The Trump Hangover Election: Voters Proclaim, “what Were We Thinking?”

It’s as if American voters, after a long night out, woke up with a bad hangover and regretted the choices they made the previous evening.

With the Democrats handily winning a huge majority in the House and capturing the Senate, the electorate sent a clear message: It’s had enough of Trump. Across many states, there was a historic rout of Republicans. Yes, a blue tsunami. In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews pulled off a stunning victory against Darline Graham in the race for the Senate seat previously held by Graham’s brother. In Texas, Democratic state Rep.. James Talarico triumphed over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Senate seat, while state Rep. Gina Hinajosa bounced out Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff cruised to reelection, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was decisively elected governor. She’ll become the first Black women chief executive of a state in US history.

The Democratic senatorial candidates prevailed in the red midwestern states of Iowa and Kansas In Ohio, Democrat Amy Acton vanquished Vivek Ramaswamy to win the gubernatorial contest. In Florida, House Democrats targeted by Republican gerrymandering survived, and throughout the country Democrats trounced GOP House members in districts Trump two years ago had won by double-digit margins.

As the disastrous news for Trump and the GOP poured in, Trump zapped out a series of social media posts bitching about Fox News. And White House aides frantically reminded reporters that Trump was not on the ballot. (Roll the video of Trump: “I’m just asking everybody to pretend I’m on the ballot.”)

These results signaled that Trump’s ugly politics of lies, deceit, division, bigotry, tribalism, hate, and demagoguery—which the GOP has fully embraced—no longer resonate with most of the United States. His braying that Democrats are USA-hating commies who want to force gender-transition surgery on children and destroy the nation could not distract a majority of voters from the in-your-face realities of Trump 2.0: high prices, a misconceived and poorly executed war of choice in Iran, a cruel mass deportation crusade, erratic and unproductive economic policy, vast and brazen corruption, creeping authoritarianism, and loads of his signature chaos.

This election establishes a clear pattern. Voters can fall for Trump when he’s a candidate assailing the ruling class and making grand promises (a “golden age”!). But when the time comes to evaluate his performance in the White House, it’s thumbs down. In 2016 and 2024, he performed well as a presidential aspirant, playing the role of the outsider big-daddy nationalist hero who could sock it to the system, take on the elites, own the libs, and deliver prosperity. That shtick—sold with the conviction of a con man and the passion of a carnival barker—succeeded.

Yet Trump as president does not impress, and his White House actions spark backlashes. In 2018, voters turned on him, and the Democrats won the House. In 2020—as Trump mismanaged the Covid pandemic—voters booted him and handed the reins to Joe Biden, and the Democrats kept control of the House and picked up the Senate.

The 2026 midterms follow suit. After nearly two years of crisis, autocracy, brutality, grift, plutocratic policies, and assorted bizarreness, voters have for the third time rejected a Trump presidency. That means Trump has never received a positive performance review from the electorate.

These midterm contests are the morning-after election. As Trump’s plummeting approval ratings have shown, voters have been nurturing a profound case of buyer’s remorse. Trump hauled himself around the country urging citizens to vote as if he were on the ballot. And they did. He has led his Republican Party to failure. Even his effort to rig the playing field with racist gerrymandering could not save him and his GOP cultists.

It’s true that presidents tend to suffer drubbings in midterm elections—or a “shellacking,” as President Barack Obama called it in 2010. But this time, Trump’s own decisions and actions—the Iran war, the tariffs, the establishment of a secret police force to round up law-abiding residents, the evisceration of vital swaths of the federal government, the decimation of the nation’s public health and medical research systems, his vainglorious campaign to attach his name to the Kennedy Center and other entities, and so on—drove his unpopularity far beyond the historic trend.

He did this to himself and his party. This election was a loud no to ICE, to a trade war with Canada, to cozying up to Vladimir Putin, to democratic backsliding, to an attempt to swipe Greenland, to the damn ballroom and the freakin’ arch.

The last days of the campaign featured so many signs of Trump’s self-inflicted wounds. He delivered an utterly weird—even for him—speech at the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in which he boasted of his purported victory over algae. (How many Americans cared about this?) In his final campaign rallies—held in red states where GOP candidates, remarkably, appeared vulnerable—he continued to proclaim the economy was great, talked about people’s asses, and spewed vicious Islamophobic comments, while often rambling wildly and emitting sounds that were not words. He did not seem well.

Throughout the campaign, Trump took virtually no steps to address the concerns of any voters beyond his MAGA-heads—besides offering a phony bribe of $5,000 checks to all American adults. (Deficit? What deficit?) He had nothing to say about the affordability crisis, denying it even existed—while Democrats wisely banged the affordability drum over and over. He did not address the rising costs of health care or housing. He contended that higher gas prices were a small price to pay for the war in Iran that he appears unable to end. He peddled empty promises of lower fuel prices in the future and relied on hatred, demonizing Democrats as anti-American radicals and freaks. He said he would drain the swamp in Washington, DC. Instead, he blew up the levees and let the sewage of corruption flow into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump became a vicious vaudeville act. That might work for a candidate, but not for a president.

Vice President JD Vance, his Mini-Me, joined in the hate-fest. At a rally for Ramaswamy, who ran the most despicable ad of the entire midterm cycle, Vance bellowed, “I saw a story…that there are illegal communities of illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote…We want American elections to belong to American citizens. Send a message by voting for Vivek for governor.”

There was no such story. Vance was simply hawking racism—perhaps in a preview of his 2028 campaign.

Trump and his party threw tons of disinformation and crap at American voters. And Elon Musk spent (wasted, it turns out) nearly half a billion dollars to prop up GOP candidates and assail Democrats, with much of that money deployed in Texas to help Paxton.

But not even Martian moolah could rescue the Republicans from the Trump implosion. After less than two years of the Trump restoration, most Americans crave a course correction. They’d like to believe the last election never happened. But it did. Much damage has been done.

The first step to getting out of the hole—stop digging—has been taken. But a mess remains, as does Trump, wounded, angry, and ready to wreak further havoc. The post-hangover cleanup does not end with this election; it only begins.