Attribution: Chad Davis., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Geoff Carter
After the Proposition 50 referendum, in which voters resoundingly endorsed the California legislature’s plan to redistrict their voting districts in response to the Republican Party’s partisan gerrymandering of Texas, Governor Gavin Newsom said, “after poking the bear this bear roared.” (Instagram)
Of course, the bear in question is the state of California, which had indeed been poked—and kicked and baited—by Donald Trump. After the president had illegally deployed the California National Guard and sent the US Marines to patrol the streets of Los Angeles during what the president incorrectly termed “a full-blown assault on peace, on public order, and national sovereignty” and compared the situation to an “invasion and third-world lawlessness” (Al Jazeera), Californians reacted. They roared.
To say Trump’s claim of unrest was an exaggeration is an understatement. There was no assault on peace or public order. There was no rioting. It was evident, however, that an overt assault was being made on American’s constitutional rights. Californians—and Americans in general—didn’t much like their rights and freedoms being messed with, or their streets being invaded by the American military. They said enough is enough.
The president also blustered and threatened to send troops and the National Guard into Chicago to stop what he claimed was rampant crime, but balked when Governor Pritzker, the mayor, and the city of Chicago stood up and said no. And they were not alone. People everywhere are fed up with the high-handed arrogance and rampant lawlessness of the Trump administration.
Over seven million demonstrators participated in the October 18th No Kings rally, protesting everything from Trump’s destructive tariff policies to the government shutdown to the rising cost of living to ICE brutality to brutal slashes to education, to firing and laying off thousands of federal workers, to cutting Medicaid, USAID, and the NIH, to his attempts to subjugate the nation’s finest universities to his will, to the DOGE invasions, and to pardoning vicious January 6th rioters and other sundry criminals. And so much more. They said enough is enough is enough.
Last week, several major off-year elections, including gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, served as bellwethers for the feelings of the American electorate. Fed up with the obstinacy of the Republican majority to end the government shutdown or to engage in any sort of meaningful legislation, voters turned out in droves to back Democrats in every important election.
Besides electing the democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey by double digits, voters voted to retain the liberal Supreme Court majority in Pennsylvania, to endorse Proposition 50 Referendum in California, to cement Zoran Mamdani’s victory as New York City mayor, and to earn a slight Democratic majority the Virginia House of Delegates, pass referendums in Maine that rejected stricter measures for voting requirements and supported a red flags gun possession law. In short, Democrats everything in every election. By a lot. Voters said enough.
While the Republican majorities in Congress has been enthralled and beholden to the President, bowing down to his every request and catering to his every whim, it is the people who have stood up and said enough is enough. And since the Democratic minority has been unable to do anything to stop Trump’s draconian agenda, it is the people who have taken it upon themselves to stand up. And stand up they have.
Not that Trump has cared. The Monday after the No Kings Rally, he commenced tearing down the East Wing of the White House. He did this without following protocol and without consulting the necessary government agencies. In fact, it seemed like the act of a spoiled child acting out in a tantrum. And that angered the American people.
Now, as a matter of political expediency, he has decided to starve children and deprive millions of Americans of their health care. As the government shutdown has worn on, Trump has ignored the Democrats’ demands that subsidies for health care premiums be extended, and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson has done his master’s bidding, refusing to call the House into session. As a result, millions will see their health insurance premiums skyrocket—if they don’t lose them altogether.
When SNAP funds—formerly known as food stamps—ran out at the beginning of November, the president refused to dip into the contingency funds created for just that purpose—to ensure no one would go hungry. Trump froze the funds. When the courts ordered him to release the funds, he refused, and then hedged, saying he might pay part and that it would take months. Then, in a turn that might have been taken straight out of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, he threw a lavish Halloween Great Gatsby ball at his Mar-a-Lago estate. I could almost hear Melania laughing and saying, “Let them eat cake.”
On the evening of November 9th, eight Democrats sided with the Republicans majority and voted to end the shutdown—without any health care premium guarantees. They caved. As usual. Which is just another sort of poke at the sleeping bear.
Perhaps these Democrats, including Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jackie Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Angus King of Maine, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassen and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, were not watching the November 5th elections. Young voters turned out in droves and cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Zoran Mamdani and other young progressive Democrats. Not only is this new powerful bloc angry at Trump for his imperial arrogance, blatant criminality, and wanton cruelty, they are sick of the political establishment that has done nothing to stop him.
Zoran Mamdani sent a direct purposeful message to New Yorkers: I will make your lives better. Your lives, not the lives of wealthy donors and Wall Street brokers.
This message resonated. Mamdani, a self-proclaimed socialist (in the proud tradition of Milwaukee mayors Emil Seidel, Daniel Hoan, and Frank Ziedler), has promised free buses, free universal childcare, rent reform, and a $30 an hour minimum wage to New Yorkers. He’s going to pay for these programs by raising taxes on millionaires. He is addressing concrete issues of affordability and quality of life. This message is not new. Bernie Sanders has been shouting it from the rooftops for decades. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has been preaching it for years. Now it’s finally resonating among the American people once more.
Trump poked the bear until it woke up. Now it is turning on him. Soon it may turn against those who—wittingly or not—aid and abet him. The eight Democrats who believed the Republicans will negotiate in all sincerity to extend subsidies for health care premiums are being either hopelessly naïve or deliberately opaque in their intentions. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me Trump—again and again—shame on me.
The American people are fed up. They’ve shown up consistently and in force at protests and demonstrations. They flocked to the polls in the first major election since the beginning of Trump’s second term and resoundingly rejected the Republican—the Trump—agenda.
New Yorkers rejected not only Republicans but mainstream Democrats. This election is a harbinger of things to come. The people want change. They want a piece of the pie. They want compassion and humanitarianism in their leadership. They don’t want to see children starve. They want a vision of a better future.
They have said, “Enough is enough”.