Long before Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac immortalized the road trip or Americans got their kicks on Route 66, cross-country drivers had to navigate a confusing network of colloquially named thoroughfares to reach their destinations.
Like pioneers of yore, motorists in the early 1910s could follow the National Old Trails Road—a transcontinental route between Baltimore, Maryland, and Los Angeles, California, stitched together from existing roads and historic wagon-train paths such as the Santa Fe Trail—or the Lincoln Highway, which connected New York City and San Francisco. As cars proliferated, so did demand for better roads. Countless automobile clubs, auto trail associations, local civic boosters, and business owners began marking highways, often with signs painted on utility poles, planks, barns, and rocks.
By the mid-1920s, these groups had helped to create, map, and promote hundreds of national auto trails. Some had evocative monikers. Travelers could thread their way from Illinois to Louisiana on the Bee Line Highway or Magnolia Route, for instance, or take the Lone Star Trail from St. Augustine, Florida, through Texas, to Los Angeles.
Names and signage revealed nothing about the quality of the roads, however. Nor did drivers have an easy time negotiating the often overlapping maze of marked highways—a challenge that only grew as cars surged in popularity.
Call for Order
Wisconsin was the first state to address this crisis by numbering its roads in 1917. In 1925, spurred by a recommendation from AASHTO’s predecessor, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), Congress formed a Joint Board on Interstate Highways to hash out a nationwide solution. On November 11 of the following year, AASHO adopted the U.S. Numbered Highway System.
Today, roads bearing the distinctive shield of the U.S. Numbered Highway System—with odd-numbered routes generally running north to south and even-numbered routes stretching east to west—span nearly 180,000 miles. That numbering system is still administered by AASHTO in cooperation with state and local departments of transportation.
Interstates Come of Age
Beyond giving rise to the numbered highway system, historic auto trails also laid the foundation for the Interstate Highway System that launched in June 1956 with passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act. I-90 and I-94, for example, closely parallel the old Yellowstone Trail—the first transcontinental route through the country’s northern tier. The popular motorway stretched from Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to Puget Sound in Washington and contained a dedicated spur to Yellowstone National Park. Parts of I-95 overlap the old Dixie Highway leading into South Florida from Michigan, while I-80 aligns with much of the Lincoln Highway.
Ironically, the inspiration for a federal roadway network—a key economic development initiative of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration—traces in part to the President’s experience with rutted, muddy roads as a young soldier. In 1919, he participated in the U.S. Army’s first transcontinental convoy, an often-grueling, 62-day journey along the Lincoln Highway undertaken to showcase the utility of motor vehicles and build public support for investing in better roads.
Today, the romance of road travel continues to beckon millions of motorists onto the nation’s historic highways each year. Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, their journeys to the Grand Canyon or grandma’s house—summer travelers logged 866 billion miles on U.S. highways in 2024—may be smoother and faster than automobile enthusiasts endured a century ago. But the scenery is no less spectacular. Sweeping vistas, kitschy roadside attractions, and other relics of America’s golden age of road trips still draw millions of travelers—many of them international tourists—to Route 66 each year.
Bypassed by Interstates, the highway that carried Dust Bowl migrants from Midwest farms to California during the Great Depression was decommissioned in 1985. But most of the historic route remains drivable, its retro diners and neon signs offering a nostalgic glimpse of past travel adventures while helping to ensure that the Mother Road, as novelist John Steinbeck dubbed it, will remain among the nation’s most iconic and enduring highways for the next 100 years.
In the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90 percent of the midterm elections have led to the party in the Oval Office losing House seats, and two-thirds of those same elections have led to it losing Senate seats. Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet. But what ensued in November went well beyond all normal expectations. When all the votes are tabulated, the current blue wave may match the massive midterm losses that buried Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.
First, what does this massive 2026 slapdown now portend?
A second-term president in his final two years, facing a euphoric and frenzied opposition Congress, emboldened by a landslide, will have difficulty confirming federal judges or cabinet members. Most presidents in that dire situation try to rush through confirmations in the brief two remaining months of their lame-duck congressional majorities—not an easy task. Trump is, at this very moment, following in their footsteps.
Come next year, Trump will still not have to face a veto-proof Congress—unless renegade Republican senators and representatives join Democrats on key legislation to provide them with the necessary 67-Senate-vote/290-House-vote override.
It is critical for Trump, then, to shore up potentially apostate congressional Republicans and keep them in line to prevent this. Another problem: waves as huge as the 2026 blue wave can sometimes take two or three election cycles to correct themselves—meaning the 2026 left-wing momentum gives the socialist Democrats advantages in the 2028 presidential elections.
Even though the Democrats cannot hope to override the veto, some, like Elizabeth Warren, have recklessly called for ending the filibuster—a huge mistake when they don’t yet have the White House. (Why end this time-honored institution just to pass legislation that will be vetoed by an opposition president anyway?)
As for Trump’s own legislative initiatives—they are dead. Bipartisan initiatives with the new socialist Democratic Party could be explored, but they would likely be untenable in the eyes of the MAGA base. Otherwise, Democrats will vote against anything and everything Trump proposes—in the fashion of what Harry Truman once called his oppositional Republican legislators: “The Do-Nothing Congress.”
So-Called Lame-Duck Presidents
Nevertheless, sometimes presidents in the wake of bruising congressional losses find ways to stay dynamic and popular. The last two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations were supposed to be inert. They most certainly were not.
Clinton successfully went to war in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic without congressional authority. He worked domestically with the Republican majority to ensure another two years of balanced budgets.
Obama was more confrontational after he had completely blown his huge congressional majorities. Even before the midterms, he had boasted that he had a pen and a phone and would govern domestically by executive orders and vetoes. And so he did—to an even greater degree after losing Congress.
Abroad, Obama entered the most contentious and radical two years of his administration. He continued his targeted assassination campaign, which would finally total 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama restored relations with communist Cuba without congressional assent. And he signed on to the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Deal. Despite claiming to be a constitutional-law expert, lame-duck Obama arbitrarily declared both agreements immune from Senate ratification.
At home, Obama, on his way out, nonetheless helped weaponize the FBI, the CIA, and the DNI and ordered them to dig deeper to find (nonexistent) evidence of Trump/Putin “collusion.”
Trump could very well follow some of these lame-duck precedents. Even now, he could stop radical Democratic legislation, quickly finish the Iran war, and continue to reset regions in the manner that he has already remade Latin America, which now bears little resemblance to its anti-American socialist character before 2025.
Twenty-seven months of his remaining tenure is a long time. If there were an end to the Ukraine war; if the Iranian theocracy becomes denuclearized or eventually even implodes; or if the strong economy goes into hyperdrive in 2027 (with 5 percent GDP growth, more good jobs reports, continuing record median household incomes, and continuing record-low poverty rates), then Trump could enjoy popularity on the level achieved by Clinton and Obama as they left office.
Blue Wave Bomb-Throwers
Historically, there is a problem with opposition-party midterm waves. The bomb-throwers, drunk on success, power, and notoriety, go overboard.
In 2010 and 2012, the Tea Party, enthusiastic about their spectacular successes, nominated poor senatorial candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. They, and others like them, had little chance of winning.
The Republicans failed to build upon their control of Congress in the 1998 midterms. Despite widespread public anger at Bill Clinton’s various sexual imbroglios, they went wild, pursued endless cul-de-sac investigations, and foolishly authorized an impeachment inquiry right before the elections—in the midst of a booming economy. That wild goose chase ensured they would lose five House seats in 1998 and win no additional Senate seats, in what should have been a golden opportunity to win large gains.
Will a weak speaker like Hakeem Jeffries and a fossilized Senate majority leader like the rudderless Chuck Schumer be able to rein in some 25 new avowed progressives and six new avowed socialists in Congress?
Probably not.
The hard Left is younger, more energetic, and more charismatic than the ossified Democratic status quo. And yet Democrats learned in 2024 that their agendas—whether on the trans issue, DEI, the border, immigration, energy, or crime—poll at only 30–40 percent favorability. So it is likely that zealots will try once again to ram through stale radical legislation that the public has long been on record opposing.
The Real Cause of the Wave: The War, the Economy, and the Border
The War
The 2026 midterm rout exposed Republican failures on the economy, Iran, and immigration. Trump can still recover, but Democrats risk overplaying their hand with a radical agenda.
In the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90 percent of the midterm elections have led to the party in the Oval Office losing House seats, and two-thirds of those same elections have led to it losing Senate seats. Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet. But what ensued in November went well beyond all normal expectations. When all the votes are tabulated, the current blue wave may match the massive midterm losses that buried Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.
First, what does this massive 2026 slapdown now portend?
A second-term president in his final two years, facing a euphoric and frenzied opposition Congress, emboldened by a landslide, will have difficulty confirming federal judges or cabinet members. Most presidents in that dire situation try to rush through confirmations in the brief two remaining months of their lame-duck congressional majorities—not an easy task. Trump is, at this very moment, following in their footsteps.
Come next year, Trump will still not have to face a veto-proof Congress—unless renegade Republican senators and representatives join Democrats on key legislation to provide them with the necessary 67-Senate-vote/290-House-vote override.
It is critical for Trump, then, to shore up potentially apostate congressional Republicans and keep them in line to prevent this. Another problem: waves as huge as the 2026 blue wave can sometimes take two or three election cycles to correct themselves—meaning the 2026 left-wing momentum gives the socialist Democrats advantages in the 2028 presidential elections.
Even though the Democrats cannot hope to override the veto, some, like Elizabeth Warren, have recklessly called for ending the filibuster—a huge mistake when they don’t yet have the White House. (Why end this time-honored institution just to pass legislation that will be vetoed by an opposition president anyway?)
As for Trump’s own legislative initiatives—they are dead. Bipartisan initiatives with the new socialist Democratic Party could be explored, but they would likely be untenable in the eyes of the MAGA base. Otherwise, Democrats will vote against anything and everything Trump proposes—in the fashion of what Harry Truman once called his oppositional Republican legislators: “The Do-Nothing Congress.”
So-Called Lame-Duck Presidents
Nevertheless, sometimes presidents in the wake of bruising congressional losses find ways to stay dynamic and popular. The last two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations were supposed to be inert. They most certainly were not.
Clinton successfully went to war in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic without congressional authority. He worked domestically with the Republican majority to ensure another two years of balanced budgets.
Obama was more confrontational after he had completely blown his huge congressional majorities. Even before the midterms, he had boasted that he had a pen and a phone and would govern domestically by executive orders and vetoes. And so he did—to an even greater degree after losing Congress.
Abroad, Obama entered the most contentious and radical two years of his administration. He continued his targeted assassination campaign, which would finally total 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Obama restored relations with communist Cuba without congressional assent. And he signed on to the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Deal. Despite claiming to be a constitutional-law expert, lame-duck Obama arbitrarily declared both agreements immune from Senate ratification.
At home, Obama, on his way out, nonetheless helped weaponize the FBI, the CIA, and the DNI and ordered them to dig deeper to find (nonexistent) evidence of Trump/Putin “collusion.”
Trump could very well follow some of these lame-duck precedents. Even now, he could stop radical Democratic legislation, quickly finish the Iran war, and continue to reset regions in the manner that he has already remade Latin America, which now bears little resemblance to its anti-American socialist character before 2025.
Twenty-seven months of his remaining tenure is a long time. If there were an end to the Ukraine war; if the Iranian theocracy becomes denuclearized or eventually even implodes; or if the strong economy goes into hyperdrive in 2027 (with 5 percent GDP growth, more good jobs reports, continuing record median household incomes, and continuing record-low poverty rates), then Trump could enjoy popularity on the level achieved by Clinton and Obama as they left office.
Blue Wave Bomb-Throwers
Historically, there is a problem with opposition-party midterm waves. The bomb-throwers, drunk on success, power, and notoriety, go overboard.
In 2010 and 2012, the Tea Party, enthusiastic about their spectacular successes, nominated poor senatorial candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. They, and others like them, had little chance of winning.
The Republicans failed to build upon their control of Congress in the 1998 midterms. Despite widespread public anger at Bill Clinton’s various sexual imbroglios, they went wild, pursued endless cul-de-sac investigations, and foolishly authorized an impeachment inquiry right before the elections—in the midst of a booming economy. That wild goose chase ensured they would lose five House seats in 1998 and win no additional Senate seats, in what should have been a golden opportunity to win large gains.
Will a weak speaker like Hakeem Jeffries and a fossilized Senate majority leader like the rudderless Chuck Schumer be able to rein in some 25 new avowed progressives and six new avowed socialists in Congress?
Probably not.
The hard Left is younger, more energetic, and more charismatic than the ossified Democratic status quo. And yet Democrats learned in 2024 that their agendas—whether on the trans issue, DEI, the border, immigration, energy, or crime—poll at only 30–40 percent favorability. So it is likely that zealots will try once again to ram through stale radical legislation that the public has long been on record opposing.
The Real Cause of the Wave: The War, the Economy, and the Border
The War
Many Americans initially were not opposed to the idea of strikes aiming to denuclearize Iran—for example, of the kind launched in June 2025. They grew accustomed to and approved of Trump’s history of brief Jacksonian one-offs abroad: the elimination of Soleimani, al-Baghdadi, and Wagner Group mercenaries in Syria, as well as the later Maduro removal.
All were quick, decisive, and came at little cost.
Perhaps Trump thought Iran would follow the script. And so he did not explain the enormous complexities of neutering the near-half-century-old theocratic disrupter of the Middle East, ever intent on acquiring nuclear bombs.
The initial bombing went well. But the United States talked more of what was destroyed, rather than what still likely remained. And we did not adopt the current crippling sanctions during the first weeks of the war. Nor did we prepare by stockpiling oil or Patriots and Tomahawks. Nor were we at the outset fully prepared to keep the Strait open.
In short, the notion that the war would resemble the other brief encounters may have undermined the necessary material preparations for an Iran war of a totally different magnitude—even beyond the lack of any candid explanation to the American public about the enormity of the challenges Iran presented.
But most importantly, as Iran was reeling, we stopped fighting after 38 days. And then we inexplicably entered endless negotiations with a regime that has been historically incapable of honest dialogue.
Trapped in such a rut, the administration kept thinking that the midterms were still a long way off—even as they insidiously grew ever closer. Seven months, then six, then five, then four, then three, then two—and finally the midterms were upon them, as the promised peaceful deal was always just a proverbial week away.
The public expected a short, decisive war, which would eliminate the Iranian military-nuclear complex, spare the restive Iranian people, and leave the theocrats sanctioned and stewing in their own juices, perhaps even with the specter of a popular revolution on their horizon—and without ground troops or the direful prospect of nation-building.
That might still happen, but not if we reenter another disastrous cycle of talk/bomb/talk/bomb and the mantra that the war will be over in another one, two, or three weeks. We could, on our departure, hit Pickaxe Mountain to guarantee that there is no bomb-ready enriched uranium, then leave with crippling sanctions still in place, ensure that the Strait is kept open by our allies with our help, and allow the Israelis to arm whomever they wish in Iran.
“Affordability”
Remember how, in November 2022, even leftist pundits were fearing a “Red Wave”?
Given the sad state of the economy and Biden’s foreign-policy debacles, there was supposedly no reason why he would escape midterm calamity—of the sort that would, as Bill Clinton said of 1994, “beat the living daylights out of us”; that George W. Bush in 2006 called a “thumping”; and that Barack Obama in 2010 termed a “shellacking.”
But Biden did just that and avoided a wipeout. How and why?
Remember that Biden was polling dismally at 40 percent approval. The economy was in terrible shape. Gas had hit $5 a gallon in June 2022 and was still averaging $3.80 in November. Inflation had soared to 9.1 percent in 2022—entirely due to Biden’s bloated $6.27 trillion budget, with massive social spending timed right when post-COVID consumer demand was surging, and supply chains were still dormant.
Polls in 2022 showed that 80 percent of voters thought the economy was one of the chief issues and gave a resounding 14-point lead to Republicans over Democrats in fixing the mess.
Wartime disasters had also helped to crash Biden’s polls. A year earlier, the United States had fled Kabul, losing 13 service members and abandoning thousands of contractors and loyal Afghans, along with some $50 billion in weapons, equipment, and infrastructure, a new embassy, and a huge newly renovated military base.
Biden’s reaction to an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was unhinged. He scoffed that his response would depend on whether he felt it was a “minor incursion.” Such U.S. indifference and the earlier Afghanistan disaster had convinced Vladimir Putin that America and NATO either would not or could not do much about his aggression. Deterrence was lost, and then Putin attacked.
And yet, in spite of all that terrible news, the red wave of 2022 became a merely tiny ripple. Republicans picked up only nine seats, scarcely reclaiming the House, while Democrats actually picked up a Senate seat.
Fast forward to the present of 2026.
The same historical rules should apply: when a president has poor ratings and the economy is deemed bad, the opposing party should have a massive midterm rebound. And pundits certainly were convinced of an imminent 2026 Blue Wave midterm.
Trump was polling poorly—right about where Biden was in 2022. Democrats were the opposing party. And the economy was again the issue, along with a war in Iran.
But there are major differences between the circumstances that led to the red wave sputter in 2022 and to the blue wave blast in 2026. Ironically, most of them make 2022 look worse.
Inflation is not at 9.1 percent as in 2022, but will likely end this year at around 3.4–3.7 percent—well over five percentage points lower than Biden’s 2022 peak. Gas is still high at $4.17, but not much higher than Biden’s $3.80, and has never, in 2026, reached the Biden 2022 high of $5 a gallon.
Third-quarter GDP growth is higher than it was under Biden in November 2022. Wall Street’s Dow Jones index stood at an almost unbelievable 18,600 points higher in 2026 than it had in November 2022.
Manufacturing activity was soaring by November 2026, while it had grown sluggish by the 2022 midterms. The poverty rate was also higher in 2022. Real median household income soared in 2025 to around $87,000, up an inflation-adjusted $6,000 from the 2022 level. Unemployment is only slightly higher in 2026 (4.1 percent) than in 2022 (3.7 percent).
Tragically, 23 service members have died in the Iran War, more than the 13 who died during the supposedly peaceful withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021. But the $50 billion worth of American weapons and infrastructure abandoned to the Taliban was likely not much more than the cost of the Iran war to date.
So the question arises: why have “affordability,” the economy, and war supposedly doomed the Republicans to a huge blue wave—while these issues did not ensure a red wave in 2022?
After all, to reiterate, annual inflation was nearly three times higher in 2022. Gas prices were high in 2026, but they never reached $5 a gallon as they had in 2022. America’s Biden-era foreign-policy humiliations, from the misadventure in Afghanistan to a theater-wide war in Ukraine, were as controversial as the Iran war.
Yet there are two differences that might explain why “affordability” is an issue now in a way that Biden’s 9.1 percent inflation was not.
One reason the prior red wave was deflated and the current blue wave was inflated was the media reaction to supposedly bad economic news. The media more or less played down the 2022 price hikes, the Afghanistan disaster, the Ukraine war, and the generally bleak economic news, while hyping the bad economic data in 2026, even though the economic picture was, in many respects, far better.
Second, and more importantly, Trump left Biden an economy with an average annual inflation rate of only 1.9 percent and a moderate four-year aggregate 7.6 percent rise in prices. Hence, even though Biden spiked inflation to 9.1 percent in the 2022 midterm year, inflation would average 5.1 percent annually during his presidency—more than 20 percent in his four years—the affordability “crisis” was not as alarming as it might have been.
In dire contrast, Trump inherited an economy where prices were a staggering 21 percent higher than when he had left office four years earlier in January 2021—nearly three times higher than the price rise that Biden had inherited from Trump.
When Trump ran in 2024 on “fixing the economy,” his team assumed that this meant lowering the average yearly inflation rate. And during his first year back in office, Trump in fact cut the Biden-era average yearly inflation nearly in half, to 2.7 percent. Even in 2026, he still kept it lower than the Biden average, at an estimated 3.7 percent.
But Trump’s team did not explain to the voters that he could hardly reverse those huge Biden price rises, although he could certainly lower Biden’s inflation rate.
There is a significant difference between absolute prices and inflation rates that was never made clear to the voters. The fact that only a full-blown recession could have wiped out the price increases of the Biden years was never explained to them.
Nor did Republicans publicize the good news that families could deal more easily with the Biden inflation because Trump had, since the 2024 election, raised median household income by 2.6 percent.
Since it is almost impossible to reduce prices in absolute terms, that huge 21 percent Biden-era inflation surge could only be addressed by raising median income while keeping inflation much lower from that point onward. Trump did both, lowering inflation and raising income—but he did not, and could not, actually lower the prices that had soared under Biden.
The Border
Ironically, the successfully closed border undermined the popular appeal of Trump’s signature issue of illegal immigration. Once it was closed tight, voters breathed a sigh of relief—without considering that, while it is easy to allow 10 million of the world’s needy to storm the border, it is quite another thing to find them, spread out over 50 states and shielded by 600 sanctuary jurisdictions.
The result was that initial ICE apprehensions, sometimes done sloppily, were demonized by the left as “Gestapo tactics.”
Trump’s people forgot where the American people were on the issue. The latter certainly wanted the border closed. And they also wanted the 10 million new illegal aliens deported—but apparently in a fantasy manner of somehow magically being flown home without any unpleasant scenes.
Many also wanted some path to green cards for the pre-Biden population of long-residing illegal immigrants, but only those who (1) had not committed a crime, (2) were gainfully employed rather than on welfare, and (3) were willing to pay fines to obtain a green card. The time-consuming path to citizenship could be left up to the individual green-card holder.
The Democrats knew all that. And so they successfully managed to portray disproportionately Hispanic and other minority ICE officers as Nazis, illegal aliens—among them 660,000 criminals—into saints, and some of the more ostentatious and overreaching Trump cabinet officers into vicious Gauleiters.
The Takeaway
So what should we conclude from this recent midterm upset?
First, not to panic or despair. Trump could still accomplish quite a bit, both domestically and internationally, even without a congressional majority.
Second, to ignore hubristic leftist claims that the election results prove widespread American support for the boutique neo-socialist agenda.
If Democrats fail to learn this lesson, Republican success in 2028 is practically guaranteed.
Everything is bigger in Texas. And that now includes the epic repudiation of Donald Trump by the American voters in the midterm elections. Yes, Republicans got pummeled in several conservative redoubts, including the loss of Senate seats in Kansas and South Carolina. But the biggest, most expensive and most stunning losses happened in the Lone Star State.
After 32 years in the wild1erness, Texas Democrats won eight statewide races in a single day, including the thumping of incumbent governor and Trump ally, Greg Abbott, by Gina Hinojosa. They also won the lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and three other offices, and flipped control of the Texas House of Representatives.
Republicans weren’t the only ones who got pummeled. The other big losers include Texas resident Elon Musk and his friends in Big Tech, who are now wondering about the future of their data center projects. Furthermore, by losing Texas, which will now have a Latina governor, it’s easy to see how Texas could rally Latino voters in future presidential elections and become reliably Democratic in 2028 and beyond.
Before we get to that, it’s essential to understand what happened in the US Senate race. James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton, one of the most corrupt politicians in Texas history, in a landslide victory. Despite Paxton’s awful record, Trump endorsed him anyway, because he said the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn, a moderate Republican, “wasn’t particularly loyal to me.”
Trump’s endorsement was the kiss of death. Why? Exit polls show that 90% of voters named corruption as a crucial or major issue.
Talarico’s vote totals are gobsmacking. He got more votes (5.4 million) than any other candidate on the Texas ballot. He also won his race by a larger margin, in both absolute and percentage terms, than any other Democrat. He collected 1.2 million more votes than Paxton and beat him by 12.3 percent. By comparison, Hinojosa beat Abbott by about 700,000 votes, with a margin of 7.4 percent. The numbers tell the story: Texans turned out in droves to vote for Talarico, or perhaps to vote against Paxton, or maybe both.
By beating Paxton, Talarico, a soft-spoken 37-year-old bachelor who is pursuing a Master of Divinity at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, rocketed out of obscurity to win the most expensive non-presidential political contest in US history. ($573 million).
This week, I spoke to a lobbyist who has worked the halls of the Texas Capitol for decades. Like nearly every other political observer in Austin, he expected a tight race between Talarico and Paxton. In fact, he expected Paxton to win. On Wednesday, he told me that Talarico “ran one of the best campaigns I’ve ever seen. Maybe the best since George W. Bush beat Ann Richards in 1994.” Indeed, Talarico campaigned hard, stayed consistent in his messaging, and ran ads attacking Paxton for corruption that were devastating and often riotously funny. (Do yourself a favor: watch this Talarico ad, which shows Paxton stealing a $1,000 Mont Blanc pen at the Collin County Courthouse in 2012.)
Talarico’s victory is a stinging rebuke to Elon Musk, who contributed $168 million in August and September to political action committees backing Paxton. In all, Musk spent $445 million on Republicans in the midterms, with at least $225 million going to campaigns in Texas. But even Musk’s mountain of money couldn’t stop what US Senator Ted Cruz – who is now the only remaining statewide Republican in Texas – has dubbed the “blue tsunami.”
Musk, who moved Tesla’s corporate headquarters from California to Texas in 2021 to get away from Democrats, now must grapple with an entirely new political environment at both the state and federal levels. Earlier this year, the New York Times found that Musk has “quietly built an empire of more than 90 companies and other legal entities in Texas,” including his EV company, SpaceX, his personal security business, X and others. And the state has lavished incentives on his companies, including a $1.7 billion tax break for his Terafab project.
Top of mind for Musk will be his ability to build data centers in Texas and other states. During her campaign, Hinojosa called for “an immediate moratorium on data centers to last until the legislature can meet to put in place real protections” for local citizens. She reiterated her stance on Thursday, saying that she wants “laws to protect Texans” from the projects. She also said she doesn’t “hate data centers. I hate the way they are taking advantage of Texas, and that stops when I’m governor.”
Musk understands the risk. At 12:12 a.m. on Wednesday, after the midterm results were clear, he posted on X, “data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
Regardless of what happens with Musk, it’s clear that Democrats are riding the biggest wave of political support since the Watergate era. They control the House, the Senate and they are perfectly positioned to win the White House in 2028. That goes back, once again, to Texas. The last time Texas voters backed a Democratic presidential candidate was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Ever since then, Republican presidential candidates have largely been able to ignore Texas in their campaigns because they could count on the state’s 40 Electoral College votes in their pursuit of the 270 needed to win the White House.
That’s not true anymore.
Texas has turned blue, and a key reason is the surge in the state’s Latino population, which turned its back on Republicans in the midterms and voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. Since 2000, the number of Latinos who are eligible to vote in Texas has doubled, to 6.3 million.
The Latino share of the state’s electorate now stands at almost 32 percent. Latinos also account for more than 45 percent of the state’s young voters. And here’s a key point: About two-thirds of eligible Texas Latinos speak Spanish at home, and half are bilingual in English and Spanish.
Now consider the significance – and symbolism – of Hinojosa, who speaks perfect Spanish. She’s the first Latina elected as governor of Texas. She’s of Mexican descent. (Her mother was born in San Luis Potosí.) She grew up in Brownsville, attended public schools, graduated from the University of Texas and earned a law degree. She’s married and has two children. In other words, for many Latinos, Hinojosa embodies the American dream.
Given those facts, Hinojosa will be enormously influential in turning out the Latino vote in Texas and other states for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028. If a Democratic presidential hopeful can count on California’s 54 electoral votes, as well as Texas’s 40, the path to the White House suddenly becomes far easier for Democrats than for Republicans. And remember, Hinojosa is relatively young, at 52. That means she could be a force in US politics for decades to come.
On Thursday, in an analysis of the Republicans’ drubbing in the midterms, longtime GOP strategist and commentator Karl Rove placed the blame squarely on Trump. Rove, who played a key role in turning Texas into a Republican stronghold, said Trump’s “wild accusations, sloppy insults and over-the-top bragging” distracted from the messaging the Republicans needed. Rove concluded by saying that Trump’s “policies and candidate choices burned the Republican party to the ground.”
Nowhere was Trump’s arson more obvious than in Texas.
Archaeologists have uncovered a remarkably well-preserved 2,000-year-old ritual bathing complex near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount that dates back to the time of Jesus. It was likely used by Jewish pilgrims visiting the ancient holy site, with an expert noting the discovery helps highlight the broader significance of baptism.
The excavation, announced earlier this fall, was carried out by archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The discovery was made in the Ophel, an archaeological area immediately south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, near an ancient entrance known as the Triple Gate.
The complex was built in the early first century A.D. It features three large ritual baths, a plastered pool and a paved plaza, along with an extensive water system.
Located near the Triple Gate, one of the main entrances to the Temple Mount, the complex likely served pilgrims who underwent ritual purification before visiting the Second Temple, researchers said.
Officials described one of the baths as “exceptionally well-preserved,” noting that it stands nearly 14 feet tall and retains its original vaulted stone ceiling and a shaft that once supplied it with water.
“The preservation of a Second Temple-period structure from floor to ceiling is exceedingly rare in Jerusalem, particularly in such a central and historically significant location,” the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said in a statement.
Excavation directors professor Uzi Leibner and professor Orit Peleg-Barkat described the monumental stone structure devoted entirely to ritual purification as “a truly unparalleled phenomenon.”
The archaeologists added, “The complex goes to the heart of our research into the archaeology of Second Temple-period pilgrimage: how the area immediately south of the Temple Mount was designed to accommodate the many pilgrims who came to Jerusalem to visit the Temple, and what activities and rituals took place near its gates.”
The complex also bears evidence of Jerusalem’s destruction by Roman forces in 70 A.D.
Archaeologists found dozens of coins dating to the First Jewish Revolt against Rome on the complex’s floors and among the debris.
Excavations also revealed an even older public purification facility beneath the complex, including another large ritual bath believed to date to the first century B.C.
The earlier structure suggests the site had been used for ritual purification long before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
While Jesus and his disciples could theoretically have visited the bathing complex, there is no evidence in the New Testament that they did, said Candida Moss, the Edward Cadbury professor of theology at the University of Birmingham.
Moss, who specializes in early Christianity, told Fox News Digital the discovery offers insight into the ancient Jewish purification practices that helped shape Christian baptism.
Between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., ritual bathing became increasingly popular among Jews in Judea and Galilee, as evidenced by the growing number of immersion facilities built during that period, Moss said.
She pointed to the Qumran community, associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose residents used ritual baths known as mikva’ot for daily bathing.
Moss said the broader interest in ritual bathing also helps explain the popularity of John the Baptist and the adoption of baptism by Jesus’ followers.
“What it does show is that baptism, a ritual that many people think of as exclusively Christian, emerged out of broader ancient Jewish bathing and purification rituals,” Moss said.
“That, in turn, can help explain the popularity of John the Baptist and the use of baptism by Jesus’ followers.”
The discovery comes amid a series of recent archaeological finds in Israel dating to the time of Jesus.
Earlier this fall, Israeli officials announced the recovery of a remarkably intact 2,000-year-old Jewish ritual bath in Kiryat Gat, about 35 miles southwest of Jerusalem.
Around the same time, archaeologists uncovered a 2,000-year-old aqueduct near Jerusalem that once supplied water to the Second Temple complex.
“Communism is terrible. But democratic socialism is cool.” Good grief. That’s like saying, “Murder and theft are terrible. But if a majority vote to murder and rob me — well, that’s cool.”
The stupidity is too ignorant to excuse any longer. There are no more words.
OK, Democrats and Socialists … It’s Your Show. Provide Unprecedented Prosperity– and give it to us NOW!
So what will Democrats propose in the new Congress? What steps will they recommend — even if President Trump will not sign them — in order to bring about the “affordability” that millions demanded and expected the government to provide them? What prices are considered affordable, and what prices are not? Isn’t affordability a subjective term? Democrats — especially socialists — are all about redistribution. They’re not really concerned with how something is produced. They take production for granted; they take supply for granted. They just get the products (already produced) to the parties they consider most deserving. How will this work? Even in theory? America, unlike past socialist countries, already has a vast, mass productive process underway. Generations of free markets brought this about. Now we’re no longer to be a free market country. Who will do the producing? Simply under orders — from Mamdani, AOC or some equivalent? How will this be codified into law?It should be interesting. Millions of voters out there — most of whom don’t consider themselves “socialist” — want the subjectively defined value of “affordability,” and they want it like yesterday. They want the best of everything (like free markets provided) — and they want it free, cheap and NOW. Better than ever … only much cheaper. Democrats had better deliver.
Socialism stops production. When the equivalent of postal employees take over the work now done by Amazon, grocery chains, clothing chains and countless small businesses, you grind production to a halt. Profit is evil, you say? OK, then. Remove self-interest and try running the 21st century like the post office. Or the highways.
Socialism slows or stops production and lowers the cost of everything for “affordability.” Very soon, the supply dries up. But there’s nothing to incentivize production. Remove the capital from capitalism, and you get your precious socialism. That’s why they’re eating dogs and cats in Venezuela and Cuba. Old Soviet Russia and Maoist China were no better.
WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE VOTING FOR? Fools. Fools, all of you. Affordability will be the least of your concerns.
If the 1940s in America produced the “Greatest Generation,” then what do we make of today’s generation? The people who vote the Bill of Rights into oblivion for the sake of a few pennies less for gas and groceries. The people who cheer calling for the execution of Elon Musk, the only major innovator of the 21st Century so far. The people who cheered Charlie Kirk’s execution.
Whatever we are living in, it’s not the Greatest Generation. I feel no shame or embarrassment. My self-esteem does not come from the time I was born, something I did not choose. Actually, my self-esteem is high for my capacity to see through MOUNDS AND MOUNDS OF CRAP destroying the world when so many appear to be brainwashed or brain-dead. I am grateful to myself, and a few significant others, for enabling the most precious capacity available to any human being : rational thought.
The only thing I feel is tremendously sad that so many better people, in the 1940s and before, once created something so great and special in this nation — something now being squandered by snowflakes and pompous little pricks and loony Karens incapable of appreciating what they’re losing.
If Texas is gone, America is over. Your fellow voting citizens are not your friends. They’re either bad people, or incomprehensibly stupid. In the end, the result is the same. The majority have given a nationwide landslide not to “Democrats” — but to actual totalitarians. It’s impossible to overstate what a disaster this is. Within two or three years, and maybe less, you will see. It’s still too soon for it all to sink in. This is really, really bad.
Texas will be blue forever now. Consider the facts. The new Democratic governor will open the borders and Texas will become the new California, or worse. Migrants will be hooked on free crappy schools, free crappy medical care, guaranteed income pittance, and all the rest. They will vote accordingly. In future presidential races, Texas will be in the Democratic column as assuredly as New York and California. Ohio may also. Georgia likely will. The Carolinas are endangered. DeSantis is right. Given the policies that WILL happen in Texas and Ohio alone, Democrats now have a permanent lock on the White House. It’s really over. Whatever we do going forward, we need a new paradigm. Get out of the past. If you love freedom, you must prepare to fight for it post-America. It’s just reality.
Thirty years ago, a kindred spirit said to me — only half joking — “If we’re going to have socialism in America, can we just get it over with?” For generations, America has gone back and forth, moving towards socialism (Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Obama), and away from it (Reagan, Trump). And at other times, in self-contradictory circles both toward socialism and capitalism at the same time (Eisenhower, Nixon, the Bushes, Bill Clinton).
Now, we have elected a Party that truly will be The Party. Even Republicans (J.D. Vance is the first, after the Bushes) are starting to jump ship to be at the cool kids’ table. In the blink of an eye, Texas — a hugely Republican, economically thriving state just two years ago — is as blue as California and New York. It’s like being in the middle of a dystopian novel. There is nowhere else to flee. Maybe Florida. But even there the margins of the non- Communist, non-Muslim candidates were shockingly small.
That’s it. That’s all that’s left of America. The Republicans didn’t deserve high praise. We all know that. But to vote and cheer for a cross dressing, mentally unstable gang of beheading medieval barbarians united with Stalinesque central planners — not just in New York and San Francisco, but in Dallas Texas and Mississippi and South Carolina and rural Georgia too? It’s truly dystopian.
Leftists (socialists, Democrats, they’re all the same) believe in government. They do not care about human ingenuity, which government stifles through bureacracy and plunder. They do not grasp the power of rational thought which, while not subjective, can only be done independently and in the absence of coercion. They applaud Medicare for All because while socialized medicine always ends in rationing, America is different and American government (run by progressives, of course) will figure it out.
We need not worry about Iran or any other insane regime gaining nuclear weapons, because a progressive government will stop them through negotiations. Peace Corps, social workers — that’s all we need. We don’t need police or military except, of course, to round up enemies of Democracy promoting hate speech. War is a thing of the past, and nuclear fire and radiation will never happen here. Not in America.
Nothing bad will happen here — so long as we have lots and lots of government. $100 trillion in debt. Who cares? Government solves all. We can outlaw fossil fuels by 2030 but no worries — government will take care of it. Solar and electric, run by government. We do not need Elon Musk. Lock him up or even execute him, as some radicalized and newly elected Democrats are calling for.
Rest easy, my friends. Progressives are smarter than all of us. Give them unlimited power. Government is the solution to everything. All will be well.
Sarcasm, of course.
CommieMuslims won big in this election, at least the extent to which there was no fraud. But they will continue to remain at war with (1) reality and (2) the people they claim to want to help. Both socialism and violent religious intolerance kill. These approaches impoverish, starve, degrade, dehumanize and murder. It takes incredibly gullible or ignorant people not to see through this. The support they received is based on fraudulent promises and results for “affordability” and prosperity they cannot deliver, and certainly do not care about delivering. The CommieMuslins are dependent on the ignorance and gullibility of their victims to succeed. You cannot succeed at something if you are weak and simultaneously depend on the weakness or stupidity of your victims. This will end badly for everyone involved.
The three major forces behind the Democratic victory — and the common thread connecting them.
1 Trump’s Personal Corruption & Disregard for Americans [belief, perception]
The overarching voter indictment: Trump appeared more concerned with personal wealth, self-interest and wealthy allies than with the needs of ordinary Americans.
2 Cost of Living — Connected to Corruption
Families struggling with groceries, housing, healthcare and other everyday expenses increasingly viewed the administration’s priorities as disconnected from their economic reality.
3 ICE Raids & Aggressive Immigration Enforcement
Aggressive enforcement generated a backlash among Latino voters and families. This became a particularly significant catalyst for shifting Latino support toward Democrats.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The election was about more than inflation or immigration. It was a referendum on presidential priorities, economic fairness and the perception that government was serving powerful insiders rather than ordinary Americ
The young male voters who helped propel President Donald Trump back into the White House in 2024 delivered a devastating rebuke to Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections, abandoning the GOP amid mounting frustration over the Iran War, economic struggles, and the growing perception that Washington has betrayed the America First agenda.
New exit polling reveals a dramatic political reversal among younger Americans, particularly men under 45, who played a critical role in Trump’s historic comeback just two years ago.
The collapse has raised serious questions about whether Republican leaders understood the coalition that elected Trump in the first place, or whether they simply assumed those voters would remain loyal regardless of what happened in Washington.
According to preliminary exit polling analyzed by Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 shifted a staggering 22 points toward Democrats compared to 2024.
That represented the largest Democratic swing among the voter groups Ruffini examined.
For Republicans, the implications could extend far beyond a single disastrous election.
Young Men Helped Elect Trump in 2024. Now They’re Walking Away.
Trump’s success with young men was one of the defining political developments of the 2024 presidential election.
After years of Republicans struggling to connect with younger voters, Trump broke through with a coalition of working-class men, politically disaffected Millennials, and Generation Z voters who rejected the Democratic establishment.
According to AP VoteCast, Trump captured more than half of male voters under 30 in 2024.
Two years later, that support has evaporated.
The same survey found that just 39 percent of men under 30 supported Republican candidates in House races during the November 3 midterms.
Big Data Poll director Rich Baris told The Epoch Times that the Republican collapse was particularly pronounced among men under 45.
His analysis found steep declines in Trump’s approval among younger male voters, including drops of 24.4 percent among men ages 18 to 29 and 32.8 percent among men ages 30 to 44.
Baris believes the swing among Millennial men could ultimately approach 30 points once voter-validated survey data becomes available.
In 2024, those voters were instrumental in delivering key battleground states to Trump.
In 2026, Democrats successfully turned that advantage against Republicans.
“The Millennial man was very, very crucial in a lot of battleground states,” Baris explained.
This time, he said, “Democrats did it in reverse.”
Iran War Becomes a Political Disaster for the GOP
Perhaps the most politically damaging issue for Republicans was the Iran War, which alienated younger voters who had embraced Trump’s promises to avoid additional foreign conflicts.
Blake Neff, a commentator associated with the Charlie Kirk Show and Turning Point USA, told The Epoch Times that younger conservatives had grown increasingly frustrated with the administration’s direction.
“They were told ‘no new wars’ in ‘24 and then a new war happened, and it hasn’t gone great,” Neff said.
“That is a tough thing to fix. It may not… get fixed in one cycle.”
The backlash illustrates a growing divide between the Republican establishment’s traditional foreign policy priorities and the younger America First voters who expected Trump to pursue a different course.
For many of those voters, opposition to additional foreign wars was not a secondary issue. It was a central reason they supported Trump.
Vice President JD Vance acknowledged the problem in his own post-election analysis.
In a lengthy statement on X following the Republican defeat, Vance described conversations with Republican data analysts who had been trying to understand why the party’s turnout numbers appeared relatively strong despite its disastrous election results.
According to Vance, the problem was not simply that Republican voters stayed home.
A significant number of people who had supported Trump in 2024 actively rejected Republican candidates in 2026.
Among the concerns identified by those voters were the Iran War and America’s relationship with Israel.
The vice president’s assessment reinforced what independent pollsters had been warning for months: the Republican Party was losing voters who had previously believed Trump represented a break from Washington’s foreign policy establishment.
Younger Voters Say Washington Failed to Deliver Economic Relief
Foreign policy was only part of the problem.
The economic frustrations that helped propel Trump to victory in 2024 have continued to weigh heavily on younger Americans.
Housing affordability, grocery prices, inflation, and the rising cost of everyday life emerged as major sources of discontent.
That sentiment represents a significant challenge for Republican leaders who continue to embrace the party’s longstanding foreign policy consensus.
For a generation of voters drawn to Trump’s America First message, the question of whether Washington prioritizes American interests over foreign commitments has become a defining political issue.
The 2026 election suggests that those concerns can no longer be dismissed without potentially serious electoral consequences.
Republican Warnings Went Unheeded
The collapse did not arrive without warning.
Matthew Williams, a 30-year-old conservative YouTuber known as The Prudentialist, had warned ahead of the election that Republicans risked losing the younger male voters who helped elect Trump.
Williams made those concerns known during the Republican Midterm Convention in Texas, months before voters delivered their verdict.
After the November 3 defeat, Williams told The Epoch Times that Republicans had failed to respond adequately to the warning signs.
Asked whether the party had ignored an increasingly obvious political shift, he replied, “I’d say so.”
Williams himself voted straight-ticket Republican, illustrating that the criticism was not confined to Democrats or voters who had never supported the GOP.
It was also coming from within the conservative movement.
Can Republicans Win Back the America First Generation?
Despite the scale of the Democratic gains, some analysts believe the shift among younger voters may prove temporary.
Lee argued that younger Americans remain deeply skeptical of established political institutions and are unlikely to develop permanent loyalty to either major party.
“You could buy them for one election, but you can’t own them,” he said.
“I think Democrats have been given a short leash to govern for the next two years.”
That assessment offers Republicans a potential path back, but also a warning.
The young men who helped elect Trump in 2024 did not necessarily become committed Democrats in 2026. Many appear to have become disillusioned with a Republican Party they believed would deliver economic relief, avoid foreign entanglements, and challenge the political establishment.
The distinction matters.
Republicans may be able to regain those voters, but doing so will likely require more than campaign slogans, celebrity endorsements, or appeals to party loyalty.
The GOP now faces a fundamental question about the future of its coalition.
Can Republican leaders reconnect with the younger America First voters who helped return Trump to the White House, or has Washington squandered one of the most important political realignments in modern American history?
The 2026 midterms delivered a warning that Republican leaders can no longer afford to ignore.
Whatever happened to the republic we knew growing up and well into our adult years? We had political disagreements, some of them quite heated. But what we’re living through today, thanks to deranged Democrats, is not only unfamiliar, it is catastrophic unless the left comes to its senses.
We often see charges from the political right that Democrats, socialists, and progressives want those who refuse to surrender to their agenda dead. Maybe it’s an overstatement. But when we see survey results that clearly show there is an uncontrolled sickness, a pandemic of depravity, we think maybe it’s more truth than an alarmist reaction.
A September poll asked 683 Democratic voters how they would feel if they “woke up tomorrow morning and saw the following news headlines.” The Center for Strategic Politics found that nearly nine in 10 (86%) said they would have a positive feeling if the headlines told them “President Donald Trump has been impeached and convicted by both houses of Congress and has been removed from office.”
Not surprising, yet still somewhat chilling.
But things get worse.
Fifty-six percent said they’d be happy learning that Trump had died overnight in his sleep, while 84% would be pleased if the 25th Amendment had been used to declare Trump “unfit by a majority of his Cabinet and removed from office.” Almost 60% would be delighted if a military coup had ousted Trump.
Some don’t need polls to express their distemper. They have forums that feed the Democrat-progressive-socialist ecosystem. Podcasters Jennifer Welch, “a darling of the liberal media” whose program is “a must-stop destination for any Democrat with lofty political ambitions,” and Angie Sullivan laughed hysterically for almost 30 seconds at the thought of “digging up Charlie Kirk” and murdering him again.
The best response to this that we’ve seen on social media noted that “The correlation between people who have ‘hate has no home here’ signs in their yard and agree with these ladies is probably close to 100%.”
An apology was issued, but it’s the sort that comes about only when the apologists are trying to do damage control, not when there is true remorse. We can say this with confidence because we know, as does anyone paying attention, that the left supports political violence at roughly twice the rate of the right.
The violent, retribution-driven left has a number of targets it desperately wants to ruin, imprison, and, if we’re reading the twisted implications correctly, in some cases execute. The list, of course, starts with President Donald Trump and includes Trump family members, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, various White House officials, Elon Musk, business executives who have supported the president, and even Republican voters, whom one just-elected Democrat believes belong in concentration camps — the sort with the gas ovens that facilitated the Holocaust. The American “Robespierres with guillotines” want blood, both symbolic and literal.
It’s sickening and disheartening to know that people have become so deeply disturbed and lost their humanity. How did a major portion of our citizenry become so mentally deranged?
That’s one of the bigger questions of our time, but we should also be asking ourselves: How do we cool the fever and unwind the rage? The answer, and our willingness to correct the course, will determine if we can keep our republic and preserve Western civilization.
If you want to know why Millennials and Gen-Z have coined the phrase, “OK, boomer,” let’s consider the predicament that our kids and grandkids are in today.
Just a generation or two ago, Americans believed that if you worked hard, saved your money, behaved responsibly, and avoided doing something incredibly stupid or going to jail, you might eventually be able to buy a house. After the Second World War, millions of relatively affordable houses went up across America, helped by suburban expansion, automobiles, and eventually the Interstate Highway System. For many boomers, the life they knew included one working parent, larger families, stronger communities, widely available public education, safe neighborhoods, and a decent house in which to raise a family. The middle class was like a vast ocean. These opportunities were not available to everyone. Black Americans were still struggling for equality, and discrimination denied many families the opportunities others took for granted. Yet the early 1960s also carried a sense of hope, despite all the obstacles.
In those days, to own a home, you generally did not need a hedge fund, a trust fund, or a father who happened to own half of Beverly Hills. Most people needed a decent job, a little discipline, and perhaps a spouse who shared the same ambitions and helped support the effort. SNIP>>>
According to a 2024 analysis of newly constructed housing, only 16 percent of households in Washington State could afford the median-priced newly built home. In Massachusetts, it was 14 percent. Montana, a state with more open land than it knows what to do with, came in at 18 percent. South Carolina was also at 18 percent, Illinois at 23 percent, Alabama at 25 percent, and Nebraska at 27 percent.
Think about that. In the richest country in the world, roughly six out of ten households lack the income to qualify for a mortgage on the median-priced existing house under conventional financing assumptions.
So, if you want to know why Millennials and Gen-Z have coined the phrase, “OK, boomer,” let’s consider the predicament that our kids and grandkids are in today. We see a lot of couples, married or unmarried, who both work jobs and can pay the rent, but cannot possibly assemble a six-figure down payment. Meanwhile, Billy the Boomer across the street bought his house in 1975, pays a pittance or nothing for a mortgage, and has seen the value of his home rise from $50,000 or so to over a million bucks. Then he lectures the Gen-Z couple about fiscal responsibility or recounts how hard life was when they were a young married couple. Meanwhile, many of these same boomers have long disappeared to somewhere warm with their bags of cash by the time couples starting out can even think about having children. If only the couple had the foresight to have been born in 1957.
And we wonder why socialism is making a comeback. Socialism is an insidious political theory, and its ethics are atrocious. It was responsible for millions upon millions of deaths in the 20th century and untold misery. Yet, the current arrangement has produced an understandable reaction in millennials and Gen Z along the lines of, “Let’s get rid of these people and take their shit.”
This is because, in the midst of our democracy, we are watching the potential emergence of a new landed gentry and a permanent renter class. We are not yet living under feudalism. But when ownership increasingly determines who accumulates wealth, who can borrow against it, who passes it to children, and who has the loudest voice at city hall, the resemblance to a hereditary class system becomes difficult to ignore.
The sneaky manner in which this has transpired makes it all the worse. In the old aristocracies, land passed from one generation to the next. In our more democratic arrangement, wealth can pass through inheritance, parental down-payment assistance, and accumulated home equity. We have not abolished inherited advantage. We have simply provided it with a mortgage calculator and a real estate agent.
And the renter gets less and less. He or she pays the landlord each month, helps finance someone else’s asset, and tries to save what remains. Good luck with that. Rising rents make the down payment a ball-buster, and rising home prices move the finish line astronomically each year.
Here are some numbers that deserve attention. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported that in 2024, 22.7 million renter households—roughly 49 percent—spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities. Of those, 12.1 million spent more than half. How exactly is a family supposed to build a down payment while surrendering half its income to remain housed?
Nor is this merely a California problem. It’s spread everywhere like locusts. Census-based 2024 figures show the share of renter households paying at least 30 percent of income for rent and utilities was 48.3 percent in Washington, 45.4 percent in Illinois, 41.6 percent in Alabama, 49.4 percent in Massachusetts, 46.9 percent in South Carolina, 43.5 percent in Nebraska, and yes, even 38.6 percent in Montana.
Our kids and grandkids want to vomit when they hear that America is the richest country on earth. Politicians celebrate the stock market as if it comes even close to helping Main Street. No, it doesn’t. Even though economists assure us that the aggregate numbers are splendid, wealth has not yet reached our working class or even our college graduates on Main Street.
And when it comes to working-class jobs, the whole matter gets a lot worse. For much of the twentieth century, an American without an advanced degree could find steady work in a factory or skilled trade, raise children, and purchase a modest home. The work could be dangerous, as in mining or heavy industry, but at least it existed on a scale that gave whole towns an economic foundation. Then we began dismantling that foundation because Bruno had an extra space in his four-car garage for a sports car, so we sent the jobs to Malaysia.
In June 1979, American manufacturing employed 19.6 million people. By June 2019, it employed 12.8 million, a loss of roughly 6.7 million jobs. A lot of the replacement jobs never paid what the original jobs did, nor did they offer security. The benefits of cheaper goods were there, but they benefited mostly the affluent classes who could afford to buy stuff, hold it for a few years, and then throw it away and buy another. It benefited shareholders. It benefited CEOs who now made astronomically more than anyone else in the company. But the losses were borne by the communities that had previously made the goods, and America’s sense of morality went in the shitter. Smug progressives kicked the working class out of the Democratic Party and told them to learn coding. Smug conservatives announced that their time had passed and it was time to move on. Perhaps AI will have the last laugh when it comes to these people, and we can one day tell the coders to learn welding.
Even lower-wage work became a political football. Some asshole announced that these were “jobs Americans won’t do,” as though wages, working conditions, and enforcement of labor laws had nothing to do with the matter. Neil from Brentwood was delighted that someone would trim his hedges cheaply; whether the worker could afford to live anywhere near Brentwood was apparently a separate question. Our “environmentalist friends” objected to industry to “save the earth,” and anything like a mine or steel mill was replaced with a charming selection of coffee shops and Lululemon. Forget that the people they had pushed out had actually built the fucking town. All these new inhabitants had to do to appease their guilt was recycle and hang a rainbow flag up in the shop. Meanwhile, the talking heads on Fox Business and CNBC evaluate fiscal health by how every little thing affects the stock market and their own personal portfolios. A national debt approaching $40 trillion is just a data point. Unemployment and out-of-control housing prices are data points that shareholders merely need to evaluate at their quarterly get-togethers with their financial advisers.
The trouble is not only prices. It is also the structure of local political power. Forget affordable housing or starter homes along the lines of what the boomers benefited from when they were children. Now, it’s all about preservation and the environment. The existing owners have all the power. They attend zoning hearings, know the council members, and often have every reason to resist additional housing. They speak eloquently about preserving neighborhood character. Sometimes they are right: water, infrastructure, wildfire exposure, and environmental constraints are genuine. Sometimes, however, protecting character in actuality means protecting scarcity—or the value of the house they already own.
The families pushed can’t protest. The families that would have occupied the unbuilt duplex cannot show up to protest. It has no address in town, no vote in the local election, and no seat on the planning commission. It is easy enough to ignore constituents who do not yet exist.
And then, in addition to how much of a couple’s income is gobbled up by housing, there are the taxes. The ordinary worker pays income and payroll taxes, sales taxes, and, directly or through rent, property taxes. In some places, they even encounter taxes on certain personal property. What bullshit. Each level of government has its own explanation for why it needs a little more. In the end, the fledgling family is left to discover that the little additions have become a substantial subtraction.
And we are assured, of course, that every last dollar is being spent with wisdom and restraint. While the people in charge tell us to tighten our belts, the Congressional Budget Office reported a federal deficit of approximately $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025, leaving future taxpayers the bill and current taxpayers the interest.
At the state and local level, taxpayers are entitled to ask what they receive in exchange for their money. Are the roads maintained? Do the schools teach? Are permits processed in a reasonable time? Is anyone checking whether public contracts deliver what was purchased? The question is not whether government should exist. It is whether government can remember whom it works for.
Our political and financial commentators seem perpetually astonished that people are unhappy. The talking heads on Fox Business can point to a strong economic indicator and announce that everything is going splendidly. Perhaps it is, from the vantage point of someone with substantial assets. But a stock-market rally benefits fewer and fewer people and does not materialize into a six-figure down payment. I am less interested in the address of the commentator’s view of things than in the distance between the economy he describes and the one his audience inhabits.
Both parties have their favorite speeches about opportunity. One promises market freedom while defending rules that keep newcomers out. The other promises affordability while discovering that almost every actual building proposal offends somebody. Between the speeches and the hearings, the young family is invited to remain patient. Perhaps until retirement. Isn’t it all a miracle?
And this is where the matter becomes larger than housing policy. Ownership has long given Americans a stake in their communities and a practical means of accumulating wealth. If the path to ownership narrows, the social distance between people who own appreciating assets and people who pay to use them widens. We have moved from a democracy of independent citizens to a democracy of landlords and tenants—not by legal fiat, but by economic circumstance.
In small towns across the West, civic leaders tell me they want young families, businesses, teachers, tradespeople, and volunteers. Yet, they also want their communities to remain exactly as they were yesterday, only with Starbucks. Consider Nevada City, California, where proposals involving the reopening of historic mining operations have generated fierce arguments about jobs, environmental risks, and the future of the community. I want to know who gets to decide whether a working town remains a working town—and whether the people who might have taken those jobs are even in the room. Since when do small-minded, small-town politicians get to say no to the economic opportunity of large segments of their town because they want it to look like a Hallmark movie?
When it comes to creating jobs and the opportunities for affordable housing, we should be mindful of leaving something for the next generation except a pile of shit on the sidewalk. Local governments should conform to citizen demands for a serious accounting of land-use rules, permitting delays, infrastructure finance, construction costs, starter-home supply, and the obvious political incentives that protect existing owners. Our out-of-touch politicians, many of whom seem considerably more comfortable with donors than with wage earners, should be asking themselves whether wages and housing costs have become so detached that the ordinary American can no longer expect ownership through work and thrift.
It is no mystery why young Americans are angry and no longer believe capitalism is working for them. Because it isn’t. Economists who cling to laissez-faire theory while the economic underpinnings of our democracy shift toward oligarchy ought to spend less time lecturing and more time listening. We do not need to move to some hare-brained Marxist economic theory. But we do need to make capitalism work for democracy. That requires thinking about the next guy, the next generation, and shifting strategy accordingly so the greatest number of our citizens can benefit from the freedom that capitalism brings.
The Democrats seem hopelessly lost in a sea of Marxism and critical theory. That’s their problem. But the Republicans have their own issues. Ever since Lincoln was shot, Republicans have had to tussle with Northeastern blowhards who want to return to some kind of Federalist dream of an aristocracy that lords over the poor. The electoral bitch slap that we conservatives experienced on Tuesday is an opportunity for us to get our act together. There is a further opportunity for boomers to try to redress the seemingly intractable problems we have helped create: massive debt, wealth concentration, crap schools, lower standards, and the denial of the next few generations of the privilege of enjoying homeownership, safe neighborhoods, and excellent schools. Any political party that wants to be taken seriously should start by explaining what it will actually do about this.
Americans are not asking to be promised a mansion, a government check, or a guaranteed return on investment. They are asking whether honest work, thrift, and a reasonable measure of good judgment can still purchase a measure of independence. That was once a central promise of the country. It would be a peculiar achievement to lose it while the people in charge congratulate themselves on record prosperity.
We can celebrate our national wealth until the balloons deflate. But the more revealing question is whether a nurse, teacher, mechanic, or young couple can acquire a small piece of the country whose prosperity they help create.
If the answer increasingly depends on whether their parents are already landowners, we should stop congratulating ourselves on having abolished the landed aristocracy. We have simply given it a new form.
American Greatness
This content originally appeared on ABSTRACTRUTH Substack.
