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11 hours ago
Opinion|‘There’s No Juice Left to Squeeze From MAGA’
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/14/opinion/midterm-elections-democrats-republicans-whats-next.html
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The Opinions
More than a week after the blue wave, what comes next for both parties?
Nov. 14, 2026, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Robert SiegelE.J. Dionne Jr. and Timothy P. Carney
Produced by Vishakha Darbha
Video
‘There’s No Juice Left to Squeeze From MAGA’
The midterms last week upended assumptions about where — and how — both political parties can win. So what comes next? The Opinion contributor Robert Siegel joins the contributing writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the senior political columnist for The Washington Examiner, Tim Carney, to debate whether MAGA can outlast Donald Trump and what Democrats can do with their new power.
‘There’s No Juice Left to Squeeze From MAGA’
More than a week after the blue wave, what comes next for both parties?
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Robert Siegel: Since the three of us last talked, the political map of America has been redrawn. Assumptions about which party can win which state have been thrown out, and past speculation about the future has been replaced with fresh speculation about the future. And before we dig into some of the big questions that arose from the 2026 elections, I’d like to hear, briefly, from each of us about what impression of the election sticks in the mind?
What sums up what’s happened most vividly for you? Tim?
Tim Carney: For me, it’s proof that the Donald Trump realignment that we first started to see in 2016 was not really a partisan realignment, but an emergence of what I call “the Trumpy vote.” If you look at the counties in Ohio, for instance, that swung most from Mitt Romney to Trump — the places where they’re not necessarily conservative Republicans, but they were Trump voters — those Trumpy counties, those were the counties that had the biggest blue wave. Same thing happened — I looked precinct by precinct level — in Lower Bucks County, the blue collar part right outside of Philadelphia.
Siegel: In Pennsylvania.
Carney: In Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia. Trump came in and won these, what Sean Trende used to call, “the missing white voter.” Those guys, sons of former factory workers, those are the precincts that swung back to give Democrats a House seat, the State Senate, that sort of thing. So I don’t know whether it’s a matter of Trump voters staying home, or what seems more likely from the numbers so far, that the Trump voter was never a conservative, never a Republican, and now he just voted Democrat.
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