Exit polls suggest the turn against Republicans was partly due to anger voters felt over the Trump administration’s actions. That could pose a challenge to his potential successors who come from the ranks of the current leadership, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “The only person who has been seriously harmed by this election campaign is Vance,” said Karen Beckwith, a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. political adventure in Iran that was politically disastrous for his party. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote on Some have been defining a position on what went wrong and what’s next. In a lengthy post on “It’s dark right now, but it’s always darkest before the dawn, and the morning is coming,” he wrote. “That is my fervent prayer and that is my commitment to you.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who abandoned his 2024 presidential bid after being defeated by Trump early on, was equally critical, pointing to Republican victories in Florida as a sign of what can be achieved. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was blunt in his assessment: “The Trump era is over.”
