Mid Term 2018 - Trump got a spanking: New York Times Frank Bruni

NYTimes opinion! By Frank Bruni echo opinion

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/opinion/midterms-house-majority-trump-wave.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists&action=click&contentCollection=columnists&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront

(I'm thankful for the access to the opinion page allowed for 2 days Nov 6-7, on The NYTimes website. Thank you.)

Democrats didn’t get everything we wanted. 

But we got what Democrats and the country needs. 
Yes, Trump got a spanking.
(Maybe Stormy Daniels knows how this particular kind of punishment is supposed to work!)

A vital safeguard against Trump's worst impulses in the form of a significant Democratic majority in the House, the exact size of which wasn’t yet clear early Wednesday morning.

Let's take it! I’ll let others quibble over whether it amounts to a big wave, a modest one or a slosh of something wet and reassuring. 

Yet, it's enough for the time being, even if doesn’t make me feel as good about America as I’d like to or as sure about the future as I yearn to.

It won’t humble Trump as thoroughly as he needs humbling. 

(Wrongly!) Trump will dwell on the Republicans’ success in the Senate, where the GOP built on their majority. 

(Wrongly and selfishly!) Trump will brag that he concentrated his own campaign-trail energy on that chamber of Congress and on those races, and he’ll be right. He’ll note — or others in his party will — that Democrats didn’t fare as well in these midterms as Republicans did two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, when they picked up 63 House seats. Now that’s a tsunami.

He’ll find a way to feel validated and vindicated. He always does.

And there were disappointments for Democrats, many of which should cause concern and prompt careful re-examination of their strategy going forward. 

High-profile progressives, including Andrew Gillum in Florida and Beto O’Rourke in Texas, didn’t fulfill the dreams that so many Democrats had for them. 

There may well be a lesson for 2020 in that, and I’m not confident that the party will learn it.

I also worry that House Democrats, flush with the newfound ability to torment a president who has earned it, will go too far, and become the foils against which he thunders profitably as he reaches for a second term.

There are ways to contain and expose him shy of an all-out subpoena-palooza. The answer to a freak-show presidency isn’t a carnival that leaves Americans confused about where the most blinding lights and obnoxious noise are coming from.

But let’s save all of that for other columns. Let’s use this one to rejoice. Trump needed a comeuppance, and the decisive swing of the House into the Democratic column was precisely that. 

You know what else was?

The profiles of the Democrats who made that swing happen.

Many of the candidates for the House who turned red seats blue were women. A record number of them ran for Congress this year, and it seemed likely early Wednesday morning, even before all the counting of ballots was done, that the next Congress would also contain a record number of them: more than the 107 currently there. So a president who has acted and spoken with such vulgar disregard for women will deal with more female lawmakers than any of his predecessors did. That’s a measure of sweet justice.

Donald Trump repeatedly told his supporters, in the days leading up to the 2018,  midterms, that he was essentially on the ballot. Ironically, for once, Trump wasn’t idly boasting.

Americans weighed in on him, and if it wasn’t quite the spanking he had coming, but it certainly wasn’t a hug.