On Tuesday night, as the Virginia returns were coming in, I wasn’t surprised—at all—by Ed Gillespie’s loss. He finished right around where Ken Cuccinelli did while running for governor and where Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, and John McCain did in Virginia while running for president. Virginia is a blue-enough state that, all things being equal, you should expect the statewide Republican to get between 44 percent and 47 percent of the vote.
So I wasn’t spooked by Gillespie’s 45 percent share. But I was plenty spooked by the rest of the results.
First, look at the raw numbers: Gillespie pulled more votes than any Republican who’s ever run for governor in Virginia. And he lost by 9 points. That should snap your head back, because it means that Gillespie didn’t lose because he failed to turn out his voters—he got his votes. It’s just that Democrats surged to an unprecedented level. And—here’s the other thing—the Democrats didn’t nominate Elvis. The next governor of Virginia is a guy who’s maybe two steps above Martha Coakley’s level in terms of political talent. And Democratic voters surged for him anyway.
But what really brought me up short was what happened in the local delegate races. I live in Virginia so I see this stuff reasonably close-up. I wrote a piece looking at what happened to the Republican from the 51st District and it’s the type of thing that ought to scare the crap out of political professionals: A highly competent, scandal-free incumbent in a district gerrymandered to make it safe for Republicans got not just beaten, but blown out by a first-time candidate who one would think is way too liberal for the district.
And it didn’t just happen in the 51st. Republicans started the night one seat away from a supermajority and when the recounts are finished, they may be in the minority.
We’re a year out from the congressional midterms, but the Virginia delegate numbers are like seeing a sudden seismograph jump: It’s not direct evidence of a quake, but it’s enough to make you wonder if one is coming. Or maybe if one happened out in the middle of the ocean, and there’s a tsunami on the way.
So just as an exercise, it’s worth thinking through what that future might look like. What if there really is a Democratic wave building, and the Dems sweep through and take the House. And maybe they take the Senate, too—which is a much more plausible scenario if Alabama’s seat flips in the wake of the Roy Moore sex scandals.
What does that world look like?
I’m not sure it’s bad for President Trump, to be honest. I mean, it could be quite bad. It’s entirely possible a Democratic House would go straight to impeachment hearings on day two. But for some reason I think that’s a low-probability outcome.
Instead, since Trump has been an ineffectual executive in terms of passing legislation, having a Democratic Congress would give him an alibi. And since his natural political inclinations have always tended toward moderate liberalism, he might even find willing partners for compromise in the Democratic caucus. Would the Republican minority go along with him? It’s hard to see how they wouldn’t. Trump would still command his alt-right legions and whatever rump of Republicans would be left in the House, at least, would be much more Trumpy than what’s there now.
Losing the Congress wouldn’t be without downsides for Trump. Probably the best aspect of Trump’s administration is the excellent job he’s done of filling judicial appointments. If the Senate is close (or Democratic) that would grind to a halt. If another SCOTUS seat opened up, a Democratic Senate might even decline to consider a nomination until after the 2020 election. (They could easily argue—with some legitimacy—that what’s good for the Garland is good for the gander.)
But the biggest issue for Trump will be his reelection. (That is, if he decides to run.) And I suspect that having a Democratic Congress to run against would make that an easier proposition. If the GOP holds Congress, then Trump has to run on his record. If the Democrats control Congress, he can run against them. Trump is an insurgent candidate all the way down to the molecular level; that’s much more comfortable ground for him to stand on.
And there’s one other thing: Trump may be in a terrible position. His job approval numbers are awful, his record of accomplishment is weak. His campaign manager has been indicted and there are ongoing investigations that may claim other people close to him. He’s one turn of the business cycle away from looking like a Republican Jimmy Carter.
But in politics, you don’t have to beat the ’27 Yankees. You only have to beat the guy in front of you. And the Democrats look pretty terrible, too. For all we know, they’ll nominate an 80-year-old avowed socialist who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. And I would not count Trump out of that race, no matter what happens in 2018.
