Thoughts on the Post-midterm Election Narrative
As I blogged earlier, my take on the 2018 election is that the Democrats did not have the ‘blue wave” they hoped for, Trump remains undiminished, and the Dems need to moderate their narrative if they hope to beat Trump in 2020. Of course, that is by no means the common narrative as we now look back on the events of November 6. In this blog post I will look at six articles that represent various perspectives on the mid-term election. My primary sources here are The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, Vox and FiveThirtyEight.
First let’s look at two op-ed pieces with differing views from The Washington Post. The first article is entitled “The midterms prove it: Progressive ideas are now mainstream.” Clearly, this is not my perspective but there are some interesting facts presented here. “65 percent of the incoming House freshman class embraced some version of Medicare-for-all or expanding Social Security benefits. Almost 80 percent embraced lowering prescription drug costs by challenging Big Pharma. And 82 percent favored challenging corporate power in our political system by rejecting corporate PAC money, passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United or passing campaign finance reform such as public financing of elections.”
Those are some impressive numbers and I certainly am happy to see the will to overturn Citizens United, a political disaster for the country that effectively grants corporations freedom of speech privileges that should, in my opinion, be reserved for individual citizens. It is funny how the op-ed piece confuses political positions for what mainstream voters support. There is no indication anywhere in the piece that voters chose these candidates based upon the issues presented in the quote above. In fact, there is reason to suspect it was for other reasons entirely.
A second Washington Post op-ed piece is entitled “Don’t let progressives fool you. Moderate democrats can win.” In also contains some impressive insights that seem to contradict the conclusions of the previous article.
“The moderate New Democratic caucus in the U.S. House endorsed 37 candidates in primary races, and 32 earned the nomination — an 86 percent win rate. By contrast, Our Revolution, the grass-roots organization founded and run by Bernie Sanders’s backers, had a win rate under 40 percent in the primaries. Once the general election rolled around, 23 New Democrat-backed candidates flipped House seats to help gain the majority, while not a single Our Revolution-endorsed candidate captured a red seat. Zero.”
That doesn’t sound like progressives are mainstream at all. While moderate Dems probably support Medicare and Social Security, they do not do so in the Bernie Sanders style of things. More prescient is this quote: “Support for the magnificent range of diverse candidates who have been inspired to run simply does not equal a demand for democratic socialism. These midterms will usher in a new generation of Democrats that is more representative of the full panoply of voters than any class in history. In the 116th Congress, close to 40 percent of the Democratic caucus in the House will be women, nearly half the caucus may be nonwhite, and the LGBTQ community could boast as many as eight representatives — all a record. That is a welcome and overdue change for the party. But don’t assume people of color, women and LGBTQ candidates are all populists or far-left progressives. They run the ideological gamut inside the party.”
I don’t like the word ‘progressive’ because it is actually too vague, intentionally so because it is basically a word liberals chose to use when the word ‘liberal’ became a ‘dirty’ word. The fact that liberals have to call themselves ‘progressive’ is inherently indicative of why progressives are NOT mainstream. The rebranding of liberals is an admission of their loss of national relevancy.
An op-ed piece in The New York Times would argue against what I just said, however. Its point is captured in the title: “Do the Math. Moderate Democrats will not Win in 2020.” It portends to offer the ‘right lessons’ about what happened November 6. This article goes into some depth about the unexpected success of Stacey Abrams’ and Andrew Gillum’s gubernatorial campaigns in Georgia and Florida respectively. According the Times piece, these candidates fared better than expected by following the Barack Obama playbook concluding that:
“Democrats can go the old route that has consistently failed to come close to winning and demoralized supporters down the line, or they can do the math and follow the example of Ms. Abrams and Mr. Gillum and Mr. Obama before them. Invest in the infrastructure and staffing to engage and mobilize voters. Stand as tall, strongly and proudly for the nation’s multiracial rainbow as Mr. Trump stands against it. And mobilize and call forth a new American majority in a country that gets browner by the hour and will be even more diverse by November 2020.”
This vision of a “new American majority” only has one small problem. While both of these candidates forced heated recounts since their races were so close, they both lost.
"...or they can do the math and follow the example of Ms. Abrams and Mr. Gillum and Mr. Obama before them." And lose Georgia and Florida, again? It is a great thing that these races were so close, as was Cruz and O'Rourke in Texas. It means that voters for Democrats are starting to show up at the polls in these states. That puts all three of the states potentially in-play for 2020. At a minimum, this will force Trump to spend time and resources in those southern states that would otherwise be directed at Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
But that is all wishful thinking at the moment. The reality is the math works against liberals trying to mobilize their base in the south. A more moderate approach might actually accomplish a lot of what the liberals want. The Times op-ed piece is a great example of how stupid liberal idealism can be. And the stupider that looks, the more appealing moderate positions become.
As of this writing, the Democrats have flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives. That is far more than the 24-25 it seemed they might get election night. So, it seems like this actually more of a ‘blue wave’ than a ripple as I immediately thought. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight offers a chat that produces a rather mixed review of the outcome in “Yes, It Was A Blue Wave. No It Doesn’t Matter for 2020.”
In that chat, Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst, states: “It was, by any historical standard, a blue wave. Democrats look like they’re going to pick up around 38 House seats, which would be the third-biggest gain by any party in 40 years (after Republicans in 2010 and 1994).” Nate Silver argues that the reason for the confusion about whether the results constituted a ‘wave’ or not came about for a couple of reasons: “I think they’re arguing it’s not a wave because (1) the “split decision” narrative is very attractive if you’re of a both-sides mentality, (2) it takes a little bit of work to figure out why Democrats didn’t win the Senate (i.e., you have to look at the fact that the contests were all held in really red states), (3) Democratic gains are larger than they looked like they’d be at say 10:30 p.m. on election night, when these narratives were established.”
The chat comes to the conclusion that it was a wave for the Democrats but not a mandate since the Republicans maintained, and even netted a gain, in the Senate. A mixed result. The group in the chat more or less agreed that whether this translates into a Democratic win in 2020 depends on who the Dems nominate for president, which is kind of like saying nothing at all, except for the fact that it does caution everyone that the 2018 results and Trumps low approval rating do not in any way constitute a Trump defeat two years from now. I, for one, already knew that.
Vox, traditionally a left-leaning outlet, presented an article just prior to the election entitled: “Democrats are running to the middle to win the midterms: The Left is fired up but Democrats are still relying on centrists in the 2018 campaign.” The Vox article offers some insights that might contradict some of the information offered above. Looking at the House races, it states: “In the 69 most competitive House districts, only 15 Democratic candidates have endorsed Medicare-for-all, the policy pillar of the left’s enthusiasm, according to an analysis by Forbes-Tate, a DC-based lobbying firm.”
There is a strong argument to be made that the success Democrats found in the House was due to the adoption of more moderate positions. Meanwhile the Republicans continue to move hard Right. “Democrats are trading ideological purity for electoral viability in many campaigns — much more so than the Republican Party, which seems to be sliding further and further to the right. A plurality of Republican voters now describe themselves as ‘very’ conservative.”
My guess is that the story of 2018 is not so much that progressive have become mainstream as it is that conservatives are leaving the mainstream. That is not the same thing as liberals are coming back into favor. It is more like most candidates are moving out of favor with most Americans. Given the harsh, uncompromising rhetoric of Trump and his ilk, the Democrats seem moderate by comparison. If that trend continues then we could see a new president elected in 2020.
National Review, a right-leaning magazine that I happen to respect, offers perhaps the most balanced view of the midterms with its article entitled: “2018: Normalcy’s Revenge”. National Review has always been lukewarm toward Trump and is the voice of what I would call traditional, Eisenhower Republicans. Its basic contention is that were wasn’t much really decided in 2018 and there was certainly no mandate for either party. Instead, quite simply, rural areas of the country became more entrenched for the Republicans while urban area became more Democratic.
I don't necessarily agree all of the specifics but the article divides the outcome into two camps, appropriately enough. The losers and the winners. The losers include: Red-state Senator Democrats, Reluctant Trump House Republicans, Uber-Supportive Trump Republicans, Bold and Charismatic Progressives, and Midwestern Republicans. So losers on both sides. The winners include: Incumbent Governors, Reluctant Trump Republican Governors, Republican Women, Political Machine Democrats, and Major Democratic Presidential Contenders. In summary:
“On the whole, despite our unusual president, the supercharged atmosphere of political acrimony, and the sky-high turnout they drove, the story of 2018 was that in many ways we returned to the normal ways of American politics. Presidential parties typically lose a little over two dozen seats in the House in a first midterm; Republicans will lose a bit more than that, but nothing on the order of the Democratic wipeouts of 2010 (63 seats) or 1994 (54 seats), undoubtedly owing in good part to a booming economy and the absence of an obvious foreign crisis. Republicans lost a bunch of governorships, but mostly ones they had held for two terms in states that were not naturally deep-red. Senators and representatives out of step with their constituents lost; so did candidates who were garishly abnormal or ideologically overambitious, and members of Congress who weren’t on board with their party’s leader. Rural red areas got redder, and urban blue areas got bluer. Democrats won more than they lost, and Republicans won or held more than many expected. Both sides got just enough taste of victory and defeat to leave them hungering for more in 2020.”
So this is more of a mixed bag than a 'blue wave.' Nevertheless, a few things are clear. Trumpism received an unexpected (from its own arrogant perspective) check. Trump is despondent about the outcome. If turnout is high, the urban areas will defeat the rural areas. That favors the Democrats over the Republicans. On a percentage basis, moderate candidates won more races than liberals or conservatives. Trump Republicans and liberal Democrats mostly lost to centrists.
While the country is highly polarized, the voters as a whole do not want more polarity. They voted away from the extremes of the political perspective. Contentions that moderate candidates cannot win the presidency are ill-founded. I stand by what I posted earlier. Do you want to be right or do you want to win? Vote for vote, the typical American is not as radical as the candidates so loudly promoted on the extremes of either party. Whoever can come to terms with that has the best chance of winning in 2020. My guess is Trump is less equipped to moderate himself than any president in history. There should be a lesson there.
Special Note: By happy coincidence this piece appeared in the National Review today written by George Will. It is an excellent and insightful piece. John Delaney is precisely the type of Democrat that needs to run against Trump. I share Will's concern that the Democratic Party won't see it this way.
First let’s look at two op-ed pieces with differing views from The Washington Post. The first article is entitled “The midterms prove it: Progressive ideas are now mainstream.” Clearly, this is not my perspective but there are some interesting facts presented here. “65 percent of the incoming House freshman class embraced some version of Medicare-for-all or expanding Social Security benefits. Almost 80 percent embraced lowering prescription drug costs by challenging Big Pharma. And 82 percent favored challenging corporate power in our political system by rejecting corporate PAC money, passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United or passing campaign finance reform such as public financing of elections.”
Those are some impressive numbers and I certainly am happy to see the will to overturn Citizens United, a political disaster for the country that effectively grants corporations freedom of speech privileges that should, in my opinion, be reserved for individual citizens. It is funny how the op-ed piece confuses political positions for what mainstream voters support. There is no indication anywhere in the piece that voters chose these candidates based upon the issues presented in the quote above. In fact, there is reason to suspect it was for other reasons entirely.
A second Washington Post op-ed piece is entitled “Don’t let progressives fool you. Moderate democrats can win.” In also contains some impressive insights that seem to contradict the conclusions of the previous article.
“The moderate New Democratic caucus in the U.S. House endorsed 37 candidates in primary races, and 32 earned the nomination — an 86 percent win rate. By contrast, Our Revolution, the grass-roots organization founded and run by Bernie Sanders’s backers, had a win rate under 40 percent in the primaries. Once the general election rolled around, 23 New Democrat-backed candidates flipped House seats to help gain the majority, while not a single Our Revolution-endorsed candidate captured a red seat. Zero.”
That doesn’t sound like progressives are mainstream at all. While moderate Dems probably support Medicare and Social Security, they do not do so in the Bernie Sanders style of things. More prescient is this quote: “Support for the magnificent range of diverse candidates who have been inspired to run simply does not equal a demand for democratic socialism. These midterms will usher in a new generation of Democrats that is more representative of the full panoply of voters than any class in history. In the 116th Congress, close to 40 percent of the Democratic caucus in the House will be women, nearly half the caucus may be nonwhite, and the LGBTQ community could boast as many as eight representatives — all a record. That is a welcome and overdue change for the party. But don’t assume people of color, women and LGBTQ candidates are all populists or far-left progressives. They run the ideological gamut inside the party.”
I don’t like the word ‘progressive’ because it is actually too vague, intentionally so because it is basically a word liberals chose to use when the word ‘liberal’ became a ‘dirty’ word. The fact that liberals have to call themselves ‘progressive’ is inherently indicative of why progressives are NOT mainstream. The rebranding of liberals is an admission of their loss of national relevancy.
An op-ed piece in The New York Times would argue against what I just said, however. Its point is captured in the title: “Do the Math. Moderate Democrats will not Win in 2020.” It portends to offer the ‘right lessons’ about what happened November 6. This article goes into some depth about the unexpected success of Stacey Abrams’ and Andrew Gillum’s gubernatorial campaigns in Georgia and Florida respectively. According the Times piece, these candidates fared better than expected by following the Barack Obama playbook concluding that:
“Democrats can go the old route that has consistently failed to come close to winning and demoralized supporters down the line, or they can do the math and follow the example of Ms. Abrams and Mr. Gillum and Mr. Obama before them. Invest in the infrastructure and staffing to engage and mobilize voters. Stand as tall, strongly and proudly for the nation’s multiracial rainbow as Mr. Trump stands against it. And mobilize and call forth a new American majority in a country that gets browner by the hour and will be even more diverse by November 2020.”
This vision of a “new American majority” only has one small problem. While both of these candidates forced heated recounts since their races were so close, they both lost.
"...or they can do the math and follow the example of Ms. Abrams and Mr. Gillum and Mr. Obama before them." And lose Georgia and Florida, again? It is a great thing that these races were so close, as was Cruz and O'Rourke in Texas. It means that voters for Democrats are starting to show up at the polls in these states. That puts all three of the states potentially in-play for 2020. At a minimum, this will force Trump to spend time and resources in those southern states that would otherwise be directed at Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
But that is all wishful thinking at the moment. The reality is the math works against liberals trying to mobilize their base in the south. A more moderate approach might actually accomplish a lot of what the liberals want. The Times op-ed piece is a great example of how stupid liberal idealism can be. And the stupider that looks, the more appealing moderate positions become.
As of this writing, the Democrats have flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives. That is far more than the 24-25 it seemed they might get election night. So, it seems like this actually more of a ‘blue wave’ than a ripple as I immediately thought. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight offers a chat that produces a rather mixed review of the outcome in “Yes, It Was A Blue Wave. No It Doesn’t Matter for 2020.”
In that chat, Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst, states: “It was, by any historical standard, a blue wave. Democrats look like they’re going to pick up around 38 House seats, which would be the third-biggest gain by any party in 40 years (after Republicans in 2010 and 1994).” Nate Silver argues that the reason for the confusion about whether the results constituted a ‘wave’ or not came about for a couple of reasons: “I think they’re arguing it’s not a wave because (1) the “split decision” narrative is very attractive if you’re of a both-sides mentality, (2) it takes a little bit of work to figure out why Democrats didn’t win the Senate (i.e., you have to look at the fact that the contests were all held in really red states), (3) Democratic gains are larger than they looked like they’d be at say 10:30 p.m. on election night, when these narratives were established.”
The chat comes to the conclusion that it was a wave for the Democrats but not a mandate since the Republicans maintained, and even netted a gain, in the Senate. A mixed result. The group in the chat more or less agreed that whether this translates into a Democratic win in 2020 depends on who the Dems nominate for president, which is kind of like saying nothing at all, except for the fact that it does caution everyone that the 2018 results and Trumps low approval rating do not in any way constitute a Trump defeat two years from now. I, for one, already knew that.
Vox, traditionally a left-leaning outlet, presented an article just prior to the election entitled: “Democrats are running to the middle to win the midterms: The Left is fired up but Democrats are still relying on centrists in the 2018 campaign.” The Vox article offers some insights that might contradict some of the information offered above. Looking at the House races, it states: “In the 69 most competitive House districts, only 15 Democratic candidates have endorsed Medicare-for-all, the policy pillar of the left’s enthusiasm, according to an analysis by Forbes-Tate, a DC-based lobbying firm.”
There is a strong argument to be made that the success Democrats found in the House was due to the adoption of more moderate positions. Meanwhile the Republicans continue to move hard Right. “Democrats are trading ideological purity for electoral viability in many campaigns — much more so than the Republican Party, which seems to be sliding further and further to the right. A plurality of Republican voters now describe themselves as ‘very’ conservative.”
My guess is that the story of 2018 is not so much that progressive have become mainstream as it is that conservatives are leaving the mainstream. That is not the same thing as liberals are coming back into favor. It is more like most candidates are moving out of favor with most Americans. Given the harsh, uncompromising rhetoric of Trump and his ilk, the Democrats seem moderate by comparison. If that trend continues then we could see a new president elected in 2020.
National Review, a right-leaning magazine that I happen to respect, offers perhaps the most balanced view of the midterms with its article entitled: “2018: Normalcy’s Revenge”. National Review has always been lukewarm toward Trump and is the voice of what I would call traditional, Eisenhower Republicans. Its basic contention is that were wasn’t much really decided in 2018 and there was certainly no mandate for either party. Instead, quite simply, rural areas of the country became more entrenched for the Republicans while urban area became more Democratic.
I don't necessarily agree all of the specifics but the article divides the outcome into two camps, appropriately enough. The losers and the winners. The losers include: Red-state Senator Democrats, Reluctant Trump House Republicans, Uber-Supportive Trump Republicans, Bold and Charismatic Progressives, and Midwestern Republicans. So losers on both sides. The winners include: Incumbent Governors, Reluctant Trump Republican Governors, Republican Women, Political Machine Democrats, and Major Democratic Presidential Contenders. In summary:
“On the whole, despite our unusual president, the supercharged atmosphere of political acrimony, and the sky-high turnout they drove, the story of 2018 was that in many ways we returned to the normal ways of American politics. Presidential parties typically lose a little over two dozen seats in the House in a first midterm; Republicans will lose a bit more than that, but nothing on the order of the Democratic wipeouts of 2010 (63 seats) or 1994 (54 seats), undoubtedly owing in good part to a booming economy and the absence of an obvious foreign crisis. Republicans lost a bunch of governorships, but mostly ones they had held for two terms in states that were not naturally deep-red. Senators and representatives out of step with their constituents lost; so did candidates who were garishly abnormal or ideologically overambitious, and members of Congress who weren’t on board with their party’s leader. Rural red areas got redder, and urban blue areas got bluer. Democrats won more than they lost, and Republicans won or held more than many expected. Both sides got just enough taste of victory and defeat to leave them hungering for more in 2020.”
So this is more of a mixed bag than a 'blue wave.' Nevertheless, a few things are clear. Trumpism received an unexpected (from its own arrogant perspective) check. Trump is despondent about the outcome. If turnout is high, the urban areas will defeat the rural areas. That favors the Democrats over the Republicans. On a percentage basis, moderate candidates won more races than liberals or conservatives. Trump Republicans and liberal Democrats mostly lost to centrists.
While the country is highly polarized, the voters as a whole do not want more polarity. They voted away from the extremes of the political perspective. Contentions that moderate candidates cannot win the presidency are ill-founded. I stand by what I posted earlier. Do you want to be right or do you want to win? Vote for vote, the typical American is not as radical as the candidates so loudly promoted on the extremes of either party. Whoever can come to terms with that has the best chance of winning in 2020. My guess is Trump is less equipped to moderate himself than any president in history. There should be a lesson there.
Special Note: By happy coincidence this piece appeared in the National Review today written by George Will. It is an excellent and insightful piece. John Delaney is precisely the type of Democrat that needs to run against Trump. I share Will's concern that the Democratic Party won't see it this way.
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