Having the Blues

Okay, the results are well-known, and profound.

Democrats have thus far flipped North Carolina, South Carolina (!), Texas (!), Ohio, Maine, Iowa (!) and Kansas (!)  That’s seven seats, and they only needed four to take control of the Senate. And two other states, Alaska and Mississippi, remain undeci -- wait, Mississippi??? Yes. Mississippi. Right now, with 97% of the vote in, Democrat Scott Colom is leading. By a whopping 43 votes -- remain undecided at the time of writing.

Taking control of the Senate means control of committees, having subpoena power and the right to hold hearings.  But also, and hugely important, is that Democrats will have the majority for confirming whoever Trump wants to nominate for judgeships.  Including, of course, Supreme Court Justices, if there’s an opening.  (So much for Samuel Alito's retirement plans...) And they also control the confirmation of Trump appointments.  It also means that Democrats can block any bill that Trump wants passed if it’s seen as draconian. Or just not the way they want it.

Furthermore, Democrats took control of the House.  But it wasn’t just a case of taking control of the House, but how significantly they flipped seats or held onto seats they had no right winning, especially after Red states went and gerrymandered districts.  And the night's earliest results in deep Red Florida gave a direction of where the election was headed --

Florida gerrymandered Democrat Jared Moskowitz’s district to make it improbable for him to retain his seat, since Trump had won the new area by nine points.  But Jared Moskowitz not only held his gerrymandered seat but won by five points – a 14 point swing.  There is an official name for this, when you gerrymander and it backfires.  It’s called “dummymandering.”

There was a lot of dummymandering. Similarly, Democrat Kathy Castor was also gerrymandered in Florida to make her district what MAGOPs thought would be near-impossible for her to win, turning it favorable to Trump by 10 points.  But she won the district by six points – a 16 point swing.

And Florida also dummymandered Democratic incumbent Darren Soto, so that he would have to run in a plus-18 Trump district, and so was given no chance.  But with 99% of the vote in, he’s in the lead by almost a point, as his MAGOP opponent needs 90.5% of the remaining ballots to beat him.

It was a pattern that got repeated across the country as state after state reported. How repeated? Last night on MS NOW, former Congressman Max Rose said that not one single incumbent who had his district gerrymandered...lost! And the end result of all this means Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black man to be Speaker of the House. Jamie Raskin to chair the Judiciary Committee. Jim Himes to chair the Intel Committee. And Robert Garcia as chair of the House Oversight Committee.

But to me, Democrats taking control of the House was a given a year ago.  Taking a moment for a Point of Personal Privilege (since I received more than a bit of "polite chiding" for what I wrote, somewhat akin to patting a precocious child on the head for explaining why gravity wasn't real), I've been watching closely to see how good my prediction from a year ago, last November, was. In that article here, I gave about half-a-dozen detailed reasons why I thought Democrats would pick up 30-40 seats (which I wrote before there was gerrymandering. And before the Supreme Court overturned the Voting Rights Act).  I don’t know what the final total will be, but as of this morning – with many races still to be determined -- MS NOW is projecting that Democrats will end up gaining a minimum of...34 seats! [UPDATE: Now at 38.] So, there you go.

In fact, what I wrote specifically last November, one year ago, was -- “The point of all this is that I think Democrats will not only have a Blue Wave in the 2026 Mid-Terms, but a tsunami.  I think they will pick up 30-40 seats in the House to take control.  And while I’m not sure about the Senate, I think that it is now in play, where just three months ago it wasn’t.” And then I gave all my reasons, in detail.

The most common polite response I got from people about that a year ago -- and in the months since -- was a kindly, skeptical and somewhat perfunctory, "Well...I hope you're right." My reply was always, "I hope I'm right, too!" While then adding, "But those are the detailed reasons why I think I am."

Though my favorite polite response came from a friend who is a well-regarded academician. Happily, he was not dismissive -- though kept his graceful response to my article very simple. "Bold words."

(What I finally want to add now is something I did not explain at the time:  although I had posted the article last November, I had actually wanted to write it in June, four months earlier.  However, I knew that as early as November was, if I had written my prediction and reasons to support it in June, I was pretty sure I’d have looked like a total idiot to most people, and that risked discrediting all my future articles for being a loon.  So, I held the article for four months.  And “only” posted it in November, 2025.)

Important to note, too, about these results is that controlling both the House and Senate, Democrats can now take charge of how Congress is supposed to operate as a co-equal branch of the government.  And so, they now are in charge of the War Powers Act and controlling the use of tariffs.

There’s much more to these Mid-Terms than just ("just"!) flipping the House and Senate. 

Among many things, it includes that there were four, very big flip wins in governorships. This means that for the first time in 16 years, a majority of states will have Democratic governors. Those flips are Georgia (with Keisha Lance Bottoms becoming not only the first Black woman to be elected governor in the state, but the first-ever in the country), Texas (with Gina Hinojosa beating Greg Abbott, a loss that infuriated Trump so much that he slammed Abbott as becoming a RINO!), Ohio, and Iowa (where Amy Acton defeated Vikek Ramaswamy and his venal, cruel last-minute attack ad).  And though these four races aren’t as high profile nationally as the races for Congress, they are significantly important.  That’s because they’re critical states for the 2028 presidential elections, and the governor oversees though in charge of counting votes and certifying the results.

Further, although I didn't see much coverage on what the results of most state and local election were, and how statehouses were affected, I did see that in Texas -- Texas! -- Democrats swept all eight of the statewide elections, including lieutenant governor, actually the most powerful job in the state, even over governor (beating the long-serving Dan Patrick), as well as attorney general. In all, they were what Reuters wrote, the "key offices that oversee the state budget, its public lands, its farm economy and its oil and gas industry." Moreover, Texas Democrats won all four Supreme Court justice races -- including Chief Justice. And in Florida (Florida!), the two legislative bodies both lost their MAGOP supermajorities.

It's hard not to imagine that if there was this the impact on state races in Texas and Florida (and what an impact in Texas), that there wasn't at least some shifting in states throughout the country.

It turns out that the polls got it pretty right this time. So, too, did the defense of democracy.

And the big loser appears to be, no, not the MAGOP.  For as crushing a Blue Tsunami as this was for the party, it's only the second biggest loser. The biggest loser is Trump. Not just for all these races being a huge repudiation of him, but because he pushed his own party's incumbent senators out in North Carolina and Texas, and got the woeful Darline Graham to run in South Carolina. And all three of those states flipped. And there went the Senate. And committee control, subpoena power, confirmation of judges and appointees, and agenda control. He also is the person who pushed for Red states to do mid-decade gerrymandering. Hey, that sure didn't go well.

But perhaps above all, throughout the campaign, Trump kept repeating his mantra: "Pretend that I'm on the ballot!" Making the election, as he tries to make everything, about himself. Putting his name on it, as he tries to put his name on everything. So, he can't run away from the results. Because Americans went and made it the "Donald J. Trump Mid-Term Elections." And that's the downside of being a malignant narcissist and don't ever believe news about you that isn't good, when you live in a bubble and block out reality, viewing your 30% approval and the concept of affordability and national hatred of your Iran War as "fake news." And think that you really are "your favorite president." You don't realize that asking the public to pretend you're on the ballot may not be the great thing that you and all those unqualified, incompetent, cult-loyal lackeys you protectively encircled yourself with think it is. And it turns out, too, that science is real, and professional psychologists really do know what they're talking about when they say that you're showing symptoms of dementia, and that it's degenerative.

Trump is now a full-fledged lame duck.  Two years to go, and without almost any power.  Yes, he’s still very dangerous, because he’s a malignant narcissist and does have dementia, which is degenerative, so he’ll worsen and lash out in ways we can’t expect – and all the more so because he is incapable of accepting that he lost.  And he didn’t just lose last night, he was humiliated and discredited.

And this massive rebuke happened fast. This wasn't a long build-up looking back as a referendum over an entire term in office. Enough people looked to Trump in 2024 to give him another chance to lead the country. And in only two years, just half his term, this debacle submerged him.

How badly was Trump defeated? The loss was so overwhelming, without any wiggle room to claim results were "rigged," that he told the New York Times, "I am absolutely willing to accept those results." (Whether he actually is willing to accept those results, and let his DOJ accept them, is another matter.) Further, as the Times reported, "He also signaled a willingness to cooperate across the aisle, saying his administration would work with Democrats and suggesting the two sides would probably reach agreements." Of course, this is from the same guy who months ago said that he would probably reach agreements with Iran within the next few days. And the same guy who just last week hinted he would again begin bombing them after the elections. So, y'know, consider "work with Democrats" a quaint collection of words from a guy who the Washington Post documented 30,573 lies ("or misleading statements") in his first term and delivered now while shell-shocked. Ultimately, if it ever turns out that Trump does reach any agreements with Democrats, it most surely will be on their terms, not his.

And yes, the MAGOP was the next biggest loser.  Party members who are still in Congress must feel bewildered without an anchor. And the smart ones should have learned by now that following Trump for the next two years risks being a fool's errand, especially those up for re-election in 2028.

Elon Musk, whose companies rely on government contracts -- and also moved out of California and its Democratic leadership to Texas... -- is up there on the big loser list, too, with $474 million of his personal money really-poorly spent.  Although, sure, he can easily afford it.  That’s only .05% of his wealth.  (For comparison's sake, if you have $20,000 in savings, that would be the equivalent of $10.  The difference is that you would have $19,990 left over in your bank account.  Elon Musk has $999,550,000,000 left in his passbook.)

Haley Stevens is on the big loser list, as well, in the honorable mention "Two days!" category. Man, did that switch endorsement not age well...

Ever since Trump’s first term, a good friend and I would regularly talk and write back and forth that as much as we wanted Democrats to win elections, what was critically important with the dangerous threat of Trump, is that Trump and MAGOPs didn’t just lose, but at some point would lose so badly that he and his party were discredited.  For so many years, that didn’t happen.

Last night, it did.