The Midterm Defeat Rejected Trump Without Giving Democrats a Mandate

Jonah Goldberg sees the Republican defeat as a 1974-scale repudiation, but not as a settled verdict in favor of the Democrats’ program. The distinction matters: the election can be a forceful rejection of the incumbent without showing what voters will support next. Goldberg points to the sequence after Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide: two years later Nixon was gone and Republicans suffered heavy losses; six years after that, Ronald Reagan won the presidency. The reversals, he argues, show how fluid American politics can be.

For Goldberg, the lesson is not that voters have permanently changed sides. Some people who voted Democratic this week had voted for Donald Trump three times. Parties do not own those voters, and a large victory does not mean the winning party has acquired a durable majority. Events can change minds; persuasion still matters.

That limits what Democrats can claim from the result. John Cochrane calls it a “throw the bums out” election, not a mandate for democratic socialism. Recent elections, he argues, have often been negative verdicts on the party in power: a narrow win is treated as permission to govern as though the winner had secured overwhelming public endorsement, and voters then turn against it. Goldberg agrees that Democrats could misread the result just as Republicans have misread previous victories.

The scale of the win may nevertheless give Democratic leaders more room to choose how they govern. Goldberg argues that a narrow majority would give the party’s most ideological members disproportionate leverage. A larger one could let leaders assemble more moderate coalitions instead. He names Abdul El-Sayed as an example of the kind of senator who might have held greater power if he were the 51st vote. The possibility that more moderate Democrats, including candidates who overperformed in red states, will enter Congress could give party leaders options beyond the progressive wing.

Cochrane sees an opening for Democrats to demonstrate how they would govern. They could pass substantive bills, even if Trump vetoes them, and make the case for what they would do with the presidency in 2028. Or they could center their work on investigations and what Cochrane calls “crazy lefty stuff,” risking the chance to show voters a more reasonable alternative. Goldberg’s point is conditional: if moderate Democrats can make their party seem less threatening, it could be difficult for Republicans to regain a competitive position.

The same warning applies to Republicans. Goldberg says he would have preferred to see a more moderate Republican Party, in the mold of Mitch Daniels or Paul Ryan, positioned to become a new majority party. But the election does not establish that Democrats will govern from the center, or that voters have given them a mandate to do so. They still have to persuade a shifting electorate.

Goldberg traces the cycle of abrupt reversals to parties that mobilize their most committed voters rather than build coalitions broad enough to command a majority. He describes the two parties as “moon parties”: instead of seeking the median voter, both increasingly rely on turnout-the-base strategies. Primaries are part of the explanation. Candidates win by presenting politics as an existential emergency, then take office as if they may never be elected again. They swing for the fences, alienate less committed voters, and help make their own defeat more likely.

Goldberg argues that the primary system has weakened parties’ ability to choose their candidates. In his account, the parties have outsourced that choice to primary voters. In a safely red or blue district, a candidate who promises to work across party lines may be rejected by party loyalists; one who promises to defeat the opposition at any cost can be more attractive. General-election voters are left with what Goldberg calls a choice between “the lesser of two evils.” Repeatedly making that choice can leave people unwilling to identify with either party.

His shorthand for the broader problem is that the United States has “strong partisanship” but “weak parties.” When party organizations cannot control their coalitions, Goldberg argues, they are vulnerable to demagogues on both the left and the right. Politics becomes a contest to punish the other side rather than to get work done.

Andrew Roberts raises the volatility of independent voters as another part of the explanation, noting that more Americans identify as independents than as Republicans or Democrats. Goldberg agrees that voters’ movement between parties helps account for electoral swings. Cochrane makes a related point about Texas: a state can change which candidates it elects without its political culture changing overnight.

That distinction does not make the Texas result trivial. Goldberg says the state has “pretty much” flipped blue this election, while allowing that Republicans could win it again in 2028. The immediate consequence, he argues, is that Republicans may have to spend money in Texas rather than assume it will be in their column. That matters for a party that cannot win the presidency without the state’s electoral votes.

Candidate type may matter too. Goldberg points to James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas, saying they performed better in their states than more progressive candidates did in blue states. He expects more moderate Democrats than Democratic Socialists of America members to enter Congress. If those Democrats can make their party seem less threatening to centrist voters, Goldberg says, it will be difficult for Republicans to regain a competitive position.

The election, in this account, does not reveal a permanent transfer of allegiance. Parties have to persuade voters who may have backed the other side recently—and who can do so again.

The panel’s discussion of the economy distinguishes overall indicators from the way voters experience prices. ? niall-ferguson describes the economy as growing and strong by comparison with other developed economies. He says inflation is higher partly because of the war in Iran, but not serious by the standards of his lifetime, and describes the “misery index”—inflation plus unemployment—as historically low. The jobs chart shown during the discussion reported 165,000 jobs added in October and an average of nearly 75,000 jobs a month that year, compared with 10,000 a month in 2025.

Cochrane also says real wages have largely kept up with inflation and that the United States is booming. But he does not conclude that voters have nothing to complain about. The political term that matters, he says, is “affordability.” He sees it as a healthy shift for parties to focus on whether ordinary Americans can advance economically rather than on identity politics. Democrats, he argues, have landed on the right question even if he disagrees with their proposed answer of providing people with more government benefits.

Goldberg’s explanation is that voters experience the level of prices, not just the rate at which they are rising. Slower inflation does not make people feel that prices have fallen. He compares it to a heat wave: if the temperature has been rising by ten degrees a day and then rises by five, people still feel as if they are getting hotter. Cochrane agrees that economists have emphasized the declining rate of inflation while consumers confront the cumulative increase in prices. Average real wages may have kept pace, he says, but not everyone’s wages have.

Goldberg adds that the growing use of subscriptions can make household finances feel pressed: people experience repeated small charges taking bites out of their income. A favorable average, in this account, can coexist with persistent pressure on individuals.

The panel offers different accounts of how affordability, corruption, and foreign policy shaped votes. Goldberg argues that affordability and corruption can be connected in voters’ minds: people who feel squeezed may be especially angry at the perception that officials are enriching themselves. He also says the war became politically legible through its effects on fuel prices. Americans do not generally vote on foreign policy, he says, but they do care about higher gas prices.

Cochrane disputes the idea that the war alone explains oil costs. He points to longer-running restrictions on energy supply and argues that oil prices reflect more than events in the Strait of Hormuz. He also says the conflict is unlike Vietnam: no American troops are fighting there and coming home in body bags, and he describes the U.S. military’s handling of shipping as an underrecognized success.

Goldberg counters that the timing of the price increase coincided with the war, and that oil can become more expensive to ship even when vessels continue to pass through the strait. He says insurance and crewing costs had risen sharply. Their disagreement is not simply whether the war affected prices, but whether it adequately explains them—and how much voters connect the cost of living to the administration’s foreign policy.

Tariffs supplied another route by which voters could connect affordability to Trump. Ferguson notes that tariffs featured in Democratic campaign advertising against the administration’s trade policy. Cochrane calls the tariff policy a major economic own goal. Goldberg’s argument is that “Liberation Day” did more than introduce a policy whose effects voters might dislike: it made Trump own the economic issue. Before then, voters could treat inflation as a problem inherited from Joe Biden. By announcing a major trade-policy shift, Trump made the economy his responsibility.

Goldberg also disputes the idea that Trump’s approval began falling only when the Iran war started. He says the decline began after the tariff announcement, and that focusing the timeline on the war misses the earlier shift. The chart shown in the broadcast marked Liberation Day, April 2, 2025, and the start of the Iran war, February 28, 2026; it displayed Trump’s second-term approval at -27.5, compared with -10.3 in his first term.

Cochrane acknowledges that Trump took actions he regards as beneficial to the economy, including early executive orders on climate regulation and artificial intelligence. He says Trump could have closed the border, imposed more limited tariffs on China for national-security reasons, and then left well enough alone. Instead, Cochrane says, Trump “couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

These accounts leave a tension: Ferguson emphasizes the economy’s overall strength; Cochrane emphasizes both real-wage averages and the persistence of high prices; Goldberg emphasizes how cumulative price increases and other complaints can combine in voters’ judgments. The speakers do not reduce the defeat to one economic explanation.

Republican leaders and prominent figures offered different explanations for the defeat. Ron DeSantis blamed bad appointments and aggressive immigration enforcement. Ted Cruz emphasized the scale of the losses and affordability, arguing that working-class voters were experiencing more pain than Republicans wanted to acknowledge. Vice President JD Vance said the war was the reason Republicans lost.

Goldberg treats Vance’s account as political positioning, not a neutral diagnosis. He notes that Vance’s proposed agenda includes both opposition to the Iran war and a recalibration of policy toward Israel. Goldberg argues that this emphasis does not fit the views of many Republican voters who turned out: he cites exit polls showing roughly 80 percent thought U.S. support for Israel was about right or should be stronger. He also objects that Vance’s explanation leaves out corruption, which Goldberg says ranked higher among voters’ concerns.

For Goldberg, the foreign-policy argument is entangled with judgments about Trump. Voters who object to the Iran war may be reacting to its costs or to the way the administration handled it, rather than rejecting every intervention. He contrasts criticism of the war with the absence, in his account, of comparable objections to the administration’s actions and rhetoric concerning Venezuela, Greenland, Canada, or the Monroe Doctrine. He interprets Vance’s emphasis on Israel as positioning.

Goldberg’s broader formulation is that different complaints can lead back to the president. Corruption and affordability may be linked in voters’ minds; the war can be associated with fuel costs; frustration with those issues can become frustration with Trump himself. He describes the complaints as facets of a single image rather than independent explanations.

That does not mean every voter had the same reason for changing sides. Goldberg’s point is that an election can express an accumulated judgment about the administration even when voters describe it through different issues. Ferguson, too, argues that the defeat was an expression of disillusionment with Trump, not a vote of confidence in Democrats. He warns that Democrats could misread the result as a mandate, as he says Labour’s 2024 landslide in Britain chiefly reflected anger at the Conservatives.

The contrast between a strong economy and a severe defeat is part of what makes the result striking to Ferguson. He argues that the administration made avoidable choices. In his account, Trump had a 2024 mandate to address immigration and inflation. The administration succeeded on immigration, Ferguson says, but overreached with aggressive enforcement. On inflation, he argues, the chaotic rollout of tariffs created uncertainty, while the Iran war became unpopular when it went wrong and disrupted the Strait of Hormuz. He calls these unforced errors.

Goldberg’s criticism of the tariff decision adds a political mechanism to that account: Trump made himself responsible for the economy and then faced voters’ judgments about what followed. Cochrane’s criticism is that Trump did not stop after taking steps Cochrane considered useful. Across their different explanations, the speakers describe an administration whose decisions made it harder for voters to separate Trump from the problems they felt.

Cochrane argues that Trump’s loss of power gives Republicans a chance to decide what they want to be. As a lame duck, Trump has less capacity to threaten members or shape primaries by promoting loyalists. Republicans have two years, Cochrane says, to build a message for “centrist, practical, fix-the-pothole voters.” If Democrats govern poorly and Republicans find a credible alternative, he thinks the party could be competitive in 2028.

That opportunity sits alongside the possibility of a more destructive Washington. Cochrane expects Democrats to weigh policy work against investigations. Some investigations may be useful, he says, but he worries about making them the center of congressional activity. Ferguson warns that another impeachment could backfire, as he believes earlier efforts to use law against Trump did. Cochrane agrees that impeachment might be a mistake while stressing that his view of its likely political effect is not a prediction that Democrats will avoid it. Goldberg expects a bitter period of subpoenas and conflict.

The possibility that Trump might resign is raised as speculation. Ferguson says it is not inconceivable that Trump will find Washington frustrating once he is no longer the center of attention. Cochrane imagines establishment Republicans deciding the administration is sinking and abandoning it. Ferguson, however, thinks another impeachment would be a mistake. Goldberg’s forecast is less about a particular mechanism than about the risk that a sour economy could push Trump’s popularity lower still.

The discussion also raises the backlash against the technology leaders aligned with Trump’s 2024 coalition. Goldberg says voters are hostile to AI and data centers, and argues that an economic downturn could make Trump’s standing worse. Data centers were on the ballot 41 times, according to the figure cited in the discussion; the displayed article reported that voters backed restrictions or rejected measures easing construction across 10 states, with one measure winning.

Goldberg warns that one serious AI-related accident could bring a regulatory response resembling the one he associates with nuclear power after Three Mile Island. Cochrane sees the resistance less as a response to comparable safety risks than as NIMBYism: communities oppose development near them even when its harms appear limited. He argues that data centers use electricity and water but are among the least polluting and least dangerous facilities people can imagine, and that they can be built somewhere else.

Goldberg counters that the location of planned construction matters: he says a third of the data centers due to be built between then and 2030 were planned for Texas. The state’s political shift could therefore affect the technology buildout, not just presidential arithmetic. The exchange turns on how much local opposition will constrain AI development: Cochrane thinks facilities can move to places that accept them; Goldberg sees a political risk for an industry already facing public suspicion.

The panel’s final political judgment is deliberately bleak, though not unanimous. Asked whether 2027 will bring bipartisan legislation or investigations and impeachment, Goldberg answers, “Be option B.” Another panelist predicts the glass will be “empty and broken,” with subpoenas flying. A different speaker sees incentives for moderates in both parties to show that they can get something done, while warning that American politics may be moving toward a pattern in which losing an election brings investigations and legal jeopardy. The election has weakened Trump; it has not settled how either party will use the power that follows.

The debate over data centers connected the election’s local results to the prospects for AI development. The displayed article reported that data-center proposals appeared on ballots 41 times across 10 states and that voters overwhelmingly backed restrictions or rejected measures that would ease construction. Cochrane calls this a victory for NIMBY politics, arguing that data centers are relatively clean and can be located where communities will accept them. Goldberg sees a more consequential exposure: with a third of planned construction through 2030, by his account, set for Texas, the state’s election could affect the AI buildout. He warns that the industry may be only one accident away from a regulatory backlash.

The panel also considered Elon Musk’s proposal to give every American child a SpaceX share. Cochrane says a single share cannot fund a retirement and has nothing to do with making Social Security solvent. He supports the idea of shifting Social Security toward a savings-based system, which he says economists have advocated for decades, but does not regard Musk’s proposal as that reform. He groups it with what he calls economic populism, alongside “no tax on tips” and a proposed $5,000 payment for voting Republican. He adds that the rules for Trump accounts are complicated compared with 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. Goldberg agrees with Cochrane.

The exchange about Americans who moved to Europe complicates the election’s economic arguments. Ferguson says the widening gap in living standards between the United States and Western Europe is more visible to him than it was when he began moving across the Atlantic nearly 25 years earlier. He argues that American visitors often see wealthy or picturesque parts of Europe and mistake them for the whole. He points instead to provincial Britain and France and the poorer, depopulating south of Italy, and says the United States is now far ahead.

Cochrane makes a related argument about averages and daily life. Tourists see cafés and luxury shops, he says, while ordinary residents face housing costs and living standards that may look different from the visitor’s experience. He contrasts the difficulty of affording a three-bedroom house in the United States with the difficulty of affording a two-bedroom apartment in Europe, and says some European conveniences Americans take for granted are less common.

Ferguson’s point is that a strong economy can still be punished for inflation; Cochrane’s is that comparisons with Europe can obscure relative prosperity. Neither claim removes the complaints about prices that Goldberg and Cochrane describe. Ferguson closes his comparison with H. L. Mencken’s line that democracy is “the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” Goldberg says Trump gave voters what he campaigned on—including tariffs and tougher immigration measures—and that they responded, in effect: “We wanted that, but not like that.”

The discussion closes on Remembrance Day, which Ferguson describes as a British tradition commemorating the dead of the world wars on November 11. The date marks the end of the First World War at 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Ferguson says he takes his son to a school service honoring former pupils who served and died, and connects the observance to his own grandfather’s service in the First World War. He says the young men who fought were close in age to the children hearing about them.

Cochrane says Americans can forget the scale of the losses suffered in Britain, France, and Germany, and the effects on generations born around 1900 and after. Ferguson describes the British Legion, to which he donates, as an admirable veterans’ institution. The observance, as he presents it, makes the people who fought in those wars feel close rather than remote.