Despite the blue tsunami, Republicans avoided the 2010 Barack Obama “shellacking” in 63 House seats and seven Senate seats flipped from Democratic control.

President Trump was effectively on every ballot and the general low regard in which he is held affected all the races.  With the possible exception of data centers, local races in the Lehigh Valley were all about national issues and Trump’s character and erratic behavior.

In my opinion, we lost some very good local Republican legislators in the blowout.  The Trump “stain” tainted virtually all Republican legislators, down to Pennsylvania state senators and representatives.

First-term U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie lost to a firefighters union leader who seemed to lack even the most rudimentary qualifications for high office and avoided debating Mackenzie. Mark “wealth tax” Pinsley, who never saw an election he did not like, beat the very effective state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, and long-term state Rep. Milou Mackenzie lost to a candidate with no observable platform. Here in the Valley, voters provided Democratic candidates with nearly a clean sweep.

The winners of these local races now must show that they can do better than mouth platitudes about “Medicare for All” and “affordability” with no plans for addressing these issues.

Now that Trump is a badly weakened lame duck president, remember that his second term was made possible as President Joe Biden and the Democrats energized Republican voters in 2024 by:

• Embracing open borders that allowed millions of migrants to illegally enter our country.

• Igniting inflationary pressures with the so-called Inflation Reduction Act spending surge.

• Trivializing that one quarterly 9% inflation report as “transitory.”

• Naming Kamala Harris — the queen of word salads — as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee without any primary election process or other input from the voters at large.

Trump carried considerable baggage into the 2024 campaign, especially that Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Many voters used those four Biden-era miscues to justify giving Trump another chance.  He solved the illegal immigration/open border disaster, attempted to pare back the federal government and reduced taxes, but started or compounded other problems.

Many voters cited the war with Iran — intended to keep that country from obtaining nuclear weapons — as a reason for opposing Republicans. Iran, a large country of over 90 million people, operates as an authoritarian Islamic theocracy, very different from democratic or most authoritarian states.  Like the Terminator, the Iranian regime cannot be reasoned with and shows no remorse.

These characteristics, along with the Iranians’ will to resist and the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, were badly misjudged by the Trump administration when it commenced hostilities and later found it has no obvious viable exit strategy.

One clear result for voters is the resulting increase in oil prices, which flowed through manufacturing and became especially visible in high gas prices.  Although the war clarified Iran’s commitment to obtaining nuclear weapons, many voters apparently looked the other way.

It seems that Democrats at all levels campaigned for Medicare for All, including Bob Brooks and Mark Pinsley in the Valley.  Here is my situation: I paid into Medicare for 40-plus working years with the Medicare payroll tax when I never needed or used Medicare. Today, I am in original Medicare (not Medicare Advantage) and enjoy very good medical coverage, but I do pay for it with monthly $284 Medicare premium and $377 Medigap supplement.

The population of the United States is about 350 million people.  A little arithmetic suggests that the cost of offering this kind of coverage at no charge to millions who never paid a dime for it is incomprehensible. Already teetering toward bankruptcy, our nation cannot do it.  Additionally, the government would eventually have to manage all hospitals and medical providers to hold costs down with obvious reductions in quality of care.  Using the Medicare for All slogan to influence voters is disingenuous and dangerous because it raises unwarranted expectations.

Finally, voters in the Valley and across the country savaged the MAGA “movement,” the coalition Donald Trump developed to augment his nominal Republicanism.  Like most politicians who campaign against growing government deficits and national debt, Trump backed off when charged with governing.

Will the new Democratic lawmakers do any better?  For the sake of our wonderful Lehigh Valley and the nation at large, I sincerely hope so.

This is a contributed opinion column. James Largay of Upper Saucon Township is a professor emeritus of accounting at Lehigh University. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author(s), and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at mcall.com/opinion.