Opinion Democratic blue wave that hit America was a tsunami

For weeks leading up to the November 3 general midterm elections, polls and pundits pointed to a major blue Democratic tidal wave surfacing on the horizon. However, what happened last Tuesday was a Democratic hurricane, or some refer to it as a tsunami. It was stunning and staggering. It completely changed the political landscape in America. It was a historic change of direction for our nation.

The numbers are staggering and devastating for the Republican Party. It will be decades before the GOP can recover from the devastation. The loss of the House of Representatives was expected. The tea leaves portended that the Democrats would take the House. The Republican majority was razor-thin, and history was on the side of the party that lost the White House two years earlier.

The opposition party wins seats in the off year after a presidential election. The Democrats were expected to pick up 15 to 18 seats in the House of Representatives, but the actual number of seats that flipped to the Democratic Party was closer to 45 or more. The Democratic majority will be in the neighborhood of 255 seats or more. This will give the Democrats at least a 75-seat majority over the Republicans, which will be hard to overcome in 2028 and probably for the foreseeable future.

The real dagger in the heart was the annihilation of the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate is where the most power rests in our democracy.

Currently, the Senate has 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. The Democratic November 3 tidal wave transferred complete power to the Democrats. There will probably be 56 Democrats and 44 Republicans. Folks, this is a dramatic and historic transition. The power to change public policy in this country rests in Congress and especially in the august U.S. Senate. The Democratic tsunami took out red-state senators throughout the country. It drove a dagger into hardcore red Republican states in America, like Texas, Kansas, South Carolina, Iowa, North Carolina and even Alaska and Mississippi.

President Ronald Reagan, our most popular Republican president in history, would remark there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the national Republican Party and the national Democratic Party. As Reagan would say today, there truly is a difference in the two parties.

Folks, I am here to tell you the national Democratic Party is truly liberal, and the national Republican Party is extremely conservative. You are going to see major changes in Washington with this Democratic takeover of Congress.

The most important differences or accomplishments that a president can effect during their tenure and can claim as a legacy are their appointments to the federal courts and, more importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the ability to start and win a war.

Donald Trump successfully added three members of the U.S. Supreme Court during his first administration. His appointments changed the philosophical tint of this omnipotent panel from liberal to conservative. He could not have accomplished this coup if he had not had a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. Senators, like our own Richard Shelby, were instrumental in confirming these judges. Shelby is responsible for the selection and confirmation of most of the current sitting U.S. federal judges in Alabama. The Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate will now thwart Trump’s appointments to any federal judgeship for the remaining two years in office.

Thus, Trump will be relegated to being an emasculated figurehead lame duck for the next two years. He will also be forbidden from starting any more wars. Congress controls the purse strings, and it will no longer allow Trump to pay for any more meaningless and costly wars.

Trump’s war in Iran was the coup de grace to the end of his reign. The Iran war and the subsequent escalated costs of gas and diesel fuel, which caused the rise in prices of groceries and all other items, are what spurred this historic shifting in partisan power.

Make no mistake about it, this historic Democratic tsunami was a referendum on one Donald Trump. History will record his legacy as being a clown prince who took the Republican Party off a cliff that will take decades to recover from, if ever.

U.S. Senate terms are for six years.

See you next week.