Back in 1996, the whole "soccer mom" demographic emerged for pundits, an overplayed but nonetheless useful demographic description of the women voters who helped keep Bill Clinton in office. Eight years later, it was "security moms" who helped give George W. Bush a second term, responding to incessant terrorist warnings. With mass massacres becoming the new norm, with bulletproof school backpacks now being a thing, the threat has changed to a domestic one, and now soccer moms and security moms are converging to scare the hell out of Republicans. And they’re bringing the dads along with them.
A retired teacher from a manicured suburb in Georgia, Liz Chase, explains. "They're afraid," she told The Washington Post. She watched last Monday morning, the first day of schools, as parents stood "together in a circle at the bus stop, holding hands and praying that their kids would come home safely in the afternoon." This happens to be in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, Newt Gingrich's old place, now represented by Democrat Lucy McBath, who largely ran on guns and was sent to Washington partly because her personal story of a child lost to gun violence resonated.
One of the converts was Gordon Blitch, a 54-year-old independent, who explained that "there was massive pushback among some of my Republican friends against Trump, even if it meant putting in an anti-gun person. […] They saw larger issues at stake, and she helped herself by running a pretty smart campaign." Aircraft worker Chad Staggs, a 52-year-old Republican, echoed that. "I've always supported the Second Amendment, and I grew up hunting with my dad, but you saw what happened [in El Paso and Dayton]. It's scary. […] I've got two daughters, and I don't want to see anything happen to them. It’s simply out of control, and something has to be done on guns."
In 2018, 41 House seats flipped to Democrats, and the majority of them were in the suburbs. These were voters motivated against Trump and the threat he posed, largely to health care. Now that threat is to their children's—and their own—lives in the immediate term. House Republicans who've been retiring at a very quick pace this cycle get that. So do the groups that traditionally back Republicans.
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They see it, but they still don't get it. Take Scott W. Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior political strategist, who says, "There is so much angst with these retirements and there is so much hope that President Trump would just talk about the economy for three days straight." Right, if Trump would just talk about the economy and taxes, then they could all ignore the hate and racism oozing out from the entire White House. Instead of changing the GOP, the Chamber wants to change the subject.
Georgia. Orange County, California. Texas. The Republicans have reason to worry, and the Trump campaign is gearing up again to try to get those suburban voters back on board even as Republicans in Congress flee from these seats. They know that Trump is physically incapable of not spewing hate and racism and misogyny. He can't stay on script. And rather than stand up to him, rather than trying to restore their party, they're bailing.