Hey there!
Take a deep breath — it’s over. For the past year, I’ve been reporting on the different possible outcomes of yesterday’s midterm elections. Would Donald Trump solidify his iron grip on the country? Would the results be too close to call, prompting Trump to contest the results? Would the pollsters overestimate Democratic strength once again?
Voters across the country responded to all of those questions with an overwhelming “hell no.” That includes voters in deep-red districts where Trump won by double digits in 2024.
There’s no real precedent for the blue tsunami we saw last night. Democrats flipped seven Senate seats, and two more remain too close to call. Dems won every statewide race in Texas, including senator and governor. Kansas will send a Dem to the Senate for the first time in nearly a century. Dems swept nearly all demographics in House races, including 70 percent of young voters, 69 percent of Hispanic voters, and 51 percent of male voters.
Even Vice President JD Vance admitted today that he was stunned by the blowout. “Our voters showed up,” he tweeted. “Many of them voted for Democrats.”
The question for Democrats in Congress becomes: What’s next? Investigations? Pressure to end a war? Action on bringing down prices?
As important as those questions are, I expect Dems will take a cue from a recent New Yorker cartoon, in which two suitcase-toting businessmen gaze down at a pile of leaves. The caption: “One jump, and then it’s back to work.”
The same goes for Crooked Media. Your support ensures that this newsletter continues landing in your inbox everyday — and that I can keep reporting on the issues that matter to you most. I would be grateful if you considered becoming a paid subscriber today.
Thanks,
Matt
JD Vance slammed Donald Trump’s war in Iran, raising big questions about the future of MAGA in the wake of a stunning Democratic victory. Is Trumpism collapsing?
“I guess it wasn’t a dream,” Crooked’s Dan Pfeiffer
𝕏noted first thing this morning, awakening to the reality that Republicans just suffered a generational, cataclysmic defeat at the ballot box last night. President Donald Trump, by contrast, seemed lost in dreamland today, all but oblivious to the fact that he’s now asuper-lame duck. He spent this afternoon wandering around his White House ballroom construction site, babbling incoherently about marble and construction safety, totally unplugged from reality.
“Our country is more successful now than at any time in its history,” Trump
▶told reporters. He casually admitted that war with Iran was responsible for blowing up Republicans’ governing coalition. Even so, he wouldn’t do anything differently, Trump blithely insisted, while he roleplayed being a full-time architect. “Watch the beam go up.”
Vice President JD Vance reacted with far less chill. The veep trashed his own administration’s decision to go to war with Iran, opening a new rift with Trump.
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a
𝕏lengthy tweet, distancing himself from some of the administration’s most controversial policies, sounding painfully aware that his association with this unpopular war may have detonated his future presidential prospects. “Our voters showed up,” he added, but “many of them voted for Democrats.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has no patience for Vance’s aboutface. “Wake the fuck up! I mean, honestly, everyone’s been against the war in Iran from the beginning,” she told
What A Dayin an interview this afternoon. “JD Vance, like, where’s he been? That’s exactly what this election was about!”
Gillibrand has absolutely no regrets about how Senate Democrats went about the midterms.
Gillibrand’s DSCC played a key role in deciding which candidates to support and which races to dump money into. Despite yesterday’s historic win, some
Democrats have grousedthat the organization should have put more resources into places like Florida and Mississippi, where Senate races turned out to beway closerthan anyone thought.
I asked Gillibrand if she wished the DSCC had put more money into certain races — and she said “no” before I could even finish my question.
“We deployed more money than we expected we could,” she said. “We raised over $220 million, and then took out a $25 million loan, so we could keep sending money to places like Mississippi and South Carolina and Florida to keep expanding the map. We never imagined all these types of states could be in play.”
The DSCC also caught heat for supporting primary candidates who later dropped out in Maine and Michigan. Anti-establishment candidates Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson won in those states.
What lessons did Gillibrand take from those races? “Primaries are typically messy, and we as Democrats let primaries run. We really do,” she said, praising El-Sayed and Jackson’s campaigns. “We have to let the voters decide, especially on the ground, because they’re the ones who are going door to door.”
One more topic I wanted to get Gillibrand’s thoughts on: Trump
threatened to contestthe results of the Alaska Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins, after theNew York Timesreportedthat aides on Peltola’s campaign and the DSCC had recruited a “spoiler” candidate to hurt the GOP incumbent’s odds of winning. (Peltola and the DSCC have denied participating in the effort.)
Trump recently accused Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer of being aware of the plot. “I didn’t know anything about it,” she told me.
** Democrats’ historic win in the midterms could signal** the end of the Republican Party as we know it, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) predicted on the
** MAGAworld erupted in fury at Donald Trump **over Republicans’ historic losses. “I’m 100 percent at war with Trump,” far-right conspiracist Alex Jones said, branding the president a “sleeper cell” who “did this on purpose.” Sen. John Crutis (R-UT) also put out a
** House Speaker Mike Johnson told staffers that he won’t run **for his leadership position again. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) have already thrown their hats in the ring to be the next House minority leader.
** There already appear to be cracks, peeling, and discoloration** in the Reflecting Pool liner, two days after Trump boasted about the landmark’s renovations. “The Reflecting Pool has never [looked] this beautiful and it’s all thanks to President Donald J. Trump,” an Interior Department spokesperson told the
** Remember that U.S. cruise ship that made passengers disembark **in Cambodia because of high fuel prices? The ship left with only staff on board yesterday — and its final destination remains unclear.
▶Did you miss the ▶Pod Save America** guys **on Jimmy Kimmel last night? “Donald Trump’s never going to pass another law again,” Crooked’s Jon Favreau said. “There’s no more judges from Donald Trump. No more Supreme Court justices. No more federal judges.”
** Tuesday night saw a number of historic firsts. **To name a few: Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms became the country’s first Black female governor. Michigan’s Abdul E-Sayed became the first Muslim senator. New Mexico’s Deb Haaland became the first Native American woman elected governor. New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas became the first (openly) gay man elected to the Senate. Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan became the first Native woman elected to the Senate. As Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA)
** Politicians around the world are pumped** that Trump’s party got trounced in the midterms. The midterms will “introduce a new era in world relations,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
** The hottest debate in Washington, D.C.’s midterm elections** was over whether to ban restaurants from serving foie gras, the delicacy that’s made by force-feeding ducks. A local duck named Olivia, who was the face of the anti-foie gras initiative, excitedly “announced” that the ban had passed with a series of quacks at a bar.
** Biologists in the Great Plains are working to save** the back-footed ferret from extinction, using a tool called a “magic ferret plunger” and mini gas masks to capture the critters, search for ticks, vaccinate them, and insert microchips. These little guys are adorable.
** Pope Leo met Bob Dylan today. **You have to see these pictures.
