Donegan qualifies Trump’s reported acceptance: “for what it’s worth, which isn’t much”
Donald Trump told the New York Times on Tuesday night that he would accept the 2026 midterm results, according to Moira Donegan’s post-election analysis. Donegan noted that the administration had signaled over the preceding weeks that it could make efforts to contest certification of especially close Senate races, notably Alaska. She wrote that “the wind may have gone out of the sails of that plan for now” and called Trump’s acceptance “for what it’s worth, which isn’t much.”
In the coming days and weeks, Donegan expected Trump to alternate between saying the Republican losses were fake — through fraud by what she called a “nefarious but ill-defined conspiracy of Democrats and illegal immigrants” — and saying the losses were real but somebody else’s fault. She also expected him to “rail into microphones and complain in all caps on social media,” but wrote that “it is not likely that any of that will go anywhere.”
A Senate majority shifts the balance of leverage
Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s election with a Senate majority, Donegan wrote. She said the electorate had sent Trump a message of dissatisfaction with his second term and had voted decisively to curb his power. Under the Democratic majority, she said, lawmakers could investigate Trump and his cabinet members, draw public attention to Democratic agenda items, assert Congress’s constitutional prerogatives and block Republican judicial appointments.
Donegan contrasted the result with forecasts so grim for Republicans that poll watchers traded a joke that the outcome would mean either “the end of the Trump era, or the end of the polling profession.” She said any Republican victory would have seemed like a minor miracle. Democrats were expected to win in a blowout, while Republicans had counted on a somewhat more mixed final tally that would let them claim they had performed better than anyone expected. Donegan said it would be difficult to credit those explanations after the election.
She wrote that “the Trump era effectively came to an end,” almost exactly 10 years after Trump won the presidency in an upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Donegan forecast that “The next two years will look nothing like the previous two.”
Her analysis contrasted the election with Trump’s first several months back in power, when he controlled a unified government and was said to have won a 2024 “restoration” on the heels of widespread cultural discontent and anti-“woke” sentiment. Donegan wrote that he seemed momentarily as though he might succeed in efforts to “consolidate an authoritarian regime in America.”
Donegan said Trump’s administration purged the federal bureaucracy, eliminating hundreds of jobs and filling thousands more positions with loyalists and what she called “incompetent cronies.” She said Trump imposed his will and social agenda on nongovernmental institutions, from large technology companies to major universities, which complied in part because they feared retaliation “from a strong Trump regime” if they refused.
Donegan also said Trump took the power of the purse from Congress, reappropriated taxpayer money as he saw fit and disregarded elected representatives’ intentions. She attributed that leverage to Trump appearing powerful while the opposition appeared weak: during the first year of his second term, he wagered that people would obey because he could threaten consequences for refusal, while Democrats could not credibly threaten consequences for complicity. Donegan said that political credibility had flipped.
Inflation and material pressures shape voter discontent
Donegan said Trump’s 2024 re-election now looked less like a broad cultural realignment and more like a product of material factors, notably inflation. She said the same pressures had returned to bite Republicans in 2026 as “staggering gas prices, consumer disempowerment, persistent unemployment, and visible, egregious inequality” angered voters.
Donegan wrote that Trump seemed “indifferent, if not oblivious” to the concerns when he was not actively making them worse. She described what she called Trump’s “reckless and needless war on Iran” as broadly blamed — “largely correctly” — for driving up gas prices.
Meanwhile, Donegan said Trump had draped large banners of his own face over federal buildings, remodeled the White House in gold and made what she called bizarre rally-stage diatribes about male politicians’ backsides. She assessed that he “seems frivolous and out of touch, like Marie Antoinette in a bad toupee.”
Donegan forecasts divisions within Trump’s Republican coalition
Looking to 2027, Donegan forecast that Trump would enter the year with “a hostile Congress, noticeably diminished cognitive power and physical stamina, a cratering approval rating, and a term limit.”
She said Trump would also enter the new year with “a fractured coalition.” Donegan said his decision to pursue a war with Iran had split his inner circle and “destroyed his credibility with the Republican rank-and-file.” She said his 2016 “no new wars” pledge had signaled a break with the neoconservative establishment for rank-and-file Republicans.
Donegan expected ambitious Republicans, whom she identified as younger Republicans, to “sense blood in the water” and turn against Trump to shore up their own prospects. She wrote that “he will rage at their betrayal and rally his base against them,” likening the scene to “some sort of stupid King Lear.” She added that his efforts “to crown kings and exact revenge” may be severely diminished after Tuesday night’s election.
Donegan tied the forecast to Trump’s political strength: “Trump’s strength was always the hold he seemed to have over the Republican base, the degree to which his charisma could compel voters to follow him anywhere. If the margins of the Democratic victories on Tuesday night are any indication, they are not following him anymore.”