Figuring Out Who To Vote For Down-Ballot-- Let's Look at PA-01, Bucks County

The New Dems don't just endorse anyone who asks them for an endorsement and they don't sell endorsements as part of a protection racket the way certain other caucuses do. They vet their candidates very carefully and if they detect any fiscal progressive streak-- BOOM!-- it's over. The New Dems are the dominant part of Congress' Republican wing of the Democratic Party. They're not as bad as Republicans but they are corporately financed and tend to vote with Republicans on economic issues. In other words-- if 2 gays want to get married, it doesn't bother them any more than a woman getting an abortion does, when when it comes to making the rich pay their fair share of taxes or regulating the banksters... that's where we have a little problem. Actually, a big problem-- of the 10 Democrats with the worst voting records in Congress, 8 of them-- all Blue Dogs Collin Peterson (MN) and Jared Golden (ME)-- are New Dems. Most of them are also Blue Dogs. Almost every Blue Dog has joined the New Dems-- makes it easier to access Wall Street bribes.

There are currently 104 New Dems in the House, making it the biggest Democratic caucus in the House. Of the 104 New Dems, only 21 do not have "F"-graded voting records-- an even dozen with "D" scores (like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Greg Schiff, Darren Soto and Juan Vargas), 5 with "C" scores, although that includes Eliot Engel who was recently dispatched by his constituents and replaced by a Democrat with real progressive values, Jamaal Bowman, and 3 with B scores and just one with an A, Lori Trahan (who is also a member of the Progressive Caucus).

When I was looking for information about Christina Finello, the hand-picked DCCC/EMILY's List candidate for the Bucks County congressional district (PA-01), I went to her website first and saw her proudly displaying the New Dems endorsement meme. She's one of the 27 candidates conservative and amenable to corruption enough to make the grade. But there was no AFL-CIO endorsement; which went to the pro-union Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick.

She's running in Pennsylvania's penultimate swing district with a PVI of R+1, but with a record of having voted for Obama both times he ran and even having given a 2 point win to Hillary over Trump-- 49.1% to 47.1%. The so-called "Blue Wave"-- and an attempt to buy the seat by a wealthy Democrat who put an obscene and offensive $12,756,892 of his own money in-- didn't take out Fitzpatrick in 2018, when he beat Scott Wallace 169,053 (51.3%) to 160,745 (48.7%). Bucks County (90% of the district) performed very strongly for Fitzpatrick, while voting even more strongly for progressive Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf (58.5%) and for Democratic Senate incumbent Bob Casey (56.2%), both of whom were running against crackpot Trumpists.

As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Fitzpatrick had raised $2,741,797, spent $1,029,695 and had $1,828,737 cash on hand. Finello raised $501,826, spent $205,703 and had $296,123 cash on hand. There hasn't been a lot of outside spending yet, but I expect there will be, for both candidates. Looks bad for the New Dem, Finello. Maybe. Why maybe? Trump. Trump may pull all down-ballot Republicans down with him. Finello is just a nothing careerist candidate with nothing to offer but she's in the right place at the right time. 92,308 Democrats voted in the primary, 71,571 of them for Finello. And just 75,895 Republicans voted on the same day-- and just 48,017 of them for Fitzpatrick. Fighting the Trump anti-red headwinds, it's going to be very hard for Fitzpatrick to stave off a defeat, although he'll easily beat Finello in a 2022 rematch when the Democrats have spent 2 years accomplishing nothing important to anyone, primarily because of status quo candidates like Finello (and Biden) getting swept into office.

Fitzpatrick's lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote score in 27.35. Only one Republican, Thomas Massie-- and by less than one percentage point-- has voted more frequently for progressive legislation. In fact, Fitzpatrick is basically tied with Utah Blue Dog Ben McAdams and has a more progressive voting record than two Blue Dog/New Dems, the detestable Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Joe Cunningham (SC). Fitzpatrick uses his score to insist he's a "moderate" and "independent," his biggest selling points back home. Will voters hear his pleas over the Trump din though? Last week, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Andrew Seidman and Chris Brennan asked if Fitzpatrick really is a moderate, which isn't how either party paints him. The right wing of the GOP dismisses him as a RINO and Democrats desperately try to tie him to the despised Trump. Fitzpatrick has a tightrope because if he is seen as too close to Trump he will lose independent voters who are the ones who decide elections in Bucks County. But if he's too unsupportive of Trump, he'll hemorrhage the Republicans who are devoted to Trump and Trumpism.

Seidman and Brennan wrote that "Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans in the district, a solidly middle-class swath of suburbia that includes part of Montgomery County. And heated debate over whether a Fitzpatrick deserves the moderate tag is familiar ground for local voters, dating back to when his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, represented the district. Whether Brian Fitzpatrick survives what’s likely to be a challenging reelection campaign while Trump continues to repel suburban voters will offer clues about if and how Republicans can hold on to power in the suburbs.

“Anybody that claims I’m not a moderate and not an independent thinker is living on another planet,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview Thursday, touting his involvement with the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, said the success of moderate politicians in the region dates back to the late 1970s. Pete Kostmayer, a Democrat, served seven terms in the House, followed for six terms by Republican Jim Greenwood. They weren’t ideological warriors. The district didn’t expect-- or want-- them to be. The same could be said for the men who followed: Mike Fitzpatrick and Democrat Patrick Murphy.

The AFL-CIO this month endorsed Fitzpatrick, the only Republican the labor group backed for U.S. House in Pennsylvania and just one of eight GOP endorsements out of 189 overall. Bloomingdale cited Fitzpatrick’s support for unionized federal employees’ rights, dredging jobs on the Delaware River, and protections for union organizing.

All that made it “pretty easy to endorse” Fitzpatrick, Bloomingdale said. To do otherwise would be the act of a “fair-weather friend,” he said.

Fitzpatrick’s moderate bona fides have been a source of frustration among progressive groups eager to retake a seat held by Republicans for a decade. Fitzpatrick withstood the 2018 Democratic wave that washed out Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs.

In an interview, Finello rattled off positions taken by Fitzpatrick that she said show he’s no moderate, starting with his support for Trump’s 2017 tax cuts-- which disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans and swelled the federal budget deficit.

She condemned Fitzpatrick for voting against the Heroes Act, a second coronavirus economic relief package the House passed in May. The Republican-controlled Senate didn’t advance the bill, and negotiations between the White House and congressional Democrats have gone nowhere.

Finello said Fitzpatrick’s vote means he opposed oversight of federal aid to make sure it “went to struggling small businesses rather than corporations.” The bill also included money for state and local governments, continuing supplemental unemployment benefits, and extending moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures.

“We’re talking right now in August, the fourth straight month where roughly a third of Americans have missed a housing payment, voting against things people need,” she said.

Fitzpatrick noted that 14 Democrats voted against the bill. He said he supports more funding for state and local governments, the Postal Service, small businesses, and unemployment benefits. But he opposed a provision in the bill that aimed to reduce the prison population to fight the spread of the virus.

He also opposes Trump’s call for a payroll tax cut, saying it would “jeopardize Social Security and Medicare.” And on a day when Trump openly admitted that by withholding funding for the Postal Service, it would be unable to handle an anticipated surge of mail voting, Fitzpatrick said the USPS should be “fully funded.”

And Fitzpatrick noted that he backed “major policy initiatives” advanced by Democrats after they retook the House, including Democratic priorities like strengthening protections for voting rights, closing the gender pay gap, and expanding antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.

“That’s union rights, environmental rights, gun safety, LGBT rights,” Fitzpatrick said. “These are major, major initiatives.”

In June, he was one of just three Republicans who voted for the police reform measure passed by the House after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

It all adds up to a record the Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy rank as the most bipartisan of any member of the House. The center’s index is based on “how often a member of Congress introduces bills that succeed in attracting cosponsors from members of the other party, and how often they in turn cosponsor a bill introduced from across the aisle.”

Fitzpatrick has voted with Trump 64% of the time on legislation on which the president has a clear position, according to the website FiveThirtyEight. Just two House Republicans have voted with Trump less frequently, according to the analysis.

Democrats counter that Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent, has failed to deliver on a defining issue: standing up to Trump.

“You can’t deny the fact he’s been complicit with Donald Trump on his most important initiatives, and has been silent as a lamb when his own FBI directors have been attacked, when our military leaders have been attacked by this president,” said Murphy, who unseated Mike Fitzpatrick in 2006 but lost the seat back to him in 2010. (Mike Fitzpatrick died in January.)

Murphy, asked if he thought there were any moderate Republicans in Congress, pointed to Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only one who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial.

“Where was he on that vote?” Murphy said of Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick said he will wait until the election to decide whether to vote for Trump or presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The debate over Fitzpatrick’s independence is something of a redux of his 2018 campaign against Democrat Scott Wallace.

Progressives were incensed then when Everytown for Gun Safety, the antigun violence group cofounded by Mike Bloomberg, endorsed Fitzpatrick. Everytown cited Fitzpatrick’s vote against a bill backed by the National Rifle Association that would require states to recognize concealed carry permits from other states-- but progressives questioned his commitment to the issue.

The Bucks County branch of Moms Demand Action, an arm of Everytown, dissolved in protest.

Ali Glickman, of Solebury Township, cofounded Orange Wave for Gun Safety along with other former Moms Demand Action volunteers. She said that Fitzpatrick is no moderate, and that regardless, voting for Republicans won’t help on issues like gun violence. The only way to advance the cause is to elect Democrats like Finello, she said.

“If we don’t have the majority, it doesn’t really matter, period,” Glickman said.

While Finello’s campaign frequently mocks Fitzpatrick’s claims of independence, Finello said she doesn’t focus on labels.

“I’m focusing on what people are talking about right at this moment,” she said. “People are concerned right now about how they’re going to pay their rent when they’ve lost their job. They’re worried about what’s happening when they have to send their kids back to school.”

That ad didn't work-- at least not enough to flip the district-- in 2018, but that's basically the campaign again this cycle. It's all a matter of how skilled Fitzpatrick is in walking his tightrope-- distancing himself from Trump, but not so much as to offend Trump supporters enough to watch them decide to skip the vote-- or vote for the Libertarian on the ballot in November..

Still, Finello may win. If she does, her voting record will be slightly better than Fitzpatrick's. She's not for Medicare-for-All and She doesn't back a Green New Deal. Her website issues page is basically DCCC pablum-- sounds good/means nothing. Is she better than Fitzpatrick? Yes, a bit. Can she hold the seat in a bad wave year for Dems? No way. Incumbents like her always lose the seats. This is the kind of thing-- made by Republicans-- that will sweep Finello into Congress:

The Republicans Can't Blame Trump For What They've Become-- Nor For What's About To Happen To Them

Murder/Suicide by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, The Hill reported that, in private, House Republicans see the tsunami coming for them and they are panic-stricken. Everything is working against them and there is "a growing sense of doom... House Republicans face numerous, almost insurmountable obstacles: a cash shortfall against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 27 retiring lawmakers and a Republican National Committee that is more focused on reelecting President Trump and protecting the Senate GOP majority. 'If the election were today, we would lose the House, the Senate and the White House,' said one Republican source. Several GOP lawmakers are warning that the party faces a landslide defeat on Election Day if Trump doesn’t start landing punches on former Vice President Joe Biden, who has a strong lead in the polls both nationally and in key battleground states. 'This is the problem: [Trump] continues to allow it to be a referendum on himself; you can’t do that in a competitive race,' one GOP lawmaker said."

Well... that turns out to be only partially true. It is a referendum on the Republican Party and on conservative governance. A new poll by David Binder Research of rural voters in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin for Focus on Rural America shows Trump-- and the GOP-- up shit's creek without a paddle. Trump is even losing in Iowa, where Republicans claim he is solid.

And rural voters disapprove of Trump by large numbers and think Biden will do a better job than he has on issues that are specifically important to rural and small town voters. If those numbers represent rural voters in other parts of the country, this is going to be the biggest GOP ass-whooping since America decided Herbert Hoover didn't deserve a second term. In fact, these voters "give Biden the most significant advantage on understanding the values of rural America, and improving access to health care in rural areas. Majorities also believe that Biden would be better than Trump at supporting farmers and stabilizing markets for agriculture commodities, and being relatable to rural Americans."

My own calculations see between 2 and 3 dozen Republican House seats flipping blue-- with a possibility of Trump doing something between now and November than will increase those numbers significantly. And writing for The Atlantic yesterday, Norm Ornstein explained how the GOP has been so radically changed-- a change that culminated with the rise of Trump-- that he barely recognizes it. He wrote that over time "Nothing has been more striking or significant than the transformation of the Republican Party, from a moderately conservative party to a very conservative party to something else entirely."

One sign of this change? A five-term Republican congressman from Colorado, elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 and now a Trump loyalist, was recently defeated in a primary by a candidate who runs Shooters Grill, where servers are encouraged to carry firearms, and who has indulged the QAnon conspiracy theories and who is now endorsed, not repudiated, by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Another? The current buzz surrounding Tucker Carlson as the party’s hope in 2024-- even as he takes sudden leave from his show to go fishing, after one of his writers was tied to racist and misogynistic posts on an internet message board.

Few of the dozens of Republicans in high office I have known and admired over five decades-- in a party not my own and holding views that, in many cases, I did not share-- would be represented in the Republican Party of today. While some of my friends and mentors were and are moderates, others were proud conservatives, who genuinely believed in fiscal discipline but also valued government, albeit in a limited form. But the radical and unconservative idea that all government should be disdained, that tax cuts that blow up the debt are just fine, would be anathema to them.

And the idea that the Republican Party would be a force for ethnic and anti-immigrant animus and racial division would appall them-- including my late friend Jack Kemp. The Republicans I knew best and worked most closely with were almost uniformly for civil rights-- they represented the party of Everett Dirksen and William McCullough, who were instrumental in passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

The individuals I knew, admired, and worked with were not the entirety of the Republican Party, even then. Plenty of lawmakers and others were quite content to exploit racism. They sought out the votes of segregationist former Southern Democrats, such as Strom Thurmond, to refill their party’s diminishing moderate ranks in the Northeast and the Midwest, and on the West Coast. Beginning with Barry Goldwater’s 1964 candidacy and Richard Nixon’s 1968 “law and order” campaign, some Republican politicians ran for office using rhetoric that, at best, cynically inflamed racial divisions.

But even as I opposed many of the initiatives and campaign tactics of that Republican Party, I appreciated its efforts to solve problems and work within the governing institutions. The party of Nixon, with all its pathologies, created the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed a health-care-reform plan as sweeping as the later Affordable Care Act, and considered offering Americans a guaranteed annual income on a par with Andrew Yang’s universal basic income. The party of Reagan, which tried to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and which slashed taxes in 1981, precipitating ballooning deficits, also cut deals with Democratic Representative Henry Waxman to bolster Medicare and Medicaid; championed bipartisan Social Security reform in 1983; and supported tax increases in 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986 to offset the earlier cuts and reduce the deficits. The party responsible for Iran-Contra is also the party that championed democracy and moved in concert with Democrats to create the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Institute of Peace, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.




...The Republican Party’s slide away from those values preceded Donald Trump, providing the conditions for his rise. In recent years, the GOP has thrown away its guiding values and embraced its darkest instincts. It has blown up long-standing norms in the Senate, creating divisions that outstrip anything I have seen before; done nothing about rank corruption in the White House and the Cabinet; accepted the politicization of the Justice Department and lies from the attorney general; avoided any meaningful oversight of misconduct; and failed to curb attacks on the independence of inspectors general.

The GOP now distinguishes itself by inaction. It has stood and watched as this administration separated children from their parents at the border, mistreated asylum seekers, botched its response to a hurricane in Puerto Rico, attacked science, and opened new avenues for toxic materials in our air and water. It said and did nothing about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and is actively blocking efforts to combat a recurrence in 2020. It has refused to pass a new Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder eviscerated the legislation, which, reflecting the GOP of the past, had passed the House unanimously. It has refused to deal in any fashion with urgent problems such as climate change, immigration, global competition, hunger, and poverty. It confirmed nominees who lied to the Senate, who inflated résumés, and who failed to meet minimum qualifications for the job. It confirmed judges who were unanimously rated unqualified by the American Bar Association.

The party jammed through a tax cut at a time of low unemployment and low economic growth, making a mockery of modern economics and leaving little flexibility to deal with the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. It slashed the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, delivering an 80 percent cut to global-health programs designed to fight pandemics, and leaving the agency without the resources necessary to battle COVID-19. It has said almost nothing about the pitiful and reckless responses of the president to the pandemic, which has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths that should never have occurred. And now it is silent as we learn that Russia offered bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers, while the president said and did nothing.

...Plenty of the Republicans I dealt with in the past were fierce partisans, including Dole and John Rhodes. But when pushed, they put country first-- that was the basis on which they could forge bonds across the aisle. I had strong relationships in years past with a number of Republicans currently in the Senate. But none of them have, in recent years, behaved in a fashion that would meet the values of the party of Domenici, Steiger, or Dole.

The country obviously needs a major change in its politics, a purging of the status quo. It faces challenges both societal and structural that go beyond Trump and the two parties. The United States must recover from the pandemic and rebuild its economy, while confronting head-on the issue of racism. But we cannot long operate as a democracy without two problem-solving parties that aim to compete for genuine majorities in the country.

The Democratic Party is far from a paragon of virtue here; in politics, there are no angels. It faces its own deep challenges ahead. But America’s crisis of governance has been driven by a party that my colleague Tom Mann and I, long before Trump, described as an insurgent outlier in American politics. “It is ideologically extreme,” we wrote in 2012; “scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

I was reminded of that description recently by the comments of the Republican pollster Alex Castellanos. “Mask-wearing has become a totem, a secular religious symbol,” Castellanos told the Washington Post. “Christians wear crosses, Muslims wear a hijab, and members of the Church of Secular Science bow to the Gods of Data by wearing a mask as their symbol, demonstrating that they are the elite; smarter, more rational, and morally superior to everyone else.”

A reshaped GOP would be very conservative, but not radical. It would believe in limited government, but a government run by professionals, respecting data and science, and operating efficiently and fairly. It would believe in genuine fiscal discipline. It would try to apply free-market approaches to solving difficult problems, such as climate change. It would believe in the integrity of institutions and insist that those in office adhere to high ethical standards. It would respect the sanctity of alliances and the fundamental values of decency and equal treatment. It would work to broaden its base across racial and ethnic lines, not use division and voter suppression to cling to power.

Sadly, even if Donald Trump is defeated in November, there is no sign that such a party will return anytime soon. But restoring the Republican Party to its traditional values is absolutely essential to preserve the core of our system of governance.

Well... he's wrong about there being no sign that such a party will return anytime soon. In case anyone didn't notice, Ornstein just described the post-Bill Clinton Democratic Party-- the one so many Republicans seem to be very, very comfortable with these days. I predict that the Biden administration will be more like the Republican Party Ornstein just described than the Trump-Pence regime.

If The Democrats Win State Legislatures, Will They Gerrymander States The Way Republicans Do? Or Will They End Gerrymandering?

And it all depends on...

Sure, the GOP stole the racism issue from Democrats long ago and there is no longer any doubt which is the party of bigotry and hatred. But no one supposed to talk about it outlaid the way Trump does. And he's making other Republicans nervous-- not that minorities aren't going to vote for them-- they're not-- but that educated white people who don't like overt racism won't. Yesterday a team of NBC News reporters, Geoff Bennett, Peter Alexander and Carol E. Lee, looked into how this racism and divisiveness are playing itself out now.

They wrote that "Trump allies are telling him that he has a better argument to make and to focus on his accomplishments in office and offer sharp criticism of his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. But Trump is 'going with his gut' and 'relying on instinct.' "Instead of touting wins, Trump has opted to zero in on the national debate about race and side with supporters who view themselves as victims unfairly cast as racists in the renewed national discussion about discrimination targeting minorities."

Trump has heard from some political allies encouraging him to embrace a divisive tone likely to further inflame civic unrest seen across the country over the past month and deliver political wins by rallying his supporters.

But other aides have pushed him to temper his rhetoric.

A second White House official said Trump is making a mistake by stoking racial divisions and continuing to revive the kind of grievances he also aired in 2016, when he stoked racial animosity targeting immigrants. This official says the president’s attack lines no longer have the same resonance as they did four years ago.

...[Trump] believes divisive rhetoric helped him win the White House, and could do so again. And two officials said he is largely eschewing the political advice to shift his message because he blames the coronavirus pandemic and his campaign's strategy-- and not his own approach-- for his polling plunge.

As a result, he’s tapping more deeply into the perceived anger and resentment of his white supporters.

The president, for instance, has gone from obliquely describing an effort to take down Confederate statues as an assault on “our heritage” during his campaign rally in Oklahoma last month to defending the Confederate flag and attacking NASCAR’s only Black full-time driver Monday on Twitter.

Some of the president’s allies worry he is out of step with public sentiment during this moment of national reckoning over racial justice, even if they agree he has a case to make that demonizing historical figures like George Washington goes too far.

The president “senses victimization that a lot of Americans feel” in scenarios where they’re deemed racist if they don’t denounce the Confederate flag, one of the officials said.

Yeah... like nearly the whole Mississippi state legislature and Republican governor, who just finally shit-canned the Confederate battle flag from their own state flag. The Democrats aren't going to win Mississippi-- or Wyoming for that matter. But other than that... the sky's the limit.

And the DLCC-- a less toxic version of the DCCC and DSCC but for state legislatures-- is aiming high and allowing themselves to dream about keeping the GOP from gerrymandering key swing states in 2021. And they thank Trump for what is looking more and more like an anti-red tsunami. Natasha Korecki and Christopher Cadelago reported that "they’re imagining a rout that extends all the way down the ballot... From Pennsylvania to Texas to Minnesota, cash-flush Democrats are working to win back legislative chambers needed to take control of drawing congressional maps-- or at least guarantee a seat at the table. If they succeed, it would correct an Obama-era down-ballot shellacking that handed Republicans House control and resulted in the loss of more than 900 Democratic legislative seats. The devastating results for Democrats in 2010-- part of a multi-million dollar effort by Republicans and Karl Rove to zero in on winning governor’s offices and battleground statehouses-- gave the GOP total control in 19 states and allowed them to draw 213 congressional districts." The 2020 Blue America state legislative thermometer above, is for carefully vetted progressives running for legislative seats. The thermometer below is for just the state of Florida and-- again-- just progressives, not run of the mill Democrats or crooked careerists.

The new maps were a disaster for Democrats and spawned a bevy of groups and fundraising efforts intent on preventing a repeat in 2020. Most notably, Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder created the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a centralized redistricting hub on the Democratic side “to make sure that what the Republicans did last time was not possible again,” said John Bisognano, the NDRC’s executive director. “We weren’t going to get caught off guard again.”

But the opportunity in November is even more profound, Democrats say. It represents not only a once-every-20-years occurrence when reapportionment falls in a presidential year, but perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity when an incumbent president appears so weak.

Joe Biden has long said he thinks it’s part of the job as the presumptive nominee to bolster down-ballot races. His campaign is coordinating with local campaigns in battleground states, where building out infrastructure and organization can help drive Democratic control at lower levels of government.

If Trump’s dismal polling extends into the fall, Democrats say it's even more likely Biden’s campaign will contest territory once unfriendly to the party.

“We are a campaign aggressively looking to expand the map as we move forward,” said senior adviser Anita Dunn. Naming Texas and Georgia as “expansion targets,” she added, “Right now, we’re not ruling anything out.”

Simon Rosenberg, who worked as a senior consultant for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018, when the party swamped Republicans en route to the House majority, said the environment is just as ripe this year.

“The rationale for going big is clear: it can help flip the Senate, create a more powerful mandate for governing, and lock in wins for the coming reapportionment,” he said. “From a governing and party perspective, there will be a powerful case for going big, and trying to get to 400-plus Electoral College votes.”

Republicans say Democrats should curb their enthusiasm. The GOP is pursuing its own state legislative fundraising efforts to stave off Democrats. In Texas, Rove has returned to serve as treasurer of Leading Texas Forward PAC, aimed at maintaining a Republican state House. They also paint Democrats as hypocritical, saying the party complained about gerrymandering by Republicans only to take part in it themselves in blue states, like Illinois.

Former Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, the financial chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, dismissed talk of a Democratic rout.

"They were making similar predictions in 2016 while Hillary Clinton ignored Wisconsin after our primary and tried to run up the score in other states," he said.

Adam Kincaid, the group's executive director and a veteran of the GOP's 2010 redistricting efforts, said it won’t be easy for Democrats to flip legislative chambers in states where they came up short four years ago. “If the Biden campaign is talking about winning in Texas and Arizona and Georgia," he said, "they need to go back and read the clips from four years ago."

Some Republicans, however, acknowledge the party faces a genuine threat in longtime conservative bastions like Texas.

“The switch was flipped on in the November 2018 midterm elections. It was, 'Oh boy, this is real, we better get our act together,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas. “But I’m also not sure the party has figured it out.”

...National groups are eyeing Texas not only because Biden is polling close to Trump, but because Democrats need to gain control of at least one chamber of the state legislature to have a say in the state’s congressional map.

Texas stands to gain a handful of new congressional seats after the Census. In 2018, Democrats flipped two state Senate seats and 12 in the state House. The nine state House seats Democrats are eyeing to flip the chamber were all carried by former Rep. Beto O’Rourke when he ran for Senate two years ago.

In an interview, O’Rourke said years of litigation over the state’s maps-- and claims those maps have diluted the power of voters of color-- are motivating Democratic voters.

“Folks are talking about this and they get that if we have a Democratic majority, not only can we help decide what those new congressional districts look like, we can help to redraw existing state House, state Senate, U.S. Congress districts to include instead of exclude Black and brown voters in this state,” O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke is among the higher-profile Democrats working to direct resources and attention to obscure statehouse races in states like Texas and North Carolina.

So, too, is Virginia State Delegate Danica Roem, who in 2017 was the first openly transgender person to be elected to a U.S. statehouse. Roem said she’s held Zoom calls to help raise money for candidates or state parties in places like North Carolina and Texas.

In some areas, Democrats don’t need to win outright to advance their cause. In Kansas, they’re aiming to break the GOP’s statehouse supermajority so Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly can wield her veto power over congressional maps. To do that, they need to flip one seat in the state House and two in the state Senate.

Democrats are zeroing in on races in states with independent redistricting commissions that have come under fire from Republicans. They include Michigan, where Republican lawmakers have tried to take control of funding for the redistricting commission, and Arizona, where legislators have tried to split a legislative district that is the only majority Native American one in the state.

North Carolina is important for another reason. Despite having a Democratic governor, state rules prevent him from vetoing maps crafted by the majority GOP legislature.

Several factors make Democrats believe this time will be different. They’ve already made important strides to thwart Republican map-making in 2021, including winning the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan and reelecting Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. They also forced the redrawing of some old maps that put them in better position in places like North Carolina, and are encouraged by recent turnout in primaries in Wisconsin and Georgia during the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, with so much attention focused on the presidential election and control of the Senate, many Democrats still worry that down-ballot races will get short shrift.

“The question is... given the extraordinary and appropriate emphasis on the presidential race and the extraordinary emphasis on winning back the Senate, are we going to miss the third leg of this stool, which is losing control of the states and having this extreme congressional and legislative gerrymandering for another decade,” asked Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist who ran for president and has spent hundreds of millions to elect Democrats.

Steyer said he’s encouraged by the grass-roots activity on the ground. Yet taken together, he’s still concerned about the broader “Republican playbook”-- which he said includes redistricting, voter suppression and preventing vote-by mail expansion-- if Democrats don’t remain vigilant.

Dave Abrams, deputy executive director of the Republican State Leadership Committee, predicted that Democrats are “going to fail again" at the state level despite their renewed efforts. He said voters would "definitively reject the liberals’ new radical agenda that dismantles our nation and replaces it with a lawless society.”

But Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Chris Turner, who lost his state seat to remapping in 2010 and was later reelected, said that recent polls showing Trump and Biden virtually tied in Texas suggests the president is slipping in the suburbs. That alone, he said, is plenty of incentive for national Democrats to play in the Lone Star state.

“We’re very bullish about 2020,” he said, pointing to the party's gains in Texas in the 2018 midterms. “It’s a complete train wreck of an environment for the Republican Party right now.”

My guess that the Democrats 7 most realistic shots at flipping chambers are the Minnesota state Senate, the Pennsylvania House, the Iowa House, the Michigan House, both the North Carolina chambers, the Arizona House and, if things really rock for the Democrats, the West Virginia, Texas and Kentucky Houses.

The Whole GOP Will Fit In The Grave Trump Is Digging For Himself

I think everyone sane can agree with this tweet from Republicans for a New President: "Trump is a failed president who abuses his power to enrich himself and destroy constitutional checks. We MUST stop him before he succeeds." They went on to say that they are "calling on current and former principled Republicans to join us." Another group of anti-Trump Republicans, Stand Up Republic responded: "The GOP has lost its way, and the American people need to see principled Republicans still exist and have a better vision for the country than Trumpism offers. That's why we and @Principles_1st will be co-hosting a counter convention to the RNC." They should have been aware that Trump was unsuited for the presidency-- and especially for a national emergency of this scope. Yesterday, Tony Schwartz, author of Art of the Deal, the book that launched Trump's public persona told HuffPo: "I’ve always assumed, like most people have, that the primary motivation is to be loved and admired and recognized and praised. That is a motivation but the deeper motivation is domination, is to win. And that is a function of the fact that he has no conscience. And let’s be clear. No conscience."

We may not agree with the #NeverTrump Republicans on much else, but at least they're doing their part to liberate America from the fascist threat:

For three and a half years, the nation and the Republican Party have suffered under the failed leadership, corrupt dealings, and incessant lies of Donald J. Trump. Rather than maintain their principles, other Republican leaders sold their integrity for personal benefit and became his enablers.

Especially amid Depression Era unemployment and nearly one hundred thousand U.S. pandemic casualties, much of which could have been avoided, principled and former Republicans must now unite in offering a vision for better leadership and a brighter future for America.

That’s why, in partnership with Principles First, we are hosting the first ever Convention on Founding Principles concurrent with the Republican National Convention.

The event will feature speakers, thinkers and leaders from across the country who share our commitment to principled conservatism and political renewal in America. Delegates will present, deliberate and ratify organizing principles, vote for preferred candidates, and plan future actions.

Friday a large team of Guardian journalists, spread out all over the world, reported that it isn't only in the U.S. where people are horrified by Trump's catastrophic shortcomings in the face of the pandemic that neither he nor his brain-dead followers see as serious. Trump's failed regime "has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is 'leading the world' with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow. Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the U.S. handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet. 'Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,' the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. 'But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.'"

The U.S. has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the U.S. is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them-- when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the U.S.

The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”

A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.

A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.

...Trump’s decision not to take part in a global effort to find a vaccine, and his abrupt severance of financial support to the WHO at the height of the pandemic, added outrage and prompted complaints that the US was surrendering its role of global leadership.

“If there is any world leader who can be accused of handling the current crisis badly, it is Donald Trump, whose initial disdain for Covid-19 may have cost thousands of Americans their lives,” an editorial in the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper said last month.

The newspaper said Trump had only decided to take Covid seriously after finding himself “cornered by the facts”-- and expressed shock at his decision to halt WHO funding.

“Even by the standards of his behaviour, the level of impudence is astonishing for the holder of an office that, until just a few years ago, was a considered reference in leadership for the democratic world,” it said.

Back in the U.S., Trump appears to be digging his own grave-- one big enough to fit the whole Republican Party. Reporting for Reuters, Jarrett Renshaw wrote from Pennsylvania yesterday that Trump has made no secret of his disdain for mail-in voting, proclaiming frequently-- without evidence-- that such balloting is riddled with fraud. "Republican leaders say his messaging may be hurting the party’s chances to win in Pennsylvania," wrote Renshaw, "where Democrats are dominating a surge in requests to vote by mail in the midst of the pandemic. With less than three weeks to go before the primary, 1,178,475 Pennsylvania voters have applied for absentee ballots, a 14-fold increase from 2016. Nearly 70% of those requests have come from registered Democrats, state data as of May 13 show. That margin is far wider than the 55% to 45% registration advantage held by Democrats in the state... The balloting features competitive statewide and local races whose outcomes could be determined by the large contingent of absentee voters."

That’s a worrisome harbinger for Republicans looking ahead to the general election, if coronavirus remains a health threat and Democrats continue their mail-in advantage, according to Lee Snover, head of the Republican Party in Northampton County, about 70 miles northeast Philadelphia. Northampton is one of three Pennsylvania counties whose voters flipped to Trump after supporting Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by the slimmest of margins-- just 45,000 votes, or less than a percentage point. At stake are 20 Electoral College votes, out of 270 a candidate needs to win the presidency. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of former industrial “Rust Belt” states that could decide this year’s election.

“It’s a real problem and could be really troubling come November,” Snover said. Trump supporters “simply don’t trust the process, and the president’s comments have not helped things, for sure.”

It’s not just Pennsylvania. Republicans nationwide appear less eager to embrace voting by mail. Just one-third of Republicans said they are at least somewhat likely to vote by mail in November, compared to two-thirds of Democrats and half of independents who said so, according to an April 30-May 4 Monmouth University poll.

The Republican National Committee said it has had a team on the ground in Pennsylvania since 2016 and is aggressively educating volunteers and supporters about the process to vote by mail.

“Republican voters are much more traditional, they generally like to vote in person,” said Rick Gorka, a senior member of the Republican National Committee and part of the Trump Victory re-election campaign. “Some level of discomfort is expected, but that’s why we are diligently working to retrain voters.”

IN TRUMP THEY TRUST

But Pennsylvania Republicans such as Frank Miller, a 51-year old business owner, could prove tough to persuade. He lives in Luzerne County, a politically divided region in the northeastern part of the state. Miller says there is no way he would vote by mail in November, pandemic or no pandemic.

“Most Trump supporters are like me-- we trust Trump but no one else,” Miller said. “When I see Democrats pushing it, I know there must be a sinister reason for it.”

Mail-in balloting has emerged as another highly charged issue in America’s polarized politics. Republicans in states across the country are engaged in legal battles to stop Democratic attempts to expand mail-in voting in response to the biggest U.S. health crisis in a century.

In Texas, the Democratic Party and a coalition of voters and civil rights groups have filed several lawsuits to expand mail balloting in light of the coronavirus. The Republican-led state government opposes those efforts, arguing mail ballots are prone to fraud and there’s not enough time or money to implement such a sweeping change.

In Nevada, several conservative groups have sued to block Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak’s plan to hold congressional and local primaries in June entirely by mail, arguing that, among other things, it violates the U.S. Constitution.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania, which has a Democratic governor and a divided legislature, have gone the other way. Last year the state passed legislation making it easier for citizens to vote by mail.

November will mark the first general election in which any registered voter in Pennsylvania can request an absentee ballot without having to provide an excuse such as illness or travel, and evidence to back it up. Those restrictions severely limited the number of people who could vote absentee in the past; mail ballots accounted for just 4.6% of all ballots cast there in the 2016 general election.

...Statewide, Democrats have sent texts to at least a million supporters, logged 500,000 calls and hosted over 1,200 attendees in online training sessions, according to the state party.

Republicans, too, are gearing up. Even as Trump denounces mail balloting, his campaign has organized virtual training in Pennsylvania to teach volunteers how to get Republicans to register for absentee ballots, which can be done online or by mail...

‘WE COULD PAY A PRICE’

Voting-rights advocates have denounced Republican efforts to limit mail-in voting as particularly unfair to minorities and low-income Americans, who tend to vote Democratic and also have been hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak.

But the Republican Party has created risks for itself by sewing doubts among its own members about casting absentee ballots in the midst of a public health emergency, said Robert Stein, a political science professor at Rice University who has studied mail balloting.

“It’s a terrible mistake for Republicans,” Stein said. “There is one party embracing innovation and there’s another fighting an obstacle, the president.”

Stein said the party that does the best job mobilizing supporters to vote by mail could gain the advantage if coronavirus is still raging in November and depresses in-person turnout.

In Pennsylvania, that prospect is worrying Sam DeMarco, head of the Republican Party in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh. He said if his party continues to lag Democrats badly in mail-in voting, Republicans will be under tremendous pressure to get their supporters to the polls on Election Day to overcome the absentee-ballot deficit, a big gamble in a pandemic.

“We don’t want to start the election down 500,000 votes,” DeMarco said. “Republican leaders in the state need to embrace it or else we could pay a price.”

Democrats Could Wind Up With A Big Senate Majority-- Too Bad Schumer And The DSCC Have It Rigged To Be A Conservative Majority

The media hasn't been talking about another anti-red wave-- nor even the idiotically-named "blue wave." But, take my word for it, even with the venality and incompetence of the Democratic Party establishment, that is exactly what's headed our way. In fact, in a Washington Post piece Seung Min Kim and Mike DeBonis wrote over the weekend-- Republicans Grow Nervous About Losing The Senate Amid Worries Over Trump's Handling Of The Pandemic-- they quoted a Republican Party official saying that "Everyone's fortunes are tied to the economy. It's going to be a tsunami." A tsunami is the next step after a wave. Republicans should be nervous. It isn't Schumer, the DSCC or any particularly talented Democratic candidates who are killing them. It's Donald J. Trump.

The Post's point is far from what people thought about the Senate races just a few months ago. The Republicans are now the underdogs and they "are increasingly nervous they could lose control of the Senate this fall as a potent combination of a cratering economy, President Donald Trump's controversial handling of the pandemic and rising enthusiasm among Democratic voters dims their electoral prospects. In recent weeks, GOP senators have been forced into a difficult political dance as polling shifts in favor of Democrats: Tout their own response to the coronavirus outbreak without overtly distancing themselves from a president whose management of the crisis is under intense scrutiny but who still holds significant sway with Republican voters. 'It is a bleak picture right now all across the map, to be honest with you,' said one Republican strategist closely involved in Senate races who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss concerns within the party. 'This whole conversation is a referendum on Trump, and that is a bad place for Republicans to be.'"

Republicans have privately become alarmed at the situation in key races where they are counting on GOP incumbents such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina to hold the line.

Multiple strategists said they believe GOP candidates will recover once the nation-- and the presidential campaign-- returns to a more normal footing, casting the November elections as a contest between Trump and presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Democratic Senate candidates in the most closely watched races also could be benefiting from a lack of scrutiny and negative ads with the nation's attention consumed by the pandemic.

But a return to normalcy ahead of the elections is far from a given as the death toll continues to rise and economic data paints a grim picture, meaning the president's handling of the pandemic could be the determining factor not only for his reelection but for Republicans' ability to hold onto the Senate. In short, as goes Trump, so likely goes the Senate majority.

The emerging consensus of several Republican strategists is that GOP incumbents should be able to hang on in states Trump won in 2016 if the president can hang onto those states himself. That list includes North Carolina, Arizona and Iowa, which Democrats are heavily targeting this cycle.

The flip side for Republicans is that states Trump lost in 2016-- such as Colorado and Maine-- could be out of reach. Many GOP strategists have already written off Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), barring a major shift, and some have doubts that Collins will be able to continue her trend of faring far better in elections than Republican presidential candidates she has shared the ballot with.

Republicans currently hold a 53-to-47 seat advantage in the Senate.

"The political environment is not as favorable as it was a few months ago," said another Republican, one of a half dozen officials working on Senate races who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the party's outlook.

Of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this fall, Republicans are defending 23 of them. Strategists from both parties said the key battles for Republicans remain races in North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Maine and, to a lesser extent, Iowa. Republicans are banking on picking up at least one seat now held by a Democrat-- Alabama, where Sen. Doug Jones won a special election in 2017 against a Republican challenger accused of sexual misconduct in the 1970s-- but acknowledge they are playing defense in the vast majority of the marquee races.

Potentially competitive races looming in the second tier of Senate campaigns-- where Republicans are also on the defensive-- could pose an even bigger problem for the GOP if the party is forced to spread resources throughout the country in a difficult political environment.

Both Senate seats are on the ballot in Georgia, a state whose changing demographics are trending in favor of Democrats. In Kansas, Republicans fear that flawed GOP candidate Kris Kobach could again emerge victorious from a primary but lose a statewide race, as he did in the 2018 race for governor.

And Senate Democrats' ability to get popular Montana Gov. Steve Bullock to run against Republican Sen. Steve Daines revived a once-dead race into a closely-watched contest, particularly as Bullock benefits from the wave of political goodwill voters have afforded to state executives during the pandemic.

"It's a good time to be a governor," said Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who heads Senate Republican's campaign committee, though he vowed Daines would win in November.

A third GOP strategist acknowledged that Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina had become "incredibly competitive" but said there was little sense yet that Democrats would be able to seriously compete in the next tranche of states that Trump won handily in 2016.

...Republicans warned there are clear obstacles-- none more so than strong Democratic fundraising, and the fear that small-dollar Democratic donors will be more resilient in the economic downturn than high-dollar GOP donors.

Democrats also plan to attack GOP senators for their opposition to the increasingly popular Affordable Care Act, with 2020 marking the first Senate elections where Democrats can target a large swath of Republicans for votes early in the Trump presidency to repeal the health law.

"Democrats have expanded the Senate map and put Mitch McConnell's majority at risk with impressive challengers, record-breaking grass roots fundraising, and a focus on the issues that matter most to voters like defending coverage protections for pre-existing conditions," said Stewart Boss, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

If only! The DSCC has a completely unimpressive roster of challengers, one crap right-of-center, establishment/status quo candidate after another-- John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Sara Gideon in Maine, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Barbara Bollier (an actual Republican state legislator running as a pretend Democrat) in Kansas, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, lobbyist and party hack Jamie Harrison in South Carolina! They didn't even manage to recruit any candidate to run against Tom Cotton in Arkansas! The only decent candidates they managed to recruit were Mark Kelly in Arizona and Steve Bullock in Montana, neither a Blue America-grade candidate, but each a candidate who won't force voters to hold their noses to mark a ballot for. But it won't even matter in most states. People just want to see the end of Trump's and McConnell's reign of terror and may be willing to vote for any piece of crap to get rid of them.

Normally I wouldn't want to predict a winner in a state that hasn't even had a primary yet to pick a candidate-- like Iowa, Kentucky and Georgia-- but it may not matter. The DSCC is backing the worst possible contenders in most contested primaries and people are so desperate to get rid of GOP incumbents that it may not make any difference. I'd say that if the anti-Trump wave continues building the way it is right now-- and it's more likely to strengthen than weaken-- Democrats will win these red states' seats in the list below. The Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer is on the right and if you're interested in electing progressive Democrats to the Senate, instead of DSCC garbage, please click on it and contribute what you can.

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Georgia (one, possibly both!)
• Iowa (this is the one state where the quality of the DSCC candidate might be bad enough to keep incumbent Joni Ernst in her seat)
• Kansas
• Maine
• Montana
• North Carolina

This is part of a misleading fundraising e-mail from the DSCC that they sent out on Sunday to persuade people to contribute to their efforts to replace Republicans with crappy conservative Democrats: