The Blue Tsunami

With a mixture of relief and disappointment everyone examining the midterm elections agreed that there was no ‘Blue Wave’. Democrats did gain the majority in the House, and history was made across the country at all levels of the electoral process in terms of increased diversity amongst new members of Congress, state governors, and local representatives. But they also lost ground to the Republicans in the Senate, and there certainly did not seem to be a large general uprising amongst the electorate against Trump and the country’s current conservative leadership. No one saw a Blue Wave, but that’s because they were looking for the wrong thing. What is coming, what is happening at this very moment, is a Blue Tsunami. And as is the case with real tsunamis, it will transform the landscape of American politics.

Stage I: Initiation

All tsunamis begin with a massive explosion of energy, many times more powerful than the wind that is responsible for their smaller cousins the wave. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was not just one of these massive explosions, it was largest earthquake in American politics since the resignation of Richard Nixon. Everything about the 2016 presidential election was exponentially larger and more impactful. From race and gender to the growing tribalism in American politics, issues that were often secondary in mid-term elections were now front and center in ways that they had not been since the 1960s. Similarly, personalities on both sides of the aisle suddenly had the ability to have a significant and immediate impact on the…