Back before Donald Trump was ever president, or even the Republican nominee, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made a bold prediction: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.”
That didn’t happen during Graham’s lifetime, but his prophecy has come true posthumously.
The Republican Party now faces disaster as Trump has led it over an electoral cliff in states where Republicans long held an iron grip. His tyrannical, corrupt and chaotic rule during his second term shattered his coalition and allowed Democrats to break through in states that they have salivated over for the past decade.
Democrats broke the dam in Georgia, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas on Tuesday, with Democratic senators elected in each one. State legislative and House gerrymanders collapsed as lawmakers lost to Democrats in races that had long been considered safely GOP. This will have major implications for political control in these states, to the detriment of Republicans, for years to come. This result is more 1974 than 2006. And it’s all Trump’s fault.
First and foremost, this election result stems from Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran — a long-held dream of Graham’s, ironically. Trump’s war shattered one of his biggest campaign promises: that he would not start another forever war in the Middle East. This pledge was never believable, considering how he ramped up bombing around the world in his first term, but nothing that had such disastrous ramifications as the Iran war. As was once said about Napoleon: “It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder.”
Trump’s tariffs — when combined with the Iran war, which drove up gas and diesel prices, and Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID, a program that purchased farm products for international aid — amounted to an all-out assault on farm communities across the Plains. Democrats took advantage and clinched major wins in Iowa and Kansas.
But Americans did not only rebuke Trump for reasons related to the war. His lawless pursuit of a mass deportation campaign attacking and killing Americans and noncitizens alike revolted Latino voters, who moved hard for Trump in the 2024 election. The racist assault on Latinos across the country drove them out of a coalition with Republicans and back into the arms of Democrats.
Just look at the results in Texas, where incoming Sen. James Talarico and incoming Gov. Gina Hinojosa won with massive Latino majorities, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, which went for Trump two years ago.
“Trump found himself surrounded by authoritarians, sycophants and trolls who believed their own spin that the 2024 election signaled a vibe shift for conservatives that could be locked in by a strongman enacting their wildest dreams.”
What these blunders revealed is that the people around Trump in his first terms really did hold him back from his worst policy and political instincts. With those people gone, Trump found himself surrounded by authoritarians, sycophants and trolls who believed their own spin that the 2024 election signaled a vibe shift for conservatives that could be locked in by a strongman enacting their wildest dreams.
And so Trump attempted an autocratic takeover of the country through unconstitutional acts to consolidate power and corrupt deals to make himself richer. This also fed into public displeasure with his bullying administration. His now-failed effort at autocratic consolidation involved efforts to seize control of elections and force Republicans to engage in mid-decade gerrymandering to steal House seats. None of this worked.
Trump’s effort to rig the election through gerrymandering — turbocharged by the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, eviscerating the Voting Rights Act — completely backfired. Republicans appear likely to lose every seat that they redrew for themselves in the past two years except for one in Louisiana and likely one each in Tennessee and Texas.
The losses in some states for Republicans are staggering, and Trump’s handpicked candidates turned out to be duds. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is as uncharismatic as he is corrupt, was blown out by Talarico. Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.), who took over the seat her brother left empty when he died, won Trump’s endorsement but not the election. In North Carolina, Trump’s pick of former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley lost so badly that Republicans were wiped out in the state.
Trump’s closing message didn’t help anyone, either. He rhapsodized about the “power” of the “great ass” of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, who ended up losing to former Sen. Sherrod Brown. He dismissed concerns about inflation and gas prices, declaring, “I don’t give a damn, I’m going to say it, we’re making a freaking fortune.” He waved away concerns about data centers by claiming opponents just “want to end up being backwards and poor.” Finally, in a fitting scene, he stood before the reflecting pool in Washington, which has become a symbol of his administration’s absurdity and misplaced energy, to deliver a closing midterms speech about algae.
And the results of this message speak for themselves. Democrats not only won gubernatorial races in Georgia for the first time in 26 years and Texas in 36 years, but they swept the statewide offices in Georgia and are in a position to do so in Texas. In Texas, they appear poised to defeat four GOP state Supreme Court judges — seismic change to a judicial body that was, until now, totally dominated by Republicans — and could win control of the state Senate. In Wisconsin, Democrats won control of both chambers of the state legislature.
In North Carolina, Democrats broke one of the most brutal Republican gerrymanders by not only winning control of the state House, but possibly winning a supermajority. They are also likely to break the GOP supermajority in the state Senate. Democrats also broke supermajorities in legislatures in Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and South Carolina.
But the impacts of these victories will last long past Trump’s time on the political scene. Republicans have held the front foot in American politics for a decade because of their dominance with the white working-class voters who have disproportionate influence over the Senate. This gave the GOP more power over the courts, and gave them little reason to moderate.
In a single night, Democrats changed that dynamic. While Tuesday night’s results provide an obvious warning against the concept of permanent political majorities, Democrats will have senators representing the purportedly red states of South Carolina, Texas, Iowa and Kansas until 2032. That will provide them more votes to pass their agenda or to block a Republican one.
For Democrats, this sweep was a long time coming. Now Trump’s lame-duck period begins as his political future is over. What Democrats do with their smashing victory over Trump’s MAGA movement is yet to be seen. But Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who won reelection by nearly 20 points on Tuesday, provided a vision of change in his victory speech: “This moment is not for restoration, but for reformation.”