The GOP Doesn't Have Enough Congresswomen. Lara Trump To The Rescue?

How smart could Lara Trump be? After all, she married the dumbest member of the Trump clan, their Fredo. Lara Yunaska was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1982, and has only ever lived in Manhattan and North Carolina... but she's been to the Hampton's frequently enough to have a general idea where Long Island is. Lucky, because there's a week-old rumor circulating that wife of Eric may run for Peter King's seat, now that he's retiring. The rumor started at Bereitbart and has oozed into legitimate media like the New York Times and Newsday, Long Island's most widely read newspaper. The district includes much of blue-leaning Suffolk County and the south shore of Nassau County. As we saw a week and a half ago, swingy NY-02, is trending blue.

Last year, Nassau County’s white population dipped below 60% for the first time ever, as Latino, African-American and Asian populations across Long Island grew while the number of non-Hispanic white residents continued to decline. Less than 30 years ago, Long Island--then classic white flight suburbs-- was more than 84% white, according to the 1990 census. In 2018, about 59% of Nassau County residents and 67% of Suffolk County residents were white, according to the new estimates. Democrats now outnumber Republicans on Long Island, a once unthinkable development in a traditional conservative stronghold where voters backed every Republican presidential candidate, bar two, from 1900 to 1988… The numbers on Long Island enumerate the challenges for Republicans. In 1996, registered Republicans in Nassau County outnumbered the Democrats, 360,000 to 257,000. By this year, the number of Democrats had rocketed to 411,000. The number of Republicans, by contrast, had dropped by more than 30,000. In NY-02, once all all-Nassau district is now mostly a Suffolk County district and the Democratic Party now has a registration advantage over Republicans. Obama won the district both times, although Hillary lost it to Trump by almost 10 points. Peter King was reelected in recent years because he was Peter King, beloved by the transpartisan super-corrupt Long Island establishment, not because he was a Republican per se. All things being equal, a Democrat is likely to win it in 2020.

The Republicans are looking for a candidate to replace King and the Trumpist wing of the GOP is floating Lara Trump's name. There are 16 other Republicans in the primary-- Islip Town Councilwoman and ex-TV news reporter, state Assemblyman Mike LiPetri and Suffolk County election commissioner Nick LaLota-- or looking at it, particularly former Congressman for the North Shore district, Rick Lazio. The Democratic establishment seems to have settled for Babylon Town Councilwoman and Afghan War vet Jackie Gordon, a centrist, which is just what the DCCC wants.

The shady Club for Growth poll that Breitbart claims to have seen shows Lara Trump with 53% compared to 19% for Lazio. The poll showed that 60% of respondents had a favorable opinion of her while only 13% had an unfavorable opinion of her and 18% never heard of her. Although Trumpanzee's own approval rating on Long Island is in the dumpster, 78% of Republicans in NY-02 favor him and only 19% view him unfavorably. (And since this is an all GOP poll, yes, 1% said they have never heard of Donald Trump.)

These are the November 1, 2019 NY-02 registration numbers by party:

• Suffolk part of the district

Democrats- 38,110
Republicans- 59,075
Decline to state- 33,238

• Nassau part of the district

Democrats- 124,904
Republicans- 93,231
Decline to state- 85,086

• Total, district-wide, shows that if Democrats turn out their base and continue turning independent voters against Trump, the district is unwinnable for a Republican, especially one with the last name Trump.

Democrats- 163,014
Republicans- 152,306
Decline to state- 118,324

Now, remember, this Obama district flipped red for Trump (or against Hillary) in 2016. A Biden nomination might be as bad but there's no way to be certain what made NY-02 voters turn against Hillary so strongly. Over a year ago, John Pavlovitz had already begun giving up on the hardcore Trump fanatics. "There's an old saying," he wrote: 'When the horse is dead-- dismount. It’s time to stop beating that horse, America. It’s not going anywhere. I’ve tried for three years now. I’ve tried to understand them. I’ve tried to listen to them. I’ve tried not to assign motive to them, not to speculate as to why they voted the way they voted, not to believe they consented to every cruel thing their vote birthed and enabled. I’ve tried not to caricaturize them; not to make them into one-dimensional stereotypes, not to treat them as some fictional other whose presence posed a threat. I’ve tried appealing to their sense of decency, to their capacity for compassion, to their faith in Jesus." As I'm sure you can imagine, basically none of that has worked for Pavlovitz.

I’ve quietly endured thousands of their racist outbursts and homophobic rants on Twitter and at neighborhood picnics and across the Thanksgiving dinner table-- in the hopes that I could find some vulnerable place beneath their fear to access later.

I’ve tried buoying pep talks and firm tough love and expressions of kindness and straight-talking challenge and attempts at affirmation.

I’ve tried discussing theology, tried sharing stories of oppressed communities, tried to offer facts in the face of a million lies generated by their President, tried to show the lessons History has already taught us about the slope we’re currently sliding precipitously down.

They have all failed to reach fertile ground.

Nothing has worked.


It’s all been fruitless.

I think it’s time to stop saying that we need to understand these people. I think we do understand them:

We understand that they have dug in their heels so deeply, they will not be moved by anything-- not facts or data or truth or their own eyes.


We understand that there is no political scandal massive enough, no President’s Tweet reckless enough, no legislation predatory enough to alter their allegiance.


We understand that the past two years of viciousness and ineptitude haven’t tempered their passions but ignited them.

We understand that the image of an angry white, American male God is so burned into their brains, that they see no conflict with a religion devoid of love or a world absent diversity or a theology made of malice. 
We understand that infidelity, dishonesty, obscenity, and cruelty are no longer liabilities to those they would have lead them.


We understand that the FoxNews poison has so fully circulated through their systems that truth is no longer necessary.

We understand that white supremacists in the Cabinet and Russian infiltration in our elections and children separated from their parents are acceptable collateral damage to winning.

We understand that their capacity to rationalize away human rights atrocities now borders on complete delusion.

People have warned that we should treat these people with kid gloves; that explicitly expressing anger or pointing out criminality or vocally opposing injustice right now will only drive them deeper into their entrenched positions. That’s a fairly dire assessment.

If adults are that fragile in the face of reality, that willing to deny country and humanity simply because they’re offended, that thin-skinned and prone to mutiny-- their dispositions aren’t really a burden the rest of us should or could bear.

We don’t come to this understanding with any joy or self-satisfaction-- we come to it with sober despair and the deepest grief, because we know practically speaking that right now they are unreachable.

It’s one thing to have held out hope for them on November 9th, 2016, but at this point, I’m not sure any miraculous moral awakening or conversion of the heart is possible.

If their consciences and compassion and reason have not been accessed and unearthed by now, I’m concerned those things will never be forthcoming.

And since these people will not be moved, the rest of us need to move together.

Democrat, Republican, and Independent, the deeply devout and the passionately irreligious, people of every pigmentation and persuasion-- we need to move in concert, to affirm our shared regard for one another, and to vote to restore balance in something we all love that is teetering wildly.

This isn’t a battle to change the minds of the few who refuse to be changed. That horse is dead.

It also isn’t a test to see if we can manufacture the same hatred and vitriol for them as they dispense toward us.

This is a golden moment for the vast, sprawling army of good people who believe in the beauty of diversity and in a fully accessible America to speak unequivocally-- on our social media profiles, at family gatherings, in our church meetings-- and most of all, in the voting booth.

We don’t need to convince or coddle or win over hatred, and we don’t need to outdo it either.

We need to outnumber it.
We need to outlast it.
We need to outlove it.
We need to outvote it.

Bernie Calls For Banning For-Profit Charter Schools-- Strengthening Public Schools

Lara Trump isn't supposed to be the brightest of the Trump menagerie and she's certainly always welcome at Fox. Yesterday she was babbling some incoherent nonsense about how sad it is that Democrats want to beat her father-in-law, almost universally recognized as the worst"president"-- if history will even remember him as a president-- on history. "Shouldn’t you want someone that you think can run the country well, that’s gonna do the best job at being president, not just beat Donald Trump? But I think it actually speaks to the fact that there are still a lot of people who out there that are very upset that Hillary Clinton did not win in 2016." There may be, but the only people I know who pine for Hillary are people who recognize how much better she would have been than Trump. Anyone-- even Status Quo Joe, the worst of the Democratic alternatives, would be better than Trump.

Author and Princeton history professor Julian Zelizer reported how Trump is trying to be king. He singled out 4 precedents:

• Delegitimating oversight
• Using the bully pulpit for disinformation
• Legitimating conflict of interest
• Using national emergency power to replace legislating

The Worst. Ever. So... according to Newton's third law of physics, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." That suggests that following Trump-- the worst-- the U.S. is ready for-- not some mediocrity like Status Quo Joe Biden-- for someone as good as Trump is bad-- a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or-- better yet-- the two of them on a unity ticket.

Today, Bernie, basically ignoring the ugly and demeaning Trumpism that almost defines everything in our world, delivered an important education policy speech in Orangeburg, South Carolina-- as if Trump didn't exist. He called for a ban on all for-profit charter schools-- pretty much the opposite of what both corporate Democrats and the Republican Party have been working for-- and a moratorium on the funding of all public charter school expansion until after a national audit, a policy suggestion that comes from the NAACP.

California already has a new ban on for-profit charter schools. This will immediately put Bernie at odds with more corporate Democrats-- particularly Beto, Cory Booker, Tim Ryan and McKinsey Pete all of whom have admitted to being for charter schools, No other Democratic candidate has called for a ban on for-profit charter schools yet, but probably will now that Bernie has. These are the positions he laid out today:

• Mandating that charter schools comply with the same oversight requirements as public schools
• Mandating that at least half of all charter school boards are teachers and parents
• Disclosing student attrition rates, non-public funding sources, financial interests and other relevant data
• Matching employment practices at charters with neighboring district schools, including standards set by collective bargaining agreements and restrictions on exorbitant CEO pay
• Supporting the efforts of charter school teachers to unionize and bringing charter schools to the negotiating table

Watch who lauds Bernie's position and who unmasks themselves as the corporate whores being paid off to go on the warpath against him. I wonder how long Biden can keep quiet on the subject and not take a stand one way or the other. See if you can identify the corporate whore below (hint: she's completely in sync with both Betsy DeVos and that wretched Trumpanzee daughter-in-law).

Sanders will concede that the initial goal of charter schools-- to help kids with unique learning needs-- was admirable. But he will argue the system has been corrupted by wealthy activists who spent millions to privatize these schools, leaving them unaccountable and draining funds from the public school system.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, lauded the Sanders plan. In a statement to CNN, she called the proposal "vitally important" and said that it would provide real checks and balances for the charter school system.

"For the last several decades, the unregulated growth of private charter schools has siphoned off money from public schools, with little protection against fraud, and little attention paid to equity or quality when it comes to educating kids," Weingarten said. "The senator's plan takes tangible steps toward making the charter school industry accountable to parents and the public."

Those who operate these schools feel differently. Amy Wilkins, senior vice president of advocacy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, points out that three California branches of the NAACP broke with the national organization's call for a moratorium on funding. She noted that there was evidence that charter schools have helped thousands of children in at-risk situations.

"Sanders' call is out of touch-- as usual-- with what African Americans want," Wilkins said in a statement to CNN. "More disturbing, the senator-- for personal political gain-- would literally lock African American students into schools that have failed them for generations."

Really? Out of touch? Here's Bernie's plan; please read it and decide if he's out of touch, the way the charter school shills-- like Jonathan Chait-- are saying he is. "Our nation," he wrote, "used to lead the world in the percentage of young Americans with college degrees. We were number one. Today, we are number 11, behind countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia-- and that is not acceptable. And here is the simple truth: 40 or 50 years ago, in California and Vermont, virtually any place in America, if you received a high school degree, the odds were pretty good that you would be able to get a decent paying job, raise a family, buy a house, buy a car, all on one income. That was the world 40 or 50 years ago. But that is not the world we live in today. The world has changed, the global economy has changed, technology has changed, and education has changed. Over the past decade, states all over America have made savage cuts to education, while, at the same time, providing massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations in America. Our kids and our students are too important to cut back on education, especially when those cuts reduce educational opportunities for underserved students, students of color, low income students, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities."

In the twenty-first century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. If we are to succeed as a nation, public colleges and universities must be tuition free. Higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. That means we have got to make public colleges and universities tuition free and we must substantially reduce student debt. Each and every year, hundreds of thousands of bright and qualified young people do not get a higher education for one reason and one reason alone: their family lacks the income. That is unfair to those families; and it is it is unfair to the future of this country.

Instead of pursuing their dreams of being an environmentalist, a teacher, a social worker, or an artist, too many Americans end up taking higher-paying jobs on Wall Street or as accountants or as corporate managers simply to pay back their student loans. We need environmentalists. We need people to take care of the poor. We need health care providers to choose to work in community health centers. We need good teachers. Each and every American must be able to get the education they need to match their skills and fulfill their dreams.

In fulfilling those dreams, we must make teaching a highly attractive profession again. Teachers have one of the toughest and most demanding jobs in America. Teachers have been the leaders in the fight to improve public schools, reduce class sizes, and provide every student with books, computers and safe, high quality schools. What encourages me and gives me so much hope about the future is that teachers across the country are standing up and saying enough is enough! The wealthiest people in America cannot have it all, while public schools all over America are falling apart.

Over the past year, tens of thousands of teachers across the country have gone on strike to demand greater investment in public education. The wave of teacher strikes throughout the country provides an historic opportunity to make the investments we desperately need to make our public education system the best in the industrialized world, not one of the poorest.

Bernie’s education plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools. This plan calls for a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system.

Universal school lunches and a $60,000 floor on teachers salaries, which Bernie proposed in his South Carolina speech today-- seem like a pretty good straight-forward idea too. Right? Where do you think the opposition to those two proposals will come from? Come on, take a guess. It's not a trick question. On a macro-level, it hasn't changed since the debate in the colonies on whether or not we should declare our independence. A third of the population opposed that. Many fought on the side of the colonial occupiers. Don't remember? Starts with con...