Sorry to tell you, but the midterm elections tell us very little about what may happen ahead.
We can’t even agree on what happened in them. Some called it a wave, and there are some signs of one, but then look again: A wave overwhelms everything near it, but the party that romped in the House lost ground in the Senate.
That isn’t a wave. In a wave election, the close races nearly all go in just one direction. That didn’t occur earlier this month.
The ultimate swing state of Florida had elections for the Senate and the governor’s mansion that were decided weeks later after litigation and recounts. These critical races were won by the party that lost so many important House races.
Yes, the Democrats were Shermanesque in their march through the suburbs. But that still doesn’t make it a wave.
It also appears quite un-wavelike in that both sides seem depressed. Both had too many close, heart-breaking losses, lost too many people they looked to as stars in the future, and had too many nerve-wracking close calls. Each gave the impression they had at one moment hoped for something much better.
The Democrats, before the Kavanaugh hearings, loomed like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. They melted down between then and Election Day.
The Republicans were disappointed because the effect of those hearings didn’t last quite as long as they had hoped. It would have helped had the election come two weeks earlier, but a rapid succession of sick, shocking, and shattering incidents had stunned the whole country and shoved all campaigns and politicking off the stage.
One thing that did seem to be truly a wave was the movement of independents and women in the close and near suburbs of fairly big cities away from the GOP and toward the Democrats. But it remains to be seen what this means or whether it lasts. Is this the first sign of a true realignment, in which these people detach from their previous party? Or is it a rebellion against President Trump himself, his manners and morals, which they seem to find wanting? And if it’s the latter, will it come to an end when he goes away?
What people seem to despise about Trump is less his politics than the traits, tweets, and tantrums they find so offensive. Will they come to hate the Republican Party permanently because he is its temporary face, or do they only hate him now because he is so unlike the other Republicans for whom they had voted, and unlike the party they knew?
This the answer we need to uncover, and the midterm elections tell us very little about it.
