Donald Trump acted and governed like the abusive alcoholic father, oblivious to the needs of the family; the 2026 shellacking was akin to a spouse and kids finally finding the strength to kick him to the side of the road, and better for it.
The nation’s biggest problem now is that the current GOP is the bar that never cut Trump off and likely can’t if it wanted to, thus bearing responsibility for everything he wrecks going forward.
That’s a Republican problem that will extend two years into the future with few good solutions. Because Trump will not stop metaphorically drinking, he won’t acknowledge he has a problem, and too many GOP primary Republican voters will agree.
How does that add up?
The historic 2026 election represents the ultimate tour de force against all things MAGA, at least with respect to general elections. When Texas goes entirely blue? MAGA is dead as a national political party. It will remain a powerful GOP minority in part because MAGA was always an identity, not a set of principles; thus, the core cannot give up on it lest they give up on themselves, admitting they might have been wrong all along. Won’t happen, not with the core.
The result is a Faustian bargain for all 2028 GOP candidates. They have to show enough loyalty to Trump to keep the hardcore primary vote (remember, Ken Paxton didn’t appoint himself; Republican primary voters put him there), and yet the Trump stench, any whiff, would seem to be sufficient to preclude a win in November.
Take a moment to enjoy the fact that any GOP candidate eyeing the presidential nomination must take this past election into account and must do so now, not eight months from now, having let the rough edges dull a bit. Candidates have been announcing earlier and earlier in the last generation of cycles. Tuesday’s zeitgeist simply cannot be ignored, nor easily worked around.
How about some quick candidate housework?
Vance is skunked for good, certainly as a possible president. Absent a fast resignation, which almost surely won’t be coming, he’s still stuck to Trump, and we now know that such association spoils faster than milk on the counter.
Rubio? Less so. But he, too, almost surely needs to resign to distance himself, and the moment Rubio starts rebuking all the policies that led to where we stand, even including Trump’s ever-puffing presence, Rubio will likely be banished to the wilderness by an unforgiving, tempestuous president scorned. That’s where you want to be headed into the general in 2028, but you won’t be there to enjoy it: knee-capped in the parking lot by that 25% of the nation for whom MAGA- dead or alive- remains their essence.
There are some intriguing possibilities, in the sense that they might win the primary and at least avoid some Trump stench in the general. Possibilities arise primarily from a noticeably decreased list of available governors, less involved in day-to-day Trump support.
There is Ron DeSantis, newly unemployed, who has challenged Trump in a primary before- something few others can claim- but then supported Trump just enough to call himself a Trump supporter before the 2024 election. Laugh out loud, though: Ron DeSantis may wiggle himself into winning the primary, but he sure doesn’t sound like the guy voters just demanded. He is not the anti-Trump.
Not that any of them are, but we’re just spitballing here.
Perhaps the best-positioned former governor is Brian Kemp of Georgia, who famously stared Trump down in 2020 and never fully ingratiated himself with MAGA-proper, meaning, again, he might have at least a respectable chance in 2028 but, again, won’t get there for a hilariously deserved proper reason. Trump never forgets, and MAGA-lite won’t allow it.
See how this plays out? It is the same for just about everyone.
The irony is that it would not necessarily have to be this way, but for that one ongoing problem. Symbolically, Trump ain’t about to sober up, change his tune, start acting and governing more in line with what voters clearly demanded — including an end to the corruption and an end to the abject juvenility voters faced every day coming from the White House. If we know anything about Trump, it is that he has one solution to every problem — brute force. In Trump’s mind, if brute force isn’t working, it’s because he’s not using enough.
Thus, GOP candidates must come to grips with the fact that Tuesday’s electoral shockquake owes itself to a nearly unforeseeable level of Trump resentment; and despite the stupifyingly obvious message, because Trump is so uniquely Trump, the result only assures us more Trump.
He is not about to create more room for candidates to maneuver by backing off anything, even his march to economic war with Canada, march to real war with Iran, none of it. Candidates will be forced to take their medicine in search of Trump’s blessing in the primaries only to overdose in the general.
Like any proper historic election, the ramifications from Tuesday will ripple out for years, six years in at least seven Senate seats, but the biggest waves, those closest to the tempest, must be navigated without capsizing in the next six months.
It is impossible to conceive of a more deserving group. It also gives Democrats a lot of landscape to explore approaching the general, perhaps a more committed progressive than might otherwise be realistic.
Sure, a lot of people will still be doing CPR on the remains of MAGA, but as Tuesday proved, that body has been brain dead for a while. Not that they noticed; it was Trump, after all, punch-drunk, throwing haymakers that land only on GOP moderates.
That’s an encouraging and fairly sober assessment. Want a touch of champagne?
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, former editor at Occupy Democrats, author, attorney, consultant, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at [email protected]
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