Photo Credit: Alex Shuper For Unsplash+
It was hard to turn away from the dramatic election results from this year’s midterm vote in the United States. So, I didn’t. The latest outcome as described by Tim Balk today at NYTimes:
“The full extent of the Democrats’ decisive gains in the midterm elections was still coming into view Friday, three days after their party rode anger with the Trump administration to majorities in the House and Senate.”
“The Democrats had captured at least 253 seats in the House and at least 54 in the Senate as of Friday morning, their largest majorities the party has had since the first years of the Obama administration.”
I was talking with some colleagues, and one in particular who is in fact working in Mississippi to help secure a win for the democratic senate candidate Scott Colom. He assured me that Scott Colom, the Democratic candidate in the end would win this almost unbelievable outcome – but that is what this election has shown us time after time. The Colom race is particularly interesting. John Yoon and Jim Beaugez described the race in the NYTimes:
“Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Mississippi, went from a long shot months ago to holding a lead of over 1,700 votes over the Republican incumbent, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, leaving the race too close to call on Thursday.”
“In Mississippi, which President Trump won by about 23 points in 2024, Ms. Hyde-Smith was favored to win throughout her campaign. But the deep-red state became an unexpected battleground in October when one of Mr. Colom’s campaign ads went viral.”
“The roughly 30-second video mocks Ms. Hyde-Smith’s response to a local television anchor’s comment on the rising price of beef: “You have so many proteins to choose from,” she says in a clip.”
“The video cuts to a man grilling burgers. “Pick another protein?” he says. “I’d rather pick another senator instead.” The message, which aligned with Mr. Colom’s focus on affordability, amplified a gaffe by Ms. Hyde-Smith that turned off voters.”
“National Democrats noticed. Not long after the ad’s debut, the Senate Majority PAC, the flagship super PAC for Democratic Senate candidates, poured $1.2 million into the race, and later invested another $1 million. The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm also put $500,000 into the state.”
“High-profile Democrats campaigned for Mr. Colom. Former President Barack Obama filmed an endorsement ad. Former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia all campaigned with him in Mississippi.”
“If Mr. Colom wins, he would be Mississippi’s first Black senator since the Reconstruction era, though he downplayed the milestone during his campaign.”
But it remains close – yet who would have thought that a Democrat would be on the cusp of securing this very deepest of deep red states. Maybe not as dramatically ,but still rather stunningly we have seen Democratic win after win for the Senate and the House and a variety of gubernatorial contests.
But this contest, and indeed many others, do suggest where the voting American public is. And others at the NYT, including John Swan and Maggie Haberman, along with a colleague, Shane Goldmacher bring home ‘the why’ we have been witnessing – these dramatic Democratic results – for the last couple of days:
“What Republicans could not overcome was a president who lost the public’s trust on the economy and so much more. And what they had not counted on was an unpopular war in the Middle East — one that would close the Strait of Hormuz and push gas prices past $4 a gallon — that would rage all the way through the election.”
“Even before the polls had closed, Mr. Trump had begun to ruminate on what might have been.
“If we never went into Iran, what do you think would happen in the midterms?” the president had asked privately, according to a person who spoke to him.”
“The story of the G.O.P. midterm implosion was not only a story of broken promises; it was also a story of radical overreach. After Mr. Trump came back from pariah status after Jan. 6, 2021, some advisers believed he had convinced himself that the rules of politics had been suspended for him alone. That illusion was obliterated on Tuesday night.”
“Over nearly two years, hubris had become the governing philosophy of Mr. Trump’s second presidency.”
And to me, and it appears to others as well, the most dramatic actions have been the President and various family members. The hubris is breathtaking. Continuing the description of various family member actions, Goldmacher, Swan and Haberman go on:
“There was a seemingly endless string of investigative pieces revealing that Mr. Trump, his family and their close associates had used the presidency to enrich themselves brazenly. Those reports began to resonate with voters; an early October poll from Fox News showed corruption as the top voter concern. (Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said: “The President only acts in the best interest of the American people. There are no conflicts of interest.”)”
And added to this was Trump’s policy actions that increasingly became clear failed to receive public support:
“In 2025, Mr. Trump began a trade war with the entire world — the pain of which was still being felt more than a year later on farms all over the suddenly competitive states of Kansas, Texas and Iowa.”
“Unlike in the past, Democrats mostly ignored the daily Trump distractions and sought to connect corruption to costs. They also told a story of a government focused on elites while average people struggled — from Jeffrey Epstein’s protected associates to the president’s $2.2 billion in personal profits.”
“Yet Mr. Trump’s own pollster’s final survey, taken two weeks before the election, showed that while both the MAGA Republican brand and democratic socialists were unpopular with voters, MAGA carried more baggage. When Republicans who were not planning to cast ballots were asked what it would take to earn back their vote, their top two answers were ending the war and addressing inflation.”
But none of that was to be and we see today the consequences of bad Trump policies and his unwillingness to do anything other than what he desires, whether tariffs or conflicts.
Now, we must wait to see whether the Democrats can balance their need to advance critical policies and their earnest effort for Trump accountability. If they target the latter to an excess and fail to work forward on serious policy efforts to promote economic growth, raise wages and reduce inflation, we will see the American voter turn very quickly on this Democratic ‘blue wave’ – and that would be a significant loss for Americans.
Finally, I was going to take a quick look at the just released Carney budget in Canada but on second thought I think I shall save that for another time and opportunity. Good weekend.
