The midterm elections were a draw, with both sides able to make claims of victory. The Republicans bolstered their majority in the Senate, thanks largely to the Democrats’ shameful treatment of Brett Kavanaugh. The Democrats took the House, cutting off any chance that the GOP will pass major legislation in the next two years. Twelve Houses races are still unofficial, but the Dems have gained more than 30 seats and a solid majority. They had a good night, but it still wasn’t quite the wave they promised.
One consequential outcome is that Democrats picked up seven governorships: Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, and Maine. The Democrats now occupy 23 governor’s mansions, to the Republicans’ 27. That’s an impressive achievement for a party that has struggled to win statehouse and governor’s races for a generation.
The long-term effect has been to deprive the Democratic party of capable leaders from places that aren’t dominated by liberal metropolitan populations. All the party’s likely 2020 presidential contenders come from California or the Northeast: Cory Booker from New Jersey, Kamala Harris from California, Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, and Bernie Sanders from Vermont. Where is the Democrats’ next Bill Clinton?
Leave aside the man’s shameful personal behavior and recall that, as a second-wave “New Democrat,” he promoted centrist policies in ways that almost nobody in today’s Democratic party is willing to do. He was able to do this, at least in part, because he was not from New York or California but Arkansas. He understood the outlooks and worries of people in flyover country—a talent his wife, for one, never cultivated. And for all the 42nd president’s intermittent liberalism in domestic affairs and starry-eyed multilateralism abroad, he pushed his party to acknowledge realities it prefers to forget: the dangers of welfare dependency, the necessity of spending priorities, the need for robust crime-prevention policies, the electoral folly of embracing progressive social issues.
Just as it’s an ominous thing for the GOP to fall into the hands of harebrained populists fixated on immigration and voter fraud, so it augurs nothing good that the Democratic leadership has shed most of its moderates in the last few years.
That leads us to the 2018 gubernatorial races. The Dems’ seven pickups conspicuously did not include Florida, in which the Bernie Sanders-aligned progressive Andrew Gillum lost to Ron DeSantis, or Georgia, where the aggressively left-wing romance novelist and former state representative Stacey Abrams fell short against Brian Kemp.
Where Democrats ran as moderates, by contrast, they mostly prevailed. In Kansas, Democrat Laura Kelly defeated populist rabble-rouser Kris Kobach. Kelly campaigned on traditional Democratic issues—school funding, infrastructure spending, social welfare spending—and largely avoided the culture-war absurdities. She won the endorsement of an impressive array of Republicans in the legislature, and she won the election.
In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a former prosecutor and state senator, won in much the same way. Whitmer is a liberal—she favors a $15 minimum wage, vastly increased spending on an unreformed school system, and the repeal of Michigan’s new right-to-work law—but she, too, shows little interest in the social liberalism with which Harris, Warren, and Co. are obsessed. During the campaign, Whitmer talked about fixing roads and balancing the state budget more than anything else, and she favors repealing a tax on pensions that her term-limited Republican predecessor, Rick Snyder, signed.
In Nevada, voters plumped for Democrat Steve Sisolak over Republican attorney general Adam Laxalt. Sisolak based his appeal almost exclusively on education spending, Chamber of Commerce-style economic boosterism, and Democratic boilerplate on health care. He has clashed with unions and sharply criticized corporate welfare giveaways. If it weren’t for the D after his name, you would have a hard time pegging Sisolak as a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat.
Democratic moderates are thriving elsewhere. Gina Raimondo won a second term in Rhode Island. In her first term she cut regulations and lowered both the car tax and the corporate tax. In her previous job as state treasurer, she reformed the Rhode Island pension system.
At the national level, Democrats have gone from disappointment to disappointment. Their congressional leaders are progressive loudmouths bereft of any idea except opposing Trump. For their own good and the nation’s, the party’s voters should look to the governor’s mansions.
