President Donald J. Trump holds a press conference regarding the midterm election results Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
It’s about as good as Republicans could have hoped for and really disappointing for Progressives.
The Blue Wave that the media was envisioning turned out to be an ordinary mid-term election, almost a yawner, rather than an extraordinary rebuke of President Trump. As the Washington Examiner points out:
Recent presidents have suffered much more severe chastisements after two years of unified party control.
- Bill Clinton’s party in 1994 lost 54 House seats and its House and Senate majorities.
- Barack Obama’s party in 2010 lost 63 seats and its House majority.
To any voter watching or reading the news., given the media’s seeming revulsion to Trump and Republicans, it seemed as though the lumps would be bad.
But despite an extremely hostile news media, Republicans came through it pretty well. They won key governors’ races in presidential states like Florida and Ohio. They gained a handful of Senate seats, despite being badly outspent. They also won many of the House races they were expected to lose, giving them an easier path to regain their majority in the future.
Public Not Nearly Anti-Trump as Elites Implied
In short, Republicans’ relatively strong performance in this extremely high-turnout midterm is a strong sign that the public is not nearly as annoyed about the Trump presidency as coastal elite liberals seemed to think they were.
Most Trump-Endorsed Candidates Won
That’s a lot more than Barack Obama can say for any of the midterm or off-year elections in which he campaigned, including 2009, 2010, 2014, and now 2018 as well.
In the final analysis, Republicans lost the House. That’s bad for them. But it’s not like the bottomless defeats that Democrats suffered in 2014 and 2016.
In election 2018, Republicans retained strong foothold in nearly all state governments, in the courts, and in the U.S. Senate.
Republicans kept House losses to a minimum, which makes the retaking of the House a realistic goal.
Read more here.
