By Robert Dean
For the Carter County Times
On Friday night, October 31, President Trump threw a “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. Burlesque dancers. Champagne fountains. Guests in flapper costumes celebrating Gilded Age excess. The slogan? “A little party never killed nobody.”
Hours later, 42 million Americans lost their SNAP benefits.
This is the America working people are living in right now. And this week, in three major elections, they voted like it.
Virginia elected Abigail Spanberger as its first female governor — a milestone that should feel historic. She’s also a former CIA agent, so the “finally, not another old white guy” celebration comes with an asterisk. Meanwhile, in New York City, 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani pulled off a stunning upset, defeating Andrew Cuomo and the entire Democratic establishment machine. And across the river in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill handily defeated her GOP opponent for governor.
These weren’t protest votes. They were a coordinated middle finger to a system that’s stopped working for anyone who actually works.
Neither party owns the blue collar anymore, because neither one listens. Corporate Democrats discuss working people in the past tense, like artifacts in an industrial museum. Republicans romanticize them in campaign ads while voting against their interests every time. Both parties have built machines that run on the labor, taxes, and patience of working folks — then treat them like props once the cameras turn off.
You know the scene: a politician in a spotless Carhartt jacket, pretending to know the price of unleaded, shaking hands outside a diner he’ll never eat in again. They call it “connecting with working people.” I call it performance art.
But working people are done being the audience. They’re holding the bag while everyone else argues about whose “values” they represent. And increasingly, they’re realizing they’re closer to needing SNAP benefits themselves than to understanding why a president would throw a Roaring Twenties party while the working poor wonder how they’ll feed their kids.
That’s why Mamdani resonated. He didn’t just run as anti-establishment — every opportunist does that. He ran on rent freezes, free buses, and cheaper groceries. His tax plan said it plainly: you pay less if you’re a worker, you pay more if you’re a corporation or millionaire. It’s not radical. It’s honest about who’s getting screwed.
After I took my kids trick-or-treating on Halloween, we stopped at Burger King. Two Whopper meals came to $29. That’s not inflation — that’s extortion. Millions of people across this country live that reality daily while being told the economy is A-OK.
Will all of Mamdani’s promises come true? That remains to be seen. What’s clear is that party heads on both sides don’t like a socialist who wants to strip power from the elite.
Being mayor of any big city is a Sisyphean task; you’re never going to be loved in today’s political landscape. But what’s real is that people are tired of choosing between Pepsi and Coke when neither quenches their thirst. New Yorkers took a sledgehammer to the vending machine. Mamdani’s win proves they want something different — even if the establishment pretends not to understand why.
The people of New York are gambling against the machine because they must. They’re setting a precedent for the rest of the country. When the alternative is watching the powerful toast the bubbly while grocery bills double and benefits vanish, even a gamble starts looking like the safe bet.
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