An anti-Trump wave boosts Democrats
What happened
Democrat Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam won a bitterly fought race for Virginia governor this week, capping off a wave of victories for the Democratic Party as voters delivered a stinging rebuke of President Trump on the first anniversary of his election. Northam defeated his opponent, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, by 9 points, amid the highest turnout for any gubernatorial race in 20 years. While Gillespie refused to campaign directly with Trump, the Republican candidate adopted many of the president’s positions on cultural issues, defending Confederate monuments and linking Northam to the MS-13 Central American gang. Trump had recorded a robocall and tweeted in support of Gillespie, but disavowed him after his defeat—saying that the Republican “did not embrace me or what I stand for.”
The Democratic sweep extended both down the ballot and in races across the country. Democrats were on the verge of regaining control of Virginia’s House of Delegates pending a recount, with transgender activist Danica Roem unseating state lawmaker Robert G. Marshall, who described himself as the state’s “chief homophobe.” In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor suffered a landslide gubernatorial defeat to former banker Phil Murphy, while in Maine, a Democratic-supported initiative to expand Medicaid passed by a nearly 20-point margin. Democrats also took control of the Washington state senate. “This is a tidal wave,” said polling expert David Wasserman. “Democrats are the current favorite for control of the House in 2018.”
What the editorials said
The Virginia gubernatorial result was a decisive rejection of Trump’s “white nationalism” and “hateful politics,” said The New York Times. Gillespie started off the campaign as mainstream Republican, but when he lagged in the polls he “chose to dog-whistle himself breathless in pursuit of the state’s pro-Trump white voters.” He ran inflammatory ads featuring “menacing tattooed” MS-13 gang members, accusing Northam of being “weak” on illegal immigration; Gillespie even tried to portray his opponent as a defender of child sex abusers. Trump claims the former lobbyist didn’t “embrace” him or what he stands for. “Gillespie did, and he lost.” Pro-Northam groups did their fair share of dragging this election into the gutter, said the Richmond Times-Dispatch. A liberal Latino group paid for a highly divisive campaign ad depicting a racist Gillespie supporter in a pickup truck chasing minority children. This was a toxic, “dispiriting” election, said The VirginianPilot, fueled by political tribalism on both sides. Unfortunately, in the Trump era, it’s probably “indicative of what voters elsewhere can expect in the coming years.”
What the columnists said
So much for the Democrats being in “disarray,” said Eric Levitz in NYMag.com. Team Blue didn’t just win big in Virginia; Democratic candidates also picked up unexpected legislative seats and mayoralties in Georgia, North Carolina, and other states. Widespread Trump revulsion is helping Democrats overcome their historic “Achilles’ heel”: “turning out nonwhite voters in a nonpresidential year.”
“Republicans had better brace themselves,” said John Podhoretz in CommentaryMagazine.com. Until now, it seemed like Trump “possessed mystical powers” enabling Republicans to avoid the electoral consequences of his historically dismal approval ratings, currently at 37 percent. Now, “political gravity has reasserted itself.” Trump is mobilizing Democratic voters in huge numbers, increasing the chances that their party will regain control of the House in 2018. Republicans need to adapt—and fast, said Kevin Williamson in NationalReview.com. Hitching their wagon to Trumpism clearly isn’t worth the “degradation,” and the only way to avoid being dragged down by this relentlessly “obnoxious” president is to distance themselves from him.
Trump himself should be very worried, said Matthew Yglesias in Vox.com. Polls find Republicans down 10 points in a generic House contest, and while the president often treats congressional Republicans with disdain, their fates are intertwined. In 2019, “even a thin Democratic majority would open the floodgates of oversight that Republicans have kept shut, with hearings extending well beyond the Russia matter to the Trump family’s systematic conflicts of interest.” If this wave keeps building, the president could find himself “in big trouble.”