Let’s Talk About The Midterms

The midterm elections delivered a much larger Democratic wave than Amala Ekpunobi expected. She admits she was caught off guard by the scale of the shift, particularly in states like Texas and South Carolina. While the president’s party typically loses seats in midterms—this has happened in every midterm since the 1940s except two—the extent of the losses this time felt different. Ekpunobi is not interested in rehashing the full-scale analysis that other commentators are already producing. Instead, she focuses on what the results mean going forward and what kind of political future America might be facing.

The stakes: best case and worst case

Ekpunobi lays out two scenarios. The best case, she says, is that nothing gets done over the next six years—a kind of legislative gridlock that prevents the worst outcomes. The worst case is considerably darker. She points to a packed Supreme Court, the possibility of Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. becoming states, the immigration issue reopening, and the deep ideological commitments of the newly elected officials. She describes these candidates as “socialists, communists, extremists” and warns that their policy influence will have deep cultural and social consequences. She notes that some candidates delivered victory speeches in Somali and Arabic, which she presents as evidence of a fundamental shif