The Electoral Ricochet

How a Politics of Staying Human Can Break the Cycle

We were never meant to live on a pendulum.

Every few years, we swing from left to right, from rage to resignation, from hope to disappointment. Tuesday’s election brought another round of whiplash. For many, it was a “win.” For others, another loss. But what if we’re asking the wrong question altogether?

This post isn’t about who won and who lost on election night. It’s about how we vote, why we vote, and what it would take to break the cycle. It’s about Zoran Mamdani’s unexpected rise in New York City, the referendum fight in Maine, and the hollow center of our partisan theater. It’s about refusing to play team red or team blue when both teams serve the same donors. And most of all, it’s about remembering that electoral politics isn’t the destination, it’s one of many paths we walk while learning how to stay human in a system that so often forgets us.

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Tuesday night, I had a funeral planning meeting scheduled. A family grieving, stories to gather, meaning to hold. That came first. But as I got into my car afterward, what I really wanted to do was see what was happening as the polls came in. I pulled up Breaking Points’ live election stream and let it play on the drive home. Once inside, I kept it rolling, but now I found myself even more focused. Watching the numbers settle, waiting to see if the shape of anything real might emerge. I wanted to know where we’d landed. Not because I thought some sweeping redemption had arrived. But because I believed some of the results might actually matter.

But when I say some of the results might actually matter, I’m not talking about which color claimed more seats or whether the Democrats got a “W” against Trumpism. That kind of scoreboard politics might thrill the consultants and party diehards, but it doesn’t feed people or keep them housed. What caught my attention were a few races where the candidate on the ballot wasn’t just a placeholder for partisan control, but someone who ran on a clear vision rooted in the actual needs of everyday people. Electoral politics is not the answer. No ballot box is going to save us. But it can shape the climate in which better answers take root. And every once in a while, a campaign comes along that opens a window, lets in fresh air, and reminds us what representation could look like if it were built on solidarity instead of slogans.

With that in mind, I fully expected the blue wave that Tuesday night delivered. Trump is historically unpopular, at least in every poll that doesn’t come from his own imagination. His approach to trade and tariffs has been sporatic and nonsensical at best, and they’ve disrupted manufacturing jobs rather than protecting them. The cost of living is going up and the best Trump can do is call groceries an old fashioned word, well, that an insist that prices are down despite what American’s experience every time they go to the store.

His aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, with expanded ICE raids and deportations, draws criticism even from Republicans who worry about overreach and damage to key industries reliant on immigrant labor. And across the board, voters are turning cold on the expansion of executive power, fearing that norms have unraveled and the question of “who’s in charge” no longer inspires confidence.

And of course we’re in the midst of what is now the longest government shutdown in history, one most Americans are blaming on Republicans. And to make matters worse, Trump’s administration is withholding SNAP funding from families who need it most.

Given all that, anything but a Blue wave would be abnormal. It would be breaking the pattern. What pattern? The one we might call electoral whiplash. It’s what happens every time you get an energized partisan base and a mass of people who are sick of the current regime coming together on the first Tuesday in November.

This time it resulted in candidates as different as Abigail Spanberger and Zohran Mamdani both winning big. One a CIA-trained centrist. The other a democratic socialist, an immigrant of South Asian descent, who campaigned on things like free buses and public groceries. What did they have in common? Not policy. Not approach. Not even the demographics they appealed to. They had a D next to their name.

And right now, that’s all it takes. Because the backlash to Trumpism runs so deep that voters would have elected a literal Spam burger if it came with a Democratic label. Sure there were partisan Democrats who voted for Spanberger based on her perceived merits, but in this moment, where Republicans are toxic, a processed meat product with the right partisan ID could have pulled it off too.

And in case there’s any doubt, look at Virginia’s Attorney General election. Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate, was revealed to have sent text messages wishing violence upon another state politician and his family. He wasn’t some fringe figure. Not someone running as a protest candidate. A Democrat who made violent threats and still came out ahead. That is not a commentary on his platform. That is a window into just how deeply people were reaching for anything and anyone without an R next to its name.

And before anyone on the Republican side gets riled up about Jay Jones, let’s pause for a quick reminder. Donald Trump is the man who once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single supporter. That wasn’t a throwaway line. It was a test balloon, and ultimately, it floated just fine among the Republican base.

Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve been here, where people found themselves willing to vote for anyone who didn’t align with the status quo.

In 2008, people turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama. And not just in traditionally Blue States. Indiana and Virginia hadn’t gone Democratic in a presidential election since LBJ in 1964. In Coloroado, it was the first time since Humphrey lost to Nixon in 1968. So in 2008, even in traditionally Red States people went out to cast a vote for hope. For change. For a break from George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the financial collapse, and the slow erosion of dignity that followed. And for a moment, it felt like something new had broken through.

But eight years later, 9 million voters who voted for Obama twice crossed over and cast their ballots for Donald Trump. And it won him the election. Why? Because the hope they voted for hadn’t shown up in their lives. Wall Street was bailed out as those on Main Street lost their homes. The anti-war Obama ushered in drone warfare. And while Obamacare expanded access to insurance, it was already revealing itself as an unaffordable program that was going to need massive subsidies to survive, in part because it did nothing to reign in the insurance companies and pharma.

Mergers ran rampant in the Obama years allowing monopolies to form in healthcare, media, agriculture, banking, airlines, defense contracting, and tech. And while most people don’t care about mergers, they do care about the results: higher prices, lower wages, fewer choices, and an economy that serves corporate power rather than human dignity.

And the only answer Obama had? The demeaning and professorial line, “Learn to code.” A line that now drops into an AI world with an irony no one at the time could have imagined. No wonder voters didn’t feel seen or fed or free. So they went with the candidate who pointed fingers, named villains, and promised to blow it all up. Trump didn’t offer policy. He offered blame. And it worked.

Four years later, exhausted by the noise and cruelty of Trump’s presidency, people rejected him. This time in favor of Joe Biden. Not because Biden was a movement. The man literally ran his campaign from his Delaware basement, his staff doing their best to keep him away from the public eye, I assume because they knew without some kind of upper cocktail, any moment could looks like his 2024 debate with Trump. People didn’t vote for Biden, Trump had just become unbearable.

But four years later, the weight of daily life under Biden had taken its toll. COVID-era benefits expired, leaving many to face financial hardship as prices rose and wages lagged behind. Inflation hit groceries and rent harder than any chart could explain. On their screens, they watched what many recognized as a genocide unfold in Gaza, and felt complicit, powerless, enraged.

And while Biden’s administration actually did take steps to challenge corporate power, through the antitrust efforts of Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DOJ, or invested in the future with the CHIPS Act and sweeping infrastructure and climate packages, none of it was named in ways that landed. The story was never told.

So while people’s lives felt harder, they heard nothing of the long game being played on their behalf. All they knew was that nothing around them seemed to get better. And without meaningful material improvement to anchor their lives, many of those same voters went right back to Trump.

Now, less than a year into Trump’s second administration, we had Tuesday’s election. This is the cycle we’re caught in. We are not moving toward anything. We are ricocheting between disgust and disappointment. Each election becomes a referendum on the last disappointment, not a vision for what might be. We are constantly voting against the present rather than for the future. That’s not democracy. That’s whiplash.

And the truth is, as long as the masses keep playing Team Red vs. Team Blue, we will continue to ricochet. What keeps the pendulum swinging is that neither party actually operates with the majority of people in mind. Both serve corporate interests and the wealthy. Republicans talk about trickle‑down and rely on the private sector to solve public problems. Democrats promise social programs and help for those on the margins, but they shy away from the broad systemic change that would shake the power of the donors who fund them.

Take healthcare for example. Not long ago someone commented on one of my YouTube Shorts that if you wanted to keep healthcare, you should have voted for Democrats. And it’s true in a sense. Republicans do want to get rid of Obamacare and foolishly think that there are private sector solutions to fix healthcare, never mind that Obamacare delivers poor outcomes at high costs precisely because it’s so compromised by corporate interests. But that means the bulk of the Democratic caucus just wants to keep pumping ridiculous subsidies into the program to reduce monthly out of pocket expenses. Neither side is actually out to deliver quality affordable healthcare because both sides value profitability over quality and cost.

But it wasn’t just Obama’s signature program that’s a failure. Clinton did nearly everything Reagan dreamed of but couldn’t pull off himself: gutting the social safety net, pushing through NAFTA, and locking in mass incarceration with Biden’s crime bill. As a collective, Democrats haven’t been on the side of working people since before Watergate.

So when we engage in partisanship or just react to the current conditions, we lose, because no matter who we pick, we’re voting against our interests. But as I’ve argued before, this no win choice is cast as the only option we have.

At the same time, there are individual candidates who not only center people over corporations in their platforms but are also willing to fight for what they believe in. They don’t retreat into political caution or offer excuses when bold policy is what the moment demands. So with that in mind, which results did I find myself most curious about?

First, Zohran Mamdani in New York City. Let’s be honest, despite how disliked Andrew Cuomo is, Zorhan was running against a New York political dynasty, the Democratic establishment, and the Israel lobby. And more importantly, he was doing it on a tangible agenda that would make life better for millions of everyday New Yorkers.

I was also curious about other candidates who reject corporate funding and put the well-being of working people front and center in their campaigns. Like Minneapolis and Seattle mayoral candidates Omar Fateh and Katie Wilson. I found myself curious if Zohran-type messaging could extended beyond New York’s five boroughs.

There were also a couple measures in Colorado that centered on providing free meals at school for every student. But it wasn’t just the meals I was curious about, or the fact that the program was designed to support local ranchers and farmers by sourcing food from them, it was the funding mechanism and that it only taxed people who made more than $300,000 a year. In a state where we’ve see regressive tax after regressive tax, could a progressive tax measure pass or would the people be afraid that it’s the wealthy today and the masses tomorrow?

Finally, I was curious about Maine Question 1, not because of the race itself, but because Maine Senate candidate Graham Plater decided to not only speak against the measure, but put his campaign machine to work fighting against it. If he could marshal his network to help defeat the referendum, he would show he has the muscle to challenge entrenched power in Maine.

But what often happens to these kinds of candidates and policies? Wednesday morning, I opened CNN.com to check the numbers. I already knew the big wins and losses, but I was curious about margins, about how close things had been and where. What caught my eye wasn’t just the results. It was the stories. One headline after another asking, “Who is Zohran Mamdani?” You could feel the suspicion pulsing through the coverage. The curiosity laced with fear. As if someone like him wasn’t supposed to be there. As if his victory disrupted a script they’d all agreed to follow.

At the same time, the coverage of Abigail Spanberger was glowing. Polished. Predictable. She was being lifted up as the future of the Democratic Party. A new path forward. A template, maybe. The kind of candidate consultants and cable news panels feel comfortable praising. But not because of policy. Because she fits.

This has been the move for years. Democrats, no longer able to distinguish themselves from Republicans based on economic policy, lean hard on identity (at least identities that make suburban voters feel comfortably inclusive). Running candidates who look the part but are careful never to rattle corporate donors. And that’s the tightrope. If you check the right demographic boxes, you’re celebrated. But if your identity actually shapes your politics, if it leads you to challenge the system itself, you become a problem.

That’s what sets Mamdani apart. Yes he checks a number of identity boxes. He is young. He is Muslim. He is an immigrant. But unlike most candidates who share those traits and still toe the party line, he let those experiences inform how he listens and how he governs. He didn’t just put people of color in his campaign ads. He asked them what they needed. He didn’t just say the words equity and inclusion. He talked about free public buses, public groceries, universal childcare. He ran on policy that disrupts power, not just on slogans that perform it. And, perhaps worst of all, while being pro-Jew, he is anti-Zionist.

And for that, the party turned cold. Commentators and insiders said he shouldn’t call himself a Democrat at all. Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Democrat in the House, withheld his endorsement until the last possible moment. Chuck Schumer never endorsed him and to refused to say who he voted for. Those are the two Democratic leaders in Congress, and they’re both from New York. The message was clear: someone like Mamdani, who challenges power instead of managing it, might win as a Democrat, but he won’t be treated like one.

And it’s not just candidates like Mamdani. Bernie Sanders, a curmudgeony old white guy, checked none of the identity boxes the party loves to spotlight, but he spent two election cycles championing similar kinds of policies: universal healthcare, free public college, an economy that serves workers instead of Wall Street. And what did the Democrats do? They fought him harder than they fought the right.

In 2016, the DNC leaked emails showed staffers working to undermine his campaign while publicly claiming neutrality. They scheduled debates at times designed to minimize viewership. They funneled resources and influence to Hillary Clinton before a single vote was cast. In 2020, they waited just long enough to see Sanders leading before rallying every establishment candidate to drop out and endorse Joe Biden within 48 hours. That wasn’t democracy in motion. That was a power structure protecting itself.

And when a party that calls itself Democratic silences the candidate with the most small-dollar donors, the largest crowds, and some of the most detailed policy proposals, it becomes clear they are not listening to the people. They are listening to capital. They are guarding the gate.

So if we are going to end the electoral ricochet we need new questions. Not, “Who can win?” but, “What can grow?” Not, “Who’s electable?” but, “Who’s planting seeds that will outlive this election cycle?” Not, “Who plays the game best?” but, “Who’s brave enough to tend entirely different ground?”

How do we discern which candidates respond to these new questions? How do we tell the difference between candidates who actually inspired people to vote for them and those who were simply the convenient vehicle for rage, exhaustion, or party loyalty? How do we know when someone is drawing support because of who they are and what they offer, rather than just being the lesser of two evils?

One clue is this: look at who shows up. When people who normally don’t vote find their way to the ballot box, something real is happening. Something rooted. Like dormant seeds that only germinate after specific conditions align, warmth and water and light all at once, certain voters only emerge when they finally sense the possibility of growth.

That’s exactly what happened with Zohran Mamdani. He didn’t launch his campaign by talking at people. He started by listening, including to Trump voters. He sat with them, asked questions, and let their stories shape the campaign’s core. Not in some vague “we care about your voice” kind of way, but in concrete, measurable ways. He took their feedback and built a platform around the things that actually mattered in their daily lives: fast, free buses. Urban grocery markets. Universal childcare. A rent freeze for the two million people in rent-stabilized units. Tangible outcomes, not abstract promises.

And he didn’t stop there. Mamdani didn’t just run on affordability, he ran on accessibility. On dignity. On a politics rooted in shared struggle and collective flourishing. His campaign became a place where people saw their lives reflected back to them with care and with vision. And that changed the electorate. People who had never felt included in the political process turned out. People who had stopped believing showed up again. Because someone was finally speaking in ways that matched their lives.

Ironically, Trump did something similar in 2016. He tapped into disillusionment and economic anxiety, and made people feel like someone was finally naming what they were experiencing. It wasn’t policy that drew them in. It was the sense that he saw them. That he was willing to point fingers at the elites they’d long suspected were rigging the game. But the difference is that Trump never had any intention of delivering. He wanted the cheers, not the change. And what followed was predictable: policies that hurt the very people who had felt most heard. Broken promises, rising cruelty, and a gut-level reminder that being seen isn’t the same as being served.

Mamdani flipped that script. He didn’t just echo frustration, he turned it into solidarity. He didn’t just name the pain, he mapped out a path forward. And in doing so, he offered more than a vote. He offered a reason to believe again. And the question now becomes, “Will he deliver?”

But maybe that’s not the only question. Maybe the deeper one is: Will they let him? Will the incumbent machinery of New York City politics, the donors, the developers, the party elites, strangle his vision before it can breathe? Will they treat his win as a fluke to be contained, or a mandate to be honored?

Now the fact that I have to ask if the machine will let Mamdani succeed invites a very valid conversation to be had about electoralism itself. Whether real change can ever come from inside a system built to preserve power. Whether the ballot box is a tool of transformation or a pressure valve to keep revolution at bay. I don’t dismiss those critiques. But if we’re going to participate in electoral politics, and many of us still will, then let’s do it with eyes wide open and clearly state what it will take.

Mamdani can’t do it alone. No one can. That’s what Obama got wrong, assuming he ever genuinely wanted change. He rode a wave of grassroots momentum all the way to the White House, then cut the roots that fed him. Like a tree that forgets its underground network, he withered what made him possible. Movements are living systems. You can’t extract their power without tending their soil. He traded organizing for optics, swapped street-level solidarity for polished centrism. And in the vacuum that followed, Wall Street got richer, wars went quieter but deadlier, and hope became a hollow brand.

Movements are ecosystems. They need more than a single strong tree. They need understory, ground cover, decomposers turning old failures into fertile soil. They need the whole forest, feeding each other through underground networks of care and resistance. So if Mamdani succeeds, it won’t just be about him or his staff, it will be about New Yorkers. Not just the ones who cast a ballot, but the ones who believed enough to knock doors, host house meetings, show up to rallies, and tell their neighbors something different was possible.

It means they have to keep showing up to city meetings. Holding power to account. Keeping the pressure on, not just to get policies passed, but to protect them once they do. It means fighting not just for him, but with him. For their blocks, their bus lines, their grocery stores, their kids’ futures.

If we are going to defy the political apparatus, that’s how you do it. You don’t just vote and then go back to brunch. You build. And you keep building when the spotlight moves on. Because if this becomes just another win, just another name in the headlines, the machine will eat it alive.

But it’s not only about New York. It’s about us. Wherever we live. Whoever’s on the ballot. Whatever party we feel closest to, or farthest from. Because the question now isn’t just, “Can Mamdani deliver?” It’s, “Will we?”

Will we recognize when someone dares to lead differently? When someone puts vision above viability and people above polling? Will we show up early enough to make their win possible and stay long enough to help it take root? Will we be brave enough to elevate the ones they say can’t win because we see what’s possible in them? Will we organize not around the candidates who seem safe, but around the ones who actually see us, who name what hurts and invite us into the work of healing it?

And when the system hands us someone we didn’t ask for, someone polished, consultant-approved, and corporate-backed, will we let them coast on identity alone? Or will we press them to become something more? Will we call the Spanbergers of the world not to lean on their past careers or party lines, but to keep faith with the promises that earned our vote?

Because even if their win road the wave of backlash, we can still choose to hold them accountable to tangible promises they made on the campaign trail. To remind them that winning isn’t the end. It’s the threshold.

And in Virginia, that means Spanberger has work to do. Not for corporate donors. Not for party strategists. But for the people. She campaigned on kitchen-table issues: lowering prescription drug costs, expanding mental health access, protecting reproductive freedom, investing in broadband and infrastructure in rural communities. Those weren’t just talking points. They were lifelines. So now it’s time to deliver. Not with polished statements, but with policies that change lives. Not in backroom negotiations, but in full view of the voters who trusted her to fight for them. And if she doesn’t, the response isn’t to flip to a Republican, it’s to find a candidate who will actually fight to deliver on those promises.

Because if we’re serious about breaking the cycle, it won’t be by choosing better brands. It will be by choosing better builders. People who don’t just point fingers but plant something better. People who ask real questions and stay long enough to hear the answers. People who refuse to climb the ladder unless they can bring others with them. That’s not politics as usual. That’s a politics of becoming. Of transformation at the root level, where soil meets seed. Where what looks dead in winter is actually gathering strength for spring. Where collective flourishing isn’t a distant dream but the inevitable outcome of tending each other with the same fierce attention we give to survival.

Because the recoil from a failed administration doesn’t last. Disgust is flash fire, it clears ground but plants nothing. If you don’t seed something better, something with deep roots that can weather drought and storm, the pendulum swings right back. And invasive species always return faster to scorched earth.

So maybe it’s time to drop the party loyalty. Time to stop voting the lesser of two evils. Time to stop swinging from one disappointment to the next, hoping something sticks. What if we stopped asking, Who’s electable? And started asking, Who helps us stay human?

Because staying human isn’t static. It’s not preservation, it’s transformation. It’s the daily work of becoming more tender, more truthful, more connected to the web of life that holds us all. It’s remembering that we are not isolated trees competing for light, but a forest breathing together, roots intertwined, each one’s flourishing dependent on the health of the whole.

That’s the wisdom I carry, the litmus test that guides my choices. It confuses people, sure. But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I’m not the outlier. Maybe I’m just a mirror for the questions we’re all aching to ask. And if enough of us start asking them, out loud and together, then maybe we find our way not just to the next election, but to a politics that finally looks like us.

Not a war of tribes. But a shared act of becoming. Of transformation that happens not in isolation but in the rich compost of community, where our breakdowns feed our breakthroughs. Where we don’t just react to the past but actually build a future, seed by seed, story by story, until collective flourishing isn’t a fantasy but the forest we all get to live in. It’s the only politics I know of that will help us to stay human.

Practices To Reflect

While the practices I produce typically sit behind the paywall, this week, as my birthday gift to you, I’m skipping the paywall and inviting you to step into one of three levels of reflection. Whether your day only allows for a 60-second reclamation, your week a one-hour resistance ritual, or you find yourself ready for a full on rebellion against a world that assaults your humanity, I have something for you.