I love the smell of bloodbath in the morning. It smells like victory.

A Democratic House and Senate, signaling the death of MAGA hegemony. The election of the first Kansas Democratic senator in 94 years. The election of the first Texas Democratic senator in 38 years. The election of the first South Carolina Democratic senator in 28 years. The election of the first Iowa Democratic senator in 18 years. The ouster of House Republicans in dozens of red states, a rout of historic proportions thanks to the landslide loathing of you know who.

And here’s what smells like defeat: Trump Steaks. Trump Ice. Trump Vodka. Trump Shuttle. Trump University. Trump Magazine. Trump Mattresses. Trump Mortgage. And now, Trump Midterms.

Let’s remember what the late Lindsey Graham prophesied in 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”

Everything Trump touches turns to dust. That now includes the MAGA Republican party. We the People laid waste to the cowards who swallowed the cult leader’s Cruel-Aid.

A mere two years ago, a convicted felon stormed back to the presidency with a disturbingly impressive coalition of independents, Latinos, and young people. This time he lost all three cohorts. This time, thanks to his extremism at home and abroad, he lost the GOP’s traditional issue triad of economy, immigration, national security. And this time grassroots Democrats got off their asses en masse.

In the words of Peter Wehner, a former aide to three Republican presidents, what we’ve just witnessed was “a true repudiation of the politics of savagery,” an awakening of conscience, an almost physical need to register revulsion, “like bile rising in the throat.”

The battlefield is strewn with red corpses. Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, a 2020 election denier and House apologist for Jan. 6? Gone. Colorado loon Lauren Boebert? Gone. Ohio congressman Max Miller, an accused wife-beater? Gone. Ohio smear artist Vivek Ramaswamy? Gone. Susan Collins, the nine-lives Mainer who gifted Brett Kavanaugh the opportunity to drive a stake into Roe v. Wade? Gone.

It can be argued the slaughter of Trump’s enablers was basically a protest against the high price of gas and diesel. But the polls – which were correct, by the way – also reported that the issue of “corruption” was a rare galvanizing factor. A huge share of the voters accurately linked their economic suffering to Trump’s relentless self-enrichment. A lot of people finally realized Trump couldn’t give a flying fig about their everyday lives. They finally realized he was America’s Dracula, sinking his fangs into Lady Liberty’s neck and sucking her dry – a rapacious pig at the public trough, feasting on every last monetary morsel.

It was, all told, a protest on every front. A protest against high prices, a protest against his piggery, a protest against his bigotry, his misogyny, his cruelty, his demagoguery, his lies, and his ignorance. The racism alone helped propel a Black woman to the gubernatorial chair in Georgia (the first Black woman to ever hold such a job), it helped propel a Latino woman to the gubernatorial chair in Texas (the first Latino woman, ditto), and, at this writing, it has made a Black man highly competitive in a razor-thin Mississippi Senate race (no Democrat has won a Mississippi Senate race in 44 years).

Despite what MAGA thinks, there is no majority thirst for a white supremacist future.

Indeed, these midterms will hopefully signal to the world we are not fated to humiliate ourselves forevermore. Perhaps we’ve even proven that the flame of democracy still flickers here, the same way it did not long ago, triumphantly so, in Hungary and Serbia.

A Democratic Senate will ensure not a single MAGA whack job will be confirmed for a federal judgeship; that alone is progress. Nevertheless, barring illness or death, Trump will still be president, and there’s no way he’ll quack like a traditional lame duck.

The veto pen will be the least of his weapons. Having learned at the knee of Roy Cohn, Trump will likely double down on his corruption, concoct crazy executive orders, and play the victim on social media. The newly-empowered Democrats, in both chambers, will need to craft the savviest way forward, holding Trump and his MAGA apparatchiks accountable for the havoc they’ve wrought – via hearings and subpoenas – while demonstrating to a restive electorate that they’re serious about addressing every facet of the affordability crisis. They’ve long shown us who and what they are against; they’ll need to show us via governance what they’re for, lest they be swamped by the next populist wave.

The midterms brought us a hefty measure of redemption, but the road to national recovery and institutional repair will be long and rocky. Winston Churchill said it best, early in the fight against fascism: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]