To the Bitter End, Trump Has Been the Author of His Own Ruin

It is Election Day — it’s all over but the voting and counting tonight. I can hardly believe we made it through yet another campaign season of craziness, all the way to the finish line, and I am glad to be with you, dear readers — here at the end of all things. There are no eagles coming to save us from onrushing doom this time, however, no deus ex machina to extract the Republican Party from an electoral judgment fully two years in the making.

And in all matters, great and small, this outcome has been crafted by . Truly, Donald Trump is the master of his own fate, the author of his own bad fortune, down to nearly every detail and grace note. Seen one way, it’s a perversely Nietzschean triumph of the will: No other president could singlehandedly put their party so deep down in a hole that half the operatives I’m talking to consider the Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina Senate races to range from “severely threatened” to “gone.”

JB

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

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It is Election Day — it’s all over but the voting and counting tonight. I can hardly believe we made it through yet another campaign season of craziness, all the way to the finish line, and I am glad to be with you, dear readers — here at the end of all things. There are no eagles coming to save us from onrushing doom this time, however, no deus ex machina to extract the Republican Party from an electoral judgment fully two years in the making.

And in all matters, great and small, this outcome has been crafted by . Truly, Donald Trump is the master of his own fate, the author of his own bad fortune, down to nearly every detail and grace note. Seen one way, it’s a perversely Nietzschean triumph of the will: No other president could singlehandedly put their party so deep down in a hole that half the operatives I’m talking to consider the Texas, Kansas, and South Carolina Senate races to range from “severely threatened” to “gone.”

JB

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.