By Charles R. Stith
The 2026 US midterm elections have come and gone, as have many of the Trump sycophants in Congress.
The late great Julius Nyerere jokingly once said to me that the influence of the US is so great that the rest of the world should also get to vote in America’s elections.
Well, if the rest of the world could have voted in this election, this would have been the outcome the world would have wanted.
I’ m sure this rebuke of Trump and Trumpism precipitated shouts of joy from Dar es Salaam to Denver, from Tokyo to Toledo, from New York to New Zealand, from Cairo to Canada, and from Ukraine to Kansas.
From sea to shining sea, the people spoke in historic fashion. The first African American female governor ever elected to head a state was elected in the state of Georgia, the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The first openly gay Senator was elected Senator from New Hampshire. Mississippi, a state about which Dr. Martin Luther King said was “a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression” could be “transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice”, did something historic.
Mississippi is on the verge of electing an African American man as one of its US Senators. Texas elected a Latino woman governor and New Mexico elected a Native America woman as its governor as well. North Carolina, which was a Republican stronghold, has now become one of the most solidly Democratic states in the Union.
The chapeaux on all of this is that out of the fifteen seats Republicans created last year to try to maintain their chokehold on American democracy they won only two. The result is Democrats control the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Donald J. Trump is officially a lame duck. In the remaining two years of his presidency, Trump has a choice. He must either go along to get along with a Democratic Congress or set the stage for a similar sweep in two years that guarantees that a Democrat wins the White House and they secure even more control in Congress.
What message were the American people sending at the ballot box in these midterm elections? Were there multiple messages being sent?
Was this a referendum on cruelty, corruption, and chaos? The short answer is – yes. Was this a referendum on the price of gas, the price of food, and the cost of war? Again, without a doubt, the answer is – yes.
Was this, in a word, a referendum on “Trump”? It would surely seem so. Those are the obvious lessons to be learned from the 2026 midterm elections in the US.
I would also suggest that there was several much more subtle, but no less powerful, messages that were delivered in America’s midterm elections.
The most unbelievable, given America’s history in terms of racism and sexism, is that the majority of Americans are prepared to move beyond race, gender, and sexual orientation as ultimate arbiters about how political decisions are made and who they are prepared to entrust with the levers of power on their behalf.
Do the midterm election results mean that racism has ceased to exist in America? No. Does it mean that gender bias is dead? No. Does it mean American has become miraculously bereft of bias? No. What the midterms revealed is that the majority of Americans want honest, creative, and caring leaders that will work on their behalf and make the country work.
Nothing else matters. This is not only a message about America’s people, it is a message to America’s leaders. That message is that the bar of accountability has been raised for those elected to office.
The message is – you can no longer get elected by playing to age old tropes, you’ve now got to do the hard work of offering solutions to the problems the people face and if you ignore that message, you do so at your peril.
The first three words introducing the US Constitution are “We the people.” The point being that the legitimacy of government is derived from the people. Government is by the people and for the people.
Therefore it is ultimately accountable to the people. What that means is that when those that are stewards of sacred trust of governance are not faithful in duty, it is the responsibility of the people to replace them with leaders that will. What we witnessed was American democracy in action in its purest form. Government must be accountable to the people. That is what was on full display in America’s midterms.
Those are a couple of takeaways for those of us who are Americans.
Are there any lessons in America’s midterm elections for Africa’s nascent democracies? I would suggest there are several.
Democracy only works when you stay fully invested. On election day, vote. Sometimes it takes longer than you like to get it right.
Sometimes it takes more elections than you’d want to make things right, but keep trying. The apocryphal lesson is something I used to tell Tanzanian’s during my tenure as Ambassador.
As Churchill once remarked “democracy is the worst form of human governance, it’s just better than everything else.” It’s not always neat. It’s more often messy. It doesn’t guarantee a succession of great leaders, but it does guarantee that you can get rid of the worst. This is the message to the people.
There’s also a message for those that seek the mantle of leadership. Would-be leaders have an obligation to make the sale for their candidacy. Do the hard work of offering a better idea about how to make the lives of people better.
The people are listening and if you do, then, only then, will you merit their support. Change for the sake of change is not enough.
Those in office are corrupt and you’re not, is not enough. If you want to lead, offer a better idea about how you’ll make the lives of the people you aspire to lead better.
Let me end as I started. America’s midterm elections have come and gone. Given the world has suffered mightily through the first two years of Trump’s second term, we deserve to “eat, drink, and be merry” today. Well, maybe tomorrow too.
Though we might’ve thought we’d die, we didn’t. So, let’s celebrate. But after we celebrate, remember the work begins anew. That’s an everyday takeaway from America’s midterm elections.
For those who are devotees of democracy, in the words of Kwame Nkrumah, “forward ever, backwards never.”