Goldstone’s most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights.
To call the results of the midterm elections shocking would not be an overstatement. Confounding conventional wisdom and many pollsters (yet again), Democrats dodged the dreaded “red wave” that would have given Republicans, especially in the House, license to initiate any variety of attacks on President Biden and his family, up to and including multiple impeachments as payback for what they insist were unfair and uncalled for attacks on Donald Trump, up to and including multiple impeachments.
At the very least, if Republicans did win control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, they could thwart Democratic policy initiatives and then blame them for inaction in 2024. And while they did win the House, with conservatives still promising attacks on Biden, the nation has told them that their appetite for such shenanigans is extremely limited
But the real winners were not Democratic senators, Kevin McCarthy, or even President Biden, but rather moderation and democracy, both at the expense of the day’s biggest loser, Donald Trump. In the weeks and months before the midterms, the United States faced what seemed the very real prospect of an election marred by widespread claims of fraud, voter and poll worker intimidation, and even the possibility of armed intervention by far-right groups claiming it to be taking patriotic action.
In addition, many of those projected to win in key races denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and promised that, once in office, they would ensure that no Democrat would ever be elected in the jurisdictions over which they would preside. Trump had either explicitly or implicitly encouraged each of these ploys, all in pursuit of a return to the White House, from whence he would wield dictatorial power and remain in office until he decided to pass the torch to a chosen successor, likely his son. Even more frightening was that virtually no Republican beyond the soon to be out of office Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger dared voice opposition.
As Election Day approached, those prospects began to look more and more ominous. Many of the stunningly unqualified candidates Trump had forced on the party — Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and Tudor Dixon, among others — either led in the polls or were within striking distance of victory. Biden was viewed unfavorably by more than half of the electorate, blamed for a post-pandemic economy that was saddled with high inflation, a good bit of it generated by oil companies raking in huge profits, and, because of his struggles with a stammer, once more accused of senility by right-wing pundits, many of whom should have known better.
For most Democrats and some Republicans, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, was certain to be a cataclysm. Trump was so confident that he planned to announce another presidential run on election eve, only at the last minute acceding to his advisors’ entreaties to wait until the election was over. Then, America’s would-be Vladimir Putin would triumphantly begin the process by which he would be swept into office.
But American voters did not cooperate.
Given the opportunity to play into a narrative that could easily have been the first step to the dismantling of American democracy, millions refused. To be sure, millions more did not, but far less than Donald Trump had both predicted and counted on. But many of those Trump millions were in deep red states where most voters would have voted for Osama Bin Laden before pulling the lever for a Democrat. In almost every key race considered “competitive” by most media outlets, extreme right candidates either underperformed expectations or outright lost. Even Oz, running against a Democrat whose stroke had left him often unable to speak cogently in their one debate, lost a Senate seat previously held by a conservative Republican. And Herschel Walker got fewer votes than Raphael Warnock in a state where Gov. Brian Kemp trounced Stacey Abrams. The list of Trump disasters, not the least of which was Ron DeSantis’ huge win in Trump’s adopted Florida, went on and on.
But that by no means implies the Republican Party has fully rejected Trumpism and returned to the democratic ideal. Although Mike Lawler, a newly elected Republican congressman from New York, has called for his party to move on from Trump, tens of millions of MAGA Republicans are sure to brand him as an apostate and vow to oust him in the 2024 primary. Another New Yorker, Rep. Elise Stefanik, endorsed Trump for president before Trump announced he would run.
Control of the Republican Party, therefore, is still very much in doubt, and with it, the survival of the American system of government. The framers of the Constitution, most notably pluralists such as James Madison, neither anticipated nor planned for the rise of such powerful political parties and that they would coalesce into our current two-party system. Instead, they envisioned many, smaller groups of advocates for particular issues and with more narrow points of view arguing for favored initiatives, thus necessitating compromise among shifting coalitions. Such a scenario would have mitigated the minority rule they built into the system, while avoiding what has been termed “tyranny of the majority.”
But that lack of foresight left each of the parties, and thus contemporary America, vulnerable to anti-democratic forces eager to exploit the resulting opportunities. In the first half of the 20th century, for example, the outsized influence of Southern Democrats, operating in what was effectively a one-party system, perpetuated Jim Crow, slavery’s illegitimate offspring. Currently, it is the Republicans who are doing their best to turn a two-party system into a one-party system. Donald Trump merely showed them how to do it more brazenly.
And so, American democracy is still in no way secure. But the pathway to making it secure just may have been revealed. What the 2022 midterms made clear is that issues and candidates, not just ideology, actually do matter to what one hopes is a majority of American voters. If the leaders of both parties can absorb that lesson – which, sadly, is far from a certainty – Madison’s vision of a government that puts a premium on thought, honest debate and policy just might be reclaimed.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.