Hard as it can be to define the best strategies for one’s party, it’s also imporant–and fun–to mock the other party’s strategic thinking. I had a chance to do that this week at New York:
Hanging over all the audacious steps taken so far this year by Donald Trump and his Republican Party has been the fact that voters will get a chance to respond in 2026. The midterm elections could deny the GOP its governing trifecta and thus many of its tools for imposing Trump’s will on the country. Indeed, one reason congressional Republicans ultimately united around Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill was the sense that they needed to get all the policy victories they could in one fell swoop before the tough uphill slog to a likely midterm defeat began. No one had to be reminded that midterm House losses by the president’s party are a rule with rare exceptions. With Republicans holding a bare two-seat majority (temporarily three due to vacancies created by deaths), the gavel of Speaker Mike Johnson must feel mighty slippery in his hands.
But if only to keep their own spirits high, and to encourage fundraising, Republican voices have been talking about how they might pull off a midterm miracle and hang on to the trifecta. A particularly high-profile example is from former RNC political director Curt Anderson, writing at the Washington Post. Anderson notes the unhappy precedents and professes to have a new idea in order to “defy history.” First, however, he builds a big straw man:
“[I]t’s always the same story. And the same conventional campaign wisdom prevails: Every candidate in the president’s party is encouraged by Washington pundits and campaign consultants to run away from the national narrative. They are urged to follow instead House Speaker Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill Jr.’s famous axiom that ‘all politics is local’ and to think small and focus on homegrown issues.”
Actually, nobody who was really paying attention has said that since ol’ Tip’s retirement and death. As Morris Fiorina of the Hoover Institution has explained, presidential and congressional electoral trends made a decisive turn toward convergence in 1994, mostly because the ideological sorting out of both parties was beginning to reduce reasons for ticket splitting. And so, returning to a pattern that was also common in the 19th century, 21st-century congressional elections typically follow national trends even in midterms with no presidential candidates offering “coattails.” So in making the following prescription, Anderson is pushing on a wide-open door:
“[T]o maintain or build on its current narrow margin in the House, the Republican Party will have to defy historical gravity.
“The way to do that is not to shun Trump and concentrate on bills passed and pork delivered to the locals, but to think counterintuitively. Republicans should nationalize the midterms and run as if they were a general election in a presidential year. They should run it back, attempting to make 2026 a repeat of 2024, with high turnout.”
Aside from the fact that they have no choice but to do exactly that (until the day he leaves the White House and perhaps beyond, no one and nothing will define the GOP other than Donald Trump), there are some significant obstacles to “rerunning” 2024 in 2026.
There’s a lazy tendency to treat variations in presidential and midterm turnout as attributable to the strength or weakness of presidential candidates. Thus we often hear that a sizable number of MAGA folk “won’t bother” to vote if their hero isn’t on the ballot. Truth is, there is always a falloff in midterm turnout, and it isn’t small. The 2018 midterms (during Trump’s first term) saw the highest turnout percentages (50.1 percent) since 1914. But that was still far below the 60.1 percent of eligible voters who turned out in 2016, much less the 66.4 percent who voted in 2020. Reminding voters of the identity of the president’s name and party ID isn’t necessary and won’t make much difference.
What Anderson seems focused on is the fact that in 2024, for the first time in living memory, it was the Republican ticket that benefited from participation by marginal voters. So it’s understandable he thinks the higher the turnout, the better the odds for the GOP in 2026; that may even be true, though a single election does not constitute a long-term trend, and there’s some evidence Trump is losing support from these same low-propensity voters at a pretty good clip. At any rate, the message Anderson urges on Republicans puts a good spin on a dubious proposition:
“The GOP should define the 2026 campaign as a great national battle between Trump’s bright America First future and its continuing promise of secure borders and prosperity, versus the left-wing radicalism — open borders and cancel culture or pro-Hamas protests and biological men competing in women’s sports — that Democrats still champion. Make it a referendum on the perceived new leaders of the Democratic Party, such as far-left Reps. Jasmine Crockett (Texas) or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York).”
Without admitting it, Anderson points to the single biggest problem for Republicans: They don’t have a Democratic incumbent president or a Democratic Congress to run against. Jasmine Crockett is not, in fact, running in Pennsylvania, where she is likely unknown, and even AOC is a distant figure in Arizona. Democrats aren’t going to be running on “open borders and cancel culture or pro-Hamas protests or biological men competing in women’s sports” at all. And Republicans aren’t going to be running on “Trump’s bright America First future” either; they’ll be running on the currently unpopular Trump megabill and on economic and global conditions as they exist in 2026. Democrats could benefit from a final surge of Trump fatigue in the electorate and will almost certainly do well with wrong-track voters (including the notoriously unhappy Gen-Z cohort) who will oppose any incumbent party.
Whatever happens, it won’t be a 2024 rerun, and the best bet is that the precedents will bear out and Republicans will lose the House. A relatively small group of competitive races may hold down Democratic gains a bit, but unless an unlikely massive wave of prosperity breaks out, Hakeem Jeffries is your next Speaker and Republicans can worry about what they’ll do when Trump is gone for good.
From THE ECONOMIST:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2910706
“Is the recovery losing momentum?”
“PITY the Republicans. No sooner had America’s jobs figures become rosy enough to brag about in campaign ads, than the pesky statistics stopped playing ball. According to numbers released on July 2nd, only 112,000 new non-farm jobs were created in June, far fewer than in each of the previous three months and less than half what analysts were expecting. After rising for four months, jobs in the politically sensitive manufacturing sector fell. The average work-week shortened and the unemployment rate is stuck at 5.6%. ”
[…]
“the number-crunchers also revised down the jobs figures for April and May a bit. And other evidence suggests America’s economy may be cooling somewhat. Durable goods orders (admittedly yet another highly volatile indicator) fell in May for the second consecutive month. Vehicles sales were decidedly lame in June. Measured at an annual rate, only 15.4m light vehicles were sold in June, a sharp fall from the 17.8m rate in May. And, perhaps most significant, several big chain stores, including Target and Wal-Mart, warned that June would be weak.”
“It is not all bad. For instance, consumer confidence looks robust (the Conference Board’s index rose to 101.9 in June, its highest level in two years). But for Mr Bush, even conflicting signals look dangerous. For the past few months, his campaign has been frustrated by how little his poll ratings have benefited from a string of uniformly rosy economic statistics. If the economic numbers are less rosy, then the poll numbers could yet go down.”
Marcus’ observation about the National Review is interesting, because Fox did try to spin it. The bottom-of-screen headline I saw was “Bush Was Right!” That’s pretty bad even for those guys. They must be getting nervous.
How bad news for “Shrub” is this? So bad even the partisans at NATIONAL REVIEW didn’t try to spin the 112,000-new-jobs release. They merely noted that at least the statistics were released at a time (=Independence Day weekend) when comparatively few people pay attention. And they are grateful for that.
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerryspot.asp
MARCU$
When it comes to something like the economy, the public’s perception comes mostly from their actual experience. We shouldn’t worry about Bush and the press hyping it, and by the same token there is no point in trying to play it down.
Kerry can win by properly explaining why the economy went into recession without blaming the American people. He can’t win by raising taxes just to end the recession. That’s BS and the smarty-pantses who think it works also drove the Democratic Party into a massive defeat in 2002. They should be banished from any position of decision-making, they should be exiled to a desert island until next February.
Sobering. Very sobering.
I agree with Ruy’s comments.
The bad economy is particularly visible when one compares job gains to population gains.
1) The index of Aggregate hours worked fell by 0.6 percent. This June number implies that there has been essentially no change in aggregate hours worked by employees since March 2004 and since 2002. Aggregate hours worked in manufacturing rose only 0.2 percent since March 2004. Aggregate hours in manufacturing are still more than 5% below their level in 2002 (Table B-5).
2) Recent Job growth is barely keeping pace with population growth. The HH survey’s employment population ratio was above 64 percent in 1998, 1999 and 2000. It fell to 62.3 in 2003 and that is also it’s level in June 2004. The unemployment rate has been constant since January 2004. (Table A-1) Just to get back to an E/P ratio of 64%, the economy would need to add 3,780,000 jobs.
3) From May to June 2004, The seasonally adjusted Weekly earnings of non-supervisory workers fell by $2.45 or about 0.5 percent (table B-3). This decline in nominal weekly wages came on top of a 0.2 to 0.4 percent rise in the cost of living. There is no disconnect between workers perceptions and the “reality” of an improving economy. Workers real weekly earnings fell by nearly one percent in June 2004. Their pay check’s buying power is declining.
4) Hours worked per week by non-supervisory workers has declined over the last year. Combined with the decline in the inflation adjusted hourly wage, the result is a declining pay check in real terms.The stability of aggregate hours worked since March implies that the increase in employment since March was accomplished by cutting back on the weekly hours of existing workers..
5) Occupations that are most subject to foreign competition and off shoring are still suffering despite the large reduction in the value of the dollar that should have improved the competitiveness of American workers. Household survey data implies that Employment of production workers fell 4.4% from June 2003 to June 2004 and office and administrative support occupations employment fell by 0.7 percent. Fast growing occupational categories were Construction (6%), Transportation and materials moving occupations (5.4%) and Installation and maintenance and repair occupations (3.5%). These are types of work that must be performed in the US (Table A-10)
6) The occupational up skilling of the employed work force has slowed. During the last year up skilling stopped. Over the last two decades professional, technical and managerial jobs (which account for 34 percent of all jobs) have accounted for about two-thirds of job growth. During the last 12 months, these high skill occupations accounted for only 22 percent of net job growth (Table A-10). Their share of total employment fell.
6) Industry payroll data from the establishment survey are consistent with this picture. Over the past 12 months, The fast growing industries were mining (2.9%), construction (2.8%), Janitorial services (3.4%), Temporary help agencies (10.3%), education and health services (2.1%) and Hotels and restaurants (2.4%). The Declining industries were manufacturing (-1.0%) and information and communications (-0.5%).
7) College grads have suffered along with everyone else. The employment to population ratio of college graduates was above 77 percent in 2000 and the first two quarters of 2001. The seasonally adjusted Emp/Pop for college grads had fallen to 75.3% in April 2004, 75.2% in May 2004 and 75.7% in June 2004. The E/P average for the second quarter of 2004 is 3.2 percent below its level in the first quarter of 2001. If we were to return to the first quarter of 2001 college grad E/P ratio, 1,250,000 extra college graduate would be employed. That is roughly equal to the number of bachelors degrees annually awarded by the nation’s colleges and universities (Table A-4)