Belated Midterms Thoughts

We're a week out from the midterms, and now that the dust has settled a little bit just wanted to say a few things about them.

It's been curious to see the litany of articles and think pieces trying to figure what "happened" to the supposed Blue Wave that was coming.  The easy answer is, people fundamentally misread the political situation which led to unrealistic expectations which naturally collapsed in the face of reality.  The core idea of this, it seems to me, was that this election would be like 2006, where Democrats retook both houses of Congress and then built even larger majorities in 2008.  That was never going to happen for a very simple reason: no real swing voters.  A large part of the Democrats success in turning previously red states like Colorado in the late aughts was due in large part to conservative voters who were tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the response to Katrina, and the looming-then full-on- financial crisis that they were ready to try something new and the Democratic party was happy to supply candidates who were mostly the same as the Republican incumbents so those disgruntled conservative voters could jump ship without feeling like they were betraying their principles.

The difference this time is that the Republican electorate doesn't have the split to exploit like it did in the later years of the Bush presidency.  Trump's approval rating among Republicans has stayed in the mid-to-high 80's (with dips into the 90 and a few in the high 70's) for his entire presidency, so even if, theoretically, that remaining 10-15% of Republican voters put off by Trump voted for Democrats wherever they are around the country, that really isn't going to make a difference.  The Republican party is solidly behind Trump, any hope that there's going to be a firm rebuke of him and all he stands for from the majority of the Republican electorate is a delusion that needs to be abandoned.

So, when you look at the midterms in the context of a deeply divided partisan electorate where both sides where highly motivated and turned out in near-presidential election numbers, the Democrats did pretty well.  Taking control of the House is no small thing, Scott Walker will no longer be the governor of Wisconsin, a Senate seat in Arizona flipped, and even now votes are still being counted in Georgia and Florida because of how narrow the margins are turning out to be.  Yes, Beto lost, but two years ago if someone told you a Democrat running on an unapologetic progressive platform with only small donations would come within three points of beating the incumbent Senator in Texas, you would've been right to laugh it off as ridiculous.  But now we know it can be done, that is as close to a winning strategy that anyone has found for the ridiculously gerrymandered state, so yes, while six years is a long time for Ted Cruz to be a Senator and inflict even more damage on the country, it's also a long time to build up the political infrastructure in Texas so when Cruz is up again in 2024 there's an even better chance of being free of that sniveling ghoul once and for all.

Turning back to those Georgia and Florida elections for a moment, I also want to stress how, even though both Republican states did everything they could to tilt the elections- or in Kemp's case outright steal it- the sheer number of people turning out to vote has prevented that from happening.  In Georgia, on top of all the things that Kemp did before the election to stop as many people as he could from voting, he then upped the ante by shorting heavily-Democratic areas on voting machines; in one polling place the machines actually died because their batteries ran out and Kemp's state department "forgot" to provide the polling station with enough extension cords to keep the machines powered. 

The real kicker though, was the state department keeping at least 1,000 possibly up to 1,500 voting locked away so they couldn't be used on Election Day.  Kemp's excuse was that the state had been court ordered by a judge to sequester those machines because of an ongoing lawsuit regarding the hacking vulnerability of Georgia's voting machines.  The truth is that the judge did not order Kemp or the State Department to keep the voting machines locked away, she just criticized them for "[standing] by for far too long, given the mounting tide of evidence of the inadequacy and security risks of Georgia’s DRE voting system and software."  You have to appreciate the gall Kemp has to have to site a federal lawsuit accusing him of being actively negligent in protecting voting machines from hacking and manipulation as a reason to keep those machines from districts that would've voted for his opponent to sabotage her chances of winning.  Honestly, Kemp is so brazen and open about his attempts to steal the election that it's actually kind of impressive.

Just one last point about this; the actions of Kemp, of the Texas state department, and how Rick Scott is saying with a straight face that counting every vote is a form of voter fraud should be proof positive that Republican politicians don't care about democracy.  I've said before that the goal of conservatism as a political project is to protect and further entrench established power hierarchies whether they be social, political, economic, or cultural.  Things like democracy or civil rights are means to that end, once those things no longer serve the end purpose, they are to be sabotaged or outright discarded.  So when you see the Texas state department insist on keeping voting machines that change your vote, or Kemp being worried that people will turn up to vote, or see Rick Scott's escalating panic as he creams fraud, this is why.  An engaged, high turnout electorate is an active threat to Republican power, which is why they're so committed to making voting as onerous as they can.

Anyway, now that we've got all the optics out of the way, let's get down to the actually important consequences of the election which, basically, what are the Democrats going to do now?  Unfortunately, that all pretty much comes down to what happens with Nancy Pelosi.

In all probability, Pelosi will be Speaker of the House again which doesn't bode well for, anything, really.  A big part of the sales pitch for voting Democrats into power was that if they were in charge of the various Committees, they would have the ability to launch their own investigations into the Trump administrations activities with subpoena power to compel people to testify under oath in the pursuit of those investigations which could, in all likelihood, turn up enough solid evidence to impeach Trump.  The issue is, even in the event that the Democrats receive actionable evidence either from the Mueller report or their own investigations, Pelosi is unlikely to act on it.

The Atlantic has a good interview with Pelosi where she lays out her thinking on the matter and it basically boils down to she won't make any move unless the Republicans in the Senate go along with it.  Her reasoning for this is that Nixon impeachment only got off the ground with Republican cooperation and she wants to avoid the disastrous consequences that came as a result of the failed Clinton impeachment in the 90's.  First thing, there's a big difference between impeaching someone for openly fraudulent, expedient reasons like Gingrich did and impeaching them for actual, legitimate crimes which Trump as already, openly committed.  Second, waiting for the Republicans to come around is a dodge, full stop.  Pelosi has many of the undesirable traits one expects of politicians, but she's not stupid; she's seen every Republican Senator line up behind Trump and every aspect of his agenda, no matter how abhorrent.  Rewrite the Constitution by executive fiat?  Sure, why not.  Lindsay Graham even introduced legislation in support of it.  Possibly illegally replace the Attorney General he forced to resign?  No problem. 

Point is, Pelosi has seen the entirety of the Republican political establishment, media, and voter base circle the wagons around Trump.  Any evidence the House investigations or the Mueller investigation produces will be dismissed like literally everything else as Fake News or Witch Hunt.  It takes a staggering level of idiocy or incompetence to believe any Republican will cross Trump-and, by extension, the entire Republican base- on the word of a Democrat or Robert Mueller.  And like I said, stupid she is not, so this is all a play for her to deflect responsibility for not wanting to impeach Trump to uncooperative Republicans in the Senate.

You can see her pulling a similar move with all those calls for bipartisanship, too.  With a new wave of progressive candidates on her heels demanding legislation for things like Medicare-for-All, tuition-free college, aggressive action on climate change, Pelosi is going to have to find some way to stall all of those things, so, enter Republicans stage right.  Pelosi will use them as a prop to squash any progressive policy agenda as an ugly yet necessary sacrifice on the alter of bipartisanship and cooperation, because "[she] owe[s] it to the country to find common ground" with Trump and the Republicans.  This is flat-out dangerous, the more she engages the Republican party and all it stands for, the more she legitimizes their policies and their goals as normal, acceptable aims.  Compromise in and of itself isn't terrible, but when your compromise is to renew the DACA protections only for the people who recently had them, but let Trump build the wall (like Schumer was willing to do or give him everything but the wall like they both agreed to), then you really haven't achieved anything.  All you've done is abided fascism instead of stopping it, which is what she should be dedicating herself to.

If you feel like I'm being unfair to Pelosi and her aims, I just want to remind all of  you that we've seen this before.  In that Atlantic interview above, she mentions how she had direct evidence that W. Bush lied to the American public to start the Iraq war and she did... nothing. The entirety of her term as Speaker when Obama was president consisted of reaching out to Republicans to create bipartisan friendly bills like the ACA, Dodd-Frank Act, and the Stimulus package, all of which kinda sorta worked, but not very well- and in the case of Dodd-Frank, largely inert- which led to the Democrats losing Congress which lead us to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh so... yeah.  We've already seen the effects of her leadership and they aren't good on either political or policy fronts.  So when she's signaling that she has learned absolutely nothing in the last eight years and plans to do everything the exact same way she did the first time, it's cause for concern and benefit of the doubt doesn't really play in her favor.

So while it may seem like our time is done and we can leave the handling of the Trump presidency to the professionals, but, no- we're going to have stay engaged, stay angry, for a lot longer to make sure these people don't kill us all.


P.S.  Based on this article in the Wall Street Journal, Hillary is "definitely" going to run again for 2020.  Two of her former aides say "She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House."  I don't know how you write that sentence with a straight face, but, you know, how does being emphatically told "We don't want you has president" twice not deter you from trying a third time?  Please, for the love of god, someone find her a new hobby because her current one of losing presidential elections hurts us so, so much more than it hurts her.