|
Like many people, I looked at the 2018 midterm results last Wednesday and decided that it was a mixed bag ... that Democrats did well in the House, better than expected, and Republicans did well in the Senate, better than expected.
But in the ensuing days, as more votes have been counted, the once talked about but later dismissed "Blue Wave" seems to have been real after all: a 36-seat pickup (as of this writing) in the House, including some shockers in places like South Carolina (Mark Sanford's seat!), on Staten Island, in Oklahoma. Newt Gingrich's old seat in Georgia. Five seats in California (with the possibility of another), three in Virginia, three in Pennsylvania, and a whopping five in New Jersey (leaving the GOP with just one seat, its lowest number since 1912).
President Trump must have felt it too. His incredulous decision to mock the House Republicans who lost because they failed to "embrace" him -- Mike Coffman, Mia Love, Barbara Comstock, others -- and his seeming delight to bask in their defeats was something I had never seen a president do, ever. Of course, I have been saying that for two years now. But to disparage members of his own party ... why, that's like attacking democratic allies such as France, Germany, Canada and Britain, while praising autocratic leaders in Russia, Turkey, the Philippines and North Korea. Of course, that would never happen.
Meanwhile, there seems to be a serious debate in the Democratic Party about Nancy Pelosi returning as speaker. Far be it for us to weigh in on an internal matter -- the Dems can make their own decisions -- but would the party remove her as leader in the aftermath of their greatest election showing since the Watergate midterms of 1974? Yes, she is 78 years old, and yes, she is a polarizing figure that Republicans love to run against. And yes, many Democrats are thirsting for a generational change in leadership, one of the reasons why so many Democrats ran this year on the promise they would vote against Pelosi for speaker.
Still, do they cast her aside in the so-called Year of the Woman, when a record number of women were elected to the House? We'll know by the end of the month.
|
