What's Really Wrong With Trump? Want To Know? Stare In The Damn Mirror

Can you just chalk Trump up to extraordinarily bad genes? Extraordinarily bad parenting? A really, really diseased mind? For sure, no one ever taught him/he never learned/he's incapable of being... someone who isn't a sociopathic malignant narcissist.

Dean Heller, like most Republican senators, figured out Trump is a truly dangerous sociopath early on. He toyed with opposition but weighed his options-- a primary from the right versus a stiff general election in a swing state-- and his calculus led him to button up his pie hole, smile, nod and back Trump. After all, he had never lost an election. His Senate career ended with Heller at a 91.6% Trump adhesion score, good enough to prevent a primary but no-good enough to prevent defeat by an utterly worthless Democratic opponent (who outspent him $25,463,471 to $15,119,555 and whose outside backers threw $34,814,754 against him, while his own outside backers only threw $20,685,500 against her). It was also not good enough to prevent Trump from taking a dump on his political grave this week. Debra Saunders reported in Adelson's Las Vegas newspaper that Trump told reporters on Wednesday that Heller lost because he had been "extraordinarily hostile" to the man at the center of the universe.

“What happened with Dean Heller is, I tried for him,” Trump said during a sit-down with regional reporters in the Oval Office. But he said hard-core voter base “did not believe me. They wouldn’t go for him.”

...Trump accused Heller of leaving the impression that he had voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.

“But the worst he said was ‘no comment,’ which is essentially the same” as saying he voted for Clinton, Trump contended. “When a senator walks out of a voting booth and he’s a Republican and he says ‘no comment,’ that’s not a good sign.”

...It was for that reason, Trump said, that he did not nominate Heller to be his next Interior secretary. Heller had been considered a leading candidate to replace former Secretary Ryan Zinke, but on Monday, Trump nominated acting Secretary David Bernhardt for the job.

“I just could never get my base excited on him,” Trump said, before he added, “I like him a lot.”

"A lot," huh? Imagine if Trump only liked him a little! Writing yesterday at Time, Nancy Gibbs wonders if the clown in the Oval Office "has so accustomed us to surprise that any script, however sincere, sounds phony and forced" and worries because before any honest-- or at least normal-- politicians "can start talking about vital needs or fresh ideas, candidates have to persuade us to listen. That task has perhaps never been harder, and not because we don’t care. We may just no longer know how."

Elections have consequences; so do campaigns, and Trump’s never actually stopped. Unlike his predecessors, he saw no need to shift from running to serving, never moved past the performance art of his massive rallies where he could repeat the same outlandish promises over and over, thrilling the crowds, appalling the fact checkers, confounding his adversaries. The universe of political discourse swelled, crashing through boundaries of truth, tradition and at times decency. The audience grew too, as people never much interested in politics were drawn to the dazzle. Meanwhile, traditional gatekeepers have found themselves at a loss for how to react, other than to overreact, overread messages, overplay hands. Shared stupefaction binds us like an audience at a horror movie, our lizard brains alight.

Trump is not responsible for our attention economy. He just got in early and looked to corner the market. All this had been a long time coming, the technologies hooking us on cheap and constant stimulus, our reflective reflexes weakening to the point that the last remaining political sin is now uncertainty.

Our political conversations have become not just dismal and mean but also way too focused on the combat instead of the context-- like which problems most need solving, who has the best solutions and whether there is enough common sense left anywhere to find common ground.

Bernie The Most Beloved Senator-- McConnell The Most Hated... Sound Familiar?

The people love Bernie-- the establishment of both corrupt DC parties fear him

I feel like I've written this post every year forever. Bernie is the most popular senator in America and Mitch McConnell is the most despised. Morning Consultant reported the new rankings. Their top-lines are that crooked New Jersey senator Bob Menendez is as unpopular in his state as Trump is and that Florida Dem, Bill Nelson, had the biggest net slide this year of any senator.

Vermont voters aren't just happy with Bernie. Patrick Leahy is almost as popular and comes in at #2 nationally. These are the top 10 most approved senators

• Bernie- 63%
• Patrick Leahy (D-VT)- 61%
• Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)- 58%
• Angus King (I-ME)- 58%
• John Thune (R-SD)- 58%
• Brian Schatz (D-HI)- 57%
• Mazie Hirono (D-HI) 57%
• Jack Reed (D-RI)- 56%
• John Hoeven (R-ND)- 54%
• Mike Rounds (R-SD)- 54%

The 10 senators with the highest disapproval numbers-- from most hated to somewhat less hated are all repulsive conservatives-- every single one of them:

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- 52%
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)- 49%
• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)- 48%
• Robert Menendez (D-NJ)- 46%
• John McCain (R-AZ)- 45%
• Dean Heller (R-NV)- 44%
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)- 43%
• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)- 43%
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)- 42%
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)- 41%

I've highlighted the senators who are "underwater"--meaning there are more people who hate them than like them-- by entering them in red. Only conservative Democrats Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp on this list have more positive ratings than negative ratings, although McCain 45% negative is almost erased by a 44% positive.

Nelson joined three other Senate Democrats on the ballot next month in Trump-won states-- Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia-- in trailing the president’s net popularity among their constituents.

Averages of the head-to-head polling tracked by RealClearPolitics up to Monday showed a close race in three of those states. In Florida, Nelson leads Scott by just 2 points. McCaskill (D-MO), who saw a net drop of 7 points in her approval in the third quarter, is essentially tied with Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley, and Donnelly, who also saw a net drop of 7 points over that time period, has a slight lead over Republican Mike Braun.

The six other Democrats from Trump-won states who are on the ballot this year are all more popular than the president, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (WI), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Jon Tester (MT), Sherrod Brown (OH), Bob Casey (PA) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND).

Baldwin posted the biggest quarterly improvement among vulnerable Democrats, with her net approval rising 6 points from the second quarter. She was followed by Heitkamp, who improved her net standing by 4 points. Head-to-head polling has found Heitkamp trailing her Republican rival, Rep. Kevin Cramer, by nearly 9 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was the quarter’s second most unpopular senator who will appear on the ballot next month, following McCaskill. His net approval rating fell by 8 points, to 16 points underwater, with 46 percent of Garden State voters disapproving of his job performance. Menendez is as unpopular in New Jersey as Trump, who lost the state to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 14 points during 2016.

Menendez leads his rival, Republican businessman Bob Hugin, by 7 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of New Jersey polls.

In Nevada, the net approval of Sen. Dean Heller-- the sole Republican incumbent running in a Clinton-won state-- is 7 points underwater after dropping a net 4 points in the third quarter.



In Texas, a Republican-friendly state where Cruz is facing a well-financed rival in Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the incumbent senator is 8 points more popular than the president in terms of net approval. Overall, 49 percent of Texas voters approve of Cruz.

Eliot Cohen Pronounces The Dissolution Of The Bond Between The GOP And Conservatism

Republican Values by Nancy Ohanian

Other than Jeff Flake, he wrote Sunday, "There was not a profile in courage to be seen. Not one." Eliot Cohen is a professor at Johns Hopkins and a neo-conservative thinker who worked for Condoleezza Rice at the Bush State Department. He was one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century and is the author, most recently, of The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force. He's a real war-monger and has been an unrelenting champion of going to war against Iraq and Iran. A Putin-hater, he was also a prominent Never-Trumper. Last year, he wrote in The Atlantic that "Many conservative foreign-policy and national-security experts saw the dangers last spring and summer, which is why we signed letters denouncing not Trump’s policies but his temperament; not his program but his character. We were right. And friends who urged us to tone it down, to make our peace with him, to stop saying as loudly as we could 'this is abnormal,' to accommodate him, to show loyalty to the Republican Party, to think that he and his advisers could be tamed, were wrong."

Over the weekend he published a new piece at The Atlantic, The Republican Party Abandons Conservatism. He's correct, but he doesn't identify the Republican Party with the fascism it has turned to. Maybe next year. He re-registered as an independent in 2016 after Trump occupied the White House. "Being a conservative," he wrote, "has always meant, to me, taking a certain view of human nature, and embracing a certain set of values and virtues. The conservative is warier than her liberal counterpart about the darker impulses and desires that lurk in men and women, more doubtful of their perfectibility, skeptical of and opposed to the engineering of individual souls, and more inclined to celebrate freedom moderated by law, custom, education and culture. She knows that power tends to corrupt, and likes to see it checked and divided. Words like responsibility, stoicism, self-control, frugality, fidelity, decorum, honor, character, independence, and integrity appeal to most decent people. They come particularly easily to the admirers of thinkers from Edmund Burke to Irving Kristol. The GOP threw frugality and fiscal responsibility away long ago, initially in the Reagan years, but now on a stunning scale involving trillion-dollar deficits as far as can be forecast. It abandoned most of its beliefs in fidelity and character when it embraced a liar, cheat, and philanderer as its nominee and then as president. But something else snapped this week." I guess you can imagine now that Cohen is no fan of Brett Kavanaugh nor of any of the Trump enablers like Kavanaugh.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy as expressed in various statements and conclusions was, for the most part, pretty standard conservative fare, save for one tell-tale element: his ascription of very high levels of immunity and discretion to the executive. In this respect what passes today for conservativism is anything but. Where traditionally, conservatives have wanted “ambition to check ambition” as Alexander Hamilton put it, Republicans are now executive-branch kinds of people. It is not surprising that Kavanaugh himself worked at a high level in a Republican White House. The disdain of many contemporary Republicans for congressional power and prerogative makes them indistinguishable from liberals who (as recently as the Obama years) turned to sweeping uses of executive power to circumvent a balky House of Representatives and Senate.

It was, however, in the epic clash over the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford that the collapse of conservatism in the Republican Party became most evident. Eleven men, most of them old, hid behind a female prosecutor wheeled in from Arizona because they could not, apparently, trust themselves to treat a victim of sexual assault with consideration and respect. So much for courage. Their anger at Democratic shenanigans was understandable, but virtually without exception, when they did summon up the nerve to speak (during Kavanaugh’s turn) their questions consisted almost exclusively of partisan baying at the opposition. Genuine conservatives might have snarled initially, but would, out of regard for the truth, tried to figure out exactly what happened to Ford 35 years ago, and whether the character of the man before them was what it was said to be.

Perhaps the collapse of modern conservatism came out most clearly in Kavanaugh’s own testimony-- its self-pity, its hysteria, its conjuring up of conspiracies, its vindictiveness. He and his family had no doubt suffered agonies. But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant, or disciplined courage from a firefighter rushing into a burning house, we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out. No one watching those proceedings could imagine that a Democrat standing before this judge’s bench in the future would get a fair hearing. This was not the conservative temperament on display. It was, rather, personalized grievance politics.

Real conservatives have always prided themselves on their willingness to stand up to their own kind in the name of moral principle. Think of Senator Robert Taft opposing the North Atlantic Treaty, knowing that those positions could destroy his political career. Taft was wrong in his views, but he was principled, he was courageous, and he went down speaking truth as he saw it. William F. Buckley took on the John Birch Society in the middle of the 20th century, and the anti-Semites in the conservative camp later on. In 1993, when Buckley had to choose between loyalty to Joseph Sobran, his long-time protégé and colleague at the National Review, and rejection of bigotry, principle won and he fired his friend.

During the Ford and Kavanaugh testimonies, Americans watched the cranky maunderings of Senator Chuck Grassley and the spitting, menacing fury of Senator Lindsey Graham. The combination of calm strength and good humor that characterized the modern conservative icon, Ronald Reagan, was nowhere to be found. But that spirit, the spirit of a president who celebrated America as a city on a hill that was generous abroad, welcoming to newcomers, and self confident at home, has been replaced by the sour meanness of a party chiefly of men, who build walls to keep the world out, erect tariffs to destroy free trade, despise the alliances that keep Americans secure, and sanction the deliberate plucking of babes from their mothers’ breasts in order to teach illegal immigrants a painful lesson. In such a world, decorum and courtesy are irrelevant.

There was always been a dark side to American conservatism, much of it originating in the antebellum curse of a society, large parts of which favored slavery and the extermination of America’s native population, the exclusion of immigrants from American life, and discrimination against Catholics and Jews. Many of us had hoped that the civil-rights achievements of the mid-20th century (in which Republicans were indispensable partners), changing social norms regarding women, and that rising levels of education had eliminated the germs that produced secession, lynching, and Indian massacres. Instead, those microbes simply went into dormancy, and now, in the presence of Trump, erupt again like plague buboes-- bitter, potent and vile.

The last twitches of conservative independence consisted of Senator Jeff Flake securing a week-long FBI investigation of Ford’s charges. For the rest, there was not a profile in courage to be seen. Not one.

It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back. Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work. And so it will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple. It might stumble into a political tar pit and cease to exist or it might survive as a curious, decaying relic of more savage times and more primitive instincts, lashing out and crushing things but incapable of much else.

Intellectuals do not build American political parties. Politicians do. The most we can do is point out the truths as we see them, and cheer on those who can do the necessary work. It is supposedly inconceivable that a genuinely conservative party could emerge, but then again, who thought the United States could be where it is now? And progressives no less than bereft conservatives should want this to happen, because the conservative virtues remain real virtues, the conservative insights real insights, and the conservative temperament an indispensable internal gyro keeping a country stable and sane. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man” runs the proverb. The hour is upon the country: conservatives wait for the men (or more likely women) to meet it.

While conservatives wait for a messiah to rescue them from Trumpism, may I humbly suggest that you help us rid our country of the unfettered power Trump now exercises with the connivance of his congressional rubber-stamps and enablers, like Drunken Hunter (CA-50) and Chris Collins (NY-27), the first two members of Congress to endorse him, both currently awaiting trial for dozens of personal enrichment fraud charges. See this thermometer on the right? That's a 2018 ActBlue congressional thermometer for heavily vetted progressive candidates devoted to our country and to a sense of integrity and truth. Even if you're a conservative through and through-- and believe in conservative values-- we all need to keep our eyes on the ball: checking Donald Trump's authoritarian nature. Click the thermometer and you'll find congressional candidates who will help do just that. Please contribute what you can to their campaigns. You'll be happy to know that none of the money you contribute goes anywhere near the DCCC or the DNC or to any crooked consultants. 100% goes right to the candidates of your choice.

Two crucial Senate seats are slipping out of the GOP's grasp. They have been desperate to hold onto Dean Heller's seat in Nevada and were certainty could win Claire McCaskill's seat in Missouri, a state with a PVI of R+9 (same as Indiana and Mississippi), which Trump won 56.77% to 38.14%. A pair of new SSRS Research polls, released this afternoon by CNN, show the Democrats ahead in both:

What's the common denominator? The toxicity of Señor Trumpanzee doesn't really tell the full story. Among likely voters in red Missouri 51% of likely voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job compared to 45% who disapprove. But among likely voters in purple Nevada 51% disapprove and just 45% approve when asked the Trump question; the exact opposite. McCaskill is fighting a successful uphill battle to present herself as a Missouri candidate above the national fray. Jacky Rosen, pretty much a nothing candidate, looks like she'll just washed into office in the anti-Trump/amti-red wave.

Shutting Down The Government Is Now A Game Of Chicken For Trumpanzee

A friend of mine used to be in business with one of Trump's lawyers. He told my friend and my friend told me a funny story. Lawyers hate working for Trump and not only because he doesn't pay his bill. This particular lawyer told him that among lawyers who have worked for Trump this is fairly common. He and Trump would be their way to court. The lawyer would say something to the effect of "Now, whatever happens, whatever the judge asks you, do not under any circumstances say 'XYZ.'" So they get to court and the judge says, "For the record, please state your name." And Trump says, "Let's cut the crap and get right to the matter at hand, 'XYZ.'"

Do you think Trump has changed his ways? He hasn't. And it isn't just with lawyers. Trump's a dick who thinks he knows better than anyone else in the room. And wants to prove it. This week Eliana Johnson and Burgess Everett, reporting for Politico, wrote about the GOP Senate luncheon with Señor Trumpanzee. They wrote that the senators didn’t ask too many questions to Señor T "but the party’s most vulnerable incumbent did make one big ask: Please, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller pleaded, don’t shut down the government over funding for a border wall before the midterm elections." But that's exactly what Trumpanzee plans to do and he certainly doesn't care what Dean Heller has to say about it.

Picking that fight during an election season would hurt Republicans at the ballot box, Heller told Trump, according to an attendee and two people briefed on the meeting. Though Heller prefaced his request by heaping praise on the president, Trump was noncommittal. “We’ll see what happens,” he told the group.

Heller, who confirmed he asked Trump not to shut down the government, was speaking for Republican lawmakers who fear that the president’s desire to follow through on one of his signature campaign promises could undermine their attempt to maintain control of the upper chamber. While Trump held campaign rallies with a raucous audience pushing him to “build the wall” at the U.S. border with Mexico, many Senate Republicans want to avoid a government shutdown at all costs-- at least between now and the November elections.

Government funding runs out on Sept. 30, and Trump is laser-focused on getting his wall money in the next fiscal year, telling senators on Twitter not to take their usual August recess unless the border is secured.

...[Trump] has in recent weeks expressed frustration with his advisers about the lack of progress on border security. He blew up at his Homeland Security chief, Kirstjen Nielsen, for example, during a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, telling his advisers that the border remains too porous, and he has privately groused to friends that his team isn’t being aggressive enough.

While the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill Trump signed into law in March allocated $1.6 billion for border security, it focuses on fencing rather than a massive wall as envisioned by the president and is far short of the $25 billion that White House officials wanted. That was one of many aspects of the legislation that infuriated the president and made him tell associates subsequently that he wished he had vetoed the effort and would stop future, similar efforts.

Heller, who is facing Democratic challenger Rep. Jacky Rosen in November, is widely considered the most vulnerable Republican in the Senate and has for months now sought to chart middle-of-the-road positions that will appeal to Nevada’s moderate voters without drawing Trump’s ire.

Alan Grayson was a member of Congress when the Republicans shut down the government last time. Now Trump wants to-- really wants to-- do it again. "Trump hears that you don’t like what Trump is doing," Trump said to Bill Gates, who thought, "Wow, but you are Trump." Grayson wasn't there for that crazy little get-together. Today, he told us that "If you look at the polling during the government shutdown that cost $27 billion during the Obama Administration, you’ll see that the GOP suffered a crushing 10-point drop in generic polling right then. Which they recovered from, because other things happened, and in the following election, I don’t remember a single Democrat in the entire country ran an ad condemning them for the shutdown. But if Trump does it again, maybe the Democrats won’t let the GOP off the hook this time." I'm sure Grayson won't let them off any hooks... anytime.

How The Politics Of Healthcare Have Made Dean Heller Unelectable In Nevada

Dean Heller is a squishy mainstreamish Republican senator from Nevada. He was appointed to the seat by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval in 2011 when corrupt Republican John Ensign was forced to resign. Before getting into politics, Heller was a stock broker. In 2012 he was challenged by a corrupt New Dem, Shelley Berkley and managed to beat her 457,656 (45.87%) to 446,080 (44.71%)-- an 11,576 vote margin (against an incredibly weak and unattractive candidate who many Democrats just couldn't persuade themselves to vote for).

This cycle, Heller is a dead dog. He has a Trumpist opponent, Danny Tarkanian and another crappy DSCC-backed conservaDem just like Berkley (totally unqualified Jacky Rosen) and a Berniecrat the DSCC is trying to derail, Jesse Sbaih. Sarah Palin has already endorsed Tarkanian and the most recent poll of Republican voters shows Heller losing the primary to Tarkanian 39-31%. There is no doubt that Bannon's whole Roy Moore neo-fascist support team will be showing up in Nevada to destroy Heller as soon as they've finished destroying Luther Strange in Alabama-- and teaching Trump a lesson about where he gets his marching orders.

Unlike Heller, Rand Paul stood up to Trump's bullying and bribes

You know the TrumpCare bill that John McCain just torpedoed, commonly known as Graham-Cassidy? That was actually short for Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson. And that's weird for someone who made such a big deal about sticking with the very popular Governor who originally appointed him to the Senate, Brian Sandoval. Sandoval has denounced the bill as detrimental to Nevadans. This week the Nevada Independent report on this sounded like an early Dean Heller political obituary.

Gov. Brian Sandoval said Thursday that the flexibility fellow Republican Sen. Dean Heller promised will be good for Nevada in a health-care bill he’s sponsoring is a “false choice” because the legislation will also slash funding.

Sandoval, in a statement to the Nevada Independent, said he would not “pit seniors, children, families, the mentally ill, the critically ill, hospitals, care providers or any other Nevadan against each other” because of the steep cuts to federal funding the state would face if the Heller-sponsored measure were to pass. A state analysis, also obtained by the Nevada Independent, agrees with independent calculations from various health-care organizations estimating Nevada will lose between $600 million and $2 billion in federal funding by 2026 if the legislation passes.

As tensions mounted this week with Senate Republicans renewing a health-care debate thought to be laid to rest, Heller publicly touted the “flexibility” the measure would create by dividing up the federal dollars currently spent on the Affordable Care Act among the states in the form of a block grant. Where Sandoval only gently rebuffed Heller on Tuesday, saying he appreciated the “intended flexibility” of the bill, the careful, deliberative Sandoval-- not one to rush to the presses with a strongly worded statement-- didn’t mince words on Thursday.

“Flexibility with reduced funding is a false choice,” Sandoval said in the statement. “I will not pit seniors, children, families, the mentally ill, the critically ill, hospitals, care providers, or any other Nevadan against each other because of cuts to Nevada’s health-care delivery system proposed by the Graham-Cassidy amendment.”

Sandoval’s statement stands in sharp relief against one issued just two days earlier, in which the even-keeled governor attempted to soften the blow to Heller after authoring a letter with a group of nine other bipartisan governors urging Senate leadership not to consider the proposal. In the earlier statement, Sandoval said that Heller is “working in the best interest of the state” while gently, but firmly reiterating that he favors a bipartisan fix to the nation’s health-care system.

The recent rift between the two Republicans is also a sharp turn of events from June, when Sandoval and Heller stood side by side to harshly condemn Senate Republicans’ last repeal-and-replace plan, saying that it would strip health care away from millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. Sandoval remained mum for weeks on the measure, initially drafted by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy and signed onto by Heller amid a week of heated health-care negotiations in the Senate in July.

Heller publicly touted that “Nevada wins” under the measure, which would divvy up the block grant annually based on states’ numbers of poor or near-poor residents as well as create a per capita cap on the half-century old Medicaid program. The Republican senator, who is up for re-election in 2018, has had to walk a fine line amid discussions in the Senate over the past couple of months about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, facing a challenge from the more conservative Danny Tarkanian.

...[W]hile the bill sponsors compare the amount of money Nevada will receive in 2026 under Graham-Cassidy when the block grant ends to how much it will receive in 2020 when the block grant begins, the correct analysis would be to compare the projected funding Nevada will receive in 2026 under the Affordable Care Act under the status quo compared to what it would receive in 2026 under Graham-Cassidy. When that comparison is done, Nevada loses between $600 million to $2 billion by most organizations’ calculations, the state analysis says.

Over months of discussions about repealing the Affordable Care Act, Sandoval has repeatedly argued against touching the extra dollars the federal health-care law made available to states that chose to opt in to an expansion of Medicaid, a point he reiterated in the Thursday statement. Sandoval was the first Republican governor to opt in to Medicaid expansion, and the state has since entirely restructured the way it provides services, such as mental health care, to rely on those new federal Medicaid dollars.

“As Governor, I made a commitment to use all the tools available to ensure Nevadans had access to affordable and quality health care. I made the decision to expand Medicaid to never before covered populations, including childless adults and pregnant women,” Sandoval said. “I made the decision to leverage all the federal funding possible through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and to work to improve the health-care system for those with mental illness, addictions and disabilities.”

Before the state expanded Medicaid, the uninsurance rate was 20.7 percent, 27 percent for adults under 65 and 14.8 percent for children; after, the uninsured rate dropped by 9.3 percentage points, down to 11.4 percent in 2016. Between Medicaid expansion and the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange, nearly 400,000 Nevadans have gained access to health care, including more than 300,000 in Medicaid and nearly 90,000 on the exchange, Sandoval said.

According to the state’s analysis, more than 200,000 people currently receiving Medicaid will lose coverage when the block grant goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 and need to be moved to other coverage with unknown costs. An additional 90,000 Nevadans who purchase insurance on the exchange would also be left without access to subsidized coverage.

The per capita cap that Graham-Cassidy places on Medicaid funding, which organizations who have analyzed the bill do not believe will keep pace with the costs of providing health care, will “fundamentally” change the federal Medicaid program without analyzing the cost of long-term impacts to the state, the state analysis says.

The legislation will also reduce the ability for states to levy provider taxes from 6 percent to 4 percent over time, which will limit Nevada’s ability to help finance increased Medicaid payments to nursing homes. The reduction will result in a $10 million per year reduction in payments to nursing homes by 2025, according to the state’s analysis.

The state analysis says Graham-Cassidy will also reduce the $8 million in prevention and public health funding Nevada receives annually to pay for immunizations and conduct disease investigations to protect public health, as well as reduce Nevada’s hospitals from accessing Medicaid funds in retroactive months of eligibility in many cases, resulting in more uncompensated care and cost burdens being shifted to other parts of the health-care system.

“I have said many times before that I will not support legislation that may result in a cost shift to the State or result in Nevadans losing insurance coverage,” Sandoval said. “I cannot in good faith support the Graham-Cassidy amendment.”

Nevada's U.S. Senate Race Looks Wide Open-- Party Establishment Picks May Fail To Make The Final Ballot

The ad above by Save My Care started running yesterday in Nevada, where panic-stricken serial flip flopper Dean Heller is widely seen as the most vulnerable Senate incumbent up for reelection in 2018. After vowing to Nevadans to not help GOP extremists repeal Obamacare he was threatened by Trump and immediately buckled and voted against Nevadans. And now he's back with another bill he helped write that will rip healthcare away from even more Americans than the last one! Below is the ad a Trump SuperPAC, with money raised by Mike Pence, used as an effective cudgel to beat up Heller and force him to switch his postion from the pro-healthcare position that the popular Republican governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, embraces to flat-out a flat-out anti-healthcare stand that Nevadans hate:



Last year Clinton beat Trump in Nevada, 539,260 (47.92%) to 512,058 (45.50%). She won big in Clark County (Vegas)-- 52.43% to 41.72%-- and narrowly in Washow County (Reno)-- 46.39% to 45.14%-- enough to take the state's 6 electoral votes. On the same day Catherine Cortez Masto beat Republican Joe Heck for the U.S. Senate seat, also narrowly-- 521,994 (47.1%) to 495,079 (44.7%). Nevada is a swing state trending blue.

Schumer and Harry Reid have selected the worst possible candidate to run against Heller, conservative and utterly undistinguished and unaccomplished, Republican-lite freshman Jacky Rosen. Rosen has already earned one of the lowest "F" scores of any Democrat in Congress from ProgressivePunch, normally voting with the Blue Dogs on every important issue. In July Stanley Paher wrote in the Reno Gazette-Journal that it would be very unwise for the Democrats to run her. "For more than a half century," he wrote, "successful Nevada politicians have ascended from lower offices upwards into the U.S. Senate. These include Paul Laxalt, Harry Reid, Dick Bryan and Dean Heller. In contrast, a non-political background as touted by Rosen seldom translates into electoral success. How does synagogual leadership, computer programming skills, and familial experience translate into votes? Her lone electoral win last November was a 1% squeaker against a very weak Republican who had lost 5 elections over the past 8 years... The Rosen forces will point to Las Vegas’ large Democratic registration as an advantage for her statewide bid. But tell that to the bushel full of Nevada Democrats who lost in the 2014 midterm elections up and down ballot, as well as in 2010 when Joe Heck bested incumbent Las Vegas Congresswoman Dina Titus and Republicans Krolicki and Sandoval won in landslides for Nevada’s top two offices."

Rosen beat Danny Tarkanian, a crackpot Trumpist, for the open congressional seat last year, 146,869 (47.2%) to 142,926 (46%). The southern Clark County district, basically everything south of the airport, including Henderson and Boulder City, right down to the tip of the state where California, Arizona and Nevada meet in the Mohave Valley. Obama won the district both times but Hillary lost it to Trump 47.5% to 46.5%. Rosen's brief tenure in Congress has shown her to be, basically, everything that voters in NV-03 didn't like about Clinton. She's a disaster as a candidate and Reid and Schumer-- and EMILY's Lidt, of course-- stumbled right into it.

Meanwhile the Trumpist, Tarkanian, is primarying Heller with the support for Bannon and the rest of the whole nationalist fringe of the GOP. The most recent poll of Nevada Republicans-- which shows Trump with an 80% approval rating and Heller with a 34% approval-- indicates that Tarkanian would beat him 39-31% if the primary were held today.

Democrats do have a choice in their own primary as well. If they want to stand up to the party bosses-- Reid and Schumer-- they can vote for a Berniecrat in the race, Jesse Sbaih, someone who Reid rejected as a Democratic candidate last year because of his Muslim faith. When he was running for Congress, Reid told him to get out of the race because "a Muslim cannot win this race." Unlike Rosen Sbaih is a dedicated progressive and has pledged to fight for Medicare-For-All. Rosen is one of the minority of House Democrats who has refused to co-sponsor John Conyers' Medicare-For-All bill. Sbaih's wife is a physician and he has made Medicare-For-All one of the keystones of his campaign.

I Don't Feel Sorry For Paul Ryan-- He Made This Bed

As I sat down to write this post, the big headlines at Bannon's and Mercer's extreme right website were a series of attacks on Trump chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kushner-in-law and on the Senate's most vulnerable Republican, Dean Heller. The anti-Heller diatribe was something that has many congressional Republicans wondering when they should break with the Trump Regime for their own political survival.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Danny Tarkanian for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, an endorsement Palin and Tarkanian provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release.

“Danny Tarkanian is a conservative outsider who will support the ‘America First’ policies our nation needs to survive and thrive, including building the border wall, ending sanctuary cities, and finally repealing Obamacare,” Palin said in the statement endorsing Tarkanian, provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “Commonsense Conservatives in Nevada and across America need to unite and help win this critical fight. I strongly endorse Danny Tarkanian for the United States Senate and look forward to helping him win this important election.”

...Tarkanian’s race against Heller comes as Heller, a far-outside-the-mainstream establishment Republican, has not stood with President Trump on most issues. For instance, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Heller “bragged about his dissent against the Republican-backed health reform bills” and he “stated he would continue to uphold” support for former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty for illegal alien youths.

In addition, Heller announced his opposition to the idea that President Trump would pardon Arizona’s former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Meanwhile, a top player inside the Mercer/Bannon operation contacted Blue America to ask if we would partner with them on a project to topple Paul Ryan who they hate with a fierce passion. They really hate Ryan-- probably as much as we do. The WI-01 congressional race will hinge on independent voters choosing between Ryan's increasingly ugly and deteriorating brand and the vibrant and sparkling everyman brand Wisconsin iron worker Randy Bryce has patiently built up for years. A little over a third of the midterm voters will be Republicans and a slightly smaller number will be Democrats. But over a quarter of the voters will be independents who are indicating in no uncertain terms they don't think Ryan has earned another reelection. Trump-leaning independents are as adamant as Democratic-leaning independents that Ryan is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Politico's Rachel Bade covers Ryan from a very sympathetic perspective. Yesterday she asked the country to feel sorry for his plight. "For all its power and prestige," she empathizes for her idol, "the speaker of the House is one of the most thankless jobs in Washington-- just ask John Boehner. Now, with Congress barreling toward major fiscal fights this fall, Paul Ryan is about to get a taste of the Boehner treatment-- and then some. Consider what's on the immediate horizon for the GOP wunderkind: President Donald Trump is ready to shut down the government over his border wall with Mexico. Breitbart has all but declared a renewed, Steve Bannon-led war on GOP leaders, with Ryan in its cross hairs. And conservative lawmakers are exhorting the speaker to play hardball on raising the debt ceiling-- even as the White House demands a no-strings-attached increase to calm nervous creditors."

"Conservatives aren’t going to roll over when it comes to the debt ceiling,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) in a Tuesday interview. “I can tell you: It’s going to be a battle.”

Asked about Ryan’s leadership on such matters, Walker added: “I would like to see his genius in policy manifest itself… Behind closed doors, there are strong conversations when it comes to holding the line for the will of the bulk of the conference. And I would like to see some strength in that area.”

When Ryan reluctantly took the reins of the House Republican Conference in late 2015, he went out of his way to say he was only heeding the call of duty and didn't really want it. Two years later, he faces the most treacherous stretch of his speakership as September showdowns over the budget and debt ceiling approach.

Like Boehner, Ryan will be forced to mediate the long-running hostilities in his conference-- between the always-potent Freedom Caucus and a newly-empowered faction of centrists. Only this time, Ryan also has a demanding and unpredictable president thrown into the mix, too.

Trump isn't making it easy. On Thursday he attacked Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for rejecting his proposed strategy of pairing a debt ceiling increase, a toxic vote for Republicans, with a popular veterans bill to garner more support.

GOP leaders rejected the approach because they ran out of time before recess and worried some Republicans would fume that they got arm-twisted into voting for the debt bill they'd otherwise oppose but for the vets provision.

Trump didn't care about those sensitivities, tweeting Thursday: “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval.... They didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

That slight came just days after Trump said he'd be willing to shut down the government in order to secure funding for his border wall-- a strategy that could backfire on the Republican congressional majority in next year's midterms. And as if that's wasn't enough stress, Ryan will almost certainly be forced to rely on Democrats for the fall’s big fiscal votes-- a move that was eventually Boehner’s undoing.

No one is saying Ryan's job is in jeopardy. But the way he handles all these situations could well determine his standing and popularity within the GOP.

Meanwhile, frustration is mounting among Republican voters that Congress failed to deliver on campaign promises like repealing Obamacare. While Ryan points out that the House passed legislation and it was the Senate that came up short, the public isn't necessarily interested in that distinction.

Neither, it seems, are Trump and his allies. In fact, the president has shown he has no compunction about blaming Republicans in Congress for not enacting his agenda. And while Bannon engaged politely with Ryan and GOP leaders in the White House, he’s made clear that he plans to pound them relentlessly from his new perch atop Breitbart.

"You can see the emerging theme from Trump world is that Trump doesn’t fail; Trump has been betrayed," said longtime Ryan acquaintance Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative commentator based in Wisconsin. "They’re going to line up the scapegoats... No matter how much [Ryan] appeases Trump, it won’t take long for Trump for turn on him."

Most of Trump's ire has lately centered on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in retribution for failing to pass a bill to repeal Obamacare. But the Trump-Ryan marriage has always been one more of convenience than true love, so many are wondering how much longer it will last.

Here in Ryan’s southeast Wisconsin district, longtime Ryan supporters worry their congressman will be crippled from all the impossible demands and pressures. Marlene Lamberton, a Ryan constituent and retired manufacturing employee from Caledonia, Wis., said this week that Ryan is being “forced to do many unpopular things” and “make a lot of compromises" because his conference is so divided.

“Being speaker of the House has become a setback… It’s basically ruined his career for a while,” she said. “I think Paul Ryan is a good person. I think he’s one of the most honest politicians I’ve ever known and heard. But I think he is compromising his values a little.”

We contacted David Keith, Randy Bryce's Racine-based campaign manager about how this is playing out in southeast Wisconsin. He told us that "Ryan finds himself in a very precarious situation: does he hug the far right in the hopes of fending off a revolution from the Bannon-types, or does he dismiss the far right in the hopes of winning enough of the independent vote to get him to 50+1? The latter is the type of tactic Ryan is normally comfortable with. In Ryan world, his cookie-cutter style will be: dump millions of negative advertising on Randy Bryce while amplifying the 'aw-shucks' Mr. Nice Guy/I'm your wonky neighbor type to target milk toast moderates (a vote that I believe is becoming few and far between).

"There is a problem with this approach however. 1/3 (maybe slightly less) of the vote will be independent, meaning that he would have to win 75% of the independent vote in addition to winning ALL of the Republican vote. If Ryan deserts Trump and his Bannon-type extremists, he CAN'T win 100% of the Republican vote, or even anything remotely close to that. They may stay home. They may vote for the iron-worker, or they may vote for a third party...

"So this dynamic begs the question: is Paul Ryan nearing a check mate scenario? No matter how bad the Koch Regime and their money apparatus muddy up Randy's name, Democrats are eager to vote, Independents hate the President and his agenda so their vote will likely mirror the Democratic voter sentiment, and the far right hates Ryan. I don't see a majority coalition there for Ryan.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, might be the phrase increasingly playing in Lyin-Ryan's head for the next 15 months."

Both Political Parties Start The 2018 Primary Season Mired In Civil War

Instead of Heller vs Rosen, how about Sbaih vs Tarkanian?

Yesterday, you may have seen that an American Research Group poll of likely presidential primary voters in New Hampshire showed that John Kasich leads Trump 52-40%. And if Trump is replaced by Pence, the news is even better for Kasich. In a 2-man head to head, Kasich leads Pence 41-27%. Also yesterday morning, Nevada Trumpist-- and serial loser--Danny Tarkanian went on Trump's favorite TV show, Fox & Friends, to announce his primary challenge to Republican Senator Dean Heller. Heller, who vehemently opposed TrumpCare, was threatened by Trump and Pence-- threats that included a negative TV ad paid for by a PAC for which Pence raised the money-- and he flip-flopped and sold out Nevada voters rather than man up and take the heat the way Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) and John McCain (R-AZ) did. Heller, no doubt, imagined he would be safe from Trumpist rage by surrendering. That doesn't seem to be working out for him. GOP pollster Strategic National showed Heller having a tough time in a match with Tarkanian, edging him, 38-34%, within the poll's margin of error. In a 3-way match up including Rep. Mark Amodei, Amodei leads with 27% to Heller's 26% and Tarkanian's 21%.

David Drucker reported for the Washington Examiner, a GOP website, that Trumpanzee and the GOP "are increasingly at each other's throats at a time when lawmakers are back in their districts for recess. Trump sometimes treats congressional Republicans as an opposition party, tweeting criticism of them and reprimanding them in public settings. Republicans have taken to doing the same-- ignoring the president as if his spotlight-grabbing tweets don't exist and rebuking him on key elements of his foreign and domestic priorities."

Trump's rise has elevated the populists, often working-class and rural voters, who tend to be less fiscally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy and more motivated by cultural wedge issues like guns and same-sex marriage, than traditional conservatives, who tend to hold down white-collar jobs and live in the suburbs.

The conflict has infected intraparty relations in the states and at the grassroots level as well, leading to factionalism and a group of party loyalists who are a separate and distinct group from Trump loyalists, although there is overlap.

"The populist-conservative fusion has been coming for some time," Republican strategist Brad Todd said. "The trick is going to be finding some things that each branch of the party wants that the other branch can live with."

The impact has been felt among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Whether on repealing Obamacare, controlling government spending or immigration reform, they periodically run into trouble in advancing their own agenda because of they can't agree among themselves. But Trump certainly controls the party apparatus.

The installation of Kayleigh McEnany as national spokesman for the Republican National Committee is the latest example of Trump's takeover. McEnany doesn't have experience as a professional GOP communications operative, as an individual in her position usually does.

But she is a Trump loyalist who excelled in an arena important to the president: on CNN as television surrogate.

Trump nevertheless remains, in many respects, a stranger in his own party. That's most evident in his reliance on Vice President Mike Pence, a traditional Reagan conservative, for political and policy outreach.

Pence was an essential tool Trump used during the general election to reassure skeptical Republicans that they could trust the GOP nominee. Pence also forged connections between with a standoffish party establishment whose work on the ground was important to helping Trump win.

The president's dependence on Pence has continued long past Election Day, however.

Two-hundred days into his administration, Trump hasn't developed the array of relationships with members of his party on Capitol Hill that the previous Republican other president had or, in place of those connections, strong personal and political loyalty.

Pence is still the president's conduit to many Republicans on Capitol Hill-- the White House figure congressional Republicans actually trust and prefer to deal with. As Sen. Jim Inhofe told the Washington Examiner during an interview in late June when asked what Trump could do to ensure passage of legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare:

"Keep in mind, his greatest ally in helping him is the vice president," the Oklahoma Republican said on June 22, roughly one month before the Senate GOP bill failed. "That's an area where he's going to be more prominent in trying to help get this through than the president, because he has the direct contact with the individuals."

The vice president is also Trump's go-to for much of the party-building activities outside of Washington that are normally overseen more directly by the president and his staff. It's that dynamic that created the atmosphere for speculation to flourish that Pence had ulterior motives for launching a leadership PAC and traveling the country to raise money and campaign on behalf off down-ticket Republicans.

"The party is damaged and fractured," a former House GOP leadership aide said. "Part of that was a pre-existing condition, and part of that is Trump throwing gas on the fire every day."

Good to know it isn't just the Democrats going through a primary season civil war. With Pelosi's DCCC and the DC establishment Democrats using Medicare-for-All-- and a progressive agenda in general-- as a litmus test to oppose congressional candidates, Beltway media outlets like Politico are helping them twist the framing to make it sound like progressives are enforcing a litmus test against the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. "House and Senate Democrats," wrote Gabriel Debenedetti, "have wondered for months whether Bernie Sanders’ supporters might choose to focus their energy on launching primary challenges to party moderates in 2018. They’re about to get an answer... The Vermont senator himself has not explicitly said he’ll support primary challenges to those who won’t support his push for a so-called Medicare-for-all health care plan. But there are plenty of signs that Sanders and his allies view the issue as a defining moment for Democratic lawmakers."

As we showed yesterday, the DCCC spends tens of millions of dollars backing Blue Dogs, New Dems, "ex"-Republicans and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, while starving progressives of any meaningful support. But for lazy, easily-spun Beltway types like Debenedetti, it is the Bernie backers who are about litmus tests. In his reporting about the Nevada Senate primary Debenedetti doesn't even mention that the extremely right-of-center establishment candidate, Jacky Rosen, is one of the Trumpiest Democrats in Congress with one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in the House and an "F" score from Progressive Punch.

[E]ven as leading party figures have drifted toward supporting a single-payer system similar to the one proposed by Sanders, almost none of them expect anything like it to become law while Republicans control Washington.

With Sanders promising to play a major role in 2018 races, that’s led many party officials to worry about the prospect of his involvement in primaries that could upend the Democratic establishment’s plans to win crucial House, Senate and gubernatorial seats.

The fears are acute enough that when the Nevada chapter of Our Revolution-- the political group spawned from the Sanders presidential campaign-- endorsed long-shot candidate Jesse Sbaih in the state’s Democratic Senate primary over party favorite Rep. Jacky Rosen, retired former Sen. Harry Reid felt the need to call Sanders directly.

Don’t endorse Sbaih, and don’t let the national Our Revolution group accept its Nevada chapter's recommendation to back him either, the former minority leader implored his friend. Sanders agreed, said a Democrat familiar with the interaction.

“There’s a concern that [Sanders allied] people will try to make a stir,” said a senior Democratic aide working on a 2018 campaign. “You can’t just be a liberal Democrat in a lot of these states and be elected. [So] the question is how we improve the lives of people instead of playing these political games."

Sanders allies don’t find that argument convincing.

“Any Democrat worth their salt that doesn’t unequivocally say Medicare-for-all is the way to go? To me, there’s something wrong with them,” said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution. “We’re not going to accept no more hemming and hawing. No more game playing. Make your stand.”

...The Vermont independent has signaled that he expects serious resistance even from Democrats, but he has yet to spell out how he'll fight back.

“We will be taking on the most powerful special interests in the country: Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the corporate media, the Republican Party and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party,” he emailed supporters last Tuesday.

What’s clear is that Sanders’ large and politically active following has stopped Democrats from confronting him directly — including when it comes to offering alternatives to his Medicare-for-all measure. Many still remember the swift and angry January response from grass-roots progressives including Sanders supporters toward Booker for a symbolic drug importation vote, and toward Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her procedural vote in favor of Ben Carson’s nomination as Housing secretary.

“It represents the broader question of what the Democratic Party stands for, [so] this is a fundamental moment for Democratic senators. It’s an issue that everyone is going to be watching to see how they respond,” said Chuck Idelson, a senior operative for the National Nurses United union, which served as one of the most prominent backers of Sanders’ campaign and has long been a needle in the side of establishment Democrats.

Like many Democrats who are closely aligned with Sanders’ political operation, Idelson stopped short of primary threats. But he refused to rule out the possibility that his group might consider backing challenges of sitting Democratic lawmakers who don’t back the plan.

“Our organization, and plenty of other people out there, are going to be holding the Democrats accountable,” Idelson said. “What are we electing people for if they’re not going to be fighting for getting people health care when they need it?”

Other Sanders-allied progressives have been equally adamant on the need to give his Medicare-for-all push a starring role in forthcoming primaries after the recent Capitol Hill health care fights and the stalling of a much-publicized California state legislative proposal.

“We should run on Medicare-for-all in the 2018 and 2020 elections,” said Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna, a Sanders backer who has encouraged primary challenges. “The Democrats that are activists are there, the Democratic voters are there, but now we just need enough of the elected officials to listen to where their constituents are.”

The distrust between Sanders forces and the establishment is increasing the tension. Some Democratic senators privately bristled at the health care rallies that Sanders and others organized across the country in January: They were shocked to be greeted by angry Sanders backers in the crowds who loudly urged them to back a single-payer plan, according to several Democratic senators and aides. There is also longstanding grumbling over his refusal to share his campaign email list with other Democrats and, more recently, over his vote against a new round of sanctions against Russia and Iran.

On the other side of the divide, Sanders allies insist the party seldom acknowledges the role of the senator’s 2016 presidential bid in shaping the party’s new agenda, whether on health care, a $15 minimum wage, or free college. And they express frustration that Democratic gatekeepers are still slow to accept Sanders’ likely front-runner role if he chooses to run for president in 2020.

In the words of one senior aide to Sanders’ campaign, “A special cloud of denial formed over the swamp when polls started coming out showing Bernie was the most popular politician in the country."