Apparently Trump's open white nationalism in the final days of the 2018 midterm campaign is finally a bridge too far for suburban GOP voters, who are now looking for the exits in suburban purple House districts.
Two years ago, the presidential election hinged in large part on a rightward shift among working-class whites who deserted Democrats.
Tuesday’s House election may turn on an equally significant and opposite force: a generational break with the Republican Party among educated, wealthier whites — especially women — who like the party’s pro-business policies but recoil from President Trump’s divisive language on race and gender.
Rather than seeking to coax voters like these back into the Republican coalition, Mr. Trump appears to have all but written them off, spending the final days of the campaign delivering a scorching message about preoccupations like birthright citizenship and a migrant “invasion” from Mexico that these voters see through as alarmist.
In Republican-leaning districts that include diverse populations or abut cities that do — from bulwarks of Sunbelt conservatism like Houston and Orange County, Calif., to the well-manicured bedroom communities outside Philadelphia and Minneapolis — the party is in danger of losing its House majority next week because Mr. Trump’s racially-tinged nationalism has alienated these voters who once made up a dependable constituency.
One of those disenchanted voters is J. Mark Metts, a 60-year-old partner at one of this city’s prestigious law firms. Mr. Metts had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate until 2016. Now he and some of his neighbors in the moneyed River Oaks enclave of Houston are about to oppose a Republican once again, to register their disapproval of President Trump.
“With Congress not really standing up to Trump, this election is becoming a referendum,” Mr. Metts said, explaining why he would no longer support the re-election of Representative John Culberson, an eight-term Republican.
Mr. Culberson is now running roughly even with the Democratic candidate, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll last week — an extraordinary development in a district that has not elected a Democrat since before an oilman named George H.W. Bush won here in 1966, and one that illustrates how difficult Mr. Trump has made it for his party to retain control of the House.
The president amplified his fear-peddling Wednesday night with an online video that is being widely condemned as racist, showing a Mexican man convicted of killing two California deputies with a voice-over saying “Democrats let him into the country.”
Trump knows as long as he keeps 50 Republican senators, he gets all the federal judges, Supreme Court justices, and treaty agreements he wants. Another two years of the Mitch McConnell federal judge factory, and god forbid another Supreme Court justice, means it doesn't matter what Democrats do in the House in the short run.
Sure, it means investigations and oversight. But on the big issues, Trump can turn to the courts, and grind down the civil rights era one decision at a time until we're back to the 1950's...or the 1850's. There's nothing that makes me believe that Trump won't finish out his term and be a clear favorite for re-election unless he crashes the economy, a legitimate concern. And even then, Trump can blame House Democrats.
And remember, all these Republicans who hate Trump would come back to the party in a heartbeat if Mike Pence was running. We'd be right back to 2016, only without Trump.
The Republicans will be fine without the House. If anything, it gives Trump what he loves the most: an "enemy of the people" to scream at on Twitter every day for the next two years.
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