Two of the most telling data points of the entire election cycle are that support for Justice Kavanaugh increased among Republican women after the hearing and a poll by Morning Consult that showed that 58 percent of Republican women believed that Justice Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was “being opportunistic.” By alienating Republican women, Democrats hurt their chances in many suburban and exurban House districts and made life much harder for their Senate candidates here in Arizona and in states like Nevada, Missouri, and Indiana. They might also have killed Heidi Heitkamp’s re-election bid in North Dakota.
Democratic hubris seems to have convinced some wavering voters that it really is a binary choice: Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump and Mike Pence. If Democrats don’t do as well as they had hoped this year, they can trace much of it back to the Kavanaugh hearings. That’s when Republicans found their voice and when Democrats alienated a large of group persuadable voters they needed to win. After the 2012 election, Harry Reid was confronted with his lies about Mitt Romney’s tax returns during the 2012 presidential campaign. His reply was pure political cynicism: “Romney didn’t win, did he?” And he’s right: Sometimes it works. But this year it may well keep Republicans in power and destroy two years of work by Democratic candidates . . .
Read the story at the New York Times.
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