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Back in May 2016, Sen. Lindsey Graham looked at the rotten husk of corruption, bigotry, and ignorance that was his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, and he recoiled.
“If we nominate Trump,” he famously tweeted, “we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”
Trump of course ended up securing the nomination. Then he had the luck of the cursed in winning the presidency while losing the popular vote, and has squatted like a repugnant orange boil on our politics ever since.
In the decade since, Trump has suffered serious setbacks — notably managing to lose an Alabama Senate seat in 2017 and reelection in 2020. Coup attempts, a jury holding him liable for sexual assault, daily assaults on democracy and decency — all of it has made him a historically unpopular president. But partisan hypocrites and stooges like Lindsey Graham, who knew better, rallied to him for the cause of destroying abortion rights, establishing Christofascism, and partisan victory.
As a result, Trump never suffered the complete and brutal rebuke from the electorate that he deserved.
Until now.
As this is written in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, it’s clear that polls predicting a blue tsunami had if anything understated its height and breadth.
Democrats yesterday won a House popular vote victory larger than any since the 1974 Watergate elections. As a result, they secured a sizable majority in the House of Representatives, flipping deep red seats like IN-5 (Trump +17) and holding on to freshly gerrymandered districts like FL-25 (Trump +9). Further down the ballot, Democrats were on course to win a governing trifecta in what was until recently the red state of Arizona. Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black governor in US history by winning in Georgia.
Democrats also did what seemed impossible a year ago and flipped the Senate, winning states like Ohio, Texas, and Kansas that have been red for decades.
In perhaps the most stunning and satisfying upset, Democrat Annie Andrews won Lindsey Graham’s old seat in South Carolina. Graham himself died of a cardiac event earlier this year. Trump insisted on backing his utterly unqualified sister Darline Graham in the primary, alienating South Carolina Republican electeds and, as it turns out, voters. The race wasn’t even that close in the end; Andrews won by 4 points.
The brutal drubbing is more than just karma. It’s a broad rebuke of Trump’s massively unpopular policies — his war with Iran, his tariffs, his corruption, the violent gestapo he has unleashed on Black, brown, and immigrant communities.
Perhaps even more importantly, the scale of the Democratic victories, up and down the ballot, give them significant power to investigate and stymie the GOP’s evil agenda. Trump will remain president, and as such he has the ability and the will to do great harm. But just as he has never suffered such an unprecedented election loss, he is now likely to, and must, face unprecedented opposition.
Everybody hates Trump
Two years ago, when Trump won a narrow victory in the presidential election, elites all reacted as if he had established a mandate for a 1,000-year Reich.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gutted the Washington Post to curry favor with the orange one and turned its editorial page hard right. Top law firms made deals with Trump and shuffled away from their voting rights work. Universities abandoned DEI policies as Trump illegally threatened their funding.
These capitulations all seemed based on the assumption that Trump would rule forever, and that there would never be a reckoning for bribery or collusion with repulsive fascists.
Now, though, only a very, very foolish elite could believe that Trump, or Trumpism, will hold power in perpetuity with no pushback. Rather than looking like an unstoppable foe, Trump has revealed himself as one of the all-time all-time weakest and most unpopular presidents. Exit polls suggest he was more unpopular with voters than any midterm president going back to 2006, when Bush was losing the Iraq war — numbers in line with his dreadful mid-30s overall approval.
Elites know there will be hearings. They know that there will likely, at some time in the next few years, be a Democratic administration again. Do they want to make themselves targets? At least some of them, very likely, do not.
Trump also gratuitously and vindictively sandbagged his own party, meddling disastrously in not one, not two, but three Senate contests. His antipathy led Thom Tillis to decide not to run for reelection in North Carolina, allowing Democrat Roy Cooper to romp to victory by 20 points — flipping the uber-gerrymandered North Carolina State House in the bargain.
Then, in addition to foisting the hapless Darline Graham on South Carolina, Trump backed the staggeringly corrupt and personally repulsive Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary over longtime incumbent and merely bog-standard awful Sen. John Cornyn. Democrat James Talarico hammered Paxton’s corruption relentlessly during the campaign and absolutely crushed him — he appears likely to win by double digits. More, it Paxton’s name on the ticket may have had downballot effects, helping Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeat longtime incumbent Greg Abbott, one of the GOP’s most evil and most seemingly undefeatable figures.
In the past, Republicans have mostly eaten whatever orange shit Trump stuffed into them and bellowed, “Please sir, may I have more!” That’s because they feared his connection to the base and his power in primaries. Most people in Congress figured that they were in safe red districts, and that as long as they stuck to Trump, all would be well.
But even the dimmest Republican has to have noticed the giant Trump-shaped abyss opening beneath their feet last evening.
Incumbent Trump lickspittle goons lost Senate seats in deep red Ohio, in deep red Texas, in deep red Kansas, Iowa, and South Carolina. They lost red districts that went for Trump by 10-15 points in 2024. They lost districts that were gerrymandered expressly for them. They came perilously close to losing a Senate seat in Florida — and even Mississippi was too close to call with votes still waiting to be counted early this morning.
It is now manifestly obvious that through his strategy, through his unpopularity, through his indifference, Trump is leading the GOP to doom.
That certainly doesn’t mean Republicans will all abandon him. But if Democrats put forward legislation to defund Trump’s massively unpopular war, or to rescind his unpopular tariffs, or to wind down his vicious ICE kidnappings, or to force the release of more Epstein files, there are going to be a certain number of GOP senators and representatives who wonder whether they really want to tie themselves to a lame and sinking duck.
Democrats empowered
If Republicans are scared and disorganized, Democrats are going to be supercharged. In part that’s because they recognize that their voters have put them in office to derail Trump’s ugly agenda. But it’s also because the overwhelming victory gives them real power.
Solid majorities in both House and Senate means Democrats cannot be undermined by the odd assholery of a Fetterman or Henry Cuellar. In the Senate they should be able to block unqualified nominees at will — and should be pushed to refuse to seat any nominee, given the repudiation of the nominator. They will have a powerful consensus for a range of hearings — including, hopefully, impeachment hearings for minions like Hegseth, and for Trump himself when he inevitably does escalating impeachment-worthy things. And while Democrats may not be able to override presidential vetoes in most cases, they may well do so in one or two.
Downballot victories are also crucial. Trump will no doubt push for more gerrymandering if he can. But with unified Republican control broken in Texas, Georgia, Ohio (where Amy Acton won the governor’s race), New Hampshire (where Democrats flipped both the House and Senate), and more, it will be an uphill battle for him. On the other hand, the Democratic move to push through blue gerrymanders in states like Virginia, New York, Illinois, New Jersey — and perhaps now Arizona — all look more feasible given obvious electoral rage against the GOP.
Similarly, the strengthening of Democratic state power makes it much harder for Trump to try to steal the election in 2028 as he did in 2020. Most swing states — like Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire — have Democratic governors and/or secretaries of state. Trump has precious few Republican hench-thugs in a position to bow to his pressure, which substantially reduces his options for meddling.
More, the blue tsunami puts Democrats in a very strong position to win a national trifecta in 2028. Two years is a long time in politics, but the next Senate map is, for once, not that bad — certainly not bad enough for Democrats to drop four or five seats in a year when they win the presidency.
If Trump’s popularity continues as it is — or falls even further — Democrats are very likely to end up in control of Congress and the presidency. That means they can expand the Supreme Court, as they seem increasingly willing to do. And that creates the possibility for real progressive change as we have not seen for decades.
The next fight
No victory is permanent, in general or in politics, and Trump and his Christofascist Republican movement will continue to launch wars, kidnap non-white people off the streets, push to exterminate trans people, and on and on. Winning is important, but Democrats need to use the power they’ve gained to oppose the regime with real force, and voters and those who made the victory possible will need to continue to fight as well
But while the battle isn’t over, it is certainly easier after you’ve thrown your opponent into the dirt and stomped on him a few times. Thanks to the blue tsunami, we are in a better place now than we were last week. If Lindsey Graham were alive, he would be vindicated, and very, very sad.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
With the utmost sincerity, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood….” 💪❣️
Here's hoping the Democrats use widely the unexpectedly great powers and opportunities that now befall them. If only Lindsay Graham's prophecy had come true much, much earlier!.
I think Noah over-reached when he said the Republicans tried to 'exterminate' trans people but let us surely hope they have learned that banging on againts trans people is not a winning tactic. Why, oh why can't ignorant people just leave this small minority alone? It oughtn't be too hard a thing to ask.