In Missouri, the strains of the national political parties hit home

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

Nov. 04--WASHINGTON -- The maneuvering around the 2018 fight for Sen. Claire McCaskill's Senate seat in Missouri touches a larger story of eruptions inside the national Democratic and Republican parties.

For Democrats, those fissures were exposed in an exchange between McCaskill and NBC "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd late last month.

Todd asked McCaskill whether self-professed moderates, like McCaskill, still have a home in the Democratic Party.

McCaskill gave a long answer about the minimum wage, protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and other pocketbook issues that she says unite Democrats. They have been staples of Democratic campaign promises for more than 30 years, and they often work when social issues or war don't intervene.

But when Todd pressed, McCaskill said that one reason she spent so much time in rural Missouri this year was because President Donald Trump had connected, culturally, to Missourians in those parts of the state.

"Those people watching 'Dancing with the Stars,' they're not getting into the details of what we're doing on Pell grants," McCaskill said. "They are rather saying, 'Hey, I can't afford college, you know, give it to me straight.' And they don't think they've gotten it straight. ... And the cultural issues divide cities and the rural areas."

McCaskill was acknowledging a criticism of the national Democratic Party: that it has lost connections with working-class Americans while waging campaigns based on identity politics.

The Post-Dispatch asked Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez, who was elected this year after a bitter struggle between remnants of the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns, the same question about McCaskill that Todd did.

"What she has been doing is something that the Democratic Party needs to do more of," Perez said. "She has been all over the state, in every ZIP code. We didn't pay enough attention to certain parts of all too many states, and we have to do that."

Perez said this two days before excerpts of a new book by longtime Democratic operative Donna Brazile came out that sent new sparks through the smoldering Sanders vs. Clinton factions. In it, Brazile admitted what Sanders supporters had long claimed: National Democratic Party operatives decidedly favored Clinton over Sanders in last year's presidential primary.

McCaskill supported Clinton in 2016. But the senator had been exiled from Clinton Land after she supported Barack Obama for president in 2008. Now, most recently tied to the Clinton faction in a state Clinton lost by 19 percentage points last year, she will have to maneuver between the Clinton wing, friendly to Wall Street even while campaigning against it, and the Sanders faction, progressives who want to pull the party left on everything from universal health care to free college for everyone.

As an illustration of how that split now plays out in the Senate, only 16 of the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus signed onto a Sanders "Medicare for All" bill this year. But they included Democrats said to have presidential ambitions, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

McCaskill was not one of them. She would rather "fix" what was wrong with Obamacare, she said. But she and other centrists in both parties have made little headway getting there.

McCaskill has drawn a novice Democratic primary challenger. Angelica Earl, a former Obamacare marketplace worker who seems to fall into the Sanders camp, at least on one issue. She told the Post-Dispatch this summer that "my stance is single-payer health care for all."

Strains of ideology

Earl's is the longest of long shots, but her challenge of McCaskill is illustrative of how the two major political parties in the United States are being frayed by at least five strains of ideology and interest:

--What might be called "Trumpers," who like the president's America First rhetoric and nationalist appeal on everything from immigration to protectionist trade policies to his criticism of NFL players who kneel for "The Star-Spangled Banner." Their motivations have economic underpinnings, and on the outer fringes include white nationalists. The primary elements include Tea Party supporters and libertarians who believe anything Washington touches goes sour. Their media-anointed clarion is Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

--Economic and global Republicans (think Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney) who see business as the pre-eminent economic engine of not only America, but of the world. They shape pocketbook and social policies around that belief, and stress opportunity and global engagement. Three decades ago, this was the "morning in America" strain of the GOP.

--Cultural conservatives, who once proliferated in both parties, but since Ronald Reagan have increasingly concentrated in the GOP on issues like abortion.

--Center-left Democrats who, like McCaskill, see a role for business as a provider of jobs but concurrently view government as a necessary pushback on business' worst instincts. They are less likely than left-wing Democrats to push abortion rights and other social issues to the forefront of their legislative agendas, although they often use those issues to motivate social liberals on Election Day.

--The aforementioned left-progressive wing, which Sanders captured last year, which believes that an active and expansive government -- financed by "the rich paying their fair share" -- is the only path to a more just America.

Reagan, who died in 2004, remains the pre-eminent Republican because he was able to stitch the various GOP factions into not only winning political campaigns, but policy victories. Ten months into Trump's presidency, he and the GOP Congress have been unable to replicate that second part largely because of strains between McConnell and Bannon factions.

Bannon, M

Connell

and the Missouri GOP

For now, an uneasy truce between the Bannon and McConnell factions appears to be coalescing around Attorney General Josh Hawley, who got into the race after Ballwin Republican Rep. Ann Wagner's surprise decision not to run.

Bannon has threatened to recruit and support Republican primary opponents who would be Trump allies and McConnell opponents, and he recently claimed victory in the loss of incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in an Alabama primary and the retirements of Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker in Tennessee. Bannon has called McConnell an impediment to Trump's legislative agenda.

But Missouri may represent detente between the two, at least for now.

Bannon, who did not respond to interview requests, has not publicly endorsed Hawley. But Breitbart, the website to which he has long been associated, twice wrote favorable stories about Hawley in October, saying in one that Bannon "reportedly remains very interested in recruiting Hawley in his war against the establishment, which includes Senate Majority Leader McConnell."

Meanwhile, a deep-pocketed "Super PAC" affiliated with McConnell is also getting behind Hawley. The Senate Leadership Fund spent roughly $17 million last year to get Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, a close ally of McConnell's, re-elected in Missouri.

Senate Leadership Fund president and CEO Steven Law said his committee could spend at least that much next year to defeat McCaskill.

"The most likely nominee is Josh Hawley," Law told the Post-Dispatch. "In his primary for attorney general he was really a consensus candidate, someone who could appeal to social conservatives and economic conservatives, and I think he would do that again this time.

"If Steve Bannon decides to endorse (Hawley), that is fine," Law said. "He will just be joining a very large party."

Hawley faces three newcomers in the fight for the party's nomination: former Libertarian presidential candidate Austin Petersen; Navy veteran Courtland Sykes; and retired Air Force pilot Tony Monetti, who has ties to Gov. Eric Greitens.

Petersen says he's the "anti-establishment conservative." Sykes says he identifies with the Freedom Caucus, a group of mostly House Republicans often at odds with House Speaker Paul Ryan. Monetti's motto is "Mission: Missouri First, America Always."

Blunt told the Post-Dispatch that he would likely weigh in on his preferences in the GOP primary. He also said that despite Trump's faltering national approval polls, the president remains popular in Missouri.

"Voters had a strong view that they wanted different things to happen," Blunt said. "They chose a different guy to lead that effort, and I think he is still popular in our state."

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