ELECTION 2018—WHO WON AND WHY
THE OUTCOME
The battle lines were drawn for the knife fight that was the election of 2018. President Trump campaigned as if he was running on the ballots of numerous states and Democrats thought that voters would follow Oprah Winfrey towards electoral victory. The day after the election left a blurred impression to observers trying to designate a clear winner. There wasn’t one.
The Republicans lost at least 37 House of Representative seats but gained two in the Senate. A last Senate seat in likely in Mississippi was won in a run-off by Cindy Hyde-Smith over Democrat Mike Espy. The House numbers might change also, due to ballot recounting.
President Trump claimed victory after comparing his gains and losses to the two previous Democrat Presidents.
The President has a rightful claim to a better outcome in both the Senate. Nevertheless, it is never good to lose, which is what happened to the Republicans in the House. The losses were meaningful because the House of Representatives is now controlled by the Democrats, so it wasn’t a mere loss of seats, but a loss of the entire Chamber.
Additionally, seven states, Nevada, New Mexico, Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine flipped their Governor to Democrat from Republican and one, Alaska, flipped from Democrat to Republican. This is significant considering the new governors will determine much of the legislative redistricting which will take place in 2020.
Republicans, who tend to be more conservative, have suffered a significant loss, although they lead overall in governors 27 to 23.
In direct contests, the President won. Where he campaigned, mostly for U.S. senate candidates, he was overwhelmingly successful. But he could not stem the tide of angry losers among the Democrats who converted the House of Representatives to their side. Democrats have vowed to harass the President from the committee chairmanships in the house. They will make all manner of accusations against the president and those who supported him, and they will have the platform from which the compliant press will broadcast to the American people as if the worst scandals were now being discovered.
The presidents loyal following came through for him in the Senate races. Democrats did well in the house races because of Gerrymandering, local political issues, and where the registration of the parties is close.
ADVOCATES FOR THE POOR
Democrats outspent Republicans by $300 million. A total of $5.2 billion was spent by all candidates.1[1] Republicans faced the usual press bias in most races, which amounts to free publicity to the challenging Democrats. In Florida, the national press played down the corruption of the leading Gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, who took valuable tickets (approximate value $1000) to the play, Hamilton, among other corrupt acts for which he is being investigated by the FBI. In Minnesota, Keith Ellison won the attorney general position despite credible evidence that he had physically abused his ex-girlfriend. #metoo, anyone? He won by over 100,000 votes. The Left has given up the pretense of honesty on the subject of female abuse that drove their narrative in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. As an aside, Cory Booker (Sen.-NJ) has admitted his own damaging lack of virtue and he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He, too, is a female abuser. The Democrats interest is surely that of the poor and needy.
So, in this sense, left-wing Democrats did quite well. Corruption and dishonesty did not stop voters from voting for them. Republicans hold the state of Florida, but Andrew Gillum, the corrupt Socialist was defeated by only .4% or 32,463 votes out of 8,119,909 cast in the 2018 election.[2] There is a powerful incentive for people to vote for Democrats promising them other people’s money and a $15 minimum wage.
Here is the bottom line: both Republicans and Democrats won in a divided America. The big loser was America the Beautiful, America the world’s leader in democracy, America with the greatest economy of the day.
Not since the Revolutionary War, itself, has the threat to American values been greater than it is today. The Civil War threatened to retain the disenfranchisement of Africans and Women, but today all Americans have lost. America has lost her way in a life of ease, self-indulgence and unsuspecting self-satisfaction.
*See next post for additional commentary on the threat to America.
[1]https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/10/cost-of-2018-election/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_gubernatorial_election,_2018