瞿宛文的部落格How the House Fell: Republican Chaos and Democratic Focus NYT
By Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin
NYT, Nov. 7, 2018
It was a campaign defined early by Mr. Trump’s divisive persona and hard-right ideology, and by Republican leaders’ unswerving decision to align themselves with Mr. Trump and his overwhelmingly white, rural base rather than politically vulnerable moderates in Congress who hailed from the country’s population centers and represented the political middle.
A campaign of retribution against Republicans who did not pledge fealty to Mr. Trump — and to Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s legislative agenda — triggered an exodus of senior legislators that opened the way for a Democratic takeover….
That narrow focus on health care and a few economic issues came to define the Democrats’ midterm campaign. It represented a wholesale rejection of Hillary Clinton’s failed strategy in the 2016 campaign, which focused on Mr. Trump’s fitness for office.