The coming Republican attack on Jeff Merkley

Senator Merkley

Republicans have money to spend attacking Merkley.

It won't work. He will be re-elected to the US Senate.

(Of course, he does need to raise money from his donor base of Democrats. They need to come through, but I am confident they will.)

Jeff Merkley has staked out a position on the liberal-progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He is there with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and whichever other Presidential contenders now try to squeeze into that political space to get traction with Democratic activists.  

But Merkley is the genuine progressive article. The RNC knows it. The Koch Brothers know it. His base knows it.

Jeff Merkley will win re-election. Trump has changed American politics, re-energizing the culture war and American division. He re-ignited the political consciousness the country experienced during the 1968-1974 period of hippies, student-agitation, Vietnam, Nixon, urban riots, and Watergate.  Politics was in the air back then. Families squabbled at Thanksgiving. Back then crew cuts were the equivalent of MAGA hats now, a statement.

Humble posture

Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon.

Nixon's political positions were majority positions. A great many people--then and now--like the sound of America First patriotism, of sneers of young people, and advocacy for traditional social hierarchy and values. Nixon was a professional, who handled Southern Strategy identity politics with some delicacy.

Trump isn't careful and delicate.

Trump governs to elicit the roar and laughter and delight of the motivated crowds at rallies, and it works as far as that goes, bringing him a base of 35-40%. Nixon's lighter touch got him most of a 60% majority, and a 1972 landslide.

Trump will get Merkley re-elected. The attacks the GOP will direct at Merkley will be translated in the public mind to a binary choice between Trump-people versus everyone else. Trump's language and behavior sees to it there are more of "everyone else."

Merkley is inoculated from the strongest direction of attack, an accusation that he has "gone Hollywood," that he has become part of The Swamp, a full of himself big shot fraud.

Jeff doesn't look the part. He looks un-pressed. Humble. Un-charismatic. And earnestly concerned about the working people with traditional values who are struggling to be in the middle class. He "reads" as mill-town, not college-town. Cottage Grove, not Eugene.

Listening.

What frustrated his presidential campaign makes him impregnable in a Senate campaign. The modern presidential candidate, especially one competing against Trump, needs a kind of rock-star celebrity crowd appeal quality. Successful evangelist ministers have it. Successful stand up comedians have it. Cher and Oprah and Bruce Springsteen have it. Trump has it.

Merkley doesn't. What he has is better, and speaks well for his character, but it is different. It is not what this media environment demands in 2019 and 2020.

The coming campaign attacks on him will make him look like a good guy, being attacked by bad guys with money. It will tend to damage the reputation of whichever Republican candidate runs against Merkley. It will backfire.

Merkley will come out OK, and be re-elected.