Democrats took back “both branches.” No. Democrats took back “both chambers of the House.” Nope. Okay. After twenty years of writing police reports, it took me three tries to get the sentence just right: Democrats took back both chambers of Congress. [1]
It’s 3 a.m. and I have the distinct impression I’m being watched while I write this. Probably just my inner child, who’s been waiting his whole life to see if any of it was going to come true, and my inner ancient hermit, who’s already figured out how it ends and wants to let me know I should probably write it down while I still can.
Anyway. Apparently when CNN projected Adam Hamilton had won the U.S. Senate race in Kansas (beating Republican Senator Roger Marshall), about a thousand people watching on two jumbo screens at a Marriott in Overland Park, Kansas, started chanting “USA!” When the AP followed suit with its projection, they switched to chanting “Adam!” That’s according to Anna Kaminski of the Kansas Reflector. [2] It was 11:24 p.m. Eastern. Kansas had just elected its first Democratic U.S. Senator since 1932. [2] [3]
Eleven minutes later, AP called Iowa’s U.S. Senate race for Josh Turek, giving Democrats their 51st seat. [4] At 1:23 a.m. Eastern, AP called Texas’s 35th Congressional District for Johnny Garcia, a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy. That was House seat number 218. That’s the district Texas Republicans redrew to help elect a Republican. [5] [6] Back in August, Speaker Mike Johnson went to a VFW hall in San Antonio to campaign for Garcia’s opponent. Of all the districts in the country, that’s the one he called “the whole enchilada.” [7]
Texas sent James Talarico to the U.S. Senate over Ken Paxton. [8] Back in 2012, Gina Hinojosa ran for the Austin school board after learning her son’s elementary school might close. Fourteen years later Greg Abbott conceded to her. Texas had elected its first Latina governor. [9]
I’m sitting here still smiling about it and I know where my own mind goes if I let it. Man! We can go back to normal now! Which normal? Whose normal? I have daughters. Which of those good old days am I supposed to want back for them?
What it would take to bring back my Publix
Last night I was listening to Lawrence O’Donnell on MS NOW. [10] As I remember it, he was talking about the makeup of Congress in 1992 and how this current makeup of Congress is similar. It was probably just the late hour creeping up on his brain, but what I heard in his voice was a guy who missed that time and place. I get that. I do.
All weekend long I thought I knew what I’d be writing about Wednesday morning. I had been doing research on that list of voters the Justice Department sent to California. I found out It wanted the state to set their mail ballots aside until their citizenship could be checked. On Friday the Ninth Circuit turned down that emergency request. [11] I still wanted to hear what Trump would say when the returns came in. He told Fox News he’d accept the results. [1] Man, I miss being the guy who could go to bed on election night without having to wait up to hear a president say that.
When I drive through certain neighborhoods now back where I grew up, I still look for the Publix shopping center where I used to stop for chocolate chip cookies after school. There are townhomes there now. I get lost in neighborhoods I grew up in because I’m looking for landmarks that no longer exist. But even if I could wave a magic wand and make that Publix reappear, where would the families living in those townhomes go?
I can afford the luxury of missing that Publix. The people who live there can’t afford for some jerk to hand me a wrecking ball.
I can afford to get sentimental about the Congress of 1992, too. Democrats held the House and Senate and kept them both that November. [12] Illinois elected Carol Moseley Braun the same night. Come January, she’d be the first Black woman to take a seat in the U.S. Senate. [13] Now imagine me telling her how much I miss the place the way it was before she got there.
Three days after victory in Europe
May 11, 1945. The kitchen is women’s “Big Post-war Goal,” proclaims a newspaper for Kaiser shipyard workers. A cartoon depicts a woman in an apron gleefully drying dishes. The previous year, the same paper had reported that more than half the women polled intended to continue working in industry after the war. [14]
As the shipyards scale back production, women lose their jobs at a higher rate than men. In Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, many committees planning for postwar employment had already left women out. At the Vancouver yard, many Black women had been steered into lower-paid cleanup work. [15] You could read that paper, see a woman back home after the war and go on believing she’d chosen to leave her job.
On July 2, 1946, Medgar Evers, his brother Charles and four other Black World War II veterans go to vote in Decatur, Mississippi. Armed white men are waiting at the courthouse. The veterans go home for their guns, and when they come back the same men are still there. All six leave without voting. [16]
In 1956, Gordon Parks photographs a Black girl getting a drink of water in Mobile, Alabama. A man helps her because she’s too small to reach the fountain. Jim Crow decides which fountain he can lift her to. [17]
Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress when that photo was taken. [12] Virginia Democrat Howard W. Smith chaired the House Rules Committee. He introduced the Southern Manifesto on the House floor in 1956, calling for resistance to school desegregation. [18] Had I stopped at which party controlled Congress, I’d have told you the truth and missed the point.
Those white men outside the courthouse had guns. Medgar Evers went home without voting. They couldn’t take away from him a day of military service. [16] When we won World War II, the woman who’d learned to weld still knew how to weld. The shipyard, however, could stop paying her to do it. [15] Smith would sometimes head home to his farm, leaving a civil rights bill waiting for his committee to take it up. [18]
Suppose your name had been on the list the Justice Department handed to California. I’m hoping that come January some committee of the House will subpoena the records behind that list to find out how your name got there. [11] [19] I’m hoping those who put it together will be asked to tell us under oath. Let’s start with one voter.
How did you get this name? What information did you have that this person was not a citizen? Who verified that information before you asked the state of California to hold that person’s ballot?
The Ninth Circuit turned down that emergency request. [11] If my name had been on the list, I’d still want to hear those answers.
On Tuesday night in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms told her supporters that when her grandfather moved to Atlanta, he had to use the back doors of buildings she later entered through the front as mayor. Georgia just elected her governor, the first Black woman elected to that office in any state. [20] Somebody who’d always used the front entrance could talk for an hour about the Atlanta he remembered and never think to mention the back door.
When my eldest daughter was ten, I couldn’t give her the name of a Black woman who’d been elected governor in this country. My youngest daughter is ten now. I can give her a name.
I hope she keeps this piece. Years from now, if she catches me going on about how much better America was in my day, she can hand it back and ask which part of her country I’d like her to give up so I can have mine back. I hope the old man I thought I saw at three this morning has sense enough to listen.
It’s us watching us.
Sources
Associated Press, Voters give Democrats control of Congress in rebuke to Trump.
Anna Kaminski, Kansas Reflector, Hamilton makes history with U.S. Senate win over Republican incumbent.
Associated Press, via the San Francisco Chronicle, Democrat Adam Hamilton wins election to U.S. Senate from Kansas.
Washington Examiner, Josh Turek flips Iowa seat to give Democrats Senate majority.
Associated Press, via the Houston Chronicle, Democrat Johnny Garcia wins election to U.S. House in Texas’ 35th Congressional District.
Washington Examiner, Democrats cap off midterm night to remember as they clinch 218 seats to win House to go with Senate sweep.
Andrea Drusch, San Antonio Report, House Speaker Mike Johnson says all eyes are on San Antonio’s new congressional district.
The Texas Tribune, via KPRC, James Talarico defeats Ken Paxton, giving Democrats their first U.S. Senate win in Texas since 1988.
Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune, via KRGV, Democrat Gina Hinojosa topples Greg Abbott to become first Latina governor of Texas.
MS NOW, “We the People” election coverage lineup. The 1992 comparison is the author’s recollection.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, United States v. California, No. 26-7231, October 30, 2026.
Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Party Government Since 1857. See the 84th, 102nd and 103rd Congresses.
U.S. Senate Historical Office, Carol Moseley Braun, United States Senator, 1993–1999.
Diane Simmons, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Women in Oregon’s World War II Shipyards.
National Park Service, Working Women at Vancouver’s Kaiser Shipyards.
SNCC Digital Gateway, Black veterans return from World War II.
Gordon Parks, High Museum of Art, At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956.
Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, The Southern Manifesto of 1956.
Associated Press, House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option.
Associated Press, Georgia Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms makes history as the 1st Black woman ever elected governor.
In order to for a more perfect union, we need to keep closely watching us, and constantly correct the drift. We cannot afford to dismiss how we got here.