The Connection Between Impeachment And The Midterms

Closing In by Nancy Ohanian

NBC News has released polling numbers from 9 key states-- eight of which Trump won-- showing that, among other things, that the anti-red wave is going to sweep away a lot of Republicans in November. National numbers show trends but state numbers are closer to reality-- and the reality doesn't look good for the GOP-- despite the hundreds of millions of corporate dollars they are spending smearing Democrats in every single contested seat in the country.

Yesterday, the imbecilic, senile, illegitimate "president" tweeted more of his bullshit:

What polls? The ones Ivanka and Kushner-in-law make up and read him to calm him down before bedtime? These are the congressional preference numbers in states the GOP absolute must hold onto to keep the midterms from being a rout. Every one of them other than Texas now has a Democratic preference (and Texas is trending away from the GOP in all the key districts around Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio:

• Texas- R+7
• Florida- D+3
• Ohio- D+3
• Arizona- D+4
• Pennsylvania- D+6
• Wisconsin- D+8
• Michigan- D+9
• Minnesota- D+12
• Illinois- D+14

How could this turn around so rapidly? We're not looking at numbers that factor in heavily Democratic states like California, New York and Massachusetts. These are the states Russia used to put Trump into the White House. The numbers have a lot to do with revulsion for Trump among 3 key groups: suburbanites, women and white with college degrees. The suburbs in all 9 states have turned away from Trump. These are his approval/disapproval numbers:

It's even worse for him among women, who have traditionally protected their children (and the species) from existential danger. And that's what they sense Trump and his Republican enablers are. I've never seen numbers like this among women for an incumbent president. The understand their children are in danger. They are going to vote in drove in November-- like their lives and their children's lives depend on it-- even in Texas and Florida!

Whites with college degrees have been the traditional backstop for the Republican Party. They see what Trump is and what the Republican Party has turned into. And they're not happy about it.

It's now become laughable when pundits say "but the election is a long way off and anything could happen between now and then." Yeah-- but what has been happening as the months tick down is that Trump has gotten crazier and crazier and the Republicans have horrified more and more people by showing themselves as pathetic rubber stamps. IN all likelihood what will happen between now and the midterms will be that Trump makes it even worse for the GOP, not better.

Thursday, Time published a piece by Martin London, I Was a Lawyer for Spiro Agnew. President Trump Should Consider Resigning.

This is half-time. We do not know what the Mueller investigation knows, what it has learned from Flynn, Popadopoulous, Gates, Van der Swan, Pinedo-- who have all pleaded guilty. Nor do we know what, if anything, Michael Cohen has already told investigators. Or what White House counsel Don McGahn said in 30 hours of interviews with them. Or what Mueller’s team has learned from what we can sure is the scores, if not hundreds, of other witnesses they have interviewed. And, of course, there are the millions of tapes, computer files and documents seized in the Cohen raid, along with those handed over by Trump’s former lawyers.

Mueller can and likely will name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator on any case he brings going forward, if he abides by Department of Justice guidelines and does not indict a sitting president. And Trump needs to worry about his criminal liability (and that of his son and son-in-law) when he leaves office.

Impeachment aside, given all that the President now faces, does anyone in his camp have the courage to discuss a so-far unmentionable strategy? Do what we did for Spiro Agnew, and the country. Negotiate a deal: You end the Mueller investigation, and I’ll send out of a tweet: “No collusion, I did nothing wrong, rigged witch hunt, but this is bad for the country, and I am a patriot. So I hereby resign. Sad.”

Good theory. But it won't work in real life. Trump is not-- not even remotely-- a patriot. He doesn't care about this country. He only cares about himself. Yesterday the Wall Steet Journal reported that the Trump Organization long-time CFO Allen Weisselberg, who has already testified for a grand jury, was granted immunity. This actually could be curtains for the Trumps. And it sure isn't going to help Trump enablers in tight reelection battles for their political lives. What do people like Ron Estes in Wichita, Mimi Walters in Orange County, Michael McCaul in the Austin-Houston corridor or Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Spokane do now? These are all members of Congress who have attached their political fortunes to Trump and who rubber-stamp everything he does and everything he stands for.

Mike Siegel is a progressive Texas Democrat who won his primary and was promptly abandoned by the DCCC. That just makes him work harder to defeat reactionary Republican Michael McCaul in an Austin/Houston area district. He just told us that "McCaul votes with Trump 98.9% of the time, as loyal as any Texas Republican. At the same time, the president is eroding his base in the Texas 10th: hurting rice and sorghum farmers with a foolish Trade War, sabotaging Affordable Care Act health insurance policies, even insulting law enforcement officials in his zeal to attack Michael Cohen as a 'flipper.' No matter what Trump does, you can count on McCaul to let it happen. As I knock on doors across the district, I keep hearing from Democrats, but also from Republicans and independents, that folks want a real system of checks and balances. When they vote this November, if they want real Congressional oversight, they have to vote blue."

Yesterday, Lisa Brown, the progressive Democrat who resigned as chancellor of Washington State University to oust McMorris Rodgers and her detrimental agenda from Congress told me that McMorris Rodgers is "doubling down on the Trump administration, bringing Kellyanne Conway in for a fundraising event just a few weeks after a closed door lunch with Devin Nunes. She announced that Ben Carson will be next."

James Thompson, the progressive taking on Ron Estes in Kansas, is on the same page. "Instead of acting like a congressman and waiting to see what the evidence shows," he told us, "Ron Estes is simply doubling down on his support of President Trump. He is not concerned with guilt or innocence, right or wrong. Estes is only concerned with maintaining power for his political bosses and corporate donors.  Without seeing any evidence, or hearing any testimony, Ron Estes simply choosing the politically expedient course of action and supports Trump come hell or high water. As a congressman, Estes should be doing what is best for the country, rather than what is simply best for his career and party."

The decision by prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to grant immunity to Mr. Weisselberg escalates the pressure on Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Weisselberg has served for decades as executive vice president as well as CFO for the Trump Organization. After Mr. Trump was elected, he handed control of his financial assets and business interests to his two adult sons and Mr. Weisselberg.

...The Journal couldn’t determine whether Mr. Weisselberg told prosecutors that Mr. Trump had knowledge of the payments.

Last year, Mr. Weisselberg arranged for the Trump Organization to reimburse Mr. Cohen, who had in October 2016 made a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a former adult-film actress who claimed she had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier, in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair. A person familiar with Mr. Weisselberg’s thinking said he didn’t know that money was intended to pay Ms. Clifford, who goes professionally by Stormy Daniels, when he agreed in January 2017 to a $35,000 monthly retainer for Mr. Cohen.

That month, according to charging documents filed Tuesday, Mr. Cohen gave executives at the Trump Organization a copy of the bank statement from his bank account for Essential Consultants LLC, the company he used to pay Ms. Clifford the previous fall. The statement reflected Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Ms. Clifford, as well as an additional $50,000 that Mr. Cohen added in handwriting was for “tech services.”

Executives at the Trump Organization “ ‘grossed up’ for tax purposes” Mr. Cohen’s requested reimbursement, doubling it to $360,000, and added a $60,000 bonus, the document said. The next month, one executive at the company asked another executive to pay Mr. Cohen’s monthly retainer “from the trust” and to “post to legal expenses.”

At the Trump Organization, Mr. Trump was known for being meticulous about payments the company made. Mr. Weisselberg would bring Mr. Trump checks to sign for the company on a daily basis, according to a person close to the company. Mr. Trump would routinely ask questions about the checks and what they were for, at times requesting Mr. Weisselberg hold off on specific payments, the person said.

“He would say, ‘That’s too much,’ ” the person said.

Democratic candidates really should be doing a lot more of this kind of campaigning. Democratic voters and independent voters know what Trump is and know what the congressional Republicans are and they want leaders with the guts to oppose it. Democratic candidates who think they're going to offend Republican voters need to understand that Republican voters aren't going to vote for them anyway-- other than the few Republican voters who agree with this kind of sentiment: