The 2025 off-year elections were by any measure a top-to-bottom win for Democrats and a setback for Republicans and more particularly for Donald Trump . This last point is important to stress, since the president is trying to distance himself from the bad results on grounds that (a) he wasn’t on the ballot anywhere and (b) the GOP suffered from a government shutdown he had nothing to do with producing. On the first point, well, of course, Trump will never appear on a ballot again, barring some sort of coup, and on the second point, Trump’s personal domination of political discourse since he returned to the White House means every election reflects on his personality and job performance. The 2025 results reflect his job approval and disapproval numbers pretty faithfully. So he should

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