Defying the Odds
Page 21
44. Becky Bond and Zach Exley, “Hillary Clinton’s Vaunted GOTV Operation May Have Turned Out Trump Voters,” Huffington Post, November 11, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clintons-vaunted-gotv-operation-may-have-turned-out-trump-voters_us_582533b1e4b060adb56ddc27.
45. Darren Samuelsohn, “George H. W. Bush to vote for Clinton,” Politico, September 19, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/exclusive-george-hw-bush-to-vote-for-hillary-228395; “George W. Bush Didn’t Vote for Trump or Clinton,” The Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/11/08/george-w-bush-voted-for-neither-trump-nor-clinton.html?viadesktop&sourcecopyurl.
46. Publius Decius Mus, “The Flight 93 Election,” Claremont Review of Books, September 5, 2016, http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/.
47. Phillip Bump, “Two-thirds of Trump voters viewed the election as America’s last chance,” Washington Post, December 2, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/02/two-thirds-of-trump-voters-viewed-the-election-as-americas-last-chance/.
48. James Hohmann, “The Daily 202: Trump’s Pollster Says He Ran a ‘Post-Ideological’ Campaign,” Washington Post, December 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/05/daily-202-trump-s-pollster-says-he-ran-a-post-ideological-campaign/5844d166e9b69b7e58e45f2a/.
49. Ibid.
50. James Hohmann, “The Daily 202: Rust Belt Dems broke for Trump because they thought Clinton cared more about bathrooms than jobs,” Washington Post, November 22, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/11/22/daily-202-rust-belt-dems-broke-for-trump-because-they-thought-clinton-cared-more-about-bathrooms-than-jobs/58339cf3e9b69b7e58e45f1b/?utm_term.7fe59f05a432.
51. Aaron Blake, “3 election stats liberals love that don’t mean as much as they seem,” Washington Post, December 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/13/3-election-stats-liberals-love-that-dont-mean-as-much-as-they-seem/.
52. “Presidential Election Exit Polls,” CNN.
53. Jay Caruso, “Nate Silver Says Comey Letter Cost Hillary the Election But Nothing Suggests That,” RedState, December 12, 2016, http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2016/12/12/nate-silver-says-comey-letter-cost-hillary-the-election/.
54. Dan Hopkins, “Voters Really Did Switch to Trump at the Last Minute,” FiveThirtyEight, December 20, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voters-really-did-switch-to-trump-at-the-last-minute/.
55. Amy Chozick, Nicholas Confessore, and Michael Barbaro, “Leaked Speech Excerpts Show a Hillary Clinton at Ease with Wall Street,” New York Times, October 7, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/hillary-clinton-speeches-wikileaks.html.
56. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “WikiLeaks emails appear to show Clinton spokeswoman joking about Catholics and evangelicals,” Washington Post, October 13, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/12/wikileaks-emails-show-clinton-spokeswoman-joking-about-catholics-and-evangelicals/; “Clinton campaign chief helped start Catholic organisations to create ‘revolution’ in the Church,” Catholic Herald, October 12, 2016, http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/10/12/clinton-campaign-chief-helped-start-catholic-organisations-to-create-revolution-in-the-church/.
57. Jessie Hellman, “Former ambassador to Russia: Putin wanted ‘revenge’ against Clinton,” The Hill, December 11, 2016, http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/309854-former-ambassador-to-russia-putin-wanted-revenge-against-clinton.
58. Greg Miller and Adam Entous, “Declassified report says Putin ‘ordered’ effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump,” Washington Post, January 6, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-chiefs-expected-in-new-york-to-brief-trump-on-russian-hacking/2017/01/06/5f591416-d41a-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term.00eab2ded554.
59. Karen Tumulty and Philip Rucker, “Shouting match erupts between Clinton and Trump aides,” Washington Post, December 1, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/shouting-match-erupts-between-clinton-and-trump-aides/2016/12/01/7ac4398e-b7ea-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html.
60. Caldwell and Sarlin, “How Trump Won.”
61. See Richard Foussett and Alan Blinder, “Charlotte Officer ‘Justified’ in Fatal Shooting of Keith Scott,” New York Times, November 30, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/us/charlotte-officer-acted-lawfully-in-fatal-shooting-of-keith-scott.html.
62. Louis Nelson, “Trump wins endorsement from Fraternal Order of Police,” Politico, September 16, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-fraternal-order-of-police-endorsement-228296.
63. “Americans’ Respect for Police Surges,” Gallup, October 24, 2016, http://www.gallup.com/poll/196610/americans-respect-police-surges.aspx.
64. John Robson, “John Robson on Barack Obama: The Incredible Shrinking President,” National Post, September 12, 2016, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-robson-on-barack-obama-the-incredible-shrinking-president.
65. “After Nuclear Deal, U.S. Views on Iran Remain Dismal,” Gallup, February 17, 2016, http://www.gallup.com/poll/189272/after-nuclear-deal-views-iran-remain-dismal.aspx?utm_sourcealert&utm_mediumemail&utm_contentheading&utm_campaignsyndication.
66. See Hohmann, “Trump’s Pollster Says He Ran a ‘Post-Ideological’ Campaign.”
67. David Bernstein, “The Supreme Court oral argument that cost Democrats the presidency,” Washington Post, December 7, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/12/07/the-supreme-court-oral-argument-that-cost-democrats-the-presidency/.
68. Hohmann, “Trump’s Pollster Says He Ran a ‘Post-Ideological’ Campaign.”
69. Nancy Gibbs, “The Choice,” Time, December 19, 2016, 71.
70. Publius Decius Mus, “Dear Repentant NeverTrumpers: No One Else Could Have Won,” American Greatness, November 13, 2016, http://amgreatness.com/2016/11/13/dear-repentant-nevertrumpers-no-one-else-could-have-won/.
71. Harry Enten, “It’s Not All About Clinton—The Midwest Was Getting Redder Before 2016,” FiveThirtyEight, December 9, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-not-all-about-clinton-the-midwest-was-getting-redder-before-2016/.
72. Nate Silver, “Election Update: Where the Race Stands with Three Weeks to Go,” FiveThirtyEight, October 16, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-where-the-race-stands-with-three-weeks-to-go/.
73. Peggy Noonan, “Imagine a Sane Donald Trump,” Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/imagine-a-sane-donald-trump-1477004871.
74. Ian Schwartz, “Paul Ryan: Trump ‘Heard a Voice Out in This Country That No One Else Heard,’ ” RealClearPolitics, November 9, 2016, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/09/paul_ryan_trump_heard_a_voice_out_in_this_country_that_no_one_else_heard.html.
Chapter Five
Red Down the Ballot
Congressional and State Elections
Before the election, one party controlled the House and Senate, and the other party held the presidency. Voters decided to change parties in the White House and keep the majorities on Capitol Hill, with some marginal shifts. Unified government was back, and after years of widespread complaints about gridlock, the new president looked forward to legislative victories.
As you may have guessed, this description fits both the 1992 and the 2016 elections. There was a major difference, though, when it came to downballot races. In 1992, the congressional majorities were Democratic, which struck many academics and political professionals as the natural order of things. Republicans had not won a majority in the House since 1952, and their six years of Senate control (1980–1986) looked like a fluke stemming from the Reagan landslides and a run of good luck in small states.1 Though Republicans had sometimes done well in the overall tally of governorships, it had been decades since they had held more than half of state legislative seats. Because the legislatures were the key “farm club” for congressional races, Democrats felt confident
that they could hold onto their dominance for many years to come.
Nevertheless, Republicans had won five of the past six presidential elections, and political science developed a cottage industry devoted to Americans’ apparent preference for divided government. One explanation was that voters liked Republicans on the broad issues on which presidents take the lead (national security, economic prosperity) while preferring Democrats on distributional issues (Social Security, health care) that made up the congressional wheelhouse.2 The joke was that the people elected Democratic law-makers to give them stuff and Republican presidents so that they would not have to pay for it. Another explanation was that Republicans ran inferior candidates on the wrong side of the issues that voters cared about in down-ballot races.3 The assumption was the GOP’s limited-government ideology made public service unattractive to its best and brightest. As one Wisconsin legislative leader told journalist Alan Ehrenhalt, “The Republicans hate government. Why be here if you hate government? So they let us run it for them.”4 The South was yet another purported reason for Democratic success: although Southern states had been trending Republican in presidential elections since Eisenhower, Democrats seemed to hold the residual loyalty of Southern voters in other races. After the 1992 election, for instance, Democrats controlled every Southern state legislative chamber except for the Florida Senate. As Bill Clinton of Arkansas took the oath of office, Southern Democrats looked healthy.
The next twenty-four years turned these assumptions upside down and inside out. In the seven presidential elections between 1992 and 2016, Republicans won the aggregated popular vote for president only once, in 2004. But they took control of the House in 1994 and, except for the elections of 2006 and 2008, they kept their House majorities through the beginning of the Trump years. They also controlled the Senate during most of this time. As of the 2016 election, Republicans dominated state governments as well, and, in a nearly complete reversal from the 1992 outcome, they controlled every state legislative chamber in the South. As Trump might say, there’s something going on.
RED OVER BLUE
The end of the old order started abruptly in 1994, when a unique confluence of events triggered a Republican sweep in the midterm election. The 1992 defeat of George H. W. Bush had freed the GOP from having to defend an unpopular administration, and it also simplified the choices before the voters: the best way to register discontent with the state of the nation would be to vote Republican.5 The early missteps of the Clinton administration and the ethics scandals on Capitol Hill gave them much to be discontented about. A couple of years before, moreover, the 1990 reapportionment and redistricting had created many winnable seats in the House and state legislatures. The Republican National Committee and Newt Gingrich’s outside group GOPAC had done a skillful job exploiting these opportunities and recruiting a strong class of Republican candidates.
By undercutting the assumption that the Democrats were the “natural governing party,” the 1994 election supplied long-term benefits to the GOP. First, it made fundraising easier. Access to a “permanent minority” had little value to interest groups, but now they had a strong material incentive to make friends with Republicans. Second, it showed that ideology was not as big a barrier to GOP recruitment as some had thought. There were many right-leaning and politically ambitious young people, but up until now, the GOP had often looked like a poor vehicle for their aspirations. Why bear the costs of a congressional or legislative campaign if there was no hope of ever serving in the majority? As of the mid-1990s, however, it made more sense for them to run as Republicans instead of conservative Democrats.
The 1996 election confirmed that the GOP majority was not a one-off. For the first time since 1928, voters reelected a Republican majority in the House. The second book in this series, Losing to Win, explained that President Clinton and the congressional GOP effectively used each other as foils.6 Clinton ran ads against “Dole-Gingrich” while Republicans were portraying themselves as a check on a Democratic president. One GOP TV spot started a voiceover by asking, “What would happen if the Democrats controlled Congress and the White House? Been there, done that.” It showed headlines from 1993 and 1994 about taxes, government waste, and Clinton’s unpopular health care proposal. “The liberal special interests, aligned with Clinton,” the voiceover continued, “desperately want to buy back control of Congress.”7
Despite a public backlash against the Clinton impeachment, Republicans clung to their majorities in the 1998 midterm. In the “perfect tie” election of 2000, they barely held the House while ending up with a 50–50 split in the Senate. One senator’s switch from the GOP briefly tipped the majority to the Democrats, but Republicans won it back in 2002. They took political advantage of the “rally around the flag” effect in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the impending invasion of Iraq, thereby inverting the losses that the president’s party usually suffers in a midterm. Additional GOP gains in 2004 led some scholars to fret that Republicans had a nefarious mojo that threatened democracy.
In 2006, these fears proved unfounded when the Democrats regained majorities in the House and Senate. The deepening unpopularity of the Iraq War intensified the usual midterm effect, and congressional Republicans had brought additional political woes upon themselves. In 1994, they had run as outsiders against a corrupt political establishment. Then they fell into the fundamental trap of outsiderism: when outsiders repeatedly win reelection to positions of power, they become insiders. There is more to this problem than a simple matter of definition. Over time, insiders come to value power for its own sake, and they fall prey to all kinds of temptations. Paul Ryan, who went on to become Speaker of the House, recalled in 2010:
And then slowly but surely, as the conference matured, they started to recruit career politicians as opposed to citizen legislators. They brought in more machine-like people. And I think our leadership changed and adopted the position that, well, we beat the Democrats’ machine, now it’s time to create a Republican machine to keep us in the majority. And out of that came this earmark culture.8
In the “earmark culture,” GOP House members earmarked appropriations for local projects on the basis of political favor rather than merit. In 2005, Duke Cunningham (R-CA) pleaded guilty to taking bribes for earmarks, and as a sentencing memo revealed, he had brazenly written out a menu listing how much he expected in return for contracts of various sizes.9 Shortly before the 2006 election, news broke that a GOP member had sent sexually charged text messages to minors working as congressional pages, and that the party leadership had looked the other way.
Republicans lost even more ground in 2008. “The conservative movement brought about by the Gingrich revolution has been crushed,” said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. “There has been a change in the way we think about society and the economy, and Democrats have a huge advantage.”10 The 2010 midterm shook such confidence. President Obama’s signature health care law turned out to be unpopular, and his policies failed to bring about a quick recovery from the Great Recession. Republicans regained control of the House and, just as important for the long run, picked up twenty state legislative chambers. Not since the modern redistricting era began in the 1960s had they been in a stronger position to draw favorable district lines. GOP gerrymanders in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina would help entrench party majorities for the rest of the decade.
The 2012 election kept the partisan battlefield mostly in place, leaving Obama with a shrunken vote share and congressional Republicans with slightly fewer seats. Democrats thought that they had stemmed the GOP tide, and President Obama adopted a strategy of accepting gridlock until Democrats could regain the majority in the House. Noting that their party won a plurality of total popular votes cast for House candidates in 2012, some Democrats maintained that they could defy historical patterns and overtake the House GOP in the 2014 midterm.11 For a while, this scenario seemed plausible.
When the 2010 midterm election gave the GOP a majority in the Hou
se, it brought many “Tea Party” Republicans who wanted to slash the size of government. Like generations of outsiders before them, the Tea Party Republicans took an aggressive stance against what they saw as a corrupt political establishment. They were suspicious of the new speaker, John Boehner (R-OH), even though he had started his own House career as a conservative outsider. They opposed any compromise in their fight to defund the president’s health care law, and in October 2013, their hard line led to a partial government shutdown. The public scorned the GOP’s actions, and polls showed Democrats pulling ahead in the generic congressional ballot.12 The New Republic ran an article titled “The Last Days of the GOP” with the subheading “We could be witnessing the death throes of the Republican Party.”13
For once, Republicans stanched their own bleeding. A short-term deal ended the shutdown in mid-October, and a longer-term compromise in December effectively precluded a shutdown before the 2014 election. In the meantime, the glitchy rollout of Obamacare gave the GOP a reprieve: by November, the ongoing problems of the program’s website had overshadowed the shutdown and was cutting into public support for the Democrats. The broader issue of health care was not the political bonanza that Democrats had expected: most polls showed that the public opposed the new law.
The president’s party usually sheds seats in midterm elections, but the scope of the Democrats’ 2014 defeat was remarkable. Not only did they lose their Senate majority, but their House membership also dwindled to its lowest point in decades. Instead of gaining governorships, as they had expected, they suffered a net loss of three, including deep-blue Massachusetts, Maryland, and Illinois. They now held full control of just eleven state legislatures, their fewest since Reconstruction.14
These results reflected long-term trends as well as short-term fluctuations. The reddening of Southern white voters was one such long-term trend. Statistical journalist Harry Enten illustrated this point by analyzing data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). In the 2006 House elections, the first for which CCES data are available, he found that Republicans won Southern white voters 58 percent to 41 percent. In 2014, Southern whites voted Republican 70 percent to 28 percent, a much bigger shift toward the GOP than in the national electorate. Enten writes, “To put that in perspective, people are making a big deal over some Midwestern states—Michigan, for example—going from slightly more Democratic than the nation to slightly more Republican between the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. What’s occurred in the House over the past decade is a political earthquake by comparison.”15