A Transactional President Faces the Wrath of a Transactional Party

The red walls have fallen. The president’s coalition has collapsed. In January, the GOP will be reduced to a rump in Congress. Then, for the first time in 16 years, Democrats will occupy a majority of the nation’s governors’ mansions. At the crucial but often overlooked state legislative level, Democrats flipped dozens of seats and captured control of twelve chambers. Democrats took the “trifecta” in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin while breaking the GOP’s control of the levers of government in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.

A conventional political mind might be humbled by the sheer scale of this electoral rebuke, but the president and the courtiers he has surrounded himself with understand power better than they do politics.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.

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The red walls have fallen. The president’s coalition has collapsed. In January, the GOP will be reduced to a rump in Congress. Then, for the first time in 16 years, Democrats will occupy a majority of the nation’s governors’ mansions. At the crucial but often overlooked state legislative level, Democrats flipped dozens of seats and captured control of twelve chambers. Democrats took the “trifecta” in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin while breaking the GOP’s control of the levers of government in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.

A conventional political mind might be humbled by the sheer scale of this electoral rebuke, but the president and the courtiers he has surrounded himself with understand power better than they do politics.

About the Author

Noah Rothman

Noah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. His third book, Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence, was published by Hachette in May 2026.