By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
Voters handed Democrats both chambers because this whole shebang is broken, not because someone has a shrine to Sherrod Brown in their bedroom. (If they do, check on them.) Team-sport politics isn’t working for the American people, and the results are a message: this is your shot to fix what’s very, very badly messed up.
Trump is a lame duck. He’s as vindictive as ever, but his reign of terror has been kneecapped, to a point. Expect him to play Mr. Veto.
Here’s the house on fire: Democrats are about to hand the keys right back to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. House Democrats vote on their leadership Nov. 18; Senate Democrats vote in early December. Re-electing those two would be a step backward into complacency. Neither one is who the wave stood in line for. The voters who flipped Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and Texas weren’t saying, “more of the same!” They were saying “enough.” Even some of the new Democrats they just elected agree: five incoming senators, including Illinois’ Juliana Stratton and Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan, have said they won’t back Schumer. More than 100,000 people signed petitions in a day and a half asking for new leadership. The run-of-the-mill Democratic playbook ain’t it. There’s still time to pick somebody who understands voters aren’t looking for Washington buddy-buddy.
Come January, Democrats will control Congress and its subpoena power. Use it. Haul administration officials before committees, demand the remaining Epstein records, and investigate the justification for the Iran war. The Justice Department has released 3.5 million pages of Epstein files, out of more than 6 million it identified. Congress must find out what’s in the rest. And follow the money: according to the Wall Street Journal, a UAE-backed investor bought 49% of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial for $500 million, in a deal Eric Trump signed days before the inauguration. Of the first $250 million paid, $187 million went to Trump family entities. Investigate whether presidential power helped enrich the family. Trump, his dorkus malorkus kids, and every other politically connected player deserve scrutiny.
This is the moment for the left to throw down the gauntlet. Kentucky’s minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. Think about a cashier in Grayson slogging it out for forty hours a week and trying to raise a family on that: $15,080 a year, before taxes. Raising wages is mission critical. So is putting people to work rebuilding roads, bridges and schools, with paychecks that can support a household. Invest in teachers and healthcare instead of leaving working people at the mercy of insurance companies. Give people something tangible for their tax dollars.
Meanwhile, the war with Iran has cost taxpayers $47.1 billion through mid-October. Even JD Vance admitted the war helped cost Republicans Congress, and Trump acknowledged its effect on gas prices. I just spent $25 at Taco Bell for four items, and we’re supposed to worry about imaginary litter boxes in middle schools and Sharia law around the corner? Enough with the culture-war boogeymen. There are roads to fix, schools to improve, and American workers who could use the paycheck.
We deserve better. We deserve to know why American tax dollars keep supporting Israel when a United Nations commission has concluded that its government committed genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejects. We deserve to know why billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are treated like benevolent pillars of society when a 2021 ProPublica investigation found Bezos paid zero federal income tax in 2007 and 2011, and Musk paid none in 2018. Meanwhile, working people have taxes coming out of every paycheck. That’s the scam. Not imaginary gay/trans/Muslim/immigrant culture-war BS, but a system where ordinary folks carry burdens the wealthy can afford to avoid.
The voters in Kansas and Ohio said “enough.” Now it’s on Democrats to prove they heard them, starting Nov. 18. No Jeffries. No Schumer. New blood. A new fight for the people.
Contact us at or send submissions to news@cartercountytimes.com
Visit the author on Substack at What’s Annoying Robert Dean Today?
