OPINION:
The GOP is running against history: Since World War II, presidents’ parties have lost an average of 26 House seats and three to four Senate seats in midterm elections. This year’s devastation may be worse owing to President Trump’s rough style, poor messaging on the economy and disappointing delivery on other issues.
By any reasonable measure — growth, unemployment and the progress of minorities — Mr. Trump has delivered. Tax cuts and deregulation work but President Obama has put the economy in play by claiming credit. Conservatives might not like it, but Mr. Obama is simply more credible than Mr. Trump with critical swing voters.
Democrats are particularly disciplined at propaganda. Witness the Kavanaugh affair — make up a fable, repeat it endlessly with the help of the liberal media and absent a sound and unified Republican counter offensive, voters will believe them.
Democrats have the public convinced the recent tax cuts favor the wealthy when it’s the nurse not the doctor that often gets the benefits.
With the repeal of state and local tax deductions, high income suburbanites in places like New York and California face tax increase and will likely abandon the GOP. Its candidates can blame President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for caving to the Koch brothers and Walmart by not applying the corporate tax to imports and rebating it on exports. That would have generated $1 trillion in additional revenue and permitted tax reductions for everyone.
Other than the steel and aluminum tariffs, the president’s trade policies have not delivered for workers, and farmers hit by foreign retaliation are worse off. They might not happily vote for socialist Democrats but many will stay home on Nov. 6.
The deals struck with Mexico and South Korea are largely defensive. Those will limit further losses to China in the auto parts, technology and several other industries but won’t move the needle on the trade deficit.
By taking aim at all our allies with metal tariffs, when Mr. Trump had options to aim those solely on the real malefactors like China and Turkey, he nixed the possibility of strong, coordinated western actions to combat Beijing’s cheating on trade.
We are headed for stalemates in the trade war with China and fixing problems with the Europeans. When Mr. Trump’s presidency ends, the trade deficit could well be worse than when it began.
On health care, the GOP failed to deliver a better plan than the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Americans may have been glad to get rid of the individual mandate but they remain upset about rising premiums, drug companies profiteering and hospitals monopolizing local markets and fearful of losing coverage for pre-existing conditions. The Democrats have managed to turn those issues so that voter approval of the ACA is near an all-time high.
On immigration, the president may be making some progress but his obsession with a border wall makes little sense. It appeals to his base but not to swing voters who rightly understand technological-intensive measures would be more effective. And the fiasco surrounding the separation of children from parents just doesn’t sit well with most decent people.
We were promised a big infrastructure program. Getting Democratic cooperation on spending for roads should have been easy but Transportation Secretary Chao has not come up with a package.
Republicans simply won’t accept that folks who use the roads should pay for them with higher gas taxes. Or that Americans pay way too much to build and tunnel thanks to pork barrel spending appropriated by both parties and abusively inflated costs imposed by unions through the Davis-Bacon Act. As with health care, unless Republicans learn to rail against monopoly exploitation with the zeal of Democrats, they lose.
Republicans may blame their woes on Mr. Trump’s failure to win a plurality in 2016, Democratic obstructionism and constant media bashing, but George W. Bush suffered from the similar liabilities. He was careful to project a presidential demeanor and won sympathy from voters about Democrats’ negativism — remember Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s endless criticism?
In the 2002 midterm, the GOP picked up seats in the House and control of the Senate, and South Dakota voters sent Mr. Daschle’s incessant nagging packing two years later.
It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s bad messaging and coming up short on voters’ expectations on just about everything else.
• Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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