Beating the Trump Generation of Congress

Reps. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) &
Lauren Boebert (R-CO)

Tomorrow, Donald Trump will leave office, and for the years that follow, possibly for the rest of all of our lives, historians will debate about how he came to occupy that office.  Electoral politics are complex-not everyone votes for someone for the same reason, and when you're talking about tens of millions of Republican voters over two election cycles & a very thin win in 2016, while there are theories you can pinpoint, not all of the motives will be the same.

But how Trump was created is a question we need to ask-you can't prevent a repeat of history if you never learn from it, and considering the actions of the Republican Party this year, while I hate this tautology, the next few election cycles are going to be "the most important" to win, considering that 2/3 of the US House were willing to dismiss the rightful winner of the election based on partisan lines, a basically unheard of situation that we will have to address, possibly for the next decade.  

The only way to beat the Republicans for an extended period will be to adopt a strategy that the GOP did throughout the 2000's and which culminated in massive wins in 2010 & 2014-by winning seats at the margins, not by getting distracted by shiny objects.  While the GOP occasionally sends too much money to people challenging safe incumbents like Ilhan Omar & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by-and-large they picked up their sizable wins in the Senate & House over the Bush and Trump years by targeting Democrats who represented red/purple states.  It wasn't the Chuck Schumer's and Nancy Pelosi's they beat, it was the Mary Landrieu's, the Joe Donnelly's, the Kendra Horn's, moderate Democrats who attracted few headlines-Republicans have achieved a largely monolithic caucus in the Senate and especially the House by going after the most-likely course of success.

Democrats won their majorities doing the same, but one could argue they are more prone to getting distracted.  Spending tens of millions on races in South Carolina & Kentucky was a foolish endeavor, and underfunding races in places like Florida in 2018 probably cost them a Senate or House seat along the way.  For Senate Democrats in 2022, they are lucky in that (on paper) the only one of their "most-loathed" incumbents to be running is Ron Johnson, who happens to be in a state they should be going after-Wisconsin poses a huge amount of potential for the Democrats, and is one of their best chances of a flip if they can align their ducks.

But the House will be more challenging in 2022, and we don't know what it will look like until redistricting is completed.  However, it is easy to see at this juncture that Democrats have several "shiny objects" that they are going to get distracted by, and I think it's worth asking the question of how we prevent this...and how we prevent these "shiny objects" from turning into another Trump, giving too much credence to someone before 2024.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

Three freshmen Republicans standout at the moment not because of their compelling personal histories, but because the media has become obsessed with them: Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert, & Marjorie Taylor Greene.  There are nearly 50 freshmen Republicans in the House, but you'd be hard-pressed to name any of the rest except for these three.  They standout for several reasons, not all of them necessarily bad.  Cawthorn & Boebert are relatively young, a theoretically welcome change to the House which struggles to hand off power to new generations, and both Boebert & Greene are women in a Republican freshmen class that is surprisingly diverse, something that the GOP has struggled with in the past few decades to change.

But that's not why you know who they are.  These three have been heavily involved with promoting the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the office, and have been accused (specifically Boebert) for letting their rhetoric fuel the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.  Boebert & Greene have both had associations with the conspiracy theory QAnon, and Cawthorn has photographs of himself at Hitler's Eagle's Nest, which he described as a "bucket list" moment for himself (and called Hitler "Fuhrer").

Trump wasn't caused just by himself.  He was caused by a media that couldn't shut up about him.  Trump's one genius is that he knows how to attract headlines, and he unlocked a teflon magic that made all headlines he attracted, while few positive, enough for his thirsty followers, who took any mention of him (good or bad) to be a sign that their support of him is working.  It's possible that Josh Hawley & Ted Cruz will try to emulate this, but it doesn't appear to be working.  Hawley & Cruz are not the kinds of no-shame figures that Trump's followers are going to like-they're more Mike Pence, coming across as sycophantic & cloying, not the real deal don't-give-a-crap attitude of Trump.  If anyone is going to emulate Trump's attitude that holds elected office today, it's not Hawley & Cruz, it's people like Cawthorn, Boebert, & Greene, whose ability to push boundaries is both jarring and gladiatorial, giving the "own the libs" crowd something to root for in a way that Hawley & Cruz aren't going to do.

I'm not saying the two senators can't be the nominee in 2024, and I'm not saying that the other three might be (Cawthorn won't be old enough), but what I am saying is that letting these figures have free reign over the press, more than what is due to a freshman member of Congress, is what started Trump.  They are sitting members of Congress-they are worth noting in the media if they do something, but Democrats would be wise in how they utilize these figures on the campaign trail or media appearances.  Giving them leadership in attack ads will also lead to people thinking they're going to beat them (and all three represent money pit red districts-the Democrats shouldn't focus on them as we fight to retain control of Congress next year), we should point out that we want to marginalize them but beating them is probably not an option unless they run for higher office.  And we need to be careful in assuming that these people don't pose a legitimate danger to capture the imagination of the Republican Party...after all, that's how we got into this mess in the first place.