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WASHINGTON – The unemployment rate has reached its lowest level in 50 years, businesses create jobs and gross domestic product rose 3.2% in the first quarter, reversing the forecast of an upcoming recession.
Despite all this political advantage, Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated last week that they were not gearing up to push the 2020 election over the vigor of the economy.
President Trump and his senior advisers have sent mixed signals about a possible war with Iran. Mr. Trump presented a proposal for intransigent immigration that was unlikely to succeed, but he refocused his attention on the most inflammatory issue of his presidency. His drum beat on tariffs in China caused the stock market to turn. And in Alabama, the Republican governor has signed a bill banning abortion, the most recent and most ambitious of the new restrictions imposed by the state, as well as a step towards a possible confrontation of the Supreme Court on the right to abortion.
These positions of division and destabilization – motivated by the political impulses of Mr. Trump and by emboldened conservatives – could alienate opposing voters and help Democrats who might otherwise be on the defensive in the face of the relative prosperity of the country, said politicians and strategists from both parties. And the long-standing truth that Americans will vote with their wallets could be tested in 2020 like never before.
The party's challenge was crystallized last week in a Quinnipiac poll conducted among Pennsylvania voters, one of the states that helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 race. The poll found that 77 % of electors rated their own financial situation as excellent or good. – but that Mr Trump would lose 11 percentage points against Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the main Democratic candidates.
Trump's low ratings, which run counter to a president's normal ratings in a frenzied economy, also point to the deep divisions in the country. The president's erratic conduct and instinct for issues of culture and identity, combined with the leftist energy within the Democratic Party and the possibility that the Supreme Court may re-examine the Roe case v. Wade, are likely to further polarize an electorate already divided into parties. , sex and class lines when it comes to Mr. Trump.
"We are separating more, not together, and the traditional problems are eclipsed – because if" peace and prosperity worked, there would always be a Republican majority in the House, "said Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican of the United States. Oklahoma, who envisioned "an imminent clash there with both sides mobilized and demonizing the opposite side."
Cole added, "It's a long way from Ronald Reagan and Morning in America.
Mr. Trump's reelection campaign and Congressional Republicans will certainly highlight the country's economic gains, which they would have to endure until 2020, of course, and target the Democrats on issues such as taxes and the size of government – especially if a liberal like Senator Bernie Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren appears as the Democratic candidate.
But both parties have overwhelming motives for pushing next year's elections to tackle heart problems and not headaches.
For Republicans, the arrival in Washington of liberal women of color, such as representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as very high candidates for the Democratic presidency heading to the left created irresistible political temptations. With appalling new caricatures and explosive liberal issues such as reparations for enslaved black descendants, voting rights for prisoners and federal allowances for undocumented immigrants, G.O.P. the officials have even more material for the sort of shamelessly scathing and shameless campaign that Mr. Trump had conducted in 2016.
These new targets offer a new material with which Republicans can galvanize their base and try to convince moderate voters that, while they are uncomfortable with the Trump era GP, the Alternative is radicalism on the left.
And the fact that the President is determined to please his own political base will probably make it difficult for him to extend his support beyond the narrow band of states that delivered his victory to the Electoral College in 2016, pushing him even further. towards a cultural conflict.
"He has to recreate his coalition without losing anything," said Republican strategist Michael Steel. "This means making the Democratic candidate unacceptable, especially in Midwestern states with large working-class Catholic communities where Democrats accuse supporting infanticide will be part of the game book. "
It will also mean that Mr. Trump will convey a consistent message that, as he demonstrated late Saturday night, is not guaranteed. After keeping silent for days about the Alabama law, which prohibits abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, Mr. Trump stated that he supported those exceptions and warned his party that "If we are stupid and do not remain united as one, all our hard earned gains for life can and will disappear quickly!"
For democrats, mid-term in 2018, it is clear that college-educated suburban voters are more likely to vote against Trump's behavior than for economic management to encourage them to behave. controversial of the president in front of and in the center of the voters. The former vice president, Mr. Biden, was initially successful, prompting other candidates to put Trump at the center of their strategy.
"This is a referendum on Trump and a lot more information than in 2016," said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. This information includes the President's fidelity to his evangelical base, the appointment of two conservative judges to the Supreme Court and his The barely hidden joy of potentially replacing Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a conservative. These approaches had already stimulated many supporters and opponents of the right to abortion – and that was before Alabama.
"It's no longer an intellectual problem, it's really real," said Cecile Richards, former director of Planned Parenthood, about the future of the right to abortion.
Ms. Richards noted that at the end of the year 2018, women were giving more money to candidates than they did in 2016, when the first female presidential candidate was elected. on the ballot.
The prospect of Trump's appointment to a third Supreme Court, the determination of conservatives in state capitals to plead against Roe in the Supreme Court, and the President's often crude words about women could well spur the commitment of women in 2020.
"Part of what worked for Democrats in 2020 could be steroids because of the news," said Jill Alper, a longtime Democratic strategist.
And Mr. Trump is at the center of almost every current event. In a private memo sent this month to the Democratic Party's campaign committee in the House, Democratic investigators uncovered a key issue regarding non-resident voters in a series of six focus groups – but it was not at all a problem.
"As we saw in the 2018 cycle, the complaints of swing voters on Trump are dominated by his style and personality, not by his agenda or his politics," wrote ALG Research investigators, the Democratic Cabinet John Anzalone, after having spoken with the states voters. "Most participants expressed real concerns about tweets, insults, staff changes, distortions of the truth, and so on. of Trump. Looking for Trump's first impressions, even asking questions about his "agenda" or "priorities", hardly anyone volunteered with ACA. repeal the fighting or the GOP tax bill. "
This focus on the president's personality, which he embodies shamelessly, is what eats Republican officials even when they make little effort to curb his impulses.
Recently, in Washington, Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, said at a roundtable gathering of the minority leader's House leaders, that Republicans would win if elections were based on politics. to be continued. participants who said that it was an indisputable reference to the behavior of the president.
Democrats, of course, know that voters will look for assurances that their candidates will offer more stability.
"Democrats must be adults in the room," said Dan Sena, who led the campaign arm of the House of Democratic Democrats, which was a resounding success last year. "Whether you're a candidate in the House, or you're Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, it means you have to record your service record and assert yourself as the voice of reason. If you succeed, it will be more difficult for Republicans to stick to things too far left. "
Or, as Ms. Greenberg says, when asked her opinion to the Democrats, "Do not get trapped by questions to be taken that are clearly designed for clickbait and Republican attacks."
But this advice can be more easily dispensed than followed when the Democratic candidates are under immense pressure from progressives, which their advisers see resonate among the disproportionately liberal voices on Twitter.
Indeed, there are differences within the Democratic Party as to the positions or remarks that we intend to make in the hands of Mr. Trump.
This month, in Los Angeles, a reporter asked Biden when he agreed to allow undocumented immigrants to access Medicare and Medicaid. The former vice president evaded the issue – he talked generally about immigration – and followed up on it. It is not difficult to understand why: the Republicans would certainly have attacked it if it moved forward to let non-citizens benefit from benefits funded by taxpayers.
But after Biden avoided taking a stand and left the restaurant where he had lunch with Los Angeles mayor Eric Los Garcetti, the mayor argued that Democrats did not have to fear d & # 39; be bold in immigration matters.
While conceding that Republicans would accuse Democrats of providing federal benefits to undocumented residents, Mr. Garcetti noted that the decline of the Republican Party of California had begun after one of its leaders in the 1990s, the Former governor Pete Wilson, had supported an electoral measure denying public services. to these migrants.
"Look who's running the state now," Garcetti said of the complete dominance of California's Democrats. "I think it's a Pyrrhic victory at best for Republicans. And now it's a different time, even at the national level. "
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