View from the Left: Trump sunk Republicans in the midterms; we can help him do it again in 2020
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As the final weeks of the 2018 midterms closed in, Donald Trump's desperation was palpable. He was thrashing around about the so-called “caravan” of migrants, ordering U.S. troops to the border, holding impromptu press conferences about executive orders tView from the Left: Trump sunk Republicans in the midterms; we can help him do it again in 2020
As the final weeks of the 2018 midterms closed in, Donald Trump's desperation was palpable. He was thrashing around about the so-called “caravan” of migrants, ordering U.S. troops to the border, holding impromptu press conferences about executive orders that hadn't been written, and lamenting the hate-speech inspired pipe bombs and shooting massacres that had thrown Republicans off their game. As Democrats studiously ignored Trump's repulsive anti-immigrant rants, his raw racist appeals just grew louder and more shrill. And yes, it totally backfired. Research from the New American Economy found that the *30 congressional districts that had flipped as of Nov. 15 had all grown «much more educated and much more diverse than they were even just five years ago.» (*The analysis did not include districts that had been redrawn since 2016.) In all districts that flipped, the number of college-educated adults increased sharply. In all but one there were at least 10,000 more college-educated adults in 2018 than there were in 2013. In all but one of the districts that flipped, the share of Asian American and Hispanic American eligible voters increased in the last 5 years. The education levels of voters within these districts combined with their growing diversity made Trump's escalating fixation on the desperate migrants entirely toxic. And it didn't just hurt the GOP in the House—it likely also cost Republicans some very precious Senate seats. Former Arizona state attorney general Grant Woods, a former Republican who recently became a registered Democrat, said Trump's racist rhetoric was way out of step with the direction of the region. “The extremism of the current Republican Party is a losing strategy for the future," Woods said. “In the Southwest in particular, where we’re talking about a diverse population and, increasingly, a younger population, people just aren’t going to put up with it.” Read more