Last night was an absolute wipeout for the Trumpian MAGA Republican Party. It lost the House, it lost the Senate, it lost most governor’s mansions, it lost statehouses, it even lost Texas, Kansas, and (probably) Mississippi. This was easily one of the biggest landslide elections in modern American midterm history, at least since 1974 – the election that immediately followed the Nixon resignation and Watergate. It was a total repudiation of everything the Trump administration has done over the past 2 years, if not the entire movement he has led for a decade.
There will be a great deal to say about this over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, but here are some of my first thoughts on this truly historic result.
Share
It Wasn’t Just About Iran (or Israel)
The recriminations over this staggering loss have already begun, and they’ll continue for a very long time. But right now, we have seen a very clear trend as to what, and who, is to blame. What the majority of the online New Right/MAGA influencers – including the sitting Vice President, who seems more interested in engaging in Twitter beefs than he is in helping to run the country – are hyperfixated on as the convenient scapegoat for this defeat is the Iran War and the country they believe forced us into it (Israel, naturally). The war has indeed been unpopular and it has spiked gasoline prices, both things that militate in favor of this view. But this is only a portion of the real story here. The biggest issue with the war is not that it was started, but that the New Right folks, led by Vance, forced a counterproductive ceasefire that did not improve gas prices or make the president and his party more popular. Instead of winning the war, the administration chose to pause it and negotiate. This was a catastrophic choice. Still, if this was the issue that really turned the tide, the proponents of this approach would be more right than wrong. But that’s not at all the case.
If you look at exit polling, Trump’s approval rating over time, or the actual factors causing broad price increases – exactly the issue Trump was elected to fix – the picture becomes a lot muddier. The Iran War was a factor in voting results, but a smaller one than corruption, affordability in general, and immigration enforcement were. The turn against Trump, and therefore Republicans in general, on the handling of the economy came after the announcement of universal tariffs and their implementation. The generic ballot shows the exact same timing, with Republicans falling behind Democrats once the ridiculous tariff war against the rest of the world was launched. Tariffs remain very unpopular among voters, and they said as much in exit polling. The Vance-ites never mention this reality, as it would indict their preferred policies as a proximate cause of this astounding defeat. Instead, they prefer to place the entirety of the blame on the war against Iran (while saying nothing at all about how they would have handled the rapidly growing nuclear threat from Tehran), bringing Israel into it for good measure. The inclusion of Israel is an interesting thing, as it was essentially a total non-issue in the election outside of particular precincts (Michigan being the notable one). Once again, this speaks not only to deflection but to a deliberate misstatement of the causes of this electoral defeat, intended to craft a narrative that the New Right was right all along. In reality, the New Right has been a major force in this administration, failing all along the way and alienating voters in the process. They own this as much as anyone else, surely more than the phantom “neocons” they blame for everything.
This profound a defeat was necessarily multivariate in nature. No one thing caused a loss this devastating and total. But if you look at the data, it is clear when the worm turned against the GOP: after the imposition of tariffs. That is when the economic message of the administration – once again, the major issue it got elected to solve – became unpopular. Everything else since then has merely exacerbated this preexisting issue. Ignoring the original sin in favor of more recent issues that amplify the existing concern is a cynical attempt to preserve the political future of a movement that has very clearly failed.
Trumpism is Dead
Donald Trump is a lame duck president. He already was, given his status as a term-limited politician who has sky-high personal unpopularity numbers, but this election sealed the deal. He will accomplish precisely nothing durable outside of foreign affairs without the cooperation of Democrats who despise every fiber of his being. Everything he has done, is doing, or will do in the future will be investigated by Democrats in Congress, slowing progress to a halt and tying up the administration in lengthy and complicated legal battles. And that’s before the inevitable impeachments.
Given those indisputable facts, combined with the cult of personality that is Trumpism/MAGA, the movement is either dead or mortally wounded. Trump’s endorsement was less than helpful to his preferred candidates; indeed, it was the kiss of death for many. Trump is simply not the kingmaker he has been for a decade. The electorate repudiated him and everything tied to him, in a quite aggressive manner. The policies pushed by MAGA have largely failed, and the brash and uncompromising style of the movement didn’t help sell them to persuadable voters who pulled the lever for Trump just 2 years ago. The coalition that brought him back to the Oval Office has collapsed and the politicians it supported have been drummed out of Washington (and states like Texas and Georgia). Trump is essentially radioactive now, something that will likely stain anyone associated with this administration going forward.
The long decade dominated by Donald J. Trump is over. What comes next is unpredictable and unsettled.
2028 Will be a Trip
And that brings us to the next election. (Yes, I know this one just ended, but that’s how politics works in 2026, folks!) The 2028 presidential contest is the first wide-open slate for both parties since 2016, and it comes with a president who is rapidly tanking in popularity, making him a liability for potential candidates of his party. That means that both sides of the aisle are going to face internal battles over their ideological, stylistic, and geographic futures. The reason for the Republican clash is obvious: Trumpism is a spent force and, if the current online recrimination cycle is anything to go by, the battle for what comes next is going to be an absolute slobberknocker.
But before we dive into that, this blue tsunami will also create or exacerbate potential fissures in the Democratic Party, pitting moderates against progressives/leftists/socialists. The big majority will be nice, but it will do two things to increase these tensions: 1) allow the introduction or passage of bills that will inevitably be vetoed, but will prove to be signaling measures for base voters (think gun bans, wealth taxes, Medicare for All) and 2) set the potential Democrat president in 2029 up to have a large governing majority in Congress with which to pass major legislation. These will drive intra-Democrat feuds that will play out in what will likely be an extraordinarily crowded field of candidates.
But the Democratic infighting is nothing like what we will see (and are already seeing) on the other side. The clash to establish the next regnant iteration of the American right is going to be a bloodbath. Not only are the ideas diametrically opposed – free trade versus protectionism, international strength versus isolationism, bigger government versus smaller government, populism versus conservatism – the people driving the movements are, let’s say, not exactly the best of friends. The tenor of the vitriol is intense, mirroring the passion of the underlying political arguments. Trump’s unpopularity will only make this fight more important and thus antagonistic. He will not be able to put his thumb on the scale, and association with his administration may end up being disqualifying for potential candidates like Vance and Rubio. This opens up a whole new avenue for outsider candidates, whether literal (governors like Brian Kemp (GA), Ron DeSantis (FL), and Glenn Youngkin (VA)) or figurative (businessmen, celebrities, Tucker Carlson). Ideological combat will be at the heart of the campaign, and a great deal of that will be fought out online, in the pages of the right-leaning press, and in visual and auditory media. Which means you’ll be seeing a lot of that fight right here, as I surely do not intend on leaving the arena just when things heat up.
Buckle up, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
Nothing in Politics is Permanent
I’ll conclude with this: the only constant in American politics is change. Elections ping-pong between parties almost every cycle, especially in the 21st century and the age of social media. But even when things were a bit less mercurial, like when Democrats controlled the House of Representatives from 1955 to 1981, change was still in the offing. (And Democrats did indeed lose control under Reagan.) Ideological, geographic, and coalitional shifts still occurred. Politics in the US swings like a pendulum, often driven by the party in power declaring a “mandate” and overreaching on policy. Now is no different.
America is not dead and buried. Nor has it fallen to a communist takeover, a plague of foreigners, or Islamic fascism. This was not the most important election ever, nor will it be the last one ever. The fate of the world, or of the American experiment, or of your own family was not decided by this vote. (Yes, I’ve seen all these takes online since Tuesday.) Doomerism is both silly and unbecoming. The sun will rise tomorrow. The next election will happen. Democrats will assume that this election was a mandate for their most radical ideas instead of a repudiation of Trump and naturally overreach. And Republicans will have a chance to capitalize on their error – if they can get their own house in order.
That is the work that starts now for those of us on the right. We need to reset, restart, and rebuild a new coalition backed by better ideas, better policies, better rhetoric, and better people. All is not lost unless we allow it to be. So buck up, take your lumps, and get back in the saddle. It’s time to start anew.
Onward.
Share
%26stroke%3Dnone%26strokeWidth%3D3.6){kind=small}
