After last night, about the only thing Republicans can celebrate is the fact that Trump can still use the veto pen.
by David Shephard, ©2026
(Nov. 5, 2026) — Yesterday, I did something that I have never done before, at least as an adult, which is, I went to bed and didn’t stay up to watch the election returns. It wasn’t because I was tired, which I was, but I didn’t watch the returns because I didn’t need or want to. I knew early on that this Democrat wave was real and that it would cost my party virtually every contested race and therefore control of both Houses of Congress.
In fact, I knew it by about 8 o’clock for two reasons. First, I saw how close the Senate race was in Florida. Ashley Moody, an incumbent, won, but it was close, far too close. As I recall, Moody didn’t take the lead until after about 70 percent of the vote was in. And her opponent was a socialist. The second sign that this would be an anti-Republican tsunami came when I saw that Darline Graham lost in South Carolina. After that I went to bed. I figured I’d assess the damage in the morning. No need to ruin my sleep.
It’s important to remember that the critical trait of any political wave is that on election day, all or virtually all of the close races break for the winning party. Not that candidate quality is irrelevant – there are examples of candidates of the wiped-out party who buck the trend and win the close races, but it is not common.
Political trends, like all trends, are almost irresistible or “unbuckable,” if that is a word. For example, in the Republican wave of 1994, James Sasser, the Chairman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, lost to a Nashville doctor, Bill Frist, who had never run for office before, and aside from his patients, no one knew who he was. That Republican wave also took out the Democratic Speaker of the House, Thomas Foley, and the House Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski. Both lost to candidates who in an ordinary year, would have lost.
Were there any Republican candidates who should have been able to buck this year’s blue tsunami? Perhaps John Cornyn could have won in Texas if he were nominated. I do think in Kansas, Roger Marshall ran a bad campaign and his opponent, Independent Adam Hamilton, ran a great race. Perhaps we can say that a better Republican candidate would have won there. The media has made much of the fact that Kansas has not had a Democrat senator since 1939, but I would note that Hamilton ran as an Independent.
I do think that a Republican other than Darline Graham would have won in South Carolina. But overall, the public wanted a change, and no matter how good our candidates were, most lost. I do think Trump deserves the lion’s share of the blame for last night’s disaster. He is the President and the leader of the Republican Party, and Republican members of Congress push his agenda. He is now unpopular and the voters took it out on Republican candidates for Congress.
At some point, all Presidents lose their luster. At some point the population gets tired of him, and that President becomes a lame duck. Ronald Reagan used to call it losing your audience, and I think it is clear that Trump has lost his audience. I do think he has been a good President and that history will judge him kindly, but over these last two years he has had his share of missteps.
Some examples of his mistakes are that he pushed for tariffs on all countries, both friend and foe alike. He oddly called this “Liberation Day.” This drove up the cost of living for Americans. He declared that he wanted the U.S. to take over Greenland. He got into a social media fight with the former Canadian Prime Minister. He even called on Canada to become the 51st State, and he put tariffs on them to be removed once they do.
The American people like Canada, and they don’t want to pay higher prices on Canadian goods. Trump’s anti-Canadian views drove him to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. Speaking of renaming things, Trump added his name to the Kennedy Center, something which the American people don’t want. To his credit Trump is building a cool ballroom for the White House, and he is cleaning up the District of Columbia, but these are things that few voters care about.
He decided to take out the Iranian leadership with a missile strike, and I think he assumed that this would lead to the Iranian people taking to the streets and overthrowing the regime. Sadly, that didn’t happen. The regime has hung on, and gas prices went up. I think Trump did the right thing, but it hurt him politically. Drivers are paying more for gas, and they blame Trump and Republicans.
I also think Trump could have helped to avert this tsunami by explaining why we support Israel. It is easy to do: Israel consistently votes with us in the UN, they share intelligence with us, they are a democracy, and they help us fight our common enemies. And Trump also should have pointed out that Democrats are wrong; Israel doesn’t randomly drop bombs on Palestinians. The reality is that Hamas hides behind Palestinian men, women and children.
Trump didn’t do this, so Democrats, such as El-Sayed in Michigan, were able to vilify Israel and drive up turnout among their woke, uninformed, and college-aged base. For example, If Trump had offered a defense for Israel, Mike Rogers might have been able to win Michigan.
Last night the American people, against my advice, elected a lot of far-left Democrats. And for that vote of confidence the American people will get, over the next two years, lots of investigations, impeachment hearings, and government shutdowns. On the plus side, I think Trump will get more popular every time he vetoes one of the Democrats’ bad bills.
As far as affordability goes, the last Democrat who ran and won on the issue of affordability was a woman named Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. She is now governor, and so far, at least, nothing is more affordable here in the Old Dominion.
David Shephard is a native and very proud Virginian. Raised in Fairfax County, David graduated from George Mason University and majored in Government and Politics. He spent decades in politics, campaign consulting, raising money and lobbying. He is also a longtime conservative blogger writing for numerous blogs. He is also the host of “The Virginia Gentleman Podcast.”
David is the author of Elections Have Consequences, A Cautionary Tale, and his latest book, Norton’s Choice: An Inside Politics Exposé.
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