Rep. Andy “It’s Not A Sin To Be White’’ Barr’s greatest fear has come to pass — we have lost our country.
And, to Andy’s dismay, it’s the American people who did the deed.
Barr, R-Lexington, who waged a successful campaign for the U.S Senate to replace the retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, on Tuesday, warned ominously back in September of a possible Democratic takeover of the upper chamber.
Barr said, according to the Appalachian News-Express. “…if we lose the Senate, we will lose our country, That is what is at stake.”
And, yeah boy, howdy, did they lose it. In spades.
Barr’s Republicans could only watch while Democrats flipped seven seats on Tuesday with two more, Mississippi and Alaska, pending, thus forfeiting control of the chamber beginning with the 120th Congress next year.
That’s only part of the story. Democrats have regained control of the House by a significant margin and now hold the majority of governorships. Several state Houses have followed suit.
So Andy will have a whole bunch of new playmates when he meanders back to D.C. in December, including a few self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists and the first Muslim, Abdul El-Sayed, of Michigan, to enter the august upper chamber.
It was, in the parlance, a good, old-fashioned butt-kicking. And the effects of that swat to the GOP’s rear end will be felt for some time to come.
Kentucky played a small role in the blue tsunami. Democrat Zach Dembo flipped the seat currently held by Barr in the 6th Congressional District, defeating Republican Ralph Alvarado by seven points for a seat that has been held by Republicans with increasing margins since 2012.
Dembo’s win counts toward the new Democratic majority in the lower chamber, with the party claiming 253 seats, according to the Associated Press, as of Thursday night with 27 races yet to be called. Democrats seem headed for the biggest majority in the House in more than 20 years.
And the man primarily responsible for, at least in Andy’s mind, losing the country is none other than his old pal, Republican President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, who urged voters to pretend that he was on the ballot this go-round and vote for Republicans.
You can see the results.
Despite all of his claims to the contrary, this election was about Donald J. Trump, with Republican lawmakers finding themselves caught in a crossfire. There were some ridiculously lousy candidates on the GOP side — Ken Paxton in Texas and Darline Graham in South Carolina come immediately to mind — but most of those that hit the skids were standard issue Republicans who wound up paying the price for Trump’s atrocious mismanagement of the federal government.
“Bad policy, bad character make bad politics: erratic tariffs, impulsive Iran war, blanket pardons, apparent corruption, weaponized justice, ICE brutality, mountainous deficits, hiding Epstein, abandoning allies and coddling enemies.’’
That statement pretty much defines Trump and his administration. It doesn’t come from me. That’s Mitt Romney, the most recent Republican standard bearer before Trump, who lost to Barak Obama in 2012. That’s just a short list of the disasters that have befallen the country under Trump’s guidance and he still has two years to go despite the sudden Democratic surge.
Millions of words will be written about these results, providing various rationales for Trump’s fall from grace. There’s certainly plenty of reasons in play. But one factor, I believe, is being underemphasized thus far in the political discourse:
The people of the United States have simply grown embarrassed by Trump and they want him gone.
They realize they made a terrible mistake two years ago, Tuesday’s results validate that, and, to remedy the ongoing tragedy, voters responded in the only manner at hand — they took it out on the members of his party
To put it bluntly, the people of the United States of America are sick of Trump’s…stuff. (I’d be even blunter by using the most appropriate word but my editors frown on it.) And, as often is the case with Trump, other people paid the price.
There is simply nothing about Trump to make the nation proud. It is as if the good people of America, in their infinite wisdom, chose Curly Howard bestowed with the conscience of Josef Stalin, to lead the free world.
Yes, it’s obviously true Trump has made mincemeat of people’s personal economy — inflation is rising faster than wage growth, with Trump characterizing the diminished purchasing power as a “hoax.’’ And folks are having to take out a second mortgage just to fill the car tank with gas (that’s called hyperbole to make a point, for those keeping score at home).
But it’s reasonable to conclude, given the results, that after witnessing Trump’s vaudeville routine for 22 months people rose from their couches and simultaneously declared “Enough!’’
We’re talking here about a sociopath, a first-class bore who displays not even a smidgen of class. (He has redecorated the White House in a style reminiscent of a 19th Century Russian bordello.) The man is intentionally cruel, condescending and crass. He denigrates various groups of people, like Haitians and Somalians, thus taking racism to a whole new level. And there’s the outrageous self-aggrandizement, like dissing Norway because he hasn’t been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gee, I wonder why.
And he recently, for no apparent reason, has taken to ogling the backsides of various men and then providing the public with his personal assessment.
Does that sound like a president to you? To make it worse, despite his continued efforts at humor, he’s really not very funny. An Eddie Murphy he’s not. He has humiliated this nation and voters have showed they don’t like it.
The most recent poll on Trump’s job approval, from Economist/YouGov, places it at 38 percent, which explains GOP failures on Nov. 3. But even given the public disfavor for the Trump administration, the election results were shocking.
While some (ahem) predicted a much more modest outcome for Democrats (you see, I didn’t actually write that column saying such last week, must have been some AI thing slipped into my usual space) Democrats won in places unseen in years and by unheard of margins. As of this writing, Democrats could experience an even greater success in Mississippi and Alaska and the remaining House races that are outstanding.
In Texas, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1993, Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton by 12 points. It didn’t hurt that Talarico ran against a mini-Trump, Paxton, who, had he been elected, would have been the biggest grifter in all of DC. But even beyond all that, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott by seven points, Democrats assumed control of the state House for the first time in more than two decades.
It’s premature for Democrats to claim a generational shift. There are plenty of red pockets where, given the opportunity without Trump, that will surely return to their conservative ways.
It’ll be up to the new majority to achieve the results that have evaded Trump, starting with improved affordability, ending the useless war in Iran and not permitting itself to succumb to diversions like a ballroom, a triumphal arch, or a golf course.