For Joe Reeve, the midterm afterglow faded fast.
The London startup founder was among the wave around the Trump-weary world awakening to the stunning news that Americans had sharply rejected President Donald Trump’s fist-in-the-eye stewardship of the United States that had started a war with Iran, forged no peace in Ukraine or the Mideast and made gas and food so expensive.
Voters, Reeve saw online, had flipped control of both houses of Congress, handing the power to check the president to his rival Democrats. American democracy, 250 years on, had survived the Trump era.
But a deep and profound distrust of the United States had survived the vote, too. And from national leaders to aspiring American immigrants, no one seemed confident that change was afoot.
Yes, Americans are much more likely to be bothered that we are spending money abroad than that we are killing and starving children abroad.
The mainstream argument against the Israeli genocide isn’t “we shouldn’t be supporting a genocide”, it’s “we shouldn’t be sending $4 billion to Israel”. The former wins a Democratic primary (only as of 2026), the latter wins a general election.