Commentary: After the Blue Tsunami, Democrats in Virginia, Nationwide Should Avoid Misinterpreting Their Mandate

After a win as sweeping as Tuesday was for the Democratic Party nationally, Democrats representing Virginia and other states might imagine they hold an unlimited mandate for anything and everything they want to prioritize once they take control of Congress in January.

It would likely be their swift undoing, as history affirms.

In the enthusiasm wave elections like this generate, victors find it irresistible not to presume that voters emphatically validated all of their ideas. They did not.

It is clear from Tuesday’s exit polls conducted by NBC News and other media groups that this was not so much a vote for Democrats as it was a referendum against a deeply disliked Republican president and a GOP Congress that failed to protect the public from his capricious, harmful actions.

The cost of living was by far the most pressing issue on voters’ minds this election, and they held the GOP responsible, but the polling also shows that there was no majority for either party when voters were asked which is best prepared to fix it.

Two of every three voters surveyed said Trump’s policies have worsened economic conditions. Almost the same share disapproved of the way Trump is handling the presidency, and 77% disapproved of Congress’s performance.

But when asked their opinion about the Democratic Party, 52% voiced an unfavorable view of it while 60% disfavored the GOP.

Warner wins fourth term, Luria ousts Kiggans in VA-02, Taylor triumphs in VA-01

Virginia was part of the blue wave, but its results were unremarkable compared to epic upsets in House and Senate races. Democrats flipped two Republican-held Virginia seats that polling showed were vulnerable.

Democrat Shannon Taylor edged 10-term Republican incumbent Rob Wittman in the 1st District, and Democrat Elaine Luria won back the seat Republican Jen Kiggans took from her in the 2022 midterm in Virginia’s 2nd District. Virginia’s House delegation will have an 8-3 Democratic majority in the next Congress.

A third House race was close but, as expected, the seat remained in GOP hands. Democratic former Rep. Tom Perriello came just short in his bid to reclaim from Republican Rep. John McGuire the 5th District seat he won in a 2008 Democratic wave and held for one term.

Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Warner easily brushed aside Republican challenger Bert Mizusawa in what the former governor says is his fourth and final Senate campaign. The outcome was never in doubt.

The headlines went to states such as Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and even Mississippi that had been solidly red since the 20th century, until Democrats either unseated Republicans or held unlikely leads when Tuesday’s counts were finished.

We’ve seen wave elections like this before.

This was the fifth time since World War II that American voters in midterms have shifted control of both chambers of Congress from one party to the other. In 1946 and 1994, Republicans swept Democrats out of power during Democratic presidencies. Democrats ousted the GOP in 1954, 2006, and again this week.

Twenty years ago, Republican President George W. Bush squandered the popularity he held after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the misbegotten Iraq invasion and widespread dissatisfaction with a GOP Congress. Voters punished Republicans at the midpoint of Bush’s second term.

In 1994, voters ended decades of Democratic congressional dominance midway through Democratic President Bill Clinton’s first term. History largely credits Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a younger and more confrontational field of GOP candidates and their “Contract With America,” but voters were actually fatigued with Democrats and what they saw as overreach under Clinton.

Exit polls from that election showed that a majority of voters knew nothing about the “Contract With America.” Only a small percentage could identify any item within it, and those who knew the most were the most opposed to the Republican candidates.

Backlashes like those that precipitated these midterm house-cleanings may become more common as the electorate becomes more culturally divided and politically volatile. We are in a pattern of voter discontent and anger at whoever happens to be in control.

Democrats already have signaled their intention to hold investigations of claims of Trump administration corruption. That is properly Congress’s role. But there is a danger that voters will view it as more partisan retribution done at the expense of addressing problems like the cost of living that they were elected to solve. That’s how backlashes can turn into wave elections.

By Mark Rozell, Virginia Mercury

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