Behold the Non-Binary Election: Now, will D’s take the Win?

Prior to this week’s election the question was would the right, really Trump, accept the results — the legitimacy — of the election if it went against him? I was not at all certain that he would. I feared January 3, 2027 might bring some sort of re-do of January 6, 2021 when Trump’s manipulated minions assaulted the Capitol.

We now know a couple of things. One, November 3, 2026 was a massive win for the Democrats, extending far beyond Congress to state houses across the country. It also extended to “Red States” like South Carolina, Texas and Iowa and Mississippi. And it extended to groups of voters — young men and Hispanics — that had, after the 2024 election, been declared as part of an ascendent multi-racial “Trump Coalition.”

We also know that Trump appears to have accepted the legitimacy of the election. There is no talk of a “stolen election” this time. That could, of course, be because the margins of victory for Democrats were so substantial that contesting them was simply not credible even in Trump’s universe.

So despite all the apprehensions — that the polls overstated a blue wave, that Trump would, against all odds, somehow manage another win, or failing that there would be a rightist backlash or even a coup attempt — none of that has happened (yet). Instead, the election mechanics went just fine, so far as I know, and there was a massive repudiation of Trump, of his policies and party.

Here then is my question . . . will the left take “yes” for an answer?

There are parts of the left, “progressives,” that have been in the Resistance mode for so long and so strenuously that they may be reluctant to credit that American democracy, far from being lost, actually worked. People said “no” to an illegal war, “no” to lawlessness and corruption, “no” to indecency and “no” to attempts to buy the election.

To be clear, I am not saying that we are now out of the woods, or that everything has been put right. We face huge challenges and lots of repair work. We certainly are not home free and there certainly is massive work to be done. In this life, there is always work to be done; it never ends.

But if your view has been that America is irredeemably racist, completely rigged economically and a failed democracy — a democracy in name only — will you grant the legitimacy of the election and its challenge to such doomer scenarios?

Because we have, in many quarters, been imbibing doom scenarios for quite some time now. Such narratives, as I’ve noted before, tend to rely on seeing all things through simplistic explanatory lenses, as for example, that of critical theory’s “oppressor and oppressed” binary. Every identity group and every nation are either one or the other. And that everything is about power, and anyone who has power will inevitably and only use it oppressively and in service of self-interest.

The now common and fixed labeling of every state in the union as either Red or Blue is a version of this. We’ve come to accept this Red or Blue designation, this map of our country, as a fixed verity. You are either this or that. They are either this or that.

This election complicates such narratives. It demonstrates that people are persuadable; that votes and minds can change. It demonstrates that demographic groups cast for one role or another, are actually less predictable and more complex. There’s more nuance in life than Red/Blue, Oppressor/Oppressed binaries allow. There’s more mystery to human beings, thanks be to God, than the prevailing narratives would suggest.

Again, I hasten to add, no, we’re not out of the woods. In some sense we will always be “in the woods.” America is a big, complicated country with its share of reactionary political forces. And as an African-American preacher friend says, “You are either in a storm, just coming out of a storm, or about to enter into a storm.”

But the two-sides narratives are not the whole story. Far from it. Moreover, the 2026 vote indicated that there is a solid core, really a majority, of moderate voters who would like to rescue us all from the extremes on either side and their apocalyptic scenarios to simply get on with addressing our most urgent challenges and solving our most vexing problems. Politicians more often follow than lead. Let’s hope that some follow the sanity-seeking majority in the 2026 election.