We Can Finally Breathe

It started with a golden escalator ride. On Tuesday, the long goodbye began.

Now we can let out a breath. But we still have to breathe through the next two years.

In June of 2015, Donald Trump stepped onto the golden escalator at Trump Tower and rode it down into a lobby full of cameras. A few minutes later, he was telling the country that Mexico was sending us “rapists.” A lot of people laughed. A lot of people assumed it would be over in a few weeks.

It wasn’t over in a few weeks. It took over the next decade of American life.

On Tuesday night, more than eleven years after that escalator ride, the country finally delivered its clearest verdict yet on Donald Trump. Democrats took the House. They took the Senate. They won up and down the ticket in every part of the country. It was the kind of midterm wipeout neither party has suffered in half a century.

The next day, the President of the United States spent his time talking about his ballroom.

The Exhale

I want to name something I suspect a lot of you felt on Wednesday morning, because I felt it too.

Relief. Not giddiness, not gloating. Just relief. The kind you feel when you’ve been holding your breath so long you forgot you were doing it, and then, all at once, you let it out.

If you felt that, you’re allowed to.

Because the last ten years have been heavy for those of us who care. Think about what so many of us carried. The early shocks of the first term, when every week brought something we’d never seen a president do and the feeling that everything we knew about what held our country together was ripped apart overnight.

Then, January 6th, when a mob stormed the Capitol and I watched from inside the building as the peaceful transfer of power nearly broke.

And then the second term, which was somehow worse. DOGE, tariffs, and eye-watering corruption preceded a foolish war which was the final straw for millions of voters who gave Trump a second chance.

For a lot of you, it was more personal than that. It was the Thanksgiving dinners that turned into arguments. The relative you stopped talking to. The friend who was afraid of what would happen to her family. The constant, low hum of dread every time you picked up your phone. That weight was real. And on Tuesday night, for the first time in a long time, it started to lift.

And I want to talk about something else that’s been on my mind this week.

When I stood up against Donald Trump after the 2020 election, when I voted to impeach him and spent more than a year investigating January 6th, I lost a lot. My party. Friendships I’d had for years. A career I loved. And I believed, maybe naively, that the country would get there with me pretty quickly. That once Americans saw what happened at the Capitol, they’d turn the page.

It took a lot longer than I hoped. There were years when it felt like the country was going the other way, when being right early mostly felt lonely.

So I don’t feel vindicated this week. I feel relieved. Relieved that the country I believed in was still there, waiting for its moment. Relieved that so many Americans, including a whole lot of Republicans, finally looked at the same thing I saw and decided they’d had enough. I’ve had people stop me on the street over the last year to tell me they’re Republicans, but they’re done with this. On Tuesday, a lot of them backed it up with their votes.

The Next Step

What began as an escalator ride turned into a rollercoaster for a decade of American politics.

Now, a word of caution, because I’d be doing you a disservice if I let the celebration run too long.

Donald Trump is still the President for two more years. He still has the power to pardon, to sign executive orders, to run a war. A lame duck is still a duck, and this one has a way of lashing out when he’s cornered.

A lot can change in politics, too. Two years is a long time. But I’m confident of this much: Tuesday was the beginning of the long goodbye for Donald Trump. He’ll spend his final two years as the lamest of lame ducks, facing a Congress with subpoena power and a country that has made up its mind.

Which brings me to the people who won.

To every Democrat headed to Washington in January: congratulations. You earned it. Now remember why you were sent.

Voters didn’t hand you this majority so you could settle scores. They sent you to do two things. Check a President who has refused to check himself. And bring down the cost of living for families who are tired of being squeezed. Hakeem Jeffries has already said Democrats will move to end the Iran war as part of a broader push on affordability. Good. Don’t forget it.

Because if the new majority spends the next two years bickering about intraparty policy squabbles, the voters who just gave them a chance will take it away, and the worst of the Republican Party will be waiting to step back in.

That’s not a threat. It’s just how this works. Dance with the one that brung ya.

Breathe, Then Get Back to Work

So here’s what I’d ask of you this week. Celebrate. Call the friend you knocked doors with. Thank the poll worker down the street. Sleep in, if you can. Let yourself feel it.

And then, when you’re ready, get back to work. Because the long goodbye has only just begun, and how it ends is still up to us. The country we hand our kids won’t be shaped by one election night. It’ll be shaped by what we do with it.

It started with an escalator ride. It ends the way it was always supposed to: with the American people, voting him out of our lives one election at a time.

Take a breath. Then let’s finish this.

— Adam