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“Well, we certainly had midterms,” writes David Cole this week in the NYR Online. After this year’s elections seemingly remade the regional political map of the United States—putting places like Texas and Mississippi into play for Democrats for the first time in generations—the Review convened twelve of our contributors to write about possibilities presented by the new Congress. Below, Cole, Quinn Slobodian, Sue Halpern, Mark O’Connell, Rozina Ali, David Treuer, Olivia Paschal, Lily Geismer, Christoper Hooks, Francisco Cantú, Aslı Ü. Bâli, and Aziz Rana examine everything from memes to Texas to Islamophobia. “It’s early yet (these victories are not even a week old), but my eyes are on the prize,” writes Treuer. “The system remains the same and it needs to change.”

The Blue Wave—I

David Cole
The People’s Referendum

On the voters’ prerogative

Sue Halpern
The Question for the North Country

On the Lake Champlain districts

Quinn Slobodian
Rubio with Blue Hair

On the meme shift

Mark O’Connell
‘Now Envision Chandeliers’

On JD Vance’s two-step

The Blue Wave—II

Rozina Ali
‘Are You for America?’

On crescendoing Islamophobia

Olivia Paschal
The Changing of the Southern Guard

On the new Southern strategy

David Treuer
The Shoreline

On settler colonialism at home

Lily Geismer
Revenge of the Watergate Babies

On the legacy of 1974

The Blue Wave—III

Christopher Hooks
Lone Star Pastoral

On the Texas revolution

Francisco Cantú
Will the Blue Wave Crash Against the Border Wall?

On border-town resistance

Aslı Ü. Bâli and Aziz Rana
The Foreign Is Domestic

On imperialism at home and abroad

Fintan O’Toole
The Next Generation

The American left has won a historic election by successfully linking the affordability crisis to Republican corruption, and the whole Democratic Party must now learn from their example.

Joseph O’Neill, interviewed by Daniel Drake
Now What?

“A mandate is a command, we sometimes forget. It is mandatory for Democrats to respond to the voters’ concerns. If they don’t, their party could soon suffer its own collapse.”

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