The best that may be said in defense of the President is that he is not a well man. Some of his allies in Congress lack even that excuse. Together, they’re doing horrific damage to the republic and her people. But the midterm elections are, at last, at hand. The opposition lacks clear leadership and identity. The American people are bitterly divided. But even though we can’t agree on our vision of the future, we can agree on this: Congress cannot remain in the hands of those who have betrayed and disgraced us. This November of 1854, the realignment begins.
The President, whose name I’m sure I’ll remember in a second, is pursuing a racist and imperialist agenda. He wants to buy, or failing that to conquer, Cuba. He openly plots to annex Canada. He’s trying to install puppet governments by force in South America. His planned endgame is to admit all of these new territories as slave states, decisively shifting the balance of power in the United States to those who would keep one in seven of us in bondage.
The President and his congress have repealed the Missouri Compromise, paving the way for slavery in new northern states. They enforce the Fugitive Slave Act with sadistic glee, making a public spectacle out of the deportation of Baptist preacher Anthony Burns, back south across the border he’d risked everything to cross. They promised peace and integrity, and gave us a government of feckless thugs.
We don’t agree on who, and what, comes next. Some candidates are just calling their party the Opposition, rather than choose among movements calling themselves the Independent Democrats, the Northern Whigs, the Republicans, or simply the Americans. It’s messy, and it’s going to stay messy. But we turn out anyway, millions of us. We vote the President’s party out. Decisively. Politicians look at the margins, the details of turnout, and decide what a winning coalition might look like.
Afterwards, the President (I feel like he had a single-syllable name? That was maybe also a verb?) deludes himself that he’s still popular, that he’s going to be nominated for another term. No chance. He watches in sullen disbelief as his party casts him aside, and then as the great political realignment culminates in the election of Abraham Lincoln.
Historians remember whatshisname as one of the worst to hold office, one who destroyed his own party, one who failed catastrophically at the expense of his country. Americans sort of remember his chief enabler, Senator Douglas, but only as that guy who lost a series of debates with Lincoln. But the President himself? I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to remember his name. You’d think it would at least be on a building somewhere.
Tomorrow, November 3rd, 2026, will be our 60th midterm election. We’ve had one every four years since 1790, without interruption, and tomorrow we will once again exercise our franchise and reaffirm our freedom. Worldwide, the fever is breaking. In Brazil, in Serbia, they’ve chosen for democracy, against strongmen and would-be tyrants. Tomorrow, we in the United States will do the same.
Make your plan for tomorrow. There are very few safe seats this year, and the margins will affect how our parties are reshaped. Your vote matters. The fever will break, but only because you and I will vote. We’ll win. Then, we’ll figure out what comes next.
