It may seem a little premature for a conservative to point at a Democratic Party firmly in control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives as having problems, but according to liberal polling guru David Shor, the Democrats are on the edge of a long trip through the political wilderness.
At The New York Times, Ezra Klein writes of Shor’s polling projections:
But it’s 2024 when Shor’s projected Senate Götterdämmerung really strikes. To see how bad the map is for Democrats, think back to 2018, when anti-Trump fury drove record turnout and handed the House gavel back to Nancy Pelosi. Senate Democrats saw the same huge surge of voters. Nationally, they won about 18 million more votes than Senate Republicans — and they still lost two seats. If 2024 is simply a normal year, in which Democrats win 51 percent of the two-party vote, Shor’s model projects a seven-seat loss, compared with where they are now.
Klein and Shor go on to blame structural factors that favor rural over urban voters in the Senate, but Shor also tells Klein this:
The deeper problem with the Democrats is not a Senate that favors rural voters — it is that the hyper-educated radical white progressive elite that runs the party ultimately does not share the same values as the voters it purports to represent.
Nowhere is this more evident than the issue of immigration. Again from Klein:
The solution that Obama used to diffuse the immigration issue was just to never talk about it. Romney, Klein notes, helped Obama in this regard because he also was clearly uncomfortable talking about immigration.
Trump had no such qualms.
The question is if a post-Trump GOP will be as willing to engage on the issue.
