‘Trump 2024’ tweet, vote in N. Carolina show division
WASHINGTON » President Trump’s tweeting of a “Trump 2024” meme should concentrate the minds of his opponents. So should the results of North Carolina’s special congressional elections on Tuesday.
Perhaps it’s a mistake to take the first too seriously. But it underscores the utterly abnormal, chaotic, norm-breaking and corrupt nature of this administration. We have a leader who, like some of his dictator friends abroad, would love to be president for life. This means he will do everything he can to divide the country by sowing anxiety and intergroup hatred, something he did with gusto on the eve of the Tar Heel state’s balloting.
If Democrat Dan McCready had defeated Republican Dan Bishop rather than lose by about 2 percentage points, we’d be facing Armageddon-inflected political punditry. Combined with many new polls showing Trump’s disapproval ratings in the 55% to 57% range, such an outcome would have created Democratic “Trump is toast” euphoria. And, it could have sparked a panic among Republicans about the costs of allying with a president who plays fast and loose with intelligence, may profit personally from Defense Department outlays and encourages reprimands of scientists who simply tell the truth.
Instead, we learned: (1) divisions between rural and metropolitan voters are deepening; (2) Republicans face trouble winning any suburban-dominated district, making it very hard to win back the House; (3) the vast majority of incumbent House Republicans represent very pro-Trump seats and have no political interest in breaking with him; (4) life will stay complicated for vulnerable Republican senators facing reelection in swing states because they need turnout from voters turned on by Trump but also suburban crossover voters turned off by Trump; (5) division, distraction and fear will always be Trump’s play; and (6) most Americans want to throw Trump out of the White House, but Democrats need to make it easy for them to do so. There will be no miraculous solution to the Trump problem.
Republicans in North Carolina’s 9th District held the seat — not a trivial matter. McCready came even closer to winning in the 2018 midterm elections than he did in the new race, forced by voter-fraud charges against the Republicans. However, while Trump carried the district by 12 points in 2016, McCready lost by only two. A comparable pro-Democratic swing in 2020 would move the state to the Democratic presidential nominee against Trump and be highly troublesome for incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.
The Democrat ran better than he did last year in the Charlotte suburbs, but ran behind his 2018 showing elsewhere, namely in rural areas.
Thus, suburban Democratic first-termers can feel hopeful about next year, but those in rural seats should take notice and be realistic about voters in rural congressional districts.
“The country got a snapshot reminder of the realignment that’s occurring all around us,” said McCready’s pollster Kevin Akins.
Molly Murphy, another McCready strategist, noted how effective the health care issue was for McCready, particularly his focus on Bishop’s votes as a state senator putting him on the side of the pharmaceutical companies.
Especially in the districtrural areas, Trump’s campaigning just before the election likely boosted GOP base turnout. And Trump gave a preview of 2020 with fearmongering, accusing McCready of favoring the release of “thousands of dangerous criminal aliens into your communities” who were guilty of “sexual assault, robbery, drug crimes, kidnapping, and homicide.” And he called the Democrats “the socialist Democrat Party.”
Trump knows he can’t win by cataloging his accomplishments in office. He has to demonize his opponents. The polls show he’ll lose if 2020 is a referendum on him. He can only win if he makes it a referendum on the Democrats. They must make that as difficult as possible.