The Midterms: A Postmortem

America was born of revolution and hardened by a bloody civil war that moved us closer to the ideal of a more perfect union. We saved the world by defeating Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia. We are winning a long war against religiously-inspired terrorists and confronting the mercantilist and military threats from China while growing our economic and military might. We are the world’s most vibrant republic, not one of history’s exhausted empires.
But for all our strength, what may lay us low is the existential threat posed by suburban soccer moms and Ivy League imbeciles.
The ink isn’t dry on the reviews of the 2018 mid-terms and won’t be until Florida is done reminding everyone who forgot the hanging chads of Election 2000 just how untrustworthy it is when it comes to running fair and open elections. But even without a final tally in the Sunstroke State, we can conclude a couple of things about the national results.
First, returning control of the House to Democrats was made possible by the improbable coalition of racial / ethnic minorities and college-educated white women. Second, an Ivy League education seems to align high-IQ individuals with murderous communist Che Guevara rather than the Enlightenment-educated Founders.
Without wading too deep into eyes-glaze-over statistics, the Democrat-Republican voter split in House races was remarkably clear. According to the Pew Research Center, Republicans won the men’s vote 51-47% while losing the women’s vote 40-59%. When broken down by race, the GOP won the white vote 54-44%, but lost blacks, Hispanics, and Asians by wide margins.
Non-college women, college men, and the “Deplorable” non-college men gave a majority of their votes to Republicans, but the co-eds broke heavily for the Dems, 59-39%. What to make of the continued electoral alliance between minority voters and college-educated women?
While college-educated women are not all suburban soccer moms, it is a useful shorthand. The ‘burbs overall went for the Dems in a big way in all regions but the South. Even there, pre-election polling of likely voters gave the GOP only a one-point advantage.
Why would soccer moms find common cause with the driving forces behind the Blacks Lives Matter violence and the chaos of the open-borders crowd? Do college-educated women in their comfortable suburbs think they are immune from the effects of such disrespect for law enforcement and stresses put on our welfare system? Did the liars and guilty-until-proven-innocent interrogators from the Kavanaugh hearing not give them pause about the tribunal their little Johnny might one day face?
These smart women seem to have internalized the scolding from former First Lady Michelle Obama, who explained Hillary Clinton’s loss: “As far as I’m concerned, any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice. [Voting for Trump meant] you don’t like your voice. You like the thing you’re told to like.”
If condescension were a virtue, Mrs. Obama would be a saint.
The “voice” for the mostly-white, college educated woman cohort is the same voice as the racial and ethnic minority? The same voice advocating for policies that lead to higher crime (Dem-controlled cities), lower-quality education (any city), more welfare dependency (California), the failure to enforce laws (every sanctuary jurisdiction), and the economic ramblings of a newly-elected member of the House of Representatives who said about her proposed “free” tuition and “free” healthcare, “People often say, like, how are you going to pay for it? And I find the question so puzzling because how do you pay for something that’s more affordable? How do you pay for cheaper rent? How do you pay for — you just pay for it.”
As for the Ivy League schools, I need only point north to a recent incident at Dartmouth College to support my earlier contention. Last month the campus Republicans brought New York Times best-selling author and conservative commentator David Horowitz to campus. The reaction from the tolerant Left was as predictable as it was sad: They went nuts. Horowitz’s open letter response to college president Philip Hanlon is available on his website FrontPageMag.com; it makes for disturbing reading. Many high-achieving students appear to abhor the Socratic method – and insist that you do, too. Or else.
I sent the article to a friend and Dartmouth grad. She (innocently) posted it to a Facebook site aimed at women of Dartmouth asking for opinions. Most of the replies were filtered out due to foul language. From those that made it through, my friend concluded that “idiots are running the asylum” and the experience was like “throwing raw meat into a cage of starving dogs.” (Trump may have picked up a 2020 vote in the coveted college-educated woman demographic.)
Leaving the fate of the Republic in the hands of these two voting blocs courts disaster. The GOP needs to find a way to win over the hearts and minds of people who appear to use neither when deciding how to vote. A tall order, with much riding on the outcome.

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com