Greetings, and welcome to Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. The polls are closed, the yard signs are coming down, and somewhere a cable-news anchor is still standing in front of a giant touchscreen map, waiting on one more county. Get some coffee in you. We have plenty to talk about.
My calendar says it's National Candy Day, King Tut Day, and Use Your Common Sense Day. Finish off whatever's left of the Halloween candy before the grandkids find it, raise a glass to the boy pharaoh, whose tomb was found 104 years ago today, and practice some common sense. Somebody has to, since it's in short supply among the folks who just won seats in Washington.
Today in History:
1842: Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Todd in Springfield, Ill.
1879: Dayton saloonkeeper James Ritty patents the first cash register, which he nicknamed the "Incorruptible Cashier."
1922: Archaeologist Howard Carter's team uncovers the first step leading to King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
1924: Wyoming voters elect Nellie Tayloe Ross as the nation's first female governor.
1939: President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act of 1939, letting Britain and France buy arms on a cash-and-carry basis.
1952: Dwight Eisenhower defeats Adlai Stevenson to win the presidency.
1956: Soviet tanks roll into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution.
1979: Iranian militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and seize dozens of hostages; 52 are held for 444 days.
1980: Ronald Reagan defeats President Jimmy Carter in a landslide, carrying 44 states.
1991: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is dedicated in Simi Valley, Calif., with five presidents in attendance.
1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
2008: Barack Obama defeats Sen. John McCain to win the presidency.
Birthdays Today include: Will Rogers, humorist and cowboy philosopher; Walter Cronkite, anchor of the CBS Evening News; Art Carney, actor from The Honeymooners; Loretta Swit, actress from M*A*S*H; Laura Bush, former first lady; Markie Post, actress from Night Court; Delta Burke, actress from Designing Women; Ralph Macchio, actor from The Karate Kid; and Matthew McConaughey, actor from Dazed and Confused and Interstellar. If today's your birthday, too, happy birthday from all of us here.
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As of this morning, Democrats hold the keys to Congress. Or will, as of the first of the year. Someone ought to ask them where they plan to drive it.
And yeah, I know. Most of you won't recall who Bill McKay is.
Back in 1970 and '71, a guy by the name of Jeremy Larner wrote the screenplay that became the movie, The Candidate (1972). Few remember it today, but it was a hit back in the day. They got Robert Redford to play Bill McKay, and he plays him admirably. The role didn't win Redford an Oscar. The next year, the Academy nominated him for The Sting and then gave the statue to Jack Lemmon anyway. I happened to be in the Washington, D.C. area when The Candidate came out, and I saw it at a Maryland theater nearby.
The setup goes like this. McKay is a young, idealistic lawyer and the son of a former California governor. A political operative named Marvin Lucas recruits him to run for the Senate against a popular Republican incumbent nobody can beat. Lucas's pitch: you can't win, so say whatever you want. McKay takes the deal. Then the polls start moving, and the man who had nothing to lose suddenly has everything to lose. He sands down every rough edge, swaps his convictions for applause lines, and learns to talk for 30 seconds without saying anything.
And to his shock, he wins.
The final scene is one of the best endings in American political film. McKay slips away from his own victory party, pulls Lucas into a hotel room, and asks him one question: "Marvin, what do we do now?" The mob comes crashing through the door before Lucas can answer. Nobody ever does answer.
Larner won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for that script, and he earned it. He knew the territory first-hand: he had been a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign, the insurgent effort that ran Lyndon Johnson out of the race and still never got near the nomination. Larner knew what a campaign looks like when all it's built to do is get there. In reality, that's the scenario we've been watching for the last 24 months.
That scene was on my mind last night as the returns came in.
The scale of it isn't in question. NBC News reports that Democrats have wrestled control of the Senate away from Republicans, flipping seven seats in a cross-country romp, including several states where they haven't won in decades. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown took back an Ohio seat from Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio). Troy Jackson, a former logger and former president of the Maine state Senate, ousted Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Former Gov. Roy Cooper won the open seat in North Carolina, and Democrats beat Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) in Iowa. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Left's favorite, held Sen. Gary Peters's open seat by beating former Rep. Mike Rogers. Then, according to Forbes, the Associated Press called the House for Democrats early Wednesday morning, completing the party's sweep of both chambers of Congress, which puts House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in line for Speaker Mike Johnson's gavel in January.
So, congratulations. Now would be a good time for somebody to pull them into the hotel room and ask: what do you plan to do with it? In watching the run-up to last night, I'm unconvinced that, past taking revenge, they have a clue as to the answer to that question.
On the trail, the answer was "affordability." Democrats said it so often it turned into a mantra. Groceries, rent, insurance premiums, the electric bill. It made a good slogan. It isn't a plan. Congress doesn't set the price of eggs. And every big spending bill Democrats can dream up runs into the same wall: a Republican president with a veto pen, and nothing close to the two-thirds majorities they would need to override him. Anything Leader Jeffries passes in the House still has to get a signature from Donald Trump, and Trump didn't become president to sign the Democrats' victory lap into law. And a practical angle. Anyone thinking Democrat policy is going to lower gas prices should be looking at New York and California.
That election last night leaves the tools a congressional majority can actually use without the White House: subpoenas, hearings, the power of the purse, and, in the Senate, confirmations. We've seen this movie too, and it isn't a classic. The last time Democrats took the House in Trump's midterm, they spent two years on investigations and impeached him twice. Nobody in the Democratic Party has said in plain English that it won't run that script again. Indeed, they've been making noises about how they'll do exactly that. Watch the committee chairmanships. They'll tell you more about the next two years than any victory speech will.
The Senate majority matters more. It means Senate Democrats can put Trump's judicial nominees and Cabinet picks in a drawer and leave them there through 2028. That gives them a real weapon, and I expect they'll use it. Note, though, that it's a weapon for stopping things. None of it lowers the price of groceries.
Then you have the coalition itself. A caucus that seats Cooper and Brown alongside El-Sayed doesn't agree on much beyond "not Trump." For eight months, "not Trump" did the job. It won't last a single appropriations fight. The progressive wing will want its priorities on the floor, the red-state winners will want to keep their seats in 2032, and Jeffries and the incoming Senate majority leader will have to keep the two from tearing each other apart on live television. The biggest factor here is embodied in the old saying about those who spend all their time getting even never get ahead.
That brings us back to McKay. To his credit, he at least asked the question. He looked around the room, saw his whole campaign had been about winning the race, and realized he had no idea what came next.
So far, I haven't heard a single newly minted Democrat ask it. Listen to the cheering. Then listen for the answer. Like the crowd crashing through that hotel-room door, the noise will drown it out, if there ever was one.
The two things I can predict with absolute certainty out of this are that I'll have no shortage of things to write about for a couple of years, and there's nothing in this world like Democrats in power to cause people to vote against them.
Thought for the day: The scariest moment in politics isn’t losing. It’s winning without a clue what to do next.
VIP members: It's time for you to use your voice, because it matters. Let's hear your thoughts about where this is going.
Take care, gang. I'll see you here tomorrow.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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