We are probably going to look back on this as a generational shift.
Defeat has a thousand fathers. So Trump’s character, the corruption in Washington, the graft, the social media posts, the on-again off-again tariffs — everything contributed to Republican defeats tonight.
Even political successes sometimes cause disaffection. The border being secure allows some border hawks to drift away from your coalition for other reasons, because you secured the good they wanted from you.
But anyone who privileges other explanations than the Iran war is selling you a just-so story. Exit polls showed 74 percent of voters deemed the Iran war a “major” or “crucial” factor in their vote. Sixty-two percent of voters think the war was “wrong.”
The fact is, the administration ran on slogans about putting “America First.” When Trump announced the resumption of war in February this year, he did so in the middle of the night heading into Saturday, and the vast majority of his address seemed to be aimed at Iranians, rather than Americans. He did not bother to make a case for the war. Congress was given a letter about it the following Monday.
This meant that he alone owned the decision to go to war. And after Iran exercised its true nuclear option, disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, every single household budget in America was negatively affected by this. Rural Republican voters are particularly sensitive to the price of energy, which goes into their long commutes, their groceries, and often into the machines and trucks and equipment they use for their enterprises. The wipeouts we’re seeing in Texas, South Carolina, and Ohio do not surprise me at all.
What strikes me even more is that it could be, and still could become, so much worse. China basically saved our bacon by engaging in the most broad campaign of demand destruction in the history of mankind.
We are probably going to look back on this as a generational shift. The end of Fox News Republicanism, of which Trump was the last figure, if a transitional one.