Don't Exaggerate Trump's Political Power Outside the GOP: Winter Is Coming
In November, Democrats, independents, and Republicans who skip primaries get to vote
Yesterday was primary day in Alaska and Wyoming, two states with very few voters. Two hard-ass Republican women who Donald Trump hates: Lisa Murkowski survived in Alaska, and predictably, Liz Cheney did not—but lives to fight another day. Do you have a political junkie in your life who might want this newsletter? If so, please:
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One of the things I find most peculiar about our current political moment is that many political journalists treat every Republican primary as if it were a sporting event. They keep a running score of Donald Trump’s “wins” and “losses,” not as if he were endorsing candidates (in Missouri, he just winged it and endorsed “Eric” so he was guaranteed a “win”), but as if he were the candidate. “Trump Scores More Primary Wins While Basking in GOP Support,” a New York Magazine headline blared a week ago.
One of today’s post-mortems on Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s defeat in yesterday’s Wyoming primary reassures us that Trump “won” through surrogate Harriet Hageman, but that on Google, searches for Cheney’s name “still lead searches for Trump 24 to 13.” And on NBC.com, today’s headline was “Trump Takes Down Liz Cheney—and Another Political Dynasty.” Presumably, the “other dynasty” in question is the Bush family.
The truth is that Donald Trump does not win or lose any of the races where he makes an endorsement: candidates do, and even if they do it by repeating Trump’s lies, to my mind, they are still doing the work. Google searches tell us nothing about the political future and whether Liz Cheney’s long game can succeed in either keeping her political career alive or ending Trump’s.
As for dynasties? Please. Harriet Hageman is herself a name in Wyoming and not the “political newcomer” some in the national media have made her out to be. Hageman’s father, Jim, was in the state legislature for 20 years. She has been well-known in political circles for her unflinching and often successful opposition to federal environmental regulations and, in 2018, run for governor. Yes, Hageman defeated Liz Cheney, but she certainly did not defeat the whole Cheney family or diminish their influence among a growing number of homeless former Republicans.
Finally, Wyoming is evidence of exactly nothing for 2022 or 2024. It is the least populated and the most conservative state in the nation. Wyoming hasn’t sent a Democrat to Washington since 1975.
Yet, by reimagining primary contests as horse races that center on Donald Trump, the media vastly overstates the Former Guy’s power to control the nation's political fate. Instead, it is just as likely that in most states, primary wins by MAGA candidates were the work of a small number of devoted Trump followers who are likely to be far outnumbered in the general election.
The fact that so many MAGA candidates are winning primaries (and in nearly all of them, even though Trump picked one person to endorse, all the candidates claimed to be MAGA) does not mean that the Trump movement will do well in November. On the contrary, it may be just the opposite. Except for Kansas, where abortion was on the ballot, and Wyoming, where the J6 committee was on the ballot, a fraction of voters, most of them hard-core political junkies, show up for a midterm primary. In Minnesota, 18% of registered voters cast a ballot this summer. Pennsylvania had a record-high turnout in its primary at 36%, but that is less than half the voters who came to the polls in the 2020 presidential primary.
Furthermore, there is always a giant wild card that primaries can’t speak to independent voters. Gallup regularly polls Americans, and while the numbers differ from state to state, and some states have more independents than others, nationwide, 28% of voters are registered Republicans, 29% are registered Democrats, and 41% belong to neither political party.
As a result, I would argue that the journalists who are touting Trump”s “grip” on the GOP may be correct about that. Still, they are gravely underestimating how worried many in the GOP are that these primary “wins” are going to amount to general election losses. In many states, as Republican primary voters choose MAGA extremists over clean-cut John Birch Society throwbacks like Glenn Youngkin, the GOP's grip on governance may become more fragile. Why? Because independents are—well, independent. They aren’t voters whose only value is to support Donald Trump no matter what he does.
And if Democrats can rally around a Liz Cheney, who shares perhaps a tenth of their social and political values, then horrified Republicans and independents in places like Ohio could easily rally around Tim Ryan in his bid to take Rob Portman’s Senate seat away from Republican nominee J.D. Vance. Indeed, a race that should have been easy for Vance to win is now a dogfight.
The damage Trump has done to the Republican party is substantial. Initially, he exploited an existing division in the GOP between so-called conservative “elites” and a far more radical base that emerged during the Obama administration. Trump then launched a cynical and highly destructive pincers movement, in which he more or less bypassed a party apparatus that he didn’t understand and went straight to the voters. When he did that and won the presidency in 2016, Republican politicians suddenly found themselves facing constituents whose idea of what it meant to be conservative was to be loyal to Donald Trump no matter what he did or how foolishly he behaved.
Last night, on a Twitter Space full of conservatives gathering to celebrate Liz Cheney’s loss, an excellent MAGA political consultant was asked what he thought the Republican House majority could look like in 2023. He paused. “Plus two or plus three,” he finally said, a number far lower than the dozen seats that were being talked about only two months ago.
This decrease in expectations means, to my mind, that a Republican House is not a done deal. Not at all.
Trump has also steered his voters into nominating bad candidates—Mehmet Oz, J.D. Vance, and Herschel Walker are excellent examples—that anyone outside the magic Trump circle will have difficulty supporting. He has already lost the Senate for the GOP; he could also lose them the House.
And if Trump runs in 2024, he will absolutely lose them the presidency. You heard it here first.
What I write when you aren’t looking:
“The ‘lost’ Secret Service texts are part of Donald Trump’s rolling coup,” Alternet, August 16, 2022.
Short takes:
At The Nation, Katha Pollitt calls out those on the American left who tag the gravely wounded Salman Rushdie as an Islamophobe—as if that accusation excuses the horrific public attack on him last week by a disturbed man inspired by a decades-old fatwa. Reminding us that the bounty on Rushdie’s life, first issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomenei, is $3.3 million, Pollitt argues that the American left has a responsibility to stand with Rushdie and the principles of free speech his case exemplifies. “The attack on Rushdie is not about rage at anti-Muslim prejudice, and it’s not about racism either,” Pollitt writes; “indeed, Muslims can be of any race. It’s about religious fanaticism organized by a theocratic state, Iran, and rewarded by it too.” (August 17, 2022)
Should reporters stop platforming anti-abortion activists, as Physicians for Reproductive Health have asked. No, says feminist journalist Jill Filipovic on her Substack. “Whether we like it or not, abortion rights are up for debate,” Filipovic writes; “whether we like it or not, the abortion rights side has lost in the Supreme Court, and we have lost in a great many states.” (August 16, 2022)
We always see a correlation of primary votes to the GE, the excitement to the turnout. This seems a bit like hoping for something different to happen.
I agree completely, Claire. Brava!