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.
I agree, and the panic this morning is reminiscent of democrats in 2016 or the first months of 2025. The hyperbolic claims of imminent one party rule are so similar you could just ctrl+f republican, replace it with democrat and end up with more or less the same comments. The electorate that just handed democrats majorities in the senate and house is the same electorate that chose Trump in 2024 amid a COVID/inflation/immigration backlash, and is the same electorate that will probably choose a republican in 2032.
That said, what I haven't seen anyone comment on (and I'd be curious to get the thoughts of someone with skin in the game @Bleep) is the potential for democrats to have significantly more leverage in redistricting. I suppose Hinojosa can veto any maps the legislature makes and send it to the courts? This is the only realistic way I can see any semi-durable change coming out of this cycle.
I hope you're right and obviously this can flip right back the other way in 2028.
But the Democrats seem to actually want one party rule. If they win in 2028 they will have the means to achieve it. They have said they want to stack the court. They have said they are going to prosecute people in the Trump administration. Doesn't this concern you at all?
I feel like Trump hasn't helped your case here: the red team has made plenty of promises of one-party rule in his time, and he's been prosecuting his political enemies too. If he didn't already have the court majority, I'm sure we'd be hearing about packing it too. IMO if your claim is fear of your opponent doing something, I'm not very convinced as a voter if you do the same thing too.
I even agree in principle here, but "vote against parties that do this" has me voting, I dunno, Libertarian.
Ah, the old perspective meme: I’m prosecuting criminals on the other side. You’re persecuting your political opponents. He’s jailing innocent political prisoners.
The media is hopelessly broken and captured, and everything is propaganda, so nothing that “everyone knows” is fully true.
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