At LAT, "In stunning 2017 defeats, Republicans see vision of difficulties in 2018":
Tonight's analysis: Democrats have learned to weaponize enthusiasm and cut a path to 2018. For Republicans, the last year has proved a reversal of fortunes: https://t.co/qbC6ulot06
— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) December 13, 2017
Democrats who opened the year clashing among themselves and lamenting President Trump's election have closed 2017 with victories that demonstrated their ability to weaponize party enthusiasm and draw a template for success in a sharply competitive battle for Congress in 2018.More.
For Republicans, Tuesday night's stunning loss by Roy Moore in Alabama's Senate race — the first GOP loss in a Senate race there in a generation — underscored a bleak passage of time: A year that began in unified control of Washington has ended with the party bitterly split and redefined in the worst of ways, saddled with an unpopular president and a Senate candidate accused of child molestation.
The problems begin with Trump, for whom Moore's defeat represented a third straight repudiation.
The first came in September in Alabama, where Trump ambivalently backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the Republican primary. Then Trump endorsed Republican Ed Gillespie in Virginia's gubernatorial race, only to have him lose by nearly double digits last month to Democrat Ralph Northam.
Finally, Trump transferred his Alabama endorsement to Moore and watched him lose in a state that has been ruby red for decades.
Even in Alabama, a state he won by 28 percentage points, Trump was unable to ease his candidate over the finish line. Exit polls Tuesday indicated one reason: Voters even in this heavily Republican state were closely split between approval and disapproval of Trump.
That's an ominous sign for Republicans heading into the midterm election. The key races next year will take place in states that are far less favorable to Trump than Alabama.
Related to Trump's broad unpopularity is the fact that his party is fractured. Those divisions began with the primary battle, which the president's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who strongly backed Moore, helped turn into a referendum on the party's Senate leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The splits only deepened after the Washington Post published accusations that Moore had fondled and kissed girls as young as 14 when he was a local prosecutor in his 30s.
The Republican National Committee and the party's Senate campaign committee pulled its backing from Moore after the Post story. When Trump, urged on by Bannon, decided to endorse Moore, the national committee returned to support him. The Senate committee declined to follow suit.
On election night, Moore's chief strategist, Dean Young, took off not against Jones or even the typical targets, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, but against McConnell.
"I tell Sen. McConnell this: The people of Alabama are having an election tonight, and he should not overturn the people of Alabama," Young said, anticipating that a victory by Moore might be followed by a Senate Ethics Committee investigation.
On Tuesday night, it was clear that the bitter feelings among Republicans are likely to carry over to 2018 and beyond.
"The polls have been closed for 90 minutes & GOP could actually lose Senate seat. In ALABAMA," Alex Conant, a former spokesman for Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, tweeted Tuesday night. "No matter what happens next, hard to overstate what a huge political disaster this is for Moore-apologists like Trump, let alone Moore-champions like Bannon."
Moreover, in Alabama, and earlier in Virginia, Republicans found that arguments they have counted on to dispatch Democrats — that they are soft on crime, the military, immigration, guns and religion — no longer guarantee success...
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