Trump tsunami coming

The conventional wisdom flow- ing from the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district isn’t wrong: Republicans truly are on track to get a “shellacking” in November.

It will be gruesome and almost certainly cost them control of the House and possibly even the Senate, after which the word impeachment will be heard more often and with greater credibility.

The party controlling the White House has lost an average of 29.2 House seats and 4.2 Senate seats in midterm elections since 1938. Democrats especially suffered from this trend during the Obama years, shedding a remarkable total of 76 in the House and 17 in the Senate in 2010 and 2014.

Although the GOP is often thought to have an edge in midterms, where the turnout tends to be more “pale” and “frail” (whiter and older), the hunch is that this time around a name that won’t be on the ballot anywhere will matter far more than any that will, to great Republican disadvantage.

In terms of party dynamics, Donald Trump has somehow managed to mobilize and unite the other party while demoralizing and dividing his own.

As National Review’s Kyle Smith recently put it, “It’s the personality, stupid. The Chernobyl cloud of noxious presidential behavior is poisoning the party from coast to coast … supplying the Democrats with a turnout motivator like no other.”

Democrats will consequently do everything they can to link every Republican candidate to Trump, effectively nationalizing every race and forcing their opponents to either stand by or disavow a Republican president who commits outrages so fast that the 24/7 news cycle can’t keep up.

According to Gallup, presidents with approval ratings above 50 percent tend to see their party lose an average of only 14 House seats in midterm races; those below 50 percent tend to lose an average of 36.

At last glance, Trump was at 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics composite poll. The generic congressional ballot gave the Democrats an 8.2 percent edge.

The price for allowing a hostile takeover of their party will thus be paid by Republican candidates at the ballot box beginning seven months from now and likely culminating in November 2020.

Trump’s followers, for whom he can do no wrong, are more akin to members of a personality cult than members of a political party; they turn out for Trump rallies, not so much on election day for other Republican candidates.

Trump is dedicated to serving the interests of only Trump, and his most ardent supporters are loyal to him, not to the GOP. In many respects, they might even prefer to see mainstream Republicans go down in defeat in order to accelerate the transformation of the Republican Party into Trump’s personal political vehicle.

Desperate Republicans will try to divert attention away from Trump by throwing up images of Nancy Pelosi taking the speaker’s gavel from Paul Ryan, but they will still be forced to spend most of their time reacting to the latest Trump-inspired controversy and trying to avoid guilt by association.

For decades now, Democrats have benefited from the Republican tendency to blow themselves up; in November the best that Republicans can hope for is that Democrats return the favor.

Regarding which, it is important to realize that, whereas the GOP problem is a megalomaniacal demagogue occupying the Oval Office over whom they have little control and are thus held hostage by, the Democratic problem has become Democrats in general; more specifically a party base pushing the party at breakneck speed toward the radical left in a way that threatens to alienate a center-right electorate.

Along these lines, what Hillary Clinton said in her now infamous speech in India is what most Democrats inwardly think—that those who voted for Trump were backward folks in backward parts of the country who “didn’t like black people getting rights” and “women getting jobs.”

Given that she lost here to Trump by a whopping 27 points, it isn’t hard to figure out into which category the state her husband once served as governor falls.

Call it “Deplorables, the Sequel.” If the biggest challenge for Republicans is what position to take on Trump, the biggest for Democrats will be how to effectively hide their distaste for Trump voters while seeking their votes in those backward byways of the hinterland.

Accusing people of sexism and racism because they didn’t vote for you, pace Hillary, probably won’t do the trick. Nor will suggesting that women are so weak that they just vote the way their husbands, bosses and sons tell them to.

In the end, the tsunami to come will be more a rejection of Trump than an embrace of what the Democrats are offering (which consists of little more than “resistance”).

There are expectations of behavior associated with the office of the presidency that cannot be flouted, and voters will (and should) punish those who fail to uphold those norms. In Noah Rothman’s words, “The next election will be a values election— specifically, it will be a referendum on Trump’s values—and voters appear eager to register their dissatisfaction with them.”

November will be all about Trump, Trump, and only Trump, and it won’t be pretty for Republicans.