It’s not unprecedented for a fairly popular president (with his own base) to discover that loyalty and enthusiasm for him does not transfer to his party’s members of Congress. President Barack Obama was unable to bring out his base in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014, with crippling consequences for his presidency and for the Democratic Party as a whole. But Donald Trump may soon discover that he has the same problem to a much higher degree. After all, Obama did not run on the premise that his Democratic Party rivals were a bunch of low energy, lying, weaklings. He didn’t run against the Democratic establishment and its leadership in Congress.
Donald Trump surprised people when he was rewarded for brutally attacking the Bush family, disparaging John McCain’s military service, calling Mitt Romney a choke-artist, and trashing other popular Republican politicians like Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz. He called Washington a swamp and properly cast the Republican establishment as his enemy. It’s just not clear why a Trump supporter would be a natural voter for an incumbent member of Congress from any party.
Once in office, Trump has not shied away from criticizing congressional Republicans, especially when they failed to repeal Obamacare. His base must know on some level that he needs Republican majorities to protect himself, but a large percentage of his voters were never partisan Republicans or traditionally supportive of Republican majorities. Why would these people be motivated to show up to vote for Ted Cruz?
There’s obviously a reshuffling of the electorate going on, as we could see in last night’s election results. Several Republican members of Congress are no longer looking safe despite representing districts that have had a strong historic right-wing lean. This isn’t new. We’ve seen the Republicans underperform consistently in special elections for more than a year now.
Some of this is the natural pendulum swing we usually see in a new president’s first midterm, as the opposition gets motivated to counterattack. Some of it a result of the GOP nominating some truly awful people like Judge Roy Moore. Some of it is buyer’s regret from Trump supporters who thought they’d be getting something different.
But I think a significant part of the problem is that a big chunk of Trump’s voters hate Congress, are not partisan Republicans, and don’t support incumbents or either party. I’ve written about this before, and I’m still uncertain about the size of the contingent, but there’s a significant number of people who always cast their ballot as an effort to vote the bums out. In the matchup of Clinton vs. Trump, this translated to a vote for Trump. In a congressional race, it means (assuming they bother to show up at all) that the challenger is likely to get their support.
It’s not easy to turn a successful anti-establishmentarian campaign into a movement for reelection. This is especially true if you hero of the movement is not actually on the ballot and he’s asking people to vote for the establishment.
In a way, Trump has been campaigning against the Republican majorities in Congress from the very beginning. This isn’t because they’re Republicans. It’s because the whole premise of his campaign was that Washington DC is filled with bums.
I think it’s a failed premise to think that Trump supporters will save the GOP from midterm disaster. On the evidence so far, that it not going to happen.
I remain unconvinced. Despite the idiot president practically shitting into his hand and eating it on national TV hundreds of times since taking office the best sensible, rationale voters could do in Ohio was a losing tie.
Sorry. I’m very pissed off.
I’m not. That was a solid red district. And the Dem gets another shot at the golden ring in the General in November. Now the Dem knows the votes are out there. Look for the Party to ratchet up their GOTV this fall.
I’m told there are 70 seats up for grabs that are more to the left than OH-12.
I wonder if people realize the significance of the primary results in WA-08 and WA-03 last night. Flipping even one of those would be historic. Personally, I want Dino Rossi to get his ass handed to him yet again by a female candidate. Taking Reichert’s old seat would be miraculous.
So tired of hearing about how narrow electoral losses are actually wins for Democrats. Of course the votes are out there. Are they getting them? Apparently not.
It would have been historic if they won, but they didn’t.
I’ve been hearing about how the Goopers are on the edge of complete collapse for my entire adult life. It’s not happening.
Nothing ever happens.
Until it does.
Yes, I have been reading prognostications of the “Conservative Crack-up” for well over thirty years now. Yet we remain ensconced in the Conservative Era (1980-present). Also, too, don’t forget the “certainty” of Dem demographics overwhelming the supposedly shrinking GOoPers…
On the plus side, one must remember that the last Repub trifecta was shattered when Bushco lost the corrupt House of Hastert in 2006, and Repubs were then routed in the 2008 election. That defeat took two lost wars (one an illegal War of Aggression) and an historic financial collapse. The resulting political catastrophe for “conservatives” forced Roberts’ Repubs to change the nationwide rules of the game with Citizens United, and permit the Repubs’ nationwide (Dem) vote suppression scheme(s). Roberts’ Repubs will now bless their Repubs’ nationwide gerrymandering blueprints.
So “Conservatives” are openly admitting they can’t win unless they cheat, destroy any last remaining vestiges of democracy, and glorify every anti-democratic mechanism in our failed constitution. Their level of cheating has had to rise exponentially and now includes praising election ratfucking by the very country they spent the past 80 years demonizing. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, I guess!
After 30 years of rightwing propaganda, an enormous segment of the populace has been destroyed as rational, responsible citizens. Half of Repubs now chant to pollsters that the prez should be able to “shut down” disfavored news outlets, while being outraged that Facebook de-friended Alex Jones! (Of course, they mean that a Repub prez should have that power; a Dem prez is (by definition) unconstitutional.)
Repubs have naturally evolved into an openly fascist party supported by the worst elements of American society, a base fed on daily doses of spite, dutifully doled out by the coaches of Team Conservative. But that evolution was long present in the DNA of their movement. As the example of Weimar Germany makes painfully clear, the future is quite uncertain, since “conservatives” have spent the past decade erecting the flood walls.
So the pendulum keeps swinging to ever more anti-democratic ways to maintain an ever shrinking minority in rule. Unless there comes a point where the pendulum swings back. (Note that this all is produced by very narrow wins in 2000 and 2016)
Yes, and those narrow “wins” were themselves the products of an egregious anti-democratic mechanism!
2 out of the last 2 Repub prezes lost the popular vote, which does not concern Team Conservative in the least. Nor the national punditry.
“…a Dem prez is (by definition) unconstitutional.)”
Damn, that made me spit my drink out, LOL! Its funny but really sad because its true. These people actually think like that.
And as much as I’d prefer Hillary as President, its almost scary to think of what these people would be doing if that were the case.
After the 2016 election night shock receded into numbing gloominess, one of my close friends (and a staunch Democrat) commented that at the very least, the interminable Benghazi hearings would be over! But neither I, nor he or those in our friends circle, had anticipated the cruelty this President and his coterie would bring to the people they perceive as their enemies.
One staunch Bernie supporter, and Hillary hater, said we needed to bring as many court actions as possible to stump DJT at every turn.
BUT if the DoJ refuses to act where the court says it should (as in the separated childrens’ cases – where DoJ is now asking ACLU to locate the parents), how can court cases stop this bull from breaking everything in the china shop?
I would rather have taken Hillary as President over anything that the Republicans would have done in the Congress during her term(s)!
You’d bitch if they hung you with a new rope.
This was a +9R district that became a +0 district practically overnite. The orange wild child in the WH will not shut up for the next two months and the economy for average Americans is beginning to tank. There is more bad news for Ohio in manufacturing beginning to play out, similar to Harley-Davidson and Carrier.
The $$ spent on OH-12 came mostly from relatively small amounts from private people, small corporate donations (once again, relatively small) and the Democratic Party of Ohio. This is seed money. It wasn’t thrown out a window for some Harvard anarchist with a snowballs chance in hell.
You don’t win every battle, but you should come close. This was the very definition of close.
Only one Democrat has won this seat since 1938. Think about that. This is regarded as one of the safest (R) seats in OH if not the safest and, depending upon those 9000 absentee/provisional ballots, O’Connor could sill actually win and most likely will in November.
Well reading you’re considered replies is encouraging. I’m just continually astonished that anyone could vote Republican anymore. It’s brutal.
This reminded me of a snippet of conversation I had with a colleague of mine about the two Trump rally goers who wore “I would rather be Russian than a Democrat”.
He asked if instead the question was “Would you rather be a Russian than a Republican?”, what my answer would be!
I think some Republican voters, fed by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and now gaslight by Trump truly see Democrats as their “true enemies”.
Whatever it takes to defeat the real enemy. If the Russians are helping, fine, they’ll go with that.
These people live in real fear – terror really – of the horrors the Democrats represent, anything is better than that.
Classic false equivalency!
I don’t think this district is at all what is was in 1938. Hasn’t it been redrawn and gerrymandered since then?
The two most rural counties in the 12th District had abysmal turnout.
Interesting. The rural parts of the county where I live had terrible turnout as well. Also learned from looking at statewide races that there exists now a Trump Populist Party.
. . . “populist”, I guess.
“What is the Turd Estate?”
This is a very logical and insightful observation in regards to Der Trumper and “his” GOP.
But it also means that if Trumper’s GOP does not receive a very serious rebuff and defeat in the upcoming mid-terms, then something has gone very seriously wrong with both the system and the citizenry. Historically wrong.
Tradition and history would compel a substantial rejection and loss of power for Trumper’s party in the 2018 elections. If that doesn’t happen, then we are in a new reality. A reality made doubly worse by your observations here.
Trump can’t save the GOP regardless of what he says because he’s not popular. The view of the republican party is even worse, and the dislike is broad. Driving that unpopularity is the exclusive pandering to an increasingly narrow, ugly and ridiculously cultish base at the expense of the majority of the country. What Trump does to make them happy, most of which is to lie to them, is the very reason he’s not popular with a growing majority.
Its hard to appreciate at times given the media’s propensity to bend over backwards to “report” on Trump’s every utterance and treat his lies as “his opinion” and therefore newsworthy, while never missing an opportunity to remind us how popular he is with his base.
Trump can’t save the republican establishment when he can barely save himself. There is a limit to the level of screwing over you can get away with before there is a reckoning. People are getting sick and tired of Trump’s version of Marie Antoinette, “let them eat hate” with a healthy dollop of stupid act.