Well, there's no other way to put it; we took a drubbing last night in the 2026 midterms, and that's for sure and for certain. We are forced to acknowledge that reality.
This being November in Alaska, it was still pitch dark when I walked across from the house to the office this morning. As I walked, I looked up, as I generally do, at the sky, to get my first assessment of the day. Is it cloudy? Can I see stars? This morning the one thing that caught my eye was Mars, hanging hot and red, low in the sky: Mars, the Bringer of War. And I thought to myself, is this an omen?
No. It's just a planet. But we do have a struggle ahead of us.
Alaska's elections aren't decided yet. But a quick look at the map gives us a few bright spots from yesterday's election, not the least of which is Florida, Ron DeSantis's Florida, which is now expected to become Byron Donalds' Florida. In Florida's Senate race, Republican Ashley Moody looks to have beaten the Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon, perhaps by a narrower margin than we'd like, but in these matters an inch is as good as a mile. But overall, yes, we took a beating. It's happened before. It will happen again. So now: We regroup.
Here are the things we need to remember:
First, President Trump is still President for two more years. We can confidently expect he will wield the veto pen with abandon. No new states will be added to the Union, no new Supreme Court justices will be added to stack the court while he remains in the White House. Oh, we can expect the impeachment articles to fly fast and furious, but while the Democrats will have a Senate majority, they won't have enough of one to convict after a House impeachment. As for the president, he's been impeached before. He'll deal with it.
Second, the Democrats will overstep. A quick look at some of the successful candidates' reactions reveal a surfeit of hubris. Maybe that will tone down some when they actually take office and are forced to make decisions — and maybe that won't. We can confidently expect some of the more radical Democrats to grow louder and louder still, and that will turn off a lot of moderate voters who may have sprung their way in 2026. That's how that pendulum often works.
Incidentally, some of us are old enough to remember a time when Democrats held the House and the Senate for decades. President Reagan, through most of his two terms, dealt with a Democrat Congress. But those days are over; Congress flips back and forth much more readily than they did up until 1994, when the Democrats were hammered by Contract With America Republicans in the first midterm of Bill Clinton's presidency. That won't change for a while now.
Third, all Republicans need to start thinking of the post-Trump GOP, and what that will look like. We still have a strong stable of possible presidential candidates. Donald Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party and will remain so (at least) until the party picks a 2028 presidential candidate. And, at this time, two years out, we really don't know who that candidate might be; before yesterday, many of us would have confidently predicted JD Vance, and he may yet still be the candidate, but the Republican Party may also decide to go with someone from outside the Trump administration; someone, say, like the man who many say is the nation's best governor, a pretty solid Republican in his own right, who looks to have passed on his governorship to another Republican in an election that didn't have a lot of Republican triumphs.
Or it may be someone, as with Donald Trump in 2015, we never saw coming.
In Sir Walter Scott's novel Guy Mannering, Scott coined the phrase, "The hour's come, and the man," often misquoted as "Cometh the hour, cometh the man." The fact is, the 2028 field is wide open for both parties; but the Democrats look poised, in their hubris, to pick someone like Gavin Newsom, or Kamala Harris, or maybe even someone further to the left than them; and that gives us an opportunity, if we have the right candidate. If the right man, or the right woman, appears, and if the Republican Party chooses wisely in the primaries.
So, we've got a lot to do. But we can take a moment. It's good to take a moment. Touch some grass. Get some fresh air. Here, in our corner of the Great Land, the sky in the east is now starting to grow brighter. The first chickadees and nuthatches are arriving at the feeders. Our politics are of no importance to them; they are just spending another day as they usually do, putting on a little extra fat to help them through a long, cold, dark winter. And, as always happens, spring will come, in its time. For all things, there is a season. Spring always comes.
Take that moment. And then, well, we'll get to work.
