They went for Democrat Joe Biden last November….
Democrats want to keep them….
Republicans are trying to steal some back from the 2016 vote…
Will they jettison Donald Trump, and his baggage, to get those voters who would NOT vote for the ‘Big Guy’ …
But did vote for House Republicans’ down ballot….
Whoever wins this messaging battle will have the power to determine the outcome of the rest of Mr. Biden’s term, setting the stage for either two more years of Democrats driving their policies forward or a new period of gridlock in a divided Washington.
Both parties are targeting voters like Jay Jackson, a retired career Air Force officer who is now a reservist in the Omaha suburbs. Mr. Jackson had lawn signs last year for Republicans running for Congress, but also for Mr. Biden. He thought that Mr. Trump had failed to empathize with military duty and regularly lied to Americans, and did not deserve re-election.
“I’m a classic RINO,” Mr. Jackson said with a laugh, accepting the right’s favorite insult for voters like him: Republicans in Name Only.
In a guest column in The Omaha World-Herald, Mr. Jackson, a 39-year-old lawyer, explained his view: “We Republicans need to turn away from Trump and back to our values and the principles of patriotism and conservatism.”
Mr. Biden won 54 percent of voters from the country’s suburbs last year, a significant improvement over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s expansion of his own margins in rural and urban areas, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Suburbanites made up 55 percent of the Biden coalition, compared with 48 percent of Clinton voters…
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“The post-Trump Republican brand is bad politics in the suburbs,” he said in an interview. “They have embraced dangerous conspiracy theories, flat-out white supremacists and a level of harshness and ugliness that is not appealing to suburban voters.”….
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Lia Post, 54, grew up in a conservative religious family and voted routinely for Republicans. An activist for legalizing medical marijuana, she supported Mr. Biden last year. She said that more than anything else, she was relieved by the absence of perpetual chaos in Washington.
“I don’t feel so stressed out all the time,” she said. “I just feel now I have a president that I can just breathe,” she added, and not worry, “‘Oh, God, what’s the next thing?’”…
More on Republicans and suburbs….
Coalitions: Here’s a longread by Sean Trende on the recent history of the Republican coalition. It has some good graphs and maps. Give it a read. There is also a second installment coming in which Trende explores the possible future of the coalition.
RRH….