Ted Cruz Calls Election 'Watergate-Level Repudiation' of His Own Party

A Blue Tsunami, By The Man Who Lost To It

CBS News projects Democrats will take control of both the House and the Senate next year, with the party locking down at least 54 Senate seats and an estimated 251 to 268 House seats. Voters, in the network's words, repudiated President Trump and GOP control in Washington. Cruz agreed, and then some.

"It was not simply a blue wave. It was a blue tsunami," he said on his podcast. "It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation." He added that the problem was not turnout. Republicans, libertarians, and independents all showed up, he said, and voted Democrat.

Read that again. The guy who spent months warning that 2026 was the most consequential midterm of our lifetimes is now explaining that the consequences arrived and they are his.

Texas And Kansas Wake Up Blue

Texas and Kansas elected their first Democratic senators in decades. Democrats also flipped Senate seats in Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maine. South Carolina. Iowa. These are not the soft, squishy swing states that cable pundits like to point at while sipping something expensive.

Cruz said nowhere are the consequences greater than Texas, and he claimed he had been warning for weeks that Republicans could lose it all. He also called Talarico Tuesday night to congratulate him on an "impressive" victory. Credit where it's due, that is a decent thing to do, even if the call probably felt like phoning your own surgeon to compliment the scalpel.

His diagnosis of why it happened was a little thin. He pointed to the country's "K-shaped economy" and called it a "yawning divide." Maybe. It might also have something to do with a war in Iran, but we'll get to that.

Mississippi Is Decided By About Eleven Hundred Votes

While the rest of the map was calling in its verdict, Mississippi was still counting. As of the most recent Associated Press tabulation, Democrat Colom leads Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,138 votes with 96 percent counted. Yesterday that lead was 28 votes. Twenty-eight. You've lost bigger margins at a church raffle.

Here is why this matters. Democrats haven't won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, and Trump carried the state by 22 points in 2024. The state hasn't elected a Black person to the Senate since 1875. Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian whose father was a longtime Republican who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and was friends with Thad Cochran. In 2015 he became the first Black district attorney for the 16th circuit by unseating a nearly 30-year incumbent, and he posted a 94 percent conviction rate in the job.

And about that recount. Many states would trigger one automatically in a race this tight. Mississippi has no law on the books for initiating a recount. So if the margin shrinks to a rounding error, the state's answer is basically a shrug. CBS News lists Mississippi and Alaska as the two remaining toss-ups.

The Blame Game Starts Before The Confetti Settles

House Speaker Mike Johnson told staffers he will not seek another term as GOP leader, which sets up a fight over what the conference even is anymore. Meanwhile President Trump has reportedly been asking advisers whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should stay, according to multiple sources who spoke to CBS News. Trump later said he is not considering removing him. Sure.

Vice President JD Vance offered his own theory of the case. He said the Iran war is "the reason we lost." That is a fascinating thing for a sitting vice president to say out loud about the administration he serves in, and it reads like the first shot of the 2028 intraparty war. Someone is going to own that war, and Vance is clearly auditioning to be the guy who didn't.

Ohio's Ad War Ends With An Unreturned Voicemail

Vivek Ramaswamy called Democratic governor-elect Amy Acton to concede. She didn't pick up, and he left a message. A source close to her campaign confirmed the call went to voicemail and said there are no plans to call back, citing "the ad with her abusive mother, and the entire manner in which he's run this campaign."

The ad featured Acton's estranged mother, and Ramaswamy initially refused to pull it even as some Ohio Republicans urged him to. Trump and Vance stood by it. So the party's grand strategy in Ohio was to put a woman's painful family history in a campaign spot, and the voters responded by handing her the governor's mansion. Call it a market correction on cruelty.

Democrats Fight Over Who Won, Naturally

Victory has not cured the Democratic habit of arguing with itself. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Senate race by seven points, a result that came after Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost to him in the primary, rescinded her endorsement and backed Republican Mike Rogers. Stevens now says she doesn't regret it, though she is "truly sorry that it upset some of my colleagues." That is a very specific kind of apology. It apologizes for the feelings and keeps the move.

Rep. Hillary Scholten, a moderate who kept her distance from El-Sayed, congratulated him but said she "did not endorse Mr. El-Sayed in the race because I don't endorse that brand of politics." She argued that centrist candidates overperformed, pointing to her own near-16-point reelection win and incoming governor Jocelyn Benson's 11-point statewide victory. Both can be true. Benson won bigger, El-Sayed still won, and the state stayed blue. Everyone get a trophy and go to bed.