<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1bjlYr_1H1DN6QE00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1bjlYr_1H1DN6QE00" width="960" height="639" ></figure>Courtesy | Wikimedia CommonsDemocratic candidates exceeded expectations in the midterm elections but did not achieve a landslide victory, according to College President Larry Arnn.“In general, the midterms were within the range of normal for losses by the incumbent party, but there were some surprising places,” Arnn told Radio Free Hillsdale WRFH 101.7 FM in an interview.Hillsdale professors and students said the midterm election results indicate that voters are unhappy with President Donald Trump’s administration and that voters turned to Democratic candidates in hopes of seeing change.“Ninety-four percent of the counties in America shifted left by some margin in this election, so I think we’re really looking for the candidates to actually start addressing the things that Trump promised, which are popular, like releasing the Epstein list, less foreign aid to Israel, fixing the economy, and stopping forever wars in the Middle East,” said vice president of College Democrats and junior Becca Nuar. “Those are popular, and Trump promised them and he didn’t do them, and I think a lot of these new candidates will be working on those issues.”College Republicans president and junior Joseph DiPrima said that although the current administration has not delivered on some of its promises, the Democratic candidates’ large margin of victory was unanticipated because the country’s issues are less severe than they have been in recent elections.At press time, Democrats had flipped 43 seats in the U.S. House and eight seats in the U.S. Senate, giving them a total of 254 seats in the House and 55 seats in the Senate. In Michigan, Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed defeated his opponent Mike Rogers with 52.5% of the vote.“I don’t see the reason why the Democratic win was so large other than to say there’s this adverse reaction to foreign entanglement right now that there just wasn’t previously and there’s a lot of antisemitism on both sides of the aisle,” DiPrima said. “There’s a lot of frustration with Trump as a president. There’s a lot of frustration with the economy.”Professor of Politics Thomas West said voters are turning to other candidates because they want to see costs of living decrease.“The election was a referendum on Trump’s last two years,” West said in an email. “In exit surveys, voters had concerns about the Iran war and ‘affordability.’ These are connected: The war was blamed for higher prices, especially gas.”Matthew Aguilera, a graduate student at the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship, said the election results reflect more on the failure of the Senate than on the president. He said the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE America Act, a legislation that would aim to ban mail-in ballots and would require voter identification, particularly hurt Republicans’ chances of winning this cycle.“I think this comes down to the Senate refusing to do anything. Voters are not happy when Congress won’t act,” Aguilera said. “We’ve had two years to pass things like the SAVE Act, and Senate Republicans have been hiding behind the filibuster and refused to do anything. They’ve been playing the same game of ‘We’re going to lower taxes, we’re going to pass a budget,’ and they won’t take any of the serious tasks to heart. Meanwhile, I think the Democrats offer a real, alternative vision for America.”DiPrima said the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America made it particularly challenging for Republican candidates to win because the DSA offered radical solutions to high-priority voter issues.“They’re looking to get into power because they want to destroy America and change it fundamentally,” DiPrima said. “When that’s on the ballot it’s really hard to tell people, ‘This is the issue, this is the fundamental problem,’ when you have so much frustration at the current administration and what they’re doing, and you have new people who are promising a shiny new toy.”More than half of the 294 DSA-endorsed candidates won their races, and eight were elected to Congress, according to The New Republic.“One should have hope. This country is not a despotism,” Arnn said. “It might become one, but it’s not right now. There’s still room to live your life, so you should try to live it well.”The “blue wave” of this election shouldn’t discourage students from engaging in politics, DiPrima said. He pointed to the Senate race in Alaska, in which the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, is leading by narrow margins of a few thousand votes, as examples of how important it is to vote.“We sit here in Hillsdale, and we talk about the polis, and we talk about Aristotle, and what it means to be a political animal. And if we don’t go out and realize that, the fullest example of which is voting, then we’re failing not only ourselves but the education which we’ve been striving to achieve for ourselves,” DiPrima said.</div></body>

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Democratic candidates exceeded expectations in the midterm elections but did not achieve a landslide victory, according to College President Larry Arnn. “In general, the midterms were within the range of normal for losses by the incumbent party, but there were some surprising places,” Arnn told Radio Free Hillsdale WRFH 101.7 FM in an interview.

Campus reacts to US midterm elections

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Democratic candidates exceeded expectations in the midterm elections but did not achieve a landslide victory, according to College President Larry Arnn. “I

Campus reacts to US midterm elections

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