Tab of a browser flame, listen to yourself click, world serves its own links, don’t surf your own reads …
Ed: This is exactly right. We are going to look at the data and look at the outcomes, draw the best lessons from them, and then apply them going forward. I have been through twelve midterm cycles in my adult lifetime and know that these waves happen more often than not. The real challenge is to correct what is actually broken and not break what actually works.
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WSJ: President Trump said on Tuesday night that the war in Iran was partially to blame for widespread Republican losses in the midterm elections. But he maintained that he didn’t regret launching the war earlier this year.
“Iran was a piece of it,” he said in a phone interview with The Wall Street Journal when asked whether the war contributed to Republicans’ poor performance in the election.
The president said he doesn’t have second thoughts about the war, which has dragged down the popularity of his presidency. He has struggled for months to end the conflict and complained to advisers about how it has become a constant problem.
“I don’t think about it. I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he said.
Ed: He’s absolutely correct about the war, but not about its prosecution. Trump dragged the war out far longer than necessary, for months, chasing a deal that will never appear and stick. He lost three months of momentum and a lot of political capital by declaring a unilateral cease-fire in April, only to have to go back to war in July. Had he imposed the economic blockade right from the start, there would be a probability that the war would have ended on favorable terms before the end of the primaries.
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I am not sure how Vice President Vance can square away polling with blaming the relationship with Israel for the midterm loss. Nothing on tariffs? Nothing on deportations? Nothing on corruption? Really? https://t.co/amFIxJv1VO
— Daniel Di Martino (@DanielDiMartino) November 4, 2026
Ed: David wrote more about this, but I find this buck-passing to be unworthy, to say the least. Trump owned it and defended it well. Iran is just as much our enemy as it is Israel’s, and the proximity to a successful nuclear device justified the war. Vance sounds more like El-Sayed in this argument than a Republican, or even a statesman.
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Dan McLaughlin at NRO: Now, the Iran war is unpopular, and there’s no question that it contributed to the scale of the defeat. I’ve had more to say before, since the day the war started, and will again, about how Donald Trump failed to sell the war to the public or get the approval of Congress, how he never spelled out clear war aims or established visible victory conditions, and how he picked a worst-of-both-worlds halfway ground between a targeted strike on Iranian capabilities that would have been over much faster, and a regime change operation that would have had a clear objective and aimed at a permanent solution of the problem of the Iranian regime. He made things worse by trying to cut an ill-considered deal with the mullahs that had Vance written all over it and fell apart almost immediately. The war dragged on longer than projected — Americans aren’t anti-war, but they hate wars that are neither short nor showing visible progress toward a foreseeable end — it has impacts on the very visible metric of gas prices, and because of the nature of how Trump and Vance campaigned, it felt like a betrayal to a segment of their base of what they had promised.
All true. But then, I’m not the one here arguing that the election was about one and only one thing. Because the idea that the war was the whole problem, and that nothing else need be learned, is arrant nonsense. It specifically overlooks the biggest thing foisted on us by the populists: the tariffs.
The reality is that Trump, and therefore his party, was already in a lot of trouble before the war began in late February 2026. And while there were a number of causes for that, too, the overwhelming, number one reason was the disastrous Trump tariffs. I walked through the polling on this in great detail back in May.
Ed: I’m glad that Dan mentioned Vance’s fingerprints on these absurd attempts to cut deals with the IRGC, which is absolutely necessary context for why the war impacted the midterms. Had Trump prosecuted the war directly all the way to the finish, the war may have been months in the rearview mirror by the time early voting started. Vance led the efforts that derailed that momentum, and just in the past couple of weeks tried to derail it again.
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It ought to be obvious that the single biggest loser from last night’s massacre is JD Vance. What you’re seeing now is the predictable repercussion of that new political reality.
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) November 4, 2026
Ed: That’s true, but not because of Vance’s scapegoating of Israel today. (Jonah Goldberg argued that earlier today.) It’s because Vance was the heir apparent to the MAGA movement, and his potential as a candidate absolutely relied on voters wanting another Trump term in 2028. The midterms made it very clear that voters are deeply unhappy with the direction this term has taken (on several issues), which undercuts the argument for a Trump protege as successor in 2028. That may impact Marco Rubio somewhat too, but it really damages any argument for Vance. And it might directly benefit someone else, but we’ll get to that.
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Scott Jennings at the Daily Mail: That is not because Republicans had no record to run on. The US economy grew at a 3.4 percent annualized rate in the third quarter, up from 2.2 percent in the second. Manufacturing expanded for a tenth consecutive month in October, with new orders, production and employment all growing. Violent crime has fallen. Provisional estimates show overdose deaths declining. And Trump closed the border, as promised, which means safer neighborhoods and fewer families burying loved ones. Sustaining those gains, long after the campaign commercials stop, matters.
But voters can recognize progress in one part of their lives while demanding relief in another. A safer community does not make filling the tank cheaper. An expanding manufacturing sector does not erase the grocery bill.
The price at the pump is America’s scoreboard. You see it driving to work. You feel it every time you drive your children to school. When the number goes up, people assume something is wrong, and no amount of good news elsewhere changes what the sign says.
Here is the simplest explanation for Tuesday: the costs of the President’s biggest gambles arrived before the benefits he promised. Call it the timing gap. Tariffs and the war with Iran have imposed real economic and political costs, and Trump knew they would. He accepted that risk because he believed a stronger industrial base and a more secure world were worth it. He may yet be proven right. But the bill came due first.
Ed: Scott has a lot more advice for Republicans in preparation for 2028, but this may be the best defense of the issues in play this year. Trump alluded to that in his interview with the WSJ, which is why it’s so disheartening to watch Vance blame Israel for these choices. Why not just defend the policies and admit to errors in their execution?
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Trump was elected to do politically difficult but necessary things. Securing the border is ugly. Fighting Iran is costly. Taking on special interests upsets donors. Backing AI scares people. Tonight, Republicans paid the costs. The benefits will be with us for many generations.
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) November 4, 2026
Ed: Hopefully Republicans can make that argument stick in 2028. They can’t if they’re already surrendering it today. No balls, boys, no Blue Chips.
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John Hinderaker at Power Line: There have been two instances in recent history when a party “in power,” that is holding the White House, has been clobbered in the midterm elections, at least as badly as the GOP was clobbered yesterday. In 1994, Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats and eight Senate seats. And even more recently, in 2010, Barack Obama did even worse, losing 63 House seats and nine Senate seats.
A neutral observer would have said that both of those presidencies were dead, and the Democratic Party was in deep trouble. And yet, in both cases, the president went on to be re-elected just two years later. Things can change rapidly in politics. …
Along the same lines, I am old enough to remember when many observers said that the Republican Party would never elect another president. That was in 1964, after the Goldwater wipeout. But they did elect another president, in the very next cycle. I also remember when many observers said the Democratic Party would never elect another president. That was in 1988, after the third consecutive Republican landslide. But they did–once again, in the very next cycle.
Ed: Second-term midterms are almost always disasters. Obama lost nine Senate seats in 2014, too. Eisenhower lost 13 seats in 1958. Reagan lost eight Senate seats in 1986. It sucks to go through those cycles, but people have to maintain a rational view of the situation and the opportunities that lie ahead.
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Lots of Republican finger-pointing right now. I am not interested in circular firing squads, and would encourage my fellow conservatives to avoid participating in destructive blame games. We have actual enemies, and must rally to oppose them.
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) November 4, 2026
Ed: We need a rational and constructive discussion about what went wrong and how to fix it. We don’t need to hold circular firing squads, but we clearly need a better plan than the one that delivered these results.
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The truth will set you free.
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) November 4, 2026
Ed: The truth is even simpler – when you overpromise and underdeliver, you will feel the wrath of the electorate. He’s exactly right in every point of this argument. DeSantis may have the best argument now as a 2028 candidate, seeing as how the Florida he built held its Republican offices and he has no real connection to the Trump administration. He didn’t generate much interest four years ago when Trump decided to run again, but he now has the best resumé and a track record of absolute success.
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Athena Thorne at PJ Media: You’d think the left had fulfilled its fantasy of packing all the Republicans and America-Firsters onto cattle cars and sending us away once and for all, tearing down the entire U.S. government, and replacing it with its Godless socialist utopia at last!
But in fact, this was actually a rather basic reactionary midterm election.
Whenever things look grim, it’s always instructive to zoom out and take in the historical perspective. In the case of last night’s election, we need to look back less than 20 years, to 2008. With the first-ever (half) black presidential candidate, the nation clamored to be a part of history in the making. Far too many people voted for a Marxist because of his skin color and smooth talk, and they took the rest of the ballot along for the ride.
The result? Both the U.S. House and the Senate went deep, dark blue. And believe me, it was a lot worse than what we woke up to today.
Ed: Yes indeed, it was an utter disaster. We are still living through its consequences. Be sure to read it all, and I’d add that 2006 was almost as bad.
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🚨TEXAS RESULTS🚨Republicans retained their Texas Senate supermajority despite Democratic victories statewide and in the Texas House. The GOP-controlled Senate could block House legislation and reject Gina Hinojosa’s appointments. Expect legislative gridlock. @DallasExpress https://t.co/ZxZ3CffwLz
— Carlos Turcios (@Carlos__Turcios) November 4, 2026
Ed: Not a supermajority, but still a solid majority at 19-12. A supermajority would be two-thirds, or 21 in this case. However, it will be enough to block Hinojosa’s radical agenda from moving forward in the legislature, although she can do a lot of damage via executive authority, especially on cooperation with ICE at the state level. If Hinojosa goes the gridlock route, though, she will risk an evitable backlash in two years when Texas reverts to the norm in a presidential cycle. And on that point …
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Peter Savodnik at The Free Press: For months, the anger and divisions have been bubbling up—the uber-progressive left pushing back against what it views as a feeble and feckless Democratic leadership, the leadership trying to hold things together, and the bundlers in New York and Los Angeles and elsewhere raising oodles of cash. Georgia senator Jon Ossoff reeled in $115 million; Texas’s new Democratic senator James Talarico, $146 million; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, $38 million—of which she gave $1 million to Democratic Senate contender Abdul El-Sayed. That spending paid off: The Democrats now control the House and the Senate. Mission accomplished.
Meanwhile, the influencers and podcasters—who feed off the intraparty fireworks—have been lapping up the likes and views, with leftist streamer Hasan Piker becoming something of an issue on the campaign trail, and the pod bros emerging as the new Democratic kingmakers.
James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, said Tuesday that the party’s “civil war starts Wednesday”—the day after the election.
A Democratic consultant in Washington told me, “It feels like the Democratic civil war has already started.” He was referring to the trio of leftists who had just been elected to the House, and were backed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Ed: Nothing exceeds like success, so to speak. The infighting among coalition partners will be fierce, especially given the radical nature of these groups. If Democrats can’t produce substantive accomplishments on their agendas, get ready for the meltdowns to come.
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Bored Of Having A Good State, Texas Considers Voting Democrat https://t.co/zVmOE3Kthf
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 2, 2026
Ed: I wish I could laugh. This result gutted me the most last night.
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Monday’s lyric: “I’m Just a Singer in a Rock & Roll Band” by the Moody Blues.
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