OPINION: Connecticut got Trumpier, a warning to state Democrats

At first glance, Connecticut Democrats, while discouraged about the stunning Donald Trump national win Tuesday, might take some solace from the election returns here.U.S. Senator Chris Murphy cruised to an easy victory, and Democrats held all their House seats.In eastern Connecticut, Joe Courtney repeated a 2022 resounding win against the same Republican challenger, Mike France, who this year had tied his campaign pretty directly to what turned out to be the 2024 Trump juggernaut.State Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme and Rep. Kathleen McCarty, two established Republican lawmakers, both lost to Democratic newcomers, contributing to overall Democratic gains in Hartford.Cheeseman even told The Day she attributed some of her loss to anti-Trump sentiment here.I might have suggested that, too, since Connecticut voters, wary of the party's national drift right and the fascist-presenting Presidential candidate at the head of their ticket, might take it out on local GOP candidates.Indeed, I have been promoting that idea for a long time.So Connecticut Democrats won big in local races and can relax as a new Trump presidency unfolds, confident the Trumpist pall over state Republicans will keep delivering votes, right?I'm not so sure about that, given the overwhelming Trump victory.Some Connecticut Republicans have even suggested since Tuesday that it's time for the state party to stop hiding from Trump and embrace him.I do believe the upset wins over the two established Republican incumbents in eastern Connecticut probably speak less to the effects of Trumpism and more to the energetic, door-knocking enthusiasm of the qualified Democratic challengers, Nick Gauthier in McCarty's 38th District and Nick Menapace in Cheeseman's 37th District.In fact, overall Connecticut voters largely repeated a trend nationally, giving Trump more support this year than in any of his previous runs.Preliminary results show Kamala Harris winning in Connecticut Tuesday with not quite a 14 percent edge over Trump, a significant decline from President Joe Biden's 20 percent final lead over the Republican in 2020.A 14 percent edge is decisive for sure. But that still leaves a lot of Trump voters in Connecticut.The Trump gains in Connecticut are not as alarming as in New Jersey, another strong state for Democrats, where the Harris lead over the former president was just 5 percent. Yikes. That's almost close.Certainly there is some truth to much of the Democratic hand wringing over the national loss this week. Democrats started way too late to get Biden off the ticket and left too little time to properly vet with voters a winning Trump challenger.The party could't overcome the perception that too little was done too late to tame inflation and bring the border under control, and Harris took the blame. And throw in a lot of racism and misogyny.More troubling, I don't think Democrats have learned to compete well in a meme-driven social media campaign environment, where the outrageous and entertaining Trump is a sensation, and foreign-based bots spew falsehoods.The fact that a convicted felon, facing more criminal charges for an insurrection against the government, did as well in Connecticut as he did should be a warning to Connecticut Democrats that the Trump scare here may be wearing off.New faces and a lot of shoe leather, like we saw from emerging Democratic lawmakers here in eastern Connecticut, might be exactly what the party needs most.I suspect that Trump will be Trump, and when the worst of what Americans have signed on for, spiteful criminal prosecutions, nasty mass deportations, pardons for insurrectionists, price-raising tariffs and accommodation of the world's dictators, start to unravel, Connecticut Democrats may benefit more robustly again from Trump resistance.On the other hand, Tuesday's surprise results should teach not just national Democrats but those here in blue Connecticut that they have their work cut out for them as a new era in American politics dawns.This is the opinion of David Collinsd.collins@theday.com