As I survey the results of Election Day, I keep thinking about two quotes. The main one is now the prophetic utterance of the late Lindsey Graham: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”*

Now, Graham at the time thought that the Republicans were going to lose, dare I say, bigly, in the 2016 presidential contest. Instead, the magic that is the Electoral College took an almost three million popular vote loss into a win, and the rest is the history we have been living for about a decade now. And, of course, Senator Graham would go on to be one of the biggest kiss-asses in American presidential history (and yes, that is the technical, political science term).

Still, Graham wasn’t wrong; it just took longer than it should have for enough Americans to realize that, to get to my second quote, a slight paraphrase of the late NFL Coach Denny Green: “He is who we thought he was.”

I mean, who could have predicted that Donald J. Trump, whose most significant resume line was a reality TV star, was unfit to be president? How could anyone have possibly objected to a guy whose business model was licensing his name for cheap and gaudy products, and who bankrupted casinos, having the most important job in the world? How could a guy known for philandering, talk show appearances, and ghost-written books not be given command of the US military?

The reality is a whole lot of people knew, from the day he came down that escalator, that he should never be president. We knew that he was a racist. We knew he was ignorant about governing. We feared he would appoint unqualified persons to office. We feared he would start some unnecessary war. He was overflowing with ignorance and malice.

The problem is: getting enough people to believe that yes, in fact, that stove is hot, is for them to touch it.

And so, here we are.

Part of it, of course, is that in the first term he only partially surrounded himself with morons. He didn’t quite have the coterie of sycophants he has now. In his first few years, he was the new guy in the old Republican Party, but over time he MAGAfied the party the same way he has cheaply gilded the White House and Washington.

I will confess: his handling of COVID should have been enough to demonstrate his incompetence (although can you imagine what the pandemic response would have been if it had happened with RFK, Jr. at the pinnacle of our public health pyramid? Again: the proverbial “adults in the room” saved us from a far greater catastrophe). Of course, all of that did lead to his electoral repudiation in November of 2020.

Still, his action on January 6, 2021 should have been enough for his permanent ouster from American politics, and it clearly did not. We can blame the Republicans for that as well (and so the fact that they just got some comeuppance salves that national wound a tad, albeit not completely).

But to the unintended and broader point of Graham’s quote: the terrible COVID response and the fomenting of insurrection were both part of Trump destroying the Republican Party in part. Certainly McConnell’s unwillingness to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial was a short-term trading of part of the party’s soul for assumed gains, but instead was to the long-term detriment of us all.

And then we get to November 3, 2026.

There were any number of very important actions by this administration that earned it public opprobrium. The most prominent being the economic effects of the tariffs (including, Good Lord, a trade war with Canada), and ICE on the streets acting as thugs, to include the killing of US citizens and the inhumane treatment of citizens and migrants both. These actions were not aimed at the “worst of the worst” but at people whose skin color Stephen Miller and Brett Kavanaugh found sufficiently objectionable.

It should be noted that this will continue until he leaves, but hopefully the new Congress can slow the evil starting in January.

There are other things to add to a very long list, but that don’t fully enter the consciousness of everyday Americans, including summary executions in the Caribbean, the ongoing betrayal of Ukraine, and massive damage to the US role in the global order.

And I realize I haven’t even touched on the corruption!

He is exactly who many of us thought he was.

But let’s get to the key issue that is the single most significant for explaining November 3rd: fuel prices.

Here’s what they looked like on Election Day:

I have spent a career studying politics. I have paid attention to US elections since I was in elementary school. I have studied other countries, read who knows how many pages on parties and elections worldwide. Yet I don’t think I can provide a clearer example of an elected leader making as dumb a choice as Trump did over Iran.

Not only was it foolish from a foreign policy perspective, as the stated goals were not achievable via air strikes (if they were achievable at all).** But from a purely political point of view, the direct line between Trump’s war of choice and the increase in fuel prices and the increase in food and other prices could not be more stark (nor more predictable).

Voters blame the president for the economy under normal circumstances (see, e.g., the 2024 results), but Trump did something here that is truly historic: he drew a bright neon line from his actions to $4+ gas and $6+ diesel.

Throw in the tariffs, and the guy who promised to fix the economy on “day one” definitively and unambiguously made it worse.

It is truly amazing on one level. On another level, he is who we thought he was.

Back to the election outcomes: history told us that he was likely to lose the House. But the only way you get the bloodbath we just witnessed was diesel at over $6 a gallon in places like Kansas and Iowa.

A side benefit to having a fool as the leader of your party is that they do things like favor Ken Paxton as a nominee over John Cornyn. Maybe Texas would have turned out as it did with Cornyn as the nominee, but I have my doubts. Paxton’s obviously putrid character was clearly so hard to ignore that it helped bring down the rest of the ticket in spectacular fashion, especially in a national environment that was somewhere in the D +12 range due to a highly unpopular president.

And maybe, just maybe, foisting Darline Graham on South Carolina wasn’t such a hot idea for the GOP.

And maybe so was begging the country to pretend like Trump was on the ballot, holding a dumb (you know the joke) mid-term convention, and barnstorming the country when the smart move was to stay home.

And maybe, just maybe, building ballrooms, resurfacing pools, and building arches is bad politics when people are upset about everyday costs.

I am not saying that GOP is actually destroyed, nor do I think that MAGA is dead. But Graham was right in 2016; it just took until 2026 for enough people to see what a fool we have in charge.

(FWIW, I do think that the pathway is pretty clear for D trifect after 2028, especially given the gains in the Senate this cycle–more on that later.)

He has always been someone unqualified for the office.

And we will be picking up the pieces for some time.

I have more to say about him going forward, but I will at least say for the moment: he seems more like a tired old man who wants to show you the model train set he built in the garage than a dictator wannabe. I am heartened, to a degree, as to how little he has tried his old game of shouting about things being rigged. Still, I worry, quite a lot, about how much further damage he can do in the next two years and two months.

I will conclude with RIP Lindsey, your legacy is complete: You predicted the downfall of your party, and your seat now belongs to a Democrat.

Further, Graham was also right: the Republicans deserve what they are getting, because they chose this path.

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**And it may be overly kind to ascribe coherent goals to the war in the first place.