In previous years, Democrats might have rejoiced at the prospect of facing Republicans such as Greitens, Walker, Vance, and Oz. But in the Trump era, no one knows where, or whether, voters will draw a line on candidates who might have been unacceptable in the past. “The situation has really changed since 2012,” former Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota told me. Heitkamp won a close reelection race that year, before losing her seat in 2018. She said it was “an open question” whether the comments that doomed Akin and Mourdock would cost Republicans a seat in the current climate.
Like so much else about modern politics, Trump is the root of the shift. He won in 2016 despite countless liabilities, most notably the October release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape. And as Heitkamp noted, he brought in a whole new cohort of white, male voters who might be more forgiving of badly behaving men…
Privately, however, Democrats worry that the pattern no longer holds. Heitkamp told me that during her victorious 2012 race, 20 percent of GOP voters told pollsters that they were willing to vote for a Democratic candidate. By 2018, when she lost, that number had dropped to just 4 percent. The prospect that polarization now supersedes candidate qualifications is even more worrisome for Democrats in the years ahead. If Republicans capture a comfortable Senate majority this year, they could position themselves to win a filibuster-proof 60 seats by 2024, when Democrats will have to defend incumbents running in red states such as Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio, along with several others in closer battlegrounds.
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