Summing up the mid-term election results, there were no waves; President Trump did well under the circumstances, and the biggest loser was either Barack Obama or Taylor Swift.
The midterms weren't a blue wave, but they weren't shark fin soup for Republicans either, given that they lost the House by a small margin. The election wasn’t a red wave because the GOP lost the House but was not a blue wave because the Dems lost Senate seats. Confused yet? The whole thing was more of a purple puddle.
The Democrats picked up in the area of 29 seats in the House, giving them a 224-198 advantage.
Putting the House numbers in perspective though, the party in power in the White House always loses House seats in the mid-term. House Republicans had hurt themselves by allowing the number of House incumbent retirees to become larger than any time since 1930, when the Brookings Institution started tracking congressional retirements. Breaking an 88-year record for retirees is a tough way to start an off-year election for the incumbent president’s party.
Despite this institutional disadvantage, President Trump’s House losses were far less than either the 54 seats President Clinton lost in 1994 or the 63 seats President Obama lost in 2010.
Mitigating losses for Trump, the Senate Republican majority no longer includes Trump foes Jeff Flake, John McCain, and Tennessee’s own Bob Corker. Hardcore conservative and Trump acolyte Blackburn bucks the trend in the volunteer state to vote in moderate Republicans.
That said, the big loser who stands out here is hard-campaigning President Obama, the guy who thought he was the star of the Democratic Party and who, throwing the tradition of former presidents staying aloof from politics out the window, campaigned hard, long, and loud, for Democrats in this midterm. Turns out the ones he fought the hardest for lost.
Now the President formerly known as Barry Soetoro stands exposed as politically irrelevant, powerless, an embarrassment. Sorry 'bout that legacy thing, Barry.
Taylor Swift, long tight-lipped on politics, endorsed Democrat Phil Bredesen and beat up on Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn’s voting record on Twitter.
Swift, 28, continued to encourage her fans to vote in the mid-term elections in the days after that initial post as well.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham took a dig at Taylor Swift after the Tennessee Senate candidate that the pop star supported lost Tuesday’s midterm election.
“Hey @taylorswift13, haters gonna hate. #shakeitoff,” Ingraham tweeted Tuesday night, referencing lyrics to Swift’s song “Shake It Off.”
Hollywood heartthrobs, pop stars and athletes went all in on the 2018 midterm elections, using their platform to advocate for their candidates of choice – but when ballots were counted it became clear that celebrity endorsements don’t seem to matter to voters.
“Last night, the American voters -- once again -- told Hollywood that they simply don’t care what they think. All across the country, Hollywood darlings were rejected by the voters,” conservative strategist Chris Barron told Fox News.
“One glance at Taylor Swift’s pathetic endorsement of Senate loser Phil Bredesen should end the media obsession with celebrity endorsements,” Gainor said. “Look at Beyoncé’s last-minute support for loser Beto O’Rourke. All she did was generate a little social justice capital, not influence an election.”
“The only reason these endorsements get any attention at all is they allow the press to write glowing, click-bait stories about their preferred liberal candidates. In reality, they remind us all that Hollywood is a left-wing pit of vipers who think they are better than ordinary Americans,” Gainor said.
I have long held a vitriolic pet peeve for celebrity endorsers of causes, candidates, anything.
My advice: Taylor-stay out of politics and stick with dispensing relationship advice to lovelorn teens, and Obama, stay retired and maybe you won’t continue to be an albatross around the neck of the Democrat Party. The party lost over 1,000 seats nationwide during his Presidency.