Free At Last

Yes folks, the long US nightmare is finally over. Not the Reign of Trump, or whatever you wish to call it, but the never-ending midterm election campaign.

I can again watch US sporting events and be harangued during the breaks only by ads for pharmaceuticals and ambulance-chasing lawyers. No more ads telling me what a terrible person is some candidate or other for some Senate or House seat.

Truly, I do not believe that even 20% of the political ads I saw – and they came one after the other during every goddam break – was about what a candidate themselves would do or believed in. It was all attack, attack, attack. You should not vote for that guy/gal.

Depressing. And annoying. And, I should add, as some for-a-change-sensible political scientist said in an interview just after the results were known – ‘The evidence is that spending money on ads almost never influences which candidate wins.’

Still, Americans treasure their right to spend money uselessly; political candidates, college football teams, internet-connected toilets, whatever.

Here are two things not a single ad I saw during this loooong campaign mentioned:

1. The US Social Security Trust Fund will, by 2034, eight years or so from now, be ‘depleted’, according to a US Treasury Report from 2021. When that happens, the only payments to go to beneficiaries (old people) will be whatever payroll taxes are collected concurrently from workers. So, all payments will have to be reduced, by law. SS payments vary by age and work history, but the average Social Security check was $2,083 per month as of May 2026
2. The US federal government’s accumulated debt sits at more than $40 trillion. Paying the interest on that outstanding debt comprises 14% of the US government’s spending. Only Social Security payments (which come from the separate Fund mentioned above) is higher. National Defense spending is 13%.

[I just got an interesting article about the status of the US Treasury bonds that finance the US debt. I will turn that into a blog post soon.]

Not my country anymore, nothing I can do about any of that, but some light entertainment would still be welcome here on November 6, no?

For that I turn to what opinion writers have said about the results of those midterms, which, if you have been in a cave, resulted in the Democrats now having comfortable majorities in both the Senate and House. The Republicans got drubbed, for sure, but what opinion writers want to tell us is what it all means.

I am going to just tell you what a mess of them said in the headlines of the columns they wrote in the few days after the results were known.

Let’s start here north of the border, because Canadian writers are not at all shy about telling the world what was important about those results.

The defeat of Susan Collins marks the end of the moderate Republican

Andrew Cohen, G&M

Susan Collins was the Senator from Maine for a very long time. She lost this time. Mr. Cohen wishes us to know that there will never ever again be a moderate Republican elected to the US Senate. You read it here first, folks.

US midterms are a rebuke to the Republicans, but not the wipeout they deserved

Andrew Coyne, G&M

This other Globe Andrew has never been shy about proclaiming moral judgements on the US and its politicians, and if you have been reading him for any amount of time, you know that he really really hates DJT and all his minions. Coyne thinks you guys got off easy, man.

What the US midterm results mean for Canada

G&M editorial board

I really like this one. I will gently suggest that no one has a clue at this point what those results mean for the US, let alone Canada. No way to know if tariffs will change or go away, no way to know if this will speed up or completely end any Canada/US trade negotiations. What we have now in the US is divided government kids, and therefore only uncertainty is for certain. But hey, the Editorial Board knows things we don’t.

Forget the midterm results, Canadians should still not vacation in the States

Marsha Lederman, G&M

Canadian writers love to moralize, and Lederman is a leader in that category. Mostly they moralize about the shortcomings of Americans, but that does not stop them from lecturing their fellow Canadians. Consider yourself lectured.

From Iran to trade and gas prices, here’s how the US midterms impact the rest of the world

Reuters, but published in G&M

This is credited to Reuters, but appeared in the Globe. Maybe the Globe editors thought predicting the impact on Canada was as far as they could go, so they let the gang at Reuters go out on this longer limb. See my comments above.

Midterm results deliver new era in Washington

G&M staff

That is the quintessential Opinion headline. It sounds really BIG, and all columnists want to write about BIG things, which is why contemporary journalism is so bad. Well, that’s one reason. The great thing about that headline is that it sounds BIG but does not actually claim anything. How does one detect that the era is a new one? I have no idea. Neither do the G&M staff.

Ok, let’s head south of our border and look at what some Opinion writers in the US had to say about the results.

Don’t be fooled, this is what Trump wanted

Susie Cottle, NYT

Oh…..My……God. It’s all just part of Trump’s Evil Plan. Don’t be fooled.

MAGA finally gets what it deserves

David French, NYT

So Andrew of the Great White North thinks the Republicans got less than they deserved, yet David here thinks MAGA – who/whatever that is – got what it deserved. I think we need a negotiation guys, figure this out, will you?

Trump has been thumped. That doesn’t make him any less dangerous

Jamelle Bouie, NYT

Bouie is a regular in the NYT, and I am pretty sure I have not read one of his columns, because the headline on every one is the same. Trump/Republicans are pure evil. Keep your guard up, Jamelle!

So, not a surprise from Mr. Bouie, but I do wonder what he will write about once Trump is out of office.

This is a huge psychological blow to the Republicans

Michelle Goldberg, NYT

Count on an Opinion column writer to believe that they can peer into the psyche of not just a single person, but of an entire party.

I wish to be fair-minded and include some similar material from the WSJ, but honestly, the Opinion and Editorial pieces there have been rather factual and subdued Some examples:

The GOP collapse in the states

The Trump reckoning arrives

Moderates take Capitol Hill

Trump is the author of the ruin

I suppose one could argue with that last one, but at least it does not presume to see into his mind.

It is going to be a very interesting and highly stochastic (academese for random) couple of years in the US government. And I will stick by that prediction.