Can the GOP Win With Trump?
Republicans have decided that their fortunes are tied to the former president, but then why is he spending so much time attacking them?
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If someone sent you this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
I have a new gig. I’m writing a weekly column for MSNBC. This shouldn’t have a significant effect on Truth and Consequences, and one of the nice things about the newsletter is that it gives me a chance to delve a bit deeper into the pieces I write for MSNBC.
This week, I wrote about former President Donald Trump’s role in the Republican Party. Back in May, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said, “There's no way this party is going to stay together without President Trump and his supporters." So my question is, how is the party going to stay together with Donald Trump.
Republicans have made the strategic choice “that their best hope to win back control of Congress is to tie themselves completely to Trump.” The problem with this approach is that “the former president remains mired in the past, relitigating the 2020 election and focused on settling scores with his perceived enemies, be they Democrats or his fellow Republicans.”
Over the past two weeks, he traveled to Ohio to endorse a primary challenge against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who committed the sin of voting for the articles of impeachment against Trump.
He has also attacked his former attorney general, “Slow Moving Bill Barr,” for telling ABC News’ Jon Karl that the president’s claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 were “bulls---.” He targeted "RINO Republican Senators” for negotiating an infrastructure deal with Biden, called for “new leadership” to replace Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and blasted Wisconsin Republicans for “working hard to cover up election corruption” by blocking an audit of the state’s 2020 election returns.
Even when criticizing “Biden’s Department of Justice” for its suit against Georgia over its new election law, he focused most of his venom on the Republican officials in that state who refused to go along with his efforts to steal the 2020 election.
There’s something very strange and discordant about the guy you’ve tied your political fortunes to spending much of his time attacking members of his own party. On the one hand, you have Mitch McConnell trying to figure out how to get back to being Senate Majority Leader, and on the other hand, you have Donald Trump saying that McConnell needs to go. How is that dynamic sustainable over the next 18 months? Trump is more focused on getting back at those who he thinks have wronged him than he is at truly boosting the GOP’s political prospects. Not that this is a surprise: Trump has spent his entire political career caring more about his own needs than the party he leads.
I need to be clear that Trump is a net positive for most Republicans, particularly those in red states. He energizes GOP voters. In an intra-party primary, there’s little benefit for a Republican to be seen as anything but Trump’s political twin. In general elections, most Republican candidates will be running in states that are either solidly red or, at the very least, lean that way.
But, as we saw in the two Georgia Senate races when Trump is attacking his fellow Republicans, it can contribute to suboptimal political outcomes for the party.
Beyond that, Trump’s maniacal focus on his claims of fraud in the 2020 election runs counter to the GOP’s near-term political goal of highlighting the differences between themselves and the Democrats. That is the more significant issue for Republicans: they have a leader who is not on the same page as the rest of the party. They want to talk about the future, and he wants to talk about the past. So every day that Trump is out there complaining about 2020, it puts political pressure on Republicans and reminds Democrats and the small subset of swing voters what they have to fear with a Republican return to power. For the GOP, Trump giveth, but he taketh too, and it’s not hard to imagine that he ends up doing more of the latter than the former.
Look, maybe this all turns out fine for Republicans, and perhaps Trump’s ability to mobilize rank-and-file Republicans outweighs the negative, but this feels like a recipe for disaster.
The Democrat’s Problem With Hispanic Voters
The other day I wrote about Joe Biden’s success with white voters and why that was decisive in winning the presidency in 2020. But I left out a rather important data point from Pew’s research data - Trump’s strong performance among non-white, non-college-educated voters. The esteemed political observer, Ruy Texeira, wrote about this in the substack newsletter, “Liberal Patriot.”
While nonwhite voters as a whole moved toward the GOP in the 2020 election, working class (noncollege) nonwhites moved more sharply toward Trump than college nonwhites (12 margin points vs. 7 points, based on the two party vote) ….
Hispanic working class voters were particularly likely to shift to the Republicans in 2020. Pew data show a 30 point shift toward the GOP relative to 2018 (2016 not available), more than twice the 14 point shift among college Hispanics.
In terms of support levels, the Pew data indicate that noncollege Hispanics gave Trump a remarkable 41 percent of their vote in 2020.
Teixeira is right that this is a remarkable result and one that few political observers would have predicted. But, as I speculated the other day, there may be a confluence of factors at play here. First, Hispanic voters may be imitating the experience of other minority ethnic groups in aspiring to be seen as part of the white majority - and voting accordingly. By that measure, non-college-educated Hispanic voters are simply voting in a similar fashion to non-college-educated white voters.
In 2016, we saw a disparity between the voting patterns of nonwhite women and men. The latter were more likely to vote for Trump, though they still overwhelmingly went for the Democratic candidate. I speculated that these voters didn’t want to vote for a female candidate or perhaps found Trump’s quasi-authoritarian message appealing. But one of the truly surprising results from the Pew research data is that “working-class nonwhite women actually moved more toward Trump (14 points) than working class nonwhite men (9 points).” That, to me, suggests that this might be more than a Trump-related phenomenon and could reflect a slight but notable shift among Hispanic voters.
To be sure, there were some extenuating factors in 2020: the Trump campaign made a concerted outreach effort toward Hispanic and Black voters, and it seems that in some communities (Cuban and Venezuelan) the party’s anti-socialist message resonated. In addition, there was a notable shift among Hispanic working-class voters from 2018 to 2020. Again, that lends credence to the notion that some of this movement was Trump, not GOP-related. So the data is not completely clear, and we’re dealing with a small sample size. But Democrats would be very foolish not to take notice of this. Even a small shift in Hispanic voting patterns toward the GOP could have a decisive impact in places like Texas, Florida, and Arizona - and in a narrowly divided electorate, truly every vote counts.
What’s Going On?
Great piece by Clare Malone on the full Trumpification of the Ohio Republican Party.
Miami has got more problems than just a bad baseball team.
This is a really thoughtful and illuminating piece by Damon Linker on the politics of loneliness.
In his final column, the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell explains the joy of watching sports.
George Packer speaks some hard truths on the sordid legacy of Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week. Packer makes one point that particularly resonated with me. Unlike Robert McNamara, who realized the folly of the war in Vietnam while still in office regretted the decisions he made, Rumsfeld never did. His role in the Vietnam War will permanently tarnish McNamara’s legacy, but in the Fall of 1967, having realized that the war was unwinnable, he had the courage to tell President Lyndon Johnson that it was time to change course. LBJ, of course, ignored him. Rumsfeld never wavered in his support for the war and instead blamed everyone but himself for the mess in Iraq - one that he largely created by arrogantly ignoring his generals and operating from the standpoint that he alone knew best.
This Day In History/Musical Interlude
On this day in history, in 1881, President James Garfield was shot in Washington DC. He had only been president for four months and died 79 days later from his wounds. His vice president Chester Arthur became president. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. In 1863, at the Battle of Little Round Top, the 20th Maine Regiment, arguably, saved the Union Army from defeat at Gettysburg. Of course, the die was largely cast by General Robert E. Lee’s ill-conceived decision to fight the war's decisive battle at Gettysburg after losing the high ground on the battlefield the day before.
In 2005, Pink Floyd reunited for the first time in 24 years at the Live 8 concert in London, England. It’s pretty good.
I’m a big fan of 1989 Grateful Dead, and this is a very tasty show - July 4th, 1989, in Buffalo, NY. The “Morning Dew”/”Not Fade Away” is particularly strong.
On this day, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved a resolution previously presented by Richard Henry Lee that: "These United Colonies Are, And Of Right Ought To Be, Free And Independent States". John Adams celebrated the independence of the United States on this day for the rest of his life.
In your section on Hispanic voters swinging Republican, you did not mention that many are socially conservative and are opposed to abortion and unaccepting of the LGBTQ* community.
I think that is a factor to consider that is especially difficult for the much more inclusive progressive Democratic Party to make inroads with.