Recently America held a midterm election where the people were able to vote for who they wish, to represent them in congress.  Typically midterms tend to favor the opposition, but this year it turned out  differently, Democrats retained control of the senate and Republicans gained only a slim majority in the house of representatives. 

So what happened? 

I believe that former president Trump is one of the primary reasons why the republicans lost almost every statewide race for Governor in the main swing states, and only won a few of the senate races in those same swing states. 

Of the 9 Governor races that were considered to be competitive Democrats won 6 of those seats (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New york, Arizona and Oregon) with Republicans winning only Florida, Georgia, and Nevada

I believe the primary reason is that the people who Trump endorsed in the primary who ended up winning all either refused to say if they’d endorse the 2020 election or outright said it was stolen and I believe the primary lesson here is that people are sick and tired of people claiming that elections are somehow stolen despite the lack evidence to that claim. Here in Wisconsin Tim Michels, the republican candidate for governor, who said that if he won Republicans wouldn’t ever lose an election in the state again, he lost and what’s crazy is that he lost to Tony Evers worse than Scott Walker did in 2018, which was a blue wave year in which he won only by about a percentage point, however this time around in 2022 evers won by about 3 percentage points. Now if I were the Republican party I would take these midterms as a clear rebuke of what their platform was, Republicans did win the house but it will be nowhere near the margin the Republicans were hoping for, in an interview on Fox News Republican Senator Ted Cruz said “I think we’re gonna retake Both the House and Senate, In the house, I think we’re gonna end up with a big majority, I think we’re gonna end up with a majority in the range of 30-50 seats.” 

Not only did they significantly underperform the expectations he set for the house majority, the Republicans failed to capture control of the senate, and the reason is that Former President Trump endorsed these people in the primaries who denied the election outright. 

In a midterm, the opposition tries to make the midterm a referendum on the party in power. The opposition clearly defines their values as opposed to the majority party, and tries to make voters reconsider the job that the majority party has done. The Democrats were able to define the choice between themselves and the GOP as a choice between democratic principles or economic issues. 

Statewide people made the choice that favored the Democrats. Trump endorsed candidates were not the only reason people voted against the Republicans.  the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade was a major factor. I feel if the Republicans are to take anything away from these midterms, it’s that Former President Trump did not help them in this midterm, which was supposed to heavily favor them, while they only barely managed to capture the house. 

What does the future hold since the republicans won the house?

Well, house minority leader Kevin Mccarthy has said that he would has raising the debt ceiling as leverage to allow for cuts to spending on social security and medicare, effectively taking the country hostage, this could have some serious implications on that just the adults in our lives futures, but ours too, we wouldn’t be guaranteed a retirement fund some 50 years from now. There is however the other side of the story the democrats did win control of the senate again which allows President Biden to appoint a lot of judges for the remainder of his first term. There is also a runoff in Georgia and if the democrats were to win that election it would give them a majority in committees and subpoena power, allowing them to order someone to testify. The reason this is a big deal is that it could allow them to continue the work of the January 6th Select Committee. 

What to do going forward?

Well, there’s not too we can do but something we can all do is contact house representatives and senators in some way to ensure that our politicians at least know how the incoming voters feel about their policies. Electing these representatives is only part of our democracy the other part happens once they get to congress where their job as our representative is to properly represent their constituents. There is bound to be debate over issues like abortion, lgbtq+ rights, and racial inequality, no matter where you land on these issues it’s every single persons right to let their representative know how they feel on issues and contacting our representatives is a great way to exercise that right.  While we all have a tough road ahead as a country, I’ll end with this, democracy isn’t easy; it’s slow and it’s painful and it can sometimes cause us to lose things we wish we didn’t lose but giving up doesn’t solve that. The best thing we can do is to keep going and to make sure we show up to vote in the following elections to make sure we are heard.