Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump

Blue wave brings reassurance: Elections matter; Trump’s base isn’t growing; Democrats turned out to vote in the midterms

The 2018 midterm elections ended one-party rule in Washington. A Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will restore Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch and the checks and balances the Founders envisioned.

Democrats and activists opposed to Trump have been energized since before his 2017 inauguration. By election day – following the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination and the president’s deceitful campaign of fear-mongering and violent political rhetoric – the Trump base was also revved up. The result: 49.2 percent turnout (as of November 11), the highest rate in a midterm election in the past 100 years.

As of today (as votes are still being counted in undecided races) Democrats have picked up 31 seats in the House, which will welcome record numbers of women, including the first Native American and Muslim women. With a highly unfavorable Senate map – 10 Democrats were running in states Trump won – the Republican majority will increase by no more than two (Florida is still counting ballots and Mississippi will have a December runoff). Democrats flipped more than 300 legislative seats, made a net gain of 7 governorships, and will have 27 (of 51) attorneys general in place in January 2019.

What’s most significant in this picture is the return of checks and balances. No president has shown more contempt for the political and governing norms that sustain our republic. At a time of extraordinary prosperity and relative peace, Americans chose to rebuke the President and the Congressional majority that has been complicit in Trump’s assault on democratic institutions.

In their book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat write:

Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended—by political parties and organized citizens, but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents.

Flipping Congress from red to blue was not a certainty. Trump’s election generated intense grassroots push-back from left-of-center groups and aroused citizens. The Women’s March protests across the country (and the world) on January 21, 2017 set the stage. The outpouring of volunteers and huge number of campaign contributions lead the way to the November 6, 2018 general election.

Electoral rules and practices in a number of states tilted the playing field through stratagems reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. The proceedings in some cases did not constitute free and fair elections: too many institutional norms were shattered to suppress the vote. But the elections were free and fair enough to bring about change. That’s worth celebrating.

November 21, 2018 update: