There is was no blue wave last night. There was no red wave. As most midterm elections are, last night was largely a national thumbs up or down on President Trump.
Was he a winner or a loser? Of course he was both, picking up a handful of seats in the Senate, but losing the House and a number of Governor’s Mansions.
But here is the big picture that tells the larger story.
Presidents Clinton and Obama were brilliant politicians and generally popular. They were certainly dear darlings of the MSM and earned their effusive praise. But let’s remember what happened in their first mid-terms in 1994 and 2010 respectively.
They both got creamed. CREAMED.
President Bill Clinton – 1994
-54 / Number of House Seats Lost
-9 / Number of Senate Seats Lost
-11 / Number of Governorships Lost
President Barack Obama – 2010
-63 / Number of House Seats Lost
-6 / Number of Senate Seats Lost
-6 / Number of Governorships Lost
Obama referred to his first mid-term outcome as a “shellacking.”
So how did President Trump’s mid-term stack up to these two?
President Donald Trump – 2018
-27 / Number of House Seats Lost
+4 / Number of Senate Seats Won (this reflects Arizona landing Trump’s way.)
-7 / Number of Governorships Lost
Had he done as well as either Clinton or Obama, that would have been a remarkable evening for Trump, having kept up with these two. Like staying even in a pick-up game against Larry Bird or Lebron James.
But that was not Trump’s fate. He finished dramatically better than both. That is no small thing to be sure and perhaps the biggest angle coming out of last night.
Last week, Time’s cover story explained how the Anti-Trump Resistance was using it’s anger to organize itself and would thus force Trump right off the page, literally. Time and so many others were so sure of themselves. Our President’s arrogance and self-importance is in actuality no match for a great many of our nation’s journalists and their editors. A scrum between the two on that score would go well into overtime.
So this is what we learned from last night: The #Resistance is extremely angry and might have done something yesterday, but it didn’t appear to be going to vote and lynching Trump. Instead, they set their Devil up for a much stronger likelihood in 2020 and a nearly guaranteed appointment of another Kavanaugh by the name of Amy Coney Barrett.