Trump Has Alienated Voters for the G.O.P.

Like I suspect many other non-MAGA Kool-Aid drinkers, I find the Felon's second regime both frightening and exhausting. Many of the policies being pursued are horrible and are harming millions of people and meanwhile the chaos never stops. I believe that a majority of Americans want their government to quietly run the country for the benefit of the larger public and not just the so-called one percent.  The other expectation is that competent people will be in charge. In the Felon's regime, competence and expertise is shunned in favor of total loyalty to the Felon and a willingness lies to remain in the Felon's good graces.  Rather than lower prices as promised during the 2024 campaign - sane people knew better than to believe the Felon - the Felon has done nothing but pursue trade wars, tariffs and the Iran war of choice all of which have brough soaring prices, especially at the gas pump.  The result, as laid out in a piece in the New York Times is that many Republican voters are alienated and less than enthusiastic about getting out and voting in the mid-terms, causing what one commentator to coin the phrase "red undertow" even in red states that could pull down a number of GOP candidates.  Let's hope this undertow only intensifies.  Here are some article highlights: 

If Democrats make big gains in the midterm elections in four weeks, it may not only be because their most loyal voters come out in force, or because their candidates have converted Republican voters to their cause.

Instead, the Democrats’ dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on President Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow.

Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote. A stretch of rural southwest Michigan — long a Republican stronghold — illustrates the point, with more signs for blueberries and eggs than for political candidates. Volunteers are not showing up to door-knock. And many voters say they are tuning this election out.

“People are just more focused on everyday life,” said Lindsay Kronemeyer, 35, a conservative Christian mother of two who works in the construction industry. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”

The idea of the red undertow was introduced last month by the political analyst Charlie Cook, who argued that the Democratic brand was still underwater, but that this election was not about a rising Democratic tide. It was about a drowning Trump brand.

In its wake, Mr. Cook wrote, an undertow will “pull many Republicans under.” . . . . In nearly three dozen interviews in Western Michigan, a sense of fatigue was constant, and that feeling goes beyond that region.

“President Trump has been saying, ‘Vote as if I was on the ballot,’ and that’s exactly what I’m going to do — not vote,” said Brandon Tremaine, 24, a graduate student in Texas who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020. “You do not campaign on being the ticket of peace and start a war of choice that is directly hurting Americans here at home and gotten Americans killed overseas.”

Polls can be unreliable, and moods may be fleeting. Trump loyalists are also known for not taking the calls of polling outfits, and that may be overstating Democratic strengths.

The numbers aren’t drastically far apart. A New York Times/Siena University national poll from last month found that Democrats were more likely to say they were absolutely certain to vote than Republicans, 61 percent to 56 percent. While Democrats led Republicans nationally by seven percentage points among registered voters, that advantage rose to nine points among likely voters.

But in close races, a small gap could prove meaningful.

“People are tired,” Al Pscholka, a Republican and a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, said of Mr. Trump. “The whole divider-in-chief thing, it’s gotten to the point where it’s just exhausting.”

The concern is showing in unlikely places. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Western Michigan Republican whose four House victories were all by comfortable margins, is in “the fight of his life” against a well-funded centrist Democrat from Kalamazoo named Sean McCann, said Rob Pocock, a retired Republican political consultant who has worked on campaigns in the region.

Nancy DeBoer, the local Republican state representative, also faces a serious fight against Joseph McClusky, a graduate of Hope College, a conservative Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Mich., who is openly gay.

“I would be shocked if Joseph wins, but I can’t believe he’s done as well as he has,” said Mr. Pocock, who teaches at Hope and had Mr. McClusky as a student. He said in Ottawa County, he was seeing Democratic yard signs in numbers he’d never seen before. . . . “I think there’s a shift in the party back toward, we need a little bit of the establishment folks,” Ms. Kronemeyer said. “They exist for a reason.”

If anybody should be enthusiastic about the election, it is Ms. Kronemeyer. She ran for a statehouse seat in 2022. She door-knocked for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020. But she said that when a friend asked her recently about the races in her area, she had to admit she hadn’t been following them closely. She lives in deep-red Allegan County, where “traditionally in election years, yard signs would be peppered everywhere,” she said. But the only signs she’d seen this year were for a judge, she said.

Now, Mr. Pasek said, Mr. Trump seems to have lost his way. He started a war when he said he wouldn’t, sending the price of gas through the roof. And he seems to talk more about ballrooms and arches than he does about how he will bring prices back down. “He’s losing touch with the American people,” Mr. Pasek said.

Mr. Pasek cited gas prices: “He says it’s chump change. No, it’s not! It’s killing the people.”

He has noticed someone living in a car in a parking lot when he drives into town, he said. He worried about his granddaughter, 28, a college graduate from Michigan State University, who is working three jobs — one full-time and two part-time — but can’t find a house she can afford.

Those misgivings are being felt at the local party level. Doug Koopman, a member of the Kent County Republican Party’s executive committee, said that it had been a struggle to get the foot soldiers of the midterm elections — volunteer door-knockers and canvassers — to pick up brochures to distribute door to door, leaving bags of them sitting around the party headquarters.

Even Republicans who are in politics say they are tired — worn out by the battles between pro-MAGA politicians and traditional Republicans. Bob Harrison, 76, a Republican county commissioner in Berrien County, where MAGA forces won control of the county G.O.P., said those forces took away the right to vote on party decisions from local elected officials like him.

“Does he really know what he’s doing?” Mr. Stewart said.

He would never vote for a Democrat; he feels bludgeoned by liberals online, he said. But he’s not sure he’ll vote for Republicans, either.

“I just spent $60 on $30 worth of groceries and am about to go fill up for $5 a gallon,” he said, carrying two bags of groceries to his car. “It feels like they’re stress-testing us.”