How Many 2018 House Seats Will Accrue To The Democrats Based On Trump's Toxicity?

Virginia election officials were still tabulating votes, though it was obvious Trump's candidate, Ed Gillespie was losing badly, when Trump reacted with the tweet above, hoping people wouldn'tt see his unblemished record as a kiss-of-death endorser in GOP primaries and in general elections. By Wednesday morning, political and communications operatives back in the White House were working overtime to deflect blame away from Señor Trumpanzee for the massive losses Tuesdayin every part of the country. And it wasn't just Democratic gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia. The outsized losses Republicans suffered in the Virginia House of Delegates came as a complete shock and a bodyblow to the GOP. Democrats won control of the state Senate in Washington, won 3 deep red legislative seats Georgia, defeated a small city Ohio mayor who switched parties from Democrat to Republican so he could support Trump and defeated a close friend of Trump's in Westchester who had been financed to the tune of a million dollars by Bannon and Mercer... and so on.

The White House is panic-stricken that a narrative is taking hold that Tuesday was the beginning for an anti-Trump wave... which it clearly was. They're trying to blame everyone but Trump, even poor pathetic Chris Christie, for the losses. What you've been hearing coming from every White House propagandist since Wednesday morning is "This is not about Señor Trumpanzee." But they're the only ones saying it.

Vulnerable Republican Scott Taylor from Virginia Beach, where the Democrats did very well Tuesday, said exactly what the White House wants to squelch: "There has to be some self-reflection at the top and how that’s spilling over in the down ballot. I know they would tout the four congressional special elections we won, that’s a little bit different. That’s a localized thing. We under-performed in places that we should have crushed as Republicans. ... When you look at tonight in Virginia and the results that continue to come in ... [our] leaders need to have some self-reflection." He called it a "referendum" on the Trumpist Regime.

Bannon's and Mercer's Breitbart News was anti-Gillespie world headquarters on Wednesday, with article after article berating him.

Conservatives tore into failed Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie in the wake of his defeat Tuesday night-- blasting the Bush ally for playing “footsie” with economic nationalism and for rejecting Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon’s help.

“Ed Gillespie had no coherent message, was inauthentic, spoke from both sides of his mouth and at the end of the day, even the deplorables couldn’t save him,” Andy Surabian, a former Trump White House staffer and political adviser to Bannon, told ABC News.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham accused Gillespie of “playing footsie with conservative populism.”

...According to the Daily Beast, Bannon had extended “multiple offers” to Gillespie to campaign and hold rallies together, but Gillespie refused. Gillespie also declined to do interviews with Breitbart News or appear on the Breitbart News Daily radio show.

According to ABC News, Bannon made it known that he was concerned about Gillespie’s “lack of energy” and his close ties to Bush.

Gillespie’s woes are reminiscent of Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) who, in the Alabama Senate race, attempted to embrace Trump’s agenda while keeping his feet firmly in the ground of the establishment. Strange was soundly defeated by outsider Judge Roy Moore.

President Trump also recognized the conservative criticism of Gillespie, tweeting that while Gillespie worked hard, he “did not embrace me or what I stand for.”

“Tonight proves you can’t put lipstick on an establishment pig,” Surabian told The Hill.

And Bannon himself went on a fascist radio show with wing nuts Alex Marlow and Raheem Kassam to bash Gillespie.

Bannon said the lesson from Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie’s defeat on Tuesday night is that “if you’re going to win, you’ve got to embrace the entire Trump agenda, and you’ve got to do it early, and you’ve got to be dedicated to it.”

“You can’t phone it in,” he said. “You’ve got to do rallies. You’ve got to get the president out with you. You’ve got to go all-in on this. I just think campaigning with people like President Bush and Marco Rubio during these type of economic times sends the wrong signal. I think Gillespie’s campaign had ample opportunity to get Corey Stewart, get other people involved.”

“Things were done on the margin,” he said. “People worked very hard, I know the Lt. Governor, I thought Jill Vogel did a great job, but it didn’t get pulled off. I think the lessons are if people want to continue to drive this agenda, and continue to win, we’ve got to get very focused on executing the Trump agenda and then making sure we can sell it.”

“We did lose Virginia by five points during the campaign,” he recalled. “I actually thought Virginia was going to be too tough a reach. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time there, even though that’s my native state. But I was actually surprised by the five-point loss. I thought we would lose Virginia by two or three.”

“We lost it by more because of the heavy, heavy turnout in the northern Virginia suburbs, which really are a part of Washington, DC,” he explained. “When you look at Virginia today, really northern Virginia is a suburb of Washington. It has virtually all federal employees, or consultants, or media types, or companies tied to the federal government.”

Bannon said Virginia is “not a purple state, it’s a blue state.”

“Seven of the nine richest counties in the United States ring Washington, DC,” he pointed out. “I think three of those counties, or four of those counties, are in northern Virginia, three of them are in Maryland. It’s become just like the District of Columbia. It’s heavily blue. It’s made up of basically federal bureaucrats and companies, consultants, lobbyists, etc. tied to the federal budget. It’s been increasingly tough for Republicans to really get a foothold there. What you really hope to do is not to have a big turnout.”

“This is a wake-up call. People have to understand that the Democrats did a very good job of getting the vote out. You’ve got to give the devil their due, and when we think about ‘18, you’ve got to get very focused,” he advised.

...Bannon postulated that candidate authenticity is especially important in the digital age when every statement is monitored and remembered.

“You need authenticity of candidate. You need big, actionable ideas. And you need a really empowered, turned-out, aggressive grassroots movement, coupled with state-of-the-art digital technology so you can target,” he said.

Bannon said Gillespie is a “nice enough guy,” but “he is a Bush guy.”

“He decided to have President Bush come and campaign with him in Virginia,” he noted. “There’s just not enough of those Establishment types left to make a significant difference. You’ve got to bring out the Trump voters, and you’ve got to bring them out in a way that they’re enthusiastic in getting other Trump voters out. I think it’s incumbent upon people. You know, we won in a coalition. That’s one of the big lessons of Eight, is that we won in a coalition. That coalition has to stick together. But the key thing is we won in a coalition but we were selling the Trump program. I think that’s a lesson that hopefully candidates throughout the country learn.”

Bannon made some good points. Authenticity is important, although the kind of authenticity that Randy Bryce represents is positive and inspiring. Americans aren't ready for authentic Nazis.

Vox looked at voters in the most rural, conservative Virginia counties and found they were not sticking with Bannon-Trumpanzee neo-fascist politics. They claim that "Democrats saw their biggest gains in the most rural counties. Northam outperformed Clinton by an average of 14 points in places that were less than 50 percent urban. In the more suburban and urban locations, however, that falls off, with Northam actually underperforming Clinton slightly in the most urban areas... Democrats did a better job turning out their voters than Republicans did, and particularly so in the more rural localities. There was little difference between the candidates in the most urban cities and counties. Interestingly, it is in the whitest counties where Democrats did the best job holding on to their voters while Republicans did the worst."

The NY Times' Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin had a more conventional interpretation of the polling data. "The American suburbs," they wrote, "appear to be in revolt against President Trump after a muscular coalition of college-educated voters and racial and ethnic minorities on Tuesday dealt the Republican Party a thumping rejection and propelled a diverse class of Democrats into office."

From the tax-obsessed suburbs of New York City to high-tech neighborhoods outside Seattle to the sprawling, polyglot developments of Fairfax and Prince William County, Va., voters shunned Republicans up and down the ballot in off-year elections. Leaders in both parties said the elections were an unmistakable alarm bell for Republicans ahead of the 2018 campaign, when the party’s grip on the House of Representatives may hinge on the socially moderate, multiethnic communities surrounding major cities.

“Voters are taking their anger out at the president, and the only way they can do that is by going after Republicans on the ballot,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania. “If this isn’t a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.”

The Democrats’ gains signaled deep alienation from the Republican Party among the sort of upscale moderates who were once a pillar of their coalition.

Democrats not only swept Virginia’s statewide races but neared a majority in the House of Delegates, a legislative chamber that was gerrymandered to make the Republican majority virtually unassailable. They seized county executive offices in Westchester and Nassau County, N.Y., and carried bellwether mayoral elections in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Manchester, N.H., all races that appeared to favor Republicans only months ago.

...“Republicans are being obliterated in the suburbs,” said Chris Vance, a former chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, who placed the blame squarely on Mr. Trump: “Among college-educated suburbanites, he is a pariah.”

...[F]or Republicans, the bad news was not likely to end with Tuesday’s results. Congressional Republicans on Wednesday were bracing for a new wave of retirements just one day after another pair of House members, veteran Representative Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Representative Ted Poe of Texas, declared they would not seek re-election. Mr. Dent, channeling the exasperation of his colleagues, suggested an exodus might be imminent.

“Do they really want to go through another year of this?” said Mr. Dent, a leader of his caucus’s moderate wing, who has already announced he will not run again.

In the White House, electoral defeat gave way to a shifting series of explanations: Mr. Trump’s first reaction was to savage Ed Gillespie, the defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, on Twitter. By Wednesday morning, two presidential advisers acknowledged antipathy toward Mr. Trump would likely drive Democratic turnout next year.

...[S]ome of the most competitive House races of the 2018 midterms will take place in the two states. In New Jersey, Republicans will struggle to retain Mr. LoBiondo’s seat and must protect such imperiled incumbents as Leonard Lance, Tom MacArthur and Rodney Frelinghuysen. In Virginia, the district of Representative Barbara Comstock, a Republican, went 56 percent to 43 percent for Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, the Democrats’ triumphant gubernatorial candidate. Mr. Northam also captured 51 percent of the votes in the district of Representative Scott Taylor, a freshman Republican from Virginia Beach.

...To many Democrats and some Republicans, Tuesday’s results recalled the last time a radioactive Republican was in the White House and voters vented their frustrations on a Republican-held Congress. In 2005, Democrats rolled to victory in Virginia and New Jersey, presaging an electoral wave in 2006, and inspiring throngs of Democrats to run for office in difficult districts.

Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he had spent Tuesday evening calling potential House candidates and urging them to watch the returns, telling them: “I just want to encourage you to turn on the television, if it’s not already on.”

“Democrats down there were very aggressive about expanding their map and recruiting strong candidates, even where they were told they couldn’t win,” Mr. Luján said of Virginia. “We’re going to make our Republican colleagues fight for every inch.”

In the Senate, too, Democrats are seeking to expand the map. Facing a narrow path to a majority, they are strenuously wooing Phil Bredesen, a former Tennessee governor, to run for the seat that Senator Bob Corker is vacating. Mr. Bredesen has been courted personally by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, as well as several former governors who now serve in the Senate, including Mark Warner of Virginia, according to Democrats briefed on the overtures. And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee commissioned a poll aimed at coaxing Mr. Bredesen to run.

Mr. Bredesen is in Washington this week for meetings and is said to be nearing a decision.

Democrats won on Tuesday with a historically diverse slate of candidates: Having long struggled to bring diversity to the leadership tier of their party, they elected the first transgender legislator in the country, the first Vietnamese-American legislator in Virginia, the first African-American female mayor of Charlotte, N.C., and the first black statewide officer in Virginia in more than a quarter-century, among other groundbreaking candidates.

Kathy Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant who was elected to the House of Delegates in a Fairfax-based seat that Republicans previously held, said voters there had mobilized to rebuke Mr. Trump and his brand of politics. She urged national Democrats to follow Virginia’s example by recruiting candidates from a range of backgrounds for the midterms.

“This was a clear rejection of racism and bigotry and hateful violence,” Ms. Tran said of the elections, adding: “People are hungry for a government that reflects the diversity of our communities.”

County-level results captured the dizzying scale of the lurch away from Republicans: In Virginia, Mr. Northam captured outer Washington suburbs, including Prince William and Loudoun County, by 20 percentage points or more, where other Democrats prevailed by single digits in the recent past. He won Virginia Beach, an area Mr. Trump carried last year, by 5 percentage points.

In New Jersey, Mr. Murphy carried the densely populated New York and Philadelphia suburbs by staggering margins, including counties that broke for Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, eight years ago.

And in Delaware County, Pa., long home to a fearsome Republican machine, Democrats won seats on the county council for the first time since the 1970s thanks to a local campaign that featured yard signs that got straight to the point: “Vote Nov. 7th Against Trump.”

Former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, the last Republican to win a major office in Virginia, said the enthusiasm of liberal voters simply overwhelmed his party.

“The enthusiastic left showed up tonight in big numbers,” he said, “and really determined the outcome of the election.”

Prediction: Paul Ryan will not run for reelection.

Virginia Tea Leaves

Democrats need more candidates like Randy Bryce-- everywhere

People forget the nature of a tsunami in politics. When the wave builds enough momentum, nothing can stand in its way. Candidates' money doesn't matter; quality of candidates won't matter. Just revulsion. And that's what 2018 is shaping up to be. A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday morning shows the biggest margin in the generic match-up in over a decade. If the polling is correct-- and it has been corroborated by virtually every poll this year (including private GOP polls)-- the Republicans won't just lose the 2 dozen seats the Democrats need to win back control of the House, the Republicans could be on the path to lose-- despite years of gerrymandering as many as 50 seats, including Paul Ryan's in Wisconsin.

Enthusiasm for Democrats is minimal but dislike of Republicans in mammoth. Here's the bottom line though:

The Post reported that the 51% to 40% margin for the Democrats is "the biggest spread in a Post-ABC survey since October 2006, just weeks before a midterm in which Democrats won back control of the House and Senate amid deep dissatisfaction with then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Yesterday's poll shows 65% of voters lack confidence in Trump "to make the right decisions for the country's future," which is pretty dismal-- unless you compare it to the lack of confidence voters have for congressional Republicans to make the right decisions-- like 21% who are confident against a whopping 76% who are not confident. Democrats aren't going to exploit this the way they should because just 27% are confident in the congressional Democrats and 70% are not. Again, it's all lesser-of-two evils... but the Pelosi and her DCCC are fine with that. It's all they know and it's how they work-- tragically-- in responding to the election cycle. Imagine an election cycle dominated by relative toxicity of party leaders. Who's most hated by the voters-- Pelosi, Ryan or Señor Trumpanzee?

When asked "Which political party, the Democrats or the Republicans, do you think better represents your own personal values?" 46% said Dems and 37% said Republicans. 10% said neither. This is what stale Democratic congressional leadership has brought the Democrats:

It's worth mentioning that half a dozen Democratic candidates have told me in the last couple of weeks that their own House races would be much easier if Pelosi were to announce her retirement because, as much as voters would like to see the last of Ryan, they are not enthusiastic about Pelosi becoming Speaker again-- an advertising theme the Republicans have every intention of exploiting to the max. Expect to see Democratic challengers distancing themselves from Pelosi like never before. She is absolutely toxic. No candidates want her coming to campaign with them in their districts, although Ryan is experiencing a similar reaction from Republicans-- both vulnerable incumbents and challengers.

In a few hours we'll know how this played out today in Virginia, where Ed Gillespie is running on a Trumpist message, sans Trumpanzee, while the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Ralph Northam, is the epitome of the lesser evil candidate. Polling has largely favored Northam, even though the race tightened up in the last week. Yesterday, though, both Quinnipiac and the Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Public Policy released last minute polls that showed Northam back out ahead with comfortable margins. Quinnipiac showed independents breaking for Northam (46-42%) as he pulled away with a 51-42% lead. The Wason polling results were similar: 51-45% for Northam.

Northam’s lead is demographically and regionally broad. He leads among independents by 13 points (51% to 38%) and moderates by 29 points (62% to 33%). He holds significant leads among women, black voters, younger voters, voters with incomes below $50,000, and in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Gillespie leads among white voters and men, but the candidates are statistically tied among voters 45 and older and voters in Southwest-Southside, two normally reliable Republican segments.

Down-ticket, the Democratic candidates continue to lead their Republican rivals. In the race for lieutenant governor, Democrat Justin Fairfax leads Republican state Sen. Jill Vogel, 50% to 45%. Seeking a second term as attorney general, incumbent Democrat Mark Herring leads John Adams, 49% to 45%.

The entire 100 seat Virginia House of Delegates-- which the GOP holds 66-34-- is up for election. The districts are very gerrymandered against Democrats but Democrats are favored to pick up at least half a dozen seats. Anything more than that would be troubling for the Republicans nationally. There are 17 GOP-held seats that Hillary won and those are the main targets. If the Democrats win 17 seats and take control of the House, Republican nationally will go into a Defcon 1 state of ultimate panic, causing the collapse of Ryan's tax-cuts-for-billionaires bill and at least another dozen congressional retirement announcements. Fingers crossed.

What Lessons Will Be Learned If Northam Loses In Virginia Tuesday?

I recall a progressive political action committee withdrawing support-- loudly and publicly-- from a candidate they had endorsed over some kind of bullshit and inconsequential disagreement and thinking how I'd probably never trust that PAC again. But that isn't what happened when Blue America withdrew our support-- in 2006-- from our favorite Senate candidate. Then-Congressman Sherrod Brown was running for the U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Mike DeWine. And then he voted for Bush's torture bill. He was the only progressive in the House to back it. He was still a better candidate that Mike DeWine-- and in some important ways a really great candidate-- but torture seemed too important an issue to urge our members to contribute money to him. So we threw him off the Blue America endorsed candidates ActBlue page. Fortunately, he won anyway-- and he's been an excellent senator (mostly) and admitted and apologized that he's made an error in voting for the torture bill, a stupid political calculation.

Thursday, DFA announced that it would cease its support of an ultra conservative Democratic candidate, Ralph Northam, who it was backing in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Why were they backing him in the first place? Northam is absolutely horrible. Obviously, his Republican opponent is much, much, much worse... but he's terrible anyway. So Northam is the lesser of two evils... evil but not as evil. Why would a trusted group like DFA debase themselves by endorsing him and lending their good name to his foul name? Because the Virginia race is just too important? I guess that's what they-- and lots of other groups-- were thinking. The Blue America perspective was to just ignore the gubernatorial race and urge our members to support progressives running for the state legislature.

By endorsing a crap candidate like Northam, DFA was put in the awkward-- and dangerous-- position of having to withdraw their endorsement after Northam said he would sign a bill banning sanctuary cities in the state if one of Virginia's cities tries to become one. DFA issued this statement: "Ralph Northam's gutless, politically senseless, and morally debased decision yesterday to openly backtrack on his commitment to standing up for immigrant families is a picture-perfect example of why Democracy for America never endorsed him in the primary and focused the entirety of our efforts in Virginia on down-ticket races, like Justin Fairfax's campaign for Lieutenant Governor. It's also why, today, we're announcing that we will no longer do any work to directly aid Northam's gubernatorial efforts."

Politico's Kevin Robillard tweeted that Gillespie's campaign started running a digital ad highlighting DFA's criticism of Northam, seeking to hold down Democratic turnout (which, of course, could hurt Justin Fairfax, Mark Henning and all the really good House of Delegates candidates DFA is backing.

Digby was the first to sound the alarm at Blue America. She pointed out that immigrant rights people on the ground are terrified that if Gillespie wins they'll be using his ads all over the country and ginning up more hatred for Latinos. They don't have the luxury of boycotting Northam. And a few hours later, Chris Hayes was tweeting that "A Gillespie win in VA would send the signal to every GOP pol that the way to win is Trumpian white identity politics, full stop."

Meanwhile over the last week, Northam's big lead from mid-October has cratered into a November dead heat-- 45-45 according to Republican polling firm Rasmussen and 47-47 according to non-partisan Roanoke College. (A New York Times/Siena poll out this morning has Northam up a feeble 43-40%.) Their analysis bodes badly for Tuesday:

More than half of those polled (53%) disapprove of the way President Donald Trump his handling his job, and just over one-third (36%) approve. At the same time, a majority (55%) of respondents have an unfavorable view of him, while 34 percent have a favorable impression of Trump.

Almost half (43%) approve of the job Terry McAuliffe is doing as governor, while 36 percent disapprove. McAuliffe is viewed favorably by 38% of respondents.

The Republican Party is viewed unfavorably by 43 percent of likely voters (39% favorable), while the Democratic Party is also viewed unfavorably by 43 percent and favorably by 42 percent.

"Gillespie has improved his position among self-identified Independents," said Harry Wilson, director of the Roanoke College Poll. "More of those respondents say they lean toward the Republicans than we saw in our most recent poll and they moved the results favorably toward Gillespie and Republicans, but not President Trump. As we noted in the last poll, Republicans closed well in the 2013 and 2014 elections. This one may be following the same script."

...Which candidate would do a better job on the issues?

Ed Gillespie

• Economy: 47%
• Healthcare: 37%
• Jobs: 44%
• Immigration: 44%
• Education: 40%
• Taxes: 47%
• Guns: 45%

Ralph Northam

• Economy: 39%
• Health Care: 49%
• Jobs: 40%
• Immigration: 39%
• Education: 46%
• Taxes: 37%
• Guns: 39%

So-- never mind the Republicans learning to use xenophobia and racism as election tools (they've been doing it for decades, no?)-- what lesson will the Democrats learn if Northam loses? Not to back crappy conservative candidates who will drive down enthusiasm and hope down Democratic participation? Of course not; they never learn anything. With polling numbers like the ones Fox reported last week, why would the Democratic Party run conservative, Republican-lite candidates?

Gillespie And Trump Are Both Embarrassed Of Each Other! Who Could Blame Them?

Trump's approval ratings might get better-- but that's unlikely. They just keep sinking... and they are, as Jonathan Bernstein explained for Bloomberg readers, really, really bad already. Señor Trumpanzee is, in short, being judged to be the worst president in modern history. He's "back in last place in approval ratings at this number of days after being sworn in of any president in the polling era. And his 'net' approval (subtracting disapproval) has been the worst among those 13 presidents every day of his presidency, and it's never been particularly close. Currently he's within a single percentage point of same-day Gerald Ford in approval, but at -18.3, his net approval is 9 percentage points worse than Ford's, and every other president was in positive territory at this point. All of that with the more-or-less peace and something very close to prosperity-- the two things that generally drive whether U.S. citizens like their presidents or not."

As you probably know, on November 7 Virginians will be electing a new governor and their entire House of Delegates. Democrat Ralph Northam is about as conservative as you can be and still be a Democrat and Republican Ed Gillespie doesn't stand for anything at all other than personal ambition. It's a pretty putrid race. There are plenty of House seats being decided that are far more important to progressives (as long as Gillespie is defeated). Every single poll since early June shows Northam ahead, with the exception of one outlier last month predicting a tie. The most recent poll, last week, by Emerson College has Northam leading 49-44%.

So why doesn't Trump get his fat, sagging ass down to Virginia to campaign for Gillespie (who he did endorse in a weird tweet a couple weeks ago)?I t's a reasonable-- if inelegantly phrased-- question-- and Jonathan Martin explored it yesterday for the NY Times. Gillespie and Trump are dancing around each other warily. Remember, Virginia was the only state that joined the Confederacy that Trump, the improbable Confederate candidate, lost last year.

Gillespie wants the Trump supporters to turn out for him of course-- Trump lost to Hillary last year 49.73% to 44.41% (virtually identical to the gubernatorial polling numbers last week)-- but there were still 1,769,443 Virginians willing to debase themselves and their country by voting for Trump. But Gillespie doesn't want the negatives around Trump to influence independent voters in their gubernatorial decision.

And meanwhile Trump is a little gun-shy too. He's embarrassed that his candidate, Senator Luther Strange, who he backed so strongly, lost so badly. And, like Strange, Gillespie is a swamp-dwelling part of the Republican Party establishment. He founded one of DC's sleaziest lobbying firms, Quinn Gillespie & Associates, whose marquee client was Enron. He was also chair of the RNC, which is a pretty swampy position in the minds of many hardcore Trump voters. But, more than anything, Trump doesn't want to deal with the stench of another ego-damaging electoral defeat.

Martin wrote that Trumpanzee "has so overwhelmed a campaign waged by a pair of bland candidates lacking signature proposals that, much the same way he does across the Potomac, he has made himself and his incendiary style of politics the central issue." For Gillespie there is also the little matter of how Trump's mental health would impact him, especially if there's a rally like the insane one Trump did for Luther Strange a few days before the Alabama election.

“There is so much focus on the activity and the machinations in Washington,” said George Allen, the former Republican governor and senator who ran statewide four times. “With President Trump, whatever he tweets becomes the news till whatever he tweets next.”

With the president rampaging through news cycles seemingly every day, the biggest question looming before Mr. Gillespie is whether it is worth the risk of trying to harness Mr. Trump’s total-eclipse-of-the-sun attention-getting skills to rouse conservative voters.

His campaign and the Republican Governor’s Association signaled to the White House at a meeting this spring that they preferred the reliable hand of Vice President Mike Pence, who campaigned with Mr. Gillespie on Saturday, over Mr. Trump in a state where the president is loathed in the vote-rich population centers but well-liked in many rural areas.

But trailing in every public poll, Mr. Gillespie is now engaged in a robust debate with his advisers about whether he should ask the president to stump with him, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the conversations.

Those in favor of bringing Mr. Trump in for a rally argue that Mr. Gillespie will be linked to Mr. Trump regardless and, in a state where turnout plummets in nonpresidential years, that the president can jolt his supporters who may have been indifferent about the race or uneasy with an establishment-aligned candidate such as Mr. Gillespie, a former George W. Bush adviser and Republican National Committee chairman.

But the camp urging Mr. Gillespie to keep his distance from Mr. Trump counters that it would be malpractice to embrace a polarizing president who failed to win even 30 percent of the vote in Fairfax County, the most populous jurisdiction in the state and once a suburban battleground.

As they consider their options, Gillespie supporters have an object lesson: Mr. Trump’s ill-fated rally for Senator Luther Strange in Alabama, where he could not resist veering off-message. At that rally, Mr. Trump started his feud with the N.F.L. while offering a backhanded endorsement of Mr. Strange’s rival, Roy Moore.

“Having watched what a great job he did for Luther Strange, I’m not sure I’d want that,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former state attorney general, suggesting that the president could bring up the bloodshed in Charlottesville with little warning. “Trump rallies are about Trump.”

Then there is the president’s calculation: Would he even want to risk attaching himself to a potential loser so soon after the Alabama race, in which he felt burned, according to White House officials. West Wing advisers say Mr. Trump is willing to record automated calls for Mr. Gillespie but is not clamoring to fire up Air Force One for the trip to Roanoke.

Mr. Trump has tweeted twice about the Virginia race, including on Saturday night, when he wrote that “Democrats in the Southwest part of Virginia have been abandoned by their Party,” as Mr. Pence was on the way to the region.

Yet whether Mr. Trump sets foot here or not, his success at motivating voters with culturally and racially tinged appeals has worn off on Mr. Gillespie. Once one of the loudest voices in his party for an inclusive message, Mr. Gillespie is now assailing Mr. Northam over the Democrat’s opposition to a state measure that would have banned “sanctuary cities” and targeting him for supporting the removal of the state’s many Confederate statues.

The Republican chafes at questions over whether he is adopting a Trumpian message and forgoing his own advice in 2006 that Republicans should resist the “siren song” of anti-immigration rhetoric, insisting he is running as “who I am and what I believe in.”

“The great thing about a governor’s race in Virginia is the people who vote in it are focused on roads and schools and jobs and the opioid and heroin epidemic,” Mr. Gillespie said.

But his advertising reflects what he thinks will actually move the electorate: He is spending the bulk of his money on commercials focused on the statues, which make no mention of his view that the South was “on the wrong side of history,” and illegal immigrants. One of his immigration ads features amply tattooed Salvadoran prisoners meant to be members of the menacing gang MS-13, a target of the president’s.

Asked if he still supported a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants, which he once vocally championed, Mr. Gillespie unenthusiastically confirmed that he did, deflating his answer by noting that “the debate is 10 years old from my perspective.” (He did more readily note that he supported “accommodating those who were brought here as children illegally,” the so-called Dreamers.)

This week, Northam is enthusiastically campaigning with Obama, who won Virginia both times he ran (53-46% against McCain and 51-47% against Romney). In the end, Trumpanzee will probably be too embarrassed to stay away and will, in all likelihood, waddle down to Roanoke, which is pretty safe territory for him. He lost Roanoke City (56.1% to 38.5%) But he won Roanoke County 61.5% to 33.5%. If Trump does one of his crazy rallies they can bus rubes in from Franklin, Botetourt, Bedford, Craig, Henry, Floyd, and Giles counties, all blood red and filled with Trumpist crackpots addicted to Fox News, Hate Talk Radio and opioids. That way Trump can claim even though Gillespie lost the state, at least he won the backward area Trump campaigned in. Just watch.

Thinking Of Running For Congress? Only The Rich And The Corporate Whores Need Apply?

Mark Warner, not really homeless

The two richest Members of Congress are both House Republicans, career criminal Darrell Isis (net worth: $357 million) and Texas wing nut Michael McCaul, who got rich by marrying the daughter of Hate Talk radio empire Clear Channel (net worth at least $117.5). When it comes to the Senate, though, the richest members are Democrats. Once Rockefeller retires in January, the richest senator will be venture capitalist and Virginia centrist Mark Warner (net worth $95 million). A former Virginia Governor, Warner won an overwhelming victory against a former Republican governor, Jim Gilmore, 65-34%. Obama won Virginia as well that same day, besting McCain by a far less impressive 53-46%. Virginians like the moderately conservative Warner as governor and they’ve liked him as senator. His 75.38 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score puts him down towards the bottom of the Democrats, a little better than fellow corporatists and right-wing Dems Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) but worse than cautious moderates Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Jon Tester (D-MT) and Bill Nelson (D-FL). A Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders of Tammy Baldwin he’s never going to be.

The polling indicates that, despite a big name Republican opponent, lobbyist and former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, Warner never had a serious challenge. Every poll has shown him ahead— and by a lot. In fact, not a single poll— not even by laughable Republican polling firms like Harper and Rasmussen who always try to show Republicans winning— has Gillespie breaking 40%. Several have him mired in the 20s unable to even get a third of the vote. The most recent CBS News/NY Times poll by YouGov (released the first week of October) shows Warner beating Gillespie 49-36%, 51-39% if you factor in “leaners.” Among self-described “moderates,” Warner is ahead 56-21%.

This week, Gillespie waved the white flag and admitted he has no chance. The way you do that 2 weeks before election day is to stop spending money. Though Gillespie had reported raising $4,164,818 on his FEC forms June 30— and had $3,111,992 cash-on-hand— he’s now pulled his TV advertising. CBS News reported this week that “political operatives who track television advertising said Thursday that Gillespie does not have ads reserved in the final push toward the Nov. 4 elections.”

The financial struggles of Gillespie's campaign are something of a surprise. He was the Republican National Committee chairman, served in President George W. Bush's administration as a top adviser and was a top lieutenant to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

That pedigree, however, has not translated to extraordinary fundraising. And that has left Gillespie at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to advertising.

Following a report by The Associated Press about the drop-off in advertising, the Gillespie campaign said Thursday it would launch new rounds of TV ads on Saturday— but it did not specify when or where the ads would run, or at what cost. The campaign also announced it had banked $2 million for the final push to Election Day.

That's about a quarter of what his Democratic rival, first-term Sen. Mark Warner, has on hand.

Warner's campaign on Wednesday announced it had more than $8 million to spend in the race's final days. Warner is currently blanketing the state with TV.

Gillispie has struggled to keep pace in fundraising and advertising. He loaned his campaign $65,000 over the summer.

The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity shows Warner has spent $4.4 million on ads and the liberal Virginia Progress PAC has spent another $2 million.

Gillispie has spent $3.5 million on ads, but a scant $174,000 has come from outside groups.

…[B]uying television time to reach voters in population-heavy northern Virginia requires spending in the Washington, D.C., media market, where ads can cost more than $1 million each week.

Airtime always becomes more expensive as Election Day nears and more candidates are clamoring for more spots. Last-minute efforts to buy ads put the campaigns at the mercy of station owners who can demand premium prices that put cash-strapped campaigns at a disadvantage.

Campaigning for Senator Al Franken, Governor Mark Dayton and state Senator Mike Obermueller at Carleton College in Northfield this week, Elizabeth Warren told the crowd that "The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it." The crowd agreed. Today’s she’s in Iowa, campaigning for Bruce Braley with the same message.

I hope you already read yesterday’s post about how the very wealthy have come to control our democracy. As Noam Chomsky explained in the video at the bottom of the post, candidates are “vetted by corporate interests.” If the very rich don’t get behind you, you don’t have the finances it takes to run for office. There are very few exceptions. And corporate interests, while having no problem with Gillespie, of course, are perfectly happy seeing Mark Warner rise in national prominence and work for them inside the Senate Democratic caucus to counter pro-working family tendencies pushed by people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Al Franken, Jeff Merkley and Tammy Baldwin. And, of course, that’s why the South Dakota Senate race is suddenly such a big deal. All the momentum belongs to independent-minded populist/progressive Rick Weiland who is on the verge of beating two corporate Establshment darlings, former Republican Governor Mike Rounds and former Republican Senator Larry Pressler. If you want to help beat the plutocrats and corporate predators… you can do it here, on the Blue America Act Blue Senate page.

Joe Conason suggests right-wingers are mad at the president for beating them at their chest-thumping game

"This is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history."

-- GOP doodyhead Ed Gillespie

by Ken

I know the country has decided that it's A-OK that every word out of the mouth of every right-winger is frothy, thuggish lie. By that standard, of course, the Right-eous rage prompted by the Obama campaign's suggestion that Willard Inc. wouldn't have taken out Osama bin-Laden, is perfectly justified. Who's better equipped to manage the triple feat of lying about what the president and the would-be president, and the former president said about Osama bin-Laden? Not to mention erasing their heroes' unbroken history of screaming jingoism -- most notably in the record of America's forgotten-but-not-gone ex-hero, Chimpy the Accomplished-Mission.

I like Joe Conason's take in his syndicated column "Why Obama's bin Laden Ad Drives Republicans Crazy":

Nothing aggravates Republicans like seeing nasty, effective tactics upon which they have so long relied being turned against one of their candidates. So when Barack Obama's re-election campaign aired an ad celebrating the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death -- and suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have achieved that objective -- the right exploded with outraged protests.

Evidently, the feelings of longtime hatchet men like Bush-era party chair Ed Gillespie, ex-Bush flack Ari Fleischer and the editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal, to name a few, were really, really hurt — because the Obama campaign exploited a moment of national unity for partisan advantage.

Then Joe uncorks the Ed Gillespie corker I've put at the top of this post. Yup, it's Barack the Kenyan Milquetoast Moderate who's caused all that divisiveness, not thug-brained right-wingers.

During the Bush presidency," Joe recalls, "Republicans used precisely the same approach and worse, over and over, without fretting whether their words and ads were 'divisive.' "

It began weeks after the 9/11 attacks, amid sincere pledges of patriotic cooperation from congressional Democrats, when Karl Rove told the Republican National Committee that their party would "go to the country on this issue" to win the midterm elections in 2002. They won a historic victory by sliming wounded Vietnam hero Max Cleland and former Air Force intelligence officer Tom Daschle as stooges of al-Qaida.

Bush's 2004 re-election campaign amplified the same themes, with advertising and pageantry at the Republican convention in New York City grossly exploiting 9/11, a series of conveniently timed terror "alerts" leading up to Election Day and repeated warnings by Vice President Dick Cheney that a Democratic victory would signal weakness to America's enemies.

And it persisted into the 2006 midterm, with Rove falsely portraying Democrats as limp-wristed "liberals" trying to "understand" Osama bin Laden.

Until that election, the rough Rovian style succeeded brilliantly -- despite the fact that Bush and Cheney had actually allowed bin Laden and Mullah Omar to escape at Tora Bora.

"By contrast," Joe says, "the Obama ad's brief rebuke of Romney is at least factual and accurate."

Not only did he say what the ad quotes, but he also said that he wouldn't go into Pakistan to get bin Laden, which is what the mission required. Had the president followed Romney's policy recommendation, bin Laden would almost certainly still be at large.

Joe gets off a parting shot at Willard the Gutless War Wimp:

"Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," scoffed Romney in response. But he shouldn't be so quick to denigrate the former Democratic president, who entered the Navy during World War II and then served as a submarine officer until his honorable discharge in 1953. Somebody may compare Carter's service with Romney's own military record, which doesn't exist -- and remind voters that he avoided the Vietnam draft with a pampered stint as a Mormon missionary, in France.

Not to mention Willard's hulking brood of Junior War Wimps.

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CAN ED GILLESPIE BAIL BUSH OUT? SURE... AS MUCH AS NIKOLAI GOLITSYN BAILED OUT NICHOLAS II

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov became the last tsar of Russia in 1894 at 25. The Russian monarchy wasn't exactly a meritocracy and Nicholas II was a bumbling imbecile who screwed up everything he touched, very much like George Bush II. And like Bush, his tyrannical demeanor was made even less attractive by an incurious nature. Both were notoriously bad students and dullards-- probably, in both cases, because of Attention Deficit Disorder. After the 1905 mini-uprising it became clear that Nicholas was dead meat; the people had turned against him. His responses were unfailingly inept and he kept bringing in a series of weak and reactionary advisors-- Sergei Witte, Pyotr Stolypin, Alexander Guchkov, Mikhail Rodzyanko, Vladimir Kokovtsov, Ivan Goremykin, Boris Stürmer, Nikolai Golitsyn, Alexsandr Trepov-- all the while taking toxic advice from Grigori Rasputin, the Karl Rove of his day.

See if you can identify Condoleeza Rice, then a mediocre student of Russian politics, in this video clip:



Yesterday the failing and thoroughly discredited Bush Regime, teetering on catastrophe on a number of fronts, both here and abroad, brought in another reactionary re-tread, a slick lobbyist and unappealing partisan insider, Ed Gillespie. The word "hack" immediately comes to mind.

In Gillespie, Bush is gaining one of Washington's top Republican strategists and someone who has been a key ally outside the administration since the beginning of his term. Gillespie was a spokesman for Bush during the 2000 Florida recount, helped steer his two Supreme Court nominees through the Senate confirmation process and served a stint as chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2004 campaign.

...Gillespie's background as one of Washington's top lobbyists for corporate interests quickly proved a magnet for criticism yesterday. As chairman of the firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, Gillespie has been registered to lobby for 57 companies and associations in the financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceutical and transportation fields. Gillespie's firm had come to be regarded as the one to see if a company wanted access to the White House.

Although the New York Times calls the appointment "a revealing change of course for a president who came to Washington more than six years ago with a cadre of Texas outsiders who did not hide their disdain for the city’s permanent bureaucracy," it is hardly an appointment with any promise or potential to arrest the deterioration in the Regime's perceived legitimacy. Gillespie is a longtime kiss-ass and sycophant whose instincts are to tell Bush what he thinks Bush wants to hear, exactly what the out-of-touch and remote, stubborn Bush does not need at this point. He is expected to say "Amen" to whatever Rove suggests.


His only qualification is that Bush likes him. He is loathed by the Democrats for his unscrupulous and unethical manner and it is unlikely he will have any success in forging a working relationship with them, although, of course, they control both houses of Congress and are hell-bent on holding Bush and his accomplices accountable for 7 years of criminal activities. No one outside the Regime expects Gillespie to do any more to successfully prop up Bush than Boris Stürmer or Nikolai Golitsyn was able to do for Nicholas II, who came to a bad but richly deserved end.