For two years, the vice president echoed the White House line on nearly everything, and then he posted a to-do list for Republicans that begins with ending a war.
Vice President JD Vance blamed the war in Iran for his party’s midterm collapse in a lengthy post on X on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, one day after Democrats seized control of both chambers of Congress.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote. “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest,” he wrote. He continued, “But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
Four Tasks From an Unnamed Pollster
Vance credited the four-item list to a pollster he did not name, a person he described as “one of the smartest people I know in politics.” The tasks: end the war in Iran, focus on cost of living and inflation, put America first, and, in his words, “Change our relationship to Israel.”
Turnout, he wrote, was not the party’s problem. Republican-side data analysts had fixated on whether the 2026 electorate would resemble the one that showed up in 2024, and the numbers held up well enough state after state, according to his post. His diagnosis was different: many voters who backed Trump and Vance in 2024 cast ballots for Democrats this time, and pollsters told him those voters were angry.
Gas Prices and Angry Voters
The war is now more than eight months old, having begun in late February. Gas and diesel prices have climbed sharply since it started, in the United States and globally. President Donald Trump ran in 2024 on ending foreign wars and lowering prices.
An Election Day voter poll found 34% said the war was “crucial” to their vote. About four in 10 House voters told the same poll they were angry about the country’s direction.
Military aid to Israel would be cut off at the end of the year, Trump said on Election Day, although the current memorandum of understanding runs through 2028. Israeli media reported on Nov. 9 that an emerging deal would instead extend direct military aid for five years after 2028, roughly halving the package. Measures to cut that aid or block weapons sales to Israel have drawn votes from Democrats in the House and Senate; Republicans rejected them almost across the board.
Jonathan Greenberg, director for combatting antisemitism at Defending Education and a former staffer for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, called Vance’s comments nonsense and said the vice president is wrong.
Daniel Di Martino, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote on X that polling data did not support Vance’s claims, pointing instead to tariffs, deportations and corruption.
In election night interviews, the president had already named the war as part of the reason for the losses. Asked about his vice president’s post, he told reporters, “I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term.” He would do it again, he added, because Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Asked whether he knew the post was coming, Trump said he knows how Vance feels about the war and thought the post was fine.
On Thursday, Nov. 12, Trump directed Vance on Truth Social to “focus his complete and total attention” on the administration’s anti-fraud campaign rather than on the war. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote in the same post, which came a day after reports that Vance was weighing direct talks with a senior Iranian official.
A wider set of culprits has come from Republican lawmakers, who fault not only the war but the administration’s tariff policies, a focus on pet projects such as the ballroom, and weak candidates.
Not the Break Pence Made
Unnamed sources say Vance is courting disgruntled Trump voters for a “new right” alliance ahead of 2028. The four tasks serve as the vice president’s rallying cry for a coalition aligned with Trump’s original America First movement, a Trump administration official told Fox News Digital, built around staying out of foreign conflicts, affordability for families and border security.
The same official framed the message as loyalty to Trump, not a break of the kind former Vice President Mike Pence made after Jan. 6. The audience, that official said, is Trump supporters who feel betrayed by the administration’s foreign policy.
The Map That Flipped Eight Seats
Control of the chamber takes 51 seats, and as of Wednesday, Nov. 11, Democrats held 55 to Republicans’ 44. That marked a net gain of eight. The party flipped seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi, where Democrat Scott Colom defeated Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The Alaska race remains uncalled.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, reposted the vice president’s assessment on X with an endorsement.
Vance has long been a skeptic of U.S. intervention abroad, and a possible 2028 run has given him reason to put public distance between himself and the conflict. Early in the war, as Trump weighed the decision, Vance was reported to be dubious of and opposed to striking Tehran. Once Operation Epic Fury began he defended it, then said nothing on the subject for months. The vice president had been perhaps not as keen on attacking Iran, Trump said earlier in 2026.
Among Republican contenders for 2028, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are widely considered the front-runners. Observers broadly read the midterm results as a referendum on Trump’s presidency.