Trump is Sinking, Overseas and at Home

Political Notes

by Jon Fuhrman

Wednesday, May 13. Describing the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked.” It would seem that President Trump was counting on that. He and his advisers seemed sure that Iran, after huge damage and the threat of apocalyptic bombing of civilian infrastructure, would blink.

The problem is that, even in 1962, the Russians didn’t really blink. They took the deal that President Kennedy secretly offered them, giving them the strategic win they most sought -- the U.S. pulling its short-range missiles out of Turkey. President Kennedy kept that part of the deal secret, and it stayed secret for decades, but he held to the agreement and pulled the missiles out, as promised, six months after the Russians pulled their missiles out of Cuba.

Apparently, the President, and his advisors, out of ignorance or hubris, basically missed the key point. Your antagonist might back down, but only if you give them something they really want. President Trump seems to have expected, and perhaps felt entitled to, an entirely one-way transaction. It was not to be.

Now, it would seem, we’re stuck. We won’t back down without concessions the Iranians are absolutely not willing to yield, nor will they back down without our agreeing to their right to develop nuclear power for, what they assert, are entirely civilian purposes. As we’re stuck in this impasse, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and global economies are taking enormous hits on prices of fuel, fertilizer, helium gas and assorted other products derived from the petrochemicals normally coming from the Persian Gulf states.

For now, President Trump seems oblivious to the economic damage being wrought. The idea of a gas tax holiday has superficial appeal, but cutting twenty cents out of the cost of gas, which has already risen by over $1.50 a gallon, really won’t do much to placate stressed voters. Worse for the President, as the real inflationary pressures build – with retail inflation up to 3.8%, and inflation for wholesale goods now at 6% -- GOP officeholders may become increasingly desperate. They see the House slipping away, and the Senate quite possibly as well. The pressure to do something will become intense, and the easiest something is simply to declare victory and walk away from the Iranian conflict and pretend that Iran doesn’t really control the Strait of Hormuz. One alternative would be actually to negotiate with Iran and end up with an agreement eerily similar to the one President Obama signed and Trump tore up in his first term. The only other alternative is to resume hostilities at an even fiercer pitch (reportedly, the “War” Department is considering changing the name from Operation Epic Fury to Operation Sledgehammer, as if it were a video game marketed to teenage wannabe macho men).

As if dealing with Iran, and China, were not enough, the President has been getting some pretty bad news from actual elections as well as polling, although that’s been offset by some major wins in the Supreme Court and in compliant state legislatures. Six of the Supreme Court Justices seem blithely untroubled by ignoring their own precedent intended to avoid changes to electoral systems that were too close to the actual day of the election. Even worse, they seem defiantly oblivious to the dramatic impact their decision will have on decimating the ranks of African Americans elected to Congress, all in the name of supposedly race-neutral partisan reapportionment. Southern states with GOP trifectas (GOP Governors and GOP control of both state legislative houses) practically fell over themselves rushing to redraw their maps – even if early voting had already started – to eliminate essentially every Democratic seat, many of which were majority-minority seats with African-American incumbents. The glee with which they rushed through these Jim Crow 2.0 changes was as sad as it was startling. One might have thought we had progressed beyond that degree of blatant racism, but I guess not. Politically, this could result in a net loss for Democrats of 5 to 8 seats in the House, a not insubstantial number when the Reps have a current margin of merely two seats.

More bad news for Dems came from the Virginia Supreme Court, which, by a 4 – 3 vote, used an excessively picky interpretation of their State Constitution to rule that the redistricting initiative failed to comply with their state rules for Constitutional amendments. Under the rejected plan, Dems were confident of picking up four seats, so this setback further complicates Dem hopes for a blue wave.

Nonetheless, even with the existing districts, Democrats are likely to pick up two, and perhaps even three seats, in Virginia, due to strong candidates, hefty financing and a blue wave, contributing to what I believe will be overall a 30 – 45 seat gain in the House, despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision. White House staff has begun briefing Cabinet officials and senior staff on how to respond to the anticipated subpoenas and oversight hearings that a Democratic House might initiate. Moreover, it’s not just the House; more and more pundits are recognizing that the Senate may well fall into Democratic hands as well. Current polling suggests the President is falling into the mid-30% range on approval ratings, and the gap in enthusiasm between Dems and Reps is growing significantly.

Some hard evidence of this came from last week’s elections in Indiana. On the surface, it might seem like good news for the President. You may recall that the Indiana State Senate, even with a GOP supermajority, refused to go along with a reapportionment plan that would have eliminated one Democratic U.S. House seat. Eight GOP State Senators voted no, defying enormous pressure from the President, the Vice-President, and the Indiana Governor. Seven of those GOP Senators were up for re-election this year, and President Trump vowed revenge, explicitly supporting GOP challengers to all seven of those GOP incumbents who had dared defy him. The President went all-out, with campaign messages, robocalls, even campaign stops by the Vice-President. Well, five of his challengers won their races; only one of the incumbents was cleanly elected, and another is now ahead by 4 votes out of 12,600 votes cast. It would seem, then, that the President got his revenge; five, and maybe six, of the renegades will be purged.

But if we look a little deeper, it gets more interesting. In four of those races, the Trump-supported challengers won by about 60%, which means about 40% of the Republican voters, in a deeply red state, in a relatively low-turnout primary (which typically attracts the really dyed-in-the-wool true believers) defied the President. So the President is losing over a third of the GOP core base. That is definitely not a recipe for success in November. It does, however, track fairly well with the general polling, showing not only sharp losses among independent voters but also measurable losses among core GOP voters.

This also tracks with polls showing Democratic candidates like James Talarico, in Texas, with a lead outside the margin of error against either GOP candidate, and with Democrats leading in the generic Congressional vote by between 3 and 10%, depending upon the particular poll and the bias of that polling firm.

So I’m sticking to my prediction that we’ll win 30 – 45 House seats and that we’ll take back the Senate. In fact, I think the question is not whether we get to 51 Senate seats, but whether we get to 60 (including a few independents), winning in states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska and Alaska. I’ll have more details on the Senate races in future columns to justify what some might call my irrational optimism.