Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.
The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.
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Notes -
Looking at initial results, one of the things that stick out to me is that the overall margin of loss is wide enough that I feel there's less credibility in various 'Trump/Republicans could have won the midterms if it weren't for [X]' arguments. People have (for as old as democracy) loved to point at their personal priority of [X] as the thing that should have been adhered to, be it Iran or Gaza or ICE, but I'm not seeing data yet to support any singular thing being the 'but for [X], Trump would have kept the Senate.' The closest might be 'but for [Inflation],' but there have been so many contributing causes for inflation in the US beyond the Iran War that trying to tie it to any one thing is often just going to be a revision of the 'if they just cared about the [X] the way I wanted' typical-minding.
One relevant aspect for that degree of loss is that it actually undercuts various political arguments for moderating in the name of electability. There's a constant tension between general viewpoints of 'you need to moderate in order to win power and do any of what you think is best,' and 'the point of winning power is to do what you think is best, even if you lose as a result.' Professional political establishments tend towards the former, but establishment outsiders and lame-duck politicians lean towards the later. If you're not up for election again, and you believe you can't get what you want/think best by running on it in a future election, then you're in a use-it-or-lose-it window of your chance to use institutional power.
Which is to say, I suspect these results make more volatility more likely, not less, over the next two years, especially via the sort of executive tools.
The stronger you read this as a rebuke to Trump/MAGA, the less incentive MAGA has to not-MAGA while in office, because the less viable any MAGA prospects for 2028 are the less reason there is to compromise what you could do now for electoral prospects later. If you have none, there is nothing left to salvage, and you might as well get what you can before you go into the political wilderness regardless. Especially since many of the macro-factors that already made it a back election cycle- inflation, global instability, political instability- are likely to disrupt the post-Trump administration as much as their pre-existance weakened the Biden/Harris administration.
Which actually brings a final note on Texas and some similar upsets. I'm not convinced these are as tectonic as they will no doubt be claimed to be, because on top of a rough year the Republican party was having its own internal civil war of sorts. This is most notable with Paxton, who was a truly bad candidate, but almost as importantly his primary opponent Cornyn, who was one of the vanishing breed of pre-Trump establishment republicans. They weren't the only two to fight eachother, and while maybe the party civil war wouldn't have mattered in a good year, it wasn't a good year. But it's also not liable to repeat next cycle- while the voters defeated MAGA this cycle, MAGA defeated a lot of the never-Trumper holdouts in the primaries, and one of those factions has a lot more ability to regenerate political support in the Republican party than the other. MAGA-Republicans are much less likely to face primary-revolt civil wars in 2/4/6 years, while anti-MAGA-never-Trumpers have less of an institutional toe-hold. I'm sure some will cause drama next cycle, but we're barely 5 years, and just the third election cycle, since Liz Cheney got kicked out of the Republican Party and broke the back of the never-Trumper movement in the Republican party structure. I think it's fair to say their influence has been and still is consistently decreasing, and infighting like the Paxton-Cornyn primaring is going to be less consequential due to fewer opportunities.
So, calling this a shellacking is perfectly fair. I'm sure much more will be made of it than the Obama analog, but we're very much in the same ballpark and the Obama-wing of the party neither died or become electorally irrelevant afterewards. Neutralizing MAGA? Not so much, though I'm sure people will carry forth arguments about how MAGA is permanently doomed and the Democrats will be on the cusp of a permanent majority once more by means fair or foul depending on the stance of the sayer.
By 2030 we won't believe this ever happened.
Wins this big are always multi-causal. In the same way that huge businesses involve multiple points of luck and skill lining up, or that every championship sports team involves a couple of players having career years.
But this will have major impacts on the future of the country. Will Texas be purple in 2028? Certainly both sides will have to consider it in play, and Dems will have two years in the Governor's mansion to engineer it further. If Texas goes Blue, the Republican path to the presidency changes completely.
This won't necessarily happen, but preventing it from happening will require effort by Republicans, and trying to make it happen will lead to efforts from Democrats. Policies are going to change in order to accommodate these goals.
This is a measured take, and I approve of it.
I don't look forward to the catastrophizing takes that will distort this beyond reason, but I want to applaud the distinction (while I can).
Personally- I also think that democracy, as a system of governance, works better when more electoral areas are seen as in play. Mono-party political machines easily become less competent and more corrupt, and parties that write off entire regions are more likely to sacrifice their interests in fundamentally destabilizing ways. I suspect the Texas results will shake a fair deal of state party complacency, and if the Democrats actually want to remain in credible viability range, they'll need to allow policy divergences in the caucus, or just end up wasting resources trying to recreate a context-specific win.
Yes and the increasing Moneyballification of Politics along lines of 'who is actually in play' means that party heartlands no longer even particularly get the machine benefits that they used to for being 100% guaranteed to go whatever way
We used to give outlandish focus to issues in Iowa (E85!) because of its not-a-primary process. Is this that much worse, do you think? I'm not sure, but I see the pattern you're looking at.
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