The midterm election moment is fast approaching. While the catchy bromide of “All politics is local” makes sense, every national election can potentially impact every city, village or far-flung rural outpost. Local public policy might shift with national outcomes. Local races are likely to address the perceived benefit or harm produced by the most recent national electoral results. This midterm will almost certainly create seismic shifts that reshape political landscapes, here, there and everywhere.
Oak Park is now wrestling with an advisory referendum related to boycotting the state of Israel, a “traffic diverter” controversy, policing of “teen takeovers,” and resolving the West Suburban Hospital situation, among other very local matters. But for the past 21 months, local politics has operated under a dark cloud of national uncertainty.
Will Nov. 3 at least begin to stop the bleeding? Best local case scenario: the midterm outcome could eventually result in Nik, the barber taken by ICE months ago, returning to his job at the Oak Park Arms and to his home in Elmwood Park. Nationally, it could result in some measure of attaining accountability for a renegade, virtually lawless Republican Party. The radical recklessness of the GOP is embodied by Nik’s being snatched by gestapo-like ICE thugs that every Oak Parker knows about and with whom some may have had close encounters themselves. On even the most tranquil, soft and sunny day in our village, brutal national policy is capable of shattering any such serenity. It must be stopped.
Will there be a “Blue Wave”? We shall see. Will the Democrat Party come through? Well, since it’s either Red or Blue on the ballot (with some rare exceptions) the 21st-century version of the Party of Clinton, Obama and Biden is our best hope. The Donkeys owe many, many millions of us a change of strategies. That is, a winning strategy.
In the March, 2026, issue of the Atlantic an article titled, “Why Do Democrats Hate Winning?” answers that question with many examples of ill-conceived messaging on the campaign trail. The perception of the Democratic Party needing young, fresh leadership is summed up in the article by quoting David Hogg, the 25-year-old gun-regulation advocate (and survivor of the February 2018 Marjorie Stoneman High School shooting in Florida): “You cannot tell the American people that democracy is in danger and the world is ending, and the people you are putting on the front lines of fighting back against that genuinely belong in a nursing home.”
Time for a change. On so many levels.
Joseph Harrington
Oak Park