Blue Wave may be coming

 

Blue Wave: wholesale or retail elections

‘All politics is local’ no longer true

Gordon L. Weil

This year’s election may reveal the difference between retail and wholesale politics.

The Republicans and many pundits see the congressional elections as hundreds of individual contests.  For most of them, picking a winner is easy, because voting traditionally hews to a single party.  The balance of power in Congress can be determined by a few swing elections, where there’s usually only a small gap between the two major candidates.

The GOP is increasingly worried about becoming a minority party.  They would be endangered if Democrats could add to their blue-collar and Black support with more women and, thanks to immigration, Hispanic voters.  Republicans have made inroads among union members and other blue-collar workers, but they are not expected to equal the Democratic gains.

Republicans look for ways to suppress voting among those voters seen as likely to support Democrats.  Their arsenal includes difficult identification requirements, shorter voting periods, reduced mail ballots and House redistricting to maximize the chances for their candidates to win.

However spurious his claims might be, Donald Trump’s assertion that his 2020 election had been fraudulently stolen, is used as justification for most voter suppression, which claims to help eliminate fraud.  For added GOP security, he pushed for congressional redistricting years before it is required by the Constitution and laws.

The president’s party often loses seats in the midterm election, and premature redistricting is meant to nullify that shift.  Redistricting for political purposes was explicitly approved by the Supreme Court.  The Democrats tried to match the GOP slicing-and-dicing moves, but have come up short.

The object of all these moves is to retain Republican majorities, no matter how thin, in the House and Senate.  That would not only help Trump continue to adopt policies by executive order without congressional oversight, but also to protect him from what he sees as an inevitable third impeachment if the Democrats gain control of the House.

Taken together, all of these moves constitute a retail approach to the elections.  The goal is to win just enough states and districts to hold onto control of both houses.  Most analysts have bought this approach, because it’s familiar. 

“All politics is local,” said the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill.  If retail politics prevail this year, then O’Neill’s wisdom prevails.  But Donald Trump has radically changed American politics and, if he is becoming the predominant issue in any congressional race, then the old sage can be proven wrong.

All serious polls show that Trump’s rating on every major policy is solidly negative.  Despite having almost unchecked power, he hasn’t delivered on key promises.  Even worse, he continues to promise success, but many people are losing confidence.  For example, he repeatedly announces that the unpopular Iran war is nearing an end, but it isn’t.  Then, he escalates it.

He promised no long wars, instantly lower consumer prices, deporting unlawful immigrants with criminal records and ending any special breaks for women and minorities.  He delivered a prolonged Iran war, higher prices, deportation of long-term immigrants leading productive lives and open discrimination against women and minorities, especially in military leadership.

In his second term, Trump has adopted or approved policies harmful to African Americans, women, farmers, Hispanic people, science and education.  While his policies may not create new Democrats, some of their members could vote for them as alternatives to his Republican enablers or simply not vote.  A relative few could tip many balances.

Trump relies on personal loyalty and keeps his core support.  Voter suppression and expected massive fraud claims where GOP candidates lose could help him.  By making the Democrats appear dangerous, he would frighten voters away from them.

Will Trump’s falling approval translate into enough Democratic votes for them to take Congress?  When the campaign began, few gave the Democrats a chance of taking Senate control.   Now nine Senate seats are in question.  This shift suggests that the Trump Republicans’ congressional control of the Senate is now in question.  The Democrats have a good chance in the House.

But will the success of Democratic Socialists in some primaries scare enough voters nationally to allow a clear path for Republicans?  The media promotes a possibly exaggerated struggle between the party’s progressives and moderates, but they could appear united in their opposition to Trump.

The Democrats make Trump the issue (wholesale); the Republicans make individual Democrat’s shortcomings the issue (retail).  Trump’s impulsive moves create political opportunities.  The Democrats’ infighting and inability to create a unified agenda do the same.

If the Democrats succeed, the result would be the Blue Wave.  It would extend the usual midterm congressional losses into a major rejection of Trump’s presidency.  If the Iran war continues and prices remain high, chances for a Blue Wave increase.  Trump probably knows that and has about two months to complete his defenses.

 

 

 

 

Election key: Trump turnout

 

Election key: Trump turnout

War over ballots

Gordon L. Weil

A single factor may be the key to the outcome of the midterm elections – turnout.

President Trump gets it.  He gives signs of believing that it’s better for his Republicans if fewer people vote. 

In the 2020 presidential election, he lost by 7 million votes out of the 156 million between the two main candidates.  Four years later, he won by over 2 million votes out of about 153 million.  The Democrats shed over 6 million votes.

He asserts that he won in 2020 and could conclude that a lower turnout favors Republicans.  Because most Republicans vote at the polling places on Election Day, while most Democrats prefer early voting, often by mail, that might have led him to oppose mail voting.

Republicans want to tighten access to voting.  They say they are combating election fraud though there’s little demonstrated evidence of it.  But Trump claims his loss resulted from widespread fraud.  Massive efforts to prove that point totally failed, but the claims persist and accepting them is a required mark of loyalty to Trump.

Voter fraud is a myth. While there may be rare problems, they are so minor that they cannot influence the results.  But donning the cloak of protecting democracy, the GOP can seem to be the good guys while preventing many Democrats from participating.

The Republicans try to limit voting access and question vote tabulation (only when they lose).  Making voting access more difficult, the GOP expects to deter lower income workers and the poor from making what could be a big effort to register and vote in person.  They also try to influence how votes are counted, which aims at throwing out Democratic ballots.

Trump is currently thinking about declaring a national emergency giving him the power to reduce or eliminate mail voting and to impose strict identification rules to screen out lower income and less educated voters who won’t have time or transport necessary to collect needed paperwork.  Reducing mail voting could get some help from the Postal Service.

He has fought hard to secure passage of the SAVE act that could allow him to accomplish his goals, but Congress won’t pass his bill.  Declaring a national emergency would be a shortcut, though it would be challenged.

This year, increased turnouts for midterm primaries encourage uncertain expectations of a big November turnout.  In Texas, for example, the 2.3 million Democratic votes compared with 2.2 million Republicans ballots.  Both the turnouts and the Democratic showing were unusually high, but three-quarters of eligible voters did not participate.

In November, Republicans who are disappointed with Trump could stay away.  But if the Democrats are thought to be leftwing extremists, GOP voters are unlikely to swing to their side.  That’s why there’s so much handwringing by pundits when a Democratic Socialist wins a primary.

But, even merely by staying away, a lower GOP turnout could help the Democrats. And it’s possible that high prices caused by the Iran War and uneasiness about immigration enforcement could cause some to protest by voting for Democrats.  Turnout will depend heavily on whether the elections are a referendum on Trump.

In practice, the question is whether voter suppression will work and if so, whether it will have a partisan effect. The GOP may believe that educated, affluent people will vote and remain reliable Republicans.

But, despite the focus on the Democrats losing the blue-collar vote, they are making major inroads among what once was a solid GOP vote. If women, affluent, and better educated people continue moving toward the Democrats and show up at the polls, they could upset the GOP strategy.

If Trump aims to make it easier for those groups to dominate the electorate, he may have missed that they are moving away from the GOP.  If he believes less educated voters are increasingly Republican, he may have erred in making voting access more difficult for them.  Plus, their share of the electorate is declining, while the more affluent Republicans are defecting.

In both parties, campaigns could boil down to GOTV – get out the vote.

Rarely does an issue affect turnout to the point it can determine the election outcome.  But consumer price hikes could cause results that go well beyond partisanship.  Prices rose under Biden, and Trump won by promising to reverse them quickly.  The Iran war made the situation worse, but he tells voters that small gas price increases are worth it.

Whatever politicians claim, consumer price increases have not been small.  When gasoline shoots up more than one dollar a gallon, it can fuel the kind of turnout that flips the Congress. 

Talk of a Blue Wave, a massive Democratic win, has begun to pass the straight-face test. But it may take a Blue Wave to drown the voter suppression that Trump seeks.