D. Earl Stephens reflects on a sweeping Democratic election victory, drawing on a conversation with a French reporter who once described America as a country capable of both “the stupidest things ever” and “the greatest things ever.”

Stephens says the conversation took place the morning after Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. At the time, Stephens was in Germany overseeing the overseas editorial operations of Stars and Stripes, the independent newspaper serving the U.S. military community, while Europe was already celebrating the result.

His assistant advised him to take a call from a reporter at Le Monde, France’s largest daily newspaper. The reporter told him: “Let me just say before we start, that Americans are capable of doing the stupidest things ever like reelecting George Bush, and then capable of doing the greatest things ever like electing Barack Obama. We never know what to expect!”

Stephens writes that the call came back to him Tuesday night, when voters, in his view, did one of those “greatest things ever” by voting to return the country to its people and toward a functioning democracy. He describes the result as a “Blue Tsunami” that continued to move across the United States in the days after the election.

The author says the election took place nearly 10 years after what he considers another disastrous moment for the country, when voters elected “a gruesome man who abused women” instead of “the woman who loved her country.” He predicts that the latest results will become a prominent chapter in the history books, while acknowledging that it is difficult to capture the significance of a memorable political night immediately after it happens.

Stephens compares the experience to covering a remarkable sporting event on deadline. A reporter, he writes, can easily diminish the importance of something that was witnessed only moments earlier. He says Tuesday night felt like one of those occasions.

Watching coverage on MS NOW, Stephens says he initially wanted to be in a “safe space” in case the night went badly. Early numbers from states including Kentucky and Indiana, however, were encouraging. As polls closed along the East Coast, he says, Democrats began winning races quickly and leading across the map, including in places where their performance had appeared less likely.

Stephens praises host Rachel Maddow and correspondent Ali Velshi for their election-night coverage. He writes that Maddow had developed from someone with extensive knowledge but difficulty conveying it into a presenter capable of delivering information with a steady rhythm and appropriate weight. He describes her as directing Velshi to the “Big Board” to provide numbers and context that seemed difficult to believe.

According to Stephens, the Democratic gains spread from the East Coast to the West Coast. He contrasts the “oh my Gods” of 2016 with the “OH-MY-GODS!!!!” of 2026, writing that South Carolina appeared ready to fall and Texas was “shaking.”

When Texas ultimately went Democratic, Stephens says, the result transformed the state in his account from a long-standing source of Democratic frustration—a state that had not backed a Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter carried it in 1976—into a purple state. He argues that if Republicans cannot win Texas, they may never win another presidential election in his lifetime.

Stephens notes that Texas has 40 electoral votes. He writes that if Democrats can win Texas, the combined 44 electoral votes of the traditional Blue Wall states—Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, for decades the backbone of Democratic presidential strength before the 2016 map shifted—would no longer be absolutely necessary for a Democratic presidential victory. A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, and Texas’s 40 are the second-largest total in the country, behind only California.

He adds that all three of those states also voted decisively for Democrats on Tuesday. Stephens highlights several of the elections: a Black man became governor-elect in Wisconsin, a Muslim man became senator-elect in Michigan, and a Jewish man became governor of Pennsylvania.

The article emphasizes the diversity Stephens sees in the Democratic Party. He writes that Texas elected Latina Gina Hinojosa, a Texas state representative whom he describes as “joyous, smart” and uplifting, to lead the state. South Carolina elected a campaigner and pediatrician to replace Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Kansas elected a Democratic man of faith to the Senate.

In Georgia, Stephens writes, Black woman Keisha Lance Bottoms, previously the mayor of Atlanta, will lead the state, while Jon Ossoff, whom he identifies as Jewish, won another Senate term alongside Black Sen. Raphael Warnock. Stephens says the two frequently refer to themselves as “brothers from another mother.”

Deb Haaland, a former New Mexico congresswoman who served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior and became the first Native American to hold a Cabinet post, was elected governor of New Mexico, he adds, and would become the first Native American woman to govern a U.S. state. Stephens says the examples of Democratic candidates from different backgrounds are too numerous to list fully.

He also credits Black voters with forming the backbone of the Democratic gains, writing that Black voters—particularly Black women—supported Democrats by roughly 90% to 10%. As he was writing, Stephens said, another Black candidate, Scott Colom, a Mississippi district attorney, was close to winning a Senate seat in Mississippi. He also reported that Mary Peltola, another Native American woman and a former Alaska congresswoman who was the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, was leading her Senate race in Alaska.

Stephens further mentions Republican Sen. Susan Collins, first elected to the Senate in 1996, writing that she had finally been removed from her seat in Maine. He describes the election as a moment in which a national nightmare had been replaced by a dream, saying that the shadow had lifted and that Americans could breathe again.

The author rejects calls for immediate caution about overconfidence or the work still remaining before January. He says that discussion would have to wait because, in his view, everything that needed to happen on Tuesday had happened. Democrats, he writes, did not merely defeat “Trump’s lawless Republicans”; they “absolutely WALLOPED them.”

Stephens says the initial results indicated that Democrats had outvoted Republicans by 13%. He cites several individual margins: James Talarico won his Texas seat by 12 percentage points, Roy Cooper, a former two-term governor of North Carolina, won a Senate race in the state by 20 points, and Dr. Andrews won in South Carolina by four points. He says that almost every race followed a similar pattern.

With votes still being counted, Stephens writes that Democrats continued to win at the state and local levels. Under standard U.S. election procedure, results are certified by state officials in the weeks after Election Day, and newly elected governors, senators and House members take office in January. He describes the ongoing results as a blue wave that was still moving across the country and says supporters should enjoy the moment rather than return immediately to worry.

He concludes that Democrats had won the Senate, the House, numerous gubernatorial races and many local contests. He also writes that the party had won “the hearts of most of America.” For Stephens, the result demonstrated that Americans remained capable of doing “the greatest things ever.”

“I am proud to be an American,” Stephens writes, “and I wasn’t sure that I’d ever type that again.”

D. Earl Stephens is the author of Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters, available through Amazon. He was an award-winning journalist at several newspapers and later served as managing editor of Stars and Stripes. His work is available on Substack.

Originally published by Alternet.