Donald Trump's Statement Risks GOP's Delicate Balancing Act
How Trump Can Cost His Party
Donald Trump made his first serious post Presidency intervention on Tuesday with a blistering attack on Mitch McConnell over failing to hold the Senate and, implicitly, for his comments that Trump is morally responsible for the terrorist attack on January 6th (despite, you know, acquitting the guy, but whatever). And, in doing so, Trump just took a baseball bat to the idea of broad, wide spread "suburban reversion."
Again, "suburban reversion" is actually a meaningless phrase - Democrats are doing better with well-off white social liberals, and we should properly identify that success. And that distinction here matters, as there are many Hispanic areas in urban and suburban Texas which did not move left under Trump. But, if the question about 2022 is whether or not Democrats can hold the House, then the question of whether or not the GOP can get better margins with well-off white social liberals is crucial. And, Donald Trump seems to be hell bent on making it harder for the GOP.
Take Wisconsin, where there's a (probably) open Senate seat coming up, and a state without apportionment changes coming, and divided government. It's probable that the 5-3 Congressional map will stay the same, with the only possible modification being the D-held WI-03 being made safer. The southwest Wisconsin seat could be drawn a bit more east, grabbing more Democratic territory closer to Madison, but on the whole, the maps should be roughly the same.
Trump won the current 3rd district by just under 5% both in 2016 and 2020, and the 3rd was actually the only district to swing to Trump in 2020 in the state - albeit, just by 0.2%. The two biggest swings against the then-President? The 2nd, which is Madison based, swung by 3.4%, and then the 5th, which is the white suburbs of Milwaukee, which swung by 5%. The President lost Wisconsin because well-off white social liberals didn't want to vote for him again, not because of anything else.
Now, if you're Ron Johnson or whoever runs instead of Ron Johnson if and when he decides to retire, you've got a problem. In a Presidential year, turnout was up, boosting GOP margins in places like the 3rd. Remember, Tony Evers won the 3rd in 2018, but Trump-surge voters came out in force in the seat. Will they come out again? Seems unlikely, but that's not even the main question.
For the Senate GOP to hold Wisconsin, you need either slight reversion right with well-off white social liberals and Trump turnout in the rurals, or rural turnout falls and you need quite a lot of reversion right. Now, could that reversion happen? Certainly - Scott Walker outran Donald Trump's 2016 margins in the 5th by a considerable amount, so it could be that the well-off whites here are more sticky at non-Presidential levels than in other places. But still, this is the math that the GOP has to reckon with, and that's what makes this Trump statement such a disaster.
If Trump uses his considerable influence to help nominate true believers of his cause to important candidacies, like in Wisconsin Senate, then the GOP will have a harder time getting the 5th back to the level of partisanship it needs. The GOP civil war is here, and it will make every race harder for them to win. Nominate reasonable candidates, and you can, maybe, win back lost Trump 2016-Biden 2020 voters in places like the Wisconsin 5th, but you face real turnout problems in places like the 3rd. Nominate Trump loyalists, and you maybe match the margins necessary in places like southwest Wisconsin - but at a cost of the WOW collar.
The GOP's best chance of a good 2022 was Trump supporting moderate candidates by telling his true believers that they were more radical than they actually were, and letting the candidates go to the suburbs and show themselves as moderates. Now, Donald Trump has said that he intends to keep reshaping the Republican Party into his image, with primaries and nomination battles, making that impossible. The GOP's delicate balancing act - of holding a coalition of both well-off white social liberals and Trumpian whites - works well when it works. But if it falls apart, it could really fall apart.