The entire GOP (at least, those who are awake, and that does not include their standard bearer) is in a somber mood today after last night’s rout in Tennessee. The rout I speak of is the less than nine points victory by Matt Van Epps over Aftyn Behn. It was predicted long beforehand that this was a bellwether election and if it was a single-digit victory for Van Epps, it was a disaster warning. Anything under five points was to be seen as a five-alarm fire, and the final result is in the middle at 8.6 or so until the remainder of the ballots are counted, but they won’t affect the end result beyond a tenth of a point or two. Ron DeSantis, of all people, is hitting the panic button and warning the troops.
Yes, indeed. This election in Tennesse, in a deep red district, was a blood letting. Trump won that district by 22 points and last night 14 or so of those points simply went up in smoke. That is a LOT. That is not a statistical tie, that is not a shift, that is a hemorrhage.
DeSantis continued, “This is more glaring for today’s GOP because a chunk of voters who put them in power in 2024 are Trump-specific voters; they will vote GOP down ballot when Trump is running but won’t turn out to vote for a typical congressman in a midterm when Trump isn’t running.”
That’s riiiiight, Ron. And in 2026 Trump won’t be on the ballot, so whatcha gonna do? Besides panicking, like you are now? But you’re not alone. Anybody with two brain cells working (again, leave out the standard bearer of the party) is seeing this handwriting on the wall illuminate itself in neon and blink.
Matt Whitlock is a Republican strategist. I don’t know what he means “final margin 13 points.” That the shift away from Trump’s 22 points was 13? I see it as 14 and 13 or 14 is still horrific. Let’s just say that every strategist in the country who chimed in said what I said above, which is that a single-digit win is bad news and five points or under is bona fide disaster time.
We could still see a 43-seat shift. That’s not even remotely out of the realm of possibility considering that a lot of Republicans are retiring and who knows what quality of candidate will come forward to replace them? You well remember a few of the catastrophic Senate candidates, yes, Kari Lake and Herschel Walker, we’re talking about you. So if MAGA comes up with that quality of person for vacated House seats, 43 seats is not outside the realm of possibility in 2026.
Plus, James Carville and Steve Schmidt have both said that control of the Senate is not out of the question. Schmidt said that on his The Warning podcast today and Carville told the Daily Beast that in the past few days. It would take four seats to flip the Senate and in the current climate of Democratic overperformance, I daresay that Susan Collins, for one, is not feeling as cheeky as she might otherwise be.
The bottom line appears to be that the rank and file GOPers are getting the message loud and clear. What Trump gets is nothing. His head is filled with coton and he’s already sleeping through cabinet meetings and it’s not even a year into his term yet. So expect the somulent standard bearer to be less than useless, he’s actively hanging the party.
Plus, Trump, unlike a lot of Republican troupers (I’m thinking of Bob Dole) isn’t the kind of guy to worry about the team, take one for the team. For him the GOP has been a means to an end. He’s never had any loyalty to it.
Trump might actually turn on the GOP in the end. He’s already renamed his cult “Trumplicans.” Let’s see if that ends up sticking or if Trump takes down the party when he collapses himself.
Let’s see if he’s even on his feet this time next year, when he’s eighty years old and assuming that the Democrats take back the House, at least, and the Senate has a razor thin margin, if we don’t rule it outright. Let’s see what a stonewalled, demented, lame duck Trump does. I have a feeling it’s not going to be a pretty sight. Trump’s already panicking in his own way (his 162-post binging spree Monday night and Tuesday morning) and his state of mind is unlikely to improve.
