The vaporizing of MAGA

Mass mobilization led to the GOP wipeout and the beginning of the end of Trumpism. And Democrats have a true mandate to crush it entirely.

It’s Wednesday morning, the morning after an 8.5-magnitude political earthquake in the United States, and election workers are still counting ballots in Mississippi, as Democrat Scott Colom hangs on to a razor-thin lead over GOP Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

That is the nature of the devastation the Republican Party is reeling from, having been destroyed by Donald Trump.

Hyde-Smith may pull it out, but the fact that we are even talking about Mississippi the day after is astonishing. And Democrats have won the Senate races in Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas and Texas, with Alaska still in play. They held on to all the seats they had and flipped deep-red states, some of which had not elected a Democratic senator in decades. Democrats are now poised to have a clear, Fetterman-proof majority in the Senate, with at least 54 seats, including the two independents who caucus with them. They will be able to block extremist judges or the replacement of any Supreme Court justice who retires or dies in office over the next two years.

MAGA’s Byron Donalds won by the skin of his teeth in Florida’s governor’s race, as did Senator Ashley Moody in the Senate race in Florida, with the underestimated Democrat Angie Nixon wildly over-performing. That was the first big sign of the massive blue tsunami to come. I keep thinking of the many times Scott Colom and Annie Andrews and others came on my SiriusXM program, back when many Democrats had written them off. The polls turned out to have underestimated the Democratic strength rather than overestimating it.

In the House, Democrats are still counting their wins, having retaken the chamber, clearing at least 10 seats beyond the 218 needed and with many more races still being counted, and likely getting at least 10 more. Mid-decade redistricting largely backfired on the GOP, once again proving that cheating—and following Trump’s advice—collapses in on itself.

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Before I go further, we have to talk about what is the big story of the night: the mass mobilization of American citizens for many months, standing up for democracy and against autocracy and corruption. We pushed back on the evisceration of abortion rights, the attack on LGBTQ rights, the looting of the government, the purging of civil servants, the assault on the environment and so much more. We began organizing after we got back on our feet following the 2024 devastation, and the No Kings marches grew bigger each time.

A broad coalition formed in cities, small towns and rural areas. It was open to anyone who wanted to join and focused on a diverse set of issues. The movement understood that people could be persuaded as further issues arose, such as the ongoing and terrible impact of tariffs and the Iran war chaos.

Let’s be clear that the latter issues are what woke up a lot of Americans, many of whom had voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all in 2024. They only joined after they were affected themselves, looking at grocery prices and gas pumps, many having enthusiastically gone along with the Trump program when they thought it would only hurt others. But we’ll take it: We had an infrastructure in place, all ready and set to bring them in and vaporize MAGA.

And we did. It’s the end of Trump’s hold over Congress and the beginning of the end of the MAGA movement, which had already been crumbling amid major defections, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Tucker Carlson.

Today we take a big step toward bringing down Trump and MAGA

JD Vance’s whole world came crashing down as the wannabe MAGA heir. So did the vile politics that he and Trump embodied, along with people like Vivek Ramaswamy—who went down in flames in the Ohio governor’s race after the vicious ad he ran against Amy Acton, who was victorious. This was a referendum on MAGA tactics, including the misogyny, the anti-trans bigotry, the Islamophobia and all the other hate, and they lost.

I’m still delirious from the overwhelming night as the hits just kept coming, with race after race being called, and overjoyed at the history being made by Democrats. Chris Pappas became the country’s first openly gay male senator elected. Keisha Lance Bottoms becomes the first Black woman elected governor of a U.S. state, winning Georgia. Abdul El-Sayed is the first Muslim U.S. senator elected. And Gina Hinojosa became the first Latina governor elected in Texas, as Greg Abbott was stunningly ousted.

Elon Musk and the billionaire class had an enormous defeat. Musk moved himself and the headquarters of major companies to Texas after railing against Democrats and their policies in California, only to see Texas elect a Democratic governor and U.S. senator—and see four Democratic Texas Supreme Court justices elected and the Texas House taken over by Democrats. And his hundreds of millions of dollars, obscenely poured into races, couldn’t any of stop it.

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It’s a win for getting money out of politics. Young voters swung dramatically toward Democrats. Rural America moved toward Democrats, who also appear to have made inroads with white working-class men. I could go on, as there’s so much more. I’m sure you’ll all have your observations.

Now Democrats need to move swiftly. There’s plenty of time to argue about leadership, and I’m not going to get into it now. But what is clear is that whoever the leaders are in the House and Senate, their feet will be held to the fire by all of us, and by diverse and energized caucuses. They must spearhead investigations and pass legislation, even if Trump vetoes it. The American people have to see them legislating and bringing justice.

For now, let’s let the election results play out further and celebrate an enormous achievement. We showed the world—and ourselves—that America is still a democracy with a beating heart, and we have been able to land a huge blow against the already destabilized authoritarian, who is not going to be able to recover as he wallows in his lame-duck presidency.