Democrats’ hopes high for taking House
WASHINGTON — The day of reckoning for American politics has nearly arrived.
Voters on Tuesday will decide the $5-billion debate between President Donald Trump’s takeno-prisoner politics and the Democratic Party’s supercharged campaign to end the GOP’s hold on power in Washington and statehouses across the nation.
There are indications that a modest “blue wave” of support may help Democrats seize control of at least one chamber of Congress. But two years after an election that proved polls and prognosticators wrong, nothing is certain on the eve of the first nationwide elections of the Trump presidency.
“I don’t think there’s a Democrat in this country that doesn’t have a little angst left over from 2016 deep down,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, which spent more than ever before — nearly $60 million in all — to support Democratic women this campaign season.
“Everything matters and everything’s at stake,” Schriock said.
All 435 seats in the U.S. House are up for re-election. And 35 Senate seats are in play, as are almost 40 governorships and the balance of power in virtually every state legislature.
While he is not on the ballot, Trump acknowledged on Monday that the 2018 mid-terms represent a referendum on his presidency.
“In a certain way I am on the ballot,” Trump told supporters during a tele-town hall organized by his re-election campaign.
“The press is very much considering it a referendum on me and us as a movement.”
He also contended, as he does daily, that if the Democrats win they will work to roll back everything he’s tried to accomplish. “It’s all fragile,” he said.
Should Democrats win control of the House, as strategists in both parties suggest is likely, they could derail Trump’s legislative agenda for the next two years. Perhaps more important, they would win subpoena power to investigate Trump’s many personal and professional missteps.
Tuesday’s elections will also test the strength of a Trump-era political realignment defined by evolving divisions among voters by race, gender and especially education.
Trump’s Republican coalition is increasingly older, whiter, more male and less likely to have a college degree. Democrats are relying more upon women, people of colour, young people and college graduates.
The political realignment, if it solidifies, could reshape U.S. politics for a generation.
Just five years ago, the Republican National Committee reported that the GOP’s very survival depended upon attracting more minorities and women. Those voters have increasingly fled Trump’s Republican Party, turned off by his chaotic leadership style and xenophobic rhetoric. Blue-collar men, however, have embraced the unconventional president.
One of the RNC report’s authors, Ari Fleischer, acknowledged that Republican leaders never envisioned expanding their ranks with white, workingclass men.
“What it means to be Republican is being rewritten as we speak,” Fleischer said. “Donald Trump has the pen, and his handwriting isn’t always very good.”
A nationwide poll released Sunday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal details the depth of the demographic shifts.
Democrats led with likely African-American voters (84 per cent to 8 per cent), Latinx voters (57 per cent to 29 per cent), voters between the ages of 18-34 (57 per cent to 34 per cent), women (55 per cent to 37 per cent) and independents (35 per cent to 23 per cent). Among white college-educated women, Democrats enjoy a 28-point advantage: 61 per cent to 33 per cent.
On the other side, Republicans led with voters between the ages of 50 and 64 (52 per cent to 43 per cent), men (50 per cent to 43 per cent) and white people (50 per cent to 44 per cent). And among white men without college degrees, Republicans led 65 per cent to 30 per cent.
Democrats hope to elect a record number of women to Congress. They are also poised to make history with the number of LGBTQ candidates and Muslims up and down the ballot.
Former President Barack Obama seized on the differences between the parties in a finaldays scramble to motivate voters across the nation.
“One election won’t eliminate racism, sexism or homophobia,” Obama said during an appearance in Florida. “It’s not going to happen in one election. But it’ll be a start.”
Trump has delivered a very different closing argument, railing against Latin American immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S. border.
With the walking caravan weeks away, Trump dispatched more than 5,000 troops to the region. The president also said soldiers would use lethal force against migrants who throw rocks, before later reversing himself.
Still, his xenophobic rhetoric has been unprecedented for an American president in the modern era: “Barbed wire used properly can be a beautiful sight,” Trump told voters in Montana.
The hypercharged environment is expected to drive record turnout in some places, but on the eve of the election, it’s far from certain which side will show up in the greatest numbers.
The outcome is clouded by the dramatically different landscape between the House and Senate.
Democrats are most optimistic about the House, a sprawling battlefield extending from Alaska to Florida. Most top races, however, are set in America’s suburbs where more educated and affluent voters in both parties have soured on Trump’s turbulent presidency, despite the strength of the national economy.
Democrats need to pick up two dozen seats to claim the House majority.