Welcome to my column. If I sound a bit out of sorts, a bit like I stayed up till 5 this morning, it’s because I am, and I did.
A guy thinks he knows his state, right? Thinks that after living there for 60 years, traveling it from side to side and top to bottom, seemingly getting to know its people like he knows himself, he thinks he knows his state. And he considers himself to be a reasonably astute political observer, so on August 5, he tells his readers to rejoice, to pump their fists, because a Jew-hating Muslim Democrat Socialist named Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed had just barely limped home to win the Michigan Senate Democrat primary, and because that meant that the Senate would stay in Republican hands. Why? Because, well, I’ll let my words speak for themselves:
Folks, we got our wish. As I stressed the other day, Michigan isn’t going to elect a Muslim senator — especially not one who ran on Jew-hatred, and especially not if there’s a decent alternative. And Republican Mike Rogers is a decent alternative.
And then last night happened. Talk about a prediction that didn’t age well.
Oh, sure, we all figured the House would most likely go to the Democrats, given the history of midterm elections and given the Republicans’ razor-thin margin in the lower chamber. But the Senate? With Republicans up 53-47 and with a comparatively friendly slate of races? And with a Jew-hating Muslim Democrat Socialist running to protect a Democrat-held seat in Michigan, a state that Trump won twice? No way the Democrats take the Senate. No. Way.
I knew it was going to be a bad night relatively early on, when Democrat Annie Andrews kept leading Lindsey Graham’s sister in deep-red South Carolina’s Senate race. Uh-oh, I thought. And when Florida’s incumbent Republican senator, a smart and unobjectionable former attorney general named Ashley Moody, had to come from behind to eke out a narrow win against a dim-bulb Democrat socialist named Angie Nixon, I knew. I knew.
Here amid the wreckage of the Tuesday Night Massacre, it’s hard to make sense of the new, near-future political landscape — a landscape in which the Democrats will, on January 3, swear in some 250 House members and as many as 56 senators.
Republican senators got their clocks cleaned everywhere: In Texas, where a six-gender vegan named James Talarico clobbered Attorney General Ken Paxton 55-43; in reliably red Ohio, where 73-year-old leftist retread Sherrod Brown beat youthful incumbent John Husted 50-45; in equally red Iowa, where Josh Turek beat an attractive congresswoman and former TV news reporter named Ashley Hinson 50-46; in Maine, where a loutish Platner replacement named Troy Jackson whipped five-term centrist Republican Susan Collins 53-46; and in Kansas — Kansas! — where a megachurch pastor named Adam Hamilton beat a perfectly suitable incumbent and medical doctor named Roger Marshall 51-46.
Republicans, then, are on the clock. Seriously on the clock. They’ll control both Houses until this strange new Congress is sworn in on January 3, and they’d better make the best of it.
For example, the Supreme Court. In watching some 10 hours of Fox News (yeah, yeah, I know) coverage last night, I don’t remember a single talkinghead mentioning the future of the high court. But I wouldn’t be surprised if either or both of our stalwart conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, announce their retirements in the weeks ahead, thereby allowing Trump to nominate and seat their replacements while the Republicans still control the Senate.
And if there are any vacancies on the federal bench, Trump had better do everything possible to fill them most ricky-tick. Because looking ahead to the next two Senate cycles, the landscape isn’t favorable to Republicans. Indeed, they’ll likely be in the minority in the Senate for at least the next six years.
In the meantime, what-ifs abound. For example: Could squishy outgoing incumbent Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn have held off the Talarico juggernaut? Who knows. But Trump’s support of Paxton in the Republican primary made that question moot.
And what about Trump’s selection of political novice Darline Graham to fill her brother’s Senate seat in South Carolina, instead of tapping, for example, some rock-ribbed prior-military white male? Again, what if?
Here, though, as elsewhere, let’s remember: The Republicans didn’t lose the Senate by a single battleground seat, or even a pair of hotly contested seats. They got their butts kicked everywhere.
More questions: Was it the Iran war Was it gas and grocery prices? Was it the Democrats’ steady insinuation of corruption within the ruling Republicans? Likely, it was all of the above, and plenty more.
The top two Senate fundraisers in this electoral cycle were, not surprisingly, Talarico in Texas and Jon Ossoff in the once-red state of Georgia, which not only reelected the inheritance welfare leftist by a whopping 19 points but also elected our nation’s first black woman governor, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, by a solid 54-46 margin. Ossoff thus becomes The It Guy, the guy who Democrats will be whispering about as a strong potential presidential candidate in 2028. Unless the murmurs for Bottoms put her on top. She was, after all, on Joe Biden’s VP shortlist before he made the fateful decision to go with Kamala Harris.
Speaking of firsts, though, let’s remember that Republicans also clawed out a bit of history yesterday, as The Free State of Florida elected its first black governor, Congressman Byron Donalds. So there’s that.
Let’s stop right here, shall we? I’d rather remember a single bright spot amid all the wreckage. I’d rather remember Byron Donalds’s resolute and victorious face than that arrogant mug of Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed — the guy who I said couldn’t possibly be elected statewide in Michigan.
Oops.
