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Nothing has changed that; that trend will continue. Millennials and Gen Z have a much higher proportion of college [educational attainment], and theyre increasing their share of the electorate. The values of those voters continue to be aligned with Democratsthough I actually think they are more likely to be ticket-splitters.

If you look at the midterms versus what happened in 2020, [Democrats] had a drop-off in support with them, but I think they were acting normallywhereas Trumps new white working-class and rural voters were not. Many of them are new to the electorate and voting with a different kind of energyvoting straight-ticket to save the country. Anything short of that [level of support] is going to look like Democrats are just renting those suburban voters. But the Democrats new voters were being normal people who dont vote 100 percent [party line].

So, you see that trend continuing? Were not yet at the high-water mark for the diploma divide?

I do, at least with those people who are normal votersthat is, who are kind of in and out of elections. But on the white working-class and rural side, what happened in both 16 and 20 was this [surge of] new voters who hadnt voted before. So I have no idea whats going to happen in the midterms. I can see one scenario where, with the Democrats in control, those voters are motivated even more to turn out in huge numbers to save the country. Or they could drop off as they did in 2018 or maybe even like they did in [the Senate runoff elections in] Georgia, where Trump was not on the ballot. Are these voters anti-Democratic Party? Will they reward what looks like it might be a successful Democratic administration in the midtermswhich we havent had for a while? I have no idea.

Youve mentioned this sense, among certain Trump voters, of needing to save the country. Describe that. What animates that existential concern? Is it purely about race? Is it something else?

Yeah, racial resentment is a very strong piece. I think we underestimate how powerful a moment it was when Barack Obama won and then got reelected. To this coalition, they view Obamacare as simply paying off his base of voters with big government payoffs to ensure a permanent Democratic majority.

I think Obama campaigning in every election has given them the rationale that they have to vote. Its why Trump made reversing Obamas legacyreversing everything Obama didfeature centrally in his rallies: Obama represented a whole changed America that they had to stop.

That actually sounds a lot like an aspect of the Reagan Democrat dynamic you identified in Macomb County, Michigan, in the 80s and 90s. You wrote about those focus groups in 1995s Middle-Class Dreams: These white voters expressed a profound distaste for Black Americans, a sentiment that pervaded almost everything they thought about government and politics. Blacks constitute the explanation for their vulnerability and for almost everything that had gone wrong in their lives; not being black was what constituted being middle class. Is that the same dynamic at play now, decades later?

No. Theres a step in this history: In the end, these Reagan Democrats voted for Obama. It was competitive in 08 and 12, but when you listened to these voters, they decided Barack Obama was not Jesse Jackson: He was not a candidate they saw as running to represent his people. They thought he would fight for all Americans, and they ultimately voted for himwhich is pretty astonishing. What they were most concerned about was NAFTA, corporations sending jobs to Mexico, CEOs enriching themselves and not investing in their own companies. They were incredibly focused on globalization. They were on the front lines of people angry about what was happening with corporate America, and were voting for Democratsand for Obama, specificallybecause they thought he would take up those issues.

When you look at [Bidens] economic plan, a lot of it was about America First. It was about building in America. It was about stopping outsourcing. Its still part of build back better.

That competed with this racial dynamic. Obama benefited from it. But Trump benefited from it, too, because he ran on reversing all these trade agreements, and Democrats were pansies on talking about trade in 2016. Hillary Clinton was really for [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], and Trump was authentically campaigning against NAFTA, against TPP and was depicted as fighting for working people, which Democrats hadnt done for a long time. Trade was key to that. It was a key part of why he was winning these votersnot just because of race, but because America First represented fighting for American industry and American manufacturing, and Democrats were about globalization and trade and were actually embarrassed to attack some companies for moving jobs to Mexico.

That changed with Biden, by the way. Biden, when he came out of the basementas Trump described ithe very self-consciously went right to these states first, and said, I hear you. Im listening. Im not of that school. He didnt say the word deplorable; he said, Im listening to you. And when you look at his economic plan, a lot of it was about America First. It was about building in America. It was about stopping outsourcing. America First rhetoric was a part of Bidens campaign. Its still part of build back better.

Right now, polling shows overwhelming public support for Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Im curious how you read that. Is it a sign that the Reagan-era consensus about small government is over?

I dont think the Republicans are as disillusioned with Trump as polls suggest, but I do think theres huge support for the relief package. Trump voters, a large portion of them, want a welfare state that is dependable for working people. The Reagan Democrats and these white working-class voters are incredibly pro-Medicaid expansion. Look at what happened in any of any of these Senate races in 18 in states [with initiatives on] on the minimum wage or Medicaid expansion. The minimum wage and Medicaid expansion won by much bigger numbers [than the incumbents]. I mean, it won in Utah.

To put a fine point on it: Do you think that the Reagan Democrat era is over? Is it still a useful lens for us to look at U.S. politics?

Well, look: There is a kind of suburban, white working-class voter today who faces a lot of competing dynamics that are similar to the Reagan era. Its globalization and the welfare state, and whether that is going to work for them.

But there are also new voters coming in who are responsive to [appeals to] white nationalism and racial resentment, and whose overwhelming motivation is a deep worry that Black people and immigrants will control the country. For these new voters, thats still issue number one; its not competing with trade. Its the reason theyre voting. Its the reason why theyre registering.

But the Reagan Democrats were not Republicans. That was the piece that was central to them: They did not become Republicans. They were for Reagan, but they wanted to be for Democrats. And I think its still true that we still have a lot of these voters who had been voting for Democrats recentlywhether for [Bill] Clinton or Obamawho also voted for Trump but arent Republicans.

Do you see something similar at play now, with highly educated suburban voters who had long thought of themselves as Republicans now voting for Democrats, even if they dont think of themselves as members of the party? Are Biden Republicans going to play a similar role in shaping politics in the 2020s?

I think theres two kinds of Biden Republicanstwo trends.

One of them is you saw quite affluent, very Republican towns [in suburban counties], and Biden got a very large percentage of votes from those counties. They are more affluent college graduates voting for Biden. Will they stick? They may, given how Trump is defining the Republican Party.

And the other piece is that Biden is very self-consciously campaigning for Macomb County-type, white working-class voters [for whom] race is not the only thing driving their vote, but who went to Trump [in 2016] because of globalization and their belief that Democrats are not fighting for American workers. Biden is fighting for those voters, too.

Its interesting to see how Republicans are trying to respond to this political dynamic in the suburbs. Certainly, the GOP push on school reopenings right now seems directly like a play for suburban voters. Do you see that as a promising gambit for them?

Lets see how this plays out over time. I mean, if you listen to what they said at CPAC, the reason they think its wrong for Democratic states to get this aid [in Bidens $1.9 trillion stimulus plan] is because theyve been following health protocols and opening up their economies in a paced way to reflect where they are on dealing with the [coronavirus] crisis. These Republicans are Covid deniers who want to open up the economy.

But what does this look like at the end of 2021? What does it look like after these places get their state aid? After schools are fully back in-person in the fall? Particularly if the economy is fairly strongif Bidens going forward with his infrastructure plans; if hes going forward with his tax cuts and credits to working people; if theres more affordable health care. What will politics look like when the schools are open and it looks like Bidens been successful?

Youve noted that many of the new voters Trump brought out are people who see an existential battle for Americawho see this as cultural and race-related. And that seems to be a real bind for Republicans: To win back some of these suburban districts, they may need to adopt a posture thats less driven by white grievance politics. But if they do that, they risk turning off this segment of new Trump voters who might otherwise stay home. How do they navigate that? Its like squeezing a water balloonyou get a grip on one part, and it gets bigger elsewhere.

If you look at the trends in this election, [Trumps campaign] was able to, like, wage a race war with a massive increase in turnout in the rural areas and among white working-class voters. But the percentage of eligible voters who are older than Millennials dropped by 8 points. So, for Republicans to be successful with this strategy while going against that demographic trend, you need a continually animating and increasingly intense and effective effort to turn out the vote.

[In 2020,] the percentage of millennials and Gen Z voters went up, I think, 6 points. About two-thirds of that was from the natural trend [of demography], but about one-third was from increased turnout compared to the midterms. And thats a very diverse, more college-educated, group. And Biden won them. Theres no way thats not going to be a bigger bloc in the [next] midterms and, certainly, presidential election. How do you win if you dont compete at all for those voters, and you animate their turnoutand do the same for college-educated voters who want a more open country? Its just in contradiction.

Its interesting, when you look at last weekends CPAC straw poll, only 55 percent [of respondents] said theyd vote for Trump if the 2024 Republican primary was held today. People underestimate his [level of] insecurity about his hold on the Republican Partywhich meant he had to command absolute loyalty and punish anybody who wasnt for him. That will obviously continue. This battle is going to carry on within the Republican Party. Hes going to lead the party as long as he is alive and breathingeven if hes under indictment or bankrupt, [hell blame it all] on the IRS and FBI; hell be a victim.

They are going to have to lose a few elections before there can be a new dynamic within the Republican Partyjust as the Democrats lost a lot of national elections before Bill Clinton was able to change the party.

On the racial resentment component: You were Nelson Mandelas pollster. Before your work in Macomb County in the 80s, you were polling in South Africa during apartheid. How does that experience frame the way you see the politics surrounding race in the U.S.?

Initially, I was an academic doing pollingbut not on electionsand wrote very obscure books. I wrote a book [in 1980] called Race and State in Capitalist Development that has a cult following. When I started the book, it was supposed to be equally about Alabama and the American South, as well as South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland. I got hooked on South Africa, ended up writing many more chapters about it. I interviewed business leaders, trade union leaders and leaders of farm organizations during the apartheid era trying to understand what they were bringing to the market. I was arguing that the decisions they were making were not leading to a breakdown of apartheid. The normal assumption was that if you had industrial development, capitalist development, it would lead to less racial division. I was arguing that, in fact, it will, for some period, exacerbate racial divisions before it undermines them.

What I was trying to understand was: What were the rational decisions that people were making, coming out of this racial history that they all live with? How do you use that history? That meant [exhibiting] understanding and empathy when Id go to interview the trade union leaderssome of whom negotiated and built into the employment structure a racial structure very similar to Alabama. They were making kind of rational decisions as trade unionists to limit competition [for their jobs]. But then in other industries, like government, unions were broader and more inclusive and tried to bring nonwhites into the unions. I had an empathy, trying to understand working people and the history that they live with when they make decisions, but also how their leaders made decisionsnot just political, but within civil society and the economy.

I think its part of why I was able to listen to Macomb County workers. I was arguing: If you bring them a thing theyll agree with, like universal health care, these voters arent done with Democrats. Theyre not done with Democrats if you are talking about universal issues that they can gain from. Even though [some of these voters] were clearly racist, I was not willing to say that theres not something that lies behind that that we need to understand and that enables us to find a broader coalition and draws on their better nature.

When I presented my stuff at the Democratic National Committee [meeting in Chicago in 1985], I was ostracized because I was saying that these voters had to be part of our Democratic coalition. That was a time when Jesse Jackson was competing [for leadership] within the Democratic Party. I was ostracized. Its why I ended up working for the Democratic Leadership Council: They were willing to hire me, but not the DNC. [Greenbergs work for the DLC ended up leading to his work for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who implemented the Macomb County findings in his messaging during his quest for the presidency.]

How does the racial resentment you saw in studying South Africa compare with the racial divide you see in the U.S. right now?

During the apartheid period, their fear was existential: the fear that only by maintaining this apartheid system could they maintain their way of lifeand that, no, we couldnt do this in pieces, because you once do, you began to chip apartheid away.

I dont want to put all the Trump voters in that world. There are a lot of them who havent been involved at all. Theyve been politically disengaged. But Trump has brought a segment of white nationalists in. Thats very real and that [apartheid-era fear in South Africa] does look like their world. But that isnt true of all Trump voters.

Prior to the 2020 campaign, you wondered whether Democrats were ready to use government after this decade of anti-government tyranny. Based on what youve seen so far, are they?

Absolutely, yes. Im actually stunned by how much consensus there is around using the government to really deliver for people. I think the Biden administration buys that. The gap between the progressive wing and the Biden wingif that is a wingis small. You look at the relief package, and theres like one piece theyre arguing about. But if you look at what theyre agreeing on, introducing a child benefitnot just child care, but also a child benefit, which is more of a European kind of safety netcombined with a great expansion on health care, I think youre dealing with a big change. [Full disclosure: Greenbergs wife is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a leading proponent of the child benefit.]

Right now, everyone thinks that government needs to deliver in a big way. I think that scares Republicans. And it will be interesting to see. People are going to see real benefits, not just the $2,000 stimulus piece, but something more enduring. If you look at the proposed $3,600 per child; thats delivered [in installments] monthly into peoples checking accounts. That not only reduces child poverty; its virtually every middle-class person that we are talking about.

Obama was pro-globalization, and believed we benefited from it. He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America But Biden will.

Biden is willing to say, Im fighting to do this. Weve not had a Democrat I mean, when Clinton ran in 92, [his message] was very much about fighting for the middle class. It had a very populist and nationalist component to it. But [that was not the case] further into his administration, when [the virtues of] free trade was more part of the Democratic assumptions about the world.

Obama was pro-globalization and believed we benefited from it. He would have been embarrassed to go see a company that was bringing jobs back from abroad to build in America. He would have been embarrassed to highlight that. But Biden will. Were looking at a very different time.

At the start of every focus group, you ask people to fill in the blank in this sentence: I feel ___ about the way things are going in the country. How would you, Stan Greenberg, fill in that blank?

I feel deeply, deeply uncertain and foreboding. I think were in a battle for democracy whose outcome is uncertain.

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The Rise of the Biden Republicans - POLITICO

Republicans in the U.S. House last week unanimously opposed President Bidens economic stimulus bill, even though polls show that the legislation is popular with the public. The U.S. Senate will consider the bill soon and it looks like the overwhelming majority of Republicans in that chamber will oppose it as well. And its not just the stimulus. House Republicans also last week overwhelmingly opposed a bill to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And the GOP seems poised to oppose upcoming Democratic bills to make it easier to vote and spend hundreds of billions to improve the nations infrastructure. All of those ideas are popular with the public, too.

Duh, you might say. Of course, the party out of power opposes the agenda of the party in power. Democrats did that during former President Donald Trumps four years. Republicans did it during former President Barack Obamas two terms. The parties just disagree on a lot of major issues.

Youve seen this movie before, right?

This sequel is a little different, actually. Obamas health care bill was only hovering around majority support as it moved through Congress. Trumps proposals to repeal Obamacare and cut corporate taxes were downright unpopular. In contrast, Biden and the major elements of his agenda are popular. And the Republican Party isnt, which helps explain why it was swept out of power in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

So if an unpopular party uniformly opposes popular policies in the run-up to 2022 and 2024, is it buying itself a ticket further into the political wilderness?

Not necessarily.

There are several reasons to think that opposing popular policies wont hurt Republicans electorally, and conversely, that implementing a popular agenda wont necessarily boost Biden that much.

The first reason that congressional Republicans can afford to oppose popular ideas is one that you have probably read a lot about over the last several years: The GOP has several big structural advantages in Americas electoral system. Because of the Electoral College, Trump would have won the presidency with around 257,000 more votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, even though he lost nationally by more than 7 million votes. The Senate gives equal weight to sparsely populated states like Wyoming and huge ones like California, so the chambers 50 Democratic senators effectively represent about 185 million Americans, while its 50 Republican senators represent about 143 million, as Voxs Ian Millhiser recently calculated. Gerrymandering by Republicans, as well as the weakness of Democrats in rural areas, makes it harder for Democrats to win and keep control of the House even when most voters back Democratic House candidates. Thats what happened in 2020.

Put all that together, and congressional Republicans are somewhat insulated from the public will. In turn, the advantage for Biden and congressional Democrats of being closer to the publics opinions is blunted.

Second, electoral politics and policy are increasingly disconnected. More and more Americans vote along party lines and are unlikely to break from their side no matter what it does. Some scholars argue that voters attachments to the parties are not that closely linked to the parties policy platforms but rather more akin to loyalty to a team or brand. And partisanship and voting are increasingly linked to racial attitudes, as opposed to policy. So GOP-leaning voters may support some Democratic policies but still vote for Republican politicians who oppose those policies.

Third, the last several midterm elections have all been defined by backlashes against the incumbent president. You could argue that theres nothing inevitable about this, and that former President George W. Bush (Social Security reform, Iraq War), Obama (Obamacare in 2010 and its flawed rollout in 2014) and Trump (Obamacare repeal) all did or proposed controversial things that irritated voters. Maybe if Biden sticks to popular stuff hell buck the trend. But it could instead be the case that voters from the presidents party tend to be kind of fat and happy in midterms, while the opposition is inspired to turn out. So even if Biden does popular things, GOP voters could be more motivated to vote in November 2022.

Fourth, voters may like a presidents policies in the abstract but still think he isnt doing a good job or that his policies arent that effective if those policies arent bipartisan. Think of this as the Mitch McConnell theory.

Early in Obamas first term, the last time Democrats had control of the House, Senate and the presidency, the Kentucky senator and others in the GOP leadership came up with a strategy of trying to get as few congressional Republicans as possible to back then-President Obamas ideas. As McConnell said publicly back then, he viewed voters as not especially attuned to the day-to-day happenings in Washington. Instead, he said, they evaluate a president in part based on whether his agenda seems divisive, particularly a president who campaigns on unifying the country (as both Obama and Biden did). That allows the opposition party to create the perception of division simply by voting against the presidents agenda.

Put another way: The opposition party can guarantee a lack of bipartisan support and then criticize the president for lacking bipartisan support.

Maybe history wont repeat itself. But being the Party of No in the Obama years resulted in the GOP winning the House, the Senate and then the presidency from 2010 to 2016. It is totally logical that a party still led by key figures from the Obama era (McConnell and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy) would think total opposition to a Democratic president would work again.

The fifth reason is a more complicated one: Swing voters may not swing to the party with the most popular policies either because they dont engage with politics in that way or because they are motivated by non-policy concerns. The Democratic Party and much of the media (either implicitly or explicitly) approach American politics using a median voter model of political success. That model goes like this: Some voters hold mostly liberal views, some hold mostly conservative views and then some hold views somewhere in the ideological middle. Candidates and parties who hold more centrist views will do better electorally because they will win the backing of voters in the ideological middle, as well as those on either the left or right.

Following this median voter approach, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden spent 2019 and 2020 pushing ideas that were popular with the partys base and voters in the middle. They avoided stances such as defunding the police or Medicare for All that were not as popular. This view seems intuitive. And its hard to argue that its wrong Democrats won the House, Senate and presidency in 2018 and 2020 following this approach. And its likely that Democrats would have done worse if they fully embraced unpopular ideas.

Where this gets more complicated is when considering the magnitude of this median approach. Theres clearly some electoral benefit in pursuing a more popular agenda, all else being equal. But how big is it? Its not at all clear that Republicans suffer a lot from opposing popular ideas or proposing unpopular ones. And its not at all clear that Democrats gain significantly from running on things that poll well. Trump didnt really pursue the median voter much in the 2020 election cycle think of how he expressed skepticism about mask-wearing last year, contradicting the views of a clear majority of Americans, or how he pushed to put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, even as polls suggested that most Americans wanted to let the winner of the presidential election choose the replacement for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Its not that Trump did only unpopular things, but he did not seem to be courting the majority of the publics support in his policy moves during his campaign or much of his tenure in office.

I think thats why many in the media and in politics, myself included, were inclined to believe polls that showed Trump trailing in the high single digits around Election Day. It fit this general median voter model Trump had governed in an unpopular way, punctuated by his handling of COVID-19, and it made sense to think that voters in the middle of the electorate would punish him severely.

Trump lost, but his 4.5-percentage-point defeat nationally was closer than most polls suggested.

Why didnt Trump face a bigger backlash? Well, the partisanship of the electorate no doubt played a big role. There were a ton of voters who were never going to back a Democrat, no matter how moderate the candidate or how many controversial stands Trump took.

That said, its possible that the median voter concept either wasnt that sound in the first place or is increasingly outdated. As FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman has written, there are swing voters but they arent necessarily centrists who choose the candidate closest to the middle. Swing voters often have either a hodgepodge of views (some on the left, some on the right) and/or dont have strongly defined views at all. That doesnt mean that either party should nominate an extremist its likely someone with extreme views will turn off more swing voters more than a candidate closer to the middle. But it suggests that a candidate who positions themself in the center may not reap large electoral benefits.

If liberals were right about how politics worked, Donald Trump should never have been possible, and his party should have suffered crushing, generational defeats in the wake of his election, especially last November, said Will Stancil, an expert on civil-rights law and policy who works at the University of Minnesotas Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity.

He added, Politics is as much irrational, emotive factionalism as anything else. But liberals only seem capable of understanding it as an orderly marketplace of ideas and will contort themselves in pretzels to preserve the fiction that voters commitments are rational and mechanical.

Furthermore, taking popular stands may not matter that much if voters dont hear about it. Or if they dont factor those stands into how they vote. So its likely that some Americans either didnt know about Bidens popular policy stands in 2020 or didnt focus on them when they decided how to vote, instead thinking more about the negative things about Biden circulating in conservative media or among QAnon believers. Biden and Trump arent on the ballot in 2022. But you can see how Democrats might again run on a bunch of policies that poll well, assume that they are reaching a big bloc of voters in the ideological middle but end up not doing that well among swing voters.

Arguing that Democrats push for popular policies or Republican opposition to them is going to sway voters views of the parties relies on an unspoken assumption that accurate news of who is supporting what will actually reach voters, said Lara Putnam, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. But its the right wing that dominates the last mile communications infrastructure into millions of Americans homes: the memes shared in Facebook groups, the radio personalities who are known and trusted, she said.

Democrats could gain seats in next years midterms and win the presidency in 2024 because they are touting popular ideas and the GOP is opposing them. They might have the right strategy. But its not obviously true that their approach will work. Republicans are making a somewhat counterintuitive bet that opposing popular bills wont kill them electorally and there are a lot of good reasons to think that they are right.

Excerpt from:
Why Republicans Dont Fear An Electoral Backlash For Opposing Really Popular Parts Of Bidens Agenda - FiveThirtyEight

President Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is unlikely to draw any Republican support in Congress. But a majority of Americans including many registered GOP members endorse passing the expansive package as soon as possible rather than seeking a slimmed-down compromise, polling suggests.

Some 62% of likely voters polled by Vox and Data for Progress, a left-leaning think tank, said the notion of passing a $1.9 trillion relief bill ASAP to fund vaccinations, $1,400 direct payments to most Americans, expanded unemployment benefits and a higher minimum wage aligned most closely with their view. They included 80% of Democrats, 56% of independents and 47% of Republicans.

Just 31% of likely voters, on the other hand, favored passing a bipartisan $600 billion stimulus that is more targeted and strikes a compromise between the wishes of Republicans and Democrats. That group included 14% of Democrats, 37% of independents and 47% of Republicans.

Asked what was more important to them, more than eight in 10 likely voters (88% of Democrats, 83% of independents and 77% of Republicans) said getting Americans the help they need was more important to them than passing a bipartisan package.

The poll of 1,527 people was conducted between Feb. 19 and Feb. 22, prior to the Senate parliamentarians ruling last week that a $15 federal minimum wage provision did not pass muster as part of the budget-reconciliation process. Democrats are using that process to avert a Senate filibuster by Republicans and pass the bill with a simple majority.

The results came on the heels of a separate Morning Consult poll that found 77% of voters including 59% of Republicans said they would support the $1.9 trillion package when it wasnt described as a Democrat-led plan. When the question wording linked the package to Democrats, the share in favor fell slightly to 71% overall, and 53% among Republicans.

The distinction mattered little to respondents level of support, wrote the reports authors; half the respondents were shown each option. The overall poll of 1,992 registered voters was conducted Feb. 26 to March 1.

Republicans have argued that Bidens relief package is too broad and too expensive. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, has called it too costly, too corrupt and too liberal.

Whenever their long-time liberal dreams came into conflict with what Americans actually need right now, Democrats decided their ideology should win out, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week.

Despite the lack of Republican support in Congress, the White House has cited polls showing bipartisan backing of the legislation.

The Senate will soon begin debate on the bill, which the Democratic-controlled House passed last weekend without any Republican votes. Democratic senators are aiming to pass the legislation before March 14, when several pandemic-related unemployment programs are slated to expire.

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What Republicans outside of Congress think of Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID bill - MarketWatch

Sure, the attack on the Capitol was bad, but did you hear about the attack on the White House last year?

The supposed siege of the presidents residence is the latest Republican deflection from the events of Jan. 6, when a pro-Donald Trump mob stirred up by Republican lies about voter fraud ransacked the U.S. Capitol.

Some Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), have admitted what actually happened.

They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president, McConnell said in February. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth because he was angry hed lost an election.

But others are compiling a growing list of distractions, excuses and alternate theories of the days events, hoping that as time passes, the public forgets what actually went on. Here are some of the ways Republicans are trying to deflect blame:

The Rioters Were Just A Group Of Random People, Not United By Anything

Pool via Getty ImagesI dont think there was any single reason why people were here, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said of rioters who had just marched from a Trump rally in which the president called on them to "stop the steal."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said this week that the fact that these extremist groups are not monolithic ran counter to the Democratic narrative about what happened at the Capitol.

Ive heard some of these folks described as white supremacists, domestic terrorists, insurrectionist, rioters, seditionist, anarchist, the list goes on and on, Cornyn said at a Tuesday hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Cornyn was upset that Democrats wanted to create a narrative about white supremacists, but clearly that is part of the problem but its not a monolithic group, he told HuffPost after the hearing. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) had said the rioters might as well have been wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.

I dont think there was any single reason why people were here, Cornyn said.

Wray testified that many had militia ties and some were white supremacists, but theres no doubt they were all Trump supporters trying to overthrow the election. Indeed, they had just marched from a Stop the Steal rally featuring Trump, who told them to go to the Capitol and stop lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election.

They were here for a variety of reasons, Cornyn insisted.

Nancy Pelosi Is To Blame

Kent Nishimura via Getty ImagesIn the telling of some Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) didn't take seriously the threat of a mob that despised her.

An increasingly common theme is blaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

I think Nancy Pelosi will have a lot of questions to answer about what she knew leading up to the riot on Jan. 6, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on Fox News last month.

Four GOP House members also wrote Pelosi a letter, claiming that many important questions about your responsibility for the security of the Capitol remain unanswered. And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said Pelosi was using the riot as an excuse to consolidate her power.

The argument is that Pelosi wanted all this to happen or, at the very least, she looked the other way on the potential for violence. In other words, Republicans think she didnt take seriously a mob of pro-Trump supporters who despised her and, in at least one case, wanted her dead.

The GOP has continued to push the theory that Pelosi stood in the way of police requests for additional assistance, even though then-House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving has repeatedly shot down that suggestion.

It Was Antifa

Brent Stirton via Getty ImagesA mob of unambiguous Trump supporters stands outside the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The likes of Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) wasted no time blaming the supposedly fearsome anti-fascist group known as antifa for the attack, based on a false story that was almost immediately retracted.

But this outrageously untrue claim will not die. Trumps lawyers even uttered it on the Senate floor during his impeachment trial, when they claimed a leader of antifa had been arrested for infiltrating the building.

It may seem ridiculous, but a significant number of Republican voters believe the Capitol attack was an antifa operation, according to several polls. A majority of Republicans said in a January survey they believed it was antifa, as did 58% of Trump voters in a February survey.

It Was Fake Trump Supporters

Tasos Katopodis via Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump speaks at the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) claimed during a Senate hearing last week that the crowd marching toward the Capitol at Trumps direction was a peaceable bunch, and that the riot had been carried out by provocateurs and fake Trump supporters.

Many of the marchers were families with small children; many were elderly, overweight, or just plain tired or frail traits not typically attributed to the riot-prone, Johnson said, reading from a delusional piece published in The Federalist, a far-right website. A very few didnt share the jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor of the great majority. Some obviously didnt fit in.

The FBI director testified this week that there is no evidence of antifa involvement in the attack, and no evidence that there were fake Trump supporters. Some of the pro-Trump rioters charged in the attack have even complained about antifa getting credit.

HuffPost asked Johnson on Thursday whether he himself believed the statements he read aloud during the hearing, since theyd been written by someone else.

He witnessed it. He wrote down what he witnessed, Johnson said. We need to assemble a bunch of eyewitness accounts to determine what all happened from different perspectives, different vantage points.

HuffPost reporters witnessed the attack on the Capitol from both the inside and outside and saw only Trump supporters.

They they might have been Trump provocateurs, OK? Johnson said.

The Mob Wasnt Even That Dangerous

ROBERTO SCHMIDT via Getty ImagesRiot police push back a crowd of Trump supporters after they stormed the Capitol.

Five people died in the Jan. 6 riot, including one police officer. Another 140 officers were injured, suffering cracked ribs, concussions, loss of part of a finger, burns and a mild heart attack. Two officers involved in the response that day later died from suicide. The pro-Trump mob smashed officers with flagpoles, pipes, bats, metal barriers and doors in order to push past them and break into the Capitol.

Yet according to some Republicans, this crowd wasnt dangerous at all.

If it was armed, it would have been a bloodbath, said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who said Democrats were trying to make it seem like theres a bunch of people running around in the woods with Army fatigues on the weekends, and theyre going to take over the country, and thats just nonsense.

This didnt seem like an armed insurrection to me, Johnson said in a radio interview last month.

I mean armed, when you hear armed, dont you think of firearms? Heres the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? Im only aware of one and Ill defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy, OK? But I think there was only one, he added.

Authorities actually confiscated a range of weapons from that day, including an assault rifle, a crossbow, Molotov cocktails, stun guns, knives and brass knuckles. Since they werent searching attendees for weapons, there likely were far more.

Black Lives Matter Attacked The White House First

Tom Williams via Getty ImagesSen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has conjured a phantom attack on the White House that the Secret Service says never happened.

Many Republicans who condemned the violence at the Capitol broadened their condemnation to include violence against police officers in 2020.

But Republicans have begun to suggest a more direct false equivalence, decrying an attack on the White House by Black Lives Matters protesters last summer.

Sixty-seven Secret Service officers were injured during a three-day siege on the White House, which caused then-President Trump to be brought into a secure bunker, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Tuesday.

At a separate hearing on Wednesday, Hawley also brought up the attack on the White House where 60 Secret Service officers were injured, the president had to be evacuated into a bunker.

Most people may remember the siege on the White House as a protest against police brutality near the White House. (Officers wound up tear-gassing protesters so the president could pose for photos holding a Bible in front of a church that had been damaged.)

The Secret Service said more than 60 officers were injured as protesters threw objects and scuffled with officers, 11 of whom received hospital treatment for non-life-threatening injuries.

But they werent trying to storm the White House.

No individuals crossed the White House Fence and no Secret Service protectees were ever in any danger, the Secret Service said in May.

Trump subsequently said he was only inspecting the bunker.

Everybody Is Responsible

Mark Wilson via Getty ImagesHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) thinks "everybody across this country has some responsibility."

In January, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Trump bears responsibility for the attack. A week later, however, he said he didnt actually believe Trump had provokedthe mob of his supporters.

And in an interview that aired a day later, McCarthy found a way to both blame Trump for the riot while not really blaming him at all.

I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility, he said.

McCarthy later tried to clarify his remarks, insisting he wasnt necessarily saying everyone in the country was responsible for Trumps supporters attacking the Capitol, but rather that it is incumbent upon every person in America to help lower the temperature of our political discourse.

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Republicans Are Gaslighting The Country About The Capitol Riot - HuffPost

WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt announced Monday that he is not running for reelection in the Senate next year.

After 14 general election victories three to county office, seven to the United States House of Representatives, and four statewide elections I wont be a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate next year,Blunt said in a video on Twitter.

Blunt was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2011, and he was re-elected in 2016. As recently as last month, a spokesperson for Blunt said the two-term senator was planning on running in 2022.

Blunt is the No. 4 in Senate Republican leadership and is the fifth Senate Republican to decide against running for re-election in 2022. The others are Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Two other Republicans Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have not yet said whether they plan to seek reelection.

Blunt serves as the Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee and as the Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee. He also serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee; the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee; and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Blunt was previously elected to the U.S. House of Representatives seven times where he served as Majority Whip from 2003 to 2007. He was also previously the Missouri Secretary of State.

In every job Missourians have allowed me to have, Ive tried to do my best, Blunt said.In almost 12,000 votes in the Congress, Im sure I wasnt right every time, but you really make that decision based on the information you have at the time.

Former Democratic state Sen. Scott Sifton said last month that he is planning on running for Blunts seat. Sifton is the only Democrat so far to announce a bid for Blunts seat.

Blunt did not vote to impeach former President Donlad Trump for inciting for an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Blunt did however urge confidence in the countrys voting system and said the former president should be careful in his final days in office.

The other Missouri senator is Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.

The Associated Press and NewsNation affiliate KTVI contributed to this report.

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Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri will not seek reelection in 2022 - WKRN News 2