Going Big-- In Biden World

Summarizing a Jonathan Martin piece about Democrats wanting Biden to go big in Saturday's NY Times, This Week's Tim O'Donnell noted that conservative Texas Democrats Marc Veasey and Filemon Vela think "now is the best time" for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas "since Jimmy Carter" and that the state is "very winnable." Georgia Democrats want Biden, to ramp up his effort in the state, too. "But while polls indicate Biden may have a chance to flip those states blue, his campaign is taking it easy for now... Biden's aides reportedly consider it too early to switch up their strategy and go for an electoral college route by investing millions in states like Georgia, Texas, and even Ohio while surefire swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania remain up for grabs. 'When you look under the hood, we are ahead in the majority of the battleground states, but we expect them to tighten because these are battleground states in a pretty polarized electorate,' Biden's campaign manager, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, tole The Times. O'Malley Dillon is also trying to make sure Biden doesn't lose vulnerable traditionally Democratic states like Nevada."

The thought is that "of course, this doesn't mean Biden's camp won't grow more confident and eventually pour more of their resources into other states because while presidential candidates only need 270 Electoral College votes to win... some Democrats, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), believe a more convincing victory would allow Biden flip the Senate and move his agenda more easily in office."

What agenda? Dying in office and having "president" on his headstone? Sure, Democrats say they want Biden-- a team, not a senile old man who is the front man for that team-- "to seize what they believe could be a singular opportunity not only to defeat Mr. Trump but to rout him and discredit what they believe is his dangerous style of racial demagogy. This election, the officials argue, offers the provocative possibility of a new path to the presidency through fast-changing states like Georgia and Texas, and a chance to install a generation of lawmakers who can cement Democratic control of Congress and help redraw legislative maps following this year’s census."

But it should not surprise anyone who has followed Biden's limp-dick career to see that they are "so far hewing to a more conservative path," in Jonathan Martin's words. As for "go big"... if they don't have the balls to at least try to pick states like Georgia and Ohio off the relatively low-hanging branches, how are they going to "go big" where it really counts-- policy. I'll laugh my ass off if Roger Stone and Javanka persuade Trump to get to Biden's left on marijuana legalization and Trump beats Biden on that, in effect, destroying the United States of America because the Democrats were too stupid to nominate someone who had moved out of the 1970s and '80s.

"Going Big" isn't about buying Facebook ads targeting voters with pablum in Dallas and Cincinnati; it would be, for example, explaining to voters what the Green New Deal means, something Biden has not a clue about. At beast, in fact, Biden could maybe understand and work towards undoing the damage Trump has done. Not what I would see in the kind of transformative presidency that should follow a Trump regime but... the Democrats are so horribly spineless and suck so badly that Biden is all they could come up with. As Time's Jeffrey Kluger wrote last week, "Trump has smashed a lot of environmental china in four years [and] no one can deny the unprecedented sweep of Trump’s policies. Data from Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program and Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law show that the President has signed more than 100 administrative rules, Executive Orders and acts of deregulation, 66 of which have gone into effect."

CBS News poll shows Biden voters hate Trump, don't give a shit about Biden. Maybe he should give them a reason to want him that's more persuasive than just that he's the lesser evil

Biden has indicated he will get the U.S. back into the Paris accord-- Trump's withdrawal doesn't become official until July, 2021-- but that is hardly what a President Bernie would have had in mind as his be-all and end-all agenda on Climate. "Nobody," wrote Kluger, "expects a Green New Deal out of a hypothetical Biden Administration. Freeman believes Biden will look to environmental laws now on the books like the Clean Air Act of 1970 and apply them more strictly to advance a green agenda. On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis did unveil an ambitious plan for the U.S. to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050–something Biden could embrace, though its chances would likely depend on the Democrats’ holding the House and flipping the Senate as well. Biden could also, [Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program Jody] Freeman says, attach climate policies to coronavirus-related economic-recovery bills that are likely to pass. The environment has never been Biden’s animating passion. He markets himself instead as more of a Mr. Fix-It, a President who will set right what he sees as the serial messes of the past four years and then try to move beyond them. The environment will be one of his biggest cleanup jobs of all."

So how can Biden possibly win? He can't... but he can be there when Trump loses. Nancy Ohanian's latest drawing demonstrates exactly what a Biden "victory" will look like:

Murder/Suicide by Nancy Ohanian

Promises Made, Promises Broken-- Trump's Reputation Is In A Trashcan

Megan Henney of Fox Business reported that economies in 4 key states could held determine whether Trump wins of loses in 2020. So which states? Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa, 4 battleground states that Trump won in 2016? On Fox? Are you kidding. The economies in those 4 states are tanking-- and so is Trump's favorability ratings. Those 4 Midwestern states, representing 52 electoral votes, are suffering from Trump's economic policies. And, according to the latest Morning Consult Trump Tracker, a victory for Trump in any of them is, to say the least, dubious. This is where Trump stands now in these states and how much he's fallen in approval since being inaugurated.

• Michigan- minus 13 (down 21 points)
• Pennsylvania- minus 9 (down 19 points)
• Wisconsin- minus 17 (down 23 points)
• Iowa- minus 12 (down 21 points)

But Henney was looking elsewhere. Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, reminded her that Trump "understands better than most that when the average American goes to the polls, no matter what they think of him personally, they're going to evaluate their station in life and ask themselves: 'Am I going to be better off with the new candidate?'"

Across the country, unemployment is hovering at 3.6 percent, near a five-decade low; the labor market is humming, with an average monthly creation of 167,000 so far; and Trump seems poised to strike a deal with China, ending a 16-month-long trade dispute that's rattled global financial markets.

Even as the record-long economic expansion continues to chug along in its 11th year, Democratic presidential candidates are traveling across the U.S., painting a starkly different version of the country's financial well-being, seizing onto issues like income inequality, lack of health care and Wall Street cronyism.

...[T]he economies in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina-- the first states in the country to hold their 2020 primaries-- could serve as evidence that Trump's policies are working.

She gets kind of delusional about the whole thing. She claims that Iowans are doing well. They're not-- and they know exactly who's fault it is. Here's the Fox News version: "Despite the state's huge exposure to the trade war-- it's the biggest exporter of corn and pork, and the second-largest soybean exporter, all of which were targeted by Beijing-- Iowa's economy has remained steady. Since Trump took office, the state has regained most of the manufacturing jobs lost in the financial crisis, according to data published by the Department of Labor. In September, the unemployment rate in Iowa was at 2.5 percent, well below the national average. The median household income was $68,718 in 2018, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Iowa's economy expanded at a 1.1 percent annualized rate in the second quarter of 2019, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis." So why is Trump's job approval underwater by 12 points? And was has his approval dropped by 21 points since he won with 51.2% of the vote?

She makes similar claims about New Hampshire. Trump is underwater by 20 there and his approval has dropped 21 points since inauguration day. Even in South Carolina-- where Trump has a net approval of +7-- he's fallen 17 points from where he was when he got started with the job. And Nevada? He has a net approval of minus 14 and has dropped 24 points.

Let's turn to Jonathan Martin's New York Times piece about how a series of Democratic ads are spotlighting disillusioned Trump voters in states he won last time but is doing poorly in since then. Yesterday, American Bridge started spending around $3 million featuring people who supported Trump in 2016 but explain why they regret having done so and will not do again. Like this one running in Michigan (and the one above that started running in Wisconsin):

“We want to create a permission structure in these communities,” said Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge. “We want them to know, ‘It wasn’t just me.’ But you have to create space for people to defect.”

The voters featured in the commercials all focus on Mr. Trump’s record, and what they say is his self-focus and lack of accomplishments in their communities, while avoiding issues that often consume Washington, like impeachment or Mr. Trump’s inflammatory language. Speaking in personal terms, they acknowledge that they supported the president because they thought that, as a political outsider, he would be a more effective change agent than the elected officials who won the White House every four years, until him.

One participant, Lori Malburg from Romeo, Michigan, was blunt about her feelings of regret.

“I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I voted for Donald Trump at this point,” Ms. Malburg says in the spot that features her and her hometown, which is part of a storied swing county, Macomb, that flipped from Democrat to Republican three years ago.

The advertising campaign, which will include broadcast television, radio and online spots, comes at a moment when many Democrats have been expressing alarm that Mr. Trump’s heavy campaign spending on digital ads has been all but uncontested. But now, as the Democratic presidential primary appears as uncertain as ever, a handful of liberal groups are working to match the president's reelection efforts.

American Bridge plans to eventually spend about $50 million in the coming year as part of this effort and hopes to feature new, local voices in each wave of ads. While the initial focus will be on Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania-- each of which supported Mr. Trump by less than a single point-- the group may add Florida to the lineup next year.

[Trump is 2 points underwater in Florida.]

“What we got wrong in 2016 is that we spent all our time compiling Trump’s record, saying look at how gross and despicable this man is, but we never turned the mirror around on the voters,” said Mr. Beychok. “So this is going to be about daily economic life in these communities-- not impeachment, Ukraine or his tweets.”

The commercials are plainly aimed at the white working-class voters who supported former President Barack Obama’s campaigns but shifted to Mr. Trump in 2016. It’s a constituency that is increasingly aligned with Republicans, leading some Democrats to question whether it’s worth the effort needed to win them back. But officials at American Bridge say they need to make only modest inroads with these voters to take back the Midwestern states they lost.

Bernie: Into The Fox's Den-- While Corrupted Rich Democrats Work On Their Stop Bernie Crusade

Jonathan Martin's headline in the New York Times this morning said it all: 'Stop Sanders' Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum. He starts with "a closed door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month" freaking out about Bernie winning the nomination. These are people who have been served well by the status quo. They all want women to be allowed to have abortions and they support gays marrying each other. But beyond that, they're not liberals at all; they do not want anyone touching the economic fundamentals of the status quo, their status quo. "How, some Democrats are beginning to ask," reported Martin, "do they thwart a 70-something candidate from outside the party structure who is immune to intimidation or incentive and wields support from an unwavering base, without simply reinforcing his 'the establishment is out to get me' message-- the same grievance Mr. Trump used to great effect?"

Martin gets the crux of the story wrong though. He wrote that "From canapé-filled fund-raisers on the coasts to the cloakrooms of Washington, mainstream Democrats are increasingly worried that their effort to defeat President Trump in 2020 could be complicated by Mr. Sanders, in a political scenario all too reminiscent of how Mr. Trump himself seized the Republican nomination in 2016." He thinks it's about Trump. It isn't. To many of these wealthy establishment Democrats, Bernie is more of a threat than Trump is. After all, Trump may be an embarrassment... but he lowered their taxes. Bernie would raise them. For sure.

Hired political assassin-- once for the right, now for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- David Brock, a vicious leader of the anti-progressive movement and a Bernie-hater, weighs in: "There’s a growing realization that Sanders could end up winning this thing, or certainly that he stays in so long that he damages the actual winner. He is chomping at the bit to organize the establishment into an overt anti-Bernie campaign immediately. Brock hissed that "the Bernie question comes up in every fund-raising meeting I do." Fellow plotters include rich party donors like Steven Rattner, Susan Swecker (chair of the Virginia Democratic Party) and former Clintonite operative.current Bloomberg factotum Howard Wolfson. This "discussion about Mr. Sanders," wrote Martin, "has to date been largely confined to private settings because-- like establishment Republicans in 2016-- Democrats are uneasy about elevating him or alienating his supporters."

Martin points out though that "to some veterans of the still-raw 2016 primary, a heavy-handed intervention may only embolden him and his fervent supporters. R.T. Rybak, the former Minneapolis mayor who was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, complained bitterly about the party’s tilt toward Mrs. Clinton back then, and warned that it would backfire if his fellow mainstream Democrats 'start with the idea that you’re trying to stop somebody.' If the party fractures again, 'or if we even have anybody raising an eyebrow of I’m not happy about this, we’re going to lose and they’ll have this loss on their hands,' Mr. Rybak said of the anti-Sanders forces, pleading with them to not make him 'a martyr.'"

The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz. The gatherings have included scores from the moderate or center-left wing of the party, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader; former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia; Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., himself a presidential candidate; and the president of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden.

“He did us a disservice in the last election,” said Mr. Schwartz, a longtime Clinton supporter who said he will support former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in this primary.

...“If he is consistently raising $6 million more than his next closest opponent, he’s going to have a massive financial advantage,” said Rufus Gifford, former President Barack Obama’s 2012 finance director, noting that Mr. Sanders will be able to blanket expensive and delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California and Texas with ads during early voting there.

Mr. Gifford, who has gone public in recent days with his dismay over major Democratic fund-raisers remaining on the sidelines, said of Mr. Sanders, “I feel like everything we are doing is playing into his hands.”

But the peril of rallying the party’s elite donor class against a candidate whose entire public life has been organized around confronting concentrated wealth is self-evident: Mr. Sanders would gleefully seize on any Stop Bernie effort.

“You can see him reading the headlines now,” Mr. Brock mused: “‘Rich people don’t like me.’”

I ran this poll yesterday before Bernie did the Fox News town hall. 65% thought going on Fox and bringing their viewers the truth was a good idea. 35% thought it wasn't. The media and social media buzz after the event was about 99% favorable. Bernie knocked it out of the park.

Even his CAP-centered enemies-- already reeling from his polling success and the 10 years of taxes he had just released-- couldn't come up with anything negative to say. DC-based journalist Skip Kaltenheuser observed that "about half-way through, the FOX moderators started looking like deer caught in the headlights. I imagine the Democratic Party Grand Poobahs who watched had a similar look on their faces." By this morning, they were all weeping bitter tears over the Holly Otterbein piece at Politico, Sanders takes on Fox-- and emerges triumphant. "Bernie Sanders entered the Fox's den on Monday night," wrote Otterbein, "and he not only survived the hour-long encounter, but often dominated. Appearing at a Fox News-hosted town hall smack dab in the middle of Trump Country, the Democratic presidential front-runner played the part, swatting down tough questions from the hosts about health care, defense spending, and his newfound wealth. At one point, the Vermont senator even led the network’s audience in a call-and-response that found them cheering loudly for his policies." Part 1 of the town hall is up top and part 2 is below. You should watch them both. And if you like them, you can contribute to Bernie's campaign by clicking on the thermometer on the right.

Someone's frightened

In the days preceding the event, Sanders faced backlash from liberals who said he shouldn’t participate given the network's nativist bent and cheerleading for President Donald Trump. But when it was over, Sanders had received an hour of positive exposure on the highest-rated cable channel-- something none of his primary rivals have yet risked.

The town hall took place in a cultural center in the shadows of a former steel mill here, in a county in Pennsylvania that voted for Trump after twice supporting Barack Obama. But the room was packed with Sanders supporters, and the Vermont senator fed off the energy of the crowd.

Still, the image of an audience on Fox News rallying behind the democratic socialist and his left-wing platform gave Sanders the appearance of strong support in an area that was key to the president’s victory in 2016.

For the Sanders campaign, it was an ideal end to a four-day swing through the industrial Midwest that was meant to show that he's the presidential candidate best positioned to beat Trump. Significant numbers of Democratic primary voters are more concerned with a candidate's ability to win than his or her ideology, according to recent polls.

Some of the difficult questions asked by the hosts, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, were about Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan.

When asked how he would fund the program, Sanders didn't shy away from the fact that many Americans would pay more in taxes. But he insisted the “overwhelming majority” would end up spending less money overall because they would not pay for deductibles or other out-of-pocket costs. He also downplayed concerns that people would be kicked off their insurance, arguing that millions already lose their health insurance when they get fired from or quit their jobs.

His health care plan, he said, “gives you freedom of choice.”

One of the most surprising moments of the town hall occurred when Baier asked the members of the audience to raise their hands if they received health insurance through their employer. Most indicated they did. Then he asked how many would be willing to switch to Sanders‘ plan, and most people appeared to raise their hands again.

...When MacCallum said some would argue Sanders that supported felons‘ having the right to vote because it benefited him politically, she was booed by the crowd. “Oh, come on,“ he said. Asked about those who say that he is too old to be president, he shot back, “Well, follow me around the campaign trail.”

Sanders was also asked by an audience member how he would challenge the idea that “socialism is bad.”

He replied with familiar talking points: “Democratic socialism to me is creating a government and an economy and a society which works for all, rather than just the top 1 percent. It means ending the absurd inequalities that exist today.”

On the hot-button topic of abortion, Sanders‘ responses prompted an immediate rebuke from conservatives on social media. MacCallum asked him whether “a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy up until the moment of birth.” He replied: “I think that that happens very, very rarely, and I think this is being made into a political issue. So I think it’s rare, it’s being made into a political issue. But at the end of the day, I believe that the decision over abortion belongs to a woman and her physician, not the federal government.“

...As Sanders traveled to Rust Belt states that were essential to Trump’s victory this weekend, he called on the president to keep his vow to working-class Americans and ditch the new NAFTA agreement. If elected, Sanders also said he would deny government contracts to companies that outsource jobs to other countries, such as General Motors.

Sanders had a similar message throughout the Fox News town hall. He attacked Trump, arguing that he didn’t keep his campaign promise to be a different kind of Republican and avoid cutting programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Feisty and confident, Sanders ended the engagement by gently ribbing the hosts of the network liberals despise. “Thank you very much," he told Baier and MacCallum, "and I hope I wasn’t too hard on you.”

How To Win In 2020

What's more important to Democratic primary voters-- candidates' visions for a post-Trump America or who is most likely to beat Trump in the election? In a NY Times piece yesterday--Democrats Want to Run on Issues in 2020. But Does Beating Trump Matter Most?-- Jonathan Martin asserts that "the most consequential political question facing the Democratic Party is whether liberals will insist on imposing policy litmus tests on 2020 presidential hopefuls, or whether voters will rally behind the candidate most capable of defeating the president even if that Democrat is imperfect on some issues." In other words, will the corrupt Democratic Establishment that sold low-info primary voters Hillary, be able to now sell a broken down old hack and avatar of the status quo-ante, Biden, based on a lack of knowledge about how truly vile a political career he had before being white-washed as Obama's vice president?

Most polls-- though not all-- show Biden besting Trump more easily than any of the other candidates who would also beat Trump. Biden's ageless record as a public official show he would be the clear lesser of two evils in a matchup against Trump. But who wants an evil, even a lesser evil? Martin wrote that "these dual priorities-- and which one is emphasized more in the coming primary race-- will help determine how the party approaches 2020. Will candidates sprint to the left on issues and risk hurting themselves with intraparty policy fights and in the general election? Or will they keep the focus squarely on Mr. Trump and possibly disappoint liberals by not being bolder on policy?" A status quo journalist from head to toe, Martin asserts that "the two paths may help determine the electoral fortunes of potential left-wing candidates"-- he offers Bernie as the example, though he could be talking about Warren or Merkley-- and the more conservative establishment ones like Biden, Bloomberg, Frackenlooper and McAuliffe. And then there are the candidates who try to determine where they are politically via polls and focus testing, careerists with sketchy records like Kamala Harris, Beto, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, "who have a history of appealing to both liberals and moderates and drawing ire from some leftists for not being aggressive enough on policy."

Senator Elizabeth Warren showed one way of dealing with these party tensions on her first campaign swing as a presidential candidate to Iowa last weekend. Ms. Warren chose not to talk about Medicare for All, a signature issue for the ascendant left. But she seized every opportunity before overwhelmingly white audiences to highlight challenges facing people of color.

In doing so, Ms. Warren signaled to voters that she believes addressing matters of race and identity will prove as crucial to winning over Democrats as proving her bona fides on every element of economic populism.

If opposing the Iraq War was the crucial red line for Democratic candidates in 2008, many in the party believe that proving oneself as the antidote to Mr. Trump and his brand of incendiary politics will become the ultimate litmus test in 2020, more than demonstrating policy purity. Yet some activists want both: fierce resistance to Mr. Trump and unwavering fidelity to the left’s catechism of issues.

Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who is eying a Senate race in 2020, said that while many voters will expect the presidential hopefuls to meet threshold tests of being progressive, the most important factors in the race are going to be an ability to inspire the party’s voters and defeat Mr. Trump.

“I don’t believe the electorate is going to be so purist that they’re going to knock somebody out because they’re not 100 percent down-the-line,” said Mr. Gallego, who added, “People are excited about candidates they think have a potential to win.”

Or, as Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland put it: “If there’s a litmus test, it’s going to be righting the country.”

Voters, said Mr. Cummings, “are scared.”

This is exactly what alarms some on the left, who do not want the perceived threat of Mr. Trump and horse race political concerns to undercut major policy priorities.

“Fear is a useful tactic to override underlying ideological debate,” said Matt Stoller, a populist writer and former congressional aide, recalling that similar emotions about finding “electable” Democrats in the George W. Bush era led the party to embrace moderate politicians and policies to the frustration of many on the left.

As Mr. Stoller noted, much of the recent left-wing criticism against Mr. O’Rourke, the former Texas representative, was rooted in the dread that his nomination would represent a triumph of he-can-win, personality-based politics-- and that he would mark a continuation rather than a break from the incremental economic policies of the last two Democratic presidents.

When many on the left listen to Mr. O’Rourke or Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, another likely candidate, plead for a better kind of politics or healing the country after Mr. Trump, they hear an Obama-style call for stylistic change rather than a case for truly confronting entrenched power.

“We tried that and it didn’t work,” Mr. Stoller said. “And it’s pretty obvious to everybody now that it didn’t work.”

Mr. Trump’s fixation on immigration only makes it easier for a would-be candidate like Mr. O’Rourke to skirt questions about his specific policy views and instead draw broad contrasts between himself and the president on issues related to the border and the character of the country, as he has done on social media in recent days.

He and Ms. Warren are not the only potential contenders road-testing a message that spotlights their differences with the president.

“Trump is a lying populist; Democrats need an optimistic realist,” said former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, who is considering a presidential run and trumpets his progressive record on race, gender and sexual orientation but believes that Democrats must resist the temptation of lashing the business community.

“We can’t go through this campaign demonizing folks,” Mr. McAuliffe said.

Another question ahead of 2020 is which candidate will be able to portray himself or herself most effectively as the antidote to Trump and Trumpism. Will this contrast be rendered most vividly by nominating a candidate whose platform differs from the president’s policies the most; one who can speak most articulately about changing course; or one who-- through their age, gender or race-- represents the starkest departure from the president?

In the midterms, Democratic primary voters rallied behind a historic number of female congressional candidates who spanned the party’s ideological gamut.

And some Democratic strategists believe that the only real issue-based tests that primary voters will put to candidates revolve around matters of race and identity.

“I don’t think you can be for stop-and-frisk in a primary,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster, referring to the policing tactic of Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, that critics say targets black people. “It’s less about economic issues than culture and issues of the heart.”

Anyone else?

Yet to supporters of Mr. Sanders and some others on the left, it is folly to assume that voter hunger to defeat Mr. Trump will somehow obviate the need to offer a bold economic agenda. In their eyes, pursuing an aggressive populist agenda is essential to proving to voters that you will confront Mr. Trump.

“The party is in a different place-- we need somebody to stand up and defend our core progressive values,” Ben Tulchin, Mr. Sanders’s pollster, said. “And if you’re waffling on key issues like Medicare for All, or if you lack clarity on it because you want to give yourself flexibility in governing, voters will see that.”

This moment, said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, will require a candidate who sounds clarion opposition to Mr. Trump on race and gender while also embracing a full-spectrum, left-wing agenda.

“It has to be somebody who is really willing to take on race, racism and immigration, but also is willing to take on these big corporations in a way that just hasn’t happened,” said Ms. Jayapal, a rising member co-chair of the House’s Progressive Caucus.

To strategists who worked on the 2018 midterms, however, the enormous attention being paid to a handful of outspoken liberals like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York misses the non-ideological approach of many of the party’s successful candidates for governor and Congress.

“There wasn’t a demand among Democratic primary voters for litmus tests,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.

And Ms. Greenberg, who is working for former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a possible 2020 candidate, contends that electoral viability will be more central in the coming Democratic presidential primary than in any recent election.

“Trump has framed our politics,” she said. “Everything is a reaction to Trump.”

Or, as Mr. Belcher put it: “This anger about our divisions and where our country is going will be front and center-- and the candidate who can speak to this division and be a direct contrast to Trump is going to do really well.”

On Monday morning, New York Magazine published an important essay by Eric Levitz on the role of conservative elites in contemporary politics: We Need Less of Them. "Four decades ago," he wrote, "America’s rapacious capitalists and conservative moralists were singing in harmony. As the former lamented liberalism’s assault on free enterprise (i.e., their own power and profitability), the latter decried its corruption of the urban poor’s moral rectitude. In their collective telling, the welfare state didn’t just crowd out private investment or burden taxpayers-- it also fostered a culture of single-motherhood, idleness, and instant gratification; a.k.a. a 'culture of poverty'." Dream solution to all the country's problems: "slashing the safety net would facilitate tax cuts for the rich, and a rediscovery of the Protestant work ethic for the inner cities’ indigent. Curbing inflation would restore capital’s profitability, and discourage workers’ profligacy. And as poor men returned to work, and poor women lost their handouts, the patriarchal family would rise from the ashes of the welfare state-- and social reproduction would once again be financed by women’s uncompensated labor, instead of the progressive income tax. Free market dynamism and moral traditionalism would go together like Ronald Reagan and Pat Robertson." The "invisible hand," he wrote, didn't play ball:

[T]he one percent’s ascent coincided with the traditional family’s decline. Deregulated markets didn’t reinforce conservative moral values-- they sucked capital from the most conservative parts of America, and concentrated it in coastal Gomorrahs. Breaking inflation broke the labor movement-- and thus, the single-income family. Male wages fell, women’s liberation continued apace, and marriage rates plummeted. Adding insult to injury, the corporate titans of the second Gilded Age stopped feigning solidarity with the moral majority, and started getting “woke.”

Now, the face of the long-term underemployed has white skin and a rural zip code-- and the base of the Republican Party has grown less affluent and suburban. And all of this has led some conservatives to voice a heretical thought: If “big government” can induce moral degeneracy and cultural decline, perhaps big business can do the same?

Who's been addressing this (before putting themselves forward as potential nominees)? Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley. From his announcement speech this past weekend, you might think Julian Castro has been as well. But you'd be wrong. His record is... uninspiring. And the others? Mostly on the wrong side of this divide, especially Biden, Bloomberg and McAuliffe. But Gillibrand, Beto and Kamala as well. And the stakes of this argument, beyond the election, "are," wrote Levitz, "considerable. The notion that economic well-being lies downstream of moral health has been indispensable to American conservatism. If cultural values determine material conditions, then helping the poor requires spreading the gospel; if material conditions shape cultural values, then helping them requires spreading the wealth around-- and that is one conclusion that conservative thought was born to avoid." Levitz, of course, had characters like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney in mind. But it's not too much of a stretch to look at it through a lens fashioned out of the records of Biden, Bloomberg, McAuliffe and early-day Gillibrand and Booker. "Reconciling this ideological obligation with rural America’s lived reality," Levitz continued, "is no easy task for plutocracy’s apologists. After all, deindustrialization wasn’t a product of blue-collar workers’ moral choices, but of corporations’ financial ones. And it is hard to argue that the disappearance of stable, blue-collar employment played no role in reshaping civic culture-- or depressing labor force participation-- in the places that 'market forces' left behind."

The Gilded Age is not remembered as a time of “left-wing moral relativism.” If anything, America’s moral culture was even less permissive in that era than it was during the postwar period of corporate responsibility that Brooks champions. And yet, the hegemony of traditional, Christian values did not compel Gilded Age corporations to put social responsibility above profit maximization. On the contrary, the barons of industry sent Appalachian children into the coal mines until the dust consumed their lungs; paid industrial workers sub-subsistence wages and then met their strikes with gunfire; used their power over the state to preserve a deflationary monetary policy that turned small farmers into ruined debtors; and claimed a share of economic growth so disproportionate, ordinary Americans’ average height and life expectancy declined during the closing decades of the late 19th century, even as the country attained unprecedented prosperity.

Changes in moral norms cannot explain the comparative benevolence of New Deal–era elites. But changes in the balance of power between labor and capital can.

The Great Depression wiped out a great deal of ruling-class wealth, and opened up political space for progressive economic reform. The New Deal gave trade unions the protection of the state, and World War II enabled them to drastically expand their membership. Robust antitrust laws limited the scope of corporate consolidation, the Bretton Woods system constrained capital mobility, and confiscatory top tax rates disincentivized the contemporary equivalent of billion-dollar salaries. Meanwhile, the emergence of a second great power-- with a competing, putatively egalitarian economic model-- served as an external deterrent to the one percent’s rapacity.

In other words: Mid-century American corporations didn’t funnel a smaller share of their profits to top executives, shareholders, and overseas tax havens because they were morally superior; they did so because they were politically and economically weaker. They did not choose to devote a higher proportion of their earnings to labor compensation. Their workers had the unions and political clout necessary to demand as much.

These material conditions may have fostered a more communitarian corporate ideology and elite self-conception. If so, such moral norms proved highly contingent: When growth slowed in the 1970s-- and high wages ceased to appear compatible with high profits-- corporate America wasted little time in prioritizing profitability above noblesse oblige. Overseas competition, culture wars, and stagflation had badly weakened organized labor. Reagan didn’t kick the unions while they were down so much as he disemboweled them.

...Ideas matter. But they matter within limits. American history demonstrates that vast disparities in economic power have predictable effects on the “moral norms” of for-profit enterprises. When companies see a competitive advantage in exploiting workers, bribing legislators, evading taxes, or polluting the environment, sternly worded New York Times columns will not stop them. Only an organized working class can. All that “us versus them” talk might make David Brooks uncomfortable. But the choice before us is between “tribal emotionalism” and barbarism.

Will The Whole GOP Go Down With The Good Ship Trumpanzee In 2020?

Sunday morning, we took a quick look at the Republican power play in Wisconsin, where, having lost complete control of the executive branch, they have now called a special lame duck session before Scott Walker is shown the door, to hobble Democratic governor-elect Tony Evers and attorney general-elect Josh Kaul. A couple of hours ago, the Associated Press reported that they were moving full steam ahead and damned the torpedoes voters, shifting power to the GOP-controlled Legislature and allowing Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after he lost re-election. Classy as always. And it isn't just Wisconsin. The Republican legislature is up to the same bullshitin Michigan. There, Republicans in a legislature they control only because of gerrymandering, they're working to cut the legitimate power of the just elected governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. An editorial in the Lansing State Journal yesterday urges the Republicans to not use a lame duck session to override the will of the voters. "Another legislative lame duck session; another ridiculous power play by Republicans. The bills currently being decided in darkness-- with little to no transparency and insufficient time for public debate-- are too important to ignore. The Michigan Legislature is blatantly ignoring the will of the people." And this one isn't just about screwing over the newly-elected executive branch.

In September, the Republican-led Legislature voted into law two citizen-initiated statues-- one raising the minimum wage to $12 and another to require all employers provide paid sick leave. The Legislature effectively blocked the decision-making power of the electorate on these issues with the full intent of dismantling them post-election.

That dismantling is happening now, with a false urgency and secrecy that sends a clear message to every voter: What we, the Legislature, want is more important than what you want.

That's absurd. And every Michigander should be outraged.

This behavior is unacceptable. Regardless of where people stand on issues, bullying through controversial legislation in a lame duck session is not the appropriate way to legislate.

  Among the most offensive changes being pushed through the Legislature:

• Bills effectively gutting the September laws by moving the minimum wage date back to 2030, separating out tipped workers with a raise to only $4 per hour and halving the requirement for paid sick leave passed the Senate Government Operations committee with a 3-2 vote along party lines and the full Senate by similar majority.
• After less than an hour of testimony, the same committee passed a bill to complete a deal with Enbridge to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac and place authority over Line 5 with the Mackinac Bridge Authority, again, with a 3-2 vote along party lines.
• Proposals to undermine powers of the incoming Democratic Attorney General, Secretary of State and Governor-- including provisions to remove oversight of campaign finance law from the Secretary of State’s office and allow the Legislature to intervene in legal proceedings directly instead of through the Attorney General.
• Introduced legislation to undo certain provisions from all three ballot proposals-- recreational marijuana, redistricting and Promote the Vote-- that were passed by a majority of Michigan voters only last month, including prohibition of growing marijuana at home and limiting voter registration to within 14 days of an election.

These are all important issues. Why the hurry to pass them now?

The House and Senate will have Republican majorities again next session. Yes, they'll have to contend with a Democratic governor come Jan. 1. But if these bills truly are in the best interests of Michiganders, let legislators work for them in open sessions in the spirit of collaboration and representative government.

Instead, the Republicans opted for a mean-spirited, heavy-handed approach that clearly shows their disdain for the individual voter.

Yesterday, Jonathan Martin wrote in the NY Times that though, they suffered a grievous defeat at the hands of the voters last month, the Republicans have no intention-- or even ability-- to institute any kind of a course correction. "[N]early a month after the election," wrote Martin, "there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout." Trump is the albatross around their necks. When will they throw him overboard?

Despite the nice drawing by Nancy Ohanian, the answer is probably "never." Thye'll go down with him again in 2020. "The quandary some Republicans acknowledge," wrote Martin, "is that the party’s leaders are constrained from fully grappling with the damage Mr. Trump inflicted with those voters, because he remains popular with the party’s core supporters and with the conservatives who will dominate the caucus even more in the next Congress. But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly and Democrats gained the most seats they had since 1974."

Republican women-- the ones Martin spoke with are Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Susan Brooks (R-IN), Ann Wagner (R-MO) and retiring Trump critics Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)-- think it's because their party hasn't been welcoming-- to put it mildly-- to women. "If we don’t learn some lessons from this election we will not be a majority party," said Wagner, who represents suburban St. Louis, calling for a caucus that "looks more like America." But the GOP problem goes beyond the knee-jerk party sexism. The sexism doesn't cover the outrageous attitude behind the power plays in Wisconsin and Michigan. That mindset, more than anything, is what seems to have soured independent voters on Republicans.

Many of the lawmakers who lost their races or did not run again say the party has a profound structural challenge that incumbents are unwilling to fully face: Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women.

With most of the Republicans who lost hailing from suburban seats, those who remain represent red-hued districts where the president is still well-liked.

“Now the party is Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who at 48 decided to retire, “so we follow his lead.”

Or as Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, who is also retiring, put it: “It’s clear to me why we lost 40 seats; it was a referendum on the president, but that’s an extremely difficult proclamation for people to make because if they were to say that they’d get the wrath of the president.”

Beyond the eggshell-walking that Mr. Trump demands, the depth of the Republican defeat was initially obscured because of the late counting in some House races, and because the G.O.P. gained seats in the Senate while some of the Democrats’ most-heralded statewide candidates lost.

Yet there is a deep reluctance among the leaders to discuss what went wrong.

...One who did was Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois. “That was disgusting,” he said, recalling how other presidents acknowledged defeat after their party lost the House. “I think back to Obama and Bush, both admitting it when they lost, accepting that with some grace.”

There has not been, Mr. Kinzinger said, “any party lookback or leadership lookback and it does worry some of us.”

What alarms Republicans even more is that the possibility that disgust with Mr. Trump will be uncurable in 2020, when he will likely be on the ballot, no matter the party’s agenda.

“It was a personality vote on the president, not an issue vote, and that doesn’t change,” Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas said of the affluent voters in his Kansas City-area district who voted him out.

This sort of cold-eyed assessment has Republicans already expressing concern that more of their colleagues may retire rather than run again in 2020-- and that recruiting top-flight candidates could prove even more challenging going into the next campaign.

Yep... that and more premature retirements. And a party that becomes increasingly radicalized-- pleasing the hardcore base and rapidly turning normal people off. Obviously it's early, but it's hard to see 2020 shaping up to be anything but catastrophic for the Republicans. Even if the GOP isn't, Putin may be in the middle of a Trump course correction. As reported Sunday by the Daily Beast, Veronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies & Initiatives, Advisor to the Director General of Russia Today and a member of the Kremlin-appointed Russian Public Chamber, wrote for Arguments and Facts after Trump canceled his meeting with Putin in Buenos Aires that Russia can now give up on the U.S. and "should have never trusted Trump to begin with." Krasheninnikova opined that "as long as Trump is in power, nothing positive can happen in the relations between the United States and Russia," concluding that "Trump is a rock hanging around Russia's neck." Nothing like that gets published without explicit approval of Putin.

As Sean Sullivan pointed out in the Washington Post this morning, Jeff Flake had admitted, if ruefully, that "This is the president's party now. It really is. I don't think you can read it any other way." He mused that embracing Trump after his 2016 win would have been the "path to re-election, but I couldn't do it... Whether I accomplish anything or not by my opposition to some of his policies and some of his behavior... I just couldn't do that."

The electoral contours of 2020 are expected to prompt Republican senators to keep relations warm with the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his top deputy, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) are both up for re-election in states the president is an early favorite to win.

The risks of crossing Trump are in plain sight. He has aggressively targeted his GOP critics. "I retired him. I'm very proud of it. I did the country a great service," Trump said of Flake the day after the election. He has mocked Corker on Twitter as "Liddle' Bob Corker."

The threat of a Trump-backed primary challenger also looms over Republicans inclined to call out the president publicly. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) experienced this in June when he was defeated by Katie Arrington, a state legislator Trump endorsed hours before the polls closed.

Sanford is spending his final days in Congress warning that turning the GOP over to Trump could lead to the party spending a long time in the House minority as it abandons its principles in favor of pleasing a base of voters deeply committed to the president.

When Arrington lost to Democrat Joe Cunningham in the general election, Sanford quickly drew attention to the upset in his conservative district. He labeled it a "wake-up call" for the GOP and urged Republicans to step away from Trump in a New York Times op-ed that was published the week after the election.

"I continue to believe that the Trump phenomenon is a temporary phenomenon," Sanford said an interview. But he added, "I woudn't have guessed it would last as long as it has."

Asked what he felt he accomplished by taking on Trump, Sanford replied, "Not that much-- I lost." Like Flake, he said he felt it was the right thing to do given his issue with Trump's behavior and policies.

"It's my belief that where he's taking our party is in a dangerous direction, both in electoral consequence, which we saw with the midterms, and, more significantly, with regard to the conservative movement," said Sanford.

Democrats gained at least 39 House seats in the midterms, as Republican candidates fared poorly in many purple districts where the unpopularity of the president and the GOP brand dragged them down.

The Republicans who won will mostly represent conservative districts where the president is well-regarded. House Republicans picked Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is friendly with Trump, to lead them next year.

Even before the election, the ranks of House Republicans criticizing Trump started thinning. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, one of the most vocal Republican Trump critics in the House, resigned his seat earlier this year.

Some Republican activists who do not like Trump have expressed frustration at his enduring command in the party. Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, said he was hopeful that Trump critics like himself would be on the right side of history, but that "history is moving really slowly right now."

It's unclear who, if anyone, will emerge as the leader of the Republican resistance to Trump next year on Capitol Hill. Sens. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) have spoken out when they have disagreed with the president. Flake said he believes Sen.-elect Mitt Romney of Utah will be willing to call out the president when he thinks he is wrong.

But Romney has not been as sharply critical of Trump as he once was. And the political risks of developing a reputation for challenging the president are as acute as ever.

"I'm still hoping the party is going to come back to its senses one day, but I don't see it happening in the near term," said Cullen.

Trump's Reverse Coattails

Mutiny by Nancy Ohanian

Early in the cycle, I noticed that a reasonable theme to cover would be Trump as an albatross whose reverse coattails would pull down Republican candidates across the country-- particularly in districts with large numbers of independent covers. I asked Nancy Ohanian, the best of the political artists, what she thought about it. She came up with these two graphics:

Yesterday, in his Washington Post column, Dana Milbank went right for it: The Trump Albatross. He wrote that Señor Trumpanzee "is getting his wish: It’s all about him. The election, that is. New evidence indicates that the midterm elections in seven weeks will be the clearest referendum on a president in at least 80 years. But while it may delight the narcissistic president that the 2018 midterms are entirely about him, this is precisely what his fellow Republicans were hoping to avoid. With Trump’s support at historic lows-- 60 percent overall disapprove of his performance, including 59 percent of independents-- Republicans scrambling to hold the House and Senate have been struggling in vain to make the election about other issues: tax cuts, Democrats’ personal foibles-- anything to avoid the election being about Trump.This has failed, bigly."

Midterm elections have generally come to be seen as the electorate’s reaction to a presidency. But this one is on a whole different level. “In no previous election,” Gary Jacobson, a University of California political scientist who crunched the numbers, tells me, “has the linkage between opinions of the president and how people are likely to vote been as strong as this time.” Jacobson’s research goes back to the 1930s, before which there was no polling and therefore no ability to compare... [He] found in 93.1 percent of cases this year, voters’ approval or disapproval of the president is correlated with their planned votes for or against the president’s party in House races. That’s an all-time high. It averaged 86 percent in recent elections, 74 percent in the 1980s and 1990s.

And it’s more than a casual correlation. Using regression analysis, Jacobson determined that for every percentage point movement in Trump’s job approval rating, support for Republican House candidates in the midterm elections move by 0.75 percentage points-- the highest effect ever seen.

...Trump’s unpopularity seems to offset the benefit Republicans should get from the strong economy [and gerrymandering]. Using results from previous midterms and factoring in the president’s approval and the growth in real disposable income, Jacobson reports that in conditions close to the current situation-- 2 percent income growth and Trump’s approval at 40 percent-- Republicans would, by historic models, lose 33 House seats.

Republicans in competitive races are in a bind. Among independent voters they need to win, Trump is a pariah. But among the Republican voters they need to turn out in high numbers, Trump has 78 percent approval.

Their dilemma was evident on Thursday when Trump made the outrageous and false claim that the official death toll of 2,975 from last year’s storms in Puerto Rico was inflated by Democrats “to make me look as bad as possible.” (Even storm deaths are all about him.) Delicately, Republican candidates in Florida, who had been trying to win over Puerto Rican voters, tried to step away from Trump. Gov. Rick Scott, running for Senate, tweeted: “I disagree.” Rep. Ron DeSantis, running for governor, issued a similar statement.

Good luck with that. Trump, later in the day, repeated his insulting and bogus claims.

As Trump continues to repel, opinions of him drop and support for a Democratic Congress rises. It has the makings of a wave, but one that could recede before the election. We are destined for one of two outcomes: a massive repudiation of Trump or an unthinkable affirmation of him.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

I spoke with David Keith, campaign manager for Randy Bryce and one of the sharpest minds on the political landscape. He told us he "gets the feeling that a lot of pundits and pollsters and operatives are going to wake up on November 7 and say, 'How did I miss that? No one knew the wave was going to be that powerful.' The 'Trump factor' hasn't been properly factored in to Beltway projections. Trump is an albatross around the neck of every Republican on every level. Even those progressives who ousted those 6 IDC state senators in New York last week. No one beat Jeffrey Klein before but this time, he collapsed, in part thanks to people disgusted with Trump wanted to get out and vote. He's driving turn out and he's turning independent voters away from the GOP. People who may have found him amusing at one time, have woken up and they're starting to worry for their families and their country. There are going to be a lot of Republicans in 'safe' seats looking for jobs after January."

Yesterday Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote from a very similar perspective about why GOP candidates are so worried going into the midterms. "As Democrats," they wrote, "enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style.

To the dismay of party leaders, the healthy economy and Mr. Trump have become countervailing forces. The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth, have been obscured by the president’s inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir V. Putin, and other fronts, party leaders say.

These self-inflicted wounds since early summer have helped push Mr. Trump’s approval ratings below 40 percent and the fortunes of his party down with them.

“This is very much a referendum on the president,” said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, about the November election. “If we had to fight this campaign on what we accomplished in Congress and on the state of the economy, I think we’d almost certainly keep our majority.”

Perhaps... but voters' seem to have decided that what the midterms are about are not countervailing claims about so-called GOP "accomplishments," but on Trump. They know it and they're freaking out. If you drive straight south from Ardmore in Cole's district, you'll hit TX-10, where entrenched Republican multimillionaire Trump rubber-stamp Michael McCaul is getting the battle of his life from Austin City Attorney Mike Siegel. Siegel doesn't have to mention Trump as he crisscrosses the gerrymandered district stretching from Austin to the exurbs west of Houston. The voters are already aware of Trump, but what they hear from Siegel is about what trade wars have done to the price of sorghum and how climate change denial is causing flooding. He talks about healthcare and jobs and environmental and racial justice, not about Trump. He won his primary election with 70.2% of the vote and now faces one of the architects of Trump's family separation agenda. Still, the DCCC is refusing to back his race. This morning I asked Mike about a path to victory in a district where Trump beat Hillary 52.3% to 43.2%.

A while back, he told us McCaul is less "safe" than Beltway pundits all assume he is. "Even though the 10th was gerrymandered to be a 60/40 District in favor of the Republicans, Texas cities keep growing, and Austin and Houston continue to sprawl towards each other. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump beat Clinton by nine points in the 10th. And since that time, McCaul has only inflicted harm on his constituents, by cutting our healthcare and transferring a trillion dollars from working families and essential government programs to the richest among us. McCaul has also neglected the most basic aspects of representation. The 10th includes Katy, Cypress, and Tomball, three Harris County cities that were dramatically impacted by Hurricane Harvey. McCaul has done little to nothing to help those affected. And instead of obtaining federal support to fund fixes to decrepit flood control facilities, McCaul trumpeted his demand for $20 billion to fund a useless Border Wall."


McCaul’s base of support is brittle, and can be dislodged by a strong field campaign supplemented by targeted outreach across the nine counties of the 10th. We can motivate volunteers because we are fighting for the needs of our friends and neighbors.


We are fighting for healthcare for all and a reversal of the 2017 cuts; for fair immigration policies that keep families together; for a living wage and a retirement with dignity. We are fighting to keep corporate and NRA money out of politics.


To win the primary in a field of seven Democrats, I recruited 250 volunteers from diverse constituencies, including labor organizations, Indivisible activists, and the immigrant rights community.

"To win the general," he continued, "we will need to multiply efforts and reach out to additional communities who are suffering under the Trump-McCaul paradigm. The 10th is not first on the "flippable" lists, but McCaul is not invincible, and his disdain for regular Texans is an Achilles heel."

Glen Bolger, a leading Republican pollster working on several top races this year, was even blunter: “People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on-- they’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”

...Bolger and many other prominent Republicans now believe they are likely to lose the House, where they have a 23-seat majority and as many as 60 seats are being fiercely contested by Democrats. The party is preparing to shift advertising money away from some of their most beleaguered incumbents toward a set of races in somewhat more favorable territory. In the narrowly divided Senate, both parties see eight to nine seats, most of them held by Democrats, on a knife’s edge.

And instead of attempting to highlight positive economic news like the 3.9 percent unemployment rate, Republicans have turned to a scorched-earth campaign against the Democrats in a bid to save their House majority and salvage their one-seat edge in the Senate.

Republican electioneering groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund “super pac” and the National Republican Congressional Committee, have spent millions in recent weeks attacking Democratic candidates in intensely personal terms. The committees, along with some Republican candidates, have blasted one Democratic hopeful in New York for rap lyrics he once wrote; branded another, in Pennsylvania, as a “trust fund baby” and “tax dodger;” and aired commercials featuring veterans in wheelchairs to sow doubts about the patriotism of some Democratic nominees.

The Republican lurch away from economic issues amounts to a bet on the politics of Trump-style cultural division as a means of driving up conservative turnout and disqualifying some Democratic candidates among more moderate voters.

From the very first day of his campaign in southeast Wisconsin, Randy Bryce started talking about Medicare-For-All. It's part of his sterling @IronStache brand and it's expected to help win in a red district where Trump beat Hillary 52.6% to 42.3%. Bryce seems very focused on what he wants to do for his neighbors in Racine, Kenosha, Janesville and points in between. "When people in WI-01 learn what Medicare for all actually involves they like it," he told me yesterday. "A Koch Brother funded study shows that we’ll actually save ten trillion over ten years with it in place. Premiums keep getting higher and higher. Healthy people are getting charged more every year for health care some can’t afford to actually use. Those who have insurance will always be paying for those who don’t so why is it so much to ask to do the right thing and give everyone access to health care? With regular checkups we can catch a problem before it gets too big."

Katie Porter has gone from being a long-shot to being a slight-front-runner in her Orange County district. I suspect a lot of that is because of messaging similar to what she told me today: "Mimi Walters," she said of her Trump-enabling opponent, "voted for Donald Trump's health care bill that would have gutted protections for pre-existing conditions, while allowing insurance companies to charge older Californians up to five times more. I will take on the big insurance companies and fight for a Medicare for All system that ensures every American has high-quality, affordable health care."

Another weak Republican incumbent whose reelection bid in Omaha is failing, is backbencher and Trump enabler Don Bacon. Ryan's SuperPAC, desperate to save the seat has been attacking progressive Democrat Kara Eastman, who is campaigning on issues that directly impact Nebraska voters, because she was in a punk rock band when she was in college, decades ago. That's what GOP desperation looks like. I asked Kara's communications director what they think of the pounding Ryan's SuperPAC is giving them with those personal, vicious ads. She told me that they "find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do-- join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart-- and music." Meanwhile, Kara's another candidate who doesn't have to spend time talking about Trump. Omaha voters don't like him at all and he lost the district in 2016. What Kara is concentrating on are the issues Nebraska voters care about: healthcare, education, jobs, the environment and getting dark money out of politics.

Kevin McCarthy, in laying out the Republican strategy for the GOP campaign to The Times reporters, said they plan to warn voters that if the Democrats win, they will "seek to enact universal health care." I guess he doesn't realize he will be helping Democrats, not hurting them, with that message.

Kendra Fershee doesn't mind that kind of advertising at all. She reminded us she's "running for Congress in West Virginia, home to the people whose backbreaking labor made it possible to build America. West Virginians got almost nothing in return. Healthcare is about freedom. You can’t live free if you can’t see a doctor when you’re sick. And our drug addiction crisis is bringing us to our knees. I don’t know what it looks like for a state to collapse, but I fear without universal healthcare, West Virginians may find out."

James Thompson, is appealing to voters in the Wichita Metro-- Koch country-- and he's making enough headway to scare the Republicans, even if the DCCC still refuses to notice. "Article I Section 8 of the Constitution," he told us, "states that Congress is to 'provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.' If people in this country are unable to get healthcare then Congress is abdicating its role to provide for the general welfare of the United States. Healthcare must be available to every single person in this country and based on their healthcare needs not their ability to pay. Opening up Medicare to everyone is the answer. It allows for a greater pool of people paying in to Medicare making it more solvent while also making health insurance affordable for everyone at 1/3 of the costs of current private insurance companies. Healthcare decision should be made by patients and doctors, not  bureaucrats and politicians. Republicans are great at making suggestions for destroying healthcare but have yet to provide any reasonable alternative to our current system. One suggestion they make is health savings accounts, but what they forget, or often simply ignore, is that people have to have money to put it into savings. With wages remaining stagnant for the past 40 years while health costs have climbed exponentially, people in this country are broke, struggling to make ends meet, and simply need their government be responsive to the needs of the people rather than big corporate donors. People who are not rich deserve healthcare too. So Republicans need to either put up or shut up when it comes to healthcare in this country. All they have done since the passage of the ACA is complain and promise to provide alternatives. They have had 8 years to come up with a plan and failed to provide even one viable alternative that they could agree on. If Republican politicans cannot agree amongst themselves, then there is no hope that Republicans can fix this problem. Having said that, this is not a Republican problem or a Democrat problem, it is an American problem that must be solved. Everyday that we continue to argue, more people die because they do not have access to healthcare. As Americans, we are better than this and must answer the call of our citizens to provide a healthcare system for everyone and Medicare is the answer."

[T]here are already clouds forming over the Republican-controlled capital, visible in the growing anger between the Trump White House and those in the party aligned with Congressional Republicans.

After a summer in which the administration implemented a policy of separating migrant children from their parents, the president sided with Mr. Putin over American intelligence services, and then showed little sympathy following the death of Senator John McCain, Republican strategists said Mr. Trump is alienating a sizable bloc of moderate and Republican-leaning voters who favor right-of-center economic policies but recoil from the president.

“There’s 15 percent of the electorate that’s happy with the direction of the country but angry with the president,” said Corry Bliss, who runs the Congressional Leadership Fund.

But this sort of talk infuriates Mr. Trump’s aides, and one senior White House official swiped back at Mr. Bliss, accusing him of attempting to lay the groundwork for deflecting blame for the loss of the House majority. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid about the party’s predicament, said the Republicans were facing deep losses because of the 40 House Republicans who chose not to run again-- a list, the official pointedly noted, that includes Mr. Ryan himself.

Yet the intraparty finger-pointing goes beyond the skirmishing between the White House and Congress.

Republican strategists affiliated with the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House “super pac,” are privately voicing exasperation with the National Republican Congressional Committee for not raising more money, and for being unwilling so far to begin a triage that would transfer resources toward their most viable incumbents. For example, the committee still has $8 million committed to two lawmakers, Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania, who many in the party do not think can win.

...Republican officials say privately that the performance of the economy under Mr. Trump has not been a major motivating factor for pro-Trump voters. For some Americans on the right, it may even be contributing to the mood of political apathy that has so alarmed G.O.P. leaders, since voters who are optimistic rarely vote with the intensity of those who are angry or afraid.

America First Action, a political committee aligned with Mr. Trump, conducted a series of focus groups over the summer and concluded the party had a severe voter-turnout problem, brought on in part by contentment about the economy and a refusal by Republicans to believe that Democrats could actually win the midterm elections.

Conservative-leaning voters in the study routinely dismissed the possibility of a Democratic wave election, with some describing the prospect as “fake news,” an official familiar with the research said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the data was not intended to be disclosed. Breaking that attitude of complacency is now the Republicans’ top priority, far more than wooing moderates with gentler messaging about economic growth.

...[T]he main reason Democrats are sensing a wave is obvious to party veterans.

“He won’t allow himself to get credit for the economy,” said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to President Trump. Mr. Carville, who fashioned Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” mantra in 1992, continued: “He’s made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump.”

I want to end with an example of what kind of thing Trump's chaos and dysfunction bring. Leslie Wexner has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the political process-- all of it to Republicans and GOP organizations (except a few fat checks to Joe Lieberman, essentially a Republican masquerading as a Democrap). He gave lots of maxed out contributions to lots of Republicans-- including to far right extremists like Marsha Blackburn-- as well as $250,000 to a SuperPAC backing Romney and $500,000 to a SuperPAC backing Jeb. So... yeah, a high roller. One of his most recent was to the successful campaign of Troy Balderson ($2,700) in his home state of Ohio. That may be the last to a Republican for a while. According to the Columbus Dispatch Wexner, a billionaire and chairman and CEO of Limited Brands, renounced his affiliation with the Republican Party after hearing Obama's speech on the same Columbus Partnership panel Wexner was speaking at. He called Obama's speech a "great moment for the community. I was struck by the genuineness of the man; his candor, humility and empathy for others... I just decided I’m no longer a Republican."

He's the Ohio GOP's wealthiest contributor and losing his campaign cash will hurt. He says he's an independent now and he "won’t support this nonsense in the Republican Party."