Well, ladies and gentlemen, the red wave never came, more of a red ripple.
The Republican Party is now truly in disarray, upended by the failure for the red wave to materialize. For months now, Republicans, particularly MAGA people and Trump himself, have been predicting there is going to be a red wave in the House and Senate and governor’s races like you have never seen before. It’s going to be incredible. Democrats are going to lose everything.
In the ten days before the midterm election, we started to see some polling that didn’t really make sense – a lot of right-leaning pollsters being included in many of the averages. And although it’s taking time to count every single vote, we know that some major Republican candidates, endorsed by Trump, have lost and these are completely upending the thought for many of the Republican Party for 2024.
I’m talking about Dr. Oz who lost in Pennsylvania. I’m talking about Doug Mastriano who lost in Pennsylvania. Of course, Tudor Dixon who lost in Michigan to the incumbent, Governor Gretchen Whitmer. We’re talking about so many different races. Blake Masters losing to Mark Kelly in Arizona. All of these races, into which Donald Trump put so much energy and Republicans put so much money, and it ended up being for nothing.
On the other hand, Ron DeSantis, winning by 19 in his reelection for Governor of Florida, where Trump didn’t even campaign for him. Begrudgingly the day before the election, Trump said “yeah, reelect DeSantis.”
But Trump excluded DeSantis from his final rally in Miami, Florida in support of fellow Florida, Republican Marco Rubio, who did win quite easily.
And we know why that is. It’s because Donald Trump accurately sees Ron DeSantis as the number one threat to Trump getting the nomination for the Republican presidential race in 2024.
The belief is that Donald Trump will be announcing on November 15. This now really puts the Republican Party in an interesting position. On the one hand, within hours of these election results on November 8, many prominent Republicans started to say, time to dump Trump. This is Ron DeSantis’ party now. The people Trump endorsed failed. We’ve got to do something different.
On the other hand, Ron DeSantis, was only just reelected as governor of Florida. During the debate against Charlie Crist, DeSantis was asked, “Do you commit to serving out all four years?” and he didn’t answer because it’s believed he’s planning at least potentially to run for the Republican nomination.
Trump’s next move is to announce really soon in order to try to short circuit other candidacies. DeSantis can’t really announce right now that he’s running for president because he was just reelected Governor. It would look very bad. And it could really damage him with Florida voters, although maybe not. Maybe these Republicans don’t care. So that’s going to put Ron DeSantis in a very precarious situation.
The other question that has come up is, isn’t Trump’s endorsement records still pretty good? He said it was like 150 and nine or whatever. What you have to understand is that Trump mostly endorses incumbents, or endorses Republican nominees in very solid red districts. Anyone can do that and mostly get them right. But none of those make a difference. Everybody expected that Mike DeWine was going to be reelected as the governor of Ohio, with or without Trump’s endorsement. It’s not really any big prediction that Trump endorsed Mike DeWine. I think he did anyway, I don’t know. I believe that, no, he didn’t. He endorsed both JD Vance and Mike DeWine. The contested races that were the critical ones to see who controls what, Pennsylvania Governor, Pennsylvania Senate. We’re not going to know Walker-Warnock until after the runoff. But certainly Walker didn’t run away with it.
The races in Arizona, the contested ones. Michigan, Trump did not do well in. And so even more generally, there are growing questions about, when you eliminate the ones that anybody could easily get, the contested critical races, Trump didn’t actually do so well on, which raises questions about the potentially diminishing power of Trump.
At the end of the day, I know it’s cliche, but it’s going to come down to the voters because it’s going to be up to Republican voters to decide. Listen, this guy came in, Trump never could have become the Democratic nominee because the standards are just so much lower to be a Republican nominee.
Republicans chose him as their nominee in 2016 when he became president. Nobody really challenged him for the nomination in ‘20 and then he lost. And then a bunch of the people he picked in ‘22 also lost.
Are the voters done with Trump? Are the voters done with Trump is going to matter more than whether Fox News or Mitch McConnell are done with Trump. And that’s what remains to be seen.
