Party over country.
Months from now, as the pressures of midterm elections bear down on a handful of Democratic incumbent U.S. senators in states President Trump won in 2016, pundits may start to recall a meeting held at the White House on a cold January afternoon and wonder if they had missed something important.
Immediately after the meeting, everyone discussed the meeting as a live-mic free-for-all and focused on the theatrics. They speculated openly that Trump held the televised meeting to dispel any notion he was mentally fit.
Few focused on who wasn’t there and why they weren’t.
Once again, the pundits were missing the little nuances of how much American politics really has changed — and what that may mean for future results.
Importantly, three people in states that went heavily for Trump in 2016 — Indiana’s Sen. Joe Donnelly, West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin, and Missouri’s Sen. Claire McCaskill — were all absent.
Normally, the lawmakers who represent states that voted for the other party’s presidential nominee, are the most bipartisan — even if it’s just to listen. Early on Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, along with Donnelly and McCaskill, all hopped on a plane with Trump. But now that they’re in the heat of fundraising, they do not want any part of it.
They have made the bet to pick their donors in California and New York over their voters back home.