Behind the Curtain: The Trump obliteration
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Make no mistake: Democrats won by epic, sometimes historic margins across red and blue states, up and down ballots, obliterating almost everything President Trump, and a Republican Party remade wholly in his image, built over the past decade in American politics.
Why it matters: Trump and Republicans are left with a mostly white, mostly old House and Senate minority, confronting a younger, more diverse ascendant Democratic Party with power and margins it hasn't held in 18 years, since the dawn of the Obama era.
The results speak louder than any words we can write:
- Democrats won Senate races in Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio, and perhaps Mississippi en route to what could be a 55-seat majority.
- Democrats won swing districts all across red America, with national average margins of victory of roughly 13 points, according to a New York Times estimate.
- Texas is now a Democratic state, top to bottom — unthinkable mere months ago. James Talarico crushed Ken Paxton (55% to 43%) like it was Connecticut. State Representative Gina Hinojosa will become the first Democratic governor of Texas in 32 years.
- Pastor Adam Hamilton is the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Kansas in 94 years.
- North Carolina looks like a true-blue state after Democrats flipped the Senate seat and likely ousted Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) — meaning he led the GOP drive to keep the House.
- North Carolina's congressional delegation could swing from 10R-4D to 5R-9D. Georgia was even worse for Republicans, where they lost all power at the state and U.S. Senate levels.
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) predicted on X that the losses were so widespread, so deep, so severe that Republicans might not "have a shot at Senate control until 2032."
How to think about last night more broadly: This is a 50-50 nation with fast, whiplash shifts in power at the federal level due to persistent discontent with the party in power. So, on one hand, this isn't terribly surprising.
- On the other, Republican losses were so deep, so wide, so everywhere that it would be foolish to see this as anything but a massive repudiation of Trump, his agenda, his style, his rhetoric and his presidency.
If anything, what's left of the Republican Party is more pro-Trump and less likely to challenge him. His critics, even the timid ones, were ousted long before the general election. So Republicans are left with two more years of riding a very unpopular leader managing a very unpopular war. A trapped, embarrassed Trump is even more unpredictable.
- Democrats have the numbers to investigate Trump, his family and supporters, and the power to set the agenda in the House and Senate.
The bottom line: Voters nationally said government corruption was a "crucial issue" in their vote for Congress. Democrats will spend months trying to rehab a party that, despite its victory, remains deeply unpopular as a brand. Expect a vigorous fight between Mamdani-like socialists and Schumer-like center-leftists.
- Top takeaways from Axios' Zachary Basu.
