1. How great was Tuesday?

2. What a message it sent the world.

3. Hurray for Hungary, Serbia, Brazil — and now for America.  Hurray, in short, for democracy.

4. Wall Street didn’t hate it, either.  (Separately, OPRT was up 30% yesterday, but I digress.)

5. Jason Crow did a terrific job recruiting House candidates.  Chuck Schumer did the same for the Senate.

6. Most of our pick-ups were not from the left of our party — candidates who Trump and Putin have somehow persuaded MAGAns are radical lunatics and scum who want to open the borders and close the prisons while imposing communism and sharia law and sending your sons home from school as daughters — all of which, needless to say, is beyond ridiculous.  Rather, most of our flips were from the center.  Oliver Libby, founder of Strong Floor, No Ceiling — “a country that has your back without holding you back” — argues that victorious centrist Democrats will revive the American dream.

7. Chris Gallant’s bid to Make Politics Sexy Again narrowly failed.  But to have come within 2% in a deep red district was impressive.  I’m proud to have supported him.  His 2-minute exit video.

8. Ty Pinkins is Mississippi’s Ralph Nader.*  Only this time, Scott Colom — up by 65 votes as I type this — will emerge the winner despite Pinkins’ syphoning off 19,938 votes that would much more likely have gone to him than to Hyde-Smith.  And Mary Peltola will win also, leaving us at 56-44 in the Senate.

9. We’ve won governorships and flipped state legislative chambers, such that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could conceivably cross the threshold by 2028.  That would effectively abolish the Electoral College, awarding the presidency to the candidate who got the most votes. (What a concept.)

WHAT NOW?

10.  I hope we’ll pass one specific, widely popular bill each week.  The nation can applaud Trump when he signs it or watch to see whether the Republicans will join in over-riding his veto if he does not.  Either way, we should make a big, big deal out of it.

Week One could be restoring aid to Ukraine — and repealing all the price-hikes (aka, tariffs) Trump imposed.  Week Two could be restoring the heath care subsidies he eliminated.  Week Three could be hiking the $7.25 an hour minimum wage.  Week Four could be adequately funding the IRS.  Week Five could be restoring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Week Six could be restoring U.S. AID — and the Voice of America.  Week Seven could be universal background checks and perhaps resurrecting the Assault Weapons Ban (though Malcolm Gladwell makes a great case for hiring a lot more police to prevent crime before it happens, thereby reducing the need for prison beds).  Week Eight could be cutting the ICE budget and re-passing the 2024 bipartisan immigration bill.

And that just brings us to March.  There’s so much to do!  (Ban Congressional stock trading for staffers, too!  Repeal the carried-interest loophole!  Pass the Patriotic Millionaires’ Money Agenda!  Depoliticize the Supreme Court!  Regulate A.I.!)

(And how about inviting Mark Carny to address a joint session of Congress on Week One?  What a message that would send the world?**)

11.  Who knows how Trump would react to any of this.  It’s anyone’s guess what he will be like from here on.  Can he really spend all his time focused on the pipes in the reflecting pool?  His ballroom?  His arch?

His fitness for office, spectacularly dubious from the start, seems even more so now.

Will he quit?  Be asked to step down in some way?  If so, it should probably be Republicans who lead that charge.  Not least because . . .

12. Oversight — not over-reach.  That should be our mantra.  At the same time as we pursue the weekly legislative agenda to make life better for normal Americans, the Congressional oversight committees should be conducting investigations and, where wrongdoing is uncovered, expose it and refer it for prosecution.  Should it be illegal for a private citizen to lie — egregiously — to the FBI?  Hiding government documents in one of your dozens of bathrooms?  One would think so.   Should powerful pedophiles be shielded from exposure?  One would think not.  Is corruption okay just because this Administration says it is?  Why did ICE pay nearly $500 million for a facility that had been offered for $75 million the year before?  Has Pete Hegseth weakened the nation by firing competent people, or preventing their advancement, because they were not straight while males?  These are legitimate areas of inquiry.

14. However, the next few weeks play out before the new Congress is seated and in the weeks and months that follow, there will likely be elections in 2028, 2030, and beyond.  This past year has proved that when citizens become engaged, they can change the course of history.  So, join today’s Indivisible call.

And read or listen to: This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy, by Ben Wikler. 

*You will recall that Nader siphoned off 97,488 votes in Florida, which Al Gore “lost” to Bush by 534 — though in fact, if the “overvotes” had been counted, he would have won by 45,000 or so.  But when someone punched Gore’s chad and also wrote in Gore, it was thrown out as an “overvote.”  And so we got the war in Iraq, Roberts and Alito on the Court, and the financial meltdown.) 

**Thanks, Alix, for that idea.