The 2018 US midterms: The blue wave that wasn’t

13 Nov 2018

Before the midterm elections in the United States, many spoke of a ‘blue wave’ that would wash over the country and cleanse the nation of Donald Trump and his combative Republican Party. However, the focus on a blue wave has obscured the significance of the blue wave that wasn’t: The American political landscape is too complex for any kind of decisive victory underpinned by defeating or electing specific individuals.

Once the results poured in after a record turnout, in which more than 110 million people voted in the 2018 US midterm election, something different than a blue wave revealed itself. Among the many electoral “firsts” that took place, we learnt that the Republicans retained control of the Senate as well as governorships, and the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. The political commentator Van Jones, a prominent voice in support of the Democratic Party, said that the result “may not be a blue wave, it’s a rainbow wave”.

Jones described this wave as “younger, browner, cooler, more women, more women, more veterans” and “the end of one-party rule in the United States”. The architecture of the American political system, however, is designed to accommodate fluctuating control of the government, to avoid single-party dominance. The irony, of course, is that notions of the so-called blue wave implicitly bought into the premise of one-party rule — of the Democratic Party taking back control of the country from Republicans.

Perhaps a more apt image for the midterm elections is the natural waxing and waning of political tides. Indeed, whether in politics or in our own lives, lofty platitudes always look different on the ground.

Taking a closer look at the results indicates just as much. In the Senate, there were 10 Democratic candidates up for re-election in states that Donald Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. Several of these seats were vulnerable to flip back to the Republicans. At least three of them did — Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota — suggesting that where Democrats were vulnerable, the messaging they peddled was ineffective.

In the House of Representatives, the Democrats were poised to make significant strides. While they gained a majority in the House, and made some inroads into typically Republican states such as New Mexico, they did so by mostly affirming their control of states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. What gains the Democrats did make in the House are modest at best, especially when viewed against the backdrop of record fundraising and the intensified voter engagement that saw tremendous amounts of early voting, a development unknown to midterm elections.

Moreover, the focus on a blue wave is a label drained of recent historical context of midterm elections. This history illustrates how pedestrian the results of the 2018 midterm elections are. Although the Democratic Party took back control of the House last week, they secured only three more seats than they did in 2006, after George W Bush was re-elected during the height of the Iraq War.

In addition, the House’s move to the left of the aisle was smaller than the move to the right in 2010, when Republicans gained 63 seats and took control of the House after Barack Obama was elected. These shifts in 2006 and 2010 reflect a broader tendency of American politics: Opposition parties tend to do better than an incumbent president’s party during the midterm election cycle. To confirm this tendency, as was the case most recently in 2018, isn’t historic.

Although the midterm elections weren’t a resounding victory, there were specific elections that were certainly historic and worthy of highlighting. In Minnesota, the first Somali-American, Ilhan Omar, was elected to the House of Representatives; in New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the youngest woman yet elected to congress; and in Kansas, a state with deep conservative roots, Sharice Davids was the first Native American elected to the House of Representatives — among a number of other women.

These candidates reflect the complex disposition of America’s political landscape, as well as the shifting demographic tides taking place. There are now more women represented in Congress than ever before, and representation matters whether one wants to admit it or not. A label such as “Trump’s America” seems hollow considering the historic elections of these candidates.

However, as much as these individuals indicate the shifting demographics of the United States, the midterm results suggest that ideas and policies still matter. The Democratic Party certainly doesn’t lack individual politicians people can identify with, but they do appear to lack ideas that resonate with potential voters disaffected by a Republican Party fronted by Trump.

To return to the metaphor of the wave: people ride waves, they don’t embody them. To continue to formulate the future of the Democratic Party as a rebuke of the kind of politics Trump represents hasn’t so far proven to attract new voters or been useful for establishing new coalitions — nor does it seem sustainable.

South Africans are familiar with the unsustainability of campaigns underpinned by dislike for individuals. Once the African National Congress removed Jacob Zuma in 2017, opposition parties struggled to formulate new platforms, because they were too focused on removing Zuma. Now that he’s gone, we’ve seen how unimaginative the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters are when it comes to creative and principled leadership.

What observers of American politics should take away from the 2018 midterm elections is that they capture the complexity of the country’s expansive political landscape. Although the country is divided, this division doesn’t appear insurmountable, considering the many “firsts” this election revealed. To overcome the combativeness of the Republican Party, Democrats would be wise to think beyond — and bigger than — Trump. DM

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