A number of young and diverse voters are already moving to solidly conservative states and it's conceivable that an urban exodus that results from the pandemic could accelerate these trends. More importantly, President Trump and the blistering, smashmouth partisanship that constantly flows from the White House have forced Americans to confront the GOP's ugly transformation since the 1980s. Trump's botched response to the pandemic and his attempts to pander to extremists through backlash politics have forced a difficult conversation about the future of the Republican Party.
The potential costs of another four years under Trump have become clear, and it seems voters are leaning blue. Trump has failed to contain the spread of Covid-19, and the US faces a deadly, tumultuous and dysfunctional future as other countries are reopening.
We haven't seen a landslide victory since Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Democrat Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election. That was an important victory because it cemented the political standing of the conservative movement that Reagan brought into the halls of power and solidified the coalition of neoconservatives, the religious right and business and Wall Street conservatives that Reagan had stitched together in his 1980 election.
In the 1964 election, Democrat Lyndon Johnson decimated Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and set right-wing conservatism back many years, offering a mandate to the Great Society, a set of domestic policies aimed at ending poverty, reducing crime, providing health care insurance, improving education and more. After that, Republicans ran away from the Goldwater brand and entered into deals with Democrats on policies like Medicare.
Election victories of this scale and scope are harder to come by these days. The impact of a highly polarized electorate means that there are very few swing voters anymore. Most states are solidly blue or red, leaving elections to be won or lost in a handful of swing states, with slight margins decided by a small number of voters.
That will most likely be the case in 2020. If Democrats mount a significant victory, Republicans could face the potential loss of both the White House and the Senate majority, as well as stinging defeats at the state and local level. This kind of election outcome would be particularly devastating for the GOP, given the fact that, as many commentators have pointed out, the Republican base has been shrinking for some time. Republicans have depended on institutions such as the Electoral College and voting restrictions to prop up their diminishing numbers.
A landside election is one of the few cataclysmic events that could actually challenge our current political landscape. It would leave Republicans, a party influenced by intense partisanship, to finally do some serious soul-searching and put forth constructive policies and a new political strategy in order to win again. It would force a reckoning within the party, which has stood loyally by President Trump throughout his term, as he says the quiet parts out loud. A huge defeat could give younger voices in the GOP —rather than the Tucker Carlson types who take a deeper dive into Trumpian Republicanism—the political space to push their leadership to finally move in different directions.
The odds of a huge defeat, of course, are slim. Polarization is a powerful thing and despite all the sturm and drang from the Trump White House, most voters might just end up coming home. It's important to remember that President Trump has yet to unload his full arsenal—from the inevitable smear campaigns to the possible investigations the Justice Department could launch to undermine Biden.
There are still four months until election day, but if these current poll numbers hold, Biden might end up accomplishing something truly historic. If he and the Democrats inflict the kind of damage on the GOP that members can't simply forget, he might end up ushering in a "new normal" that Washington has not seen in a long time by pressuring the Republican Party to think long and hard about the principles of governance and institution-building once again.
"What" - Google News
July 19, 2020 at 07:48AM
https://ift.tt/2Cqoj7A
What a Trump loss could look like - CNN
"What" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3aVokM1
https://ift.tt/2Wij67R
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "What a Trump loss could look like - CNN"
Post a Comment