America to Trump: You’re a Loser

Tonight was a massive repudiation of Trump, his rampant corruption, and his politics of fear, bigotry, and division. Across the map, Democrats defeated Republicans in race after race, gaining control of both the House and Senate. As they recorded this special election night episode, Stress Test cohosts David Corn and Garrison Hayes analyzed this historic moment, shaped by surprising upsets in South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere. “I’m calling this the Trump hangover election,” David said. “It’s as if voters woke up, it’s the morning after. They made a bad decision the night before, and now they’re correcting that. This is buyer’s remorse.” For Garrison, the night’s meaning was captured by Keisha Lance Bottoms, the newly elected Democratic governor of Georgia, who will become the first Black woman to lead any state. “Black women have experienced, over the last decade, a kind of psychological injury, a kind of pummeling,” he said. “Tonight is a really significant moment, not just with Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, but Juliana Stratton in Illinois, the first Black woman elected to the Senate from that state.” What’s more, this Democratic victory occurred in the face of maximum Republican gerrymandering,“They thought they were so darn clever,” David said. “And yet the best-laid plans of mice and men, and racist Republicans often go astray.” Mother Jones voting rights correspondent Ari Berman joined the show, to document the backlash to GOP map-rigging. “They’re not lowering gas prices, they’re not ending the war, they’re not making anything more affordable. What are they doing? They’re rigging the districts to try to choose their own electorate,” Ari said. “I think it just pissed people off.” And the night’s larger lesson, in David’s telling, is that Trump has always fared well as a performative candidate, when he’s pretending to be the big daddy nationalist hero. But when the question is his performance as president, voters say, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what we want.” We’ll be back with more analysis soon, as we unpack the tectonic implications of this historic night.