The joy of victory and the agony of defeat in a single election

In last week’s column, I wrote…

“A blue wave rose, pushed back the red tide that had long been rising, then crested and broke without reaching shore or managing to sweep away the toxic sludge that is the Republican Party in the Trump era.

“That’s my somewhat metaphorical first reading of what happened in the 2018 midterm elections, writing at 5 a.m. the morning after. If journalism is the first draft of history, then this a rough one. The polls in the West closed just a few hours ago. We don’t yet know all the winners, and it will be some time before the finer breakdowns are computed.”

A week after, the results are still not all final, but it looks like the Democrats did a little better than I gave them credit for. Was I too cautious? Maybe I should have just written: The Democrats won!

In fact, they did what they set out to do, regain control of House of Representatives. And they won more seats previously held by Republicans than in any election since Watergate.

Then why are many progressives, including myself, not as elated as the results appear to warrant? It’s a question that the pundits and the media in general have been asking since the election. Observers have come up with various explanations.

First, the vote in the key state of Florida was deeply disappointing. The Republican candidates who, once all the recounts are done, are likely to emerge as winners in the race for Senator and Governor respectively, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, are not fit to shine the shoes of their Democratic opponents. Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum are serious leaders. Scott is a white collar criminal who escaped prosecution, as most do, then went into politics and continued to enrich himself. DeSantis is a non-entity who became the Republican candidate because Donald Trump saw him as the most reactionary and truculent and endorsed him. He won not by proposing anything positive but by smearing Gillum as a communist and a crook.

This shows that this is still the Florida that elected George W. Bush and Donald Trump, with an electorate that has learned…nothing. This alone is enough to dampen anyone’s urge to celebrate.

Then, too, arguably the most charismatic Democratic political leader since Barack Obama, Beto O’Rourke, lost the Senate race in Texas to…Ted Cruz. Cruz is the most obnoxious politician in the nation after Donald Trump. Cruz is an ultra-reactionary, who stooped low enough to lick Trump’s boots in order to get his endorsement. That despite the fact that Trump, during the primary campaign, mocked Cruz’s wife’s looks and falsely accused Cruz’s father of involvement in the Kennedy assassination. At the founding of the Republic, insults much less wounding that these would have provoked a deadly duel. I am glad duels are history but still, Mr. Cruz, at long last, have you no dignity or honor? And, Texas voters, when will you stop voting with your prejudices?

Another factor that has curbed this Democrat’s enthusiasm is that, while the Democrats picked up more than thirty seats in the House this election, the Republicans turned more than sixty seats in the 2010 midterms. The 2018 blue wave was only about half as large as the last red wave, despite the fact that Trump has given the electorate a million more reasons than Obama to punish him and his party.

I find all of these explanations for the Democrats’ less than ecstatic response to the 2018 victory valid as far as they go. They all feed into my relative disappointment too. But there is a deeper reason why, for me, the results of this election are bittersweet, and heavy on the bitter.

In less than two years as president, Donald Trump has shown, in a multitude of ways and beyond any doubt, that he is a horrible president and a miserable human being. In a country less poisoned by racism and xenophobia, in a country less in thrall to the kind of social sadism that revels in denying public assistance to the poor, the sick, and every other vulnerable group, Trump and his Republicans would have been beaten to the point of extinction. This election is evidence that this is still not that better country.

Instead, the GOP survives to fight another day to do more damage. President Trump is up to his usual tricks. On a trip to France for a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Trump, a bombastic fan of the military that never served a day, cited bad weather as a the reason he skipped a solemn event to honor Americans buried at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial. Sir Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of the British parliament and Winston Churchill’s grandson, tweeted his disapproval:

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen.”

Some in the media have attributed Trump’s absence to anger at French President Emmanuel Macron’s sharp rebuke of nationalism, which has become the President’s latest mantra. But the weather doesn’t explain Trump’s failure to make even a token appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on Veteran’s Day after returning to this country.

The explanation is simple. Trump lacks scintilla of an essential human emotion: empathy. Such a president, who is so clearly insincere about almost everything, even about his oft-expressed admiration for the military, deserved a tougher rebuke than he got on November 6. And that, to use an expression slightly out of fashion but still spot-on, is a bummer.