Why Liberal activists are grateful for Trump’s election win
WITHOUT Donald Trump’s election win, Liberal activists say there would not be a record number of women and people of colour as candidates for the midterm elections.
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THERE’s a funny thing happening in pockets of America where the president’s name is usually a dirty word. Liberal activists, Democrat organisers threaded across the country, even Hollywood stars, are expressing gratitude for Donald Trump’s election win.
Because without it, they say, the resistance would not be at what they describe as a historic tipping point.
Propelled by passionate disdain for Trump, a record number of women and people of colour are candidates at November’s midterm elections, and for the first time white men are the minority among Democrat House nominees.
“I think it’s phenomenal,” says Dr Sharmin Dharas, who quit her job as a physician to help promote women Democrat candidates through political training group Emerge America.
“Since the 2016 election, we have had women tearing down our doors to try to get in.
Most of our affiliates across the country, we usually have around 25 women that we take in each year, but this year about 10 of our programs have doubled in size.
“That just gives you an idea of women fighting for their rights.”
Oscar winner Susan Sarandon also recently said Trump’s leadership had paved the way for booming engagement from his opponents, albeit because “he is so bumbling, he’s like a character out of a cartoon or something, that you can’t not be aware of what’s going on now”.
Red or Blue?
Depending on who you believe, the crucial first midterm vote of the Trump presidency will reveal either a blue tsunami of protest or a red wave of support for the commander in chief.
In less than two months, more than 80,000 candidates will be voted into office, for roles ranging from district attorney and county supervisor at local level to state governor and one third of the federal senate.
Up for grabs are more than twice the number of positions than 2016, with one the most watched the race for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, control of which will determine whether or not impeachment proceedings can be brought against President Trump.
Several recent polls are putting Democrats ahead, with new analysis from FiveThirtyEight offering them an 82.4 per cent chance of winning control of the House.
Unsurprisingly, this is at odds with some Republican data, and Mr Trump — whose contempt for polls was confirmed when he defied almost every one of them to beat Hillary Clinton — has repeatedly referred to a coming red wave that will reaffirm his agenda.
But this in itself is presenting as a potential problem, with Trump’s confidence for November fuelling inertia in his base. Republican polling published last week showed more than half (57 per cent) of strong Trump voters didn’t believe the Democrats could take the House.
This means it’s not just that more Democrats are turning out, but Trump supporters will possibly take his messaging to heart and not bother to vote because they think they’ve already won the race, in a repeat of 2016.
In Phoenix, Arizona, Dr Dharas was among several Democrat women speaking to News Corp Australia who were almost gleeful at the gauntlet Trump had thrown down.
“Research shows that women win at the same rate as men do, so why not help them reach the same levels,” she said of her work with Emerge America.
“We train women, we kind of push them to run.
“We explain to them: look you run a household, you run a household budget, you take care of schedules, it’s basically the same thing. You fundraise for your PTA, you fundraise for your synagogue and your philanthropies — why not flip the script and fundraise for yourself?”
Such is Democrat optimism that even their losses are being lauded, with House minority leader Nancy Pelosi recently describing a strong showing by Dr Hiral Tipirneni in Arizona’s solidly red 8th district, winning 47 per cent of the vote to Republican candidate Debbie Lesko’s 53 per cent, in an April special election as a “victory”.
Jacob Peters from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said: “As Democrats build the largest House battlefield in more than a decade, it should terrify vulnerable Republicans that their party had to run a desperate rescue mission to hold on to this deep red seat in Arizona.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the result was not significant: “No offence to this candidate, but she’s not Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter if you win by 25 points or two points. A win is a win.”
President Trump had carried the district by 21 points in 2016, but Dr Tipirneni is confident she can take it for the Democrats for the first time when she faces off against Ms Leski.
“I am very excited about November because we know that what we did, we did it in less than eight weeks,” Dr Tipirneni told News Corp Australia.
“We shaved off more than 16 points. Now we’ve had more time and I was also first time candidate, nobody knew who I was.
“What we are doing is continuing to keep our Democrat base engaged but we are also reaching out to independents, we are also reaching out to Republicans. We already won the independents, we got 16 per cent of the Republicans.”
Dr Tipirneni campaigns hard on her medical experience and says healthcare and the replacement for Barack Obama’s affordable care act is one of the biggest issues in her community.
“My work has been about solving the issue at hand. As an ER doctor I never asked anyone are you a Democrat or a Republican, are you Jewish or Muslim? It’s ‘what is bothering you today and how can I help’,” she said.
“That’s what I believe people in DC should be doing. They should be focused on the problems and forget about the ideology.”
‘Not cookie-cutter women’
Dr Tipirneni was also wary of being piled into a grab-bag of female candidates.
“I think it is amazing that more women are running, but we’re not all cookie cutter moulds of each other,” she said.
“Just because we’re all women doesn’t mean we’re all the same. We don’t all have the same exact policies that we are pushing or the solutions for the problems.”
Arizona’s senate race will also be between two women, with Democrat Kyrsten Sinema leading her Republican opponent Martha McSally in polling by up to seven points last week.
Republican pollster George Khalef said he did not see Arizona “turning blue” at the upcoming election, but he did consider the female vote a “huge factor”.
“Women are excited to vote and they are leaning more towards Democrats and they are leaning more towards woman candidates,” said Mr Khalef, from Orbital Consulting.
“Right now, you have a poll, and let’s say the government will be up with men by a large amount, with women it will almost be the complete opposite.
“It’s a very interesting phenomenon: men and women have never been more far apart when it comes to politics.”
Democrats taking control of Congress not only increases the likelihood of impeachment proceedings being brought against Mr Trump. Any loss of power will further diminish Mr Trump’s already stymied legislative agenda and give Democrats more fuel in the lead up to 2020.
An example of this challenge lies in planned infrastructure reform, a key election promise at the heart of Mr Trump’s post-midterm agenda, but which Mr Khalef said was highly unlikely to be finalised.
“He has spent a lot of political capital getting taxes passed and then just on a day-to-day basis being president, so he doesn’t have a lot of political capital left,” Mr Khalef said.
“To get Republicans to pass a one trillion infrastructure deal means we are going to have to either raise debt or increase taxes, and to get Republicans to agree in an election cycle they are going to raise taxes? Well you might as well kill your mother.”
This reporter is on Twitter @sarahblakemedia