As we finish the year and prepare to head into 2015, here are some thoughts about the mid-term elections in early November and how it will impact the political landscape for the next two years and, in particular, the 2016 presidential race.
Two years after his re-election, Obama’s party suffered a humiliating defeat at the ballot box. Just as it was in 2010, when the Republicans took over the House of Representatives, the Democrats were trounced in the mid-term elections. This time, the GOP not only gained more seats in the House but took over control of the Senate for the first time during Obama’s presidency. For the second time, many of the voters who carried Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012 stayed home when his party was on the ballot but the man himself was not.
With the Louisiana runoff complete and all but one of the photo-finish recounts finished, the final numbers are in: the Republicans have a 246-to-188 advantage in the House (one House race in Arizona is still too close to call, with the GOP candidate holding a 161-vote lead out of 219.247 total votes). In the Senate, the Republicans flipped 9 seats to take control with a 54-to-46 majority. At the same time, in the race for the Governors’ mansions, the Republicans won 24 out of 36 races, the Dems just 10, with one Independent and one close race still contested. Especially stunning were the three gubernatorial wins in Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, and nearly in Connecticut. In those same four states, voters elected 31 Democratic House members and only 9 Republicans.
Here are some takeaways from the November shellacking:
Even with one party controlling both houses of Congress, I would not expect any meaningful progress in providing a more functional government in 2015. The Republicans will pass a bunch of bills that Obama will not like and will veto. Nothing meaningful will happen on immigration reform: Obama likely killed that possibility by taking executive action to delay deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants (who wouldn’t have been deported anyway), even though he said for years that he didn’t have the authority to do it. The thing that might happen is some sort of comprehensive tax reform if the GOP is clever about it and crafts something that the Democrats and Obama won’t find too odious.
Unlike in the previous few election cycles, the Republicans ran a collection of solid, mainstream candidates in the open Senate seats. In both 2010 and 2012, as the Tea Party became a force in the Republican party, Tea Party-backed candidates defeated more centrist opponents in the GOP primaries and blew a couple of winnable seats. Delaware’s Christine “I Am Not a Witch” O’Donnell, Nevada’s Sharron Angle, Missouri’s Todd Akin, and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock all lost easily winnable seats because they were just way too far to the right. O’Donnell was kooky, Angle was far too anti-immigrant and Akin and Mourdock made ridiculous comments about abortions in the case of rape. In 2014, the Grand Old Party did not run any weak candidates and nearly pulled a sweep of the close races, losing only two close races to popular incumbents in New Hampshire and Virginia.
The Democratic Party in the November 2014 election is a party that is missing from the vast central part of the United States. If you look at the map of the incoming 2015 House of Representatives, you’ll notice that the “blue” congressional districts are concentrated in five areas: the biggest American cities, the West Coast, the Northeast, southeast Florida and south Texas.
Here is where you can find the 188 Democratic congressmen who will serve for the next two years:
- The West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii): 51
- New York City area (including North New Jersey): 18
- New England (including CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT): 19
- East Pennsylvania, West Jersey and the rest of New York State: 10
- Maryland, Delaware and Washington DC area (including N. Virginia): 10
- Chicago area (including northwest Indiana): 9
- South Texas: (including Houston, San Antonio, El Paso): 9
- Southeast Florida (including Miami, Ft. Lauderdale): 6
Those 8 areas house 132 of the 188 Democrats in Congress.
There are only 56 others scattered over the rest of the USA. Look at the map: it’s stunning.
By comparison, look at how much more blue there was on the map in 2008, when Obama rode his “Hope and Change” slogan to a resounding win and carried on his coattails both the House and Senate.
Finally, what do the 2014 mid-term results portend for the 2016 presidential campaign, in particular on the Republican side? For now, the Democratic side seems to be heading to a coronation of Hilary Clinton, although the air of inevitability also existed 8 years ago before a young upstart senator for Illinois trumped the former First Lady. I don’t see any Obamas on the horizon right now to knock Clinton off the tracks if she decides to take another run at the White House.
The Republican side is much more interesting right now, even for a neutral or partisan observer. There are literally two dozen men and women who are said to be contemplating a run for the Oval Office. With the Republicans capturing more than two-thirds of all of the governor’s races last month, the GOP has a very deep bench of potential presidential candidates.
What has been very noticeable is that the nation’s governors who are positioning themselves for potential presidential runs are already laying down a marker against their colleagues and potential rivals in the Senate. In various interviews, I’ve heard New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker all make the point that governing experience is the best preparation for potential Commander in Chief. This tact serves the governors two purposes: it helps explain what they will describe as the ineptitude of President Obama, who ascended to the presidency with no executive experience whatsoever. The other purpose is that, by definition, it cuts down the presidential aspirants who currently serve in the Senate (specifically Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio).
Personally, I think this absolutely valid. It’s clear to anybody who analyzes the Obama presidency honestly that he has struggled as a leader and chief executive. This is not entirely his fault. It’s like asking a professional football player to make the step directly from playing the game to coaching a NFL franchise without first spending years coaching at the collegiate level or serving as an assistant coach in the pro ranks. It would be unheard of. Well, imagine being asked to run a nation when you haven’t run anything at all in your life. I fault Obama for not learning from his mistakes but not from making them in the first place.
If you look at the 12 presidents who preceded Barack Obama (dating back to FDR), all of them except Dwight Eisenhower were former governors or vice-presidents. Eisenhower of course had the leadership skills of a former five-star general.
Anyway, let’s finish by taking a quick look at the potential Republican presidential nominees with the key part of their resume:
The Governors
- Jeb Bush Former governor of Florida
- Chris Christie Governor of New Jersey
- Nikki Haley Governor of South Carolina
- Mike Huckabee Former governor of Arkansas
- Bobby Jindal Governor of Louisiana
- John Kasich Governor of Ohio
- Susanna Martinez Governor of New Mexico
- Mike Pence Governor of Indiana
- Rick Perry Outgoing Governor of Texas
- Brian Sandoval Governor of Nevada
- Rick Snyder Governor of Michigan
- Scott Walker Governor of Wisconsin
The non-Governors
- Scott Brown Former Senator from Massachusetts
- Ted Cruz Senator from Texas
- Ben Carson Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins
- Carly Fiorina Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
- Lindsey Graham Senator from South Carolina
- Peter King Congressman from New York
- Rand Paul Senator from Kentucky
- Mike Rogers Congressman from Michigan
- Marco Rubio Senator from Florida
- Paul Ryan Congressman from Wisconsin, former VP nominee
- Rick Santorum Former Senator, 2012 runner-up to Mitt Romney
- John Thune Senator from South Dakota
The next two years sure will be interesting!! Thanks for reading.
Excellent commentary and a great site!! Those maps are especially telling. I have to agree–though a great result for Republicans, we will only see more gridlock–too bad reason can’t win the day for a change.