Republicans have a chance to prove they can govern

In the 2nd District, Trump won all but Hancock and Waldo counties and benefited from past Republican groundwork, but he also had a party-bending set of stances such as opposition to trade agreements – a popular stance in rural ME, which has been rocked by mill closures.

Likewise, Trump says he wants to keep some provisions of President Barack Obama’s health-insurance system while congressional conservatives are bent on total repeal. Just a third of the citizenry holds a favorable view of the “Grand Old Party” (GOP).

Trump was the first person elected president without experience in government or the military.

That last streak shows no signs of abating, since Democrats have won both legislative chambers every two years since 1962.

Republicans have never forgotten that once Democrats were confronted with these events, they didn’t renounce their party’s leader.

Shoultz said he thinks Republicans over the next two years will be more aggressive than they were in the same situation 20 years ago because of heightened party politics and the increase in money in elections, even at the state level. Some have also named tax reforms, including Trump’s professed support for eliminating the carried interest loophole, as something they could work with him on.

How do we explain this seeming anomaly? I did not vote for the Republican candidate, either. “It motivated conservatives to stay on board with the Republican presidential nominee no matter who it was”.

Most of all, I mourn that the Democratic Party (and millions of Democratic voters) that prides itself on being an evidence-based party has lost its way and ignored the evidence that their candidate was deeply flawed.

What’s interesting is that prior to November 8, many Americans thought we’d have a Democratic president in the White House and possibly a Democratic-controlled Congress.

But Democrats, after several periods of exile from the White House, are no strangers to the political wilderness – nor fractious infighting over how to find their way back. But the material reality and harsh experience of low and stagnant incomes for the many are not so easily escaped.

However, in other areas of the party leadership, a change in tack does seem to be afoot.

Trump asserts that he will spend a tremendous amount of money on rebuilding America’s infrastructure and put many people to work in so doing; that he will revisit trade deals and decline to enter new agreements; and that he will only use military force as a last result and bring thousands of troops home from military outposts overseas.

It’s a sign that the Republican insurgency into rural ME during the era of Gov. Paul LePage may not wane when he leaves office in 2018, with this year’s re-election of U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and wins such as Keim’s in swing districts. It certainly has myriad issues that will need to be worked through, yet the party now controls Washington, DC, as well as a considerable majority of governorships and state legislatures.

“We don’t know yet on many issues if Donald Trump is going to do what he actually said he was going to do”, Robinson said, adding that many Republicans were taking a “wait and see” approach. In 2008, after eight years of neoliberal misery under Republican rule marked by a disastrous foreign policy (the invasion of Iraq) and culminating in the onset of the Great Recession, it was the Democrats’ moment to seize the binarily switched mantle of “hope” and “change” (also Bill Clinton’s campaign keywords in 1992)-just as they had done to defeat another George Bush 16 years earlier.

President-elect Trump, Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell have to recognize the power of this moment. The Democratic Party deserved to lose for many reasons, but especially because it had gotten annoyingly complacent about its demographic “coalition”, and smug in its convictions of its moral superiority.

As for who runs for president in 2020, there are plenty of prospects – leafing through the directory of Democratic U.S. senators offers a good start – none of whom rise to immediate advantage. Unlike the attacks on Hillary Clinton, for most of those things, these are very real. I’ve read hopeful letters from girls nationwide talking about how Hillary Clinton inspired them, they gained strength from her and won’t allow themselves to be demeaned and objectified. That’s always a tough sell.

Analysts of the outcome of the election all seem to agree on at least one factor playing a significant role in the results, that being widespread anger among working and lower-middle class voters about their prospects in the US economy as now structured. More Americans have disapproved than approved of his handling of the economy his entire presidency, his handling of foreign policy his entire second term, and his handling of health care ever since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Come January, the GOP will control the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and, presumably, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Snow-Murphy, an Arkansas native who moved to East Cobb with her husband and children past year, said once she got involved, she was shocked to see how many like-minded people lived in Cobb. The people wanted a Democratic revolution.