▶ Watch Video: Leading Dem on midterms aftermath: “We’re still in the fight of our lives”
There were echoes of history in this year’s midterm election, one of the biggest rebukes of Republicans since 1974, when Watergate, inflation and unemployment dominated the campaign. That year, Democrats won 291 seats in the House of Representatives (flipping 49 GOP-held seats), and picked up four Senate seats.
Following last Tuesday’s elections, Democrats now have robust majorities in both houses of Congress. Florida’s Republican Governor Rick DeSantis called it “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans.”
There were also stunning upsets in red states, including Kansas, South Carolina and Texas. It was, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said, “a Watergate-level repudiation.”
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, says his party is at a crossroads. He says the dynamic of many Republicans in the Trump Era being fearful of getting too far away from the president has changed. “Oh, I think it changed on Tuesday,” he said, calling this year’s midterms “the most disastrous election for Republicans ever.”
He added that, of Republicans still in office who don’t want to fight Mr. Trump directly, “Like the Cowardly Lion, they’ll find that they actually had courage all along.”
Hogan was asked what it would take for voters to trust the GOP again: “They didn’t like the status quo, and they threw out all the Republicans,” he replied. “The Democrats are now in charge. They don’t have the White House, but they do have both houses of Congress. And so, now they have to actually deliver on their promises. It’s going to be really interesting to see what both parties do. My party has to do a little bit of soul-searching about where do we go from here.”
More than a little bit? “A lot!” Hogan laughed.
“I liken it to the Battle of Gettysburg”
President Trump told “Sunday Morning” on Election Day that he will push back hard against Democrats, and on Friday he named the confrontational Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff.
Democrats, led by New York’s Hakeem Jeffries (soon to be the first-ever Black Speaker of the House), are ramping up investigations.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, set to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee, says Democrats are going to hold President Trump accountable through the rule of law.
He also does not think Congress should focus on the economy at the expense of investigations: “It’s not an either/or proposition,” Raskin said. “Take, for example, the French Revolution. Remember when Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’? Now, is that a problem of accountability and tyranny, a corrupt government? Or is it a problem of affordability and standard of living? It’s both! Authoritarianism and tyranny are extremely expensive for the people.
“And it’s the exact same thing when you go down the line with Donald Trump,” Raskin said. “So, are we going to go after the corruption? Yeah, you’re damn right. And are we going to go after affordability and making people’s lives easier? Yeah, you’re damn right. We’re going to do both of them.”
Raskin also believes that, post-elections, bipartisanship is possible. “Sure,” he said. “I saw JD Vance make a speech the other day. He’s rapidly backpedaling and trying to dissociate himself from the Iran War. Let’s work in a bipartisan way to try to extricate ourselves from the mess they got us into. Same thing with the tariffs, right? They’re all backpedaling from the tariffs.”
But Raskin says, following his party’s major wins last Tuesday, Democrats have no illusions about the road ahead: “It was a huge victory, but I liken it to the Battle of Gettysburg, which was a turning point in the Civil War, but it wasn’t the end of it,” he said. “There were a lot more battles to come. And Donald Trump still has two years in office, at least on paper. This struggle is not over by a long shot. We’re still in the fight of our lives.”
Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Ed Givnish.
For more info:
- Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (Official site)
- Rep. Jamie Raskin
- Thanks to the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy, Washington, D.C.
