THE MID-TERMS: SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE?

Is the country moving from red, white, and blue to Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White?

People from all political persuasions could celebrate something and lament something about this week’s mid-term elections, dubbed the most important in several generations. And, they’re not over. Too-close-to-call races in Arizona and Florida, and a late November runoff in Mississippi, mean the final makeup of the United States Senate remains uncertain. Continued vote counting in California leaves the ultimate size of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives undecided. Remaining absentee and provisional ballots, and possible court action, prevent resolution of Georgia’s historic gubernatorial race. The wild ride goes on.

Democratic Joy

Whether Democrats could flip the House got much of the pre-election attention. They did, gaining perhaps 40 seats, depending on the outcome in California where tabulation of mail-in and absentee ballots continues. Democrats picked up seven governorships, including several in the upper mid-west, where Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign

cratered. Of the states that touch the Great Lakes, all but two, Ohio and perpetually Republican Indiana, now have Democratic governors. Democratic chief executives will lead battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, likely helping the party’s 2020 presidential nominee.

Democrats can celebrate the ethnic and cultural diversity of their wining candidates. Kansas and New Mexico sent the first Native-American women to Congress. Michigan

Deb Haaland & Sharice Davids/PhotoCred: Bustle.com

   

and Minnesota elected the first Muslim congresswomen.  Massachusetts chose its first African-American U.S. Representative. New York’s 14^th district picked the youngest member of Congress ever, a 29-year old Puerto Rican from the South Bronx. Democrats elected an openly gay governor in Colorado, re-elected an openly gay U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, and re-elected an avowedly bisexual governor in Oregon.

Close doesn’t really count in politics, but Democratic hopes for the future soared because Texas senatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke took Republican Ted Cruz to the

wire, aiding Democratic state legislative victories in the process. Andrew Gillum apparently fell short of becoming the first black governor of Florida, though late tabulated votes might throw that race into a recount. In Georgia, at this writing, Stacey Abrams continues her quest to become the first African-American woman ever elected governor of an American state. These close calls provide inspiration, and roadmaps, for future Democratic wins.

Republican Success

The GOP not only held the Senate, it expanded its majority, possibly gaining three seats. Republicans ousted Democratic Senators in Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota, all states Donald Trump won big in 2016. Trump campaigned relentlessly in those states (and in Montana, where Democrat Jon Tester barely survived). Trump also concentrated on Florida, where Gillum appears to have lost the governor’s race and Bill Nelson, the incumbent Democratic senator, trails and probably can win only through a recount. Trump’s campaigning, based mostly on fear of immigrants, held together the Republican base. Going into the 2020 election, the GOP’s dominance of small town and rural America presents the biggest obstacle for Democrats in their effort to oust Trump from the White House and recapture the Senate.

No Unmitigated Happiness

Though both parties can celebrate, both should curb their enthusiasm. Democratic failures this year make flipping the Senate in 2020 less likely, though the map looks more favorable. Democrats have a problem in senatorial races in the middle of the country (and the South) where rural areas and small towns overwhelmingly vote Republican and Democrats haven’t convinced rural and southern white voters their policies benefit them and they haven’t generated a stronger turnout in the cities. Nothing in the 2018 results suggests that problem has gone away.

In many states, Democrats faced, and did not overcome, the two – headed monster created by the disaster of the 2010 mid-terms – gerrymandering and voter suppression. Democrats may win the popular vote in this year’s House races by six to eight points, depending on the California totals. Except for gerrymandering perpetuated by Republican governors and state legislatures, many elected in the 2010 mid-terms, such a popular vote victory might have yielded 60 House seats, not the currently projected 40. Voter suppression, the other legacy of the 2010 elections, remains a problem, limiting the black vote in southern and mid-western states, and keeping Latinos from being a bigger factor in Texas, the West, and Florida. 

Republicans shouldn’t jump for joy either. Despite keeping the Senate, they lost their advantage in the upper mid-west because of defeats in gubernatorial races there. More broadly, with health care, Democrats found an issue for which Republicans seemingly have no answer, at least not one that satisfies both their donor class and citizens clamoring for expanded coverage and protection for pre-existing conditions.

High turnout of young voters (who favored Democrats by 35 points), the GOP’s perpetual problem with blacks, a Democratic trend in the fast growing Asian-American demographic, and continued erosion of Republican support from white women (who split 49-49 in House races this year, while having voted 55-43 for GOP House candidates in 2016) cannot encourage Republicans thinking about the future. Things may appear fine now with Trump and his base firmly in control. But a day of reckoning is coming for the GOP when changing demographics overwhelm the party, even in southern states. The razor thin wins in Florida and (possibly) Georgia might not happen in four years.

The lesson for both sides from the 2018 mid-terms: Offer leadership to more, not fewer citizens.                

BEHIND THE MID-TERMS: A FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S SOUL

Culture Wars, Self-governance, and America’s Future

In 1837, as Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in her new

book, Leadership in Turbulent Times (Simon & Schuster 2018), twenty-seven year old Illinois state legislator Abraham Lincoln said the “founding fathers noble experiment – their ambitions to show the world that ordinary people could govern themselves had succeeded” and now it was up to his generation to preserve this “proud fabric” of freedom. Perhaps the 2018 mid-term elections present another challenge to

show the world ordinary people can govern themselves since these elections will determine control of Congress, numerous governships,   and the balance of power in state legislatures in the largely unprecedented circumstances of the Trump presidency.  

This year’s campaign demands examination of two very different political approaches, approaches that will likely continue in the 2020 Presidential campaign, given Donald Trump’s almost certain presence on the ballot. The difference in the approaches of the two major parties generates as much interest for us as any individual campaign. Which wins will say much about the social, political, and cultural direction of the country in the next few years. Woodson would go so far as to say “who prevails will speak to the capacity of ordinary people to govern themselves and decide who benefits from democracy and who does not.” In any event, the elections reflect a battle for the nation’s soul. 

  

Some background reading

Two books provide a good starting point for understanding what’s going in the 2018 campaign -- What’sthe Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank (Holt & Co. 2004) and That Used to be Us by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2011). Frank’s book reveals the game plan for most Republicans. Democrats, at least many of them, are trying to follow the advice laid out by Friedman and Mandelbaum. 

 

In a nutshell, What’s the Matter With Kansas details how Republicans have persuaded many white, low and middle income Americans to vote against their economic  interests. Rather than supporting candidates who favor tax, wage, and government spending policies that benefit them, these voters have often helped elect candidates who oppose those policies. They pass tax cuts tilted toward the rich, nominate and confirm judges who favor corporate interests at the expense of workers and consumers, and reject as too expensive infrastructure and job training programs that provide work for ordinary people or help them cope with the effects of globalization. Republicans have accomplished this by running cultural issue campaigns that appeal to the fears of low and middle income white America.

That Used to be Us isn’t as direct as What’s the Matter With Kansas and it’s not as much a template for Democratic campaigns. Nevertheless, the policy prescriptions in That Used to be Us on issues like health care, infrastructure, immigration, and economic innovation form the foundation for many Democratic campaigns we’ve seen this year and some Democratic gubernatorial campaigns.

The campaigns we have

As the election draws near, Republican use of the What’s the Matter With Kansas playbook has become all the more apparent. Increasingly, GOP television commercials rely on fear of hordes of brown people pouring across the southern border. Many ads are deceptive, implicitly or explicitly racist, and anti-democratic. Some Republicans, for example, present disingenuous positions on the

Affordable  Care Act, claiming support for its popular requirement that insurers cover pre-existing conditions, while signing on to lawsuits attacking that very provision or opposing it in Congress. Others run anti-immigration ads that dog whistle to whites worried about brown people coming to the United States from Latin America, supposedly bent on taking over the country.   

   

Republican candidates are not running on the 2017 tax cut (which is generally unpopular, given it’s favorability toward the wealthy) or the relatively good economy. Instead, Republicans invoke images of “uppity” (black) National Football League players

disrespecting the flag by kneeling during the national anthem, gangs of Hispanic youth terrorizing American citizens, and fears sensible gun safety laws will result in hunters losing their guns. Republicans ride that horse, hoping it takes them across the finish line first. They also now rig the system in places like Georgia, Texas, and North Dakota by changing voting rules, intending on suppressing the black, brown, and Native American vote. 

    

PhotCred: BrennanCenter.org

Democrats emphasize health care, especially pushing Medicaid expansion in states that declined that opportunity when introduced as part of the Affordable Care Act, economic wage fairness through a $15 minimum wage, and a transportation and infrastructure program that includes government funding for road and bridge repairs. Even if Friedman and Mandelbaum didn’t support every one of these polices in That Used to be Us, the book advocated the kind of bold governmental action underlying many of them because the authors saw the United States falling behind the rest of the world in innovation and economic development. 

A sign of just how different an approach the parties take in 2018 resides in the fact Democrats seldom campaign on immigration policy (except opposing splitting up immigrant families at the border) while few Republicans leave aggressive anti-immigration enforcement out of their pitch. Something has to give.

Who wins?

On the eve of the election, polls suggest Democrats will take the House, Republicans will hold a narrow Senate majority, and the intriguing gubernatorial races remain too close to call. Such a split decision would fit with our polarized politics. Regardless of who wins, however, the question of which approach best serves America won’t go away. Abraham Lincoln said America reached a point in the 19^th Century where the nation was called upon and succeeded in showing the world ordinary men and women could govern themselves. It seems we have reached such a point again, though Rob thinks that while we’re approaching that kind of crossroads, we’re not quite there yet. 

We want to know what you think.