Since Trump Brought It Up... Let's Look A Little Closer At Minnesota

States that Trump won is 2016 that look like he'll lose in 2020: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. States that Trump won is 2016 that look like swing states in 2020: Arizona, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, maybe even Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Indiana. The June Trump state by state tracking numbers look dismal:

• Michigan- minus 15
• Pennsylvania- minus 9
• Wisconsin- minus 14
• Arizona- minus 7
• Iowa- minus 12
• Florida- minus 3
• North Carolina- minus 3
• Texas- plus 4
• Ohio- minus 7
• Georgia- net zero
• Indiana- plus 1

So if some of these states continue falling away from Trump and these really dreadful disapproval numbers translate into 2020 votes, he has to pick up states he lost in 2016. Like which ones? His campaign spokespersons keep mentioning Nevada (minus 9), New Hampshire (minus 22), Virginia (minus 4) and Minnesota (minus 16). Yesterday Trump showed how he plans to win Minnesota with this tweet:

Minus 16 is a pretty steep hill to climb. Minnesota has been pretty reliably blue. Obama beat McCain 54 to 44% and beat Romney 53 to 45%. Even as weak a candidate as Clinton-- who lost the state to Bernie 61% to 38.4%-- beat Trump 1,367,716 (46.1%) to 1,322,951 (44.5%). Worth remembering-- on caucus day 2016, Bernie didn't just beat Hillary. He drew 118,135 voters. Trump drew just 24,018.

Since 1960, when JFK beat Nixon, a Republican beat a Democrat just once-- 1972 when Nixon was able to steal the election from McGovern 51-46%. But even in that dismal year, McGovern won what is now Ilhan's congressional district. So, basically, what Trump is saying is that he will win where Reagan lost twice and where Democrats lost just once in 6 decades... even though his net favorability rating is a mammoth minus 16.

Republicans didn't do well last year in the state-- losing every statewide race. Amy Klobuchar was reelected to the Senate 1,566,174 (60.3%) to 940,437 (36.2%). In other words, in a midterm, she managed to draw nearly a quarter million more votes than Trump did two years earlier. In the special election for the other Senate seat, Democrat Tina Smith beat Republican Karin Housley 1,370,540 (53.0%)-- still more votes than Trump!-- to 1,095,777 (42.4%). On the same day, Tim Walz, an unpopular conservative Democrat, won the gubernatorial race 1,393,096 (53.9%) to 1,097,705 (42.4%). Democrats also won the races for Secretary of State (52-44%), State Auditor (49-43%) and Attorney General (49-45%)

On the same day two really shitty Democratic challengers, Angie Craig and Dean Phillips, beat Republican House incumbents Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen. Craig won by 5.6 points and Phillips won by 11.4 points. In an open seat (MN-01) Republican Jim Hagedorn beat conservaDem Dan Freehan by a hair (1,315 votes, 0.4%). The only hopeful sign Trump could look for is in the northeast corner of the state, where another open seat (MN-08) went to Republican Pete Stauber 159,364 (50.7%) to 141,950 (45.2%).

It might disturb Trump to know that of all the candidates running for Minnesota's 8 House districts, the one who got the most votes was... Ilhan Omar, who pulled 267,703 votes (78.2%). She won massively in each of the 3 counties, Hennepin, Anoka and Ramsey. But the part of Hennepin County in her district alone gave her 251,739 votes. Two years earlier all of Hennepin County had given Trump just 191,770 votes. (Hennepin County is split between 3 districts, Ilhan's deep blue 5th, and redder parts of the county in the 3rd and 6th districts.

Watch this six and a half minute video unwinding Trump's premeditated barrage of slander against Ilhan for his low-info/low-IQ supporters:




After Trump's vicious, xenophobic "go back to where you're from" attacks, Ilhan went back to the city that has been her home since she was 10 years old. The welcome at the Minneapolis airport was... tumultuous-- and the KSTP video (viewable in the tweet below) was watched online by almost 17 million people so far. Yesterday she spoke at the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy conference in Washington, DC, where she reminded the attendees that Trump's "inherent" racism is nothing new. "Right now," she said, "even when we’re talking about the president, people will say, you know, his remarks are racist, and we’ll forget the inherent racism that has always been part of him... always takes an opportunity to vilify [others] and destroy their existence and ability to access our justice system." Please consider contributing to Ilhan Omar's reelection campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Worthy Incumbents thermometer on the right.

On Tuesday morning I went to YouTube to find a clip of Ilhan speaking at the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy conference, so I searched "Ilhan Omar" and used the most recently uploaded filter. Instead I found dozens and dozens of ugly and false propaganda videos uploaded by right-wing and neo-fascist extremists and by Russian bot accounts-- garbage claiming she married her brother, cheats on her taxes, is a jail-bird, that she's connected to slave traffickers, and that her father is "the Somalian Joseph Goebbels." Apparently, YouTube-- owned by Google-- has still done nothing to keep bot accounts from dominating their first page searches, a big factor in how the Russians helped Trump steal the 2016 election.