Kristoffer Ealy is a political scientist, political analyst, and professor in Southern California. He teaches American Government and political behavior, with a focus on political psychology, voting behavior, and political socialization. Subscribe to his Substack, The Thinking Class with Professor Ealy.
Republicans got beaten so badly on November 3 that calling it a mollywopping would be an insult to mollywopping. Somewhere, every grandmother who ever reached for a slipper is demanding that we find a stronger word. I’ve been studying and covering politics for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this in modern American politics.
Democrats won the House and Senate, flipping seven Republican-held Senate seats along the way. A party flipping both chambers in a midterm has happened only four times since World War II, including this election. Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in nearly a century. Kansas! The last time Kansas sent a Democrat to the Senate, people were still trying to figure out whether the radio was going to put the newspaper out of business.
I’m writing this on about three hours of sleep because I stayed up all night watching MAGA get its ass handed to it in high definition. I kept telling myself I was going to bed after the next race was called, but then another Republican lost, and I suddenly discovered enough energy to stay awake for another hour. At one point, I was practically negotiating with my own eyelids.
For the last year, I have put my entire professional credibility on the line. As a political scientist and journalist, I have been telling people that MAGA’s political dominance was neither permanent nor inevitable. I have analyzed the psychology, studied the political behavior, examined the institutional failures, and repeatedly argued that these people were creating the conditions for their own electoral destruction. I wasn’t making predictions based on wishful thinking. I was putting my professional reputation behind my analysis, knowing full well that if I got it wrong, somebody would be digging up my old articles and beating me over the head with them.
So you’ll have to forgive me for enjoying the hell out of Tuesday night. I’ve spent ten years watching people actively choose to become the worst versions of themselves. They didn’t merely tolerate cruelty, ignorance, and bigotry. They celebrated them. They wore them like letterman jackets, printed them on flags, and attached them to pickup trucks that cost more than their houses. Last night, I watched the bill for all of that stupidity come due, and for once, the people responsible couldn’t demand to speak to the manager. The manager was the American electorate, and it had already called security.
The funny thing about culture wars is that you have to be relatively comfortable to dedicate so much of your life to being furious about somebody else’s. Think about how much free time you need to have before another person’s bathroom habits become one of your leading political concerns. Imagine having your mortgage paid, your refrigerator stocked, and your medical bills covered, only to wake up one morning absolutely devastated because a transgender teenager somewhere in Nebraska wants to play volleyball. Jesus Christ, get a hobby. Buy a fishing pole. Learn how to make lasagna. There are approximately eight billion people on this planet, and somehow you’ve decided that the most pressing issue in your life is what a stranger has underneath their underwear.
