- It seems like the only positive news for Republicans is that even in a giant blue wave election Florida’s GOP statewide candidates won by 2–3%. Many Republican incumbents lost by taking their seats and races for granted, and the GOP’s gerrymanders backfired spectacularly.
- The GOP’s primary voters, as usual, fucked themselves picking terrible candidates who lose a lot of winnable seats. Candidates who are culturally MAGA but politically incompetent, uninspiring, corrupt, and sometimes straight up stupid. Ken Paxton, Darline Graham, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Mike Collins were particularly terrible candidates.
- I can’t overstate how great it is for Democrats to have Senate seats for SIX YEARS in ruby red TX, KS, IA, OH, SC, likely AK, and possibly even MS. Those seats are locked in for Democrats in 2028 and 2030, and they’ll have the incumbent advantage in 2032.
- Donald Trump has had terrible instincts with his Senate primary endorsements throughout his political career, and his meddling in this midterm lost the GOP several Senate seats. Pressuring South Carolina to stick with Darline Graham for another six years was a giant unforced error. The blue wave was so big in Texas that John Cornyn likely would have lost too, but Cornyn wouldn’t have lost by over a million votes like Ken Paxton did with a campaign so swampy and toxic it ought to be designated as an EPA Superfund site. And Trump’s six years of feuding with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp over his rare Republican integrity and refusal to go along with the plot to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election has done more to turn Georgia into a solid blue state than anyone else.
- The Ghost of General Tecumseh Sherman was no doubt partying all night long with pride for Democrats’ electoral Southern march dominating Virginia, obliterating the GOP’s gerrymander in North Carolina, snatching a South Carolina Senate seat, conquering Atlanta’s state government, and possibly even flipping a Mississippi Senate seat.
- Democrats finally won both their white whale states of Texas and North Carolina, which demographically on paper seem like they should be much bluer than they have been in the Trump era. Both have had years of incredible urban growth and an influx of young and college-educated voters growing up there or moving to them, and those demographics finally have North Carolina following Virginia into the blue column and Texas mimicking Georgia’s blue swing.
- Republican fundraisers must be apocalyptic today. Republicans in 2028 will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas to try and prevent Democrats from keeping Texas blue and winning its 40 electoral votes. It’s near impossible to imagine any path for Republicans to win the White House without Texas. Republicans might suddenly be real desperate to have a bunch of red states sign onto the Popular Vote Interstate Compact ahead of 2028 if Gina Hinojosa governs competently and James Talarico’s star power keeps rising nationally.
- Republicans deciding to ram through so many nihilistic gerrymanders watering down the districts of their safe seats to greedily steal as many swing districts as possible — despite Trump’s plummeting approval ratings and the US tradition of swinging hard against the incumbent president in the first midterm — was political malpractice that backfired spectacularly. Black voters across the South mobilized to tell the GOP to fuck off with their attempts to steal Black districts’ deserved representation.
- Dan Osborne in Nebraska didn’t get as close as I had hoped, but I still think it’s a good strategy for Democrats to keep picking liberal-leaning independents in the Western states where the D next to Democratic candidates’ names is an albatross around their candidacies’ necks. In Montana, Independent Seth Bodnar would have won if he got all of Democrat Alani Bankhead’s votes. Democrats ought to be investing a lot of money building out campaign infrastructure and get-out-the-vote capacity in Montana and Nebraska ahead of 2028.
- Louisiana was also surprisingly close, with Democratic Senate candidate Jamie Davis losing by just 2% as of right now. Could the Southern states finally be waking up to the reality that decades of uniparty Republican control hasn’t raised their socio-economic standard of living?
- David Axelrod had a good point that this is a moment of truth for the Republican Party whether they will continue going off this electoral cliff with Trump. Will they stand up to his administration’s historic corruption, reign in his Constitutional violations, and tell him that his most incompetent cabinet members like Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel need to be replaced? The election made it very clear that Americans believe Trump is leading the country down the wrong track. The Republican Party should be very focused on saving Trump’s presidency from itself.
- The upcoming Democratic Congress needs to remember that justice is not vengeance. Investigating and prosecuting the Trump Administration’s crimes, corruption, and negligence is not retaliatory, it’s a legal obligation to preserve the rule of law. Any Democrat who suggests Congress can’t work on “kitchen table issues” AND investigate the Trump cabinet selling domestic and foreign policies to the highest bidder at the same time will and should be primaried incredibly hard.
- It’s a damn shame Ted Cruz wasn’t on the Texas ballot this year.
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