| Ahead of Tuesday's election, when Americans weighed in at the ballot box for the first time since President Trump returned to office, a vicious fight emerged among the president's most prominent supporters. |
| The head of the most influential conservative think tank in Washington found himself embroiled in controversy over his defense of Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist and antisemite, whose rising profile and embrace on the right has become a phenomenon few in politics can ignore. |
| Fierce acrimony between Fuentes' critics and acolytes dominated social media for days as a historically protracted government shutdown risked food security for millions of Americans. Despite the optics, Trump hosted a Halloween ball at his Mar-a-Lago estate themed around the extravagance of the Great Gatsby era. |
| Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congresswoman who rose to national fame for her promotion of conspiracy theories, took to legacy media outlets to warn that Republicans are failing the American people over fundamental political imperatives, calling on leadership to address the nation's cost-of-living crisis and come up with a comprehensive healthcare plan. |
| And on Tuesday, as vote tallies came in, moderate Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia who had campaigned on economic bread-and-butter issues outperformed their polling — and Kamala Harris' 2024 numbers against Trump in a majority of districts throughout their states. |
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| The past year in politics has been dominated by a crisis within the Democratic Party over how to rebuild a winning coalition after Trump's reelection. Now, just one year on, the Republican Party appears to be fracturing, as well, as it prepares for Trump's departure from the national stage and the vacuum it will create in a party cast over 10 years in his image. |
| "Lame duck status is going to come even faster now," Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative commentator, wrote on social media as election results trickled in. "Trump cannot turn out the vote unless he is on the ballot, and that is never happening again." |
A post-Trump debate intensifies |
| Flying to Seoul last week on a tour of Asia, Trump was asked to respond to remarks from top congressional Republicans, including the House speaker and Senate majority leader, over his potential pursuit of a third term in office, despite a clear constitutional prohibition against it. |
| "I guess I'm not allowed to run," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "If you read it, it's pretty clear, I'm not allowed to run. It's too bad." |
| Less than a year remains until the 2026 midterm elections when Democrats could take back partial control of Congress, crippling Trump's ability to enact his agenda and encumbering his administration with investigations. |
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| But a countdown to the midterms also means that Trump has precious time left before the 2028 presidential election begins in earnest, eclipsing the final two years of his presidency. |
| It's a conversation already brewing on the right. |
| "The Republican Party is just a husk," Stephen K. Bannon, a prominent conservative commentator who served as White House chief strategist in Trump's first term, told Politico in an interview Wednesday. Bannon has advocated for Trump to challenge the constitutional rule on presidential term limits. |
| "When Trump is engaged, when Trump's on the ballot, when Trump's team can get out there and get low-propensity voters — because that's the difference now in modern politics — when they can do it, they win," Bannon said. "When he doesn't do it, they don't." |
| Trump has already suggested his vice president, JD Vance, and secretary of State, Marco Rubio, will be top contenders to succeed him. But an extreme faction of his political coalition, aligned with Fuentes, is already disparaging them as globalists working at the whims of a baseless conspiracy of American Jews. Fuentes targeted Vance last week, in particular, over his weight, his marriage to a "brown" Indian woman, and his support for Israel. |
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| "The infighting is stupid," Vance said on Wednesday in a post on the election results, tying intraparty battles to Tuesday's poor showing for the GOP. |
| "I care about my fellow citizens — particularly young Americans — being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home," he said, adding: "If you care about those things too, let's work together." |
Democratic fractures remain |
| Some in Republican leadership saw a silver lining in an otherwise difficult night on Tuesday. |
| The success of Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who will serve as the youngest and first Muslim mayor of New York City, "is the reason I'm optimistic" for next year's midterms, House Speaker Mike Johnson told RealClearPolitics on Wednesday. |
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| New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks at Tuesday night's victory celebration. (Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press) |
| "We will have a great example to point to in New York City," Johnson said. "They've handed the keys to the kingdom to the Marxist. He will destroy it." |
| Mamdani's victory is a test for a weak and diffuse Democratic leadership still trying to steer the party in a unified direction, despite this week's elections displaying just how big a tent Democratic voters have become. |
| Republicans like Trump know that labeling conventional Democratic politicians as socialists and communists is a political ploy. But Mamdani himself, they point out, describes his views as socialist, a toxic national brand that could hobble Democratic candidates across the country if Republicans succeed in casting New York's mayor-elect as the Democrats' future. |
| "After last night's results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear — we have a choice between communism and common sense," Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday. "As long as I'm in the White House, the United States is not going communist in any way, shape or form." |
| In an interview with CNN shortly after Mamdani's victory was called, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader hoping to lead the party back into the majority next year, refused repeated questioning on whether Mamdani's win might hurt Democratic prospects nationwide. |
| "This is the best they can come up with?" he said, adding: "We are going to win control of the House of Representatives." |
| Bannon, too, warned that establishment Republicans could be mistaken in dismissing Mamdani's populist appeal across party lines to Trump's base of supporters. Mamdani, he noted, succeeded in driving out low-propensity voters in record numbers — a key to Trump's success. |
| Tuesday's election, he told Politico, "should be a wake-up call to the populist nationalist movement under President Trump that these are very serious people." |
| "There should be even more than alarm bells," he added. "There should be flashing red lights all over." |
What else you should be reading |
| The must-read: Will these six California GOP House members survive new districts?
The deep dive: Shakedown in Beverly Hills: High-stakes poker, arson and an alleged Israeli mobster
The L.A. Times Special: Toting a tambourine, she built L.A.'s first megachurch. Then she suddenly disappeared |
| More to come,
Michael Wilner
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