过去十年里，唐纳德·特朗普折磨着民主党，打破了人们对在美国政治中何为领导、何为生存的预期。周二，旧规则终于追上了他。
For the last decade, Donald Trump tormented Democrats and defied expectations of what it meant to lead and endure in American politics. On Tuesday, the old rules finally caught up with him.
特朗普虽未出现在选票上，却让这场中期选举彻底围绕他自己展开，敦促支持者像他本人参选一样踊跃投票。在长达十年的时间里，他主导了全国叙事，但此前屡屡站在他一边的选民，这一次似乎并未成群结队地追随他。
Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he made the midterms emphatically about himself, urging his supporters to turn out as if he were. After a decade in which he dominated the national narrative, the voters who had sided with him so often before appear not to have followed him en masse.
据预测，民主党将从特朗普主导的共和党手中夺回众议院和参议院两院控制权。他们在红州赢得州长选战，并在几天前看来几乎毫无胜算的深度保守派国会选区接近爆冷获胜。
Democrats were projected to retake both the House and the Senate from the Trump-led GOP. They won governor’s races in red states and were closing in on upsets in deeply conservative congressional districts that, just days earlier, had looked all but unwinnable.
凌晨1点时仍有大量选战未宣布结果。但早期计票结果指向自特朗普2016年竞选白宫以来，民主党度过的最好夜晚之一——如果不是最好的夜晚的话。
Plenty of races remained uncalled at 1 a.m. But the early returns pointed to one of the best nights for Democrats — if not best — since Trump ran for the White House in 2016.
如果这些预测成真，特朗普剩余任期的面貌将截然不同。民主党控制的众参两院将能够阻滞他的议程、调查其政府，参议院将决定其提名人（包括联邦法官提名人）的命运。这可能对一位已重塑最高法院的总统构成重大制约。
If those projections hold, the rest of Trump’s term will look very different. A Democratic House and Senate would be able to stall his agenda and investigate his administration, and the Senate would decide the fate of his nominees, including to the federal courts. That could be a significant check on a president who has already reshaped the Supreme Court.
当晚的结果还表明，特朗普的号召力无法转移。他背书或为之助选的候选人在深红的堪萨斯州和南卡罗来纳州落败。总统的坚定盟友维韦克·拉马斯瓦米在俄亥俄州州长选战中失利。原来，特朗普的保守派魔力并不延伸至选票更下方的候选人。对于一个围绕一人重塑自身的政党而言，这是一个令人不安的现实。
The night also suggested that Trump’s appeal doesn’t transfer. Candidates he embraced or campaigned for lost in deep-red Kansas and South Carolina. Vivek Ramaswamy, an ardent ally of the president, lost the Ohio governor’s race. Trump’s conservative magic, it turns out, doesn’t extend to the candidates further down the ballot. That’s an uncomfortable reality for a party that has remade itself around one man.
他的选择也付出了代价。在得克萨斯州，特朗普支持该州曾被弹劾但获无罪判决的检察长肯·帕克斯顿，而非一位多次连任的共和党现任议员。该党花费巨资试图挽救帕克斯顿的竞选，使其成为本周期全国开支最大的竞选。他依然落败了。
His choices also proved costly. In Texas, Trump embraced the state’s impeached and acquitted attorney general, Ken Paxton, over a Republican incumbent who had won many times before. The party spent a fortune trying to save Paxton’s campaign, making it the most expensive race in the country this cycle. He lost anyway.
民主党人发现，他们能在比近期选举所显示的更广阔的版图上提出竞争。该党在得克萨斯州、爱荷华州、俄亥俄州、堪萨斯州和南卡罗来纳州赢得了全州范围的选举，这些地方长期以来似乎遥不可及，在某些情况下打破了延续数十年的共和党连胜纪录。
And Democrats found they could make a case in far more of the map than recent elections suggested. The party won statewide in Texas, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas and South Carolina, places that had long looked out of reach, in some cases breaking Republican winning streaks that stretched back decades.
民主党人还创造了历史。在佐治亚州，亚特兰大前民主党市长基莎·兰斯·博托姆斯当选为美国历史上首位黑人女性州长。她击败了一位富有的共和党人，后者以成为特朗普“最喜爱的州长”为竞选卖点。在俄亥俄州，特朗普两年前以两位数优势拿下该州，该州疫情时期的卫生厅长以民主党人身份获胜，击败了拉马斯瓦米。与此同时，2024年失去席位的民主党参议员谢罗德·布朗，在JD·万斯因特朗普提升为副总统而放弃的参议员席位特别选举中，赢回了重返华盛顿的资格。
Democrats also made history. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Democratic mayor of Atlanta, was elected the first Black woman governor in the nation’s history. She defeated a wealthy Republican who had campaigned on becoming Trump’s “favorite governor.”In Ohio, which Trump carried by double digits two years ago, the state’s pandemic-era health director won as a Democrat, defeating Ramaswamy. Meanwhile, Sherrod Brown, the Democratic senator who lost his seat in 2024, won his way back to Washington in a special election for the seat JD Vance gave up when Trump elevated him to the vice presidency.
在南卡罗来纳州，民主党人击败了达琳·格雷厄姆，她是已故参议员林赛·格雷厄姆的妹妹，因其兄今夏意外去世而获任命，完成其剩余不长的任期。特朗普及其盟友投入宝贵的时间、金钱和关注，试图让她在参议院的任期不止于短暂停留。南卡罗来纳州自1998年以来未曾选送民主党人进入参议院。如今儿科医生安妮·安德鲁兹改写了这一历史。
In South Carolina, Democrats defeated Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose unexpected death this summer led to her appointment to serve out what little remained of his term. Trump and his allies spent precious time, money and attention trying to win her more than a brief stay in the Senate. South Carolina hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1998. Now pediatrician Annie Andrews has changed that.
而在深红的堪萨斯州，特朗普在选举日前不久还亲自造势，共和党人自1932年——即富兰克林·罗斯福首次当选总统那一年以来，首次输掉了联邦参议员选举。
And in ruby-red Kansas, where Trump campaigned shortly before Election Day, Republicans lost a U.S. Senate race for the first time since 1932, the year Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected president.
2026年选举日标志着与特朗普时代大部分时期的决裂。2016年，他击败希拉里·克林顿，令民主党和共和党建制派都感到震惊。那个夜晚让玻璃天花板依然完好，也让民主党从此一直胆战心惊。
Election Day 2026 marked a sharp break from most of the Trump era. He stunned Democrats and the Republican establishment alike when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. That night left a glass ceiling intact and a Democratic Party that has been afraid of its own shadow ever since.
民主党在2018年中期选举中赢得众议院，但在参议院失利。2020年，他们实现了对华盛顿的统一控制，当时特朗普试图推翻他明确的失败，一群他的支持者暴力试图颠覆权力的和平交接。
Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterms but lost ground in the Senate. They captured unified control of Washington in 2020, as Trump tried to overturn his clear loss and a mob of his supporters violently attempted to subvert the peaceful transfer of power.
但民主党在经济和移民问题上的处理不一，给了特朗普充分的卷土重来机会。他抓住了这个机会，其在共和党内部的深厚影响几乎未受损，并于2024年以无可争议的方式重返白宫，使民主党分崩离析、举步维艰，并互相指责。
But Democrats’ uneven handling of the economy and immigration gave Trump ample opportunity for a comeback. He seized it, his deep influence among Republicans almost untouched, and returned to the White House in indisputable fashion in 2024, leaving the Democratic Party fractured, reeling and pointing fingers.
共和党对华盛顿拥有统一控制权，特朗普在每个总统摇摆州都取得胜利，势头正盛。但他和他的党很快就被曾经导致上一届民主党政府垮台的同样经济信息困境所困扰。
Republicans had unified control of Washington, and Trump, having swept every presidential battleground state, was ascendant. But he and his party were soon bedeviled by the same economic messaging woes that had undone the last Democratic administration.
他们将移民——曾经是他们赢得选举的议题——变成了一场关于激进和暴力执法手段的全国性反思，这些手段导致美国人死亡。总统陷入了伊朗战争。他本可以将生活成本困境归咎于前任，但这些困境很快就与他自身决策的后果难以区分。
They turned immigration, which had been a winning issue for them, into a national reckoning over aggressive and violent enforcement tactics that left Americans dead. The president tumbled into the Iran War. And the cost-of-living woes he once could have pinned on his predecessor quickly became indistinguishable from the consequences of his own decisions.
中期选举通常对执政党总统的政党不利。但选民周二给予民主党的胜利——以及出人意料的微弱失利——暗示着比通常的中期选举反弹更大的事情。
Midterms are often brutal on the incumbent president’s party. But the wins — and surprisingly narrow losses — that voters delivered Democrats on Tuesday suggested something bigger than the usual midterm backlash.
尽管特朗普在美国政坛已独树一帜，但他也从十年前踏入的时代精神中受益。2010年的茶党浪潮让共和党围绕政治局外人聚集起来，而社交媒体的兴起使错误信息和阴谋论广泛传播。
Singular as he has become in American politics, Trump also benefited from the zeitgeist he stepped into a decade ago. The 2010 tea party wave had energized Republicans around political outsiders, and the rise of social media allowed misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread far and wide.
但一切新事物终将变旧。如今，即便是特朗普和他的共和党盟友，也必须面对掌握所有这些权力所带来的相互指责，而不是承诺如果给他们机会他们能做得更好。
But everything new eventually grows old. Now even Trump and his Republican allies must contend with the recriminations that come with holding all that power, rather than promising they could do better if given the chance.