-by Patrick Toomey
I learned many years ago that looking for fundamental fairness in this country in general and in our political system in particular is a fool’s errand. The best that one can hope for is that, on occasion, the cosmic tides can appear to shift in the proper direction. Perhaps, some of that occurred in this election cycle— at least in the 49 states other than the one in which I happen to reside.
In the Dobbs case, the Supreme Court’s Fab 5 (Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Comey Barrett) could’ve easily followed the lead of the politically shrewd John Roberts. Like him, they could’ve voted to uphold the Mississippi abortion statute in question without expressly reversing the long-standing Roe/Casey line of cases. As future cases from other states inevitably came to the Court, they could’ve continued to eviscerate the substance of Roe while nominally honoring its form. Instead, they chose to openly cast aside 49 years of precedents (plural) and to bring the issue front and center. They created an immediate crisis and handed a pure political gift to the Democrats.
A party that had a president with approval ratings in the low 40s, a modest level of accomplishments during the past 2 years, and steadily rising food and gasoline prices needed every lifeline it could get. The Fab 5 threw them such a lifeline. Abortion was 1 of 2 planks of the donkey’s 2022 platform (actually more like a picnic bench than a platform). The other plank was also gifted by the GOP.
Ever since he demolished establishment choice Jeb Bush and rolled on to victory in the 2016 GOP primaries, the party establishment has enabled Donald J. Trump. They stood by him as he and his family violated the Emoluments Clause on a daily basis. They went along with his public advocacy of a Lysol cure and his unconscionable mishandling of the Covid pandemic and the tens of thousands of preventable deaths that resulted. They didn’t even repudiate him after he incited an insurrection the led to the first attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812, the imperiling of the safety of his own Vice President (and the entire Congress), and the deaths of first responders.
In a normal mid-term, a party with an incumbent with Biden’s approval ratings faces hopeless odds. When, however, the opposing party’s former incumbent, who won’t leave the stage, has even lower approval ratings, those odds quickly narrow. Trump essentially leveled the playing field between the parties on the issue of presidential unpopularity. He negated what would’ve otherwise been a major GOP advantage.
Were it not for Dobbs and for Trump, we would’ve seen the red tsunami that pundits were predicting. The Democrats did not create opportunities of their own— they merely capitalized on the fact that the GOP kicked the ball into their own net twice. Overreach by the Fab 5 and the enabling of evil by the GOP establishment allowed the donkey to hold the Senate and come oh so close to holding the House. The bad guys lost this one due primarily to their own bad deeds.
Here in Florida, things obviously didn’t work out so well. One point, however, jumps out in a comparison between 2018 and 2022 results. In the 2 gubernatorial races, DeSantis’ total rose from 4.077 million in 2018 to 4.611 million in 2022. The Democratic total, however, plummeted from 4.043 million to 3.1 million. DeSantis only gained about 540,000 votes while the Democratic nominee lost over 940,000 votes. In 4 years, roughly 400,000 Democratic votes disappeared into thin air in a state that enjoyed steady population gains in that period. The senatorial erosion was even more dramatic. Rubio gained less than 400,000 votes on Scott’s 2018 totals while Demings lost about 900,000 votes from Nelson’s totals. Roughly 500,000 Democratic senate votes disappeared.
The Florida Democratic Party has long been an embarrassment. Addressing its multiple flaws would require an essay of its own. For this essay, it is sufficient to note that the party nominated 2 uninspiring candidates. One nominee— Crist— ran a halfway decent campaign in which he was massively outspent. Demings, meanwhile, ran a lifeless “centrist” campaign that gave voters little reason to bother turning out for her. The incompetence of the party and the weaknesses of its candidates made a bad situation infinitely worse.
Perhaps we’ll see the ultimate poetic justice if a falling Trump manages to drag DeSantis down with him. DeSantis ran as the MAGA candidate during the 2018 GOP primary, including an ad featuring his wife and his little kids as Trump supporters. There is a true poetic justice in their open split now, and there would be even more justice if that split were to work to DeSantis’ detriment.
I still would’ve preferred a campaign in which the Democrats ran as resolute defenders of Social Security and Medicare in the face of GOP threats and in which the likes of Tim Ryan, Mandela Barnes, and Cheri Beasley had been adequately supported. At this point, however, I’ll take what I can get, especially given how grim things looked a week ago at this time. Some clearly bad people clearly did themselves in, and that’s something to feel some level of satisfaction about.
A good offering. One sentence is the shithole in microcosm:
"The Democrats did not create opportunities of their own— they merely capitalized on the fact that the GOP kicked the ball into their own net twice."
The democraps have not created any good reason to vote FOR them since 1966.
Their election strategy is to claim (not always true) to be not as horrible as the nazis. When the nazi evil is fresh in the minds of voters, it sometimes worked. But they don't *do* anything when they win the odd election, so that hands the nazis opportunity after opportunity which they usually make the most of.
But this time the nazis screwed the pooch, as you said, TWICE. An…