RabzonKhan
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Suburban voters angry with Trump threaten GOP’s grip on House
The Washington Post
Kari Lydersen, Michael Scherer
In a suburb outside of Chicago, Sullivan is determined to replace her congressman, six-term Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R), whom she has supported in the past. His sin, she said, was his affiliation with President Trump.
“Just the lack of respect for women, the authoritarianism, it’s too much,” said Sullivan, 47, a digital consultant. “As a professional woman, it’s very difficult for me to reconcile.”
She is not alone. In Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, 62,990 people voted Democratic last week for seven candidates, up from just 8,615 in the 2014 primary. In a district that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, a warning is being sent in letters as big and bold as any that have hung on a Trump building.
If Republicans want to hold onto the House, they will have to compete in communities that had little to do with the working-class regions that sent Trump to the White House in 2016: affluent, white-collar suburbs of Democratic cities. Many of the most competitive House seats this year are in the tony bedroom communities of Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington.
The balancing act for these Republicans is appealing to moderate voters enraged by Trump while trying to avoid alienating a party base enamored with the president. Democrats had targeted Roskam early on — a GOP incumbent in a Clinton seat. Beyond those races, the Democrats’ House win this month in a suburban-and-rural Pennsylvania district Trump won handily, as well as last year’s wins in Alabama and Virginia, underscore that dozens more districts are competitive.
Suburban voters tend to be richer and better-educated than the country as a whole. That is bad news for Republicans, who are struggling with a massive divide among white voters. Those with college degrees disapprove of the president by a margin of about 20 points. Those without college degrees approve of him by nearly the same margin.
Residents of the 21 Republican seats recently rated by the Cook Political Report to be the most vulnerable to Democratic takeover have a median household income 33 percent higher than the country as a whole, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. Thirty percent of the voters in those districts are college-educated whites, well higher than the 23 percent average for the country. Read more
You may try to downplay it, which I can understand, but trust me, Trump and the Republican establishment did not see it that way, after all, this was a district gerrymandered by and for the Republican, for them it was a YUGE loss. Trump tried everything he could, he went there twice to campaign for Saccone, he also sent his VP Mike Pence, his son, daughter and aide Kellyanne Conway there. The timing of Trump’s announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum was seen by many as an effort by him to help Saccone, but lol, nothing worked.
As I explained in my previous post, Republican Rep Tim Murphy, who disgracefully resigned last year, had won the district by 34 points in 2010 and by 28 points in 2012, and didn’t even have a Democratic challenger in 2014 and 2016. Even though Pres Obama had won the state, but Mitt Romney defeated him with 17 points and Trump carried the district by nearly 20 points. Based on these results, Conor Lamb, outperformed his partisan baseline by more than 22 points.
He is a Conservative Democrat, also commonly known as the blue dog Democrat. The funny thing is that before the election, Trump and the Republicans were portraying him as a hardcore Liberal, but after he won the election they falsely started claiming that he had run to the right, which, of course, was a lie. The fact is, Conor Lamb supported enhanced background check system quite similar to what the Democrat Sen Joe Manchin and Republican Sen Patrick Toomey had proposed, unfortunately, their background checks proposal was defeated in the Senate by the Republicans. He also opposed Trump/Republican corporate tax cuts, and strongly opposed Trump/Republican agenda against Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare.
But, he never fights back against Stormy Daniels and Comrade Putin?
Left really should pick a consistent argument (and then we can actually debate the logic of it using facts) rather than rail against everything on the Anti-Trump feelz. Swing voters are already getting quite tired and weary of it (just like with the Trump tweeting and uninformed over-reactions etc).
