That means that Trump is even losing some of his base. Yes, Democrats mostly won in the cities and suburbs and mostly lost in rural areas, which makes us look divided on rural/urban lines.
But Greenberg looked at the swings in those areas and found that it was the rural areas which moved the furthest toward Democrats—even if in many cases it was not far enough to flip the seat for Democrats. We saw that heartbreakingly in losing Senate seats in ND, MO, and IN and in failing to flip the Senate seat in TX, the governorships in GA, & FL and in House districts like the KY-06 or the WV-03.
Update: Even in those losses, the Democratic candidate over performed the partisan lean of the district or state.]
Working people are not fools, and Mr. Trump promised them a Republican president who would never cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; who would repeal Obamacare but provide “insurance for everybody”; who would get rid of bad trade deals and “drain the swamp,” as he never tired of saying. Instead, had Mr. Trump’s effort to replace Obamacare passed, it would have imposed vast cuts in retirement programs and driven up health insurance costs. His tax reforms were heavily weighted to large corporations and the top 1 percent. So it is no surprise that more than half of white working class men now believe that Mr. Trump is “self-dealing” and corrupt.
Greenberg argues that Democratic Senate candidates in MI, Wi, OH, and PA called out Trump on these issues and they won by double digits (even if, in OH, the other offices did not flip). But Greenberg argues that reaction to Trump is actually making us LESS divided—not undivided, not unified, but LESS divided.
Greenberg thought it would take a massive loss by Trump in 2020 before the nation could begin to heal, but it looks like, he argues, that we are beginning that healing already. And that means that Trump is losing his grip on power.
I sure hope he is right.
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