814 days until AOC is president.
I write that sentence on 29 October 2026 as a declaration of belief in a future that Americans still have to choose. The date I am counting towards is 20 January 2029, the beginning of the next presidential term. There are 740 days until the election on 7 November 2028, whose victory stage I can already picture, although the result might take longer than election night to establish. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has yet to announce a presidential campaign. Her nomination and victory remain ahead of us as possibilities requiring enormous work. I am placing my hope beside those possibilities, giving them a name and a date, because I believe an exhausted country can decide that it has lived under this particular darkness for long enough.
The parallel that keeps returning to me is separated by exactly twenty years. In 2006, Democrats took Congress from the Republicans during George W. Bush's second term. In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency. Now we approach 2026, with 2028 beyond it, and I find myself looking at the same potential sequence: a congressional repudiation followed by a presidential renewal. The American midterms take place on 3 November, five calendar days after the date of this essay. We are days away from learning whether the first part of that sequence will begin again. The symmetry catches the imagination, but the substance lies in what voters can do with it, and in the political strength that a successful midterm election can make available to the person who follows.
When America has had enough, it has had enough. I mean that as a belief in the capacity of people to reach a limit, organise around it and change their government. No country reaches such a limit unanimously. Millions will disagree, some will remain indifferent, and others will only discover their dissatisfaction when it becomes possible to express it through a credible alternative. Yet a political atmosphere can change before the institutions catch up with it. The certainty with which an administration occupies the public imagination can begin to weaken. People who have spent years reacting to its behaviour can start discussing the practical terms of its replacement. That transition interests me because it restores a sense of authorship to citizens who have been living as unwilling spectators.
The America of 2006 had endured years of arguments about Iraq, presidential credibility and the limits of national power. The war had become an accumulating burden on the administration that launched it. The failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina remained part of the public judgement on government competence, while congressional scandals damaged Republican claims to responsible leadership. These problems were distinct, with different causes and victims, but they contributed to a common question about whether the people exercising power deserved to keep it. The election allowed that question to acquire a numerical answer. Dissatisfaction moved through individual constituencies and state contests until it altered the national distribution of authority. A presidency that had governed alongside a Republican Congress would have to deal with an opposition capable of saying no.
The result was concrete. Democrats emerged with 233 House seats against 202 Republicans. In the Senate, 49 Democrats and two independents who caucused with them provided an organising majority against 49 Republicans. Both chambers changed hands. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker when the new Congress assembled in January 2007, and the administration's relationship with the legislature changed accordingly. Those numbers matter because they explain what an electoral rebuke becomes once the campaign advertisements stop. Committee leadership changes, legislative priorities change, and the people who decide which questions receive public hearings change. The opposition acquires offices, staff and procedural authority. It can connect public anger to the machinery through which a government must explain and finance its actions.
Bush called the outcome “a thumping.” The bluntness of that description survives because it acknowledged a political reality that presidential language often tries to soften. He still occupied the White House and still possessed the powers of his office, but his party had lost its congressional protection. In his press conference after the election, he recognised that Democrats would control committees and the movement of bills. That admission helps explain why midterms deserve attention beyond the familiar theatre of winners looking pleased and losers promising reflection. A change of congressional control affects the daily conditions under which a president governs. It gives opposition a durable institutional presence, extending far beyond the temporary satisfaction of seeing a disappointing government lose an argument on television.
Congress holds leverage over public spending, legislation and investigations. The Senate also has constitutional responsibilities for confirming many presidential appointments. These powers can compel negotiation and expose conduct that a friendly majority might prefer to leave undisturbed. They have limits, including presidential vetoes, procedural obstacles and disagreements within the opposition itself. Even so, they alter the balance. A president facing hostile committees and an opposition-controlled legislative agenda must operate in a different environment from one whose party manages both chambers. The change can also affect public confidence in what comes next. Citizens see that an administration's dominance has boundaries, and potential presidential candidates can begin presenting themselves within a political situation in which their party has already demonstrated the capacity to win.
The limitations of the 2006 victory deserve to remain visible within any hopeful comparison. Bush announced the Iraq troop surge in January 2007, after Democrats had won Congress. An electoral rejection of his party had not removed his authority as commander in chief or immediately ended the war. People continued to suffer while institutional disputes worked themselves out. That fact gives the historical analogy its proper scale. A midterm victory can restrain a government and prepare a different future while leaving it capable of doing serious harm in the meantime. The period between an election and a transfer of presidential power is lived by actual people. Their safety cannot be deferred to the emotional satisfaction of knowing that history may eventually describe the election as a turning point.
The connection between 2006 and Obama therefore concerns preparation. The congressional victory showed that the Republican coalition could be defeated, placed Democrats in control of important institutions and gave them a stronger position from which to contest the presidency. It also made a national desire for change harder to dismiss as the complaint of a permanently frustrated minority. Obama did not emerge automatically from the midterm results. His candidacy had its own history, and he faced a serious contest for his party's nomination. The political opportunity created in 2006 belonged to no single individual. What he eventually achieved was to give a compelling presidential expression to a demand that had already begun changing the composition of government.
Obama announced his presidential candidacy on 10 February 2007 and won the election on 4 November 2008. Between those dates, he had to persuade people who agreed that Bush's era should end that he was the person capable of succeeding it. The financial crisis then transformed the election's context, intensifying fears about economic security and further discrediting the governing party. Research on the 2008 electorate shows the importance of economic concerns alongside the participation of younger voters and strong Black support. The outcome arose through a particular coalition under particular conditions. This is why the comparison offers a path rather than a timetable that can simply be copied. The work was political, and the victory depended on people making decisions that could have gone differently.
When Obama entered office, Democrats controlled Congress and had expanded the majorities established in 2006. That mattered for what followed, including the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Presidential language required legislative votes before it could become a change in people's lives. The movement from midterm victory to presidential victory had helped assemble the institutional conditions for action. This is the part of the precedent that I want to carry forward into 2026. A future president needs more than a memorable election night. The government that person inherits, the representatives available to support legislation and the public expectations established beforehand all shape the space in which ambition can become law. The earlier election helps determine the practical meaning of the later one.
There is also a warning within the years that followed. Republicans retook the House in 2010, and Trump won the presidency in 2016. Obama's election had changed America without settling the conflicts that would shape its next political rupture. An inspiring individual could not permanently neutralise resentment, concentrated wealth or the appetite for a politics that assigns blame to vulnerable people. The sequence gives me reasons to believe in change and reasons to demand more from it. If we are going to invoke 2008 as a model, we should carry its unfinished business into the discussion. A future Democratic victory will have to be judged by whether it makes everyday life more secure and democratic institutions more resilient, including after the winning candidate has left office.
The madness that arrived with Trump in 2016 involved a way of occupying attention as well as a programme of government. Every institution could become scenery for a personal grievance. Every criticism could become evidence of betrayal. Public cruelty could be defended through the promise that somebody else, somebody supposedly dangerous or undeserving, was finally being made uncomfortable. I have found that atmosphere exhausting because it asks everyone within reach of it to live in perpetual reaction. From Australia, its reach remains considerable. American politics travels through international relations, cultural life and the platforms on which people spend their evenings. A presidency can become an unwanted presence in households thousands of kilometres beyond the electorate responsible for choosing it.
The interval between the 2020 election and the 2024 election felt like a breather from that atmosphere. Biden's actual presidential term ran from January 2021 to January 2025, but the emotional interval began when Trump's defeat in November 2020 made a different future imaginable. The relief was real even though the transition itself was violently contested. For a time, the White House seemed less completely occupied by one man's need to dominate the conversation. It became possible to imagine that the preceding years might eventually be understood as a period the country had survived. That feeling helps explain why the return has been so dispiriting. A population can experience a respite and discover, painfully, that the conditions allowing the original harm have remained intact.
I want 2028 to accomplish something deeper than another respite. Removing a leader leaves the incentives that rewarded him available to whoever learns to use them next. A political culture organised around humiliation can find another performer. Economic insecurity can be redirected towards another scapegoat. Institutions weakened through repeated accommodation can be pressured again. The root I want torn out is the permission structure that makes those habits effective, especially the belief that certain people may be mistreated because enough voters have been taught to despise them. That requires changes in law, material security and public expectations. It also requires a willingness to hold leaders accountable when they belong to the party we hoped would protect us.
For that reason, my hope for an Ocasio-Cortez presidency includes a judgement on Democratic failures. Gaza makes uncomplicated nostalgia for the Biden years impossible. American military support for Israel continued under his administration, and the argument about responsibility reaches across party boundaries. I cannot describe the earlier interval as healing without acknowledging the people for whom American policy helped sustain catastrophe. The Congressional Research Service documents the substantial assistance and arms relationship through those years. A future Democratic government will deserve the language of renewal only if it confronts its own inheritance. Changing the tone of the presidency will offer little comfort to civilians whose lives continue to be treated as expendable within the same strategic calculations.
Alex Pretti and Renee Good belong in this account because any discussion of national recovery must retain the names of people who cannot participate in it. Good was fatally shot by an immigration officer in Minneapolis on 7 January 2026. Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was killed by federal officers on 24 January. Reuters verified video showing Pretti holding a phone and trying to assist other protesters before agents forced him to the ground; footage appeared to show an officer removing Pretti's handgun before the shooting. Those are matters of evidence, with details that require investigation. Their deaths have become part of the moral record against which this administration is judged, and they deserve attention that lasts longer than the news cycle that first carried their names.
The struggle over evidence has continued. In July, Minnesota authorities announced that federal agencies had begun providing material previously withheld from their investigations. Reporting published on 23 October described a renewed halt in cooperation, according to state officials and court filings. At that point, no criminal charges had been filed in either fatal shooting. Accountability requires access to evidence and independent scrutiny, followed by lawful decisions about responsibility. A future administration should make that process possible without attempting to dictate its verdict. I want an America in which a grieving family can expect the government to cooperate with the search for truth. The possibility that state power may have been abused should increase the obligation to investigate it.
Then there are the White House games. In September, the administration promoted an arcade website that included Rio Run, in which players could intercept and “deport” figures representing migrants. Reporting on the launch also described a border-wall game involving a supposed zombie “horde.” The official White House arcade continues to list Rio Run as a border-patrol game. These examples deserve to be remembered because they reveal the emotional vocabulary being offered by government itself. A policy affecting actual people becomes an amusement in which the pleasure lies in removing them. The distance between a person and a target is made entertaining. I look at that and feel that something elementary has been surrendered by an institution entrusted with speaking on behalf of an entire country.
As someone who cares about games and their imaginative possibilities, I find that choice particularly ugly. Games can invite attention to another perspective or allow people to build something together. Their capacity to engage emotion makes their use by government worth examining. An official game about deportation encourages a relationship to the people it represents, however simple the graphics may be. The player is invited to experience them as obstacles within an exercise of control. The symbolism sits within a wider political culture that repeatedly asks its audience to enjoy another person's vulnerability. That culture can be rejected. Public institutions can choose forms of communication that respect human dignity, and voters can insist that their government stop treating contempt as an amusing expression of national identity.
The proposal to make Nidal Hasan's execution a public, livestreamed event belongs to the same concern about suffering becoming spectacle. Hasan was convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood killings, and the horror of those crimes remains beyond dispute. In October, the proposed broadcast drew criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Senators Mark Kelly and Chris Coons introduced legislation intended to prohibit the recording and broadcasting of military executions. The execution was scheduled for 3 December, while questions over the method and broadcast remained subject to legal and political challenge. What troubles me is that turning a state killing into a public attraction could be presented as a desirable expression of American strength.
The people murdered at Fort Hood and their families deserve a justice system capable of maintaining dignity under the pressure of terrible crimes. Public appetite for punishment can become an instrument through which government advertises its own hardness. I want that appetite challenged before it becomes an accepted measure of political seriousness. A society determines its character partly through what it refuses to make entertaining, especially when an audience could easily be assembled for it. This principle applies even where public sympathy for the condemned person is absent. The authority exercised in punishment belongs to the state, and citizens remain responsible for asking what that authority does to the community in whose name it acts.
The moral question extends beyond American borders. The independent United Nations commission of inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities had committed genocide in Gaza, and its October 2026 report reaffirmed that assessment. Israel rejects the allegation. The International Court of Justice proceedings remain ongoing, with no final judgement on the merits; the commission's findings and a court judgement are different forms of determination. That distinction deserves accuracy without becoming an excuse for moral paralysis. The destruction of civilian life demands an answer from governments supplying weapons and diplomatic support. When I describe support for this catastrophe as support for genocide, I am expressing a judgement grounded in those documented findings and in the responsibilities of governments with the power to change what they enable.
Palestinian lives cannot depend on their usefulness to an American election argument. Neither can Israeli lives. The murder of civilians, hostage-taking and collective punishment demand standards that survive the identity of the perpetrator. I want a government capable of applying those standards to an ally, accepting that security purchased through the degradation of another people cannot produce a durable peace. An American renewal that leaves this moral hierarchy untouched will have changed the branding of power while preserving a devastating habit. The hope I am placing in 2028 includes a different foreign policy, one willing to use American influence to protect life even where doing so carries domestic political costs. A claim to humane leadership should remain answerable to the people affected by it.
Ocasio-Cortez matters to this imagined future because her public work offers reasons to discuss a different set of priorities. Her congressional record includes advocacy on healthcare, housing and climate, including the Green New Deal for Public Housing. She has supported efforts to block weapons transfers to the Israeli government and co-sponsored a resolution recognising genocide in Gaza. Those positions provide substance for my interest in her. I want to consider what government would look like if the security of ordinary people were treated as a governing obligation across domestic and foreign policy. Healthcare and housing belong in that conversation alongside the safety of people living under American-supported military power. The moral connection is the value assigned to a life before its usefulness to somebody else's political advantage.
Her possible presidency also carries symbolic force. A woman identified with a younger generation of progressive politics would represent a visible departure from the culture Trump has built around himself. That symbolism can help people recognise an alternative, but it must be supported by the patient work of winning trust. Americans who encounter her principally through hostile portrayals would need reasons to listen. Voters outside the constituencies already sympathetic to her would need to see their own concerns addressed in practical language. A presidential coalition has to accommodate people who begin from different experiences and disagree about some of the answers. The path I hope she takes would require the capacity to make a shared programme intelligible without asking everyone to acquire an identical political identity.
There are two elections within that prospect, and they ask different questions. Democratic primary voters would first have to choose her over other candidates, weighing the kind of change they want against their judgement of who can win. The general election would then require success across the states that determine the Electoral College. Neither electorate can be treated as a larger version of an enthusiastic rally. The historical parallel becomes useful when it directs attention to this work of persuasion. Obama had to convert an opening into a nomination, and then convert a nomination into national victory. Ocasio-Cortez would face her own version of those tasks under different circumstances. My confidence rests partly in the possibility that a clear programme of economic security and humane government can travel beyond the audience already prepared to applaud it. That possibility deserves a serious campaign, with patient listening wherever the necessary trust has yet to be built.
The first stage of that path is the election now approaching. A Democratic House could change committee control, investigate executive conduct and prevent Republican legislation from passing without opposition consent. A Democratic Senate would add authority over confirmations and its own legislative agenda. Winning both would produce a closer institutional parallel with 2006 than winning the House alone. We should know what each outcome makes possible so that justified relief develops into realistic expectations. The incoming Congress would begin in January 2027, leaving Trump with two years in office. Those years would still matter enormously. The purpose of a congressional victory would be to use the authority available during them, making government more accountable while the next presidential contest begins to take shape.
Oversight during that period should produce evidence the public can use. Hearings about immigration enforcement should establish decisions, chains of responsibility and the treatment of people affected. Spending scrutiny should show whose interests public money serves. Investigations should preserve records and make it harder for official power to shelter behind confusion. The temptation to turn every proceeding into another performance will be considerable, especially within an attention economy that rewards confrontation. I want the public value of the work to remain visible after the clips have circulated. A successful opposition Congress could demonstrate competence through what it uncovers and what it protects. That would offer a future presidential candidate a stronger foundation than an endless declaration that the other side is appalling.
The second stage, in 2028, would require a credible account of a better life. People should be able to understand how the proposed government would affect medical bills, housing costs and the security of their work. Climate action should be connected to the places they live and the future their children will inhabit. Immigration policy should uphold lawful procedures and the humanity of those subject to them. These are the kinds of commitments I would want from an Ocasio-Cortez campaign, with enough detail to be examined and enough political support to be enacted. The campaign would also have to explain how its ambitions could survive the constraints of Congress and the courts. Hope gains weight when people can see the means through which a promise might become dependable.
This is what I mean by tearing out the root of Trumpism. I want the structures that make organised cruelty politically profitable to lose their strength. A government can reduce the insecurity through which demagogues recruit support. It can enforce standards that keep official power answerable to the public. It can treat corruption and abuse as matters requiring investigation irrespective of party loyalty. None of those tasks is completed by a single election, but an election can authorise them and supply the people needed to begin. In the future I imagine, 2028 becomes the moment when the country commits itself to that work with sufficient seriousness to change what follows. The evil I want removed is the practice of treating human beings as disposable instruments of political power.
That work must leave room for people to change their minds. A democratic majority will include former supporters of the government it replaces, and some will arrive through experiences that are deeply personal. They may have lost faith after witnessing a particular injustice or discovering that a promised improvement never reached their household. Their participation should be welcomed without requiring an elaborate performance of humiliation. I want the culture of public degradation to lose its authority throughout political life. Accountability for those who exercise power can coexist with generosity towards citizens reconsidering their choices. A society capable of healing needs ways for people to return to one another, while maintaining clear standards about conduct that government must never be permitted to normalise.
The success of that recovery would eventually be measured in experiences too ordinary to dominate an election broadcast. Someone receives treatment without fearing financial ruin. A family can remain in its home. A public servant refuses an unlawful instruction and expects the institution to support that refusal. An immigrant encounters a process in which evidence and rights matter. These are the conditions through which democratic government earns a durable place in people's loyalties. When public life becomes less frightening and more dependable, the demand for a politics of punishment can lose some of its appeal. I want the next administration to make that connection visible through its decisions, so that the memory of relief is accompanied by improvements people can actually keep. The presidency I imagine should leave behind conditions that make a return to organised cruelty harder to sell, including to people who once found its promises attractive.
The phrase “World War Three averted” describes another outcome I want future generations to be able to name. I imagine an American government helping to steer dangerous confrontations towards negotiated outcomes, recognising that the decisions of other countries will matter alongside its own. That is a reason to value the influence an administration can exercise over risk. Diplomacy, restraint and a willingness to distinguish national security from personal prestige can make dangerous confrontations easier to manage. A government that takes suffering seriously has reasons to pursue outcomes beyond the spectacle of appearing dominant. I want America to contribute that seriousness to the world, using its considerable power to reduce the chances that a crisis becomes a catastrophe beyond anyone's ability to contain.
Peace also requires attention to the lives people lead between crises. Displacement, deprivation and the repeated destruction of civilian institutions make recovery harder long after an agreement is signed. American policy can support the conditions in which communities rebuild, while its alliances can be made answerable to standards that protect people beyond those alliances. Changes in Israel and elsewhere would matter alongside changes in Washington, because the wider recovery depends on decisions made by many societies. I place the American future within that larger possibility. Each country has responsibilities that its neighbours cannot fulfil on its behalf. A government in Washington willing to meet its own responsibilities would make the work of others easier and help restore confidence that international cooperation can achieve something worth sustaining.
Gaia is a useful name here for the living world within which all these political dramas take place. I think of the atmosphere we share, the landscapes that sustain communities and the interdependence that national borders cannot abolish. The name carries an obligation to consider the consequences of our decisions beyond any single country, or any single generation, connecting democratic recovery with a broader hope for planetary healing. Human beings are responsible for what happens through their institutions. We can organise those institutions around extraction and domination, or make them better at sustaining life. America doing its part would matter because of the reach of its decisions. Its recovery could offer practical help to people elsewhere and make a shared future feel less vulnerable to the destructive appetites of a few.
I write from Australia, as a father, with a growing awareness of how much of the future will be lived by people who had no part in creating the present. I want my daughter to inherit more than an archive of adults recognising danger and failing to respond adequately. I want the accounts of these years to include people who changed direction while there was still time. The American election will belong to American voters, but its consequences will enter lives beyond the country. That is why I allow myself an investment in its outcome. I am placing hope in the ability of strangers to recognise obligations that reach beyond themselves, just as our decisions here will affect people we shall never meet.
The victory stage I imagine belongs within that hope. I picture Ocasio-Cortez walking towards a microphone after Americans have given her the authority to attempt something better. The scene is imagined, including the result that makes it possible. Its emotional force comes from the people I place around it: families who have lived in fear, people whose grief has been denied sufficient attention, citizens who have continued working while wondering whether their country would ever treat their concerns as worthy of care. A victory could give them a moment of relief. The presidency that followed would then have to earn the trust invested in that relief. I want the image to hold both the joy of arrival and the weight of responsibility waiting beyond it.
Unabashed and unashamed hope for the future means allowing that image to exist in public, where it can be questioned and where it might eventually prove wrong. Cynicism offers the protection of having expected disappointment. I would rather state what I believe people remain capable of achieving and examine the work that belief requires. The 2006 election helped prepare the ground for 2008. The 2026 election may yet prepare the ground for 2028. Across those twenty years, the possibility I recognise is that people can withdraw their consent from a political culture that has asked too much of their fear. I believe America can shake off that culture and contribute to the healing of a world that badly needs its power directed towards care. That work begins with the choices Americans make at the polls five days from now.
I end with Paul McCartney's Hope for the Future, written for Destiny and released as a single in 2014. A song can give a feeling somewhere to live while the practical world catches up with it. This one belongs beside the future I am choosing to imagine: the caricature losing its hold, institutions recovering their purpose and ordinary people discovering that the next years can contain more than endurance. The path to peace has to be walked through decisions, with every opportunity taken seriously along the way. Into this post I place my hope and belief that America will do its part. I think it is more than hope. I think it is for real.
