Cromwell

Plenty of commentators have observed that J.D. appears to have a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality when he is campaigning. When he is dealing with, say, the NYT, he is Dr. J.D.–a thoughtful and pious conservative Catholic who struggles mightily against his worst instincts and loves everyone. In front of a MAGA audience, however, he is Mr. MAGA–an angry, slashing troll who revels in cruelty and expresses nothing but contempt for his opponents. It can be extremely difficult to reconcile these two personas.

But what if he is really neither of them? What if he is just a cold opportunist who tells his audience what they want to hear because that is the best way to satisfy his vast ambitions?

I think we will find out between now and 2028.

The GOP wipeout wasn’t due primarily to the proximity of tech barons to Trump, but it certainly didn’t help. The barons now face a wave of public anger and the likelihood of more intense regulation. Will they change course or double down? As I predicted before, different companies will respond differently.

Elon Musk is one of the barons, of course, but he is a special case, because he just threw away $500 million in an effort to save the GOP’s bacon. Now he will be operating his business in blue Texas. Don’t expect him to change his opinions or his ways; he has leverage against the government at all levels, and he will have no qualms against using it.

The crypto industry had developed a reputation of being invincible. It invested huge sums of money in the midterms, particularly in the Senate race in Ohio. Adios, invincibility. Relations with the blue Congress are going to be very sticky.

J.D. campaigned extremely hard for Husted and Ramaswamy in Ohio. His efforts were a miserable failure. Trump is now arguing that the GOP only wins when he is at the top of the ticket. If he is right, what does it tell us about J.D.’s chances in 2028?

The blue tsunami was just a large wave in Florida. The GOP gave back all of its massive gains since 2018. The gerrymander was a total failure, and the state looks pink again, rather than crimson. The GOP might even have been saved by terrible weather in blue districts. Nevertheless, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. The Republicans eked out victories in the most important races; with the loss of Texas, Florida is now the unquestioned capital of MAGA; and Ron DeSantis is perfectly placed to run for president, if he has the nerve to try again.

Chuck Schumer has taken a lot of criticism over the last two years for being too passive in the face of Trumpian outrages. In reality, he understood that the blue team didn’t have the practical ability to stop Trump, that the only remedy was to mobilize public support for 2026, and that the best tactic for the midterm was to get out of the way and let Trump self-immolate. It worked. In addition, Schumer did an excellent job of recruiting quality candidates. The blue team’s success owes a great deal to his strategic patience.

Trump owes his presidency in large part to Greg Abbott. Without Abbott’s successful efforts to spread the impacts of Biden’s immigration crisis all over the country, most of us would have ignored the issue, and Trump’s signature argument would have gone begging.

Abbott has been a ruthless and methodical supporter of reactionary causes for years. Recently, however, he became aware of the political potency of the data center issue. He tried to moderate his deregulatory stance, which is a no-no to any good Trumpist.

Trump called him a RINO this morning. By any reasonable standard, however, Abbott is not a RINO. He is simply another loser, or, if you prefer, more of Trump’s collateral damage to the GOP.

J.D. is blaming the war for the GOP’s catastrophic defeat. He is largely right. His problem, of course, is that he is a prominent member of the administration that launched the war, and his boss still supports it.

How does J.D. deal with this in the upcoming presidential campaign? Does he really think the man on golf cart will designate him as the heir apparent even if he vocally opposes the war? If not, is it even remotely plausible that the VP can run as an administration outsider?

In case you were wondering, the correct answer to the last two questions is no. J.D. has to be hoping that the war will be ancient history when he starts running in earnest. If not, he will have to square a circle to win.

The relationship between Trump and Fox News has never been easy and simple. Nevertheless, Fox has been his partner in defining MAGA orthodoxy and punishing dissidents for the last decade.

MAGA is about to splinter, and its great champion has been shown to be a monumentally unpopular lame duck. How will Fox respond to that? After all, a vote against MAGA and Trump is effectively a vote against Fox, too.

I suspect Fox will return to its default of being anti-anti-Trump, instead of pro-Trump. It will continue to preach against the excesses of the left while no longer promoting the dictatorship of any particular member of the right.

Two collateral benefits of the blue tsunami: first, as a result of Democratic gains in the legislatures of swing states, the Green Bay sweep is probably no longer a viable approach in 2028; and second, the blue team should have a majority in the Senate through 2032, so J.D. will be unable to push any outrageously right-wing Supreme Court nominees through the system if he wins in 2028.

Bad news for J.D. is, of course, good news for America.

This is the massacre we should have had in 2020. If it had happened then, it would have put an end to the MAGA movement. Today, it will leave the GOP reeling and divided. What does it mean for the red team in the future?

Trump will do everything in his power to keep any Republican dissidents under his thumb; in fact, quashing dissent in his own ranks may occupy more of his time than attacking Democrats. The door is now wide open, however, for an outsider with no responsibility for the war, the tech oligarchs, and the tariffs to run against J.D. if he can summon the courage to do so.

In the immediate future, the question is whether any GOP grandees will summon the nerve to blame Trump openly and directly for the massacre. If all they do is complain about him anonymously, you will know that the fever hasn’t broken yet, and the man on golf cart is still the uncontested ruler of his party.

In the face of a blue tsunami, a normal president would admit his failures and make sincere efforts to cooperate with the opposition to correct them. Trump is not a normal politician, so in spite of some conciliatory words, don’t expect him to change; in fact, he will almost certainly double down and become more autocratic than ever.

For the Democrats, the trick will be to avoid letting him reunite the GOP by going into martyr mode. They should investigate corruption anywhere they find it, which shouldn’t be hard, since most of it is in plain sight. They must legislate–or, at least, attempt to legislate, given the veto and the filibuster–on economic issues that are of immediate importance to the American voter. They should use the War Powers Act and their control over the budget as leverage to put an end to the war. And they should impeach Trump enablers who represent a danger to the community, starting with Hegseth.

I have just finished voting. I was second in line when the polls opened, and first to finish.

I have been waiting for this day for two years. In spite of my fears about Trump’s behavior in the face of a blue wave, it is important to send an unequivocal message of disapproval to him and the rest of his henchmen. Maybe it will make a difference down the road–if not to him, at least to his more self-seeking enablers.

Now we wait and see.

From our perspective, there are innumerable reasons why Pete Hegseth should be removed. From Trump’s perspective, there aren’t any. Hegseth has been completely loyal to him; he has purged the military of any stain of wokeness; he has attempted to create a culture of mindless, swaggering, video gamers; and he has fired lots of competent people for no apparent reason and replaced them with more politically reliable types. For Trump, that sounds like a record of unbroken successes.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Hegseth will be a target of the next Congress, and Trump doesn’t typically expend political capital on anyone but himself, so we will probably have a new Secretary of Defense–er, War–before the end of the year. Trump will reward him with a suitable landing spot for his loyalty before he goes. I have read he will be the next senator from Tennessee.

Cabinet members typically start thinking hard about the future after the midterms. When the president is an unpopular and capricious lame duck, they are doubly likely to do so. Who will stay, and who will go?

The men who are most obviously identified with Trump and his agenda have nowhere else to go, so they will stay unless they are pushed. These include RFK, Vought, Lutnick, Patel, and Blanche. Hegseth is a special case; I will talk about him in a future post. All of the others–most notably Bessent–will probably depart for greener pastures in less than a year.

The final NYT polls of the campaign show the blue team winning most of the toss-up states. Can this be trusted, or is Lucy about to pull the football from Charlie Brown again?

We won’t know until tomorrow, of course, but my best guess is that the polls are correct for two reasons. First, the phenomenon of the Trump underestimate has only existed in the recent past when he was actually on the ballot. Second, as I noted before, the disgruntled undecideds typically break for change. In this case, that would help the Democrats.

Once the GOP returns to its more customary role as a minority in the House, it can return to its roots. Its members, with few exceptions, have little interest in making and carrying out policy; their objective is to throw bombs and get on Fox News.

That’s why I expect Jim Jordan to be the new Minority Leader next year. He’s perfect for the job.

As the head of a small, divided, and unruly majority party, Mike Johnson, like Kevin McCarthy before him, had an extremely difficult job. Even so, by any reasonable standard, he has been a failure. Why?

Because Johnson viewed the House of Representatives as an appendage of the Trump administration instead of a co-equal branch of government with interests that will exist long after Trump is gone. As a result, if Trump failed, so did he. And that is exactly what happened.