Proof The Left Is Delusional: Read This Bizarro Screed From Wisconsin State Senator Kelda Roys (Madison)

My friends,

This is devastating. I’m furious and very sad, but I want to start with gratitude. Thank you to every one of you for doing everything you could to prevent this outcome. You did everything we asked and more – giving money, knocking doors, making phone calls, having difficult conversations with loved ones, showing up with joy and enthusiasm and determination. We did our very best and still fell short, but it wasn’t for lack of doing the hard, necessary work of campaigning and election.

When I broke the news to my daughters this morning, one still wearing her Kamala shirt, my 10 year old did the math quickly and said, “There’s only one more presidential election until I get to vote.” This is a scary time for so many of us in the US and around the world, but nothing is permanent and giving up is not an option.

Despair is the autocrat’s most powerful tool. They want us to disengage, to feel it’s all futile, to retreat to our own private corners. We will NOT. The future is NOT WRITTEN yet, and we have more knowledge and resources than we did when we faced this 8 years ago. Granted, this is a much more dangerous situation, but we also have much more political power now and a well-oiled field and fundraising machine that will help us maintain and build our power at the local, state, and national level in every election. They will overreach, and we will hold them accountable by directing the electoral backlash.

For instance, in 2016, we had only 7 state Dem trifectas while Republicans had 23. Today, we have 17 Dem trifectas, and the GOP still only has 23. 40% of Americans live in a state with a Dem trifecta, and millions more live in blue regions in the midst of red states. We must get ourselves ready—physically and psychologically—to resist and refuse to accept illegitimate directives from the Trump administration.

Resistance to immoral and unjust laws is a great American tradition. Oppression is as well. Throughout history, people have joined together in difficult times to help each other and make change. And so will we.

There are a couple of things you can do right now to get started:

1) I’ve said it for years, but you need to order abortion medication right now. Go to AidAccess.org and have it shipped to you. Abortion will likely be completely unavailable in a matter of months; this is a top priority for Trump/Vance/Project 2025 and it will almost certainly be far more dangerous and difficult to access abortion meds by mail very soon. We need to take care of ourselves and each other. It has a very long shelf life and is indistinguishable from a miscarriage. Use a private browser and delete your emails.

2) Download Signal and use it for messaging. We don’t know how effective Trump will be at going after his political opponents, but we should all practice good security hygiene with our organizing and communications. Signal is encrypted and makes auto-delete easy, and it is less likely to be manipulated into collaborating with law enforcement and turning over our data than major companies like Apple, Google, Meta, etc.

3) Recurring donations. Money made a huge difference in races around the country. So did our field operations. Find a candidate you care about and give a recurring donation amount that is meaningful to you. Here’s my link. I also recommend giving to the State Senate Democratic Committee, because the Senate is the most likely to flip in 2026, preventing a potential GOP trifecta here (more on that later).

4) Our most urgent campaign work is the upcoming April election. Speaking of candidates, we must elect Susan Crawford to the Supreme Court. Currently, the court is 3-3, and this seat will determine whether we have a conservative court that is a Trump/Vos rubber stamp again, or whether we keep the Wisconsin democracy we’ve just rekindled. There will also be important local elections, and we need to make sure we are electing strong Democratic candidates (even in nonpartisan races) everywhere, at every level.

5) Keep informed and support our journalists. In a time of increased and unified government power, we need our Fourth Estate even more. I never canceled my WaPo subscription because it doesn’t hurt Bezos, but the loss of millions of subscribers means hundreds of excellent journalists will likely be fired. Subscribe to your local papers and to a few national outlets like NY Times or Washington Post. You won’t like everything they print—nor should you in a diverse democracy like ours—but it’s true what they say: democracy dies in darkness. Supporting trustworthy legitimate media is a necessary and powerful tool for combating fascism.

6) Search for understanding, not blame. Of course we’re angry and devastated. But we don’t fully have the data about who and how and where this election went wrong, and we certainly don’t know enough about why. It may be tempting to cast blame on people or places we think failed us by not showing up or voting wrong. Please be careful about making assumptions and generalizations, or blaming demographic groups and further dividing us. If we are going to survive this and overcome Trumpism, we need to expand our tent and take a clear eyed look at what happened, not simply assume whatever narratives our curated info diets are pushing. There are Democratic voters in every community in this country, and in every demographic group imaginable. The reverse is true as well. Every one of us is an individual, and we should not be damned or praised because most others who share our characteristics voted a certain way. Trump thrives on division and group denigration—let’s not emulate the worst of him.

Now, about Harris. She was as close to a flawless candidate as we could have asked for. She brought enormous energy, discipline, and fundraising like we’ve never seen. Her debate performance was incredible, and her mastery on the stump and in interviews was inspiring. She made no unforced errors. I cannot accept any explanation that blames her, the candidate, for this loss. There are certainly criticisms to be had of her campaign’s strategic choices, for instance focusing on democracy/fascism in the closing days rather than the economy or abortion. But overall, she executed as good of a campaign given her 107 days as anyone could have. The circumstances facing Democrats were not of her own making. And given the scale of this loss, it’s hard to think anything would have changed the outcome.

This election is both complicated and very simple. Complicated because how could our country so willingly walk into authoritarianism, elect someone so manifestly unfit, dangerous, and malignant? But simple, because we have a deeply unpopular incumbent, are still reeling from COVID, social and economic disruption, the biggest inflationary period of most of our lifetimes, and countries all over the world are throwing out their incumbent leaders. We knew it was incredibly close, even though we didn’t want to believe it.

If there is one bright spot it’s that Dems in Wisconsin are likely to take the state senate majority in 2026, thanks to massively outperforming national GOP headwinds and sweeping ALL FOUR competitive seats last night! We went from 11-22 to 15-18 last night. The Assembly likely won 45 seats, taking them from 36-63 to 45-54. The Assembly is a harder lift given the GOP-friendly map, but the 3 Senate seats we need to win are the same or more favorable than the 4 we just flipped. With the governorship up in 2026, a Democratic trifecta is very much in reach! We also reelected Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

In addition, abortion referenda continue to prove that even the reddest states are pro-choice. Seven states, including Montana and Missouri, passed measures to protect abortion rights, most by large margins. In Florida, the pro-choice amendment got 57% of the vote, 1.5 million more votes than the antis, and it only failed because the GOP raised the threshold for passage to an outrageous 60%. Even so, abortion rights activists almost got there — battling an illegal and false state-funded multi-million dollar propaganda blitz. In Nebraska, dueling amendments confused voters but even so, the pro-choice measure came very close to winning. If you don’t already, subscribe to Jessica Valenti’s substack and buy her book.

Part of what makes this so painful is seeing how many of our fellow countrymen voted for Trump because of or despite who he is—a racist, misogynist, fraudster, sexual assaulter, serial liar, felon, and traitor. They just liked that bacon was cheaper when he was president.

It’s disorienting and heartbreaking to see that America is not what we deserve, and to know that many people here and around the world will suffer grievous harm and death as a result of this election. While certainly many voted for him because of his rank misogyny and racism, many others who voted for him in spite of or indifferently to those things will be shocked by what they actually get from his presidency—a wrecked economy, morality policing by white Christian nationalists, civil unrest, and more handouts to right-wing billionaires at our expense. It’s our job to make that known, win back some of these voters, and repair fractures within our coalition, so that we can triumph next time. This is hard work, but hard work is joyful work.

Together, we can move forward. We must. We will. Read this, and then LFG.

Yours in service and solidarity,
Kelda

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