In its roundtable review of Tuesday’s mindblowing Democratic victories, New York Times opinion columnist, Josh Barro, said Republican attacks “had lost sight of voters’ top concerns: the cost of living and a pointless war” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/04/opinion/midterms-democrats-senate-house-results.html?smid=url-share).
Was it really a “pointless war”?
Focus on the verb, “was.” Perhaps in the present, it “is” a pointless, stalemated, war.
But at the outset, at the launch of devastating attacks on Iran in an effort to foment regime change while obliterating its ability to produce a nuclear arsenal, the war was “on point.”
What was pointless back then and continues to be so today was Donald Trump’s failure to prepare a comprehensive battle plan beyond shock and awe. He failed to plan contingencies, failed to anticipate Iran’s countermeasures and how to mitigate them.
Trump is an active, sometimes even creative, thinker. But he greenlights initiatives, even wars, without considering impacts. His desire to seal the border and expel undocumented violent criminal aliens, for example, has been undermined by heavy-handed ICE leaders and jack-booted, masked footmen who turned enforcement into a national disgrace.
We are suffering higher fuel prices, restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, attacks by Houthis on Saudi Arabia and the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern tip of the Red Sea, because Trump wanted to avoid sending Americans to fight on Iranian soil. Knowingly or not, he adhered to the maxim not to engage in a land war in Asia. But without boots on the ground Trump and Israel could not fulfill their objectives.
Someone—was it Bibi?—sold him on the idea that Iran was ripe for a popular overthrow of the government. Surely, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had no inkling of what it would take to force Iran to capitulate. Trump and Hegseth denigrated advice from seasoned military leaders.
Trump is not a strategic military thinker. He acts on emotions, not in the best interests of the United States. He could have strangled Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Instead he has backed Putin the aggressor, choked democratic Ukraine, causing untold suffering to its people, all because he has been paying back Volodymyr Zelensky for his refusal to produce incriminating evidence against Joe and Hunter Biden before the 2020 election.
The pointless war led to Trump’s repudiation Tuesday. For that, we should all be grateful, though the full consequences of Trump’s pointless unfinished war have yet to be determined in full.
Political Fallout: Departures from the Trump Administration are piling up. It’s not too early to speculate about who might be angling to be the Republicans’ next presidential candidate in 2028.
Anyone tainted by Trump’s shadow will be hard pressed to convince voters, in the primaries and general election, that they were innocent bystanders to the debacle wrought by the orange wonderman.
No matter how hard JD Vance professes his opposition to the war, he was full-throated for it, as vice president. Marco Rubio as secretary of state is similarly burdened. They no longer are front-runners.
Until Tuesday I thought Don Jr. had the inside track to the nomination. But the Trump brand is forever tarnished.
Here are my new possibles (not in rank order): Texas senator Ted Cruz; Tennessee’s new governor, former senator Marsha Blackburn; Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders; Arkansas senator Tom Cotton; Utah senator Mike Lee; Missouri senator Josh Hawley; and possibly the most likely choice, conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson.
Meanwhile, before the election there was buzz that Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman might take his disappointment with his Democratic colleagues across the aisle and switch parties. That would have been devastating to the Dems if they had needed Fetterman’s vote to secure a majority.
But Tuesday’s deluge of Democratic Senate victories made Fetterman’s vote less consequential. He might well be primaried in 2028 if he remains a Democrat. He might have a better chance of being re-elected as a Republican.
Another Meanwhile: Don’t be surprised if Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski abandons the Republican Party to either become an independent caucusing with Democrats or go full-bore Democrat. Unlike Susan Collins of Maine, she voted against Trump several times.
Final Fallout: Don’t be surprised if Trump, trying to salvage his reputation as a transformative presence, attacks Cuba. He has often hinted at such action. He probably thinks Cuba would be a pushover given how weak it has become under his restrictions on trade entering the island.
Even if the battle is decisive, U.S. military presence in Cuba would be long term. Do you think Trump cares?
