The Midwest Will Be A Trump Death Trap In 2020

Stormy weather ahead

Democrats targeted 2 Republican incumbents this cycle, Jason Lewis in the suburban district (MN-02) south of the Twin Cities and Erik Paulsen in the suburbs (MN-03) west, north and south of Minneapolis. They flipped both seats, each of which had been won twice by Obama. In 2016 Trump edged Hillary by a point in MN-02 and Hillary obliterated Trump by nearly 10 points in MN-03. This month Angie Craig took out Lewis 177,971 (52.8%) to 159,373 (47.2%) and Dean Phillips beat Paulsen 202,402 (55.7%) to 160,839 (44.3%), two very big wins.

But the score cards don't show the Democrats with a net gain of seats in Minnesota. That's because despite a sweep by Democrats statewide-- Dems won 2 U.S. Senate seats, the governor's mansion, and races for Attorney General, Secretary of State and State Auditor, plus a net of 18 seats in the state House (flipping it)-- the Republicans flipped two blue seats red. The first congressional district (R+5 PVI where Trump beat Hillary by 15 points after it had voted twice for Obama) was abandoned by Democratic incumbent Tim Walz who ran successfully for governor, resulting in a hard-fought 50.2% to 49,8% win by Republican Jim Hagedorn over Dan Feehan. In the sprawling 8th district-- the north east and central part of the state-- Democrat Rick Nolan retired and Republican Pete Stauber beat Democrat Joe Radinovich 50.7% to 45.2% in the R+4 district that had gone to Obama twice and then went to Trump 54.2% to 38.6%.

It's worth mentioning that in the 2016 state caucuses, Bernie obliterated Hillary in both districts. He took the first 66.3% to 33.7% and he beat her in the 8th by almost as much-- 65.2% to 34.8%. Trump's win in the general was more a rejection of Hillary than an embrace of Trump. Bernie would have won those two districts easily. But... Trump's political team seems to think it can flip Minnesota's 10 electoral votes in 2020. Really. Minnesota has gone to the Democratic presidential nominee since 1972 and it was Hillary's shiftiness that caused Minnesota to vote more Republican than the national average for the first time since 1952. They didn't-- and don't-- want Trump. They want change, not Hillary and not another putrid establishment careerist. Remember. But Hillary still did win, by an embarrassing 46.44% to 44.92%. Obama beat Romney there 53% to 45%. Obama beat McCain 54% to 44%. Kerry beat Bush, Gore beat Bush, Bill Clinton won both times. Michael Dukakis beat the first Bush 53-46%. Carter and Mondale each beat Reagan by bigger margins than Hillary's win over Trump.

The Sound of Music by Nancy Ohanian

But the Washington Examiner reported last week that Minnesota is a Trump 2020 target. David Drucker wrote about Trump "expanding his Midwest footprint in 2020," a midwest footprint that actually looks more likely to disappear-- outside of Indiana and Nebraska-- than expand. No one sane expects to see Trump win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin or Iowa next time around. Unless Putin works his magic again/

Minnesota was among the limited 2018 battlegrounds to see a major investment by America First Action, which gathered data that might inform Trump’s strategy and boost his re-election bid over the next two years. America First Action tailored its activities to states and subregions considered crucial to Trump’s next campaign: Michigan; Minnesota; North Carolina; Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

“America First Action invested in places where it could acquire information-- polling, digital, data-- in suburban and exurban areas that will be important,” a Republican insider said, noting that the group’s “micro” mail and digital messaging was built around promoting Trump as a means to test effectiveness.

The president came unexpectedly close to winning Minnesota in 2016, but lost to Hillary Clinton by just 1.5 percentage points. The state was largely uncontested in that campaign.

In races contested by both parties this year, the Republicans flipped two longtime Democratic congressional seats in rural and exurban regions of the state that have gravitated toward Trump. This happened even as the GOP lost control of the House in a broad national sweep that washed away two Republican incumbents in suburban Minneapolis.

After Trump became the first Republican in decades to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, his supporters see Minnesota as fertile ground for him to tighten his grip on the Midwest. Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist who hails from Minnesota, said the president’s prospects there depend largely on whom the Democrats nominate.

“If Democrats turn out to vote in Minnesota, it’s a huge problem for a Republican like Trump,” Conant said. “The problem is that the Twin Cities are so big, and suburban voters there don’t like Trump.”

The Republicans were shellacked in suburbs across America in the midterm elections, as affluent, educated voters that typically vote GOP for Congress rebuked Trump by punishing his party. In Minnesota, for example, Republicans lost the suburban Minneapolis 3rd Congressional District, where the GOP for years racked up big margins.

Meanwhile, Republicans continued to make gains in rural and exurban communities that used to be Democratic strongholds, also evidenced by what happened in Minnesota. The two districts the GOP won in the state were two of the only three seats the party flipped on Nov. 6.

However, there are a lot more available voters in the suburbs that are trending blue under his leadership, a critical challenge for the president. If Trump’s party can’t recover in suburbia in 2020 and he loses ground there compared to two years ago, states like Pennsylvania that the president won to much fanfare could slip away.

“All of the damage that was done in 2018 is correctable by 2020,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican operative in Pennsylvania who said that GOP performance in the Philadelphia collar counties in the midterm elections should be a warning sign. “It’s going to be up to the Trump campaign to reclaim those educated, suburban Republicans that voted for Trump in 2016 but against some of the party’s congressional and legislative candidates in 2018."

Trump’s solid Electoral College victory was built on an expanded Republican coalition that included establishment-oriented voters in the affluent suburbs but added working-class voters from exurban and rural communities. It netted the president a few surprise victories in the Rust Belt, plus convincing wins in perennial swing states like Iowa and Ohio that made those battlegrounds look a lot more red than purple.

Before Drucker descended into inane stupidity promised on Hillary having been "too liberal," he accidentally hit the nail on the head: "In 2020, Trump is unlikely to have the luxury of running against Clinton, a candidate that voters deemed as unlikable and as untrustworthy as the president, and who was under the ethical cloud of a federal investigation." What he and other pundit types don't realize-- but what voters do-- is that Hillary is not seen as a "liberal" by anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by Fox-- the GOP base-- but as an establishment corporate shill representing the status quo, just like Trump has proven himself to be. How could the Democrats lose in 2020? By nominating someone just like her: Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz (the Stabucks guy), Andrew Cuomo, Amy Klobuchar, Julian Castro, Mark Warner, John Hickenlooper, Terry McAuliffe...

On Sunday, The Atlantic noted that the anti-Trump wave this month in the upper Midwest was a Great Lakes tsunami. In Michigan, for example, "it was enormous and swept over everything: governor, Senate, attorney general, two flipped House seats with two female alumnae of the Obama administration, plus another that put a Palestinian American woman in John Conyers’s old spot, five flipped state Senate seats, five flipped state House seats, all the way down to the state supreme court and the state university boards. They legalized recreational pot, and the vote wasn’t close. They banned gerrymandering. They created automatic voter registration and an absentee-ballot process, essentially a backdoor way to institute early voting, which together will almost certainly lock in long-term the gains Democrats made."

Trump districts all over the Midwest went to Democrats in the midterms. Trump, unconvincingly, whined to Chris Wallace in that really crazy interview Fox aired yesterday, that "I have people that won't vote unless I'm on the ballot, OK?... My name wasn't on the ballot." Is he stupid? Delusional? Manipulative? A liar? All of the above?

Those two maps of Wisconsin are only part of the story. This month, the state that gave Trump a narrow 1,405,284 to 1,382,536 win-- less than 1%-- turned the beat around in a very big, very anti-Trump way. Democrats ousted Republicans Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch and elected Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes as governor and lieutenant governor, reelected Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate by nearly 11 points (despite a nearly $9 million smear campaign orchestrated by Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers), ousted Attorney General Brad Schimel and replaced him with Josh Kaul, reelected Secretary of State Doug La Follette, elected Sarah Godlewski state Treasurer. As for Trump's hopes to win in Wisconsin again... Let's look at Kenosha, a traditionally Democratic county in the southeast corner of the state. Trump won it, 36,025 (47.5%) to 35,770 (47.2%) in 2016 and Bernie had beaten Hillary in the primary 14,612 (57.2%) to 10,871 (42.5%)-- another one of those key counties where Bernie significantly out-polled Trump, who only took 11,139 votes that same day.

So what happened in Kenosha County this month? A Democratic sweep. Tammy Baldwin took it 57-43%. Tony Evers won the county 51-46%. Josh Kaul won it with 51% and Randy Bryce beat Bryan Steil there 33,129 (49%) to 31,782 (47%).

Iowa isn't going to be Trumpland in 2020 either. He beat Hillary by 10 points in 2016 after Obama won it comfortably in 2008 and 2012. Again, it wasn't Trump winning as much as Hillary losing: wrong candidate, wrong message. This cycle, Abby Finkenauer ousted Rod Blum as congressman for IA-01-- 51-46%. A big majority of voters live in 3 counties: Linn, Black Hawk and Dubuque. Finkenauer beat Blum in all 3. In 2016 Trump had won Dubuque and 17 other counties in the district for a IA-01 win.

The whole state moved away from Trump and his supporters-- urban, suburban and even rural. In the reddest district in the state, IA-04-- base of neo-fascist Trump ally Steve King-- Trump had cleaned up in 2016-- 60.9% to 33.5%. Hillary under-performed Obama by over 10 points. This cycle King barely held onto his seat with just 50.4%, his closest win ever (by far). Progressive Democrat J.D. Scholten-- with a platform significantly to the left of Hillary's across the board-- won the 3 biggest counties in the district (Story, Woodbury and Cerro Gordo) as well as 3 traditional Republican rural counties (Floyd, Boone and Webster). In 2016 Trump won every single one of them. In fact, in 2016, Trump won ever county in IA-04 except Story, home of Iowa State University in Ames.

Or will Trump clean up his act between now and then? You must be kidding. This morning, Maggie Haberman took a look at the latest Trump insider exposé, Team of Vipers, a firsthand account of the tumult inside the Trumpanzee White Madhouse, scheduled to be published in January, "the latest in a string of books that seek to decipher his unprecedented presidency." Author Cliff Sims is a former aide in the White House communications office who had previously worked on the Trump campaign. "His book," said the publisher, "offers never-revealed scenes from this most unorthodox of White Houses... As the title indicates, the book does not paint a rosy picture of the atmosphere in the White House. An author’s note describes a venomous den in which people are constantly at each other’s throats... [T]here has long been a wide gap between how Mr. Trump would like his White House to be perceived (a 'well-oiled machine') and the reality of how it operates. The common thread for most of the half-dozen books that have been published about the Trump administration has been the affirmation of real-time news accounts of chaos behind the White House gates."

That gap will only widen into an abyss for Midwest voters to stare at when they get ready to complete what they began on November 6. This morning, the New York Times' Alan Rappeport reported that Trump's promises to compensate them for losses because of his trade wars have not materialized. The $12 billion bailout program to "make it up" to farmers-- primarily in Midwestern states like Iowa-- is a bust: "red tape and long waiting periods resulting in few payouts so far." So far just $838 million has been paid out to farmers since September."