THE WIDE-ANGLE VIEW — “Trump Has Humiliated His Foes,” by John F. Harris: “Harris may have been an imperfect candidate — the postmortems are vigorously underway on Wednesday morning — but she delivered the essential Democratic argument perfectly well: The Trump Era was something to be scraped off the national shoe. “Instead, there will be another helping placed on the national plate. His adversaries don’t have to pretend it tastes good. But, for now, they need to eat it.” THE MORNING AFTER — Democrats awoke this morning to a total nightmare — and now the reality is setting in, as the party comes to terms with the fact that they’re totally lost in the wilderness. The losses on the campaign trail continue, with Republican TIM SHEEHY defeating Democratic Sen. JON TESTER. Reps. SUSAN WILD (D-Pa.) and MATT CARTWRIGHT (D-Pa.) conceded to Republican challengers. Reps. DERRICK VAN ORDEN (R-Wis.), KEVIN KILEY (R-Calif.), JOHN JAMES (R-Mich.) and RYAN ZINKE (R-Mont.) won reelection. But here’s a bigger blow: The Cook Political Report predicts that Republicans will likely hold the House, creating a Republican trifecta in Washington. Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) is already eager to use budget reconciliation to pass party-line legislation on the economy and, notably, the border. Cue the Democratic mourning. “The signs of a decisive defeat were staring us in the face all along. We were simply in denial about them or willfully blind to them, substituting magical thinking for actual analysis,” Rep. RITCHIE TORRES (D-N.Y.) told NOTUS’ Reese Gorman. Another House Democrat source was blunter to Punchbowl’s Max Cohen: “This is as bad as I’ve ever seen. This was a total and complete repudiation of the Democratic Party. People are not buying what we’re selling. Period.” Democrats are also realizing that 2025 could be worse than 2017. Back then at least, Republicans — chief among them then-Speaker PAUL RYAN — were largely skeptical of Trump and constantly worked to try to restrain his worst instincts. MIKE JOHNSON, who would almost certainly stay speaker, has effectively tied himself to Trump’s hip. So have other senior Republicans. Just consider this: We spent about two full years covering Hill Republicans begging Trump not to fire ROBERT MUELLER during the Russia probe, warning him over and over again that it would be the end of his presidency if he did (a la RICHARD NIXON’s Saturday Night Massacre). And yet, here’s House Majority Leader STEVE SCALISE , essentially calling for the immediate termination of cases against Trump on X: “The American people have spoken: the lawfare must end. I call on Attorney General [MERRICK] GARLAND, [Manhattan DA] ALVIN BRAGG, and [Fulton County, Georgia, DA] FANI WILLIS to immediately terminate the politically-motivated prosecutions of President Donald Trump.” Meanwhile, in the Senate, most of those 2017 Trump skeptics — from JEFF FLAKE and BOB CORKER to PAT TOOMEY and JOHN McCAIN — are either gone or dead, and replaced now by what’s shaping up to be a new crop of MAGA Republicans eager to do Trump’s bidding. Don’t expect Democrats to all take the same lesson from last night’s whooping. This morning, Justice Democrats put out a statement calling for a “new era,” whereby the party rallies behind the Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ -aligned “Squad” of self-described “Democratic socialists.” But this is not the take of many other Dems. Instead, they find fault with the left’s language policing, progressive and permissive stance on immigration and embrace of the Green New Deal on everything from carbon emissions to electric vehicles. GEARING UP FOR DAY ONE — On the GOP side, Trump’s team is also vowing to hit the ground running with plans to totally upend Washington and unleash massive policy changes across the country and the world. — On NBC’s “Today” show, JASON MILLER said Trump will immediately reinstate his first-term immigration crackdown and start drilling with executive actions, per Brittany Gibson. — KAROLINE LEAVITT said on Fox News that the “largest mass deportation operation” will begin targeting millions of undocumented immigrants. — And ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. told NPR’s Steve Inskeep that they’re serious about working to undo water fluoridation — one of the 20th century’s signal public health achievements — on Day One, along with providing vaccine “information.” (Though Kennedy told NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard that he wouldn’t remove any vaccines or have “directly blocked” the FDA from authorizing the Covid shots. He said he’d rather be a White House health czar than HHS secretary.) WHERE UNCALLED SENATE RACES STAND: Rep. ELISSA SLOTKIN leads Republican MIKE ROGERS by three-tenths of a percentage point in Michigan with 99 percent of the vote in. … Sen. TAMMY BALDWIN (D-Wis.) leads Republican ERIC HOVDE by about 1 point with 99 percent of the vote in. … Republican SAM BROWN is up by one-tenth of a point in Nevada. … Democratic Rep. RUBEN GALLEGO leads by 2.7 points in Arizona. … Republican DAVE McCORMICK is up by 0.7 points in Pennsylvania. Good Wednesday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop us a line at rbade@politico.com and eokun@politico.com.
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