The Road to 2026

The day Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, I flew from Muskegon to Chicago on a 50-seat jet with exactly two other passengers. I spent the next 12 hours at O’Hare waiting for a delayed flight to Arizona.

By the time I reached my aunt’s home near Tucson’s Saguaro National Monument, I had overhead fragments of over a hundred conversations — in airport restaurants, lounges, boarding areas, planes, breakfast buffets, yoga rooms, shuttle stops, gas stations and shops. Not one person mentioned the election carnage.

On Tucson streets, I saw the same campaign signage surrounding my own swing state neighborhood: “Trump Safety, Kamala Crime.” As soon as I sat down for lunch with my aunt, a distinguished professor and political junkie, a pattern emerged that would continue until Trump’s inauguration.

All of the election hype including the billboards, the roadside stands selling Trump souvenirs, saturation television advertising in swing states and endless coverage of influence peddling via the Musk’s daily million dollar voter giveaway in Pennsylvania quickly disappeared. 

In public, people did not want to take sides or even comment about the election. Campaign hats, buttons and other trappings of the election vanished. Traveling across Arizona, California, Michigan, Washington D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois — by plane, Amtrak, a Peter Pan bus, car and bicycle — felt like living in a fictional world. Strangers were happy to chat about anything and everything, except the election.

There was one exception, a woman I met at a party for an Italian filmmaker in Tribeca. While downing a canapé, she confided that Trump was the only political candidate she had voted for:

“Normally I write in Judge Judy in protest against political corruption. Trump is the sole politician in my lifetime who actually bothers telling the truth.”

It was a much different story with my aunt, other relatives and friends I saw from Morro Bay, California, to Brooklyn to Detroit. In a private meeting at a Washington embassy, one person confided that there was considerable uncertainty over what was coming down in January.

There were a fair number of “what went wrong” conversations among the Democratic faithful. People I knew in federal offices were turning in their resignations. Friends abroad, including my expat-British daughter, sent their condolences.

For me there was good news at the state and local level. Democrats I supported, Muskegon County Commissioner Chris McGuigan, Congresswoman Hilary Scholten and Senator Elissa Slotkin all won. 

Sadly, Kamala Harris, who grew up on a Berkeley street where I once lived, did not carry my blue county. This upset, which I did not see coming, was also the focus of conversations with friends swirling around misogyny, racism, Joe Biden’s delayed withdrawal from the race and the lack of a competitive Democratic convention.

Most of these discussions focused on what went wrong and what we could expect from Trump’s return from power. During lunch with a film director friend on the beach in Santa Monica, I learned some of the reasons why Harris never had a prayer of defeating Trump. Another friend in Washington told me that a black man confided to her that part of Harris’s identity crisis was that she was “not black.” 

Shell shocked like many of my friends, I came up with a one-word response to the question of where the resistance goes from here: 2026.

Now, during the first weeks of the new Trump administration, I suggest it’s not a moment too soon to begin working on the next election. 

It has taken President Trump only a few weeks to demonstrate the challenges of being an incumbent, especially when you’re term limiting and trying to push an illegal agenda (i.e. denying birthright citizenship enshrined in the Constitution, stealing control of the budget process away from Congress).

As Trump’s rhetoric rapidly collides with economic and geopolitical realities, the 2026 election now appears to be a prime opportunity for Democrats to reassert themselves. Making this happen will require grassroots engagement with a long runway to the midterms. The presidential election made it clear that donations to political campaigns are no substitute for connecting with the many non-voters and Trump voters who will experience the negative consequences of his executive action over the months and years ahead.

Before you surrender to the idea that Trump’s blizzard of lies propagated by social media and admiring broadcast media dominates the public conversation, consider this fact from Pew Research: The number one source of local news — for a staggering 73% of Americans — is friends, family and neighbors.

This source easily overwhelms all other media. Your personal conversations with everyone you know easily trumps political advertising. People listen to personal “reliable sources” they know and trust. Ignoring saturation campaigning, they have faith in the people who are part of their lives. Word of mouth remains an effective way to communicate with people who should vote but generally don’t.

Obviously, it is impossible for Trump to deliver the goods on all of his campaign promises, especially reducing inflation. He has already said as much. His all out assault on government agencies will provide ample evidence that, as flawed as government programs can be, they are a lifeline for millions of Americans.

Now, accompanied by the usual confederacy of dunces, Trump may be undercutting Republican incumbents up for reelection in just 21 months. Flipping Congress back to the Democrats is the first best answer to keeping our republic from sliding into autocracy and oligarchy. 

Let’s get started on federal, state and local election races that can put an end to this regrettable sequel. As Pew Research tells us, Republican defeat in the next election depends on your direct contact with folks you already know

Roger Rapoport’s new feature film Old Heart premieres May 17 at Detroit’s Redford Theater. Details at oldheartmovie.com and rogerrapoport.com