Trump Won Two Races On Tuesday

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Señor Trumpanzee was up tweeting his love for neo-Nazi racist Corey Stewart, a crackpot he had fired as Virginia state campaign chair in 2016, who had just won the Republican nomination to face Tim Kaine in November. Stewart won with less than 50% in the 3-man race.

• Corey Stewart- 136,544 (44.9%)
• Nick Freitas- 131,267 (43.1%)
• E.W. Jackson- 36,624 (12.0%)

The two other candidates are mainstream conservatives while Stewart is an unelectable Trumpist on the extreme fringes, Stewart caused a bring brouhaha in those fringes when he endorsed the out-and-out Nazi and Hitler lover, Paul Nehlen who is running against Randy Bryce in Wisconsin. Stewart: "One of my personal heroes, not from Virginia, but from the great state of Wisconsin, is Paul Nehlen, who had a lot of courage and took on Speaker [Paul] Ryan, and I can't tell you how much I was inspired by you."

As we noted Wednesday morning, Trump helped knock off Mark Sanford in South Carolina. This is the tweet, that Trump put up when he was still basking in the glow of being fucked by Kim Jong-Un-- and then took down pretty quickly, presumably to prevent a brawl with the NRCC and Paul Ryan.

Right wing radio host and former right-wing member of Congress, Joe Walsh lashed out at Trumpanzee, Jr. for his snark about Sanford's loss and noted that Sanford is a principled conservative who voted with Trump 87% of the time. As I mentioned, Kim has a general in his army murdered for not applauding for him enthusiastically enough. Walsh also challenged Freedom Caucus chieftains Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan to say something about Trump destroying one of their members. So far... crickets.

Alex Isenstadt tried explaining what happened to Politico readers yesterday. Sanford has always been a contrary guy but, his friends say, "in taking on Trump he took it a step too far."

His defeat is bound to raise fears among Republicans about the political perils of crossing a president who remains deeply popular with GOP voters. In recent days, Sanford himself had expressed concern that a loss in the primary would discourage what dwindling GOP dissent among against the White House remains.

At the heart of Sanford’s downfall was a fundamental miscalculation, those close to him said: That he could go after the Republican president-- vigorously, and sometimes in deeply personal ways-- and get away with it.

“Mark had a long and storied career, he was a very famous and successful politician. But he didn’t read the tea leaves right, and that came back to haunt him,” said former state Rep. Chip Limehouse, who hails from a prominent Charleston family and has known Sanford for years. “Mark misjudged it, attacking Trump. That’s what killed him.”

...State Rep. Katie Arrington, Sanford’s rival, cast the congressman as a disloyal Never Trumper. She aired commercials highlighting cable news clips spotlighting negative comments that he’d made, including one instance when he said Trump should “just shut up” and stop spending so much time paying attention to critics. Arrington portrayed the incumbent as an obstructionist who was hell-bent on getting in the president’s way.

“He made a calculation in the post-Trump election that he was going to stand on principle... But there’s an expectation out there, at least in South Carolina’s 1st District, that you have to show deference to the president,” said Scott English, a former Sanford chief of staff who remains close with the congressman. “In this race, the ideas didn’t matter nearly as much as whether he’d been sufficiently loyal to the president in the eyes of voters.”

Trump himself stayed out of the race until just hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, when he sent out a surprise tweet calling for the congressman’s defeat. Arrington’s campaign rushed out a robocall to 50,000 homes highlighting the president’s last-minute endorsement.

Other South Carolina pols say that while Sanford’s opposition to Trump was his undoing, other factors were at play. Some people close to the congressman believe that voters never really got over his affair, which destroyed his national ambitions. Others say there was general exhaustion with a politician who’s been around since the mid-1990s and that voters were ready for someone new like Arrington, a political newcomer serving her first term in the state legislature.

In what was perhaps an early sign his political strength was abating, Sanford received just 55 percent in his 2016 primary, against an opponent who spent little.

Others say Sanford simply failed to run an effective race this year, allowing himself to be out-worked. Sanford’s lethargic reelection bid was a lightly-staffed, shoestring affair. Many of the advisers who guided his gubernatorial and congressional campaigns were not involved.

After realizing he was in trouble, the ever-frugal congressman, who hadn’t spent money on TV ads in five years, rushed out a slate of commercials. Some went after Arrington directly. Others tried to make the case that Sanford had cooperated with the White House.

While Arrington relentlessly cast Sanford as anti-Trump, his backers worried, Sanford struggled to find a coherent message.

“She got up on TV early and defined the message, and he let her define him,” said state Rep. Nancy Mace, a Sanford supporter.

...His political career appears to be over.

Sanford's ultra-gerrymandered district-- from which African-American neighborhoods are largely excluded-- has an R+10 PVI. But it isn't exactly Trump country. With the exception of the 6th district, into which almost all the state's black neighborhoods were congruously dumped, SC-01 had the lowest turnout for Trump-- 53.5%-- on any district in the state. So... can Democrat Joe Cunningham win in November? Only 32,385 votes were cast in the relatively sleepy Democratic primary on Tuesday-- compared to 64,369 votes in the GOP primary. Cunningham won with 71.5% of the vote and there's a lot of excitement, especially in Charleston about his chances. He's not a Blue Dog and the DCCC has ignored his race. But his issues page points to someone who's kind of "progressive-light." On healthcare, for example:

I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. No one in America should go bankrupt because they get sick. In the United States, no one should forego necessary or preventative care because they are unable to afford it.

...With Republicans trying to rip away coverage from millions of Americans and raise premiums and deductibles, as well as the cost of prescription drugs, it’s time we take a stand. One of the many ways we can improve our current healthcare system is by encouraging the federal government to negotiate with drug companies to lower medication prices for people on Medicare, similar to how the Veterans Affairs Department does. Another possibility is allowing more middle class families to qualify for tax breaks to reduce their healthcare costs. We should also explore lowering the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 55 over the course of ten years.

Not bad; not single payer/Medicare-For-All either. The last Democrat the district elected was in 1978-- 4 decades ago. Even a huge blue wave would have to be extra-huge-- and Trump would have to melt down in late October-- for Cunningham to pull this off. So far Arrington raised $583,373 (of which $402,059 was self-funded) and Cunningham raised $527,390 (100% from individual donors). She spent $384,262 and he spent $377,843. Both have seriously depleted war chests-- 199,111 for her and $149,547 for him. My guess if that the GOP will pour money into her campaign while the DCCC will continue to ignore his.