In this year's election, no Democrat lost a Senate seat in a traditionally Democratic state. More tellingly, every Democratic senator running in a state that is considered purple not only won, but did so fairly easily. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) , Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Bob Casey (D-PA) had to defend Senate seats in Rust Belt states that narrowly gave Trump his Electoral College victory two years ago, and all three won easily. So did Sherrod Brown, in Ohio, which can be a swing state, but usually leans toward the Republicans. In Minnesota, which Hillary Clinton barely won two years ago, Senator Amy Klobuchar and the appointed Senator Tina Smith both faced the voters, and again, both won easily. If the Rust Belt is considered an important national political battleground, after nearly two years of Trump, that battleground has turned into a rout.

The final big warning for Republicans came in the two Senate races where Democrats took seats that had been held by Republicans. Nevada is considered a swing state, but this year it was a solid blue Democratic state. Democrats swept all the major races, gained a supermajority in the state Assembly, and came within a couple dozen votes in one race of likewise gaining a supermajority in the state Senate. In its U.S. Senate race, first term Democratic Congresswoman Jacky Rosen defeated Republican Dean Heller, who became the only incumbent senator from either party to be defeated in a purple state. And just to the south, in usually reliably Republican Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema became the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in thirty years, and the first in more than forty years to win without the advantage of incumbency. And in once solid red Texas, where Hillary Clinton two years ago halved President Obama's margin of defeat from four years before, Beto O'Rourke came within a few points of becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in thirty years.

In other words, the best the Republicans can claim from this year's devastating election defeat is that they slightly expanded their senate majority, but the details of that seeming silver lining are actually an ominous deep gray. Republicans picked up seats in Republican states, but didn't win one in a Democratic state. Republicans failed to pick up even one Senate seat in a swing state, not even in swing states that voted for Trump, despite multiple opportunities, and lost the only swing state seat where one of their own was on the ballot. And while Republicans failed to flip any Senate seats in blue or purple states, Democrats flipped the only one on the ballot in a purple state, and even picked up one in a red state. And given the many blue or purple states that Republicans will have to defend in the next two election cycles, they could face massive losses. And they now have to consider whether they want to risk those massive losses by continuing to defend Trump the way they have.

In the last two years, Republicans have definitively proved that they have no principles about nation over party or the fundamental concept of no one being above the law, but now they are faced with the only thing that truly matters to them: political survival. They've seen that the voters have had enough of Trump. Young voters are moving to the Democrats in extraordinary numbers, and their turnout for a midterm election soared. And while Trump may be juicing Republican turnout, he seems to be juicing Democratic turnout even more. For Republicans, the lights are blinking red.

In the next two election cycles, the Senate map will flip from favorable to Republicans to strongly unfavorable, and with Democrats sweeping to victories at the state level, they soon won't have gerrymandering to protect them in the House that they just lost despite it. And as investigations that they can't stop further expose the depth and breadth of the corruption that is the defining feature of the Trump era, Republicans will have choices to make. Do they really want to continue to protect Trump? Is it worth it? They can't be expected to do the right thing for the right reasons, but political self-preservation does tend to motivate them. Will it, or do they want their political careers and their political party to go down in metaphorical flames that they themselves lit? We'll soon find out.