'Is Republican Party able to pivot away from MAGA movement, or will it sputter forward leaderless?'

We can now bring in Ian Reifowitz, SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY Empire State University. Thank you very much for joining us on the program. What does this historic defeat for Republicans suggest to you? Well, it's an absolute and complete repudiation of Donald Trump. This is at least as severe a defeat for Republicans as the 2006 repudiation of George W. Bush. Which was followed two years later by Barack Obama's landslide win and Democrats winning 60 Senate seats. Democrats winning in Texas, governor and Senate. Kansas looks like governor as well as Senate, winning the US Senate seat from South Carolina. These are results we have not seen. Democrats haven't sent a senator from Kansas in almost 100 years. This is the end of Donald Trump's dominance of American politics. We have seen blatant corruption during the first two years of Donald Trump's second term in office. You know, we think about the gift of Air Force One from Qatar, crypto deals for his family. Did this also weigh on voters' concerns, or was it just about the cost of living? I mean, you'd have to interview every voter in the country to ask, but I have to think it matters. I think the economy was at the front of the minds of the people in terms of whether that's more important than the corruption. I think it is. I think the corruption mattered, though, because the corruption was so severe that it's one of the things that broke through. Even though Donald Trump has had a long and checkered history, the corruption was something We haven't seen from a White House really ever, or at least not in the last 100 years, you have to go back to Warren G. Harding in the 1920s. And even that was corruption that surrounded him. It wasn't his corruption. Donald Trump has been making billions. People know that they resent it when they can't afford to pay to fill up their gas. And they see that Donald Trump is making money off the presidency. It's really unprecedented. Progressive candidates also did win substantially in this election. If we think about the Democratic from within the Democratic Party, people like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan who have been calling on investing in U.S. education, in U.S. health care, stop funding foreign wars. Are they America first in their own way? These these candidates? Well, that was a really interesting question people had, right? Whether progressives or moderate Democrats would perform better. So if you look at the number. In states where you had a Democrat running for governor and U.S. Senate, and there were a number of them, with one being progressive and one being moderate, Michigan is the case, Maine is the case, and there are some others, the progressive did underperform the moderate, but only by one or two points, and either both won or both lost, so it's not like the progressive lost and the moderate won, and it was very consistent across all the states, one or two points. This is true even in Michigan. Even though in Michigan, El-Sayed, a primary rival, endorsed the Republican, he didn't pay any bigger penalty than other progressives. He also only underperformed the moderate by two points. And of course, Israel was a major issue there, and it wasn't in Texas, where the Texas governor, Gina Hinojosa, also underperformed the moderate, but again, only by two points. So it was very, very consistent, and it wasn't a huge penalty for progressives or El-Sayed, Ian, you know that Donald Trump is very, he's busy with these vanity projects, you know, building the ballroom, building that arch in D.C. See, um... He even used his final speech before the election day to stand in front of the reflecting pool and talk about his efforts to clean up the... I'm just curious, how are Democrats going to deal with this president who seems to be out of touch, not interested in governing? He's starting wars he doesn't know how to get out of. What do you think is going to happen? I mean, that's a great question. I did read that Trump accepted the results and says he wants to work with Democrats. You know, somebody who's more interested in the reflecting pool than in governing is a difficult person to deal with. I think Democrats will pick their spots. They'll try to find areas where they think. They can get some kind of approval from him. There was a big housing bill passed in the last session, in the current session, I guess, on a bipartisan basis. Trump didn't seem to like the bill very much, but he didn't veto it. So maybe there's other examples like that. You know, it's very difficult to know what Donald Trump is going to think or do from one day to the next. They don't really have any control over his foreign policy, the way the Constitution is set up, and more because of the way the courts are not reining in presidents like Trump who go outside the bounds of the Constitution or push the bounds of the Constitution. There are probably going to be some small areas. Maybe Donald Trump likes the idea of winning and being able to say, oh, I got this passed. I got that passed. Maybe Democrats can use that to their advantage. So what happens to the MAGA movement? Because who takes the mantle from Donald Trump, who's turned out to be quite toxic here? Yeah, that's the other great question. J.D. Vance is positioned as his vice president. As I said, when George W. Bush party was badly defeated in 06, he basically stepped aside and his party was defeated in 2008. I don't see how a Trump legacy party is going to win in 2028 unless something very different happens in the In the next 24 months. But if J.D. Vance is the nominee, he can't run against Donald Trump, just as Kamala Harris couldn't run against or didn't run against Joe Biden. So that's really the question going forward. Is the Republican Party able to pivot away from the MAGA movement, or will it sort of sputter forward leaderless? Donald Trump knows how to get those MAGA, I don't even want to say issues, but more like attitudes across. I don't think there's anybody else who can do it. The way he did, I think J.D. Vance is going to try. I just think that Donald Trump, his ego will not allow him to surrender the reins of the movement, even if it's a movement that is going to prove to be a loser in upcoming elections. At least as long as Donald Trump's alive, he's going to try to control this party. Indeed, Ian, we'll see what happens. Thank you very much for joining us on the program today. Ian Blythewitz there. Thank you.