“Don’t f*ck it up, respectfully.”
  November 5, 2026 Salutations, Meteor readers, As a great poet once said, “I swag. I surf.” And that’s been the exact vibe since Tuesday night when the blue wave crested over the entire country. But now that the waters are slowly beginning to settle, what’s to be done with all this power?  In today’s newsletter, we hear from a victorious candidate in Tennessee, a longtime campaign fieldworker in Illinois, a veteran advocate for gender justice in D.C., and a voting rights activist on what should come next. 🏄🏽♀️ 🏄🏽♀️ 🏄🏽♀️ , Shannon Melero P.S. Dying to talk about anything other than elections? Our virtual film discussion of “You Can See Everything” is at 1 PM on Monday. RSVP here!  WHAT’S GOING ONThe work starts now: There is a line from the 2010 film “The Social Network” that has been playing on a loop in my mind all week. When Andrew Garfield’s character realizes he’s been completely screwed over by Zuck, he delivers the now-iconic Prada flip-flops monologue that ends with, “You better lawyer up, asshole, ’cause I’m not coming back for my 30 percent, I’m coming back for everything!” On Tuesday, with a nationwide roar, the Democrats finally stepped into their Coming Back for Everything Era. On Wednesday morning, hope and optimism ranneth over. But so, judging by the “please don’t ruin this” jokes circulating online, did just a gentle sprinkling of skepticism. So we talked to four powerhouses about how Democrats—and especially the historic number of women—who won office should seize this moment. “Don’t fuck it up, respectfully.”On Tuesday night, Allie Phillips won her race for state legislator representing Tennessee’s District 75. It was a race she felt compelled to enter for the first time in 2024, after she learned that her 19-week fetus wasn’t viable and had to navigate her state’s draconian abortion ban. She lost that longshot race, but then flipped the district in 2026. The first bill on my agenda is Miley’s Law, a bill [named after the baby I lost] that would add an exception to our state’s current abortion ban. It would give parents the right to decide termination if they are diagnosed with fatal fetal anomalies. But first on the agenda in general is to start building some relationships, because I’m going into a supermajority GOP [state House] and if I want any bills of mine to have a chance at breathing air and seeing the light, I’m gonna have to have Republican sponsorship and backing. So I have to play nice with those who attack communities that I care deeply about so I can get bills passed to hopefully help those same communities.  IF THIS PICTURE HAD A SOUND, IT WOULD BE THE BRIDGE TO “I’M NOT READY TO MAKE NICE.” (IMAGE COURTESY OF ALLIE PHILIPS) And what should Democrats do with their momentum? Don’t fuck it up, respectfully. Do not forget the people that got you elected: working-class Americans, marginalized groups of people, Black and brown people. They are the ones that showed up. Women, they showed up. Don’t lose sight of the goal, and that’s to make their country, or their state, or their district a place where people can thrive and actually afford to live and raise their children and have a good quality of life. “We invest in care over war and violence, period.”Anurima Bhargava, a civil rights lawyer and filmmaker, has been working on campaigns for nearly 30 years. This cycle, she spent time in Michigan, Georgia, Virginia, and Illinois, where she lives. We can safeguard these victories by continuing to build the bonds of community. Part of authoritarianism is an extraordinary form of narcissism; what women bring is a sense of community. We were bringing carloads of women to Michigan this week. We know what it means to all get on a bus and organize folks. [And in terms of who got elected] it’s important to have women governors who will put issues like paid leave and minimum wage front and center. We invest in care over war and violence, period. And one more thing: If you betray the safety and dignity of women—if your name is, say, Vivek Ramaswamy or Susan Collins—it’s going to come back to haunt you. The things that have captured all of our attention [are things like] sexual violence and domestic violence, the Epstein files. I hope we see that, in a time of such trauma, the opposite of trauma is agency and we see the power of women’s agency coming back. “It’s easy to forget what Congress does because it hasn’t been doing its job the last two years.”Fatima Goss Graves, the CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, a lawyer, and a longtime advocate for gender justice. We shouldn’t brush by the fact that there’s going to be a historic number of women in Congress. Congress is the first part of the Constitution for a reason. Article One, that’s Congress. They not only pass the laws, they hold the purse strings; they provide the oversight. So they need to do things like prioritize affordable and high-quality childcare and paid leave and care for those who are aging and disabled. They have to deal with the crisis in our healthcare system. And a big part of that is the terrible One Big Beautiful Bill. OBBBA needs to be repealed. [When] we cut Medicaid and SNAP and defund Planned Parenthood—those were Congressional decisions over the last two years…Congress has power.  ONE OF THE NEW FACES HEADED TO CONGRESS, MELAT KIROS OF COLORADO. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) It’s easy to forget what Congress does because it hasn’t been doing its job. Congress has not been looking at the abuses coming out of the Department of Defense. Congress has not been looking at the fact that our civil rights enforcement agencies have been gutted and what that means for people. [Our new elected officials] will be a sound check on an administration that had just gotten out of control. “We need to reimagine the way democracy functions.”Hannah Fried, the co-founder and CEO of All Voting is Local. Fried is also featured in the docuseries “Nevertheless: Democracy Defenders.” What we know about this election is that the groups that were targeted by this administration…came out to vote, in spite of the most concerted effort since the Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960s to stop people from voting. The [administration’s] interest in suppressing voting is very clear: their threats against election workers, their flirting with sending ICE to polling places, the effort to remove people from voter rolls—all of that was real. And I think what happened is that the American people resoundingly said, fuck off. People do not want to live in a place that is predicated on meanness and cruelty. They want freedom, and that includes freedom to vote.  But that doesn’t mean we should let our guard down. What the last few years have taught us is that we need to reimagine the way that democracy functions. There is a better way to [run] our elections! Since the country was founded, our elections have been used to keep people out. To me, an election has integrity when we get meaningful participation in it. Voters were waiting for hours in many states….We need to handle elections properly, and I’m hopeful that with new legislators coming in, we’ll get more energy for that. So where do we go next? We should have expansive opportunities to vote early. People are working three jobs at a time—why should they only be able to vote between 7am and 7pm? That doesn’t work for people with kids, people with family obligations. Why would we make people jump through all these hoops just to register? That’s unacceptable, and it is rooted in an ugly history in this country that we don’t have to tolerate. AND:
 CHISHOLM SPEAKING AT THE DNC IN 1972. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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