As I had mentioned in a post right after Steve Bannon was ousted by the liberal wing in the White House, Steve Bannon’s departure was indeed a symbolic weakening of “Trump Momentum”. There are many reasons why a conservative democrat Conor Lamb won in the deep red district and republican Rick Saccone lost by a razor thin margin. Yet, the fact remains that Trump voters either did not show up to vote because of lack of enthusiasm to support Saccone or the Trump momentum has weakened.
Conor Lamb is not really a left wing liberal. It appears that he would be with Trump in most of the policies. Chris was not as charismatic as Conor. He might be a very good man but he wasn’t able to make crowd enthusiastic. Conor and Chris’ race seemed more of like a GOP primary. While some of these things might be less relevant, what’s more important is where Trump’s base remains.
President Trump has achieved a lot since he took office but he could have achieved much more on the key matters. The very first thing he should have done was to put pressure on the house to introduce a bill to get rid of H1B work visa, DV lottery and many other issues in immigration. No one could foresee Trump giving away 1.8 million citizenship to illegal immigrants. What he forgot is that he was elected because of his strong views on immigration. Immigration issue was the key reason why candidate Trump was able to beat many others in the primary. Liberal activists, establishment GOP and media had problem with Bannon. They know Bannon knows where exactly to target to deliver the wins. He was the guy who talked to and represented the forgotten men and women. Instead of surrounding himself with people who fully believed in Trump agenda, President Trump filled the White House with life long democrats and globalists who derailed the Trump agenda. They were successful in creating a feud between the Trump strategists and Trump which confused the GOP base. Soon after election he started to bring people from both sides of the aisle but he also diluted the issues that mattered to his base.
Now that there are almost no Bannons or Gorkas, there aren’t people to remind the once very popular Trump why he had won in 2016. Perhaps the President has realized that which is leading him to reform his cabinet. Bannon has recently spoken indicating that Trump is coming back to the core issues. Out of many mistakes, Bannon’s departure was the single biggest mistake Trump White House ever signed off on.