Republicans misread the mood of the country, and many political analysts went along. Young voters backed the Democrats, and enough voted this year to make a big difference. Americans are quite capable of being angry about the state of the economy without letting their unhappiness push them into the arms of extremists.
And for the Republican Party, Donald Trump is a stone cold loser.
The red wave so many anticipated in this year’s midterms proved to be a chimera. The reliable polls did say it would be close. Many prognosticators preferred precooked conclusions.
The United States remains a deeply divided country, but a substantial majority (58 percent in the national exit poll) dislikes the former president. This majority saved one Democrat after another from defeat. President Biden had one of the most successful midterm elections of any chief executive in history, not because he enjoyed high approval ratings (he doesn’t) but because nearly half of the voters said he was not a factor in their choice. They backed Democrats by a 3-to-2 ratio to oppose the far right, Trump and the election deniers — and to support abortion rights and gun control.
Republicans failed to put forward anything that could be considered a governing agenda. The consensus seemed to be that the GOP had run a very disciplined campaign focused on inflation and crime, with attacks on Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) layered in to fertilize discontent.
It didn’t work, partly because Republicans offered nothing in the way of solutions to the problems they were bemoaning. They also fudged what was supposed to be an issue of high principle, fleeing in horror from the abortion question once they realized how much anger a right-wing Supreme Court had inspired by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Their evasion didn’t help them. . . . . And the GOP’s inability to specify what the party might do with power undercut Republicans on the issues that were supposed to be their salvation.
The weakness of the Republican showing was brought home by some of their pickups, particularly in Florida and New York, where the results came as much from the redrawing of district lines as any change in voter sentiment.
Another column also in the Washington Post looks at how numerous GOP narratives went down in flames as they crashed into the wall of reality outside of the Fox News bubble. Here are excerpts:
Shattering the expectations of, well, just about everybody in U.S. politics, as of Wednesday afternoon a Democratic hold of the House cannot be ruled out, and Democrats are somewhat favored to keep the Senate.
We might not know either outcome for days, but we already know this: The vaunted “red wave” never materialized.
In the Senate races, John Fetterman triumphed in Pennsylvania, Sen. Mark Kelly is favored to prevail in Arizona with more than half the votes counted, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto trails in Nevada, but the makeup of outstanding ballots gives her a plausible shot.
If Kelly and Cortez Masto prevail, Democrats will hold the Senate. . . . Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans have yet to secure the 218 wins they need, though they’re still narrowly favored to do so.
Beyond the demise of the “red wave” storyline, five other big media narratives just went down in flames. Here’s what we have learned instead:
Democracy was on the ballot, and (for now) it’s winning
We have long been told that inflation and crime are “real” issues that truly matter, while Democratic warnings about the fate of democracy wouldn’t motivate voters. I also feared this.
But we can already say Donald Trump-fueled election denialism suffered a rebuke at the polls, and that voters meaningfully reduced the threat it poses.
With Democrats sweeping gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — where GOP governors could have certified sham presidential electors for a losing GOP candidate — a big pathway to a stolen or crisis-ridden 2024 election has been choked off.
Kevin McCarthy’s dance with Trump has been a disaster
Just after Jan. 6, 2021, the House minority leader privately concluded Trump should resign. Then he made a public pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to cement their alliance, and helped cover up Trump’s coup attempt for the next 20 months.
We’ll never know what would have happened if McCarthy had taken the other path — using Jan. 6 to marginalize Trump — but we do know now that harnessing Trumpist energy failed to produce the decisive rout he predicted.
In a poetic twist, the Trumpier House Republicans now see McCarthy as a wounded animal, Punchbowl News reports. Even if Republicans win the House majority, its sheer narrowness is likely to make it easier for members of the MAGA caucus to knife McCarthy in the back, legislatively or with a leadership challenge — a fitting end given the corrupt bargain he struck.
Democratic “meddling” in primaries worked
When Democrats elevated MAGA Republicans in primaries, believing they would be weaker general-election opponents, the roar of pundit criticism was deafening. . . . But it was a bet that seemingly paid off. As HuffPost’s Kevin Robillard demonstrates, six of the most prominent election-denying candidates who were boosted by Democrats in House, Senate and gubernatorial races went down.
“Invasion” language did little for Republicans
House Republicans poured enormous sums into ads depicting the migrant “invasion” in the vilest of terms. Republicans have long enjoyed a presumption of a major advantage on this issue, but aside from Trump’s 2016 victory, it keeps failing to deliver.
GOP confidence that President Biden’s “disastrous open border” would spark major electoral repudiation, giving Republicans space to hyper-radicalize their base around the issue, has proved wrong.
And if Blake Masters loses in the Arizona Senate race — after openly embracing “great replacement theory” and running ads featuring the most lurid and militarized “invasion” imagery imaginable — that will only add more evidence against the political effectiveness of this GOP strategy.
A radicalized MAGA House might not have free rein, after all
It has long been suggested (including by me) that a GOP-controlled House would be able to run amok with Benghazi-style investigations and impeachments of everyone down to the White House chef.
But if the majority remains narrow, it’s unclear whether the votes will be there to impeach Biden. And while zealous investigations are expected to roar forward, Republican leaders are almost certainly going to struggle to prevent the unruly MAGA caucus from truly driving things off the rails.
[T]he big emerging story of these midterm elections is that MAGAfied authoritarian forces enthusiastically embraced by the GOP suffered unexpected and potentially grave setbacks. Whether Republicans will accept this interpretation and act on it is another matter entirely.
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