{"id":12257,"date":"2020-03-20T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T17:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12257"},"modified":"2020-03-19T11:39:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T18:39:00","slug":"the-2018-blue-wave-that-wasnt-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-2018-blue-wave-that-wasnt-really\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2018 Blue Wave That Wasn\u2019t, Really"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Editor\u2019s Note:<em>\u00a0The following is the first of two excerpts from the revised and updated edition of\u00a0<\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Case-Trump-Victor-Davis-Hanson\/dp\/1541673557\/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0\" target=\"_blank\">The Case for Trump<\/a><em>, out Tuesday from Basic Books.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout&nbsp;the summer and early autumn of 2018, election experts had often predicted a massive blue wave of radical progressive pushback against Trump in the 2018 midterms: the long-awaited negative referendum on both his agenda and behavior, and thus at last an overdue reckoning for his entire Twitter-fueled presidency.<a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">&nbsp;&nbsp;TOP ARTICLES2\/5READ MOREChopin\u2019s Heart, Poland\u2019s Spirit<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Democratic tsunami against the incumbent president was promised to be analogous to the wipeout suffered by President Bill Clinton after his first two years (53 House, eight Senate seats lost), or Barack Obama\u2019s even more disastrous 2010 loss (63 House, six Senate seats). The nonstop media attacks on Trump, still consistent with the 90 percent negative news coverage of his first few months in office, had certainly seemed to energize Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, by election eve, Democrats, in the preponderant manner of the 2016 campaign, had raised a record $1 billion for state, House, and Senate midterm races, with hundreds of millions more garnered by the progressive political-action committees. Turnout in some states set records for any president\u2019s first midterm election. Democrats ran a number of centrists and military veterans in congressional districts that Trump had won, campaigning on Trump as the destroyer of Everyman\u2019s right to health care. Democrats promoted voter harvesting and massive registration drives to expand the electorate in districts that had previously been lost to Republicans. Yet the subsequent radical themes of the 2020 presidential election were rarely to be heard in 2018; instead, they were manifested stealthily on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/03\/book-excerpt-the-case-for-trump-democrats-overhyped-midterm-house-takeover-over-focused-on-impeachment\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0The following is the first of two excerpts from the revised and updated edition of\u00a0The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. Throughout&nbsp;the summer and early autumn of 2018, election experts had often predicted a massive blue wave of radical progressive pushback against Trump in the 2018 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3bH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12260,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-the-uniter\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":0},"title":"Trump the Uniter?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0The following is the second excerpt from the revised and updated edition of\u00a0The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. You can read the first excerpt\u00a0here. So\u00a0what had happened to the Democrats\u2019 predicted blue wave that supposedly would rack up huge House\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wolves-in-wolves-clothing\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":1},"title":"Wolves in Wolves&#8217; Clothing","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness If the New Democratic Party was smart, it would do what the old Democratic Party did long ago: always sound centrist if not conservative in the last weeks of a campaign, get elected, then revert to form and pursue a left-wing agenda for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Democrats&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Democrats","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/democrats\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11591,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/actually-2018-was-a-pretty-good-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":2},"title":"Actually, 2018 Was a Pretty Good Year","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The year 2018 will be deplored by pundits as a bad year of more unpredictable Donald Trump, headlined by wild stock market gyrations, the melodramas of the Robert Mueller investigation, and the musical-chair tenures of officials in the Trump Administration. The government is still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10761,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-fate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":3},"title":"Trump\u2019s Fate","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Originally published at the National Review. Read the original article here.\u00a0 Plenty of people in \u2018flyover\u2019 country like not only Trump\u2019s message \u2014 and actions \u2014 but also Trump, the loudmouth messenger. The political verdict seems out on Trump\u2019s current political future. His supporters have won\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Conservatives&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Conservatives","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/conservatives\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9792,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-democrat-patient\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":4},"title":"The Democrat Patient","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Ignoring the symptoms, misdiagnosing the malady, skipping the treatment If progressives were to become empiricists, they would look at the symptoms of the last election and come up with disinterested diagnoses, therapies, and prognoses. Although their hard-left candidate won the popular vote, even that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10423,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-circular-firing-squad\/","url_meta":{"origin":12257,"position":5},"title":"Trump\u2019s Circular Firing Squad","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Trump and his critics are attacking each other, failing to focus on the only story that counts: the welfare of the United States. 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