There used to be a great old bit in the various Chuck Jones Warner Brothers cartoons that we Boomers all loved when we were kids, where when a character took a serious hit, which they seemed to do regularly, he would sit up, with little birds twittering around his head, and ask plaintively, "Did anyone get the number of that truck?"
That would seem to be the stance that Alaska's senior senator, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is taking; in an interview on Wednesday, she complained that she just plain didn't see Tuesday's blue wave coming. Well, you can color me a little skeptical.
Lisa Murkowski: I knew that we were probably going to lose a couple of seats. I felt like the Republicans were probably going to lose the House. I did not expect that we would lose the majority in the Senate, and I certainly didn't expect the... I'm trying to think of the words to describe it. It really did catch me by surprise.
— Clash Report (@clashreport) November 5, 2026
Lisa Murkowski: I knew that we were probably going to lose a couple of seats. I felt like the Republicans were probably going to lose the House. I did not expect that we would lose the majority in the Senate, and I certainly didn't expect the... I'm trying to think of the words to describe it. It really did catch me by surprise.
In the video, she says just that.
Interviewer: As (Augusta?) said, Vice President Vance has mentioned the war with Iran, was really unpopular. Did you see the events that transpired last night coming?
Lisa Murkowski: No. I knew that we were going to, we were probably going to lose a couple seats. I felt like we were going to probably, that Republicans were going to lose the House. I did not expect that we would lose the majority in the Senate. And, I certainly didn't expect the, just the... I'm trying to... I've written down so many different words to describe this...
Second interviewer: You call it a blue wave?
Lisa Murkowski: Yeah, a blue wave, a blue tsunami, (some overtalk). It really did catch me by surprise that, as a state.
OK, I'm going to cut Princess Lisa a little slack here, and point out that a lot of people didn't quite grok that things would go that badly, that Republicans in the House, Senate and lots of state and local elections would, well, get our teeth kicked in the way we did. Speaking for myself, what happened was in my range of estimation, but it was down on the bad side of the bell curve; I didn't think that things would go as badly as they did, although I knew it was a possibility, that we might lose House and Senate both. The closer to election day we got, the more concerned I got that we might lose both. I've been watching American politics since the Carter administration, but I know plenty of younger people who were worried about the same thing.
And, honestly, anyone who has been watching American politics for any amount of time should have known it could go this bad. It's done so before; 1994, 2002, and 2010 come to mind. So, yeah, a surprise, but it shouldn't have caught anyone that flat-footed.
Princess Lisa's been around long enough to know better. And there's the other thing; if she wasn't suspecting this turnout and the eventual Republican Party soul-searching and retrenching to follow, then why did she turn so suddenly on her former buddy, Mary Peltola, when the New York Times suddenly broke the Decoy Dan story? Sen. Murkowski instead rushed to endorse her colleague, Sen. Dan Sullivan; no, not that Dan Sullivan, and not the other Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. (Yes, it's all very confusing.)
That's OK, though. Sen. Murkowski has certainly worked with Democrats before, and she's anything, she's a survivor.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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