The congressional elections were very unusual this year. The GOP failed to win the Senate & is only winning a small majority in the House. State elections were also disappointing for Republicans. This is better than a complete loss, certainly, but it is both a disappointment & a mystery. For once, there’s little blaming of the polls—the polls predicted, along with our common sense of the matter, a big GOP victory, even a wave election. It seemed so to me, too, I was quite certain. I was wrong.
To make sense of what happened, I start from a report by Sean Trende of RCP, a pollsters I commend to your attention. He shows persuasively that abortion didn’t really matter in the election. This is also how one would think from the point of view of partisanship—Democrats vote for their party, not particularly this issue. Mr. Trende insists instead on three issues:
Candidates. Largely this is a criticism of MAGA, which strikes me as inevitable given the losses—this is politics, after all—but not entirely persuasive. For example, Mr. Trende doesn’t look at the money the candidates had to spend, which is a different issue, inasmuch as it comes from organized donors &, of course, the national party. Since it was nowhere near parity, nowhere near even what one expects from what is called incumbent advantage, it’s worth considering things more carefully. This is the problem—careful thought requires a lot more practical knowledge than we possess. To some extent, fundraising is part of the work of a candidate—why did GOP challengers have next to no funds. This comes around to a different MAGA criticism: Mr. Trump didn’t give them money, even when he raised money for them. We’ll see the consequences in another two years, it’s not possible to say now what lessons are being learned, or by whom… Another organizational issue has to do with online communications & early voting, where GOP contenders seem to have been rather weak, a great mistake given the disadvantage in money, which goes to the most expensive ads, still on TV.
The Biden +10% bulwark. Mr. Trende explains this at some length—briefly, presidential approval +10 points as a measure of which seats stay Democratic, however close the challenger comes.
Votes to district ratio. This applies primarily to the House. Changes in the electorate since 2016 matter: Democrats now winning in suburbia, GOP winning more votes in majority-minority districts where they cannot however win the seats, & other shifts made it much more difficult to turn winning the most votes overall into winning many seats given the district by district voting. This is a problem Democrats used to have—as the GOP takes some of their voters away & loses others, it’s a problem the GOP will increasingly have & it’s best to start dealing with it sooner rather than later.
The GOP didn’t run a competent campaign nationally. There was almost no attempt to nationalize the election, which was the obvious idea. We do not know why. Organization of various aspects of electioneering—I already mentioned fundraising, competing with Democratic ballot harvesting, & campaigning online—was also unimpressive. But this doesn’t seem to explain everything &, since these failures are themselves the results of action & inaction by GOP operatives & politicians, they are themselves in need of a political argument.
To that end, let’s look at two visions of the future of the GOP. First, Mr. Yuval Levin, the champion of moderation in our politics, if it is possible for moderation to have a champion… He’s a man I admire & I can say that for once he doesn’t speak guardedly or draw very many qualifications: He blames Mr. Trump in NRO:
The relatively disappointing result for Republicans has a clear cause, & maybe it will finally move Republicans to abandon the ridiculous notion that Donald Trump is an electoral advantage for the party. Sustaining that view has always required painful contortions—the (implausible) view that Trump’s exceedingly narrow win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the only way any Republican could have beaten the most unpopular political figure in 21st-c. America; the (bizarre) notion that Republican setbacks in 2018 were a function of Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan not being Trumpy enough; the (delusional) claim that Trump didn’t actually lose the presidency in 2020.
By persuading themselves of all this, many Republicans have become convinced that narrow, tiny wins are the only possible victories in contemporary American politics. They think doing better isn’t possible. They have forgotten what a real winning majority actually looks like. Here’s a hint.
It is far from clear that Republicans will take the hint, & will finally grasp that Trumpism isn’t only terrible civics (which is reason enough to reject it), but also terrible politics. Missing the obvious is a common political vice, as both parties keep proving. But they do have less & less of an excuse.
For my part, I don’t think Mr. Trump will do well in 2024. He’s a very old man, to begin with, & politically dependent on hosting very many rallies around the nation, especially, of course, in the Upper Midwest states without which neither party can win the Electoral College… Nor did I think he helped much in 2022 & I believe he deserves blame commensurate with his influence; just as the national party does. But I take issue with Mr. Levin on several of his premises. The party elites’ weakness in face of Mr. Trump in 2016 & since is itself evidence that they are incompetent & therefore don’t deserve backing. Ordinary people can leave it at good intentions & a decent effort; elites that cannot even defend their own privileges are beneath contempt. Since the conflict in the party is most visibly between party elites & the primary electorate, to choose the elites is to reject democracy. The GOP as an institution has an access to democracy, through elections, through Mr. Trump. There was a party before & there will be a party after him, but the party just before self-destructed & now it’s not yet reorganized. It seems likely that even to get beyond Mr. Trump requires some way to speak to the electorate that doesn’t stir their indignation or contempt; it is also likely that the GOP will, as Mr. Levin darkly suggests, will fall apart in the short term in an internecine conflict. As for the party elites, I cannot myself say what they have done since 2016 to mend things with the primary electorate or indeed the majority of the electorate. The last time the party elite came up with an idea for a large coalition victory, it was the 2012 post-mortem conducted by the RNC, a catastrophe that opened the way for Mr Trump. What do party elites have to offer by way of better strategy post-Trump? Why should they be trusted to lead even if we find a way to trust them?
The part of the essay that is most important, it seems to me, is elsewhere—it has to do with the character of our elections. As I wrote in my prediction essay, America now has two minority parties—Mr. Levin thinks the same & uses the same phrase, which makes me think that I must have read it in some of his essays from previous years. I hope he takes this as a sign of my admiration… His criticism of Mr. Trump is strongest when he connects the current understanding of partisanship with the very narrow Congressional wins that fritter away very quickly, making it impossible to govern the nation or even persuade the electorate that they should want to be governed by the GOP.
Finally, Dan McCarthy, a friend whose judgment I respect, not least because he dares take a very different view of affairs than most conservatives with a reputation. For the Spectator, he says the election was a vote in favor of incumbents, which included a solidifying of victory for MAGA politicians, though not much of an expansion:
The country responded to all the uncertainty & misery of recent times not by gambling on change, but by sticking with incumbents of both parties & all ideological complexions. The public chose to punt on making decisions this election, leaving Congress closely divided.
Populism & the right are still advancing in American politics. This proved to be great news for Ron DeSantis last Tuesday, but it is also good news for Donald Trump, who remains the father of right-wing populism. What he began in 2016 continues to grow. It took the GOP by storm in this year’s primaries & has made inroads into Congress even at a time when voters are taking no risks. The present knife’s-edge balance in legislative & presidential elections will give way to decisive results before long. Which side has the energy, drive, confidence, & courage to claim the future—no matter how long it takes?
The fact that the right may be in for a bruising battle between Trump & DeSantis is only proof that there is a prize here worth fighting for, & it’s more than just the 2024 Republican nomination. The lesson of this year’s midterms, however, is not to be impatient. The timetable for change in American politics may not be what anyone expects, but the force of change lies firmly on the right.
This seems to me to have the intelligence & the right attitude needed for a continuation, an improvement of populist politics. We will see whether any organization arises that corresponds to these motives & insights.
Really appreciated these insightful comments, patience!