昨晚，历史被改写了

cse

Ted Cruz: History was made last night.


https://x.com/tedcruz/status/2118125881067487633


昨晚，历史被改写了。


几个月来，我们一直说2026年的中期选举是我们一生中最具深远影响的一次。


不幸的是，我们说对了。有些历史值得庆祝，有些则令人哀叹；但无论如何，我们都必须正视它。


2026年的选举不仅仅是一场“蓝色浪潮”，更是一场“蓝色海啸”。这是一次惨败。这不仅仅是像2006年中期选举那样的失利，而是一场堪比“水门事件”时期的彻底否定。究竟发生了什么？原因何在？后果又是什么？我们今后该何去何从？


当所有选票清点完毕后，问题显然不在于投票率。事实上，我们的选民——包括共和党人、自由意志主义者和独立选民——都参与了投票，但他们拒绝了我们的候选人，转而投向了民主党。我们失去了众议院，也失去了参议院。最终统计显示，我们在参议院失去了8到10个席位。


我们在南卡罗来纳州、北卡罗来纳州、堪萨斯州和爱荷华州这些传统的“红色州”（共和党稳固地盘）遭遇了失利；在密歇根州、新罕布什尔州和佐治亚州这些“紫色州”（摇摆州）也未能幸免。即便是在佛罗里达州和路易斯安那州这些深红州，我们也仅仅以一个百分点的微弱优势险胜；至于德克萨斯州……情况则更为严峻。


这场选举带来的后果，在德克萨斯州体现得尤为剧烈。在这个“孤星之州”，我们输掉了所有全州范围内的选举。几周以来，我一直在本播客中公开警告：我们在德克萨斯州面临着失去一切的真实风险。当时，相信这种可能性的人寥寥无几。如今这一切真的发生了，我感到非常、非常遗憾。自1994年以来，德克萨斯州再未出现过民主党籍州长；自1993年以来，也再未出现过民主党籍参议员。而现在，这两者我们都将拥有了。


为什么选举结果会呈现出如此压倒性的态势？评论员和分析师们或许会在未来数周、数月甚至数年里反复剖析这些结果，但有些事实如今已显而易见。


多年前，我曾得到过一条极好的政治建议，它来自海蒂（Heidi）。她说：“这与你无关，而是关乎他们——关乎他们的孩子、家庭、希望、梦想和未来。” 许多政客都忘了这一点。


以堪萨斯州为例，该州自1932年以来从未选出过民主党参议员，但这次却选出了一位。根据出口民调，堪萨斯州选民最关注的问题如下：


首要问题是生活成本、能源和食品杂货价格——30.6%的选民将其列为最关心的问题。
其次是腐败问题，占比18.5%。
伊朗战争的代价，占比10.1%。
候选人表现糟糕，占比7.9%。
与加拿大的贸易战，占比7.6%。
共和党对特朗普的支持力度不够，占比6.6%。
共和党未能通过《拯救美国法案》（Save America Act），占比5.6%。
特朗普对纪念碑的关注（5.5%），以及对数据中心和人工智能的关注（3.8%）。


最受关注的“生活成本”问题是非常现实的。许多政客却对此不屑一顾，他们根本不理解民众的处境。他们总是拿宏观数据说事，比如股市飙升、收入中位数创下历史新高、贫困率降至历史最低水平。这些数据固然属实，却并未反映出全貌。


以下是一些更具现实意义、更贴近个人生活的统计数据：荷美尔（Hormel）旗下的午餐肉品牌“Spam”去年销量创下纪录，达到1.13亿罐——这一销量几乎相当于整个二战期间的总销量。今年，有29%的美国人在购买食品杂货时使用了“先买后付”（buy now, pay later）服务，这一比例是两年前的两倍。


8月份，银行收回的房产数量比去年同期增加了42%。2024年，被银行收回的汽车数量超过了230万辆，这一数字甚至超过了2009年“大金融危机”期间的峰值。 2025年，6%的401(k)退休账户持有者因经济困难而提前支取资金，并为此支付了罚金。这一比例创下了历史新高，是常态水平的三倍。


还有一个令人震惊的事实：2026年，美国人通过捐献血浆获取报酬的次数超过了7500万次。这又是一项纪录。这意味着每天都有20万美国人手臂上插着针头，仅仅是为了凑钱买日用杂货。


这是美国民众所承受的真实痛苦，而许多共和党政客似乎对此毫无理解，又或是根本不在乎。食品价格太高，汽油价格太高，柴油价格太高，保险费用太高——生活成本实在太高了。


关税导致物价飞涨，而针对伊朗的战争也拖得太久了。这场战争本应是速战速决、干脆利落的。它必须结束；而且无论在什么情况下，我们都不应再向伊朗最高领袖（阿亚图拉）提供数十亿美元的资金。


经济领域存在着巨大的割裂。我们这种“K型”经济格局造成了难以逾越的鸿沟。去年，我们见证了全球首位“万亿富翁”（trillionaire）——一位现代版的托马斯·爱迪生——的诞生；与此同时，数以百万计的民众却在为养家糊口而苦苦挣扎。数据中心的建设让亿万富翁的财富进一步膨胀至千亿级别，而与此同时，过去五年里，普通美国人的电费账单却上涨了30%。


民众感到愤怒是可以理解的，而当选的共和党人并未采取足够有效的措施来解决他们所面临的真实痛苦。


那么，我们现在该怎么办？我们需要倾听民声并做出回应。我们需要倡导那些能切实改善劳动者生活的经济政策，并正视由此带来的后果。


德克萨斯州变成了“蓝色”（民主党阵营）。说出这句话非常艰难。但今天的德克萨斯州……


Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
History was made last night.


For months, we were saying that 2026 was the most consequential midterm election of our lifetimes.


Unfortunately, we were right. Sometimes history is to be celebrated; other times, it is to be mourned. Always, it must be reckoned with.


2026 was not simply a blue wave; it was a blue tsunami. It was an ass kicking. It was not simply a bad 2006 midterm election. It was a Watergate-level repudiation. What happened, and why? What are the consequences, and where on earth do we go from here?


When all the votes were counted, the problem wasn’t turnout. Instead, our voters, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, showed up and voted, and rejected our candidates, voting Democrat instead. We’ve lost the House. We’ve lost the Senate. When all is said and done, we will have lost eight to 10 Senate seats.


We lost in historically red states, like South Carolina and North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. We lost in purple states, like Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Georgia. And we just barely won by just a single point in bright red states like Florida and Louisiana, and then there’s Texas.


Nowhere are the consequences of this election greater than Texas. In the Lone Star State, we lost every single statewide election. For weeks, I had been publicly warning on this podcast that we were in very real danger of losing everything in Texas. Far too few believed that was possible. I am very, very sorry that it came to pass. Texas has not had a Democrat governor since 1994. We haven’t had a Democrat senator since 1993. Now we’ll have both.


Why were the results so overwhelming? Pundits and analysts will break down the results for weeks or months or even years to come, but several things are already evident today.


Years ago, the very best political advice I ever got was from Heidi. She said, “It’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s about their kids, their families, their hopes, their dreams, their futures.” Too many politicians forget that.


Take the state of Kansas, for example, a state that has not elected a Democrat senator since 1932. It just did. Here’s what exit polling showed were the top issues in Kansas.


Number one, cost of living, energy, and groceries. That was listed as number one by 30.6 percent of voters.
Corruption. Number two, 18.5%.
The cost of the Iran war, 10.1%.
The candidates are terrible, 7.9%.
The Canada trade war, 7.6%.
The GOP didn’t do enough to support Trump, 6.6%.
Republicans didn’t pass the Save America Act, 5.6%.
Trump’s focus on monuments, 5.5%, and data centers and AI, 3.8%.


The top issue, cost of living, is very real. Too many in politics dismissed it. They didn’t understand. They pointed to the macro numbers showing the stock markets soaring, median income at record highs, and poverty at record lows. Those data are true, but they don’t tell all of the story.


Here are some stats that are a lot more real and personal. Spam, Hormel’s processed meat substitute, broke record sales, selling 113 million cans last year. That is nearly as much spam as was sold during the entirety of World War II. 29 percent of Americans have used buy now, pay later for groceries this year. That’s double the share just two years ago.


In August, banks repossessed 42% more homes than they did last year. In 2024, car repossessions topped 2.3 million, above the 2009 peak in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis. In 2025, 6% of 401k holders took hardship withdrawals, paying penalties. That is a record, and triple the norm.


And here’s one that’s really stunning. Americans made more than 75 million paid plasma donations in 2026. That’s another record. That means 200,000 Americans every single day, with a needle in their arm, just to pay for groceries.


That is very real pain from real Americans, and too many Republican politicians seem like they didn’t understand or they didn’t care. Food is too high, gas is too high, diesel is too high, insurance is too high, life is too high.


Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long. It should have been brief, decisive, and over. It needs to end, and we should never, under any circumstances, give the Ayatollah billions of dollars.


There’s a very real economic disconnect. Our K-shaped economy is a yawning divide. Last year, we saw the world’s very first trillionaire, a modern-day Thomas Edison, at the very same time that millions were struggling to feed their families. Data centers being constructed were turning billionaires into centibillionaires, while simultaneously the average American’s electricity bill went up 30% in the last five years.


Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain.


So, what do we do now? We need to listen and respond. We need to champion economic policies that make a real difference in working people’s lives, and we need to deal with the consequences.


Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter. But Texas, today at least, is blue. As we sit here today, I am the only statewide elected Republican who remains in Texas. That’s not something I ever thought I would say.


We can be certain that the Democrats in Austin and in Washington will overshoot. In Texas, they will try to raise taxes dramatically. They may even try to adopt a state income tax, or even a California wealth tax. They will try to shut down the energy industry, destroying jobs across our state. They will embrace the radical transgender agenda. They will persecute those they perceive to be enemies, especially Elon Musk.


And in Washington, they will attack Trump every single day, constantly. Impeachment hearings, subpoenas, his family, cabinet members, business leaders, open persecution, and nonstop retaliation. Make no mistake. Nationally, the radicals are in charge. The communists and the Islamists who have taken over the Democrat Party have now taken over the United States Congress. They will be unleashed.


Sadly, that means many Americans will be hurt. Texans will be hurt. Their assault on business will make Texas a much less attractive place to start or grow a small business. Texas will become more like California if they succeed in halting all new investment into AI.


The economic results will be dramatic. Over $700 billion in new projects are scheduled to start in the next year. If the Democrats shut them all down, our country will very likely go into a recession. That will suit the Democrats just fine. They’ll just blame it all on Donald Trump.


In the next two years, we need to do two things.


One, fight the madness. I will work with Democrats when they’re willing to be reasonable. Last night, I called James Talarico. I congratulated him on his very impressive victory. It was a pleasant conversation, and I told him that I looked forward to working with him to try to benefit Texas.


So, if there are things like flood relief for the Hill Country, or trying to get the space academy to Texas, he and I will work together. But if the newly elected radicals push policies that hurt Texas, raising taxes, destroying jobs, opening the border, releasing violent criminals, threatening our children, undermining our constitutional rights, I will fight with all of my strength to defend Texas and to defend the Constitution.


And number two, we need to rebuild, getting behind policies that directly benefit the constituents we lost.


There’s a complicated story, no doubt, of what happened on Election Day, but as I see it, the key constituencies we lost were blue-collar voters, what had rightly become the core base of our party, Evangelical Christians, who didn’t show up with the same numbers and fervor as prior elections, farmers and ranchers. Tragically, we alienated rural America. Young people, who excitedly had voted Republican in 2024, and who shifted hard blue this cycle. And of course, Hispanics.


For Hispanics, there’s a strong overlap with young people and blue-collar workers. In 2024, just two years ago, I was proud to carry Hispanics statewide in Texas by six points, and we swung the Rio Grande Valley red for the first time in a century. It can be done, but in this election, those Hispanic voters overwhelmingly went back Democrat. We have got to turn that around.


And for young people, we need to be the party of the future. We need to champion policies that expand their future. Our two single biggest legislative accomplishments of the past two years, Trump Accounts and the school choice tax credit, which will unleash tens of billions of dollars in new scholarships for kids, are generationally powerful. I was proud to author both of those transformational policies, and yet too few candidates all across the country ran on that record.


Too few voters were even aware of what we’d accomplished for their kids and their future. But we need to build. We need to expand to continue creating a new investor class for hundreds of millions of Americans, help everyone, every American, become an owner, to have real skin in the game, to create new generations of capitalists ready to reject socialism.


People voted as they did because they were angry. Ironically, the Democrats that they elected are going to advance policies that will make affordability worse. The Democrats want gas prices higher. They want to ban gasoline engines altogether. Their extreme environmental mandates will drive up food prices and the prices of everything else.


But hear me now: we will bring Texas back. I am filled with hope and optimism. Texas will be red again. We have not suddenly become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-banning, tutu-wearing pinko commie liberals. That ain’t us. Texas is still Texas.


We will rebuild as a true blue-collar party, not by embracing socialism, but by being real free-market conservatives. The way we built the Texas economic miracle in the first place, and we will build and rebuild America as well.


When the zealots overreach, and they will, we will stand ready to lead in the direction of freedom, of prosperity, of safety, and security, and common sense. We will return to a new dawn of freedom in America.


It is dark right now, but it is always darkest before the dawn, and morning is coming. That is my fervent prayer, and that is my commitment to you.
4:38 PM · Nov 4, 2026
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