The Worst Person In The World-- The GOP Deserves Him... But Do The Rest Of Us?

Trumpist by Nancy Ohanian

A week or so ago, Señor Trumpanzee launched an Adderall-fueled tweet storm against his perceived enemies within the Republican Congress. He struck out especially hard against Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, one of 3 Republicans especially vulnerable in the 2018 midterms. Ironically, one of the reasons Flake is seen as son vulnerable is because he voted to repeal Obamacare and replace it with TrumpCare, which would kick millions of Americans off healthcare. Wednesday, asked by Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Political Rewind if Trump is inviting a primary challenge with his erratic behavior, Flake responded that "The direction he’s headed right now, just kind of drilling down on the base rather than trying to expand the base, you know, I think he’s inviting one... I think he could govern in a way that he wouldn’t."

Trump tweet-endorsed extremist crackpot Kelli Ward for Flake's seat and Trump's most extremist allies are on same page. On Wednesday Sean Hannity endorsed her on his radio show and earlier Trump's own Daddy Warbucks, neo-fascist Long Island billionaire Robert Mercer gave Ward's superPAC $300,000. But... Trump didn't give her a shout out-- let alone invited her up on stage-- when he was in Phoenix ranting and raving like a madman earlier this week. She was there working the crowd but Trump had already met with the GOP anti-Flake forces who are sceptical than anyone as obviously deranged as Ward can win a general election. How deranged? Watch this ad from McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund PAC. It's not possible a Democratic Party ad against her would be as harsh and demeaning:



Alex Isenstadt reported that Trump has been continuing his childish spat with Flake by actively plotting against him, driving the Senate Republicans bonkers and infuriating the people he will need to salvage his catastrophic legislative agenda and to save him from removal from office after an increasingly likely 2019 impeachment trial. "Before taking the stage in Phoenix on Tuesday evening for a campaign-style rally," wrote Isenstadt, Señor Trumpanzee "huddled backstage with state Treasurer Jeff DeWit and former state GOP Chairman Robert Graham. Both are considering running against Flake, an outspoken critic of the president who recently published an anti-Trump book, Conscience of a Conservative.

Trump ripped the Arizona senator during the brief meeting, calling him “the flake," according to three people who provided an account of the discussion. Trump also discussed the potential for a primary challenge to Flake and told DeWit and Graham, both of whom have aligned with the president, to get back to him about their interest in running.

Also participating in the huddle was Rep. Trent Franks, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus who appeared at the rally. At one point, Franks told the president that either DeWit or Graham would make strong challengers to Flake.

On Wednesday afternoon, Graham’s daughter posted a picture of the backstage meeting on her Instagram account.

Plotting against The Flake in Phoenix

Trump attacked Flake during his campaign-style speech Tuesday, though he did not mention the senator by name. The president described the first-term senator as “weak on [the] border, weak on crime.”

“Nobody knows who the hell he is!” Trump added.

Then, on Wednesday morning, the president launched a more explicit attack. “Phoenix crowd last night was amazing-- a packed house. I love the Great State of Arizona,” the president tweeted. “Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”

It was the second time in recent days that Trump had used his Twitter account to pummel the senator. Last week, the president tweeted that Flake was “toxic.”

Trump’s offensive represents a massive break from precedent. It is highly unusual for the president to attack and explore a primary challenge to a member of his own party, let alone one as politically vulnerable as Flake. Prior to Trump’s visit to the state, the White House had met privately with DeWit and Graham and former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has formally launched a bid against the Arizona senator.

On Tuesday, as the president made his way to Phoenix, he traveled with DeWit on Air Force One.

The White House barrage-- and attention to potential primary challengers-- has infuriated senior Republicans and further opened a widening rift between congressional GOP leaders and the president. In the days leading up to the Phoenix rally, in anticipation of a Trump-led assault on the senator, a number of Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, released statements promising Flake their full support.

Ward, who attended the Tuesday rally, said the president’s visit had stoked widespread interest in the primary.

“I thought it was great,” she said after Trump concluded his remarks. “I thought what he said about Flake was exactly right.”

The trip is also sure to intensify the search for a Flake opponent. With some Trump supporters unsatisfied with Ward, a controversial figure who lost handily to GOP Sen. John McCain in a 2016 primary challenge, the quest is on for an alternative.

As he made his way to the rally, Don Tapia, a major Republican Party donor and one of Trump’s biggest financial backers in the state, said he didn’t know who he would back in the primary. But he said it wouldn’t be Ward.

“I will not support Kelli Ward,” Tapia said. “You can quote me on that.”

The photo of Trump and poor Theresa May that showed up in The Baffler this week is absolutely classic-- best Trump picture all day so far, capturing his essence perfectly. David Roth noted that dogs aren't embarrassed by the cone that Trump is wearing but are "inarguably inconvenienced by these cones, which is their purpose: the cones are prescribed by veterinarians because saying things like 'I’ll need you to try avoid licking these stitches for a week' or 'I’m going to ask you to stop gnawing on that bacterial infection on your ass' is not going to work. The dogs do not like this, and they also may not like engaging with their peer-dogs while wearing a goofy blunderbuss that keeps them from their habitual introductory b-hole assessments and self-administered kamikaze junk ablutions. But at some point there’s no real sense in guessing. You have probably gathered that this is about Donald Trump."

Among the segment of the population that’s put off by things like a president refusing to forcefully condemn Nazi rioters, this has raised some uncomfortable questions about Trump’s beliefs. Does he really share any or many of the beliefs with the racists and nationalists and racist-nationalists who made his campaign their cause, or is this a political calculation against criticizing a small but important part of his base? Was his decision to defend statues of famous slave masters a reflection of his perspective on history, or maybe a darkly strategic reading of the national political mood? Did he not know that what he said was historically incoherent and obviously wrong? It’s right to wonder, but we should be past asking these questions about this man at this point. The most significant thing to know about Donald Trump’s politics or process, his beliefs or his calculations, is that he is an asshole; the only salient factor in any decision he makes is that he absolutely does not care about the interests of the parties involved except as they reflect upon him. Start with this, and you already know a lot. Start with this, and you already know that there are no real answers to any of these questions.

It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More. The only comprehensible throughline to his politics is that everything Trump says is something he’s said previously, with additional very’s and more-and-more’s appended over time; his worldview amounts to the sum of the dumb shit he saw on the cover of the New York Post in 1985, subjected to a few decades of rancid compounding interest and deteriorating mental aptitude. He watches a lot of cable news, but he struggles to follow even stories that have been custom built for people like him-- old, uninformed, amorphously if deeply aggrieved.

There’s a reason for this. Trump doesn’t know anything or really believe anything about any topic beyond himself, because he has no interest in any topic beyond himself; his evident cognitive decline and hyperactive laziness and towering monomania ensure that he will never again learn a new thing in his life. He has no friends and no real allies; his inner circle is divided between ostensibly scandalized cynics and theatrically shameless ones, all of whom hold him in low regard and see him as a potential means to their individuated ends. There is no help on the way; his outer orbit is a rotation of replacement-level rage-grandpas and defective, perpetually clammy operators.

Trump now “executes” by way of the The Junior Soprano Method. When he senses that his staff is trying to get him to do one thing, Trump defiantly does the opposite; otherwise he bathes in the commodified reactionary grievance of partisan media, looking for stories about himself. It takes days for his oafish and overmatched handlers to coax him into even a coded and qualified criticism of neo-Nazis, and an instant for him to willfully undo it. Of course he brings more vigor to the latter than the former; he doesn’t really understand why he had to do the first thing, but he innately and deeply understands why he did the second. The first is invariably about someone else-- some woman, there was a car accident, like during or maybe after that thing-- and therefore, as an asshole, he does not and cannot really care about it. The second is about him and therefore, as an asshole, he really, really does.

To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him-- the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted-- is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment-- abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite.



This is what an asshole is, and lord knows Trump is not the only one in his business, or our culture, who insistently bends every incident or issue back towards his sour and jealous self. Some of the people who do this even care at some level about the broader world, but because they are assholes believe that the solution to that world’s problems lies in paying more attention to one particular asshole and his or her ideas. Trump is not one of those people. The rest of the world is an abstraction to him, a market to exploit; there is no other person in it who is real to him. They’re all supplicants or subjects, fans or haters, but their humanity is transparently not part of the equation. What other people might want, or indeed the fact that they could want at all, is crowded out of the picture by the corroded and corrosive bulk of his horrible self.

There is no room for other people in the world that Trump has made for himself, and this is fundamental to the anxiety of watching him impose his claustrophobic and airless interior world on our own. Is Trump a racist? Yes, because that’s a default setting for stupid people; also, he transparently has no regard for other people at all. Does Trump care about the cheap-looking statue of Stonewall Jackson that some forgotten Dixiecrat placed in a shithole park somewhere he will never visit? Not really, but he so resents the fact that other people expect him to care that he develops a passionate contrary opinion out of spite. Does he even know about . . . Let me stop you there. The answer is no.

The answer is always no, and it will always be no because he does not care. Every lie, every evasion, every massive and blithely issued shock to the conscience Trump authors will only ever be about him. He will never be embarrassed by any of these things, because he cannot understand anyone’s response to them except as it relates to him. Slavery? That’s another thing that his very dishonest enemies want to blame him for. Racism? He’s been accused of it, and honestly it’s so ridiculous, so ridiculous. History? He’s in the business of making it, baby. Violence? Not his fault. People protesting? He doesn’t know them.

This is the horror at the hole of every asshole, and it is why Trump will never get better as a president or a person: it will always and only be about him. History matters only insofar as it brought him to this moment; the roaring and endless present in which he lives matters because it is where he is now; the future is the place in which he will do it all again. Trump’s world ends with him, and a discourse or a politics that is locked into scrutinizing or obsessively #resisting or otherwise chasing him will invariably end up as arid and abstracted and curdled as he is. More to the point, it’s a dead end. The shame an animal feels is secret to us.

Kelli Ward implies in her vicious and misleading new campaign ad-- featuring Señor Trumpanzee-- that Flake, who voted for TrumpCare-- was the cause of its failure by one vote. Liker Trump's, her deranged followers don't care about any reality except the one that is manufactured to conform with their crackpot delusions.

Will Trump's Interference Hand The Democrats The Arizona Senate Seat-- And A Senate Majority?

Painting by Nancy Ohanian

Señor Trumpanzee hasn't figured out Republican Party politics-- or GOP congressional primaries-- yet. He's terrible at it. But that hasn't stopped him from jumping in like some kind of a crazed baboon. A few weeks ago we mentioned that Trump's pre-adolescent vindictive, self-destructive nature is endangering Dean Heller's reelection bid in Nevada. Here's the ad that a Trump SuperPAC, which Pence beats the bushes to finance, ran in the Reno and Las Vegas media markets to scare not just Heller but any Republican daring to try to serve their constituents' interests instead of bowing down to Trump's insane megalomania:



Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. The morally reprehensible Trump only managed to win 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

In February, Ward released a poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Trump won Arizona last year-- but not by much. McCain and Romney each beat Obama in Arizona 54-45%. Trump squeaked by 49.5-45.4%. It wasn't that Hillary did better than Obama-- she didn't-- it was that voters liked Trump less than other GOP nominees. Last November Trump got 1,021,154 votes the same day that McCain was being reelected senator with 1,089,324 votes (53.4%). Trump was a drag on the GOP ticket across the state. He's less popular among Arizona voters today. The trick for a politician like Flake is to hold onto Trump's base while expanding it by differentiating himself from Trump. Monday morning, Alex Isenstadt explained to Politico readers how Trump is making that very hard for Flake to do. Trump, who has threatened to spend $10 million of his own money-- an empty threat; Trump is too cheap-- against Flake, and White House political operatives have been meeting with Flake foes.

That's DeWit in the back with a pack of Trumpanzees

Since taking office, Trump has spoken with Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, a top official on his 2016 campaign, on at least two occasions, according to two sources familiar with the talks. More recently, since June, White House officials have also had discussions with former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has announced her bid, and former Arizona GOP Chairman Robert Graham, who like DeWit is exploring a campaign.

At a Republican National Committee meeting outside of San Diego in May, David Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager and the president of the influential conservative outside group Citizens United, told Graham that either he or DeWit would likely get substantial backing from conservatives should either enter the contest, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

“Maybe [Flake] should get back on the Trump team. A lot of people believe in Trump’s policies," said former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a prominent immigration hard-liner who backed Trump, noting that the president remained popular in Arizona. “There’s a silent majority that’s still there, and still in this state, so watch out.”

Graham, who has begun reviewing polling and purchasing campaign website addresses, was present at a meeting this spring of top GOP donors in Arizona that was also attended by Chris Bannon, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s younger brother and a University of Arizona official. At the top of the agenda, according to three people familiar with the event, was a prospective Graham primary against Flake. During the meeting, which was also attended by Arizona Cardinals executive Michael Bidwill, several donors expressed mounting frustration with the incumbent.

Those familiar with the gathering stressed that Chris Bannon, who is widely viewed as a conduit to his powerful brother, was more of a listener than active participant and did not articulate his feelings about a Flake challenge.

...Trump is keeping close tabs on Flake’s fortunes back home. During a meeting with a small group of state Republican Party chairs in the Oval Office on Tuesday, he asked Arizona GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines for an update on the race. Lines responded by telling the president that the state party did not get involved in primaries, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

“The mutual dislike runs deep,” said Constantin Querard, a Republican strategist who oversaw Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign in the state. “That both complicates [Flake’s] path to re-election by putting him at odds with much of the Arizona GOP, and it makes it very likely that if he gets a primary challenger that the Trump team likes, that challenger will be funded and supported in a way that makes beating Flake the most likely outcome.”

...An administration-backed primary challenge to Flake would also further inflame tensions with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who over the last several weeks has had several run-ins with the White House over political planning. McConnell, who is fiercely protective of GOP incumbents and has vowed to protect those facing primaries, recently became enraged when a Trump-sanctioned outside group launched an advertising blitz targeting Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, who was also critical of the president during the 2016 campaign, over his refusal to back the Obamacare repeal plan.

Even so, there has been ongoing talk at the White House about how a prospective race would play out. Among the questions raised, according to two people who have discussed the matter with the administration directly, surrounds the candidacy of Ward, a brash conservative who was crushed by McCain in a 2016 primary. A well-known figure in the state, she could siphon support from DeWit or Graham, both of whom are regarded as more viable candidates.

...Among the president’s most vocal supporters, the feeling of betrayal is particularly intense.

“He’s the president, so we should stick by him, especially on the Republican side,” said Arpaio, noting that Flake was one of a small group of senators who had vocally opposed Trump.

Yet the complaints about Flake extend to other perceived apostasies, including his 2016 push to pass a bipartisan gun control bill, his openness to negotiate with former President Barack Obama over a nuclear pact with Iran, and his push to lift the U.S. embargo on travel to Cuba. While his supporters praise him as an independent-minded lawmaker who charts his own path, Flake’s detractors deride him as a grandstander-- one all too willing to poke his party in the eye.

Many of those in the state who provided Trump with financial backing in 2016 have begun talking up the possibility of finding a primary challenger, with DeWit and Graham among those most frequently mentioned. Others hold out hope that GOP Rep. Martha McSally, a rising star, or former Gov. Jan Brewer, a vigorous Trump backer, will enter the race.

Don Shooter, a state legislator and an outspoken backer of the president, predicted that a Flake challenger would immediately be able to raise between $10 million and $15 million from donors eager to see the incumbent unseated. “They’re motivated to take Jeff Flake out,” he said.

Among those Flake has rankled: Paradise Valley philanthropist Don Tapia, one of the most sought-after Republican donors in the state, who donated over $100,000 to pro-Trump causes in 2016 and also helped to bankroll his inauguration. Tapia was a benefactor of Flake’s 2012 Senate run but, according to multiple Arizona Republicans, has recently spoken of backing someone else in next year’s primary. (Tapia did not respond to a request for comment.)

"He ran into a big storm coming out against Trump,” Ed Robson, an Arizona real estate developer and major GOP donor who contributed to a pro-Trump super PAC, said of the senator. “This being a big Trump area, he probably made a mistake doing that."

The likely Democratic nominee is Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton, a garden variety establishment Democrat, but there's always the chance Schumer will make a fatal error-- he's extremely prone to them-- and persuade the most Republican-like Democrat in Congress, arch-conservative-- and very corrupt-- Kyrsten Sinema to run. That would immediately put Arizona out of reach for Democrats for 2018. And now we're hearing Trumpists in Tennessee want to back a primary by far right lunatic Mark Green, an extremely bigoted state senator who Trump unsuccessfully tried to appoint Army Secretary, against Bob Corker.

Alienating The Base-- A Tale Of Two Primaries... Arizona And New Jersey

Many Arizona Republicans see Jeff Flake through this Alt-Fact lens

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. Trump won 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

Over the weekend Ward released a new poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Across the country, if not quite across the political spectrum, one of the very worst and most corrupt far-right Democrats elected in November, worthless Blue Dog, Josh Gottheimer (NJ) is well aware he's going to attract major Republican opposition in 2018. NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford to beyond the Delaware Water Gap. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Soprano's Bada Bing club town). In 2012 Romney beat Obama there by 3 points and this year Hillary managed to have beaten Trump 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer beat the incumbent Republican, bizarre extremist Scott Garrett, 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%). Garrett managed to win in Sussex, Warren and Passaic counties but Bergen County voters were sick and tired of him and gave Gottheimer the 18,000-plus vote cushion he needed. Gottheimer immediately joined the Blue Dogs and started voting with the Republicans. Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Ryan and the NRCC were happy to see Garrett lose and they shut off the party spigots. Pelosi and the DCCC wasted over $3.8 million boosting a corrupt reactionary will will almost never vote for any progressive legislation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is one of the worst of any Democrat's in the House-- 20% which basically means he's voting with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy on virtually every one of their agenda items, giving them the opportunity to call their destructive proposals "bipartisan." Gottheimer is already damaging the Democratic brand and alienating Democratic voters. Obviously, he hasn't been involved with any resistance to Trump at all. Bergen County activists already hate him and are unlikely to support his reelection bid-- one that the Observer speculates could be a huge national circus, featuring xenophobe and racist asshole 72 year old Lou Dobbs, a longtime New Jersey resident lives in Sussex County, on a 300-acre horse farm in Wantage. The Observer analysis of the 2018 race is interesting, except that it's based on entirely incorrect numbers. For example they claim Garrett won 125,861 to 101,859 but that was before absentee and mail in ballots were counted and he actually won 156,863 to 146,643. So I'm going to throw out their faulty numbers are just use the bits of the sloppy journalism they got right.

In 2016... more voters fell off from Trump to Garrett than Clinton to Gottheimer. One can reasonably conclude that Gottheimer will be hurt more by running without a presidential candidate atop the ticket than the Republican challenger will be.

Voter registration (as of 11/30/2016): Republicans 144,959; Democrats 142,717; Unaffiliated 222,193. So it’s a slight GOP edge, but off-year elections tend to favor Republicans, though not necessarily in the first off-year election of a Republican presidency, when voters may be looking to apply a “check” on the president’s power.

...Prior to Gottheimer, the last time a Democrat won the GOP-leaning 5th was in 1974, when Andy Maguire upset 11-term incumbent Bill Widnall in the Watergate year. Maguire held on until 1980, when Roukema washed him out in the Reagan tidal wave.

The biggest question here, of course, is whether the GOP can lure a marquee candidate like Dobbs to run. With a huge national profile and over a million Twitter followers, he’d start with a strong base of support. But a Congressional seat might not seem like an attractive prize to a guy who’s been hosting his own show on national television for decades and has a closet full of Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Republicans will then have to see if Garrett runs again. He’s never been popular among establishment Republicans-- he ran close primaries against Roukema in 1998 and 2000. Garrett lost because of his own quirks and oddities, not because of his party affiliation. His odd refusal to pay dues to the Party unless it disavowed support for gay candidates sent buckets of national money into the coffers of Gottheimer, which hurt all Republicans in the district, especially the more moderate Bergen GOPers.

Two conservative northwest NJ Senators live in the district: Mike Doherty, 53 (R-Oxford) and Steve Oroho, 58 (R-Franklin). Doherty was the first NJ GOP pol to endorse Donald Trump. He’s encouraged speculation of runs of his own for statewide office since 2008, but he never pulls the trigger. Others include Assemblyman Parker Space, 48 (R-Wantage) and former state Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths, 51 (R-Wantage).

Of strong interest will be whether Bergen can come up with a high-quality, consensus candidate-- with or without Garrett. The bench is a bit depleted up there, but strong choices might include Assemblywoman Holly Shepisi (R-River Vale), 45, seeking fourth term in the Assembly; Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Old Tappan), 60, seeking third term in the Assembly; Republican State Chairman Samuel Raia, also the Mayor of Saddle River. Of these, Shepisi probably holds the strongest crossover appeal, while Raia has personal wealth.

Bergen lining up behind a consensus candidate might just be enough to ensure that person is the nominee. But at this writing, the BCRO might be in denial. Its website still shows Garrett as the Congressman.

Gottheimer deserves a primary opponent but I doubt if he has one it will be serious enough to deny him the renomination. There are local activists working to recruit someone to run against him. He deserves to be weakened enough so that he loses. He is inexorably dragging the congressional Democrats further right and further into Wall Street corruption. He could solve the Republicans' problem in NJ-05 by switching parties; it would make the most sense... and he wouldn't even have to change his voting habits.

Will The Republicans Really Impeach Trumpanzee? One GOP Ex-Congressman Says Yes

Remember, Trump is a venal, vindictive prick

Today, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the TPP, an executive order far more pleasing to progressives-- especially to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Sherrod Brown-- than to the Republican Establishment represented by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. The move is upsetting many in the Republican-controlled Congress, not the least, the two Republican senators from Arizona. Jeff Flake says he expects a Trump-backed primary from neo-fascist Republican politician and key Trump ally Jeff DeWit in 2018.

Pre-empting the threat of reprisal, Mr. McCain said he intended to be true to what he saw as his party and his voters: “Trump carried Arizona by four points. I carried my state by 14 points.”

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who like Mr. McCain has repeatedly clashed with Mr. Trump, said that he was preparing for the president to back his opponent in a primary next year-- but that it would not dissuade him from putting up opposition on some issues.

“There are some of us who will be pushing to get back to the roots of the party: limited government, economic freedom, individual responsibility, free trade,” Mr. Flake said. “Those are things that the party has stood on for a long time.”

Mr. Trump and some of his closest advisers say such resistance is not just futile but foolish. And they are already pledging to harness Mr. Trump’s following in the states and districts of recalcitrant Republicans to sound warnings of their own.

Robert Reich posted this on his Facebook page over the weekend:

I had breakfast recently with a friend who's a former Republican member of Congress. Here's what he said:

Him: Trump is no Republican. He’s just a big fat ego.

Me: Then why didn’t you speak out against him during the campaign?

Him: You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot.

Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do?

Him (smirking): They’ll play along for a while.

Me: A while?

Him: They’ll get as much as they want-- tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare-- and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything.

Me: And then what?

Him (laughing): They like Pence.

Me: What do you mean?

Him: Pence is their guy. They all think Trump is out of his mind.

Me: So what?

Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb-- steps over the line-- violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way... and you know he will ...

Me: They impeach him?

Him: You bet. They pull the trigger.

Or maybe they'll have him eliminated in some other, more unpleasant, less traumatic/less unpleasant, more traumatic, way. One Republican vote for impeachment would likely be Jeff Flake, who denigrated him all through the primary and beyond and who has told people he expects Trump to carry through with his threats to help fund a primary against him in 2018. On Friday, Flake referred it the band of kleptocrats Trump picked for his cabinet as "stellar." When asked, he told some religious right station that "if the president governs like he has picked his Cabinet, then we’re in for a good four years. I think they’ll all get through. I look forward to supporting them." Many predicted that Flake would rally behind Trump's horrendous cabinet picks as a peace-offering to the short attention span, easily manipulated new president.

Earlier this month, writing for Roll Call, Alex Roarty speculated that Flake is the most vulnerable GOP Senate incumbent to a primary. If he loses a primary, Arizona becomes the top possible 2018 Democratic pickup. Some Republicans don;t like him because he's been critical of Trump's extremis, on trade and immigration. His allies fear-- possibly expect-- a Trumpist to run against him.

To many GOP officials, no Republican senator is more vulnerable in a primary next year than Flake. The 54-year-old, according to one strategist who reviewed polling data last month, is less popular among likely GOP primary voters in Arizona than even John McCain, who for years has had a famously rocky relationship with his party’s base. The poll showed almost as many primary voters disliked Flake as liked him.

And although he has already drawn a challenger-- former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who ran unsuccessfully against McCain last year-- his supporters are more worried about another foe, state Treasurer Jeff DeWit.

DeWit was a strong Trump supporter, serving as chairman of his Arizona campaign before becoming his national campaign’s chief operating officer. And people close to Flake worry that DeWit could potentially exploit the senator’s adversarial history with Trump. Flake routinely criticized Trump’s conduct during the campaign, culminating in a tense showdown on Capitol Hill in July.

An incumbent senator has many advantages in a primary, including institutional support, name recognition and money. But none of those things might matter if the combative Trump-- the leader of the Republican Party with an unrivaled bully pulpit-- becomes personally involved in the race, a possibility that scares Flake allies above all else.

“Obviously, you hope Republican presidents support their incumbents,” said Steve Voeller, Flake’s former chief of staff. “But … that remains to be seen.”

At the end of September, Flake had only $594,000 on hand. By comparison, GOP Sen. Rob Portman, who ran a model campaign en route to winning re-election last year, had $5.5 million on hand at the same point.

Officials are confident that Flake, who they say makes a point of avoiding fundraising events before his re-election cycle begins, will raise a lot of money fast.

Flake allies are also signaling that the lawmaker, who has frequently defied his party in the past, will look for areas of cooperation with the incoming administration. The first test comes this week, when Flake will have a chance to confirm Trump’s picks for his Cabinet.

...Republicans are also hopeful that Vice President-elect Mike Pence will help bridge the gap between the senator and the White House: Flake and Pence, who both previously ran conservative think tanks and served in the House together, are personal friends.

That's DeWit with a bunch of Trumps