Last week I noted how the data show Joe Biden firmly in the lead in the Democratic presidential contest despite media efforts to make it seem like more of a race than it is — and despite liberal hopes for a more exciting and more leftist candidate.
Today, I want to offer comparable real-talk to Republicans ahead of 2020. The real talk is this: Things aren’t looking good, and the best thing supporters of Donald Trump can do to help their guy and their party is see this moment clearly and work on him to alter his trajectory.
The first harbinger of Republican doom comes from the House. This year marked the first time since 2010 that GOP members of the House found themselves in the minority due to the gigantic Democratic victory in the midterm elections.
Since most Republicans in the House were elected when the GOP was in the majority, this year marks the first time they have had to suffer the uniquely bitter day-to-day existence of being almost completely powerless.
As a result, they’re dropping like flies. As of this moment, 13 Republicans have announced their intention to retire from the House, as compared to three Democrats. This is due in part to their hopelessness about recapturing the majority in 2020. But it’s also surely about prudently abandoning a Republican ship captained by Trump that they think is about to scuttle itself on the rocks.
Most striking, perhaps, is that five of the 13 are from Texas, which has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1980. Trump scored only 52% of the vote there in 2016, the worst such showing since Bob Dole got 49% in 1996.
Meanwhile, in 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke stunned the political world by coming within 2.6 percentage points of Republican Ted Cruz in the Senate race.
All this suggests growing Republican weakness not only in the Lone Star state but in the country at large. No one really expects a Democratic candidate in 2020 can win Texas, but it is a state undergoing rapid suburbanization. And it was America’s suburbs that revolted against Trump in 2018 and handed the Democrats 40 House seats formerly held by Republicans.
When Republican politicians in Texas find themselves awash in despair and look longingly for another way to live their lives because they don’t see things getting any better for them, you have to take that seriously as a message in a bottle.
And if we continue to see House retirements among Republicans, and I think we will, just remember this astonishing statistic by Twitterato Mike Gehrke: Of the 293 Republicans who were serving in both chambers of Congress when Trump became president, more than 32% are gone or will be gone by 2021.
Nationally, polling remains the biggest single indicator of Trump’s potential weakness in 2020. His approval rating stands at 42% in the Real Clear Politics average. There are those who look at this number and pooh-pooh it by saying that Barack Obama fell to this level the year before his re-election.
But recall that Obama actually got 54 percent of Americans to vote for him in 2008, and spent most of the first two years and eight months of his presidency with an approval rating above 50%. Obama’s challenge was re-engaging people who had already voted for him, and he did so successfully.
Trump? After his first week, his approval high-water mark in the RCP average came on May 12, 2019, when he reached … 45 percent. That’s a percentage point lower than his actual vote total. He hasn’t expanded his voter base either.
Even if Trump manages to get everyone back who voted for him the first time, given population trends and the fact that Democrats know down to the block level where they need to go to get votes in the three states that gave Trump the presidency, that won’t be enough to win him a second term.
True, we’re more than a year away from the election, and the Democrats haven’t picked their nominee yet. A lot can happen.
But the point here is that whatever Trump is doing is not working, or not working well enough. You’re not supposed to think such things if you are a Trump supporter because it suggests you’re not a loyal passenger on the Trump train.
Yet the only thing that will cause Trump to shift course to a more successful outcome is the sense that his supporters are losing heart and that his cause is losing its potency. It’s simple war logic: If you don’t understand the balance of forces arrayed against you, you lose.
jpodhoretz@gmail.com