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Samuel Sero's avatar

GOP operatives also said they would make impeachment a campaign issue if Dems were to win the House. It’s amazing how the big lesson they took from the 2006 midterms was “we ran away from the GOP president. We need to run with him!”. That was Brad Schimel’s big strategy in Wisconsin and how did that play out?

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Paleo's avatar

They ran on impeachment in 2018 and it didn’t save them.

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JanusIanitos's avatar

It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't scenario. But I'd argue the less-bad option for the party holding the presidency is to stand by their president during midterms.

If they try to run away from the de facto face of their party, voters will by and large still associate the president with the party. In exchange, by running away they will depress the base a bit and signal to the country that there is something sufficiently bad about the president to warrant running away from them in the first place.

Running away is a good choice for candidates in seats that would be competitive even outside of a midterm. Easy example: someone like Collins needs to have distance between her and Trump to have a chance. Unfortunately for us she has a lot of ingrained distance built up over her career.

Dems probably would have done better in 2010 if our candidates didn't create a stampede to create distance between themselves and Obama. Still would have gotten crushed overall, but slightly less crushed.

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John Carr's avatar

I think Dems would have probably held the Illinois senate seat in 2010 had they stood by Obama.

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