PROJECTION
What has President Trump learned from defeat?
The Washington Post
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Dan Balz
The suburban defeats are potentially the most damaging to the GOP, if Trump or other GOP leaders do not act to reverse them. Orange County is one example but not the only suburban area that produced gains for Democrats. DuPage County, outside Chicago, has been a Republican stronghold for years, though the GOP's grip had been weakening. Now, not a single House member in the new Congress whose district includes a part of DuPage County will be a Republican.
Suburban voters in red states also showed increased support for Democratic candidates, whether it was Texas or Georgia, Utah or Oklahoma.
Republicans now hold a strong base in rural America. But in this election, their margins were not as big as Trump rolled up in 2016. The president's advisers argue, fairly, that people should be cautious about projecting forward as to how those rural areas will vote in 2020, when Trump's name is again on the ballot. But if the suburbs are trending away, he will need all the rural ground he had in 2016 and perhaps more.
Internationally, the president's trip to Paris to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice of World War I brought a reminder of the degree to which he has chosen to stand apart from traditional U.S. allies. He was absent physically at key moments, and absent intellectually in providing the leadership that long has come with being the American president.
The armistice of World War I is an event marked yearly with ceremonies throughout Europe, in small towns and the great capitals. The centenary was meant to be the biggest such commemoration in decades. Yet Trump did not go, as scheduled, to pay respects at an American cemetery outside Paris, where more than 2,000 American troops are buried. Weather was blamed for the decision, but he later vented at his staff for making him look bad.
The next day he chose not to march in the rain with other global leaders on the Champs-Elysees, choosing instead to be driven to the Arc de Triomphe for the later ceremony. Another leader who skipped the solidarity march was Russian President Vladimir Putin. Later, Trump engaged in a Twitter spat with French President Emmanuel Macron, after Macron in his ceremony speech sharply rebuked the concept of nationalism that Trump has embraced.
Nicholas Burns, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO who served Republican and Democratic presidents as a career diplomat, said of the trip, "It was one of the most ineffective presidential trips I've ever seen."
After returning to the United States last Sunday night, Trump chose not to make the traditional presidential trip to Arlington Cemetery the following morning to observe Veterans Day. Later in the week, apparently seeking to make amends, he went to the Marine Barracks in Washington for a lunchtime visit. On Friday, he acknowledged he had made a mistake by not going to Arlington Cemetery. He said he was busy making "calls for the country."
Since returning from Paris, Trump has embraced bipartisan legislation on criminal justice reform. Is that a sign of the future or a one-off by the president? At home and abroad, he is being closely watched for signs of how the election defeats have affected him. He has plodded through the days after the election, seeming mostly unhappy in what was "close to compete victory." He now must know what was lost in the midterms, but he seems lost in knowing how to respond.