By: Jack Shannon, Staff Reporter
As of midnight the night of November 6, the 2018 Midterm Elections are settled, and the political stage of the United States has set for the next two years. From the looks of things, it was somewhat of a disappointing night for both parties; the much-vaunted “Blue Wave” of the Democrats failed to materialize on a scale even remotely comparable to the overwhelming victory that had been endlessly prophesied on social media sites throughout the last year, and the GOP managed to lose their once comfortable grip on the House as dems took over 26 house seats in one single blow. This is a fairly big hit to the Republicans, as it means that many of the party’s big legislative goals (the border wall, for example) will likely be relegated to the backburner semi-permanently, because the bill could never make it through a dem majority legislature, andbecause the House and the Senate will be too busy trapping each other in endless political deadlock to do literally anything else. It’ll be just like old times!
While the loss of the House was indeed a loss to the GOP, they did manage to walk away from tonight still in firm control of both the Senate and a solid majority of the governorships that had been contested, preventing the Democrats from playing a larger role in the coming flurry of redistricting that will proceed the 2020 election, which will certainly be one of the most interesting of our lifetimes.
Speaking of interesting elections, there was one incident tonight I feel obligated to mention; a standoff in Florida about halfway through the night that lasted nearly an hour by my count,with both candidates sitting at exactly48.9% of the vote. It only came to an end when, in the onlydisplay of good sportsmanship anyone’s ever seen from a politician, one of the candidates chose to concede the election to his rival, who had, in fact, gotten just a few more votes then he had.
Overall, I feel that neither party succeeded nearly as much as they had hoped to, but the Democratic triumph of the House will virtually guarantee that the next two years are interesting, if nothing else.