总统所属政党在中期选举中表现不佳本属预料之中，只是没想到会糟糕到这种地步。今晚陆续揭晓的结果对唐纳德·特朗普而言无异于一场灾难——这是一种彻底的否定，是总统的对手们苦苦期盼了十年、却始终未能完全实现的愿望。按目前趋势，民主党不仅有望在众议院夺得大多数席位，还在通往参议院控制权的道路上，赢下了他们原本寄望拿下的席位（如得克萨斯州），甚至连原本毫无指望的席位（如南卡罗来纳州）也有望收入囊中。
The president’s party is always expected to do poorly in midterm elections, just not this poorly. The results arriving tonight are a disaster for Donald Trump—the kind of complete repudiation that the president’s opponents have spent a decade pining for, but never quite achieving. On current trends, Democrats are not just poised to claim a large majority in the House of Representatives. They are also on track to capture the Senate by winning seats they hoped for, as in Texas, and others that they had no business hoping for, as in South Carolina.
这种谴责的声浪过于普遍，已无法归因于任何特定选民群体的不满。以佛罗里达州迈阿密-戴德县为例，特朗普在2024年大选中辛苦积累的令人瞩目的拉美裔选民支持，似乎已彻底烟消云散。堪萨斯州即将选出一百年来首位民主党籍联邦参议员。俄亥俄州的民主党人似乎有望同时翻盘，赢下州长宝座和一个联邦参议员席位。今天早些时候，中西部一位（从不支持特朗普的）共和党操盘手发短信给我说：“我们党极其需要一次酸性熔岩带刺铁丝网灌肠，我今晚指望能如愿。”选民们听到了这个愿望。
The rebuke looks too ubiquitous to be confined to the gripes of any particular subset of voters. In Miami-Dade County, in Florida, for example, the impressive Latino support that Trump built up in his 2024 win appears to have totally evaporated. Kansas is on the verge of electing a Democratic senator—for the first time in a century. Democrats in Ohio seem likely to flip both the governor’s mansion and a U.S. Senate seat. Earlier today, a (Never Trump) Republican operative in the Midwest texted me, saying, “Our party badly needs an acid lava barbed-wire enema and I’m hoping we get it tonight.”Voters heard this wish.
共和党的局面何以恶化至此？从道德审判的角度看，或许会说特朗普正在为其任内前所未有的行为承担应得的报应——巨额个人敛财、将司法系统武器化打击政敌、未经国会同意拆解联邦机构。但这种说法过高估了美国选民的得体程度——毕竟，在特朗普试图推翻2020年大选失败结果之后，选民们又把他送回了白宫。
How did the GOP’s situation get so bad? A moralizing account might say that Trump is getting just deserts for his precedent-breaking behavior in office—the great personal enrichment, the weaponization of the justice system against his enemies, the dismantling of agencies without congressional consent. But this assumes too much about the propriety of American voters—who, after all, returned the president to office after he had tried to overturn his election loss in 2020.
共和党表现不佳更明显的解释是经济方面的。特朗普利用民众对拜登政府时期通胀的不满上台，似乎认为同样的规则不适用于他执政期间。总统向世界其他国家发动贸易战，推高了进口商品成本，此外还通过了大规模减税法案并鼓励人工智能支出热潮，这些举措推高了利率。最灾难性的是，他发动了一场针对伊朗的选择性战争，推高了汽油和柴油价格。
The more obvious explanation for Republicans’ poor performance is economic. Having come to office by exploiting discontent with inflation under Joe Biden, Trump seemed to think that the same rules would not apply to him while in office. The president has launched trade wars against the rest of the world, increasing the costs of imported goods, in addition to passing a massive tax cut and encouraging the AI spending boom, which have pushed up interest rates. Most disastrously, he has launched a war of choice against Iran which has raised the cost of gas and diesel.
目前只有38%的美国人表示认可总统的工作表现。特朗普及其盟友试图通过让共和党主导的州激进地重划选区来提高守住众议院的几率。这一策略没有奏效。
Only 38 percent of Americans now say that they approve of the president’s job performance. Trump and his allies attempted to juice their odds of holding the House by having Republican-led states aggressively gerrymander their districts. This strategy did not work.
与总统不同，民主党吸取了上届选举的教训：既认识到现任者容易因生活成本问题受到攻击，也意识到自己在移民和社会正义议题（如跨性别者权利）上偏左太远。该党内部派系众多——城市社会主义者、农村民粹主义者、“丰裕派”技术官僚——但他们汇聚于一个共同信息：“负担能力”议题，共和党在这一议题上处于弱势。
Unlike the president, Democrats learned the lessons of the last election: both that incumbents were vulnerable to attacks over the cost of living and that they had veered too far to the left on immigration and social-justice issues like trans rights. The party has many sects—urban socialists, rural populists, “abundance”-pilled technocrats—that converged on a common message: the issue of “affordability,” on which Republicans were weak.
所有这些派系都可以预期会为党的选举胜利争夺功劳，但民主党全方位的超预期表现表明，是共和党执政层的作为导致了选举失利。总统偏爱竞争力不足的候选人，包括在德克萨斯州提名深陷丑闻的肯·帕克斯顿作为参议员候选人，在南卡罗来纳州提名资历不足的达琳·格雷厄姆，这也是一个因素。但问题的大头似乎在于总统自身的决策——其拖累效应严重到危及经验丰富、根基稳固的共和党人，如缅因州参议员苏珊·柯林斯和德克萨斯州州长格雷格·阿博特。
All of these factions can be expected to jockey for credit in the party’s election victory, but Democrats’ all-terrain overperformance suggests that it was Republican actions in leadership that lost the election. The president’s predilection for underwhelming candidates, including the scandal-ridden Ken Paxton as Senate nominee in Texas and the underqualified Darline Graham in South Carolina, was a factor. But most of the problem seems to have been the president’s own policymaking—a drag so serious that it imperiled experienced and established Republicans such as Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas.
过去十年里，人们曾多次预言特朗普主义即将消亡。即便现在，也无法保证这一点。选民在投票箱前对特朗普主义的否定，甚至不意味着它在共和党内的消亡。这就是总统在其忠诚基本盘中拥有的控制力。民主党将能够通过预算之争和持续不断的调查来牵制白宫，并很可能处于可以阻挠任何最高法院提名人的位置。
The imminent demise of Trumpism has been predicted many times in the past decade. Even now, it cannot be guaranteed. The repudiation of Trumpism at the ballot box does not even spell its demise in the Republican Party. Such is the president’s hold among his loyal base. Democrats will be able to stymie the White House with budget battles and constant investigations, and will likely be in a position to block any Supreme Court nominees.
今晚的结果与其说预示着一位无权总统，不如说预示着一位愤怒、或许甚至更加肆无忌惮的总统。本届总统所有的标志性政策决定——伊朗战争、贸易战、在委内瑞拉和加勒比海的特别军事行动——均是在完全没有国会参与的情况下发起的。尽管在民主党控制下，国会将更嫉妒地捍卫自身权力，但帝制总统制已根深蒂固。特朗普的权力终将结束——但只会在再经过一次大选之后。
Tonight’s outcome does not so much foretell a powerless president as it does an angry and perhaps even more disinhibited one. All of the president’s signature policy decisions of this term—the Iran war, the trade wars, special military operations in Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea—were launched without any congressional input whatsoever. Although Congress will more jealously try to guard its power under Democratic control, the imperial presidency is well-entrenched. Trump’s power will eventually end—but only after one more election.