The 2018 midterms have finally come and gone (and good-riddance to them). For months, more than half of my daily emails have included pseudo-personal political ads and candidates’ requests for donations, none of which will be missed. Neither will the multitude of TV attack ads be much missed either. Pity the poor people of Georgia who have to go through another month of that!
That said, this election may prove to have been among the more consequential midterm elections. In a refreshing break from the historical determinism which so obsesses social scientists and political pundits alike, there was no « red wave, » barely a red trickle. For months, we have been deluged by historical analogies, which suggested – indeed demanded – a Democratic loss of many House seats. But history has been put on hold by our changed world. At this point, it looks almost certain that the Republicans will win the House, but by only a small majority, which likely will mean that the extreme Republicans’ crazy caucus will make the Speakership a (well deserved) living hell for Kevin McCarthy as they did for his recent Republican predecessors. As for the Senate, we still don’t know – and perhaps will not know until the Georgia runoff in December. A Republican House will mean no serious legislation and lots of harassing investigations and even possibly impeachments. But a Democratic Senate would mean the Administration could still make executive and judicial appointments.
We still don’t know the final outcome in Arizona and Nevada, but elsewhere it was not a good night for Trumpist election-deniers. Yes, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist J.D. Vance won in Ohio, but Ohio is a hopelessly red state. Tim Ryan ran an admirable campaign and would be a great candidate somewhere else, but Ohio remains a red state. Likewise Texas. Democratic fantasies about turning Texas blue may come true some day, but that day is still off in the future somewhere. Democrats should get over such fantasies and focus their resources in what have been shown to be the true battleground states. A fortiori, that applies to Florida, a permanently red enclave utterly unrepresentative of the rest of the United States.
One of the great success stories of the election was, of course, Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman overcame the effects of his stroke – and Republican calumnies about his being « brain damaged » – to defeat the elitist carpetbagger Trump had foisted upon them. Apart from such obvious lessons like not to run in PA if you live in NJ, yesterday’s election seems to have confirmed the general good sense of blue-state American voters who saw through the vacuous Republican narratives about inflation and crime and showed their abiding commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
The polls were probably correct in suggesting that many voters were unenthused about the country’s direction. But the election results suggest that they were even less enthused about the Republican alternatives.
