Republican Wave Was A Ripple In the U.S.
All the conditions were there for a wave, but in the end Republicans in the United States appeared to have generated no more than a ripple.
At the end of a campaign in which the fundamental conditions for Democrats seemed dire — inflation at a 40-year high, an unpopular president — Republicans could do no better than to end the evening still scratching here and there for the seats they needed to win control of the House, the minimum they could call a victory.
All indications were that they would end up at best with one of the weakest performances in decades by the out-of-power party against a firstterm president’s party, a stark contrast to Republican gains of 54 U.S. House seats against President Bill Clinton in 1994 and 63 seats against President Barack Obama in 2010.
So America leaves these midterms much as it entered: a fiercely divided country that remains anchored in a narrow range of the political spectrum, unhappy enough with President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to embrace divided government but unwilling to turn fully to the divisive, grievance-driven politics promoted by former President Donald J. Trump.
The very polarization of the country functioned as a check, as the passions of one side offset the other.
In the first national test of the political environment since an assault last year on the U.S. Capitol that upended assumptions about the peaceful transfer of power, a pandemic that unsettled society and a Supreme Court decision that took away a long-established Constitutional right to abortion, voters produced a stalemate — an outcome that for Democrats was tantamount to a victory.
They rebuked Mr. Biden with a light touch. Yet they also showed a limited appetite for the burn-downthe-house approach that Mr. Trump has spread among Republicans.
Democrats cast the election as a referendum not on Mr. Biden’s record but as a verdict on the state of American democracy, an opportunity to reject the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen.
But throughout the campaign, Mr. Trump and his party remained steadfast in their devotion to the false premise. More than 200 election deniers will take office at the national and state level in January. And Florida, which has emerged a Republican power center during the pandemic, turned out big margins for the party.
Democrats staved off deep defeats by transforming the race from a referendum on an unpopular president into a choice between democratic norms and an extreme right-wing alternative.
Gone were the big sweeping messages of structural change around issues of economic and racial inequality from the party’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Instead, the Democrats touted the more incremental progress born out of their razor-thin majorities: improving highways, jump-starting semiconductor manufacturing, a gun safety law, aid for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and capping the cost of some prescription drug prices and insulin for Medicare recipients.
They tried to promote a sense of progress in addressing the problems voters felt acutely in their daily lives — concerns about crime, rising prices and student debt loads, and others.
For Mr. Biden it will be easier to avoid the second-guessing of his party, which has questioned his political strength and fitness to serve a second term at his advanced age.
For Mr. Trump, the results could reshuffle the dynamics of 2024. He has made it clear that he plans to announce a third presidential bid next week. But his mixed record in the midterms contrasts with that of his leading Republican competitor, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who not only had a double-digit win in his re-election race, far outpacing the performance of the national party, but also flipped Democratic strongholds in South Florida.
“Freedom is here to stay,” Mr. DeSantis told a cheering crowd at his victory rally on Tuesday night.