The Elephant in the House?

As I sit here the morning after the mid-term election, I can’t help but comment on politics in the States. I found the results of the election oddly comforting, for they proved several things of which I sensed but was unsure. To whit:

1. “Democracy” is not dying. The Democratic party refrain was always overwrought in my opinion. Supposedly the Republicans had gerrymandered themselves from a minority party into a permanent majority who would suppress all other votes and question all unfavorable results. Turns out that voting turn-out was up, if not record-breaking in States which had adopted what President Biden called “Jim Crow 2.0”. And most losers of both parties are accepting the results. More on those deniers later. People were involved, informed, and voted. The Republic remains secure.
2. The US electorate remains deeply divided, both politically and geographically. Politically, issues appear to break down almost exactly 50-50, if one tries to get to the heart of any matter. You can assemble a majority on almost any issue by clever poll wording, or by staking out an extreme position for people to respond to (see the GOP on abortion). People started moving from politically diverse areas into areas more consistent with their beliefs, and now there are densely- packed cities flush full of Democrats, surrounded by vast swaths of small towns filled with Republicans. Suburbs remain the battleground. While gerrymandering is an unfortunate feature (not a bug) of our system, some of what is called gerrymandering is just a result of the very real demographic distribution. All this bodes ill for future elections, as they will likely remain close, which breeds needless suspicion (for the GOP that the elections are rigged, for the Democrats that they are gerrymandered).
3. At the moment, we don’t know who controls the US House and Senate. Here’s a hot take you won’t see anywhere else: it doesn’t matter. The last two years have demonstrated that when the margins are small, as they will be this time, neither party has the discipline to do much. Sure, if the GOP takes the House, life for Hunter Biden, Anthony Faucci, Chris Wray, Alejandro Mayorkas and Merrick Garland gets immeasurably worse. But there’s not much the GOP can do with just the House, or even with both the House and Senate. Gridlock remains the prescription, although I retain hope having the GOP in both the House and Senate would bring out the bipartisan side of Joe Biden, since having the opposite definitely pulled him left. But that doesn’t look likely.
4. The US voting public knows exactly what it does not want. It does not want a second Biden Administration, nor a Harris presidential campaign. Neither does it want a Donald Trump revenge tour. Nobody is passionate about either of the ticket-mates for the Democrats; even most Democrats in exit polls don’t want the President to stand for re-election. That said, Democrats will enthusiastically vote for anyone to forestall any more of “the Donald.” Most Republican politicians remain deeply afraid of Trump and willing to appease him at almost any cost. MAGA true-believers remain so, but even with some lukewarm support from others, they won’t get much above 40% of the electorate anywhere in the States. He’s a loser, to borrow some of his language.
5. Demography is destiny, but only for demographic issues. What? The phrase “demography (the study of population characteristics) is destiny” is popular and true. For example, the number of native-born, twenty year-old white females in California was determined twenty years ago. Yes, the total can get smaller if more people die, but not larger. When adding in immigrants, you can change the macro-dynamics, but generally only at the margins. Democratic strategists started citing “demography is destiny” about twenty years ago, suggesting that since Latino immigrants voted overwhelmingly Democratic, the growing numbers of such immigrants would make the Democratic party an inevitable and unchallenged majority. Except voting is not a demographic issue, and the term Latino (not, for God’s sake, Latinx) is a theoretical grouping, not an identity. People change. When I was young, one political adage went something like “if you’re twenty and a Republican, you don’t have a heart; if you’re forty and a Democrat, you don’t have a brain,” which suggested people get more conservative over time. Maybe so, maybe not, but people do change. Immigrants change as they join the “melting pot” (yes, I still use and believe in that metaphor). It’s not that the GOP is going to start winning the Latino vote, but that even a slightly larger share of the vote for the GOP completely undermines the “Democratic demography destiny” argument. This election cycle gave further evidence for this trend.
6. Here’s a bold prediction: victory in the 2024 Presidential election will go to whichever party breaks free first from its current leadership. Any Republican not named Trump will beat Biden in 2024. Any Democrat not named Biden or Harris will defeat Trump in 2024. If Biden and Trump go head-to-head, it will be a nail-biter, with Biden probably winning as long as he doesn’t give the electorate some irrefutable evidence of advancing senility. Anyone want to take that bet for the next two years? Me neither. The more likely a Trump candidacy becomes (and it’s bordering on inevitable), the harder it will be for Biden to back away, as being the man who slayed the Bad Orange Hair Man is Biden’s best bet for a legacy. When Trump announces his candidacy, Republicans face a moment of truth for which they have so far proven unworthy. But I contend that the first party to make the break will win, probably in a landslide.
7. The red-wave/MAGA revolution was not televised, because it did not happen. Trump’s support to candidates was mostly branding (so much of what he does is only branding) and he was mild with financial support. He successfully pushed through MAGA-friendly candidates in the Republican primaries, who then failed to win in the mid-term election. How bad was it? The party out of power in the White House generally gains twenty House seats in the midterms. The last twenty years it’s been more like fifty or more seats. The GOP may not get ten, or even five. MAGA candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election got shot down all over the country in State and local contests. Much like Trump was the reason the GOP lost the twin runoffs in Georgia (and thus the Senate) back in 2020, Trump single-handedly dispersed the red wave in 2022. That’s powerful, but not in the way Trump thought.
8. We won’t know for a while whether the political re-sorting which began in 2016 continued or abated. Democrats were increasingly becoming the party of blacks and college-educated whites, while Republicans were locking on to the not college-educated crowd and making in-roads with South Asians, some Latinos and blacks. That sort of detail is not readily available yet, but if you’re interested in where the parties are going, look for it in the next few months. It will be telling.
9. It seems to me that the subtext in this election–like all since 2016–was Trump. Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but Biden was wise to call out “ultra-MAGA Republicans” as fears of this group appear to have energized moderate and independent voters to vote Democratic in the midterm despite serious concerns about his leadership. I still believe this was simply a good tactic rather than a real concern, but in the end that doesn’t matter: it worked. Both parties face a tough choice. For the GOP, it’s cling to Trump and go down to disastrous-but-boisterous defeat, or shut him out and risk losing the MAGA wing. For the Democrats, it’s sideline a sitting President or roll the dice and hope Trump is the opponent and Joe’s brain holds up. Rarely does “primary-ing” a sitting President go well (see Jimmy Carter and Teddy Kennedy), but the alternative presents the possibility of a second Trump administration. Seeing as how the Democrats were willing to fund MAGA Republican candidates in the GOP primaries this go round (despite the “danger to Democracy”), perhaps they’ll risk it again in 2024 by staying with President Biden. And here I started off this post with such a positive vibe!