How Trump and Kevin McCarthy turned a sure Republican victory into a historic humiliation

It’s almost as if unraveling democracy is not an ideal platform for winning a democratic election.

Going into Tuesday’s midterm election, the political cosmos at long last appeared to be aligned to deliver California’s own Kevin McCarthy resoundingly to the House speakership, in pursuit of which he has spent years abasing and even endangering himself, his colleagues and his party at the altar of Donald Trump. In the aftermath of the voters’ generational rebuke of his party and his leadership, however, McCarthy is staggering toward the grim conclusion of an all too costly quest. He might yet grasp the gavel, but any victory he claims will be — to paraphrase a favorite taunt of the extremist Republicans to whom he tirelessly kowtows — in name only.

What’s even worse for McCarthy, and better for America, is the evidence that what the voters rejected in particular was his and his party’s embrace of Trumpist authoritarianism over the rule of law. McCarthy had the opportunity and the understanding to reject Trump when the then-president nearly had him killed by a lunatic mob. But he didn’t have the guts.

Now he faces losing what he traded his dignity for — or winning it so narrowly that the triumph, the proceeds and he himself are only further diminished by the ordeal.

It’s worth reviewing the monumental advantages with which McCarthy and company entered the election to appreciate the magnitude of what they squandered and why.

American elections are famously and reliably influenced by the condition of the economy and the popularity of the president — or at least they were. Joe Biden’s approval rating, according to one average of polls, is currently below 42%, a record low at this point in a presidency. The economy, meanwhile, has been contending with the worst inflation in 40 years, ushering in a series of punishing interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and putting a recession on the horizon. Mixed indications of rising crime in fact or perception didn’t help the incumbent Democrats either.

McCarthy and his co-conspirators enjoy other substantial structural advantages thanks to the quasi-democratic edifice bequeathed us by the founders and the maintenance deferred by right-wing courts and legislatures. The U.S. Senate favors rural, conservative-leaning states to the extent that its 50 Republicans represent over 40 million fewer Americans than the same number of Democrats. And gerrymandering of House districts gives the GOP a built-in 25-seat advantage in the lower chamber over the country’s actual partisan preference.

Being the party opposite the president in a midterm election, moreover, Republicans were expected to enjoy substantial gains in Congress even without those advantages. In the case of the House, the president’s party has lost seats in all but three of 39 such elections since the Civil War. The opposition’s average gain in midterms since World War II is over 26 seats.

Considering all this a few weeks before the election, the New York Times proclaimed the arrival of the “Democrats’ feared red October.” Days before the voting finished, the New Yorker predicted a Democratic “bloodbath.” And on the eve of the election, the conservative National Review gleefully awaited a “red tsunami.”

In the event, there was a lot more believing than seeing all that red. Republicans are turning in the worst midterm performance for the opposition in 20 years, having potentially gained fewer than 10 seats in the House and none in the Senate, where they could yet lose one. The last comparably underwhelming showing was in 2002, which, as many readers will never forget, was the year after the worst foreign attack ever on U.S. soil. Not coincidentally, President George W. Bush’s approval rating going into that election was above 60%, about 20 points higher than Biden’s.

By some measures, given that the GOP also appears to be facing net losses of governorships and state legislatures, McCarthy and company have suffered a setback matched only once or twice in the last century.

Such a debacle does not occur without an extraordinary intrusion on the usual course of events — a McCarthy ex machina, if you will. Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that the sustained Republican assault on government of, by and for the people seems to have bothered said people.

The voters delivered some of their sternest rebukes to those still denying Trump’s loss two years ago, including candidates for governor and other offices with authority over elections in politically divided states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Some of the most prominent candidates elevated by Trump himself lost or were losing crucial races, including the pair of celebrity hucksters most obviously in the mold of the former president, football has-been Herschel Walker and TV quack Mehmet Oz. Conversely, Republicans enjoying some distance from Trump — including Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Brian Kemp of Georgia and Mike DeWine of Ohio — were among the most successful.

Likewise, the Trump Supreme Court’s anti-constitutional, anti-democratic reversal of abortion and other rights is proving no more popular than the denialism that provoked last year’s assault on Congress and the presidential election. Abortion rivaled inflation for salience within the midterm electorate, according to voter polls, and it led to greater margins for Democrats than economic concerns did for Republicans. Abortion rights appear to be more popular than any issue or person on California’s ballot and continued to fare well in other states’ elections regardless of political complexion.

McCarthy and his party have sworn allegiance to a man and an ideology that are at war with our democracy. And our democracy is returning fire.

This story was originally published November 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.