Americans hate Donald Trump. Americans hate Donald Trump so much they will throw out any incumbent, any candidate at all, who aligns himself or herself with him, no matter how red their particular district bleeds. As they say in Hollywood, Donald Trump is box office poison.
Democrat Connor Lamb's congressional House win in the heavily Republican Rust Belt 18th district of Pennsylvania, and Democrat Doug Jones' congressional Senate win in Deep South Alabama to fill Republican Jeff Sessions' vacant seat are only the tip of the iceberg getting in the way of the GOP's doomed Titanic. With rationalization aplenty, the denial among Republican candidates, Republican elites and right-wing pundits alike has been something of a marvel to witness, as they twist themselves into knots to avoid blaming the big fat blundering elephant in the room: Donald Trump.
These talking points, the rationales Republicans are using to explain the losses, span the range from the typical use of a scapegoat, to the continued trend of Orwellian gaslighting, to the completely bizarre pulling it out of an unmentionable orifice. In all of them are the tinted edges of a desperate political party on the brink of irrelevancy, who just cannot fathom the reality of their majority slipping away and the toxic presence of their highest ranking member being the cause of the disaster.
It began with a fundraising deficiency, the always popular notion of blaming the candidate for not raising enough money to win, despite the $14 million conservative SuperPacs spent on behalf of Rick Saccone, Conor Lamb's opponent, compared to the paltry $5 million Lamb spent. When this talking point didn't gain any ground whatsoever, the talking point pivoted to Donald-Trump-the-Closer, a reference to the rally Trump held in Pennsylvania the weekend before the special election, a similar pattern to the rally Trump held for Roy Moore days before Doug Jones defeated him.
Pundits argued Trump's presence in Pennsylvania made the race close enough that Lamb barely won it, because before the rally, the polls showed Lamb in the lead by 4-6 points, even though races normally tighten on Election Day and it was always going to be close. The practical reality is that Saccone, an incumbent Republican in a deeply red district, was struggling in a close race that shouldn't have been close at all, because he aligned himself with the thoroughly disliked Trump in the first place, just as Roy Moore did in Alabama. This alliance likely energized voters to throw him out, throw them all out, ensuring Lamb's win.
So the pundits pivoted to the most bizarre talking point floating around the Republican hemisphere to explain Conor Lamb's win, and the expected blue wave to follow: The Orwellian doublespeak to gaslight whoever was left to listen, that the Democrat was actually a Republican. This was ridiculous, even for them.
Mere hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, Republicans were running campaign ads calling Lamb a Nancy Pelosi liberal who didn't share their values. Not only did they call Lamb a Pelosi liberal throughout the campaign, Conor Lamb's positions on the issues mirror those of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Also, Nancy Pelosi, as Saccone's own campaign pointed out multiple times.
In the same breath right-wing pundits were calling Conor Lamb a Republican, they also confirmed he would vote as a Democrat in line with Democratic principles when he got to Congress, as if Conor Lamb pulled a fast one on the good people of the Rust Belt. The irrational whiplash reeked of desperate grappling, when the truth seemed too painful to bear.
Finally, they accepted defeat and shrugged their shoulders and decided the PA-18 loss to the Democrats just wasn't all that big of a deal and didn't indicate the inevitable bloodbath for Republicans we all know is coming in November, because Lamb's victory wasn't a landslide "blowout." Yet, the Democrat is still the one who will be voting in the halls of Congress, and the Democrat is still the one representing a Rust Belt district in Pennsylvania, the district Donald Trump won by almost 20% only a little over a year ago. It is a big f*cking deal.
That the Republican incumbent lost his race, that the seat Jeff Sessions held, and then vacated to work for the Republican President of the United States was also lost to the Democrat, that entrenched Republicans all over the country are struggling to hold onto jobs normally uncontested is a reflection of the stark decline of their leader. These losses are on Donald Trump and the Republicans' refusal to hold Trump accountable. The first step is admitting it.