Back around Thanksgiving, the conventional wisdom was that a major electoral hurricane was coming. Will it be 60 or 50 or 40 seats in the House? Could the Dems even pick up the Senate?
All of the talk about “a blue wave” was based on two things: President Trump’s bad approval ratings and millions of Democrats who couldn’t wait to show up and vote. It was 2010, but this time, the Democrats were going to win.
Well, the political meteorologists are now adjusting the forecast. Let’s bring in The Atlantic and talk among party leaders that maybe running against Trump is a bad idea. It’s time for Democrats to tell voters something else:
For instance, a recent New York Times interview with former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick and Democratic strategist Joe Trippi (entitled “Enough Trump Bashing, Democrats”) emphasized the dangers of overreach, stridency, and partisanship.
“We need to focus less on what’s wrong with Trump and the Republicans and more on what’s right with us,” said Patrick. With Trump calling for an infrastructure bill – the holy grail of performative bipartisanship – the pressure for moderate Democrats to work with Trump is likely to grow.
By the way, we saw some of those moderates rise up during the DACA shutdown talk.
President Trump has a few things going his way at the moment, such as the U.S. economy. It’s amazing how much a strong economy can protect a president. Who remembers President Clinton 1998-99?
We caution everyone that November is still eight months away.
However, I saw an interesting contrast in the streets of Dallas a couple of weekends ago.
On one side, you had your women’s march, a largely anti-Trump gathering with zero diversity. On the other hand, thousands showed up for a pro-life march, according to The Dallas Morning News. The pro-life march had a huge Hispanic presence.
What happens in November? We will wait for the voters to tell us, but I saw a lot of resistance in Dallas, and it was not against Trump.
