David Frum said Tuesday that the 2018 midterm races could shape up to be like the 1968 elections in that major changes will occur in the Republican and Democratic parties.
“I think we’re heading into a period of such political instability,” Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a former speechwriter to President George W. Bush, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on “Rising.”
“It’s very hard to see the world after Trump because it looks like we’re going to have very bad losses for the Republican Party in 2018,” he continued. “We’re going to have a Democratic Party that lurches off to the left. How the Republicans respond is very hard to predict. It will depend to some degree on the magnitude of the defeat.”
“This year is shaping up to be a year a little bit like 1968, where before 1968, we knew the Democratic Party was the party of labor,” he said.
“The Republican Party was the party of professionals and managers, and suddenly those categories didn’t matter so much anymore. The Democratic Party became a different kind of party, and the Republican Party at the end of that process became a different kind of party.”
The 1968 elections took place amid a turbulent period in U.S. politics during a year in which Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and the presidency of Lyndon Johnson teetered amid social upheaval and the Vietnam War.
Former President Richard Nixon won the presidency, while Republicans were able to pick up seats in the House and the Senate.
Democrats hope to win back the House majority this fall. Winning back the Senate will be more of a challenge given a daunting map in which their party is defending more than two dozen seats, while Republicans defend less than 10.
— Julia Manchester
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