The biggest winner of the 2018 elections was someone not on any ballot — it was President Trump, specifically, his 2020 re-election campaign.
Assuming the absence of catastrophic events like a war or economic collapse — and those things could happen — the midterms have perfectly positioned Trump to win in 2020. The narrow Democratic victory in the House will create an investigative and legislative horror show that will begin January 2018 and not let up for two years.
Radicalized by their base and unable to help themselves, the Democrats, newly in possession of subpoena power and in control of each House committee, will investigate everything that moves in the West Wing and in the Cabinet agencies. Trump will tweet “Witch hunt!” every couple of days, and even average voters will come to believe him as they behold the plethora of probes launched by the Left.
Meanwhile, the conservative base will be galvanized by what they will regard as an obvious attempt by Democrats to stifle the Trump agenda and invalidate the 2016 election by swarming the White House with endless inquiries. They’ll be right back at the polls in 2020 to let Democrats know their votes counted in 2016, and will count again.
While there are still some politically smart moderates in the Democratic Party, even they may not be able to resist the demand from the base, which regards Trump with passionate loathing even President Richard Nixon couldn’t have imagined, to impeach the president.
That Democrats have been smart enough not to talk about impeachment too much during the campaign doesn’t mean they won’t be smart enough to resist it once in power. A good impeachment would be just the kind of freak show that would amplify the energy of an already energized conservative base as it watches the attempt to remove a president over political differences. President Bill Clinton was never more popular during his presidency than in 1998 as Republicans were busy impeaching him, and they had an actual reason (perjury) to do so.
As Democrats take to their committee chairs and the Sunday talk shows and scream invective against Trump, they will be achieving absolutely nothing legislatively. Not only do they hate Trump too much to work with him, but their agenda will be way too far to the Left to move anything they pass through the Senate. Nothing will even get to Trump’s desk, as much as he’d enjoy vetoing whatever the leftists running the House send him. Democrats will spend the next two years proving to suburban moms and other swing voters that they can’t govern.
Worse for moderate voters will be the actual legislation that does run on the floor of the House chamber. Gun control, socialized medicine, open borders — every Republican nightmare and progressive Democratic dream come true. The cacophony of frightening leftist voices and the extremist legislation will make Trump seem by comparison like some placid small-town accountant. Not only will conservatives who backed Trump in 2016 be reaffirmed in their choice, but those who hesitated because of Trump’s admittedly outrageous character will feel much more comfortable supporting him as a buffer against a House gone mad. Think Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., — “Impeach, impeach” — chairing the Financial Services Committee, and you begin to get an idea of what will be going on.
Trump doesn’t need new legislation. He’s already achieved enough to win re-election. A major tax cut, regulation rollback, job and wage growth, a return of manufacturing, and a conservative overhaul of the judiciary are already in the bank. He can continue to issue executive orders, appoint judges, and conduct a sensible foreign policy while dismissing the House as irrelevant. What he needs is not new achievements, but a proper foil, which is what the House will provide.
What’s more, Republicans held the Senate and won races in many states where Trump campaigned aggressively, while Democrats barely seized the House and the expected blue wave never came close to materializing. The 2018 midterms show that despite the demonization of him by the press and the Left, Trump’s populist-nationalist program and his personality remain forces to be reckoned with.
That is, the 2016 election was not a moment of temporary insanity for the country. Trump and Trumpism are here to stay — most likely right through Jan. 20, 2025.
Keith Koffler (@keithkoffler) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the editor of White House Dossier and the author of Bannon: Always the Rebel by Regnery.
