Good thing we got tax reform. We need to finish up the MAGA agenda this year, especially on immigration, because once the Dems take back one or both chambers of Congress in 2019, all bets are off.
At LAT, "As 2017 ends, Republicans struggle to counter a Democratic wave":
Two things equally true about the 2018 midterm outlook: Democrats start out ahead. Republicans still have lots of time to turn it around. https://t.co/HBv0iF6ZsU— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) December 31, 2017
The clock is ticking on the Republican majority in Congress: The GOP has just over 10 months to avoid a rout in 2018.
Republicans could do it. They have time and several important factors on their side: a good economy, low crime rates, achievements of significance to the party's followers.
Nevertheless, as 2017 closes, almost all signs point toward big Democratic gains next year, largely driven by President Trump's widespread unpopularity. And some of the pugnacious instincts that helped the president win election a year ago may now be worsening his party's dilemma.
Midterm elections "are a referendum on the party in power," notes Sean Trende, political analyst for the Real Clear Politics website. During the Obama years, Trende correctly forecast that Democrats had underestimated the potential of a surge of conservative white Americans voting Republican. Now, he says, Republicans are making a mistake in assuming that turnout will once again favor them in an off-year election.
Trump has "terrible numbers," Democrats have a large advantage in polls, and "it all adds up to a really rough midterm" for the GOP, Trende says.
The trouble for Republicans comes despite some of the best economic conditions in years, which normally would boost the party in power. Unfortunately for Republican candidates, a majority of Americans continues to believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, despite the good economic news.
Much of that discontent appears to center on one person — the president.
Throughout the year, opposition to Trump has generated energy among Democrats. But something new has been added to the mix in recent months, said Joe Trippi, the veteran Democratic consultant who served as media strategist for Doug Jones' upset Senate election this month in Alabama.
"The sense of chaos, the constant fight, fight, fight and alarm bells going off all the time" has deeply troubled voters, including many who backed Trump last year, Trippi said. "There's this sense of being on edge," which Alabamians talked about frequently, Trippi said. "That's what they don't want anymore."
Alabama's election had unique aspects, notably the flaws of the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. But that same voter anxiety has come up repeatedly in focus groups around the country.
If a year of Trump has put voters in the mood for less confrontation, that poses a big challenge for Republicans.
"I don't know how you stop Donald Trump from putting people on edge," Trippi said. "That's what he does."
Indeed, even if conflict weren't so deeply ingrained in Trump's personality, political calculation might lead him to continue seeking out battles at every turn. Voters as a whole may not like it, but to Trump's most fervent supporters, his willingness to fight forms a major part of his draw. His former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, threatens to add to the political tension by backing challengers to several Republican incumbents.
Trump's hard-core supporters remain loyal and probably always will. But for all the attention they get from the White House — and often from the news media — Trump's fervent backers make up only about one-fifth of the public and are outnumbered about 2 to 1 by fervent opponents.
Indeed, the gap between the share of Americans who say they "strongly disapprove" of Trump and those who "strongly approve" has grown significantly this year. In polls by SurveyMonkey, for example, the margin now stands at 26 percentage points, up from 16 points at the start of the year.
Those numbers form just one of several indicators of problems for Republicans. The most basic comes from the so-called generic ballot — a question polls have used for decades that asks which party's candidate a person plans to vote for in the next election. It has long proven among the most reliable forecasting tools in American politics.
For most of the fall, Democrats showed a healthy lead on that question — enough to suggest the midterms would be competitive. This month, the forecast took an abrupt jump in one nonpartisan survey after another — to 13 points in a poll from Marist College, 15 in Quinnipiac University's poll, 15 from a Monmouth University survey and 18 points, a previously unheard-of level, in a poll for CNN.
Exactly why the numbers for the GOP worsened is unknown, although the timing suggests the unpopularity of the Republican tax bill played a role. What is knowable is that even discounting the biggest numbers, the Democrats' lead on the generic ballot surpasses that of any party out of power in decades.
The average size of the Democratic advantage forecasts that if the election were held now, they would gain in the neighborhood of 40 seats in the House — considerably more than the 24 they would need for a majority.
For those who don't trust polls, actual election results point the same way. Some of the contests have gotten wide attention, including the Alabama Senate race and the Virginia election in November, in which Democrats won the governorship and all but wiped out a huge Republican majority in the lower house of the Legislature.
Other, less heralded contests have shown the same pattern of high Democratic turnout, depressed Republican voting and double-digit shifts in partisan outcomes, particularly in suburban areas where Trump fares worse than a typical Republican.
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