I woke up in Mallorca on Wednesday morning to discover that America had turned blue.
A blue wave. A blunami. A sweeping repudiation. Democrats had captured both houses of Congress, including victories in places where such outcomes would have seemed improbable only a few years ago. My phone filled with celebrations, declarations of vindication, and predictions about 2028. There was a palpable sense that America had finally come to its senses. From across the Atlantic, I could understand the relief. I even shared some of it. But as the morning unfolded, I found myself wondering what, exactly, we thought we had won.
There is something deeply reassuring about an election that reminds those in power that their authority is borrowed. After years of division, institutional strain, and anxiety over America’s direction, voters had exercised their right to demand something different. That deserves recognition. I would never begrudge anyone a moment of celebration. Yet I worry about the stories we begin telling ourselves the morning after a victory, especially when those stories allow us to confuse a change in political fortunes with a change in the country’s condition.
An election can tell us whom people no longer trust. It is considerably less effective at revealing what they agree should replace them. A voter concerned about grocery prices may have little in common with someone motivated by the courts, immigration, government accountability, or the president’s conduct, beyond a shared desire for change. Political parties are really good at gathering those different frustrations under one banner. Governing requires sorting through them, acknowledging the contradictions, and making choices that inevitably disappoint some of the people who helped deliver the victory.
This is the danger Democrats should be confronting now. Tuesday was a significant victory, but it would be a mistake to treat it as proof that the country has embraced the party’s entire worldview. We’ve seen how fragile that assumption can be. Democrats won the House in 2018, and later held both Congress and the presidency during 2021 and 2022. They accomplished meaningful things, including investments in infrastructure and domestic industry. Yet those achievements did not translate into durable confidence in their ability to govern. Perhaps the lesson is less about messaging than about the widening distance between what Washington celebrates as success and what ordinary people experience as improvement.
And the institutional realities have not vanished. Donald Trump remains president. The Supreme Court has not changed because Congress has. A Democratic majority can conduct oversight, scrutinize spending, shape legislation, and force consequential debates, but it cannot simply wish away executive authority or restore public trust by passing a resolution. There will be legitimate reasons to investigate abuses and demand accountability. There will also be enormous temptation to turn the next two years into a prolonged performance of political revenge. I wonder how many Americans, watching from their kitchen tables, will recognize the difference.
I ask that with some discomfort because I recognize the impulse in myself. I’ve enjoyed watching politicians whose conduct troubles me lose. I have mistaken the satisfaction of being proved right for the possibility that something might actually improve. It’s an easy habit to acquire, especially when politics becomes so personal that the defeat of an opponent feels like a moral accomplishment. But if the problems that made people angry remain, what have we really celebrated? And if we cannot understand why our neighbors were drawn to ideas we find troubling, how do we expect an electoral result to make those ideas disappear?
That’s why this election has me thinking less about parties and more about the way Americans define greatness. We have an extraordinary appetite for scoreboards. We measure the size of our economy, the reach of our military, the fortunes of our companies, the influence of our technology, and the countries that depend on our leadership. On many of those measures, America remains remarkable. Yet the same country leaves too many people worrying about whether they can afford to be sick, find a stable home, raise a family, or retire without fear. For them, another record-breaking stock market or declaration of national superiority may offer very little consolation.
Traveling outside the United States has made that contradiction harder for me to ignore. I’ve encountered societies with fewer resources and less global influence where parts of ordinary life seem more humane, more secure, or simply less exhausting. I’ve also seen their frustrations, exclusions, and failures. I have no interest in romanticizing life elsewhere. But I am struck by how rarely Americans approach other countries with the curiosity of people who might have something to learn. We seem more comfortable asking why the world hasn’t become like us than asking whether some of its answers might be better than ours.
That observation carries a personal sting. I have benefited enormously from what America makes possible, and gratitude can become its own kind of blindness. It’s tempting to assume that because a country has been generous to you, the promise is working as intended for everyone else. I’ve had to challenge that assumption. I still believe deeply in America’s capacity to offer opportunity. But belief should make us more demanding about who gets to experience it, not less willing to examine who is being left behind.
Meanwhile, as Americans have been fighting over who gets to lead the world, the world has been learning to get along without waiting for us. Europe is reassessing its dependencies and responsibilities. China has become central to manufacturing, trade, and technological competition. India is asserting a larger economic and diplomatic role. Countries are building partnerships based on their own ambitions, uncertainties, and interests. None of this means America has become irrelevant, or that some new power has simply inherited the crown. It means the international order is changing in ways that our electoral celebrations cannot reverse.
That change should invite some humility. America’s partners have watched its commitments shift with successive administrations. Even those who value American leadership have had to ask what happens when the next election brings another dramatic turn. They are making arrangements accordingly. We may elect different leaders in 2028, and they may rebuild important relationships. But we shouldn’t assume everyone else will abandon the plans they’ve made while we argued with ourselves. Trust doesn’t operate on an American election calendar.
And perhaps we should consider whether remaining indispensable to everyone else is even the right ambition. Must American greatness depend on being the world’s policeman, its referee, and its final authority? Could we share more responsibility, accept that other countries have legitimate ambitions, and direct more of our political imagination toward the conditions of life at home? This isn’t an argument for isolation. Our alliances, trade, universities, and openness to talent are sources of real strength, and abandoning them would carry a price. But influence abroad ought to mean something for the people whose country exercises it. Otherwise, what exactly are we protecting?
The urgency of that question grows when I think about the future awaiting young Americans. Artificial intelligence is changing what it means to learn, work, and build a career. Some promises will be extraordinary; some consequences will be deeply unsettling. Institutions that still struggle to prepare young people for today’s economy will have to adapt to one that is changing beneath them. Yet Washington remains fixated on electoral cycles and familiar grievances, as though the world will politely postpone its transformation until we settle the arguments of the last decade. The future isn’t waiting for either party to decide what its campaign slogan should be.
I understand why people crave a decisive political victory. It offers relief from uncertainty, an assurance that their voices mattered, perhaps even the hope that someone will finally take responsibility. But relief is not the same as renewal. If the next two years are spent tallying investigations, trading insults, and preparing for another election, we may arrive at 2028 having won and lost plenty of political contests while leaving the country’s deeper questions largely unanswered. What kind of economy are we building? What should security mean in an age of technological upheaval? What would it take for working people to feel that progress belongs to them, too?
We cannot leave those questions entirely to Washington. Americans have helped create the culture we condemn. We reward outrage, demand impossible combinations of benefits without costs, and excuse conduct from our preferred side that we would find intolerable from the other. We say we want leaders who tell the truth, but we often punish anyone who asks us to confront an uncomfortable tradeoff. We speak of loving our country while treating fellow citizens as obstacles to its salvation. I have participated in that impatience and certainty. It is much easier to find a politician to blame than to examine what we have learned to expect from politics itself.
The real measure of patriotism is our willingness to be dissatisfied with the distance between America’s potential and its performance. To acknowledge that other countries sometimes solve problems better than we do. To ask whether extraordinary national wealth is translating into ordinary human dignity. To accept that a nation’s influence should serve the well-being of its citizens, even as it honors its responsibilities beyond its borders. And to recognize that the people who voted differently from us will still be our neighbors when the election banners come down.
So I hope Democrats celebrate. They earned an important political victory. But I hope they resist the temptation to mistake that victory for vindication, or opposition for a governing philosophy. I hope Republicans examine why so many voters wanted a change instead of simply calculating how to win them back. Mostly, I hope Americans demand something more consequential from both parties than the pleasure of seeing the other lose. The country is facing choices that no majority, however sweeping, can make on our behalf without an engaged and honest citizenry.
On an island in the Balearic Sea, the morning’s excitement felt strangely distant by the time I finished reading the news. America had changed the color of its political map. The world was still moving. The cost of ordinary life hadn’t disappeared. The future hadn’t become any less uncertain.
I don’t want to diminish what voters accomplished on Tuesday. I want it to matter. And I wonder whether it can matter enough unless we finally stop congratulating ourselves for being the greatest country in the world and begin asking what it would take to make this a genuinely great country for the people who live in it.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
