Not all the results are in yet, but one thing is for sure. Democrats won big in the midterm elections. Very big. Displacing the Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Democrats have inflicted a punishing and embarrassing defeat on President Donald Trump and his party.
Trump bears significant responsibility for this loss. The war on Iran, designed for regime change rather than to blunt Iran’s nuclear program, was a predictably foolish gambit that weakened America’s ability to deal with the far more important threat from China. The war also sent gas prices soaring. Alongside his tariff war on the world, Trump supplanted his reputation for economic credibility with a record of economic instability. He threw his support behind too many flawed candidates, he accepted rife corruption, and he adopted a campaign strategy without narrative. Trump’s decision to focus his concluding election speech on improvements to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and not, say, inflation, encapsulates these failures.
