OPINION:
So much for that “Great Blue Wave.”
Of all the dire predictions American voters have suffered through this year, few came more often than the confident assurances by all the experts that Republicans would lose control of the Senate in places like South Carolina and Texas. If Republicans were lucky, we were told, they might squeak by in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama.
Just like in 2016, the grand predictions were as nightmarish as they were disastrously wrong.
Serious question: I get that the whole prediction business in life is really hard — even if you spend millions and millions of dollars on exhaustive “polling.” But why is it that these people always get so much wrong — and always in the same direction?
They never doomsay Democrat voters into submission before an election by predicting massive losses in blue states. They never bully Democrat voters into thinking there is no hope.
All their grave errors always go against Republicans. So much so that a cynical person might conclude that a touch of bias is going on here.
But it is a new day and there is always plenty to be thankful for. In the raw daylight of harsh morning, there is a lot to look at.
It was a “toss-up” in South Carolina, the Cook Political Report (and most of the predicting poo-bahs) confidently told us. Democrat Jaime Harrison raised $57 million to beat Sen. Lindsey Graham. It was, we were confidently warned, punishment for Mr. Graham’s successful ushering President Trump’s three nominees onto the Supreme Court.
All that dark money from outside South Carolina and Mr. Graham still won. By FOURTEEN (yes, 14) percentage points!
Thank you for spending all that money in South Carolina. Losers.
Other “toss-ups” included Republican Sens. Joni Ernst in Iowa and Steve Daines in Montana. Both won by seven points.
Right there on the bubble were Republicans in bright red states of Texas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Kentucky. All those Republicans won by double digits.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, we were assured, was among those facing annihilation. His best hope, according to the New York Times, was to “narrowly win.”
Mr. McConnell won by 21 points.
Mr. Graham in South Carolina and Mr. McConnell in Kentucky were both massively outspent by loads of “dark” money from outside special interest groups. Both romped to victory.
Compare those wildly errant predictions about Republican losses to the “Democrats expected to win easily.” Among those were Democrats running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota and New Mexico, where they wound up winning by five points — a fraction of the margins enjoyed by the Republicans who were supposedly in such danger of losing.
So, what does all this mean Wednesday morning with the presidency still in the balance?
Most importantly, it means that this crazy leftist mandate for which Democrats have been clamoring never materialized.
Voters did not punish Mr. Graham or Mr. McConnell for Mr. Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court. There is no frothing from the masses to “pack” the courts with more left-wing justices who don’t believe the Constitution means what it actually says.
Nor did Republicans in the Senate lose control of the chamber over acquitting Mr. Trump of the ridiculously partisan impeachment charges House Democrats flung at him. In fact, it appears that Republicans have gained a handful of seats in the House, perhaps a rebuke of House Democrats for launching the whole sham impeachment in the first place.
Finally, the “Blue Puddle” also makes clear that voters are not desperate to see Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia added as states so that Democrats would get four more senators.
What still remains unclear is whether anybody in the media will learn any lessons out of this election that they failed to learn in 2016.
As for the tens of millions of dollars poured into South Carolina and Kentucky? Thank you for wasting all your money in a couple of great American states.
It will be a very Merry Christmas indeed.
• Charles Hurt is opinion editor of The Washington Times. He can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com or @charleshurt on Twitter.
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