This is your wake-up call, GOP

Two Democrats just won statewide office in Georgia. They defeated the incumbent Republicans by about 25 points each.

I’m going to say that again so that it sinks in: two Democrats just beat Republican incumbents for statewide office in Georgia by 25 points. That’s not far from a 2-1 margin.

The Georgia GOP is making exactly the correct noises: this was an off-off-year election for seats that don’t generally get very much attention, voters from larger urban areas that lean Democrat had more incentive to vote due to local offices being on the ballot, anything can happen in low-turnout races, etc.

None of this is wrong, per se, and it’s exactly the response the party should have. Putting a positive spin on things is literally the primary function of political operatives. But it’s not the whole truth, either.

The reality is that all those factors I just mentioned used to lean heavily in favor of the GOP, because we had the highest propensity voters. Low-profile offices in off years already held by Republican incumbents? The only people showing up are the GOP base. It was only a few years ago that we elected a Republican state senator in something like a D+40 district in Rockdale County because it was a special election.

But we’ve traded those voters away in exchange for the Trump base. Trump voters are highly motivated, of course, but they’re motivated for Trump, not for the GOP. When he’s not on the ballot, they stay home, and we get the results we saw last night. I generally try to focus on Georgia because it’s hard enough to have a reasonably informed view on politics in your own state, let alone any others, but it’s pretty hard to ignore the results in VA, NJ, NYC (!), CA, etc., that paralleled our own.

The party has a bit of an unavoidable blind spot here. When you’re an activist, mainly talking to and hanging out with other activists, it’s easy to think that everyone is as passionate about politics as those in your bubble. “Trump got 51% in the past election? Great! All those people will be just as eager to elect GOP city councillors and PSC board members, because that’s how we feel, so we’ll never lose an election again.” But, of course, most people are nowhere near as passionate as the activists. That’s fine – they just need to show up, and traditional GOP voters did that more reliably than any other group.

The new Trump base does not show up, when it’s not for Trump. But guess who does, as it turns out? All the people motivated by anti-Trump anger and willing to take it out on anyone and everyone with an “R” next to their name. We’ve been seeing that in my urban county since 2016, and now the results are overwhelming, undeniable, and statewide.

Republicans can talk about how that’s irrational, how these state elections don’t have anything to do with Trump, how off-year elections are meaningless, and any other rationalization they want to apply. And the Democrats can, quite reasonably, respond “scoreboard”.

The party’s function, as per current state laws and party bylaws, is to fulfill its administrative role with respect to elections, and to support the Republican candidates chosen by the primary voters in general elections. Anyone saying the GOP should be pushing for candidates who separate themselves from Trump is just as wrong as those saying the party should tip the scales in favor of pro-Trump candidates.

But it sure would behoove them to make some room for the traditional GOP voters they’ve worked so hard to purge in recent years, since it turns out those are the ones who have been winning them all the elections where Trump’s not on the ballot.