Hate Was Not a Winning Ticket

If Trump's election in 2016 was a victory for the demagoguery of racist nationalism, the midterms marked a quiet but meaningful repudiation of that vision. Looming over the campaign trail was the "migrant caravan," which Trump painted as an invading boogeyman, illustrated with vitriolic caricatures. But Trump's last-minute racist television ad did not seem to have its intended effect. There was no dramatic sweep, but a number of midterm victories showed that the constituencies most historically disenfranchised at the ballot box—youth, immigrants, and communities of color—could still be a linchpin in a broken election process.