Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, November 13, 2026

We tend to overuse the phrase “perfect storm,” but we just witnessed one following the Midterm Elections.

The tempest started on the South Carolina coast and soon swelled into a Blue Wave which would sweep into safe southern Republican strongholds, then track north into the Midwest from Iowa to Kansas, Michigan and Ohio.

The Democrat storm surge lashed across Texas too toppling a presumed safe Republican red state with a bizarre Senate candidate, James Talarico.

Only Florida was spared albeit with dangerously closer margins of Republican victories than many would wish to assume.

The pundits and gloating major media blame President Donald Trump for the electoral fiasco, especially in some of the states and places which were central to his amazing election victory just two years ago.

South Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas; Flipped by the Democrats because of poor GOP candidates as in South Carolina and Texas and yes, under motivated Republican voter turnout.

Iran War

The U.S./Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran raises a singular concern. Even Vice President JD Vance placed the electoral loss on events in the Middle East. Indeed the lightning attacks on Iran were successful in destroying Teheran’s near breakout-nuclear bomb capability and smashed the pillars of Teheran’s theocratic regime.

The war then muddled on and that’s been the mistake; The truce and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) allowed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to regroup. But to make Iran seem like a Mideast Vietnam or even Iraq is sheer nonsense.

Thus, after a massive American investment in blood and treasure to topple the Ayatollahs, do we desert the oppressed people of Iran who put their hope in us? Do we willfully walk away from one of the Mid East’s most strategic countries?

Still the downstream danger from the Iran war hasn’t been fighting as much as supply line disruptions in fertilizer, fuel and supply through the Strait of Hormuz. This in turn has led to higher American energy prices; especially for gasoline and diesel, the lifeblood of trucking transport and agriculture.

American drivers will not stand for high gasoline costs; Farmers cannot afford $6+ diesel prices and fertilizer costs. Now think about the electoral map: Iowa, Kansas, Texas and North Carolina.

The all-knowing pundit class were right to say that the high cost of energy, resulting from the Iran war (and Ukraine too by the way for fertilizer) became the president’s Achilles heel.

Affordability has been a powerful talisman for the Democrats. It shines, glitters and distracts from a robust U.S. economy showing vibrant GDP and job growth.

But consider this: California’s gasoline prices have been high for more than a decade, long before Trump, and the same Democrat party still keeps winning elections in the once Golden State.

A Democrat beat conservative Steve Hilton for Governor by 30 percent! Go figure.

The Numbers Game

The Blue wave coast to coast is being immortalized by the scribes who make the GOP election rout look like an epic and historic loss, a GOP Waterloo. Republicans lost 8 Senate seats and 42 in the House, with some seats still in play.

Now the Democrats hold 55 Senate seats and GOP 44; They gained 42 House seats.

Indeed in 1994, Newt Gingrich engineered a massive map board shift only two years after Bill Clinton’s victory, gaining 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats.

Or in 2010, when a prideful Barak Obama following the 2008 election victory lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats and 9 more Senate seats in 2014. And to be bipartisan, even Ronald Reagan after his stunning presidential win in 1980, suffered a midterm setback in 1986 losing 5 House and 8 Senate seats.

All three presidents bounced back stronger.

The Democrat Party equally held their grip on the governors seats in New York and California, two states facing major “affordability” issues but long under unaffordable Democrat control.

Nonetheless, Republicans held the State Houses in both New Hampshire and Vermont.

The Parties

Post-election the Democrats are posturing like progressive peacocks which while understandable is not a policy but a recipe for political theatre and a downfall. Yet this is not Bill Clinton’s Democrat party but a increasingly radicalized Left version which fears the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) fringe, and thus marches in nervous lockstep.

Bernie Sanders, AOC, the Squad remain the Democrats ideological locus. Michigan’s newly elected Muslim Sen. Abdul El-Sayed is a troubling game changer.

Political pundit Victor Davis Hanson intoned, “Republicans face a new political reality following their midterm losses, but President Donald Trump still has two years to secure his legacy.”

Two years is a long time in politics.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  perceptions and posturing following the Democrat tempest, Pundits