"... Both Trump and his administration are less interested in helping ordinary Americans than they are in fulfilling their idiosyncratic program of austerity, pain and deprivation. They are all stick, no carrot.
It’s against this backdrop that voters just went to the polls and cast millions of votes against the president by way of Democratic candidates, moderate and progressive, who stood for both affordability and the nation’s most cherished values, who pledged to use their time in office to protect their new constituents from the provocations and assaults coming from the government in Washington.
If these elections had gone the other way — if the Democratic Party had underperformed or even lost one of these contests — then every commentator under the sun would say, rightfully, that Democrats were in disarray; that even the president’s deep unpopularity couldn’t keep them afloat with voters.
But Tuesday was a Democratic victory. And the party didn’t just win — it won by commanding majorities on virtually every field of play. In polls, in focus groups and now at the ballot box, the public is telling us something very clearly: Trump is simply too much. If this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back lost ground — and it is — then it is also a warning to a Republican Party that has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago." -- Jamelle Bouie, NYT, concluding that Trump is an albatross around the neck of his rotted out party/ cult.
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"... If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans. Republicans may be obsessed with trans athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.
"This disconnect between party priorities and what matters to ordinary people seems to me like a much bigger deal than Democratic 'wokeness,' which was always exaggerated anyway. [snip]
"Last night’s blue wave won’t stop MAGA’s attempt to consolidate authoritarian rule in America. If anything, they’ll redouble efforts to rig the 2026 midterms, although California, by approving a major redistricting, has largely neutralized their gerrymandering plot.
"A couple of months ago I noted that previous examples of autocrats who consolidated power after winning an election, from Hitler to Viktor Orban, did so while they were still popular. I asked whether a despised autocrat could do the same. After yesterday, it’s clear that Trump really is despised. Can he still end our democracy?
"I guess we’ll find out." -- Paul Krugman, in his eponymous Substack, on last night's historic Democratic victories coast-to-coast and which party is out of touch with voters. Voters plainly said the poor Trump economy and the rising cost/ loss of health insurance were the two biggest issues in their minds, and Democrats are more trusted than MAGAt Republicans on both.
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