Every Republican In Congress Deserves Trump-- Weaponizing His Own Toxicity Against Them

Erik Paulsen is a mainstream conservative who won his suburban Twin Cities seat (MN-03) in 2008 when Jim Ramstadt resigned. Previously Paulsen had served as the majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Although the 2008 race was tough-- Paulsen beating Democrat Ashwin Madia 48.5% to 40.9%-- he sailed through his reelection bids... until he got on the wrong side of Señor Trumpanzee. I'll get to that in a minute.

The district-- west, north and south of Minneapolis-- had gone from red to purple during Paulsen's tenure, Obama winning it both time, albeit narrowly. When Paulsen was first elected the PVI was R+1. Now it is D+1. Paulsen's voting record was garden variety GOP but his district had been getting more and more moderate and extreme conservatism was a foreign ideology by 2016. Caucus day was a disaster for conservatives that year. Bernie didn't just overwhelmingly beat Hillary (61.7% to 38.3%) but his 126,229 votes beat all 3 of the top Republican vote getters combined:

• Rubio- 41,397
• Cruz- 33,181
• Trumpanzee- 24,473

Paulsen still managed to win in 2016-- 223,077 (56.7%) to 169,243 (43.0%) with relative ease but Trump was a major drag in the Minneapolis suburbs. Hillary beat him in the district by over 9 points, 50.8% to 41.4% Going into 2018, Paulsen was worried. He raised $5,778,480 and spent $5,862,137. And the NRCC was worried too. They were defending incumbents everywhere but they felt good about Paulsen and put $2,292,761 into the race and directed the Congressional Leadership Fund SuperPAC to put in another $946,202 and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to spend a quarter million on Paulsen's behalf. The Koch brothers put in another $150,000 + and all kinds of right-wing groups came to Paulsen's defense, from the NRA and Defending Main Street to a bunch of fringe anti-Choice groups. The DCCC had saddled itself with a right-of-center rich guy with nothing to to attract anyone except one thing: "I'm not Trump and Paulsen is." Fighting for his political life, Paulsen tried distancing himself from Trump. In the end, the Dem, Dean Phillips, pulverized him, 202,402 (55.6%) to 160,838 (44.2%).

But there's more to it than just that. Remember, Trump is very unpopular is the Minneapolis suburbs-- and he knew it. In fact, Nathan Gonzales explained how Trump weaponized that unpopularity-- to get even with Paulsen. Gonzales wrote that "Trump still won’t publicly admit he was a significant factor in Republicans’ loss of the House in 2018. But a behind-the-scenes moment captured in a new book suggests he is more politically self-aware than he leads on. We know that Trump doesn’t admit mistakes or commit sins. It’s not in his personality or good for his brand to acknowledge any weakness. But, according to Politico’s Tim Alberta, the president endorsed a vulnerable member of Congress in an intentional effort to weaken his candidacy." Yep... Paulsen. Every Republican deserves this fate.

In one case, Trump endorsed as a means of punishment. Having heard that Minnesota congressman Erik Paulsen was distancing himself from the White House in the hope of holding his seat in the Twin Cities’ suburbs, the president stewed and asked that the political shop send a tweet of support for Paulsen-- thereby sabotaging the moderate Republican’s efforts,” according to an excerpt in Alberta’s new book American Carnage, shared with Axios.

“When his aides demurred, Trump sent the tweet himself, issuing a ‘Strong Endorsement!’ of the congressman in a late-night post that left Paulsen fuming and his Democratic opponent giddy.”

...Trump’s involvement in Paulsen’s 3rd District race consisted of a single tweet and the congressman lost by a dozen points. If the president had done an event for him, Paulsen would probably have lost by a larger margin.

...[Generally] Trump also didn’t even try (or was successfully deterred) to wade into less friendly territory where he was toxic. Twenty-two of 25 Republican members in districts Hillary Clinton carried lost reelection last cycle. By limiting his visits to friendly territory, the president was essentially padding his personal win-loss record. It’s like Alabama’s football team scheduling Mercer, Fresno State and Western Carolina.

...While Trump might have a more nuanced idea of his political standing than previously advertised, the bottom line is that he believes Republicans had a successful midterm election with his help. And that will lead the president to talk more about immigration and replicate his strategy from 2018 to 2020.

Trump is talking about campaigning heavily is Minnesota in 2020. This will be a dream come true for Tom Bakk, minority leader of the state Senate. The state has a Democratic governor and Democratic Party-controlled state House. What they really want to do now is flip the Senate. As of today, there are 35 Republicans and 32 Democrats in the state Senate. All 67 seats in the chamber  are up for election in 2020 and if Democrats have a net gain of just 2 seats they'll control the chamber. "Jeremy [Miller, the Senate President] and Paul [Gazelka, the majority leader] are both very worried," a friend of mine in the legislature told me this morning... We'll probably take 3 or 4 seats but if Trump starts spending a lot of time in the state... the sky's the limit. A couple of those rallies he does before election day and half a dozen seats are going to flip. He's our not-so-secret weapon."

Will The Anti-Red Wave Continue To Grow?

Longtime Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel (retired) was on the air with John Catsimatidis yesterday and he explained what Trump, a former campaign contributor of his, has done to the political system. "It is a terrible thing because it doesn’t give Americans an opportunity to vote on the issues. It’s either you’re for Trump or against Trump... The worst that we have in America has joined up with Trump and good Republicans have nowhere to go."

That's been manifesting itself in special elections all year and now, very strongly, in the polls. Take Iowa, for example. Up for re-election are the state's 4 members of Congress (3 Republicans and one Democrat) and the state's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. A poll for the Des Moines Register released Sunday shows that Democrat Fred Hubbell is beating incumbent Kim Reynolds 43-41% in a state Trump won by ten points in 2016. The worst news for Republicans is that "Among independent voters, who represent the largest share of registered voters in the state, Hubbell leads Reynolds 40 percent to 34 percent. Twelve percent say they support Porter, and 14 percent are unsure... Hubbell also leads among Iowans who say they did not vote in the 2014 midterm election, by 41 percent to Reynolds’ 31 percent. Selzer said that could be an indication he’s drawing support beyond the traditional Democratic base, from people who are not regular midterm voters." As for the makeup of the state's congressional delegation, it may well go from 3 Republicans and 1 Democrat to 3 Democrats and 1 Republican or if everything keeps going they way they have... 4 Democrats and no Republicans! (Contribute to J.D. Scholten's campaign for the Steve King seat here.)

We find a similar story just north of Iowa in Minnesota, where early voting has already begun and where Republicans had been making gains in recent years. Trump seems to have brought that trend to a screeching halt. As J. Patrick Coolican wrote ominously for the StarTribune over the weekend, "because politics has become so nationalized, an unpopular president portends bad things for his party."

Trump’s approval rating has dropped from 45 percent to 39 percent, while 56 percent disapprove of his handling of the job, according to our recent Minnesota Poll, which was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy in partnership with MPR News. The pollster conducted 800 interviews, with a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points.

The question is whether Minnesota voters who disapprove of Trump will take out their frustrations on Republican candidates-- yes, it may seem strange, but voters often choose legislative candidates based on how they feel about the president.

Perhaps most surprising and most troubling for the GOP: Trump’s approval rating in southern Minnesota is just 40 percent, which belies the conventional wisdom that Trump is popular in greater Minnesota.

In other results, Democrats are safely ahead of Republicans in nearly every major statewide race. U.S. Rep. Tim Walz leads Jeff Johnson by 9 points in the governor’s race, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is up big over Jim Newberger, and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith leads state Sen. Karin Housley by 7 points.

How will this play out in House races? Let's look at the 8 seats. The Republicans thought they had a slam-dunk to take Democrat Tim Walz's open seat in a district Trump won 53.3% to 38.4%. Their candidate, Jim Hagedorn, hasn't been able to make the sale and it's now a dead-heat in an R+5 district. If the wave is strong enough, Dan Feehan will be sworn in as MN-01 congressman in January, not Hagedorn. In MN-02 Angie Craig (D) is clobbering Republican incumbent Jason Lewis.

Same in the 3rd district, where Dean Phillips is beating Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen by an even greater margin! These two Twin Cities suburban seats are becoming an elephant's graveyard this cycle, entirely because of voter antipathy towards Trump. Phillips and Craig are both weak candidates who will be swept into Congress because of a Trump-inspired anti-red wave.

Democrats have no viable opponents in MN-04 (Betty McCollum), MN-05 (Ilhan Omar) and MN-07 (Collin Peterson-- a district Trump won by THIRTY points!) and the Republicans have no viable opponents in MN-06 (Tom Emmer). So that leaves MN-08, another one the NRCC thought was an easy pick-up. Rick Nolan is retiring. The PVI is R+4 and Trump beat Hillary 54.2% to 38.6%. But despite Republican Pete Stauber spending 3 times more money that Democrat Joe Radinovich, this is another dead heat race that will depend on the size and strength of the wave on election day.

Before we get down into the nitty gritty of how this is playing out on the national stage, one more bit of background, this from Jonathan Martin at the NY Times over the weekend: Kavanaugh Was Supposed To Be A Midterm Boon For the GOP. Not Anymore. Martin reported that "With Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, tentatively scheduled to testify this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and many women furious over President Trump’s attacks on Dr. Blasey, a Supreme Court nomination that was once seen as a political winner in many conservative-leaning states could, instead, rouse female voters and independents who otherwise may have cared little about the confirmation fight... Suburban women are pivotal in this year’s campaign and many of them were already tilting toward Democrats because of their contempt for President Trump. If Republicans are too harsh in their questioning of Dr. Blasey, they risk inviting an even greater backlash at the ballot box in an election where their House majority is in peril and their one-vote Senate majority is teetering."

OK, and that takes us right to the new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. To begin with, 52% of registered voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing (45% strongly). 44% approve (29% strongly). The Republican Party is viewed negatively by 44% of likely voters and 32% positively, as opposed to the Democratic Party, which is viewed negatively and positively by 38% of registered voters.

Kavanaugh is viewed positively by 27% and negatively by 30%.

And when asked which party they would prefer in control of Congress, 52% say the Democrats and 40% say the Republicans.

Most voters-- and most independent voters-- want their vote to send a signal that they want to see a Democratic Congress as a check on and balance for Trump.

Sixty-five percent of registered Democrats say they’re very interested in the midterms-- registering either a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale-- compared with 61 percent of Republicans who say the same thing.

That narrow 4-point advantage for Democrats is down from their leads of 11 points in August (63 percent to 52 percent) and 16 points in July (65 percent to 49 percent).

The groups with the highest level of interest in the election: Seniors (73 percent register either a “9” or “10), Democrats (65 percent), whites (61 percent), Republicans (61 percent) and African Americans (53 percent).

The groups with the lowest level of interest: Independents (37 percent) and those ages 18-34 (35 percent).

Worrying: younger voters are not enthusiastic about voting, nor are independents, two groups many Democratic candidates have been counting on to get them over the finish line, especially in red districts. Democratic candidates have to ask themselves what will help more in the final weeks of campaigning-- appealing to seniors or trying to enthuse younger voters. Where they allocate scarce resources could determine the results in November.

Independent Voters Are Ready To Step Up And Save The Country From Trump

Overwhelmingly, voters who identify as Democrats vote for Democratic Party candidates-- even for candidates for the Republican wing of the Party (Blue Dogs and New Dems)-- and the rapidly shrinking number of voters who identify as Republicans vote for Republicans-- whether mainstream conservatives or neo-fascists and, presumably, Trumpists. So... more than ever, it is independents who will determine who wins the midterms. And guess who the independents can't stand? Yes, Trump... and Trump enablers.

Take Wisconsin. Paul Ryan has bowed out of contention with as much grace as he could muster before being taken down by a union iron worker, saving, he hopes, his future political career. Focus groups showed he had irretrievably lost the respect of WI-01 independent voters. But the Randy Bryce congressional race isn't the only one with national import in the state. Remember Governor Walker? Monday morning, Politico reported that his goose is cooked... by the same independent voters who plan to vote for Randy Bryce and Tammy Baldwin. "There’s every reason to believe this is the beginning of the end for Scott Walker. His presidential bid crashed and burned. He’s running for a third term as governor in what figures to be a hostile midterm for the Republican Party. Polling shows that the independent voters who were so critical to Walker’s wins in the 2012 recall and 2014 reelection are breaking away from him... His opponent, Schools Superintendent Tony Evers, has a slight lead in recent polls and there’s evidence that critical suburban voters are shifting leftward."

“I don’t think this is about Democratic enthusiasm in Madison and Milwaukee, it’s about Democratic enthusiasm and a backlash to Trump and Walker everywhere in Wisconsin,” said Sachin Chheda, a Democratic strategist and former Milwaukee County party chair.

Chheda points to “a massive shift to the left” in what was once solid Walker territory-- including special elections in Green Bay’s Brown County and in the Twin Cities suburbs in St. Croix County.

Democrats also cite three public polls in recent weeks-- NBC/Marist, Marquette and Suffolk/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel-- show independent voters are breaking from Walker, a daunting signal given that the state is almost evenly split politically, making them an essential part of the governor’s path to victory.

“What all of those polls said is that independents are going for Evers over Walker by 10 points. Walker has generally won independents when he’s gotten to victory,” Chheda said.

While Walker is expected to again win the vote-rich, GOP suburban counties outside of Milwaukee-- he dominates in the so-called “WOW” counties where turnout is high-- Chheda said if Democrats can nibble at the margins, it would make it much more difficult for Walker to win statewide.

The Trump factor could play a role in those suburbs. Even Republicans admit Trump’s unfiltered rants on social media and a slew of scandals hitting his inner circle could prompt GOP voters to stay home in November, including those heartened by Trump’s policies on immigration and taxes.

Sunday night Jonathan Swan lit up the internet with a simple statement at Axios that "it's rare to see so much evidence of a trend accumulate so many months out, only for all the signals to be proven wrong... 'Every metric leads you to one conclusion: The likelihood of significant Republican losses in the House and state/local level is increasing by the week,' said the Republican operative who did this statistical comparison to 2010. 'The depth of losses could be much greater than anticipated and the Senate majority might be in greater peril than anticipated.'"

This is all about independent voters. Julie Pace, reporting for AP, noted that "Republicans have spent the primary season anxiously watching suburban voters, particularly women, peel away because of their disdain for Trump. The shift seems likely to cost the party in several key congressional races. Still, party leaders are optimistic that Republicans can keep control of the Senate, which could help insulate Trump from a raft of Democratic investigations."

History is not on Trump’s side. The president’s party typically suffers big losses in the first midterm election after taking office. And despite a strong economy, Republicans must also contend with the president’s sagging approval rating and the constant swirl of controversy hanging over the White House, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Despite those headwinds, Trump is betting on himself this fall. He’s thrust himself into the center of the campaign and believes he can ramp up turnout among his ardent supporters and offset a wave of Democratic enthusiasm. Aides say he’ll spend much of the fall holding rallies in swing states.

“The great unknown is whether the president can mobilize his base to meet the enthusiasm gap that is clearly presented at this point,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Because the middle won’t be there for Republicans.”

Indeed, Trump’s turbulent summer appears to have put many moderates and independents out of reach for Republican candidates, according to GOP officials. One internal GOP poll obtained by The Associated Press showed Trump’s approval rating among independents in congressional battleground districts dropped 10 points between June and August.

“The great unknown is whether the president can mobilize his base to meet the enthusiasm gap that is clearly presented at this point. Because the middle won’t be there for Republicans.”

A GOP official who oversaw the survey attributed the drop to negative views of Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the White House’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The official was not authorized to discuss the internal polling publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Those declines put several incumbent GOP lawmakers at risk, including Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, who represents a district in the Washington suburbs, and Rep. Erik Paulsen, whose suburban Minneapolis district has been in Republican hands since 1961.

Coincidentally, the NY Times took an in-depth look at how the Paulsen race in Minnesota is shaping up. Short answer: very, very badly for the GOP.

88% of Democrats are planning to vote for Dean Phillips, an exceptionally bad candidate from the Republican wing of the party, a rich, out-of-touch New Dem who will make an absolutely horrible member of Congress. 92% of Republicans plan to vote for Paulsen, who has already proven himself a horrible member of Congress and a repulsive Trump toadie and rubber-stamp. So why is Phillips so decisively ahead? There are more independents in the district than Republicans and they've swung to Phillips-- 53-40%. That's it. BOOM! And that tells us more than just about one district in the suburbs that wrap around Minneapolis from the west, north and south. Independent voters are not a factor in much of the Old Confederacy. But in the rest of the country... their disdain for Trump is going to be very bad news for the Republican Party 2 months from today.

Is Dean Phillips A Good Candidate? How Will He Be If He Gets To Congress?

How would a New Dem "repair" the government? Turn it over to the banksters?

Last night one of my favorite candidates of the cycle was in town and we had dinner. He was very enthusiastic about another candidate he had just met in Minnesota, Dean Phillips, the DCCC-favored candidate to take on Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen in the suburbs west of Minneapolis (MN-03), an arc that goes from Bloomington, Edina and Eden Prairie, through Minnetonka, Plymouth and Maple Grove up to Champlin, Brooklyn Park and Coon Rapids. Obama won the district both times and Hillary beat Trump by 9 points. The district's PVI is D+1. Still, Paulsen was reelected with an even bigger margin-- 56.7% to 43%-- than the Clinton win over Trump. He ran against a weak DCCC/EMILY's List centrist candidate, Terri Bonoff. The DCCC spent $3,330,152 attacking Paulsen and Pelosi's SuperPAC threw in another $568,897. And the DCCC wants to make sure it runs another centrist (of course). There are 4 Democrats running but the DCCC isn't waiting for MN-03 DFL voters to pick one; they've already added Phillips to their Red to Blue page in an attempt to clear the field of the other, more progressive, candidates. Voters don't like when the DCCC does this, but the DCCC is incapable of learning anything. They exist in a self-referencing DC bubble and have no understanding of America at all-- which explains why they've been on an uninterrupted losing streak since Pelosi took over.

Phillips' bio says he's the grandson of Dear Abby and that he went to work in the Phillips Distilling Company warehouse and rose to be CEO... albeit without mentioning his dad owned the company. His bio also doesn't mention he's a New Dem. The graphic above is from the DCCC website and the one below is from the New Dems website.

I have to admit, I've never spoken with Phillips and he may be a lovely man. But I do know that the New Dems have very stringent vetting process and they will not endorse anyone who doesn't fit the Wall Street agenda they are all about. Along with the Blue Dogs,the New Dems are the heart and soul of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. An overwhelming number of New Dems, in fact, are also Blue Dogs, and almost every Blue Dog is a New Dem. Good members of Congress-- those fighting for ordinary working families-- are not in the New Dems. The New Dems exist to serve special interests, especially Wall Street special interests.

I met Harley Rouda, one of the candidates running to replace Putin's favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, in Orange County's CA-48, a few months ago. He came over to my house and we had a great chat and he seemed like a personable guy and a decent candidate. Then the New Dems endorsed him and I started viewing him through that prism. He's probably going to win his race-- and he's decidedly better than the DCCC's first choice in that district, Hans Keirstead-- but I already know what his voting record is going to be like in Congress. The New Dems don't endorse people unless they're very sure there won't be any tendencies to be "too" progressive. It's a Wall Street-owned PAC and they don't fool around. So far Rouda, an ex-Republican, has self-funded 60% of his campaign ($730,500). That kind of attitude about buying a congressional seat should always set off alarm bells.

In CA-48, I've spent time-- online, on the phone and in person-- with Laura Oatman, the progressive in the race. My bet is that she's make a much better member of Congress, but she's being drowned out by the 2 New Dems, Harley ($1,225,534) and Hans ($855,340, of which $220,400 is self-funding). Another candidate in that race, carpetbagger Omar Siddiqui, has self-funded 80% of his campaign ($458,498) and campaigns openly as a "Reagan Democrat." Laura's campaign is more of a grassroots effort and she's raised $213,268. Perhaps she's waiting for the DCCC to bigfoot into the campaign against her, a move that could bring her more attention, the same way it did Laura Moser in Houston.

So... back to Minnesota. I don't know the 4 DFL candidates and I'd rather see who MN-03 voters decide the nominee is before wading into that one. The DCCC and New Dems sitting on the scale for Phillips, though, makes me very suspicious that he'd be a terrible member of Congress, just like almost all of the New Dems already in Congress are.

Sunday, DFA sent out an email to their members entitled "Some Democrats just never learn." It was more about Senate Democrats than the House Democrats we usually deal with here at DWT. "Donald Trump's allies in the Senate decided to move forward with the Bank Lobbyist Act, a bill that would massively deregulate the majority of big banks and make it easier for banks to use discriminatory and fraudulent practices," they wrote. "One would think that this would be a no-brainer bill for Democrats to oppose. Democratic voters are not clamoring for bank deregulation-- in fact, quite the opposite. Ten years later, many working families are still recovering from the last financial collapse caused by greedy big banks. But 16 Senate Democrats voted to help destroy key regulations against the big Wall Street banks. This is unacceptable. And it's exactly the type of behavior that could reverse the 'blue wave' Democrats are dreaming of in November. The young voters, voters of color and working families that the Democrats need to turn out this fall want to see representatives who will fight for them-- not give everything away to Wall Street."

That's the New Dem mentality they're railing against. They quoted Elizabeth Warren to illustrate what they're talking about:

"There’s Democratic and Republican support because the lobbyists have been pushing since the first day Dodd-Frank passed to weaken the regulations on these giant banks. People in this building may forget the devastating impact of the financial crisis 10 years ago, but the American people have not forgotten... the millions of people who lost their homes; the millions of people who lost their jobs; the millions of people who lost their savings, they remember and they do not want to turn lose the big banks again."

And, as DFA said-- We can't afford to keep electing Democrats who are bought and owned by Wall Street. We need progressive fighters who will push back on corporate corruption in every sector, from every level of government. If someone is a New Dem or a Blue Dog, you can be very sure they are exactly the problem DFA and Elizabeth Warren are talking about. Don't be fooled again.