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Opinion & Editorial

2018 Midterms: Mass-Marginalization of the American Moderate 

On Tuesday, November 6, Democrats wrested control of the House from their Republican rivals. 
Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
 

For the past several years, racism, demagoguery, fraud, corruption, elitism, obstructionism, and just about every other word describing how not to run a country have been rampant through Capitol Hill. Congress can’t agree on anything: every split decision leaves one side or the other complaining and name-calling for weeks on end. Politicians chide huge contingents of the population as “animals,” and “deplorables.” Some actually call for an end to cordial discourse. So across the country, riots sparked by emboldened extremist groups–left and right–dominate the headlines. 

So in the corner of a split, burning house that seems ready to cave in on itself at any moment, nearly 40% of Americans–the moderates of the “mushy middle”–cower fearfully in the corner, hollering and screaming, desperately hoping that someone, anyone, will hear, put out the fire, and shore up the walls.

And but get this: the firefighters are deaf. Our politicians-the people supposed to represent us, aren’t listening. 

For two years, figures on both sides of the aisle have advocated for “civility” and emphasized the need for “bipartisanship.” But this week’s midterms revealed that all that talk was for nothing. It was lip service. Nothing more. 

On the Republican side, the once-conservative GOP has simply boarded the Trump train with a one-way ticket to the far-right.

Across the country, GOP primaries quickly devolved into a contest of who could be the most like Trump: the most caustic, the toughest on immigration, the most insulting to Democrats–and in too many cases–the most offensive to the greatest number of non-whites. More often than not, the candidate that won that battle received the GOP nomination.

So when midterms rolled around, Trump-endorsed candidates fared quite well. The President served as the party’s metaphorical “closer.” His last minute rallies gave multitudes of thoroughly unappealing and trailing GOP candidates a resounding victory. 

But save a few exceptions, Republicans running without the President’s support got shellacked. 

So what did the midterms teach Republican politicians? If you want to get elected, sell your soul to the neocon, alt-right agenda. If you don’t, and you’d rather stick to your values of respect and dignity than embrace a raging populist President, then you’d better be prepared to lose. 

Against this backdrop, you’d  would’ve expected Democrats to swing to the middle. While the GOP completely ostracized large swaths of moderates on a national scale, you’d think that their rivals would have shifted their platform and attempted to win their votes.

Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.

Though a handful of Democrats did so successfully, moving to the middle wasn’t the party’s winning strategy. In fact, moderate Democrats–just like their Republican counterparts–were decimated. 

Phil Bredesen, a popular moderate Democrat in Tennessee, was expected to challenge Trump-backed Rep. Marsha Blackburn for a senate seat. Blackburn crushed him by 10%. 

Bredesen was far from the only one. Moderate Democratic incumbents all over the country, including Claire McCaskill, Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Dean Heller lost by over 5 points in races that were relative cakewalks six years ago. John Tester retained his once supposedly locked senate seat by the skin of his teeth. Even West Virginia’s beloved Joe Manchin barely eked out a win. (He carried nearly  65% of his state’s vote in 2012.) 

By contrast, Democrats flaunting their support for an unapologetically progressive agenda did quite well. Across the country, candidates proposing socialized medicine, calling for tax hikes, and toting 100% Planned Parenthood approval ratings effectively energized the Democratic voter base.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that some have drawn the exact opposite conclusion. Citing the losses of notable progressives like O’Rourke, Gillum, and Abrams, many have claimed that Americans effectively repudiated leftist policy in the midterms.

But let’s face it. Six years ago, a candidate with Beto O’Rourke’s platform would have been completely embarrassed in a crimson red Texas. The same goes for Gillum in Florida and Abrams in Georgia. Instead, all three stridently progressive icons came fractions of a point away from victory.

Many such Democratic House candidates were vociferous in their call for new leadership on the campaign trail. And while many moved to unseat Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer simply out of concern for their woefully out-of-touch leadership tactics, many more seemed frustrated that the Schumer-Pelosi establishment isn’t left enough

So even if leftist progressive candidates didn’t churn up a blue tsunami this time around, their ideology has become the future cornerstone of the Democratic Party . 

This puts moderates up a creek.

To be sure, moderates still exist. They aren’t vanishing. Very few Americans actually buy into the far-left or far-right agenda. The vast majority prefer a moderate, centrist platform.

But when there are only two candidates, and neither one even remotely represents your values, what do you do? 

In a two party system, the vast majority of Americans see an abstention from one candidate as a vote for the other. So for many, the answer is to plug your nose, grit your teeth, and pull the lever for the “lesser of two evils.” 

Republican and Democrats alike vowed they would remedy this post-2016 and promised to return civility and centrism to politics. 

But as the nation saw on Tuesday, the Democrats have moved increasingly left, and the “Never-Trumpers” have become Trump huggers. Literally. Just ask Ted Cruz.

 Instead of restoring bipartisanship, the newly elected ideological, hyper-partisan government could very well destroy any possibility of it.

For progressive liberals and neoconservatives, that isn’t so bad. The Democrat and Republican parties are now based solely around those respective ideologies, with no room for those pesky, unreliable centrists who don’t vote the party line.

But for the millions of moderates in between who don’t have a party that represents them anymore, things are about to get a whole lot worse. 

 
 
 
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