"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Will Many 2020 GOP Candidates Want Trump's Kiss Of Death Endorsement?
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People have short memories. The very first GOP incumbent running for reelection endorsed by Trump was Renee Ellmers in North Carolina. Aside from doing his carnival barker routine on Twitter, Trump recorded a robocall for her, which went out to every Republican voter in NC-02. All the far right groups backed George Holding but Trump gambled his reputation as a king-maker and party strong man on opposing them and backing Ellmers. She had been one of the first members of Congress (and the first woman member) to fully embrace his narcissistic-- not to mention racist, xenophobic and misogynistic-- campaign. Aside from Holding's own family SuperPAC, the American Foundations Committee, putting $330,580 into the race, the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity threw in $205,794 and the Club for Growth threw $787,841 into the red hot primary. Three other extremist groups, FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and the Susan B Anthony List, the lunatic fringe GOP version of EMILY's List, also jumped in to attack Ellmers. Four days before primary day Trump gave Ellmers the robocall you can hear below. He didn't give her any money or even pay for the call, but his backing for her was seen as a test of what his name meant to Republican primary voters. Although he did well in his own primary in North Carolina, he didn't do great in the Raleigh suburbs which make up much of this district. Ted Cruz had beated him in Franklin, Nash, Wilson, Chatham and Johnston counties. Ellmers lost— very badly. 5 of the 6 counties in the district went to Holding.
You’d never know it from all his bragging and gas lighting, but the Trump kiss of death extended into the general election last Tuesday. 70.9% of the candidates Trump endorsed lost to Democrats— all candidates he either held rallies for or sent out one or more of his one-size-fits-all distinctive tweets for— 39 newly dead Republican candidates, although as counting continues, several more Trump-backed candidates are losing and his win-lose number will likely be 25/75% before the end of the week. Big Trump losers in the House include Dan Donovan (NY), Karen Handel (GA), his boy Danny Tarkanian (NV), Dave Brat (VA), Kevin Yoder (KS), Randy Hultgren (IL), Katie Arrington (SC), Keith Rothfus (PA), Pete Sessions (TX), Claudia Tenney (NY), Erik Paulsen, Rod Blum (IA), John Faso (NY), Lena Epstein (MI), Mike Bishop (MI), as well as:
Yesterday, Politico gave their readers what they billed as a Sneak peek at the House Democrats’ agenda and it wasn’t only about defeating Trump in 2020. At least not according to Patriot Majority, a Clinton-oriented outfit and SuperPAC. That video below is their ad that debuted on the Sunday talking heads shows today. It will run through Thanksgiving in what they described as a six-figure TV ad buy. No mention of Medicare-For-All or… PAYGO.
The GOP Has Decided To Gamble Their Senate Majority With A Big Bet On Señor Trumpanzee
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The first Republican candidate that Trump really got behind in a big way-- an actual test of his coattails vs his toxicity-- was Renee Ellmers in North Carolina's second congressional district. Ellmers was the first woman in Congress to back Trump and he reciprocated with an ad when she was challenged in a primary by George Holding and Greg Brannon. It was the very first indication that Trump's support is a kiss of death. Although Trump won NC-02 (a mostly suburban district that surrounds Raleigh on the north, east and south and has a PVI of R+7) 53.2% to 43.6%, Ellmers was absolutely crushed in the primary. She was the Trump candidate and just barely held onto second place against an outright and completely insane neo-fascist. Republicans apparently haven't paid close enough attention to the stunning results that demonstrate exactly what Trump can-- and will-- do for them:
Since then, almost every candidate Trump has actively campaigned for has lost, some in purple constituencies like Virginia, but some in impossibly red constituencies like Alabama and PA-18. In fact, Trump's toxicity has been largely responsible for a 20 point swing towards the Democrats in special elections across the country. Int augurs poorly for Republicans in November. Yet, McConnell and the NRSC are gambling the Senate majority on the hope that Trump can motivate the Republican base and close the enthusiasm gap with the Democrats without pissing off independents enough to swing the midterms in red states to the Democrats. The plan is all they've got and it might not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Politico's Burgess Everett and Kevin Robillard reported Monday that despite his national approval ratings, Trump can be carefully deployed in a few places where he isn't as toxic and he is nationally. Their bet is counter-intuitive and recognizes that Trump will cost Republicans the House. "Senate Republicans," they wrote, "say the president will play a starring role in the closely contested campaigns that will decide control of the chamber. Trump will be front and center in every state that helped elect the president, according to GOP senators and strategists, making the case that Democrats are hindering his agenda." Some Democrats running for reelection in states Trump won-- like Bob Casey (PA), Sherrod Brown (OH), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Bill Nelson (FL) and Debbie Stabenow (MI)-- couldn't be happier. Others... not so much.
“If you look at a race in a state like Missouri or North Dakota-- or any of these states-- he’ll be very involved,” said Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the GOP’s campaign arm, who speaks with Trump about political strategy regularly. “He’ll be actively campaigning for a Senate majority. Absolutely.” Republicans will lean most heavily on Trump in five deeply conservative states where the president remains highly popular and where he crushed Hillary Clinton: West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Montana. But they say they will also deploy Trump in the next tier of swing states that Trump won more narrowly: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. And they expect him to help preserve GOP seats in Nevada, where he narrowly lost, and in Arizona. In fact, despite his unpopularity on the national level, Republicans insist there isn’t a state on the Senate map where they are nervous about deploying Trump. Republicans reason that opposition to Trump is already baked into the Democratic electorate. They figure Democrats will be motivated to vote whether Trump shows up or not, so they might as well use him to fire up their base, too. Republicans have “got to have some intensity in our base,” as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) put it. “Base mobilization is absolutely essential for victory, and there is absolutely no one better at energizing the GOP base than President Donald Trump,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The president can also help raise gobs of money for candidates, Republicans say.
Yes, Democrats will vote for Democrats and Trump could horribly get more Republicans to come out and vote for GOP candidates, but polls show he is absolutely toxic for independent voters and his lying and name-calling and general style motivates them to back Democrats. In other words, the more red meat Trump throws the Republican base, the more he turns off independent voters and motivates them too-- but to favor Democrats who can help keep him in check. Everett and Robillard cautiously warn that "There might be a difference between what Republicans say now and what Trump actually does on the campaign trail come September. No one knows where all the controversies swirling around him will end up." Democrats say "bring it on."
[E]ven if the GOP does follow through on its full Trump deployment plan, Democrats argue that the president’s personality and popularity among some voters is neither transferable to other Republicans nor enough to put their candidates over the top. Just look at the two latest examples, they say: Trump went all in for Rick Saccone in last week’s Pennsylvania special House election, and before that for Roy Moore’s Senate bid in Alabama. Both lost. “The pattern here is every time he goes in, they lose,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Still, Democrats are gearing up what are sure to be personal and vicious battles with the president, and some are already making their case to Trump voters. Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester’s first ad highlighted 13 bills he sponsored that Trump signed into law, even though Tester opposed Trump’s tax bill as well as the president’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, and his attempt to repeal Obamacare.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) similarly has noted 23 bills she has been involved with this Congress that Trump signed. But she doesn’t expect that to spare her from Trump’s scorched-earth campaign tactics.
“He’s going to trash me. Have you met him? His method in campaigns is to trash, in fact, do character assaults on opponents,” McCaskill said. Still, she noted there is an upside: “Nothing motivates our base more than Donald Trump.” Seven of the 10 most vulnerable Senate Democrats said in interviews that they were prepared for Trump to come to their states and make a spectacle of them. Few said they expected it to change the trajectory of their race. “If it were Ronald Reagan? Yes.” But Trump’s effect is “TBD,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who is expected to face Republican Gov. Rick Scott this fall. “I don’t think he will persuade many people. He barely won in Michigan. And frankly [it was] because 51,000 people voted for Jill Stein,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). If there is a wild card to the GOP’s Trump strategy, it’s whether the president can actually focus on promoting their candidates or going after Democrats. At the most recent Saccone rally, the president spent far more of the time talking about himself than the Republican hopeful. Another factor: Trump enjoys warm relationships with some Senate Democrats, most notably Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. “He does like Sen. Manchin,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). “So it’ll be interesting to see when he does come-- because I know he will-- how he approaches” it.
Republicans predicted that Trump will be plenty motivated to take on those Democrats because they have opposed so much of his agenda. There was scant Democratic support for Trump’s most controversial nominees and his rollbacks of Obama-era regulations, and none for the president’s tax cuts and Obamacare repeal push. “He’s learned his lesson. Trump thought there was going to be bipartisan support? Not happening. Supreme Court, [deregulation], circuit judges, tax bill-- that’s a pretty long list,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT). Republican Senate candidates have already given Trump a bear hug. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) has gone from “99 percent” against Trump to claiming that everything Trump has touched has been “incredible." Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) chose to retire rather than try to run as an anti-Trump Republican in Arizona, which is trending away from Republicans. The hopeful to replace him, establishment pick Rep. Martha McSally, has been using Trump in ads. In Missouri, a state where Trump received a higher percentage of the vote than any GOP presidential candidate this century, Attorney General Josh Hawley said in his Senate campaign kickoff speech he hopes Trump comes to Missouri “often.” “Look at the president's popularity there in those states relative to his national popularity,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) of the top-tier races. “He’s doing much better.” Even in Michigan, a state Trump won by less than a quarter of a percentage point, the campaign of John James, an Iraq War veteran who is challenging Stabenow, said he hopes to campaign with the president. Though Trump may be a major drag on endangered House Republicans from the suburbs, who have to appeal to a concentrated set of moderate voters, statewide races in rural places like North Dakota and West Virginia are a far different story. So top GOP operatives see bringing Trump out to the states as a way to alleviate one of their biggest fears for 2018: that a depressed base will allow Democrats to run roughshod over them even in heavily conservative areas. “There are some dangers in running away from the president of your own party,” Holmes said. “People don’t buy it, and you risk alienating your own base.” Republicans also said Trump could help Republicans close the fundraising gap plaguing many of their candidates, which is forcing them to rely on outside groups for television ads. But the biggest contribution he can provide is the attention that comes with a presidential visit and nonstop news coverage. If there is an upside for Democrats in having the president campaign against them in their backyards, it’s that Trump’s presence also brings a reminder that Democratic moderates will be a more effective check on the president than a Republican who would replace them. “It’s no mystery that if you want someone who’s going to vote with the president 100 percent of the time and do whatever the president wants you to do … then I am probably not someone you should elect in North Dakota,” Heitkamp said. That independence, she added, “is not what the president expects from Congressman [Kevin] Cramer,” her opponent.
So far this year Blue America has endorsed seven Senate candidates, 5 incumbents and 2 challengers. Two-- Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH)-- are incumbents who have remained true to progressive values in states Trump won. Along with challengers going up against conservatives-- Beto O'Rourke in Texas and Kevin de León in California-- are the ones who need the most help. If you're in a giving mood, please click on the ActBlue Senate thermometer on the right and contribute what you can. Blue America doesn't raise money for conservative Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Donnelly, (IN) Claire McCaskill (MO) and Joe Manchin (WV), even if they're generally "better" than their Republican challengers. The Senate needs to be bluer and more progressive. The candidates we're asking you to consider donating to are going to work hard to make the Senate and the country better, not just a little less terrible (some of the time). Vote for them if you want to choose the lesser-of-two-evils candidate, but please consider contributing to candidates who aren't all about triangulation.
Who Thinks Trump Will Have An Impact On The 2018 Midterms?
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During the campaign Trump fared poorly when he tried interfering with Republican primaries. His crackpot candidates all lost. He endorsed and cut radio spots for Renee Ellmers (R-NC), the first woman in Congress to endorse him. Despite his help-- possibly because of it-- she barely managed to come in second in her three-way primary.
Don't forget, Republican voters in the suburbs east, south and North of Raleigh, in Wake Forest, in Rocky Mount and way down in Dunn and Smithfield all heard this ad over and over and over:
Most votes cast in the 2nd district come from Wake County. In the general election, Clinton won the county massively-- 293,353 to 193,607 for Trump, who seriously under-performed Senator Richard Burr and barely kept up by the much-hated, now former Governor Pat McCrory. Ellmers would probably have done better without Trump's interference. Yesterday, writing for Politico, Alex Isenstadt, warned that Trumpists are on the move, looking to win in primaries across the country. "Some of Donald Trump’s most loyal aides and outspoken supporters," he wrote, "are looking to ride his revolution into elected office themselves." One Trump crackpot, Alan Cobb is running for Mike Pompeo's now empty congressional seat in south-central Kansas. Sedgwick County (Wichita) decided elections there and that's Trump country. He beat Clinton there 101,319 to 66,716. (It is worth noting, though, that in the Kansas caucuses, the 4th district went overwhelmingly for Cruz, who took 58.3% to Trump's 22.0%). Isenstadt reports that Trump will be "front and center. Cobb, who turned down a White House job to run in the upcoming special election, plans to cast himself as a Trump loyalist-- a candidate with close ties to the new administration who embraces its outsider approach. 'I would wholeheartedly support the Trump agenda,' said Cobb, who spent Tuesday morning meeting with Republicans in Medicine Lodge, a town in the south-central part of the state. 'It’s all consistent with what’s best for the 4th District.' As Trump takes up residence in the White House, his disciples hope his success can be replicated far and wide... Trump has already demonstrated a willingness to endorse in Republican-on-Republican skirmishes, raising the specter that he could play hardball in races where his political allies are running."
Cobb isn’t the only former Trump aide about to announce a bid for Congress. Bruce LeVell, who was Trump’s diversity coordinator and a frequent surrogate on TV, is poised to launch a bid for a suburban Atlanta congressional seat. What distinguishes him from the large group of other Republicans interested in running, he said, is simple: His unwavering support for the president. “I’d like to see someone in that seat who’s a champion of Trump’s policies,” said LeVell, who recently wrapped up a trip to Washington, where he was meeting with operatives could staff his campaign. “I’d like to be that champion.” LeVell said he planned to model his campaign after the new president, presenting himself as a political outsider. That means no donations from lobbyists, he said, among other things. Virginia Republican Corey Stewart, who was Trump’s state chairman, has already begun to campaign for governor. Last week, he began airing a TV ad that borrowed heavily from Trump’s campaign playbook. It describes Stewart as an “outspoken blue-county conservative who keeps beating liberals again and again,” and says he has the “experience to win.” It highlights his “zero tolerance” for undocumented immigrants. And it promises to “take back Virginia” from Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s “crooked liberal gang.” (Using a word Trump often used to describe Hillary Clinton.) Even Stewart’s mannerisms-- there’s lots of hand gesturing-- are Trump-like. “The fact that Trump won the White House means that other aspiring politicians will follow, and they will follow in terms of his policy positions, and in terms of his style,” he said. In California, Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and billionaire entrepreneur who served on Trump’s transition team, is considering a campaign for governor, according to several people privy to his thinking. Most Republicans are skeptical that Thiel will run-- he's a fiercely private person-- though they say his ability to self-fund would make him an attractive candidate. Perhaps the most intense speculation surrounding an ex-Trump hand is in Arizona. Jeff DeWit, the Trump campaign’s chief operating officer, has spent weeks deliberating whether to launch a primary campaign against GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who frequently criticized Trump during the 2016 race. One person familiar with DeWit’s thinking said he is leaning against running and is more likely to take a job in the administration. If that were to occur, attention could turn to the state party chairman, Robert Graham, as a potential Flake foe. While many party leaders shied away from supporting Trump during the campaign, Graham distinguished himself as a loyal and outspoken surrogate-- which did not go unnoticed in Trump Tower. ...Earlier this month, Trump-- in a highly unusual step for a president-elect-- personally phoned members of the Ohio Republican Party to advocate for his favored candidate for state GOP chair, Jane Timken, who raised money for his campaign. Timken went on to dislodge the incumbent chairman, Matt Borges, who had been a vocal Trump critic. Then, last week, on the eve of Inauguration Day, two of Trump’s top aides, Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, sent a letter announcing their endorsement of Ron Weiser, a major party donor, in the race for Michigan GOP chair. Both Weiser and his opponent, Scott Hagerstrom, had worked for Trump-- Weiser as a fundraiser, and Hagerstrom as his state director. Over the weekend, just after the letter was released, Hagerstrom withdrew.
Whether they're full-blown Trump-Like fascists or just garden variety GOP proto-fascists, it's essential for Democrats to win the House in 2018. With the execrable pair of congenital losers, Steve Israel and Kelly Ward, finally gone from the DCCC things are even starting to look a little less gloomy there! At Blue America we devote a minimum of a couple hours a day talking with prospective candidates from around the country. And, as you probably know, we have two great candidates who have already tossed their hats into the ring, both here in California. Click the thermometer on the right if you'd like to contribute to their elections which is, in both cases, contributing to the Resistance. Whether you think Sabato's crystal ball functions well or not before election, his shop is definitely good at analyzing results after them. And a couple weeks after the last one, they came up with 16 observations from 2016, some of which-- ones relevant to our work going forward-- I want to run by you. Let's start with observations 5, 6 and 7, which need to be out there in light of conventional wisdom that implies Hillary lost because minority voters didn't bother coming out for her on election day.
5. Michigan: Poor urban turnout tells the tale Despite doing significantly worse outside of Wayne County (Detroit) than Barack Obama, if Hillary Clinton had replicated the margin the county provided any of the last three Democratic presidential nominees (342,000, 441,000, and 382,000 in 2004, 2008, and 2012, respectively), she would have carried the state. As of the most recent count, Clinton is losing Michigan by about 13,000 votes, with only about a 289,000-vote margin in Wayne, about 53,000 votes worse than John Kerry’s. 6. But not necessarily in Pennsylvania A vital part of the Democratic formula in Pennsylvania is getting a huge margin out of Philadelphia County, particularly in recent years when some typically reliable Democratic counties in Appalachian western Pennsylvania have deserted the party. Unlike in Detroit, where Clinton’s sagging margin was likely decisive, Clinton did acceptably in Philadelphia. Her margin in Philadelphia was about 457,000 votes, down from Obama’s 479,000 and 492,000 in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but a decent win, and markedly better than John Kerry’s 412,000-vote margin in 2004 (Kerry won Pennsylvania). Clinton also outperformed Obama in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), adding about 15,000 votes to Obama’s 2012 margin. So why did she lose the state by about 66,000 votes? Because outside of Greater Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and its closest suburbs, she lost by huge margins. Leaving aside Allegheny and Philadelphia counties, Barack Obama lost the rest of Pennsylvania by about 273,000 votes. Clinton lost the rest of the state by…wait for it…629,000. A great example of Clinton’s struggles outside of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is Lackawanna County, a white, working class enclave that contains Scranton. Obama won the county by slightly more than 25 points in each of his elections, but Clinton won it by only three percentage points. Clinton also lost Erie County in the northwestern corner of the state-- it swung from Obama +16 to Trump +2. There are similar eye-popping swings across the state. Brandon Finnigan of the election results-reporting site Decision Desk HQ has argued for years that Republicans had a path in Pennsylvania, and he was proven correct thanks to the giant shift that the Trump candidacy effected in the Keystone State. 7. Or Wisconsin The Wisconsin story is similar. Clinton lost the state by about 24,000 votes, but her combined margins from the state’s two Democratic powerhouse counties-- Milwaukee and Dane (Madison) counties-- were almost identical to Obama’s margins in 2012. Clinton’s margin dipped a bit in Milwaukee from Obama but she did better in Dane than Obama, and she only lost about 800 net votes from Obama in those two counties combined, effectively a wash. Outside Milwaukee and Dane, Obama lost Wisconsin by 97,000 votes. Clinton lost outside of Milwaukee and Dane by 333,000 votes. To win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2020, Democrats are going to have to work to reverse some of the transformation outside of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Madison. Both states have what should be highly competitive Senate and gubernatorial races in 2018, and the performance of the small cities and rural counties that swung hard from Obama to Trump will be interesting: Will they stay Republican without Trump on the ballot, or will they revert to their Democratic roots? ...9. Why Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia didn’t flip While the Rust Belt largely abandoned the Democrats in 2016, albeit by very small margins in some of the aforementioned states, states with newer Democratic leans like Colorado, Nevada, and Virginia held fast for Clinton. There are two demographic factors that likely help explain why this occurred, particularly in comparison to the three Rust Belt States that crucially flipped for Trump: nonwhites, especially Latinos in Colorado and Nevada, and college-educated white voters. Helpfully for Trump, the exit polls found that white voters without a college degree made up pluralities of the electorates in Michigan and Wisconsin and were about even with white college-educated voters in Pennsylvania. Although Colorado had a smaller nonwhite share than Michigan, its electorate had a large plurality of white college-educated voters. Virginia also had a plurality of whites with college degrees and a sizable nonwhite share of the electorate. And Nevada had a plurality nonwhite electorate, the largest nonwhite share of the states in question, helping Clinton overcome the slightly larger share of voters who were white without a college degree in the Silver State. As of the most recent count, Clinton won Colorado by a little under five points, Virginia by a little over five, and Nevada by about 2.5 points. Table 2: Exit poll data for shares of electorates in Rust Belt trio and Sun Belt trio
10. The increasing urban-rural divide The political split between more urban and more rural areas only grew in 2016. In 2012 Mitt Romney carried just four of today’s 50 most populous counties. Donald Trump carried the same number of localities, but with four changes. Romney carried Salt Lake County, UT-- not shocking given his Mormon faith-- and Orange County, CA. Trump lost both places-- notably, Orange County had not voted for a Democrat for president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. But unlike Romney, Trump carried battleground Pinellas County, FL along the important I-4 corridor in the Sunshine State, as well as Suffolk County, NY, at the eastern edge of Long Island. Table 3: 2016 and 2012 presidential vote in the 50 most populous counties as of July 1, 2015
Among the largest localities in the country, Trump did worse overall than Romney while making up ground in places with smaller populations. Clinton performed about 0.5 points better (California still has many votes left to be counted) in the 50 counties in Table 3 than Obama did in 2012, but Trump performed about four points worse that Romney in the same group. However, in counties around the country with populations below 200,000 people, Trump improved about 4.5 points on Romney’s 2012 performance while Clinton did 7.5 points worse than Obama. ...15. Do the Republicans have new targets in the House? Before the election, we speculated about the possibility of some white, working-class House districts with Democratic incumbents potentially producing a massive House upset because of their swings to Trump. While there were no upsets, there were a few close calls. Reps. Tim Walz (D, MN-1) and Collin Peterson (D, MN-7) had closer-than-expected races as their districts swung hard to Trump, as did Rep. Matt Cartwright (D, PA-17). As the National Republican Congressional Committee plots its targets for 2018, some of these districts might get special attention. On the flip side, Democrats will be looking to 2018 as an opportunity to make gains in the House, and at this early date, as unlikely as it may seem today, we would not rule out the possibility of Democrats grabbing the roughly 25 net seats they would need to take control. Simply put, midterm elections are often a backlash vote against the president’s party, and with Trump in the White House, history suggests the opportunity is there for the Democrats, even on a national House map that has given them headaches in recent years thanks at least in part to Republican control of redistricting in many swing states following the 2010 census. 16. Democratic losses in the Age of Obama As we pointed out after the 2014 midterm election, the Democratic bench has taken an unprecedented hit during President Obama’s time in office. The numbers have worsened slightly following Obama’s final election as a part of the political environment. With most 2016 results in (adding projections for some uncalled races based on who is ahead at this point), the damage is as follows: a net loss of 13 governorships, 11 Senate seats, 63 House seats, 949 seats in state legislatures, and 29 state legislative chambers. Some other modern presidents lost more governorships, Senate seats, and state legislative chambers, but none has lost more net House seats and-- especially-- state legislative seats. Having lost close to 1,000 (!) seats in legislatures around the country, the Democratic Party has a weak bench from which to groom future party stars for higher office. Table 5 lays out the comparable losses-- and in some cases victories-- of other modern presidents compared to the outgoing one. Table 5: Down-ballot wins and losses for modern presidents
Trump Broke The FBI-- Can It Be Repaired? Will It Survive? Should It?
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This has been a really bad year for Renee Ellmers. The North Carolina Republican was the first woman in Congress to endorse the misogynistic Trump. And he appreciated it-- although the folks in the 2nd congressional district, most of whom had voted for Cruz in the primary, didn't like he jumping on the Trump bandwagon. She then got locked into a horrific three-way primary of her own, the first in which Trump endorsed a candidate; and he even recorded an ad for her. It backfired badly. The final results didn't just see her lose her seat, it saw her lose any hope for a future in electoral politics:
She then abandoned any pretense of being a Representative for his district and became a full-time Trump surrogate, hoping, of course, for some kind of job in Trump's administration. And any time Trump was caught molesting a woman or saying something insane about women, they'd call in Congresswoman Ellmers to go on TV and defend him. Over the past couple of months, she's turned herself into a laughing stock. Maybe she thinks he'll give her a nice job at one of his hotels or casinos where there's an opportunity to make good tips. But she's practically a Trump regular on CNN and Friday she was on with Chris Cuomo spreading the Trumpist nonsense about Hillary's "imminent"-- or even just eventual-- indictment.
Ellmers: "She is under-- facing indictment; we’re in a situation where the Clinton Foundation..." Cuomo: "No proof she's facing indictment." Ellmers: "There is proof." Cuomo: "There isn't any proof." Ellmers: "There is." Cuomo (getting exasperated he had to deal with a delusional imbecile): "What's the proof?" Ellmers: "The proof is the FBI investigators. This is coming out everywhere. I'm hearing about it. I don't really have all that many connections and yet I'm hearing about the investigation... You know what, people are talking. So, the investigation is moving forward. Now, I do agree with you, there is someone who is trying to put a cover up in place here. And it's at the Justice Department level. That's where it is." Cuomo: "That's a conspiracy theory and that's fine for you to believe it. But you said she's facing indictment... [Y]ou know something that the FBI is about to do. We have no basis of proof that that is about to happen. You may want it to happen, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen."
She's insane and a practiced liar but I suppose thinks having a moron punching bag for Cuomo is good for ratings. Of course she's not the only one Kellyanne Con-Man is sending out to lie on TV. Christie may be busy trying to stay out of prison but they still have nutty old fruitcake Rudy Giuliani willing to say anything for his last opportunity to find gainful employment before becoming worm food. The NY Times reported that Giuliani has ties with FBI moles who he uses as a conduit for the Trump campaign.
Tireless if often wildly inaccurate in his attacks on Hillary Clinton’s ethics, health and work as a United States senator and as secretary of state, Mr. Giuliani has been spending every minute in the public spotlight as a surrogate for Donald J. Trump. His most remarkable claim is that he has a pipeline into the Federal Bureau of Investigation and that agents tell him they are “outraged” that they have not been able to bring Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to justice.
Last week he was on Fox & Friends to rally the Trump troops when he told the hosts to expect a big surprise in regard to Clinton revelations. That was 3 days before Comey did his bit to elect Trump and destroy the integrity of the FBI itself.
Since August, Mr. Giuliani has publicly claimed that F.B.I. agents were telling him that Mrs. Clinton should have been criminally charged for the email server. “It perplexes numerous F.B.I. agents who talk to me all the time,” Mr. Giuliani said during an August interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN. “And it embarrasses some F.B.I. agents.” Mr. Giuliani has not named the embarrassed or perplexed agents, and as Wayne Barrett noted in the Daily Beast on Thursday, it is a violation of F.B.I. policy for agents to share investigative information. This week, Mr. Giuliani opened a new front. He attributed what might be seen as a commonplace difference of opinion about law and evidence to rampant corruption at the highest levels of the Justice Department, specifically naming the attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, who began her career as a prosecutor in the New York area in 1990 and has obtained convictions of politically corrupt Republicans and Democrats. Mr. Giuliani provided no substantiation of this grave accusation, but instead staked his claims on information that he said came from unnamed law enforcement sources. “You have outraged F.B.I. agents that talk to me,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on Wednesday with Megyn Kelly on Fox News. “They are outraged at the injustice. They are outraged at being turned down by the Justice Department to open a grand jury. They are convinced that Loretta Lynch has corrupted the Justice Department.” Asked about Mr. Giuliani’s statements, Mr. Miller said that, in fact, the former mayor had not been speaking with any active F.B.I. agents. “He has only had conversations with retired F.B.I. agents who no longer work inside the building,” Mr. Miller said. So Mr. Giuliani was apparently basing his charges on second- or thirdhand information when he declared, “This is worse than Watergate.” A bit much? Maybe. But he is giving Joseph McCarthy a run for his money.
Yesterday on Fox and confirming that the FBI was (illegally) giving the Trump campaign ammo, Giuliani said there are more e-mails coming that will be devastating to the Clinton campaign. The Wayne Barrett post linked to above, has led most people to conclude that the first swamp President Clinton is going to have to drain-- if Obama doesn't do it first-- is the FBI itself. It's now a useless organization that no one could possibly take at face value.
Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.” “The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity,” said Giuliani. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.” Along with Giuliani’s other connections to New York FBI agents, his former law firm, then called Bracewell Giuliani, has long been general counsel to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents. The group, born in the New York office in the early ’80s, was headed until Monday by Rey Tariche, an agent still working in that office. Tariche’s resignation letter from the bureau mentioned the Clinton probe, noting that “we find our work-- our integrity questioned” because of it, adding “we will not be used for political gains.” ...Back in August, during a contentious CNN interview about Comey’s July announcement clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal charges, Giuliani advertised his illicit FBI sources, who circumvented bureau guidelines to discuss a case with a public partisan. “The decision perplexes me. It perplexes Jim Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.” Kallstrom is the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the ’90s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani’s longtime friends. Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons as a “crime family.” He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey’s exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values. ...When Comey cleared Clinton this July, Kallstrom was on Fox again, declaring: “I’ve talked to about 15 different agents today—both on the job and off the job—who are basically worried about the reputation of the agency they love.” The number grew dramatically by Labor Day weekend when Comey released Clinton’s FBI interview and other documents, and Kallstrom told Kelly he was talking to “50 different people in and out of the agency, retired agents,” all of whom he said were “basically disgusted” by Comey’s latest release. By Sept. 28, Kallstrom said he’d been contacted by hundreds of people, including “a lot of retired agents and a few on the job,” declaring the agents “involved in this thing feel like they’ve been stabbed in the back.” So, he said, “I think we’re going to see a lot more of the facts come out in the course of the next few months. That’s my prediction.” Kallstrom, whose exchanges with active agents about particular cases are as contrary to FBI policy as Giuliani’s, formally and passionately endorsed Trump this week on Stuart Varney’s Fox Business show, adding that Clinton is a “pathological liar.”
Kallstrom, who served as a Marine before becoming an agent, didn’t mention that a charity he’d founded decades ago and that’s now called the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, was the single biggest beneficiary of Trump’s promise to raise millions for veterans when he boycotted the Iowa primary debate. A foundation official said that Trump’s million-dollar donation this May, atop $100,000 that he’d given in March, were the biggest individual grants it had ever received. The Trump Foundation had contributed another $230,000 in prior years and Trump won the organization’s top honor at its annual Waldorf Astoria gala in 2015. ...Despite his ties to Pataki, Limbaugh, and Trump, Kallstrom says he’s apolitical and has never been involved in a campaign, including Trump’s now. He says he’s a registered independent, and that the people he’s known in the FBI over all his years are as nonpartisan as he is. But, as quiet as it’s kept, no Democrat has ever been appointed FBI director. Four Democratic presidents, starting with FDR’s selection of J. Edgar Hoover in 1935, have instead picked Republicans, including Obama’s 2013 nomination of Comey, who was confirmed 93 to 1. This tally does not include the seven acting directors, who were named for brief periods over the last 81 years. For the first time in FBI history, the agency is now run by a director who isn’t a Republican, since Comey announced in a congressional hearing this year that though a lifelong Republican, having donated to John McCain and Mitt Romney, he had recently changed his registration (he did not say how he is currently registered). Six months into his first term in 1993, President Bill Clinton tapped Freeh, a onetime FBI agent who’d worked under Kallstrom, and Freeh spent much of his eight years at the bureau’s helm trying to put Clinton in jail, even dispatching agents to a White House side room to get the president’s DNA during a formal dinner. When Freeh stepped down in 2001, shortly after George Bush replaced Clinton, he went to work for credit-card company MBNA, a giant Republican donor where Kallstrom and another top Freeh FBI appointee were already working. He’s still hunting for the Clintons, though-- delivering a speech assailing them at an annual FBI office event in New York last year. It’s not just the man at the top who’s invariably a Republican. Like most law enforcement agencies, the FBI hierarchy and line staff has a Republican bent-- it’s a white, male, usually Catholic, and conservative culture. Giuliani and Kallstrom claim that the agents revolting against Comey’s handling of Hillary Clinton were doing it because they want apoltical investigations, with all targets treated the same. But neither of them, much less FBI brass or agents, were publicly upset when the worst Justice Department scandal in modern history exploded in 2007, with Karl Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the Bush White House swamped by allegations that they’d tried to force out nine U.S. attorneys and replace them with “loyal Bushies,” as Gonzales’s chief of staff put it. Democratic officials, candidates and fundraisers were five times as likely to be prosecuted by Bush’s justice than Republicans. Then at the top of the polls in the 2008 presidential race, Giuliani had to answer questions about it and said that he thought Gonzales should get “the benefit of the doubt,” calling him “a decent man” a few months before he resigned. “We should try to remove on both sides as much of the partisanship as possible,” lectured Giuliani. He recalled that strict rules were put into place while he was at the top levels of justice in the aftermath of Watergate limiting contact between law enforcement and political figures, a particular irony in view of the fact that he talks freely today about engaging in just such conversations on national television, oblivious to the fact that he is now a “political figure.” Giuliani’s mentor, Michael Mukasey, who succeeded Gonzales as attorney general, appointed a special investigator to examine the U.S. attorney scandal and she concluded that no laws had been broken. It was later reported that four days before Mukasey named this special prosecutor, a federal appeals court vacated seven of eight convictions in a case she supervised in Connecticut, ruling that the team suppressed exculpatory evidence, including the notes of an FBI agent. Kallstrom contends he didn’t say anything about the blatant partisan interference then because he was “never asked to comment,” though he had been a law enforcement consultant for CBS News in about the same time frame. How he became a frequent Fox commentator now is unclear. It’s clear enough, though, why when Comey sent a note to FBI staff on Friday explaining his decision to inform Congress about the renewed Clinton probe, the scoop about that internal memo went to Fox News. Why Kallstrom gets booked to talked about the Clintons a “crime family.” Why Clinton Cash author Peter Schweitzer, caught in a web of Breitbart and Trump conflicts, would announce on Fox that he was asked in August to sit down with New York office FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation (with the New York Times reporting this week that the agents were relying largely on his discredited work when they pitched a fullscale probe). Fox is the pipeline for the fifth column inside the bureau, a battalion that says it’s doing God’s work, chasing justice against those who are obstructing it, while, in fact, it’s doing GOP work, even on the eve of a presidential election.
Renee Ellmers (R-NC) is the only Republican member of Congress who Trump cut an ad for. It didn't help Ellmers win her primary. In fact, it probably hurt her She barely managed to come in second in a 3 way primary race and will be hoping for some kind of a job-- any kind of a job-- from Trump after January. These were the results:
She was the first woman in Congress to endorse Trump and she's one of the Republican female elected officials who has stuck with him, despite his bragging about groping women and despite all the assault allegations flooding in by the day. Sunday Ellmers was on CNN's State of the Union in her capacity as a Trump surrogate. It didn't go well, her on-air bullshit helping make it clear why her constituents retired her by such a massive vote. (Watch the video above.) Ellmers is the go-to-person-- or go-to-female-person for the media if they need someone to defend Trump no matter how disgusting his behavior. While many of his best known surrogates hid when Trump attacked former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, the craven and desperate Ellmers was on TV defending the indefensible. After Trump's 3AM twitter storm about Machado and her weight and a phony claim she was a porn star, Ellmers dutifully went on TV and answered for Trump. "Why," asked the interviewer, "does Donald Trump keep this issue alive? What do you think he thinks he has to gain by revisiting a topic that a lot of people have obviously been turned off by?" Ellmers had to say something, so she tried, "Obviously, Hillary Clinton brought this up in the debate and she did it clearly to try to paint Donald Trump in a negative light, so now Donald Trump is addressing the issue, as he did in the debate. He’s using social media because he knows it's the most effective manner to get his message out. He knows that, unfortunately, he cannot depend upon you, the media, to tell his story, and really what is happening. You know, you heard a lot about fact checking during the debate. Donald Trump is setting the record straight and he's using social media. That's the kind of president we need. Someone who goes right to the root of the problem... This isn't about the Miss Universe. This is about Hillary Clinton using this former Miss Universe pageant winner as a pawn in her bid for this White House presidential race." That's some stretch! And she wasn't done digging. When the interviewer asked her why Trump was still talking smack about Machado rather than addressing the issues the voters want to hear about, she said that Trump " is absolutely talking about these issues. But here, again, this is part of the Hillary Clinton strategy. This is part of her playbook—corruption and making things appear something that are not there. And this is how she's trying to attack him. Her main issue is to say that he doesn't have the temperament to be president of the United States. I completely disagree... He's setting the record straight. I mean unfortunately in Washington, when you're accused of something or painted in a certain light, typically, the reaction is not to fight back. If you do, then you’re playing into it. He is setting the record straight... I think that Donald Trump needs to move on and, again, the American people want to hear about the future. He is the future of this country. He is going to turn this country around and make America great again. Unlike Hillary Clinton that remains in the gutter."
Something tells me we're not going to be hearing much from Renee Ellmers ever again after she leaves Congress in mid-January, none-too-soon. And from Renee Ellmers to Charles Blow for tonight's bonus: Donald Trump, the worst of America. I literally don't know anyone who didn't already know this long before the buffoonish Trump came waddling down the escalator spewing hatred and bigotry. Blow's point is that Trump knows he's not going to be president and he's now just "stacking logs of grievance on the funeral pyre with the great anticipation of setting it ablaze if current polls turn out to be predictive." In other words, he'd like ti burn it all down.
There is something calamitous in the air that surrounds the campaign, a hostile fatalism that bespeaks a man convinced that the end is near and aiming his anger at all within reach. As his path to victory grows narrower, his desperation grows more pronounced. Last week a steady stream of women stepped forward to accuse Trump of some form of sexual assault, abuse or inappropriate behavior. Trump’s response has been marked by a stunning lack of grace and dignity, let alone contrition or empathy, a response much like the man himself. Instead, he is doubling down on sexism. ...His response to these charges has been surprisingly-- and perhaps, revealingly-- callow. He has mocked, whined, chided, bemoaned and belittled. It’s as if the man is on a mission to demonstrate to voters the staggering magnitude of his social vulgarity and emotional ineptitude. He has dispensed with all semblances of wanting to appear presidential and embraced what seems to be most natural to him: acting like a pig. ...Trump now looks like a madman from Mad Men, a throwback to when his particular privileges had more perks and were considered less repugnant. He looks pathetic. He is a ball of contradictions that together form a bully, a man who has built a menacing wall around the hollow of his self. He is brash to mask his fragility.
...Trump is in fact the logical extension of toxic masculinity and ambient misogyny. He is the logical extension of rampant racism. He is the logical extension of wealth worship. He is the logical extension of pervasive anti-intellectualism. Trump is the logical extension of the worst of America. With him you get a man who believes himself superior in every way: through the gift of fortune and the happenstance of chromosomes. He believes the rules simply don’t apply. Not rules that govern the sovereignty of another’s body, not rules that dictate decorousness. And the Republican Party was just the right place for him to park himself. When you have a political party that takes as its mission to prevent government from working instead of to make government work, a party that conflates the ill effects of a changing economy with the changing complexion of the country and is still struck by fever over the election of President Obama, Trump is a natural, predictable endpoint. Furthermore, Trump is what happens when you wear your Christian conservative values like a cardigan to conveniently slip off when the heat rises. Trump is fundamentally altering American politics-- coarsening them, corrupting them, cratering them. And America, particularly conservative America, has only itself to blame. Republicans sowed intolerance and in its shadow, Trump sprang up like toxic fungi.
That said, it was somewhat heartening this morning to read polls showing Trump sinking in deep red heartland states like Georgia-- where the latest YouGov survey reveals Clinton actually leading him 46.9%-44.4%-- Arizona and even Alaska. Are the Republican governments of those states rigging it against Trump too? We'll hear all about it on Trump TV eventually.
Primary Day: Trump Takes On The Koch Brothers, Club For Growth And The Tea Partry
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We've been focused on today's congressional primaries in races in California, New Jersey and Iowa, where Blue America is backing 9 candidates in competitive races: Lou Vince, Nanette Barragan, Bao Nguyen, Bill Ostrander, Alex Law, Jim Keady and Pat Murphy. But there are also primaries for House seats in South Dakota New Mexico, Montana and North Carolina. Many of the races in these states are not competitive. Even in New Jersey, where Blue America is involved with primaries for Alex Law, Eloy Delgado and Jim Keady, we have another candidate we've endorsed-- Peter Jacobs, who's taking on Republican Leonard Lance--where the party is already united and the nomination is settled... at least on the Democratic side. We think Peter will be up against Lance, the Trump-supporting GOP incumbent, but the Republicans have their own primary in NJ-07, where Lance has 2 crackpot opponents, right-wing businessman Craig Heard and teabagger gadfly David Larsen. Lance has already spent $665,108 making sure he would have no surprises tonight, while Heard has spent $47,667 (Larsen has spent nothing). But the most-watched Republican primary today is definitely in North Carolina, where gerrymandering has caused a court-ordered redistricting that has thrown two incumbents-- Renee Ellmers and George Holding into a race against each other (which also includes a well-known far right extremist, Greg Brannon). We've been mentioning this race lately because movement conservative organizations have lined up against Ellmers in a big way and because she moved early to wrap herself in the Trump lustre. She was one of the first members of Congress (and the first woman member) to fully embrace his narcissistic-- not to mention racist, xenophobic and misogynistic-- campaign. It was a shrewd strategy once the right-wing had declared war on her and backed Holding. Aside from Holding's own family SuperPAC, the American Foundations Committee, putting $330,580 into the race, The Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity threw in $205,794 in their first foray into the world of congressional primaries and the Club for Growth threw $787,841 into the red hot primary. Two other extremist groups, FreedomWorks and the Susan B Anthony List, the lunatic fringe GOP version of EMILY's List, have also jumped in to attack Ellmers. Game-changing big news broke in the race over the weekend, when Trump himself weighed in with an endorsement for Ellmers, putting him in conflict with the right-wing of the party and in line with the Paul Ryan establishment wing. Saturday he gave Ellmers the robocall you can hear up top. Tonight we'll get a another clue whether Trump is going to be seen as a king-maker or a drag for congressional Republicans. Koch money vs the Trump brand! He didn't give Ellmers any money or even pay for the call, but this will be a test of what his name means to Republican primary voters. Although Trump did well in his own primary in North Carolina, he didn't do great in the Raleigh suburbs which make up much of this district. Ted Cruz beat Trump in Franklin, Nash, Wilson, Chatham and Johnston counties. Before Trump's endorsement Saturday, Holding looked like he would win this one. Trump has thrown the contest into turmoil-- and there will be no runoff. Whoever gets a plurality wins the primary and, in effect, the seat. Most of the newly drawn second district was part of Holding's old district and just a small part was in Ellmer's. Here's a Koch brothers ad that ran this weekend:
Monday morning, the Tea Party Patriots, which calls itself the "biggest" of all the teabagger groups still active in politics, endorsed Holding, primarily because they hate Ellmers (and Paul Ryan). They are now urging North Carolina Republican primary voters to "reject a Representative who first ran for office with Tea Party support but was seduced by Washington once she got to the nation’s capital." This pits them directly against what Trump is asking NC-02 Republican primary voters to do. Should be interesting to watch the results roll in tonight.
Rep. George Holding-- a former legal counsel to the revered Sen. Jesse Helms-- refused to support the Ryan-Murray budget deal that ended Sequestration; supported the 2015 Republican Study Committee budget; has refused to vote to raise the debt ceiling; voted in favor of prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortion; voted in favor of preventing the IRS from implementing ObamaCare; voted to require Members of Congress and their staffs to give up their illegal ObamaCare subsidies; and has been a strong opponent of both illegal immigration and the Obama Administration’s executive amnesty programs. Rep. Renee Ellmers, on the other hand, has been a disappointment, to say the least. She campaigned in 2010 with Tea Party support, but turned her back once she got to Washington, and instead became another Big Government liberal. She supported wasteful spending bills-- including voting for a trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill that broke the spending caps Congress had set on itself!-- and voted to increase the national debt. She even sided with Nancy Pelosi in voting to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank last year, and she voted to fund President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty program. Perhaps even worse than her voting record, however, is her disdainful and dismissive attitude toward her constituents. In one such meeting in 2014, she was so rude that the meeting-- an account of which can be found here-- has become legendary. She has made clear that she no longer thinks of herself as her constituents’ representative to Washington; instead, she thinks of herself as Washington’s representative to her constituents. That’s just not a record worthy of Tea Party support, and, in fact, is a record worthy of Tea Party opposition.
UPDATE: Trump The Big Loser In North Carolina George Holding trounced Renee Ellmers, (despite?) the endorsement by and robocall from Trump. She barely held on to second place, losing 5 of the 6 counties, narrowly winning Harnett Co.
Is A Congressional Bloodbath Coming For GOP Candidates Who Hopped Aboard The Trump Train? Oh Yes
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This morning an inexperienced campaign manager called and asked me for some advise. She talked-- mostly complaining and gossiping and babbling about herself-- for over an hour and I doubt she listened to a word I said. But what I told her her under-funded, unknown candidate must do is tie their opponent to Trump. "Every time someone thinks about him, Trump should come into their consciousness. Your candidate is a long-shot, but, in your district, this is the way to do it." Do you know who Republican strategist Rick Wilson is? Many people heard about him when he launched a Republican Establishment jihad against Trump. In late March, he told the NY Times that he would prefer Hillary to Trump; may conservatives would. He told Times readers "I will not vote for Hillary, and I will not vote for Trump. At the end of the day, I believe that President Clinton would be less damaging to the Republican Party than President Trump. Because five minutes after she’s elected president, every bit of this anxiety in our party disappears instantly. We will go at the main enemy as we do. It will be a terrible four years, but it will have stopped this lunacy... I wrote the original Reverend Wright ad. I have spent a 25-year career in politics detonating Democrats out of safe seats and causing no end of troubles for them. I’m not a squishy liberal Republican."
Over the weekend, he wrote about one of my favorite subjects: what Trump is likely to do for down-ballot Republicans. Tonight we'll watch North Carolina's second congressional district where a GOP civil war raged between two different Republican establishments. Although she started her political life as a teabagger, Renee Ellmers was identified as a shill for the Beltway establishment and as a Boehner/Ryan lackey. The Club for Growth, the Koch brothers and half a dozen other far right establishment anti-establishment groups backed George Holding. Trump weighed in outside this dichotomy-- backing Ellmers solely based on his own narcissistic perspective (i.e., she endorsed him)-- and he was unable to rescue her political career. Maybe he'll remember to make her Secretary of Something in his imaginary cabinet. Conjuring up a warning, Wilson asked his readers to imagine that "it’s the Fall of this year and you’re a U.S. House or Senate candidate in a swing district or state. Your Democratic opponent is running a low-risk campaign, having pivoted to the slightly-center-left with aplomb. Regardless of their actual beliefs, they’ve got their masks bolted on tight, staying relentlessly on message as technocratic middle-of-the-lane moderates. Barack Obama’s approval numbers keep creeping higher and higher as a kind of “at least he’s not crazy or obviously corrupt” vibe sets in with the public. It makes your “Obamacare, Benghazi, tranny bathrooms” message cluster feel less promising than it did last year when you were planning this run, doesn’t it?"
When you endorsed him, you bought all the problems Trump has with the voters and none of the assets. That’s why you’re awake at night, staring at the ceiling wondering what the madman will tweet next. You’ve had a tough summer, with endless questions from the press in your not-too-conservative state. Every time he opens his mouth, you’re flooded with questions. You wake up every day trying to stay on your message, but each morning your guts get watery when the Google alert with “your name + Donald Trump” pops on your iPhone. It’s why you can’t go on your Twitter or Facebook or do town hall meetings; because the whole election is about Trump, not you. The resources you need from the donor community are a bright spot, because they’re certainly not giving the money to Mr. Self Funder Billionaire, but you’re having to spend it basically as it comes in to defend yourself. Your opponent and their allied SuperPACs are pounding you with media linking you at the hip with Trump. The themes are easy to predict; “Donald Trump says Mexicans are rapists…and Candidate X still backs him…100%” is the core script. Some of the connections are tenuous, but it doesn’t matter. All because you said the fateful words, “I support Donald Trump.” I get it. You were terrified of his online horde of low-information whackjobs, neo-Nazi trolls, red-hat jackasses and their endless, febrile demands that you worship at the foot of Agent Orange. Hell, you’re a politician. You want to be loved. He was beating all the people you liked and respected, one after another. The media kept making him the spotlight, the hot focus of attention and you wanted some of that mojo, didn’t you? Bad call.
You see it in your polling, every day. Trump’s poison brand has splashed over on you, like the reek of some political sewage you can’t wash off. Your data model shows you need to capture at least 30% of the Hispanic vote, but with Trump polling with Hispanics in the low teens and nearing single digits in some places, you can’t seem to break through. Married, professional women are voting for Hillary in droves, repelled by Donald Trump’s racism, misogyny, and also by the increasingly hideous behavior of his supporters. They’re suddenly not so fond of you, either. You own his politics. You own his policies, even the ones that only last as long as the next contradiction. You own the racial animus that started out as a bug, became a feature and is now the defining characteristic of his campaign. You own every crazy, vile chunk of word vomit that spews from his mouth. You own his racist bleatings about Mexicans and “his” African Americans. You own his digital Hitler Youth alt-reich fanboys with their white-power fantasies and roaring anti-Semitism. He’s political poison. Don’t believe me? You will. Feel that sinking sensation? That’s Trump’s negatives dragging you down. Donald Trump’s polling-average approval rating among registered and likely voters today stands at a grisly 34% favorable and 60.5% unfavorable.Hillary’s isn’t much better, but she has the small benefit of being able to shut her mouth when some crazy thought is trying to escape her mind. You were intrigued by his new, energetic populist message that breaks out of the stale confines of the tired old GOPe’s message playbook? You mean “build duh wall!” and “bomb duh oil?” and the rest of his catalog of slack-jawed inanities? Good luck with that. Yes, you need to stop “speaking Washington” but Trump’s message, affect and style isn’t fungible to human candidates.
Oh, you believed he was expanding the electorate? Bringing in millions of new voters? They’re not new; they’re just general election GOP voters who came out for him in the primary. Not you. Him. You perhaps overlooked that he’s also shedding millions of voters from the GOP’s coalition. If you’re in a swing state or district, tell me how you win back the Republican women and professionals who are fleeing Trump in droves? Tell me how you win in Florida or Nevada or Colorado as Hispanic support approached single digits? He’s not going to change. He’s not going to stop being a shallow blowhard and non-stop-Malaprop. There is no better Trump. He’s not going to become more Presidential or more mindful. Trump doesn’t give a damn about your election. You’re not part of a unified Republican ticket; you’re collateral damage in Trump Rampage Raw WWE 2016. Every day, Donald Trump hands the Democrats another sword with which to cut off your political heads. Every day, Trump adds to their catalog of opposition research and endlessly catchy video bits. He’s all yours, and there are few paths to escape the blast radius.
Earlier this evening Lindsey Graham said that Trump's jihad against Judge Curiel are "the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy" and, more ominously, that "there’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary." (And ole Lindsey doesn't really hate Hillary anyway.) So... the thermometer below leads to a unique fundraising page: #NeverTrump-- too late for Republicans; anything but too late for normal people.
