Welcome back, happy campers! In my last article, I promised to speak more on a very specific subject having to deal with Trump, and his unruly mob, and here I am. I keep my promises.
Right now, every GOP incumbent, especially the delusional ones who think that they have an actual shot for President in 2024, are all busy trying to put Trump’s lightening into a bottle. Kevin McCarthy, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan, Matt Goetz, even that pathetic loser Louie Gohmert, are all trying to grab the tail of the Trump tiger. There is just one problem with that strategy. It won’t work.
This is nothing new for me. In fact, I have been tracking it for almost four long years now, shitty eyes and all. And the evidence is there for anybody who wants to look at it. Republicans already know that they can’t win without the Trump base, but it turns out that they can’t win with it either, since sane GOP suburban women either vote them out or just stay home. But that’s the path before them.
How many times have I written that Trump has the shortest coat tails of any living politician? Trump acolytes constantly try to remodel themselves as Trump, but if he’s not on the ballot personally, they’re likely sunk. Sweet Jesus, Susan Collins, one of the weakest GOP Senate incumbents in 2020, won her reelection by 9 points, which mirrors how much Trump lost the state by.
I have actually been following this phenomenon for the last four cycles, 2017-2020. Trump was elected in 2016. In 2017 the commonwealth of Virginia held their normal off year state elections. The state had a healthy majority for the GOP in both chambers. There were no Senate seats up in 2017, but the Democrats blitzed the place, coming within a literal coin flip of tying the lower chamber. and swept the statewide offices. Post election analyses showed that participation in traditional GOP strongholds was down, and in some cases, seriously so. Trombies didn’t show up.
Also in 2017, there were a whole series of special elections for House seats vacated by GOP incumbents who went to work for the administration. In every damn case, while the Democrats didn’t actually flip any seats, they over performed their 2016 levels, by an average of 11-16 points, making previously safe races close. Also in 2017, the Democrats made sweeping gains in the scheduled off year Illinois state elections. Again, the Trumplets stayed home.
Then came the 2018 midterms. Once again, Trump wasn’t on the ballot, although he did everything in his power to make sure that the election was a referendum on him, And he got absolutely shellacked. White suburban GOP women came out of the woodwork to vote their disapproval for his piggish and racist behavior, and the GOP lost 40 House seats. Hillary won by 3 million votes nationwide in 2016, and in 2018, the Democrats doubled up that bulge, winning nationwide by 6 million votes.
2019 was actually more or less pastoral. Pastoral that is, if you ignore the fact the the Virginia Democrats swept the state, winning Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, and flipped both chambers, giving Ralph Northam working room. And the Illinois Democrats held their own, even electing a Democratic Governor.
More importantly, for our purposes, there was also an off year election in the state of Kentucky. The GOP incumbent, Andy Bevn, who liked to refer to himself as Trump before there was Trump, was up for reelection. And he lost. And this is the critical part. Post election analyses showed that while Trump’s influence drove Democratic votes in major urban areas, especially with black voters through the roof, GOP voting in the traditional GOP strongholds of the southeast and southwest coal counties was way down from 2016 levels. The Trumpkins were busy watching the Teletubbies.
And then came 2020, and once again Trump was on the ballot. And boy! did it show. Trump garnered millions more voters than he did in 2016, but the Democrats crushed him by 8 million votes. Suburban white women, with Trump on the ballot, gave it to him on the chin. They either voted for Biden, or simply left the top spot on the ballot blank. But, and this is important, having taken out their fury on Trump, they came back home for the down ballot races. It wasn’t BLM, or defund the Police that cost the Democrats those seats, it was white suburban women coming home, having taken out their frustrations directly.
But here’s the critical art of the 2020 race, for our purposes. While rump lost Georgia by a couple of whiskers and a sneeze, neither GOP incumbent up for reelection could clear the 50% margin, forcing off a pair of January run offs, winner take all. And here, once again, is the true story, and the Trump weakness.
On January 5th, the night of the special elections in Georgia, it started out badly. Loeffler and Perdue were looking good, but that was due to smaller, rural, GOP stronghold counties presenting their results while everybody else was still counting. And while my sweet wife Teri was hyperventilating, and looking for a paper bag, I was busy paying attention to Steve Kornacki on MSNBC. And the news wasn’t good. For the GOP. The northern border counties of Georgia are the greatest stronghold of support the GOP has. And while they were still coming in with numbers approaching the 83% that Trump got in 2020, GOP voter turnout was down, mostly by 15-30%! Once again, the Trumplets were absent.
And later that night it became worse. On the southern part of the state, there is what I like to call a shallow sickle, that stretches from the eastern border of Georgia to the western border in a shallow dent. It is a GOP stronghold, but with a large black population. Not only was black participation up, but GOP participation was down. The GOP still won those districts, but not by the kind of numbers they needed to offset the Democrats strength in the urban areas.
Have I made my point? Trump is a one-trick-pony, and his schtick only works for Trump. We have had four separate cycles now that definitively show that when Trump personally isn’t on the ballot, there is at least a portion of his most rabid base that stays home. And as Loeffler and Perdue found out, it doesn’t take that many of them to tip the balance. Ossoff and Warnock both won their races by more statewide votes than Biden did. The GOP made their deal with the Devil, and now the check is on the table, The problem is that the GOP cabinet win without support from the Trombies, but four years of evidence makes it fairly conclusive that without Trump himself on the ballot, his people won’t show up. This is going to get good.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like to check out President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange . They comprise a pretty much daily report from the front of the 2016 GOP primaries, as well as the general election
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
They’re still looking at having him ramble at at least one national meeting – ‘scuse me, superspreader event – in April. We can only hope he’s charged or indicted before them.
Be interesting to see what kind of press coverage that gets. My bet? Not nearly as much as Trump wants.
But who is going to sponsor? What companies will want to be associated with it? Well besides Fox and fools. Tucker will be in catnip heaven.
Your writing makes it seem like you’ve been in a better than usual mood for…I don’t know…a little over a week. Must be the wet weather, lol.
All they do is lose, lose, lose with Trump around. They only stick with him because they have nowhere else to go. Pathetic, isn’t it?
After four years of bungling Joe’s job killing policies, high unemployment, 5.00 a gallon gas prices, return to 2.5 economic growth, increasing home energy costs and flooding in of third world immigrants to take away from American citizens, whatever blue collar jobs are left , I suspect democrats will be receiving their walking papers. I bet quite a few will be sent packing when the midterm elections come around as well.
Skepticism noted…looking forward to your disappointment. Now kindly piss off.
Yeah, jim jones. The dumpling in N.Korea with the bad haircut. Hitler. Frump. Personality cult driven dictators can’t be replaced by their sycophants. Until we found out how drug addicted Americans are on sugar & salt, i used to drink regular coke. Diet coke, coke zero, etc., never compared to the taste of the real deal. I can’t imagine anyone following leningrad lindsey anywhere except into the men’s room at the airport. Of course, who could have imagined 75 million of our fellow citizens having their collective heads planted squarely up their collective dumbasses? Speeding around the sun at 67,000 miles/hr. “This is how empires fall” john prine
Let’s see where it goes after all the indictments for tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud etc……