OH, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT

Fun fact:  when Donald Trump took office on January 21, 2017, 36 out of the 50 governorships belonged to Republicans.  Today, the split is 26 Republicans and 24 Democrats.  Trump is helping to make America great again in spite of himself. 

Cast your memory back there, Lord, to the dark days of 2017.  The Deplorables were feeling their oats, and the Resistance was learning to fight back.  Women in pink pussy hats rallied in Washington on January 21, and drew a bigger crowd than Trump could muster for his inauguration the day before.   The November off-year elections brought some hopeful signs, but they were mostly in the form of closer than expected losses. 

A year later, though, the worm had turned.  In 2018, Democrats took back the House of Representatives in a wave election.    

In 2019, Republicans were taking no chances.  Donald Trump made last minute personal appeals on behalf of his beleaguered supporters.  He showed up in Lexington, KY, the evening before the election, begging voters to elect Republican Matt Bevin.  "If you lose, they are going to say Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world. You can't let that happen to me!" 

On Tuesday, Kentucky voters didn’t just let it happen – they made it happen.  Republican spinmeisters pointed to the down-ballot Republican sweep and said don’t blame Trump.  But Trump didn’t campaign for the down-ballot Republicans.  He campaigned for the one Republican who lost.  Now they’re claiming that they had secret polls that showed Bevin trailing by 15 points before Trump showed up.  No, it was 18 points.  Maybe even 20.  Trump worked his magic and elevated Bevin to within 5,000 votes of victory.  Don’t blame Trump, they argue, for the fact that Bevin was such a lousy candidate. 

So how about we blame Trump for putting his reputation on the line for such a lousy candidate?  Which he has a habit of doing, e.g. Alabama child molester Roy Moore in the 2017 Senate campaign. 

Maybe you can blame the Kentucky upset on Matt Bevin’s personal unpopularity, but there’s no similar excuse for that happened in Virginia.  It used to be reliably Republican.  On Tuesday, Virginia turned bright blue.  Similar Democratic upsets occurred in local elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana.  Hey, even my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, elected a Democratic mayor.

As goes Wichita, so goes the nation. Maybe. But miles to go before we sleep.