The United States of America is 3.8 million square miles, filled with 340 million people, producing over $30 trillion in gross domestic product per year. We are the fourth largest country by land, third by population and first by GDP. We no longer know each other, care for each other or like each other. We are a nation of isolated people staring at screens and filled with existential terrors about the other, whoever the other might be.

On Tuesday night across America, those existential terrors played out with fear of the other. Hispanic voters who voted for President Donald Trump and Republicans in 2024 swung back to Democrats in 2026. They were fine with deporting gang bangers and criminals, but maybe not Jose down the street, who works as a gardener. Young men in Virginia voted for the Democrats’ white female gubernatorial nominee instead of the Republicans’ black female gubernatorial nominee. In New York, voters decided they preferred the smiling communist to the scowling Cuomo who killed their grandparents and sexually harassed their granddaughters. In Georgia, two Democrats got elected to statewide offices because Republicans did not even know it was Election Day.

When Democrats control the White House, Republicans vote as if their physical lives depend on it and vice versa. The election was bound to go badly for the GOP. Some Republicans are waving it all away because it was New York City, New Jersey and Virginia. Others believe the sky is falling. The tell that it would be bad for Republicans was former President Barack Obama on the campaign trail while Donald Trump stayed off it. Trump, when not on the ballot, tends to motivate Democrats more than Republicans to vote. Republicans should use Tuesday as a wake-up call to up their game for the midterms.

Though we are a vast and divergent land of good people, Americans sort of hate each other these days. The further away from a screen one is, the less they hate and the more they love their neighbor. Our digital world is designed to capture our attention, isolate us and motivate us with dread and terror. It is working quite well to keep people riled up and angry.

But what actually happened Tuesday? If you hate tariffs, you think tariffs cost the GOP. If you hate deportations, you think that cost the GOP. If you hate Trump, you think he cost the GOP. But what is the truth? We can get a sense of it from a common concern raised by voters across the nation from California to Texas to Georgia to Virginia to New York. Voters have moved on from blaming former President Joe Biden and Democrats to blaming Trump and Republicans for the cost of living being too high.

On Wednesday, in the U.S. Supreme Court, President Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, admitted to the Justices that Trump’s use of tariffs could be replicated by a future Democratic president who could declare a climate emergency and impose massive tariffs on imported parts for gas-powered vehicles. If the Supreme Court does not save Mr. Trump from himself and, instead, says his tariffs are constitutional, Trump will have constructed the policy used by Democrats to destroy industries to save the planet.

I think tariffs are harming the economy and now think even worse of Trump’s strategy. But others insist tariffs are saving the economy. Perhaps tariffs are not to blame. In practical terms, it does not matter. Tariffs are Trump’s biggest economic idea and voters now blame him, not Mr. Biden, for the economy.

Whether one blames tariffs or deportations, raising labor costs or any other issue, the real problem is the economy. In every election in the United States where the voters in all the various, vast, divergent states shift in the same direction, those elections are economic elections. Your issue, your pet cause and your view (and mine) do not matter. The election is about the economy. How and why are different and multifaceted issues. But Republicans, to mitigate midterms, must understand that it will remain about the economy. Make people feel better off than when Joe Biden was president.

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