After my upsetting (in multiple ways!) and remarkably accurate prediction of the 2016 election two years ago, I’ve been expected by a particular cadre of Facebook friends to recreate the magic with the 2018 midterms. The midterms, unlike 2016, are like taking candy from a baby. While I was pretty certain from a year before the conventions that the United States would never ever elect Hillary Clinton to the Presidency, Donald Trump did absolutely everything in his power to throw the election. Possibly deliberately. So that created some uncertainty that made me almost not post my now fabled prediction.
No such uncertainty exists this year, unless you count the hubris of my Republican and Libertarian friends who insist that because Trump won an upset once, that means that: (A) 1,000 years of darkness for the Democrats, (B) the Republicans are always +10 points on the polls, (C) Trump voters are the only voters, or (D) all of the above. I remind them, not always gently, about the claim during the Obama years that changing demographics in the US were enough to ensure that the Republicans would never again hold the White House. That bold prediction, taken as Gospel by HRC and her team, didn’t hold up for even one election. What makes Trump fans think they’re any different?
There are many obvious built-in factors that make a massive swing to the Democrats a lock this November. The first midterm of a party-switch President always swings violently against them. And that’s even with a popular President, which Trump notoriously is not. Trump’s administration has been unstable and ineffectual, creating exactly one piece of significant change in the nation (tax elimination, er, “reform”) while alienating even close allies on the hard-line of immigration by acting like a comic-book villain in tearing toddlers away from their parents. (He’s still behind Obama on deportation for all his red-meat rhetoric.) There just aren’t enough rich voters who love tax elimination and hate receiving social services to make up for the overall inadequacy of Trump’s conducting of business. And, perhaps most vitally, no one’s done their taxes yet under the new rubric, so even the “middle class” folks who may want to like the tax cuts haven’t really processed them.
Plus, Trump, unlike what everybody said, hasn’t even started a war yet. (I reserve the right to revise this prediction if he does in the intervening two months.)
But there are unique considerations that will turn the expected secular blue wave into a crushing tsunami this fall. The most vital is that Trump is not on the ballot. Trump won in 2016 by peeling a ton of Democrats, Independents, and people who rarely vote. Those folks are not going to turn out for mainline Republicans in a midterm election. Trump also won by getting to run against the insanely unpopular Hillary Clinton, who does not appear on a ballot for two more years. No Clintons running this year to polarize otherwise Democratic-leaning voters away. But perhaps most importantly, Trump is quite disaligned from the mainline Republican Party. He does not see them as allies or friends. He does not rely on them. He does not say that he needs them or likes them. And the feeling is mutual. So even if Trump voters wanted to turn out to support their main MAGA man, it’s unclear how that would translate in a generic House or Senate ballot in 2018. Mitch McConnell has hardly come out swinging for Trump’s goals with an enthusiastic grin. Paul Ryan is fleeing in terrified embarrassment for how much water he did carry for Trump already. The very factors that made Trump a surprise winner in 2016 and carried some down-ballot results in the red column will make those voters abandon the polls this year in record numbers.
Meanwhile, of course, Democrats have never been more motivated. And unlike in 2016, they don’t have to agree on a person to run against Trump. Everyone is running against Trump. By being diverse and generic and having a D by their name and spouting about how awful everything is, every Senate candidate, House candidate, and dogcatcher candidate in blue is a vote against Trump. Made all the more powerful by not having to actually hold off the Trump voters at the polls. A general “anti-Trump” strategy is a fool’s errand for a highly unpopular candidate in a 1:1 election against an abstract threat no one believes in. But against an actual sitting President of two years who most people hate when you don’t have to rally around someone unpopular to get there, it’s gold. Pure gold. And this will bring the wave to full crescendo, wiping away almost all traces of red on the legislative map. Which will be all the more devastating for how much of a sure bet the Senate was supposed to be for Republicans this year.
So here’s the prediction…
Senate:
(See full prediction on 270toWin.)
Heidtkamp loses. Otherwise, the Democrats run the imaginable table, including Bredesen and O’Rourke in staggering upsets, along with the Republicans comically left unable to flip such blood-red states as Montana and West Virginia into their column. The only bright spot of the night for Republicans outside of ND is that they almost snuck up on New Jersey because Bob Menendez is so woefully corrupt, but the blue wave is hardly going to be stopped by NJ. Mississippi ends up not being all that close despite an early signal that this might join the blue tsunami elsewhere.
House:
(See full prediction on 270toWin.)
Yup. That’s a 64-seat swing. It’s outside of 538’s current max likelihood graph, which is guessing a 39-seat swing and taps out of possibility at 61 seats. That’s a tsunami, folks. Forgive the weather disaster allusions during Hurricane Florence, but that’s what’s coming.
As my Facebook arguers in political spheres will recognize, my worry then shifts to what the Democrats do with that massive majority in terms of impeachment and how the few remaining Republican Senators in Washington will check in to Chuck Schumer’s Senate in January 2019 and start plotting the palace coup for Mike Pence (that I’m sure has been whispered about since before Trump’s inauguration). And that truly scares me. If Democrats can restrain themselves, beat Trump down at every turn, refuse to impeach him no matter what Mueller digs up, and run someone halfway decent (please no more HRC) in 2020, they will come out way ahead for the last four years. But if they impeach, they were are looking at a stark possibility of ten (10) years of President Michael Pence. And Pence, unlike the caricature of Trump that often gets trotted out, actually is a draconian conservative. Trump likes to play a proto-fascist on TV, but is far too stuck in his own head and own image to actually do anything beyond embarrassing himself. Pence, on the other hand, fresh from being ushered in as a civil response to the incivility and horror of the Trump era (while not alienating his base because he was Trump’s chosen successor!), could cobble together a coalition for years that would do some truly scary stuff. And given Democrats’ love of sacrificing everything to reach across a civil aisle, I don’t doubt he could peel a ton of Democrats for his far-right agenda.
(There’s also a tiny window in which Trump shifts to his more left-wing ideas to work with a Democratic Congress and they get a truly great infrastructure bill passed. But I can’t imagine Schumer and Pelosi will allow it, even if Trump is game, just because they will rightly see their 2018 success as hinging on treating Trump like ebola.)
So, Democrats. Enjoy your coming blue wave. But please don’t misuse it to impeach Trump. You’d get 8 Republicans to flip in the Senate, and then where will you be? Trump is a horrific comic-book villain of a human being, but he’s actually much better than Pence on policy and much less able to implement his ideas. Sit tight. Nominate someone with charisma and ideas in 2020. Don’t let the blue tsunami go to your head. You’ll be fine.
