Vox: The Moment Donald Trump Blew The Midterms

The Great Betrayal https://t.co/xGWO13FUNz

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 5, 2026

Tim Scott: Free people are now celebrating in Venezuela. Under dictators, Cuba, Iran, listen, people smell freedom in the air and they can thank Donald J. Trump https://t.co/rfyF77NjQi

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 7, 2026

Ted Cruz said that it’s a very real possibility that Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba could all fall within six months and be replaced by “governments that want to be friends with the United States of America.” I think we all know who this is really for, and it’s not America… https://t.co/dgNYvQ7AdU

— heweymedia (@heweymedia) February 20, 2026

Ted Cruz says the United States will most definitely be bombing Iran in the upcoming days calling them “limited strikes” Ted Cruz says he has advised President Trump to immediately start arming the protesters in Iran so they could overthrow their government. Ted Cruz says in next six months we will see the government’s of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba all fall and replaced with governments who want to be “friends with America”.

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) February 24, 2026

Levin: Trump is the biggest liberator in modern history. He and Reagan. Trump is liberating the people in Venezuela, the people in the Middle East, the people in Iran. He will liberate the people in Cuba and he has liberated the American people. https://t.co/skTRLOwxcR

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 21, 2026

Republicans were always going to lose the 2026 midterms.

Last year, I thought Republicans were headed toward a political disaster. I thought Republicans would definitely lose the House, but I doubted they would lose the Senate. I anticipated the Supreme Court would gut the Voting Rights Act in the Louisiana v. Callais decision. I thought redistricting would end up a wash instead of multiple dummymanders. I thought MAGA would continue to fracture.

Crucially, I didn’t think Trump would be stupid enough to launch a regime change war with Iran for Israel in a midterm election year. I thought no one would die for Israel. I thought there wouldn’t be an American war with Iran. I thought Republicans had enough problems on their plate like farmers in Kansas being angry about the tariffs, the backlash against the ICE raids, the division over Midnight Hammer, etc. Republicans would have lost in a normal way in a typical midterm backlash election.

Democrats ending up with over 260 seats in the House and 56 seats in the Senate wasn’t possible until Trump was sold on Ted Cruz’s vision of doing regime change in Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. Republican senators began talking it up on FOX News last winter. The success of the Maduro raid in Venezuela was the point of no return when the atmosphere of hubris on the Right spiraled out of control.

Vox:

“Democrats just partied like it’s 1974. On Tuesday night, they pulled off the largest midterm victory since the post-Watergate wave. Democratic Senate candidates conquered longtime Republican strongholds like Kansas and Texas — and probably (in the view of the internet’s gamblers) Mississippi and Alaska. When the dust settles, and all ballots are tallied, Democrats are expected to boast a 13-percentage-point popular vote victory and more than 250 House seats.

Taken together, these results exceeded many Democrats’ wildest dreams — and Republicans’ greatest fears. Countless Americans are therefore asking: How the hell did that happen?

To make some headway on that question, I spoke with the Democratic data scientist David Shor. …

What explains these shifts in turnout and voting patterns?

If you look at Trump approval — both from 2016 to 2020 and then from 2024 until the end of 2025 — it was really quite stable. Obviously, it was highest at the beginning of his terms and went down after a month or two. But then for most of Trump’s first term, he was hovering around the mid-40s in our data and it really barely moved in response to events. And it was much the same for the first year of Trump’s second term. Which was worrisome: Trump had all of these scandals, but at the end of the day, the line didn’t move. A good day would be like, “Oh, Trump approval is down three-tenths of a percentage point — amazing!”

So, a lot of people became very nihilistic. They were like, “Oh, we really live in this world where nothing matters.”

But then, the Iran war happened. And there was a giant structural shift in public opinion. His approval rating on the cost of living plummeted. To put some numbers on this, the day before the Iran war, Donald Trump had a 49 percent approval rating on gas prices. Within a week, it was 33 percent. …”

The Greg Abbott regime fell in Texas.

Democrats replaced Republicans in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Maine and Alaska. Republicans nearly lost in Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida.