Op-Ed: No matter what happens in the midterms, pundits will trot out familiar narratives – and ignore the facts.
The 2018 midterm elections, as Donald Trump and his supporters would have it, are just another opportunity to expose liberal bias and “populist” sentiment. We’ll see whether the majority-black districts Republicans lost in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and elsewhere are able to prevent Democrats from taking back the House. Or whether a President Trump can prevent them from taking back the Senate and White House. Maybe both. And maybe — and maybe not — nothing will change between now and November. But it’s worth noting that 2018 is not, in fact, the last midterm wave. If we don’t make it the last, it will be because Democrats have made it harder to reverse the wave by winning back the House, and by stopping Trump’s agenda from expanding, not shrinking (which is where it started in the first place).
Democrats are poised to win the White House — and the House. That’s true regardless of who is elected in November. But they will become a minority in the Senate when all is said and done. The House will be a check on the president, rather than a check against him. The 2018 midterms will be the first chance for voters to send a political message. The choice facing Democrats is whether to send that message in a positive or negative way.
And they have to figure out how to do it the right way.
The GOP can’t let the House fall too far from under their control.
We’ve seen this before. Many have tried. In the run on 1990, Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic majority came under assault from George Bush Sr., the Speaker of the House. Democrats lost control of the House, but their majority never fell to a level of majority in the Senate. Republicans could never have won the House without some degree of Democratic support, and the vice versa — even at the worst time for Republicans and for their own prospects.
When George W. Bush began his first term in 2001, the House was close to 60 seats. Most of his party was on the verge of losing their majority in the Senate. With