Monday, April 30, 2018

Right After Halloween Trump Will Come Back To Haunt Republican Candidates Everywhere

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Republican strategists are counting on this to defeat Democrats

Yesterday, a group of Jess King allies in Pennsylvania, People’s Action, sent out an e-mail reminding their supporters that "We live in a populist moment. More and more Americans understand that the economy has been rigged against them. They know that our politics has been corrupted by big money. Rural and small town America have taken some of the hardest hits. Jobs lost, plants closed, water fouled, family farms crushed, the relentless spread of the afflictions of despair-- divorce, suicide, depression, addiction. Trump and the Republicans consolidated their hold on these regions with race-bait politics. They blame 'those people'-- blacks, Latinx, immigrants, 'limousine liberals'-- for what has been lost."

And now Trump and a GOP with its head planted firmly up his ass will pay the piper. And Trump doesn't have a clue he's leading his party towards the gates of hell. As the NY Times put it on Saturday, Trumpanzee "is privately rejecting the growing consensus among Republican leaders that they may lose the House and possibly the Senate in November, leaving party officials and the president’s advisers nervous that he does not grasp the gravity of the threat they face in the midterm elections. Congressional and party leaders and even some Trump aides are concerned that the president’s boundless self-assurance about politics will cause him to ignore or undermine their midterm strategy. In battleground states like Arizona, Florida and Nevada, Mr. Trump’s proclivity to be a loose cannon could endanger the Republican incumbents and challengers who are already facing ferocious Democratic headwinds. Republicans in Washington and Trump aides have largely given up assuming the president will ever stick to a teleprompter, but they have joined together to impress upon him just how bruising this November could be for Republicans-- and how high the stakes are for Mr. Trump personally, given that a Democratic-controlled Congress could pursue aggressive investigations and even impeachment."

And it isn't just in the richer, whiter, better educated suburban seats that Hillary managed to do well in and was the theory behind DCCC 2018 strategy where Democrats look like winners this cycle. Democrats are even competitive in rural districts now. Thanks to Trump, Democratic candidates came very close in rural districts in South Carolina, Kansas and Arizona and actually won in Pennsylvania-- districts the DCCC wasn't even looking at (as they wasted tens of millions off dollars in an Atlanta suburban district on a Hillary-like status quo candidate).

Last week, in an interview he did with The Economist Rubio admitted that the Republican tax scam isn’t helping American workers like his party promised it would. "There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers. In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker." You think Trumpanzee would ever/could ever admit that?

That Trump refuses to accept reality will help Democratic candidates far, far more than the bungling DCCC ever will. The 2018 midterms will be a referendum on Trump-- and everyone knows it. Trump seems to think that the only voters will be the racists and gullible morons who were cheering for him at his campaign rally at Total Sports Park in Washington, an all-white suburb north of Detroit, Saturday. His prediction about bringing people "crystal clean water" was as likely as his prediction that "We're going to win the House."

New York Magazine's Benjamin Hart had his finger right on the heart of the GOP's problem: Trump’s Reality Distortion Field. "One of President Trump’s most bedrock character traits," he wrote, "is his refusal to truly reckon with any piece of information that reflects poorly on him. This self-aggrandizing, reality-denying flavor of egotism has defined Trump for decades, through his roller-coaster business career and into political life. In recent months, it has sometimes veered into the straight-up delusional, as when he reportedly claimed last year that it wasn’t actually his voice on the Access Hollywood tape." And now it's catching up with him Señor Trumpanzee's "unwavering confidence may finally be about to take a serious electoral toll." What makes it worse is that his pollster, Brad Parscale, "is feeding him inaccurate, Trump-friendly poll numbers."
In election after election over the last year and a half, Democrats have vastly overperformed their expected vote share, largely thanks to animus toward the president. They have triumphed in a Pennsylvania Congressional district where Trump won by more than 20 points, picked up a Senate seat in ruby-red Alabama, dominated state races in Virginia, and made close several contests that almost certainly would have been Republican landslides in previous years.

...Why does this matter? Most presidents, even if they claim not to be obsessed with polls the way Trump is, have a pretty good idea of their own political currency, and adjust their alignment with their parties accordingly. Sometimes, presidents realize that they are not welcome by members of their own party in certain areas; for example, a then-struggling Barack Obama avoided red states in 2014, and George W. Bush was not always welcomed with open arms on the stump, even in Republican-friendly districts, circa 2006.

Something different is going on this time around. President Trump remains enormously popular within the Republican Party; most Republican members of Congress have made the calculation that even if Trump is underwater in their state, defying the president would be a political loser, since it leave them without any reliable constituency.

The problem is not only that Trump refuses to believe that Republicans will lose, but that, even if he were sufficiently worried, he doesn’t care enough about his own party to bother helping. He is connected enough to the GOP that he sees it as an extension of his own electoral prowess, but not so connected that he will muster the focus and energy needed to boost candidates who aren’t him. (Granted, this may be impossible for him on a cellular level.)

Establishment Republicans reportedly want Trump to flog the GOP’s unpopular tax law on the campaign trail. The president is pushing back on this directive-- which he is right to do, since the unpopular law probably isn’t galvanizing anyone to vote.

But the president’s own, predictably unpredictable routine is unlikely to work much better. He might attack vulnerable Republican Senators he disagrees with; he might serve more as a distraction than a cheerleader, the way he did when he suddenly started complaining about Colin Kaepernick at a campaign rally for Luther Strange in Alabama; he might just ramble about himself. In other words, he’ll put on the Trump show, which is the only thing he knows how to do.

This routine won’t turn off voters who already love the president. But it’s more likely to spark another Trump news cycle than rally much-needed enthusiasm for Republican candidates.

...Republicans seem to have grasped the lesson that Trump needs to be personally invested in their election results. They are trying to make the stakes of the election startlingly personal, reportedly telling Trump that if he doesn’t help them out this fall, they may not have his back if and when Democrats initiate impeachment proceedings next year. That stark warning may perk Trump’s ears up, but it’s just as likely to be perceived as an unacceptable intramural threat, not as motivation to work for the party.

However Trump performs on the campaign trail, and however Republicans fare this fall, the president will continue living in a bubble of his own making. Because Trump was right to dismiss the concerns of the many, many people who insisted he couldn’t win in 2016, he can now perennially point to that shocking election result as proof that his instincts, not some politico egghead’s, are always correct. And if Republicans lose big this year, he’ll just say they didn’t stick by him closely enough.
This is a recipe for gigantic-- perhaps unprecedented (at least in our lifetimes)-- GOP disaster, one that will fail to take advantage of the serial DCCC incompetence that has worked for them over and over for longer than a decade. The DCCC isn't doing anything different than what has lost them dozens and dozens of seats in Congress-- but now the GOP is burdened with Trump, hanging like an insistent, flapping, snapping albatross around their collective necks.



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7 Comments:

At 1:15 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Will he haunt or will the Dems? As they continue their profitable losing ways. Since nothing better is allowed; voters will have to again choose what's worse.


Poll finds Millennials losing support for Democrats
Reuters - Enthusiasm for the Democratic Party is waning among young voters - so-called millennials - as its candidates head into the crucial midterm congressional elections, according to the Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll.

The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.

Although nearly two of three young voters polled said they do not like Republican President Donald Trump, their distaste for him does not necessarily extend to all Republicans or translate directly into votes for Democratic congressional candidates.

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2018/04/poll-finds-millennials-losing-support.html

 
At 1:27 PM, Anonymous Hone said...

While my fingers are crossed that there will be the huge tsunami that is anticipated, anything can happen by November. Knowing Trump, he will find distractions and "wins". These are very scary times.

This piece is absolutely correct in that Trump only cares about himself and not one whit about the Republican party - he would view any threats from the party as disloyalty rather than incentive. From his perspective, the Republican party has only been and continues to be there solely for him to use. We all know he is a one way street that only goes in his direction. And yes, without Trump the party now has virtually no other constituency. There are no longer any "moderate" Republicans - they have all either left the party, resigned or retired. Ha, ha, ha.

The whole Republican party, with its lock step complicity and downright "collusion" in Trump's interest, should be drowned in the bathtub, or should I say, burned in hell? The third of the country that continues to love Trump is as deplorable as Hillary said - these folks have always been there and will continue to be around with or without Trump. It has become clear that this is racism, pure and simple, rather than any benign explanation such as economics. We are not that far away in years from slavery after all.

 
At 5:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hone, so what if your tsunami happens?

I've asked you many times to describe your orgasmic scenario should democraps gain majorities in both chambers. You've gone mute each time. Why is that? could it be that you, DWT and several others here have one goal in mind? That goal being just winning elections and majorities? That you have no clue what the democraps will do (and, more importantly, NEVER do) with their windfall? Could it be simply that you don't care?

We saw this in 2006 and 2008. If the anti-red tsunami drags a bunch of new democraps into congress... then what? Impeachment has already been forsworn. MFA? Wars? Torture? Bank reregs? JG? economic inequality? taxes? debt? CO2?
Please describe how your democraps, led by whores Pelosi, scummer, hoyer, Crowley et al, will do anything at all about these? And I don't mean make them worse, which is what happened when the last anti-red tsunami gave us 2009 and obamanation.

Yes, the Rs are pure evil. That much has been obvious since they stood aside as capitalists cooked up 1929's crash.

But the Rs being Nazis doesn't mean that the democraps are good. They're nearly as bad and worse than they were in 2009 when they last refused to address a big voter mandate.

Pick your favorite between hitler and stalin. Or just pray that stalin defeats hitler because hitler is more scary today. doesn't make stalin any better.

1:15, if that polling holds true, it simply means that the millenials (utterly fail to) think as Hone does. just because they grow disenchanted with heads does not mean tails is their friend. Flip that money coin all you want. It won't come up good no matter what the result.

 
At 6:06 PM, Anonymous Exit 135 said...

You wrote, "The DCCC isn't doing anything different than what has lost them dozens and dozens of seats in Congress..."

I never understood why the DCCC does not practice the politics of retribution. That is, identify one congressman per cycle who did something odious that resulted in legislation which became law. A law that hurt millions of citizens irrespective of party affiliation.

Take Tom MacArthur (NJ-3). As I remember, the second time The House took a swing at dismantling the Affordable Care Act, MacArthur injected himself into the health care debate. His actions brought the bill back from the dead. In my mind, he alone is responsible for the House ultimately removing money and access to health care for millions of our fellow Americans.

The DCCC should punish MacArthur for harming President Obama's signature legislation. Find a candidate who lives and identifies with the district. Someone who shares our progressive ideals. Fund that person with millions of dollars and leave him/her alone to run a campaign.

NJ-3 is tough but possible. There are tens of thousands of republicans who crossed the Arthur Kill to make New Jersey home. People who found the felon Michael Grimm acceptable. But it is a wealthy district, one which will suffer mightily from the mortgage deduction scam in the tax law.

So I do not understand why the DCCC is not looking to make an extinction level event of MacArthur. It is personal. Make an example of him. Send a message that the Democratic Party can play by rules that republicans have used for generation.

And maybe Democrats can seed the term "Fellow Americans" with 21st century ideas that research and polling shows we all share. Like affordable health care. Clean air and water. Improves schools. Improved infrastructure which NJ-3 desperately needs. It should not be hard.

 
At 1:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I watch for the "democrats' to bungle this historic opportunity, because they continue to not understand Harry Truman's observation that if you give the voters a choice between a real Republican and a fake Republican, they will always choose the real Republican every time.

Easily since 1980, the "democrats" desire to be Republicans. Remember a certain major disappointment telling Univision that his policies were of a "moderate" 1985 Reagan Republican? He only won in 2012 because RMoney couldn't figure out how to take advantage of obamanation's mishandling of the economics of the middle class.

Obamanation is hardly an outlier. The major party figures are all just like him, which is why Republicans get away with all of their crimes against this nation and the world while as Michelle Wolf observed, "the Democrats don't do anything".

How many times are we going to do 2006 and give "democrats" incredible power only to see them do 2010 and hand it all back to the GOP with hardly any additional mileage on it?

I've seen Groundhog Day, only reality doesn't allow do overs. It's up to us to end this, and voting for "democrats" merely because they aren't Republicans isn't going to get the job accomplished.

 
At 6:50 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The question, as I read the comments above, will be which will suppress more voters:

Will trump depress, suppress and oppress Nazi voters more

or

will the DxCCs and DNC depress, suppress and oppress lefty voters more?

Will anti-red or will blue-no-balls win?

NOT in question is what will happen for 300 million americans. Neither result will do jack shit for these hapless tools. An anti-red wave will be the same, if not worse, than the 2008 anti-red wave.

Groundhog Day is apt. But it's not because of some cosmic karmic thing. It's because we're just fucking morons.

 
At 5:25 AM, Blogger Sel said...

What has happened here in Florida is that the younger, progressive wing of the Democratic Party was recently defeated for its leadership bid. That happened in my home county of Duval, too. This is turning off the young voters. Within weeks of winning here in Duval, the county party chairman was loudly saying some racist b.s. at a biracial function that was widely reported. WTF! At 62 years of age I have long suspected that the Dem party upper echelon here throw elections to the Republicans. The wealthy seem to stick together, regardless of party. We even had a Democrat who was the State Attorney here who was running the election and re-election bids of Republicans! But Florida should be considered an outlier because we have some very wealthy oldsters that make up 20% of our electorate (65+). Google ‘The Villages’ for a concentration of heavily conservative money, much less the lower east and west coasts of Florida. Our current Governor, Prick ‘I Helped HCA Steal Billions from Medicare’ Scott is running for the Senate with tons of Dark Money behind him. He hoped to keep his secret meetings with the Kochs just that and he is a millionaire thanks in large part to his thefts.
I just don’t have much hope about a Blue Wave.

 

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