Op-Ed: What the ‘Blue Wave’ Means for the Midterms

It’s unsurprising that progressives smugly celebrated their recent election victories in Virginia and New Jersey.

Having lost the presidency a year ago to a man they tried to paint as a Hitler, no longer controlling either the House or the Senate, and with the Supreme Court leaning right for years to come, they were left grasping for straws.

They billed the results as Trump’s repudiation, claiming voters had come to their senses and MAGA was being relegated to the dustbin of history.

Yet, upon closer review, the election’s outcome a scant month ago was just as likely a preordained blue-wave ripple as an unexpected tsunami-consuming Republican beatdown.

While it’s true that liberals won the Statehouse in the only two gubernatorial elections in the nation, that should have surprised no one. In fact, if the results had been otherwise, it would have been almost shocking.

And, despite what progressive talking points claim, in both contests, the results were far less a rejection of Trump than a business-as-usual blue-state expectation.

In New Jersey, four-term Democrat congresswoman Mikie Sherrill easily bested Republican Jack Ciattarelli by over 13 percent.

Indeed, an impressive win, but less remarkable when considering that, as an entrenched member of Congress, Sherrill enjoyed an enormous name recognition advantage and also greatly benefited from a Garden State history of deep-blue voting outcomes.

In fact, over the last quarter-century, New Jersey has voted for the Democratic candidate for president every time, and a year ago chose Kamala Harris by nearly six percent over Trump.

More specifically, over the past 25 years, four Democrats have been elected governor compared to only one Republican. Therefore, being surprised by the continuation of that trend is akin to being shocked that Elon Musk drives a Tesla.

In Virginia, the defeat of the Republican candidate for governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, was only slightly less expected. Certainly, the Old Dominion’s history of alternating between Democratic and Republican governors clearly signaled a close race, but that did not happen. The progressive candidate, Abigail Spanberger, won the election by over 15 percent.

But in hindsight, that blowout was also foreseeable.  For as was true for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Spanberger’s name recognition as a member of Congress resonated with the electorate. However, even though Virginia voters typically ping-pong between governors from both parties, their electoral history in presidential elections shows a very different pattern.

Since Virginia voters supported George Bush in 2008, they’ve favored Democratic candidates for president every time.  And in 2024, that trend continued when Harris defeated Trump by nearly six percent.

But perhaps more importantly, anyone still viewing Spanberger’s victory as part of a sweeping blue-wave rejection of MAGA Republicans should consider the context of her win.  That is, Spanberger won even after refusing to withdraw her endorsement of Democrat murder fantasizer Jay Jones for Attorney General.

That failure to condemn Jones’ unspeakable comments for fear of offending party loyalists should make it clear that Spanberger’s victory had little or nothing to do with a rebuke of Trump. In electing Spanberger and Jones, it’s clear Virginia voters would support anyone from the left as long as they could fog a mirror.

However, inferring a blue-wave kickstart for political dominance goes beyond gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia — It also refers to mayoral races in the 18 largest cities where they were held. Of those contests, Democrats won 13, Republicans won four, and an independent won the remaining election.

But again, were those results a blanket rejection of conservative candidates in general and Trump in particular, or was there another explanation?

Of the 13 large-city Democrats who won mayoral elections, five were incumbents seeking another term, and eight replaced outgoing mayors — all of whom were Democrats.  Overall, in those 18 largest city mayoral contests, all retained the same party control as before the election.

So again, rather than an outright rejection of Trumpism, name recognition for incumbents and past support for Democratic candidates significantly influenced electoral outcomes.

But beyond the widespread progressive wins in the recent gubernatorial and mayoral races, falsely exaggerated as clear signs of an emerging blue wave, there are broader reasons for those results. Most notably, off-year elections almost always result in diminished support for the party in power.

This is because political discontent energizes voters far more than satisfaction. And clearly, supporters of the out-of-power party are likely to be far more politically unhappy than those across the aisle.

And with the overwhelming media coverage demonizing Republicans, supporting Democrats, and reinforcing such sky-is-falling discontent, the results of the recent election should not have been surprising.

It’s not that the Democrats didn’t perform well in that election. Only an unaware ultra-partisan fool would argue otherwise. However, human nature is such that wishful-thinking winners often overstate an outcome’s importance while sour-grapes losers often downplay its significance.

Consequently, when objectively analyzing the recent election’s results, it’s hard to decisively conclude anything other than the outcome should have been expected — not necessarily as a blue-wave rejection of Trump, but at least as likely a blue-wave ripple, quick to dissipate and already easy to forget.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either d or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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