Democrats took the House in a massive repudiation of Donald Trump, throwing Republicans out of district after district. On the other hand, the Senate edged more Republican as Trump proved that 70 percent of the Senate really does represent 30 percent of the population. But even those numbers are deceptive. Here are the real Senate results from last night, as of 8 AM this morning …
Senate Vote Totals
Democratic Party: 44.9 million votes
Republican Party: 32.9 million votes
That’s the story on the House side, as well. Democrats didn’t just take more seats, they took an enormously greater number of votes. Democrats carried both the House and the Senate with vote margins of greater than 9 percent. That’s bigger than the Republican “wave” elections in 2010, or even 1994. It’s a massive margin of victory. Massive.
If it doesn’t look that way from some of the end results, it’s simply because of structural issues. Small rural states, and small rural counties, have an outsized importance in a system that, as we often get reminded, isn’t a pure democracy, but a representative republic. At this point those rural areas are utterly wedded to the GOP. How strong is that attachment? So strong that a dead pimp easily captured a seat in the Nevada state assembly just by having an “R” next to his name. Really.
Democrats demonstrated last night that they can carry this nation by a huge margin. Republicans sat comfortably on top of a system that gives them a Dead Pimp Advantage. Still, Donald Trump says he’s happy. That it was an “incredible Midterm election” and a “Big Win.” In fact, Trump is so, so happy that—he’s preparing to send the Senate to war with the House.
Campaign Action
Donald Trump stood on stages across the nation and told Americans that there were riots going on in California over immigration policy, that towns in New York were celebrating their “liberation” from MS-13 with parades, and most of all that Middle Eastern terrorists—young men, strong men—were marching on the United States from that Middle Eastern outpost known as Honduras. If Trump deserves any credit at all, he showed that his voters would leave home to pull the lever for any lie he gave them. Or for a dead pimp.
But if Trump is pointing at the Senate as evidence of his ability to … lose by over 9 percent … that’s not a lot of comfort to Republicans who, in two years have to face Senate elections in states where they don’t enjoy a Dead Pimp Advantage.
And what those senators are going to really love, is Donald Trump spending the next two years trying to use them as a means of halting any investigation of him.
