The impact of the midterm election results should not be diminished despite what the president would tell you. Particularly in House races, the election was a referendum on the president and it didn't bode well for him. There has indeed been a political realignment. In fact, the results triggered one of the worst performance weeks of his presidency so far. More on that in a minute.
Locally, the Republicans could not be trusted to protect people with preexisting conditions from getting kicked off their health insurance and that was a big factor. As we discussed at length in this column, the Republicans during the campaign were promising to mandate a protection but had no remedy on how to keep costs down so that people weren't simply priced out of the market. Voters understood that with the Affordable Care Act proving quite popular though fixes are needed. Where Democrats need to improve is in their economic messaging. David Brooks of The New York Times made a point that has mostly flown under the radar, which is despite an economy that has been growing and low unemployment, the working class is still having a hard time of it. Finances for most Americans are still extremely strained in large part because of healthcare especially prescription drug prices, but also because real wage growth in relation to the cost of living has been inadequate, and that's being kind.
It's these tensions along with the tenor coming from the White House that drove the Democratic wave in the House lead particularly by women candidates, which makes perfect sense because in most households women oversee the finances particularly with their children in mind and the president's general treatment of women is reprehensible. As Donna Edwards stated, this midterm election was certainly a rebuke of the president's behavior, and now there are 100+ women in Congress, thankfully.
Given those House gains, Republicans did pick up seats in the Senate with a map that was certainly tilted to their advantage. Democrats had to defend seats in red states where the president won by large margins so Joe Donnelly (D) in Indiana is out as is Heidi Heitkamp (D) in North Dakota. And though this column predicted that Claire McCaskill could pull it out again in Missouri, she came up short to Josh Hawley. Florida and Arizona are still up in the air.
This brings us to the president's performance this past Wednesday (the day after the election) which started off with an ugly press conference where Mr. Trump mocked Republican candidates who lost because they did not support him, according to his logic. He also stifled free speech and freedom of the press (in the First Amendment) in unjustifiably banning CNN's Jim Acosta from the White House as well as threatening the same for other reporters. In that same press conference he accused Yamiche Alcindor of PBS of asking a racist question. And he misogyny continued before he left for Paris saying that April Ryan of the Urban Radio Network was a loser and that Abby Phillip of CNN always asks stupid questions. (all African-American women).
Also on Wednesday, the president fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions and appointed his Mr. Sessions' chief of staff Matthew Whitaker as acting Attorney General setting off concerns of a Constitutional crisis. Sifting through all the opinions since the decisions, it's debatable whether the appointment is Constitutional or not. However, even Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon conceded that Mr. Whitaker is in no way qualified for the job, but Mr. Whitaker was installed into the position to protect Mr. Trump from the Mueller investigation, for which Whitaker is on record saying that the investigation isn't credible. This is not to mention that fact that on Friday, Mr. Trump said that he didn't know Mr. Whitaker when only a month earlier he said that he did know him as is typical of this president. To counter this, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have sent a letter to the DOJ as to whether or not they have given an ethics opinion on Mr. Whitaker, as outlined by Adam Schiff (D-CA) who said it was clearly a political decision where there shouldn't be one. Also, Mr. Schiff explained that the Democrats have to focus on a positive agenda, one on which they ran on. Even with that in mind, oversight of this administration is absolutely necessary.
Then 11 days after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh another mass shooting occurred at a club in Thousand Oaks, CA. Yet, the president simply refuses to have the larger conversation on mass shooting epidemic we have in this country, only offering his condolences. Then to add insult to injury, wildfires are ravaging through California with 25 people now dead, threatening the community that just lived through the mass shooting and the president blames poor forest management for the fires. He also threatened to pull federal funding to California to combat these fires while they're still raging. As Mr. Schiff stated, Mr. Trump doesn't understand the job he has and shouldn't be levying punitive punishment on those communities at this time.
With a recount underway in Florida's senate race and votes still being counted in Arizona, the president made accusations of fraud in both contests. This is completely uncalled for by the President of the United States. But this is simply another in a long list of compulsions of Mr. Trump to tear this country apart. With that said, Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) does have a point about Broward County in Florida that the way they run elections there is incompetent at best and unconstitutional at worst. After the fiasco that was the 2000 recount, this county has had 18 years to get their act together, and they haven't. That's just ridiculous. Of Mr. Gardner took a step too far in saying that we should have an accounting and an election we can be proud of in that county, conveniently forgetting about how Mr. Bush was given the presidency in 2000 with a Supreme Court stoppage of the vote counting.
Lastly, Mr. Trump flew all the way to Paris to take part in the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of WWI and he didn't make the trip to Ainse-Marne cemetary, an hour outside the city, to pay tribute to the 1,600 American soldiers who died in battle there. This is a basic job of the president and he couldn't do it because of rain? Give us a break. This shows total disrespect for our soldiers who fought and died for this country. Not to mention the fact that the president has yet to visit any troops in active combat areas around the globe. Politico's Eliana Johnson said that Mr. Trump has no range as a politician meaning that he doesn't have the capacity to expand his base or the electorate in his favor. You should really take that one step farther and say he has no range as a leader of the American people, at home or abroad.
Is President Trump so self-consumed with his own preservation that he's unable to do the right thing, the presidential act, in any situation? If you've read this far, the question has been answered.
Panel: Matthew Continetti, The Washington Free Beacon; Donna Edwards, fmr. Congresswomen from Maryland; Eliana Johson, Politico; David Brooks, The New York Times
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