Trump Lost A Battle, But The War's Not Over' | Simon Marks' American Week

From the very first moment that results started streaming in on Tuesday night, it was immediately apparent that having been entirely let down by the constitutional checks and balances that were supposed to secure their democracy, America's voters had decided to take matters into their own hands. The electorate provided a dramatic corrective, demonstrating abject fury with the state of affairs here. And delivering results that even the most optimistic Democrats did not dare to predict. President Trump had told Americans to pretend I'm on the ballot. And across the country, they did precisely that. There was no single epicenter for the earthquake that laid waste to Republicans, but Austin, Texas, is as good a place to start as any. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. James Tallarico, the first Texas Democrat heading to the Senate since 1988. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state. In this country, power belongs to the people. At just 37, Tallarico and other new Democrat faces all over Texas are daring to dream that they have finally turned a once solidly Republican state into a new permanent electoral battleground. And Texas was the tip of the iceberg. Kansas is sending a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1932. Georgia elected the country's first ever black female governor. California joined Texas in electing its first Latino governors. New Hampshire is sending the first openly gay man to the U.S. Senate. Native American candidates made history in New Mexico and Minnesota. And in Michigan... Abdul El-Sayed, who had been on the receiving end of weeks of Republican racist invective from President Trump on down, basked in victory, knowing in January he will become the first Muslim ever to sit in the Senate. Donald, look, I know you struggled with my name, so after J.D. swears me in in January, you can just go on and call me Senator. That's a reference to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which poured money into Michigan, first to try and stop him in the Democratic Party primary earlier this year, and then to try and shore up his Republican opponent in the election. As public support for Benjamin Netanyahu wanes here, the Israel lobby in America was one of the biggest losers of the night, along with the tech bros, particularly Elon Musk. Who in Texas alone spent $225 million trying to derail the Democrats and came away with nothing. But the biggest loser by far was the man who, sitting in the White House on Tuesday night, called in to Fox News, recognizing that the outcome was too big even for him to try and rig. Well, I'm a little bit surprised. I thought they'd do better. We had tremendous rallies. We had About 30 of them, there were thousands and thousands of people outside, let alone inside. You're going to accept all these races, right? Yeah, sure, I'll accept them. Why wouldn't I? By the time the night was over, the White House had a new narrative. Trump wasn't the problem. It was the quality of the Republican candidates that had let the side down. His brilliance just did not rub off on them. And on Wednesday morning, his empire in ruins... You know, these beams are among the heaviest beams ever set. And Beau was telling me, we were talking about it, if you look at that roof, that roof could actually hold helicopters on it, as big as the yard. The president's first public engagement took him to the White House ballroom building site, incredibly his mind still on his construction projects, even as the voters had shown that theirs were on his government's demolition. Look, I mean, if I were on the ballot, we would have won. You saw the people that were packed, thousands and thousands of people at every rally. And if I was on the ballot, we would have won. But they just, you couldn't transfer that love. There was such love at those rallies. It was incredible. We weren't able to transfer the love to candidates. Absolutely delusional. Within hours, more cracks started appearing in his political edifice. Vice President J.D. Vance taking to social media to distance himself from the president he still serves. The reason we lost is the war, he wrote, arguing Trump's decision to negate everything he said on the campaign trail in 2024 and drag the military into conflict in Iran was the root cause of the party's undoing. Everyone knows why we lost, he wrote, and any conversation about where we go from here must start there. I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term. And probably that's, probably it's true. But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again. Because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear war. Do you feel like it was worth it? I do, yeah. I mean, well, you have no choice. Says the president about his war of choice. And a reminder, America's intelligence agencies collectively concluded Iran had not even started to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. That is something reporters hear. Never, ever put to him when he trots out that nonsense. J.D. Vance, coveting a presidential run of his own in two years' time, is not entirely right when he says the war is the singular reason for the Republicans' demise. In the midterm election campaign's final weeks, corruption in government topped the list of voter concerns, with 88% of them telling Fox News they were either somewhat or very concerned about it. But breaking with the president over the war is about as courageous as the vice president is willing to get, at least for now. Though other aspirants for the Republican presidential nomination were not holding back. Let's just be clear about what happened last night. This is close to an extinction level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen. Probably in the last hundred years. In comments carried live on Fox News, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is leaving office because he's term limited and therefore has nothing in his diary for the next two years, was strongly indicating that he wants to position himself as the Republican Party's savior. Florida, he said, had largely survived the rout that was washing his fellow Republicans away across the rest of the country. This is going to last far beyond just two years. You look ahead to the 28th election, a presidential election. You are not, as Republicans, going to be able to retake the Senate under this current map just two years from now. And with all the House seats that have been done, probably not viable to take that back as well. So this is really going to have an impact two years, four years, six years, maybe even longer. before Republicans could exercise unified control in Washington again, like we've enjoyed over the last two years. Translation, Trump and the sycophants who were unable or unwilling to challenge or constrain him have completely squandered everything they won just two years ago. Little wonder that the president's on-again, off-again political advisor, Steve Bannon, was left clutching at straws. There are a lot of people that are in the fetal position and, you know, You know, just like after the big steal in 2020. People process it differently, but the bottom line has got to be, if you want to save your country, you're going to have to stand and fight. Now we've got to figure out what exactly we're going to fight for and how we're going to do it, because there's been a lot of, I think, wasted effort, mixed messages, spinning of wheels, and maybe some policy things. It is absolutely extraordinary that even now, so few Republicans can bring themselves to say it publicly. President Trump has only himself to blame. Of course, in two years' time, the Democrats will now also bear some responsibility for the state of the nation. And as they scramble to decide what to prioritize, do they try to impeach the president again, expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court, give Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, two Democratic Party strongholds, seats in the Senate? Do they even try to scrap the Electoral College, as some are suggesting? They will need to be very careful not to bite off more than they can chew. The American people don't want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf. Hakeem Jeffries, the centrist Democrat hoping to be the next Speaker of the House on MSNBC on Wednesday, was already making promises that he may not be able to keep. We ran on affordability. We won on affordability, and now it's our job to govern on affordability. As a matter of fact, we made clear that we're fighting for an affordable America and explicitly promised the American people that we would fight hard to lower the high costs of groceries and gas and housing and that we were going to fight hard to make sure that health care was affordable for every single American. But how do you do that when the president can veto every piece of legislation you pass and is prosecuting a war you lack the power to stop even as it continues ravaging the American economy? And there may be more economic troubles right round the corner. Tuesday night's vote was a disaster for the AI industry, demonstrating Americans loathe data centers and want to say over a sector that is entirely unregulated But may not be for much longer. The industry's explosive growth is about to be reined in. And Zohran Mamdani of New York City, one left-wing Democratic socialist celebrating widespread wins by others this week, told Wired magazine he fears the AI sector is about to implode. We are now at a point where there are far too many similarities between the housing bubble and the state of AI in our economy today. You worry that we're in a bubble? Yes. You worry that bubble's going to pop? Yes. Do you trust the Sam Altmans of the world? No. Do you trust the Sam Altmans of the world? I'm not the one being interviewed. It is far too early to say, as many inevitably were claiming this week, that America is back. The Democrats are back. But to govern effectively, they will now have to overcome battles between left-wingers and centrists for the soul of the party and decide what is achievable in the only 12 months or so they've got before the country is focused on the runners and riders in the 2028 presidential race. Trump lost a very major battle this week, but the war is not over yet. And if, as Harold Wilson correctly observed, a week is a long time in politics, the next two years are going to be an eternity.