这是否终于意味着唐纳德·特朗普遭到了否决？在数十年的美国政治报道生涯中，我想不起有哪次中期选举像这次这样，如此直接地提出了关于一位总统的这一问题——更不用说所有迹象都愈发清晰地指向一个直截了当的答案：是的。
Is this, finally, the repudiation of Donald Trump? In decades of covering American politics, I cannot think of a midterm election which has more directly posed that question about a President—never mind one where all indicators point, ever more starkly, to a straightforward answer: Yes.
随着特朗普在这个秋天在全国各地奔波造势，他重拾了首次中期选举竞选时的策略。“请假装一下，”他走到哪里都说，“我就在选票上。”一如既往，他想让这成为一场特朗普、特朗普、还是特朗普的选举。总统的麻烦在于，事情正精准地朝这个方向发展——而在11月3日清算日仅剩几天之际，美国人压倒性地不喜欢他、他的政策，也不喜欢他的政党。
As Trump has barnstormed around the country this fall, he has reverted to the playbook he tried in his first midterm campaign. “Pretend, please,” he says wherever he goes, “that I’m on the ballot.”As always, he wants this to be the Trump, Trump, Trump election. The problem for the President is that that’s precisely what it is shaping up to be—and, with only days left before his November 3rd reckoning, Americans overwhelmingly do not like him, his policies, or his party.
除了特朗普和一小圈亿万富翁为挽救共和党在参议院的多数席位而挥霍的、令人咋舌的创纪录巨额竞选资金这一指标外，按几乎任何其他衡量标准，这场秋季大选看起来都像是许多人预测的那场惨败（自特朗普4146天前踏入政坛以来，这类预测屡见不鲜，也屡屡令人尴尬地落空）：历史性的低支持率、一场导致物价高涨和通胀飙升的不得人心的对伊朗战争、猖獗的腐败致使三分之二的美国人如今相信他正从总统职位上牟利。
By just about any metric except the obscene, record-setting amounts of cash that Trump and a small circle of billionaires are spending to save the Republicans’ Senate majority, this fall’s contest looks like the wipeout that so many have predicted (and so often been embarrassingly wrong about) since Trump first entered politics 4,146 days ago: historically low approval ratings, an unpopular war with Iran that has led to high prices and surging inflation, corruption so flagrant that two-thirds of Americans now believe he is profiting off the Presidency.
最引人注目的是，特朗普声望的下滑不仅体现在民主党人和独立选民中，也体现在许多红州共和党人身上——正是这些人坚定不移的支持，一次次在他经历的这疯狂的十年美国政治中挽救了他。
Most notably, Trump’s sagging popularity is not just with Democrats and independents but with many Republicans in red states whose unwavering backing has, time and again, saved him during this insane past decade in American politics.
在本选举周期的最后一轮民调中，民主党在通用选票测试中拥有十一分的优势，比2018年高出四分，当时该党赢得了四十一席并重夺众议院控制权。至于驱动选民的议题，民主党民调专家约翰·安扎洛内概括了目前的竞选态势。“民主党在所有问题上都领先，”他在民调发布后在X平台上写道。“简直是字面意义上的所有问题！”
In the final poll of the election cycle, Democrats had an eleven-point advantage in the generic ballot, which is four points higher than in 2018, when the Party picked up forty-one seats and regained the House. As for the issues driving voters, the Democratic pollster John Anzalone summed up the current state of the race. “Democrats lead on everything,” he wrote on X after the poll was released. “Like Literally Everything!”
结果是，美国腹地出现了一系列完全出乎意料的胶着州，参议院控制权——鉴于今年的选举版图，一度被视为民主党无法企及——可能在爱荷华、堪萨斯、内布拉斯加和得克萨斯等州决定，这些州几十年来都未曾选出过民主党参议员。（堪萨斯州长达九十四年。）民主党也有很大机会自2010年以来首次赢得多数州长职位。在众议院竞选中，民主党仅需净增三席，该党被视为几乎稳操胜券。
The result has been an entirely unexpected series of tossups in the American heartland, where control of the Senate—once seen as unattainable by Democrats given this year’s map—may be decided in states such as Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas, none of which have elected a Democrat to that chamber in decades. (Ninety-four years, in the case of Kansas.) Democrats also have a strong chance to win a majority of state governorships for the first time since 2010. In the race for the House, where Democrats need to pick up only three seats, the Party is seen as a virtual lock to win.
这绝非仅仅是民主党的“一厢情愿”。共和党几周前就开始恐慌，在原本自信能轻松拿下的州投入数亿美元广告费，并几乎完全放弃了此前具有竞争力的参议院席位，如北卡罗来纳和佐治亚——特朗普仅两年前在这两州仍大胜。周一，特朗普将前往密西西比——这个坚定的共和党大本营——助选，该州参议员席位如今正式列为“有竞争力”。至于众议院，“极其严峻”的共和党内部人士已向记者透露数周，他们正为中期选举惨败做好准备。
This is not just a matter of Democratic hopium. Republicans began panicking weeks ago, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads in states they once reckoned on winning comfortably and all but withdrawing from previously competitive Senate seats in places, such as North Carolina and Georgia, where Trump won decisively just two years ago. On Monday, Trump will campaign in Mississippi—staunchly Republican Mississippi—where the Senate seat is now officially “in play.”As for the House, “exceedingly grim” G.O.P. insiders have been telling reporters for weeks that they are braced for a midterm blowout.
“美国选民的经济中心正在崩塌，对共和党而言是灾难性的打击”，周二，一名共和党民调专家格雷格·斯特里姆普（Greg Strimple）如是说。他与一位民主党同僚共同发布的一项新联合调查显示，民主党参议候选人在爱荷华州、俄亥俄州和得克萨斯州——这三个州均曾三次投票支持特朗普——目前略微领先。据斯特里姆普称，“选民对缺乏降低生活成本领导力的态度感到极度不满，他们似乎愿意为民主党在可靠的共和党州中创造意外胜利铺路，尽管民主党的受欢迎程度低于特朗普总统或共和党本身。选民不满的程度堪称前所未有。”
“The economic center of the American electorate is collapsing on Republicans,” Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster, declared on Tuesday. His new joint survey with a Democratic colleague for the found Democratic Senate candidates narrowly leading in Iowa, Ohio, and Texas—all states which voted three times for Trump. According to Strimple, “Voters are so upset with the lack of leadership on reducing their cost of living, they appear willing to propel Democrats to upset victories in reliably Republican states despite the fact that Democrats are less popular than either President Trump or Republicans. The level of voter discontent is truly unprecedented.”
那么，为什么许多民主党人正如拉姆·埃曼努尔（Rahm Emanuel）在一次为《政治风云》播客接受采访时所言，所谓“小‘c’，小‘o’，审慎乐观”地认为自己能够以赢得参议院从而给特朗普致命一击？
So why, then, are so many Democrats no more than what Rahm Emanuel called, in an interview for ’s Political Scene podcast the other day, “small ‘c,’ small ‘o,’ cautiously optimistic” about their prospects for dealing Trump a decisive blow by winning the Senate?
历史提供了一个显而易见的原因。若不是党内对2016年特朗普的致命性过度自信，特朗普可能根本不会成为总统。在2016年选举前最后两周，尽管部分全国民调显示希拉里·克林顿拥有看似不可逾越的两位数领先优势，她的败局已定，其竞选团队甚至未曾派出民主党提名人前往决定性战场州威斯康星州，反而企图将战场扩展至传统红州如亚利桑那州和犹他州。
History suggests one obvious reason. Trump may never have been President at all if not for the Party’s fatal overconfidence about him, in 2016. In the final two weeks before that election, with some national polls giving Hillary Clinton a seemingly insurmountable double-digit lead, her doomed campaign did not even bother to send the Democratic nominee to the decisive battleground state of Wisconsin, instead looking to expand the map to traditionally red states such as Arizona and Utah.
即便在2018年，当民主党在克林顿败选后取得强势表现时，结果却是两党分庭抗争——共和党保持参议院控制权，而民主党赢得众议院，这意味着特朗普不太可能面临真正的问责或有意义的制衡。这被视作一种谴责，而非结束总统任期的全面否定。
Even in 2018, when Democrats did come back from Clinton’s defeat with a strong performance, the split decision—with Republicans keeping the Senate even as Democrats won the House—meant that Trump was unlikely to face real accountability or meaningful constraints from Congress. It was seen as a rebuke, not a Presidency-ending repudiation.
这里的关键在于，美国选举的胜负既取决于预期，也取决于谁赢得了更多席位。2026年初，民主党夺回众议院并在一张艰巨的地图上竞争参议院席位，可能被视为该党两年前糟糕状态后的强劲复苏。如今，尽管民调显示参议院的控制权仍悬而未决，关键竞争均在误差范围内，但基准已经改变。正如一位民主党朋友前几天对我说的：“如果我们没有赢得参议院，我会感到失望，因为一个月前我并不指望能赢。”
The point here is that winning in American elections is about expectations as much as who claims more seats. At the start of 2026, Democrats taking back the House and running competitively for the Senate across a daunting map might have been seen as a rousing recovery from the Party’s poor state two years ago. Now, even though polls show that control of the Senate remains up for grabs, with key races all within the margin of error, the baseline has shifted. As a Democratic friend said to me the other day, “I’ll be disappointed if we don’t win the Senate that I did not expect to win a month ago.”
此外，还存在一个问题：各党派会从选举中汲取什么教训。2022年，民主党自行宣传他们成功抵御了红色浪潮，确信仅失去五个众议院席位并在参议院保留仅有的五十一席多数是巨大的胜利。这一好于预期的表现促使乔·拜登宣布计划再竞选一届，众所周知，结果如何。特朗普在2024年获胜后，共和党人认为已经发生了如此重要的政治重组，以至于他们在本十年中期进行前所未有的重新划区，旨在削弱民主党在今年中期选举中的优势。
There is also the question of what lesson the parties take from the election. In 2022, Democrats bought their own spin about how successfully they’d held off a red wave, convincing themselves that losing the House by only five seats and holding on to a bare fifty-one-seat majority in the Senate was a great victory. The better-than-expected performance helped spur Joe Biden to announce that he planned to run for another term, and we all know how that worked out. After Trump’s 2024 win, Republicans believed a political realignment of such importance had taken place that they undertook an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting designed to blunt the Democrats’ advantage going into this year’s midterms.
年初时，这次重新划区看似能帮助他们多赢约十二个席位；而现在，随着许多2024年投票支持特朗普的选民在德克萨斯南部和佛罗里达等地转而反对总统，净效应可能仅为一个席位。
At the start of this year, that redistricting looked like it could help them gain as many as a dozen seats; now, with many 2024 Trump voters turning against the President in places such as South Texas and Florida, the net effect might be as little as one seat.
然而，随着可能标志着特朗普长期、奇特统治美国选民的终结的选举终于逼近，令我最担忧的并非胜者的狂妄或必然出现的大量糟糕评论，而是一如既往的——总统本人。
But, as the election that might spell the beginning of the end of Trump’s long, strange hold on the American electorate finally looms, it’s not the hubris of the victors or the inevitable flood of bad punditry that has me most concerned. It is, as always, the President himself.
自从重返白宫以来，特朗普一直在为可能出现的中期选举惨败做对冲准备，他抢先攻击选举结果，质疑邮寄投票的合法性，假装存在非公民非法投票的流行病，并威胁要在选举日及之后动用其掌握的大量联邦资源。发现，自其第二次就职典礼以来，他在超过 70% 的日子里公开对选举表示怀疑，最近的言论集中在“被操纵的民调”上，他声称这些民调“从来都低估了 MAGA（让美国再次伟大）”。在 2020 年大选之后的世界里，我们当中还有谁认为不应认真对待这些威胁？
Ever since he returned to office, Trump has been hedging against the possibility of a midterm embarrassment by preëmptively attacking the results, questioning the legality of mail-in voting, pretending there is an epidemic of illegal noncitizen voting, and threatening to mobilize the considerable federal resources at his disposal on Election Day and beyond. The found that he has publicly cast doubt on the elections on more than seventy per cent of the days since his second Inauguration took place, with recent comments focussing on “rigged polls,” which he said, “have ALWAYS underestimated MAGA.”In the post-2020 world, is there anyone among us who thinks we should not take these threats seriously?
私下里，许多民主党人（我相信也有不少共和党人）用“蓝色浪潮将大到无法操纵”这种说法来自我安慰。连前财政部长罗伯特·鲁宾这样一位稳重的人物，都因这种自满情绪感到震惊，他在本周公开警告称，特朗普可能试图干预甚至彻底“篡夺”选举结果，存在“实质性风险”。我毫不怀疑，如果这位总统宁愿煽动暴徒冲击美国国会大厦也不愿承认失败，一旦看到机会，他就会尝试这么做。
In private, many Democrats (and I’m sure plenty of Republicans, too) self-soothe with talk of a blue wave that will be too big to rig. No less a stolid figure than the former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is so alarmed about this complacency that he warned the public this week of the “meaningful risk” that Trump might seek to interfere with or outright “usurp” the election results. I have no doubt that, if the President who was willing to unleash a mob on America’s Capitol rather than concede defeat sees a way to try, he will.
最重要的是，我确信一点：特朗普依然是他一直以来的那个人。他从未公开为任何事情承担责任，现在也不会开始。不会有路线修正，不会向中间靠拢。他不会像乔治·W·布什和巴拉克·奥巴马在中期选举惨败后那样，承认选民的愤怒，并发誓通过跨党派合作做得更好。特朗普及其共和党人在选举之夜的表现越差，我们越应该担心他的反应。被否定的特朗普，可能会成为最危险的特朗普。
Most of all, I am sure of this: Trump remains who he has always been. He has never publicly accepted blame for anything, and he will not start now. There will be no course correction, no pivot to the center. He will not, as George W. Bush and Barack Obama both did after their midterm shellackings, acknowledge the voters’ anger and vow to do better by working across party lines. The worse Trump and his Republicans fare on Election Night, the more we should worry about his response. Repudiated Trump may turn out to be the most dangerous Trump of all.