The Blue Wave Breaks Gently

An election conducted as a referendum on Trump ends up reinforcing the ranks of Trump loyalists.

Tuesday night turned out to be a gentler wave than Democrats had hoped. Much larger waves have happened in American elections, the biggest being the tsunami of 1894, which washed away 127 Democratic representatives and increased Republican ranks 57%. The election of 1874 did almost the same damage to a Republican majority, drowning 100 of them and costing them 49% of their strength. The election in 1932, which brought Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency, also kissed goodbye to 46% of Republicans in the House.

What happened Tuesday night was substantially more modest. It involved a Democratic gain of some 35 seats in the House—a loss of about 15% for Republicans—and Democrats lost Senate seats.

For a real wave, Democrats would have needed the lift of some national economic failure. Since there had been none, the alternative was to run campaigns as referendums on President Trump. Republicans also ran on Mr. Trump, largely because the president gave them no choice. In rally after rally, he made himself the principal issue while stoking apprehension of a different kind of wave approaching the southern border.

On that basis, many Republicans lost. Yet while Democrats gained seven governorships, that was out of 26 Republicans were defending. It did not include Ohio and Florida, which Democrats badly needed to stake out as blue states for 2020. In 12 states, Republican governors crushed opposition by double digits, while Democrats did likewise in 10—which only meant that each party largely dug its trenches more deeply in places where it was already entrenched. There was only one genuine Democratic gubernatorial surprise, in Kansas.

The Senate races were the Democrats’ greatest disappointment, since Republicans not only won the most high-visibility Senate race (in Texas) but defeated Democratic incumbents in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and possibly Florida, while holding an open seat in Tennessee (another one, in Arizona, is not yet decided). Senate Republicans will expand their majority to between 52 and 54—and with new recruits from this election who are closely wedded to Mr. Trump. This will make it easier to confirm conservative judges without appeasing moderate Republican senators.

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