"Shocking" result of the midterm election reveals Trumpists in denial about its meaning

 

A week has passed since election day and things are shaking up rather surprisingly, given that Democrats were expected to receive a drubbing given Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, inflation and the usual allowance for just a two-year window for the party in power to pass an agenda and that’s it. Many people thought that the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v Wade decision might tilt voters back the other way, but then came the usual attack ads claiming Democrats were out-of-touch with "ordinary people," which generally means self-serving white nationalist and "culture war" types.

What did happen, it seems, is that Donald Trump was an "issue" as well, and he is even less popular outside his fanatical base than Biden. Democrats held on to the U.S. Senate, even flipping Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin, where Ron Johnson was incomprehensibly reelected by a narrow margin. This result is important because it allows Biden to continue to fill vacant judgeships with  center-left candidates without too much trouble.

The House of Representative will likely go Republican, but nowhere near the landslide predicted. If current leads hold from uncalled races, Republicans will have just a seven-seat majority. This may be not be as much a “blessing” as they think if the Trumpists in the party are given free rein to make insane speeches that leave voters in competitive districts thinking “That’s what I just voted for?” after another “flip” to Republican.

With an apparent win in Arizona, with Katie Hobbs defeating by a narrow margin the narcissistic loudmouth former television news anchor Kari Lake (whose verbal vomit exits from both ends), Democrats flipped three governorships to the Republicans one, meaning a pick-up of two. 

The midterms thus could be said to demonstrate that voters who are not in the reddest of states are suspicious of a party that supports a man who is facing numerous criminal and civil charges, and which seemingly rejects those even in its own party who respect the democratic institutions of this country, and common sense. If Tucker Carlson and Stephen Miller think this election was just about the “border”…

 

…that just indicates that Trumpists are devoid of policy ideas, simply working on the premise of white nationalist thinking which still begs the question “We already know what you are going to do about them—so what are you going to do for us?” This has to be more than just passing tax cuts for the rich and corporations, gutting environmental regulations, trying to kill affordable health care or fighting "culture wars."

If people are “suspicious” of “radicals” in the Democratic Party, then the same goes for the radicals in the Republican Party, meaning Trumpists and election deniers like Sen. Josh Hawley—the man who gave the January 6 rioters the fist pump before he entered the Capitol Building to vote against certification, before the Trump “enthusiasts” raided the building, and Hawley was caught on camera running like he is about to shit in his pants…

 

…is rather amusingly blaming the voters’ lack of enthusiasm for Trumpism on the current leadership led by Sen. Mitch McConnell, for not full-on embracing fascist white nationalism.  People like Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who says "her" party is Trump’s party) are a destructive force in this country, whose idea of “governing” is by subtraction That means opposing any programs that actually helps ordinary people, rather conning them into believing that scapegoating demographics vulnerable to such will solve all their problems. 

Hawley and fellow numb nut Ted Cruz claim that the party has no “plan,” but they do; the problem is the only “plan” they have is “the border,” every day and every hour ad nauseam. For most people, this has become a cliché; most people can’t even say precisely what the “aliens” have done to them personally or know anyone that has been harmed by their existence.  

Trump diehards are too blinded by their own hate and contempt for democratic institutions that it is impossible for them to see that many voters see something very different: a corrupt, self-styled cult “leader” of the party whose rhetoric always seems to be on just this side of madness with the constant hint of violence. Trump has lived his entire adult life being contemptuous of the law, civil mores and people in general. He apparently only sees his supporters in terms of a faceless, stupid mass the moves as he moves, never questioning him or his motives.

In the midterms it was McConnell more than Hawley who read the mood of the country, which was that it wanted a “pause” in the action but not to scare swing voters into believing that they were handing power to a bunch of lunatics like the trailer-trash blonde Greene, who won reelection but just not as “easily,” her winning margin shaved by nine points over 2020’s result. 

Meanwhile Trump is expected to announce his bid for the White House in 2024; that may set-up a real barnburner if Ron DeSantis decides to run, and those two compete for the mantle of who is the more fascist in philosophy, which out to be "fun" for those opposed to both, but no so much for the Republican establishment. And what that means is that Republicans like Hawley and Cruz are the ones who haven’t learned anything from the midterm results.