There was no red wave. But there was no blue wave either. The Americans chose not to make any more waves. It was not an election of change. It was a stability election. Although Joe Biden’s approval rating on Tuesday averaged 41% and 72% of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction, at least for now Americans chose stability over turmoil. The last few years have been pretty chilling: four wild years of Donald Trump, two horrible pandemic years, a deep recession followed by skyrocketing inflation, climate disasters, a violent attack on the US Capitol, a rogue US Supreme Court. A. precedent and willing to take away reproductive rights that have been held sacred for nearly 50 years, a war in Ukraine where the Russian president is talking about using nuclear weapons. Americans want to keep politics pretty much as it is because everything else is so unpredictable. This is bad news for Trump and Trumpism – the quasi-religious personal cult of authoritarianism, political violence and QAnon conspiracy theories that Trump has espoused, whose fundamental goal is to overturn American politics led by Trump. There will be no reversal. In fact, as the dust now settles, it looks like there was only one clear loser last week: Trumpism. As a result, the next two years before the 2024 election are less likely to pose a terrifying threat to American democracy. (They can still be scary, though.) Notably, not a single state-level election-denying candidate for secretary of state—the people who would oversee the 2024 election—was elected. In Pennsylvania, a recusal who would have had the power to appoint the secretary of state lost his bid for governor. In Wisconsin, the defeat of an election naysayer in the governor’s race blocked a move to bring the election administration under party control. Nor were two of Trump’s most notable Senate candidates, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Blake Masters in Arizona, elected. Trump himself didn’t help the Republican cause. The apparent undercurrent of aggression, bigotry and electoral denial reminded many voters of what threatened the Republican party if it regained power. All that said, Trump’s expected announcement on Tuesday that he will run for president again is hardly good news for the Republican party — though, presumably, Trump couldn’t care less. The next two years will not be as dangerous as they would have been if Trump’s picks had been elected, but they will still be filled with his divisive bellicosity. At least some political stability will prevail. Biden will continue to fill the federal courts with judges who are likely to protect important Democratic legislative achievements (including past achievements like the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Social Security), as well as voting and reproductive rights rights (as far as the supreme court is concerned, it leaves room for them). If any of the current Supreme Court justices die, Biden will have a clear opportunity to fill the vacancy with someone more amenable to democratic (and democratic) values. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans won’t be able to do what House Republicans are almost certain to do if they win the majority — launch a series of hearings and investigations to embarrass Biden and his administration on everything from withdrawing from Afghanistan to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Thanks to Americans’ preference for stability over upheaval, Georgia’s Dec. 6 senatorial runoff between Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Hershel Walker will no longer determine control of the Senate — and therefore no longer invite a media circus and cesspool of campaign money. If Warnock prevails, the real loser will be West Virginia’s Joe Manchin — who will lose effective control of the Senate Democratic agenda because Democrats will win a 51-49 majority that shifts the balance of power to Manchin’s left. The other change if Warnock wins is that Senate committees will no longer be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats will win their majorities, keeping Biden’s nominees and Democratic bills from deadlocking in committee, requiring time-consuming votes to resolve. But if Republicans win the House, even by a vote or two, the Democratic bills in the Senate will go nowhere, anyway. Maybe that’s what the Americans chose. After years of turmoil and turmoil, most of us could wish for nothing more dramatic than a competent government that acts sensibly and carefully – and makes no waves.
