Donald Trump Leaves a Car Wreck Behind

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on October 21, 2016 Re­pub­lic­ans will now have four years to think about what they did to them­selves this year, plenty of time to con­tem­plate the con­sequences of hand­ing over their party’s car keys to the tea-party move­ment and watch­ing as the quint­es­sen­tial tea parti­er, Don­ald Trump, drove the car over a cliff. If Re­pub­lic­ans are really, really lucky, their cur­rent 54-46 Sen­ate ma­jor­ity will only be cut back to 51-49. Los­ing the Sen­ate is at least an even bet, and some ana­lysts think the GOP’s chances are much worse than that. If the Re­pub­lic­ans are really for­tu­nate, they can keep their House losses down to 15 seats or so, half of their cur­rent mar­gin. Then there are the 12 gubernat­ori­al races, where Re­pub­lic­ans once hoped to pick up three to four seats. Also in play are 5,920 of the na­tion’s 7,383 state le­gis­lat­ive seats, 80.2 per­cent of the total, ac­cord­ing to Bal­lot­pe­dia. State le­gis­lat­ive seats are a party’s fu­ture, their seed corn. Demo­crats can tell you what hav­ing dev­ast­at­ing midterm elec­tions can