On May 3, 2016, Donald Trump actually won the Republican presidential nomination for the first time that night. Lindsey Graham tweeted: “If we nominate Trump we will be destroyed… We deserve it.”
Graham is not alone in expressing this sentiment. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Jeb Bush and most political analysts said the same thing. After all, how could the nomination of an unpopular, profane and authoritarian reality star—who has more expertise in tough contractors than crafting policy—possibly lead to the demise of a major political party?
On Tuesday night, the reckoning Graham predicted finally came, just a decade behind schedule.
As of this writing, Democrats are almost certain to win nine of the top ten Senate battleground states this cycle, including perennial Republican strongholds like Kansas, Texas and South Carolina. Democrats are expected to win the 10th battleground (Alaska) and win at least 255 House seats. Next up, a Game 11 (Mississippi State) that few saw coming. The party’s share of the national congressional vote is not entirely clear. But many analysts expect it to be the biggest win for either party since the 1970s.
Among the many Republicans who fell in this “blue tsunami” was Graham’s sister Darline, who Trump handpicked to be the South Carolina Republican nominee after Lindsay’s death earlier this year.
From one perspective, these results are shocking. We haven’t seen such a big wave in half a century. Every election since 2016 has cast doubt on whether such a Democratic rout is possible. After all, Democrats won the national election in a landslide in the 2018 midterm elections but still failed to gain control of the Senate because red-state voters remained largely unwilling to support Democratic candidates.
Conventional wisdom holds that the nationalization of elections — and the polarization of the electorate — has ended the era in which unique Democratic candidates could compete in heavily Republican states.
no longer. Tuesday’s results look exactly what many expected in early 2016, when Trump proved himself more politically powerful than most critics imagined.
All of this begs the question: Why now? Why is Trump able to inspire landmark condemnation from American voters in 2026 but not in previous elections?
Part of it is ‘economics, stupid’
In the words of legendary Democratic consultant James Carville, the most logical answer is “the economy, stupid.”
As 2016 showed, American voters do not view Trump’s illiberalism or lack of experience as disqualifying as mainstream elites. Some argue that business executives are well-suited to managing the economy, or at least bringing about a degree of welcome economic change.
For much of his first term, Trump seemed to confirm that impression, working toward low inflation and full employment. In December 2019, a CNN poll found that voters were more satisfied with the U.S. economy than they had been in nearly two decades. (Of course, 2020 will bring economic turmoil, but many Americans don’t hold Trump responsible for the pandemic.)
Trump’s apparent economic efficiency underpinned his approval ratings and the Republican Party’s electoral performance in his first term. That gives him greater credibility as a 2024 anti-inflation candidate.
However, after being re-elected, Trump showed less than zero interest in controlling the cost of living. Instead, he imposed steep tariffs on most imported goods, aggressively pushed up prices and triggered a global energy crisis through a war with Iran.
It turns out that the latter is especially important. From February (when the war began) to Election Day, Americans’ energy costs soared as Democrats gained in the polls.
The whole “dictatorship nightmare” thing is important too
While the economic backdrop may be the single biggest driver of the Republican Party’s belated reckoning, it’s not enough to explain it. The economic situation in 2026 is not good. But it wasn’t a complete disaster either. Inflation in the United States is just below 4%; Joe Biden faced much less criticism in the midterm elections in November 2022, when his approval rating was over 7%. Meanwhile, our country’s unemployment rate is 4.2%; it was closer to 10% in November 2010, but Republicans clearly won a smaller share of the national vote than Democrats did Tuesday night.
To explain the scale of the Republican defeat at the time, we cannot rely solely on material factors.
Indeed, Trump has been an illiberal demagogue from the moment he entered the race in 2015. Of course, while he incited the Capitol riots in 2021, he did not waste his political energy.
However, the brutal and authoritarian nature of Trump’s political program has been more naked than ever in the past two years. The first Trump administration did not regularly post white nationalist slogans from federal agency accounts. More critically, it does not increase internal immigration enforcement to the level of Trump’s second White House.
The indiscriminate nature of ICE enforcement over the past two years has alienated many Latino voters who will warm to Trump in 2024. A recent NBC News/Telemundo poll found that 65% of Latino voters disapprove of ICE, while nearly a quarter said they know someone who has been detained or deported in the past two years. Latino counties turned out massively against Republicans Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, Trump’s willingness to condone the killings of two U.S. citizens by ICE agents, combined with his broader attacks on civil liberties and government integrity, may have boosted his opposition to unprecedented levels.
The costs of Trumpism may persist
It’s unclear whether Republicans will pay a lasting price for their Faustian bargain with Trump. In early 2016, before he became a Trump sycophant himself, Lindsey Graham predicted that Trump’s nomination would not only cost the Republican Party in the 2016 election but “destroy the party for decades to come.”
The chances of the Republican Party becoming politically irrelevant for a generation are slim. But exactly how it will emerge from its Trump-led woes remains to be seen. The party clearly needs to differentiate its brand from the president’s. However, its remaining elected officials overwhelmingly come from jurisdictions that are deeply pro-Trump. Unlike George W. Bush after 2008, Trump is unlikely to quietly tolerate his party cutting ties with him.
Whatever the future holds, Republicans won’t soon forget a loss of this magnitude. Tuesday’s results are unlikely to eliminate the Republican Party’s tendency toward illiberal demagoguery. But the next Republican leader may hesitate before launching a new trade (or actual) war, winking at neo-Nazis, or letting federal agents execute American citizens.
Indeed, the political costs of Trumpism are unusually high. It only took 10 years for the bill to come due.