When pundits claim Donald Trump can win the presidency, they often evoke a fabled political species: “Reagan Democrats.” “Are Reagan Democrats becoming Trump Democrats?” wondered CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord last fall in The American Spectator. “I think there’s a lot of Reagan Democrats waiting to vote for him,” declared MSNBC’s […] Read more »
How the G.O.P. Elite Lost Its Voters to Donald Trump
… As the Republican Party collapses on itself, conservative leaders struggling to explain Mr. Trump’s appeal have largely seized on his unique qualities as a candidate: his larger-than-life persona, his ability to dominate the airwaves, his tough-sounding if unrealistic policy proposals. Others ascribe Mr. Trump’s rise to the xenophobia and […] Read more »
No, Trump won’t win votes from disaffected Democrats in the fall
… Democrats worry that Trump’s focus on economic protectionism and opposition to trade deals could turn Democrat-leaning rust belt states into swing states, giving the Republican nominee an unexpected path to the White House in 2016. We can learn a little from students of Western European politics here. CONT. Charlotte […] Read more »
Trump’s Revolution from Within
Donald Trump has advanced to the brink of the Republican presidential nomination not by transforming the GOP electorate, but by dividing it along a new axis. … Overall, although turnout has soared from 2012, the share of the total primary votes cast by self-identified Republicans this year is virtually unchanged. […] Read more »
Donald Trump, the Winning Wild Card
… Trump had already revealed the vulnerability of both the Republican Party and the conservative movement, institutions that together claimed the presidency in seven of the ten elections between 1968 and 2004. He has reconvened the largely passive “silent majority” — the Reagan Democrats and the angry white men of […] Read more »
Will Trump Send Working-Class Whites to the Democrats?
Democrats have regularly argued that, with a robust populist pitch, winning back white working-class voters could be within reach. In 2016, there is evidence that, with the impact of Donald J. Trump on the race, that could actually happen. CONT. Andrew Levison, New York Times Read more »