Is Trumpism Dead?
By: Quardricos Driskell, Columnist
Democrats were slated to get a shellacking this mid-term election, and Republicans were widely expected to win the House overwhelmingly and possibly take control of the U.S. Senate in what has been forecasted as a “red wave.” Indeed, that was not the case. Historically, since the Civil War, the president’s party has lost seats at every midterm except for a few times. And this is one of those times.
In August, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different statewide, and candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
The tactician Minority Leader of the Senate was correct. Republicans performed poorly overall. Why? Could it have been because of larger issues such as abortion, election denialism, and Christian Nationalism? Frankly, all these issues were on the ballot, as other high-priority policy issues, including inflation, the economy, health care, crime, and education, with the diverse voting population split by age, region, and religious affiliation. This year’s midterm results indicated that the voters were not solely single-issue voters. People will vote for more tangible kitchen table issues such as gas prices than over the “threat to democracy.”
Perhaps, President Biden’s “treat to democracy” speech was impactful than original though. As such, important lessons resulted from the 2022 Midterms: President Trump is a liability to his party, and this is perhaps the number one issue the Republican Party needs to contend with – the lingering effects of Trumpism. Electoral politics is about addition and not subtraction. Candidate quality matters, as Sen. McConnell lamented – move on from the past and stop talking about an election that is over. Most of the election deniers aren’t doing well, either. Trumpism alienates voters who normally would vote Republican. So, as the GOP becomes more extreme, Democrats are going to be required to absorb more of the country’s ideological diversity, thus forcing them to be more conservative when campaigning to win a large swath of American voters.
The stain that Trump has on our federal republic is permanent. The country voted against authoritarianism. Even in very conservative states, voters strongly support abortion access – essentially, people don’t want their freedom restricted.
This begs the question, what kind of party do Republicans want to be? Time after time, Republicans have shown they want Trumpism. But these results are a moment of soul-searching for the GOP. It is clear – voters want respectable, principled, non-grifting candidates – and the reality is that the Republican Party needs to go in a different direction. Will Republican candidates do what the voters have mandated? Not so fast; cue Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
In his DeSantis’s victory speech, he said, “we reject woke ideology. We will never ever surrender to the woke agenda. People have come here because of our policies. The people have delivered their verdict – freedom is here to stay.” While Ron DeSantis and Trump appear to be rivals, DeSantis certainly embraces Trumpism. In fact, DeSantis may be even more dangerous than Trump to some degree because he can actually implement and execute his policies, unlike Trump. Therefore, the question and strategy for the GOP becomes how to frame extremism into a more “mainstream” package like Governors DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).
Overall, the voters showed the country that bad candidates don’t deserve to win because they are members of your preferred political party. And despite the GOP best efforts to reach Latinos – the partisan split of Hispanics voters stuck with more traditional tends of voting for Democrats. Yet there was another loser for the 2022 midterm election – political polling. There are polls, and there are people. And thus, to anyone involved in politics, which is motivated to review polls in the future, stop and knock on a door. There is a clear winner in the 2022 midterm however – “we the people” proving once again the country is plum – not “red” or “blue” but slightly more “red”.
Quardricos Bernard Driskell is an adjunct professor of legislative politics, where he teaches religion, race, public policy, and politics at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. Follow him on Twitter @q_driskell4
