This might seem like an odd choice to target someone who has not had any significant power in over half a decade, but Pelosi has been a bete-noir to the GOP since her ascendance to the role of minority leader in 2003. She has been a prime target for Republican ads in every election, especially midterms, since then, primarily because she was seen negatively by independent voters.
Of course, as Paul Krugman pointed out earlier this week, Republicans hate Pelosi because she is probably the effective speaker and minority leader in modern history. And she is a woman. One of the lessons of the 2016 election and Hillary Clinton's loss was just how much a factor misogyny is, especially in the GOP base.
Pelosi's favorability rating is still under water by over 20 points. But some of that stems from the fact that Democrats are viewing her less favorably than they have in nearly a decade. That has been driven by two conflicting forces within the Democratic party. Centrists and swing-district Democrats think Pelosi's unfavorability will weigh them down and have been refusing to endorse her for speaker again. On the other hand, more liberal Democrats think it is time for newer, younger leadership to usher in the increasingly progressive Democratic priorities.
Republicans are now hoping to capitalize on their prior success with running against Pelosi and perhaps the discontent among Democrats with her. But a new poll shows that the tactic is not likely to be successful on any significant scale, with Pelosi ranked as one of the least important factors for the current electorate. In fact, Pelosi is far more important to Democrats than independents or even Republicans.
It was always going to be hard for the GOP to make Pelosi a focus this year, especially with Trump as President. No matter what the GOP does or how often Democrats try to downplay it and focus on health care, this election is always going to be a referendum on Trump and his administration.
With the GOP ramping up their attacks for the midterms, the number of stories about Pelosi's future have proliferated in just the last few days. While that may seem understandable, considering wavering Democratic support, it is worth noting that Mitch McConnell's favorability rating is actually further underwater than Pelosi's. Yet you never hear Chris Mathews, or any reporter for that matter, pressing a Republican Senator on whether McConnell should still be majority leader, especially considering the fact that he refused to defend the country when confronted with evidence of the Russian attack on our elections.
Democrats are also reviving an earlier strategy that was successful for them in 2006, running against the "culture of corruption" in the Republican party, while also harping on health care and income inequality. Needless to say, the targets for Democrats this year are boundless. The corruption that pervades the Trump family and the entire Trump administration similarly taints Congressional Republicans who are complicit in abetting that corruption by refusing to rein it in. In addition, a handful of House Republicans are implicated in an insider trading scheme and others, including Ted Cruz, are implicated in campaign funding violations.
A recent poll of swing districts show that Republicans are viewed as "more corrupt" than Democrats by an eight point margin. In addition, another poll shows that 60% of independents feel similarly. That certainly bodes well for Democrats.
But, as I mentioned above, all this posturing is simply working around the edges but perhaps may end up as the key difference in a handful of races. The reality is best described by a Michigan GOP operative who stated, "Right now, people have made their mind up. Either you like the president or you don’t like the president. There’s no in-between." Which is exactly the way Trump wants it.
One last point about corruption as an election strategy. It is perfectly understandable and appropriate for Democrats to use it. But over the last couple of decades, counterintuitively, the issue has probably been a net benefit to the GOP. Facing a demographic shift that may make them a permanent minority and bound to a shrinking but fervently loyal base, the strategy for Republicans, especially for the last decade and a half, has been to do everything in their power to shrink the electorate. That has taken many forms, from gerrymandering and other various voter suppression tactics to probably enlisting the help of Russians to create dissension in the Democratic party.
Similarly, the ability of the Republicans to create Democratic corruption out of whole cloth and publicize it widely using their now expansive propaganda networks not only counteracts any actual GOP corruption but adds to the impression that both sides are equally corrupt and that there is no difference between the two parties. Barack Obama ran one of the cleanest administrations in American history and Hillary Clinton's career had been microscopically examined for a full quarter of a century. And yet her campaign spent all its time fighting the media narrative of the faux scandals of Benghazi!! and EMAILS!! Meanwhile, the prior four Republican presidents have all been involved in major scandals - Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Katrina, and torture, to name just the worst - while Bill Clinton dealt with the fiction of Whitewater and was impeached over a consensual affair. And today, Donald Trump is probably running the most corrupt administration in a century.
Do Democrats get any credit for running generally cleaner administrations? No. Until Obama, the default assumption was that every presidency would endure a major scandal, especially if it ran for eight years. In other words, both sides do it.
The attitude that Republicans are able to create, no matter what the reality, that both side are equally corrupt arguably cost Democrats the presidency in 2000 and 2016. And it contributes to one of the largest gaps between eligible and registered voters of all the major industrialized countries. Those voters are the missing element to large Democratic majorities. The actual turnout of registered voters in the 2016 election was a relatively high 87% but because only 70% of eligible citizens are actually registered, the turnout percentage of all eligible voters was an abysmal 56%, one of the lowest among major democratic governments. Part of that is voter suppression but a bigger part of that is the feeling that voting makes no difference.
The answer to this problem, especially for the Democrat who takes over from the Trump administration, is to prosecute the crimes actually committed. There can be no more moving on for the sake of the country or the fear of re-litigating the past. A large reason that Democrats have down so poorly in elections this decade is because the Obama administration refused to prosecute those responsible for the financial crisis for fear of triggering yet another crisis. Similarly, the war criminals in the G.W. Bush administration have not been prosecuted and are actually getting promoted to run the CIA and now, perhaps, to a seat on the Supreme Court. Until that attitude ends, the GOP will always be able to create the impression that both sides do it and that will always be to their advantage.
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