By Paul Angel
Election day 2025 in Virginia, where I live, was a disaster for Republicans. They got what we call a “down home country whippin’.”
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Not only did former CIA desk jockey Abigail Spanberger take the governor’s seat, Ghazala Hashmi won the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race, becoming the first Muslim woman elected statewide, a sign of changing times in the Old Dominion and the nation.
Scariest of all, Jerrauld Charles Corey “Jay” Jones is our new attorney general. As you probably heard, Jones, according to The Virginian-Pilot and the Richmond Times-Dispatch, fantasized in text conversations with former Republican delegate Carrie Coyner about killing GOP House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his family.
The newspapers reported:
[I]f he “had two bullets and could shoot Gilbert, Hitler, or Pol Pot, Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.” Jones acknowledged that he had talked about hoping Gilbert’s children would die because “only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” before describing Gilbert and his wife as “evil” and “breeding little fascists.”
Needless to say, conservatives are a little antsy about having Jones as the top law enforcement official in the state, though Democrats didn’t seem to have any problems with it, brushing off the comments as youthful impetuousness. If I end up with two bullets in my head, you know where to look.
Interestingly, post-election polls revealed that 67% of those who voted for Spanberger did so “as a vote against Donald Trump,” not because they particularly liked her.
That statistic alone does not bode well for Republicans in the upcoming 2026 mid-terms. The hatred of Donald Trump has now crossed party lines, it appears. Though 90% of Virginia counties still cast their votes for the Republican candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, almost every red county saw gains in Democratic vote tallies. In the end, the Democrats won delegate seats in counties that were thought to have been un-flippable.
But let’s be honest, the GOP got what was coming to it. As populist, America-first Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) commented after the election:
To avoid a repeat of last night’s shellacking in the [upcoming] 2026 midterms, Republicans should quit covering for pedophiles, put America before Israel, put farmers before corporations, quit funding wars abroad, reduce spending to control inflation, and quit attacking independent voices.
The most important issue on the minds of voters, according to polls, was the economy—rising costs, inflation, unaffordable healthcare and super-expensive housing. Trump made some pretty big promises on the campaign trail, vowing he would take care of all these problems before the clock struck midnight his first day in office.
Though inflation is not at the astronomical levels it was during the Joe Biden years, it is still a concern. Fully 65% of consumers are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck, and insurance costs could be soaring to the point where bankruptcy for many Americans may be a real possibility. Outstanding credit card balances rose by $27 billion during the second quarter of 2025 and now total $1.21 trillion.
In addition, according to the “CNN Business” website:
The percentage of subprime borrowers who are at least 60 days late on their car loans has doubled since 2021 to 6.43%, according to Fitch Ratings. That’s worse than during the past three recessions—during the Covid pandemic, the Great Recession or the dot-com bust. America’s current subprime delinquency rate is at the second-highest level since the early 1990s. … Cars are being repossessed at the highest rate since the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
So, you see, people are desperate, and will turn to anyone offering solutions, hence the election of Ugandan-born neo-Marxist Zohran Mamdami in New York City and the blue wave that recently struck Virginia.
Trump, when asked about this, responded as did Biden on his foggiest of days, insisting the economy was great, energy prices were down, and the stock market was soaring.
He is evidently vacationing in Mar-a-La La Land. And optics matter.
Even as voters were turning to the Democrats to save them from penury, Trump was tweeting out pictures of his lavish White House bathroom re-model and photos of his Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party, attended by upper-crust sycophants who mingled around what can only best be described as a stripper in an oversized martini glass.
It was all quite garish and an apt metaphor for the stark disconnect between the plutocracy and the hoi polloi, i.e., the “common horde.”
Populist political strategist Steve Bannon, in an interview with “Politico,” had this advice for Trump and the Republicans, should they want to avoid being wiped out in 2026 by slick Mamdani-like candidates who, he predicts, will be popping up across the nation:
Tonight should be a wake up call to the populist nationalist movement under Trump. … There should be even more than alarm bells. There should be flashing red lights all over. …
The official Republican Party just wants to tap Trump along and then be done with him, be done with MAGA, and get back to what they want to do—neocon, neoliberal.
I’ve said for a while, populism is the wave of the future. The managed decline of our country by the elites is the basic undertone of what this kind of political revolution in the country has been.
The two parties—Democrat and Republican—don’t really matter. The energy is in the populist right and what I would call the neo-Marxist left.
It’s time for the GOP to get on the populist bandwagon, or step aside.
