As a pick-me-up for any readers bummed out by our recent cautionary post on the Alabama election results, I recommend this sharp-eyed analysis from New Republic’s Jeet Heer about what Doug Jones’ victory may portend for U.S. politics. After commenting on President Trump's notable failure to persuade voters to support his preferred candidate in Alabama, Heer makes a few further observations that seem both correct and grounds for optimism:
Trump is turning out to be a true disaster for the Republican Party, because his hardcore supporters are numerous enough to win primaries (as they did for both Moore and Trump), but can only be mobilized by a divisive politics that’s alienating a chunk of traditional Republicans while also animating the Democratic opposition. This can only to lead political disaster for the Trump led GOP.
In the wake of Moore’s defeat, Republicans will be more divided than ever. Moore supporters like Steve Bannon, the Breitbart CEO and former Trump strategist, had prepared for such a result—and whom to blame for it.
The Republican Party is facing a nightmare 2018 scenario where Bannon-backed populist candidates disrupt the primaries, creating wounds that will make it difficult for the GOP to unify and win general elections.
There’s a final ominous fact about the Alabama election. Moore lost in large part because of the accusations of sexual assault against him. This is an indication of a sea change in American culture, one that bodes ill for a president who notoriously boasted that his celebrity allowed him to grope women with impunity. Seeing Tuesday night’s election results, Trump has every reason to worry that the social forces that took down Moore have the president in their crosshairs.
Let’s take these point by point. First, the idea that Trump’s very success with a hardcore base is also working against him has been a central theory of Trump Studies since he began running for the presidency. The 2016 election was a body blow to this notion, seeing as Trump ended up alienating a whole lot fewer Republican voters than many thought he would; in the end, partisan loyalty ruled the day. The Alabama election results, like those in Virginia last month, suggest that now that they’ve experienced the full horrific reality of an empowered Trump, sufficient numbers of Republicans are starting to lose their enthusiasm for the GOP to help the Democrats make substantial gains. And as demonstrated in both Virginia and Alabama, Trump’s presidency has galvanized Democratic voters, much more than his candidacy did in 2016; again, the lived experience of a Trump presidency seems to have made a world of difference.
On to the second point: Heer’s suggestion that Moore’s defeat will divide the Republican Party even more presupposes that it’s divided to begin with, which may be underestimating the degree to which the Donald Trump-Steve Bannon white nationalist vision has overcome the GOP as a whole. Many obviously still resist this authoritarian, racist vision — Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker come to mind — but many more, both politicians and rank and file, have embraced it. Moore’s defeat gives these slightly less conservative politicians ammunition for making a case that the party has gone too far to the right, but it seems to me that most Republican voters are still on board with the red meat vision of Trumpism. My guess is that the “Bannon-backed populist candidates” won’t divide the party so much as largely win their races, reflecting the horrid new consensus position of the Republican Party. In facing their Democratic challengers, though, we will have the best test to date of whether this shift to the right will end up losing them more votes than they gain.
Finally, it does seem certain that a “sea change in American culture” is upon us, with a reckoning regarding sexual harassment and assault against women finally at hand. My gut tells me that “tidal wave” may be a more apt nautical description than "sea change" for the righteous storm, both cultural and political, that daily roils and strengthens around us, and that will likely upend political expectations in 2018 and beyond. Jonathan Chait has written a short piece on how Trump’s self-avowed history as a sexual predator may yet come back to destroy his presidency, after he himself lit the fuse that runs through the exposure of Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent cascade of sexual misconduct stories involving public figures. Whether or not such fitting poetic justice is visited upon the president, it bears remembering that we are only at this critical moment because in response to misogynists like Trump, thousands of women have gone public with painful stories — an inspiring democratic response to the sexual infractions of the powerful.
