反特朗普抗议，或将预示不了2018年选举结果

对总统唐纳德·特朗普的强烈抗议壮大了民主党的积极分子队伍，但他们刚刚迸发的这股激情面对的是严峻的现实——共和党仍处于有利位置，从而在2018年的中期选举中继续把权力握在手里。

虽然共和党在参议院占据微弱多数，但本次中期选举涉及的席位大多由民主党把持。这就意味着他们必须狙击共和党，特别是在特朗普获胜的10个州。

在众议院，为保持共和党政治主导地位而划定的选区将为共和党提供支持。在某些情况下，划分时专门把大批民主党支持者纳入仅仅几个选区中，从而让更多的席位向共和党倾斜。

普林斯顿大学神经学家、统计学家山姆·王说：“民主党人目前极为气愤。”他开发出了一款统计模型，用于分析两党为自己划定有利选区的行为。

然而，王指出，民主党要想重新在国会掌权，“就得出现极端事件。而问题在于，出现了这样的迹象了吗？”

为本次中期选举设立的民主党众议院选举委员会瞄准了共和党在24个州的59个众议员席位，其中涉及民主党总统候选人希拉里·克林顿击败特朗普的23个选区以及近年来共和党从民主党手中夺走的其他一些选区。

民主党已经开始在其中的20个选区安排全职有偿组织者。该委员会表示，民主党此前从未在这样的初期阶段采取过此类行动。

今年1月，该委员会争取到的新支持者陡然增加了67.5万人，其中许多人都参加了美国各地反对特朗普政策的抗议活动。这股能量能否保持到2018年仍有待观察。

共和党众议院选举委员会发言人杰西·亨特把民主党的乐观情绪称为“白日梦”。亨特指出，民主党对2016年的国会选举也曾有很高的期望，但在他们瞄准的15名首次当选的共和党众议员中，落败的只有4人。

历史看来站在民主党一边。南北战争以来，共和党在中期选举初选中全面落败，只获胜过两次——一次是在1934年，当时总统富兰克林·罗斯福正在带领美国熬过大萧条；另一次是在2002年，时任总统的乔治·W·布什正带着美国对2001年的恐怖分子活动进行反击。

在贝拉克·奥巴马的首个总统任期内，共和党在2010年的中期选举中夺回了60多个众议院席位，重新赢得了众议院控制权。它在当年选举中赢得的州议会和州长位置也超过了民主党。

随后，共和党利用州议会的力量巩固了自己在华盛顿的控制力，途径是在2010年的人口普查后重新划分了议员选区。

2012年，在新选区划定后的首次选举中，尽管民主党候选人的全国得票总数比共和党候选人多140万票，共和党仍在众议院取得了33个席位的多数优势。

虽然此后法院的裁决使一些选区重新得到了划分，但在2018年的中期选举中，许多选区都将保持原状。

王估算，要获得在众议院占据多数的足够席位，民主党议员在本次选举中的得票率需要比共和党方面高7-12个百分点。他说，民主党上一次取得这样的领先优势是在2008年。

但随后情况出现了变化。

杨百翰大学政治学助理教授迈克尔·巴伯说：“目前就是有更多的选区自然倾向于共和党，一部分原因是民主党的布局，另一部分原因则是共和党人在划分选区时考虑到了帮自己的党派拿下更多议席。”巴伯研究过特意划定选区和当政者对国会选举的影响。

前总监察长埃里克·霍尔德最近成为新设立的民主党全国重新分区委员会主席。该委员会的目标是通过赢得今后几年的关键州议会选举和诉讼，让民主党在2021年重新划分选区时处于更有利的位置。

在爱荷华州办公的民主党顾问吉米·科特迈耶说：“要做的工作还有很多。重新划分选区是个实实在在的问题，但坦白地说，更大的问题在于民主党的支持者过于集中在太过狭小的地区”，也就是那些大城市，而不是许许多多的美国中小城市。

对一部分近来精神抖擞的民主党积极分子来说，现实中的选民分布情况给他们的乐观情绪泼了冷水。

大选以来，费城医生瑞娅·鲍威尔一直和其他女性一起在华盛顿和费城游行，抗议特朗普推翻奥巴马医改法案的企图，她们还在机场示威，反对特朗普颁布的移民限令。她甚至报名参加了民主党候选人培训项目。

但鲍威尔也知道，取胜或许很艰难，至少是在短期之内。

她说：“我担心的是，特意的划分对许多选区的影响也许会让我们很难（在2018年的选举中）明显改变局势。”

其他新涌现的积极分子则相信，就算选区划分不利，也有可能获胜。

玛丽·克劳斯是一名来自于芝加哥郊区的小企业主，她最近参加了在华盛顿的游行，目前正在自己的社区组织女性成员。她说：“我觉得总会有障碍……（但）我们不会只是坐在这里并摇着头说，‘嗯，好吧，我想只能这样了。’”

讽刺的是，民主党赢得大量议席的可能性或许取决于特朗普能否顺利施政。共和党在2010年获得的那波胜利就是来自于奥巴马颁布的政策在选民中引发的抗议，其中最主要的就是被迅速冠以“奥巴马医改”名号的医疗保险法案。

政治学家、密歇根州立大学公共政策和社会调查研究所主任马特·格罗斯曼说：“政客有时认为他们许诺后支持者会希望他们遵守这些承诺，但历史所展现的模式恰好相反，那就是民意走势和政策变化相悖。”

“所以，唐纳德·特朗普越成功，或者说，共和党越成功地让政策右倾，反作用力就可能越大。”（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

Passionate protests against Donald Trump's presidency have swelled the ranks of Democratic activists, but their new enthusiasm faces a hard reality: Republicans remain well-positioned to retain their grip on power in the 2018 elections.

While Republicans hold only a slim majority in the U.S. Senate, Democrats occupy most of the seats up for election in two years. That means they must play defense against Republicans, especially in 10 states that Trump won.

In the U.S. House, Republicans will be aided by favorable district boundaries that were drawn to maintain GOP political dominance. In some cases, the congressional districts were gerrymandered to pack high numbers of Democratic voters into just a few districts as a way to create a greater number of Republican-leaning seats.

"Democrats are extremely fired up right now," said Sam Wang, a Princeton University neuroscientist and statistician who has developed a statistical model for analyzing partisan gerrymandering.

But for Democrats to win back Congress, Wang said it "would take an extreme event. The question is, are we seeing something that's headed towards that?"

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 59 Republican-held House seats in 24 states as it builds toward the next election. Those include 23 districts where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defeated Trump and various others that Republicans took away from Democrats in recent years.

It also is beginning to place full-time paid organizers in 20 of those districts, something the committee says it has never done at this early stage.

The Democratic committee is touting a surge of 675,000 new supporters in January, many of whom joined the cause amid nationwide protests against Trump's policies. Whether that energy can be sustained through 2018 remains to be seen.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Jesse Hunt calls the Democratic optimism a "pipe dream." Hunt notes that Democrats also held high hopes for 2016, but unseated just four of the 15 freshmen GOP representatives they targeted.

Democrats would appear to have history on their side. The president's party has lost ground in Congress in all but two of the initial midterm elections since the Civil War. The exceptions are 1934, when President Franklin Roosevelt was guiding the country through the Great Depression, and 2002, when President George W. Bush was leading the response to the 2001 terrorist attacks.

In the 2010 election during the middle of President Barack Obama's first term, Republicans flipped more than five dozen seats to take control of the U.S. House away from Democrats. Republicans also won control of a majority of state legislative chambers and governors' offices that year.

They then used that statehouse power to help cement their control in Washington by redrawing congressional districts following the 2010 Census.

In 2012, the first election under those new maps, Republicans won a 33-seat majority in the U.S. House even though Democratic candidates across the country received 1.4 million more votes than their Republican opponents.

Although court rulings have since forced the redrawing of some districts, many of those boundaries remain in place for the 2018 elections.

Wang estimates Democratic congressional candidates would need to win the 2018 nationwide vote by 7 to 12 percentage points to capture enough seats to win control of the House. The last time Democrats enjoyed such a spread was 2008, he said.

But circumstances have changed since then.

"There are just more districts at the moment that have a natural tilt toward Republicans, partly because of Democratic geography and partly because of Republicans drawing districts with an eye toward helping pick up more seats for their party," said Michael Barber, an assistant political science professor at Brigham Young University who has studied the effects of gerrymandering and incumbency on congressional elections.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder recently signed on as chairman of the new National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is attempting to better position Democrats for the 2021 redistricting by winning key statehouse races and court cases in the coming years.

"There's a lot of work to be done," said Iowa-based Democratic consultant Jim Kottmeyer. "Redistricting is a real problem, but the bigger problem is frankly that Democratic votes are just way too concentrated in too small of geographic areas" — big cities, instead of America's many small and mid-size towns.

The realities of the electoral map have tempered the optimism of some newly invigorated Democratic activists.

Since Election Day, Philadelphia physician Rhea Powell has marched with other women in Washington, protested in her home town against the potential repeal of Obama's health care law and joined in airport demonstrations against Trump's immigration restrictions. She has even enrolled in a program that trains potential Democratic candidates.

But she also understands that victories may be difficult, at least in the near term.

"I am worried that because of the impact that gerrymandering has had on many of the districts that it may be hard to make big changes" in the 2018 elections, Powell said.

Other new activists believe it's possible to win even with unfavorable districts.

"I think there'll always be barriers ... (but) we're not just going to sit back and shake our head and say, 'OK, well, I guess that's it.'" said Mary Clauss, a small business owner from suburban Chicago who recently marched in Washington and now is organizing other women in her community.

Ironically, Democratic chances for huge congressional gains may depend on Trump's success at enacting his agenda. The Republican wave in 2010 was fueled by voter backlash against Obama's policies, headlined by the health care law that quickly became known as "Obamacare."

"Politicians sometimes think that they made promises and their voters want them to keep them, but the historical pattern is the opposite — that public opinion moves against the direction of policy change," said political scientist Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.

"So the more Donald Trump is successful — and the Republican Party is successful — in moving policy to the right, the bigger the backlash is likely to be."