Once again, the polls were terribly off; however, this time around, instead of being wrong about who would win, they were wrong about how resounding the defeat was. Now most people knew that Republican's were going to lose the House. Frankly, I don't even think Speaker Johnson or President Trump truly believed that Republicans could keep it; they didn't really have a choice to say anything different. The message that voters (the American public) sent to Congress, Republicans, and Trump was blunt.
We are sick of this shit and what you are doing.
Last night, as I watched CNN's coverage of the midterms, it wasn't long before I realized that this was nothing short of a disaster. While the idea of a Blue Tsunami had been picking up over the last week and a half, I honestly dismissed a lot of the chatter because of how close the last ~5 elections have been. Even when I factored in that this would be a midterm election with significant turnout and people voting against Republicans because of how they enabled Trump, I did not expect to see such a clear and consistent rebuke across the states, no matter where you lived or how good a candidate was. The end result wasn't a blue wave or a blue tsunami, but a blue meteor strike blowing Republicans sky-high.
I will be the first one to say Republicans have done this to themselves because we allowed Trump to become a godlike figure whom you did not stand up to because you would get crushed. The only people who stood up to him were either people who were retiring or those who lost their primaries and thus had nothing to lose. Trump's tactics over the last decade finally wore out their welcome. You can be a dick and a terrible person if you are getting results for the country, but as soon as that goes away and your choices have put Americans in a difficult spot, heads are going to roll.
It wasn't like there were just one or two instances either. His tariff war, which a lot of people initially supported, went off the rails, and the personal attacks started to fly not just at a common rival like China, but at Canada, the EU, South Korea, etc. The Admin completely failed to present the public with why the war with Iran was necessary and to provide a game plan. As a result, the whole situation is confusing and randomly seems to be drawn out without a true end... aka getting us into a Forever War, something he has criticized Republicans and Democrats for. Then, just for fun, you can throw in any number of other insane things he has done recently, from trying to warm up ties to Russia to the tone-deaf talks about data centers to his random side quests in improving DC; the list just goes on and on. Oh, and let's not forget when he proudly announced to the world months ago that he didn't care about the midterms and how he didn't need a Republican Congress.
For me personally, this is the first time in the 5+ years I have lived here that I know, come January 3rd, my job will be gone. House Committees work in an interesting way, as the majority receives 2/3 of the budget while the minority receives 1/3, with the same being the case for staffing levels. Meaning that 2/3 of our current staff is getting the axe, and those who are hit the hardest by these cuts are the middle-tier staffers. Senior-level staff are kept for their expertise, and the entry-level staff are cheap, whereas middle-level staff like myself are too expensive but not quite knowledgeable enough to fill the role.
Over the next ~2 months, I will be navigating a space that will also be filled with people in the same position as me, and the number of jobs on The Hill will be pretty limited. Due to being three months short of 5 years come January 2027, I will likely try to find another office or Committee to latch onto to hit the 5-year mark.
The results of this election are not going to be quickly reversed. The Senate map for 2028 doesn't offer much, with 2032 being the next time all of these races that were lost are up again. The House will likely take an election or two before it could be flipped.
For Trump..... I expect that by the end of December, he is going to be just going ham on giving out blanket pardons. Due to how Biden handled leaving office and the blanket pardons he issued, Trump is going to do the same, and the Democrats are going to face a harsh choice. If you go after the legality of these pardons, you are going to open up everyone who got one in 2024/2025, as Biden left office, to legal action as well. Eventually, Republicans will retake Congress, and if the Dems have destroyed the blanket pardons, then Fauci, Hunter Biden, etc are all going to have to face the music.
There are going to be a lot of investigations launched in January and it is going to take up a ton of time for the next two years. Who knows if they will result in anything but we can already see they are taking shape now.
To put it plain and simple.... being in the majority is hard as hell. It is so much easier to be in the minority and just be a thorn in the side of the majority party. Getting your Members to come together and agree is hard enough, but given that the Dems won't have 60 Senate seats, they won't have a filibuster-proof majority, and since it is a Republican president, they can't pass anything through reconciliation, given that Trump would just veto it. It's going to be an interesting next few years, and hopefully the Republican Party realizes that the character of your candidates matters just as much as their qualifications.
Trump is an idiot. The end. Maybe the country will get it right next time.
Meanwhile, if they have the votes in the Senate, they should take him out for good measure.
But fuck Democrats and their supporters, they are anti God, anti life, and annti prosperity, anti freedom and they are terrorists and communists and trans pedophiles. Leave me and my family and my state alone you damn Democrats, eat shit and fucking die. We are fucking sick of you left and your violence. Trump has done good in enforcing immigration (look at what is going on in Europe), he freed Ross Ulbricht, under him the NFA has been defeated. I don’t support fighting the wars of another country (the Zionist trick boomers into supporting them), but other than the Iran war He is much better than hellish Democrats which all should be barred from office and deemed what they are and admit, communists and terrorists.
Sorry you've been led astray. If you see MAGA and the cult leader, Trump , as pro God, then you aren't looking at the God of the Bible, and saying "besides the war" is the equivalent of saying besides being a total moron.
With all that being said, I think the best thing Dems could do over the next two years is this The Electoral College Could Be Neutralized Before 2028.
To convict in an impeachment trial, the Senate would need 2/3 of the vote. At this time, that's not even remotely possible; maybe the investigations will uncover something, but as is, the numbers aren't even there to break a filibuster.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it takes 67 votes to convict and remove. Dems could have 56 senate seats. Last trial for J6, they got 7 republican votes to convict and remove after getting just 1 the first time. The trend is their friend. As we saw from the midterms no one except white men likes this turd. 1 -> 7 -> 11 votes from the other side seems feasible to me , and if the votes are there, I say pull the trigger on him!!!
So the issue with that is, well, several of those 7 are lost, and so the number doesn't work anymore. The seven were
So only two are left of the seven, and of those seven, two of them are part of the 54-56 Democratic Senate Seats. Senator Elect Letlow is a big Trump ally so I would be stunned if she burns that bridge so quickly. Senator Curtis is a moderate Republican, but if I remember right, he is thinking about running for another office, maybe Gov. of Nevada, and so there are more significant considerations there. Senator Ricketts, I guess, could, since he just won re-election, so he wouldn't have to deal with it for 6 years, but I'm not sure.
2 to 11 is a steeper climb, but this president is a convicted felon. Grounds for impeachment aren’t scarce.
I’d rather see Democrats make the national popular vote decisive, ending the Electoral College’s power to overturn the voters’ choice.
I can't remember off the top of my head what the legal issues with that case were, and I was told that by people on both sides of the aisle. There was something about the way it was done and the business implications that were on very very questionable ground. I can't remember what it was, but I remember hearing people talk about it.
What I am trying to say is we all know he is a corrupt MF. Finding a case for impeachment will not be difficult.
It's kind of like the menu at the Cheesecake Factory. The hardest part is all the choices!
With all that being said, I think the best thing Dems could do over the next two years is this The Electoral College Could Be Neutralized Before 2028.
Nice write up. But I take issue with your last part: "To put it plain and simple.... being in the majority is hard as hell."
Trump had it easy. He was given a complete mandate. He had significan public approval + house + senate.
All he had to do was: (a) Sensible immigration (I think the ham-fisted ICE raids even screwed that up, there was a much better way to do it!), (b) Roll back insane leftist cultural issues (men in womens locker-rooms, sex changes for toddlers, tranny story hour, etc), (c) Modicum of DOGE + regulation trimming, etc.
That was it. Nothing he needed to do even required any legislation.
He couldn't do it though because he is retarded + blackmailed.
I voted for him 3 times and I'm very happy last night happened. I certainly don't support any of the leftist policies, however I rather "navigating commie policies" over "having a nuclear war and/or grid collapse".
If JD was really smart he should instigate an impeachment. Its honestly the best hope republicans have....get their QB in the seat without having to risk election and hope that JD can salvage enough of the MAGA agenda to make him a contender in 2028. However I think the Dems completely see thru that scheme and thus won't go for impeachment...they would rather leave the fat, unpopular retard in office since he is their best chance at getting in on '28.
"Roll back insane leftist cultural issues (men in womens locker-rooms, sex changes for toddlers, tranny story hour, etc), (c) Modicum of DOGE + regulation trimming, etc."
See this is the reason that Republicans lost... And they just don't get it yet.
People don't care about these issues... I'm not saying cultural issues don't matter at all but they are like absolutely near last, to the extent that they barely even exist.
Americans are frustrated by kitchen table issues, cost of living, and inflation. Why those things are a problem I think is complex... But it certainly isn't going to be solved by having more (or less) transgender people in sports. That would have zero impact and it doesn't get farmers cheaper diesel or Americans cheaper healthcare.
Focusing on 'cultural issues' like the LGBT while most Americans rank the economy bad/poor with record low consumer confidence... was never going to work.
And so it was a complete disaster.
And the truth is that Republicans aren't even interested in doge - they are spending and borrowing more money than ever. So whatever happened to 'balanced budgets' like they promised?
Republicans need real solutions that offer people a better life beyond focusing on the 10 'transgender athletes' (if that many) or they will lose again.
I both agree and disagree with your take.
Where I disagree is that I think DEI had really gone overboard and it was a live voting issue for many people. When you hear at a faculty meeting, "I took this person off the list because they're a white male", it's become a real problem.
Where I agree is that nothing Trump did or didn't do about DEI can override poor decisions on the economy, including getting us into needless wars.
Will Democrats get farmers cheaper diesel and Americans cheaper healthcare? (And I mean actually cheaper, not cheaper because it's paid for by the government).
It will be VERY VERY interesting to see how far the Dem Party as a whole pushes DEI like stuff. It blew up in their faces last time around, so do they learn a lesson or go with a good old self-inflicted wound?
As an outsider (non-American), that's indeed what the whole American culture war looks like. In the EU and Asia, where I've lived, I feel like most people laugh about these issues (both left and right extremes). There is some spillover from the US tendency, but the resulting DEI policies are much less extreme (and overall, quite reasonable), and similarly, the response from the right is consequently much less severe. YMMV.
I mostly agree and partially disagree. Some of the early stuff, like DOGE, was seeming very popular, which makes it appear easy. To my knowledge though, Congress was never particularly helpful at making any of those cuts or reorganizations permanent.
The things he really cared about were tariffs and illegal immigration. Neither of which were even remotely practical reforms, without Congressional cooperation, which never meaningfully happened.
The result was mostly feckless chaos.
Yes, tariffs turned out to be unworkable due to distributed supply chain, and he took exactly the wrong approach on immigration.
There was a variety of very straight forward approaches he could've made. First and foremost, any illegal on welfare, in prison, or voting should've been the main focus. Yes, that would only account for 10-15% of the total of illegals, but thats what people really care about.
The truth is, most people don't really care about "Jose the lawn guy".... but the notion that we have illegals on welfare or in prison was a "low hanging fruit + big positive optics".
In truth his deportation numbers may've only been similar to Obama or Clinton but it was all just good optics for him and the public would've loved it.
I still dont understand why illegal immigration was ever such an important issue. Sure maybe there's that 5% bad element (if its even that high) but the rest are like Jose the lawn guy.
And Americans like their cheap, affordable Jose lawn guy. So mass arbitrary deportations were never going to work.
Maybe the rule of law. Plus they are the perfect scapegoat of why things tend to suck for some folks.
I feel the same way. Jonathan Haidt’s moral sensibilities offer the best explanation I’ve seen.
Basically, it violates some people’s senses of fair play and purity, so they are primed to respond viscerally rather than logically.
Oh yeah, I'd say easily 75% of the cuts are easily reversed if a Dem Admin takes over because nothing was permanent. Even the reorgs and renames are not permanent and could immediately be undone by the next person. For DOGE to work, it would have to be codified, and the brute force approach to firing a bunch of people hurt a lot of districts across the U.S., which alone dealt the Republicans a huge blow. Then we factor in how we fired people who never should of been, like those at the NNSA, it became a bumbling mess. DOGE sounded good in theory to the public, but those of us on the Hill knew it would be a disaster, and we were proven right.
I didn't mention him, but he is just as guilty as the rest is Russell Vought, the head of OMB, who, putting it nicely, is a bumbling idiot. He slashed and burned areas like, idk, our freaking nuclear security workforce because he was so stupid; he either A) can't read or B is so stupid he refused to even do a simple Google search.
He didn't need to make it permanent. His mandate was to bring these things into the conversation and start moving the needle in the right direction.
My view of Trump voters is that their main reason for voting for him is because he acknowledged their grievances. I don't think they necessarily cared that much how much he accomplished as long as it moved the needle in the right direction, and he continued to speak to them in a way that makes them feel heard.
Maybe permanent didn't matter, but without any help from Congress they couldn't even reduce spending, because Congress kept appropriating the same amount of money to the gutted agencies. Then it all got bogged down in unnecessary court cases that could have been avoided with cooperation from Congress.
They really got what they deserved, for both enabling the bad of Trump and obstructing the good.
You and I think almost exactly alike. I 100% agree that Trump had a very simple political mandate, but he botched it either because he misread it or because he just stopped caring.
And I agree that the Republican party's best path forward is for JD to orchestrate the removal of Trump, become president, and use the last 1.5 years of the Trump term to repair the Republicans' image.
You think a 3-seat House Majority is a mandate? That was the biggest joke in the world because we were never going to have the votes to do any sort of thing he talked about. If anyone has a mandate, it's the Dems, just like it was the Republicans in 2010.
The issues you said he should of done was going to require legislation esp. when it came to DOGE and a ton of regulation trimming would have needed it as well.
If JD wanted to remove him, he wouldn't need to deal with impeachment; he could invoke the 25th and get the Cabinet to do so.
Besides going after trump I have no clue what type of legislation this new blue wave will bring forward to improve the lives of Americans
Their priorities most likely will be to:
But I don't know how much they can get done while Trump is still president.
Within the democratic party, they are going to fight a lot over how much support to keep giving Israel
Trump already said he was cutting funding to Israel at the end of the year.
That was as empty a promise as the $5k checks.
Lol now that the checks are dead I want to believe (in my little bubble of course) that those checks would have easily gotten Congressional support so voters cost themselves a whole $5k!
We never got the tariff checks or any others that he promised.
Yeah those died when the Supreme Court made the Feds return on the money.... notice how none of those companies ever passed that money on to their customers though.... the only company I can think of that even sort of did anything was Nintendo, who did the first sale in forever with the discount coming from the money they had gotten back.
Exactly
I would bank on them working to pass an extension of the CHIPS and Science Act tax credits for building semi's in the U.S. as those expire at the end of this year.
Another big thing is they are likely to try to find a workaround to clamp down on data center on-site generators. The emergency backups will likely avoid it, but the data centers that have built or are building on-site gas-fired generators w/o paying for grid upgrades or anything of that sort are likely to get swept up in something.
Gonna get a job in bitcoin legislation?
What makes you think the problem was only Trump, and not the entire system you've spent the last five years working for?
Well at the beginning of my career we were in the minority, gained the majority, kept the majority, and then lost it this time around. As dysfunctional as the House is there was still a lot of really good legislation that passed out of it. Yes, some of the bills are going to die in the Senate, but others have passed and become law and do address a lot of priorities that the 2022 and 2024 Republicans were elected on.
Just to name a few, each of these were passed in separate legislation: no taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security; the Laken Riley Act (an immigration bill directly run on in 2024); the GENIUS Act (for better or worse, was a significant crypto industry promise); and, more recently, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (the most comprehensive housing legislation passed in decades).
There was also some stuff done to address SNAP and Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse, but to be honest, since that isn't what I work on, I have no idea how what has been signed into law addresses or fails to address those issues.
I am hopeful that there is a ton of compromise over the next 6ish weeks to get even more finished up this Congress for the American People, as that is what normally happens, and will only be supercharged with the election results
And those are the good things, I don't want to imagine what the bad ones look like
Great write up. The pendulum tends to swing rather dramatically these days in the US. I hope it doesn't veer significantly left trying to get away from the Trump era. Sending a message was probably needed, imploding the country to do it wouldn't be ideal.
Republicans havent done one thing right the last 2 years IMO. MAYBE the datacenter build out because ai is such a great thing but they are incredibly unpopular now and Americans don't want them.
Not a single thing? I think no taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security were pretty amazing for those in the service industry. The Laken Riley Act was a basic, common-sense immigration bill that was passed and signed to keep the public safe. Whether you like it or not the GENIUS Act was something that Republicans ran on, won on, and passed into law. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was the most comprehensive housing legislation passed in decades.
Those are just some off the top of my head that cover a wide swath of issues and were each done in separate packages.
This is a nitpick, but there were Republicans who tried to stand up to him and were intending to stay in office. They were run out of town by the rest of the party.
Yeah, you are right, but off the top of my head, I can only think of two that are still left, and that's because they were Senators who were not up for election. The House people got mowed down in primaries unless I am missing someone!
The two who immediately came to mind were MTG and Massie. I recall there being more early on, but not more than a few.
Will you switch parties to get one of those staff jobs?
While that is always an option, the rule of thumb as a staffer is that you get one party switch in your career, and with the likely priorities of the next Congress, they are not something I really support. Sure, there are some things they will work on and likely pass that I think are good ideas, but at least in the type of legislation I do, the money printer is going to be open at full throttle.
Drump is a Zionist war criminals puppet.
Americans have woken up to his traitorous lies and betrayal.
Lock Him Up.
Mamdani for POTUS 2028...or sooner.
I will just remind you again.... Mamdani cannot become President because he does not meet the Constitutional requirements. He was born in Uganda; you can't run for President if you are not a "natural-born citizen," and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. He wasn't born to U.S. citizens or in the U.S., which means he isn't a "natural-born citizen."
He has talked about it himself and has been asked if the U.S. Constitution should be amended to allow naturalized citizens to run, Mamdani stated, "I think the Constitution looks good the way it is"
If enough people want it, it can happen.
The USD has operated in direct breach of the US Constitution for many years and the Zionists control you all through it.
Trump is owned by the Zionists.
Lock Him Up.
Mamdani for POTUS.
yuck, the mixing of metaphors here!
great write-up, thank you for your thoughts! Esp about the deteriorating standards (blanket pardon game theory) and this:
arrogance backed up by competence = fine. Competence/results gone? No mercy.
Lol, I got a crack out of all that descriptive language in a single sentence!!!! My English teachers would throw up if they read it hahaha
To me, this was brutal, but honestly, hopefully it causes the party to change and get their shit together.... It's been getting wilder and more unhinged since 2020. We've got to be honest with ourselves and, really, the American people, about what was wrong and how we are going to address that.
Its interesting, will save most of this for the pod on friday, but it is the talk of the town right now, had a meeting this morning with a founder asking me how things will shake out, gave him some advice and told him, how i am positioning, meeting with other people tomorrow as well, i am sure it will come up, heading to dallas next week so will get a good lay of the land before the end of the year
I wish Congress had half the common sense you've detailed here. But politics are what they are. I'm sure we'll see stupidity on the other side of the aisle as well being in the majority now. It's their classic downfall to splinter and infight.
Oh yeah, I am sure the Dems are going to have issues. Even with the Senate flip, those senators who won aren't really part of the far left (with the exception of El-Sayed) so when the House, which has those much further to the left DSA members find out that the Senate will not go as far as the House, there is going to be infighting and issues.... same with what we have seen this Congress
@Undisciplined