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The Fatal Formula of Donald Trump’s Electoral Fiasco, or “Drill, Baby, Drill”

Олександр Домбровський
Author's column Oleksandr Dombrovskyi
5 min read

My first degree was in technical cybernetics. I have loved mathematics since childhood — and therefore formulas. So I will try to describe the election of November 3, 2026 in the language that comes most naturally to me: the language of systemic causes and effects.

The Initial Condition

“Drill, baby, drill” is one of Donald Trump’s signature campaign formulas. It put fossil fuels, above all oil, back at the center of US energy policy and the international agenda. Together with coal, oil is among the dirtiest energy sources and a key driver of global warming. This formula stalled America’s green innovation drive, pulled the world’s largest economy out of the Paris Agreement, and dragged the world back into a past where oil, war, and corruption all too often become synonyms.

The Formula

Here is its core: three parallel branches of transient processes converging at a single critical point:

  • Branch 1. Price
    Drill, baby, drill → oil as the foundation of policy → war with Iran → the Strait of Hormuz → $100+ per barrel → gasoline and diesel → inflation → chaos
  • Branch 2. Geopolitics
    Anchorage → a backroom “deal” with Putin → collapsed negotiations → escalation in Ukraine → Russian refineries in flames → a global shortage of middle distillates → a diesel shock in the US
  • Branch 3. Trust
    Corruption-deal → a cynical scam → deceiving the voter → disillusionment → hatred

The sum:

→ The vote → The result → Fiasco → (Investigations → Impeachment?) → Political death

Testing the Formula Against the Data

These are not abstract metaphors. This is the hard factual record of a global feedback loop.

Branch 1. The Middle Eastern Noose

The Strait of Hormuz was effectively blocked after the February US–Israeli strike on Iran that triggered a direct war. Roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied gas passed through this chokepoint.

Every American felt the consequences directly at the pump: in October 2026, regular gasoline averaged $4.31 per gallon (40.8% more than a year earlier), while annual inflation in September jumped to 3.7%, compared with an average of 2.6% in 2025.

Branch 2. The Geopolitical Boomerang: Anchorage, Russia, and Diesel

The Trump administration’s attempt to impose a separate deal in Anchorage at the cost of Ukraine’s capitulation failed spectacularly. Instead of “peace in 24 hours,” it unleashed an escalation of unprecedented force. Ukraine’s asymmetric response to the terror against its energy system was a campaign of systematic, high-precision strikes by long-range drones on key Russian refineries in the European part of Russia.

The blow to Russian refining knocked millions of barrels of fuel out of the international market and forced Moscow to halt its own exports of petroleum products entirely. The global diesel balance — the core fuel for US trucking, railroads, and agriculture — was torn apart.

The result: on September 21, 2026, the US diesel price hit an all-time record of $6.53 per gallon, and the October average stood at $6.25 (+69.9% year over year).

The “drill more” slogan collapsed: light American shale oil is physically unable to quickly offset a shortage of middle distillates in the domestic market when the global supply chain has been burned down by foreign-policy adventurism.

The Final Scoreboard

For the first time in 20 years, a sitting Republican president has suffered a crushing loss of control over both chambers of Congress. Democrats won a convincing majority: they took seven key Senate seats and, according to NBC News projections, are set to hold about 258 seats in the House of Representatives — a result the party has not seen since 1993.

Trump’s 38% approval rating marked a historic collapse of trust in a midterm election. Tellingly, even Vice President JD Vance was forced to publicly link the electoral defeat to the war in the Middle East and the fuel crisis it caused.

Having secured committee chairmanships and the power to issue legally binding subpoenas (subpoena power), Democrats will inevitably move the final terms of the formula — financial investigations into the Trump family’s schemes and impeachment proceedings — from the realm of hypothesis onto Capitol Hill’s working agenda.

Conclusions

First. A significant share of the American electorate voted not so much out of enthusiasm for the Democratic Party as against the all-encompassing Trump chaos. It was a protest verdict against an undisguised philosophy of cynical bargaining (corruption-deal) that offered to trade away national interests and global stability for the illusion of cheap gasoline.

Second — and decisive. America’s youth chose its future. According to the AP Voter Poll, 73% of voters aged 18–29 backed Democrats (versus just 25% for Republicans), even though as recently as 2024 this age group was split almost evenly.

This generation voted for a future without corruption, without toxic instability, and without the oil addiction that feeds tyrants, fuels wars, and robs the planet of its climate future.

Oleksandr Dombrovskyi,
Chairman of the Board, Global 100% REnewable Ukraine

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