For decades, the Democratic party and the media obsessed (and I do mean obsessed) with the “Reagan Democrats” , those white voters in places like Michigan who were so upset with the way the hippies and the Blacks and the uppity women had ruined everything that they voted for Reagan in 1980 and never looked back. Year after year, the Democrats chased those voters, absolutely sure that if they just went easy on guns or waffled on abortion and backed the cops or passed lots of job training programs that these folks would come back home. They never did.
So, I have to wonder if this inversion of that moldy trope will dominate GOP politics and the media the way the earlier iteration did?
Anyway, here’s a rare bit of reporting on Republicans becoming Democrats:
Jay Copan doesn’t hide his disregard for the modern Republican Party.
A solid Republican voter for the past four decades, the 69-year-old quickly regretted casting his 2016 ballot for Donald Trump. When Trump was up for reelection last year, Copan appeared on roadside billboards across North Carolina, urging other Republicans to back Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Nearly three months into the new administration, Copan considers himself a “Biden Republican,” relieved by the new president’s calmer leadership style and coronavirus vaccine distribution efforts. Copan is the type of voter Biden is counting on as he pushes an agenda that’s almost universally opposed by Republicans in Washington.
As Biden meets Monday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss his massive infrastructure plan, he’s betting that the GOP’s elected leaders are making a political miscalculation. The party’s base remains overwhelmingly loyal to Trump, but Biden believes that Republican leaders are overlooking everyday Americans eager for compromise and action.
The question is whether there are enough Republicans like Copan.
“I really want there to be a good two-party system,” said Copan, a former senior officer with the American Gas Association. His vote for Biden for president was his first for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 but probably won’t be his last. “I think there’s a lot of people like me out there.”
The ranks of Republican crossovers may be smaller than he would expect. Only 8% of Republicans voted Democratic in November’s presidential race, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate nationwide.
Well sure. And here we see the old narrative reassert itself:
“If there’s any Republicans voting for Biden, they were not voting for Biden, they’re just Never Trumpers,” said Phillip Stephens, a former Democrat who is now Republican vice chairman in Robeson County, about 90 miles south of Raleigh. The county twice voted for Barack Obama but went for Trump in 2016 and again last year.
In Biden’s early months, Stephens sees the president catering more to the left than to conservative Democratic voters.
During last year’s campaign, Biden at times courted Republicans at the risk of alienating the Democratic left. Several prominent Republicans got speaking positions during the Democratic National Convention, such as former Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
A number of Republican groups also openly backed Biden. Republican Voters Against Trump spent $2 million on billboards in swing states, featuring Republicans opposed to reelecting their own party’s president. That’s how Copan’s beaming and bespectacled image, 12 feet (3.6 meters) high, ended up on billboards with the words: “I’m conservative. I value decency. I’m voting Biden.”
As president, Biden has expressed openness to working with Republicans. But he also helped ram through Congress the largest expansion of the social safety net in a generation as part of a coronavirus relief and stimulus package that didn’t get a single Republican vote. He’s now calling for spending trillions more on infrastructure, pushing a proposal meant to appeal to people in both parties.
Note the term “ram through” as if the Republicans were even half-heartedly trying to negotiate. Some things never change.
It gets worse:
Biden has so far enjoyed wide, relatively bipartisan support, with 73% of Americans approving of his coronavirus response and 60% approving of his handling of the economy. Still, favorable ratings don’t always translate to votes: Of the more than 200 counties that supported Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016, only about 25 went back to Biden in November.
The limited crossover power is even true in places that were bright spots for Democrats. Biden flipped longtime Republican stronghold Kent County, Michigan, which includes Grand Rapids, Gerald Ford’s hometown. But those gains were built more on the local electorate getting younger than any measurable surge of conservatives backing Biden.
Scott Carey, former general counsel of the Tennessee Republican Party, wrote an op-ed in October saying he was voting for Biden. He’s been mostly satisfied so far — but not about to become a born-again Democrat. He worries about tax increases and government overreach.
“I don’t see myself becoming a big Harris, or certainly a Bernie fan or anything like that,” Carey said of Vice President Kamala Harris and liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders. If Biden decides not to seek a second term in 2024, Carey said, he’d be more excited about Republicans, including “some governors I’ve never even heard of who would step up post-Trump and bring us back to sound governing policies.”
Sure. That’ll happen.
They do mention a few who say they’ve had it:
Tom Rawles is an ex-Republican county supervisor in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and was critical in Biden carrying swing-state Arizona. After voting for Biden, Rawles registered as a Democrat.
“I’d rather fight philosophically within the Democratic Party than I would for character in the Republican Party, because there’s none there,” said Rawles. He’s 71 and said he doesn’t expect the GOP to return to principles he can support in his lifetime.
Rawles and his wife spent months before the election sitting in their driveway along a busy suburban Phoenix road, hoisting Biden signs for four hours a day. Some drivers stopped to chat or offer water. Others made rude gestures or screamed that they were interlopers from fiercely blue California.
“Some people would yell, ‘Go home!,’” Rawles recalls. “And we’d say, ’We’re in our driveway. Where do you want us to go?’”
It seems clear to me that any hope of the Biden Republican becoming a thing is thin. The media certainly doesn’t seem that interested in really looking at it seriously. Their ongoing need to pander to the Real Americans just doesn’t fit this narrative and I see little prospect that they’ll approach it the same way they did back in the 1980s. And the Republicans could not care less about their defectors. They have decided that the way to win in this country is simply to lie and cheat. And why not? It seems to work for them a good part of the time. They just need to hone their tactics a little bit and they can have it all with very little effort.
Nonetheless, it might actually be something that’s really happening. I would just remind everyone that despite all the constant begging and pleading, the Reagan Democrats never came home. In fact, they ended up being among the most conservative Democrats, eventually turning into Tea Partyers and Trump voters. So maybe these Biden Republicans will end up being typical mainstream Democrats even as the Dems move left. You never know.