If you want one data point that captures the force of what hit the country on Tuesday, it comes from Iowa. Eric Armstrong, a Democratic nominee for a red-leaning state House district, suspended his campaign in September, citing personal health issues that required his full attention. Iowa Democrats wrote the seat off. Then, Armstrong won it comfortably anyway. “I’m going to do my best to represent the district because I won,” he said in a phone interview with AP Wednesday morning.
That was the backdrop for Ben’s post-midterm special on the MeidasTouch Network, recorded the day after the election: a wave that ran from the federal level to statehouses to local races, and that Ben framed as a nationwide mandate on two inseparable issues. The first is affordability. The second is corruption. As Ben put it, the MAGA oligarchs “have been making the cost of living impossible while they’ve enriched themselves,” so the oversight agenda and the cost-of-living agenda are the same fight. He also flagged one striking number from Nate Silver: if the remaining results hold, Democrats will hold governorships in states totaling 392 electoral votes.
To talk about what comes next, Ben brought on two of the most popular Democratic executives in the country, who come at the job from different places and land on the same answer: deliver for people, and do it now.
The MAGA civil war started before the votes were counted
The finger-pointing inside the regime began almost immediately. Vice President JD Vance posted his own postmortem, reposted by Don Jr., blaming the catastrophic results on the catastrophic war in Iran. Vance listed the top four reasons he says Republican voters stayed home or voted Democratic: ending the war, the cost of living and inflation, putting America first, and changing the country’s relationship with Israel. The problem, as Ben pointed out, is that Vance IS THE VICE-PRESIDENT. He was IN THE ROOM. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump while the regime kept telling Americans the war was “two weeks away” from being resolved. Now he is trying to put distance between himself and the wreckage with 2028 in mind.
He is not the only one. According to CNN, Trump feels “misled” over the Iran war and may look to blame senior officials, with Pete Hegseth, Admiral Brad Cooper and CIA Director John Ratcliffe among the names in the mix. (Where’s Marco?) Speaker Mike Johnson announced he will not seek any leadership position in the Republican caucus again. Bye-bye, MAGA Mike!
And while all of that was happening, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was posting tough-guy threats about sanctioning anyone who supports the Iranian regime “by land, sea or air,” and Markwayne Mullin was promising the deportations will continue. It’s loser behavior by a loser regime.
Josh Shapiro: “Victory for me would not be enough”
Governor Shapiro won reelection in the toughest swing state in the country by more than 20 points, and he made clear that his own margin was never the goal. A year ago, he told Ben, he set out to use Pennsylvania’s power to “literally tilt the balance of power” in Washington. He recruited candidates for the state’s four competitive congressional races, got all four through their primaries, and all four won on Tuesday. Democrats also won a trifecta in Harrisburg, which Shapiro said is the first since 1992. He did it on roughly two and a half hours of sleep before heading straight back to his desk.
What Shapiro heard on the trail is the part every Democrat should study. He campaigned in counties that went 80-20 for Trump in the last election and got the same reaction he got in counties that went 80-20 the other way: people showing up in tears, worried about their democracy and about the country they will leave their kids. In the Trump counties, he said, voters had backed Trump for lower prices, no wars and a drained swamp.
Two years later, prices went up, the swamp “not only wasn’t drained, it was added to,” and there are more wars. Shapiro won Lancaster County, which he called the center of the universe for Republican activity in Pennsylvania, and Ben noted he carried at least ten counties Trump won. Shapiro’s read on the national map is just as pointed: of the 35 to 40 House seats Democrats are on track to gain, he said roughly two-thirds sit in districts Trump won by close to ten points or more. Keeping them means delivering for those voters.
With the trifecta, Shapiro wants a minimum wage increase to at least $15 an hour as “Act One of 2027,” on his desk in January. He also wants to finally give survivors of sexual abuse the legal ability to confront their abusers in court, a measure he said Senate Republicans blocked at the request of the Insurance Federation and the Catholic Conference. “If they don’t like something, they can vote no,” he said of Republicans. “But we’re going to keep moving forward.”
On Vance’s postmortem, Shapiro didn’t hold back. “You can’t delete the stink of Donald Trump once it’s on you,” he said. “JD stinks, man. And he is not going to be able to tweet his way out of that.” He added that he wishes Vance had campaigned for his opponent, because it might have been worth a couple extra points.
He had the same energy for Ron DeSantis, who has suddenly found religion on the Epstein files after years as Trump’s biggest booster. Shapiro also noted that of the ten largest states, Florida is now the only one with a Republican governor, with Texas the clearest example of a big state flipping.
Ben pressed the former attorney general on oversight, from the Qatari jet to the ballroom to crypto and foreign influence. Shapiro’s answer was that the new Democratic majorities have to “walk and chew gum at the same time.” Run robust oversight in the committees of jurisdiction while passing bills that lower costs and expand affordable health care, then put them on Trump’s desk. Either Americans get relief, or they see exactly who vetoed it.
Shapiro closed with Benjamin Franklin walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention, when Elizabeth Willing Powel, a woman who had no right to vote under the document just signed, asked him whether they had a monarchy or a republic. “A republic, if you can keep it.” On Tuesday, Shapiro said, Democrats, Republicans and independents showed up in record numbers to keep it.
“They put a check on this guy, and they showed that our nation won’t be defined by his cruelty.”
Zohran Mamdani: “Americans cannot afford to wait two more years”
Mayor Mamdani went straight at the GOP’s closing pitch. JD Vance asked Americans for a couple more years to fulfill his promises, Mamdani said, but people “cannot afford to wait two more years when their rent is due on the first of the month,” when they have to pay for childcare, when they have to buy groceries today.
Tuesday showed that Americans are tired of being told their needs are unrealistic “by the very politicians that have been bought by the wealthiest people across the country.” The mandate, in his words, is to drive down costs and “build schools instead of bombs.”
And the money was staggering. Mamdani put the spending from crypto, AI and online betting interests at $517 million, and said Elon Musk alone spent $440 million on these midterms. Democrats won anyway, from South Carolina to Kansas to Iowa to Texas.
“The American people stood up and said that they could not be bought,” Mamdani said, “and neither should their politicians be able to be.”
Ben connected it to the post-Citizens United landscape and to his larger point that democracy can’t only be defended in election cycles. Mamdani agreed and took it a step further: democracy “must mean dignity,” something working families can measure and feel in their wallets.
Ben asked what the rest of the country can take from New York, where Mamdani is governing with an approval rating above 70 percent. Mamdani said he has been told over and over that what works in New York can’t apply elsewhere, and Tuesday proved otherwise. The same struggles are felt in Anchorage, Allentown and Atlanta, and can be met the same way they are being met in Astoria. “There is only one majority in this country, and that’s the working class.”
He pointed to free childcare for thousands of two-year-olds and the unglamorous work of filling potholes, delivered side by side, and to candidates who ran on concrete promises: James Talarico on universal pre-K, Dr. Annie Andrews on ending endless wars, Keisha Lance Bottoms on streamlining affordable housing. He also credited his partnership with Governor Kathy Hochul.
On the global authoritarian network, from Trump to Netanyahu to Bolsonaro to Orbán, Mamdani cited Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s description of a global struggle against working people that demands a global response. His closing message was the one Democrats should tape to the wall: “Our job is not to lecture Americans on the choices that they’ve made. Our job is to listen. And then our job is to lead.”
Tuesday was the opening, not the ending
Shapiro and Mamdani are different politicians, and nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But on the day after, they said the same thing. Voters handed Democrats power because they want their lives to get better and they are sick of being robbed by the people at the top. The victory speeches from Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Senator Jon Ossoff, Dr. Annie Andrews, Adam Hamilton, James Talarico, Roy Cooper and so many others sounded like grown-ups talking about real problems, not ballrooms. Now the job is to deliver, and to build the long-term systems and trust that the other side spent decades building while Democrats showed up only at election time. As Mamdani put it, last night is not the end of the story. It is the opportunity.
Watch the full special above, or listen here. And become a paid subscriber now if you haven’t already. Our blue wave merch is live at the MeidasTouch store. And for the second week in a row, WTF America?!, the book my brothers and I wrote about how we got into this mess and how we get out, is on the New York Times bestseller list, and on the audio list too. Grab the hardcover or the audiobook anywhere books are sold.
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