It was a night when the Democrats flipped Texas and — wait for it — South Carolina.
South Carolina. Let that sink in.
I’ve been saying all week and really for 10 years that the key to the Trump years has not been geopolitics, the culture wars, finance, technology or even whites becoming a majority-minority. The keys are psychology and philosophy.
President Donald J. Trump is a narcissist who gave his MAGA followers and his cabinet of curiosities enablers the license to be cruel and incompetent. You can withstand cruelty, believe it or not. You can’t withstand incompetence. Some hard examples from my own life: I paid $20 today for gas that used to cost me half that. I paid a $27 tariff on a $32 statuette from Spain. And I wasted an hour in the post office today rewrapping packages, because the U.S. Postal Service now requires you to remove all previous mailing labels — you can’t paste over them — because the package may explode on the plane. Huh?
Tonight, however, marked the return of smarts. The Democrats’ team had a deep bench that played to each individual state. They understood, at last, that what plays in Michigan doesn’t play in Texas and vice versa.
But they got a real boost from Trump’s narcissism and its myopia. A simple example: Trump could’ve kept John Cornyn in Texas as a safety senator. But Cornyn wasn’t MAGA enough, so he went with Ken Paxton, a dreadful candidate. His Dem rival, James Talarico, was a dream for that state, a Presbyterian seminarian with a slightly devilish sense of humor. But he got an assist from Paxton.
Similarly, Trump though the late Lindsay Graham’s sister, Darline, would be a shoo-in for his former Senate seat in South Carolina, even though she was ignorant of foreign policy and proudly so. But, as we’ve learned, ignorance is arrogance. Darline went down to Annie Andrews.
Karma also came for the even more arrogant Vivek Ramaswamy and his hateful ad as he lost the Ohio governor’s race to Amy Acton, M.D. (Gee, maybe Ramaswamy can go on the pro tennis tour.)
There will be more of a post mortem here in the days to come. But let me end by saying that the Dems need to understand that this isn’t about them. It’s about the people. We are, in the words of one man, sick and tired of being sick and tired. The country has long been the victim of narcissistic abuse, and we have had enough.
What does that mean for Dems: It means it can’t be business as usual. I’m not talking impeachment. But I do think former President Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is right: Follow the money. Take Trump on regarding the Iran War — now. That means you Mr. Future Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and you future Majority Leader Chuck Shumer. No more cool cats and namby-pamby.
A lot of courageous Democrats around the country gave us this victory. The longtime Democratic leaders need to keep faith with them. Keep the faith — and spread it.