Kamala Harris’s defeat was damaging to the left. But her loss overshadows the true scope of the damage wrought on the Democratic Party: the permanent loss of the Senate.

Democrats have lost the Senate before, but this loss is different from 2014. This time, it may well be for good. For the first time in a century, there is not one Democratic senator from a reliably red state.

We have entered an era of one-party rule — at least where the Senate is concerned.

Today, the Senate map mirrors the national electoral divide. Democratic senators in blue states, Republican senators in red states, and swing states up for grabs. That’s grim news for Democrats. Simply put, there are more red states than blue states.

For decades, Democrats relied on popular Democratic senators in deep-red states — for example, Tom Daschle in South Dakota (lost in 2004), Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas (lost in 2010), Mary Landrieu in Louisiana (lost in 2014), Claire McCaskill in Missouri (lost in 2018), and Jon Tester in Montana (lost in 2024). In recent years, these red-state Democrats were critical to holding the Democratic majority.

The final nationalization of the Senate in 2024 with the ousting of Tester and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and the retirement of Joe Manchin in West Virginia, shifts the path to a Democratic Senate majority entirely to blue and purple states. This makes the Democrats' task nearly impossible.

Republicans, in contrast,........

© The Hill