What To Read About The Midterm Election Results
Democrats won the House but lost the Senate, and failed to upset Republicans in a number of high-profile races around the country. What should we make of these midterm election results? Here's some of the best analysis and commentary we've read on what the election means for Democrats, Trump and the future of our democracy.
Women Were The Midterms' Big Winners
One of the election's clearest narratives was the ascendency of women in national politics, with at least 117 women set to serve in Congress next year. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben takes a closer look at women's role in the midterms:
Many first-time candidates this year were inspired to run for office, at least in part, by the 2016 presidential election — both the fact that the first female major-party nominee ever lost, and that Donald Trump, who is very unpopular among women (particularly Democratic women), won.
And the women elected this year are overwhelmingly Democratic. Thus far, 82 of the 94 women elected to the House this year, as well as nine of the 12 elected to the Senate, are Democrats. (One still-undecided Senate seat, in Arizona, will go to a woman no matter what, as both major-party candidates are women. That brings the total of women assured to be elected to the Senate this year to 13.)
[NPR]
Democratic Control Of The House Should Terrify Trump
Democrats taking back the House may have been expected, and it may feel underwhelming given the expectations of a "blue wave," but it's huge in terms of what it means for the opposition's power to constrain Trump's authoritarian impulses, writes Slate's Dahlia Lithwick:
[I]f the cure for Trumpism is more adult supervision, the fact that the House has changed hands is crucial. Those worried about the erosion of the rule of law can take comfort in the fact that Robert Mueller is no longer alone in investigating and holding the president to account; there will now be a massive check on this presidency that brings with it subpoena powers, the authority to compel the Trump administration to produce evidence, and the power to call witnesses to testify. This is precisely the outcome the White House was most dreading pre-election: disinfecting sunlight trained on the cracks and corners they would prefer to keep secret. Indeed, if the shocking behavior of the Scott Pruitts and Ryan Zinkes were somehow revealed even in the absence of meaningful legal checks and oversight, imagine what comes next for this previously unsupervised administration.
[Slate]
The Election Revealed The Power Of Gerrymandering And The Undemocratic Nature Of The Senate
It's important to note that Democrats won the House in spite of gerrymandered districts and lost the Senate despite winning 56% of votes cast for senators (according to current estimates). The playing field is tilted, points out HuffPost's Molly Redden and Nick Baumann, and a single election won't change that:
Because the process of redrawing political maps will not begin until after 2020, House Democrats will have to defend their gains on the same, skewed playing field. Ahead of Tuesday's election, various forecasts posited Democrats would have to beat Republicans by roughly 5.5, 7, or even 11 points in the general vote just to win a slim majority of seats in the House.
"If it requires a generational wave to give Democrats [the House], that's a sign of just how powerful gerrymandering is, not a sign that it can be conquered," said David Daley, the author of Ratf**cked, a chronicle of the GOP's aggressive gerrymandering efforts. "Winning back the House does nothing to change that structural unfairness in the future."
[HuffPost]
Voter Suppression Was A Stain On Georgia's Election
Long lines and voting machine problems were a major feature of the midterms in many states. Georgia in particular — where Democrat Stacey Abrams has not yet conceded to Republican Brian Kemp in the state's gubernatorial election — was tainted by voter suppression efforts large and small, writes the Atlantic's Van R. Newkirk II.
[N]o matter the outcome, it's clear that voter rights and suppression will be one of the major stories of the 2018 election in Georgia. The state has become the battleground for something deeper than the ideas of the candidates themselves; it's now emblematic of a larger struggle over voting rights that has changed party politics markedly over the past five years. The true nature of voter suppression as an accumulation of everyday annoyances, legal barriers, and confusion has come into full view. Today, voter suppression is a labyrinth, not a wall.
That labyrinth has been under construction for years. Kemp has embarked on what his opponents and critics say is a series of naked attempts to constrict the electorate. Since 2010, his office reports that it has purged upwards of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, including more than 660,000 Georgians in 2017 and almost 90,000 this year. Many of those voters found their registration canceled because they had not voted in the previous election.
Climate Change Was A Losing Issue For Democrats
Weeks after the publication of a terrifying report on the imminent effects of climate change, you might expect voters to want to take action — but a combination of fossil fuel money and a lack of urgency in Democrat campaigns led to disappointing results for the future of the planet. Here's the New Republic's Emily Atkins:
Voters failed to pass a historic ballot initiative in Washington state to create the first-ever carbon tax in the United States. They rejected ballot measures to increase renewable energy in Arizona and Nevada, and to limit fracking in Colorado. Some of Congress' most outspoken climate deniers held onto their seats. Several candidates who ran on explicitly pro-climate agendas lost.
Democrats did not quite get the blue wave they wanted, but it was even worse for environmentalists. There was no green wave whatsoever. That's partially because of record political spending by the fossil fuel industry to oppose pro-climate initiatives, but also because of the Democratic Party's failure as a whole to draw much attention to the issue.
There's Just No Single, Satisfying Takeaway
Pointing to the failure of the vaunted "blue wave" to materialize, FiveThirtyEight's Clare Malone points out that the election can't be easily summed up as a political bellwether. "[T]he election was an accurate reflection of where the country stands," writes Malone, "existentially muddled, politically divided and historically engaged with its politics."
Perhaps the single thing that we can say about Midterm Election Day 2018 is that America was paying attention. According to New York Times estimates, 114 million votes were cast in House races, up from the 83 million in the last midterm elections in 2014. This is unsurprising in some sense, given the way that politics has become ingrained in popular culture over the past three years. Americans live and breathe their politics now, though the breath can sometimes be labored and the life it brings is usually filled with more caustic takes than inspiring words.
The Overall Results Show That Trump's White Nationalist Strategy Is Failing
At a time of low unemployment and a roaring economy, you'd expect the president's party to do pretty well. The fact that Republicans lost the House and the popular vote for the Senate shows that Trump's racist appeals to voters are failing, writes Vox's Ezra Klein.
Imagine the election had gone another way. Imagine Trump's hyping of the migrant caravan had succeeded, and Republicans had outperformed expectations. Trump would be heralded as a mastermind, and fearmongering on immigration would be the path forward for Republicans.
The opposite judgment should land with just as much force. Trump's decision to keep the country in a constant state of agitation and his critics in a constant state of mobilization has failed. His effort to use immigrants to scare Americans rather than touting the economy to unite them lost the House. Republicans, rather than reaping the rewards of a booming economy, are facing a blistering electoral repudiation. The only reasons their losses are contained is that gerrymandering and geography have tilted the map in their favor, and so, like Trump himself, the share of power they win obscures how badly they lag Democrats in vote totals.
[Vox]
