The national media are blaming President Trump for Republican Roy Moore’s defeat Tuesday night, even though the Senate candidate in Alabama was dogged throughout the campaign’s final month by repeated accusations of inappropriate conduct with teenage girls, and most voters didn’t see Trump as a factor.
Democrat Doug Jones eked out a victory by a little more than 1 percent of the vote in a state that Trump won handily in 2016, and columnists and analysts said Trump was the reason.
“[I]t’s now pretty clear that Trump is a giant anvil on the backs of Republican candidates,” CNBC’s John Harwood declared on Twitter.
“Trump openly supported Moore, urging the residents of a state that he won by about 30 points in November 2016 to reward him anew and smile again on the G.O.P,” wrote New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. “Their refusal to do so is vivid proof of the president’s vulnerability, no matter Moore’s flaws.”
it’s now pretty clear that Trump is a giant anvil on the backs of Republican candidates
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) December 13, 2017
Ross Douthat, the Times’ right-leaning columnist, said the election “was not so much a rejection of the Trump agenda as it was a rejection of the whole Trumpian mode of politics.”
Exit polling published by the Washington Post, however, offered mixed evidence on how important of a factor Trump’s presidency was to voters in the election. Among all voters, Trump’s approval was split even, with 48 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving.
Fifty-one percent said Trump was not a factor at all in casting their vote.
On the allegations of misconduct, 60 percent of voters said those were at least a minor factor in their vote. Thirty-four percent said the allegations were one of several important factors. Thirty-five percent said they were not a factor.
Still, journalists hung the results on Trump.
David Von Drehle of the Washington Post said Moore’s defeat “is about a rising tide of Americans who won’t swallow the bilge President Trump is pushing.”
Writing for the Times, the anti-Trump conservative writer and MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes also said the Alabama election was a sign of more to come.
“With Roy Moore’s humiliating loss in the Alabama Senate race,” Sykes wrote, “the Trumpified Republican Party finds itself both defeated and dishonored, with no sign that it has yet hit bottom.”
