The top Senate Democrat said President Trump and his policies led to the GOP’s sweeping defeat in Tuesday’s election and said their losses should serve as “a five-alarm fire” to abandon the president’s “cruelty, corruption and chaos that defines MAGA radicalism.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York basked in his party’s victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races, where Democrats won by double digits, as well as less-prominent races around the country that flipped GOP seats or advanced Democratic ballot initiatives.
Mr. Schumer gave Mr. Trump all the credit for Republican losses, pointing to the president’s policies on trade, the government shutdown and the GOP’s refusal to support extending enhanced, pandemic-era subsidies for those enrolled in Obamacare.
“Last night was a shellacking for Republicans and Donald Trump,” Mr. Schumer said. “Last night was clear, unmistakable, as a repudiation of Trump and a vindication of what Democrats have been fighting for over the last several months, and all year.”
The GOP candidates were not expected to prevail in deep-blue New Jersey or in Democratic-leaning Virginia, but the Democrats had wide margins of victory and exit polls showed Republican candidates were largely abandoned by women, independents and Latino voters just a year after they helped Mr. Trump win a second term.
Democrats see the results as a hopeful sign for the midterm elections, when they hope to retake majorities in the House and Senate.
Mr. Schumer said voters punished the GOP for rising prices associated with tariffs and higher energy costs, which Democrats say are connected to the Republicans’ elimination of taxpayer subsidies for wind and solar. Mr. Schumer said voters also blamed the GOP for the government shutdown, even though Democrats are blocking a stopgap bill to reopen the government. Voters viewed that impasse as the GOP’s fault, Mr. Schumer said, because Republicans have refused to fund the enhanced government subsidies for higher-income earners that were meant to be in place only for the duration of the pandemic.
“All year, Americans have been feeling the real-world repercussions of Trump’s policies,” Mr. Schumer said. “And last night, Republicans felt the political repercussions.”
Following his party’s losses on Tuesday, Mr. Trump quoted pollsters who said Republicans lost the elections because of the government shutdown and because Mr. Trump was not on the ballot.
But other Republican leaders rejected the shutdown as a driving factor in Tuesday’s results, particularly in states where Democrats were long favored to win.
“I think the shutdown fight and the elections are maybe somewhat related but not really,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said. “The elections were going to be what they were going to be. With the shutdown, nobody wins. That is why we need to open up the government.”
