If you missed last night, a few blue state politicians won some elections in a few blue states and now the big blue sky is falling. The 2026 midterms are a fait accompli! President Donald Trump is a lame duck!
I pity my friends who live in the commonwealth across the river who have enjoyed the past four years with Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin sitting in Richmond, but this is not so.
The conservative chattering class will lament loudly and profusely about Tuesday’s results, not only because it is good for business, but because it’s their elections. Virginia, New Jersey, New York City—these are the places they call home, and they expect too much of the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Which I only feel comfortable saying because I’m from California, a modern day Capernaum.
Certainly, the temptation to get swept up in the punishment about to be exacted on these places is strong. In New York City, Democrat Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s policies will destroy what’s left of the city’s independent working class. In Virginia, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger is poised to set the schoolmarms loose on parents who don’t want their girls changing in locker rooms with boys. In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherril, if her absentee voting record in Congress is any indication, will do little to relieve citizens of the Garden State from the green policies pushing up energy prices.
Weep, if you must, but it’s best not to turn back.
As I previously wrote for The Daily Signal:
On Tuesday night, the temptation for professional and casual election observers alike will be to assume that if more candidates win with D’s next to their names than R’s, Democrats are in the driver’s seat for the midterms, and vice versa….
The truth is that the party identification of Tuesday night’s winners are oftentimes bad predictors of how the chips will fall in the midterms.
What we did learn from the 2025 election cycle that culminated in Democrat victories across the board, however, is that Democrats have no interest in moderating.
Their base has the basest desires. They demanded the government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history. They embraced Mamdani’s democratic socialism. They pulled the lever for Virginia Attorney General-elect Jay Jones, who explicitly called for the death of a former speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and his family. This, of course, came less than two months after the most high-profile political assassination of my lifetime.
And the Democrat base has rewarded its Democrat candidates for their hostility, extremism, and violence.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution and one of Virginia’s finest statesmen, wrote in Federalist No. 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Perhaps the 2025 elections demonstrate the opposite truth: If men were devils, no government would be sufficient.
Sounds like I’m getting swept away. I am not. This radicalism forced Democrats to spend more money on races Republicans thought unwinnable just two months ago—much less before the 2024 election, when Trump made massive inroads in both New Jersey and Virginia.
Take Jones’ message, ‘war to the death’ with my political opponents, and Mamdani’s ‘let them eat cake’ from government-run grocers and see how it plays in the purple areas of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It won’t.
I’ve long thought it is a fallacy to wish to face a more extreme opponent in a general election, and I’d still take a 2028 presidential matchup against Democrat Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. My blood is just not that rich.
While Democrat radicalism makes the stakes of each and every race in the 2026 midterms that much higher, conservatives now know the Democrat playbook for 2026. With well-laid plans, there’s hope to find peace in Canaan.
