Lessons of the last election

The Czar of Muscovy muses on the outcome of the vote this week.  As always, your Autocrat is clear, thoughtful, and to the point.  First, the Republicans:

You had a heavy majority and, for once, some mandates. You were supposed to remove and replace Obamacare. But it was too hard, and lots of people were starting to get familiar with it, and messing with it could possibly cost you an election. In fact, you were elected to do hard work, and you definitely lost an election because you didn’t want to do hard work. You were supposed to do immigration reform, but didn’t. You were supposed to cut the size of government, but instead increased it. A lot. You were supposed to reduce regulations, but barely got started. So you were fired. 

Know how you can tell? Because you lost the House. That’s the easiest thing to correct, and the voters seemed to have figured that out. Consider it a two-year probation, because that’s how long you have to fix it. 

Sure, you did cut some regulations, and you did indeed slash taxes and get the economy moving. That’s why you lost only a couple dozen seats and not a bunch. Voters still think Republicans can fix things—just that not all of you seemed to want to. And those guys have been fired.

And then the Democrats:

You aren’t going to change the world with a twenty-odd majority. 

In fact, you should probably ask yourselves if you are superheros or just interim replacements. Your newly appointed roles in the House may be nothing more than temporary help until the permanent hires arrive. You could of course make a strong enough impression that you keep those jobs. But to figure out how to do that, you better look to see why the people your replaced got let go. Not because they were Republicans, but because they were weak. They were culled from the herd. You might want to be a little more strong. 

Of course, you won’t listen.

I think it's more like a ten seat majority, which just underlines the Czar's point.  The problem for the Democrats is that they live in the Media bubble - they think that the American public is much more liberal than they really are.  This is actually the big challenge for the party, to recognize reality as it exists, instead of trying to "shape" that reality.  Their success is tied to offering what the public actually wants, rather than what they think that the public wants.  Quite frankly, this looks like a big hill for them to climb.

The Republican party has had a very difficult last two years, psychology-wise.  They have begun to come around to the view that Donald Trump has offered the voters, rather than the view their establishment donors wanted to serve up.  In the past, the donors had a win-win situation: either the Republicans won and implemented the donor's preferred big government crony capitalism (c.f. George Bush senior or junior), or the Democrats won and implemented the donor's preferred big government crony capitalism (c.f. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama).

Trump changed that dynamic, cutting the donors out and offering something much more palatable to the voters.  This is really all you need to know to understand why Hillary doesn't put her pumps up on the Resolute Desk.

But this change was painful for for the GOP.  It's still not over, as the Czar points out.  A similar change needs to occur in the Democratic party, but it not only hasn't begun yet, but there's nobody obvious to start that ball rolling.

Right now the smart money has to be betting on the Democrats continuing the same game of identity politics, radical socialist red meat for their ideological core base, and quite frankly not very smart handling of the inevitable provocations from Trump.  He excels at leading his opponents to self-destruct, and none of the current Democratic leadership inspires confidence that they will be able to impose the required discipline to keep the party from looking barking mad insane.

So it looks that it's Advantage: Trump.  And will continue to be so as the GOP completes its transformation.