Gov. Matt Bevin’s loss should send a message to embattled Republicans in Trump Country: President Trump is not going to save you if you’re drowning.
Republicans’ loss of both chambers of Virginia’s legislature should send a message to Republicans in the rest of America: Trump is going to drag you down like an anchor.
Since Trump’s shocking upset win in November 2016, the story of politics in America has been pretty simple: Democrats win, Republicans lose.
The explanation is pretty simple, too: Trump has made Trump voters, but not Republicans, out of working-class independents and Democrats, and he has made Democratic voters out of independents and Republicans. Trump has also motivated Democrats to unprecedented levels.
The net effect is a massive shift of the electorate towards Democrats.
To be perfectly clear, Trump didn’t cause Bevin to lose in Kentucky on Tuesday. Bevin did that. But Trump tried and failed to save Bevin. Bevin tried to use Trump as a life raft. Bevin sank despite Trump’s popularity in his state.
Bevin was a remarkably unpopular governor. He ran far behind all the other Republicans running for statewide offices in Kentucky — they swept every office except governor. Bevin was extraordinary also in how furiously he tried to ride Trump’s popularity.
That’s understandable: Trump is amazingly popular in Kentucky. Consider the numbers over the past decade or so. Sen. Rand Paul’s two statewide wins have been by margins of 15 and 11 percentage points. Mitch McConnell’s two wins have been by 16 and 7 percentage points. John McCain won by 17 points, and Mitt Romney won by 22 points. But Trump carried the state by a massive 30 points in 2016.
A down-on-its-heels, opioid-ravaged, working-class, alienated electorate found its champion in Trump.
So Bevin thought that by attaching himself to Trump, he could overcome his own electoral gravity. Bevin somehow tried to run on opposing impeachment. He campaigned on restricting immigration and gave his opponent the Trumpian nickname “Li’l Andy.” Bevin’s ads regularly pictured him and Trump together. The governor even wore an ugly jacket emblazoned with many images of Trump’s face.
The two polls this fall showed either a tie or a Bevin lead. So Bevin brought in Trump for a massive rally the day before Election Day. Trump failed to help Bevin enough.
There’s a bigger story here. In general elections, Trump’s popularity among the white working class translates into one thing only: votes for Trump.
Trump’s core supporters — the type of people he brought out of the political woodwork to give him victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin — still aren’t Republicans. They’re just Trump voters. And that doesn’t mean they’ll listen to Trump’s endorsements, either. It means they’ll vote for Trump, and that’s it.
In Kentucky, the standard Republican gets about 55%. Bevin’s poor first term lost him enough points to drag him below 50%. Had he been able to tap into Trump’s well of independent and Democratic voters, he could have won. That didn’t happen, because Trump voters are just that — Trump voters.
In Ohio, some blue-collar places that had voted Obama and then Trump have swung back, voting on Tuesday for Democrats.
We saw the same thing clearly in Michigan a year ago. Trump in 2016 famously outperformed past Republicans in nearly every county in that state, swinging 12 counties from blue in 2012 to red in 2016. Come the governor’s race in 2018, half of those counties swung back to blue, and the rest gave back most of their GOP gains. Macomb County, the most populous such county, swung 16 points to Trump in 2016, and then 15 points back to Democrats in 2018.
These back-and-forth counties are white and working class. The results in 2018 and 2019 don’t mean the white working-class independents have soured on Trump. They mean that the populist love of Trump was never a love of the GOP. In Michigan, that meant a Trump win in 2016 and Democratic wins in 2018.
While Trump didn’t bring working-class white America into the GOP, he has caused a partisan realignment elsewhere: driving upper-middle-class white America out of the GOP.
Democrats took over Virginia’s state legislature on Tuesday, in part by finishing their conquest of suburban Virginia. In Southeastern Pennsylvania, Democrats took over the county council in suburban Delaware County.
For Trump, it may look like an even trade: lose the wealthy whites and gain the working-class whites. But for the rest of his party, it’s one-sided: lose the wealthy whites but don’t gain anything.
It seems that once again, the folks who entered into a partnership with Trump are coming out on the losing end.
