by Ramesh Ponnuru
Election Day ended with a lot of crucial races uncalled, and who controls the Senate may remain unknown for a long time — maybe not even until December, if the Georgia Senate race goes to a runoff. But a few preliminary judgments are possible.
First, Republicans avoided the worst possible defeat. My hunch is that commentary is going to dwell instead, understandably, on the fact that they aren’t making the big wins they had increasingly been expecting. But Democrats were trying to retain the House and expand their Senate majority, and during the summer that scenario sometimes looked plausible.
If it had happened, Democrats would have been able to pass far-reaching liberal legislation on such issues as election law and abortion policy. Now it appears that Democrats will not have the votes to pass major partisan legislation. They won’t replicate their legislative victories of the last two years, let alone surpass them. And the legislative difference between a Republican ripple and a Republican wave is not that large: With President Joe Biden in the White House and Democrats holding the power to filibuster, Republican bills aren’t becoming law either way.
Second, the fundamentals held. Voters usually swing away from the party in power during midterms, and they usually punish the party in power when they’re unhappy with the economy. That’s what happened here.
Third, the punishment was lighter than it could have been because Republicans threw away some seats. They nominated a hopeless candidate for governor in Pennsylvania and a far-fetched one for senator in New Hampshire, for example, in both cases under the influence of former President Donald Trump and his mania about denying that he lost the 2020 election.
Fourth, abortion hasn’t proved as potent an issue for Democrats as they had hoped. More data may yet show that it helped Democrats cut their losses, and that referenda in various states turned out in favor of legal abortion. But Republican governors were able to sign anti-abortion legislation without seeming to pay any price for it.
Finally, and perhaps most consequential for 2024, Florida has moved from purple to red. The realignment of Miami-Dade County, in particular, has been seismic. Whoever the Democrats nominate for president in two years will have to think hard before putting resources into contesting the state.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ landslide victory vastly expanded his margin over his initial win in 2018. That can’t wholly be attributed to a changed national climate, since Republicans performed much better in the state than they did elsewhere. His governance is looking politically astute. It looks even better because some of Trump’s candidates have fizzled. If you wanted to arrange the 2022 election results to make the case for DeSantis as a stronger 2024 presidential nominee than Trump, you’d come up with something pretty close to what happened Tuesday night.
