There are many reasons why Democrats won landslide victories in Tuesday’s off-year elections, not the least of which is that the party out of power usually wins in such circumstances. None of the polls showed Republicans poised to produce an upset. But none predicted that Democrats would receive such huge margins, or that the party would win down ballot in places where Republicans have long dominated. In other words, it was a much better result than Democrats had even hoped — and a much worse outcome for the GOP.
You could see how bad it was by observing President Donald Trump’s drawn features and low energy appearances throughout the week. He even seemed to doze off at one point in the middle of a presentation by Dr. Mehmet Oz, who runs Medicare and Medicaid, in the Oval Office. For some time now, Trump has appeared to be living in a bubble, convinced of his invincibility and so sure of his own instincts and impulses that he hasn’t been paying attention to what’s really happening.
So far, his second term has been a chaotic mess. Trump pursues revenge against his enemies and gives favors to his friends, and in every possible instance he creates opportunities for his family to profit. To the extent that he’s focused on the actual job of being president, it has mostly been on foreign policy, where he’s enjoying the pageantry and flattery he receives from foreign leaders; his immigration crackdown, which thrills his hardcore base; and his precious tariff regime. But as Tuesday’s election results show, all of that comes with a big political price.
Trump’s forays into foreign policy have been embarrassing at best. The good news for him is that, except for the Israel-Gaza peace deal — which he has himself portrayed as an opportunity to ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to build a resort — nobody is paying much attention. They are consumed with the other two issues which form the basis of the resistance to his agenda, as well as the electoral losses the GOP just suffered.
Voters are appalled by his authoritarian immigration agenda, particularly the Hispanic community, which had been trending more Republican for the last few cycles but is now showing signs of swinging sharply to Democrats. This is a big problem for the GOP. Republicans were so sure they had permanently captured the Latino vote that they began racially profiling and brutalizing immigrants in the streets of American cities — and believing Latinos would still turn out for GOP candidates. They gerrymandered five seats in Texas under that assumption, and now they might end up losing them, as well as other seats they weakened in the process.
Mostly, though, the American people are upset about the economy — specifically inflation and affordability, which every Democrat elected on Tuesday ran on in one way or another. Trump promised to fix the economy on day one, and clearly that has not happened. Voters are beginning to blame the president and his tariffs for making it worse.
His first reaction on the morning after the election was to blame the GOP losses on the shutdown — after he had pretty much ignored the issue since the government closed on Oct. 1. Then he demanded that the Senate nuke the filibuster to pass the rest of his unpopular agenda. Republican senators had been resistant to the so-called “nuclear option” before the elections, and after the party’s shocking losses they came back with a hard no.
Trump did have an unusual moment of clarity. “They have this new word called ‘affordability’ and [Republicans] don’t talk about it enough,” he said. “Democrats did.”
This was progress for the president; he seemed ready to admit that people were not happy with the economy. But that coherence only lasted a day. By Thursday, Trump was saying, “I don’t want to hear about affordability,” after a misleading Walmart statement said that Thanksgiving meals would be less expensive this year than last. (The company replaced brand name goods with lower quality options, while leaving out the pie, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, onions, cornbread and whipped cream. It’s a real bargain.)
Trump was on a roll from there, claiming that only the price of beef had gone up, disputing that any cost increases add up to much and defending his decision to withhold Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. “Our country has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars — it could be anything,” he said. “We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away.” (The U.S. controls its own currency.)
But the president got some other bad news. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to his emergency use of tariffs, and most of the justices — even those appointed by the president himself — didn’t seem convinced. Trump, seeming to recognize a defeat could be in the offing, said that he’ll “have to develop a game two plan” and let it slip that average Americans “might be paying something.”
He tried to pivot to a national security argument, but it was so fatuous that it’s hard to believe anyone would buy it. “Look, I’m ending wars because of these tariffs,” he said. “Americans would have to fight in some of these wars.”
On Thursday, Challenger, Gray and Christmas, a firm that tracks workplace reductions, released a comprehensive report showing that layoffs surged to recessionary levels in October. The company calculated that 1.1 million jobs have been lost so far in 2025, resulting in the worst October for layoffs since 2003. With inflation still stubborn and people smarting from the higher prices induced by Trump’s tariffs, the economy is on shaky ground. And that’s before skyrocketing health care premiums and electricity prices start hitting this month.
Trump is set to have a serious crisis on his hands, and it doesn’t appear he has the slightest idea what to do about it, except what he usually does: Double down and blame someone else.
This week’s election results have shown Republican officials that voters are paying attention to what’s happening in Washington, D.C. — and they don’t like what they see. The gadflies and Trump fans who only come out to vote for him have not been converted to loyal party members, and many of the non-white and younger voters who gave him an edge in 2024 are fleeing to the Democrats.
The result? Trump has been pushed into early lame duck status.
He promised to lower prices and instead they are going up. He promised a thriving economy and the job market appears to be cratering. He vowed to deport gang members and criminals, and instead it’s his federal agents who are marauding through the streets. When asked if he thinks Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have gone too far, Trump said they haven’t gone far enough, reiterating his commitment to a violently anti-immigrant program. There is no reason to believe he has any intention of changing course.
The president might get lucky; he has before. Maybe all of this will calm down, and by next November it will be morning in America. Republicans, though, would be foolish to count on that happening. Trump is causing massive trauma across this country and people are angry about it.
The sooner Republicans wake up and treat him like the rabid lame duck he is, the better off they — and the country — will be. The only question is whether they can muster the courage to do it.
Salon
