In 2016, as Election Day neared, a colleague said to me, “Hillary’s gonna have to hang half a hundred on him. That’s the only way Trump and Trumpism will be repudiated. Truly repudiated, finished. A narrow or modest victory won’t do.”
The expression comes from Barry Switzer, the legendary football coach: “hang half a hundred on ’em.” It means, to score 50 points against the other team.
My colleague was saying: Hillary is going to have to win 50 states to zero.
In fact, she lost (in the Electoral College). Trump won. And that changed everything. Not just the Republican Party but the “conservative movement,” which “got with the program.” It accommodated itself to Trump and Trumpism, jettisoning its longstanding beliefs and values.
(I am generalizing, but permissibly, plausibly, I think.)
I will return to this subject at the end of my notes today.
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The heading over my column here? Some of you may remember a television drama—1983—about the Cold War: The Day After. It rocked the country, to a degree.
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Bill Rusher, who was for many years the publisher of National Review, had a pithy saying about voters in “wave” elections: “When they go, they go.”
Yesterday, they went.
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In 1994, the “wave” went the Republicans’ way, giving us the first GOP House in 40 years. (Forty years.) Have a look at a statement by Nancy French last night:
Many another conservative can nod in agreement. Which is meaningful, deeply.
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Yesterday, voters did not just elect a different Congress. They elected a Congress. What I mean is, that branch of the government has been missing. There has been no check on the executive—not from the Hill.
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I have two main hopes for the new Democratic majorities—the majorities in the House and the Senate: that they curb the corruption and lawlessness of the executive; and that they help the Ukrainians, somehow (in accordance with our national interest).
No to a partnership with Putin. No.
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Putin had a bad night. He has a dream team in our executive branch: Trump, Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, et al. The Republican Congress has shied from supporting Ukraine because this Congress is a servant of Trump.
May the next one be starkly different in this regard.
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Sometimes, you root for defeats, not victories. I thought it was important that Ken Paxton lose in Texas and that Vivek Ramaswamy lose in Ohio.
In Texas, Republican voters decided not to renominate their veteran senator, John Cornyn; they nominated Paxton instead. Thus did they nominate one of the most corrupt politicians in America.
Against the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, the Republicans ran a foul, nasty campaign—and a campaign free of substance.
Glad they lost.
I’m glad, too, that Ohioans rejected Ramaswamy. (I wrote about him a couple of weeks ago, here.) Ramaswamy is a poison in our public life.
And the guy hit the jackpot. He “landed with his bum in the butter,” as the British say. Let me explain.
His parents immigrated to America from India. (Big break for Vivek.) He went to Harvard and Yale. He became a billionaire.
And he used this success to spread poison in our politics.
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Last week, the Milwaukee Brewers won the World Series. This proved that money isn’t everything—the Brewers are one of the least wealthy teams in baseball. (And they are the best.)
Texas, too, proved that money isn’t everything. Elon Musk, the richest man in history, dropped something like $170 million on the Paxton for Senate campaign. And they went down to ignominious defeat.
Reassuring.
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One more word about Texas. Greg Abbott, the governor, lost. Glad he did. I admire him. When he was in his mid-twenties, he suffered a hideous injury, leaving him paralyzed him from the waist down. Yet he persevered. And he rose to the heights of politics.
A brave, determined dude, Greg Abbott.
When Trump and Trumpism came along, he accommodated himself. He went along with all the malevolence and stupidity of the era.
A pity, a waste.
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Darline Graham, in South Carolina? Of her opponent, Annie Andrews, she said, “She’s just plain old batsh** crazy.” Graham has gone down in defeat. And she disgraced herself in the campaign.
Bad show, all around.
Trump dubbed Andrews “Tranny Annie.” South Carolina senator Tim Scott and other Republicans repeated this.
Bad, bad show.
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From Kansas, there will be a new Democratic senator. None of us has ever written “Democratic senator from Kansas,” except when referring to history.
In college, I was an intern for Senator Bob Dole. I know the names of lots of Kansas towns—because I answered constituent mail.
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Maine’s Susan Collins first ran for the Senate in 1996. She pledged to serve just two terms: “Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution, and then come home and let someone else take your place.”
Thirty years later, she has at last been defeated.
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As of this writing, the Mississippi Senate race is too close to call. Either way, the race saw one of the most delightful ads of the year.
In an interview, the incumbent senator, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, said, “You know, there are so many proteins to choose from.” She was responding to a question about the high price of beef.
Her Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, then hit her with this.
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Colom would be the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
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In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected governor. She will be the first female governor of Georgia. She will be the first black governor of Georgia. She will be the first black woman to serve as a governor anywhere in America.
That’s a lot of firsts.
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Several weeks ago, I gave a definition of “having your cake and eating it too”—a personal definition: I wanted Democratic majorities in Congress, to check the executive—but without Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan.
I am not eating my cake, for El-Sayed won.
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By the way, his name should really have a small “e”—“Abdul el-Sayed.” But he spells it with a big “E,” for some reason. It’s hard for me to type.
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I recall Spencer Abraham, who was a senator from Michigan (a Republican) from 1995 to 2001. Then, in the first term of George W. Bush, he was energy secretary.
There was a funny line about Abraham. His handicap, went the line, was that Arab voters thought he was Jewish, and Jewish voters thought he was Arab.
This year’s Senate race in Michigan was very different.
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In her Florida district, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna eked out a victory. Too bad. She is one of the most ardent Putinists in Congress. (Three guesses which party she belongs to.)
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In Pennsylvania, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick lost. I am very sorry about this. He is a pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin Republican. I mean, vocally so, and actively so. There are precious few.
The Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko posted this:
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In Indiana, Congresswoman Victoria Spartz lost. Let me give you Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal (who was born in Kyiv):
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Take note of Rebecca Bennett and Nancy Lacore. Both Democrats, they have been newly elected to the House. Bennett will represent a New Jersey district, and Lacore a South Carolina district.
Bennett was a naval aviator. Lacore was an admiral, fired by Pete Hegseth.
They may well be interesting to watch.
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Perfect—just perfect.
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Bruce MacKinnon is a veteran political cartoonist at the Chronicle Herald in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Have a look:
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Okay, back to where I started—to 2016 and all that. I will be blunt (too blunt, probably). I don’t take all that much pleasure in yesterday’s elections.
From about 2017 to 2019, I was hoping for a nationwide revulsion: a revulsion against Trump and Trumpism. It never happened.
Trump lost in 2020—and then tried to overturn the election. He fomented violence to this end. I could go on, at great length.
And what did the Republicans do? They nominated Trump for the third time in a row. And the American people elected him for the second time.
You know, it’s just too late. The Republican Party has been disfigured. The conservative movement has been disfigured. America has been disfigured.
Oh, so people are unhappy about the high price of beef and the high price of gas? Great, I guess. But what about the corruption, the lawlessness, the Putinism, the lies …
So, part of me is churlish, or, worse, blasé. But only part of me …
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This morning, I received an e-mail from a friend of mine, a prominent Norwegian journalist. He wrote,
Are you happy with the midterm results? Might it be a good thing for the Republicans in the long run?
I answered,
(A) I am happy with the results. (B) I’m sure this is wrong of me, but I don’t give a damn about the Republicans. (I must, however, because I care about my country, and the Republicans are half of it.)
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I would like to see a revival of conservatism—genuine conservatism, not the vulgar nationalism and clownish populism that have been visited on us, and that erstwhile conservatives have appeased, excused, aided, and abetted.
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Earlier today, I was talking with a young friend of mine—an earnest and real conservative—and a phrase occurred to me: “Nothing is written.”
Do you mind if I paste a (longish) excerpt from a little essay I wrote in September 2025?
“Nothing is written.” That’s the answer that Patrick Chovanec gave me, when we were talking in a podcast last year. He is an American analyst—political and economic. I had asked him whether we were going to make it, basically. Whether the constitutional “guardrails” in our country would hold. Whether our democracy would soldier on. “That’s in our hands,” he said. It’s up to us.
He then cited the script of Lawrence of Arabia. “It is written,” people keep saying. In other words, this or that is preordained, and there is nothing that human beings can do about it. Lawrence goes off to rescue a man in the desert, who has been fated to perish, in some eyes—because “it is written.” Returning with the man, Lawrence says, “Nothing is written.”
My essay concludes,
One more phrase: “Fortune favors the bold.” That is a line from antiquity, but never-staling. The authoritarians, all over the world, have no lack of boldness. May the advocates of freedom match them, and best them.
I’ve gone on long enough—too long. Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for indulging my moods and quirks and crotchets and peeves. Thank you for reading and subscribing. God bless America, and God bless you.
I wish Mitch McConnell were alive to see this… ;-)