Tuesday’s astonishing election results were a massive nationwide repudiation of Donald Trump, his administration and the conduct of his government in the last two years. Tuesday was the opportunity for the people of the nation to be heard, beyond social media posts and occasional protests. And the people of the nation were heard.
Various voters had various reasons for their fierce opposition to Trump and his government, opposition fierce enough that they would have crawled over glass to get to the polling place.
David Gushee
It could have been the shocking cruelty and random violence of Trump’s immigration enforcers. What happened in Minneapolis, most visibly, but in many other places as well, has shocked the conscience. Kristi Noem preening in front of inmates in a Salvadoran prison. The harassment and persecution of people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
It could have been the stupid Iran War, which never was adequately explained to the American people, has not succeeded in any of its goals, has cost the lives of American servicemen and thousands of Iranians, has involved unauthorized spending of more than $40 billion, and has resulted in sharply higher fuel costs and spreading regional violence. The laughable (if it weren’t so serious) conduct of the war, and of the peace negotiations, and Trump’s delusory foreign policy by late night social media posts, have embarrassed him and us.
It could have been the unleashing of Elon Musk and his young minions, an unelected, unofficial, unconfirmed megabillionaire rampaging through the U.S. government, gutting agencies, services and careers, and crowing about it online.
It could have been the slow-crawling, illegal, incomplete release of the Epstein papers, symbolic of an administration that routinely sides with abusers over their victims.
It could have been the Gatsbyesque indifference of the president, his billionaire friends and Republicans in Congress to the sounds of ordinary people strangling economically, having to choose which to sacrifice in a given month — rent, doctor’s visits, groceries or gas.
It could have been the numerous, visible, well-documented stories of corruption on the part of the president, his family and some of his closest advisers.
“It helped the Democrats that the president cared more about personal loyalty than political skill on the Republican side.”
It could have been the macho cosplaying of Pete Hegseth, who got into office by one vote and proceeded to purge the top ranks of the military as far as possible of everyone not in his mold, especially anyone not white, male and heterosexual.
It could have been the tariffs, which have raised prices and hurt industries all over the country.
And maybe it could have been the evidence of Neronic madness creeping into the president’s behavior, a man pondering impressive posteriors and unauthorized White House ballrooms while the nation and the world burn.
It helped the Democrats that the president cared more about personal loyalty than political skill on the Republican side, thus favoring candidates for office like Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in Texas or Michael Whatley over Thom Tillis in North Carolina or Darline Graham over Ralph Norman in South Carolina. All now swept away. This election marked the culmination, first of a general gutting of the GOP of anyone not made in Trump’s image, and then of the party as a whole.
It also helped the Democrats that in multiple races they put forward appealing, disciplined candidates who were able to bring home their own voters, win independents and even a significant slice of Republicans.
These were people like James Talarico, Amy Acton, Adam Hamilton, Annie Andrews, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, Gina Hinojosa, Rob Sand, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Abdul El-Sayed.
Implications and takeaways
Here is my idiosyncratic list of major implications and takeaways from this election.
Democracy prevailed in 2026. In the runup to the election, the president tried to put his finger on the scale in various ways; they all failed, blocked by states, by election officials and by the courts. That the election results were so smashing, with victory margins generally so decisive, and the congressional majorities so far beyond the needed minimum, made the results “too big to rig.”
Let no one doubt that election denial and various dirty tricks woud have been attempted if the results were close. But instead, all over the country, our elections functioned as they are supposed to.
“All over the country, our elections functioned as they are supposed to.”
Democracy more likely to prevail in 2028/29. Donald Trump (re)introduced a very dangerous anti-democratic toxin into our politics. His 2020 threats to election integrity, culminating in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, accompanied by his enticement of a large number of election deniers into major GOP roles, made me worried about what would happen in the next presidential election.
But now, Democrats will be in charge of the state governments in most of the country, including 13 of the top 14 states by population, and all of what we used to call the swing states, and will be in charge of Capitol Hill when the electoral count happens on January 6, 2029.
The Republican albatross is Donald Trump. On Wednesday, JD Vance officially distanced himself from the president by blaming the GOP rout on the Iran war. To me, this marked the beginning of the coming marginalization of Donald Trump.
But it is hard to see how the new GOP can be born from the ruins of this GOP as long as Trump is Trump — ego-needy, delusional and, well, still president. The odd sight of him on the day before the election, and the day after the election, talking about the Reflecting Pool and the White House ballroom indicates it may be all he has left in him to do is to revert to this role as real-estate developer.
I can imagine a tacit agreement on the part of Republicans and maybe even some Democrats to let the old president play with his arches and blueprints and leave the governing to others. But no, it is likely to be far messier than that.
Expect a government of temps. The Democratic Senate is going to be most unlikely to confirm any Trump-nominated Supreme Court judges or cabinet officers unless Trump decides to move to the middle and work cooperatively in his last two years. Since that does not seem likely, I anticipate that as cabinet officials — like Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. — resign, are fired or even impeached, their agencies will be run for up to two years by “acting” secretaries. And if any Supreme Court justices die or resign, their places will likely remain unfilled. A government of temps.
Look for a new government being born. The Democrats need to know, and surely do know, that the people who voted for them are hungry for results. They need to move forward with discipline at state and national levels. They need to pass well-considered legislation in the areas people are crying out for, even if the president vetoes one bill after another.
A new government needs to be in the process of being born even as the old one withers away for its remaining miserable days. It reminds me a bit of the concept of prolepsis that we use in New Testament studies — “the manifestation of a coming future in the present.”
Imagine a very different religious and moral vision. The Christian Right was born in the 1970s. It may have died on Tuesday. Of course, that is an exaggeration, but with a point.
“Evangelical support for Trump helped discredit an entire religious community.”
The marriage of evangelicals and many Pentecostals with the Republican Party is an old and tired one, going back to white backlash against the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s, winning its first major victory with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Its apotheosis has been the embrace of amoral Donald Trump. Evangelical support for him helped discredit an entire religious community with tens of millions of people, beginning with their own children.
Now, with this election, the moral resources of center-left Christianity in America, as embodied by Mainline pastors like Adam Hamilton, seminarian James Talarico, Black Church pastors Raphael Warnock and now Freddy Haynes, Sarah Trone Garriott and Lindsay James, will be brought to bear in Washington. A moral vision that is about meeting everyone’s human needs and treating every person with dignity is just going to be much more appealing to the public and much more fruitful of good results. It will expose the Christian Right vision for the small, crabbed thing it is.
Final thought here. Many of us have been living in a state of heightened tension, even a feeling of national emergency, since 2016. People’s nerve endings are shot, our exhaustion level high.
As long as Donald Trump remains president, there will still be some — maybe much — of that feeling. After all, we don’t know what he is going to do as an embattled, embittered lame duck. But I am hopeful that something that feels more like normal democratic politics, taking its reasonable place in a well-balanced life and well-run society, may be on the horizon.
I sure hope so.
David P. Gushee serves as Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, chair in Christian social ethics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and senior research fellow at International Baptist Theological Study Centre. He is past president of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Christian Ethics. He also is author of 30 books, including Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust; Kingdom Ethics; Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies; Changing Our Mind; and The Moral Teachings of Jesus.
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