Those who believe in democracy and in environmental and social justice have a far more difficult task, both to sell to voters and to accomplish, Hurst wrote.
In Michigan, voters chose a man who responded to a hate-filled question about sharia law with disarming, acerbic humour about shawarma law instead, Hurst wrote.
He asked whether it was any surprise that, when there is clarity about the choice on offer, voters have started to shrink away from a vision fuelled by billionaire wealth and runaway inequality.
Hurst did not claim either side of the Atlantic had an easy route from that Wednesday morning onward.
The column presented the U.S. results as a moment of relief rather than a finished realignment.
The shift did not happen only because voters were angry and Democrats offered anger in return, Hurst wrote. It happened because they were angry and a slate of exceptional candidates said they were too, and that it did not have to be this way. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt recognised that liberal democracy, faced with an existential threat, had to evolve to survive, the column said.
In part, the youngest generation of voters, who have only ever known Trumpism, massively rejected everything Trump has birthed, he said. That rejection echoed down the ballot, all the way to state legislatures and school boards. Hurst said there are dozens of stories like these that have temporarily transformed scrolling from an experience of doom to one of hope.