How to Write About the Midterm Elections, According to Everyone
The polls are closed, the results are (mostly) in, and across the nation media outlets agree: There’s only one way to view the midterm elections:
Democrats Get Trampled On Election Night [Huffington Post]
In the absence of a Democratic agenda to vote for, voters found something to vote against, registering their anger with the direction and structure of the economy. Attitudes measured in exit polls were negative in the extreme, with eight in 10 saying they were dissatisfied by the performance of Congress and 54 percent giving the thumbs down to Obama. A potent majority was unhappy with the U.S. economic system itself, with nearly two-thirds of voters saying it’s unfair and favors the wealthy and only 32 percent saying it’s fair to most people, a shift even since 2012.
What? That’s not apocalyptic enough for you? How about this:
This Boring Midterm Is Actually the Most Terrifying Election In Recent History [Vice]
It is terrifying by design—a huge number of campaign ads are explicitly tailored to scare Americans about the virtual non-threats of Ebola and ISIS. It is terrifying for its banality—it is otherwise boring and presumably low-stakes and few Americans seem to care about its outcome. It is terrifying on a fiscal level—record-high Super PAC spending means the election is engineered by a flood of dark money.
Okay, maybe that’s too dark. Here’s some light at the end of the tunnel:
Republicans Didn’t Win As Big As You Think They Did. And Obama Didn’t Lose [The Guardian].
Still, 2014 was hardly an endorsement of the Republicans. That they have now taken control of the Senate marks a substantial change in terms of leadership but not a particularly consequential one in terms of legislation. The Republicans will emerge with only a small majority, and if the party’s recent experience running the House of Representatives is anything to go by, the GOP is likely to be a dysfunctional caucus – and anything Republicans do come up with that is unpalatable to Democrats, the president still holds a veto. Obama at times has proved himself in negotiations to possess the spine of a jellyfish, but unless he caves, nothing much more will get done this session than during the previous one.
And here’s some unadulterated optimism:
Weed Is Legal In the Capitol—And 10 Other Reasons This Election Wasn’t A Total Bust [The Nation]
Scott Brown, feminist hero: In New Hampshire, Republican Senate candidate/carpetbagger Scott Brown became the first Republican to lose twice to a woman: first to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and on Tuesday to incumbent Jeanne Shaheen.
Which seems pretty reasonable compared to this flying-pig optimism:
Can Obama Work with the GOP And Find A Common Ground? [The Daily Beast]
More likely, the road ahead will be paved by small accomplishments as opposed to grand bargains that would rattle the rough equilibrium between the two parties as they position themselves for the presidential sweepstakes. Republicans need to rebuild their brand, which Rand Paul said quite graphically “sucks.’’
Even locally, there was complete agreement about the governor’s race:
With Martha Coakley, Deep-Blue Massachusetts Continues To Be A Headache for Democrats [Washington Post]
Of course, the cast of characters in those races has been pretty constant — two Coakleys, two Browns and two Bakers. But if nothing else, the nature of these competitive races and the repeating cast of characters reinforces the fact that candidates matter. And Coakley is a decidedly not-good one.
Or in even plainer English…
Martha Coakley Is A Very Bad Politician [The Daily Caller]
Not a terribly impressive performance by the Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts. She failed even to win the endorsement of the Boston Globe! But not a terribly surprising one either. Martha Coakley is perhaps the worst politician to enjoy a semi-successful political career.
Yes, Coakley was a bad politican. But let’s split hairs about precisely how that didn’t work out for her:
Being A Terrible Candidate Isn’t What Doomed Martha Coakley [Mother Jones]
The easy take-away here is that Coakley is a spectacularly bad candidate, woefully out of touch with Massachusetts voters. “You could call her the Bill Buckner of politics, if she even knew who the Red Sox were,’’ as Politico Magazine’s Ben Schreckinger put it in October. But if you really know who the Red Sox are, you’d know that Buckner’s famous gaffe came only after the rest of the team had already blown the game. And that’s sort what happened here—the loss stemmed from a confluence of factors, not a singularly flawed candidate.
Finally, our prize for Most Ludicrous Take on the Midterms goes to The Onion, which wrote about the elections in a way that was more straightforward, old-school, and believable than anyone else’s:
Republicans Poised To Retain Control of Senate [The Onion]
“If current polling projections are accurate, it appears as if Republican lawmakers will hold on to power in the Senate chamber and will continue to steer the legislative agenda with little resistance,’’ political analyst Michael Barone told reporters, noting that the likely election results will preserve the GOP’s singular authority over the direction of the Senate, allowing Republicans to go on stymieing judicial appointments, derailing or neutering any legislation they oppose, and obstructing President Obama at every turn.
Can’t argue with that.
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