Contrast

On this mid-term election day, the Democrats are poised to take over the House of Representatives. If you are to believe their trained hamsters in the media, the era of Trump will be all but over, decency and civility will be reintroduced to American politics, and our democracy will be saved.

I don't think any of that will happen after a Democrat "win" today, even if the Dems should pull off the unexpected and take the Senate as well. Instead, as a reaction to their collective nervous breakdown over the past two years, vindictiveness will reign. Myriad "investigations" will be launched to cripple an elected president, and nothing will be accomplished by the Congress. Then again, it's possible, although not probable, that the mid-terms might yield a different result. That would be interesting.*

David French comments on the one thing that all politicians (Dem and GOP) do really, really well—hypocrisy. He writes:

Democrats claim that now is a critical time for public hygiene. It’s time to hold corrupt, self-aggrandizing politicians accountable. I agree.

Ask your Democratic candidate if he or she is willing to publicly condemn New Jersey senator Robert Menendez — tried for public corruption and admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee for doing favors for a wealthy contributor in exchange for lavish gifts — the way that so many conservatives condemned (and ultimately rejected) Roy Moore.

Democrats claim that now is the time to reject the politics of personal destruction. They look at a president who calls people names, who spins out wild conspiracy theories (Ted Cruz’s father participated in the Kennedy assassination? Really?), and they demand better. I agree.

Look at your Democratic candidate’s actions regarding Brett Kavanaugh. Did they credit facially implausible gang-rape allegations? Did they presume his guilt and declare they “believed survivors” even without substantiation and in the face of contradictory evidence? Did they participate in a campaign to destroy a man’s life and career, only to drop the whole matter the instant he was confirmed?

Democrats decry Republican extremism and alarmism. They look at wild claims about the border caravan, wasteful troop deployments, and alarmist rhetoric about criminals and Middle Easterners. They condemn family separation. They decry Trump’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric. They believe that Trump and his allies are dangerously raising tensions in the American body politic. I agree.

Ask where your Democratic candidate stands on Hillary Clinton’s rejection of civility, Cory Booker’s call for protesters to “get up in the face of some congresspeople,” Eric Holder’s declaration that “when they go low, we kick them,” or Maxine Waters’s ominous demand that “if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

And while you’re at it, ask your Democratic candidates if the challenge of Donald Trump is so grave that they’re willing to moderate their positions on abortion, immigration, health care, gun rights, or religious liberty even in the slightest to win your support.

There are those who will read this piece and decry the “whataboutism” or the “both sides-ism,” but isn’t every single election an evaluation of both sides? Don’t we have to compare and contrast candidates?

My guess is that the average voter knows relatively little about their candidates and couldn't cogently discuss the contrast between the two. Instead they vote their gut.

We'll see what their gut has decided over the next 24 hours. But no matter what, life will go on, the democracy will NOT be under threat nor will it have been saved. Most important, I suspect that there will be no nervous breakdown or childish tantrum should the Dems prevail.

FOOTNOTE:
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* Ann Althouse comments on the unlikely event that the Dems do NOT take over the House:

You might think Trump has set the midterms up as a referendum on himself, and I think that's true. But if the GOP wins, Trump antagonists are not going to give it to Trump and say his referendum passed and bow to democratic choice. They're going to say that racism won, and resisting and fighting is even more important now that we know so many Americans have been caught up in Trump's horrible scheme.

I think that's about right. In fact, the same general commentary will occur if the vote is relatively close (to explain why it was close). Oh well.