As predicted, a deeply unpopular Trump stomped on the GOP message; early races I’ll be watching Tuesday night
As predicted, a deeply unpopular Trump stomped on the GOP message; early races I’ll be watching Tuesday night
As I wrote a few weeks ago, whatever message Congressional GOPers might have wanted to put out (like, “our tax cuts helped spur the best economy in years!”) got stomped on by Donald Trump.
As it turns out, (please be sitting down for this) he was being truthful when he talked about momentum having been going his way. Here’s Gallup’s weekly polling through last Sunday:
Until the bomb attempts and several mass shootings derailed things, his approval ratings in the weeks following the Kavanaugh confirmation were the best since spring 2017.
Then, during the week of actual and attempted mass murder he went down 4 points.
I’ll update this post with Gallup’s final pre-midterms weekly number when it comes out tomorrow.
By the way, Gallup also supplied a nifty chart of Presidential and Congressional approval for each of the last 10 midterms in addition to current polling:
Only George W. Bush had worse numbers in 2006, and only the Congressional democrats had worse numbers in 2014.
Just based on those numbers, I would expect the incumbent President’s party to take a pasting.
We ought to get some clues from some east coast races early Tuesday night. So here’s a handy list of the tightest ones, that I will be particularly watching:
Governor
Georgia – Stacey Abrams (D) vs. Brian Kemp (R)
VA-2 Elaine Luria (D) vs. Scott Taylor (R) 5/7
Outside of California and a few seats in the upper midwest, the east is really where most of the action is in the House of Representative races. If there are upsets in the “slight favorites,” that will give us a lot of information as to whether or not there is a “blue wave.” Meanwhile, if democrats lose both “higher favorited” races, their ability to take the House is in real trouble. Contrarily, if the GOP loses one or more the the races where they are “higher favorites,” be on the lookout for a blue tsunami!
He didn’t stomp on the GOP message, he is just repeating it louder.
“Pundits love to throw around the term “identity politics.” It’s usually used to diminish the importance or legitimacy of political demands made by historically marginalized groups that turn on experiences specific to that group. Under this definition, African-American voters demanding action on police brutality is identity politics. Corporate CEOs asking for tax cuts or suburban voters demanding action on health care costs, well, that’s just normal politics.
This narrowed definition obscures the true might of identity politics. Virtually all politics is identity politics, and the most powerful political identities are the biggest political identities — Democrat and Republican, which are increasingly merging with our racial, geographic, religious, and cultural groups to create what the political scientist Lilliana Mason calls “mega-identities.”
Politics lies downstream from these mega-identities in large part because perception lies downstream from these mega-identities. Who we are influences not just what we want from politics, but what we believe is true about politics.
This is the key message of Identity Crisis, a new analysis of the 2016 campaign from political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck. Based on reams of data covering virtually every controversy, theory, and explanation for the outcome, it settles many of the debates that have raged since the election…..
Consider just a few of the book’s findings, many of which make a hash of much post-election punditry:
• During Barack Obama’s presidency, polling showed Republicans making more than $100,000 a year were more dissatisfied with the state of the economy than Democrats making less than $20,000 a year. Economic anxiety was “in large part a partisan phenomenon.”
• It was also a racial phenomenon. Prior to Obama, measures of racial resentment didn’t predict views on the economy. After Obama, they did. It’s worth stating that clearly: The more racially resentful you were, the worse you thought the economy was doing, even controlling for your party, circumstance, and so on. This flipped as soon as Donald Trump was elected: the more racial resentful you were, the more economically optimistic you became.
• Among Republican primary voters, Trump did not do better with Republicans who worried that “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does” or that the system “unfairly favors powerful interests.” Nor did he routinely lead the field among Republicans who felt betrayed by their party. There’s little evidence, in other words, that Trump voters were registering outrage with the political system as a whole.
• Trump destroyed the rest of the Republican field among primary voters who were angry about immigration. Trump did 40 points better among Republican voters with the most negative views of immigration than among those with the most positive views. Trump’s success, in other words, was that he ran an issue-based candidacy on an issue where he was closer to the Republican base than the other candidates were.
• The same was true with attitudes toward Muslims: “Trump performed significantly better with Republican voters who rated Muslims relatively unfavorably in 2011 than he did with Republican voters who rated Muslims relatively favorably.” By contrast, views of Muslims did not affect support for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
• And so it went for race, too. Republican voters who attributed racial inequality to a lack of effort among African Americans rather than past and present discrimination were 50 points likelier to support Trump. Similarly, Republicans who told pollsters they felt coldly toward African Americans in 2011 were 20 points likelier to support Trump than Republicans who said they felt warmly toward African Americans.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/5/18052390/trump-2018-2016-identity-politics-democrats-immigration-race
Yep, trump took gop racism out of the closet and wore it on his chest. Just like what is happening now.