Most Americans Are Ready-- Eager-- To Vomit On Trump's Grave

Some of the best members of Congress are freshmen who were elected in 2018-- AOC (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Andy Levin (MI), Joe Neguse (CO), Chuy Garcia (IL), Veronica Escobar (TX), Sylvia Garcia, Debra Haaland. Those 10 are the only freshmen whose voting records have earned them "A" grades from ProgressivePunch.

Last cycle, Democrats netted 41 House seats but none of those 10 listed above are included in that count. Each of them won a blue seat that had already been occupied by a Democrat. And, with the exception of Andy Levin's suburban Oakland and Macomb counties district, each is overwhelmingly urban. The story of the media emphasizes about the 2018 election is that the action was flipping suburban districts from red to blue. Unfortunately pretty much all of those Democrats in flipped suburban districts turned out to be conservatives or, at best, "moderates." They're not for-- or not willing to go out on a perceived limb for-- peace, economic equality, real reform or anything else that drove voters to the polls for in 2018.

Most disappointing of all are the 9 freshmen who joined the right-wing, corporately-funded Blue Dogs-- Joe Cunningham (SC), Jared Golden (ME), Kendra Horn (OK), Ben McAdams (UT), Max Rose (NY), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Mikie Sherrill (NJ), Abigail Spanberger (VA) and Xochitl Torres Small (NM). Each has a record rated "F" by Progressive Punch. They represent a combination of urban, suburban and rural districts. And they are hardly the only freshmen with "F"-rated voting records. These are the members of the class of 2018 who did NOT earn "A" ratings:

• Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-05)- B (suburban)
• Madeleine Dean (PA-04)- B (suburban)
• Jahana Hayes (CT-05)- B (suburban)
• Donna Shalala (FL-27)- C
• Mike Levin (CA-49)- C (suburban)
• Sean Casten (IL-06)- C (suburban)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26)- C
• Chris Pappas (NH-01)- C
• Greg Stanton (AZ-09)- D
• David Trone (MD-06)- D (suburban)
• Jennifer Wexton (VA-10)- F (suburban)
• Steven Horsford (NV-04)- F (suburban)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ-07)- F (suburban)
• Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07)- F (suburban)
• Dean Phillips (MN-03)- F (suburban)
• Haley Stevens (MI-11)- F (suburban)
• Colin Allred (TX-32)- F (suburban)
• Kim Schrier (WA-08)- F (suburban)
• Gil Cisneros (CA-39)- F (suburban)
• Lauren Underwood (IL-14)- F (suburban)
• Sharice Davids (KS-03)- F
• Harley Rouda (CA-48)- F (suburban)
• T.J. Cox (CA-21)- F
• Susan Wild (PA-07)- F (suburban)
• Josh Harder (CA-10)- F (suburban)
• Susie Lee (NV-03)- F (suburban)
• Lucy McBath (GA-06)- F (suburban)
• Antonio Delgado (NY-19)- F (suburban)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06)- F (suburban)
• Andy Kim (NJ-03)- F (suburban)
• Katie Porter (CA-45)- F (suburban)
• Max Rose (NY-11)- F
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11)- F (suburban)
• Angie Craig (MN-02)- F (suburban)

[all the members below this line vote more frequently-- like below 50%-- against progressive substantive roll calls than for them]

• Elissa Slotkin (MI-08)- F (suburban)
• Xochitl Torres Small (NM-02)- F
• Abby Finkenauer (IA-01)- F
• Elaine Luria (VA-02)- F
• Cindy Axne (IA-03)- F
• Jared Golden (ME-02)- F
• Ben McAdams (UT-04)- F (suburban)
• Kendra Horn (OK-05)- F
• Abigail Spanberger (VA-07)- F (suburban)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)- F
• Joe Cunningham (SC-01)- F

Trump's niece, Mary Trump, recounted in her book, Too Much And Never Enough, how Trump paid someone to take his SATs so he could get into college, a fairly easy college to get into. She also noted that "Honest work was never demanded of him, and no matter how badly he failed, he was rewarded in ways that are almost unfathomable. He continues to be protected from his own disasters in the White House." Some low-achievers-- say in Mississippi or Wyoming-- might think that was a smart move. Well-educated college graduates in the suburbs are not likely react the same way and that anecdote isn't likely to endear Trump to them.

Ron Brownstein's a good reporter with interesting insights but when he writes about electoral politics, it's a Democrat vs Republican thing, not a progressive vs reactionary thing or a reformer vs corrupt sack-of-shit thing. And his CNN.com post yesterday was all about how the massive anti-Trump wave is headed towards more suburban districts held by Republicans that remained after the 2018 wave. He sees it as well-educated votes in the 'burbs turning against the Trump and his congressional enablers. He wrote that "In 2018, a suburban revolt against Trump powered Democrats to sweeping gains in white-collar House districts from coast to coast. The backlash left the GOP holding only about one-fourth of all House districts that have more college graduates than the national average, down from more than two-fifths before the election... Now, recent national and district-level polls signal that many of the well-educated voters souring on Trump are also displaying more resistance to Republican congressional candidates than in 2018-- potentially much more. That movement could frustrate GOP hopes of dislodging many of the first-term House Democrats who captured previously Republican suburban seats in 2018. It also means Democrats see further opportunities in white-collar House districts-- from Pennsylvania and Georgia to Indiana and especially Texas-- where the GOP held off the 2018 suburban tide, often only by narrow margins."

"The suburban exodus has continued, and my gut is as long as Trump is identified as the leader of the party, that continues," says former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Even if Trump's strength outside the metro areas allows the GOP to recapture some of the non-urban seats Democrats won last time, Davis warns, further suburban losses could still leave the party in a deeper hole after November.

"You can't afford that," says Davis... "[Suburbia] was the base of the Republican Party just a decade and a half ago. And there just aren't enough rural voters to make up for those kind of losses. It means for the Republicans that instead of picking up seats in the House, that the bleeding could continue."

...Public polling this spring consistently showed Trump and the GOP facing grim numbers with well-educated voters. National surveys released in the past few weeks by Monmouth University, the Pew Research Center and CNN all showed Trump's approval rating among White voters with at least a four-year college education sinking to 33% or less, with at least 64% disapproving.

By comparison, even during the 2018 Democratic sweep, exit polls found that 38% of college-educated White voters approved of Trump's job performance, according to results provided by Edison Research, which conducts the exit polls for a consortium of news organizations that includes CNN.

That decline contrasted with Trump's showing among minorities in the new CNN and Monmouth polls, which found the President's approval rating with voters of color was almost exactly the same as in the 2018 exit poll, just over 1-in-4 in each case.

...The Monmouth and CNN polls and a national New York Times/Siena College survey all found Biden leading Trump among well-educated White voters by about 30 percentage points, a much bigger advantage than any data source on the 2016 results recorded for Clinton. (The exit polls showed Trump narrowly carrying those college-plus White voters.)

Critically, some of the recent public surveys found that weakness trickling down to GOP congressional candidates. In last week's Monmouth survey, college-educated White voters preferred Democrats over Republicans in House races by a resounding 59% to 36%.

If that disparity held through November, it would represent a huge deterioration for Republicans since 2018, when the exit polls showed Democratic House candidates nationwide carrying those voters by 8 percentage points, about one-third as much. (That came after the exit polls made a methodology change that analysts believe provided a more accurate estimate of the vote among college- and non-college Whites than in previous years.)

Even the more modest swing among well-educated voters that exit polls recorded in 2018 was sufficient to fundamentally reconfigure the House battlefield. The Democratic wave that year crested highest in well-educated and often racially diverse urban and suburban districts. Before that election, Republicans held 43% of the House districts where the share of people 25 and older with at least a four-year college degree exceeded the national average, according to a CNN analysis of the 2018 results.

But now Republicans hold only 23% of such seats, according to a new analysis of results from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey conducted by CNN senior visual editor Janie Boschma. In all, Democrats control 135 of the House districts with higher-than-average college education levels, while Republicans hold just 41. (Those numbers reflect the new district lines drawn under court order in Pennsylvania, but not the new lines that state courts have approved in North Carolina.)

Many of the top Democratic House targets for November are within those remaining 41 Republican districts with more college graduates than average, including incumbent Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, Ann Wagner in Missouri, Chip Roy in Austin, Don Bacon in Nebraska, David Schweikert in Arizona and Steve Chabot in Ohio, as well as opportunities in open seats around Indianapolis, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Raleigh, North Carolina. Several more potentially vulnerable GOP seats (including those held by incumbent Reps. Rodney Davis in Illinois, John Katko in New York and Scott Perry in Pennsylvania) come in just below the average education line.

The flip side is also true: Many of the Democrats elected in 2018 who Republicans most hope to oust hold seats in districts with many more college graduates than average, including Reps. Lizzie Fletcher and Colin Allred in Texas, Sharice Davids in Kansas, Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens in Michigan, Lucy McBath in Georgia, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Tom Malinowski in New Jersey and all the newly elected Democrats from Orange County, California.

In 2016, when exit polls showed Trump running more competitively among college-educated White voters, he won many of the white-collar districts on both lists. With far fewer voters than in earlier generations splitting their tickets between presidential and House candidates, the outcome in many of them may be tipped by whether he does so again.

Perhaps the best test of Trump's standing in white-collar districts will come in Texas, which Republicans have dominated since the early 1990s. Even in 2016, the state was only marginally competitive, with Trump beating Clinton there by 9 percentage points or nearly 800,000 votes. But in 2018, Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke rode a surge of support in Texas' big metropolitan areas-- he won its five largest counties by about six times as much as Barack Obama did in 2012-- to hold Republican Sen. Ted Cruz to a victory of only about 2.5 percentage points. Democrats rode O'Rourke's strong performance to sweeping gains in state legislative and local elections across urban and suburban areas, as well as the election of Fletcher and Allred.

"In Texas, the Democrats performed about as well in the suburbs in 2018 as they've done in 20 or 25 years," says Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant and GOP chair in Travis County (Austin).

Trump's increasingly polarizing strategy for reelection helps explain why many strategists in both parties believe it will be difficult for as many House candidates as in the past to win in districts that vote for the other party in the presidential contest. That may help Republican challengers against Democratic incumbents in blue-collar and rural districts where Trump has been stronger, such as Reps. Collin Peterson in Minnesota, Jared Golden in Maine and Abby Finkenauer in Iowa. But it looms as a huge challenge for the GOP in these suburban areas.

Carlos Curbelo, a former GOP representative who lost his urban Miami district during the 2018 Democratic sweep, agrees it will be tough for the party's candidates to escape the undertow if Trump doesn't improve his position in those places.

"It's almost impossible," he says. "All candidates [are] encouraged to run their own races and maneuver however it is they need to in order to win. But with this heavy overlay, it's very difficult. The space in which to maneuver is very tight."

Like the NRCC's Salera, GOP consultant Mackowiak says he believes Trump will perform better in these suburban districts than the party did in 2018. While Mackowiak believes that "if it's a referendum on Trump he's going to get killed in the suburbs," he maintains the President can win back previously red-leaning college-educated voters by tying Biden and Democratic House candidates to liberal ideas such as the Green New Deal and single-payer health care that might advance under unified Democratic control of government.

Still, Mackowiak acknowledges that if 2020 produces an electoral divide in Texas similar to the one in the 2018 Senate race-- with Trump holding the state by maximizing rural turnout while suffering huge losses in the big metro areas-- it will "be a category five political hurricane" for local Republicans.

"The state House will be gone," he said. "We will lose three or four congressional seats. That's an unthinkable scenario."

Yet many observers in both parties believe that's exactly what the November election may produce in virtually every state: a widening trench between the preponderantly White small-town and rural areas that remain bonded to Trump and a deepening recoil from him in the diverse and well-educated urban and suburban population centers.

Trump may be comfortable with that trade since he is trying only to finesse one more Electoral College victory even if he loses the popular vote again. But many Republicans say Trump's vision of squeezing bigger margins out of shrinking places at the cost of generating more resistance in communities that are growing is a losing long-term trajectory for the party. Nowhere is that more true than in the battle for control of the US House.

"It's a strategy that is divorced from the reality of the country," says Curbelo. "And there are Republican leaders in both chambers who are aware of this. This is not an important [consideration in] the President's strategy because in his team's mind they only have to win one more election. But for everyone else it's a longer-term game. A lot of Republicans have been willing to be shortsighted and taken what they can get from the Trump era. But ultimately they know this is not the future of the party."

"Shooting rubber bullet grenades at protesting priests. Catastrophically botching the pandemic response, resulting in a public health and economic calamity. Tweeting 'white power' memes. Ranting in front of empty arenas about how he navigated a 'slippery ramp.' Being MIA while his Russian benefactors put out a hit on American soldiers in Afghanistan. The last 3 months have been a political dumpster fire, for President Trump," wrote Tim Miller at Rolling Stone this week, "and the flames have engulfed Republicans up and down the ballot." Miller, a #NeverTrump Republican, spoke with 9 GOP political operatives to find out how they perceive Trump's performance impacting their candidates. "Are there discussions," he asked, "about either storming the cockpit or gently trying to #WalkAway from Trump? And finally, why in the hell aren’t they more pissed at this incompetent asshole who is fucking up their life?"

What I found in their answers was one part Stockholm Syndrome, one part survival instinct. They all may not love the president, but most share his loathing for his enemies on the left, in the media, and the apostate Never Trump Republicans with a passion that engenders an alliance with the president, if not a kinship. And even among those who don’t share the tribalistic hatreds, they perceive a political reality driven by base voters and the president’s shitposting that simply does not allow for dissent.

As one put it: “There are two options, you can be on this hell ship or you can be in the water drowning.”

So I give you the view from the U.S.S Hellship, first the political state of play, and then the psychological.

The Politics
The impact of Trump’s disastrous 3 months on down ballot candidates was best summed up in the first text message I got back.

“Could you use a poop emoji for my comments?”

The assessment was excreta across the board.

• “Every shred of evidence points to a likely ass kicking in the fall.”
• “Well it’s as bad as it gets right now.”
• “Right now most campaigns are thanking baby jesus every day the election isn’t held today.”
• “I’ve got Trump down in Texas. [Republican Senator Steve] Daines down in Montana.”
• “It’s certainly better than public polling, but it’s not good.”
• “I told very high ranking people in the Trump Administration that it hasn’t been like this since October of 06”-- when President Bush’s numbers were tanking over fallout from the Iraq War, Katrina, and the Mark Foley scandal.

But in 2006, Republican candidates could strategically distance themselves from an unpopular president without facing a mutiny within the ranks. That won’t work in 2020, as-- though Trump’s numbers are plummeting with some demos-- they are solidifying or improving among his core support demographic. Which makes running afoul of Trump fatal in the eyes of these strategists.

“There are practical realities-- we ran a bunch of red district primaries, and it would come back that the number one issue for 80+% of Republican primary voters was loyalty to Donald Trump. I’m not making that number up,” a respondent told me.

Several consultants pointed to the situation that Sen. John Cornyn faces in Texas to illustrate the problem. They indicated that internal polling shows Trump either tied or very slightly ahead in the Lone Star State. One said Cornyn should be feeling very lucky that Beto O’Rourke ran for president, rather than tacking slightly center and spending $90 million on a campaign to unseat the incumbent senator. Another said Cornyn’s “quietly in trouble.”

But rather than addressing this by creating some strategic separation from Trump to solidify the historically conservative Dallas and Houston suburbs where Trump is bleeding out, Cornyn has become a Mr. Trump fan girl, echoing his virus denial and defending the attack on nonviolent protestors in Lafayette Square.

Why? According to one: “You have 25% of the state is rural and Trump gets like Saddam Hussein level numbers here. 87% in 25% of the state… Cornyn gets 69. And so Cornyn can’t find a place to break from because he could really put that in jeopardy.”

And thus the polarizing nature of Trump makes it impossible for Cornyn to make a move that helps him in the swingy suburbs without risking the floor falling out from under him in West Texas.

This same calculus pervades no matter the race, no matter the district, no matter the geography: The operatives insist that the pro-Trump zealotry the president’s supporters demand makes it far more difficult for candidates to win over anyone else.

A consultant who advises a challenger in a swing house seat that Hillary Clinton carried, for example, indicated that they thought they had less ability to distance from Trump than those who are in safer, more MAGAfied districts. “No dissent is tolerated [with the base],” and “If my candidate is going to win, it’s going to be by 1 or 2 percent they can’t afford to lose any votes [on the pro-Trump flank].”

In fact some candidates in competitive house seats are going the other direction because of what it takes to win a primary. A different consultant said: “My candidate didn’t vote for Trump. But we’re running ads right now about being a big Trump supporter,” because in that district “drap[ing] yourself in Trump is still a good decision.”

This view is so widespread that when asked, all of the consultants but two said they haven’t even had a conversation about the possibility of distancing from Trump with any of their candidates or campaign teams. Another put it this way: “The idea of distancing, if it’s discussed, it’s discussed very quietly, it’s discussed one-on-one. You wouldn’t talk about it on a conference call…maybe someone would, but let’s just say it hasn’t happened yet and I’m on a lot of those calls.”

Sit with that for a second. The idea of separating from Trump is so verboten in GOP circles that the best consultants won’t even talk about talking about doing it in mixed company, for fear of being stigmatized, and thus losing potential client work on other campaigns.

Biden v Trump-- Horrible v More Horrible..., The Ultimate Lesser Of 2 Evils Elect Set Up-- Don't Fall Into The Trap

Yesterday, on Fox, towards the end of his panel discussion, Chris Wallace asked Karl Rove if "Trump's continued targeting of Joe Biden may be the best thing Biden has going for him right now." Rove: "Well, it would be if Biden knew how to respond. The president started going after him the weekend of September 16th and his first real tough response was October 5th, delivered late in the afternoon on the West Coast so that none of us saw it, and it was, how dare you attack my family. Ironically, Biden's best defense would be to say, you know what, in retrospect I should have said something to Hunter about getting off that Burisma board while I'm-- while I'm focused on corruption in Ukraine and said you've got to make a living someplace else. But he didn't. So the more that he says, how dare you attack my family, the more we talk about the stinky arrangement and the stinkier it gets."

Wallace: And let's look, because I was talking about Biden's campaign, let's look at the fundraising numbers for the third quarter, which are pretty dramatic, on the screen. Bernie Sanders, in the third quarter of this year, raised $25 million and Elizabeth Warren, $24.6 million. Pete Buttigieg, $19 million. And all the way back in fourth place, the supposed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden at $15.2 million. Josh, do you think that at some point President Trump may come to regret his efforts to get Joe Biden out of this race?

Josh Holmes: "NO, because he's... because he's... well, I mean it's an easy question. I think the fundraising is a very interesting component of this because as the world of politics has adapted, the Joe Biden's of the world have not, right? They all... everybody's gone to the digital low dollar sort of renewable resource to try to keep your campaign funded. He had a huge boom, bang, max out dollar thing first quarter and now here he is in fourth place. What is he going to do in the fourth quarter? It's not going to get better and it's not going to get better in the first quarter of next year either. He's going to be outspent and outraised four, five, six to one down the stretch, all of it because, you know, frankly this campaign is a little antiquated.

Rove: It may get better in this next quarter for him because he is Trump's target and he's... my inbox is inundated with Joe's requests. If Joe wants me to send him $5, Joe's upset about Trump, look at what Trump is saying about me or saying...

It goes way beyond fundraising but the panel never discussed the essence of why Trump is attacking Biden. Trump desperately wants Biden as an opponent. Biden is the only candidate he can beat because Biden is Hillary in a suit and tie and because Biden is senile and a compulsive liar-- like Trump, essentially voiding those two potent anti-Trump arguments for the Democrats. And, obviously the families. TRump's family of grifters is beyond disgusting. But so is Biden's. So... independent voters just throw up their hands and say, basically, "a pox on both your houses"... and walk away. By hammering Biden, Trump is manipulating unsophisticated Democratic primary voters into nominating him. It's what Trump wants. And the same folks that burdened the Democratic Party with Hillary may now now burden the party with Biden-- and another 4 years of Trump.

Biden hasn't been able to defend himself against Trump's barrage of attacks over the last week because the last thing he wants is to encourage a bigger investigation into his grifter family of lobbyists and crooks. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of Trump's term as "president," will be him saving the country from a Biden term. I literally can't think of two less fit individuals for the White House. How would you like seeing a campaign based on whose family is more inherently disgusting and criminally-minded?

The Biden campaign's comms team wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post yesterday: Trump won't destroy me or my family. The title is as close as he gets to defending his notoriously corrupt family. "Enough is enough," wrote Biden's professional communicator in his name, if not his voice. "Every day-- every few hours, seemingly-- more evidence is uncovered revealing that President Trump is abusing the power of the presidency and is wholly unfit to be president. He is using the highest office in the land to advance his personal political interests instead of the national interest. The president’s most recent violation of the rule of law-- openly calling for China to interfere in our elections, as he stood on the South Lawn of the White House-- is so outrageous, it’s clear he considers the presidency a free pass to do whatever he wants, with no accountability."

He does not understand the immense responsibility demanded of all those who hold the office of the president of the United States. He sees only the power-- and how it can benefit just one person: Donald Trump.

Our first president, George Washington, famously could not tell a lie. President Trump seemingly cannot tell the truth-- about anything. He slanders anyone he sees as a threat. That is why is he is frantically pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me and my family, no doubt hoping to undermine my candidacy for the presidency.

It’s the same cynical playbook he returns to again and again. But this time, it won’t work, because the American people know me-- and they know him. I will put the integrity of my whole career in public service to this nation up against Trump’s lack of integrity any day of the week.

It all comes down to the abuse of power. That is the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency.

We now know he has abused the foreign policy of the United States in an attempt to extract political favors from multiple countries. He has directly asked three foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections, including Russia, one of our greatest adversaries, and China, our closest competitor. He has corrupted the agencies of his administration-- including the State Department, the National Security Council staff, the Justice Department and the office of the vice president-- to do his personal political bidding. We also know that the people around him in the White House recognized just how profoundly wrong it was and worked overtime to cover up Trump’s abuses.

Whistleblower by Nancy Ohanian

Thankfully, someone had the courage to blow the whistle. In America, not even the president is above the law. That’s a founding principle of our nation and our system of government.

This isn’t just an academic exercise in political theory. A president who puts his self-interest ahead of the public good and the nation’s security poses a threat to the daily lives of every American

Just days after the House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry against him, Trump hosted the president of the National Rifle Association in the Oval Office. Did they discuss the common-sense gun-safety legislation the nation so desperately needs? No-- they talked about how the NRA can help reelect Donald Trump.

He’s so deep in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, he’s literally sacrificing the planet’s future for personal political gain. He pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and froze fuel economy standards the Obama-Biden administration put in place for cars, and he’s preventing California from implementing its own higher standards. He won’t even acknowledge the climate crisis that he is making worse every day.

In his phone call in June with Chinese President Xi Jinping-- in addition to seeking his involvement in our election, which he then publicly repeated-- Trump reportedly sold out the people of Hong Kong, who for months have been rallying in the streets for the democratic rights they are owed.

America’s word and our standing in the world are in free fall because of the actions and incompetence of this president.

...And to Trump and those who facilitate his abuses of power, and all the special interests funding his attacks against me: Please know that I’m not going anywhere. You won’t destroy me, and you won’t destroy my family. And come November 2020, I intend to beat you like a drum.

Is Karl Rove Scared Straight? By What? Decoding Rove = Is Impeachment Necessary For Bernie To Win?

-by Emorej

I. Drilling through lies of Karl Rove’s forked tongue reveals true fork in road

A reliable path towards achieving progressive political goals is to oppose all goals of Karl Rove-- after first drilling down to find them.

A. An Attack Dog Not Baring Teeth is Suspicious

Karl Rove, after a career of built on dirty wars against good government, and against all Progressive values, whether held by Bernie Sanders or professed by Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, now commends the respect (for “the great common sense of ordinary Americans”) underlying the Pelosi-Biden-Bernie skepticism about impeaching Trump, which Rove summarizes as follows:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) doesn’t want to put her majority at risk by plunging into impeachment. And the two current frontrunners in the Democratic presidential contest-- Biden and Sanders-- have refused to join the lesser lights in the primary in demanding Trump’s impeachment.

This comes near the end of Rove’s recent article (archived here). Rove’s article starts with the argument that:

President Trump and his defenders can successfully attack former Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional Democrats on impeachment-- but not both... So the president and his advocates should keep it simple and focus on Congress, not Mueller

B. Decoding Rove’s “Not Political” Label of Mueller

The above comments fit smoothly into Rove’s brutally earned and relentlessly cultivated brand as a cutting edge practitioner of values-free political cynicism. But, in light of this brand, what can we learn from Rove’s further assertion as follows?

Unintentionally (because he’s a law enforcement professional and not political), Mueller’s actions again disappointed the Democratic firebrands who want Trump impeached.

This assertion requires layers of decoding in light of the fact that Rove’s primary audience, of political insiders, knows Rove’s history:

· Rove was a ground-breaking politicizer of security/intelligence agencies’ analysis and public statements, and
· Rove was the beneficiary of highly politicized decisions not to prosecute him for lying under oath, to a previous Justice Department investigation, into Rove’s arguably treasonous leaking of national security secrets about the CIA’s undercover network abroad-- in order to deter truth-telling about the lies told to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

C. Rove’s Decoded Fears

Rove’s message to political insiders (and wannabees) seems to include the following:

· Tearing down of public trust, in federal law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies, should be slowed or reversed. (Why? We can infer that Rove sees a risk of killing the goose, of federal and imperial power, from which Rove and his clients have extracted so many golden eggs.)
· Impeachment proceedings against Trump should be avoided. (Why? We can infer that Rove foresees that impeachment would provoke Trump loyalist counterattacks containing allegations and/or evidence of even more politicization and illegality of federal law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies.)

II. Implications for Bernie Supporters?

A. Context (Premises)

· Federal law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies are the most dangerous weapon of the establishment.
· The establishment is ever-less unified on any goal other than to block Bernie from interfering with their golden egg harvesting.

B. Causation (Predicted)

· Only if the establishment fails to block him can Bernie peacefully achieve the power to fundamentally reorient major federal policies.
· A necessary precondition, of their failing to block Bernie (peacefully or otherwise) is for the establishment and its deadliest agencies to continue losing both public trust and internal unity.

C. Conclusion: Trump’s Impeachment Good for Bernie

The most likely (and perhaps only) scenario, which could enable Bernie’s peaceful triumph, includes impeachment proceedings that, by means of competing disclosures by different elite factions, further expose the politicization and illegalities of federal law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies.

Does The DCCC Have Its Own Troll Farm?

So who is Patrick Karlsson? No really... who is he (or who are they)? If he were a person, he would be a superman who doesn't need any sleep and who would "automatically" tweet as soon as someone would say anything positive about Laura Moser (like "Patrick Karlsson"-- not a Swede-- does). About 3 or 4 days before the primary, he popped up and went on the warpath against Moser. A pseudonym for Ben Ray Lujan or Nancy Pelosi? Nah. Jason Bresler? That sounds possible.

I never heard of him until today when I was told he's part of what looks like a concerted effort to continue the DCCC's shocking smear of Laura, one of the 2 Democrats-- the progressive one-- who made it into the TX-07 runoff. When I looked him up to read his tweets myself, this popped up on my screen:

So I had a friend look him up and BOOM! No problem at all finding tweets like this by the troll:

So I guess I'm blocked... by an account I never heard of and that doesn't appear to belong to an actual person. Wouldn't that be just like the DCCC (or EMILY's List)? I guess no one at the DCCC cares that Bernie said he's "especially distressed that the DCCC tried to do negative attacks against a very respectable and intelligent candidate who is running a serious campaign. That’s just not acceptable. I suspect that it backfired on them, and I hope they don’t do it again." They keep going with the negativity-- except not on their own website this time. They're trying to destroy Laura's character, using really vile tactics right out of the Lee Atwater/Karl Rover playbook-- going right for her strengths and turning them into weaknesses. Laura is the progressive in this race, running against an anti-union corporate Dem, EMILY's List shill Elizabeth Pannill Fletcher. So the DCCC trolls are painting her as a racist, tearing her down and tearing her down in the ugliest possible ways. [Don't quote me on this but I think her husband is a person of color.]

Someone told me about another possible DCCC troll, an account called Paradigm Shift Suki (@freeandclear1). I had never heard of it and went to check it when I was told the account was the source of endless smears against Laura. When I did, this was the message:

You are blocked from following @freeandclear1 and viewing @freeandclear1's Tweets. Learn more.

The DCCC and EMILY's List are setting the table in such a way that will absolutely guarantee one winner in November, John Culberson-- and what's most tragic about all this is that THEY KNOW IT AND DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS. They would much rather have a conservative Republican in Congress than a progressive.

The DCCC is the worst den of iniquity in Washington. As Bernie said over the weekend in Texas. "I detest that type of politics and I think most Americans do... That is to my mind, absolutely unacceptable. And it’s got to end." But it won't stop, not while unaccountable, corrupt DC characters like Pelosi, Hoyer and Crowley control the party. Please consider helping to teach the DCCC a lesson they badly-- oh so badly-- need to learn by contributing to Laura's campaign at the Take Back Texas ActBlue thermometer on the left.

People Who Tell You Trump Can Win Reelection In 2020 Are Using Some Very Powerful Drugs-- Get Some

The Tiki Torch Leader by Hugh Brown

In his Wall Street Journal column yesterday, Steve Bannon’s Motley Crew of Challengers-- One is fresh out of prison. Another held a town hall to discuss ‘chemtrail’ theories, Karl Rove basically said the Republican establishment is fine fighting a war against Bannon's brand of fascism: Bring It On, Asshole! "Steve Bannon, the failed presidential adviser and alt-right sympathizer," he wrote pointedly," has declared war on incumbent Republicans, particularly Sen. Mitch McConnell. From his perch at Breitbart, Mr. Bannon is vowing to defeat officeholders who back Mr. McConnell as majority leader or who won’t sign onto Mr. Bannon’s populist agenda. So what kind of challengers is Mr. Bannon marshaling for the midterms?" Staten Island Mafioso Mikey Suits made great target for Rove's outrage and went on to suggest "Bannon has picked a team... of misfits and ne’er-do-wells."

I would bet Rove didn't read Charles Blow's NY Times column before he wrote it... but he should have. Señor Trumpanzee is certainly laying to rest myriad conventional norms and one is Godwin's Law, which Godwin himself has said is suspended while Trump is in politics. And Blow went there-- pr almost did. I think he isn't aware Godwin has said his Law is more... flexible for Trump than it was for, say, Bush or Cheney. "It is a commonly accepted rule among those who are in the business of argument," wrote Blow, "especially online, that he or she who invokes Adolf Hitler, either in oratory or essays, automatically forfeits the argument. The reference is deemed far too extreme, too explosive, too far beyond rational correlation. No matter how bad a present-day politician, not one of them has charted or is charting a course to exterminate millions of innocent people as an act of ethnic cleansing. Hitler stands alone in this regard, without rival, a warning to the world about how evil and lethal human beings can be, a warning that what he did can never be allowed again."

That said, there are strategies that Hitler used to secure power and rise-- things that allowed his murderous reign-- that can teach us about political theory and practice. And very reasonable and sage comparisons can be drawn between Hitler’s strategies and those of others.

One of those lessons is about how purposeful lying can be effectively used as propaganda. The forthcoming comparison isn’t to Hitler the murderer, but to Hitler the liar.

According to James Murphy’s translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf:

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

...“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

This demonstrates a precise understanding of human psychology, but also the dangerously manipulative nature that operates in the mind of a demon.

And yet, as many have noted, no person of sound reason or even cursory political awareness can read this and not be immediately struck by how similar this strategy of lying is to Donald Trump’s seeming strategy of lying: Tell a lie bigger than people think a lie can be, thereby forcing their brains to seek truth in it, or vest some faith in it, even after no proof can be found.

Trump is no Hitler, but the way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies, stacked one on top of the other, has an eerie historical resonance. Demagogy has a fixed design.

It should be mentioned that Vanity Fair reported in 1990 that Trump’s first wife, Ivana, “told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.” The magazine pointed out that “Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.”

...Trump has found a way to couch the lies so that people believe they don’t emanate from him but pass through him. He is not a producer but a projector.

One way he does this is by using caveats-- “I was told,” “Lots of people are saying” -- as shields. Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post addressed this in June 2016, writing about Trump’s use of the phrase “a lot of people are saying”:

“Trump frequently couches his most controversial comments this way, which allows him to share a controversial idea, piece of tabloid gossip or conspiracy theory without technically embracing it. If the comment turns out to be popular, Trump will often drop the distancing qualifier-- ‘people think’ or ‘some say.’ If the opposite happens, Trump can claim that he never said the thing he is accused of saying, equating it to retweeting someone else’s thoughts on Twitter.”

...He even projects his own ignorance onto others with his lies. As Steve Benen pointed out in July on MSNBC.com, Trump’s “awkward process of discovery has, however, produced a phrase of underappreciated beauty: ‘A lot of people don’t know that.’ These seven words are Trump’s way of saying, ‘I just learned something new, and I’m going to assume others are as ignorant as I am.’”

This is not a simple fear of the truth; it is a weaponizing of untruth. It is the use of the lie to assault and subdue. It is Trump doing to political ends what Hitler did to more brutal ends: using mass deception as masterful propaganda.

Maybe I have crossed the ink-stained line of the essay writer, where Hitler is always beyond it. But I don’t think so. Ignoring what one of history’s greatest examples of lying has to teach us about current examples of lying, particularly lying by the “president” of the most powerful country in the world, seems to me an act of timidity in a time of terror. It is an intentional self-blinding to avoid offending frail sensibilities.

I have neither time nor patience for such tiptoeing. I prefer the boot of truth to slam down to earth like thunder, no matter the shock of hearing its clap.

The world has seen powerful leaders use lying as a form of mass manipulation before. It is seeing it now, and it will no doubt see it again. History recycles. But the result doesn’t have to be-- and hopefully never will be again-- a holocaust. It can manifest as a multitude of other, lesser horrors, in both protocol and policy, including the corrosion and regression of country and culture.

That is the very real threat we are facing. Trump isn’t necessarily a direct threat to your life-- unless of course you are being kept alive by health care that he keeps threatening, or if you’re in Puerto Rico reeling in the wake of two hurricanes-- but he is very much a threat to your quality of life.

The only question is: Are enough Americans sufficiently discerning to understand that this time they are the ones being manipulated?

Now consider the latest Granite State Poll, released this week. A tad early for 2020 primary polling? Yes, absolutely. BUT... one gets a good look at what New Hampshire Republicans are thinking about their party's leader right now. And it's pretty shocking. Trump almost won New Hampshire last year. The state was certainly not Hillary country. Bernie won the primary 151,584 (60.4%) to 95,252 (38.0%). Although Trump came in first on primary day with 100,406, Bernie bested him and runner up, John Kasich combined (145,315). On election day Hillary pulled 348,521 votes (47.6%) to Trumpanzee's 345,789 (47.2%), the closest state in the country.

Inasmuch as I've seen this poll discussed, it's because of the Democratic presidential primary results, for which-- much to the chagrin of the corrupt Democratic establishment-- has Bernie way out ahead, leading Joe "Mr credit card bankruptcy bill" Biden 31% to 24%. The only declared candidate, self funding multimillionaire New Dem shithead John Delaney (D-MD) is polling at exactly what he deserves to be polling at: ZERO. But today I want to look at the polling of New Hampshire Republicans.

Only 18% of Republican primary voters say they have definitely decided whom they will support for the 2020 Republican Presidential Primary. Five percent say they are leaning toward someone while 77% say they are still trying to decide. Just under half (47%) of likely Republican primary voters say they plan on voting for Donald Trump.

Does Trump Have Any Credibility Left? How About Paul Ryan?

Someone needs to explain to Señor Trumpanzee what "exonerated" and "vindicated" mean. No matter where you woke up Friday-- red state, blue state, purple state, there were no newspaper headlines talking about vindication. They were all talking about how we're saddled with a compulsive, manipulative liar in the White House. Even Karl Rove, in an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal took the opportunity to slam Trump this week-- as did widely-followed right-wing activist Erick Erickson.

Trump, wrote Rove, "may have mastered the modes of communication, but not the substance, thereby sabotaging his own agenda... [Señor Trumpanzee] lacks the focus or self-discipline to do the basic work required of a president... his chronic impulsiveness is apparently unstoppable and clearly self-defeating. He added Trump routinely disregards basic fact checking, making "the already considerable doubts Americans have about his competence and trustworthiness" worse day by day. Rating for were so high for TV (almost 20 million Americans watched Comey's testimony-- as though it were an NBA final) that broadcast media stocks went up while he was speaking. All those folks watching Comey continuously assert that Trump is a liar-- with no a single Republican claiming he isn't-- and then seeing that repeated endlessly on TV for 2 days hasn't hurt Trump's trustworthy and honest ratings among voters-- already the lowest anyone can remember for any president. Erickson actually tried to defend Trump but wound up writing that "we know President Trump lies regularly" and that "the public will latch on to Comey as the honest broker." Trumpanzee, he reminds his Republican readers, "only won because he convinced 70,000 people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that he was not as bad as Clinton... if there are at least 70,001" voters who decide to take Comey’s word over Trump’s, the GOP will be in very big trouble for the 2018 midterms.

And his 2 horrid sons have been molded to be just like him

Friday NBC's Chuck Todd began the day writing about Trump's credibility gap.

After former FBI Director James Comey accused President Trump, under oath, of lying and possibly obstructing justice, Trump and his lawyer fired back, trying to turn it all into a he said-he-said dispute. “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted this morning (after a two-day hiatus). The problem here for Trump: The president has used up so much of his credibility after:

• Misstating the size of his inaugural crowd.
• Claiming that 3-5 million “illegals” voted in the 2016 election.
• Accusing Barack Obama of wiretapping him.
• Boasting, incorrectly, of achieving “the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.”

And that’s just the tip of the fact-checking iceberg. “In a credibility battle between Trump and Comey, everybody knows Comey is going to win that war,” Adam W. Goldberg, a former associate special White House counsel under Bill Clinton, tells the New York Times... [T]his is important: In a battle over credibility, one person (Comey) has testified under oath; the other one (Trump) hasn’t. And one person (Trump) has raised the possibility of having “tapes” of their conversation but has not produced them; the other (Comey) is begging for any tapes to be released. "Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey told Congress.

...Tellingly, the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee paid no heed to the talking points distributed in advance by the Republican National Committee at the behest of the White House. Instead of attacking Mr. Comey’s credibility, as the R.N.C. and Donald Trump Jr. did, the Republican senators praised him as a patriot and dedicated public servant. They largely accepted his version of events, while trying to elicit testimony that would cast Mr. Trump’s actions in the most innocent light possible.

I didn't include the headline from the Denver Post in the collage up top. Instead, let me quote to you what voters in Republican Congressman Mike Coffman's very vulnerable swing district in the suburbs south and east of Denver were reading today (an area Hillary won convincingly-- 50.2% to 41.3%):

Whatever happens with the investigations into President Donald Trump’s campaign and his firing of FBI Director James Comey, significant damage has been done to the president’s reputation that brings into stark question his ability to lead.

Even if Trump isn’t implicated in colluding with the Russians, even if none of his campaign staffers are found guilty, Comey’s sworn testimony and the known facts about his firing cripple the president’s credibility.

Comey’s testimony portrays a president who only cares about loyalty to himself, and not loyalty to all Americans. By repeatedly pressuring the then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to swear allegiance to him, Trump betrayed America. He never reversed this error, and kept talking about the necessity of personal loyalty with Comey until the day he fired him.

Trump denies everything, of course. But who can believe him? He’s proven himself wonderfully skilled at telling lies.

...Trump’s only values are the constantly shifting ones he conjures to win for himself a favorable news cycle.

Even if he survives these investigations, his credibility going forward will be forever tarnished unless he’s able to reform.

Bob Inglis is a conservative Republican who was a South Carolina congressman. He pointed out that Trump isn't the only liar leading the Republican Party. Ryan has fully embraced the tactic and completely shot whatever remained of his own credibility as well. He's been trying to mislead voters by lying about the impact of TrumpCare, by lying about Trump's draconian budget and by lying about House Republican efforts to cement their ties with Wall Street by giving them the biggest legislative bonanza in decades.

Wisconsin iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce, who is rumored to be about to declare his much-anticipated candidacy for Paul Ryan's congressional seat told us this morning that "Ryan is still making excuses for Trump’s obvious incompetence. He told us to to cut him some slack because he’s 'new at this.' All kinds of French words run through my mind after hearing that because I specifically heard Trump boasting about how much better he was than everyone else running for the job of President. He’d have us all think that he is smarter than all of the generals. At what point can we expect Republican leadership to put the concerns of the country over that of their plans to destroy the country? I don’t think that we can. Our current government has become more corrupt than at any other time in history. Those who refuse to abide by the oaths that they took are complicit in the illegality. Every one of them needs to be removed and replaced. I’m looking forward to doing my part. Speaker Ryan-- the clock is ticking."

Trump accusing Comey of lying under oath, isn't going to help his own credibility. And coupled with Lyin' Ryan's casting scruples to the wind with regular alacrity, the party is taking on a certain undeniable odor. One thing seems certain: these Republican politicians are way more concerned about themselves than they are with the American people.

Another person who noticed how badly Ryan is hurting himself-- and his party-- is Brian Beutler who made the point at the New Republic that Comey's testimony won't just hurt Trump but, largely thanks to Trump, the whole party. "In the midst of the most devastating testimony delivered about a sitting president in the living memory of nearly everyone serving in Congress today, the Republican speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, shuffled before microphones to say that Donald Trump--vin trying to interfere with FBI investigations-- probably just made an innocent mistake: 'The president’s new at this. He’s new to government and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this.' Ryan wants us to imagine Trump sitting alone in the White House with only his intellect and his muscle memory as his guides. He asks us implicitly to forget that Trump has a White House counsel, a vice president with years of governing experience, and an attorney general who campaigned with him for a year, all at his behest to instruct him. He asks us, again implicitly, to forget that Trump pierced the veil meant to separate the White House and FBI, to corrupt the rule of law, and that he then fired FBI Director James Comey, lied about why, and confessed-- to NBC’s Lester Holt, and to senior Russian officials in the Oval Office-- that he did it to remove “the cloud” of Comey’s investigation of his campaign.

It is an article of faith in Washington that no revelation about Trump’s conduct, no matter how severe, could convince Ryan and members of his conference to launch an impeachment inquiry. As dispassionate political analysis, this may well be true. It would certainly be foolish to believe the opposite-- that Trump’s impeachment is a certainty.

But for everything we know about Trump’s conduct already, all this means is that the ethical and strategic conduct of Republicans in Congress should now be as heavily scrutinized as Trump’s. Republicans may not know what they’re covering up, but covering up they are; and they may believe they’re acting in their own political self-interest, but they almost certainly are not.

Bracketing everything we know about Trump’s potentially illegal behavior almost makes the GOP’s somber indifference to his conduct in office more damning. Trump, we were reminded Thursday, is an abject liar who doesn’t even seem to understand the concept of the public interest. In his testimony, Comey asserted that he began his practice of taking notes after every encounter with Trump before the inauguration because he became “concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting.”

Comey used variants of the word “lie” repeatedly, as if to correct for the fact that reporters and news outlets are reluctant to use it themselves.

...Ryan’s special pleading on Trump’s behalf already requires him to insult the public’s intelligence. He may have sunk so much cost into his complicity that he sees no option other than to sink more. Rather than take the hits as they come, he should consider the predicament he’ll face if Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller refers an obstruction of justice complaint to Congress. Like Comey, Mueller is a former prosecutor and FBI director. If he tells Congress, in so many words, that Trump would face a federal indictment were he not the president, will Ryan still reconcile himself to ignoring the crisis he’s helped inflict on the country?

Let's give David Frum the last word on this: "Friends of the president will reply that the Comey hearing did not produce a smoking gun. That’s true. But the floor is littered with cartridge casings, there’s a smell of gunpowder in the air, bullet holes in the wall, and a warm weapon on the table. Comey showed himself credible, convincing, and consistent. Against him are arrayed the confused excuses of the least credible president in modern American history."