Did you get our message? We're woke!

Well, after 43 days, the federal government is back open now. That should mean thousands of federal workers have reported back to work, at full pay with money they’ve missed coming to them. It also should mean that the games played with full SNAP benefits for the poor and hungry should be over with, and our airports should slowly, but surely be returning back to normal.

More on all of that in a minute, but first….

Boy, wasn’t last week something?

Democrats from “sea to shining sea” (my fancy way of saying from New York City to California, and many places in between) wiped the floor with win after win, not just in large marquee places like the Big Apple, New Jersey and Virginia, but also here in North Carolina and other states holding smaller, local, but significant off-year elections.

Dems even had victories in tough suburban areas, along with Hispanic voters, who left the party in 2024. Apparently seeing many other latinos being brutally manhandled by masked federal officers in 2025 had left a bad taste in their mouths this election.

“It was good to see progressives get off the mat,” former Pres. Barack Obama said. “It was a good reminder that, it turns out that the American people are paying attention.”

“And what this election also taught us is that it turns out that if, number one, you have candidates with integrity who believe in something and are in it for the right reasons, they can win. And what we also learned is that when young people are engaged and involved, then we win.” 

“This is a big loss,” Fox News anchor Bret Baier, a sometime Trump golfing buddy, countered on-air the next day. “If you look inside the numbers, there are some dangerous things.” "Dangerous" for who, Bret? You're supposed to be a 'fair and balanced' newsman.

Sounds like you had a serious problem with the results.

For example in Charlotte, Queen City voters reelected Mayor Vi Lyles by 70%, and told all but one Republican City Council member to hit the bricks, now giving Dems an 11-1 majority there.

Same song in Wilmington, where Democrats on the City Council now have a 7-0 majority.

There were many, many more small Democratic election victories like these

across the country. This was truly a mandate.

Based on the overwhelming results, it seems like Democratic candidates across the country all got the same memo - run for something!

In this case, “running for something” meant campaigning to improve everyone’s quality of life by addressing our bad economy, corrupted democracy and dysfunctional government, with a singular purpose - vowing to do legislatively what’s necessary to make American living more affordable and reasonable for everyone.

Cause when you do that, and mean it, you automatically run against the person and political party two-thirds of Americans, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, said was responsible for the country getting "pretty seriously off on the wrong track.”

Trump and the Republicans. 

You see, that’s what’s been missing. A political party that actually, and actively, fought for the American people in the past year. A political party willing to stand up strong against the folks who not only run Washington, but actually own it.

That’s why it’s taken bold Democrats willing to stand up strong and unyielding for 43 days - the longest federal shutdown in history - to make it clear that those days of bending over and taking it from Trump and the Republicans are over. Since Dems can’t pass anything because they are a minority in the House and Senate, and don’t have the White House, they have to leverage the only effective weapon they do really have.

Courage!

And hopefully, that courage, that willingness to stand up to Trump and the Republicans as they continue to sell the average American down the proverbial river to the rich and filthy, will yield positive results a year from now in the 2026 midterm elections.

Because only then, if Dems are able to win enough seats to take back the House, making my fellow Brooklyn homeboy Hakeem Jeffries speaker of the House, will we be able to stop much of the foolishness coming out of the Trump White House (a place now known as “Corrupt-a-lago”).

And that’s why last week’s election results are encouraging. Because it shows that Americans - meaning Democrats, a sizable number of independent voters, and even some Republicans - are ready for a dramatic change. After 10 months of Trump, we’ve all seen enough, and we know that we have to stop this nonsense before we completely lose our country, our democracy, and our minds.

And I love the way it all came together.

In October, 7 million people hit the streets across America in protest to declare that we simply will NOT have a king.

The federal shutdown then manifested itself in October, with Trump and the Republicans not only ignoring the massive protests, but actually, and insanely, taunting them with more and more brutal masked ICE and Border Patrol agent raids in our cities; more and more federal employee firings; more and more obscene behavior with a $300 million White House gilded ballroom and wrecking ball to the East Wing; illegal tariffs raising costs for American businesses and consumers; trips abroad to get fancy gifts from foreign leaders while our government at home is shutdown; holding an atrocious and obscene “Great Gatsby” party for rich people at Mar-a-lago resort while over 40 million Americans were set to lose their SNAP food stamp benefits; and a lot of other stuff that signaled to everybody that their president was hopelessly out of touch, committed only to his own warped personal agenda, and not caring at all about solving our problems.

In fact, Trump was actually adding to our problems, and acting as if he had the absolute and unassailable right to do so!

But folks were paying attention, and had had enough. We just needed a constructive outlet through which we could express our frustration with the B.S. we were experiencing.

Enter November 4th, Election Day! The day Americans WOKE up!

I put that in caps because I know it bothers MAGA people, but you know what? I don’t care, because now heading into 2026, we have a horse race.

By the way, I recently read a conservative pundit who ignorantly likened being woke to white nationalism. There could be no purer crap. Being woke simply means being aware of the truth, and it is not restricted to any one race, color or creed. It is NOT “reverse racism!”

Last Tuesday, millions of Americans, arguably “woke” to the fact that their country has been hijacked by forces not in their best interests, and took the time and effort to send an important message.

WE’VE HAD ENOUGH!

So now, that fire must continue to burn going into 2026, so that folks can change the House, and counter the power of Trump before it becomes too late.

I must tell you that the size and proportion of last week’s Democratic victories, which for the record, again went well beyond the blue state boundaries of New York, Virginia, New Jersey and California, is encouraging. It comes as no surprise that there are reports that Trump is trying to come up with new policies from his administration that supposedly address affordability, even though he says he doesn't want to talk about it because his administration is "better" at affordability than any other "in history."

Yeah, and my grandmother won four gold medals for track in the last Summer Olympics!

Trump has even called complaints about affordability "a con job by the Democrats," maintaining that the economy is the "greatest" it's ever been.

Yeah, for the rich and filthy!

He's also trying to bribe Americans with a so-called "$2,000 tariff rebate check" so that they will forget the pain of this historic shutdown, and be able to purchase their own health insurance. Naturally, he's calling that "Trumpcare." How original!

And yet, I can't get over the Republican games that were played over denying poor people their right to eat and feed their families.

I can’t tell you how saddened I was to read a quote from a 25 year-old Colorado woman on the front page of The N.Y. Times last Friday. “I went to the dumpster behind a Wal-mart, and I grabbed as much as I could,” she cried. Reportedly, this woman's local food pantry had run out of food.

What Trump and his Republicans have done to this country, and especially our poor, is disgraceful, and it sickens me.

But I also busted a gut when I saw tape of Republican House “Squeeker” Mike “MAGA Mouse” Johnson telling low-wealth citizens who have had to go without their needed full SNAP benefits since Nov. 1st because of the GOP federal shutdown, that they “have a home in the Republican Party.”

Any low-income person who falls for that crap, deserves the friggin’ haunted house that comes with it!

In fact, Trump, who vowed during the 2024 election that he would lower prices for American consumers on Day One of his administration, is trying mightily to convince folks that grocery prices are down now, crying that Americans are “feeling better,” contrary to facts actually on the ground. Suddenly, “affordability” has become his middle name, apparently replacing “criminality.” Tough to fight the high cost of living with Trump’s incoherent tariffs killing our small businesses and grocery stores for the holidays.

And make no mistake…it is not below Trump and the Republicans to attempt to rig the election system so that November 4th never happens again. In fact, I would be absolutely shocked if our best and brightest in election law, like Attorney Marc Elias, aren’t expecting games to be played, and are gearing up to head these folks off at the pass.

By the way, I know there’s a lot of concern about the eight moderate Democrats who decided to vote this week to provide the 60-vote threshold needed to help reopen the government with a short-term funding bill, and that they did not include any language to address the Obamacare subsidies in that vote. They say a vote on that will come up in December. But they were able to stop more federal employee firings, get backpay for those furloughed, and get SNAP benefits fully funded until September of 2026 (assuming the Supreme Court won't further screw that up like it already has).

And they were also able to get the federal government reopened through January 31.

No, it’s not a great "deal" by any means.Those furloughed federal workers are supposed to get back pay BY LAW per the last Trump shutdown anyway. But Trump signed the Republican-passed deal into law Wednesday night, so that's something.

Obamacare notices have already gone out, shocking millions of Americans with sharp increases in their monthly premiums because Congress - and the Republicans specifically - have yet to do anything to address the issue (truth be told, Republicans want to kill it dead, and are hoping enough folks will now find it so unaffordable that they’ll drop it now). 

And yet, a lot of conservative folks in red Trump country are on Obamacare, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s family, so the next vote on the issue could hold some surprises from the Republican side because let’s face it, after 16 years and over 70 votes failing to kill it, Republicans still have no plan for affordable health care. And I really don’t expect them to.

Knowing this, eight moderate Democratic senators decided to vote with Republicans to bring the longest federal shutdown in American history to an end earlier this week, instead of holding firm for a deal that immediately helps 22 million Americans with Obamacare that may have never come.

Theoretically, those 22 million have food on their tables for now, while 42 million SNAP beneficiaries Trump and the Republicans keep playing cruel games with, even to the extent of using federal court orders to act ignorantly about what they’re supposed to be doing in making sure people are being fed, don't.

And don’t get me started on airline travel, and how we really are playing with fire not having our air traffic controllers fully staffed with paid, competent professionals.

Every bone in my body wanted to continue to fight Trump and the Republicans with this shutdown, trust me, but I have to agree with those who say Americans proved in last week’s Democratic election mandate that they know who is ultimately responsible for the shutdown horror show we’ve had for 43 days. Having a Senate floor debate on an Obamacare extension bill in December will further expose Republicans for thirsting to kill it, and who was ultimately responsible for all of the pain we’ve been going through.

 You folks who are now complaining, last I looked, are well fed and haven't missed a meal. I don't see you scavenging for food behind Wal-Mart like many of your fellow citizens. 

But at least, for now, many of your fellow Americans will have food for themselves and their children for Thanksgiving, while others will be able to fly safely to see their families.

I don't see this as a cave by Democrats. I see it as a necessary change in tactics because innocent people were suffering, and that was NEVER the objective. For me, Trump and the Republicans were inexplicably holding Americans who could not fight back as hostages, and blaming Democrats for the crime as long as they could always lie through their collective teeth about what they were never going to give. Dems weren’t ever dealing with congressional Republicans. They were always dealing with Trump indirectly. He’s the one with the cold heart and ruthlessly steel spine, not "MAGA Mouse" Johnson and John Thune. After 40 days, the public could see that nowhere was the ultimate destination in this shutdown, with a lot of collateral damage.

But now the public will also know, whether they admit it or not, which was the compassionate side that wanted Americans safe, and wanted innocent Americans fed.

That’s a good thing!

 Solving healthcare is a prime issue now for 2026, unless Republicans join Democrats in extending the Obamacare subsidies, and then work to permanently fix the health insurance system. If they don't, Democrats can make them pay for that too!

Bottomline is if you’re going to fight for something, then fight for something! Just don’t fight to fight! Fight for resolution, results. Fight for justice. Those of you who are pissed that eight Senate Democrats made a deal, has it donned on you that after over 40 days, Democrats had carried the ball for Obamacare as far they could, and now, it’s our turn? That the rest of us, including millions of poor, red Republicans on SNAP, now need to get in the faces of Republicans in Congress and DEMAND that Obamacare be fixed? What were the millions of demonstrators at the two "No Kings" marches this year all about? You mean to tell me 22 million people can't generate that same energy for this cause too? Democrats have done a fine job of opening that door, but maybe now it’s OUR job to close it! Think about that!

And NO ONE should have to starve behind that effort!

 By now you’ve heard the latest? Republicans want further restrictions on Obamacare tax credit subsidy funding on abortions beyond what is currently not permitted under federal law. They want to totally kill a woman's right to choose, and vow no deal without it.

 You know what Democrats are going to say to that. It’s clear to me that Republicans had this nonstarter in their back-pockets from the very beginning.

Politico has reported the Democratic “Gang of Eight” actually began planning to make their deal to end the shutdown right after the first day, but five of them held off until after the Nov. 4th election at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s request.

Those five Democratic senators waited 40 days before moving forward with their vote to reopen the government. In doing so, they allowed Democrats plenty of time to successfully frame the Obamacare issue, and to also show that they had the resolve to stand up to Trump and the Republicans.

Now that the government has reopened, the ball is solidly in the Republicans’ court on dealing with Obamacare, and they won’t be able to handle it. Whatever happens next on the issue, Republicans, NOT Democrats, will pay the price.

So don’t be surprised if we’re back where we started by January 31st with another shutdown.

But again, Democrats made their point. Democrats didn’t close the government. Republicans did, and could have reopened it anytime they wanted to by ending the filibuster. Now that it is reopened, look for more games about healthcare coming from Trump and the GOP. Hell, he's already started talking trash at the re-open law signing late Wednesday night.

And about those Epstein files…..well, I’ll deal with that at another time!

So, did you get our message? We’re woke again, and whether it is the school board, city council, state House, or Congressional House, we’re ready to kick Republicans to the curb again like we did last week because they’re too busy kissing Donald Trump’s crooked hind quarters to properly govern in the best interests of ALL of the people. Republicans proved they can’t be trusted!

But know this, Democrats…Americans are not totally convinced you have your act back together yet. Don’t think you don’t have to prove yourself here, because you do, more than ever!

Do everything you can to keep all of your campaign promises not just to the people who voted for you, but ALL Americans, PERIOD! Make a significant difference! Show Republicans what true public service is all about.

Are you getting our message, Democrats? Good! Then continue fighting for us!

But in the meantime, Democrats, nicely done.! Nicely done!