President Trump doesn’t like long spiels from anyone, including his close advisers, at White House sessions. He has a short attention span if he thinks he’s being lectured.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has found a way to grab Trump’s attention and hold it. I’m told he starts with this: “Mr. President, this is about your reelection.” With the 2020 election 14 months away, nearly every issue touches on his reelection.
The two-year budget that was being negotiated at the White House in August certainly did. The president was told he had three options to choose from: a government shutdown, a series of short-term continuing resolutions that would cause problems for the military, and an agreement that featured an expensive hike in spending.
Mr. Trump knew how strongly Mr. McConnell opposes government shutdowns. And the president himself is wary of causing difficulties for the military. That left one option, a deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The media hasn’t been much help in explaining why so many House Republicans are retiring. There are some who fear enduring a grueling fight for reelection, and then losing. But there may be more who fear winning.
How could this be? In last year’s midterms, Democrats captured the majority, 235-197. In the House, Republicans are living a nightmare. That’s what being in the minority amounts to in the “lower chamber.” They have practically no power. The press doesn’t bother with them as important players, only as critics of Democrats. Otherwise, they are politically invisible.
Being in the minority is painful for Republicans after basking in the majority since 2010, when they won 63 seats. For eight years, they ran the show — the committees, the House floor, occupying the biggest and best offices. Now the Democrats have all that as they concentrate on finding reasons to impeach Trump.
Just for the record, the Senate is a paradise in comparison, even for the minority. The Senate is 52-47 Republican. Yet the media take Senate Democrats seriously. They can credibly run for president. Not so, House members. Minority senators can filibuster Republican bills and sometimes block them. Think of all the politicians who were nobodies in the House, starting with JFK and LBJ, but became famous as senators.
Poor presidential candidates are good at casting their campaigns in a favorable light. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is an example of this phenomenon. “My campaign may well have been ahead of its time,” she told the New York Times when she became the first of the six women running for the Democratic presidential nomination to drop out.
That’s not the reason she flopped. Gillibrand had too many shortcomings to be taken seriously as a potential president. First-time candidates often stumble when they seek the presidency, and she did. Joe Biden crashed in his first two presidential races.
Gillibrand’s background was a problem. As a House member from Upstate New York, she fashioned herself a moderate Democrat, notably outside the liberal camp on the gun issue. She got a high rating from the National Rifle Association. This was not forgotten in the political community, even after she switched 180 degrees to become a gun control advocate.
It was one of many flip-flops. As a presidential candidate, she joined the pack in trying to make sure no candidate got to her left. But in two presidential debates, Gillibrand had trouble speaking credibly as an orthodox leftist. She vowed to ban money entirely from politics and campaigns and boasted about being the only candidate to do so. But she failed to understand how far-fetched she sounded. Liberals have tried and failed for decades to keep private money out. The more realistic of them have now given up, concluding that money will always play a role in politics.
A front-page piece by Lisa Lerer in the New York Times said Gillibrand “attempted to distinguish her candidacy by offering the most outspokenly feminist message of the field.” But “more female candidates in a race can help voters see women as viable political leaders without making one campaign a referendum on gender equality.”
As an outspoken feminist, Gillibrand was quite credible. But it didn’t give her the political boost she needed.
Republican strategists are worried about the low approval ratings of senators seeking reelection next year.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, for instance, polls in the low 20s.
Who do the strategists blame for this? President Trump. He dominates the news so thoroughly that Republicans one rung below him in the Senate are all but shut out. This also occurred in 2018. But this year, it’s worse.
Fred Barnes, a Washington Examiner senior columnist, was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.
