Welcome to The Drain Pipe, your weekly guide to DC. Forecast: swampy.
Saying “I told you so” won’t be enough to resurrect the Republican Party after the midterms bloodbath. An autopsy is in order.
First, a silver lining: While Democrats flipped two House seats in Arizona and reelected Gov. Katie Hobbs, voters shot down a ballot measure which would’ve legalized trans-identifying athletes. Meanwhile, in Ohio — where Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Jon Husted got crushed — a ballot measure which will mandate voter ID won over 65% of the vote.
So it appears that the midterms weren’t a rejection of conservatism, per se, but of Republicans. Look at the Mississippi Senate race: When beef prices were climbing, Republican Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said, “You have so many proteins to choose from.” Now the state, which has been reliably red since 1980, is too close to call.
President Donald Trump told reporters in May that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation” when dealing with Iran. According to the NBC News Exit Poll, 43% of respondents said rebuking Trump was one of the reasons behind their vote, 75% said the economy was in bad shape, and 62% believed the Iran War was a mistake.
In response to what many have called the “Blue Tsunami” (though I prefer “prairie fire”), Vice President JD Vance posted his own autopsy Wednesday:
“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”
The top four reasons disenfranchised voters would vote Republican again, he said, were if Trump: 1) ends the war, 2) focuses on cost of living, 3) puts America First, and 4) changes our relationship with Israel.
Fox News’s Marc Thiessen and Mark Levin accused Vance of throwing Trump under the bus, apparently demanding undying fealty. But when you look at what that war has cost Americans, and who has consistently pushed for it, who is actually betraying who?
EXECUTIVE
President Donald Trump departed Mar-a-Lago yesterday for the White House after spending weeks on the campaign trail.
Will The Blue Tsunami Hit Israel?