Lauren Boebert, once a MAGA star, officially loses her Colorado seat

 

Getty Images

Republican Lauren Boebert lost to a Democrat after three terms in Congress

"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" Legacy may be her infamous Beetlejuice escapade

Sheila Flynn

Senior US Reporter 

BBC 

Lauren Boebert, the Republican representative from Colorado who rose to national fame as one of Donald Trump's biggest cheerleaders, has lost her seat in Congress.

The race was too close to call on election night last week, but after every vote was counted the Democrat Eileen Laubacher has been declared the winner by the AP news agency.

It means Boebert, who was one of the most vocal conservatives in the House of Representatives, will not serve a fourth term.

The 39-year-old was one of the faces of Trump's "Make America Great Again" - or MAGA - movement, when she burst on to the Colorado political scene at the end of 2019.

Like the president, she was not a career politician. Boebert first made headlines when she encouraged staff at her restaurant Shooters, located in a small Colorado town named Rifle, to openly carry firearms.

Her rallies focused on gun rights and fighting - fighting Democrats, fighting the establishment, fighting illegal immigration or fighting anyone or anything that could be deemed "woke".

Reuters

Boebert, now 39, was first elected in 2020 after unseating a five-term incumbent

"Speaking after Lauren Boebert was like the band that played after the Beatles - no-one remembered them," said Republican state representative Matt Soper, now Colorado's most senior Republican legislator.

He first met Boebert and her then-husband, Jayson, when she was gathering signatures for a state-voting initiative.

She arrived in jeans with a Glock on her hip, her husband "looking like a classic oilman" in blue jeans, boots, cowboy hat and belt buckle, Soper told the BBC.

It played well with her Western Colorado constituency - a mix of ranches, farms and tough terrain with a smattering of ski towns - which Trump won with 53% of the vote in 2016.

Those same voters embraced Boebert in the lead-up to the 2020 election, helping her unseat the five-term Republican incumbent in the party's primary.

Boebert earned her high school equivalency diploma right before that victory, then won the seat in November, just before her 34th birthday.

It was the start of a political career Soper did not anticipate after that first meeting with her and her spouse.

"If I had been told, you know, they're going to make not just national headlines, but international headlines, for years, and Lauren will be a member of Congress for six years, I mean, I would have put no money on that bet," he said.

Once in Congress, Boebert garnered constant airtime with her aggressive pro-Trump rhetoric. Along with fellow political provocateurs like Marjorie Taylor Greene, she established herself as one of the most outspoken MAGA cheerleaders.

Perhaps most notably, she joined Greene in heckling President Joe Biden during his 2022 State of the Union address.

But that knack for the limelight began to work against Boebert at home.

Getty Images

Boebert and fellow MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene heckled President Biden

"I think, as that national profile grew, it made it much harder for her to be able to maintain that small-town fighter narrative that she had relied on," Justin Gollob, a political science professor at Colorado Mesa University, told the BBC.

Waning enthusiasm for Boebert became glaringly apparent in 2022, when a Democrat from Aspen challenged her for her seat and nearly won. Boebert eked out a victory by just 546 votes.

Colorado voters had initially liked Boebert's "straight talk and her direct, down-the-barrel approach" as well as her conservative Christian views, said Rich Wyatt, a county Republican chairman in Colorado and former reality star who served time in prison for tax fraud.

But that narrative became harder for her to maintain as the congresswomen was beset by controversies that were personal, not political.

She filed for divorce from her husband and, five months later, footage of Boebert and a man being kicked out of a Denver performance of the musical Beetlejuice went viral.

Staff accused the politician of vaping, taking pictures and "causing a disturbance".

Footage released by the theatre showed Boebert, in a gold cocktail dress, arguing with staff before twirling and dancing with her date upon ejection.

An incident report claimed she had told staff "do you know who I am?" and "I will be contacting the mayor," the Denver Post reported.

Getty Images

Boebert campaigns in Colorado in 2022 with a gun on her hip

That December - facing another matchup with Adam Frisch, the former Aspen Democratic councilman who nearly unseated her - Boebert announced she would be switching districts altogether. She moved across the state to Colorado's easternmost constituency, which voted reliably Republican.

With Trump's endorsement, Boebert won the seat in 2024.

But she turned on the president during his second term in office, when she became one of four House Republicans pushing for the full release of the Epstein files.

Suddenly, her biggest champion was no longer in her corner.

The next month, Trump vetoed a water bill Boebert had sponsored. As she sought re-election this year, he took aim at her on social media.

The president invited candidates to run against her in the primary (though the deadline had already passed) and called his former cheerleader "dumb" and "weak-minded".

Trump eventually endorsed Boebert for the race, but Democrats had found a strong moderate candidate to take her on - Navy veteran Eileen Laubacher, who retired in 2024 as a two-star rear admiral.

Getty Images

Boebert lost this month to Democrat and retired Naval admiral Eileen Laubacher

Like several other Democrats who have emerged victorious after the 2026 midterms, Laubacher's win is as much about her qualities as a candidate - she was a former Republican with strong appeal to middle-ground voters - as it was a rebuke of Boebert's time in office.

Peggy Lozen, a constituent who voted for Trump in 2016 but not after that, was thrilled to see Boebert go. She had been turned off by the representative since her State of the Union stunt in 2022.

"I was sick over that," the 72-year-old told BBC. "I was raised in an era where you respect everyone, regardless of their opinion, and especially the president of the United States."

The mother of a veteran, she voted for the rear admiral and displayed a sign of support in her yard.

While it remains to be seen what Boebert does next, there is a consensus among both politicians and the public that she is unlikely to vanish altogether.

"I'll leave you with this," Wyatt said: "You haven't seen the end of Lauren Boebert."

First things first

 

by keefknight

Daily Kos Staff 

Furious Republicans set to impeach Hegseth

 

Defense Secretary "Pistol" Pete Hegseth, shown in May.AP

"We just heard from the voters, and … they’re not happy.”

by Emily Singer

Daily Kos Staff 

 

As reality sets in for House Republicans after their pummeling in the midterms, anger at President Donald Trump for putting them in this position is spilling out into public view.

Multiple Republican lawmakers now want heads to roll, chiefly that of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom they say is as much responsible for their party’s bruising losses as Trump, thanks to Hegseth’s handling of the disastrous war in Iran.

Outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky reintroduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday, when lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill for the first legislative work day since Sept. 16. It was on that day that House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the chamber home in order to avoid having to vote on Hegseth’s impeachment, though he framed the early exit from Capitol Hill on his members’ need to campaign for the Nov. 3 elections, which saw Republicans lose over 40 House seats.

Massie’s articles of impeachment accuse Hegseth of committing the high crime of waging war without congressional approval, as well as over his extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean Sea, his efforts to suppress free speech, and his kidnapping former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Multiple House Republicans have expressed openness to supporting Hegseth’s impeachment, including Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and French Hill or Arkansas, both of whom say the war in Iran was not handled well.

“I want to hear the debate on it,” Hill said Sunday morning on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He added that Trump also “has to take responsibility” for the war, and said that if Hegseth is “not conducting his mission in the right way, then the president ought to make a change there.”

As for Comer, he said impeachment has to be done the right way but that there is a lot of anger among the GOP ranks about how Hegseth has conducted himself.

“There’s a lot of discomfort with the effort in Iran,” Comer told Fox News. “I think that if the secretary of defense will come out quickly and address those, I think that every Republican should be solid in that. Now, having said that, that doesn’t mean we want to continue down the same path in Iran. … We just heard from the voters, and … they’re not happy.”

Indeed, Politico reported that House GOP leadership expects the articles of impeachment will pass. The party already has a miniscule majority and expects that a number of Republican lawmakers simply won’t return to Capitol Hill after last Tuesday’s ass-kicking.

What’s more, a handful of Senate Republicans are suggesting they’d support convicting Hegseth in an impeachment trial if the evidence is there. That includes outgoing GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the latter of whom says confirming Hegseth to the job is the biggest regret of his Senate career.

“.@PeteHegseth, cabinet secretaries shouldn’t be wasting taxpayer dollars on campaign style videos. [Former Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem learned that the hard way,” Tillis wrote in a post on X, responding to a video Hegseth posted defending his tenure at the Defense Department. “This is about you: the incompetence you’ve displayed, the bad advice you’ve given to president, and your shameful and embar[r]assing episodes from firing our top generals to texting war plans to reporters.”

Testosterone Pete with a man whose testosterone has been known to run wild.  Before he lost his faculties, that is.  Of course, there is still Natalie Harp.
 

The 3 Trump toadies Democrats should impeach first

DARTS, ANYONE?  President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are seen on Jan. 18, 2025.AP

 

Hegseth, Patel, RFK Jr. are worst of the worst 

 

by Lisa Needham

Staff

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 12:00 PM MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Look, we’re going to have to pace ourselves here. We’ve got a lot of people who deserve impeaching. We might have to do these, like, two at a time. We probably need to hire some sort of logistics coordinator or project manager to make sure we can shuffle these folks out the door with minimum fuss and maximum mockery. 

But listen, every race, long or short, needs a warm-up, right? So let’s start with the people who we know that even the surviving sliver of Republicans hate. 

Here’s who is getting dropped through a trapdoor we’ve just built into the Congress floor:

1. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Here’s the thing about Pete Hegseth: He’s so bad at his job that even if you actually love what Pete Hegseth stands for, you can still hate Pete Hegseth. Like, even if we set aside his propensity for committing war crimes, there’s so, so much more. 

A defense secretary who decides to decimate his own military during his own ill-advised war? The guy who seems to be lying about how many munitions he’s wasted on said war? The guy who makes more than half of the military want to quit early? 

Defense Secretary Pete HegsethAP

Who knew that hiring a sentient bottle of hair gel with a Crusades tattoo would turn out so poorly for the country?

But the biggest reason why Hegseth is first on the list is that the knives aren’t just out for him; they’ve already been lovingly sharpened and wiped down with soft cloth until they positively sparkle. 

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who’s out the door and has nothing to lose, said even before the midterms that he was ready to reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth. And GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also out the door with nothing to lose, said that he’s going to spend his lame-duck session going after Hegseth. 

As for Democrats? Today, we are all Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who used her victory speech last night to do some priority-setting: “Yes, we’re going to go after Hegseth.” 

Yes, ma’am, yes we are. 

2. FBI Director Kash Patel

Here’s the thing about Kash Patel: He’s so bad at his jo—whoops, sorry. Didn’t mean to repeat myself there. But Patel really has beclowned himself in spectacular fashion. From his inept staff purges to screwing up major investigations to using government resources to fly hither, thither, and yon with his fake country singer girlfriend, Patel just sucks at his job. 

He’s also been a big part of protecting President Donald Trump from having his sterling reputation tarnished by the publication of the Epstein Files and has been more than willing to deploy the FBI as a tool of harassment.

FBI Director Kash PatelAP

If there’s anyone who will be absolutely devastated to be thrown, feet first, out the door, it’s probably going to be Patel. Not because he loves his job, but because he has turned not doing his job into an art—a very special Make-A-Wish for one very special boy. 

Once Patel isn’t in government—once he doesn’t have the force of law behind him—who is going to hang out with him? No more partying with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team, my wee little dude. No more assigning a full FBI security team to your girlfriend so she can get her hair done. No more snorkeling at the Pearl Harbor memorial, because what is wrong with you, you ghoul? 

Enjoy returning to podcasting, Ka$h. Oh, and maybe restarting your clothing line? You know, the one where the website has been down for months because it was hacked? Is there anything this guy doesn’t suck at?

3. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now, this guy is a genuine goblin. Perhaps Kennedy will take a moment away from bathing in beef tallow and working out with Kid Rock to show up before Congress to hear all of the reasons it’s going to bounce him ass first onto the pavement. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.AP

But if he doesn’t, no worries. He can be removed in absentia just as easily. 

The man is absolutely responsible for deaths. Maybe not Elon-Musk-level deaths, but deaths aplenty nonetheless. Throw him out over his decimation of vaccines. Throw him out over the fact that he lied to Congress in the first place about what he would do with vaccines. Throw him out over his “let them eat peptides” approach to healthcare. 

Heck, throw him out because he works out in jeans, because what the actual hell. Just throw. Him. Out.

 And speaking of really, really, really bad guys...

Corporate America Courted Trump. Now a Blitz of Investigations Is Coming.

 

Democrats are laying the groundwork to investigate some of the country’s largest companies, setting off a scramble among executives who courted the president. (photo: Getty)

 

Zeroing in on Apple, Meta, Elon Musk companies 

 

Pranshu Verma / The Washington Post

 06 November 26

 

Democrats are preparing to unleash a wave of investigations that will probe the most sensitive and controversial actions of America’s largest corporations over the past two years, sparking a reckoning among Silicon Valley and Wall Street executives who courted the Trump administration — and who are now bracing for an onslaught.

Days after winning majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats are setting sharp priorities. They are zeroing in on Apple, Meta and the companies led by Elon Musk as early targets for congressional investigations, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The House is laying the groundwork to investigate President Donald Trump’s use of Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, to plan the military operation and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to those people. Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Meta over its demands that local governments sign nondisclosure agreements related to data center development.

This report is based on interviews with five congressional staffers, lobbyists, venture capitalists and lawyers familiar with the preparations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters, along with recordings of meetings reviewed by The Washington Post.

Those possibilities have prompted a flurry of activity in Washington, where corporate lawyers are hosting emergency online meetings, gatherings in co-working spaces and intimate bar conversations to dispense advice to founders and C-suite executives on how to prepare for the highly public investigations about to rain down on firms with ties to the Trump administration.

Multiple firms have crafted pitches for why they should serve as Musk’s personal counsel, aware that the world’s richest man is likely to receive a barrage of subpoenas and that any casework stemming from those investigations will be both lucrative and the highest-profile investigative work available in the coming year, according to two of the people.

It remains unclear in Washington’s corporate legal circles, however, whether Musk’s current team can manage these efforts, according to the two people.

“This is a new era,” a lawyer at a prominent Washington law firm warned corporate executives in a private online meeting on Thursday. “If your company is caught up in this oversight, it’s likely to be much more highly publicized.”

Since Trump started his second term, tech billionaires and corporate executives have flanked the president at White House lunches, donated to his planned ballroom project and showered him with gifts in the Oval Office. Members of the Trump family, along with Wall Street executives, have also invested in a slew of firms that now receive billions of dollars in government funding.

Democrats have signaled privately and publicly that one major focus will be holding the business dealings of corporate America to account, in what some see as a generational reckoning for a cohort of firms with close ties to the Trump administration.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), who is poised to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee next year, said Wednesday that House lawmakers will target areas where the government has “been absolutely poisoned and contaminated by quid pro quo corruption.”

“We’re going to be advancing a whole series of investigations and hearings to shine a light on the corruption and then advance the laws that we need to shut this down for good,” he added.

“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, wrote on election night.

Across Washington, firms are preparing for a multitude of investigations. Venture capitalists have advised Silicon Valley start-ups to close funding rounds before the end of the year in case money dries up in the event that executives are called into hearings or the Pentagon’s spending plans are curtailed, according to one person.

Jamie Bair, head of the congressional investigations practice at the law firm Crowell and Moring, said that the Democrats’ control of both chambers of Congress heightens the expectation that they will move with speed and severity.

“This is the story on everybody’s mind,” he said.

Apple, Meta, X and Musk did not immediately return requests for comment.

‘A whole new world’

On a rainy Thursday in Washington, corporate executives signed in to an online meeting to discuss how to prepare for potential upcoming congressional investigations.

The advice from the white-shoe lawyers was stark. Capitol Hill probes require a different skill than traditional lawsuits, a lawyer said, and it’s apparent that Democrats are throwing out the old playbook of polite investigations in favor of being much more aggressive.

The attorney noted that immediately after the midterm elections this week, lawmakers such as Garcia accompanied their warnings of upcoming investigations with Instagram posts that received media attention and thousands of reshares.

“That is a whole new world compared to what sort of traditional Hill oversight publicity has been,” the lawyer said.

Congressional panels such as the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees will have a “higher-profile role” in oversight, the lawyer added, because the people affiliated with the administration have had many business dealings with foreign governments. “We would expect to see them pile into that space,” he said.

Republicans may still be looking to do their own oversight, even though they are in the minority. If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations.

“If it’s Mr. Jordan, the chances that [Republican strategy] has an aggressive oversight-oriented lens to it, driven by their own political interests, gets even higher,” the lawyer said.

Lawmakers made it clear even on election night that investigating Silicon Valley would be a priority. “The titans of Silicon Valley dig bunkers for themselves and warn that the artificial intelligence they’re creating risks human extinction,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) in his victory speech.

Tech executives “are going to need to plant new forests for all of the subpoenas we’ll be printing,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) said Tuesday night in a post on X.

After winning his race in Michigan, Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, said in a victory speech that he would be “taking on the corporations and the billionaires, special interests who’ve rigged the system against us for far too long.”

Bair said investigating corporations will be the best way to hold the Trump administration to account. It is likely investigators will issue congressional letters to the Trump administration and not get answers, he said. But corporations are likely to get more detailed letters of inquiry, and they are more apt to respond, and thereby more likely to divulge information about their dealings with U.S. officials, he said.

“That is the playbook you’re going to see,” Bair added.

Many of the Capitol Hill investigations will probably center on how the companies courted Trump and how they used that relationship to attain better fortunes.

A memo from the Groundwork Collaborative, a think tank, noted that large tech companies, private-prison corporations and natural gas firms would be “high-value” targets because of what they may have given Trump, what they may have received, and what kind of behavior they may have engaged in, the memo noted. The Washington Sun earlier reported the document.

Robert Kelner, chair of the election and political law practice group at the law firm Covington … Burling, said there’s “no question” that a wave of Democratic investigations will happen and that clients are hiring lawyers and determining what their priorities for legal protection will be.

“We’ve been telling clients all year that winter is coming,” he said. “Now winter has arrived.”

Are Elon's halcyon days drawing to a close?
 

The Great Sleeping Giant of the US Has Awakened...

 

 

 “The biggest divide in this country is not left versus right,” said the newly elected Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s top versus bottom.”

 

...looked at what's happening...and roared a thunderous "NO!" 

 

 Robert Reich / Guardian UK

05 November 26

 

The great sleeping giant of the US has awakened, taken a hard look at what’s become of the nation, and roared a thunderous “NO!”

What occurred on Tuesday was not – as some are saying – the inevitable midterm swing of the pendulum against the party in power. Texas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988. The last time Kansas elected a Democratic senator was 1932.

Nor was it just the economy. Americans are unhappy with high prices, to be sure, but inflation isn’t out of control. The country is not in a depression or recession. Unemployment remains quite low.

Nor, finally, was it all due to Donald Trump. Despite Trump’s repeated efforts to get voters to “pretend” he was on the ballot, he was not. Most Republican candidates barely mentioned him and many Democratic candidates stressed local or statewide issues rather than fixate on him.

Something much larger is responsible for what occurred: anti-establishment populism. It’s burst forth against the mammoth corporations that have scored record profits while most Americans have had to pay more. Against the mega donors and super Pacs that have flooded US politics with more campaign money – legalized bribes – than ever before.

And against the big tech billionaires who have become the most powerful force in the US economy and society – as well as Trump’s and the Republican party’s most visible backers.

The irony is that anti-establishment anger propelled Trump into the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024. Many Americans had found his politically incorrect rants and “America first” nativism to reflect their own anger at being disrespected and left behind. “I am your warrior,” he told supporters when he announced his candidacy for the 2024 election.

But during his second term, Trump has morphed into the very establishment he had railed against. He gave tax cuts and subsidies to tech billionaires. He’s promoted their AI, pushed their datacenters, put Elon Musk in charge of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), advocated their crypto, and went to war in the Middle East – not only causing gas prices to soar but making big oil billions (or, as Trump bafflingly boasts, “we’re making an absolute fortune in our country”) and enriching big tech weapons makers and investors, including his family.

Many who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024 have now abandoned him because of this blatant corruption, crony capitalism and eagerness to be on the gilded side of the US’s new Gilded Age. According to CNBC’s late October poll, corruption was the top issue on voters’ minds.

Meanwhile, anti-establishment populism has taken firm hold in the Democratic party. “The biggest divide in this country is not left versus right,” said the newly elected Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s top versus bottom.”

Sherrod Brown regained his Senate seat from Ohio largely due to voter anger at datacenters and the big tech billionaires behind them.

Abdul El-Sayed never tired on the campaign trail of reminding Michigan voters that his opponent, Mike Rogers, was backed by big corporations and mega donors.

Even Kansas’s victorious Adam Hamilton – who during his run for the Senate adamantly rejected the leftist label his opponent wanted to impose on him – campaigned on making datacenters pay for their own energy, banning lawmakers from trading stocks, expanding Medicare drug-price negotiations, and cracking down on price-gouging.

Hamilton also rejected money from corporate Pacs, as did most Democratic candidates for the Senate.

The real question in my mind is whether, come January when they control Congress, Democrats will take advantage of the new populism to enact measures most Americans need, such as Medicare for All, and reforms most Americans want, such as tougher anti-monopoly laws and limits on campaign contributions (even if this requires a constitutional amendment).

Trump is likely to veto any such initiatives, of course, but at least they’ll lay down markers for the 2028 presidential election – which, judging from what we’ve seen in the midterms, is likely to be a populist doozie.

 

Abdul El-Sayed never tired on the campaign trail of reminding Michigan voters that his opponent, Mike Rogers, was backed by big corporations and mega donors. 

"WE THE PEOPLE": AMERICA IS BACK!

A Blue Wave Just Crashed on Trump

 

Senator-elect James Talarico at an Election Night event in Austin, Texas. (photo:  Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Absolute landslide returns Dems to control of both houses

 

CANADA: Will you be our neighbor again?

 

Benjamin Wallace-Wells / The New Yorker

 04 November 26

The Republican Party has only the President and his policies to blame for its historic losses in the 2026 midterms.

For nine months, on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis, there has been a makeshift memorial for Alex Pretti, the registered nurse who was shot and killed by federal agents while trying to shield a fellow-protester during last winter’s deportation campaign in the city. On Tuesday, after Minnesotans cast their ballots in the state’s Senate race, many of them pressed their “I voted” stickers onto a lamppost at the memorial, as if completing a picture. The gestures suggested something about this year’s midterm elections which, as the evening wore on, turned out to be true: that it was a mundane event that held unusual moral stakes.

During the two years since Donald Trump won reëlection, he has pushed the country toward a brink. Trump won only a narrow Presidential majority in 2024, and his party held a majority in each chamber of Congress by just a few seats. Even so, the President faced little institutional resistance as he pushed the federal government-eroding DOGE program, the senseless and costly tariffs, the authoritarian power of the crackdown on migrants, the feckless Iran war. 

He could pursue these goals because he had convinced most of his party, and many members of the public, that his victory over Kamala Harris meant that half of the country would irrevocably be on his side.

The results of the midterm votes are still rolling in. But the rejection of the President is undeniable and uncomplicated, and it reached deep into what had long been understood as conservative territory. 

His party has lost its Senate race in Ohio—and looks likely to lose in Michigan, where the post-industrial economy had long supplied the symbolic heart of Trumpism. 

It has lost in Texas, where Democrats had not won a statewide race in more than a hundred contests, stretching back to 1994, and in South Carolina. 

It has lost in Iowa and in Kansas, which has not seated a Democratic senator since the Great Depression. There are counties in southwestern Kansas where Trump won two years ago by about thirty-five points—Finney County, Seward County, Ford County—that, as the tallies accumulated in the state’s U.S. Senate race, were voting narrowly for the Democrat. For a decade, the country had become used to a fixed map—blue in the cities, deep red in the outlying areas. Now there is some instability around the edges.

One specific issue, or an especially weak Republican candidate, might make sense as an explanation in particular races. But the truth is that Trump’s past two years have offered voters a menu of reasons to turn away from him. 

In South Texas, it might have been the cruelty of the immigration raids; in Kansas, the effect of the Iran war on diesel and fertilizer prices; in South Carolina, an especially poorly chosen Republican candidate. Over the course of the long Trump decade, many liberals had come to assume that conservatives were so devoted to the culture war that they were politically impervious to events. But this time, in such places, the news made it through. All of it mattered.

Somewhat suddenly, almost nothing in U.S. politics seems certain. The Democratic Party has lately been understood as an aging, defensive entity, with a nursing-home veneer. But this year’s campaigns have elevated a group of younger and newer Democrats (Jon Ossoff, in Georgia; James Talarico, in Texas; Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan) who have found it quite natural to denounce the oligarchic and authoritarian elements of the status quo, and to separate themselves from some elements of the Party’s doctrine. The South, the most deeply conservative region in the country for nearly all of its history, suddenly has a purple hue. 

Is J. D. Vance still the presumptive next Presidential nominee? Will the Republican Party still pliably fall into line behind the man who lost in Texas?

And though the Democrats have made astonishing breakthroughs, their near-term future is a little cloudy, too. The intraparty fight, between its insurgent, youthful left and the legacy party, a contest intense enough that at times it seemed to crowd out the whole rest of American politics, is still unresolved—both sides can claim vindication, and can point to new champions emerging from the midterms. The Party itself remains generally unpopular. Perhaps most important, with the liberal grassroots awaiting a Presidential primary to come, lower-wattage figures (Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer) are now in charge. For a political formation that might now have a claim on a majority, the Democrats remain curiously faceless.

Even so, one instance of clarity came around 11 P.M., as Fox News flashed the graphic predicting that the Democrats would win control of the House of Representatives: we are no longer in the shadow of 2024. In culture and in politics, conservatives had insisted that Trump’s victory in that election was the defining one, and that it reflected a culminating turn against “wokeness,” against internationalism, against modern ideas about gender or race—a more atavistic America was being unleashed. Trump called into Fox News just after midnight, sounding a little whimsical and discursive. “It’s just a point in time,” the President said. “There was a mood in the air, I guess.”

In a similar way, perhaps, the 2024 election, and the atmosphere it ushered in, now looks a bit more like an aberration, and the idea that it represented a historical pivot seems more like the wishful thinking of a few people who stood to benefit from it. The experience of the past two years has mattered—tallied, among other places, in the “I voted” stickers that climbed up the memorial in Minneapolis. Elon Musk spent nearly two hundred million dollars to keep Texas red, and the Republicans blew it. Of course, it looks like a slightly different Texas, this morning. It looks like a slightly different country.

 

Supporters cheer as they watch early election results before Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives to speak at an election night event in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 3.

Eric Gay/AP Photo/Eric Gay