By David Harsanyi
Friday, June 23, 2017
What if Republican voters who don’t particularly like
President Donald Trump are also able to compartmentalize their votes? What if
they dislike Democrats more than they do the president? What if, rather than
being punished for Trump’s unpopularity, local candidates are rewarded for
their moderation? This would be a disaster for Democrats. And Tuesday’s runoff
election in Georgia’s Sixth District shows that it might be possible.
Now, had Jon Ossoff come out ahead of Karen Handel, the
coverage would have painted this as a game-changing moment: a referendum on
conservatism itself, a harbinger of a coming liberal wave, and a rejection of
Trump’s disastrous presidency. It would have illustrated that Democrats had
figured out how to flip those suburban and affluent Republicans who aren’t
crazy about the president.
Perhaps some of that will still play out during the
midterms, because one race (or even four) doesn’t tell us everything we need to
know. Every district is unique. Still, there are definitely ominous signs for
Democrats.
You can try and grasp at moral victories, of course, as I
saw a number of liberal pundits on cable television trying to do. You can tell
yourself that Ossoff had come closer than any Democrat ever in the Sixth
District. But there are numerous problems with this optimism. For one, there
won’t be many red districts where the president is less popular. Democrats are
going to have to flip some of these seats to win back a majority. Second, it’s
difficult to imagine how the environment could be any worse for the GOP (though
that, too, is possible). Moreover, Ossoff spent a record $23.6 million on a
House race, yet Handel outran not only him but also Trump.
This last point is mentioned as often as the others, yet
it’s probably the most important. Trump’s approval rating in the Sixth District
is equal to the national approval rating of 35 percent, which is to say
exceptionally low for a Republican area. He had won the district by less than 2
percentage points back in November. According to a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, the majority of Republicans
surveyed (55 percent) said that “expressing their opinion on Trump wasn’t a
factor in their decision-making” for the special election.
It’s true that neither Ossoff nor Handel mentioned the
president much during the race — which, in itself, bolsters the theory that
Trump might not be as consequential in these races as Dems hope. But the race
was nationalized. Its implications were national. The coverage was national.
The parties treated the race as one that would have national implications.
Certainly, the money that poured into the race was national. One imagines that
every Georgia Republican who went to the polls understood what this race meant
for the future of the parties. When you nationalize races, Republicans will
take more than the president into account.
We already know that an electorate can be happy with a
president and dislike his party. Why can’t the reverse be true? President
Barack Obama, for example, carried healthy approval ratings for the majority of
his presidency, yet voters decisively rejected his party over six years. What
if there’s a faction of Republican voters who don’t like Trump but still don’t
like Obama’s policies?
As low as Trump’s popularity ratings remain, and as
constant a theme in the media as this is, elections are still a choice. For
instance, Congress’s low ratings as an institution are a mirage. Despite what
you may have heard, it is actually one of the most popular institutions in
America. Everyone loves his or her members of Congress; they just hate yours.
Handel will likely be in her position as long as she pleases, because
incumbents win more than 95 percent of races.
If the average Republican is willing to look past Trump’s
sins (and, obviously, many GOPers like him outright), they can start weighing
many other factors. They may, for instance, understand that voting for Ossoff
is not only a vote against Trump but a vote for progressive liberals such as
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who had a disapproval rating of nearly 60
percent in the Sixth District. This is the choice.
It is also worth noting that, as galvanizing as the
anti-Trump movement has been these past months, it is not a movement of
persuasion. The default rhetorical disposition of liberals is still to accuse
anyone who takes a cultural or economic position to the right of Senator
Elizabeth Warren of being a clingy racist. Maybe affluent suburban Republicans
don’t appreciate the accusation. And maybe bashing the president and getting
hysterical over Russia isn’t a winning strategy in places such as Georgia
because, while the GOP has tons of problems, for what does the Democratic party
stand?
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