Sweep

2026 Senate Electoral Map as of 5:15 EDT, November 4, 2026

Happy days are here again

The skies above are clear again

So let's sing a song of cheer again

Happy days are here again

                             Ager and Yellen, 1929

Well, Pollyanna reporting for duty. When all the world was gloom and doom, I never lost hope. When they said our country had suffered irreparable damage, I reflected on those private moments when I would prepare for a tour of the rotunda of the National Archives. I would walk alone into that dimly lit space and contemplate the original United States Constitution and the Senate copy of the Bill of Rights. They were there then. They are still there now. They are our guide and our shield.

The Founders had dealt with tyranny. They had dealt with citizens being killed in the streets. They had dealt with their franchise and self-government being taken away. They were not going to let that happen again, so they created a covenant between the government and its citizens that if properly exercised would derail even a neanderthal fascist like Donald Trump.

That is why I always had faith in our system of government. And I knew that an unhinged President when fully exposed would force the American public to do the right thing. I always joked that the Democrats should have paid for television airtime to let him talk and talk and talk. But ultimately, it wasn't his persona that doomed his captured party. It wasn't his all too familiar sideshow that he took from state to state and arena to arena that became his downfall.

It was his unhinged policies that culminated in the "Bluenami" that swept the nation yesterday.

• An unnecessary war that broke a promise, killed combatants and schoolgirls, and skyrocketed our fuel costs. 

• Insane tariffs that tanked our most sacred alliances and increased our prices. 

• Unbridled corruption that has illegally filled the coffers of the family to a level the Tzars would have found selfish.

• Murderous gestapo tactics in the streets of Minneapolis and masked Federal police snatching parents out of the carpool line in front of their terrified children. 

• Transparent efforts to take the vote away from Black citizens whose parents and grandparents had marched and died to secure the franchise.

• Repeated unconstitutional incursions into the right of states to hold fair and free elections.

• A Big Beautiful Bill that took away health care from the poor to give unprecedented tax breaks to the rich.

• And to distract our attention from this litany of bad decisions, a cruel attack on our Trans brothers and sisters and a return to Islamophobia.

We all sat and watched our elected representatives become enablers and silent partners in this unconscionable assault on our values, safety, and national pride. We felt powerless. We felt like we had been tied in a chair and forced to watch 250 years of American exceptionalism be destroyed one tweet, one firing, one insult, one retaliatory indictment at a time. A slow-motion dumpster fire next to our house with no water or tools to fight the danger.

But yesterday, we had water in the hose, an army of firefighters, and a day-long journey for Trump that even Dante couldn't have predicted.

In short, we had the vote. The vote.

Democrats used it; Independents used it; Republicans used it; Blacks used it; our Hispanic citizens used it; young Americans used it; aunts, uncles, grandparents, and parents of Trans kids used it. Combined, it created a wave of Blue across the country the likes of which has never before been seen.

While I was my usual optimistic self going into last night, several happy moments caught me off guard.

We in North Carolina were confident that Roy Cooper would prevail in the Senate race. He is a quality guy, known by the vast majority of North Carolinians as someone who is in it for all the right reasons. There is a reason that he has never lost a race. And like many races across the country, he was running against a hand-picked Trump choice. Loyalty over leadership, butts over brains, sycophancy over sincerity. Trump has the judgement of a hog in a feed store.

But when one of the networks flashed the North Carolina congressional map on the screen, I saw a beautiful sea of blue across the entire 500-mile width of the Old North State. It elicited a "wow" from everyone in the room.

In February of last year, I speculated in a blog that perhaps, through arrogance and overreach, Trump the great divider would become the great uniter. It's now come to pass. Those of us who never voted for him have been united with those who have never voted, and those who certainly did not vote for what has become Trump 2.0. And the great news is that while angry, the nation has elected people who are not. Roy Cooper, Adam Hamilton, James Talarico, Rob Sand, Frederick Haynes III, and Sarah Trone Garriott are examples of a turn from hate to love, a signal of a longing for a different kind of politics.

And the map. The national map. That beautiful national map.

Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and maybe Mississippi and Alaska as new US Senate seats for the Democrats. And in the House of Representatives, Democrats are projected to win 258 seats, an 81-seat majority. Even this Pollyanna was gob smacked by those totals.

Not since the post-Watergate 94^th Congress has the Democratic Party had this size of a governing majority in both the northern and southern ends of the US Capitol Building. That landside was also due to the illegal acts of an unpopular Republican president.

And what did they do with that opportunity?

Here is a partial list combining legislative achievement and oversight:

• Voting Rights Act of 1975

• Education for All Handicapped Children Act (1975)

• Tax Reform Act of 1976

• Energy Policy and Conservation Act (1975)

• National Emergencies Act (1976)

• The Church Committee exposed abuses by the CIA, FBI, and NSA

• Presidential War Powers

• Government transparency and ethics

In short, it was one of the most consequential periods of government reform in modern history. 

But we had a Democratic President you say.

This Pollyanna doesn't think Trump will be President one year from now and both Vance and the Democrat who succeeds him in 2028 will be chastened co-equal partners with the Congress.

Afterall, they both saw what happened yesterday.

Maestro if you please:

All together shout it now

There's no one who can doubt it now

So let's tell the world about it now

Happy Days Are Here Again.