Will the ‘Trump 10’ pay a price?
Apparently, no one has informed Bob Casey and Claire McCaskill that they should be running scared.
Casey and McCaskill are among the 10 Democratic senators facing reelection next year in states President Trump carried in 2016. During the transition, almost all of the “Trump 10” not surprisingly declared their willingness to cooperate with the new president. “There are probably a number of areas where we can work with him,” Casey told MSNBC shortly after Trump narrowly carried Casey’s home state of Pennsylvania.
It is an understatement to say the relationship between the president and the Trump 10 hasn’t worked out that way. In recent interviews, both McCaskill and Casey made clear the White House has done almost nothing to solicit their input or enlist their support. “I will be optimistic and hope that moment comes, but not yet,” Missouri’s McCaskill told me.
Instead of being tugged toward Trump, both Casey and McCaskill have been propelled toward resistance of his agenda, and that’s been the case for the rest of the Trump 10 too. The group also includes Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Florida’s Bill Nelson, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow (from swing states that tilted toward Trump); and Montana’s Jon Tester, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin (from more conservative states where the president romped).
The 10’s opposition took root early in Trump’s tenure. None backed Betsy DeVos as Education secretary. Just Manchin, Heitkamp and Donnelly voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. And, more recently, all 10 have signaled opposition to the evolving Senate Republican legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
This pattern of resistance has forced Senate Republicans to try to squeeze more of their agenda into the reconciliation process, which requires fewer votes to pass legislation. It’s also framing what could be the pivotal question in next year’s Senate midterm elections: Will these Democrats pay a price for consistently opposing Trump in states that voted for him?
“They had better hope the king is dead,” said Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant John Brabender, and that Trump isn’t seen in these states as having “delivered” on his core issues.
So far, though, Casey, McCaskill et al have been emboldened to oppose Trump precisely because they believe his agenda hasn’t delivered.
McCaskill said she “respects” Trump voters and their choice to “see if we can upset the status quo.” But she argues that Trump’s agenda would deliver “a gut punch to [the] rural Missouri” communities where he ran best — thanks to a healthcare plan that would raise premiums for older and small-town consumers; proposals to shift federal funding from public to private schools through vouchers; and an infrastructure plan centered on promoting private investment and adding toll roads, both of which are most likely to benefit urban areas.
Casey pointed to similar GOP challenges in Pennsylvania. Add in proposed reductions in community-development grants and home-heating assistance for low-income seniors, Casey said, and “I don’t think that’s what people in his base thought they were getting.”
Just as striking as the substance of the Trump 10’s criticism is its style.
No one uses “firebrand” to describe Casey, a soft-spoken former state auditor with a centrist pedigree. (He’s one of the last prominent Democrats to oppose legal abortion.) Yet, since Trump’s victory, Casey’s defining image was set when he rushed, still in formal white tie, from a Philadelphia Orchestra ball to join an airport protest against the president’s first travel ban in January.
McCaskill, who was also a state auditor after working for years as a prosecutor, has always had a more acerbic political style than Casey, though her voting record is even more centrist. Her defining Trump-era moment came at a hearing in June when she pointedly challenged Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah over the absence of public debate before the release of the Senate healthcare bill. “The question is,” she said of the smothering secrecy, “is this going to be a new normal?”
The Trump 10’s defiant streak carries undeniable risks. Trump carried more than half of the vote in six of the 10 states and dominated with working-class whites across them, exit polls found. Several of the 10, particularly McCaskill and Donnelly, benefited from weak opponents last time. All could face tough recruits in 2018 (though Republican Rep. Ann Wagner, considered McCaskill’s most formidable potential challenger, announced Monday she won’t run).
Yet all of these Democrats could benefit from growing public doubts about Trump’s performance and temperament. By stressing confrontation over accommodation, the Trump 10 are wagering that veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin is right when he predicts that “even in places where Trump won … he will end up being a bigger problem next year for the Republican than the Democratic candidates.”
Ronald Brownstein is a senior editor at the Atlantic. rbrownstein@nationaljournal.com