Voters Repudiate Trump as Democrats Rout Republicans

While some races remain too close to call, the take away from yesterday's elections is that the Felon and Republicans were dealt a massive defeat, with Democrats retaking control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with comfortable margins.  Texas and Georgia both elected Democrat U.S. senators and governors and Kansas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time in nearly 100 years. In state after state the GOP nightmare scenario unfolded  and locally in the 1st and 2nd congressional districts both incumbent Republicans went down to defeat. The Felon had demanded that voters act as if he were on the ballot and voters took that to heart and handed the Felon a huge repudiation and rejected numerous congressional Republicans who had repeatedly rubber stamped the Felon's horrible policies.  In most races, the Felon's hand picked candidates lost and the redistricting the Felon demanded in states like Florida and Texas failed to help elect more Republicans.  The Felon, of course, will take no responsibility for the electoral rout, but among Republicans it will be difficult to avoid the Felon for the disaster that unfolded. One question that remains is whether those Republicans who managed to cling to office will realize that the Felon has become toxic and that they are free to defy him.  One thing for certain, there must be ketchup all over the White House.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the situation:

[The Felon] President Trump has been the dominant political figure of this century. He pulled off one of the most unlikely campaign victories in American history, and then staged the greatest political comeback. He has altered the United States’ relationship with the world, rewritten the rules and expectations of the presidency, inflamed the nation’s divisions, and changed how—and how often—Americans think about his office. He is omnipresent, and draws his power from that ubiquity.

But tonight, Trump has been forced to face his political mortality. He asked voters to make these midterm elections a referendum on him, to imagine that his name was on the ballot. They listened—and then rejected him. It is a stunning, widespread rebuke. Democrats appear poised to win the House and, if trends hold, could also capture the Senate after Americans registered their strong disapproval of the direction in which the president has taken the country over the past two years. Trump will now likely have to deal with congressional Democrats who could block his agenda and wield the power of the subpoena. He also must face the possibility that the political party he remade in his image may soon start looking beyond him. Donald J. Trump is now officially, thoroughly a lame duck.

But we haven’t heard the last of him. He remains the commander in chief, dominates global affairs, wields the expansive power of executive orders, and remains unequaled at capturing attention.

Yet for all his power, for all his volume, he cannot browbeat the unrelenting calendar: The next national election will be the one to replace him. Trump will before long begin to slip in the headlines, pushed off the front page by the presidential campaign. He’ll face the possibility of being succeeded by a Democratic president who could employ the Department of Justice to plumb the previous four years and look into Trump’s allies, friends, family, and businesses. And he’ll confront arguably his greatest fear: irrelevance. . . . . Tonight’s expected losses will not humble him. But they mark the beginning of the end.

Trump’s midterm campaign ended in the most ridiculous, yet predictable, way possible. For months, the president had been accused of being out of touch, of losing his once-unmatched feel for what animated his supporters. He has mocked affordability concerns while his own fortune has swelled, started a war that Americans did not want, remodeled the White House, and planned various monuments to himself. And then yesterday, he decided that the best way to push back against the accusation that he’d been consumed with vanity projects and corrupt bargains would be to deliver the final speech of the campaign cycle at the site of his most absurd, failed renovation project. . . . Worst of all, the detour to revisit the Reflecting Pool distracted from Trump’s true closing message: that Senator Jon Husted of Ohio has a great body.

Trump was a late entrant on the campaign trail, and had to be talked into holding rallies over the past month or so. But once he was, he insisted that the election be about himself and his successes, and make no acknowledgment of any missteps or empathy for those who are struggling. . . . But these road shows weren’t quite the same as those that became the defining political event of the past decade.

They were smaller than normal, and few were outdoors (in part because of security concerns). One rally in Ohio in the campaign’s final fortnight was held in a small gym, and others featured plenty of empty seats. More striking was where the rallies were held: nearly half in deep-red states where Trump has easily won in the past and has rarely needed to campaign. . . . But the geography also told a story: Trump had to visit Republican strongholds such as South Carolina and Montana because seats in those states were suddenly in play and his faithful had to be summoned. But once there, what did Trump really have to offer?

He forced out multiple incumbent senators for being disloyal and backed some problematic candidates, all of which put more races into play. He gave Republican candidates very little to run on, as voters furiously reacted to an economy that seemed to benefit only the rich (a category that includes the president’s family and Cabinet). Instead, Trump tried to recycle culture-war issues from campaigns past, including fears about transgender surgeries, Muslim terrorists, and even communism.

He seemed out of step not just with the public but, in many cases, with his own party. Despite warnings that AI could wipe out humanity (or at least a lot of jobs), Trump backed the nascent technology and its data centers—even as the public turned on them—because tech companies are propping up the stock market. He supported a controversial attack ad in the Ohio governor’s race that the state’s Republican governor denounced. He sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine. He threatened to once more bomb Iran. And there really was a lot of talk about butts, which will surely confuse future historians.

Trump took to social media to duck blame—and contradict the central message of his campaign, writing, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump is now in a new place, and one he won’t like.

In his first midterm election, in 2018, Democrats gained control of the House, but that victory was offset by GOP wins in the Senate.  . . . The Democratic Party’s approval ratings remain low, and although not being a Republican boosted many Democrats in this year’s campaign, that won’t be the case going forward. Jeffries has signaled that he will focus on measures to try to address affordability and health-care challenges. Democrats are going to say “no” a lot, and now that it appears that they will capture the Senate too, they will likely make it difficult for Trump to confirm any of his nominees, including possible Supreme Court justices.

But the Democratic Party’s base is hungry to hold the Trump administration accountable: for DOGE’s destruction of the government, for war, for foreign business deals masquerading as diplomacy, for profiting off the presidency. Accusations of corruption against Trump and his administration have proliferated compared with in his first term. Democrats have promised to issue subpoenas and parade administration officials through the Capitol’s hearing rooms . . .

Trump is leery about some of the possible investigations and does not want to be impeached again. (Democrats might be more inclined to try to oust a Cabinet member anyway.) The probes he likely faces next year could act as a preview of what would happen in 2029 if a Democratic president follows him. Trump enjoys a sort of immunity granted by the Supreme Court, and he has vowed to give preemptive pardons to many people in this administration. Yet advisers say he is unhappy at the prospect of his inner circle facing punishing investigations once he leaves office.

Trump also may start to see the complete fealty of the Republican Party erode. This stunning midterms wipeout suggests that Trump’s instincts and influence seem to be waning, and Republicans may be more willing to defy him. As the next round of presidential contenders begins to emerge, Republicans will begin to sort out what their post-MAGA future will look like—and what role, if any, Trump plays in it.