There have been plenty of explanations for the blue tsunami in the midterm elections, and most pundits are at least a little bit right. Inflation, tariffs, the war in Iran, bad Republican candidates, gas prices---yes, these all had something to do with it. The result was so decisive that you can find a marching band for anything bad you wish to say about Trump and the Republicans. That doesn’t mean that everyone is correct, however.
Both Trump and Vance, for different (self-serving) reasons, blame the war in Iran for the results. For Trump, the war is a temporary thing he can shut down whenever he wishes, and once he does, everything will be groovy again. Tariffs, ICE tactics, crypto deals, the ballroom, his general arrogance---none of that was ever really a problem. Stop the war he seems intent on losing, and he’s back to being the Donald again.
As for Vance, blaming the war for the election results gives him a rare opportunity to put some political distance between himself and Trump, something that is not easy for a VP to do. J.D. Vance was a dissenter on the war, though he could never express his disapproval publicly, and we never knew just how much he fought against it. If the Iran war is really the cause of the midterm meltdown, however, Vance cannot be blamed for the defeat.
But though it might be convenient for both Trump and Vance to blame the war, polls clearly indicate the war itself was NOT a primary reason for the debacle. It’s clearly unpopular, but it was not a major reason the electorate went to the Dems. According to the AP Voter Poll (which, among a dozen or so, seems to be the most comprehensive), the largest contingent of voters was moved primarily by “corruption.”
This cannot literally be true. Only a few cranks like me regularly object to “corruption.” For everybody else, it is a purely partisan complaint. Democrats only object to shady deals by Republicans, and Republicans only howl about corrupt deals by Democrats. There are hundreds of examples of these partisan battles and almost none where the crook’s own party throws him to the curb.
When Joe Biden made his family rich in secret deals with foreign governments, no Democrats called him out for it. When Mitch McConnell made millions from stock trades involving non-public information, where were the Republicans who demanded he be investigated? When Hillary sold her office of Secretary of State to various foreign thugs and dictators, and turned the Clinton Foundation into a money-laundering operation, Democrats chose her only three years later as their nominee for president. George W., as president, was credibly accused of insider trading involving Harken stock, but Republicans quietly closed ranks around the story, leaving only a few Democrats to complain. Where are the Democrats who object to the stock-trading of Nancy Pelosi or Ro Khanna? And how, exactly, did a mildly successful author and community organizer like Barack Obama wind up living in Martha’s Vinyard with $80 million in his kick?
I’m not suggesting that Trump hasn’t cashed in as well. When he saw there were no meaningful objections to presidents getting paid, he decided he would make more from the game than any of his dishonest predecessors had. So while Biden and Obama and the Clintons escaped with tens of millions, Trump’s haul is already in the billions. “Corruption,” if that’s what we are still calling it, comes naturally for him. He sees himself as more of a Roman Emperor than an American President so, like a Roman Emperor, he set up various mechanisms by which others could pay tribute to him. Crypto investments, the purchase of pardons, collecting tips for new regulatory actions…. The system of tribute for benefits bestowed was a fundamental engine of government in the Roman Empire, and so it has become in the American system as well.
When we dig deep into the voting, we see that the reason for the landslide in the midterms is that a significant number of people who voted for Trump in 2024 voted for Democrats this time. This almost never happens. Usually, a party’s losses can be attributed to some of its voters staying home and not voting at all. Rarely do they come out and vote for the other side, but that’s what happened here.
However, it couldn’t have been Trump’s “corruption” that did it. That just does NOT happen. Just as Democrats never complain about stealing by Democrats, Republicans still vote for Republicans who get free airplanes from unsavory foreign governments.
My wife has been predicting for months that Trump and the Republicans would get creamed in this election, and her reason from the beginning was not the war, not the tariffs (which she actually likes), not inflation, not the cost of gas, not “corruption,” but simply because he’s a retard, though she would never use that term. It’s his bad taste. It’s the name-calling. It’s saying “fuck” in public. It’s trying to put his picture on money and his name on the Kennedy Center. It’s the bazillion-dollar ballroom. It’s calling Norway a shit-hole country because he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the gold-leaf and gold plaques and gold picture frames and gold spittoons in the Oval Office. It’s saying Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett “owe him” because he nominated them to the Supreme Court. She didn’t really hate him originally, and she understood the appeal he had for voters, but now she is done with him, and she was convinced there were millions more like her.
And she was right.
I didn’t see it coming, and the reason is that, while I acknowledge he is a retard in many ways, for me that was always one of his more charming aspects. What I loved about Trump is that he never displayed the façade of civility effortlessly projected by megalomaniacs like Biden, Obama, the Bushes and the Clintons. It drives me crazy that Obama or the Bushes were, and still are, regarded by many as decent, gentlemanly individuals despite the smiling falsehoods, despite the dead American soldiers, and despite the tens of millions that somehow fell into their laps during and after their presidencies.
Trump’s behavior can be crude. I see that. Still, I view him as more honest, more straightforward, and more basically decent than almost all the presidents I have observed in my lifetime. (Jerry Ford seemed like a nice guy, but that’s about it.) I guess I’m a tiny minority, however. A lot of voters suddenly decided he’s an embarrassment, and I never noticed. Threatening to take over Greenland? Renaming the Gulf of Mexico? Calling a reporter “Piggy?” Expressing admiration for various men’s buttocks?
And for that kind of stuff, the same people who gave him the White House two years ago now take the House and Senate away? Democrats have never liked him, and there is nothing about Trump they have ever voted for, so this election is not about them. It’s about the Republicans dropping their president. I got this wrong---that’s for sure. But I still don’t quite understand the result.
Copyright2026MichaelKubacki
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