Watching Gina Hinojosa celebrating her win was what made it real for me.

I’m a born Texan. I left thirteen years ago to escape an oppressive climate… and I’m not just talking about the weather. Three years later, I watched the Trump era begin from the relative comfort of a serene blue bubble where no one saw it coming, including myself.

Four years later, I dared to hope the era had ended when the country elected Joe Biden. Four years after that, I once again realized how much I still lived in a bubble and shared with my neighbors a sense of deep disappointment, betrayal, and contempt – not just contempt for Trump, contempt for the people across America who voted to return him to power.

Two years later, I may finally be finding my way past that contempt – at least for Trump’s voters, who have answered a previous question and at least somewhat regained their senses, at least enough to have played a decisive role in what will likely be considered one of the most consequential midterm elections in U.S. history.

I expected James Talarico to prevail over the vile Ken Paxton. In as much as an expat has a useful opinion on such things, I liked Jasmine Crockett better in the primary – but of course I did. If I had remained in the equally blue bubble of my old ‘hood in Houston, it’s likely I would’ve found Talarico just a little too rural and just a little much of a Bible thumper.

I did not expect Gina Hinojosa to beat the equally vile Greg Abbott. Once I realized that the next governor of my birth state was going to be a Hispanic woman from the Rio Grande Valley, I realized the scope of the moment… and the scope of the movement.

I realized, even as the election results began to pour in, that the people I had written off for returning Trump to power were not quite as irredeemable as I had believed. I still think their new-found support for the Democratic Party and democracy in general has a lot more to do with the price of gas than any deeply held moral convictions, but that is a safe description of almost every voter in American history – and it does not diminish the impact of this moment in American history.

Had Kamala Harris won in ‘24 by anything less than the kind of margins Democrats just won by in the ‘26 midterms, there is a very good chance I would be writing about the reascendance of Trumpism this morning… instead of its apparent demise. Harris would’ve been plagued by the same resistance Barack Obama faced, with no need to wait for the billionaires to spin up a ‘tea party’ of aggrieved white christian nationalists.

In that alternate reality, we would probably be watching an at least flailing (if not outrightly failed) presidency. But we could also be watching the escalation of the toxic fever Trump first inspired a decade ago, instead of signs that fever has finally broken. It is far too soon to read the Blue Tsunami of 2026 as a permanent realignment. Many of the people who enabled it are likely to prove just as transactional as the would-be despot they voted into power two years ago. The leadership of the incoming Democratic Congressional majority would do well to remember that. We might well be in the opening days of a new progressive era – but not if the price of eggs and gasoline is still a campaign issue two years from now.

A lasting progressive era will require more than fleeting transactional revulsion at the damage Trump has done to the U.S. economy. It will require a lasting revulsion at what ten years of Trumpism has done to the moral fabric of America. It will require an honest assessment of how fragile that fabric can be, if we do not all have an equal commitment to preserving it. 

It is going to take more than a historic midterm election to repair that damage, even if we now have the means to halt it. It is going to take more than the moral leadership offered by people like Abdul el-Sayed and James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa and Keisha Lance Bottoms, and all the other senators, governors, house members, and state and local officials swept into office by this big, beautiful wave.

It is going to take a common commitment to the standards of public decency and public trust Americans once had the luxury of being able to take for granted. The enduring legacy of Donald Trump is going to be that we will never have that luxury again. Hopefully, that is the only enduring legacy – that the Blue Tsunami will ultimately wash the rest away.

But whether what just happened is the beginning of a new and hopeful era, or merely the defining end of ten years of hopelessness in the face of empowered cruelty, it is a turning point… and a cause for rejoice. There is still much to be done. But there is also hope.

And hope is everything.

Photos by Eduardo Drapier and Alejandro Barba on Unsplash