Gallup‘s latest Party Affiliation poll should be disheartening for the GOP … who have, of course, governing dominance at the moment.
So the question in my mind is what has more importance here? Is it just Democratic incompetence, culminating in an inability to get their voters to the polls? Or completely unable to persuade Independents to their cause?
Or is it gerrymandering showing a very ugly face? This won’t explain the Senatorial dominance of the GOP, slender as it is, but it might explain their current dominance in the House.
And this result probably explains the recent trend of Democrats winning Republican seats in state-level special elections, as last happened last night in Georgia:
It was already a foregone conclusion, but Democrat Jen Jordan has become the newest member of the Georgia State, ending a two-thirds supermajority previously enjoyed by Republicans.
Jordan, a lawyer, won the election over Howard, a pediatric dentist, with 10,681 votes (64 percent) against Howard’s 6,017 votes (36 percent).
Howard and Jordan entered the runoff after drawing the most votes in a crowded field during the initial election. The seat was previously held by Republican Hunter Hill, who resigned to run for Georgia Governor, so it was a big surprise that two Democrats garnered the most votes. [Cobb County Courier]
A “jungle primary” resulted in two Democrats facing off. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee claims the Democrats have flipped 33 seats in 2017. I’m not sure how many Democratic seats have come under GOP control in the same time period, but it seems unlikely they have anywhere near as many.
It doesn’t take any insight that the Democrats have high hopes for the 2018 midterms; they feel they just need to beat the mighty GOP marketing machine, which is quite formidable.
But, for me, what will it take for the GOP to reconsider its suicidal – and country-damaging – ways? Or are they too addicted to the donor-supplied cash, who now seem to be directing the GOP, at least in part?
The next national level special election is for the former Senatorial seat of Jeff Sessions, where accused child molester and stalker Roy Moore of the GOP is up against Democrat and “pro-abortionist”, as the GOP‘s literature says, former Federal prosecutor Doug Jones. I suspect the GOP, which has recently turned against its stated principles (with the exception of a few Senators) to back Moore after all, will retain the seat – Alabama goes its own way, even at the expense of its moral standing (and soul, if you believe in such things), and right now they perceive “the establishment” as being against Moore. Polls are all over the place, so it’s not worth citing them.
But the Democrats are actually in a win-win situation, if they are smart enough to take advantage of it. Moore is reportedly clever – he knows how to talk to Alabamans – but not particularly bright. If he wins, he’ll function as a screaming red canker on the hide of the GOP, and by highlighting this fact, and the evident fact that the GOP will embrace anyone of dubious morals and intellect, the Democrats should be able to swing more Independents to their side.
And if they win, it’ll spotlight the GOP as a Party in terrifying moral – and demographic – decline.
We’ll see how this plays out.
