The GOP's Other Strong 2022 Head Wind: Trump

One thing is apparent as we approach the 2022 mid-term elections: people either love Donald Trump or they hate and detest him, and far more hate and detest him than those who love him.   With his endorsement of trulu horrendus candidates in a number of races, especially for U.S. Senante seats, and his theft of top secret government documents, Trump has inserted himself into the 2022 mid-terms and produced second strong head wind - the other is the Dobbs ruling over turning Roe v. Wage - against Republicans hoping to reclaim control of Congress.  Of course, with Trump it is first and foremoost always about himself, how he can make money (selling top secret information?), his one true god, and stroking his malignant ego.  Historically, mid-term elections have been a blood bath for the party holding the White House, but as the Washington Post and numerous other outlets are reporting, Democrat fortunes seem to be moving toward possible survival despite inflation and low job approvals for Joe Biden.  For this, if it materializes, Democrats can largely thank Trump who (i) appointed three of the Supreme Court extremists who overturned Roe, and (ii) constantly reminds the larger public that today's GOP is synonymous with Trump. The GOP and Trump simply cannot be separated and for millions that is a motivation to vote against the GOP, preferably at all levels.  A piece in the Post looks at how Trump is not helping the GOP's prospects despite the continued loyalty of the cultists in the MAGA base.  Here are excerpts:

It’s long been said that midterm elections are all about the current occupant of the White House — a referendum on the incumbent and his party. But do the old rules and assumptions apply as they once did? Because of Donald Trump, they may not this year.

American politics can be divided crudely into two eras: BDT and SDT, or Before Donald Trump and Since Donald Trump. What was true before he came on the scene isn’t necessarily true now. Trump broke rules and assumptions on his way to winning the White House, broke more in office and is still breaking them. And that could haunt the Republicans in November.

This November’s election will still be a reckoning for President Biden and the Democrats, given inflationary pressures and disapproval with the incumbent’s job performance. But Republicans cannot escape the reality that Trump and his Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement are also part of the reckoning that will take place.

Since Trump came on the scene, elections are louder and angrier and, notably, they have drawn millions more Americans to the polls. . . . Biden got 15.4 million more votes than Hillary Clinton got in 2016, and Trump drew 11.2 million more in 2020 than he got in his first campaign. The Democrats’ popular vote margin rose from nearly 3 million in 2016 to 7 million in 2020.

The presidential races were not isolated examples of the Trump factor. Just as startling was what happened in 2018. For decades, midterm election turnout, which is always lower than in presidential years, . . . . Then came 2018, when overall turnout was the biggest in roughly a century, registering an 11-point increase over 2014, according to census data.

This too was the Trump factor — in this case a revolt against him led by women voters that reshaped the contours of an election. By one calculation from the Democratic firm Catalist, Democrats gained 23 million more votes than in 2014 and Republicans added about 11 million. Trump wasn’t on the ballot, but he was the biggest motivating force.

Though no one can predict whether turnout this fall will even come close to what happened in 2018, there are signs all around that this will be another SDT (Since Donald Trump) election and not necessarily one that conforms to what was the norm previously.

Republicans began the year with lofty expectations, built on traditional assumptions: Biden’s approval ratings were deeply underwater and the inflation rate was rising to its highest levels in 40 years, even as the economy continued to add jobs at a healthy clip. Republican leaders talked expansively about playing offense in 70 or more congressional districts. . . . Even many Democrats lamented how bad the climate seemed for their party.

Earlier in the year, White House officials concluded that the “MAGA” label was toxic to many voters and that, if it was broadly and effectively applied to the Republican Party, it could change the midterm election from a pure referendum on Biden to a choice between two philosophies and, presumably, two leaders, both unpopular.

On Thursday, Biden delivered a slashing speech in the Maryland suburbs that highlighted the White House’s plan to employ this strategy over the next two-plus months. He described the Trump-led Republican Party as having taken a turn toward “semi-fascism” and said: “The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security. They’re a threat to our very democracy.”

Biden alone cannot change the midterm from a referendum on his presidency to a choice election. But he has an unexpected partner in this effort: Trump and the Republicans themselves. Trump remains in the forefront of this election year, continuing his baseless claims about a stolen election, caught up in twin Justice Department investigations over his retention of classified documents and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and demonstrating that the Republican Party is now very much the Trump Party through the power of his endorsements to prop up questionable candidates. . . . Those nominations have added ammunition to Biden’s and the Democrats’ charge that the Republicans have become a MAGA-dominated political party.

The [January 6^th] hearings have shown the efforts to which Trump and those close to him went to overturn the results of the 2020 election — and the degree to which the 2024 election could be put at risk if Trump acolytes control the administration of elections.

Meanwhile, the ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Trump’s retention of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida has kept the former president in the forefront of the news. The search of the premises has touched off what is now a weeks-long story that is likely to continue for weeks more. Trump not only broke rules of politics, he may have broken the law.

The other factor that has changed the landscape — the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade — also has Trump’s fingerprints on it. The three justices he nominated — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — provided the clear margin for the ruling written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has produced a surge in registration among female voters in a number of states and has become a motivating force for many women and men this fall, especially independent voters. . . . . the recent Democratic victory in a House special election in New York state, where abortion was a central issue, provided another indication of the power of the issue to redraw assumptions about November and has spooked Republicans.

But weak [Biden] approval ratings might not be as definitive an indicator of these midterm elections as those in the past. Democratic strategists have seen approval ratings of some candidates rise, even as Biden’s were falling, suggesting that the candidates’ fates may be somewhat decoupled from the president’s ratings.

This is still a tough year for Democrats. But the polarizing effect of an ever-present and controversial former president means this midterm election may not conform to the norms of the past.

If Republicans do poorly in November they will have largely themselves to blame and their shameless and morally bankrupt self-prostitution to Trump and his Christofascist/white suprmacists followers.