Well, this is a delightful day. It seems that most Americans aren’t keen on losing democracy. And the Republicans either need to start listening or prepare to fade away over the coming years.
Even if the GOP claims the House and Senate once the counting is over, the red wave so widely predicted didn’t come to pass. Voter showed up - particularly Generation Z, whose hatred of the GOP’s dictatorial ways is almost palpable.
The best-case scenario for Republicans is that they get tiny majorities in the House and Senate, with every sane member recognizing that it’s time to move on from Trump and his salivating desire to impose a dictatorship along the lines of a Putin or a Kim Jong Un. Or the Republicans can keep playing footsie with lunacy, hatred, and autocracy, knowing that in two years more of the Boomers who support them will have died off, and another 8 million teenagers will be reach voting age.
Election denialism really took a hit, with voters largely rejecting GOP candidates for secretary of state and who pushed Trump’s fable that his 2020 loss was the result of fraud. That was one of the most important pieces of this election, because it kept the people most likely to rig the vote in the future out of office.
Add to that the governorships - Democrats won elections for governor in the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on Tuesday, giving them the ability to block attacks on abortion and voting rights that are sure to be pushed by Republican-led state legislatures. And Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, reelected over a Trumpist loon, may well have a Democratic state legislature - something that hasn’t been seen for decades.
Meanwhile, in a direct slap to the homophobia and racism of Trumpism, Democrats flipped two governorships with history-making candidates. In Maryland, Wes Moore became the first African American to win the governorship in that state’s history. And in Massachusetts, Democrat Maura Healey will be the first woman and first openly lesbian governor.
Massachusetts is a great example of the growing repudiation of Trumpism. The state has a history of frequently electing moderate Republicans for governor who consider their job to be making life better for the state’s residents instead of just throwing bombs. The current governor, Charlie Baker, is quite popular in the state, but he was attacked by Trump for being, you know, a governor rather than a Trump acolyte. He wasn’t an election denier, he didn’t bow and scrape to Trump, and so the attacks by the Lunatic-in-Chief came raining down from Florida. Baker stepped aside in what was widely seen as a move of someone sick of the battle with a man craving a dictatorship, and a pure Trumpist won the GOP nomination…and got clobbered.
In the ultimate demonstration of the waning influence of Trumpism, candidates who received the strongest backing from the former president - including Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominees for Senate and the Governorship of Pennsylvania respectively, and Don Bolduc, Senate candidate for New Hampshire — all went down in flames. So far, only one of the big races, for the Senate in Ohio, went to a Trump candidate, J.D. Vance. (Vance, who has a spine of spaghetti and always moves the direction the wind blows, may likely look at the results and ease away from Trumpism.)
To understand the magnitude of the Trumpism drubbing, look at the conditions and the results. Inflation is at a 40-year high, Biden’s polling is weak, crime is up, and the GOP ran on each of these issues (along with election denialism and other Trump falsehoods.) A perfect set up for a rout.
Add to that the consistent trend in American politics where the party holding the White House usually gets shellacked in the midterms, and the expectation for a red wave was logical. Trump lost 40 seats in his midterm, Barack Obama lost 63, Bill Clinton lost 54, Ronald Reagan lost 26.
And Joe Biden? The best performance for the party in power in decades. Republicans are clawing and scraping to get control of Congress, and still might not gain control of one or both houses.
One other takeaway here: Millionaires and billionaires who care about nothing other than tax cuts, deregulation, and any other policy that feeds their greed really don’t like spending millions of dollars on losers. But that is what happened here. And, as the puppet masters of the Republican Party, the power dynamic is sure to shift away from Trump and back to the 1% who are going to demand future candidates have qualifications other than their obsequious fealty to the narcissistic God King. It’s going to be, get serious, GOP, or we won’t pay.
One of the delightful outcomes to this is knowing that current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy - a sniveling coward who has so craved the Speakership he has kowtowed to Trump at every turn - will either remain in his position or have a majority that is so small he will have all the responsibility of the Speaker’s job while being able to accomplish next to nothing. And most of his time will be spent trying to contain the mouth breathers in the Trump wing. (Although, in a wonderful result, it looks like Lauren Boebert, incumbent from Colorado’s third district and one of Trump’s strongest, dumbest supporters - is going down in flames.)
The glory of this ignominious collapse belongs not just to Donald Trump. We would be remiss to forget the others responsible. So, thanks, Sam Alito and the other troglodytes on the Supreme Court! It seems people don’t like having their healthcare decisions shoved to the states, so the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was one of the big issues bringing out Democratic voters. (I guarantee you, if Alito - the most partisan and worst justice in modern history - saw this election result coming, he would have declared Roe the law of the land.)
So, take delight in this outcome - even if Republicans gain both the House and the Senate - because the chances of survival for American democracy appear to be much stronger than it has been for years.
Finally, a bit of schadenfreude: Trump is having a tantrum. Jim Acosta at CNN reported this: “'Trump is livid and screaming at everyone after last night’s disappointing midterm results for GOP, according to a Trump adviser," Acosta said. "The adviser went on to slam the former president’s handpicked contenders: 'they were all bad candidates.' 'Candidates matter,' the adviser said."
Hahaha! Oh, and it doesn't end there. Of course, Trump is blaming everyone but himself, according to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times. He is attacking ““everyone who advised him to back Oz -- including his wife."
Fortunately for America, Republicans seem to be blaming the person most responsible for their terrible performance. "All the chatter on my conservative and GOP channels is rage at Trump like I've never seen," said Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review.
What a great day for democracy.
Just heard you on Joe Walsh's "White Flag" podcast. What a fantastic, thoughtful, productive conversation. So I came here to check out your Substack.
I'm done with Twitter. I won't associate myself with Musk's political brand; won't be part of his radical libertarian experiment in spreading lies, making $, and destroying democracy. Maybe collapse of twitter (anarchic state of nature where life is nasty, brutish, and short) will help fuel rise of substack (a few rules to safeguard society's most vulnerable).