HAYDEN, CO — I know, I know. You’ve seen so many post-election analysis pieces that your eyes cross or glaze over.
This one is fairly simple. It starts with a puzzle that greeted Rep. Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, the morning after the election. AOC had been easily re-elected, but it was Donald J. Trump who won her district’s presidential votes, not Kamala Harris. That surprised AOC, given what she thought she knew about her own neighbors.
So she asked her constituents who voted for her AND Trump to please explain why.
Basically, the answer was, they were voting for change – for agents of change. AOC has always been an agent of change, closely allied to Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Saunders and progressives in the U.S. House.
So is Trump an agent of change? Yes, if you’re referring to a wild bull in a shop stocked with china and dynamite. He ran a campaign characterized by outrageous, outlandish, BIG/WOW ideas – like deport 20 million migrants, slap tariffs on major trade partners, and gut the federal civil service and replace them with Trump fans.
Harris/Walz ran a campaign that was a logical extension of the Biden/Harris Administration – decent policy ideas that would easily have come from a Biden re-election campaign. Increased tax credits for new children, for a new mortgage or new business.
Between the two sets of ideas, which has the WOW factor? Trump’s ideas, even if with a little thought, they become highly problematic. For many Trump voters, change is the key, whether they understand it or not.
I don’t think there was enough daylight between Biden and Harris. Certainly, both were playing it safe and avoided bombshell announcements.
If Democrats and Progressives want to fare better in the 2026 mid-terms, they need to run on big ideas, like Medicare for All, a minimum wage of $20/hour, vastly less expensive or free education at trade school, community college or university levels, a $2 trillion Green New Deal that hires millions to get us off fossil fuel, public service for all with a GI-like bill that gets everyone into a new home, a bejeezus tax on billionaires, and a promise to break up giants and make it easy for workers to unionize.
For 2026 thereafter, it has to be GO BIG!
