Trumps Pennsylvania Downdraft - WSJ Editorial
The Republican hold on Congress grew more tenuous Tuesday with Democrat Conor Lamb’s apparent victory in a special election in the heart of Trump country. The GOP will need a better strategy in November than imposing tariffs and donning Nancy Pelosi fright masks.
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The most important fact is that Democrats came out in droves while the GOP vote collapsed. Republican candidates in the district typically get well over 150,000 votes but Mr. Saccone won only about 113,000. Mr. Lamb received nearly 114,000 votes, winning a larger percentage of the electorate than any Democratic candidate in the district since 2000. This continues the trend in special elections and in the Virginia Governor’s race last year that Democrats are highly motivated while Republicans are less enthused.
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Mr. Trump and the GOP tried to nationalize the race by sending the President into the district on Saturday and linking Mr. Lamb to the return of Mrs. Pelosi as House Speaker. But Mr. Lamb never took the bait, saying that “I’m not running against President Trump, and people in my district are not looking for someone running against Mr. Trump.”
Mr. Lamb could afford to soft-sell opposition to Mr. Trump because he knows Democrats are itching to vote against the President in any case. Like Republicans against Barack Obama in 2010, Democrats will “crawl over broken glass” to demonstrate their opposition, as Texas Senator Ted Cruz recently put it. An anti-Trump wave is building that could take out the GOP House and even Senate majorities.
Republicans are touting their tax reform and the strong economy as a cure-all, but tariffs muddy the message and they didn’t sell the tax cuts well in Pennsylvania. They also let Mr. Lamb blame them for cuts to Medicare and Social Security that they don’t have the nerve to vote for. It’s quite a feat to lose for something you have no intention of doing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-pennsylvania-downdraft-1521060707