Tuesday, election day, was an important day. How important will be determined in the future, but for the moment it has created a political crisis for the Republican party.
Tuesday followed a weekend of polls released. They weren't different from previous polls except that for the MAGA regime they were worse. They showed mass disapproval of every policy and major action of the Chaos government, and mass approval of what Republicans were against, like continuing Obamacare credits.
So were they surprised? It's possible that in the beginning they bet on the public cheering on any actions against immigrants, including ambushing anybody who looked brown in the Home Depot parking lot, or treating Chicago like Afghanistan, or shooting clergymen in the face, or kidnapping toddlers. Apparently even Latinos were supposed to be pleased.
They bet on their public cheering the dismantling of the federal workforce, even apparently in Virginia where many of them lived. They bet on their people cheering Chaos showing the world who's boss with his tariffs, even when it raised their prices, hit farmers hard, threatened small businesses and even their hallowed tech sector.
They even bet on reviving the old hatred of Obamacare, throwing in Medicaid and other programs because they helped only welfare queens, even when it hit family budgets hard (and the times they were a changing: Obamacare is popular) and took medical care and other services away from especially their small town and rural supporters, directly and by de-funding small rural hospitals and other medical facilities.
Was that the political calculus? People may believe many digital lies, and whoppers out of the White House, but they have to pay their grocery bills, their medical bills, energy and housing. When they know that the Chaos regime lies about that, it might make you wonder what else...
The election results showed not only Democrats winning the vast majority of races across the country from governorships and mayors (in Pittsburgh the Democrat won by 87.5%) to state legislators, judges and school boards. Moreover, the margins of victory, especially in Virginia and New Jersey, were very large, especially when compared with predictions and polling.
Democrats won the first two statewide offices in Georgia since forever. They strengthened the courts in Pennsylvania, took 13 GOP seats from the Virginia legislature, beat back a voter suppression ballot question in Maine and approved redistricting in California to counter the Texas gerrymanders.
The analysts were quick to note that Democrats won back Latino voters, and even took a slice of Chaos voters--perhaps 7%, perhaps more. There may be more demographic surprises in the mix.
As if Wednesday morning wasn't already bad, the Chaos tariffs got eviscerated at the Supreme Court hearing. Some giddy observers suggested a 9-0 vote making them illegal was not out of the question.
Together with the gathering consequences of the longest federal shutdown in history, all of this adds up to the Republican political crisis. All King Chaos could suggest to the Senate was to get rid of the filibuster so they could open up the government, then pass voter suppression laws so Democrats could never win again (the King's actual words.) Republican Senators had their own reasons for keeping the filibuster, but they were still playing the Chaos game by reflexively rejecting Senate Democrats' offer to reopen the government in exchange for a one year extension of the Obamacare credits.
The Senate meets Saturday so by the time you read this something else may have happened, and maybe we'll see which way the pieces are going to fall. Right now GOPers are in crisis, as is the country. King Chaos is getting weirder in more obvious ways, and maybe nobody knows how to deal with that either.
Meanwhile the election results have changed the public mood dramatically. Months of peaceful protests culminating in 7 million participating in No Kings events in or near just about every community in America may well have emboldened people to continue their protests by marking a ballot. I'm surprised that Republicans weren't prepared for something like this.
On the other hand, maybe there was no political calculus. This is only ideological ( Psycho Steven Miller and his white supremacists, Russ Vought and his death-dealers by budget) and elaborate distraction as the Chaos cabinet steals the Treasury blind, and King Chaos extorts millions. Maybe the voters don't matter, just the plutocrats, the tech bros, the billionaires behind the curtain. In that case, the military options are even more on the table than they were.
But time may be running out. Is this an inflection point? Time will tell.
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