The left’s true face is becoming visible. You like it, America? 

J.R. Dunn | November 9, 2026

It’s strange how small gestures can sometimes echo events taking place on much larger stages. It may well be the same impulse acting simultaneously at the human level and on the global.

Last week an elderly man slapped a young man scarcely out of boyhood across the face in public for no rational reason. It did not occur during an argument; no such argument took place. Rather, the old man was responding to reasoned statements with an unhinged tirade totally at odds with the circumstances.

On election day in Laconia, New Hampshire, 70-year-old Steven Redic confronted Rainer Vesey, an 18-year-old volunteer spokesman for Charley Kirk’s Turning Point manning a table at a polling place. The early moments of the incident are unrecorded, but what we get to see is enough. That consists of Redic shouting at Vesey, cutting him off, not allowing him to speak, and at last slapping him across the face.

Onlookers reacted with shock. Only after a few seconds did somebody say, “Call the police.” By then Redic is walking off, moving pretty quickly for a man his age, shoulders slightly hunched in the posture of somebody actively fleeing.

This occurred simultaneously with a number of other incidents as the American left celebrated its anticipated return to power.

Somebody released a 182-page “hit list” of targets the Democrats want to gang up on as soon as they enter office in January. This includes a number of high-tech corporations such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, Oracle, and Palantir, along with the executives, the Trump family, cabinet members, government officials, and needless to say, Elon Musk. It’s not likely to stop there.

In recent months, James Carville has been speaking in measured tones like a man worthy of civilized, intelligent debate. That’s all gone now. In his latest clip, he comes across as a badly animated cadaver, looming into the lens while ranting about how “We gone git that-there Donal’ Trump and his whole famla, das right.”

Then we have podcaster Jennifer Welch, a strange-looking female with the fixed gaze of a department-store mannequin, who, while speaking to Angie Sullivan – apparently another podcaster — responded to an online posting by talking about how she’d like to dig up Charley Kirk so she could “kill him again.” The two of them then laughed uncontrollably for the better part of a minute. Welch went on to claim that “He was shot by a MAGA person. White person, White MAGA family.”

This, playmates, is the real left on display. They’re not going out of control. They’ve always been this way.  They’re just showing it now because, after one victory, they think they can get away with it.

Then we have podcaster Jennifer Welch, a strange-looking female with the fixed gaze of a department-store mannequin, who, while speaking to Angie Sullivan – apparently another podcaster — responded to an online posting by talking about how she’d like to dig up Charley Kirk so she could “kill him again.” The two of them then laughed uncontrollably for the better part of a minute. Welch went on to claim that “He was shot by a MAGA person. White person, White MAGA family.”

This, playmates, is the real left on display. They’re not going out of control. They’ve always been this way.  They’re just showing it now because, after one victory, they think they can get away with it.

Their problem is – they can’t. Redic was arrested and charged with simple assault and disorderly conduct. He calls himself a “poet.” What rhymes with indictment?

As for Jennifer Welch, she immediately shed most of her sponsors. Her anchor sponsor, Cash App, announced, “We do not condone violence of any kind, and we are no longer sponsors of this podcast.” Eyewear manufacturer Zenni followed in short order, along with bedding company Boll and Branch and pet outlet Chewy. A transparently fake apology did nothing to slow down the stampede.

This will continue, and it will continue to cost them. The left always shoots itself in the foot. They can’t help themselves – they are going to take it all the way down the line. They really think they’ve got a blank check and can do any damnfool thing that gets into their heads. And that’s the way it should be. They need to be encouraged in this, provoked into expressing themselves to the ultimate degree, to living up to their carefully nurtured self-image as bloodthirsty, destructive, hateful Lokis. Do that, and you’ve won half the battle.

Of course, that brings us to the question of why our team can’t take advantage of it. Which we will have to learn to do.

Twenty million new voters in just 4 years?

We have seen this show before.

Sociopaths inevitably turn on each other. I read on Newsmax that Jewish Democrats are outraged in Philadelphia that Palestinian Democrats are boycotting Jewish businesses. The Jew haters and the leftist Jews still prominent in the Democratic Party are on a collision course now that MAGA and Republicans have totally lost influence over Congress and any legislative agenda. Another collision course bubbles between social liberals and the most strident and violent “religious right” in human history: Muslims. They kept the coalition together well enough in order to defeat Trump. Now that they have done so, the impossibility and absurdity of merging Marxism, Nazism, antisemitism, Islamic Sharia Law and a “transgender” society will explode. Remember: All of these ideologies are based on force and violence. The Democratic Party has attempted to incorporate elements of all of them. I hope they destroy each other. I hope President Trump assists them.

@TruthNinja316 on X writes:

STUNNING: It is my opinion the United States died on this election. The voting compact will eliminate any chance of a Republican POTUS ever in the future. Including 2028. In addition, from a Californian, (and I tried to warn you), once you hit a tipping point, it’s irreversible. California is NEVER going back. And neither is the United States. We now live in a California style one party rule.

I suspect this is true. Time will tell. In such a situation, either you fight or flee. You cannot flee. The U.S. was the last place to flee. When blue states fell, you ran to red states. Most of the red states have fallen, or are falling. The federal government, once we have a Communist president, will finish off freedom in the remaining red states, primarily Florida.

If you cannot flee, do you fight? But under what context? The Nazis and Communists of the 20th Century were fought via sanctuary in, and with the military assistance of, a free country, such as Great Britain or the USA at that time. You need at least one free country to assist with the fight. There are no more free countries or states. In several more years — without Texas, after Trump leaves — the USA will be done. I hope I am wrong. But I don’t see our options.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Law professor Jonathan Turley posted on X on Friday, “Democrat Richard Ojeda, who was just elected to Congress, has declared that he would be ‘happy to go to jail’ if he has a chance to physically assault the incoming Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.” While I’d love to see the Secret Service, under whose protection Miller lives because of violent leftists threatening to murder him and his family in the name of “tolerance,” break Ojeda’s jaw as they threw him to the floor, I somehow suspect the unfortunate-looking Democrat is all talk, as most Democrats are.

They’re all talk when it comes to them physically doing anything, but that doesn’t mean they’re all talk when it comes to abusing the power of government to go after their enemies – and make no mistake, they view anyone who disagrees with them as their enemies (it’s long past time we view them the same way). These leftists will try to use their positions to harm, imprison, and ruin everyone they can, as Nazi’s don’t let decency or precedent stand their way.

And if that doesn’t work, they will try to get people murdered by causing one of their mentally unstable followers to snap. Just ask Steve Scalise, Donald Trump, Charlie…

Well, you can’t ask Charlie, whose murder by a leftist was mocked this week by a couple of Botoxed up genital warts with a podcast called Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan. Of course, if they or one of their family members were murdered, you would be canceled for making fun of them – one “Why am I supposed to care that modern Eva Braun was prevented from stealing more oxygen?” and you’d probably be fired. Them? They’ll likely get more CNN and MS Now bookings.

Threatening to murder, or calling for the murder of someone you disagree with politically, is a resume enhancer on the left and will likely be a requirement for a speaking slot at the 2028 Democratic National Convention.

….

Honestly, I’ve heard from a lot of people who have made it clear that they will not be upset if another James Hodgkinson got the wrong directions and ended up at a mutant march somewhere, or they’ve made jokes about various leftists hopefully having beepers. (Google it.)

Why should we care what happens to them? I know we’re all humans, but we don’t have to acknowledge that. Sharing a general DNA structure with someone like Scott Galloway is not enough for a lot of people to have any kind of bond as a species.

Galloway, who called for Elon Musk to be executed for “treason to the West” this week, makes a fortune as a professor and podcaster. He’s considered to be a “moderate” voice on the left. He will pay no price for his call. Some sponsors may step away or pause their payments to him, but either they’ll be back or someone else will step up. He has an audience, and that’s enough for many corporate leftists.

Of course, people like Galloway are truly “traitors to the West,” as they advocate the destruction of Western civilization through the invasion of the third world and the collapse of our economy through the welfare state. He wants Elon lined up, but he’s the actual traitor. If we’re going to call for executions, why is one ok and the other not?

None should be, but there is no price for vicious, vile, attempted inspiration of unhinged homicidal mental cases on the left. I can’t finish that as an analogy because there is no correlation on the right. It’s not that we wouldn’t tolerate that kind of rhetoric; it’s that it doesn’t happen. Maybe there’s some anonymous Twitter troll account or Asian bot saying nasty things, but no one real with a voice that has influence.

The left will wish you dead, hoping to inspire it, and play the victim if you happen to notice. If you return the favor, treat them the way they treat you, well, forget about it.

As Democrats like Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-8) make threats to anyone who works with the Trump administration to make their lives hell or ruin them financially, you can see why even their kids can’t stand these people and would do anything to avoid them. They bring nothing of value to human existence and only offer misery, jealousy, and hatred.

Never forget, they want you dead. They may not say, though sometimes they do. Unless you think they’re willing to stop at just a few high-profile people, but history has shown that once they indulge their lust for blood, they get a taste for it that makes the world’s biggest meth junkie seem indifferent to the glass. Be aware, their rhetoric may be just words to normal people, but it’s a strong suggestion to others.

They know exactly what they’re doing; Democrats are evil, not stupid.

Derek Hunter, Townhall

People often ask me to explain what a psychotherapist does. Though I’m tempted to mumble something about secret handshakes, decoder rings and electric shocks, I go ahead and try to answer the question truthfully. And the answer isn’t mysterious at all: A psychotherapist helps people identify what’s bothering them in their lives, and then helps the client figure out how to change that situation.

One of the things I see almost every day is people falling into the trap of “victim-think.” This mindset is frequently encouraged by politicians and the media, because people are easier to manipulate if you divide them and convince them they’re helpless. For a good example, just take a look at what passes for “news” nowadays.

It is true that we can’t force other people to change their behaviors and choices. But victim-think suggests (incorrectly) that we’re powerless to do anything about others’ behaviors. Well, that’s just not true. After almost 40 years of doing what I do, I’ve put together a list of nine questions you can ask yourself to combat victim-think.

1. What am I allowing him to do to annoy me?
2. How did I manage to convey the impression to her that it would be acceptable for her to act this way?
3. What in my thinking is causing me to FEEL upset and angry (rather than saying he “made” me upset and angry)?
4. What actions of mine have encouraged her offensive behavior?
5. What is she counting on, in MY behavior, when she treats me this way?
6. What do I gain from allowing this behavior to continue without protest?
7. What do I currently do for him that I can stop doing if he refuses to change the behavior I don’t like?
8. What am I willing to do for her that I don’t currently do, provided she stops the behavior I don’t like?
9. I have the power to choose to have nothing to do with him, or maybe just less to do with him. How much is entirely up to me.

You don’t have to sit idly by and feel like a victim. Successful psychotherapy teaches you to recognize your power of choice. I’m not referring to power over people — that’s ineffective and unhealthy. I’m talking about power over yourself. Once you realize that you are capable of managing your feelings, you can then refer to another list that I fondly call: “Three Things to NOT Say to Yourself, Lest You Fall into ‘Victim-Think.’”

1. “He makes me so angry!” Correction: Nobody makes you angry. Your thoughts make you angry. Emotions, like anger, are the result of thoughts and beliefs that may or may not be valid. It’s your job to figure that out.
2. “I’m sick of being treated this way!” Correction: You’ve probably tolerated the behavior too long. You have to show intolerance if you want things to change. If someone’s stepping on your peace of mind, you have every right to NOT tolerate it.
3. “Why does she act this way?” Correction: Understanding another’s motives can be interesting, but beyond that, it’s of little value. Your energy is better spent identifying your role in the problem, and correcting whatever behavior you may be displaying that encourages the actions you dislike.

Unless someone’s holding a gun to your head, you are rarely a victim. Intentionally or not, we are often doing something that enables the actions we find annoying. In fact, most people don’t want to be annoying, especially if they value your friendship. We are not to blame for others’ bad choices. But we ARE responsible for removing that irrationality from our lives. It’s entirely up to us to exercise power over our reactions. In the process, we grant ourselves the freedom to change our feelings and not be ruled by others’ behaviors.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Having now read the blame storming, post election data and punditry, I would like to offer my own take, for the little it is worth. I usually do not engage in Vanity posts. Please forgive this one or ignore it.

Two storms collided to make a super storm that destroyed the GOP and likely the country.

In one corner: Trumpism. The man believes in getting things done. See a problem, solve the problem. And that, in our lifetimes, has been refreshing and amazing to behold.

For example, America has been screwed by bad trade deals and partners for years and years. Trump saw that and set about fixing it by exacting Tarrifs and renegotiating trade deals. This is necessary and who could argue the result will be lasting and beneficial. Or should I say, would have been. The democrats will readily use their power to sell us out to the World again.

And therein lies the rub. The problem solver forgot or disdained one thing, namely, politics and being a politician. Whether he likes it or not, running for President, and being President, means by definition being in a political office and being a politician.

It is anathema to a man like Trump and to most of us. “Politician” is a dirty word and an insult. It means being cautious or hedging bets. We hate these people in our careers. But in DC, it is part and parcel and indicates that one can’t just stampede through solutions without considering the political ramifications. That is not what a “see the problem, eliminate the problem” type does.

It means, when you are enacting Tarrifs, even if the results will be amazing if better trade deals are reached, you have to consider the fallout. It means when you confront Iran, the ramifications need to be weighed, despite the proper motives. It means you are going to anger and adversely impact your electorate and there will be a price to pay. It also means being tone deaf to all those who raise concerns is not the way to go, especially on Truth Social or X.

In the OTHER corner sits the purely politically motivated wing of the party. Every move they make, rather don’t make, is motivated by equivocation.

John Thune and the Bushes and Rove and, well, you know the cast of characters. They all are so paralyzed by fear of consequence that they forget politics is about mitigating downstream effects of action. It isn’t about eliminating or avoiding it. You still have to get the hard things done BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU PROMISED the voters you are going to do and are elected to do.

And thus we get a feckless and weak group who can’t do a damn thing. Instead, they complain about and disdain Trump and do little to help him or find a middle ground.

The voters, quite properly, don’t bother to support them and feel lied to. The voters, right or wrong, punish these weak fools.

I posit that both corners motivated GOP voters to be in “deliver a message” mode. Thus, blaming Thune and his ilk is on the money. But so is realizing that the fallout from Trump’s policies had an equally bad impact.

If you were mad at Trump for Iran or Thune for failing to pass the Save America Act, then I can see that there was something for everyone to be pissed at the GOP for.

Either corner alone would have resulted in a defeat. It took both to wipe out the GOP.

Flip Wilson

Rioters attempt to smash the windows of a Snipes store near Châtelet–Les Halles in central Paris, France, on 18 October 2026. Matthieu Rondel/AFP.

Three-quarters of a sample of suspects brought before French courts following last month’s mass riots bore Arabic–Muslim or African-origin first names, according to an analysis by leading pollster Jérôme Fourquet.

The finding points to mounting indications of significant immigrant-background involvement in the looting and violence that, with the help of the far left, turned France’s protests over education and living costs into weeks of urban chaos.

Fourquet, director of the opinion department at polling institute Ifop, examined national and local newspaper accounts of expedited court hearings following the 17 October riots. Of the 70 cases in which sufficient biographical information was available, 75 per cent had first names he classified as Arabic–Muslim or African in origin. He described the result as showing ‘very strong overrepresentation’.

Similar concerns had already emerged in neighbouring Italy and Germany. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said around half of the 330 people stopped or arrested during October’s riots were of immigrant background. In Frankfurt, Hesse Interior Minister Roman Poseck described the groups involved in looting on 31 October as predominantly migrant in character.

The French findings have also exposed a growing split within the political establishment. Former prime minister and 2027 presidential contender Édouard Philippe said on 1 November that footage of the pillaging showed significant numbers of young French citizens of immigrant background. Far-left presidential candidate and one of the main political forces behind the riots, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, condemned his remarks as racist, while Republican leader Bruno Retailleau cited Fourquet’s research in support.

Joakim Scheffer, Hungarian Conservative

Putting aside voter discontent, the abrupt, overwhelming shift in one solidly conservative state after another is possible, but doesn’t seem highly probable.

Amil Imani | November 7, 2026

Look at the map. Just look at it. If you have spent more than five minutes listening to the heartbeat of America—the hum of truck engines, the quiet grit in the grain silos, the packed-to-the-rafters rallies, and the sheer, undeniable pulse of neighborhoods demanding fiscal sanity and secure borders—the results coming out of this midterm cycle don’t just feel wrong. They defy gravity. They defy human intuition.

Was this a 2020 rigged election all over again?

For millions of everyday Americans who put their faith in the ballot box, that is not a wild conspiracy theory; it is the screaming, unaddressed elephant in the room. How are we supposed to look at sudden, unexplained shifts in long-standing conservative strongholds and swallow the official narrative without choking?

Let’s strip away the polished corporate media spin, the late-night talking heads gloating in New York studios, and look at the raw mechanics. We are left staring at a handful of basic, common-sense questions that nobody in authority wants to answer directly:

The Texas Quagmire: For decades, the Lone Star State stood as a fortress of individual liberty, economic growth, and bedrock conservative values. Yet, suddenly, we are expected to believe that millions of voters abruptly turned their backs on the very policies that made Texas the economic engine of the nation? In what universe do traditional heartland communities experience these sudden, seismic reversals overnight?

The Heartland Anomalies: Look at Kansas and Mississippi. These are places where neighbors know neighbors, where common-sense traditional values are woven into the fabric of daily life. When vote tallies start drifting into outcomes that completely contradict the visible enthusiasm, the rallies, and the ground game, skepticism isn’t just justified—it’s a civic duty.

The Midnight Momentum Shifts: Just like before, we went to sleep with strong leads and solid momentum, only to wake up to a completely transformed landscape. Why is it that modern administrative machinery always seems to find mysterious batches of late-night adjustments that tilt the scales in one specific direction?

And let’s not pretend this is happening in a vacuum. This feeling that the voice of the ordinary, hard-working citizen is being systematically managed or subverted is crossing oceans. We are witnessing strikingly similar disconnects in Europe—where establishment power structures continuously manage to cling to control despite massive public pushback against open borders, staggering taxation, and top-down globalist mandates.

Underpinning this global political friction is a profound domestic chasm: the staggering disconnects between national media narratives and the actual sentiment on the ground in heart land communities.

When major media institutions—largely anchored in coastal or metropolitan urban centers—report on national elections and public policy, their framing breeds deep alienation for citizens living in places like rural Texas or Kansas:

• Kitchen-Table Realities vs. Macro Data: While national anchors tout aggregate economic health, heartland communities anchored in agriculture, small businesses, and energy production feel the acute pinch of inflation at the fuel pump and supply store. When official statistics ignore local struggles under heavy regulatory compliance, residents feel gaslit.
• Cultural Translation: Major media outlets frequently frame traditional community structures and faith-based values through a dismissive lens, reducing deep-seated moral convictions to caricature.
• Top-Down Policy Impact: Policies drafted in distant capitals—whether concerning energy transitions or administrative mandates—are experienced in the heartland as coercive measures that punish rural livelihoods for the benefit of urban centers.

When the media and establishment narratives continually misinterpret or dismiss these genuine economic anxieties and cultural values, it deepens the suspicion that the system is entirely out of touch with the people it purports to serve. They sit in air-conditioned newsrooms pretending a piece of paper or an electronic tally sheet represents the will of the people, while local families watch their life savings get squeezed dry. It is a profound, systemic disconnect between those who rule and those who actually produce.

When the people scream for change, and the establishment somehow always manages to keep its grip, it forces a hard, uncomfortable reckoning. Trust is the absolute glue of a republic. Once that glue dissolves, you cannot govern by decree or dismiss tens of millions of citizens as fringe actors for asking questions. If the system is secure, transparent, and honest, it should welcome absolute scrutiny. Instead, what we get are lectures, closed doors, and demands to move on.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vice President J.D. Vance admitted Wednesday on X, explaining the Republicans’ disastrous midterm election loss the day before. He listed the top four things the GOP could do, according to a pollster with whom he spoke, to win back voters who had defected to the Democrats. These were:

1) End the war

2) Focus on cost of living/inflation

3) Put America First

4) Change our relationship to Israel

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) replied to Vance’s post, “Thanks for acknowledging these things. Better late than never.” Massie included an image of a red, MAGA-style hat. Instead of “Make America Great Again,” it said “Massie Was Right About Everything.”

“I’ll send you the hat,” he added.

Massie had a point.

“Donald Trump will put Americans first by securing our liberties at home and preventing needless wars abroad,” declared Massie in his endorsement of President Donald Trump in October 2024.

At the time, Massie’s praise for Trump expressed the most basic hope of many in the original MAGA movement, and certainly of its ideological core.

After his inauguration, Trump’s early promises of radical DOGE spending cuts and a break from interventionist foreign policy withered more quickly and completely than even his political adversaries had expected, and by March 2026, the administration had launched a war with Iran that seemed to serve Israel’s interests, first. That war cost Americans at home, at the gas pump and beyond. So did massive federal spending. So did the other wars.

Massie resisted all of this. He has remained a fiscal hawk throughout the entire Trump era, which has enraged Trump in both terms. And he has been a stalwart “America First” Republican, one who is not afraid to challenge Israeli influence and question policy (which also irked the president). Massie understood that financial and foreign policy restraint were related, something many Americans are now experiencing firsthand.

The Kentucky congressman never abandoned the old MAGA message from his original Trump endorsement. He refused. For that reason, Trump teamed with pro-Israel billionaires to defeat Massie in his primary this May—the most expensive House primary in U.S. history.

This week Republicans suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in modern American political history. And it was a loss that differed in important respects from prior reversals. “Past midterm blue waves largely involved angry Democrats and independents beating up on jittery swing-seat Republicans who weren’t totally comfortable with what their president was doing, with a few genuine upsets sprinkled in,” observed Jim Antle of the Washington Examiner. “This one hit the GOP’s center of gravity.”

Indeed.

Massie tried to warn his party. After the off-year 2025 elections in which Democrats did exceptionally well, he told Republicans what they might need to do to survive the 2026 midterms. “To avoid a repeat of last night’s shellacking in the 2026 midterms,” Massie urged, “Republicans should: quit covering for pedophiles; put America before Israel; put farmers before corporations; quit funding wars abroad; reduce spending to control inflation; quit attacking independent voices.”

Take out Massie’s efforts for more transparency on the Epstein Files, also a part of original MAGA, and this sounds like Vance’s midterm postmortem list. In fact, in this election a number of Democrats ran with the “America First” message sounding more like Trump from two years ago than the president today—and sounding more like Massie on any day than the current Lindsey Graham–ified MAGA.

Resharing his November 2025 warning post, Massie wrote on Wednesday, “Instead of correcting course, the GOP chose to shoot the messenger and double down on stupid.”

Trump’s Republican party did shoot Massie the messenger, and it definitely doubled (tripled? quadrupled?) down on stupid.

But now, who looks stupid?

In the broadest sense, the America First message still remains viable and has been largely untried.

That isn’t due to Thomas Massie’s lack of trying. But judging by the midterm results, the voters believe it’s due to Trump’s.

Jack Hunter, The American Conservative

The main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.”

That was Vice President JD Vance’s diagnosis of why Republicans lost so soundly in the midterm elections. And the data supports it. Nearly every demographic swung heavily toward Democrats, including groups central to Trump’s coalition: young men, working-class voters, and voters in rural counties. The coalition that carried Republicans to victory just two years ago had turned sharply against them.

But what explains that shift? According to Caroline Downey at National Review, the answer is horseshoe theory, and the volatility of populism.

Trump has run successfully on populism, and conservatives have increasingly embraced it as their driving political force over that of principle. But populism is a fickle beast. An electorate united more by grievances than by shared principles can shift dramatically, moving between political camps that promise to address the same frustrations. Downey argues that Tuesday was a manifestation of that volatility, this time working against Republicans.

“The price of populism is that it’s volatile. It can work extremely well, or it can come back to bite, because it’s emotional. It’s often fueled by resentment,” Downey explained. “In his post-midterm statement, J.D. Vance said that Trump voters turned out, but they flipped for Democrats in a lot of cases. The resentments were at a deep level, very similar, and they manifest at the voting booth.”

What are those resentments? On both the populist left and the populist right, affordability dominates the political debate, alongside distrust of the wealthy, elites, big business, and “experts.” Many of those frustrations are justified. But shared frustrations do not amount to shared principles, and they do not guarantee loyalty to either party.

That is where the overlap becomes revealing. Suspicion of powerful institutions can slide into conspiratorial thinking, as the debate over the Epstein files has shown. On economics, some on the right denounce socialism while accusing oil companies of capitalist exploitation.

Principles may have taken a back seat with Trump’s election in 2016, but that lack of grounding leaves the electorate vulnerable to massive, emotionally driven shifts. Resentment can propel the right to victory, but it can just as easily send those same voters to the left.

Without shared principles to hold a coalition together, its loyalty can last only as long as its anger is directed at the right people.

Downey went on to argue that corruption is “poison” to populist leaders precisely because their movements are built on opposition to elite corruption. When those leaders break their promises or appear to embrace the behavior they campaigned against, they risk turning their supporters’ resentment against themselves.

“There’s one thing that’s poison to populism, corruption,” she explained. “Every populist movement in history has been explicitly opposed to it. If you want to spark a populist revolt, try breaking promises, try throwing off a whiff of corruption, and throw in a foreign war that you haven’t exactly made the case for.”

This comes as conservatives search for something to blame for Tuesday’s defeat, with many settling on the Iran war. While it was certainly a contributing factor, many commentators have been quick to overlook its economic effects and blame the decision to wage war itself. In doing so, they preserve the populist argument by placing the blame on the neoconservatism of the past rather than examining the movement’s own failures.

That has yet to produce a reckoning with economic policies such as tariffs, which have featured prominently in voter discontent across exit polls, or with allegations of corruption and the rollout of immigration enforcement operations.

Dmitri Bolt, Townhall

What the mass disapproval of U.S. voters means for the world.

By Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

Americans have now delivered on what they’ve been telling pollsters all year: They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. In a stunning rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican Party, voters have entrusted Democrats with both the House and the Senate, flipping their control simultaneously for only the fourth time in a midterm election since World War II. The reverses for the GOP include defeats in usually deep-red states such as Kansas, South Carolina, and Texas.

Trump is already distancing himself from the results—after encouraging voters to pretend he was on the ballot. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, as he cast blame on the right-wing network Fox News for platforming Democratic party voices. But polls show that voters across the country were concerned about rising costs and government corruption as they cast their ballots on Tuesday. They also show that Americans were linking their dissatisfaction over those matters directly to Trump’s policies, including the Iran war and tariffs.

Democrats should, of course, take credit for running successful campaigns in states as different as Maine, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina. And they ran a diverse slate of candidates, from centrists such as Adam Hamilton, a pastor who has become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Kansas since the Great Depression, to Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, one of several new House representatives associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. But that broad tent—without a clear party leader or direction—suggests that the midterm vote was more a repudiation of the present than a roadmap for the future.

It would be wise to not expect too much change immediately. “LAWYER UP,” wrote Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California who is expected to chair the House Oversight Committee and launch enquiries into the Trump administration’s actions. But Democrats will remember their failed attempts to convict and remove an already impeached Trump in his first term. Without a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, Democrats will find that their hands remain somewhat tied in the face of a powerful executive. In case they needed a reminder, Trump already posted on Tuesday night an image of his signature red cap on Truth Social with the word “VETO” embroidered on the front in white. Yet the president will now contend with greater hurdles than he has been used to. Even if Trump restarts the Iran war or launches a new one in Cuba without congressional approval, he will face more enquires, increased public resistance, and a reduced ability to fund his pet projects.

Until Democrats coalesce around a new leader and a unifying vision, the greater checks on Trump may turn out to be systemic rather than from the Democratic Party or Congress. When it comes to waging foreign wars, whether old ones or new, the White House’s greatest restraint comes from the diminished capabilities of its defense industrial base. As is now well documented in Foreign Policy and elsewhere, the United States has expended two-thirds of its Patriot missile interceptors and one-third of its Tomahawk cruise missiles since the Iran war began. Replenishing those stockpiles could take years. Trump’s trade policies have hit repeated roadblocks in court. The president’s hold on the media—including his once-beloved Fox News, and influential right-wing commentators—has begun to slip. As I have previously written, companies and countries will see these signs of resistance and adjust how they approach Trumpworld. Entities around the world will begin to reach out to policymakers they expect to take power in two years—and this week’s results indicate they might not be Republicans. As Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X on Wednesday morning, the Democrats’ massive margin will take a long while to overturn. “It is very unlikely Republicans will recapture Congress in 2028,” he wrote. “Might not have a shot at Senate control until 2032.”

Beyond the partisan tug-of-war, what is clear is that the democratic system itself is holding in the face of incredible pressure. Election workers have this week ensured the integrity of democracy in the United States. Unsung state officials—both Democrats and Republicans—have fended off the Justice Department’s attempts to seize confidential voter data. Most of all, ordinary Americans, tens of millions of them buried under bills and worries, have taken the time to show that their vote counts. That is the sign of a system that is resisting historic attempts to write it off.

It is often said that the world follows the United States’ lead. Perhaps it will. It’s worth noting, however, that the U.S. midterms come amid a global mood of protest, from France to India. Countries such as Serbia and Hungary have recently booted out their leaders. And in that sense, the bigger takeaway could be that we are in a moment of historic tumult. If Trumpism was the most recognizable brand of our global moment of backlash, then perhaps we are now in the throes of a counter-backlash. Voters are realizing that the people who wanted to blow up the system—the Trumpists, if you will—don’t have the answers to our problems. Now it’s time for a sober debate about the actual solutions.

Foreign Policy