WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

THE GUARDIAN GATHERED COGENT VIEWS on America’s political future. I share my thoughts together with tidbits gleaned from “Time to Fight Back: Five Leading Thinkers on What Democrats Should Do Post-Midterm,” The Guardian, November 9, 2026. Each quoted item is identified by its author.

Bust Up The Broligarchy. “Democrats should use their mandate to be Democrats again. That means taking on concentrated wealth and economic power—the oligarchy—with a wealth tax on multimillionaires and billionaires. Campaign finance reforms to get big money out of our democracy. Labor law reforms to make it easier for workers to form unions and harder for employers to fire them for doing so. And tough new anti-monopoly laws to give government authority to bust up concentrations of economic power, especially in tech.”—Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor and a Guardian U.S. columnist.

We’ve shown trillionaire Elon Musk that his nearly $500 million couldn’t buy the midterms. Nor did Trump’s asinine (and mathematically impossible) buyoffs of the electorate have any effect.

I’ve oft expressed the hope that “there are more of us than there are of them.” The midterms clearly expanded the “us” in U.S.

Smoke Out the Ghost of the Confederacy. “We’re not going to just move forward, hold hands and get along. We have to vanquish the Maga spirit to ensure the ghost of the Confederacy can no longer haunt and terrorize our country.”

“First, Democrats should unleash hell in the name of justice. This means investigations of the Jeffrey Epstein class, Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth, Jared Kushner, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Stephen Miller. Second, Democrats must end the trade wars and the failed, disastrous war in Iran while not getting outflanked by Republicans in rejecting Israel’s interference in our politics. Restore Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse the $1tn cuts to Medicaid. And how about Medicare for All?”—Wajahat Ali, editor of The Left Hook and co-host of The Democracy-ish Podcast.

The killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in Senatobia, Mississippi, shows that Civil War attitudes have yet to change in parts of the South. Has shoplifting diapers ever been a capital crime??

Make the Lawyers Pay. “With their clear mandate from voters, Democrats must immediately launch investigations into the actions of Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba, former U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, US attorney Jeanine Pirro and other US attorneys and federal prosecutors who furthered Trump’s intimidation campaign. U.S. attorney general Todd Blanche, who allegedly quarterbacked several of these illegal and unethical prosecutions, should be investigated first.”

“The all-out assault on the rule of law by Trump and his justice department must be stopped. It should be a top priority for the Democrats as they begin the 120th Congress.” – Katie Phang, independent journalist, trial lawyer and political analyst.

Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department has been part of his fascist control of all aspects of American life: our electoral process (Trump and ballots), our health (RFK Jr.’s measles surge), our own Washington, D.C. (the JFK Center renaming; the White House ballroom and Trump Arc Mussolini-like “national security”; the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool fiasco).

It’s time for our lawyers as well.

Root Out Corruption. “The first order of business should be to pass a law banning all members of Congress and the president from trading individual stocks. (Trump has made more than 25,000 individual stock trades since returning to the White House.) Such a bill should pass with overwhelming—and potentially veto-proof—bipartisan support. What better way for Democrats to begin their majority than to deliver real reform on an issue of importance to voters?”

“Next, subpoena Jared Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law is a top U.S. negotiator on every key foreign policy issue while reportedly remaining on the dole of foreign governments. It’s one of the biggest corruption scandals in history.”— Judd Legum, founder and author of Popular Information.

See “Broligarchy” above. Also as Judd Legum observes, “The most crucial issue for 2026 voters was not grocery prices, or the Iran war or immigration. It was corruption.”

Do the Work. “First, I would caution Democrats not to consider this victory a mandate, but rather an assignment. Voters were repulsed by Trump and his actions, but they were not writing Democrats a blank check. They want accountability for corruption and affirmative action toward greater equality and economic relief.”

“However, the ‘blue wave’ delivered neither a filibuster-proof nor a veto-proof majority in Congress. The goal now is to keep expectations aligned with actual opportunity and ability.”—Charles Blow, author, political analyst and contributing writer to The Guardian.

See also “ ‘A Historic Beatdown’: Americans Take Back Their Country in Rebuke to Trump,” The Guardian, November 4, 2026. The path ahead is a complex one, but we have avoided the cliff. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026