The internet reacts to the blue wave – and has young voters to thank

Democrat voters experienced a strange feeling as they woke up this morning. It wasn’t anxiety — that kind of pang you get in your stomach before receiving bad news. It wasn’t nervousness, either. It was this unfamiliar tingling sensation. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? It’s called hope.

“Hello 911, I’m experiencing a glimmer of hope,” said one tweet that summed up this unfamiliar turn of events as the Democrats took control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives (Texas went blue for the first time in 40 years; Kansas elected its first Democrat for almost 100 years) — effectively making President Donald Trump a lame duck. “Can’t sleep because my body is re-learning what it feels like to have something good happen,” said another tweet. “Haven’t felt this patriotic since Miley Cyrus put out ‘Party in the USA.’”

The celebratory memes have been thick and fast, and young people are leading the charge. Some of the most chronically online have joked that the era of “woke 3.0” is here. “Everyone put your pronouns back in your email signature by 10 a.m. tomorrow,” said one jokey tweet. “I haven’t libbed out like this in so many years…” said another rejoicing at the results rolling in.

“America is experiencing Knicks in 5 collectively right now,” said a reference to the communal joy experienced by New Yorkers after the NBA Championship win in June. The election results — which are still trickling in — have also led to the newly coined term “Bluenami,” the so-called blue wave to signify the weight of the Democrats’ flip of the House and Senate.

Young people are perhaps celebrating so hard because they played a significant part in this election result. According to the Associated Press Voter Poll, roughly seven in 10 voters aged 18 to 29 said they supported the Democratic House candidate in their district, with the main motivation being dissatisfaction with Trump. Two years ago, voters under 30 were roughly evenly split in their support for Trump and Kamala Harris. Young voters have become particularly disenchanted with Trump’s performance and policy agenda, the poll suggested.

With most of the results in, the internet is awash with hope core — a social media content trend centered around radical optimism. Instead of doomscrolling — swiping on your phone for hours in a pit of despair — people are hopescrolling, consuming joyful content that makes them feel (gasp!) encouraged about the state of politics for the first time since Joe Biden won the White House in 2020.

The internet’s response has been both joyful and darkly comic. Most people are seeing their X feeds restored to pre-Elon Musk times; unnerving, AI-pilled content has been overcome by witty jokes about the results and straight hope core posting. Chief among the memes is the revival of actor Parker Posey’s hilarious pronunciation of “tsunami” from the HBO series The White Lotus, in reference to the blue wave. Others have said these times have permitted us to be saccharine in our unbridled positivity. “Millennial optimism is back baby i’m blasting florence and the machine bass boosted the dog days ARE over,” one person said, as another added: “These are unfortunately the exact conditions for a Glee reboot.”

The online left is really “libbing out” right now. The “lib” part of “libbing out” stands for liberal, a political label used to describe voters on the left. The shortened version is often used in a derogatory manner by those on the right, but in recent times — especially after Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City Mayor last year — it has been reclaimed by online progressives. It’s no surprise that the online left have claimed the label — it is in their nature to use irony, dark humor and self-awareness as coping mechanisms for surviving American politics.

The evolution of the term “Talafreako” is one example. The president has ridiculously mocked the Texas Democratic elect James Talarico, calling him “Talafreako,” which only empowered his campaign. His supporters labelled themselves as “Talafreakos” and wore T-Shirts printed with the slogan. Musk poured more than $400 million into the Republican midterms campaign — but the online left, apparently, works harder.

No amount of money, as it turns out, could change the minds of those voters who have felt disenchanted by Trump’s priorities. At his final pitch for midterms on Monday, he used the first 24 minutes to talk about refurbishments of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, ranting about pipes, aromas and algae. “This is a massive piece of pool,” he said. Well, yes. This disenchantment was reflected in early voter turnout numbers, which showed just how much Americans wanted change. Turnout across the country was high for a midterm election: 54 million Americans cast their votes ahead of Tuesday, beating the numbers of the 2022 midterms by more than 9 million.

These are the types of numbers that make even the most jaded leftists engage in hope core. Young voters are feeling enthused by Democratic politics again, indulging in the utopian possibilities of what could be around the corner. We should let them lib out: it’s been a while, after all.