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Beyond the Ballot: It’s Time to Govern
The people believe in a better future. Will our elected leaders finally deliver on their promises?
The midterm election has come and gone, and while we face a “new” political reality, facts are facts, America. Our country faces real economic headwinds. All the macroeconomic indicators paint a challenging context—compounding crises of the U.S. debt and the deficit, price gouging, rising inflation, withheld wage growth, unattainable housing, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence that could lead to a bursting bubble, to name many. Our country must also address a democracy that repeatedly fails to remake the economic systems that, by design, limit progress for working people and our nation as a whole. And the truth is, to fix what’s broken, we must confront racialized capitalism. It will not undo itself.
The crisis of confidence in government to deliver for the people is well-earned. And the outcry for change is overwhelming. The midterm results underscored a mandate up and down the ballot. This is a call to action not just for the new House and Senate, but also to new delegations in state legislatures, governors’ offices and city halls, county commissions, and local school boards. It’s time to govern.
We’ve been asked, since this nation’s founding, to build and exert our power in an economy and democracy rigged to concentrate wealth at the top, extract labor from the masses, keep working people voiceless, and, to put it frankly, kill our souls. So every vote cast is an act of faith. Every vote matters to combat policy and political violence that threaten the livelihoods of the most marginalized.
And still, the people are striving. They’re striving to show up at the polls and be heard. They’re striving to work together and have each other’s backs at work and in the streets. They’re striving to provide mutual aid and community safety. They’re striving to find joy in each day, to find community and love and hope, in spite of how difficult each day may be.
So now what’s left to do? Back to the facts and how people see them at their kitchen table:
- The cost of living is too high and completely unsustainable.
- Housing and rental costs are stretching people beyond their max.
- The private market cannot provide acceptable early care and education, a critical foundation for every child.
- Health care is not treated as a right, and too many families struggle for basic coverage.
- The labor market does not produce wages that can keep pace, while shareholders and corporate profits remain at all-time highs.
Workers, families, parents, caregivers, everyday people trying to survive have been asked to wait and be patient for relief, for generations, while they watch the rich get richer and economic inequality deepen. There is no shortage of demands, and there is no shortage of solutions to meet them. There is, however, a shortage of political will, and the necessary results are long overdue.
It is time for every elected leader, regardless of what political affiliation, to give an account. It is time to govern.
What the 2026 Election Proved to Be True
“Progressives claim vindication,” as reported by Politico. “Running on unabashedly populist platforms like Medicare for All and taxing the rich, candidates like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine, and if returns hold, Randy Villegas in California’s Central Valley tore up the party establishment’s playbook …”
Despite years of skepticism and demonizing from political elites falsely claiming the unelectability of a populist economic platform, the people have spoken: Given the chance to vote for improving their material conditions, they voted for relief. They voted with care—for the rising multiracial citizenry, for queer people and other marginalized groups, for bodily autonomy, and for an economy that works for them. The American public overcame the authoritarian, billionaire-backed agenda and surmounted voter suppression because they believe in the candidates who pledged to course-correct on decades of failed economic policy and democracy that doesn’t deliver equality. Addressing our shared crises at home is, it turns out, a “proven election-winning platform.”
And of course, we cannot forget to thank Black women, who always vote for shared prosperity and lasting liberation for all.
The voters who bolstered the progressive, populist agenda chose diverse representation and results. That representation included many first Black governors—including the first Black woman governor in U.S. history and the first Native American woman governor—the first Muslim senator in Michigan, and the first openly gay man elected to the Senate, just to name a few.
These wins for personhood are not incidental to a populist mandate—they are its proof. The demos chose to be governed by leaders who understand what it’s like to be in their shoes and will pursue policies that don’t leave them having to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Above all, the 2026 Election is evidence that populist, structural politics work. We’re not surprised though, because we’ve been paying attention. People know what they want and what they need. They always have. The fault lies with those in power who have, for generations, lacked the political will and courage, or were too beholden to monied interests, to act on the will of the people.
Now it’s time to put populist, structural policies into action. Incremental change won’t cut it, good intentions aren’t worth a dime, and the time for managing expectations is over. People voted for candidates who promised to change the rules and execute a governing agenda that will improve their quality of life.
Right now, our democratic systems limit the political power of our citizenry, especially among Black and brown people. Voting is one of the most remarkable tools we use to demonstrate our power and influence on the agenda setting. Power policies are what the people voted for—policy choices that change their lives here and now, structural reforms that make those changes irreversible. It’s up to those in power to show up and deliver on both.
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For too long, our leaders have made promises on the most-pressing asks and left structural change undone. The result is an incomplete democracy
Last week’s election results are a revelation: Our democracy has yet to consistently translate what the people want into what the people get. What we need more than different election results is a different system entirely. For too long, our leaders have made promises on the most-pressing asks and left structural change undone. The result is an incomplete democracy—where not everyone is included, where every victory is in jeopardy, and where every loss is especially damaging.
In places where power policies have come into play, the outcomes are more representative and far more durable. Radical citizenship reminds us that the ballot is one form of power. It’s essential and worth fighting for and protecting, but it’s not the only form. We must wield every form of power—at the polls, in the streets, at the bargaining table, in the statehouse, and in the long-range movement work that transforms the results of one election into a lasting foundation for the next generation.
We must now build what voters have demanded, establishing better systems that produce better outcomes for the people. So which side will you choose? Whose side are you on?
Govern as Reconstructionists or Redemptionists
Come January, a new crop of elected leaders takes office alongside those who held their seats. Each of them has a choice to make: Will you be a reconstructionist or a redemptionist?
A reconstructionist is someone committed to using the power they’ve been given to change the structural conditions that will deliver on voters’ wishes—to govern by and for the people who voted in their name, to deliver material relief now and rewrite the rules for the long term.
The original redemptionists were post-Civil War white supremacists determined to undermine the First Reconstruction and the Black political power-building it promised. Redemptionists today are similarly devoted to restoring the skewed status quo, working to maintain an arrangement that has always served the few at the expense of the many. They are not our allies; they are our obstacles.
Govern for the people or be held accountable by them. Get results or get out of the way.
The mandate before you is not complex. It is this: Govern for the people or be held accountable by them. Get results or get out of the way.
Just know that we won’t accept the false choice between meeting people’s immediate needs and pursuing long-term structural change. Both are necessary. People need policies that improve their lives right now, and they need systemic reforms that ensure progress cannot be easily reversed.
Radical citizenship is a people-powered mechanism for accountability, and it doesn’t stop or give up after election day. The people who showed up to vote are the same people who will show up at town halls and statehouses and school boards and every other site of governing power—insisting, as radical citizens do, on what they are owed.
Beyond the Ballot: What Radical Citizenship Builds
Choices have consequences. The people are paying attention, but they’re also not waiting to build the future we all deserve.
“We can,
Each of us,
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.”
—Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
What may feel impossible in these times—a government that finally honors what it owes, a multiracial democracy that includes everyone—is not impossible. Because “the impossible” happens all the time. The practice of radical citizenship is an ongoing act of the seemingly impossible. In the last few years, the people have won universal child care in New Mexico, expanded access to the ballot in meaningful ways in Michigan and other states, begun the long-overdue work of accounting for missing voters in the South, and united as one cross-national coalition to demand statehood for Washington, D.C.
Our partners in New Mexico were told that a universal child care program was impossible; that the state was too poor, the opposition too entrenched. They made it happen anyway.
The Power Policies agenda we crafted at Dēmos, which includes universal child care, is not a wish list—it’s a record of what radical citizenship makes possible and a roadmap for winning it everywhere.
This election demonstrated a hope, a prayer for change. It’s a belief that we can claim, for the first time, the governing power that would make our wins irreversible. To practice radical citizenship is to live that belief. To act on it.
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