Making Sense of the Mid-Terms and Where We Go from Here
When all the chatter stops regarding the 2018 mid-term election, and all of the self-described “experts” have finished blathering about who won, who lost and who should take the blame or credit for its results, some very real and tangible consequences will begin to emerge that will shape the next two years and then the four years that will follow.
As was almost expected, Democrats were able to “flip” the House of Representatives by only the slimmest of margins. As of this writing, Democrats now lay claim to 220 House seats, barely surpassing the 218-seat threshold needed to attain majority status. With 22 House races yet to be decided (again, as of this writing) the Democrats’ hold on the House will be just as tenuous as the Republicans’ hold on the House last year. With the departure of over thirty House Republicans who chose not to seek re-election, the Democrat takeover of the House was certainly eased, if not abetted by these Republicans- most of whom were RINOs whose support of the President was flimsy, at best. As a group, the Republicans who remain in the Congress are more solidly behind the President, even though their overall power has been obviously diminished.
House investigations into Democrat misbehavior regarding the launch of the Russia probe, and other such investigations of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take a U-turn, with any investigation of Clinton and the Democrats being brought to an immediate halt, while investigations into Trump will be intensified and broadened- Democrats poised to chair the requisite House committees have already said so. Whatever progress made by Bob Goodlatte’s (R-VA) and Devon Nunes’ (R-CA) investigative committees will now evaporate into thin air, while at least two key Democrats poised to take over committee chairmanships, Maxine Waters (D-CA) of finance, and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) of judiciary, have promised to begin impeachment proceedings against the President and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, respectively. But therein lies the ironic secret to Donald Trump’s eventual victory in 2020.
With little or no legislation coming from the newly-aligned House, President Trump will be able to effectively run against a “do-nothing” Congress in 2020, while at the same time- and this is ironic- being able to portray victim-status in the wake of more and more hearings, investigations and other subsequent “witch hunts,” sure to follow. In other words, flipping the House to Democrat control may be the one thing that assures Donald Trump of re-election in 2020. After all, he now has someone(s) and something(s) to run against, whereas without this change, who really is Trump’s adversary?
In spite of historical precedence that has indicated a flip of one or two houses of Congress during a given president’s first mid-term election, President Donald Trump managed to flip at least three, perhaps four, Senate seats adding a net gain of at least three seats to his threadbare majority in the Senate.
For Democrats in the Senate who voted to oppose Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, representing states where Trump defeated Hillary Clinton two years ago, things didn’t go so well. Bill Nelson (D-FL), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) all paid the price for this vote, and it appears that John Tester (D-MT) barely escaped joining them. Only Joe Manchin (D-WV), who voted to confirm Kavanaugh, was able to retain his seat, while the only incumbent Republican to lose his seat was Dean Heller (R-NV). In Arizona, Martha McSally (R-AZ) seems poised to win Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) abandoned seat over Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and if that should hold, (pending the eventual outcome in Mississippi’s special election to replace Thad Cochran (R-MS), then President Trump will have expanded his majority in the Senate from 51 to 54 seats.
More importantly, erstwhile anti-Trump/NeverTrump Republicans Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) will have been replaced with Trump loyalists, expanding the President’s political influence over his caucus in the Senate. With fifty-one Republicans including three anti-Trump/NeverTrump in the old Senate, the President was unable to pass his healthcare bill in 2017, thanks to John McCain’s (R-AZ) infamous thumbs down vote in July of that year.
With 53 or 54 Republicans in the new Senate, including the newly-elected erstwhile anti-Trump/NeverTrump Mitt Romney (R-UT), the President will be able to more easily confirm replacement cabinet officials, more easily get Senate approval on trade agreements and other such treaties, and continue his success in appointments to the federal judgeships. Essentially, Trump was smart to concentrate on campaigning for Senate candidates and the fact that he was able to not only retain, but then expand, the Republican majority in the Senate will bode well for him in the next two years, running up to his re-election campaign in 2020. If either Associate Justices Ruth Bader-Ginsberg or Stephen Breyer (both in their 80s) decides to step down, President Trump will have an opportunity to alter the direction of the Supreme Court for decades to come. Having already confirmed two Associate Justices, and some 1100 other federal judges, it may well be that Trump’s biggest legacy and most lasting impact will be in the judiciary.
Needless to say, a lot of new faces from both parties will appear on Capitol Hill come January. A record number of seats in both Houses will be held by women in both parties, and the effect that will have on the comings and goings of our elected officials and in the legislative process remains to be seen.
In Virginia alone two incumbent Congressmen, Dave Brat (R-VA) in District 7 and Scott Taylor (R-VA) in District 2, were replaced by Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Elaine Luria (D-VA), respectively. As expected, Barbara Comstock (R-VA) in District 10 lost in her re-election bid to Jennifer Wexton (D-VA)., hence the three House seats that flipped in the Old Dominion. Once reliably conservative going back decades, Virginia is now an irreversibly “blue” state, thanks both to the fact that Virginia claims more federal spending than any other state and is now politically dominated by the DC suburbs of Northern Virginia. Save for four congressional districts in rural Virginia, the Democrat takeover of the Old Dominion is almost complete and the Commonwealth has become irreversibly changed as a result.
If history is any indication, America seems to be fixated on the idea of divided government like no other country in the entire world, and nothing from yesterday’s election would tend to counter this claim. The next two years promise to be a topsy-turvy world of high drama and low dealing, with treachery and trouble-making brought to the forefront as never before.
While members of both parties, as well as President Trump, can legitimately lay claim to winning the mid-term election of 2018, it will nonetheless vouchsafe the old adage that “victory has a thousand fathers, while defeat is but an orphan.” While politicians of all stripes will claim such victory, let us hope that we the people do not become orphans in the process.
-Drew Nickell, 7 November 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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