Honestly it for the most part failed as non MAGA Republicans voted Blue as a protest.
Correct. This was a "vote against", not "vote for" election (which is usually the case with a US midterm).
The biggest take away is that the Demās didnāt really win, the vote was really solely an indictment of President Trump and his administration.
Mostly, but not solely. As people have been noting here for the past couple of years, the Republicans mostly had a do-little Congress since 2024. Conservative Americans also noticed, and have been talking and writing about it for all that time.
Both Parties now have 2 years to find an acceptable Candidate more to the middle to appeal to voters down here like Carter and Regan did and gain the middle while ignoring the fringes.
Here is where it gets interesting. The Democratic win is - despite what a lot of people seem to think - not really historic by the numbers (Senate, House, governors); what makes it stand out (and I have not read anyone - yet - mention this except a handful of pre-election articles) is that this was supposed to be a "difficult map" year for Democrats. An emphatic win is better than a close result or even a mediocre surge, especially since they have majorities in both legislative bodies. It puts Democrats squarely in charge in Congress, with no doubts. It also reduces the likelihood of members at the extreme left commanding any outsize weight in the internal party decision processes.
It isn't just the presidential candidate choices that are going to matter in two years. Parties can interpret legislative chamber victories generally in one of two ways: the people voted to throw out the other guys; the people voted for our platform.
I predict the Democrats are going to believe the latter (most victors do, but with a two-year election cycle, it's common in the US for the counter-rebuke to be received pretty soon). There are a couple of major indicators that this belief would be wrong. One is that Republican turnout was good, but didn't deliver Republican wins. Another is that conservative-oriented propositions did well on ballots. If conservatives are voting against their incumbents but still supporting conservative policy aims, it suggests this was a "throw out" election.
Another choice for Democrats is how they split their time among these three broad categories: investigating their political enemies; passing their wish-list without any consideration for what Trump thinks; negotiating with Trump to effect meaningful change in the top four or five items US voters nominate when asked.
Given the way some are talking, a lot of emphasis is going to go to the first. Given their past history as a party in opposition to a Republican president, a lot of emphasis is going to go to the second. Very little time will be left for the third, which is actually what voters are mostly likely to reward.
A wild card is whether Democrats will be foolish enough to remove the Senate legislative filibuster rule. As a matter of tactics, it makes little sense for a party to do so except under one set of circumstances: immediately after capturing the trifecta (presidency, Senate, House) with a first-term president. To remove the rule in the face of a presidential veto would be to reap all the negatives with very few (maybe none) positives.
If conservative voters, having contributed to throwing out members of their own team, see the other team simply trying to administer punishment and pursue the left-liberal dream list, they're highly likely to return home in 2028.
