Publisher’s note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) former producer and correspondent for Trends Wide, is a columnist on world affairs. She is a weekly opinion contributor for Trends Wide, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a columnist for the World Politics Review. The opinions expressed in this comment belong solely to the author of it. See more opinions on Trends Wide.
(Trends Wide) — The results of the 2022 midterm elections have not been fully accounted for and the crucial question, who will control Congress, remains unanswered. But on this day after, we can draw some initial conclusions.
First of all, there was no red “wave”, let alone a red “tsunami”. Predictions of a huge Republican victory at the polls did not materialize. It was a deeply disappointing election for the Republican Party. It was also a disastrous day for former President Donald Trump, who had hoped a Republican rush would put him on a direct path to the nomination to become the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
Regardless of what we find once all the votes are counted, it was a good day for American democracy.
That’s because the movement spearheaded by Trump and those who deny the election results fared worse than expected. Even some of the most shocking Republican victories seemed like a rebuke to Trump and his gang of anti-democratic activists.
President Joe Biden was supposed to lose out, but it was Trump who took the beating.
In exit polls, 28% of voters said they chose their House vote “to oppose Donald Trump.” And just 37% said they had a favorable opinion of the former president, the presumptive GOP favorite, at least before this election. That should alarm the party.
Election night, Trump said to an interviewer: “I think so [los republicanos] win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, they shouldn’t blame me at all.” But the evidence strongly suggests that he deserves much of the blame.
In the last 100 years, the average gain in the House of Representatives for the opposition party is 29 seats. This year, Republicans needed only five seats, a goal that seemed so achievable that virtually all pollsters predicted the GOP would easily top it, especially given the high rate of inflation and Biden’s relatively low approval rating. But Republicans are struggling to overcome that very low bar.
They may get it. Rep. Kevin McCarthy may replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, but even if the Republicans take control of the House, the Democrats’ performance in this election is nothing short of amazing. Biden presided over the best showing by the ruling party since George W. Bush in 2002, the first election after 9/11.
It turns out that Biden was right to declare that democracy itself was at stake in the midterm elections.
The argument resonated. Trump, and the election-denying radicals he supported, helped Biden and the Democrats make that argument clear.
Biden, in fact, has said that he chose to run for president in an effort to save American democracy. In light of Tuesday’s results, even if his party loses control of Congress, he can take comfort in having made significant progress toward that goal. These elections were a victory for democracy.
The challenge to democracy is not over, unfortunately. Many election deniers won. But even those who emerged victorious fared worse than those who did not deny the election. In other words, by parroting Trump’s lies about 2020, they alienated voters who had supported other Republicans.
Overall, it was a very bad night for some of Trump’s most prominent, most estranged and most embraced candidates.
In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro defeated Doug Mastriano, who played an active role in trying to nullify the 2020 election and ran a campaign riddled with anti-Semitic innuendos against his Jewish opponent. Trump’s far-right allies who deny the election lost in Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maryland and many other races.
And in the high-stakes battle for control of the Senate, Trump’s involvement may hand the chamber over to Democrats, as it did in 2020.
Soccer star Herschel Walker could still win the second round in December. But anyone who heard him campaign or learned about his past knows that he should never have been on the ballot. Trump apparently thought fame would do the trick, just as it did for him. So, he also endorsed TV star Mehmet Oz for the Pennsylvania seat. Oz lost to John Fetterman, who after suffering a stroke struggled to regain his verbal dexterity, a key skill for a political candidate.
Trump’s rebuke was even visible when the Republicans won.
If Trump was the big loser of the night, the biggest winner was his main rival for the nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who won in a landslide and was greeted by supporters at his victory party with chants of “ Two more years!” an acknowledgment that his eyes, like Trump’s, are on the White House by 2024.
All of this happened within hours of Trump deploying one of his mob tactics, threatening to reveal “stuff” about DeSantis if he runs. The former president grimly hinted: “I know more about him than anyone, except maybe his wife.”
Then there was Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, another Republican who won re-election, in a rematch with Stacey Abrams. Trump despises Kemp because he, like other Georgia officials, refused to overturn the 2020 vote, despite enormous pressure from the then president.
To block Kemp’s re-election, Trump persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to run against him in the primary. That primary vote ended in humiliation for Perdue and for Trump.
Despite his terrible performance, Trump plans to declare his candidacy soon. Most Democrats find the prospect hard to stomach, but most Republicans would also like him to focus solely on his golf game. As the second half showed, he is a threat to the game.
Meanwhile, Democrats ponder who will lead them into the next presidential election in 2024. Tuesday’s results showed that Biden was not wrong, despite what pundits said, when he said democracy was on the ballot. He paid off, proving once again that his political instincts remain sharp. But the choice also put the spotlight on some of the party’s rising stars. Among the candidates, several whose names are not well known throughout the country, stood out as intelligent, charismatic, committed to democracy and potentially eligible.
Soon, Americans will likely have to begin enduring another presidential campaign season from the most disruptive candidate in living memory, a man who has shown nothing but disdain for democracy. Against that background, it’s good to know that the country took a step toward sanity this week and that democracy fared quite well.
