A column published by Alternet argues that Democrats' sweeping gains in Tuesday's midterm elections should not be read as a detailed set of policy instructions from voters, but as a direct verdict on President Donald Trump — and that the party loses nothing by pairing affordability with accountability rather than choosing between them.

Mandate, schmandate

Attention in Washington has quickly turned to what Democrats will do with their newfound power, and there is strong incentive in the capital to arbitrate the rules by which they use it. The Washington Post reported that the Democrats' "policy agenda remains vague," adding that "though Democrats pledged on the campaign trail to tackle affordability, they have been light on legislative specifics, floating broad plans to reverse Trump's cuts to health care funding, roll back his sweeping tariff regime and block his ability to wage war in Iran."

The column's response to that concern: let it be vague. The question will answer itself in practice soon enough — the new Congress convenes in January, and whether the floated plans on health care funding, tariffs and war powers acquire legislative text will show what the winning party's working definition of a mandate actually is.

It's about trust

Political science, the column notes, holds that democracy is about choices, and that electoral outcomes are difficult — if not impossible — to interpret in ways that are not overlapping, contradictory and strange. The Washington press corps, by contrast, likes to pretend that election results amount to a clear set of instructions that winners must follow or face the consequences. While consequences always exist, the column argues that no one can say what voters wanted this cycle beyond the obvious: they do not like what Donald Trump is doing as president.

Elections, in this view, are about trust — who has it, who does not, and why. They are not a legally binding contract guaranteeing services rendered. Writing on her Substack, Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari urged elected officials to forget about mandates and instead take "ownership of what they choose to do with that power, following not the mandate of the election but the imperative of the rule of law."

If you need a mandate, pick a simple one

The Post article rests on the premise that Democrats must demonstrate they are more than the anti-Trump party. The column counters that this is not an empirical truth but the product of elite media consensus — and one that Republicans do not apply to themselves.

Writing in National Review, Yuval Levin observed that the range of explanations for Tuesday's result is "so broad, and the public rebuke so overdetermined, that it might make it hard to decide where and how to change course." But, he added, "the comprehensive character of the problem makes it easier to define: The problem is Donald Trump."

Republicans, the column notes, know that the president is the single greatest reason voters rejected them — and they know it would be better if Democrats did not keep reminding voters of that fact, hence the advice that Democrats be "more than an anti-Trump party." In the column's view, however, there is nothing wrong with Democrats being anti-Trump, because Trump is anti-law. If a mandate must be named, let it be restoring the rule of law.

Enforcing the law is not politically risky

In the wake of the biggest electoral wipeout in a generation, elite media coverage has framed Democrats as facing a perilous choice: pursue affordability, or pursue accountability. The implication is that they cannot do both without violating the mandate handed to them. The column calls that framing a product of self-interest — reporters want conflict, because conflict begets attention, and attention begets status and profits — and says it is false. There is no conflict between affordability and accountability.

Democratic candidates in the cycle's highest-profile races were explicit that the two go hand in hand. "We have an affordability crisis, because we have a corruption crisis," Texas Senator-elect James Talarico said in a post on Bluesky.

Congressman Robert Garcia, who will lead the House Oversight Committee, tied the point back to an anti-Trump mandate. "People are struggling because of corruption," he said. "People can't afford to pay the gas and the groceries, because Donald Trump is ripping off the American people."

Those assignments carry mechanical weight as well as messaging value: the Oversight and Judiciary gavels come with broad investigative and subpoena authority over the executive branch, the levers through which congressional accountability would actually operate while the party holds power on Capitol Hill but not the presidency.

Democrats, don't overthink it

For two years, the column observes, Trump's crimes were everything, everywhere, all at once — and the Washington press corps loved it. Democrats can follow that example by flooding the zone. Most pundits, it argues, are cynics, nihilists or worse — paid influencers — but they can be useful, because their appetite for conflict can be exploited with relentless motion. What they really want is energy and excitement: something to take back to viewers and say, look at this.

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed suggested as much, arguing that Democrats should abandon slow-motion consensus-building around bland omnibus bills. Instead, they should rebrand measures to generate buzz and incentive and push them through one after another. No one, he offered by way of example, is going to oppose the "C--- Lettuce Elimination Act." The same dynamic, the column argues, can be applied to the party's entire agenda, however vague it currently is. Pundits may claim they want to arbitrate "legislative specifics," but the column contends they do not actually care; Democrats can satisfy that appetite with nonstop action.

"Corruption, corruption, corruption"

Democrats do not control the presidency. They cannot bring indictments against anyone, and they cannot force Trump to sign legislation. Even if the mandate really were affordability alone or accountability alone, there is only so much they can do — which is another reason, the column argues, that choosing one or the other is meaningless. What they must do is show they can be trusted with the power they have been given, if they want voters to expand that trust in the 2028 election.

Part of that, the column suggests, is understanding what actually happened — not the hype, not the spin, not the propaganda, but why voters turned the world upside down. Yes, the column asserts, Trump is burning up the economy, but inflation is not especially high. Unemployment is relatively low. Interest rates are not great, but they are nowhere near the double digits of the 1980s. Yet something made Texas blow up. The column's guess: a general feeling — a vibe — that workaday Americans do not matter, and that for two years everything people believed about themselves and their country did not matter. Across race, class and gender, there are powers beyond ordinary people's control trying to control them. "We all know the feeling," the column writes, and all that is missing is a name — call it oligarchy, authoritarianism, or even "data centers." Scott Colom, the Mississippi Senate candidate on the cusp of victory, called it "corruption, corruption, corruption."

It was a revolution

Republicans used to call the midterms of 1994 and 2010 "revolutions." The first delivered Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and Republican control of the House for the first time in four decades; the second was the Tea Party wave that returned the chamber to GOP hands. By comparison, the column argues, 2026 dwarfs them both. The last time this many members of Congress were wiped out in a single night was 1976 — the election after Richard Nixon's resignation and the revelations that he was a criminal president trying to rig an election in order to steal power. Americans did not like it that year, the column notes, and they did not like it this year either. Voter demands are hard to interpret, but any plain reading of either election reaches the same conclusion: they were revolutions against tyranny. Trump came to represent something monstrous, and the people said no. There is no downside, the column concludes, to Democrats validating that rejection and doing everything they can to prevent it from happening again.

"This is not a game of surprise or gotcha," said Congressman Jamie Raskin, who will lead the House Judiciary Committee. "We're talking about trying to defend our system of government against authoritarians."