Rachael Bade of the Washington Post has written the latest iteration of a increasingly familiar analytical theme in American politics: Donald Trump is hurting the Republican Party in the suburbs. There’s really no doubt about this observation, but Bade takes it one step further to argue that this development will prevent the Republicans from retaking the House of Representatives and is leading a lot GOP congresspeople to retire.
On this second point, Bade is keen to profile a few examples, most prominently Rep. Paul Mitchell of Michigan, who are expressly retiring out of frustration or disgust with their own president. While a tiny handful of Republicans have made clear at least obliquely that defending Trump’s behavior is a factor in their retirement, Bade lists out several others who are suspected of being motivated in that way. This leaves an unbalanced impression on the reader, in my opinion, where high principle plays too great a part in explaining why a higher than normal number of GOP officeholders are hanging it up to spend more time with their family. More often, simple distaste for serving in the minority is the driving factor. In other cases, the House Republicans’ self-imposed term limits on leading committees is removing the last compensation for serving in the minority. In still other cases, retirement is driven by polling data that shows a congressperson’s seat is no longer safe in this environment. They’re not willing to risk the indignity of defeat.
Some of these retirements are happening in blood red districts and won’t have any perceptible impact on who controls the House after the 2020 elections. But retirements in competitive seats will indeed make it harder for the Republicans to take away Nancy Pelosi’s gavel. The problem for the Republican Party is that Trump doesn’t have a strategy that fits with any sensible strategy to win the lower chamber.
For Trump, he would like to win as many suburban votes as possible and he will fight for them. But his winning formula can be described in fairly simple terms. He will win if he gains more votes in rural and small-town areas than he loses in the suburbs. The worse he does in the suburbs, the harder his task, but he can already be certain that his suburban performance in 2020 will be inferior to his 2016 performance. For this reason, victory is dependent on making small-town/rural white America vote for him at an even higher rate than 2016. This is why he keeps to themes that racially polarize the electorate and that hit on social, cultural, and economic insecurities people feel in overwhelmingly white communities.
The result is hard to achieve both because he came close to maxing out his support in these areas four years ago and because every vote he wins there is likely to be offset by another lost suburban vote. The strategy doesn’t work for House Republicans because they already own almost every one of these types of districts, so they don’t gain any benefit simply by carrying them by even larger margins.
However, the strategy can work for Senate seats because those are chosen by a statewide electorate. This is why the GOP won competitive Senate seats in 2016 and 2018 even while losing House seats.
What results is a Senate where the Republicans remain fairly static in their makeup, but a House that becomes a world all of its own. Basic natural selection wiped out Blue Dog Democrats in the 2010-2014 period, and it is now wiping out suburban Republicans. The threat for statewide Republicans running for Senate or governor is that the suburbs will reach a tipping point where the GOP reaches the same pariah state it enjoys in major urban centers like New York City and San Francisco. The same problem in reverse happened to the Democratic Party in 2016 and gave us a shocking Trump victory.
Insofar as members of the GOP really are retiring from Congress out of disgust for the president, that is leaving Congress bereft of Republicans who have principled objections to his style and actions. When people say that Trump is molding the party in his own image, this is what they actually mean.
To the extent these retiring Repubs represent suburban districts that Der Trumper is alienating, then they don’t need to retire if they (actually) oppose him, they could just join Dems and turn on him–which their constituents presumably would approve. By aiding the Dem attempt to hold Trumper accountable for his impeachable offenses/obvious crimes, they would be aiding the country and its democracy.
Yet they bravely choose to retire instead, so it’s not really disgust with Trumper that must be motivating them. In the grand scheme of things, while these “conservatives” profess pious adoration for the failed Constitution, they are far more attached to the modern partisan/party model–“Party over Country”tm—than the Founders’ 18th Century regime of (anti-factional) checks and balances. So much for “originalism”, haha! If today’s Congressional Repubs aren’t willing to check a woefully unqualified, mentally unbalanced wannabe dictator of their own party, then there’s no possible future scenario where they would place the supposedly overarching principle of separation of powers over partisanship. And this means the effective ruination of the governing theory of the Constitution. What do you think was supposed to be the greater protection against tyranny–the separation of powers or the Second Amendment? We know how today’s “conservatives” answer the question….
In the Golden Age of Democracy (1960-1980) the Repubs (elected and otherwise) sided with defending the Constitution when a criminal prez manifested himself. The “conservative” movement, however, resolved they would never allow that mistake to be made again! So they bought the corporate media, propagandized 46% of the population and gave them increasingly crazed rightwing lunatics as candidates. And Voila, National Trumpalism, which these “patriotic” suburban Repubs don’t have the spine or stomach to oppose, and instead opt to slink out of sight, most likely to begin an abusive “lobbying” (i.e. bribery) practice.
It remains astounding (to me) how bad at politics 101 centrist Republicans are and have been for the past decade. Caucus together, figure out 1) what you agree on, and 2) how much power you have, and then use your power to fight for what you want.
Collins, Snowe, and Specter got $100 billion in tax cuts and a smaller overall Recovery Act in exchange for their 3 votes. Now imagine what a caucus of 5-9 senators and/or 30+ representatives could accomplish on immigration, health care, deficits, military spending/programs, climate change, infrastructure, etc. It’s mind-boggling.
Trump believes fervently in the ‘silent majority’ theory. He has been told repeatedly that there is a hidden white voter majority that hates as he hates, and that he can get them to come out and vote for him if he can just hit their sweet spot of 1) anger about their limited future prospects, and 2) anger at all the black people on net work television, 3) anger at the damn Mexican food place down the street.
Every single person he has hired for his campaign also believes this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections#Turnout_statistics
This is why is a turn out election. If Trump can get ‘his’ secret people to vote, while getting his opponents voters to NOT show up by swamping them with propaganda and suppression, he will win.
There is really nothing unusual about this, it’s just an extension of the Southern strategy, and is right in the Carl Rove playbook.
Trump is really just an ordinary Republican, using ordinary tactics.
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That is what has always bothered me— his ability to bring out his hidden army of white sad sacks.
Unfortunately, a democracy cannot be better than its citizens—particularly one that allows for rule by a minority faction!
Reminder: it’s not much of an army.
He lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes; and that was with Comey’s unprecedented interference in the election. He’s a historically unpopular president.
The only thing holding him in place is his image as a tough guy…which is why House Democrats should lay siege to him and his administration with every investigative tool in their toolbox for the next 6-12 months.
I don’t mean to be contentious, MassC, but one can’t deny reality. Almost 63 million numbskulls voted for a completely unqualified ignoramus with an obvious severe personality disorder. That’s a political army by any measure. We now know they were overwhelmingly motivated by white identity “concerns”, shall we say. Even after the unprecedented fire-hose of scandals, Der Trumper’s support hangs very consistently at 43% or so—so the National Trumpalist cultists love his Anti-Prez antics, his gratuitous cruelty and his rhetoric of rage. And if I remember correctly, that’s substantially higher than than the percent of Nazi voters in Germany in 1933. The MAGA turds showing up at Der Trumper’s Nuremberg rallies surely equal the level of Herr Hitler’s early support.
And now we see that 80% of Repubs oppose a national popular vote, so they have thrown any idea of moving to an actual modern democratic republic into the shitter. We therefore have a huge problem on our hands as a result of the (white) army created by the monstrous “conservative” movement–the abusive imbecile Trumper is merely a symptom. And let’s not forget it took a national Gotterdammerung to deprogram the Nazi cultists…