LUKE BALL: The midterm warning signs for Democrats no one is talking about
Democrats have been deliriously giddy since the midterm elections.Their party, rudderless and defeated for two years, appeared to come roaring back into relevance with a House and Senate majority.The once-defunct political careers of establishment Democrats like Chuck Schumer roared back to life, as even traditionally safe Republican seats faced the wrath of a disgruntled electorate.But as Democrats celebrated their candidates’ wins in campaign offices across the country, dozens of conservative victories went largely unnoticed in the very same states Democrats claimed were now solidly blue.ELAINE PARKER: DEMOCRAT WIN IS A WAKE-UP CALL FOR REPUBLICANS, NOT A VOTE FOR SOCIALISMThe Democrats’ victories were a backlash against broken Republican promises.
They were not a mandate to usher in a vast liberal policy platform.To understand this argument, you must look past the boisterous celebrations from the left’s election night parties and look a little further down the ballot.Across the country, voters codified conservative policy priorities through ballot initiatives that liberal groups spent millions of dollars to fight against.
And even more surprisingly, those historically conservative initiatives found success in states that flipped blue on election night.Let’s look at just a handful:On election night, Colorado elected a Democratic senator, a Democratic governor, and is on track to have only one Republican out of eight seats in the state’s entire congressional delegation.You would think that means any conservative ballot initiative would have gone down in flames.But that’s not what happened.Colorado voters delivered a stunning rebuke to some of the left’s most entrenched policy platforms.
Proposition 134, written to keep men out of women’s sports, passed decisively.Proposition 135, banning gender transition surgeries on children under 18, passed as well.The same phenomenon happened in other so-called blue states.North Carolina passed a ballot init...