The 2014 midterm elections: 5 big takeaways

Key Takeaways

one of the bad habits we have in the media is trying to give each election a narrative as if there is one story going right through it doesn't work so instead of giving you one story about it I'm going to give you five takeaways that I think I think are true number one is that this was just a goddamn disaster for Democrats they got destroyed they got destroyed in the states they got destroyed in the governor's Races they lost in Maryland in Mass assetts in Maine this was a wholesale rejection of Democratic party this was a republican wave but takeaway number two is that liberalism actually did a whole lot better than Democrats did across the country you had ballot initiatives that were pretty damn liberal a couple of them were liberal enough that you couldn't even have imagined them being serious contenders a decade ago in Washington DC and Oregon they legalized marijuana they increased the minimum wage in Illinois and Nebraska and Arkansas they expanded background checks on guns in Washington State a lot of these ballot initiatives were in states where Republicans won the election which suggests voters are very angry at the Democratic party but they don't necessarily agree with the Republican party on very much takeway number three is that Democrats as every party does every time they went an election had told themselves a bunch of stories that just turned out to be they thought there was a whole new electorate that had emerged and that pollsters simply W en counting the rush of Latino voters and young women who coming to the polls and they're right about one thing the polls were wrong but they weren't wrong because they underestimated Democratic strength they're wrong because he underestimated Republican strength takeway number four uh there are actually a couple 2016 winners in this bunch and the two big ones are for Republicans Chris Christie who ran the Republican Governor Association and so gets a lot of the credit for the fact that Republicans won a bunch of governor elections in blue States and so now chrisy can go in 2016 and argue to Republicans and not only has he shown he can win in a blue State like New Jersey but he was actually able to lead other Republican Governors to win in blue States like Maine and Massachusetts and Maryland that's going to be a really powerful appeal to a party that has not won a presidential election in a long time on the Democratic side Hillary Clinton comes out of this looking pretty good actually Democrats are going to know they can lose an election so they're going to want a trusted commodity who's pretty damn good at running campaigns and a lot of possible competitors to Hillary Clinton who could have Rose up during a successful democratic election either don't exist or they got cut down the fifth it is just going to be a lot harder for the Obama Administration to really do anything going forward that's true obviously because they're going to be more Republicans and Republicans have not shown much inclination to compromise with President Obama but also Democrats have just lost an election in part because the president was an anchor around their campaigns because his approval ratings are bad they feel like he did not do a good job helping their campaigns by sticking to a good message in the runup so he's going to have even less leverage among members of Congress meanwhile he's been promising a big executive action on immigration reform is he really going to legalize millions of immigrants the administration thinks they will they reiterated it on Election Day but it's hard to believe in the end most of this comes down to one thing this was a bad election for Democrats it was a bad election for Democrats because the electorate is unhappy and they are angry they haven't necessarily changed their opinions on very much they don't necessarily think Paul Ryan is right about everything they certainly don't think President Obama is right about everything but they are tired of watching Washington fail them and they are very very angry at the party that is supposed to be in control for letting that [Music] happen