BRUTAL VOTER VERDICT: ‘Bluenami’ is real as Republicans face reckoning, Trump’s grip on Washington weakens

By the time the results of America’s midterm election came into focus after President Donald Trump’s insistence that this year’s midterm election was a referendum on him, his administration and its policies, just such a judgement came to pass but it was not pretty for the incumbent in the White House. 

Instead of a rousing vote of confidence in the president and his administration, Republicans across the nation at the congressional, state and local levels have all been beaten decisively. Most shatteringly, the Republican grip on both houses of Congress is at an end. 

Ultimately, Americans were in an angry mood as their unease and fears about the direction of the nation’s economic circumstances, an unresolved war with Iran, its disastrous effect on relations with allied nations, the global petroleum/LNG supply chain, the excesses of immigration patrols, and an increasingly strong and bitter whiff of corruption and incompetence among administration figures has all been laid at Trump’s feet. Not surprisingly, voters took out their anger on Republican candidates. In short, public anger created Trump in 2016. Now it has destroyed him in 2026.

What next for Democrats and Republicans?

At the time of writing, while not every vote has yet been counted and some outcomes will only be confirmed in the next several weeks, it is clear Democrats can celebrate capturing substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. They will now have the power to schedule any consideration of future legislation, to control all of both houses’ committees, to set hearings and issue subpoenas and summonses for testimony and potentially incriminating documents, and to set the agenda on government spending in the exercise of the constitutional power of the purse. 

Such an exercise of power and authority might even include the possibilities of impeachment investigations being voted on (but less likely convictions by the Senate) against some administration figures. Likely targets? Think of obvious candidates like Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, or Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jnr, for starters.

What happens next is up to Democrats. One flashing yellow light may be that if they try to impeach Trump for the third time, the public will get tired of the he said/she said agonies, in part because of an already wide understanding of his failures and culpabilities.  

Alternatively, if they hold their collective noses and try to work with Trump – wherever and whenever it is feasible – they will look responsible and mature, the adults in the room. It will be incumbent upon Democrats to deliver a message that unlike those other people, they care about issues ordinary people care about – housing, healthcare, the cost of living, AI and so forth. 

If the White House is politically savvy, Pete Hegseth will be moved out before he does further damage to national security. Meanwhile, in the way he carried out his campaigning during this midterm election, Vice-President JD Vance has been damaged.  

Other Republicans such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will go into overdrive to carve out independent identities for a future run for the brass ring. It is easy enough to visualise Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, departing soon enough to avoid being further embedded in the wreckage of the Trump administration – and simultaneously to position himself as the only viable Republican presidential candidate in 2028.

Still, in the first blush of enthusiasm and their eagerness to seek retribution, some Democrats are itching to flex newly gained power to enforce accountability on the administration – bringing to bear House and Senate committees and their staffs to do the hard yards of investigative work and enforcing oversight – behaviour that would be very different from the current, supine Republican-controlled Congress. 

Some Democratic activists are arguing that their core task now is to organise themselves to pass legislation, even if such measures end up being vetoed by the incumbent president. Those efforts would be a message to voters this is what their congressional majority is for, saying to voters in looking ahead: “If you give us the presidency in 2028, we are going to turn these ideas into laws.”

Collectively, the use of such powers (or just the threat of using them) could force the Trump administration – despite any muttering he could try to govern by executive order and threats to veto any legislation he dislikes – to figure out ways to work cooperatively, or at least grudgingly, with newly empowered and emboldened Democrats. 

Not surprisingly, the president, after insisting the voting was supposed to be a referendum on his administration, has now gratuitously blamed Iran for his party’s losses and in pointing at defeated Republican candidates being unable to win their respective races – i.e., it is all on them because of their flaws and weaknesses. He had nothing to do with it. But the plain fact is that the country’s citizens were angry and ready to blame the president and almost anybody associated with him and with an “R” next to their names.

By midday following election day, the Democrats had secured 263 House of Representatives seats out of a total of 435, and they had 54 Senate seats, winning many of the 35 seats up for grabs this year, out of a total Senate membership of 100. The ultra-partisan redistricting efforts in every state had yielded no net gain for Republicans. According to analysts, of the House seats already decided, almost every one of them won by Democrats showed major shifts towards Democrats in comparison with the 2024 election. 

Preliminary data digs show serious shifts in support back towards Democrats among young voters, Hispanics and African-Americans. Importantly, with such a blow-out win, and with many moderates newly elected, Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to become the Speaker of the House, may be able to avoid being too beholden to the cohort of progressives in his party’s delegation. That should make his task less onerous. 

Meanwhile, several independent candidates for the Senate ultimately failed in their bids to beat Republican opponents. (Democrats had largely decided not to oppose independents on the theory that an independent was not a Republican.) 

Among the many notable senatorial victors have been James Talarico in Texas, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, and Annie Andrews in South Carolina. Results may yet lead to Scott Colom in Mississippi (!) gaining a razor-thin victory against the incumbent Republican senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, despite Colom’s campaign having been seen as a quixotic quest by donors and Democratic Party structures. Meanwhile, in gubernatorial races across the country, in standout wins, Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio, Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott in Texas, and Keisha Lance Bottoms beat Rick Jackson in Georgia.

Show me the money?

For years, it has been a near given that money is a crucial variable in politics. The adage by legendary California politician Willie Brown, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics”, has been treated as holy truth. This has been particularly so as left-wing and activist politicians routinely denounced the outsized role of big money, as billionaires and major businesses, including the Silicon Valley crowd, made massive contributions to candidates and into Political Action Committees and super-PACs. 

With this Democratic sweep, there may even be a push to rein in the river of money as a form of free speech sanctified by the Supreme Court ruling in “Citizens United”. Despite the money gap, someone with extraordinary communication skills and an ability to generate empathy among ordinary citizens such as Democratic senatorial candidate James Talarico has meant he won convincingly against his deeply flawed opponent, despite a flood of money, primarily from Elon Musk, meant to push Texas’ Attorney-General, Ken Paxton, ahead. In fact, the overall flood of money has been unprecedented for a midterm election as more than $12-billion has been spent. Perhaps this election will trigger generational reforms in campaign financing.

And now it is on to 2028

Besides the obvious fact this Democratic “bluenami” means there is a very different ball game in Washington, come January 2027 it has now, inevitably, set the scene for initial stages of manoeuvring for the presidential nomination in both parties. 

Among Republicans, it will mean a candidate must both continue to be loyal to the incumbent president somehow, even as he or she manages to move away from the policies and positions of the administration. That is going to be one hard trick for JD Vance or Marco Rubio, enmeshed as they are with those policies. 

Perhaps an outsider favourite will emerge from among the survivors of their party’s electoral humiliation. One might even see the rebirth of Nicky Haley as a candidate. 

Among Democrats, the spotlights will begin focusing more brightly on a whole platoon of potential claimants, especially those who campaigned hard for victorious candidates or were candidates themselves. 

This list includes California Governor Gavin Newsom, former vice-president Kamala Harris, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, North Carolina Senator Roy Cooper, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Representatives Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna, or even former cabinet secretary Pete Buttigieg, among others.

One sign of being an active candidate (at least in their own minds) is appearing around the country as a guest speaker at big, high toned or partisan events, delivering a major speech on their theory of international relations in the post-Trump era, and publishing a memoir or a book of policy prescriptions. 

These include volumes like JD Vance’s new volume “Communion”, and Gavin Newsom’s personal memoir of his unlikely rise in politics (after a career as a restaurateur and wine purveyor). 

This writer plans to read them all so he can parse out their skills and ideas – and spare our audience the need to read them themselves. DM