By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Donald Trump and Republicans didn’t listen to Americans… and got swept out on a wave.
Lots of right-thinking people probably woke up this morning with what they thought was a hangover.
The understandable sick feeling was attributable to either drinking their sorrows away last night (and into the morning), or simply because folks from our side of the ideological spectrum have been engaged in a persistent “The world’s gonna end if the Democrats win the congressional majorities on Election Day” sense of doom for a long time now.
The attitude’s been furthered by negative polls, gleeful Democrats and an unwillingness by the President of the United States to concede that not everything’s as peachy as he maintained it was since he was re-sworn-in early last year.
Ah, the Inauguration. The occasion felt so good last January, didn’t it? Remember Carrie Underwood? And Kamala Harris and hubby Dougie looking on and trying their best not to break out in a rage? We thought the joy was here to stay. It wasn’t.
Well, the doom arrived sometime last evening, and it was ugly. Outside of Florida, Republicans lost every major contested race that comes to mind, including in blood red states such as South Carolina (new Democrat governor and senator) and Texas (new Democrat governor and senator), among others. The House went. The Senate went, too. Governors changed sides. Democrat Socialists won. So called Democrat “moderates” won. Republicans lost almost everywhere.
But the sun still rose this morning, despite the foul moods. What now?
In a newsletter piece titled, “The arrival of divided government”, Byron York wrote at the Washington Examiner this morning:
“[M]any Democratic lawmakers are obviously itching to go after Trump. Their zeal concerns more sober Democrats who believe the party should devote more of its time to addressing the cost of living and other issues that won the election. But be real: Does anyone believe that a new Democratic House majority that might reach 250 members will not impeach Trump? After a victory like Tuesday’s, many Democrats will believe they have a mandate to pursue the president to the very end.
“And that leads to a final point. A majority of voters will likely be fine with some of the Trump investigations. But if we have learned anything from the last 10 years, it is that Trump’s pursuers have an irresistible urge to overreach. And when they do, they strengthen support for Trump among his political base and some independents.
“That seems almost guaranteed to happen in the coming year. And when it does, the era of the new Democratic majority won’t be about affordability, or healthcare, or housing. It will be all about Donald Trump and a desperate battle over his political survival.”
Yes, it will. Trump will become even more hunted than he was at any point in his political life, more so than in 2019 and 2020 when impeachment, then Dr. Anthony Fauci and COVID brought down his first term presidency. The finishing figures still aren’t in, but it could easily be claimed Democrats finally got their revenge on the populist Republican president.
The whole scenario was brought on by Americans’ anger over the cost of living and the fuel prices that everyone sees. Couple this with President Trump’s inexplicably tone-deaf and awful messaging and years’ worth of work and progress on Trump-ian policy came crashing down in a matter of hours. Or was it months in the making?
Some of us tried to warn the decisionmakers and policy setters and campaign shapers. The polls were there, too, consistently dismissed as “fake news” and wrong by the arrogant Republicans. The feeling was everywhere. The underlying policies were sound, but regularly telling Americans that everything is so great when they’re struggling to meet the mortgage ain’t a good way to inspire people.
Mercifully, today doesn’t feel quite as bad as it did twenty years ago in 2006, an election that occurred in similar circumstances but engendered a much deeper sense of dread from Republicans who could scarcely believe what transpired after living through the ultra-contested 2000 election, 9/11/01 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War.
Perhaps it was because there still are signs of hope for the country in our current depressed-and-in-need-of-meds reality.
Donald J. Trump is still president. And, as Barack Obama famously remarked after enduring one of his election drubbings (for Democrats), he “Still has a pen and a phone.” Trump will use his pen, and his phone will be busier than ever. Donald Trump never gives up or gives in. I don’t think he grasps that the word “surrender” exists. Someone would have to explain the concept to him.
That’s a good thing.
Trump loves to punch. We’ve seen it for over a decade now. But he can take a punch, too. Democrats should be wary of overconfidence in the coming months.
The vaunted Victor Davis Hanson wrote (at American Greatness) it himself the other day… that losing Congress might (gulp) help Trump’s standing with the people: “Even if the blue wave does happen, presidents on occasion can become more popular after losing Congress. They can also, even without majorities in Congress, use executive orders to do a lot of things domestically and almost anything they wish abroad—as long as they keep ironclad support among their own sizable congressional minority and thus prevent veto-proof congressional action. The bottom line is these midterms may not go quite as predicted. And even if they do, this much-predicted blue wave may have far less impact than most think.”
VDH wrote before the elections took place, but his ideas certainly are still valid. Democrats act as though they’ll take over the world now that they’ve been freed from the bonds of minority status in Washington and in more places than I can count across the country. But here’s thinking they’ll try to cram everything from their wish-list into their first hundred-or so days, and they’ll invariably go overboard. Because that’s what Democrats do.
We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again. This very well could be 2019 all over again.
Besides, in recent days, Trump began moving (somewhat) off his “We’re gonna win everywhere” line of persuasion and signaled that maybe, just maybe, the polls weren’t nearly as off-the-mark as he’d claimed and he might be governing the final years of his second term staring down the glares of self-obsessed Democrats bent on doing whatever they can to not only defeat his agenda, but ruin his presidential legacy in the process.
Democrats are like the “Immortals” in the movie “300”. The immortals were an elite fighting force employed by the Persians in the fifth century, BC (at the Battle of Thermopylae (Greece) in 480 BCE). They were turned lose after several more “conventional” attacks had miserably failed to break the home Spartan defenders. The immortals wore masks (at least they did in the movie) and, well, looked frightening. Imagine a horde of guys in masks and swords besieging your house on Halloween.
Democrats will be relentless. It will lead to their undoing.
Were the Democrats to take over Congress, Trump said in the past few days, he would become the “Veto President” and deny them the legislative victories they seek. Trump more or less said the Democrats would pass their bills and he’d veto them, leading them to get tired of the sequence. They’d then come over to the White House and the two sides would talk, make a deal, and go on with it.
Last weekend, Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett indicated that the president would continue with his Make America Great Again agenda using the considerable leadership tools at his disposal regardless of Democrat obstruction. Here’s betting Trump will test the boundaries, too.
Common sense tells me nothing will get done in the next two years, which will be good in a lot of respects. Democrats may not be as anxious to ditch the Senate filibuster with a veto pen waiting at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Democrats have made oodles of promises about “affordability” and improving the cost-of-living, but government messing with the economy will only bring tried-and-true bad results.
Democrats will hem and haw and threaten and pontificate and overreach. As I said, it’s what Democrats do. Then the pendulum could/will swing back again in 2028.
I don’t think JD Vance and Marco Rubio are lookin’ quite as strong as Republican presidential candidates as they were just days ago. The 2028 GOP race changed last night. Is there now an opening for Florida governor Ron DeSantis now that the petals have fallen off the Trump bloom?
Let’s just hope President Trump is feasting on a large slice of humble pie this morning. It will make his presidency better.
In the end, if you looked out the window this morning, you noticed signs of life out there — and soon, as you thought about it, your internal “Will life really change that drastically?” conversation with yourself might have ended with a, “No, it won’t (change that much)” realization. Then, there hopefully will be a new sense of energy to go on, to keep fighting and not allow the smirking faces of Democrats to ruin your otherwise satisfactory existence.
Get up, pour yourself a cup o’ Joe and get going on the rest of your life. But keep fighting the good fight to save the republic. Be like Trump, in this respect. Get busy. The next political cycle starts today.
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .