What’s next?
There are few things more stirring than the Kansas sky at dawn, and the election results on the morning of Nov. 4 rolled like thunder across the prairie. We are less than a week out from that historic election, in which a Democrat from the Sunflower State was elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1932, and many of us are still basking in the promise of a new political day.
The short list of upheavals: Both houses of Congress were resoundingly wrenched from GOP control in a stunning rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump. Kansas Republicans lost their supermajority in the Kansas House, effectively ending their single-party ability to override the governor’s veto. Democrats won the majority of governorships for the first time in 16 years, and Kansan Cindy Holscher will likely join them, pending results of a close-race audit.
Pundits will dissect the 2026 midterm for years to come, but I doubt their analyses will add much to what we already know: that the spectacular unpopularity of Trump and his corrupt and inhumane actions drove us to the polls with a renewed sense of purpose.
The economy was killing us, as anybody who’s pumped gas or bought groceries in the last six months knows, but affordability wasn’t the only reason most of us voted for change. What we shared was a collective sense of moral outrage over a clumsy and ill-advised war with Iran, a deadly and sadistic immigration policy, a federal government so rife with corruption it resembles organized crime, and the incoherent blustering and brazen indecency of Trump himself. We longed for a return to decency, competence in government, and the progressive ideals that had shaped America since the end of World War II.
Not all of us voted alike, I know.
But when I use the collective, I’m speaking for the majority of voters, in Kansas and across the nation, who came together in the unlikeliest of circumstances. It is rare that I’m able to claim part in a majority, but the fact that I can now is a testament to why political analyst Charlie Cook called the midterm a “unicorn election” in rural America.
Now that the unicorn has been verified as an uncommon but real part of the political taxonomy of the nation, it is time to survey the terrain. There are two years remaining in Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court is largely sympathetic to him, and there are still two months to wait before the new Congress is sworn in.
So, what’s next?
The danger is that this new era will be shaped by what it opposes instead of what it hopes to achieve.
Coming together to fight a common threat to democracy is a noble thing. Without that kind of collective effort, no would-be authoritarian would ever be stopped. But now the election is over; it is not enough simply to resist Trump’s vision of America.
We must have our own vision.
And that takes leadership.
If somebody presses me to define leadership, I’m likely to say, “I know it when I see it,” a joke that references Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 remark about pornography. I’m likely to make a joke of it because whenever anybody starts using the word “leadership,” they’re often talking about themselves, and that makes me nervous. None of the best leaders I know ever refer to themselves in that way, or wrote a book about leadership or gave inspirational seminars in how to be a leader.
They just led.
There is a thread connecting the best leaders in American history, a durable but winding political sinew that stretches back to the founding of the country. That sinew is the effort to advance, in equality and prosperity and the pursuit of happiness, the human condition. For all of us. I’ve talked about some of these leaders in my columns before, especially Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower. In retrospect, fighting slavery or battling fascism might seem like simple choices, but few choices are uncomplicated in the fever of current events.
Consider Teddy Roosevelt, who came to Kansas in 1910 to talk about the “New Nationalism.” In a speech at Osawatomie, the former president, a Republican, mentioned Lincoln often as he addressed a crowd filled with Union veterans of the Civil War. Roosevelt urged better wages for workers and the end of government protections for businesses.
“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress,” Roosevelt said.
Roosevelt advocated an eight-hour workday, a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and the elderly, and a bracketed income tax. Roosevelt’s Progressive Party lost, but the ideas stuck.
In 2011, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, went to Osawatomie. At a speech at the high school there, he picked up the plea for the middle class that Roosevelt had made a century before.
“This is the defining issue of our time,” Obama said. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.”
Obama was speaking just a few years after the Great Recession, the longest and deepest economic slump in 70 years. Obama noted that for his “New Nationalism” speech, Roosevelt was called a socialist and even a communist. But the same things that Roosevelt railed against in 1910 were still problems in 2011.
Inequality, he said, distorts democracy.
“It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions,” Obama said, “and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder.”
Fifteen years after Obama gave that speech, the rich have stadium-sized PA systems while the rest of us whisper.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, gave more in political contributions for the 2026 midterms than any other donor in American history, according to an analysis by The New York Times. That superlative in spending is for a non-candidate contributor in a single election cycle. Musk’s disclosed political donations to state and federal political groups amounted to $474 million since Jan. 1, 2025. Those contributions went to Republican-aligned PACs, and half of them were spent in Texas, where Musk has a Tesla factory and launches his SpaceX rockets.
Musk must have been particularly frustrated by last week’s election, because Texas elected Democrats to the U.S. Senate and all statewide offices.
But the fact that a single individual can pump half a billion dollars into an American election in an attempt to influence the outcome should be a source of national outrage. Such lavish giving was made possible by the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which ended longstanding restrictions on outside political contributions.
That Musk’s millions made little difference in the midterms seems a civic miracle, or at least a testament to the power of whispers when combined. Personally, I haven’t been able to stand the sight of those wedge-shaped stainless steel Tesla trucks since he wielded the DOGE chainsaw at the Conservative Political Action Conference last year.
It was an absurd act, a bit of political theater about slashing bureaucracy, but it had something that other MAGA antics didn’t. It was memorable. I suspect that in time the chainsaw burlesque will come to symbolize the clownishness and danger of the second Trump administration.
While the midterms seem to have dealt the MAGA movement a crippling, if not fatal, blow, as Trump has become politically radioactive, they have also introduced uncertainty into the Democratic Party.
With big wins should come big change.
The old Democratic leadership — Chuck Schumer in the Senate, for example — might not suit a party renewed by a historic victory. If the symbol of MAGA is a chainsaw, then the symbol of the Democratic Party during the Trump era is a sternly worded letter.
Schumer, who is 76, seems too timid for the task ahead.
Articulating a new vision for America while holding Trump and his administration to account will require not just confidence, but boldness. That the Democratic Party failed so badly in 2024 by allowing Trump a second term is reason enough to take a hard look at the established leadership. Schumer ought to be asking his imaginary typical middle-class couple on Long Island, Joe and Eileen Bailey, about whether it’s time for him to step aside. Since they’re fictional, I can answer for them.
The answer is yes.
The question is not just who is bold enough to lead us out of the Trump era, but who has the courage and vision to help us escape a trajectory that has eroded American democracy and deepened inequality for decades.
“The historic nature of this election cannot be overstated,” observed historian Heather Cox Richardson the day after. “It is a rejection of Trump, who insisted voters should imagine he was on the ballot. But more than that, it is a rejection of the Republican ideology that has driven American politics since the 1980s: the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule.”
Our current system of checks on presidential power was the result of reforms instituted by Congress in the 1970s after the abuses of Richard Nixon infuriated the nation. But a docile GOP-controlled Congress has failed to use the tools available in Trump’s second term, even though Trump’s offenses are legion.
When the new Congress is sworn in, on Jan. 3, 2027, it will be up to them to use those tools, including the War Powers and Ethics in Government acts. It will also be necessary to create new laws to prevent the kind of chaos and corruption that has marked the Trump era. In addition, there will be a dizzying array of challenges facing lawmakers, topped by ending the war with Iran, bringing down prices for food and fuel and curbing ICE.
In addition, and perhaps most crucially, these things must be accomplished in a competent and even-handed manner, with no hint of retribution but with a full commitment to accountability. This might mean impeachment, but in the service of justice and not revenge.
Our new Congress must not only demonstrate good judgment and a fealty to law; it must not simply articulate an enthusiastic and humane vision of the future; and it must not merely be satisfied with the partisan divisions of the past. It must repair a government while healing a nation. It must act, not merely for the good of any one party, but for the benefit of all.
As Roosevelt said in Osawatomie:
“The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.”
Leadership isn’t about power, but about the wise use of power.
So, what’s next?
Readers will recognize that I have borrowed this phrase from Aaron Sorkin’s television series, “The West Wing,” which ran for seven seasons, ending in 2006. In it, Martin Sheen plays fictional Democratic president Jed Bartlet, whose signature phrase, after one problem was solved, was “what’s next?”
The Sorkin series is fictional, but it is also aspirational. It articulates a vision of how government should work on behalf of average Americans. Much of it is about the use and abuses of power.
The Democratic Party has an opportunity to begin the rebuilding of government on competence and compassion. What’s next is what is now unexpectedly in reach. In addition to the obligation to repair democracy’s foundation is the chance to work for those things that most Americans want and desperately need. That includes universal healthcare, protecting Social Security, and shoring up voting and other constitutional rights. It means providing meaningful protections to vulnerable populations among us, especially the poor and migrants and those who peacefully live or love differently. Finally, it is an opportunity to renew America’s global commitment to freedom by defending our allies, honoring our promises and promoting democracy abroad.
So, what’s next?
It’s the promise of America.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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