How President Trump won last night
Despite all you are hearing today, it is clear that President Donald J. Trump won last night.
Think about how bad the election was for his predecessor, President Obama, in his first midterm election. In 2010, President Obama led his party into a bloodbath, including the loss of 63 seats in the House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate. Republicans picked up approximately 680 state legislative seats across the nation because of Obama’s unpopular policies. That was a terrible night for Democrats.
In comparison to historical trends, President Trump can declare a big victory with the results from last night.{mosads}
On only a handful of occasions, the party in control of the presidency picked up seats in the midterm elections in the Senate. In Missouri, Attorney General Josh Hawley handily beat Sen. Claire McCaskill, handing Democrats a stunning rebuke of the Never-Trump agenda. In Indiana, Republican Mike Braun beat Sen. Joe Donnelly, handing Democrats another defeat. A third Senate race that set back the Democrats’ plan to take over Congress and impose a Democratic socialist agenda was the race in North Dakota, where incumbent Sen. Heidi Heitkamp lost to Rep. Kevin Cramer. All three of these races stunned the Democratic establishment and took some of the excitement away from the Democrats’ victories in the House of Representatives, and we still are waiting on final results in other races that likely will send more incumbent Democratic senators into early retirement.
One clear take-away from Election Day was that where President Trump campaigned for Senate candidates, they won. The president’s message of strong borders and a growing economy was a policy and messaging success. The president likes to refer to “fake polls,” and he was validated with polling that was proven to be wildly wrong. With all the left-wing pundits predicting a “blue wave,” it looks like the voters produced a “blue ripple” in the House — and an actual “red wave” in the Senate. Democrats talked a big game before the election, and they clearly underperformed in many House and Senate races.
Look at the future stars of the Democratic Party who all lost Tuesday.
The excitement on the left was clearly behind Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s campaign to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). After running one of the most expensive races in our nation’s history, and with the emotional support of left-wingers from Hollywood to Wall Street, O’Rourke still lost his race for Senate. The defeat did not stop the delusional Hollywood elite from calling for him to run for president.
In Florida, many polls indicated that left-wing mayor of Tallahassee Andrew Gillum was a lock to be the next governor of the Sunshine State. Election Day came along, and reality set in: Another lefty leader went down in flames.
All the Democrats who were measuring the drapes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were given a wakeup call yesterday that their plans may be thwarted by voters who sent a number of Democratic senators back home.
Democrats can brag that they did take over the House, but to what end? They likely will continue the witch hunt of subpoenas and a constant harassment of government officials with the hope they can set up enough perjury traps to harm President Trump’s 2020 prospects. Don’t expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s band of Democrats in the House to do any actual legislating, because they will be too busy using the House committee powers to fight a proxy war for party control of the White House in 2020. The Democrats’ only “legislating” will be to send over a number of bills that they know will never be signed into law. Expect an even more liberal House Democratic caucus to send to the Senate a number of big-government bills touching on health care, higher taxes and immigration that they know have zero chance of becoming law.
Democrats should take note that their heroes, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, suffered massive defeats in their first midterm elections, yet they subsequently won re-election. President Trump did win seats in the Senate, and the losses in the House are dwarfed by the staggering number that President Obama put up in his first midterm election. President Trump, unlike Presidents Clinton and Obama, led an unprecedented string of rallies to help Republicans win. If the Obama and Clinton precedents hold weight, expect Democrats to understand that they are unlikely to beat Trump in 2020.
Don’t listen to the spin from the left-wing talking heads who will try to portray the election as a defeat for President Trump. It was a victory — and Democrats are going to have to take a hard look in the mirror to see if they want to continue the witch-hunt investigations or work with the president to implement policies that will make our nation great again.
Corey R. Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) served as a campaign manager to Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and is a senior adviser to the Great America Committee, Vice President Mike Pence‘s political action committee. He is author of the forthcoming book, “Trump’s Enemies,” to be published Nov. 27, and co-author of “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of his Rise to the Presidency.”
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