Daily Kos
By Kerry Eleveld
March 14, 2018
After watching congressional Republicans sell their souls to a crass, intemperate, and divisive pr*sident, suburban voters are jumping the GOP ship. As Republican licked their wounds in the aftermath of a race where they watched a 20-point Trump advantage in 2016 evaporite into dust Tuesday night, suburban flight from their started to sink in.
“One Pennsylvania Republican operative called the results in the suburbs, in particular, ‘apocalyptic,'” NPR reporter Scott Detrow said on Up First Wednesday morning.
As the website 538 noted, Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district—where Democrat Conor Lamb still narrowly leads Republican Rick Saccone—is both wealthier and more highly educated than the nation on average, making the race a suburban referendum on Trump.
As the numbers show, Lamb won this election not in “Trump country,” but in the Allegheny County suburbs.
The problem for Republicans is that the Allegheny County break with Trump isn’t a fluke, it’s a pattern. The New York Times writes:
Just as they did outside Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala., in December, and Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C., in November, energized and angry suburban voters were swamping the Trump stalwarts in the more rural parts of those regions, sending a clear message to Republicans around the country.
Suburban voters were “energized” alright. As NBC notes:
Intensity was highest in the places where support for Trump was lowest: Turnout was at 67 percent of 2016 levels in Allegheny County, where Lamb won, compared to 60 percent in Westmoreland County, where Saccone led handily.
The suburban apocalypse Republicans are facing is really summed up in one word: Trump. He’s repulsive to suburban voters overall. And the more GOP candidates model their candidacies after him, the more suburban voters flee. For instance, Trump built his entire campaign on racist anti-immigrant sentiment that turned out to be just as disastrous for Republican Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania Tuesday as it was for GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie in Virginia last year.
These groups then hammered Lamb, a Marine Corps veteran and former prosecutor, as pro-sanctuary cities. Then they accused him of letting dangerous drug dealers get off the hook for their crimes with lenient sentences. (The dark turn the ads took in the final weeks foreshadows a particularly nasty fall campaign. If you live in a battleground and have young children, you might want to keep them away from the tube.)
For the GOP’s college-educated voters, that messaging is just toxic—as is the notion of having to “shield” your kids from the TV. Here’s how well it worked last year on Virginia Republican Mike Potts, who said the only thing he needed to know about a candidate before casting his vote for them was that they weren’t a Republican.
“The Republicans are just so negative,” Mike Potts said. “We have kids — 10 and 7 — and we need a little hope. The Republicans aren’t giving us any. I’m protesting and it feels good in the sense that I’m registering my concerns about it. Normally I would like to know a little more about whom I’m voting for, but right now I’m overwhelmed by the protest aspect of it.”
Another issue that isn’t helping Republicans with moderate suburban voters is the GOP’s crazed position on guns. While Conor Lamb ran as a pro-gun Democrat in PA-18, the GOP’s lockstep loyalty to the National Rifle Association didn’t sell well in Allegheny.
After casting her vote in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, dental hygienist Janet Dellana said she had been outraged to see Trump call for arming teachers instead of limiting access to semiautomatic weapons after the deadly school shooting in Florida.
“He flip-flops on everything, but in the end, he caters to the extreme right,” said Dellana, 64. “I am a registered Republican, but as this party continues to cater to the extreme right, they push me left.”
You’re not the only one, Ms. Dellana.
Republicans built this. They have given Trump a pass on everything—decorum, competence, morality, corruption. They have not just looked the other way, but have actually enabled his attempts to tear down the foundational principles of our government. And they have been complicit in insulating Trump from the possibility that he conspired with a foreign power to win the election or has abused the powers of the presidency since, or both. Now, Republicans are trying to sell suburbanites on the idea that their measly tax cut is a worthy exchange for the total debasement and destruction of our country. Sorry, GOP, welcome to your apocalypse.
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