Chapter 16: Endgame: The 2018 Midterm Elections
As part of my TEA Party +15 celebration I am serializing my 2019 book The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. A chapter will appear each Tuesday until the 15th anniversary next week, on February 27.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up! And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd! And you push back on them! And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” – Rep. Maxine Waters (D – California) at a pro-immigration protest in Los Angeles, June 23, 2018.
As 2017 came to a close it seemed the Democratic Party was ascendant. In the last chapter I detailed the surprising results of the Alabama special election where Democrat Doug Jones – with a huge wet kiss from the Washington Post – snatched a Senate seat away from the GOP and reduced their majority to a bare 51-49 Senate advantage. While it was the first time the Democrats had succeeded in winning a previously Republican seat in a special election – previous attempts in Kansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Montana, and Utah had fallen shy of victory – anti-Trump “Resistance” Democrats (the “Indivisible” crowd) pronounced 2018 as the year of the “Blue Wave” that would restore Congressional control to their side and enable them to impeach Donald Trump.
Besides the Alabama special election, their evidence came from off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey: while the governor's seat in Virginia was a Democrat hold as Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam succeeded former Clinton Administration official and DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, their bigger excitement was coming literally one person's vote short of eradicating a once-formidable 66-34 GOP advantage in the Virginia House of Delegates. The final contested seat, in House District 94, was won when the name of GOP incumbent David Yancey was drawn from a bowl containing two canisters with slips of paper: one with Yancey's name and one with the name of his Democrat challenger Shelley Simonds.1 The pair had split two previous recounts, with Yancey winning at first and Simonds carrying the second by one vote – however, a state court ruled an uncounted ballot with both names circled but a slash through Simonds' name was intended as a vote for Yancey, meaning the two were tied with 11,608 votes apiece. Had Simonds' name been drawn, the Virginia House of Delegates would have been split 50-50, ending nearly two decades of GOP control – still, the 15-seat swing was a major boost to Democratic hopes for two reasons: many of the districts Democrats captured were the suburban districts where the proverbial “soccer moms” live, and most of their first-time winners were female candidates. The roster of Democrats even included the first openly transgender person elected and seated in a state legislative capacity in the nation.2
Although the Democrats also won in New Jersey and made modest gains in their legislature, their news wasn't as exciting because few expected any Republican attempting to follow the deeply unpopular, scandal-ridden, and term-limited Governor Chris Christie to succeed. But it was a Democrat sweep, and given how the 2009 election that put both those states' governorships in the GOP column (Christie in New Jersey and former Governor Bob McDonnell in Virginia, where governors are limited to one four-year term) was painted as a precursor to the 2010 midterms by TEA Party groups, the Resistance optimism seemed to be justified. One month later, Doug Jones won the open Senate seat in Alabama (akin to the Scott Brown win for the “Kennedy seat” in Massachusetts in January, 2010 that I covered back in Chapter 4 – even down to the fact both represented the longtime minority party in their respective states) and the narrative of a Blue Wave for 2018 was set.
The first House incumbents to lose, however, were defeated in their party primaries. Republicans in North Carolina were first, ousting three-term incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger. While Pittenger was an incumbent, he never enjoyed smooth electoral sailing from his own party, defeating primary challengers to both gain office in 2012 and stay there in 2014 and 2016. This time he lost a rematch with 2016 primary opponent Mark Harris.3
Pittenger, who had formed a bipartisan and centrist Congressional caucus with fellow freshman members4 after his 2012 election, also angered TEA Party activists shortly after his election5 for not supporting a government shutdown to defund Obamacare and never really got back in their good graces as the TEA Party regularly supported his opposition.6 In a rare moment of agreement, Mark Harris secured the endorsement of the Tea Party Express7 and Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund8 PAC for the 2018 election and won the primary by a scant 828 votes after losing in 2016 (without the TEA Party endorsements) by just 134 votes.9
Those close votes weren't finished yet for Harris: he squeaked out a 998-vote win in November in what was considered an R+8 district.10 However, weeks after the race, the Democrat-controlled North Carolina State Board of Elections entertained allegations that absentee ballots were being collected illegally (a practice known as “ballot harvesting”) in minority-dominated areas, refusing to certify the results.11 After their investigation, in February the NCBOE ordered a new election in the Ninth District, with neither Harris nor Pittenger among the ten participating in a May primary on the GOP side; however, 2018 Democrat nominee Dan McCready was the lone one from his party to file for the special election slated to be held in September – unless a GOP runoff is necessary.12 In that case, voters from that district will have to wait for November, 2019 to seat a Congressman.
The TEA Party also rolled snake eyes with their choice of incumbent South Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Sanford.13 A longtime TEA Party darling,14 Sanford was defeated by state Rep. Katie Arrington, who barely avoided a runoff against the incumbent by securing 50.6% of the vote. Arrington credited her win to an eleventh-hour Tweet of support15 from President Trump that was critical of Sanford.16 17 In October Arrington finally got the TEA Party nod from the TPX,18 but it wasn't enough as she lost the race by 1.4% to Democrat Joe Cunningham, doubling South Carolina's Democratic delegation.19
Yet while the 2018 Republican primary campaign started off with those two upsets, remaining elections held fewer surprises for them. The Pittenger and Sanford upsets may have raised a few eyebrows, but from a conservative, TEA Party perspective little was really changed in the Republican ranks as one upset pushed the party a little bit rightward while the other tugged it back in a populist direction thanks to the Trump support.
Conversely, the Democratic upsets left little doubt as to the direction of their party.
It began with the New York primary June 26, a date which turned out to be a momentous day in the ranks of the far-left progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It was expected that 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley would win a rare contested primary in NY-14 over 28-year-old upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but the young Latina would use a “ruthlessly efficient grassroots”20 to defeat the longtime Congressman, rumored to be an heir apparent to Minority Leader (and former Speaker) Nancy Pelosi should the Democrats regain control of the House later in the fall. Instead of the possibility of New York City representatives running both houses of Congress with Crowley joining Sen. Chuck Schumer in a leadership role, voters selected the challenger and it wasn't even close: Ocasio-Cortez blew Crowley out by 14 points.21 Ironically, New York's arcane election laws gave Crowley a second chance as he refused to vacate his spot on the Working Families Party ballot line but he quickly made it clear he wouldn't actively campaign to retain the seat.22 23 (Still, Crowley picked up over 6% of the November vote on his ballot line – losing to the GOP candidate by just 7 percent.)24
Ocasio-Cortez's improbable upset was huge, and it managed to upstage another victory that June day by a fellow Bernie Sanders acolyte: former NAACP head Ben Jealous handily won Maryland's Democratic gubernatorial primary, pacing a nine-person field crowded with well-known and perennial candidates alike with a shocking 39.6 percent of the vote.25
Two months later, Massachusetts 7th Congressional District voters tossed out yet another 10-term incumbent: Rep. Michael Capuano was defeated in favor of Boston city councilor Ayanna Pressley. While Pressley admitted she and Capuano were both well left-of-center,26 she staked her race on the need for “a new, more assertive style” against Donald Trump and Republicans.27 “(Capuano and I) might vote the same way, but we will lead differently,” Pressley told a group of supporters. “These times require and this district deserves bold, activist leadership.”28
It should also be noted that both Crowley and Capuano are white males who were both defeated by women of color in districts that are majority-minority. But those Congressional primary wins, along with Democratic gubernatorial primary victories by progressive favorites Jealous, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in Florida, and House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams in Georgia – all of whom are minorities – buoyed hopes among the Resistance crowd that they could provide a counterpunch to the Trump White House and set him up for defeat in 2020. In short, they saw the 2018 campaign as the flip side to the TEA Party wave election in 2010 – with an exception I'll get to in due course.
While the similarities to 2010 were there in the primary election results, the overall condition of the nation was far different eight years later. Donald Trump's 2016 election immediately boosted people's economic perception29 30 and, thanks in large part to tax reform passed in 2017, their optimism was eventually borne out with exceptionally low unemployment – as in more jobs available than people to fill them31 – and regular GDP growth seldom seen during the Obama years. And despite left-wing rhetoric to the contrary about companies using their tax cuts simply to repurchase their stock,32 people were generally all right with the Trump tax cuts as they also led to increased hiring, employee bonuses, and billions of dollars in capital improvements among American businesses.33
Moreover, economic gains were just the beginning: Trump's administration was taking a chain saw to the regulatory state, cutting down over 20 regulations for each new one and creating a Federal Register that hadn't been so skinny in nearly 25 years – one-third smaller than the last Obama rendition at the end of 2016.34 Add to that a proposed new trade deal with Canada and Mexico to supplant the hated NAFTA35 and a reversal in diplomatic tone to an America-first policy that included backing out of Obama-era pacts like the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Agreement, and it was no wonder Trump's popularity was inching up despite the oppressively negative press about him.
Yet as the primary season came to a close in mid-September – mere weeks before early voting began in some states for the November 6 decision date – there was still the conventional wisdom of an electoral Blue Wave. The Left remained buoyed by its unity in hatred of Donald Trump and all things Republican while the GOP struggled to find a cohesive message and voice. However, in the space of a few gripping weeks as the center of a news (and personal) maelstrom, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh altered this political equation.
As the 2017-18 Supreme Court session came to a close, Justice Anthony Kennedy surprised the nation by announcing his retirement after three decades on the nation's highest court. Yet perhaps they shouldn't have been: at 81 years of age, he was the second-oldest justice on the court and the final Ronald Reagan appointee to serve.
Kennedy's retirement put the Democrats in a panic, as he was considered the swing voter of the Supreme Court. The Left was still smarting from having a SCOTUS seat “stolen” from them in 2016: after the sudden passing of Justice Antonin Scalia in February of that year, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings for prospective appointee Merrick Garland, citing a 1992 precedent commonly known as the “Biden Rule” where vacancies in the high court were to be filled by the winner of that year's Presidential election after taking office. Instead of Garland being the third and final Obama appointee, Neil Gorsuch was elevated from the Denver-based Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in April, 2017 as Donald Trump's first selection.
So it really didn't matter who Trump selected for the post: the radical Left had press releases and signs36 ready for opposing anyone (including “XX”)37 who was reasonably believed to be on Trump's short list. Their chief misgiving about the conservative Brett Kavanaugh was how he would throw the Supreme Court out of its long-standing “balance” – as fate would have it, Barack Obama joined his most recent predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in selecting two new justices who replaced departing members with a common political philosophy. In their eight years in office apiece, Obama and Clinton each got to replace two of the more activist jurists while Bush selected two new members as reinforcements on the conservative side. Conversely, George H.W. Bush could have pulled the Supreme Court significantly to the right with his two picks to replace activist judges, but misfired with his initial choice, David Souter. However, Clarence Thomas has been effective on the conservative side. (It was in the wake of the Thomas selection when then-Senator Joe Biden made his “Biden Rule” pronouncement during the 1992 campaign.)38
Had Garland made it through confirmation, the Supreme Court would certainly have been an even more activist court than it has proven to be over most of the last half-century – fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's gamble paid off, and less than 18 months into his term Donald Trump was already getting his second SCOTUS pick.
The process of replacing Kennedy became easier thanks to changes the Democrats had made during the Obama era when they still ran the Senate – in part as a reaction to the demands for strict originalist fealty uttered by Republican Senators either elected with TEA Party support or fearful of a primary challenge from that new wing of the GOP. Thanks to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the once-formidable challenge of amassing a 60-vote supermajority to end a filibuster to thwart the appointment of judges deemed unfit for office on political grounds was scrapped – Reid's Democrats revised the Senate rules midstream to allow for a simple majority to end debate on appellate and district court nominees. Called the “nuclear option,” McConnell extended Reid's precedent to Supreme Court nominees once Trump was in office and Democrats threatened to filibuster Gorsuch's nomination.39
Because of that, it appeared for most of the Kavanaugh nomination process that he would be confirmed, with the only question being how many endangered Democrat senators from states that voted for Donald Trump would follow in line and run the affirmative vote to 55 or more. But a July letter from California-based professor of psychology Christine Blasey Ford would throw the process into a tailspin. In Ford's letter, originally delivered to Rep. Anna Eshoo and passed along to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, she accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault stemming from an incident that occurred sometime in the mid-1980's, although later in testimony Ford would peg the timing as the “summer of 1982.”40
Stammering Republicans immediately halted the march to confirmation, bending to Democrat and media demands that the accuser have her day in court, as it were. Pushing the nominating process beyond the October 1 opening date for the 2018-19 Supreme Court term, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley ordered a supplemental hearing on the Kavanaugh nomination, with only Ford and Kavanaugh as witnesses. It would be a contest of “he said, she said,” and the partisan lines deepened41 as outgoing GOP Sen. Jeff Flake brokered a deal between the two sides to delay a Judiciary Committee vote in order for the FBI to conduct yet another investigation of Kavanaugh and the allegations.
With a narrow 11-10 vote to advance Kavanaugh's confirmation out of committee, a 51-49 cloture vote,42 and a bruising 50-48 Senate vote43 to confirm Justice Kavanaugh, there was no question the country was divided. But Republicans and conservatives were galvanized by Kavanaugh's ad-libbed opening remarks, where he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “This confirmation process has become a national disgrace.”
“I will not be intimidated by withdrawing from this process. Your coordinated and well-funded effort to destroy my good name and destroy my family will not drive me out,” Kavanaugh added defiantly. “You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to quit. Ever.”44
If Kavanaugh's riveting opening statement wasn't enough, Senator Lindsey Graham – previously considered a lightweight RINO by many in the TEA Party,45 who openly recruited primary opponents when he ran for re-election in 2014 – threw down this shocker:
When you see Sotomayor and Kagan, tell them that Lindsey said hello because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham since I've been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy.
Are you a gang rapist?
(Kavanaugh: No.)
I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through.
Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford; none.
She's as much of a victim as you are. God, I hate to say it because these have been my friends. But let me tell you, when it comes to this, you're looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.46
The Kavanaugh confirmation battle came to a close in early October, and its effects were immediate: what was once a 10-point “enthusiasm gap” between Democrat and Republican voters in July melted away to a statistically-even 2-point swing in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh saga, which ended with the swearing in of the newest Supreme Court Justice moved inside amidst protests outside on the steps of the Supreme Court.47
Yet there would be further October surprises on the way to this midterm. On October 22, the first of what would be over a dozen improvised explosive devices was found at the estate of left-wing philanthropist George Soros, with more, addressed to other prominent Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, discovered over that week. All had the return address of former DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whose name was misspelled in the return addresses as “Shultz.” The misspelling became a prominent clue in identifying the culprit.
Of course, many of those loyal to the TEA Party movement smelled a “false flag” rat, even as some of the mainstream conservative outlets dubbed those skeptics as conspiracy theorists on the order of the disgraced Alex Jones.48 As just one prominent example, filmmaker (2016: Obama's America) and author Dinesh D'Souza Tweeted, “Fake sexual assault victims. Fake refugees. Now fake mail bombs. We are all learning how the media left are masters of distortion, deflection & deception.”49 This attitude of disbelief became more entrenched when the perpetrator of this clumsy scheme was caught just four days later thanks to a fingerprint match on one of the envelopes,50 apprehended in an AutoZone parking lot with his van, a vehicle festooned with pro-Trump, anti-media stickers. Cesar Sayoc, a longtime felon once jailed after pleading guilty to a charge of making bomb threats, was the alleged culprit. (He was indicted days after the November election on 30 counts, including using weapons of mass destruction,51 eventually pleading guilty in March, 2019 to a 65-count accusation.)52
But the evidence was just too obvious and Sayoc too much of a patsy for some. Rush Limbaugh, on the afternoon of the arrest:
This guy’s van. Cesar Sayoc’s van. He lives in a van down by the river. This van, every window has stickers, decals, bumper stickers! There are so many of ’em, you can’t see out these windows. The first reaction I had when I first heard – when I first was told and believed it – that this was the guy’s van, my first reaction, “How in the world does a van like that in south Florida not get defaced?”
Do you realize how…? There are a lot of Democrats down in south Florida. There are a lot of people that hate Donald Trump down here. This guy driving that van? That van would have tomatoes all over it and rotten eggs. Swastikas would have been painted on it. Any number of things would have been done to deface this. There is no way that you could hide in that van. There is no way that you could remain obscure, invisible. It’s just the exact opposite!
(…)
Very little of it looks faded, meaning it doesn’t look like it’s been there very long. Certainly, this guy’s van is parked outside; he’s been driving around in this thing. We have inclement weather here in south Florida. There’s been some rain. But it’s a hot, baking, wet sun. And even if these stickers are plastered on the insides of the windows, there would be some fading of this stuff.53
Needless to say, there were still a lot of skeptical people, even after the arrest was made and Sayoc dubbed the “MAGA bomber.” While some relished the chance to say, “told you so,”54 unfortunately that story was quickly swept off the front pages by a tragic mass shooting the day after Sayoc's capture.
On October 27, a Pittsburgh synagogue55 became a crime scene – eleven murders quickly blamed on President Trump despite the fact the anti-Semitic assailant, Robert Bowers, believed Trump was too much influenced by Jews himself. (Among the reasons: Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who also serves as a Trump adviser, is a practicing Jew and his wife Ivanka Trump adopted the faith nearly a decade ago.) Politicizing the event also meant mass protests of Trump's visit a few days later.56
Simmering in the background while all this was happening was an event hundreds of miles outside the United States. Eventually nicknamed the “caravasion,”57 it began as a band of asylum-seekers left Honduras and Guatemala in October. While it was rumored that the migrants were getting enough travel assistance to reach the border in time for an election-eve showdown, the Trump response of Operation Faithful Patriot – sending military troops in to assist the Border Patrol with non-lethal activities such as building tent cities to house those claiming asylum until their cases could be heard and staffing command-and-control facilities58 – was thought by the Left to be too heavy-handed,59 even as the caravan refused Mexico's offer of jobs and asylum in order to cross into America.60 Their charge was that Trump's reaction was a political stunt in order to drive up voter turnout among border hawks.
All this, then, served as a lead-in to the final balloting on November 6. But a quick electoral review may be in order.
In 2010, the first national election governed by the TEA Party, voters were stoked by anger on the Republican side and they allowed a massive 63-seat swing in the House. This was countered in 2012 by a cooling of interest from TEA Party members, who had to be begged and cajoled to turn out to support GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
In 2014, the TEA Party's second midterm, voter participation slacked even further despite the fact Republicans finally won back the Senate, albeit with a more “establishment” group of candidates than the TEA Party may have liked. But they resurrected themselves by enough of an extent to shock the political world and lift Donald Trump to an Electoral College victory over the heavily favored Hillary Clinton.
In electoral terms, that 2016 election may have been the zenith and last hurrah of the TEA Party. Anger was again a key motivator in 2018, and it was anger toward a President once again. But turnout in the 2018 midterm smashed records dating back to 1966, a midterm where Democrats lost a significant part of their staggering House and Senate majorities but still prevailed to lead for another 14 years in the Senate (until Reagan's election in 1980) and 14 more House terms, until the 1994 Gingrich revolution.
In 2018, much of what the TEA Party gained in 2010 was lost by the Republican Party that adopted them: 40 seats and the majority in the House, over 300 state legislative seats, governorships in Kansas, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, and (most importantly, based on his prominence in the movement) Scott Walker's defeat in Wisconsin as he sought a third term. In essence, this “blue wave” wasn't quite as successful on a federal level as many predicted, but it may have finally eroded away the base of local support the TEA Party could always provide.
The 2018 midterms also showed to just what lengths the Democrats would go in pursuing electoral success, as Georgia's Stacey Abrams refused to concede her governor's race and claimed her opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, suppressed thousands of votes, making his victory illegitimate. “If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. I say that publicly, it’s clear,” said Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.61
But the Abrams race was a sideshow compared to the saga in Florida, where three separate statewide races ended on election night with razor-thin margins for Republicans in the lead: Ron DeSantis for Governor over the aforementioned Bernie Sanders disciple Andrew Gillum, outgoing Governor Rick Scott over incumbent Senator Bill Nelson, and Matt Caldwell in the lead for Agriculture Commissioner over Democrat Nikki Fried. However, two counties were having issues reporting their final results, and (of course) they were the Democrat stronghold counties Broward and Palm Beach. Palm Beach County admitted they could not complete a machine recount of three separate races in time to overturn their November 6 results,62 but Broward County defiantly demanded more time to do its recounts and found a judge63 to allow them to do so. If they were looking to steal an election for Gillum and Nelson, though, the increasing amount of public scrutiny as time passed from Election Day was making it impossible.
So while DeSantis and Scott were finally declared winners a week and a half later, the election night lead for Caldwell disappeared in Broward County, leaving Fried as the only Democrat to flip the initial results.64
But Florida wasn't the only place where Democrats found more votes after the election was ostensibly over. A loss of House seats that looked as if it would fall in the mid-30s on election night for the GOP stretched to the forty mark as absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots were collected and counted – California was particularly brutal in this regard as three seats originally thought to be GOP holds flipped once the stragglers were counted;65 meanwhile, even in deep red Utah Republican Rep. Mia Love eventually lost a lead she had held with 96% of the vote in to her Democrat challenger.66 (Other similar flips were recorded in New Jersey and New Mexico.)67 At that point, the trend was obvious: “Nine of the previous 10 House races that had been called by The Associated Press flipped to the Democrats after Gil Cisneros defeated Republican Young Kim in California’s 39th District,” wrote Griffin Connolly at Roll Call. There are two stated reasons for the anomaly in California: one is that absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots are counted in the order in which they were received, and the other is a change in the law allowing anyone (rather than the voter or a family member) to drop off absentee ballots. The latter practice drew Republican charges of “ballot harvesting,”68 and frankly it was suspicious because Democrats would have known the margin to overcome on election night.
On the other hand no Republican overcame a similar deficit to win a race, and as noted earlier the NC-9 where the Republican led on election night was not certified due to questions on absentee ballots. A similar 1984 controversy was decided on a nearly party-line vote69 in the House of Representatives, which has the final say and switched to Democratic control after the 2018 midterms. In this case, the seat remains vacant pending the 2019 special election.
Another factor in the midterms made 2020 prospects even worse for Trump: a number of key states he won in 2016 now have Democrat control in two key offices: governor and Secretary of State. The latter office is important because that person generally serves as the chief election officer.70 Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin fall into that category, although Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 despite that handicap. Arizona, another state Trump won, kept their GOP governor but elected a Democrat as Secretary of State and flipped a Senate seat as part of a Democrat trend in that border state. Losing two or three of those four states could spell defeat for Trump.
We obviously can't know at this writing who Donald Trump's Democrat opponent will be next year, particularly as over a dozen serious candidates were already in the race when I finished this book, but we can look back at the TEA Party experience in 2012. Will the Democrats overplay their hand once again as they did in governor's races in Florida, Georgia and Maryland and nominate a candidate suitable only for the progressives? There none of that fear among analysts in the immediate wake of the election, but once Democrats began entering the 2020 Presidential race, some began to ponder this possibility.71 On the flip side, it can also be asked whether the Democrats will repeat their 2016 campaign and nominate someone who doesn't appeal to the far left? That would be akin to the difficulty the TEA Party leadership had in getting their rank-and-file excited about voting for Mitt Romney as opposed to just casting a ballot against Barack Obama.
One thing buoying the hopes of the TEA Party opposition is demographics, as the Left often crows about its dominance with voters under 35.72 Voters under 30 went Democrat by a 67%-32% margin in the 2018 midterms, and while youth aren't the best of voters they will come out for the right candidate – the previous best for Democrats in that demographic was the initial Obama election in 2008. Eventually, though, youth has to be served: just as many of us on the back side of middle-aged fondly recall the Reagan years, today's youth will gain a nostalgia about Obama as the first black President, a guy who was considered “hip” and “cool” by those celebrities who matter and who hate Donald Trump.
After all, while the seasoned citizens who made up a significant percentage of the TEA Party were the best voters, their numbers were long ago eclipsed by younger generations of voters and in the 2018 midterms enough of those meddling kids were motivated to push the TEA Party aside for one final time. Given the fact that Congress will be split between the parties and President Trump has re-election on his mind, it's doubtful the frenetic pace of reform he attempted in his first two years will be maintained; moreover, the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal will now have different adversaries with different agendas and goals to fulfill that may whet other parts of his populist appetite.
It was a nearly decade-long run. Behold, then, the rise and fall of the TEA Party.
Yet the movement still has a lot of unfinished business requiring our attention. In my epilogue I answer the question: what's next on the agenda?
Notes - bearing in mind some of these links may now be dead ones:
3 Given subsequent alleged election shenanigans by the Harris camp, the question of whether Pittenger really lost is a valid one.
4 https://www.rollcall.com/news/lets_get_along_house_freshmen_embrace_bipartisan_comity-222476-1.html
5 https://www.politicsnc.com/nc-09-the-tea-party-challenges-pittenger/
6 https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article9114665.html
8 https://www.teapartypatriots.org/news/citizens-fund-endorses-mark-harris-for-congress-in-nc-09/
9 https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article211815314.html
10 https://ballotpedia.org/North_Carolina%27s_9th_Congressional_District_election,_2018
11 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article222436915.html
12 http://www.wect.com/2019/03/15/nc-special-election-final-list-candidates-determined/
13 https://www.teapartypatriots.org/news/citizens-fund-endorses-mark-sanford-in-sc-01/
14 From the 2013 special election to fill the SC-1 seat: http://www.teapartyexpress.org/6637/tea-party-express-endorses-mark-sanford-in-sc-01
15
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1006630395067039744
Polls closed at 7 p.m. that evening, so Trump's Tweet was put out just before the end-of-work voting rush.
18 http://www.teapartyexpress.org/9402/tea-party-express-endorses-katie-arrington-for-u-s-congress-in-south-carolina The endorsement was made October 12.
19 https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-carolina-house-district-1
21 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/nyregion/joseph-crowley-ocasio-cortez-democratic-primary.html
22 https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/joe-crowley-working-families-party-democratic-house-caucus-race/index.html Remember back in Chapter 4 when I talked about New York's arcane ballot rules? Here's the example.
23
https://twitter.com/JoeCrowleyNY/status/1017408740855693314
In a Tweet, Crowley stated the issue: “I don’t plan on moving out of New York, have a clean record, hope God’s will is that I don’t die, and won’t commit what I honestly believe to be election fraud.”
24 https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york-house-district-14
25 Jealous defeated his closest competitor, Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker, by 10 points. Another county executive (and early favorite), Kevin Kamenetz of Baltimore County, suddenly died just weeks before the primary, too late to remove his name from the ballot. Besides the perennial candidates, Jealous also defeated a sitting state senator, former advisers to both Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the top attorney of the state's largest law firm. He even outpolled Republican Governor Larry Hogan by 21,000 votes, although that's simply a product of lopsided partisan voter registration numbers. https://elections.maryland.gov/elections/2018/results/primary/gen_results_2018_1_003-.html
27 https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/massachusetts-primary-democratic-direction/index.html
28 Ibid. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley won in a majority-minority district. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley had a walkover November election – one of four such contests out of nine Congressional districts in deep-blue Massachusetts.
30 https://news.gallup.com/poll/197474/economic-confidence-surges-election.aspx As one may expect, Republicans were suddenly bullish on the economy while Democrats were more apprehensive. The difference was that far more Republicans were dismayed with Obama's policies than Democrats were fearful of Trump's.
31 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/there-are-more-jobs-than-people-out-of-work.html While some of this was a product of what's described as a “skills mismatch,” the sheer fact we have this situation is a testament to revived economic growth.
32 Just one of many examples, written days after passage: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-tax-buybacks-5f9f78cf6e27/
33 https://www.atr.org/sites/default/files/assets/NationalListofTaxReformGoodNews_2.pdf As of October 19, 2018, this was a 244-page list of companies that had announced new capital investments or passed on their tax savings to employees as raises, bonuses, or in additional benefits.
34 https://cei.org/blog/trump-regulations-federal-register-page-count-lowest-quarter-century Accessed October 22, 2018. As of the end of 2017 it was down to the 53,000 page range – territory unseen since the Bush 41 administration.
35 I say “proposed” because, as of publication, Congress has not voted on USMCA. https://www.agprofessional.com/article/usmca-ratification-around-corner
36 https://observer.com/2018/07/liberal-activist-groups-protest-trump-scotus-pick/
37 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/9/womens-march-mocked-press-release-opposing-supreme/ I don't care who you are: proofreading is your friend.
38 Said Biden: “It is my view that if a Supreme Court justice resigns tomorrow or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not… name a nominee until after the November election is completed.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/us/politics/joe-biden-speech-from-1992-gives-gop-fodder-in-court-fight.html
40 https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/09-27-18%20Ford%20Testimony.pdf
41 https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2574
42 All Democrats except Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted to retain cloture, while all Republicans except for Alaska's Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted yes on ending debate. “I can see 2022 from my house,” teased Sarah Palin in a Tweet.
43 Because Montana Sen. Steve Daines (a yes vote for confirmation) was to be away at his daughter's (obviously planned well in advance) wedding, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who was against confirmation – made an agreement with Daines to forgo the final vote so as to not change the result and allow Daines to attend. Thus, the final vote reflected the 51-49 vote for cloture made two days earlier.
45 Regarding the Kavanaugh questioning: “In less than five minutes, Graham appeared to absolve years of shortcomings in the eyes of right-wing purists. Republican foes old and new sang his praises.” https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/sc-conservatives-say-lindsey-graham-rebuilt-reputation-in-kavanaugh-hearing/article_f5c09fe8-c327-11e8-9e09-6bc68ccc06f1.html
47
49
https://twitter.com/DineshDSouza/status/1055494477748551683
50 https://www.wired.com/story/how-feds-tracked-mail-bomb-suspect-cesar-sayoc/
53 https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2018/10/26/drive-bys-call-arrested-suspect-maga-bomber/
57 https://patriotpost.us/articles/59135-the-caravasion-is-a-sideshow
62 https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/11/politics/florida-recount-palm-beach-county/index.html
63 https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article221709545.html
64 https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article221862885.html
65 https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/election/local-election/article222033525.html
66 http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/5-house-races-still-uncalled-nearly-2-weeks-midterms
67 https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/12/politics/2018-election-what-changed/index.html
68 https://www.14news.com/2018/11/30/democratic-sweep-california-raises-gop-suspicion/
69 http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-02/news/mn-20101_1_house-votes
70 Would Florida in 2000 have turned out the way it did if Republican Katherine Harris wasn't the state's Secretary of State? She eventually parlayed her notoriety into a Congressional seat, serving two terms there before losing a Senate bid.
71 Some moderate Democrats already believe so: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/413951-democrats-beware-we-are-leaning-left-too-far
72 One instant analysis: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-democrats-a-midterm-election-that-keeps-on-giving/2018/11/09/b4075ef2-e456-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html
Next Tuesday will conclude my series with the Epilogue: So What Comes Next?
In the meantime, you can buy the book or Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now. And remember…