How Many Republican Politicians Are Ready To Lose Their Seats To Support Behavior By Trump They Hate?

A few days ago, the Cook Report published a piece by Amy Walter about the 2020 prospects of a Blue Wall, basically that "the 'easiest' or least risky electoral path for the Democratic nominee in 2020 is to reconstruct the so-called 'Blue Wall' in the industrial midwest. If the Democratic nominee wins every state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, plus Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, that Democrat would win 278 electoral votes-- eight more than the 270 needed to win. Just as important, it means that Democrats wouldn’t need to sweat Ohio or Florida. They can lose those big, electoral-vote-rich states, and still have enough to win the White House."

Good, especially if it causes Democratic Parry officials to realize that the party should never abandon the working class to go after the Wall Street class again. It didn't win Hillary a single state shouldn't have won anyway and it cost her Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania as well as any shot she may have had otherwise in Iowa, Ohio, Florida... perhaps Arizona and North Carolina as well. The party hierarchy is from the Wall Street class so they think that represents the party. That's the problem with the DCCC policy of ignoring candidates from the working class and keeping them out of "the club" as they did with IronStache (Randy Bryce). Walters doesn't gp anywhere near this stuff but she makes a point that's important to digest:

[I]f Iowa looks tough for Democrats, Michigan is looking pretty good. Trump carried the Wolverine state in 2016 by less than 11,000 votes. But, a recent WDIV/Detroit News poll finds Trump’s job approval in the state a bleak 38 percent favorable to 53 percent unfavorable. The Detroit Free Press’ Todd Spangler also highlights a key point: "General Motors has laid off thousands of employees counter to what Trump promised when he won in 2016.. and [h]e’s also running into trouble in terms of getting congressional approval for a new North American trade agreement to replace NAFTA, another key campaign promise that helped energize a base of white, working-class voters in Michigan at a time when Democratic enthusiasm seemed at a low point."

More ominously for the president, his job approval rating among independent voters in the state was just 43 percent, with 50 percent disapproving. EPIC/MRA pollster Bernie Porn, who founded the non-partisan Michigan-based polling firm more than 25 years ago, told me that even a motivated GOP base will get Trump, at best 43 percent of the vote. The rest needs to come from independents and/or disaffected Democrats.

But, but, but, didn’t all the polls in 2016 show Hillary winning the state? Why should we trust the polls now? It’s a fair question. The RealClear Politics average of Michigan polls gave Clinton a 3.5 percent advantage going into Election Day 2016. EPIC/MRA never showed Trump ahead in any of their polling. Their final pre-election poll had Clinton over Trump 42 percent to 38 percent.

EPIC/MRA’s pollster, Bernie Porn argues that polling didn’t pick up the tremendous gap in enthusiasm for Trump and lack thereof for Clinton. The results in Michigan in 2016, he told me in a recent interview, were “as much against Hillary Clinton as it was for Trump.”

Today, Porn and others argue that the enthusiasm gap that plagued Democrats in 2016 wasn’t there in 2018, and is not likely to be there in 2020 either. Unless, of course, Porn notes, "Democrats run a terrible candidate." An analysis of the 2018 vote in Michigan by the Detroit Free Press found that turnout in the state was “higher than other non-presidential election years going back decades. And that turnout was higher everywhere-- including rural areas and other areas where Trump did well. But the turnout was particularly notable in some big Democratic areas." In other words, Trump juicing his base only works if Democrats once again fail to be inspired to vote.

...Pennsylvania is another state where the polling was off in 2016. Pollsters in the Keystone state, like their colleagues in Michigan and Wisconsin, point to an underestimation of enthusiasm for Trump as a key factor in their miss.

In 2018, however, it was Democrats who enjoyed a solid enthusiasm advantage. Democratic Sen. Bob Casey crushed Clinton’s margins in the Philadelphia suburbs, while not losing as badly as Clinton did in the more rural/exurban parts of the state. For example, Clinton carried suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County by just under 3,000 votes. Casey won it by 41,000. Meanwhile, while Trump carried York county in the southeastern part of the state by more than 60,000 votes in 2016, Republican Senate candidate Lou Barletta won there by just 26,000 votes.

Ambivalent voters who disliked both presidential nominees. Tepid enthusiasm from Democrats for their nominee. Tremendous support and energy from Republicans for theirs. Those were the three most important factors in Trump’s success in the three blue wall states. As we look to 2020, we know that Trump continues to enjoy solid support from his base, but the Democrats are at least equally energized to get out and vote against him. This leaves the battle for the 'ambivalent' voter as the most critical piece of the 2020 strategy. Trump has done little in his tenure in office to woo those not already in his base. The only question now is if Democrats will nominate a candidate who can appeal to these voters, or if they will choose a flawed candidate who will, once again, force these voters into having to decide between the "best-worst-choice."

Early this morning Scott Wong and Mike Lillis, reporting for The Hill, noted that Pelosi's office had sent out spreadsheets to Democratic members enumerating 400 wide-ranging local projects threatened by Trump’s decision to raid various budgets to build his vanity wall. The list includes locally important projects from maintenance facilities for F-35 stealth fighters at Eielson Air Force Base outside Fairbanks, Alaska and the operation of a middle school at Fort Campbell, Kentucky to funds to replace a training maze at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

We have to smoke out as many Republicans as possible by making the case that projects in their backyard are in jeopardy and will likely be raided to help pay for Trump’s ineffective and politically motivated wall,” said a senior Democratic aide.

Key congressional Republicans, meanwhile, don’t need any nudge from Democrats. They’re already tearing themselves apart over Trump’s declaration.

“Congress has granted the executive branch certain spending authorities. I strongly object to any president acting outside of those explicit authorities to spend money that Congress has not appropriated for specific initiatives,” said Rep. Greg Walden, the House GOP’s former top campaigns chief and the only Republican in the Oregon delegation.

...Across the Capitol, GOP criticism of Trump’s executive move was even more scathing.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a former member of leadership and senior appropriator, lambasted Trump’s emergency declaration as “unnecessary, unwise and inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Judiciary and Armed Services committees, warned that Trump was setting a horrible precedent that the next Democratic president could use to ram through “left-wing” policies.

A President Bernie Sanders, Tillis said, would declare a national emergency to implement the “radical Green New Deal,” while a President Cory Booker would declare an emergency on gun violence and end Second Amendment rights.

...Those GOP concerns aren’t necessarily unfounded. On Friday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a progressive freshman rabble rouser, tweeted that the next president “should declare a #NationalEmergency on day 1 to address the existential threat to all life on the planet posed by Climate Change.”

Gee, I hope everyone knows who Franco was

And yesterday, CNN reported that Republicans are paying a price for Trump's wall crusade. Good but... what price? Will McConnell, Cornyn and Perdue lose their Senate reelections? Will the Democrats hold all their 2018 gains and win another 50 seats, making the House GOP as relevant as a goldfish? Stephen Collinson's analysis led him to write that "A declaration of a national emergency to bypass Congress and reprogram funds already allocated by lawmakers would represent Trump's most striking assault yet on the system of constitutional order that he is sworn to preserve, protect and defend. If the move is not permanently blocked by the courts it could also come back to haunt Republicans, since it could provide a precedent for a future Democratic president to enact liberal priorities on an executive whim." Pelosi added, ominously "If the President can declare an emergency on something that he has created as an emergency, an illusion that he wants to convey, just think of what a president with different values can present to the American people." Could be gun control (an actual national emergency). Or something like the Green New Deal (an existential planetary emergency).

Trump's power grab yesterday is opposed by 66% of voters. During his entirely unconvincing Rose Garden presentation yesterday, he as much as admitted the whole phrase was just about 2020. "The only reason," he stupidly said into the microphone, "we are up here talking about this [the wall and fake national emergency] is because of the election." McTurtle must have nearly had a stroke or-- in CNN's parlance-- Trump's move "is likely to soon present politically dicey challenges for his fellow Republicans."

Pelosi is likely to invoke a clause in the 1976 National Emergencies Act that permits Congress to seek to terminate a President's declaration that McConnell appears to have no power to stop from coming to the floor in the Senate.

That will jam Republicans worried about the implications of presidential overreach but who will face a tough decision on whether to oppose Trump on the wall-- an issue that has an almost mystical hold on the GOP base.

It will represent yet another uncomfortable moment for a party that has often had to pick between its traditional conservative principles and standing with the barnstorming force-- Trump-- that has taken it over.

Usually, when it has been a dilemma between wielding or maintaining power and guarding principles by reining in Trump, the party has taken the first option.

A GOP senator who will face that choice again is John Cornyn of Texas, who told CNN this month that it was a "serious constitutional question" whether presidents can "usurp" the separation of powers and unilaterally dole out money.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who is sometimes a Trump ally, expressed deep reservations about the idea of an emergency declaration.

"I, too, want stronger border security, including a wall in some areas," Paul tweeted. "But how we do things matters. Over 1,000 pages dropped in the middle of the night and extraconstitutional executive actions are wrong, no matter which party does them."

Cornyn's up for reelection and a state that is slowly transitioning from red to purple. If the DSCC gets it wish and Beto runs against Cornyn, he could be in trouble trouble. What will a vote on stopping Trump mean for his reelection chances. If he votes to do that, independents will be more predisposed towards supporting him, but at a tremendous cost among Trumpified Republicans in the more backward, rural parts of the state that Cornyn needs to balance out the suburbanites who have finally freed themselves of the cult of Republican hive behavior. If he votes to let Trump do whatever he pleases regardless of the Constitution, he will activate moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats to commit to voting-- against him.

It's not just Cornyn who might see their seat in jeopardy over this. It will be a politically excruciating decision for Joni Ernst (R-IA), David Perdue (R-GA), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Thom Tillis (NC)-- not to mention Doug Jones (D-AL).

And the House will have to vote too. It could be suicidal-- no matter what they decide to do other than hiding in the cloakroom-- for olde warhorses like Michael McCaul (R-TX), Kenny Marchant (R-TX), Fred Upton (R-MI), Peter King (R-NY) Scott Perry (R-PA), Steve Chabot (R-OH), Scott Tipton (R-CO), Ann Wagner (R-MO), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Tom McClinton (R-CA), Vern Buchanan (R-FL)-- and even worse for less established members like Ross Spano (R-FL), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Chip Roy (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), Jim Hagedorn (R-MN), Mike Bost (R-IL), Bryan Steil (R-WI), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Peter Stauber (R-MN)...

Trump's critics are warning that America's constitutional architecture is now in peril from a President who has never shown much interest in submitting to institutional checks on his power.

"Just because the President didn't get what he wanted-- a stupid wall to placate his rally-goers and his right-wing media chorus-- does not mean he alone can do whatever he wants," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a pro-immigration overhaul advocacy group. "This is about more than a political tactic. It's an attack on our democracy by an autocrat."

Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement that declaring a national emergency would be a "lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency."

"The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities," they said.

But none of that is likely to matter to the President.

This showdown has demonstrated yet again that his own political interests come before any respect for constitutional norms or an awareness of how his actions will affect the political system itself when he has left office.

If that is painful for his own side-- in this case, Senate Republicans-- Trump seems not to care. The most attractive feature of a declaration of national emergency is that it allows him to escape a humiliating set of defeats in Washington and initiative a new controversy.

Even if the courts and Democrats in the Senate succeed in curtailing his behavior, the President can rail against their efforts in order to stir his political base as he embarks on his 2020 re-election race.

That will make clear what has always been the case-- Trump cares most about his base, and rarely dwells on who or what is caught in the crossfire.

Carl Hulse and Glenn Thrush, reporting for the NY Times this morning, noted that "The Republican resistance to Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration was much more pronounced in the Senate than in the House, where a few Republicans-- in the minority but more closely aligned to Mr. Trump-- groused. But most of the conservative rank and file embraced it." Remember, if the DCCC doesn't screw up recruitment, the Democrats can flip more House seats next year than they did last year. This kind of enabler approach McCarthy is leading the House Republicans into is, clear and simple, another loud and unmistakeable death knell for a party that deserves to die.