It’s noteworthy that neither Party is doing well.
On the right is one of the most important charts in the current American political landscape. From Gallup, it speaks to how Americans feel about adhering to specific party tenets.
In two words, they don’t. In case you’re wondering, this 2017 chart is roughly reflective of the latest Gallup polling of August 1 – Independents at 43%.
I was reflecting on the Republicans and Democrats post-midterms, and how both parties are dependent on wooing Independents in order to get themselves elected. If the Democrats do manage to take control of the House as expected, Megan McArdle sees the Democratic majority as coming under tremendous pressure to begin impeachment proceedings:
And if Democrats manage to eke out a majority in both houses of Congress, here is the poll’s really bad news for Trump: Half the country wants him impeached. …
Most worrying for Trump is that three-quarters of Democrats say they want Congress to impeach him. If Democrats gain control, they will be under immense pressure from their base to deliver.
That doesn’t mean they’ll do it. It takes a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate to actually remove a president from office. The best that Democrats can possibly manage in 2018 is a narrow majority; they would need more than a handful of Republican senators to support removal. The leaders of a Democrat-controlled House might well decide they’d rather not force their Senate brethren to take a hard and futile vote.
For long-term Republican strategists, a failure to impeach may actually be a fucking disaster, as Megan hints at elsewhere. In Trump you have a President who is fundamentally disconnected from reality, who lies and cheats and is, for the first time, under continual observation by observers who make their money by discovering mistakes – the free press. He knows this, and tries to defend himself through his Fake News meme, but when even Fox News is beginning to criticize Trump, it may slowly be dawning on everyone in the news business that an attack on one is an attack on all, when it comes from the Executive.
But he remains the face of the Republican Party. In fact, in these mid-terms many Republican candidates are embracing him like Superman, as I’ve noted a number of times, and have used a perceived lack of personal loyalty to him as a lever against Republican competitors.
And this must horrify our hypothetical Republican strategist. The Republican brand is being bloodied not just by the incompetent and lying Trump, but by all his little Trump-wannabes.
And for the discerning Independent who takes their role in politics seriously, the Trump phenomenon, antithetical to American principles and customs, must mark the Republican party as an anathema not to be condoned.
Sure, there’s a lot of Independents who don’t take their role seriously, or absolutely loathe Democrats for reasons legitimate or illegitimate, or are single-issue voters who have yet to understand there’s more to politics than a strong defense, or abortion, or transgender bathrooms. But they will learn.
And the lessons to be learned is that the guy holding the biggest office happens to be Republican and lies a lot. And so do a lot of his adherents.
So what happens if Trump is not impeached and convicted next year? He has two more years of wrecking the Republican brand. Sure, his supporters won’t see it that way – but their intensity of loyalty is vitiated by their small numbers, which are shrinking as more and more come to their senses, and the demographics inevitably eat away at them, they being mainly older voters.
In the short-term, there’s a lot of hand-wringing over the Senate and how the Democrats can, at best, only hope for a slim majority. But what happens in 2020? There will be a lot more Senate Republican seats up on the election block, and a President who, in all likelihood, will have become far more toxic than he is even now – and, yes, I find that a little hard to stomach, too. But that’s what will happen. And that amateur claptrap he spews will end up all over the Republican brand, and its consequences will become apparent.
The Republican strategist should be squirming big. Particularly if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed as a SCOTUS and Roe v Wade is set aside. Independent women will remember that for a long, long time. And they won’t forgive.
