A Blue Wave Cometh

I remember talking with longtime political friends in November 1994, I was working at a large community bank at the time. Almost every loan officer and the president of the bank were politically minded. I learned a lot of politics from them and managed to show them my own ideas were not too strange. The bank president said, rather blandly, that George W. Bush was predicted to defeat Ann Richards for governor of Texas. I just did not think that would happen. I told him so. And in such missteps I learned to keep my mouth shut a shade more often.

It was a big red wave. President Clinton took a beating. The idea of what was then called “national health care” (not Clintoncare or something) was already dying in the Senate that September. I didn’t know it then but it was dead for 16 more years. It did eventually come back, though. Maybe it was just in a coma.

Republicans gained 54 House seats and eight in the Senate, taking both chambers for the first time in 40 years. About ten governorships too. George Pataki beat Mario Cuomo in New York. Speaker Tom Foley lost his own seat, the first sitting Speaker beaten at the polls since 1862. Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” took the gavel.

Georgia held out. Zell Miller (a blue conservative, imagine such a thing!) survived Guy Millner and kept the governor's office for the Democrats. It felt like a last stand. Ten years later Miller was giving the keynote at the Republican National Convention. Democrats celebrating today should make note of that.

The South was turning. It has not stopped turning just because Georgia is a purple state. That’s just stopping the bleeding. It takes more than that.

I knew enough to know that the Dems stood a good chance of gaining some seats. But this was way more than I was expecting. I check the Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll, and by that measure Trump is barely worse off than he was in January. The percentage of “strongly approve” is virtually unwavering near 29%. But almost half the country “disapprove” to some degree. 

So I hoped. The Senate confirms Supreme Court justices, which I maintain a special interest in (see here). The Court is the slowest institution we have to change, and it does not need another non-John Roberts conservative tilting it further right. A Democratically controlled Senate virtually ensures that won’t happen in the next two years at least.

Democrats flipped seven Republican Senate seats: Maine, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina. Yeah, South Carolina. They lost none. Wow. Kansas has not elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century. Susan Collins, who survived every Democratic attempt in Maine since 1996, finally fell. Mississippi and Alaska are still uncalled as of this post.

By Wednesday morning the Associated Press had called 228 seats for Democrats and 139 for Republicans, with 68 still out. That is 25 flips so far. Democrats led in 34 of the 68 still out. They won’t hold every lead, and they’ll steal a few where they trail. NBC’s decision desk estimates 258. I’ll call it 255 to 260 Democratic seats when the counting ends, a net gain of 41 to 46. Top 260 and it’s their biggest House majority since 1990.

The governors surprised me most of all. Democrats took Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada, every one a state Trump carried in 2024. Vivek Ramaswamy (2024 Republican candidate and then a Trump-guy) lost Ohio to Amy Acton, the state's former health director. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa beat three-term Governor Greg Abbott and became Texas's first Latina governor. State Rep. James Talarico beat Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Senate seat. Democrats also took lieutenant governor, attorney general and railroad commissioner. Texas had not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

Yeah that 1994.

I vote in Georgia. Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, beat Rick Jackson by more than eight points to become the first Black woman ever elected governor in America. I did not think she would win. She did not have an impressive record as Mayor of Atlanta but she knows how to campaign. Jackson, a billionaire health care executive, put more than $200 million of his own money into the race and promised to be “just like Trump, but with a Southern tone” and to be "Trump's favorite governor." Georgia had not elected a Democratic governor since Roy Barnes in 1998. Atlanta is heavily blue and also heavily populated, like most of the nation’s urban centers.

The old rule in politics says that the president's party always underperforms the midterms. No matter if it's Clinton or Trump, the other guy’s chances always improve. Some years more than others, obviously.

In the House, this is especially evident. Since 1946 the president's party has lost House seats in 18 of 20 midterms, about 26 on average, about 35 when his approval is under 50 percent. Most national polls had Trump near 39 percent this spring. On paper, a loss in the high 30s was baked in. If the estimates hold, this ranks with Eisenhower's 1958, Johnson's 1966 and Ford's 1974. Bad. Historic. Still short of Obama's 63 seats in 2010, the year of the Tea Party, another manifestation of Dems being dim.

The average mid-term Senate loss is about four seats. Republicans lost seven and took none back, on a map that favored them. In 2018 Trump lost 41 House seats and gained two senators. Senate races are statewide. No gerrymander, no suburbs to blame. You have to lose a whole state.

The governors tell the same story. Five flips, all in Trump country.

Put it next to 1994. Fifty-four House seats then, 41 to 46 now. Eight Senate seats then, seven or more now. About ten governorships then, five now. Historic. Short of Obama historic, and short of 1994 too. Everybody needs to keep that in perspective. By the numbers, the red wave was bigger.

Where this one hit is the story. Kansas. South Carolina. Texas. And both chambers changing hands on the same night has happened only three times in 50 years: 1994, 2006, and Tuesday.

The right has been remarkably candid about why this happened. The loudest answer is the war. Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire listed it: an unpopular, pointless war, gas prices too high, groceries nobody can afford, and America First abandoned. Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, called it the worst Republican wipeout since 2006, when voters punished the party for a badly planned war in the Middle East. Conservative radio host Buck Sexton said the party got its tail kicked and deserved it.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board went straight at Trump, calling him the main architect of the rout and holding him directly responsible for at least three Senate losses. The once pro-Trump Drudge Report ran two words over his face: "Orange Crush." The New York Post, usually Trump-friendly, put "BLUE TSUNAMI" on its front page. Utah Senator John Curtis said the party traded limited government and fiscal responsibility for winning, and lost anyway.

Then there is Trump. All fall he told voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” I did. So did everybody else.

Don’t get all giddy. This was not about high moral principles. Or glorious representative democracy. Nor the endangered Eisenhower Republican, down to maybe a third of the party now. The original core of the party was simple and reasoned. Keep government small so you don't need taxes to begin with, which is a different creed from the cut-my-taxes (but increase Medicare) Republicanism of recent years. This was not about any of that. This election was about Donald Trump.

Of course, Trump is doing what he always does when he doesn’t get the birthday gift wrapped in a big, beautiful bow and all about him. He blamed the candidates. He blamed Abbott for turning "RINO." He said voters backed the war but would not put up with the short-term pain at the pump. On his own platform, Truth Social, he posted: “I wasn’t on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

He also blamed Fox News, for putting Democrats on the air (Bill de Blasio and Fox’s own Jessica Tarlov) and running polls he did not like. The president attacked Fox for the parts of Fox that look most like journalism instead of the usual propaganda machine it has come to be on the right like, say, MSNBC (now MS NOW) is on the left.

There’s no need to even comment on that kind of shit any more.

Every big wave is a warning to both the winner and the losers. For the latter it is a call to evaluate messaging. To the winners it should be about how do we work together to maintain this momentum but it always becomes more about “elections have consequences” and giving the other party the finger.

Regardless of his grandiose vision of himself as savior of America, Trump cannot run again so the Republican civil war has already started. The MAGA crowd wants America First restraint back. The Journal crowd wants Trump gone. I suspect that fight decides 2028 more than anything the Democrats do.

Democrats now own Congress. Hakeem Jeffries is in line to be Speaker, Chuck Schumer majority leader. Trump still has the veto. Can they do anything with the momentum?

I have my doubts. They need to look more like Georgia's Jon Ossoff. Centrist. Disciplined. Progressive yet practical, willing to compromise. Electable in a former red state. Ossoff was reelected yesterday, and I voted for him. I also voted for Bottoms. I helped make history. I don't think I have ever before voted for a historic first of its kind and watched that candidate win. It is an interesting feeling. The power of one vote comes out of the metaphorical shadows and takes on a body.

But I have no reason to believe Ossoff has much control over his party. The Democrats have found a way to screw things up for years now. A bunch of interesting candidates all dropped out of the 2020 primary season and handed us Joe Biden. Supposedly under the elevated banner of party unity.

Joe, before the memory problems became the story, made all sorts of bad things happen on his watch (the border, the end of Afghanistan, inflation, etc.). Losing his mind was the least of it. Then there is the New Left, the woke wing, pushing issues mainstream America either doesn't like or doesn't relate to. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders and everyone like them should take note. They are primarily responsible for Trump 2.0. They (as in “fear of socialism” and general incompetence) got him reelected, and that led to today’s enormous mess.

You can't blame Trump for being Trump, aggressively Trump. You can blame the Democrats. Yesterday’s voters were grading gas prices, the cost of living, and a war. The party's ideals and its supposed future were not on the ballot. It is a mistake to think there is any mandate here that is other than get rid of Trump, the war, and the cost of living. It ain’t about whether women can turn themselves into men and compete in female sports. Word.

I’ve seen waves come and go. This was a blue one. A big one. Possibly an important one. If the Democrats don’t screw this up again.