Republican reckoning: Accountability finally comes for Trump

Ad spending on this year’s midterm elections clocked in at more than $11.21 billion , an eye-watering number that even edges past the $11.2 billion spent during the 2024 presidential cycle. All that money went to perpetuate the wall of noise marketing a campaign cycle that felt like it would never end. From sponsored Facebook posts to YouTube ads and television spots to good old billboards, the 2026 midterms ought to be known as the election cycle no one could escape.

Yet all the ad spending in the world didn’t convince voters that Republicans had even the concepts of a plan for fixing Donald Trump’s worsening economic mess.

The party limped into this year’s midterms carrying the burden of a historically unpopular president and a historically bad affordability crisis . It stumbled over the finish line in a state of total exhaustion, successful only in its mission to alienate nearly every voting bloc it gained in 2024.

One has to wonder if some of the Republicans who lost their seats were just glad that this whole disgraceful march was finally over.

By midnight it was clear that the long-predicted Democratic wave wasn’t just a mirage of polling or a conspiracy of the anti-Trump media. Democrats notched high-profile Senate wins in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, South Carolina and North Carolina, many by convincing margins. In Texas, James Talarico romped to victory over Donald Trump’s hand-picked nominee, Ken Paxton, by nearly 20 points.

Democrats also made major inroads into a Deep South that Republicans once proudly called their “ red wall, ” flipping governor’s mansions in Texas and Georgia. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black female governor of a state that was once the heart of the Confederacy.

The scale and size of Democrats’ triumph was so great that even Trump seemed to realize it would be pointless to rehash his perennial claims of election fraud. Instead, Trump sheepishly told The New York Times that he would accept the election results as legitimate. “We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out,” Trump said.

I guess there are some drubbings so brutal that even MAGA is forced to accept reality.

The specter of Tuesday’s outcome also appeared to send deep cracks through the MAGA movement as Republicans came to grips with Trump’s rapidly declining political clout. A day before voters headed to the polls, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) publicly broke with the president on issues ranging from the Iran War to immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, longtime Trump allies, including seven-term Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), lost their seats.

Trump now heads into 2027 with fewer friends than ever on Capitol Hill and a Republican Party that is deeply skeptical of his value as a messenger. It’s arguably the weakest Trump has been since the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol attack . After years spent defying political gravity, Tuesday’s sweeping rebuke now has Trump looking and feeling like a lame-duck president.

The same can’t be said for Democrats. Yesterday’s results were a stunning vindication for a Democratic Party that emerged from its 2024 loss to Trump both emotionally and organizationally shattered. Bolstered by Trump’s historic economic and foreign policy failures, Democrats managed to mend most of their public divisions while crafting a message that appealed to the Latinos, Arab Americans, young people and independent voters who abandoned them two years ago.

Democrats’ message was as simple as it was effective: Trump is making you poorer .

The affordability crisis became the unifying message of progressives and centrists, establishment Dems and outsider insurgents alike, and the party’s willingness to engage with voters’ frustrations opened doors with rural voters and traditional conservatives long thought to be beyond the reach of Democratic economic appeals. The party’s affordability campaign asked those voters to choose between a plan they might not completely agree with and Trump’s lack of any plan at all.

On Tuesday, Associated Press exit polling showed that affordability concerns and public corruption ranked near the top of voters’ concerns, while a supermajority of Americans blamed Trump for making their lives worse. If anything, those numbers understated just how angry voters were at Republicans who promised them a Golden Age only to deliver higher prices and a total lack of accountability.

Republicans don’t have any more answers to those crises today than they did a month or a year ago. Now they can add massive voter disillusionment and a demoralized party base to their mounting problems. The Republican Party is the weakest it’s been since the Bush administration collapsed under the pressure of the 2008 financial crisis, yet it is still bound to a president who can’t — or won’t — acknowledge his own staggering unpopularity. Republicans may finally be thinking of a future beyond Trump, but actually ridding themselves of a man who never surrenders the spotlight will be another headache entirely.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.