Naturally, everyone and their cousin has an opinion on the recently completed mid-terms. The trick, I think, is to treat it like a traveling email from a conservative friend: read with skepticism. Here’s Ed Rogers in WaPo, who I’ve not read before, but appears to be quite the apologist for Trump:
While Tuesday night was not a complete win for Republicans, there was no blue wave, either. By most measures, Republicans beat the odds of history and nearly everyone’s expectations, while Democrats were left disappointed as the fantasy of Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams and others winning fizzled. Not one new progressive Democrat was successful bursting onto the scene. It will take a few days to process the meaning of this year’s election returns, but the instant analysis is clear: Democrats may have won the House, but Trump won the election.
As I always say, in politics, what is supposed to happen tends to happen. I predicted in August that the Democrats would take the House but that alone was not enough for most Democrats. As much as this year’s midterms offered an obvious opportunity to rebuke President Trump, little of what the arrogant Democrats and members of the mainstream media expected would happen actually did. So much of what they said turned out to be wrong that it will take a while before the significance becomes clear. And if the 2018 midterms prove anything, it is that Trump is standing strong while Democrats and their allies who thought Trump would have been affirmatively rejected are in fact the ones who have themselves been denied.
Rogers has some problems to overcome if he’s going to convince readers of his thesis (Trump good, Obama bad). For example:
- “Democrats have underperformed in comparison with the historical markers and general expectations of a midterm cycle. The president’s party loses 37 seats in the House on average in midterm elections when his approval is below 50 percent — but Democrats aren’t projected to pick up nearly that many seats.” Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? But out of sight is that tricky devil, numbers shorn of context, and the context in this case is a nation that has been excessively gerrymandered, mostly by the Republicans (Maryland exception duly noted). As this has been getting worse and worse, this average number becomes less and less meaningful. In point of fact, it’d be interesting to see a graph of that average changing over time compared to the amount of gerrymandering occurring. Apples and oranges.
- “Let the message be clear: Voters had a chance to repudiate Trump and they did not.” No? It’s often a mistake that innumerate pundits indulge in, thinking that a binary result is the end of the question. But it’s not. Let’s take a single example which, I believe, represents most legislative seats defended by Republicans this mid-term: Representative Steve King. Representing the deeply conservative western heartland of Iowa, the 4th and, earlier, 5th districts, that state to my south which I visit most years (Sioux City, specifically), he’s been in Congress since 2003, and he won again in the mid-terms. Now, if Rogers’ thesis was impregnable, we’d expect King’s margin of victory to be comfortable, since it has been in the past, with margins ranging from 9 percentage points to 23.3 points in the recent 2016 contest (data from Ballotpedia seems a little fragmentary for the now non-existent District 5). Trump was a big winner in District 4 during the Presidential election, winning the district by 27 points. So how did Representative King do yesterday? Must have been a cakewalk, right?
According to The Gazette, King barely won 50% of the vote. His margin of victory? 3.3 points. Remember, voters hate members of Congress – except their own. They typically get a break. So how did King suddenly fall apart? By clasping Trump tightly, he damn near sank himself in the lake. Like a number of Trump-endorsed or Trump-loving candidates, from Arrington in South Carolina to McDaniel in Mississippi, that big old Trump stamp on their foreheads was the stamp of doom. King managed to survive it, which I find more than a little puzzling – but, having driven through the district in campaign season, it’s not really surprising. The advertising was suffocatingly for King. (And this is a guy who’s been little more than a rubberstamp, BTW. But I’ll let you do that research.) The toxic power of team politics comes to the fore, I suppose.
My point is that there are more to numbers than Thug Won, Thag Lost. Rogers should acquaint himself with the numbers behind the numbers, the stories that are flowering all around him – if he’s willing to look at them.
- Rogers is smart enough not to mention the Senate, because this time around the Senate was configured overwhelmingly in the GOP’s favor – which is why I’m mentioning it, for the benefit of the reader who only skims politics.
- In another instance of shorn context, and as Kevin Drum adroitly points out, the Democrats made large gains despite the heavy burden of fighting in an overall good to very good economy. This became a point of some contention, as President Trump proclaimed his holy influence over the stock market every time it jumped, and ran and hid from the big bad thunderstorm every time it tumbled. The Democrats, and some independents such as myself, on the other hand, noted that President Obama handed off a good economy to Trump, and that’s saying more than usual, given the turd that Bush had handed Obama. From there, and noting that Trump’s tax reform of 2017 has done remarkably little except balloon the deficit, it’s not hard to make a credible case that it’s still an Obama-inspired economy. If you’re really set on pursuing this somewhat dubious line of logic, the stock market jumped 2+% the day after mid-terms. Understanding why may require you to stand on your head without recourse to your hands, however.
Of course, this entire topic deserves its own rant, which I’ve indulged in at least once. But the important point is that we’re asked to accept judgments that sound good, but have been cleverly made bereft of important context.
- “Not one new progressive Democrat was successful bursting onto the scene.” This should be a big red flag concerning Rogers’ willingness to dance with the liars. This only needs one example: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins NY-14 by 64 percentage points. But she’s not alone, as Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota won confirmation of her progressive agenda surprisingly comfortably, and Ilhan Omar, also of Minnesota, has burst onto the scene with a real shock for those of an anti-Muslim bent. And I’m not even bothering to research the question, I knew about these without a single search (except to get Ocasio-Cortez’s name). There’s probably more.
But the point is that reality is misrepresented here. A storm came through and knocked over the trees, Rogers, and proclaiming it as nothing more than some showers is a waste of time.
Viewed with as much context as possible, I think the mid-terms have a lot to teach the Republicans, but it’ll be a lesson they can’t stomach: Trump is a metastasizing cancer. In some parts of the body politic, he’s still a rock star. But for others, they’ve recognized he’s a disaster, and they’re trying to find ways to get rid of him.
But perhaps most importantly is this pert little line, slipped in without trumpets nor support:
No liberal will want to admit it, but Trump is an asset to the Republican Party, while President Barack Obama was a disaster for the Democratic Party.
It’s not a misinterpretation, but a deliberate smear. And, most interestingly, it’s not a smear of President Obama, but of what he stands for: the old style of politics. Rogers, as an apparent apologist for Trump, dares not have any truck with the style of politics in which both Parties debate and create solutions to commonly recognized national problems through cooperative effort. This cannot be tolerated because it ruins the narrative that the Democrats are evil and out to wreck the United States. (If you think I hyperbolize, you need to research some of what Trump had to say in the last days of the mid-term campaign.) This is not a new narrative, though, because it starts with Newt Gingrich, and sweeps along to Lott and McConnell and many others.
By attributing doom and disaster to Obama, of which I, as an independent, didn’t notice a whiff, Rogers wants to bury that old style of politics and replace it with the single Party with its manly leader. And Rogers might have even made this work. If only Trump wasn’t such an ineffectual putz, and doomed to become recognized by more and more disaffected former supporters as that.
If you’re a Republican and want to save your Party, start a new one. Or kick Gingrich out, followed by Trump, followed by anyone who protests the first two. Then start listening to officials and former officials such as Warner, Flake, and Lugar. That’s the path back to an honorable political institution.
