Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:
No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”
But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.
Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).
Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.
But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:
“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”
Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.
Just a few comments on the Ohio vote, and the
exurban/small metro issue. It was interesting to read your comment about Kerry not doing as well in the metro areas of Ohio. When reading the analysis I did not notice any comment about the 20 percent reduction in polling places in Lucas, Stark, Cuyahoga, and Franklin counties. This is part of what led to the long voting lines in these areas. Also there were additional voting machines placed in the exurban and rural counties where Bush was strongest. These are external issues that must be taken into consideration when comparing votes to 1996 and 2000.
I am familiar with a lot of exurban voters and I can say that they did not become Republican after they moved to those areas or soley because of 9/11.
The citizens who reside in these counties moved
away from the urban/suburban area because of their families. They were tired of the crime, traffic, constant redistricing of their schools, wanted larger homes for expanding families that were less expensive in the outlying areas, and finally wanted to escape the city property taxes. When looking at the logic behind their concerns, a lot of it is contradictory, like better schools and lower taxes. But the fear used by the Bush campaign from 9/11 resonated with these voters. The Democratic Party must find a common sense message that will resonate with these voters. The Republicans have been far to successful at introducing wedge issues that put Democrats on the defensive. These wedge
issues sometimes do not even fit on the national stage, but our candidates spend time defending these issues. Issues like Gay Marriage, Abortion, Guns, School Prayer etc…. In my opinion we need a candidate ( governor) who has a background in business etc… who understands how middle class Americans live and can develop a message to resonate with the voters. If our candidate has a message and plan to take the country forward, then the wedge issues will not stick. The party cannot rely on Washington insiders who have voted on these issues to lead the party.
By saying this I am not advocating that we change
our postition on issues or tack to the right. It is not necessary to make those changes. Our last two candidates for President have come to the voters with a plan for every problem and end up looking like snake oil salesmen. The emphasis has to be on the direction for the country. The plans can be brought up when necessary, but not in every speech.
Actually, Bush made big gains in NYC, especially Staten Island (which went from 54-46 Gore to 57-43 Bush). In Brooklyn, Bush gained by 9 points (from 16% to 25%). As Ruy said awhile ago, Bush gained a little bit everywhere- but more in some urban communities but exurbs.
As to the broader point: Crewes’s view is supported by the gradual meltdown of GOP support in big cities (which indicates that people who were already Republicans have been moving away). In the first half of the century, even after the New Deal, Republicans were dominant in some big cities (Philadelphia) and competitive in others (St Louis). From the 50s to the 70s or so, Republicans were the minority party in cities but dominated most suburbs. Now, Republicans have lost inner suburbs as well, are are competitive only in outer suburbs (which matter a lot) and rural areas (which have flipped massively to Bush in the past two elections). If rural areas were as Democratic as they had been a decade or two ago, Bush would have been clobbered.
ttcrewes, you might want to look up the series on “The Great Divide” that was done by a couple of writers for the Austin American-Statesman this summer.
Basically, the writers looked at county-level election data going back over the past 30 years or so and found that the percentage of Americans living in “landslide” counties– that is, counties won by either the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate by a margin of 20 points or more– has steadily increased over time. In other words, there seems to be some sort of geographic-level sorting-out of political preferences going on.
Here’s a link to the series:
http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/greatdivide/index.html
I have observed the growth of an exurb (Dutchess and Ulster Counties, NY) over a twenty-year period and I think the idea that Bush carrying such areas has significance is ludicrous.
The people who have moved to the exurbs from the suburbs and the cities are those who can afford the commutation and the 5-acre zoned homes. They are the bedrock of the Republican Party and always have been. The only thing they changed was their zip code.
Furthermore, the areas they moved to were often heavily Republican anyhow. Most rural areas outside of the South always were, and the ones in the South have been turning red for years anyhow in reaction to the civil rights movement. Dutchess County, lifetime home of Franklin Roosevelt, voted 2-1 for his Republican opponent in all four elections.
So to note that a fast-growing exurb county went for Bush is to note that the kind of people who like Republicans haven’t changed their minds. We already knew that. What we NEED to know is why the sons and daughters of the unionized workers of Canton and Youngstown failed to vote for Kerry in sufficient numbers.
So, assuming that the medium sized city hypothesis is correct, then some of the gnashing of the teeth on organizational matters and logistical difficulties of GOTV can be canned to some degree because the population density is still high enough that traditional Democratic GOTV methodologies can stay pay off if we can find the correct message/presentation to appeal to people? Correct?
What is missing from the discussion of the exurban new communities is whether when someone moves, say from Staten Island, which is part of NYC to Orange County, which is 40 miles away, does their political viewpoint actually changed? Were they a democrat in Staten Island and then change to a Republican in Orange County? Or are the Republicans in Staten Island just segmenting out to Orange County so that NYC is now MORE Democratic and there is no net gain for Republicans. Is this just a permutation of the evolutionary phenomenon of the Reagan Democrats, whose parents were Roosevelt Democrats, having Republican children who are who are now clustering in places where they can afford to live? I doubt that the exurban environment is exuding some weird influence on this demograph that morphs them into republicans. They were repubs already. Which is not to say Republicans have not made inroads in the last generation among upwardly mobile state college educated whites. It is just to say that such people, like most Americans, are choosing to live in economically lateral communities, which is no surprise. The problem for Democrats is not the rise of the exurbs. The problem for Democrats is the alienation of socially conservative middle class whites that started in the 1960’s in the South and has gradually moved Northward. On this particular issue, I’m with George Eliot, “Breed tells more than pasture.”