Americans Want to Move on From Trump: He's Not Listening

 In the lead up to last week's mid-term elections, the Felon repeatedly told crowds to vote as if he was on the ballot.  Voters all across the country listened to that directive and voted for Democrats up and down the ballot, both to protest the Felon's Nero like rule and, just as importantly, to punish Republicans voters viewed as the Felon's enablers and/or accomplices. The result was a generational defeat for Republicans and victories for Democrats in places once never thought possible even six months ago.  The message to anyone not delusional is that the majority of Americans want the country to return to the rule of law, ICE thugs to be removed from the nation's streets, programs restored that were cut to fund tax cuts for the super wealthy, and the Felon restrained and his corruption and lawlessness stopped.  In true malignant narcissist form, the Felon has denied any responsibility even as many in the GOP who survived the electoral debacle want a course change as the GOP faces a likely far more difficult 2028.  By appointing Stephen Miller - the architect of the Felon's cruel and inhumane deportation push - as his chief of staff, the Felon has signaled that he intends double down on the very policies that voters strongly rejected.  Where this leaves Republicans seeking to move forward and rebuild in preparation for 2028 is not enviable.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the election defeat and the lesson the Felon is ignoring:

Two generations ago, in the fall of 1974, President Gerald Ford and the Republican Party approached the midterm elections with considerable dread. That August, Richard Nixon had learned that he could no longer outrun his crimes in the White House. One tape recording in particular, the so-called smoking gun, proved that he had conspired with his aide H. R. Haldeman to obstruct the investigation into the Watergate break-in. The Republican elders Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Hugh Scott told Nixon that impeachment in the House of Representatives was now certain, and conviction in the Senate likely. Nixon resigned, handing over his office to Vice-President Ford. A month later, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, pardoning Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed as President.

Until then, despite a dreadful economy, Ford had enjoyed approval ratings as high as seventy per cent. But the Nixon pardon was political poison, for both Ford and the G.O.P. His popularity plummeted by more than twenty points. And, in the midterms, the Democrats gained forty-nine seats in the House and four seats in the Senate.

This week, some commentators, having exhausted the usual marine metaphors for midterm blowouts (a “blue wave” quickly became a “blue tsunami”), scurried to find historical points of comparison for the astonishing nationwide triumph of the Democratic Party. More than a few settled on the post-pardon midterms of 1974.

In sheer magnitude, this week’s Democratic victory—a sweeping repudiation, above all, of Donald Trump and the low, dishonest decade he has defined—makes the post-Watergate humbling seem modest. Both houses of Congress flipped, giving Democrats a substantial majority in each. The new Senate Majority Leader needn’t worry if, say, John Fetterman strolls across party lines. Nine of the ten most populous states will have Democratic governors. For those already anticipating the Presidential race in 2028, it’s significant that all the traditional battleground states (which Trump won just two years ago) have elected Democratic governors. The Party scored in unlikely places, particularly in the Midwest and the South. Texas, the second most populous state in the Union and reliably red for a generation, will have a Democratic senator (James Talarico), governor (Gina Hinojosa), and state House. Kansas—seriously, Kansas—elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in ninety-four years. Democrats also chalked up amazing wins in both Carolinas. The geographic shift was as pronounced as the demographic one.

The diversity of “firsts” was heartening. The first Muslim in the Senate: Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan. The first Black female governor: Keisha Lance Bottoms, in Georgia. The first Latino governors to be elected in Texas (Hinojosa) and California (Xavier Becerra). New Mexico will have the first female Native American governor (Deb Haaland), and Minnesota will send the first Native American woman ever to the Senate (Peggy Flanagan). Even the near-misses were stunners. . . . . This all happened after years in which the President and the Vice-President have deployed racist epithets, jokes, and myths.

The scale of the victory left no room for Trump to contrive a conspiracy theory and challenge the outcome. On Election Night, he was, by his perverse standards, gracious. He blamed Fox News for the Republican losses, “by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.” Separately, he claimed, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” #Classic.

The results were driven by the most urgent economic concerns of the voters: the spike in fuel prices, which followed the misbegotten tariffs and the war in Iran; the high cost of groceries, housing, and health care; and, for some, anxiety about data centers, artificial intelligence, and what all this portends for employment. But what is so striking about Trump’s second term is that he entered office intent, it now seems, on flaunting his cynicism, his greed, and his scorn for the American people. It was as if he actually meant to squander his support as quickly as possible. How else to explain the heedlessness of his behavior in office? On Day One, he gave pride of place at the Inauguration to a lineup of moguls who had agreed to bow to his power and his ego. . . . As in any tin-pot autocracy, this was the price of doing business. Trump’s populism was always a fraud. Now he plainly didn’t care who knew.

Trump has shown contempt for the law, as he hollowed out the Department of Justice and ordered federal agents to menace American cities from New York to Minneapolis to Los Angeles. He has shown contempt for culture and education, as he threatened and defunded one invaluable institution after another. He has shown contempt for competence, by stocking his Administration with preposterous, often odious, fourth-raters: Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller

Abroad, Trump’s contempt for restraints on his power has been equally conspicuous. The United States’ closest allies found themselves coping with his arbitrary tariffs, his threats to shatter alliances, and his periodic intimations of invasion.

The most consequential result of the midterms has been to break the fever of Trumpism and to diminish its threat to democratic institutions, to personal and civil liberties, and to decency itself. Trump’s unique brand of lurid authoritarianism has finally lost appeal, and he has lost the plot. The election was also a vindication for those who had refused to submit. We are all too familiar by now with the many politicians, law partners, billionaires, C.E.O.s, university presidents, and others who cowered before Trump. Part of the reason we will survive the Trump era is that many more did their work honorably. Judges, civil-rights lawyers, academics, election officials, curators, artists, and countless ordinary citizens stood up. Their resistance to Trump’s bullying, corruption, and heartlessness has gained new political force.

This is a moment of enormous relief and celebration. Trump can still do damage, and, in defeat, may prove even more unhinged and vengeful. But restraints in Congress and beyond are now far stronger. This aging autocrat, repudiated by an electorate he once believed to be under his spell, has been significantly weakened.

The next Congress will succeed not through an obsession with retribution and punishment but by delivering on the myriad hopes and demands of the voters who elected its members. The Democrats of 2026 have won an extraordinary opportunity. What they make of it will determine what this election means.