From Bret Stephens at the New York Times.\u00a0This is the best contribution to restoring civility in our political discourse you will read today:<\/p>\n
THE MIDTERM RESULTS ARE A WARNING TO THE DEMOCRATS<\/a><\/p>\n For months we\u2019ve heard from sundry media apocalypticians that this year\u2019s midterms were the last exit off the road to autocracy. On Tuesday, the American people delivered a less dramatic verdict about the significance of the occasion.<\/p>\n In a word: meh.<\/p>\n Are you interested in seeing Donald Trump voted out of office in two years? I hope so \u2014 which is why you should think hard about that \u201cmeh.\u201d This week\u2019s elections were, at most, a very modest rebuke of a president reviled by many of his opponents, this columnist included, as an unprecedented danger to the health of liberal democracy at home and abroad. The American people don\u2019t entirely agree.<\/p>\n We might consider listening to them a bit more \u2014 and to ourselves somewhat less.<\/p>\n The 28-seat swing that gave Democrats control of the House wasn\u2019t even half the 63 seats Republicans won in 2010. Yet even that shellacking (to use Barack Obama\u2019s word<\/a>) did nothing to help Mitt Romney\u2019s chances two years later. The Republican gain in the Senate (the result in Arizona isn\u2019t clear at this writing) was more predictable in a year when so many red-state Democrats were up for re-election. But it underscores what a non-wave election this was.<\/p>\n It also underscores that while \u201cthe Resistance\u201d is good at generating lots of votes, it hasn\u2019t figured out how to turn the votes into seats. Liberals are free to bellyache all they want that they have repeatedly won the overall popular vote for the presidency and Congress while still losing elections, and that the system is therefore \u201crigged.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s the system in which everyone\u2019s playing \u2014 and one they had no trouble winning in until just a few years ago. To complain about it makes them sound like whiners in a manner reminiscent of Trump in 2016, when he thought he was going to lose. It\u2019s also a reminder that, in politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert.<\/p>\n The Resistance didn\u2019t convert.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t convert when it nominated left-wing candidates in right-leaning states like Florida and Georgia. It didn\u2019t convert when it\u00a0poured its money<\/a>\u00a0into where its heart was \u2014 a lithesome Texas hopeful with scant chance of victory \u2014 rather than where the dollars were most needed. It didn\u2019t convert when it grew more concerned with the question of how much Trump did not pay in taxes than with the question of how much\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0pay in taxes.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t convert when Chuck Schumer chose to make Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court the decisive political test of the year. It didn\u2019t convert when it turned his initial confirmation hearing into a circus. It didn\u2019t convert when media liberals repeatedly violated ordinary journalistic standards by reporting the uncorroborated accusations against Kavanaugh that followed Christine Blasey Ford\u2019s.<\/p>\n Above all, it didn\u2019t convert the unconverted.<\/em><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t take a lot to get the average voter to tell you what he doesn\u2019t like about Donald Trump: the nastiness, the divisiveness, the lying, the tweeting, the chaos, the epic boastfulness matched by bottomless self-pity. As my colleague\u00a0Frank Bruni has astutely observed<\/a>, Trump is as transparent as they come: You don\u2019t need a Ph.D. in psychology to know that the president is an insecure narcissist with daddy issues.<\/p>\n Then again, what does the average voter think about the people who pompously style themselves \u201cthe Resistance\u201d? I don\u2019t just mean the antifa thugs and restaurant hecklers and the\u00a0Farrakhan Fan Club<\/a>\u00a0wing of the women\u2019s movement, though that\u2019s a part of it.<\/p>\n I mean the rest of the Trump despisers, the people who detest not only the man but also contemn his voters (and constantly let them know it); the ones who heard the words \u201cbasket of deplorables\u201d and said to themselves: Bingo. They measure their moral worth not through an effort at understanding but by the intensity of their disdain. They are \u2014 so they think \u2014 always right, yet often surprised by events.<\/p>\n I was a\u00a0charter member of this camp<\/a>. Intellectual honesty ought to compel us to admit that we achieved precisely the opposite of what we intended. Trumpism is more entrenched today than ever. The result of the midterms means, if nothing else, that the president survived his first major political test more than adequately. And unless Democrats change, he should be seen as the odds-on favorite to win in 2020.<\/p>\n To repeat: I\u2019d hate to see that happen. I want Trump, and Trumpism, to lose. But if the Resistance party doesn\u2019t find a way to become a shrewder, humbler opposition party, that\u2019s not going to happen. The day Democrats take charge in the House would be a good opportunity to stop manning imaginary barricades, and start building real bridges to the other America.<\/p>\n Bret L. Stephens has been an Opinion columnist with The Times since April 2017. He won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary at The Wall Street Journal in 2013 and was previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>@BretStephensNYT<\/a>\u00a0\u2022\u00a0Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Bret Stephens at the New York Times.\u00a0This is the best contribution to restoring civility in our political discourse you will read today: THE MIDTERM RESULTS ARE A WARNING TO THE DEMOCRATS For months we\u2019ve heard from sundry media apocalypticians … Continue reading