Voting with the Opposition
Are Conservatives Democrats' Only Hope? Analysis by Todd Lassa
Democrats have had a sense of doom about this year’s midterms and the 2024 presidential election at least since the Senate acquitted Donald J. Trump last February after his second impeachment. While the present hand-ringing may be appropriate under the circumstances — the economy; omicron explosion — the party has been long known for its uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Its lack of discipline is well described by humorist Will Rogers’ immortal quote in which he says he doesn’t belong to an organized party: “I’m a Democrat.”
Republicans often have been split, too, though not so obviously. There was trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt against industrialist- and banker-Republicans. Barry Goldwater versus George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller. The John McCain of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform versus the John McCain of McCain-Palin.
A significantly sized group of Republicans broke off from the party completely when Donald J. Trump won the GOP’s nomination for president in 2016. Now, they might be Democrats’ best chance for not losing quite so much of its super-thin majorities in the House and Senate this November.
The Lincoln Project, itself highly troubled in an almost Democratic Party sort of way, has launched the sharpest television commercials against the former president and his considerable coterie of sycophants and fellow grifters.
Some Democrats seem confident Biden will turn his fortunes around in the next 10 months as his bipartisan infrastructure plan takes hold. Perhaps Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) will see the light on the Build Back Better bill and support at least one of two voter rights bills that might prevent pro-Trump Republicans from turning over Electoral College votes two-and-a-half years from now.
Anti-Trump Republicans would like to defeat the former president’s acolytes, and strip Trump of his tenacious grip on the GOP. It is in their best interests that the Democratic candidates who make that happen are moderates, not hard-left progressives out to swing the political pendulum as far as they dare from the populist-right of the Trump GOP.
Charlie Sykes, a founding editor of The Bulwark, [https://www.thebulwark.com] is a never-Trumper conservative who wants to have moderate Democrats he can vote for so he doesn’t have to leave his ballots blank. Sykes writes that one of Capitol Hill’s Trumpiest of Republican senators, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, has a better chance of winning a third term than the latest poll numbers from the Marquette University Law School indicate.
In the poll taken last October, Johnson had a 36% favorable rating versus 42% unfavorable (while Biden was 43% favorable/53% unfavorable in the state). A year earlier, Johnson was at 36/33. He scored 40/30 in October 2019.
Despite the latest numbers, Sykes believes factors favoring a third term for Johnson include:
1.) The national political environment.
2.) A Wisconsin track record of “out of party” Senate incumbents winning midterms.
3.) Democrats nominating “unelectable” challengers.
To that last point, Sykes notes the frontrunner so far (among a dozen-plus intended Democratic candidates) to challenge Johnson is Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who has been endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and would be the most high-profile senator belonging to the party’s progressive wing. Just what Democrats need, a candidate ripe for attack as a “socialist.”.
Will Democrats heed Sykes’ warning? Can the Party of Lincoln crowd influence Democratic primaries?
Progressive Democrats can win House seats in reliably liberal areas: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents a district that includes the Bronx and parts of Queens, Rashida Tlaib mostly covers Detroit, Ilhan Omar mostly Minneapolis. Sure, the Senate has Warren and Bernie Sanders, but as a native Cheesehead like Sykes, I can tell you that Wisconsin – the state of both “Fighting” Bob LaFollete and Joe McCarthy – politically is no Massachusetts or Vermont. Barnes’ current office didn’t require the volume of votes necessary to win a gubernatorial or U.S. Senate election. For Barnes to win the Senate election this year, he will need a huge turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, probably resulting in votes being counted after 3 a.m. Eastern, just as in the ’20 presidential election.
For the time being, it looks like Democrats are only in the moment, hoping a House select committee issues Trump a subpoena and stop him in his tracks. Maybe they’ll pay attention to the entreaties of anti-Trump conservatives after November 8. But don’t bet on it.
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