The midterms changed the battlefield, but not the war.
By Sarah Kendzior | Nov 5, 2026
On Election Day, I voted for my vote to count. Again.
I don’t know yet if my vote for my vote to count will be honored by the people who count my vote. There’s not great precedent for that here in Missouri.
For a decade, the Democratic party machine has lectured me to “vote harder”. We Missourians vote so hard, we voted for the same damn thing three times in two years. The third time was a vote for the same damn thing to be made law, as the state constitution decrees. But law stopped following the constitution long ago. Courts follow the whims of liars. I follow the money.
This is why Missouri is the bellwether state.
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Missouri used to be called the bellwether state for its century-long streak of picking the presidential winner. Our swing state status ended in 2008 when a Black man ran for president and operatives field-tested Citizens United tactics on our soil. Missouri is a petri dish for people who seek to end the American experiment.
Missouri is also a “trigger state”. It triggers old laws and new horrors. In 2022, after the Roe repeal, Missouri was the first US state to trigger a pre-existing ban on female bodily autonomy. I spent two years with my uterus as Missouri state property. Once a month, I considered pelting the legislature with receipts.
In 2024, I voted on a ballot initiative to get the right to my body back. It passed. The Missouri legislature said, Screw you, woman, we don’t care what you want, and contested it. Courts debated how human I am relative to my husband. They were leaning toward less, so Missourians made yet another ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives are a state growth industry, like fentanyl and firecrackers. This one said that when voters approve a citizen initiative, the state legislature must actually enact it.
On Election Day 2026, I voted that officials be required to honor the voters’ will. I hear rumor this is known elsewhere as “representative government”. It’s a novel concept, especially in St. Louis, where my House representative is funded by donors who serve a foreign country. On the same day, I voted — again — to protect my body from state control. This is the second time I’ve done that in two years. Both votes went my way.
Folks say I’ve got my body and my constitution back. I say, we’ll see in January.
Missouri is the bellwether state. Missouri is a trigger state. But its official motto is “The Show-Me State.” In 1899, Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver declared to fancy Philadelphians, “I’m from a state that raises corn, cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
Missouri is so thoroughly built on the expectation that everyone in power is a liar that we tack this motto on our license plates and drive to polling places where we demand to have our stated choice made law. Nothing goes without saying. We don’t believe it until we see it, and we assume a win may be retracted on a whim.
In Missouri, election season and hunting season are at the same time of year.
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Don’t get me wrong — I’m proud of the midterm results and proud of my state. Not for anything I did, but that others fought a Sisyphean battle. They got to the top of the mountain and let everyone see clear the lay of the land.
I’m proud of Texas. I’m proud of Michigan. I’m proud of the South. I’m proud of Missouri, which I love very much. Of course I love Missouri: why else would I be so angry when officials hurt its people while claiming to serve them? My state is not my government. The same is true of the whole US. Everyone knows that, now.
Missouri makes you a realist. I’m watching that mountain top, waiting for the rock to roll down and run us over come January. Maybe it won’t. It feels different this time, even here. Had Missouri a 2026 Senate or governor race, a Democrat may have won by sheer momentum. In Missouri’s 2nd district, Fred Wellman, a Democrat, unexpectedly ousted a long-loathed Republican.
Most voters in Missouri are independents, as are most voters in the US. We are the United States of the Betrayed. The midterm results reject GOP oppression, but that doesn’t equal an embrace of the Democratic Party: not without major changes.
Future Democratic House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries — a confidante of Jared Kushner and an abettor of genocide — is already implying he doesn’t feel it necessary to honor the voters’ will. This is an all-too-familiar refrain for folks who live under GOP legislatures. It makes no difference when it’s a Democrat singing the tune.
I’d love to get behind the paywalls and the propaganda to see how this election was won. But I live in a technofascist oligarchy: data is in short supply. Like a true Missourian, I only know what I see. I didn’t hear any national Democrats talking about the ballot initiatives that determined my freedom. I heard them trashing the folks who knocked on my door one day to make sure I knew.
On my porch were two youths. A boy and a girl, bright-eyed and shiny as a Mentos commercial. “Mormons,” I thought. I opened the door. I welcome attempts at conversion; they let me tally what parts of myself I would give away.
The youths said they were from the DSA: the group both Democrats and Republicans decry as fearsome and wily socialists. The youths smiled and offered a sample ballot for my keeping. They explained to me my rights in plain language. I pretended I did not know who I was.
“No on 3, Yes on 6!” they said cheerfully, referring to the bodily autonomy initiative and the initiative that says, Hey you really need to do it this time.
Shame that officials deem these folks a threat instead of the invasive Flock camera installed down the street recording their door-to-door civic virtue.
My guess is that youth and independent voters caused the “blue” wave, along with voters appalled by unceasing corruption, war, and the abandonment of ordinary Americans in favor of foreign states and wealthy elites. The cost of living is too high: the material cost, the psychic cost. The latter is hardest to bear. How many people have we seen murdered on our phones since 2025?
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I’ve got more to say, but I’ll say it another day. Many writers I respect say they feel an unfamiliar exhaustion. Not one born of agony or anxiety, but of shock, and gratitude, and knowledge that we’re not alone in seeing what’s happening. A Langston Hughes bone-weariness coupled with a Langston Hughes longing for the land that’s never been but may still be. Langston Hughes, child of Missouri, poet of America.
As Missouri shows, votes are only as good as the officials who honor them. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless they are put into practice. But ordinary people are stubborn, and brave, and they look out for each other.
The fight for our country’s freedom is far from over. We are still battling corrupt actors in two parties, many of whom are funded by the same donors.
But nothing can change that our will was heard. The midterm results mitigate a threat about which I’ve long worried: the attempt to harden “red state” and “blue state” designations so that it will be easier for operatives to divide our country and sell it for parts — much like in the former USSR.
The Trump administration and various plutocrats are already doing the latter. But formal partition would have sped it up and broken the bonds of family, friends, and countrymen. Texas, especially, renders toxic “national divorce” rhetoric moot. The culture war has failed: people can see each other past the algorithms.
I’ll leave you with the words I wrote the morning after the results, when I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s good time. I mean them still. But remember, even in your excitement: They have got to show you. You deserve nothing less.
My initial thoughts about the midterms:
May the midterms end the propaganda lie of “red” and “blue” states — conjured in the 2000 election and weaponized. As I’ve said: There is no such thing as a “red” or “blue” state: America is purple, purple like a bruise.
Let the powerful turn of Texas shatter stereotypes. Let the wave of wins elsewhere destroy excuses for abandonment. Americans have been subject to a top-down assault by criminal elites. We remain under assault. Pundits blamed the victims below instead of GOP abusers and Vichy Dem enablers above. They lied and said Texas and the South deserved a cruel fate.
Now pundits are shocked about folks whose strength was evident the whole time. I hope those pundits swallow their forked tongues and choke on them.
Respect to the shunned who fight because we know our own worth — including my fellow Missourians. The midterms were a battle in an ongoing war. You redrew the battle lines in the public imagination. Imagination is a wonder; in a kleptocracy, it is a weapon. You can’t vote out the mafia. But you can change the nature of the battlefield. You just did.
I’m not going to sugarcoat the threat we face, which goes beyond electoral politics. But I hope folks feel proud — not just for last night, but for making it through these terrible years, and for standing up for each other.
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Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
