Six years ago, after Joe Biden won his narrow victory over Donald Trump, I wrote that the president’s defeat wasn’t a repudiation as much as it was a split decision, “an uncertain result for an uncertain time in American life.” The political trench warfare of the previous four years would continue. There would be no repudiation of either Trump or Trumpism.
That is, until now.
On Tuesday, Democrats won the largest midterm victory either party has seen since the post-Watergate elections of 1974 and 1976, which swept Richard Nixon’s Republican Party out of Washington. They won everywhere, with nearly total victories in states as different as Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin. They won seats in the longtime conservative strongholds of Kansas and South Carolina and shattered the electoral coalition that gave Trump his second term. As the dust began to settle, Democrats held the majority of governorships, a suite of new state trifectas, a 54-seat majority in the U.S. Senate that may well grow and something north of a 250-seat majority in the House of Representatives.
For the Republicans, it was as close as an American political party gets to total collapse — not a defeat but a catastrophic rout.
There is an obvious question to ask here: What happened? How, two years after its first presidential popular vote win in a generation, did the Republican Party disintegrate on renewed contact with voters?
Of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments,” Number 4 is probably the most important: Never use what you sell, never get high on your own supply. Doing so is an easy way to lose perspective, act recklessly and make choices that threaten the entire enterprise.
The midterms were such a seismic political event that there is an overwhelming amount to unpack, break down and analyze. But if there is a single diagnosis you might make of the Republican Party’s generational defeat at the ballot box, it is that from Trump down, the party got high, ruinously high, on its own supply.
Trump and his allies looked at the 2024 election as an enabling act for all of their most radical aspirations. They saw the president’s popular vote victory and relative down-ballot success as a mandate that handed them the keys to American politics and culture. This was the “vibe shift”; the idea that Trump had not won an office but had built a new MAGA majority, a realignment that would shape American politics for the duration. It was a message that quite a few people wanted to hear, as it dovetailed with an elite “anti-woke” backlash and a revolt of capital against a strong, worker-friendly labor market.
For Republicans, the idea that Trump had engendered a vibe shift — and that the whole nation was now Mar-a-Lago — was reason enough to commit entirely to the president’s authoritarian agenda. Republicans sat back and either watched or cheered as the White House, drunk with power, attempted to rip up American democracy and turn the United States into a personalist autocracy.
Republicans backed Trump as he made Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection a roving deportation force, putting tens of billions of dollars into kidnapping Americans from their homes and workplaces and terrorizing entire communities. Republicans backed the military occupations of American cities and the president’s move to treat Democratic-led cities and states as conquered territory.
Republicans sat back as Trump imposed disastrous tariffs, shipped immigrants to foreign prisons, tried to destroy independent news media and worked to dismantle the nation’s institutions of public health and higher education. Republicans watched, in silence, as the president’s roving thugs shot multiple people dead in the street.
If the Trump administration was high on its own victory, then the Republican Party did not just share in that irrational exuberance but facilitated it and allowed it to run out of control. It made itself a partner to Trump’s tyranny in virtually every instance. And when Trump demanded that Republicans take steps to block meaningful political opposition with an unprecedented campaign of mid-decade redistricting, most agreed, eager to do what they could to stop the public from holding the president accountable.
The results on Tuesday cannot be understood outside of the hubris of Trump and the Republican Party; outside of its belief that it had insulated itself from popular discontent; that it had, in some sense, won politics and that Trump had fully escaped the pull of political gravity.
But this was delusional. It was delusional then, after the 2024 election, when Trump and his party were euphoric with anticipation, and it was especially delusional as this year progressed and November loomed larger on the calendar.
What is true of the physical world is true of the political one: With every action comes an equal and opposite reaction. A de facto ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at Hispanics as such, and not merely at “criminal illegal aliens,” produced a swing among Hispanic voters so large that it did the previously unthinkable: it flipped Texas blue across the board, in a Southwestern shift reminiscent of the transformation that hit California in the aftermath of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187.
In the states of the Deep South, the Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act — and the Trump administration’s broad hostility to diversity, inclusion and the presence of Black Americans in the highest reaches of public life and government service — triggered a counter-mobilization so large that it flipped South Carolina’s Senate seat and may well do the same for Mississippi, in addition to nearly closing the gap in Florida and Louisiana.
And the stunning shift in the Midwest, as well as the states bordering Canada, is a clear reaction to the president’s economic policies, his tariffs and his war, which have made life more difficult for farmers and blue-collar workers.
A Trump administration and a Republican Party that had a realistic sense of its 2024 victory, that saw it not as a decisive cultural settlement but as a narrow and contingent win whose durability would depend entirely on the president’s ability to deliver for the voters who joined his side, would have made more measured choices. It would have put a lid on Stephen Miller’s demagogic dreams of demographic transformation, kept Elon Musk far away from the levers of government and told Russell Vought to put the brakes on his grand ambition to traumatize the Civil Service. It would never have put Pete Hegseth in a position of authority and would not have launched a war with Iran. It would have tried to deliver economic relief and avoid major cultural conflicts. It would have tried to cement and build on its victory, not take it for granted.
But asking Trump and the people around him to show humility is like asking the scorpion not to sting the frog. MAGA is a faction devoted to the subordination of those it believes to be its racial inferiors and cultural and political enemies. It rejects pluralism and democratic deliberation in favor of authoritarian homogeneity. Its hubris was inevitable. They are who they are.
It is on that note that I will say that Democrats should also not get too high on their own supply. This has a somewhat different valence for the Democratic Party, which has too often been afraid of its own shadow. The temptation of some in its ranks is to downplay the implications of its victory, to say that the party is not especially popular with the public and should keep its ambitions in check.
But that is silly. Tuesday was a mandate, if not for Democrats qua Democrats then for consequences and accountability for this administration. The American people voted against Republicans to end corruption, to reject authoritarian rule and to assert control over their own lives and communities in the face unaccountable corporations, billionaire oligarchs and their allies in government.
For Democrats to get too high on their own supply, then, is for Democrats to retreat to the idea that the only thing that mattered were a set of narrow “kitchen table issues” — and to shy away from taking bold action to clean house in Washington.
And so, in addition to heeding Biggie Smalls’s fourth crack commandment, Democrats should also take the advice of another hip-hop luminary, Big Daddy Kane. In a fight such as this one — a fight for the survival of American democracy — there simply ain’t no half-steppin’.
What I Wrote
My column this week was a look at how President Trump leveraged the entire federal government to try to subvert the midterm elections. He failed, but the attempt illustrates his contempt for democracy and the threat he continues to pose to the Constitution.
The core of the problem is that Trump turned the federal government against American democracy in a relentless effort to challenge, subvert and undermine the nation’s election infrastructure. All in an effort to disrupt the conduct of free and fair elections and hold on to power in the face of popular discontent.
I gave a few thoughts on the election in an Opinion roundup of Tuesday night. I joined my colleagues to talk about our takeaways from the election on video. And Michelle Cottle, David French and I taped a live episode of “The Opinions” at the Brooklyn Public Library on Thursday. Elsewhere, I talked about the movies “Collateral Damage” and “Clear and Present Danger” on the Trade Movies Podcast.
Now Reading
Mark O’Connell on JD Vance for The New York Review of Books.
Susan B. Glasser on America’s first truly anti-Trump election result for The New Yorker.
David Dayen on what progressives hope to do to deliver on their promises for The American Prospect.
Sherrilyn Ifill on the midterm results for her Substack newsletter.
Stacey Abrams on what Democrats need to do next for her Substack newsletter.
Photo of the Week
A memorial to Representative Robert Smalls in his hometown, Beaufort, S.C. Smalls, whose daring escape from slavery during the Civil War is the stuff of Hollywood, was one of the first Black Americans elected to Congress during Reconstruction.
Now Eating: Cuban Black Beans
I made a big pot of black beans this week and I’ve been eating them with various meals. Here is a good recipe if you would like to do the same. I usually use smoked turkey instead of bacon and greatly reduce the salt — start with one teaspoon kosher salt and add more as needed. Serve with white rice or a nice piece of crusty bread. Recipe from NYT Cooking.
Ingredients
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1 ½ green peppers, stemmed and seeded
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10 garlic cloves
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1 pound dried black beans, rinsed and picked over to remove any stones
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1 smoked ham hock
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2 bay leaves
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5 teaspoons salt, or to taste
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¼ cup olive oil
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4 slices thick bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces
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1 Spanish onion, diced
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1 jalapeño, stemmed and finely chopped
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1 teaspoon dried oregano
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½ teaspoon ground cumin
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½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
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3 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
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1 tablespoon turbinado or other brown sugar
Directions
Cut 1 green pepper into 1-inch squares. Smash and peel 4 of the garlic cloves. Put the green pepper and garlic into a large pot with the beans, ham hock, bay leaves and 1 tablespoon salt. Add 2 quarts water and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and simmer until the beans are tender, an hour or more.
Meanwhile, make a sofrito. Cut the remaining ½ green pepper into ¼-inch dice. Peel and finely chop the remaining garlic. Heat the olive oil in a very large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the green pepper and onion and cook, stirring, until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add the remaining garlic, jalapeño (leave out the seeds if you don’t want it too spicy), oregano, cumin, black pepper and 2 teaspoons salt and stir for another minute. Pour in the vinegar and scrape any browned bits from bottom of pan with a wooden spoon. This is your sofrito.
When the beans are cooked, discard the bay leaf. Remove and set aside the ham hock and let it cool. Transfer 1 cup of beans to small bowl, mash them into a paste with the back of a fork and return to the pot. Add the sofrito, then the sugar. Pull the meat from the ham hock, leaving behind any white sinew or gristle. Chop the ham into ½-inch pieces and return it to the bean pot.
Stir the beans well and bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so, skimming any foam from the top. Taste for salt and serve with white rice.
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