As Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court hangs in the balance, Republicans, Democrats and their respective operatives and donors cannot help but notice the post-Labor Day trend. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes:
“Six weeks out, Republican ads aiming to disqualify Democrats early don’t appear to be sticking. House polling — both public and private — was already tenuous for the GOP, but has become noticeably more dire since Labor Day. Independent polls in the last two weeks show Reps. Mimi Walters (CA-45), Leonard Lance (NJ-07) and Dave Brat (VA-07) trailing. Not long ago, they were in the Lean Republican column.”
He points to a few exceptions, but the pattern is unmistakable. He explains that “both parties are seeing Republicans’ numbers continuing to erode in professional suburbs, and some in the GOP fear they still haven’t hit ‘rock bottom.’” In keeping with the big picture, he moves five more House seats toward Democrats. “Overall, 13 GOP seats now lean to Democrats and another 29 are Toss Ups. Right now the likeliest outcome is a Democratic gain in the 25 to 40 seat range (Democrats need 23 for a majority).”
The Senate picture looks dimmer for Republicans as well. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin seem way out of reach. Red- and purple-state Democrats (e.g. in Florida, Indiana, Montana) have pulled even or gone ahead in most polls; Democrats in red states (Arizona and Nevada) are running strongly.
This does not mean that Democrats are a lock to win one or both houses. You have to turn out your voters and get through the next 40 days or so without major flubs.
However, given the numbers, the Republicans’ unwillingness to examine what is going so very wrong and make adjustments is rather remarkable. It might be possible to save some seats, yet they are doubling down on losing positions. They might be too nervous about raising the alarm given President Donald Trump’s nonstop cheerleading and intolerance for negative facts, or they also might have lost touch with political reality, caught up in the Trump whirlwind of paranoia and tribalism. Weirdly, though, you still see a batch of right-leaning pundits declare that if they pull Kavanaugh, the Republicans are done for. The base will bolt!
They’ve already bolted. Maybe it is a grand coincidence, but the decline in GOP polling fortunes in House and Senate races coincides with a huge dropoff in support for Kavanaugh among GOP women. Trump falsely and repeatedly says he won 52 percent of women. He actually won 52 percent of white women (suggesting nonwhites are invisible to him), only 41 percent of women overall. Some of those certainly are stampeding away from the party in House and Senate races as they watch the GOP fight furiously to the death over Kavanaugh, a Beltway elite whose own calendar doesn’t support his self-image of a Boy Scout and teen feminist.
Granted that Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Virginia, was already in the intensive political care ward, but when she won’t tell her suburban constituents (with an outsize percentage of college-educated voters) whether she believes Kavanaugh’s accusers, you can imagine hundreds of new lawn signs going up for her Democratic opponent, Jennifer Wexton.
In North Dakota, Rep. Kevin Cramer, R, might go down as the Todd Akin of the cycle thanks to his remark about Christine Blasey Ford’s complaint of sexual assault. “Nothing evidently happened in it all, even by her own accusation,” he announced. “Again, it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere.”
GOP candidates should keep in mind that just about every big political calculation their leadership and conservative strategists made over the past couple of years has been dead wrong. They cannot run on tax cuts for the rich, which predictably turned out to be very unpopular. Their opposition to the Affordable Care Act, specifically the protection for pre-existing conditions, is now a cudgel for Democrats. They nevertheless – despite polling and anecdotal evidence of its deleterious effect on races – insist that sticking with Kavanaugh is smart politics. Somehow I don’t see it, but stay tuned.
Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion from a center-right perspective for The Washington Post. Follow her @JRubinBlogger.
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