The No Kings Election

The American people rejected a mad and cruel tyrant

“I Voted” stickers on the memorial to Alex Pretti (via @dwillmodel)

The usual pundits are in shock at the margins in the overwhelming nationwide rout of Donald Trump’s Republican Party on Tuesday. But they seem to have reached a consensus on what it all meant.

It was a rebuke of Trump on account of the economy and the war, they are saying. And maybe about the corruption, too.

But for the people and groups who make up the resistance, watching the results stream in Tuesday night was less a shock than a profound, full-body vindication of what we knew – at least what we thought we knew – about the American people.

Have the pundits forgotten the millions of Americans who took to the streets over the last two years, chanting “No Kings”?

Apparently.

But we were there. And we know how to interpret the election results: The American people rejected a mad and cruel tyrant.

As Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, wrote in an email to supporters late on election night: “It’s now clear: This was the No Kings election.”

He continued: “We know this is the product of historic grassroots-driven turnout against an out-of-control, would-be king, and his corrupt coterie of crooks, collaborators, and cowards.”

“Today,” he wrote, “we join the ranks of Hungarians, Brazilians, and Serbians who resoundingly rejected authoritarianism in national elections this year.”

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff – one of very few Democratic candidates who campaigned as an anti-Trump anti-authoritarian – won by 18 points in a state that Trump won in 2024 by 2.

“In a sweeping and decisive victory,” he said on election night, “the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame duck President Donald J. Trump.”

And he offered hope. “If at times these last two years, amidst the ceaseless onslaught of brutality and indecency, you doubted whether our republic will survive,” he said. “Let tonight’s results give you courage that the first light of dawn is on the horizon.”

As for the future, he said, “this moment is an opening not for restoration, but for reformation.”

What solid evidence do I have that Tuesday’s vote was an expression of resistance values? The exit polls would have provided tons if the elite media hadn’t been so focused on voters’ economic motives that they were no questions about authoritarianism or democracy.

There was one, multiple-choice question where democracy was offered as an answer: “Which ONE of these six issues is the most important facing the country?”

And 32% of voters said the state of democracy was their top concern – more than any other issue except the economy. If a third of voters considered democracy the single most important issue facing America, how many others took their concerns about it into the voting booth? A lot.

And in response to a somewhat relevant question – “Would you say Donald Trump has the mental capability to serve effectively as president?” – 56% said he did not.

So the exit polls indicate that what happened Tuesday was that the American people voted against a mad king.

Why are the elite media pundits not getting it? In my view, they normalized him so much – describing his antidemocratic, inhumane, and racist presidency with timid language, treating it as nothing to get hysterical about – that they forgot that Trump is not remotely normal.

By contrast, Americans had a normal, human response to the horrible, vicious, hurtful things he has done to their neighbors, their government, and the world – and his violation of core American values like pluralism, checks and balances, and lawfulness. They reacted with revulsion.

Some lefty pundits did get it. Former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in his newsletter that “It was a mass affirmation that most Americans still believe in our nation’s basic values, and a mass rejection of a movement that wants to destroy everything our nation stands for. And no, it wasn’t just economic dissatisfaction…. Americans of every kind were repelled by the administration’s cruelty and its rampant, brazen corruption.”

His conclusion: “The main point for now is that MAGA took 2024 as proof that Americans want fascism, and acted on that premise. But tens of millions of Americans in effect said, no, that is not what we want. That is not who we are.”

MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday night said that “The results are not commensurate with just frustration with inflation and prices, they just are not.”

So what else is it? “The rot that is coming from the top of the country is very, very, very clearly on voters’ minds in every demographic, in every geography, in every region of the country, in every corner,” he said.

And while reporters on the news side were talking about everything but, the New York Times editorial board (amazingly) wrote with assurance that it was, indeed, about democracy. “President Trump has spent the past two years trying to subvert American democracy. On Tuesday, voters stood up to him,” they wrote. “The outcome creates a crucial check on Mr. Trump’s autocratic behavior. It empowers Democrats to investigate his corruption and law breaking and pass legislation that offers an alternative to his counterproductive agenda. The country already feels changed, and it will in fact be changed in January.”

Certainly the economy was a big factor on Tuesday. But as one Bluesky poster suggested, “The way I read the sequence, prices were like a key that unlocked understanding of corruption and anti-democracy danger.” And yeah, the two most inflationary things Trump did – attack Iran for no good reason and impose inexplicable tariffs on imports – were both examples of Trump’s whims unilaterally acted upon, with no checks and balances.

At the end of the day, the most moving and emblematic images I saw were the photos and videos of people placing their “I voted” stickers on the memorials to Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

As another Bluesky poster put it: “The resistance of Minnesotans this winter changed the trajectory of our country and that cannot be overstated.”

I think that’s exactly right. Minnesotans reminded Americans of who they were – and who they weren’t. And less than a year later, Americans started voting the bastards out.

End Notes

This is not the usual format of my Heads Up News newsletter. I’m not doing a bunch of items. But there’s some good stuff you should read:

I will direct you to last week’s newsletter, and my New Republic article about the No Kings agenda for a Democratic Congress. I think there’s going to be a lot of friction between the Fight Caucus (which includes No Kings) and the No-Fight Caucus, unfortunately represented by the chambers’ Democratic leaders.

Also read election law professor Richard L. Hasen, who celebrates the lack of Trump-induced conflicts at election sites but writes: “That none of this happened is a testament to the very hard work that has been underway for years.”

And oh my goodness, this is so delicious. You know how I’ve been writing for months now about how the (failed) prosecution of the “Broadview Six” in Chicago was obviously dictated from Washington? Now we have proof from the inside! The former chief FBI agent there says in a lawsuit that he was in the room when it happened. I could have done a whole column on that alone.

There were SO MANY election-related lawsuits! Go read Democracy Docket for the blow-by-blow. But I have to call attention to this most excellent filing by the ACLU about DOJ’s terrifyingly stupid argument in favor of blocking certification if the Republican Senate candidate didn’t win:

But imagine if the United States were somehow right. Imagine if the federal executive could pluck a few words like “election integrity” from some statutory preamble and, on that basis alone, bend the machinery of state elections to his will, preemptively blocking certification of a U.S. Senate election to protect his preferred candidate from defeat and then subjecting voters to a law-enforcement-led inquest about who they “really” supported. Imagine that world and ask whether it is what the Framers wanted or precisely what they most feared.

Until next week, my friends. Better days ahead!