 was accidentally released from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
• That “gain-of-function” virus research was being conducted in China and funded by the United States government.
• That mRNA shots didn’t prevent contraction or transmission of COVID-19.
• That those same shots had harmful — even deadly — side effects, like myocarditis and pericarditis
• That the drug ivermectin helped treat COVID-19 and isn’t just “horse paste.”
• That social media companies like Facebook and Twitter (pre-Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform) were censoring facts and keeping truthful information from the public at the request of the Obama and Biden administrations.
• That Hunter Biden’s laptop was not “Russian disinformation” and did, in fact, contain images of him using drugs and with prostitutes — including some that looked underage — and emails showing that Hunter was selling access to his father, former President Joe Biden.
• That the Obama and Biden administrations were weaponizing law enforcement against Trump and violating his constitutional rights (as well as those of members of his campaign team and Cabinet) by fabricating allegations of collusion with Russia that they knew were false.
• That federal law enforcement under the Obama administration lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to illegally obtain surveillance warrants.
• That Hillary Clinton’s campaign illegally paid for “opposition research” that was used to fabricate allegations against Trump that everyone knew were false.
• That there were election abnormalities in the 2020 election.
• That there were federal agents in the crowds at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Shall I continue?

Most of the legacy media outlets in this country are less investigative journalism organizations than they are vehicles for largely left-wing propaganda. And you know what that means: “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

What’s more shocking — but shouldn’t be at this point, frankly — is how many on the left in this country are taking Lula’s side. Our reliably ill-informed celebrities in Hollywood have appeared in videos supporting him, making “L’s” with their thumb and forefinger. (In my lifetime, that symbol has had a different meaning, and one that seems remarkably appropriate for those making the gesture now.) Democrat politicians like Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and outgoing Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) have supported Lula for demanding Bolsonaro’s passport and attempting to throw him in prison.

Why should I be surprised? This is the same party that attempted to frame Trump on false charges of “colluding” with Russia, engaged in illegal surveillance of his campaign, and cheered on a New York state judge who idiotically lowballed the value of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort at $18 million to $27 million so he could find Trump guilty of fraud in borrowing against the property (and repaying the loan in full — with interest, no less). Mar-a-Lago is nearly 20 acres of unparalleled waterfront real estate in Palm Beach, Florida — an island where property runs $30 million to $44 million per acre. At a conservative estimate of $25 million per acre, Mar-a-Lago is worth $500 million.

Corruption in Brazil looks eerily similar to corruption in the United States, and its cheerleaders are on the same political side.

Written by Laura Hollis

Official website; http://law.nd.edu/directory/laura-hollis/

Enemies are replaced by new enemies, dictators give way to new dictators, and supposedly decisive victories become endless occupations. The beneficiaries are the military-industrial complex, the intelligence agencies and the politicians who confuse the exercise of power with the achievement of peace.

The American people deserve an answer to a simple question: What have we gained from this perpetual warfare? The answer is NOTHING in national security, and a great deal in lost lives, national debt, diminished liberty and shattered constitutional government.

The pattern is familiar. The government tells the public that a foreign adversary threatens our existence, that diplomacy has failed and that military action will be limited, necessary and successful. Then the bombs fall, the casualties mount and the mission changes. What began as a narrowly defined operation becomes a wider war, regime change, counterinsurgency or an open-ended commitment to demonstrate American domination. Then spying at home and federal borrowing are ratcheted up — all accompanied by the false message of spreading democracy and liberty.

Americans were told that Vietnam was essential to containing communism, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that Afghanistan was a necessary campaign against terrorism, that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles. In each case, the distance between official assurances and eventual reality exposed the dangers of trusting government claims without demanding evidence. We now know these excuses were absurd.

And the constitutional order has been systematically circumvented.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. The framers deliberately withheld from the president the unilateral authority to plunge the nation into war because they understood the danger of concentrating the power to initiate hostilities in one person’s hands.

Yet since 1950, American presidents have repeatedly committed American forces to major conflicts without formal declarations of war. Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Iran and numerous other military operations have proceeded under various presidential theories of authority, vague congressional resolutions and claims of inherent executive power.

Some operations have received congressional authorization to use military force. But a vague authorization to use military force is not a blank check for perpetual war. Nor should a president’s authority to respond to an attack become a license to initiate hostilities wherever the president chooses.

When does the war end? Who decides that its objectives have been achieved? What event obligates the president to bring the troops home?

Too often, there is no satisfactory answer.

Congress has surrendered much of its constitutional responsibility, preferring to criticize a war when it becomes unpopular rather than accept responsibility for prohibiting it. Presidents enjoy the appearance of exercising decisive power while spreading the costs of their decisions across generations of taxpayers.

The intelligence agencies compound the problem. The CIA has conducted covert operations, fomented coups, participated in foreign interventions and murdered and tortured in ways that escape public scrutiny. Its clandestine capabilities can become instruments of presidential foreign policy operating beyond the ordinary accountability expected of a constitutional republic.

The author Tom Woods has observed, “No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain.” The point is not about the late senator’s personality. It’s about the bipartisan foreign policy and deep state establishment’s enduring and triumphant commitment to intervention, military primacy and American dominance of the world — no matter who is president.

The military-industrial complex benefits. Intelligence agencies expand their influence. Defense contractors receive lucrative government contracts. Politicians posture as guardians of national security. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans pay the bills through taxes, inflation, mounting debt and the opportunity costs of spending money on destruction rather than productive activity at home; and our civil liberties are curtailed.

A republic that cannot distinguish national defense from global domination will eventually sacrifice both its resources and its principles.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Oct. 7, 2026, address in Greece exemplifies this. He offered a shameful expression of ambition. He called for the unapologetic pursuit of American dominance and warned that the West — a euphemism for the U.S. — must fight to maintain its position at “the head of the world.” This was a deeply misguided and utterly ignorant view that somehow American freedom, security and prosperity depend on American military dominance over the whole planet.

Russia and China have legitimate security interests, regional spheres of influence and militaries nearly as powerful as America’s. Recognizing that fact does not require endorsing their governments, approving their actions or militarily siding with their adversaries. It requires acknowledging that other major powers will resist what they perceive as hostile military encroachment near their borders.

If we expect Russia and China to respect legitimate American security interests, we must respect theirs. Reciprocity is not appeasement; it is a foundation for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.

Contrary to Rubio, the emerging international order is better understood as tripolar, not unipolar, with the United States, China and Russia exercising different degrees of military, economic and geopolitical influence. Their power is not equal, and their interests often conflict. But pretending that Washington can indefinitely dictate the terms of world affairs is a recipe for perpetual confrontation, not stability.

Is America a constitutional republic or a fading military empire?

A republic defends its people and their lands against genuine threats. An empire seeks to shape the behavior of other nations through force, coercion, colonization and the constant threat of intervention. The former requires vigilance; the latter endless violence.

The most dangerous enemy of American security is not a foreign power. It is our own government’s inability to recognize that the power to wage war is not an unlimited license to rule the world.

A people whose country cannot say no to perpetual wars will eventually discover that wars have said no to their personal freedoms.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

Voters ought to be at least as discerning. People will say almost anything during a campaign, especially when they have identified something that makes us angry, frightened, or exhausted. The challenge is to distinguish a promise that earns applause from a program that can produce results. Who will do the work, where is the money, and what happens when somebody with influence objects?

That brings me to Project 2025 and a question for Democrats and progressives: Where is our project? Donald Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during the 2024 campaign, even as the conservative movement prepared its policy and personnel agenda for a Republican administration. His disavowal did not prevent his administration from pursuing much of that agenda. The Center for Progressive Reform and Governing for Impact reported in February 2026 that his administration had initiated or completed 283 of the 532 domestic administrative actions identified in their tracker. That is a chilling measure of preparation.

MAGA Republicans had worked out what they wanted government to do and how to use its machinery to accomplish it. Those of us who abhor the objectives of Project 2025 must examine the organization behind them, because outrage at the results will not substitute for preparation of our own. Democrats and progressive organizations have policy proposals, talented researchers, and communities that know precisely where public policy has failed them. What I want to see is a shared governing program that people can understand, organize around, and use to hold those asking for their votes accountable.

Why is it so much easier to describe what we oppose than what we intend to build? “Affordability” needs some arithmetic attached to it. A housing agenda should tell a nursing assistant or a retired teacher what share of their income they ought to spend on shelter and what government will do to make that possible. An economic agenda should explain how workers will gain the bargaining power to secure better pay, rather than asking them to celebrate growth that too often fails to reach their household budgets. Schools do not get better because the education advocate won an election, and environmental justice does not appear because a candidate acknowledges that pollution is unfair. Both require decisions about resources and power, including a willingness to confront people who benefit from existing arrangements.

A serious agenda ought to identify those conflicts before taking office. For Black voters, so often summoned to rescue democracy, the questions must include what that democracy will deliver. What is the program for reducing the racial wealth gap, protecting Black landownership, and enforcing fair housing? We deserve commitments with a route from the campaign platform to the public budget. Black voters cannot substitute the pride of a historic first for tangible results. If Hakeem Jeffries becomes the first African American Speaker of the House, the significance will be undeniable, but so will the questions about what his leadership can deliver.

Will “affordability” translate into a serious push to raise the federal minimum wage? What will he fight to restore or expand in student aid and student debt relief? What can a House majority do to reduce the costs squeezing household budgets, and how will it overcome the obstacles? We can celebrate a breakthrough, but we must insist on a program. “Not Trump” is not an agenda.

A House majority cannot accomplish all this alone. An honest program would explain what requires legislation, how to confront a president prepared to veto progressive measures, and where state and local governments must act. Voters can understand obstacles; what wears people down is discovering after the election that the promises came without a plan for confronting them.

The organizations that mobilize us must remain engaged when campaign offices close. Churches, unions, civil rights groups, and neighborhood organizations should help shape the agenda and sustain pressure to advance it. That work needs funding and staff throughout the year, because the interests resisting change will remain on the job. The ballot is necessary, but its power depends on the work surrounding it.

We should arrive at Election Day knowing what we intend to demand the morning afterward and who will help us demand it. I hope Washington gets relief from its rats. Whether the promise concerns rodents or racial inequality, I want to see the resources, the timetable, and the people responsible for delivery. Campaigns are full of people telling us what they want to do. We ought to insist on knowing what they are prepared to get done.

Written by Julianne Malveaux

Official website; https://www.juliannemalveaux.com

I felt the pull of it myself, so do not mistake me. November of 2008 I sat in my living room and could not say a word for a long while, watching folks down in Grant Park cry like the levee broke. My uncle Sonny would have loved it. He put in his years in the mills up in Birmingham, spending most of them being told where a Black man was allowed to stand and where he wasn’t. By the time Obama won the White House, Sonny was gone. That night was real. The mistake is what people built on top of it, and it has cost the party plenty: you do not get to reverse engineer a miracle.

Go back and look at the actual circumstances. In 2004, Barack Obama was an Illinois state senator barely anybody outside Illinois could pick out of a lineup. At that year’s Democratic National Convention, he spoke about one America rather than a nation divided into red states and blue states. The speech knocked the room flat. Then 2008 arrived with the house on fire. Banks were going under, two wars dragged on with the body counts still climbing, and the country was plain worn out after eight years of Bush. People were scared and bone tired, hungry for anybody who sounded like the morning after. That was the ground he landed on. Obama gifts were real, I will never argue different, but the timing did half the work, and most folks would rather forget that part.

That second half is what nobody wants to hear. Charisma is not some free floating thing you can carry from one year to the next like a good suit. It only works if the weather around it cooperates. You can study the man’s cadence, copy that easy walk, even practice his jump shot in the driveway. None of it lands if the country is in a different frame of mind by the time you show up. Lightning wants the right sky, and you do not get to schedule the storm.

Here is the part that ought to make everybody laugh. The fellow they keep trying to photocopy has been standing up in public begging them to stop. Out at the University of Illinois back in 2018 he told a room of students to quit sitting around waiting on a savior, cracked that it was politics, not Coachella. Then in July 2025, at a big money dinner in New Jersey, he made the point even clearer. Obama message was simple: quit chasing a messiah and get behind the good candidates already on the ballot. The man drew the blueprint and keeps hollering that the blueprint is not the house. Hardly anybody wants to hear it.

And why would they? Sitting tight and waiting on a rescue beats rolling up your sleeves any day of the week. The savior does the heavy lifting while you sit on your porch and clap. Trouble is, that story is a fairy tale, and Black folks of all people got taught the fairy tale version of our own history, so we ought to recognize it. They hand the children one preacher on one balcony in Memphis and call that the whole movement. Anybody who was there, or whose people were there, knows better.

Ella Baker had it figured out long before most of the big names did. Strong people do not need strong leaders, she liked to say, and she spent the better part of her life on the ground proving she meant it. The lunch counters and the long voter drives down in Mississippi, those ran on regular people whose names never made it onto a single postage stamp. Church mothers. College kids. Sharecroppers like Fannie Lou Hamer, who never got near a polling model but could flat out organize a county. That kind of leading is not a stage act. It is a weight, and a whole lot of shoulders carry it together.

Look at what the party managed last year with nobody anointed out front leading any parade. Abigail Spanberger, who used to run intelligence work for the CIA, took the governor’s office in Virginia. Over in New Jersey it was Mikie Sherrill, who flew helicopters in the Navy before any of this. And in New York City a young democratic socialist named Zohran Mamdani rattled the whole establishment by just pounding away, week after week, on the rent and the grocery bill. Put those three side by side and nothing lines up. They do not come off like the 2008 senator, and if you are honest they barely come off like each other. Spanberger pitched the suburbs. Sherrill went after the commuter towns. And Mamdani ran straight at the cost of living in one of the priciest cities in the country. Affordability mattered to all three, but each approached that problem in a different way, speaking to voters whose daily troubles did not look quite the same. Three different political styles, three different electorates, and three victories earned on their own terms.

The bench behind them goes deeper too. Wes Moore is running Maryland like the soldier he was, and folks already have 2028 stars in their eyes about him. AOC took a stretch of the Bronx and turned it into a national microphone. Andy Beshear keeps getting himself reelected in a red state like Kentucky by sounding like the guy who would help you move a couch. None of these three is some Obama tribute act, thank God. Each speaks to a different slice of the country. The party ought to put those strengths to work, not hold auditions for another Obama.

None of this is complicated once you sit with it. A coalition that stays out there waiting on a messiah quits seeing the ones who already walked through the door. Everybody gets held up against the memory, and the memory always comes out ahead. Of course it does. A memory never has to govern. It never loses a vote or sits through a rough news week. So you put some real candidate next to how we all remember 2008 and the real one comes up short, every time. That is not the candidate’s fault. We are the ones holding the crooked ruler.

Now somebody is going to read all this as me taking shots at the former president. Wrong. The brother was a blessing, and his spot in the history books is nailed down whether the party apes him or not. My quarrel is with the aping. When admiration sours into pure nostalgia it turns into a kind of stuck, and a movement cannot afford to be stuck on its heels while the other side is swinging with both fists.

The America that put Obama in office in 2008 is gone, same as every yesterday is gone. Wars have changed, fears have shifted, and everybody carries a whole world in their pocket. The youngest voters getting fired up this year were still in diapers or barely starting school when Obama raised his right hand. They are not sitting around waiting on his echo. What they are doing is listening for whoever can say their trouble out loud and actually mean it. Whoever that turns out to be will not show up dressed like the past. She will arrive on her own terms, built for a season none of us has lived through yet.

So the next time one of the old heads at the shop asks me where the next one is hiding, I have started answering a question they did not ask. Nobody is riding in to save us. If Democrats get wise enough to bury the ghost and do the grunt work, the next one turns out to be a whole lot of ones. That is not some runner up prize. It is the entire point, and it always was.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

She is also denying any wrongdoing in this case. She maintains that she has conducted herself honorably and that this investigation is only intended to bully and intimidate her. This type of misconduct regarding immigration matters has been previously investigated by federal authorities and was dropped by the Department of Homeland Security some years ago after an investigation into the allegations. It was determined by the Department not to pursue an investigation of these claims when they were first raised.

The Timing Raises a Fair Question

On October 12, Federal Investigators searched the home of Ilhan Omar, seeking evidence of possible false statements or immigration fraud relating to documents from her childhood that she used as part of her naturalization process. Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000. She immigrated with her family as a refugee from Somalia when she was a child.

Regardless of whether or not you support Ilhan Omar, the investigation into potential misconduct by her must be taken seriously and followed to the appropriate conclusion, as we would expect to be the case for any U.S. citizen.

But the timing is difficult to ignore.

Omar’s house was searched 22 days before the election in which she is running for re-election. The Justice Department has in the past tried to avoid investigating candidates for office in the 60 days prior to said election. This has been referred to as the “60-day rule”. It is not a law and is not always followed but it has often been the practice of the Justice Department to refrain from public investigations of candidates for office in order to avoid the appearance of violating the constitutional rights of all citizens by politicizing their investigations.

Evidence Should Come Before Judgment

One thing that really troubles me about this story is that the allegations are traveling way faster than the facts are.

For years, conservative media has been writing about the claims of Omar’s past as an immigrant. So far, the public has seen very little solid evidence to back up the more serious of the claims. Reuters reported that investigations currently under way concern old immigration documents and similar claims have already been reported by other media in the past.

That does not mean Omar should receive special treatment. It means she should receive equal treatment. If investigators have evidence, let them present it. Are the documents even real to prove such alleged fraud? And if they do, let the legal system be able to review them. If there is no evidence of fraud then we need to be told that too.

That is how justice is supposed to work. We cannot judge based on political affiliation, race, religion, where he or she is from, etc. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and fairness. We should be better than that.

Why the Bigger Political Message Matters

A possibly more disquieting comparison to the current American politics is to be found in an attempt to revive an obsolete ideology, which irrationally considers the losing side of the American Civil War as the “right” side for Americans to support. This comparison should disturb every American.

In many ways the Civil War was fought to save the freedom of all Americans, be they black or white. The Union victory brought an end to slavery with the 13th Amendment and no matter what problems that exist with today’s politics, there is nothing whatsoever to desire in returning to a time when it was lawful to own fellow human beings as property.

Omar represents more than a seat in Congress. She is a Black, Muslim, Somali-born American, an immigrant refugee to this country. She is a challenge to old stereotypes of who should be in the US Capitol, leading America, and what an American looks like.

That does not mean that she is above the law. Nor does it mean that she is below the law either.

America Should Not Make Citizenship a Political Weapon

For one reason or another, I am going to be particularly sensitive here.

The granting of citizenship is one of the most sacred acts of this great country. Once someone becomes a citizen, removing that status is an extraordinarily serious matter. They must have proof to back up their allegations and act within the bounds of the law.

A Washington Post report looks at the current Omar investigation, and what it could mean for her citizenship. Omar has rejected the allegations and says she is confident that she did nothing wrong.

My concern is to see facts, not political theater. I do not wish to see Rep. Omar exonerated simply because she is a Democrat. I wish her to be found free of any charge should there be no evidence of any wrong doing. And I wish the full rigor of law to be brought to bear were there evidence of wrongdoing, regardless of her status as a Member of Congress, as a Democrat, or as an immigrant.

The Silence Is Deafening

So many people are staying silent and this is one of the most disturbing aspects of this scandal.

Journalist Roland Martin and others are asking a question on his Roland Martin Unfiltered platform – Why are prominent Black Republicans silent while a Black congresswoman is under a legally dubious, politically motivated federal investigation?

Those who make their living fighting for due process and equal protection under the law have gone silent. They have had little to say about a Black Muslim congresswoman having her home raided three weeks before an election — with no charges filed.

Their silence in this matter does not go unnoticed. So do their so-called “principles” even reflect their values or are those just a bunch of canned talking points that can be employed or jettisoned at will depending on the circumstances and the party in question?

Martin correctly stated that the measure of political integrity is what you say when it costs you something to say it.

Let Ilhan Omar Fight Back With the Facts

Omar has said she is prepared for the legal fight ahead. She went through every detail of the raid on her home in a recent interview and according to her, there was no wrongdoing on her part. She has also been talking about the threats being made to her and her family since her home address was posted.

I find that especially disturbing. As always, disagreement with her policies, her votes and her stance on various issues are fair topics of discussion and even critique. Threats of harm to her and her family are not. That is democracy. But intimidation is something else.

Instead of piling more insults on her head during the time of the investigation, why not respond respectfully and constructively with transparency? Let the evidence come forward. Let Omar’s lawyers challenge it. Let an independent court decide what matters. Then let the American people judge her political record for themselves.

Due Process Is Bigger Than One Politician

I have no idea what the end of this investigation will be. Neither does anyone else who does not have access to the full evidence. Until we have more clarity on the issue at hand I want her cleared of any wrongdoing as she is sure that she has done nothing wrong.

It would be tragic for our democracy if the weapons of law enforcement were being used for political purposes, and the constitutional rights of citizens being granted or denied at whim. Though I may disagree with much that Ilhan Omar says on the various issues of the day, I shall be defending her right to due process, her right to answer charges that are serious enough to merit an investigation by law enforcement. I shall be defending the evidence against her as opposed to the anger of her political opponents.

This matter is far greater than Ilhan Omar. This is way beyond that, this is about the kind of country we wish to be. I want an America that treats everyone equally under the law, regardless of political ideology, skin color, religion or where one is from.

That is the America that we must defend.

Associate Editor; Stanley G. Buford

Feel free to connect with this brother via Twitter; Stanley G. and also facebook; http://www.facebook.com/sgbuford.

Also his email addy is; StanleyG@ThyBlackMan.com.

There was good cause for his worry and the admonition. Every one of the four hundred thirty-five congressional seats were up for grabs. In addition, there were thirty-six gubernatorial seats being contested as well as thousands of state and local offices. Many of them were very much in play for Democratic candidates.

Trump and the GOP well understood that if there was anything that even remotely resembled a Blue Wave in the midterms, it would blow to smithereens the notion of a unified government and more critically governance of the country. Trump would have to spend the final two years of his administration warding off Democratic challenges at every level of government to his policies.

The start to understand Trump’s possible dilemma is the numbers. The number of Democrat and GOP House members up for reelection are almost dead even. A handful of retirements, defections, election changes, court challenges, or even deaths or serious illness can easily tilt a keenly contested GOP filled House seat to a Democrat.

That possibility alone eliminates the need for a massive Democratic Blue Wave. A gain of two or three seats might well be enough to provide Democrats with the all-important majority in the House, and thus control.

Meanwhile, there is some talk and even nervousness among GOP strategists about retaining control of the Senate. That is a far steeper uphill climb for Democrats. They will need to capture four seats while not losing one Democratic seat to regain Senate control. It is possible. But again, it will be a much harder hurdle to leap than the House.

Here’s the major summary of what is at stake in the 2026 midterms. At the federal level, whichever party controls one or both houses, that party will set the template for legislative initiatives in the House, and the all-important Senate confirmations. And for both houses crucial funding and committee control is at stake. With the nation in a seeming iron clad political polarization split almost evenly down the middle, there is little hope of either side giving ground in either chamber.

Trump continually blusters about how supposedly good the economy was under his stewardship. Yet he can’t get around the blunt fact that the cost of virtually every consumer good, from gas to food, has soared. The greatest jump that affects millions and is literally a life and death concern for legions is the cost and accessibility of quality medical care. That combined with a visible slowing down of economic growth and creeping up joblessness cannot be blustered away by Trump.

The prospect of a divided government with the House and possibly the Senate again in Democratic hands will hurt Trump the most. There are two other Trump concerns about a congressional loss in the midterms. The first is one that he constantly alludes to in talks to GOP boosters in the months before the elections. That is the threat of having his legislative agenda picked to pieces and stymied. It is the threat of impeachment –again.

The other is the effect a strong Democratic midterm showing will have on the 2028 presidential election. He will not be on the ballot again. But a GOP candidate will. If the Democrats continue to gain momentum from the 2026 midterm, that will not bode well for the party’s bid to keep the White House.

The key to victory for Democrats and Republicans in a sharply polarized nation and an even more sharply divided electorate between are the independents. Both parties expend much time, effort, and resources to message their stance on the issues in the most appealing way to independents. Both understand that even a small uptick in the independent vote in key swing states can play a huge role in the outcome of congressional and state races.

A divided government, though, will complicate matters for both parties. That’s what looms if the predictions hold true and the Democrats win the House and the Republicans hold the Senate. The House Democrats can conduct endless investigations, and committee hearings and shape the first version of spending bills. The GOP controlling the Senate can say who gets confirmed and blow off any Democratic boosted House legislation it doesn’t like.

In the run-up to the 2026 midterms, the Democrats spent a great deal of time and effort into constructing a winning game plan. The party mounted a deft fundraising campaign, picked a core of credible, electable candidates for state and House offices, eliminated much of the factional in-fighting within the party, and laser focused on the issues that voters soured on the most. They are Trump’s Iran war folly, and the soaring cost of living. That is more than enough to make Trump, and the GOP sweat the 2026 midterms.

Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson Report.

Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchins

He is also an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book is From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press).

I’m ready to hear in detail what candidates are ready to do to win the upcoming elections and give help to the people in need—and there are a lot of things from which to choose!

My prayer is that candidates will stop bickering and just tell us what they’re planning to do to help to bring us out of this abysmal situation we’re in now. Instead of spending so much time being shocked by what the highest elected man in the land is saying and doing, let’s concentrate on how to put up guard rails for him when we vote We already know more than enough about what he has said and done. Let’s pledge to elect leaders who’ve shown they care about the people they campaign to represent.  There are a lot of good candidates out there who are being overshadowed by the bickering

Let’s not leave everything to elected leaders.  As community activists, Get Out the Vote workers, religious leaders and all the good people around us. Show the way to a better nation to all around us. Let’s concentrate on what we are going to do to help people in need.  Let’s work on plans to make their lives better. Let’s pledge to get along with our neighbors at home, and our neighbors in Canada, our friends in Ukraine and stop being led by someone who hangs out with those set on disrupting our system of democracy. Ignore the wrecking balls who are more interested in tearing down monuments and praising themselves, supporting evil with lies and unbelievable positions on good people, those who are destroying our military and using government and our taxes on evil things.

Let’s call out corruption, but don’t participate in it. Let us ignore lies about good candidates at all levels.  Let’s support the left out. Jamie Davis, a Black man in Louisiana, is a leading candidate for the U.S. Senate. We don’t have to live in Louisiana or be a Democrat or a farmer to support him when you see how much trouble the person running against him is dealing with something people don’t want.

We can vote across party lines when that candidate has expressed the good things she/he will work for when elected. Never mind that in this case she has an R after her name. I know Monique Appeaning in Louisiana who worked in my campaign for Congress when she was a very young woman. I missed winning by a few votes to become the first Black woman to represent my home state in Congress.  Forty years later, there has still been no Black woman in the Louisiana delegation. Monique has chosen to pick up the challenge and give my hope life so that other young Black women can have hope in refusing to allow any good thing to be beyond their reach.

You know right from wrong, so don’t be afraid to vote for what’s right in a few days. Always promote good.  Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Amy Acton deserve your vote if you are in Ohio or Michigan.  Yes, you know right from wrong, so do what’s right wherever you are.

Written By Dr. E. Faye Williams

Official website; http://www.efayewilliams.com/