The midterms: A nation marching in place

Winners and losers from the latest election to end all elections.

You were warned that the ugly specter of politics was going to rise and invade this newsletter from time to time. Fortunately it has been restrained from June until now.

It took nine days to figure out that the Republicans won the House and it will take until Dec. 6 to learn if the Democrats will have a somewhat comfortable 51 seats in the Senate or will have to shoehorn their way into 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the ghost-runner.

After an unprecedented torrent of midterm money, the body politic has barely changed. Not one incumbent Senator has lost a race, at least not yet, and only one sitting Governor, Nevada Democrat Steve Sisolak, was beaten. Considering all the “wrong track” grumbling that the polls reflect, the bums rarely get thrown out.

The House might turn out 222-213 for the Republicans. If it does, only five seats have to change to make it Democratic again. The battle lines are indelible, the result of what UCLA political science professor Lynn Vavreck calls “calcification.” That’s far more profound than polarization. The thought of a President winning 46 or so states, or getting a 59-41 Senate, is as quaint as the Saturday afternoon double feature, downtown at The Bijou.

What news there was, in these midterms, came from below.

The Secretary of State candidates who had promised to tinker with election results all lost, like Nevada Republican Jim Marchant. He said he’d make sure Donald Trump would get Nevada’s electors in 2024 no matter what. He lost, but yet he got nearly 472,000 votes and over 46 percent of the total. In Arizona, insurrectionist Mark Finchem got nearly 1.2 million votes as he fell short. There is much talk of a Democratic “win,” but it felt more like survival. The party, and the country, merely dodged an asteroid.

The other relief came from state legislatures, the petri dishes (or Peachtree dishes, if you’re Marjorie Taylor Greene) for all kinds of mischief. The Democrats took over the entire legislature in Minnesota, Michigan and Vermont, and prevented the GOP from gaining super-majorities in North Carolina and Wisconsin. For the first time since 1934, the President’s party did not lose a state legislature in a mid-term election.

Dominating state-level politics is how the Republicans became a force, thanks to a project called Redmap that began during the Obama Presidency. For instance, Kentucky has a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear. If Mitch McConnell had retired, Beshear could have nominated a Democrat to that Senate seat. However, Kentucky Republicans passed a law stripping the governor of that power. Now Beshear would have to choose among a group of three Republicans provided to him by McConnell’s party.

If the two parties had been in locker rooms as the results came in, champagne corks would have popped in both. The loudest would have arrived Saturday night when Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Blake Masters, an aspiring election-canceler, in the Nevada Senate race, which ensured the Dems would keep the upper chamber. But there was no real conquest here, no realignment, no statement made.

Here’s a rundown of the winners and losers:

WINNERS

– Ron DeSantis. Not only did the book-banning champion of liberty win re-election by 15 points over Charlie Crist as Florida’s governor, he watched Republicans gain four House seats in Florida, almost solely through a redistricting plan he designed. He can claim credit for flipping the House when he just happens to show up in Iowa and New Hampshire neighborhoods. Republican thought-leaders and actual officeholders are jumping out of Trump’s sidecar and landing in the back of DeSantis’ pickup truck, the one with the Yale decal. At the moment you’d have to say President DeSantis is at least as inevitable as….President Chris Christie, who won re-election in New Jersey by 22 points in 2013. And we know how that turned out.

– Lee Zeldin. The New York Congressman (pictured) ran a strong governor’s race and only lost to Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, by 5.8 percentage points. His vote totals were a boost to GOP House candidates who took advantage of Democratic bumbling on redistricting, and won four seats that were by no means assured. Add the Florida wins, and that’s eight seats that the GOP won by getting its legislators to choose the voters, not the other way around.

– Gretchen Whitmer. In winning re-election by nearly 450,000 votes over MAGA sympathizer Tudor Dixon, the Michigan governor went to the top of the list of Democratic contenders in case President Biden decides it’s time to drink warm milk and watch Jeopardy all day. There’s no reason to believe he will, but Whitmer led a parade of Michigan victories throughout the ballot. Her blend of toughness and unpretentiousness and her wide appeal to Blacks would serve her well.

– The youth vote. It’s not that the 18-to-29 group showed up in droves. They made up only 12 percent of the electorate, but they favored Democratic House candidates by 28 points. Climate, abortion, democracy concerns, and the promise of student loan forgiveness were their motivators. Naturally, the GOP answer to this is not to moderate the message, but push to raise the voting age to 21.

– The old vote. Pollster John Anzalone points out that in 50 targeted congressional districts, seniors went from a 10-point Republican lead to a three-point Democratic edge after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which promised lower prescription drug costs. It also helped that Florida Senator Rick Scott scored an own-goal on the Republicans, proposing to alter Social Security and Medicare.

– Pollsters. For the most part they were in the ballpark if you looked at individual polls on election eve. What confused people were the “poll averages,” which were distorted by unreliable Republican polls.

– Maxwell Frost. The 25-year-old Democrat won his Florida race and became the youngest member of Congress. Said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “He was born in 1997. I’ve got liquor that’s older than he is.”

— President Biden. He was ridiculed when he spoke of “MAGA Republicans” but in doing so he defined a lot of lightly-tethered candidates who wound up losing. He was also chided for framing the election as a fight for democracy, and that seemed to resonate as well. Then, when Donald Trump got involved, Americans realized why seven million more of them preferred Biden over The Former Guy in 2020.

The losers:

– Reticence. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (pictured) declined to take on Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan, and Hassan beat election-canceler Donald Bolduc. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan likewise passed on a challenge to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. If Sununu and Hogan run and win, it’s probably a 51-48 GOP Senate right now.

– Donald Trump. Several doctors have rushed in to re-set the broken legs of the Trumpies who have dived off the bandwagon since Nov. 8. Yet if Republicans had won the Senate, he would still be an impregnable cult leader. As has been said, the base gladly tolerated Trump’s ineptitude, moral degradation and nonstop ridicule because it viewed him as a winner. As soon as he is perceived as a loser — and why not, after 2018, 2020 and now this? — he loses his ballast. The Trump-DeSantis dunk contest will be worth the price of courtside seats, and the Dems are hoping against hope that Trump, after he bloodies up Gov. Freedom but loses the primary battle, refuses the leave and becomes a third party write-in. But we have miles to go before then.

— Debates. The intelligentsia ripped Katie Hobbs for refusing to debate Republican democracy-doubter Cari Lake in the Arizona governor’s race. It also said John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in June, blew the Pennsylvania Senate race by speaking haltingly and incoherently in his debate with Dr. Mehmet Oz. Hobbs and Fetterman both won. Meanwhile, Crist took large hunks out of DeSantis in their debate  and Democrat Val Demings blistered Sen. Mario Rubio, and Crist and Demings were of course beaten soundly. No debate has been conclusive since Ronald Reagan cheerfully hollowed out Walter Mondale in 1984. It just doesn’t matter.

– Ronna McDaniel. The RNC chair spearheaded the grievance-laden campaign that turned a Republican romp into a stalemate. The Republicans pounded inflation and crime, and voters shrugged and basically said, “Yeah, we know. Got anything for us?” They didn’t. So Zeldin is mounting a campaign to unseat McDaniel.

– New York Democrats. How they wound up losing the redistricting war is worth a book of its own, but the Democrat who drew the map pointed out that it made little difference. What does make a difference is the loss of Democratic veterans like Carolyn Maloney and Sean Patrick Maloney and potential stars like Mondaire Jones. If the Republicans can find a way to win New York’s electoral votes, the Dems’ own map to keep the White House meets the incinerator. As it is, with Texas and Florida and Ohio reddening, their must-wins are still Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Arizona. And with the Senate lineup in 2024 looking as red as Donald Trump Jr’s eyes, it wouldn’t be outlandish to see the Dems retake the House and lose the Senate.

– Tim Ryan. Lauded as the great Democratic Senate hope in Ohio, Ryan ran a funny, tireless campaign and still lost to J.D. Vance by 7.4 points. As he tried to win over rural Republicans by moving away from Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Ryan failed to get the urban turnout he needed to beat Vance. He won 67.5 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) and 65.8 percent in Franklin County (Columbus). In 2016 Sherrod Brown won the Senate for the Dems with 72.5 percent in Cuyahoga and 68.7 percent in Franklin, and he got 143,922 more votes in those counties than did Ryan. The Dems did win three House elections that ranged from dubious to hopeless, but it’s hard to connect those with Ryan.

– Punditry. It should be called “parrotry,” in which everyone parrots whatever was in the Washington Post that morning. Inflation and crime were supposed to buoy the GOP, Turns out, inflation was the No. 1 issue but abortion was a strong No. 2, and voters didn’t want to end democracy just because black beans are now $1.69 a can. They also knew from personal experience that your life is not in danger every time you leave your front porch. While the studio savants chirped, data-oriented commentators were noticing strong early voting by Democrats. That was redeemed on Election Night and in Election Week and even in Election Fortnight.