In one more signal the citizens is rejecting MAGA’s culture-war politics, Democrats swept faculty board elections in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
“From Texas to Pennsylvania to Ohio, Democrat-backed candidates ran successful campaigns in some of the nation’s largest school systems and in political battlegrounds,” reported Politico. “They emphasized test scores and bus safety over debates about which bathrooms transgender students use and banning books from school libraries. The result was a set of election results at the local level that accentuated the punishment meted out against Republicans by swing voters earlier this month.”
Seems, anti-trans hysteria isn’t precisely top-of-mind when voters are anxious about the price of dwelling or the standard of a kid’s schooling.
“Republicans thought it was an effective strategy, because it represented the values of their party, like ‘We’re looking out for you, and Democrats are looking out for this niche group,’” Chris Cormier Maggiano, a board member of pro-LGBTQ+ PAC Battle for Our Rights, instructed Politico. “And I think that narrative has now flipped.”
We at all times speak about political pendulums swinging, and we’re seeing that now. Republicans are in a world of harm, and it’s solely fixing to worsen subsequent yr, with extra resignations anticipated.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced final week that she would resign from Congress in January 2026.
In the end, Republicans received’t lose the 2026 midterm elections due to their culture-war stances however due to their fixation on them. Democrats bought electorally punished for the manufactured notion that they cared extra about trans rights than the price of dwelling. Republicans at the moment are getting hammered for his or her very actual obsession with trans individuals on the expense of cost-of-living points.
And that’s the place Democrats should be cautious. The pendulum could also be swinging their method now, however pendulums swing again when you let the basics slip. Voters need their lives to get higher in materials, tangible methods. They wish to really feel just like the individuals in cost perceive what it means to juggle hire, baby care, groceries, well being care, pupil debt, getting older dad and mom, and unpredictable wages. When a celebration delivers on that primary expectation, voters reward them for it. When a celebration will get distracted or begins signaling that one thing else issues extra, they don’t.
For Democrats, the trail ahead isn’t sophisticated. The social gathering has to maintain exhibiting up for the on a regular basis financial issues that form individuals’s lives whereas nonetheless preventing for the rights and dignity of the communities that type its core coalition. These two issues aren’t in rigidity until Democrats enable them to be. The broader citizens isn’t rejecting inclusion or equality, as we had been reminded this previous election. It’s rejecting political actors who appear extra invested in symbolic fights than in fixing actual issues.
The GOP can’t escape its culture-war spiral. That’s the one factor its base cares about anymore. And Democrats have the benefit of a coalition that really desires governance. In the event that they deal with that as a possibility as an alternative of a constraint, they will meet the citizens the place it’s now and preserve it there. The pendulum could also be swinging of their favor, but it surely received’t keep there by itself.
