The winners and losers of 2018.
I n the run-up to the midterms, countless pundits and politicians declared 2018 was “the most important election of our lifetimes.” That wasn’t true. The power of the presidency has grown so great in the modern era that 2018, simply by virtue of not being a presidential election year, probably ranks somewhere in the bottom half in terms of importance.
Of course, 2018 did matter, even if it’s hard to know how it will affect the 2020 presidential election and beyond. Let us count the ways.
The House goes blue.
T he Democratic takeover effectively forecloses any conservative legislative victories over the next two years. True, the Republican legislative agenda had been exhausted for several months: They’d already sent the president what legislation could get through the House, could not be filibustered in the Senate, and wasn’t rejected by moderate Republicans in the Senate. With a more conservative Senate, Republicans could’ve made some more legislative gains. Now they can’t. But Trump, like Obama before him, still has his pen and phone.
It’s very unlikely Democrats will get any liberal legislative victories during the next two years, but Democrats did gain the power to investigate and subpoena the executive branch. You only have to look back a few years to see how subpoena power can hurt the opposing party. It was the House GOP’s investigation of the Benghazi attack that revealed Hillary Clinton was using a private, unsecured email server to conduct government business, and that issue likely cost her the 2016 election.
On the other hand, the Democratic House could prove to be a useful foil for President Trump in 2020 if Democrats push legislation that is too liberal or if they engage in investigations that spark a backlash (such as impeaching Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh). Again, just consider how Barack Obama ran against the Republican House in 2012. But right now, we really can’t know if the Democratic House will be a net positive or negative for Trump in 2020.
The Senate gets redder.
M oderate Republican senator Dean Heller lost in Nevada, while conservative Republicans unseated Democrats in three red states: Josh Hawley in Missouri, Kevin Cramer in North Dakota, and Mike Braun in Indiana. As we went to press, it appeared that Republican Rick Scott had unseated Democrat Bill Nelson in Florida. (Scott led by 17,423 votes out of 8 million ballots cast, but a small number of votes remain uncounted and a recount is likely.) In Arizona, Republican Martha McSally was a hair behind with several hundred thousand votes left to be counted. That means Republicans will hold 52 to 54 Senate seats, up from their current 51.
In terms of policy, the most important consequence of the GOP Senate gains is that Republicans will continue to confirm as many federal judges as they can over the next two years. It also creates an opportunity for Republicans to confirm another Supreme Court justice without needing the votes of moderates Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, should another vacancy open up.
The oldest Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, has been on the court for nearly three decades, but he will only be 71 next year (still a whippersnapper by Supreme Court standards). Thomas will have to weigh the opportunity to have a justice who shares his constitutional philosophy replace him (something that will happen only when there is a Republican president and a Republican Senate) against his desire to stay on a court that could be more conservative now that Kavanaugh has replaced Anthony Kennedy. The oldest Democratic-appointed justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will be 86 next year and will want to stay in the job until there’s a Democratic president (or at least a Democratic Senate) if she can.
The GOP Senate gains also mean that Republicans are in a better position to hold on to the Senate in 2020, but that is by no means guaranteed. Republicans are likely to retake the Alabama Senate seat in 2020 (recently deposed Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reportedly considering running for his old seat), but they will have to defend Republican seats in the blue state of Maine and the battlegrounds of Colorado, Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.
Republicans (partially) melt down in the Midwest.
D onald Trump’s path to victory in the Electoral College in 2016 ran through the Midwest. He took Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 0.7 percentage points (while Republican Senate candidates did a bit better) and Michigan by 0.3 percentage points. Republicans suffered losses in all three states this November.
In Wisconsin, Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin won reelection by 11 points, while governor Scott Walker suffered a 1-point loss that denied him a third term. Walker, who had been the top target of unions and survived a pro-Obama electorate, was finally undone by an anti-Trump backlash. (Republicans, though, maintained a strong grip on the Wisconsin state legislature, and most of Walker’s policy achievements will survive him.)
In Pennsylvania, incumbent Democratic senator Bob Casey won reelection by 13 points, while incumbent Democratic governor Tom Wolf won by 17 points. In Michigan, the governor’s mansion being vacated by retiring Republican Rick Snyder will be filled by Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who won by 9 points, while incumbent Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow fended off a strong challenge from John James, a young African-American Army veteran, by 6 points.
The GOP’s mini-meltdown in the Midwest doesn’t mean Trump is doomed there in 2020. In 2010 Democrats lost statewide races in all three states, and Barack Obama still carried them all in 2012. But there are at least a couple reasons a Midwestern backlash is more ominous for Trump than it was for Obama.
First, Obama had a bigger cushion in these states than Trump does. Obama won Wisconsin by 14 points in 2008 and 7 points in 2012, Michigan by 16 points in 2008 and 9 points in 2012, and Pennsylvania by 10 points in 2008 and 5 points in 2012. Trump, by contrast, can’t slide at all in these three states; he won each by less than one point.
Second, the economy had still been in the gutter in 2010 and was improving in 2012. Now the economy is booming, and Republicans still lost in these key battleground states. It’s anyone’s guess if the business cycle will bust before 2020.
Progressive stars burn out in statewide races.
O f course, all was not well for Democrats either. Their young and dynamic statewide candidates who enraptured the progressive base all lost: Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and Andrew Gillum in Florida.
If Gillum, who was trailing by 0.4 percentage points as we went to press, had won in Florida, the entire narrative about progressive-versus-establishment Democrats would’ve been different. The story would have been that an unapologetic progressive can win a battleground state that voted for Trump, and O’Rourke and Abrams did make things surprisingly close in longtime GOP bastions.
