To understand what just happened in this week’s elections—notably Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City, Mikie Sherrill’s win in New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger’s win in Virginia—wind back the clock five years.

In 2020, Joe Biden won by promising that he could restore normalcy to American life. That did not happen. As the biological emergency of the coronavirus pandemic wound down, the economic emergency (inflation) took off. An affordability crisis broke out around the world. The public revolted. Last year, practically every incumbent party in every developed country lost ground at the ballot box.

So it went in the United States. In 2024, Donald Trump won an “affordability election.” I’m calling it that because affordability is what Trump’s voters said they wanted more of. Gallup found that the economy was the only issue that a majority of voters considered “extremely important.” A CBS analysis of exit-poll data found that eight in 10 of those who said they were worse off financially compared with four years ago backed Trump. The AP’s 120,000-respondent VoteCast survey found that voters who cited inflation as their most important factor were almost twice as likely to back Trump.

So Trump won. And for the second straight election, the president has violated his mandate to restore normalcy. Elected to be an affordability president, Trump has governed as an authoritarian dilettante. He has raised tariffs without the consultation of Congress, openly threatened comedians who made jokes about him, pardoned billionaires who gave him and his family money, arrested people without due process, overseen the uncons