Tuesday's election wasn't a blue wave or even a blue tsunami: It was a blue apocalypse.
Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who leads the one notable bright spot on the map, referred to the wipeout as "close to an extinction-level event" for the GOP.
It was the worst midterm defeat for one party in over a half-century.
Much of the postmortem conversation has focused on why this massacre happened.
Was it the Iran war? Was it the tariffs? Was it corruption? Was it the "Epstein files" mess? The answer is both simpler and more sweeping: The MAGA movement, which has defined the GOP during the Trump era, has forgotten what populism means in practice and requires in governance.
When Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he launched a populist revolution.
His message was simple: An elite ruling class has sold out the country, and the MAGA movement is here to finally listen to the people.
Trump largely delivered during his first term.
Trump cut taxes, tamed inflation, and oversaw a booming job market and a surging stock market.
He became the first president since Richard Nixon to begin to reset our relationship with communist China.
In exile during the Joe Biden interregnum, Trump promised to return and close the border, get inflation under control, and bring back general sanity and stability.
To be sure, Trump's second term has had its successes.
The southern border is airtight.
Violent crime has fallen to the lowest rate in 125 years.
Prescription drug prices are the lowest since the 1960s.
The Justice Department's fights with the Ivy League yielded real concessions.
The raid to extract Nicolas Maduro from Caracas was bold and masterful.
But somewhere along the way, the MAGA movement forgot what it was.
Some in and around the administration have engaged in the most brazen corruption — pardons, access, illicit cryptocurrency enrichment, real estate side deals — in a century or more of Washington life.
When Americans see "special envoys" Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner negotiate with wealthy Arab states while padding their bank accounts from those same states, they understand what's going on.
There's nothing more anti-populist than such elite self-dealing.
On economic policy, the administration dramatically expanded its tariffs, including its "universal tariff" policy.
Strategic, focused....
