Donald Trump has been aching to get back on the campaign trail—back in front of the rabid crowds that scream at his every jeer and buoy his flagging morale. That began in earnest this week as Trump solidified the GOP's focus for 2018: A fear-mongering, scapegoating, deep-seated hatred for immigrants, who are also arguably the most vulnerable group in Trump's America now.
At a Nashville rally on Tuesday, Trump previewed the points he will be pounding home all summer, saying Mexico was "going to pay for the wall and they’re going to enjoy it,” calling the House Minority Leader "MS-13-loving Nancy Pelosi,” and charging that “MS-13 takes advantage of glaring holes in our immigration laws to infiltrate our country.”
“The Democrats want to use [immigration] as a campaign issue, and I keep saying I hope they do,” Trump said. Accusing Democrats of wanting “open borders,” Trump added: “That’s a good issue for us, not for them.”
Whatever Trump may say or think, his divisive immigration rhetoric hasn't proven to be ‘a good issue’ for Republicans in almost any election since his. Outside of GOP primaries, most Republicans who have tried to recreate Trump's 2016 playbook have been roundly repudiated at the polls. Most notably, perhaps, was Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, who ultimately embraced Trump's most nativist attacks on undocumented immigrants only to get trounced by Democrat Ralph Northam by nine points on Election Day.
Election eve polling by Latino Decisions showed that Gillespie's MS-13 themed ad not only backfired with voters across the board, but that highlighting his racist attacks also moved more people toward Northam. In fact, Political scientist and Latino Decisions co-founder Matt Barreto penned a piece for the New York Times earlier this year reprising key elections that broke for Democrats in which immigration played a prominent role, including the Virginia governor's race and former Sen. Harry Reid's successful 2010 re-election bid against GOP Tea Partier Sharron Angle. Similar to Gillespie, Angle pushed nativist messaging while Reid ran hard on the Dream Act.
Mr. Reid defied the polls and won re-election on the strength of very high Latino turnout — and no signs of a white working-class backlash. According to the exit polls, Mr. Reid ran 11 percentage points ahead of Ms. Angle among white voters who earn less than $50,000 and, according to data compiled by Latino Decisions, a polling organization that I co-founded, won an estimated 90 percent of the Latino vote. [...]
In Virginia, polling data has made it clear that Mr. Gillespie’s MS-13 rhetoric backfired among minority voters as well as, crucially, among many whites. Mr. Northam won a majority of white college-educated voters, who made up a larger share of the electorate in 2017 than they did in 2016. Mr. Gillespie matched Mr. Trump with noncollege whites, but their turnout was down. And minority voters in 2017 matched their 2016 electorate share — for the first time ever there was no drop-off from the presidential to the gubernatorial election. The Democrats also expanded their margin of victory in Virginia from five percentage points in 2016 to nine points in 2017.
Just to recap: Sen. Reid’s pro-Dream message didn’t hurt him with working-class whites while it drove Latino turnout, and Gillespie’s anti-immigrant push depressed turnout among working-class whites while suburban whites and especially voters of color turned out in higher numbers than usual. Naturally, other factors were also at play, but immigration was a central player in both contests.
None of this evidence is particularly compelling to Republican candidates running for the House. Thus far, they have flooded the airwaves with some 14,000 ads touting Trump-style anti-immigrant messaging while Democrats have aired some 26,000 ads focused on health care. In many ways, the midterms are shaping up to be a replay of Virginia's race last year, where Northam not only prevailed at the top of the ticket, but down-ballot Democrats also blew away expectations by flipping 15 seats in the House of Delegates (Virginia Senate seats were not on the ballot last year).
That election stunner laid the groundwork for the bipartisan vote this week expanding Medicaid coverage to 400,000 low-income residents of the state. Northam and his fellow Democrats made Medicaid expansion a key campaign issue and, after Republicans suffered a drubbing at the polls, GOP lawmakers in both the House and Senate finally decided to join with Democrats to pass the expansion. But this is how the push began:
In February, 19 of the 51 Republicans in the House joined Democrats to pass a budget bill that expanded Medicaid, apparently concluding that they have more to fear from energized Democrats and independents than from potential primary challengers on the right. (emphasis added)
Elections have consequences—as do the messages in those elections. Virginia has now provided a model for both. Democrats across the country who are running on improving health care for their constituents can point to the Commonwealth as Exhibit A for how to carry the momentum of an election win into meaningful change for their constituents.
When voters go to the polls this November, many of them will be faced with a stark choice between fear-induced nativism and possibility-infused optimism. The GOP's every-person-for-themselves message of scarcity will be directly contrasted with a Democratic message that together, we can improve the quality of life for everyone.
So far, that's proven to be a winning formula for Democrats in the 41 state legislative seats they have flipped from red to blue since Trump’s election, which suggests it should be again this fall.