在明尼阿波利斯的尼科莱特大道上，有一个长达九个月的临时纪念碑，纪念注册护士亚历克斯·普雷蒂。在去年冬天的该市驱逐行动中，他在试图保护同行抗议者时被联邦特工开枪打死。周二，明尼苏达州选民在该州的参议院竞选中投下选票后，许多人将“我已投票”的贴纸贴在纪念碑的一根路灯柱上，仿佛在完成一幅画面。这些举动暗示了今年中期选举的某种特点——随着夜幕渐深，这一点被证明是事实：这是一场有着不同寻常道德利害关系的平凡事件。
For nine months, on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, there has been a makeshift memorial for Alex Pretti, the registered nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents while trying to shield a fellow-protester during last winter’s deportation campaign in the city. On Tuesday, after Minnesotans cast their ballots in the state’s Senate race, many of them pressed their “I voted” stickers onto a lamppost at the memorial, as if completing a picture. The gestures suggested something about this year’s midterm elections that, as the evening wore on, turned out to be true: that it was a mundane event that held unusual moral stakes.
自从唐纳德·特朗普赢得连任以来的两年里，他一直将国家推向边缘。特朗普在2024年仅赢得微弱的总统多数票，他的政党在国会两院也仅以微弱席次维持多数。即便如此，当总统推行侵蚀联邦政府的项目、毫无意义且代价高昂的关税、对移民采取的专制镇压权力以及无能的对伊朗战争时，他几乎没有遇到体制上的阻力。他能够追求这些目标，是因为他已经说服了他所在党派的大多数人以及许多公众，让他们相信他对卡马拉·哈里斯的胜利意味着半个国家将不可逆转地站在他这一边。
During the two years since Donald Trump won reëlection, he has pushed the country toward a brink. Trump won only a narrow Presidential majority in 2024, and his party held a majority in each chamber of Congress by just a few seats. Even so, the President faced little institutional resistance as he pushed the federal government-eroding program, the senseless and costly tariffs, the authoritarian power of the crackdown on migrants, the feckless Iran war. He could pursue these goals because he had convinced most of his party, and many members of the public, that his victory over Kamala Harris meant that half of the country would irrevocably be on his side.
中期选举的结果仍在陆续揭晓。但选民对总统的否决是不容置疑且明确无误的，而且深入到了长期以来被视为保守派腹地的地区。他的政党在俄亥俄州的参议院竞选中失利——在密歇根州也似乎将告负——那里的后工业经济长期以来一直是特朗普主义的象征性核心。在得克萨斯州失利，民主党在过去一百多场全州范围的竞选中未尝胜绩，这一纪录可追溯至1994年；在南卡罗来纳州也失利了。
The results of the midterm votes are still rolling in. But the rejection of the President is undeniable and uncomplicated, and it reached deep into what had long been understood as conservative territory. His party has lost its Senate race in Ohio—and looks likely to lose in Michigan—where the post-industrial economy had long supplied the symbolic heart of Trumpism. It has lost in Texas, where Democrats had not won a statewide race in more than a hundred contests, stretching back to 1994, and in South Carolina.
在爱荷华州和堪萨斯州失利，后者自大萧条以来从未选出过民主党参议员。在堪萨斯州西南部的一些县，特朗普两年前曾以约三十五个百分点的优势获胜——芬尼县、苏厄德县、福特县——而在该州联邦参议员竞选的计票过程中，这些县却以微弱优势投给了民主党候选人。十年来，美国习惯了一张固定的选举地图——城市呈蓝色，周边地区深红。如今，边缘地带出现了一些动荡。
It has lost in Iowa and in Kansas, which has not seated a Democratic senator since the Great Depression. There are counties in southwestern Kansas where Trump won two years ago by about thirty-five points—Finney County, Seward County, Ford County—that, as the tallies accumulated in the state’s U.S. Senate race, were voting narrowly for the Democrat. For a decade, the country had become used to a fixed map—blue in the cities, deep red in the outlying areas. Now there is some instability around the edges.
某个具体议题，或一位格外疲软的共和党候选人，或许能解释个别竞选的结果。但事实是，特朗普执政的过去两年给了选民一份拒绝他的理由菜单。在南得克萨斯，可能是移民突击搜捕的残酷；在堪萨斯州，是伊朗战争对柴油和化肥价格的影响；在南卡罗来纳州，是一位选得特别糟糕的共和党候选人。在漫长的特朗普十年里，许多自由派曾认为保守派对文化战争极其痴迷，以至于在政治上对现实事件免疫。但这一次，在这些地方，消息传了进去。所有因素都发挥了作用。
One specific issue, or an especially weak Republican candidate, might make sense as an explanation in particular races. But the truth is that Trump’s past two years have offered voters a menu of reasons to turn away from him. In South Texas, it might have been the cruelty of the immigration raids; in Kansas, the effect of the Iran war on diesel and fertilizer prices; in South Carolina, an especially poorly chosen Republican candidate. Over the course of the long Trump decade, many liberals had come to assume that conservatives were so devoted to the culture war that they were politically impervious to events. But this time, in such places, the news made it through. All of it mattered.
美国政坛的局势似乎有些突然地变得扑朔迷离。民主党近来一直被视为一个老迈、守势的实体，带着一种“养老院”的外表。但今年的竞选活动推高了一批更年轻、更新的民主党人（佐治亚州的乔恩·奥索夫、得克萨斯州的詹姆斯·塔拉里科、密歇根州的阿卜杜勒·赛义德），他们觉得理所当然地谴责现状中的寡头和威权成分，并将自己与党内某些教条划清界限。
Somewhat suddenly, almost nothing in U.S. politics seems certain. The Democratic Party has lately been understood as an aging, defensive entity, with a nursing-home veneer. But this year’s campaigns have elevated a group of younger and newer Democrats (Jon Ossoff, in Georgia; James Talarico, in Texas; Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan) who have found it quite natural to denounce the oligarchic and authoritarian elements of the status quo, and to separate themselves from some elements of the Party’s doctrine.
美国历史上近乎始终是最保守的南方，突然呈现出紫色（摇摆州）色彩。J·D·万斯还是下一任总统提名人的当然人选吗？共和党还会顺从地追随那个让它丢了得克萨斯州的男人吗？
The South, the most deeply conservative region in the country for nearly all of its history, suddenly has a purple hue. Is J. D. Vance still the presumptive next Presidential nominee? Will the Republican Party still pliably fall into line behind the man who lost it Texas?
尽管民主党取得了惊人的突破，其近期前景也有些模糊。党内斗争，在其激进的青年左派与传统党派之间，激烈到一度似乎挤占了美国政治的其余全部空间，至今仍未解决——双方都能声称获得正名，都能指出从中期选举中涌现出的新拥护者。民主党本身依然普遍不受欢迎。或许最重要的是，在自由派草根等待总统初选到来之际，低功率人物（哈基姆·杰弗里斯、查克·舒默）如今掌管大局。对于一个如今可能声称拥有多数派地位的政治阵营来说，民主党依然奇怪地“无面孔”。
And though the Democrats have made astonishing breakthroughs, their near-term future is a little cloudy, too. The intraparty fight, between its insurgent, youthful left and the legacy party, a contest intense enough that at times it seemed to crowd out the whole rest of American politics, is still unresolved—both sides can claim vindication, and can point to new champions emerging from the midterms. The Party itself remains generally unpopular. Perhaps most important, with the liberal grassroots awaiting a Presidential primary to come, lower-wattage figures (Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer) are now in charge. For a political formation that might now have a claim on a majority, the Democrats remain curiously faceless.
即便如此，清晨11点左右还是出现了一个清晰的时刻：福克斯新闻网闪过一张图表，预测民主党将赢得众议院的控制权：我们不再处于2024年的阴影之下了。在文化和政治上，保守派曾坚信，特朗普在那场选举中的胜利具有决定性意义，它反映了一种向“觉醒主义”、向国际主义、向关于性别或种族现代观念的顶点式转折——一个更加返祖的美国正在被释放。
Even so, one instance of clarity came around 11 , as Fox News flashed the graphic predicting that the Democrats would win control of the House of Representatives: we are no longer in the shadow of 2024. In culture and in politics, conservatives had insisted that Trump’s victory in that election was the defining one, and that it reflected a culminating turn against “wokeness,” against internationalism, against modern ideas about gender or race—a more atavistic America was being unleashed.
午夜刚过，特朗普打进福克斯新闻网，听起来有些异想天开且语无伦次。“这只是一个时间节点，”总统说，“我猜，当时空气中弥漫着一种情绪。”
Trump called into Fox News just after midnight, sounding a little whimsical and discursive. “It’s just a point in time,” the President said. “There was a mood in the air, I guess.”
或许，2024年大选及其所迎来的氛围，如今看起来更像是一个反常现象，而它代表着一个历史转折点的想法，则更像是少数有望从中受益的人的一厢情愿。过去两年的经历至关重要——这些经历被记录在各种地方，比如贴在明尼阿波利斯纪念碑上的“我投票了”贴纸上。埃隆·马斯克花费了近两亿美元来保持得克萨斯州的红色，而共和党人却把事情搞砸了。当然，今天早上的得克萨斯州看起来有些不同。这个国家看起来也有些不同。
In a similar way, perhaps, the 2024 election, and the atmosphere it ushered in, now looks a bit more like an aberration, and the idea that it represented a historical pivot seems more like the wishful thinking of a few people who stood to benefit from it. The experience of the past two years has mattered—tallied, among other places, in the “I voted” stickers that climbed up the memorial in Minneapolis. Elon Musk spent nearly two hundred million dollars to keep Texas red, and the Republicans blew it. Of course, it looks like a slightly different Texas, this morning. It looks like a slightly different country.