Yes, The GOP Lost The Midterms Because Of Trump
The evidence that the GOP lost the midterms because of public repudiation of President Trump is overwhelming. The GOP will either accept this and learn from it, or they will not.
With the midterm elections two weeks behind us, it has become clear that the GOP did indeed face a Democratic wave both in the House of Representatives, where they are now projected as having lost at least 37 seats, but also in Governor’s Mansions and state legislative elections, where Democrats made pickups that will aid them going forward in the redistricting battles likely to take place after the 2020 census. On the House level alone, Republicans lost the most seats of any midterm election since 1974, when they lost 49 seats. Of course, 2018 and 1974 are very different years. The biggest differences, of course is that forty-four years ago, the nation was faced with the beginnings of a cycle of slow economic growth and high inflation that would not be alleviated for another decade and with the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which had seen the first Presidential resignation in American history in the face of what clearly would have been a case of impeachment and removal from office. This year, by contrast, voters headed to the polls with a relatively healthy economy, expanded hiring, and rising wages. Under those circumstances, the fact that the GOP lost what at the end of the day will be close to forty seats is extraordinary and something that ought to cause Republicans around the country to evaluate the future of their party.
As Jennifer Rubin puts it, there are really two problems with the GOP, Trumpism and Trump, and that leaves the party with something of a dilemma:
First, if Republicans stick with Trump, their least enthusiastic voters (women and young people) may continue to drift away. Democrats have an opening to entice these groups to vote Democratic in 2020, as many did in the midterms. Outside of deep-red enclaves, Trump generates a strong political backlash, aiding Democratic turnout.
Second, for some time now Republicans have lacked a compelling agenda. Tax cuts for the rich, entitlement cuts and insistence on “small government” were, by 2016, the unpopular views that allowed an ideological heretic such as Trump to take over the party. Once in office, he has reverted to tax cuts for the rich, tried to take away Obamacare and run up a huge debt. Cronyism and corruption are rampant. What’s popular about that? Not much, voters are telling Republicans. Right now, the right is an intellectual wasteland whern good policy goes to die — killed off by economic illiteracy on trade and immigration, denial of science and lack of interest in investing in workers (e.g., education, worker training).
Third, all of this takes place in a remarkably strong economy. There is reason to believe, however, that the bull economy won’t last for two more years. Ben White of Politico writes that Trump has reason to fear the end of the “sugar high” from tax cuts. He explains, “Fiscal stimulus from the GOP tax cuts is likely to start running out. The Federal Reserve is expected to keep bumping up interest rates. And few analysts expect a divided Congress — facing soaring deficits and with its eyes on 2020 — to join hands and pass a big infrastructure package or sweeping middle-class tax cuts to keep the fiscal juice flowing.”
(…)
In sum, Trump personally is an anvil around the necks of his party members outside deep-red enclaves. More systemically, Republicans are out of popular policy ideas, and the only thing keeping them politically afloat is the economy — which sure doesn’t seem like it will perform indefinitely as Trump promised. Democrats cannot beat something with nothing, but if they could scrape together a competent, non-offensive presidential nominee, advance some popular ideas (e.g., infrastructure, ethics reform, shoring up health care and cutting drug prices) and champion economic policies based on something other than more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, they might win in 2020. But that’s a big “if.”
Before the election, President Trump tried to make clear to his supporters that even though he wasn’t on the ballot, the upcoming midterms were indeed about him and his agenda. Because of this, he stressed to them it was important for them to go out and vote to preserve that agenda, to prevent the Democrats from taking over Congress, and to prevent Democrats from using the subpoena power that control of even one chamber of Congress would give them to “harass” the Administration. While it seems clear from the turnout that many Republicans listened to him, which is one reason why the GOP was actually able to make some gains in the Senate. it is equally clear that many voters agreed with the President. He was indeed on the ballot, but that didn’t exactly work out to the benefit of the GOP.
In support of her argument, Rubin cites a new post-election poll from the Pew Research Center that finds that 64% of the people who voted in the election say that Trump was a consideration in the vote, while just 35% say that he was not much of a factor. Additionally, 39% of those surveyed say that their vote was a vote against Trump while just 25% say that their vote was a vote in favor of the President. Looking ahead to 2020, while most Republicans (61%) say they don’t want to see a primary challenge against the President, 37% of self-identified Republicans say that they do. Even worse, two of the groups that abandoned Republicans in the largest numbers this year — women and younger voters — are open to the idea of a challenger, with 43% of women and 48% of younger voters who say that they are likely to vote in a Republican primary say that they want to see a challenge to Trump by someone in the GOP.
Even worse for Republicans, the poll finds them behind Democrats on many specific policy areas;
- 55% of respondents say Democrats have a better approach on the environment, while 19% support Trump’s approach and 25% say they don’t believe there will be a major difference between the impact of either approach;
- When it comes to ethics in government, 48% say Democrats have a better approach, while 22% favor the President’s approach and 29% say there’s not much of a difference between the two;
- These patterns are repeated when it comes to issues such as Medicare, health care, Social Security, where pluralities favor the approach of Democrats over Republicans;
- On foreign policy, just 35% favor the President’s approach while 43% prefer the Democrats’approach;
- Finally, on what is arguably the President’s signature issue of immigration 46% favor the Democrats approach while just 40% support the President.
Trump does outperform Democrats in the poll on the issue of jobs and the economy, but as I’ve noted before the relatively strong state of the economy was not, by itself, enough to help Republicans stave off the Democratic wave.
As Rubin notes in a subsequent column based on some recent comments by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Republicans don’t seem to have learned a thing:
Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg points out that the danger to Republicans is greater than simply loss of college-educated women in the suburbs of big cities. He explains:
Democrats did not win simply because white women with college degrees rebelled against Mr. Trump’s misogyny, sexism and disrespect for women.
Nearly every category of women rebelled . . . Democrats got their wave in part because a significant portion of male and female white working class voters abandoned Mr. Trump and his Republican allies . . .
Working people are not fools, and Mr. Trump promised them a Republican president who would never cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; who would repeal Obamacare but provide “insurance for everybody”; who would get rid of bad trade deals and “drain the swamp,” as he never tired of saying. Instead, had Mr. Trump’s effort to replace Obamacare passed, it would have imposed vast cuts in retirement programs and driven up health insurance costs. His tax reforms were heavily weighted to large corporations and the top 1 percent. So it is no surprise that more than half of white working class men now believe that Mr. Trump is “self-dealing” and corrupt.
If she doesn’t want to listen to a Democratic pollster, maybe she should pay attention to Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who saw a Democrat win the race to fill his seat. “We’re losing the suburb,” he warned. “If we had a mass movement from the suburbs for people to move back to rural areas, then perhaps our Republican Party would have more of a future, but not the way that we’re going now.
The evidence that Republicans lost on November 6th because of Donald Trump is all around them. They will either pay attention to it, or they will ignore it to their peril.
The weird thing is that on some level the Trumpist wing of the Republican party actually wants the Democrats to take over the presidency. Then they can be the forever aggrieved minority party, and it won’t matter how crazy their conspiracy theory worldview gets because they’ll never be responsible for actually doing anything.
Narrator: They will not.
Right before the election Trump said he and congress would soon be passing a 10% tax cut for the middle class.
How’s that going?
I suspect many, if not most, Republicans do know that Trump is toxic. But they’re terrified of his fan club, which may not be big, but it’s very loud, very angry, and probably dangerous.
@Stormy Dragon:
Narcissists are never villains; they are either victorious or victims.
The GOP is stuck between a rock and a hard place. All they have left is the blind crazy trump worshiping cult they call a base. Turning on them is not going to bring suburban women back or impress the youth much, it is just going to drive a wedge right down the middle of their rotting dying base. It was always going to end this way, and they can’t say Goldwater (? I think it was he, maybe others too) didn’t warn them of it back in ’68.
Does Flake honestly think suburban folks moving into rural areas would be magically transformed into Republicans? Or does he think that suburban conservatives moving into rural areas would suddenly double or triple in number? I’m having a hard time following his math. It seems just as likely to me that rural areas will become more purple.
I’ve banged on about this for a while but you need look no further than the contrast between the economy and Trump’s support. The economy is strong and we have no new wars. So why isn’t Trump at 60% . Why is he stuck perpetually at 42%? Why has he gained zero supporters, added zero constituencies?
Because he’s a pig. It is that simple. Trump is a vile, despicable, incompetent, treasonous, pathological liar trading in nothing but hate and rage. He’s a creep. We all know it. The base knows he’s a creep and love him because they’re creeps, too. But a base of older whiter, less educated rustics only wins in the south and midwest, and only temporarily. Every growing demographic – black, Hispanic, Asian, young, educated, urban, suburban – is moving away from the GOP.
In the midterms there were as many votes for Democratic candidates as Trump got in his presidential win. Midterm Dem turn-out equaled Presidential election turn-out. Which is not something we have ever seen before. Just about half the country despises him, and another 5% just dislikes him.
Trump is quite simply too noxious for the United States. But the next time Tajikistan has a vacancy, he’d be a great choice.
Yeah, but hasn’t he been saying lately he wasn’t on the ballot?
It’s said that Victory has a thousand fathers while Defeat is an orphan. In Cheetoland, Victory is Trump’s baby, and Defeat is Democrats stealing the election.
I haven’t double-checked this but I read last week that in the GOP Wave of 2010 the GOP got 45 million congressional votes, and 2 weeks ago the Dems got 60 million. If that doesn’t make GOP leaders run around with their hair on fire they’re drooling idiots.
There’s a complicating factor, too. Fox/Breitbart/GatewayDipshit etc don’t answer to the GOP. The GOP answers to them. And when they whip up the dumb racists and the dumb racists demand primary candidates of their liking, how can the GOP leadership moderate to broaden their appeal? The conservative media that propelled them to victory turns into an anchor around the party’s neck.
Those of us who lived in the Greater NYC area since the 80’s knew how this was going to play out. Everything and everyone that Trump touches turns to sh*t. He is the Midas of Manure. Nothing ever survives for long with him until it ends In spittle flecked invective, followed by a dramatic storming off for a month or two until he shows up with another round of idiots that think they know how to handle him. No relationship, no deal, no partnership, nothing lasts. It all turns to sh*t.
We often talk about what the Republican Party should do, but the changes away from smoke filled rooms has guaranteed there is no longer a Republican Party capable of turning things around. Rather there are thousands of individual pols at every level of government who are desperate to keep their head down and hold onto their own little patch. Keep their voters distracted and their donors properly stroked. That’s all that’s left.
Bet Doug did not write this in 2010 when the Republican gained 6 Senate Seats and 63 house seats.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
The GOP Dilemma: Tea Party Not Representative Of America As A Whole
Doug Mataconis · Wednesday, November 24, 2010
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-gop-dilemma-tea-party-not-representative-of-america-as-a-whole/
I’ve seen from a few pundits that the worst news for the GOP is that Trump’s core voters showed up for the ’18 elections and they still got routed in House races.
I’ve yet to see exit polls that back this up, but if that is, in fact, the case, then it’s a sign that they may be losing the same middle of the road Republicans who failed to show up in 2006 and 2008.
@mattbernius:
Name them.
40 house seats is a crushing defeat. But 63 is not.
@Teve:
Ron Howard as Narrator.
@Paul L.:
Nobody claimed the 2010 midterm results weren’t a crushing defeat for Dems. Nobody. Obama himself famously called it a “shellacking.” James Joyner called the results when they were announced “truly stunning.”
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/gop-house-gain-floor-is-60-the-ceiling-is-71/
A few days later, he wrote a post titled “State Level Tsunami.”
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/state-level-tsunami/
So, as usual, you’re inventing a double standard out of whole cloth by claiming people said something they never said.
Also keep in mind–in 2010 the country was still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession. Unemployment was at nearly 10%. Trump doesn’t have that excuse now. What’s yours?
@Kylopod: You’ll lower your blood pressure if you ignore just a few of the very lowest-quality commenters. 😛
@Paul L.: Just in case you haven’t noticed, 2010 is… past history. Maybe you would like to engage with 2018?
@Kylopod:
trump.
@Paul L.:
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the request for me to show my work. I’ll do my best.
I should have said *pundit* vs *pundits* — I thought there had been more than one, but it turns out I can only find one: Jonathan V. Last, a Weekly Standard editor:
He in turn was responding to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report:
To that point Cook’s analysis of the exit polling reveals this:
So either way, it’s clear that Trump’s core base appears to have shown up in 2018. However, given the gaps between Trump support and the failure to hold any but the strongest Trump districts, it either means that overall Republican turnout was depressed or more Democrats showed up.
This is partly why the GOP is doomed. They’re even losing religious voters.
Forgive me for the cut and paste. This comes from John Pavlovitz:
Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.
They’re done.
They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:
They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.
They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.
And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet today, you openly give a full pass to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.
They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.
Maybe you need to read what he said again—if he still matters to you.
“…more than half of white working class men now believe that Mr. Trump is “self-dealing” and corrupt.”
This statistic will be more telling if someone will uncover the change in percentage the new statistic represents. It may be true that “white working class men” are mostly the “older whiter, less educated rustics” that Michael Reynolds portrays, but my experience being one causes me to hold some skepticism about it.
“Jesus is white…”: said Megyn Kelly when she was at Fox News.
That’s all your Holy Roller Honkies needed to hear.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I have another question about that stat. In my experience at least, many of the Trumpers I’ve met freely admit Trump is corrupt and self-serving. Many of them claim to admire that about him–or at least to tolerate it. It’s one of the reasons why it’s important that Trump be exposed not just as a crook and wannabe dictator, but as the weak, pathetic coward he’s always been.
@Mister Bluster:
One of the most popular depictions of White Jesus is a portrait of Cesare Borgia. An Italian nobleman of Hispanic descent (the family name originally was Borja), son of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borja).
So, sure, Jesús was white. He was also Catholic and Hispanic.
How about that?
Let’s get real here:
In Clinton and Obama’s first midterms they lost 6-8 Senate seats and 55-65 House seats. The Bush midterms fell during unusual circumstances, and the singular paragraph one reference to Republican (only) losses is sleight of hand. It’s relatively good performance.
The environment? That’s about number 10 on people’s lists.
Democrats and ethics? It is to laugh.
Foreign policy? Finally we have stopped being everyone’s piggy bank.
Immigration a winner for Democrats? Only in a fantasy world.
The big issue of substance where Trump and Republicans laid an egg is health care, and specifically pre-existing conditions and cost control. But what do the Dems have? Free beer for everyone. It’s going nowhere. And now they have the House. Show me your cost control Dems. Show me.
The rest is style. Trump is a rude, crude stream of consciousness and direct from brain to mouth New Yorker. Yes, some may be so delicate that it offends. His delivery needs polishing.
But a stream of smooth talking empty suits in the White House had given us sluggish economic growth dependent on a torrent of liquidity crack, resulting income disparity issues, a hollowed out manufacturing sector, runaway health care costs, a public pension system headed to insolvency, debt to GDP off the charts, wars everywhere…….. it’s the very reason he was elected.
Call me when Spartacus or Occasional-Cortex have something useful other than “I’m for good things and against bad things.”
@Guarneri: “In Clinton and Obama’s first midterms they lost 6-8 Senate seats and 55-65 House seats. ”
Note that in Obama’s first midterm, we were still crawling out of the Great Financial Crash. In Clinton’s first midterm, we were still in a long, dragging recession.
Trump went in with a good economy (courtesy of Obama).
The GOP should have done much better.
By 2020, judging by present trends, the wingnuts will be lecturing on how badly Carter lost in 1980 to that RINO movie star.
@Guarneri:
Seriously, what part about global climate change being an existential threat, don’t you get? Or do you just not have any children?
@OzarkHillbilly: Lil Drew doesn’t have anything, including smarts. Easier to pretend he’s a big financial whizz on the internets rather than have to actually, y’know, produce anything.
(Happy Turkey Day, everyone! I’m roasting a duck with cornbread stuffing and root veggies. What are you all doing?)
@Guarneri:
“Call me when Spartacus or Occasional-Cortex have something useful other than “I’m for good things and against bad things.””
Call me when Republicans in Congress actually vote to do anything other than oppose good things and support bad things.
@OzarkHillbilly:
He no doubt thinks that by moving to rural areas, suburbanites will retain their cosmopolitan natures enough to help transform rural politics into something different than it is now.
@Kylopod: Yeah [sigh] that’s another element, alright.
@grumpy realist: Bringing homemade mincemeat pie and Irish soda bread to a friend’s house.
Forgot to add, Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!
@James Pearce: That’s not very smart; if rural politics change from what they are now, how will he trick them into voting Republican and, especially, for him?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Jeff Flake? He’s getting out of politics…
You can tell when someone is morally and intellectually bankrupt very easily. They choose to not engage or debate the comment you actually made, and instead change the topic – often incorrectly and using false narratives from Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars or Drudge – to something wholly unrelated.
Sad!
SomeTimesOurPatience FindsEveryErgDispersalINGreat TonnesHuddledEverywhere ToRightOurselvesLet’sLeaveStat
@Mister Bluster: It’s peaceful here in Florida, but I can see the weather is much stronger where you are urinating. 😛