For educated Americans, Tuesday’s election was a great sigh of relief. The wheels are coming off the clown car; the American legislature will no longer be giving a demented fascist everything he wants. Americans can turn to the understandably furious Canadians and say: that is not who we are. Over and over, candidates ran against the tariffs and won.

For me, it’s the victories in Texas that are personal. I kept hearing people say “we don’t believe the polls, Texas can’t possibly go Democratic”, and I thought: that’s not my Texas. I lived in Texas for only a year, but I loved it then and still do – and I am a brown-skinned gender-fluid immigrant socialist. My Texas is the Austin costume shop with a wide variety of stiletto heels in men’s sizes. It’s the parade of girls in resplendent dresses getting their quinceañera pictures taken in the Dallas botanical gardens on a typical Sunday. It’s the miles of shops selling saris and barfi in the suburbs of Houston. It’s the old Spanish canals of downtown San Antonio, built before there was a United States. It’s the local chain supermarket selling dozens of kinds of dried chiles in bulk. It’s the Burning Man-inspired Meow Wolf immersive art exhibitions outside Dallas and Houston. It’s the Rio Grande Valley where 90% of the people are of Mexican origin. It’s Ethiopian barbecue fusion in a Dallas suburb. And this week, after a drought of more than thirty years, my Texas finally won at politics.

I’m proud of Gina Hinojosa, finally giving a Mexican-origin governor to a state where less than half the residents are white. I’m delighted that the state house and other statewide offices went Democratic too. But I’m absolutely tickled by the young senator-elect, James Talarico.