Why the Wave Election of 2018 Could Mean Nothing

Trump is a historically unpopular President. The bills passed by the Republican Congress are hated.

In 2018, the United States will likely see a wave election, with control of the House and possibly the Senate returning to the Democrats.

I remember a similar election, one I followed closely as my job: 2006. The Democrats took the House, and did virtually nothing with it. They did not meaningfully oppose Bush.

Then in 2008, Democrats took the House, Senate, and Presidency and used it to pass an inadequate stimulus, a flawed healthcare plan (which, yes, has helped some people), and some technocratic fixes, while basically running an austerian, neoliberal policy regime: They bailed out bankers, collaborated with banks to take away houses from homeowners through fraud, increased drone murders, and so on.

They then lost control of the House and Senate, lost about a thousand seats at State level, and eventually lost the Presidency to the most unpopular Presidential winner in history (running a candidate who had the second highest negatives of any major party candidate ever).

All of this happened for a simple reason: The Democrats governed badly. Yeah, the worst part of 2008 was patched over (something which would have happened anyway–financial crises and recessions end), but basically the economy never, ever became good for most Americans again. We saw an actual decrease in life span for many Americans, we saw the rise of the opiate crisis, we saw the percentage of people with jobs never recover.

It was catastrophic, and the Democrats didn’t fix it.

Yeah, they did some good. But they didn’t do much and they did a lot of harm.

Fed up, enough Americans in the right places decided to try the other side.

Now the other side has revealed themselves as even more rapacious and incompetent, and Americans will then go back to Democrats.

Ping.

Pong.

Ping.

This ends ONLY when one party or the other decides to govern to the benefit of a significant majority.

Democrats did this under FDR and they basically controlled DC for 5o years or so, until they fucked it up by failing to handle the oil and inflation crises of the 70s–at which point, they decided to go along with Republicans in getting rid of the economic and political policies which made the previous period of great prosperity possible.

So, there are some signs that Democrats are beginning to get it: increased support for single payer, anger over various internet monopolies, and so on.

But when they win, they have to actually DO IT. Especially once they have a President, they must just ram through the right shit. 51 votes in the Senate is all it takes if you are serious. That’s a choice.

Until they do…

Ping.

Pong.

Ping.

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