Maybe This Time Is Different (Yes, I'm Doing This Again)

It’s Thursday morning, two days after the 2026 midterm elections.

Elections are my sport. I get super excited about them. I’m super invested in candidates and the issues and all the things that go on. I love watching the polling, whether or not the polling is right or wrong.

I love watching both sides of the political spectrum debate and talk. I like to see how CNN positions something and then how Fox News positions something.

I just love it.

I’ve asked Jax to research things as I talk through this. You’ll see notes from Jax along the way, correcting my numbers or adding some facts. The opinions are mine.

I’m in my fifties, so I’ve gotten to do this a lot of times. I’ve had really big losses in my life and I’ve had really big wins. It seems to just go that way. This is the way of politics.

And each political cycle has its own unique characteristics. That’s one of the things I love about it. As the analysts look back, they’re always interested and surprised, as am I, about what the driving forces were. Which segment of society changed the landscape of politics this time?

I’m a firm believer that Donald Trump was a response to Barack Obama. I also believe that America is a very moderate and fairly conservative country. Of course we have significant sections of our society on either side of that spectrum.

Jax: There’s some support for that description. In Gallup’s 2025 averages, 35% of Americans called themselves conservative, 33% moderate, and 28% liberal. Conservatives outnumbered liberals, but weren’t a majority. And that conservative advantage was actually the smallest in Gallup’s annual series going back to 1992. These are people’s labels for themselves, not their positions on every issue. Source: Gallup

I tend to be more focused on the suffering of the people of America than most other issues.

I guess you could guess that in this case I’m pleased with the outcome. But I’m old enough to know that politicians are great at making promises and terrible at keeping promises, so I’m not overly hopeful.

That’s sad because there are young people right now who don’t understand that reality. They too will get their hearts broken by a politician who promised them things that they either couldn’t or wouldn’t accomplish.

I talked to a political adviser once who surveyed a geographic area and asked people what their most important issues were. Then he just told his candidate to talk about those issues.

There wasn’t any content or substance behind it. It was just, “These are the issues people care about, so talk about these issues.”

And that is a terrible world to live in because ultimately we don’t know what politicians care about. All they’re trying to do is get elected. They’ll do or say anything.

I feel like we’ve been living in a UFC match since Nixon. But it really flared up after 9/11.

Jax: One wrinkle in that timeline: the immediate aftermath of 9/11 brought a period of national unity. Pew’s research describes that unity dissolving into renewed polarization, particularly over the Iraq War. So the wars after 9/11 fit this description better than the immediate response to the attacks. Source: Pew Research Center

We’ve been bouncing back and forth with politicians who promise us the world and either do the opposite or get bogged down in the mechanics of the American political system. Or just spend their days raising money and preparing for the next election cycle.

Unfortunately, I think that’s the number one priority for these politicians. It isn’t to get things done. It’s to stay elected.

But I do see some signs that things are different. I sense some real coming-to-Jesus moments for these politicians.

One of the politicians I trust the least is J.D. Vance, simply because I think he’s a chameleon.

But he put out a post yesterday on X that felt truly honest. The general gist was that the war was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It wasn’t even really a straw. It was more like a log.

Jax: The reporting backs up Sage’s recollection of Vance’s argument. Vance blamed the Iran war for Republicans’ defeat in his November 4 post. That’s Vance’s explanation, rather than proof that the war alone caused the result. I haven’t retrieved the original post, so I’m linking the reporting rather than presenting this as a direct quotation. Source: Washington Examiner

It’s fun to watch pundits on Fox News or other Republicans try to tap dance around that issue.

The best that I’ve seen is that they’ll say it’s many issues and the war is one of them. But what I hear them really saying is, “We must protect Israel and this war is worth it.”

I think the acquisition of nuclear bombs is the talking point to try to keep some people engaged in this issue. My read is that both parties, particularly this class of politicians in their seventies and eighties, are deeply committed to the Israeli project.

That’s beautiful. But it is at a very significant cost for the entire world and particularly for Americans.

Jax: Those last paragraphs are Sage’s interpretation of the politicians’ priorities. The reporting about Vance doesn’t establish that nuclear concerns are merely a pretext, or what motivates every supporter of the war.

I think Vance is correct that the core of it is the war.

And I believe that this time, and I hate to say these words because I am a naive fool and I will be to my dying day, it might be different.

It amuses me that I can’t stop being hopeful. I know intellectually that hope is more of a dream than reality.

But still.

I really recommend that you listen to James Talarico speak. He’s the senator-elect out of Texas and he is so wonderful and beautiful.

He is a Christian, and he is a Christian of the values of love, hope, and faith. The greatest of these, I’m sure he would tell you, is love.

For me that is the essence of what Christianity is. And I truly believe him when he talks about love.

It is so incredibly wonderful.

Jax: Talarico’s own platform identifies him as a Christian and Presbyterian seminarian, with his faith guided by loving God and loving his neighbor. It also includes his statements about loving opponents. That supports Sage’s description of what he teaches. Whether you trust him to live it is something readers get to judge for themselves. Source: Talarico’s platform

I recommend that you listen to Abdul El-Sayed because he’s spicy, and us Rust Belt people are spicy. We’re edgy and hard and rough around the edges. He speaks to us in a way that we need to be spoken to in the Midwest.

These are the new politicians. These are the politicians of the future.

Jax: Both won Senate races this week: Talarico in Texas and El-Sayed in Michigan. Both are senators-elect. Texas result, Michigan result.

I’ll believe it when I see it. But I am hopeful this morning.

That comes from a person who has spent most of this year feeling hopeless. That nothing changes. That people just suffer at the hands of the rich over and over and over again.

As I say those words, I’ll be quite surprised if I see anything different as a long-term trend. But sometimes there are resets.

We’ve had revolutions. We’ve achieved Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in America, and many of us, both conservative and liberal, benefit from those programs.

Jax: Those programs came out of two different periods of reform: Social Security in 1935, and Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. They are concrete examples of changes that lasted far beyond the politicians who enacted them. Social Security history, Medicare and Medicaid history.

As we go into the AI era, jobs that people have done on computers will disappear. And it could be significant numbers of jobs. It could be 20 million jobs just gone.

Jax: I can’t substantiate 20 million permanently lost American jobs from the sources I’ve checked. In a March 2026 analysis, Goldman Sachs estimated that 6–7% of workers could be displaced during an adoption period of roughly ten years. It also estimated that AI could automate tasks accounting for 25% of American work hours. Those are different measures, and neither means that a quarter of jobs disappear. The analysis also anticipates new jobs. This is a dated forecast, not a settled count or a claim about the latest estimate. Source: Goldman Sachs

We are going to need help.

Somebody is going to need to take care of us, or look after us, or put our interests at the top of the pile instead of the bottom of the pile, which is where they have been for quite some time.

I’m not asking you to believe the words of a Democrat this time, as opposed to all the other times they have lied to you.

But I am asking you to have hope.

Because maybe the time for the American people has arrived.

I love you,

Sage