On Tuesday, November 3 – and in the weeks prior to that day – Democrats, independents and even many Republicans walked into voting booths all across the country, looked for the word Democrat and voted straight down the line Democratic for everything from senator to dogcatcher, and, by doing so, took down Republican candidates in Guilford County, North Carolina and across the nation – even in some of the reddest states in America.

Candidate quality didn’t matter.

Name recognition didn’t matter.

The ground game didn’t matter.

Money didn’t matter. Elon Musk may well have taken the $474 million he poured into this election out into a field and set the money on fire. It would have had the same effect. Actually, maybe not: The night of the election, some commentators were saying that his spending of $224 million in Texas actually helpedJames Talarico because Texans didn’t like the idea of a trillionaire trying to buy the election.

One of the clearest examples of nothing other than party mattering in this midterm election is the fact that Democrat Shelly Headen beat out Rep. John Blust in the race for North Carolina House District 62. Blust, a well-known name and longtime Republican lawmaker, lost to a Democrat who essentially dropped out of the race and lost the support of the Democratic Party.

Blust was even one of the few politicians who would call out his own party if he thought they did something unfair or disrespectful.

Headen, an Oak Ridge CPA, lost the support of the Democratic Party after a controversy erupted due to her old social media posts that resurfaced – including several containing harsh comments about President Donald Trump and his supporters.

The Assembly reported on Sept. 10 that Headen had written on Facebook, “I think our only hope is an attack on US soil… preferably Alabama, Louisiana… where the stupid people live.”

After Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024, Headen also wrote on X, according to The Assembly, “I’m so excited! Ready for the MAGAs to die off!!”

Another social media comment attributed to Headen suggested that Trump supporters might need to experience sexual assault to understand what Trump’s victims felt.

She even said that, if she won, she would not take office and would let the Democratic Party pick her replacement. Now everyone will get to see if she does that or not.

But again, none of that mattered on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Two excellent, experienced county commissioners – fair-minded veteran Pat Tillman and former Guilford County Commissioner Alan Perdue, who knows Guilford County government inside and out – got swept away too for the sin of having an R next to their names on the ballot.

Republican Mike Perdue never had a chance in the at-large Guilford County commissioners race in this political environment.

Nothing else mattered.

In the 2026 midterm election, the only thing that mattered was the policies, actions and personality of President Donald Trump. Hispanics didn’t like the cruelty of ICE tactics. Others didn’t like ICE agents shooting Alex Pretti in the back ten times. Rural farmers didn’t like the skyrocketing price of diesel fuel or the tariffs that hit their states particularly hard. Others across the political spectrum didn’t like hearing Trump’s threats to attack Canada or Greenland – or the actual attack and never-ending war with Iran. Others didn’t appreciate the president making several billion dollars in questionable ways while ordinary people suffered financially. Still other voters didn’t like the fact that he handpicked terrible candidates in South Carolina and Texas, states in which Republican senatorial candidates of a higher quality might have won. Others didn’t appreciate Trump’s affinity for Putin while showing disdain for Ukraine. The failure to release the Epstein files didn’t help.

In the months leading up to the election, it was almost as if Trump was trying to lose. His closing message was about how great his arch was going to be and that Jon Husted had a nice ass. His final message was one he chose to deliver in DC in front of the Reflecting Pool – apparently so as to remind everyone of one of his biggest screwups.

Any senator or member of Congress willing to stand up to Trump – Thom Tillis, for instance, did it once or twice – was driven out of the party. Tillis may have had a chance against Roy Cooper (now we will never know).

And all that is why, Tuesday night, an asteroid hit and created a near-extinction-level event for MAGA – and the Republican senators and House members who have remained silent – and Republicans in North Carolina state government who have also remained silent through it all.

The election was about one thing and one thing only – the utter contempt and hatred of Donald Trump that many Americans feel.

The day after the election, Trump at least owned up to his mistakes and said that he was almost entirely responsible for the losses in the election and that clearly he needed to do a lot of reflecting and change course in order to help ordinary Americans.

Of course, he didn’t really say that. What he did say was that the immense love Americans apparently felt for him couldn’t be transferred to these other candidates, and that, if he had been on the ballot, he would have won “IN A LANDSLIDE!”

Regardless, the stock market was booming Wednesday after the massive Republican losses, and the people who went to bed early Tuesday night woke up the next day in an entirely different country.

Some Democrats will no doubt treat the blowout as an endorsement of Democratic policies – and socialist ones as well. However, many smart Democrats will know that this election was only a rejection of Trump and MAGA and had little to nothing to do with what the Democratic candidates said or did.

Here’s a synopsis of the Republican carnage across the country that occurred during the election.

Guilford County

In the unofficial returns, Headen led Blust by 233 votes, 21,367 to 21,134. That’s 50.27 percent to 49.73 percent – close enough for Blust to request a recount after the county canvass if the margin stays within the 1 percent threshold.

In the county commissioners races, Democrat Scott Jones led Alan Perdue by 712 votes in District 2, 13,076 to 12,364. In District 3, Democrat Derek Mobley had 19,274 votes to Tillman’s 15,329, with Green Party candidate Jeanine Couto drawing 862. And in the at-large race, Democrat Greg Drumwright took 66.5 percent of the vote, with 142,467 votes to Mike Perdue’s 71,657.

North Carolina

Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley with about 59 percent of the vote – flipping the U.S. Senate seat held by Tillis. Democrats also won control of the state House for the first time since the 2010 election. And in western North Carolina, Democrat Jamie Ager flipped the 11th Congressional District, defeating Republican state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom.

Across the country

By 10 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, the Associated Press had called 222 US House seats for Democrats and 138 for Republicans, with 75 still uncalled. Democrats were already past the 218 they needed. In the Senate, Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them had secured at least 54 seats to Republicans’ 44, with Alaska and Mississippi still uncalled in that count. Democrats had flipped seven Republican Senate seats.

Texas got much of the attention: Talarico beat Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race there since 1988.  Texas is considered as the Death Star by Democrats.  But Kansas was an even bigger surprise. Democrat Adam Hamilton beat incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in a state that hadn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years. In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated appointed Republican Sen. Darline Graham in a state Trump had carried by 18 points just two years ago.

The other Senate pickups, besides North Carolina, came in Maine, where Troy Jackson beat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Ohio, where Sherrod Brown beat Husted, and Iowa, where Josh Turek beat Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson for an open seat. And Texas Republicans lost the governor’s mansion too. Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, one of five Republican-held governorships Democrats had flipped in the Wednesday morning count.

The price of gas, groceries and health care gave voters plenty of reasons to take their frustration out on the party in power. Trump himself acknowledged Wednesday that the Iran war and the resulting rise in gas prices had hurt Republicans.

And about seven in 10 voters in the AP Voter Poll said Congress wasn’t doing enough to check the president.  That’s about to change in a big way.

 Republicans lost both chambers, and some of the people who took those majorities away lived in places Republicans had been able to count on for decades.

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