'The mood got better and better as the night went on': Dems celebrate midterms victory

Well, let's cross then straight to our correspondent, Waseem Kourne, who joins us now from Los Angeles. It's midnight there, of course, Waseem. Democrats along the West Coast, though, I suspect celebrating tonight. Give us some of the highlights for them. Yeah, it's hard to believe that seven hours ago, we were arriving at this Democratic watch party in the neighborhood of Westwood. We're a volunteer. Volunteers close to the Javier Becerra campaign, the candidate for Democrat and governor-elect now, the future governor of California. And when we arrived, listen, there were some decorations stashed in the corner. There were some balloons stashed in the corner. But you could sense the people didn't dare to be too optimistic. One of the representatives for the California's 30th district, I believe, told us that there was so much PTSD from results back in 2024 and in 2016. And then within literally an hour and a half, the balloons came out, the decorations and the champagne bottles were being opened because even though there were no major calls that were being made, you could see that in competitive or excuse me, typically uncompetitive districts in states like Florida, for example, districts that Trump had won by 5, 10, 15 percent just two years ago, they were unusually competitive. Democrats were maybe just getting very, very close to flipping those seats. And so. Clearly, the mood got better and better as the night went on, and of course, when those big calls started coming in, in Ohio, in South Carolina, in Texas, of course. There were just cheers and cheers at one point, just every 10 or 15 minutes, it felt like. And clearly, it was just a very, very, very good night for Democrats across the United States. And here, something that a lot of Democrats were very, very happy about, to experience something a lot of people told me at that election night. It felt good to have that sort of joy. A lot of people evoked sometimes feelings that they hadn't felt since 2008 or 2012, when Barack Obama won his first term and then his re-election. Waseem, you're obviously a lot closer to this story than we are here in Paris. Give us a sense about how and why the results have gone this way. Is it all about Donald Trump? Is it about the economy? Is it about the Middle East? What? You know, it's not a new concept. In 1992, Democratic strategist James Carville, a strategist for the Bill Clinton campaign, coined this famous phrase, it's the economy, stupid. And, you know, again, it's not a new concept, but I think it couldn't be closer to the truth for what we've been seeing for these midterm elections. Listen, since 2022, in the two last years of Joe Biden's term, and then following into Donald Trump's term, Americans have seen an incredible increase in cost of living. In terms of food, gas prices, healthcare, housing, and Donald Trump was reelected for his second term based on that of anger and based on Joe Biden's inability to decrease that inflation, that crippling inflation. Donald Trump promised no new wars in the Middle East. He promised he would bring those prices down. He promised he would bring those gas prices down. And now two years on, he did the exact opposite. And much of that was self-owned by starting a war in Iran, by starting a trade war. Many of those retaliatory tariffs, excuse me, having a big impact on Americans' bank accounts. So clearly, the economy, I would say, played the biggest role in this repudiation of Donald Trump's second term.