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Americans woke up to a decidedly bluer map this morning, as sweeping Democrat victories in Kansas, Texas and beyond dramatically realigned the country’s electoral makeup. With Congress soon to be under Democratic control, Republicans face a potential end to an era defined — and perhaps doomed — by President Donald Trump.
What did the commentators say?
After imploring voters “not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall” to act as if he himself were on the ballot, Trump got his wish, said Peter Baker at The New York Times. “Just not the way he hoped.” That Democrats won as decisively as they did suggests the country is “signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.”
There is “something bigger than the misadventures” of any one Republican candidate at play, said John Kennith White at The Hill. The “stench of political death has repelled even Trump’s most devoted followers,” as voters demand an “end to the anything-goes rhetoric” in favor of “leaders they can admire.”
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GOP hopes that Trump’s previous victories were a “political realignment grounded in expanded support” from “working-class minority voters” have been “reduced to rubble,” said Ronald Brownstein at Bloomberg. The electoral “drubbing” also “exposed some cracks in the core MAGA coalition” of white men who did not attend college and rural voters that has “sustained Trump since 2016.”
Trump, “like lots of populists,” forgot the “economic bit of populism,” said Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times. That lapse made it “hard to distinguish him from a laissez-faire Republican of yesteryear.” A “voter rebellion” against Republicans could “force conservatives to rethink their undying allegiance” to the “80-year-old lame-duck leader,” said Steve Peoples at The Associated Press. Before polls closed Tuesday, some GOP candidates had already “begun to distance themselves from him.” These midterms mark the “beginning of a high-stakes fight” over the United States’ “political future in the twilight of the Trump era.”
What next?
How Trump responds to the midterm results will “shape the GOP’s fate,” not only for the remainder of his term but in the 2028 race to succeed him, said Bloomberg. While “Trumpism may be receding,” said the Times, its namesake has the “power of the presidency for two more years.” Trump may do “everything he can to remain a dominant voice for as long as he can.”
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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.
