"you don’t have a constitutionally guided democratic republic; you simply have a banana republic with nice cars and XBoxes."

Bookworm writes,

You can kid yourself as much as you want about living in a constitutionally guided democratic republic, but if 27 of the last post-election counts and recounts miraculously favored the Democrats, if Democrats are openly registering illegal aliens, if Democrats coincidentally win in regions with more voters than residents, if the dead are walking and voting, and if many “voters” were alive during the Spanish-American War, you don’t have a constitutionally guided democratic republic; you simply have a banana republic with nice cars and XBoxes.

Read more here.

The numbers

Credit: Bookworm

"There is no viable Semi-Detached-from-Trump party."

He's here, she's gone: Brett Kavanaugh with one of the kamikaze Democrats who voted against him, Clare McCaskill.

While some votes were still being counted yesterday, Mark Steyn wrote,

Yes, "suburban women" are antipathetic to the President, but it is nevertheless a fact that there's a Democrat party and a Trump Republican party but there is no viable Semi-Detached-from-Trump party.

Two years ago, when Democrats and celebrities started yakking about boycotting the inauguration, Trump should have moved the ceremony to a simple swearing-in by whatever judge or justice of the peace was to hand down on the southern border, followed by a ceremonial laying of the first brick of the Trump Wall. He was not elected to be a conventional president, and the conventional types - the bureaucracy, media, Ryan - were determined to obstruct him from Day One. Trump was stiffed by his own party on, inter alia, Obamacare - which, insofar as the Dems had an issue last night, was a biggie. He's not going to get much legislation with a Pelosi House, but he didn't get much with a Ryan House, did he? So the Wall is either dead, or will have to be accomplished via some artful sidestep, such as devious re-purposing some funds deep within Homeland Security or the Pentagon or wherever, and taking the heat from whichever twerp District Court jurist strikes it down.

The Senate, unlike the House, at least confirms judges and cabinet officials. If the GOP gets to 54 or 55 seats, it's thanks to Trump, and he should take advantage of it to do some re-jigging of the team. Moving Jeff Sessions to Homeland Security and Kris Kobach into Justice wouldn't be a bad start.

~Speaking of waves (at least with respect to the Florida coast), I'm relieved about the Sunshine State races, and not just because Senator Bill Nelson with his peculiar rictus grin was one of the most ridiculous of the podium grandees on the day I testified in Washington on climate change. Nelson a-huffed and a-puffed on how there was water in the streets of Miami Beach. Well, I said, why not do what the Dutch coast and the Thames Estuary and St Petersburg (Russia) have done and build a flood barrier? That's a few million bucks, and it's up and running in a few years. Whereas attempting to re-set the thermostat of the planet will do nothing for water in the streets of Miami Beach.

Alas, taking focused local action doesn't offer Senator Nelson as many opportunities for planet-saving virtue-signaling. So good riddance to him, and we'll see how his opponent, Rick Scott, fares in Washington.

In the gubernatorial race, another Republican prevailed - notwithstanding, as I wrote a few weeks back, his shameful association with yours truly:

The Washington Post has certainly got the goods on the GOP's Ron DeSantis - because he made the mistake of attending a conference whose speakers included ...um, me.

So last night was an important result. Association with Steyn is not necessarily fatal to political viability.

~Colorado elected the first openly gay governor, but Vermont declined to elect the first transgender governor. I'm bored with all these supposedly historic "firsts" - as I said to a Dem activist on "Tucker" a couple of months back, where's the first Muslima transgender? Yeah, okay, maybe I scoffed too soon: Kansas did manage to elect the first lesbian Native American ex-MMA fighter. But I do think that, if you examine the margins in the other statewide races, it's not unreasonable to posit an intriguing hint of "transphobia" among Green Mountain Democrats. That's an interesting glimpse of the limits of identity politics.

More analyses of the midterms

Bookworm, like many of us, is trying to understand what yesterday's elections will mean to tomorrow's America.

Trying to convince myself that, while a Democrat-majority House will be very, very bad, Trump will not abandon the American people and may still win 2020.

Democrat-majority House Divided CongressIn no particular order, here are my thoughts on the morning after an election that saw Republicans gain strength in the Senate, while losing their majority in the House:

1. We kept the Senate, which matters when it comes to the judiciary (phew!) and Trump’s ability to get his people appointed.

2. Trump can continue to dismantle the regulatory state, which is huge.

3. Trump still has a free hand with foreign policy and I like his approach to foreign policy.

4. The Democrats will use their hold on the House to escalate their open border policy, but I think (hope) Trump as the executive still has the stronger hand on this. I also hope (think) that the American people will not appreciate an open border, especially minorities who are always on the front line when it comes to illegal immigrants taking jobs and introducing new crime into a region.

5. What’s going to come out of the House in the upcoming years will be, literally, insane. Sarah Hoyt is very worried that Trump, who is committed to deal-making, will cave or, to use a Bill Clintonesque term from 1994, “triangulate”

...Bookworm provides links to analyses by Sarah Hoyt and Don Surber today.

Surber also points to the fact that we’re not dealing with Tip O’Neil era Democrats who were, admittedly, corrupt and power-hungry, but they were neither communists nor were they insane. What we’ll have for the next two years is a big fraction of our government consisting of people like Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, and Alexandria Occasional-Cortex.

...As any sentient being knows, and as both Surber and Hoyt agree, the next two years will be taken up with non-stop efforts to destroy Trump personally (Russia collusion will take center stage for another two years, with Mueller, Comey, Brennan, and Clapper finally in a congenial room), to elevate and protect the corrupt Deep State, to attack businesses that have not made obeisance to Leftist governance, to raise taxes, to open the border, and to de-fund the military.

But here’s the difference between Surber and Hoyt — Surber has more faith in Trump than Hoyt does:

..."If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!

He did everything he could to keep the midterms from being a blue wave. He succeeded in expanding his party’s majority in the Senate.

Voters deposed four incumbent opposition party senators. In the last nine midterms 114 opposition incumbents ran and only four lost. You have to go back to FDR in 1934 to have a president do better."

Surber ends on a “this will get worse before it gets better” note, but he thinks Trump will stay on the side of Americans, rather than abandoning them.

I’m inclined to agree with Surber, not just because I’m trying to turn my eyes away from the worst possible outcome, but also because Trump is not Clinton. That’s kind of a “duh! obvious” statement, but I actually mean it in two very specific ways.

First, Trump is a Republican, not a Democrat. When Clinton pivoted to the center, the media continued to love him. Because Trump is a Republican, even if he pivots to the center, the media will continue to despise him and seek his total destruction. Trump, no dunce, knows this. In other words, there’s no political or social benefit to him to engage in deal-making with a completely radicalized Democrat Party.

Second, Clinton lived to be loved. Trump, on the other hand, lives for the fight. Sure, he loves to make deals, but he also understands that he is in a cage match to the death here. Yielding to the Left will not earn him their respect, whether we’re talking about Leftists in the media, Congress, academia, or the streets. They will continue to call him Hitler. The only thing that yielding to them will do is destroy his base on the right. The Americans who have so stalwartly supported Trump will see him as a turncoat, so much so that they might even primary him in 2020. Conservatives love Trump because he fights; if he stops fighting, he is a double loser, on both the Left and the right.

6. This election outcome really isn’t anomalous, although it’s stupid. Americans frequently turn on the White House party during mid-terms. At least conservatives didn’t lose Congress entirely and (referring to Item 1, above) if you’re only going to hold onto half of Congress, the Senate is more useful than the House.

7. I’m reminding myself not to feel stressed. The die is cast. All I can do now, from my powerless position at my computer, is watch events play out. My hope is that the Democrats repulse America with their unleashed insanity and that Trump continues to be a masterful strategist and persuader. If things go sour for all of America, I’ll have to deal with that outcome’s effect on me and my family. But I can’t let the stress take hold now, when nothing has happened yet and the show is just about to begin.

I’d hoped for a different outcome, but you play the hand given you. Sadly, if you’re me, unless you get a winning hand in the first instance, you pretty much lose, because you’re neither a strategist nor a tactician. I have more faith in Trump’s ability to play the hand he was dealt, though, and can only pray that he positions himself and a conservative Republican party for victory in 2020. If we lose then, especially if the hard-Left, hard-stupid Kamala Harris takes the White House and Democrats take Congress . . . well, that’s when I’ll have my nervous breakdown.

(By the way, a friend suggested that a true identity-politics Democrat ticket in 2020 would be the Native American/Hispanic ticket of Warren and Beto. Made me laugh.)

Read more here.

The purple puddle

In USA Today, Glenn Reynolds gives us his thoughts on yesterday's elections in a piece entitled Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle. Read his thoughtful analysis here.

Some frightening prospects to consider on Halloween

In PJ Media, Roger Kimball writes,

As I write, the 2018 midterm elections are just a week away. What is at stake? There have been lakes of ink, and whatever the digital equivalent of ink is, spilt pondering that question.

Since I write on Halloween, let me confess that I find the prospect of Speaker Nancy Pelosi pretty frightening, ditto the prospect of replacing Devin Nunes as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee with Adam Schiff, or the elevation of Rep. Elijah Cummings to the chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I am told that Maxine Waters would be in line to become chair of the House Financial Services Committee, which is not so much scary as surreal. And there are a number of other changes that would be made that would put the trick in trick-or-treat.

Read more here.

A big red wave?

Michae E. Young writes at American Thinker,

You might ask -- What about all the statistics that show incoming administrations tend to lose the House in the first midterms? Response -- those statistics don’t encompass the largest governmental corruption scandal in history and a party that refuses to acknowledge or take any responsibility for it. I offer to my fellow conservatives good tidings: the Dems are headed for a path of destruction, and they don’t even realize it, because they never pulled their heads out of the echo chamber. If they continue down this path thinking that the collective TDS stance will carry them across the goal line, they will find themselves in the path of a big red wave. Bet on it.