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Well.
The polls weren’t wrong. A veritable blue wave crested above Donald Trump’s America on election night. MAGA is apocalyptic. Sean Davis of The Federalist blames “the neocons.” That’s because real MAGA has never been tried, I guess.
Donald Trump lit the Republican Party on fire. Darline Graham, Vivek Ramaswampy, Ken Paxton… they all fed the flames. Kansas sent its first Democrat to the Senate since 1932. The GOP won in Florida - but barely. Ron DeSantis built a 1.5M registration advantage and the Prince of Mar-a-Lago found a gubernatorial candidate that barely cleared 50%.
The MAGA base turned out. But you don’t win with the base. Independents wanted anyone else but Trump’s base. They couldn’t even be bought for $5,000.
Perhaps the biggest loser last night was JD Vance. Ohio filled the remaining two years of his Senate term with a liberal retread in Sherrod Brown, the man he defeated four years ago. He now owns the Trump legacy. Watch for Marco Rubio to look for a graceful exit in the new year and plan for 2028.
Discussion (2)
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I'm not sure the base turned out here in Kansas. Roger Marshall got 728K votes in 2020 but only 500K tonight with 94% of the vote counted. Adam Hamilton got 555K tonight, but Marshall's opponent Barbara Bollier got 572K in 2020. The Dems kept roughly the same total from 2020 to 2026, but Marshall's support cratered by 31%. Granted it could be that traditional Republicans or right-leaning independents stayed home tonight, but I there's good reason to believe that Trump's base in Kansas is very unhappy with him.
The tariffs have hit farmers and ranchers hard. Importing cheap beef from Argentina was wildly unpopular here in Kansas, especially since herd numbers are just starting to increase after a devastating drought a few years ago.
The ICE raids in southwest Kansas a couple months ago were badly mishandled. Dairies and feedlots in southwest Kansas depend on illegals from Mexico for cheap labor. There was no PR; instead ICE just showed up and started arresting people. Most of the arrests were criminal illegals, but it scared everyone and suddenly dairies and feedlots had no workers for a while.
Trump's threats to shut down the Canadian company Bombardier in the US were a terrible idea. Bombardier has a plant in Wichita that employs over a thousand people, and it is a well-liked corporate citizen here. Marshall worked to smooth this out with Trump, but the damage was done.
Rural people drive a lot, and the trucking industry is big in Kansas as I-35 and I-70 run through the state. Farmers and ranchers use a lot of fuel. So high gasoline and diesel prices hit hard.
Marshall was way over-confident. Supposedly he didn't even have any campaign staff until a month ago because he thought he would cruise to re-election.
The MAGA base had a lot of reasons to be unhappy with Trump, and they took it out on Marshall. Trump may say the GOP would have won if he had been on the ballot, but I don't think is true in Kansas.
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I warned you the commies lefties were reaching endgame. Now you get to enjoy it.