Apologists for the current US presidential administration are hard at work, telling us the mid-term defeats were not all that significant when they are put in perspective. ‘Look what happened way back when,’ they shout. They omit to say that the party of the president almost always loses Congressional seats in the mid-term elections. It is the norm. It a matter of degrees.
How large is the change, and how important is it? There certainly have been larger reversals for the presidential party in the past. Today’s apologists trot those out with enthusiasm, especially the ones that befell Democratic presidents.
The question of importance is harder to pin down. Partly it is numerical: which party has a majority, and in which of the two houses. Not simply to win seats from your opponents but to do so in sufficient numbers to take the majority is certainly significant in and of itself. Twice that when it concerns both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The horn was sounded readily enough the last time it swung the other way. Only now do the apologists quibble.
Perhaps a more important effect is the psychological impact of the shift. This shift certainly seems to have had one. The rush of apologists to spin the result downward is evidence of it. Meanwhile, the president will dazzle and distract us by pointing to more gold lamé as evidence of his misunderstood greatness. But the fact remains that South Carolina went Blue! That alone is a showstopper. Will Nebraska be next? Although, I expect the flat earthers, climate change deniers, and voter fraud crowd will soon fire their broadsides, citing as conclusive proof of electoral fraud the complete lack of evidence.
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Moreover, the apologists’ spin overlooks the obvious. There have been years of voter intimidation, embodied of late by his Praetorian Guard of ICE, and from many Red Governors. Proof of birth right no longer guarantees immunity from ICE. The gerrymanders have been out of control. In this context the swing against the powers that be in the White House and the Governors’ mansions is such a difference of degree as to be a difference of kind. This election was only barely free and fair.
I fear the only lesson learned by those who lost this time is that free and fair elections have to go. We have heard rumblings about this before from the White House incumbent himself. The result will be more work for the apologists.
On the other side, I suppose one result will be more effort to eliminate the Electoral College. Doing so will certainly change the way campaigns are run, and there will be unintended consequences, but maybe they are the price that has to be paid. See Tara Ross, Enlightened Democracy: The Case for The Electoral College (2004). It certainly opened my eyes about some of the most likely consequences with such a change in the rules of the game.