Expect More, Not Less, Of Trump's Race-Baiting Madness As The 2020 Campaign Heats Up

Louisiana's junior senator, Jon Kennedy, was first elected to statewide office as a Democrat but jumped the fence most of the way through his second term. Now he takes every opportunity he can to remind Louisiana Republicans that he's exactly as racist and bigoted as they are. On Fox yesterday he defended Señor Trumpanzee's racism and attacked AOC, Ilhan, Rashida and Ayanna as the "four horsewomen of the Apocalypse." Echoing Trump, he told an appreciative and deluded Fox audience that "The simple fact of the matter is, the four congresswomen think that America was wicked in its origins. They think that America and its people are even more wicked now, that we are all racist and misogynistic and evil... They’re entitled to their opinion. They’re Americans. But I’m entitled to my opinion, and I just think they’re left-wing cracks, and they’re the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle. I think we should ignore them." He also thinks MSNBC viewers should ignore Trump's racist tweets. They caught up with him in a hallway and he told them Trump's tweets we're racist, "but a poor choice of words." Oh.

And speaking of Fox and delusional thinking, Eric Trumpanzee was on Fox & Fiends yesterday: "I'm telling you, 95% of this country is behind him in this message." I don't think so, but it was shocking Tuesday evening hearing to comments from Republican NPR listeners who completely agreed with Trump. I guess that accounts for the spike in his approval ratings among self-identified Republicans this week-- as it sunk even lower among normal Americans. Approval is now 41% and disapproval is 55%. Among Republicans its 95%. Sad.

When asked if he thought Mark Sanford could beat Trump, Tim Scott (R-SC), the GOP's only African-American senator, laughed and said, "No. I think President Trump is unbeatable in a Republican primary." Maybe that has something to do with the media mentality demonstrated by Keith Woods, NPR's VP for newsroom training and diversity, who says that journalists should not be using the term "racist" to describe Trump's tweets. "Leave the moral labeling to the people affected," he said... cluelessly.

Monday night, the Washington Post published a piece by Seung Min Kim about the Trump anti-immigration legislative agenda. It details "the type of immigrants the administration wants to admit to the United States." But there are already problems. "Senior Republicans in the Senate," she wrote, "on Tuesday immediately began downplaying the prospects of the White House’s proposal-- an effort led primarily by senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law-- even before they had been briefed on its details. Said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD): 'To get it to the floor, you have to have some bipartisan buy-in. There would have to be a lot of work that would get done, and I don’t sense that they’re anywhere close to having done that work with Republicans, let alone with Democrats.'"

MAGA poster by Chip Prosser

What's it really all about, as Thune well knows, is Trump's 2020 strategy, well-laid out yesterday by Jim VanderHei and Mike Allen for Axios readers: Trump's premeditated racism is central to his 2020 strategy. "It might seem," they wrote, "like improvisational madness when President Trump tells American citizens in Congress to 'go back' where they came from, but those close to Trump say there's a lot of calculation behind his race-baiting. It’s central to his 2020 strategy, they say. Trump's associates predict more, not less, of the race-baiting madness. The rough calculation goes like this: 

1- Trump knows that in 2016, he won the white vote by 20+ points.
2- He hopes he can crank their turnout even higher, especially among older, white evangelicals. He knows most of those voters are unlikely to ditch him, no matter how offensive his comments.
3- He watches Fox News and knows AOC, in particular, is catnip to old, white voters, especially men. She is young, Hispanic, female and a democratic socialist-- a 4-for-4 grievance magnet. Last week, AOC got nearly as much online attention as all 2020 Democrats combined.
4- Trump believes he did better than Mitt Romney among Hispanic voters because many who came here and went through the legal process agree with his views.
5- Axios sat in on a focus group in Michigan where white swing voters agreed with Trump on immigration. Carlos Algara, a political scientist at UC Davis, told the NY Times that a forthcoming analysis of the 2018 midterms found that even without Trump on the ballot, "white Democrats with high levels of racial resentment were likely to vote ... Republican."
6- Facebook is often his incubator. He has spent three times more than all Democratic contenders combined on Facebook, with a mix of message-testing immigration lines to appealing to Hispanics who seem susceptible to his worldview.
7- So Trump calculates that (white voters + some Hispanic voters) (tough immigration rhetoric + race-baiting language) = narrow 2020 win.

Even The Mooch! An old crony of Trump's-- and his former White House Communications director (for 10 days after Sean Spicer's 49 days but before Hope Hicks' 225 days)-- says he's appalled by Trump's racism and xenophobic and dishonest vitriol against AOC, Ayanna, Ilhan and Rashida. He told CNN's Alisyn Camerota this morning that Trump's unhinged statements of the last few days have been "racist and unacceptable" and that he's not going to vote for him if they continue (although he didn't say for how long). "And so what ends up happening is it's such a turnoff to a large group of people that you are running a risk that 15% of the people that you want to get you through that electoral map and back into the presidency say, 'You know what? I love the policies, but I don't like the send her back rhetoric. I don't like the racist rhetoric of sending people back to the homes that they came from.'" As a result, the Palm Beach County Republicans disinvited The Mooch from a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump And Colbert-- Thinking Of Snakes

Trump confers with advisor Roger Stone by Nancy Ohanian

Do Snakes seeth? Trump sure does, and is. On Thursday morning, Jonathan Swan and Mike Allen were all over the seething. Señor T is "deeply suspicious of much of the government he oversees-- from the hordes of folks inside agencies, right up to some of the senior-most political appointees and even some handpicked aides inside his own White House," according to their sources. And they're almost sympathetic. "He should be paranoid." That NY Times anonymous OpEd was devastating. They wrote that "In the hours after the New York Times published the anonymous Op-Ed from "a senior official in the Trump administration" trashing the president ('I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration'), two senior administration officials reached out to Axios to say the author stole the words right out of their mouths. 'A lot of us [were] wishing we’d been the writer, I suspect ... I hope he [Trump] knows-- maybe he does?-- that there are dozens and dozens of us.' Several senior White House officials have described their roles to us as saving America and the world from this president. A good number of current White House officials have privately admitted to us they consider Trump unstable, and at times dangerously slow. But the really deep concern and contempt, from our experience, has been at the agencies-- and particularly in the foreign policy arena.

For some time last year, Trump even carried with him a handwritten list of people suspected to be leakers undermining his agenda.

• "He would basically be like, 'We’ve gotta get rid of them. The snakes are everywhere but we’re getting rid of them,'" said a source close to Trump.
• Trump would often ask staff whom they thought could be trusted. He often asks the people who work for him what they think about their colleagues, which can be not only be uncomfortable but confusing to Trump: Rival staffers shoot at each other and Trump is left not knowing who to believe.

Officials describe an increasingly conspiracy-minded president:

• "When he was super frustrated about the leaks, he would rail about the 'snakes' in the White House," said a source who has discussed administration leakers with the president.
• "Especially early on, when we would be in Roosevelt Room meetings, he would sit down at the table, and get to talking, then turn around to see who was sitting along the walls behind him."
• "One day, after one of those meetings, he said, 'Everything that just happened is going to leak. I don’t know any of those people in the room.' ... He was very paranoid about this."

"People talk about the loyalists leaving," the source close to Trump tells us. "What it really means is [that there'll be] fewer and fewer people who Trump knows who they really are. So imagine how paranoid you must be if that is your view of the world.

At the same time, Politico's headline was Trump Alone. Their top excerpts from the Anonymous OpEd: "The dilemma-- which he does not fully grasp-- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations… The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making. Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright… Successes have come despite-- not because of-- the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective."

"Trump," they wrote, "couldn't be blamed for thinking all of official Washington is closing in on him. The Justice Department is investigating him, and it refuses to take what he sees as obvious action against his political enemies. The nation's most prominent newspaper took the rare step of granting an aide anonymity to deliver a broadside about him. Administration officials have granted hundreds of hours of interviews to Woodward-- the most prominent non-fiction writer in the nation-- to blast him. Senate committee chairmen like Bob Corker of Tennessee say they agree with the outlines of the criticism of the president... The Washington Post's Phil Rucker, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey said the combination of the Woodward book and the Times op-ed 'landed like a thunder clap, portraying Trump as a danger to the country that elected him and feeding the president’s paranoia about whom around him he can trust... According to one Trump friend, he fretted after Wednesday’s op-ed that he could trust only his children.'"

But not everyone was as sympathetic to Trump's plight as Politico Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair pointed out something that can't be overlooked in this dysfunctional , chaotic mess of his own making Everybody on the inside knows it's true: Woodward's reality bomb is blowing up the West Wing. "Pandemonium, he wrote, "reigns as Trump cancels meetings." He may have given up on closing down the government but he's certainly closed down the West Wing. Nothing's going on there-- Sherman called it a "virtual standstill"-- but a hunt for Judas... He literally isn’t talking to anyone. He’s canceled meetings and is on the phone calling up his friends,” one source said. Current and former staffers, meanwhile, pointed fingers in all directions as they sought to deflect blame for the damaging leaks."

What Would Freud Do? by Nancy Ohanian

The traumatic triggers for him were all the stuff that hit too close to hime: John Kelly calling him "an idiot," Jim Mattis comparing him to a "fifth-or-sixth grader," and John Dowd calling him a "fucking liar" and predicting he would end up in "an orange jumpsuit" if he testified under oath.

Trump is also outraged that the book portrays aides as believing they are the grown-ups protecting the country from his dangerous impulses. Two sources said Trump is particularly angry with former economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is revealed in the book to have snatched a letter off Trump’s desk to protect “national security.” “He hates that people are leaking. They think they can take things off the Resolute desk because of this idea they’re ‘saving’ the country,” one senior West Wing official said. “I mean, who does that?” One source said Cohn called up his former colleagues to ask them how he came off in the book. “Gary wanted to make sure he didn’t compromise himself that much,” a source who spoke with Cohn said.

Former CIA director, John Brennan was on Today saying that "the depth of concern within the administration… about what is happening and the extraordinary steps that individuals are willing to take… to prevent disasters... is active insubordination… born out of loyalty to the country, not to Donald Trump. This is not sustainable to have an executive branch, where individuals are not following the orders of the chief executive. [He said he thinks] things will get worse before they get better. I don’t know how Donald Trump is going to react to this. A wounded lion is a very dangerous animal and I think Donald Trump is wounded."

Russ Douthat wrote that Trump has lost control of his White House and that he’s an exceptionally weak president. Sounds about right-- and something sane people had figured out long, long ago.

Nancy Pelosi Has Her Ideas About What The Country Wants And Expects If She Gets The Gavel Back-- Reach For The No-Doz

My guess is that Pelosi will be the Speaker starting in January. That's predicated on two things happening-- that the Democrats take back the House and that a majority of House Democrats elect her to be their leader again. According to a report from Mike Allen at Axios yesterday, she's got her plans for what she wants to accomplish between January and the crucial 2020 election when there's likely to be a Democratic president who will sign bills (also likely to be a Democratic Senate). In any case, Pelosi is still impeachment iadverse. She's claiming all the establishment-variety of the identity groups had input into "the plan." 

Allen reports that "The first three legislative packages will cover health-care costs, $1 trillion in federal infrastructure investment, and ethics and lobbying reform. Medicare-For-All? Job Guarantee? Are you kidding?

Although "polls show that health care and wages are voters' top concerns," Pelosi-- and the overwhelming majority of her leadership team-- is incapable of a grand, bold vision. Her plans are basically baby steps and the status quo ante. They're going to focus on some of Trump's 2016 promises that the GOP renegged on. One of her aides told Allen that "We're ready from Day 1 to fight for the people. These priorities took months and months of conversation with members to boil down." Wow, I would have thought they were put together while someone was taking a dump and re-reading the dull Better Deal thing that no one ever thought about twice and certainly never caught on with the voters.

Committees will investigate the Trump Regime, but will not move forward with impeachment until it's a bipartisan endeavor, which means never.

• Health care would be divided into two buckets: cost containment, including reining in premiums, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.
• The $1 trillion in infrastructure spending would be sold as a way to boost jobs and wages.
• Drain the Swamp for real means "sweeping lobbying reform, changes in internal rules (something the public may care about, but not all that much, and not at all compared to things like Medicare-For-All).

Stephanie and Rob are referring to Pelosi's Pay-Go idiocy

Allen also points out that "Pelosi, despite opposition from some progressives, is committed to reviving the 'pay-go' (or pay as you go) rule she had during her previous run as speaker, requiring that new spending be paid for by budget cuts or revenue offsets. It's almost as if she's hoping to build up a surplus for the next Republican Congress to squander instead of doing anything useful for the American people. This is why more and more people are calling them Democraps instead of Democrats. Except for the hatred of Trump, this plan would keep people from bothering to even get out to vote in November.

So what happened to that "We're the party that isn't afraid to think big" thing? No transformative policy agenda here. What do progressives want that Pelosi and her team are ignoring? Obviously, Medicare-For-All, but also free state colleges and universities, spending real money to tackle the opioid crisis, passing a paid medical and family leave program, job guarantee, incentivizing veteran hiring, a massive investment in green infrastructure, moving towards 100% renewable energy, student loan debt relief. Not a hint of any of that in the Pelosi Plan. For one perspective, her plan is more conservative than the Republicans'. They both sing from the same hymnal but the GOP is always ready to abandon fiscal responsibility for their priorities-- tax cuts, corporate subsidies, the military-- while Democratic leadership is too scared to. Pelosi is sending a message that makes the Democratic Party sound like the GOP of the 1950's-- "We're the party of responsible budgets. Elect us if you're mad about Trump and his congressional enablers racking up trillion-dollar deficits with his gigantic tax cut."

It was just a few weeks ago that Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) told NBC that "The instinct that some Democrats have, which is born out of a sense of responsibility as the 'governing' party, is to explain exactly how you're going to pay for everything and how it all adds up. It puts you at a total disadvantage because you're already constraining your priorities." Schatz also said that "the GOP is skillful about never talking about paying for what they want and Dems are always trying to satisfy the 13 people who are doing Third Way work on K Street. It’s a game that disadvantages Democrats. I don’t want to play it anymore."

That's the clarion call the Democrats on the Senate Buget Committee learned from their 2015-16 Chief Economist, Stephanie Kelton,who left that position to work as the Bernie campaign's economic advisor. "I have a strong sense the American people would care very little about the government's budget outcome if the government was delivering a good economy." Kelton added that "PAYGO is a self-imposed, economically illiterate approach to budgeting. Republicans know this. They understand that deficits pose no risk to our national solvency and that the budget can be used to improve the financial well-being of the donor class. So they have unabashedly used their power to expand deficits and, hence, deliver windfall gains for big corporations and the already well-to-do. Instead of vowing budget chastity, Democrats should be articulating an agenda that will excite voters so that-- when the time comes-- they can unleash the full power of the public purse on their behalf-- a cleaner planet, good jobs, a secure retirement, affordable child care, debt-free college, and Medicare-for-All."

Rashida Tlaib, who won her primary in Michigan and is guaranteed a seat in Congress. Having served in the state legislature she very much understands this austerity trick Pelosi and Hoyer are buying into. "Our families in MI-13 reside in the second poorest congressional district in the country, and they need real help from the federal government. House Democrats insisting on paying for progressive legislation that elevates working families with budget cuts elsewhere needlessly ties our hands before we even begin to fight. If Democratic leadership is going to buy into right-wing talking points and stand in the way of progress for our families, we will replace them with representatives more in touch with the families we represent."

Will The House Democrats Ever Free Themselves Of Their Geriatric Leadership And Move Into The Future?

Would the Democrats win more votes in November if Pelosi announced she was retiring? No one doubts it. Does she care? Nope; she's obsessed. I speak with candidates and members of Congress every day. Almost no one I speak with wants Pelosi leading the party-- including people who admire her. Yesterday, after Pelosi told the Boston Globe she intends to run for Speaker again, Dave Weigel and Paul Kane looked at the numbers for Washington Post readers. And it isn't just progressive candidates who oppose another term for Pelosi, Candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party oppose her as well. Take Blue Dog (and DCCC recruit) Dan McCready of North Carolina. He's quoted by The Post saying "I’ve said since Day One that I wouldn’t vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker. I think we need a whole new generation of people in D.C. That’s part of why I’m running; we need some new blood." Yeah, yeah, but McCready is also saying he opposes Pelosi for political reasons. He doesn't want to see oceans of TV ads running constantly in Myers Park and Lionsgate in south Charlotte down through Matthews, Monroe, Wadeboro and along the border with South Carolina to Lumberton and north into Savoy Heights and Fayettesville, all equating him to Pelosi. "Democrats across the country," posits The Post, "are locked in an awkward dance in which candidates sensing a chance to win GOP-held seats are increasingly distancing themselves from the party’s longtime liberal leader from San Francisco-- at the same time that the 78-year-old congresswoman is boldly holding on to power." (Liberal? She once was, but that was quite some time ago, amigo. She long ago morphed into a centrist.)



They claim only 10 candidates have come out against her. I've counted more than double that just among people I talk to. Among the candidates endorsed by Blue America-- progressives-- I found little support for her, although several are unwilling to say so on the record. One of our best congressional candidates: "Off the record, I'll be frank and say I think we need new leadership, I'm just not sure who." Another great congressional candidate who asked for anonymity told me "Off the record, I do not want Nancy Pelosi anywhere near my campaign. Thanks, but no thanks. She is toxic." I don't know how she expects to get enough Democrats to elect her leader/Speaker.

Last November I reached out to several campaigns to ask candidates and campaign managers what they plan do about the threat from the NRCC to portray them as Pelosi clones. One of the best campaign managers in the country: "I respect Pelosi," he told me back then, "but it's time for her to pack it in-- past time. She's hurting the party's chance to decisively win the midterms and put a check on Trump. I know it's not fair, but the Republicans have succeeded in demonizing her, especially with independent voters... We're going to have to tell our voters that we don't want her or Ryan as Speaker.. We feel bad about equating them both but not even Democrats in [our district] want to see her back with the Speaker's gavel... I agree with you that Hoyer and Crowley would be much worse party leaders but most voters have never heard of either one of them and the Republicans can't use them against candidates... unless they read some obscure blog like yours." Another candidate told me that "She's pretty toxic among the independent voters here. I don't have anything against her but it isn't just Republicans who hate her. Many Democrats want to see her just move on and make room for someone else... Her time is over."

Candidates willing to go on the record back then:

James Thompson, currently running for Congress in a Kansas rematch, has a very different perspective on this than anyone else because he just went through the experience a few months ago. "I ran for Congress in the 4th District of Kansas in the very first Special Election after Trump was inaugurated," he told us. "The DCCC claims they did not help my race because they did not want to 'nationalize it.' Yet, as soon as I received the nomination from the Kansas Democratic Party to run for Congress, the Republican Party 'nationalized' the campaign by immediately tying me to Leader Pelosi, saying she hand-picked me and that I was her puppet. Ron Estes and the Republicans in Kansas, led by the KOCH brothers ultra-conservative political machine, never met a lie they didn’t like. I had never met, nor even spoke with, Nancy Pelosi and yet was being branded like a bull with her unpopularity here in Kansas. She sure never helped my race, and the mere mention of her name hurt my campaign. The same ads used against Ossoff, were used against me by simply switching out his picture for mine. The night of the special election, Leader Pelosi called and offered her condolences for my loss. She was warm, friendly and sympathetic and I greatly appreciated her taking the time out of her busy schedule to call me. While I respect her as a person and her accomplishments as Speaker of the House, her time in leadership needs to end for the good of the Democratic Party. With better leadership from the party, we may have been able to harness the progressive wave sweeping the country and possibly win some of the Special Elections. The Democratic Party needs an infusion of new progressive leadership like Keith Ellison and Ro Khanna. Regardless of whether it is true, Republicans will brand every Democrat with the Pelosi brand in hopes of sinking campaigns in 2018 with the mere mention of her name. New leadership needs to take over and lead the fight for a 50 state strategy. If Leader Pelosi is still in office when I get to Congress, I will vote for new leadership that will ensure the Democratic Party fights in all 50 states."

Tom Guild in Oklahoma City knows he's definitely going to face a barrage of ads conflating him with Pelosi. He doesn't seem worried. "Because of the extreme dysfunction in Congress today, I’m going to wait and see who the candidates for House Democratic Leader/Speaker are before deciding which person to support. It would be hard to do worse than Paul Ryan has done as the leader of House Republicans. I want a progressive who can pass an increase to the minimum wage, single payer health care, a massive infrastructure bill to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure while creating millions of good paying jobs, direct and hasten the transition to renewable energy sources, and invest in America before looking for new overseas military adventures. I will take this decision seriously and am not in anyone’s hip pocket. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio (or his closest living iteration in Congress)? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you."

Jared Golden is running for the Maine seat held by Trump rubber stamp Bruce Poliquin. He's the Majority Whip of the state legislature and he has a clear understanding about how legislative bodies work. One of his primary opponents happens to be straight out of Pelosi's coterie of super-wealthy elites. And Golden didn't mince any words. "It’s time for a new generation of leaders in Washington. My support will go to the leader that shows me they care about and understand the priorities of working class people-- it’s got to be someone serious about rebuilding an economy that doesn’t leave small rural states like Maine behind. I want to serve with leaders that demonstrate they have the courage to fight for progressive values and the ability to work across the aisle to deliver results. We need service-driven leaders who will do what’s best for this country and I believe that’s to fight for the great majority-- working and middle class people."

Jenny Marshall, the progressive Democrat running for the Piedmont seat Virginia Foxx occupies toked us that "People are looking for a person that can relate to the everyday struggles of average Americans. They need to know that their representative is not bought and paid for by corporate interests. We are separating ourselves from candidates who do not support progressive issues like single payer health care, campaign finance reform including eliminating corporate donations to campaigns. These issues are important for our communities and they need to know that they have a strong choice that supports what they need."

Doug Applegate has a similar perspective-- as well as some creepy Pelosi candidate backed by big money in his primary. When I asked him if the GOP Machine will try to conflate him with Pelosi, he laughed and said, "You’ve got to be kidding me. Since nearly beating Darrell Issa after the DCCC came in late in the race only 67 days before election day 2016, corporate and establishment Democrats have only indicated that the last person they want to join their club is a Marine Colonel. While Dem Hill members insist they won’t endorse until after the primary, multiple conservative Democrat Congressmen endorse Mike Levin whose corporation received an 'undisclosed payment/investment' from Exxon in the summer of 2016. Despite that bump from the biggest carbon fuel producer, Levin still insists that he’s an environmental lawyer.  As a former Clinton aide and Qualcomm heiress, a crowbar couldn’t pry Sara Jacobs away from moneyed corporate Democrats and Pelosi. I’m not a corporate Democrat; I’m not an establishment Democrat. I’m a Marine Colonel who will fight for change, for a new labor movement, for single payer healthcare, for public preschool to public university regardless of parental income, for ending oil subsidies that will free market forces to reach 100% renewable energy by 2027 and for real change. The only label you will ever stick on me is 'he’s a Marine Colonel who will fight like hell for change.'"

John Rogers, the monkey the House Republicans hired to run their version of the DCCC, the NRCC, admits he's counting on benefitting from the years-long attempts to use Nancy Pelosi against Democratic congressional candidates. He admits that the NRCC's main weapon to try to hold onto the House is by making every race about her. "In reality," he said, "next fall is going to come down to whether or not you want to reinstitute Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House."

It's true that the Republicans have become a one-trick pony with that narrative and have every intention of using it again, the way they used it against Jon Ossoff in Georgia last year. Ossoff was an extraordinarily weak and pointless candidate-- a real DCCC special-- and it was predictable that he would be vulnerable to that kind of idiotic attack. The DCCC was never capable of the kind of single-minded aggressiveness it would have taken to turn the tables on the GOP by making Ryan into the kind of villain the Republicans have made Pelosi into. The irony there was that before Randy Bryce chased him off the field of battle, Ryan was already more disliked nationally than Pelosi was-- even after years of Republican slander against her!

In the last poll before he announced he would leave Congress to teach little Sammy and Charlie how to shoot rabbits with bows and arrows, Ryan's unfavorable rating was 49.3%, compared to Pelosi's 48.7%. Luckily for Senate Democrats, Mitch McConnell has a far lower popularity than either of them-- and is the most disliked politician in America. This was from last August:

Note the only leaders from either party with statistically more positive support than negativity are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. People-- as in registered voters-- absolutely hate both Trump and Hillary, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The public rejects these people-- yet they still are managing to control the levers of power in Washington. The whole corrupt, money-fueled system stinks to High Heaven.

The only thing that has kept Pelosi in power this long are the wretched alternatives-- Hoyer and, at one time, Wasserman Schultz, for example-- but Crowley is worse than either Pelosi or Hoyer and just as unpalatable as Wasserman Schultz.

In March Mike Allen pointed out that Pelosi could be in trouble after the Democratic wave sweeps her party back into power in November. He wrote that "Top Democrats" tell him that "if they take back the House in November, a restoration of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer guaranteed."

• In fact, some well-wired House Democrats predict she will be forced aside after the election and replaced by a younger, less divisive Dem.
• Conor Lamb, 33, won his U.S. House race in Pennsylvania this week after saying he wouldn't vote for her for leader-- a new template for moderates.
• Pelosi has hung in through the minority, and remains the party's most consistent fundraiser. As for whether she'll return as Speaker, she has just said that it's up to the members. (Her allies note that she has never lost a leadership vote.)
• But others have their eye on the gavel, and many members want a younger, newer face. Her No. 2 and longtime rival, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, 78, covets the job but is three months older than she is.
• Pelosi is more likely to be the bridge to a younger generation. A possible successor, who works the caucus behind the scenes, is Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens, N.Y., who turns 56 tomorrow.
• Another possible candidate who's getting buzz: Rep. Adam Schiff, a fellow Californian who has a sky-high profile as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, investigating Russia's role in 2016.

One Democratic source told me that Pelosi hears footsteps: “She used to be retributional. Now she’s more inclusive.”

• Pelosi allies see some of the criticism as sexist, and say she has always been inclusive of all parts of the caucus' diversity, including newer members.
• Pelosi told the Congressional Progressive Caucus at a retreat in Baltimore last week: "Every morning, I don a suit of armor, eat nails for breakfast, and go fight inequality."
• President Trump plans to invoke her frequently in midterm speeches, and Republicans already use her image to raise funds. And in campaigns this fall, many Dems challengers will be put on the spot about whether they'd vote for her as Speaker.

One scenario, from a Pelosi ally:

• "She could win the caucus vote [for Speaker] easily but lose the floor vote."
• "[I]f Dems win the majority by, say, a 10-vote majority, and 15 newly elected Dems have committed not to vote for her [like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania] for leader of the party, ... she could lose the floor vote for Speaker. That would give the House to the head of the Republicans."
• "She would never let that happen, and she would bow out to someone else."
• "[S]he’s the best vote counter this generation has ever seen. So she’ll know this scenario well in advance, and will figure out a way out that will preserve her legacy."

Be smart: If there's a post-election coup against Pelosi, Crowley is the likely winner because Schiff and the others would scramble the field and Joe is acceptable to all factions.

• One knowing Dem says: "My guess is Crowley is the next Dem Speaker/Leader. He’s the fresh face that the majority of the caucus yearns for ... He’s a spring chicken by congressional standards, at 55 years old."

Crowley is the most corrupt Democrat in the House. The Queens County Democrat boss who was handed his seat and never fought a real election in his entire life and the "former" head of the New Dems, is the bagman who launders Wall Street's money into the Democratic House Caucus. He's "acceptable to all factions" because he pays off all factions. Pelosi's corpse would make a better Speaker than Crowley. The thought of Crowley as Speaker is so disgusting that I'm going to go to the bathroom and vomit now. Crowley is even worse than this:



Weigel and Kane assert that Democrats refusing to back Pelosi "are following in the footsteps of newly elected Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb, who scored a stunning upset in March in a Republican Pennsylvania district after saying he would oppose Pelosi" but then go quite a bit further.

This clamor for change at the top underscores the generational tensions within the House Democratic caucus as younger lawmakers look to replace not only Pelosi but also two other septuagenarians-- Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD.), 78, and Assistant Democratic Leader James E. Clyburn (D-SC), 77.

Pelosi stands as the Democratic conundrum, a prolific fundraiser and skilled politician, as well as a deeply polarizing figure used by Republicans as a club against Democrats.

The dynamic sets the stage for a potential showdown-- should Democrats win the majority-- between Pelosi allies, who would relish the historic moment of returning a woman to one of the most influential positions in the country, and her critics, many of whom would have won office by promising a change in leadership.

“We will win. I will run for speaker. I feel confident about it. And my members do, too,” Pelosi told a meeting of Boston Globe reporters and editors on Tuesday. Earlier, at an event in New York City, she introduced several of her fellow House Democrats to the crowd by highlighting which committee they would lead next year, assuming a Democratic majority.

“It’s important that it not be five white guys at the table, no offense,” Pelosi said in Boston, a reference to the top leaders in the House and Senate and President Trump. “I have no intention of walking away from that table.”

There is the question of whether Pelosi would have the votes to win the job. Unlike other leadership posts, which are selected by secret ballot in the respective caucuses, the entire House must vote for the speaker in early January. The minority party never votes for the majority’s speaker-designate, so it would require Pelosi to get at least 218 votes from her side of the aisle.

So, if Democrats ended up with a caucus of 235, Pelosi could afford to lose 17 votes when the speaker vote is held on the floor.

Pelosi’s strength comes from several sources, the first among equals being her fundraising on behalf of candidates and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Her advisers attributed 45 percent of the committee’s $34 million raised in the first quarter of 2018 to Pelosi.

But there are other, beneath-the-radar reasons Pelosi feels confident in her post.

Despite GOP claims, Pelosi is not as unpopular as she was eight years ago when she was speaker. Back then, 58 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of Pelosi, including 41 percent who held a strongly unfavorable view.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, just 44 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view, with those strongly disliking her down to 29 percent.

That played out in Lamb’s victory. Outside Republican groups spent more than $6 million on TV ads in southwestern Pennsylvania, the lion’s share of it on commercials trying to tie Lamb to Pelosi. But the 33-year-old Democrat ran an ad making clear he would not support Pelosi, calling for new leadership on both sides of the aisle.

It helped to inoculate him against the Pelosi attack line. GOP operatives now worry that other Democrats will follow Lamb’s lead and that there will be even less potency in the anti-Pelosi campaign that they have been hoping will save their majority in the fall.

Most Democrats have distanced themselves from Pelosi but have tried to avoid taking a hard-and-fast position on how they would vote if she is the Democratic nominee for speaker. Kathy Manning, a Democratic candidate here in western North Carolina, said in an interview that she would like to see an open contest for party leader.

“I would make that decision like I make all my decisions: Get as much information as I can, find out who’s running, find out what their positions are, then vote for the person who’d make the best leader,” Manning said.

This sort of nuanced answer-- she never explicitly says she opposes Pelosi-- is one that Republicans will use to try to turn her into a Pelosi clone. North Carolina Republicans have already begun highlighting Manning’s $500 and $1,000 donations to Pelosi’s political committees in 2002 and 2004.

Pelosi and Hoyer have held the top two spots in leadership for more than a dozen years, while Clyburn has held the No. 3 post since 2011. Clyburn raised eyebrows a few weeks ago when he told Politico that this year’s midterm elections were an up-or-out moment for the trio, that all three would have to step down if Democrats failed to secure the majority.

Democrats are not demanding a loyalty pledge from candidates who might flip the majority their way. McCready and Manning have been added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list, denoting them as candidates who can expect party support in their primaries and the general election.

In an interview, Elissa Slotkin, a “red-to-blue” candidate in a GOP-held southwest Michigan district, said she would prefer an alternative to Pelosi.

“I think it’s clear that on both sides of the aisle, people are seeking new leadership, and I’m going to be looking for someone who best represents my district and what we care about here. And I believe that’s a new generation of leaders,” said Slotkin, a former Defense Department official running her first congressional race.

Some House Democrats are openly advising these candidates to oppose Pelosi.

“If Republicans want to do the same thing to Elissa Slotkin that they did to Conor Lamb, all Conor Lamb had to do was point to the front page of the newspaper that said ‘Conor Lamb will not vote for Nancy Pelosi.’ It’s phony. It’s played out,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), who traveled to Michigan this week to campaign for Slotkin.

Is Michael Cohen In Real Trouble?

Mike Allen reporting for Axios yesterday says Trump is flipping out over the raid on Michael Cohen's home, office and hotel room. He's blaming Mueller and Rosenstein. Allen says this came from an inside source: "Until now, when storms hit, Trump could turn to Hope Hicks to explain things to him, suggest wording, simmer him down. With her departure from the White House, we saw the president working out his fury in real time... This is the first crisis post-Hope Hicks... This was different: I've never seen him like this before... This is the president you're going to see more of from here on out: unvarnished, untethered."

Allen reiterates that the Washington Post, citing three sources, reports that Cohen "is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations." Señor Trumpanzee is taking it personally and sees it as "the red line" of intrusion into personal financial matters. During that fabulous rant we ran Monday night, Señor T used "disgrace" seven times and "disgraceful twice; fumed about an action by agents of the government he heads: "I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys-- a good man... It's a total witch hunt;" and accused those agents of his government of "an attack on our country, in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for."

One of the things Trump is going nuts over is that one of his own appointees, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, signed off on the FBI raids of Cohen and that another of his appointees, Geoffrey Berman, recused himself from the Cohen investigation. Trump, as everyone knows by now, hates recusals snd thinks everyone should fight with everything they're got (to protect him from the law).

So was it a fishing expedition? Of course not; they would never have gotten the go-ahead from Rosenstein, nor the warrants, if it was. So what were they looking for? Reports say they were looking for records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Señor T, documents related to Cohen’s ownership of taxi medallions (which is mixed up with Cohn's shady and notorious connections with the Russian mafia), and information regarding broken election laws. So why is this such a big deal? Adam Serwer offered some possibilities at The Atlantic yesterday.

Whatever evidence federal prosecutors have collected concerning Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime attorney, it is most likely extraordinarily strong.

Before federal agents raided Cohen’s home, hotel room, and office Monday afternoon, they would have had to convince high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice and a federal judge that a search warrant was necessary to obtain the evidence sought.

“Doing a search warrant rather than a subpoena suggests the investigators thought Cohen, if given a subpoena, would possibly destroy evidence or withhold key evidence, particularly if it were incriminating,” Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said.

Under normal circumstances, obtaining a search warrant on an attorney for the subject of a federal investigation is an incredibly aggressive move. When the attorney’s client is the president of the United States, the stakes couldn’t possibly get any higher.

...The raid was reportedly conducted after Mueller went to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein with evidence, and Rosenstein referred the matter to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Geoffrey Berman (Berman reportedly recused himself). According to the Times, federal agents seized “business records, emails, and documents related to several topics,” including Cohen’s payment to Daniels, and “privileged communications” between Cohen and his clients, according to Cohen’s attorney.

“You don’t just have to have the evidence that the documents may or may not exist, you have to show that there’s no other way to get them besides serving a warrant on the attorney, because of the sensitivity of attorney-client privilege,” David Gomez, a former FBI agent and a fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said.

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted “WITCH HUNT” and “Attorney–client privilege is dead!”

Some of the president’s supporters in the conservative press have been invoking attorney-client privilege, the legal rule that says communications between an attorney and a client are typically protected. But there are important exceptions.

“Records of conversations between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump are not necessarily privileged,” Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Fordham University, said. “If the conversations do not relate to a legal representation, but Mr. Cohen was providing business assistance or other non-legal services, the privilege probably will not apply.”

There is also something known as the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. “When the communications between an attorney and client are in furtherance of criminal activity, it’s viewed as an exception to attorney-client privilege,” Barrett said.

In cases where an attorney’s records are seized, a separate team of federal investigators, known as a “taint team,” will go through those records and sort out which are protected, and which prosecutors will be allowed to see or use. “There are various other limitations and exceptions that could make the privilege inapplicable. If it isn’t clear whether documents are privileged, the issue may get litigated,” Green said.

One thing prosecutors are reportedly examining are Cohen’s payments to Daniels. Cohen has said he drew on his home-equity line of credit from First Republic Bank in Manhattan to obtain the funds. Even if the evidence seized from Cohen was sought for a different investigation, if federal prosecutors uncover evidence related to the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, Mueller will have access to it. “Whatever the returns of these searches are, if relevant to Mueller’s work, it will become available to him,” Barrett said.

Trump was furious about the raid, calling the move “an attack on our country, in a true sense,” and “an attack on what we all stand for.” He also said that the prosecutors involved “have the biggest conflicts of interest I have ever seen. Democrats—all. Either Democrats or a couple of Republicans who worked for President Obama.”

Being a Republican, of course, has never stopped Trump from calling for criminal investigations of his Democratic political rivals, no matter how flimsy the pretext. But as my colleague David Graham points out, virtually all the major players involved here are Republicans. Mueller is a Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush to run the FBI. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, is an appointee of Trump himself, and so is Chris Wray, the current director of the FBI. Berman, the U.S. attorney whose office executed the raid, is a former law partner to Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, who was hand-picked by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The warrant sought not only would have had to have been approved by officials at the Department of Justice, but a federal judge would have had to sign off on it, knowing that he would be sanctioning a raid against the personal attorney of a sitting president.

Evidently, they all signed off anyway.

Louis XIV said it long before Señor Trumpanzee: "L'État, c'est moi." Same mentality, that's for sure.

More Robert Mueller stuff pertaining to Trump-Putin-World that just happened since I first started writing this post:

• The new Quinnipiac poll came out and most voters (69-13%) say Trumpanzee should NOT fire Mueller. In fact, just 30% of Republicans say Trump should fire him!
• Trump claims he has the power to fire Mueller, which he doesn't
• Republicans in Congress are pretending they don't want Trump to fire Mueller. They say he "better" not (woof, woof) but they refuse to pass a law preventing him from doing so.
• The NY Times reported that Trump is near a "meltdown [and that his] public and private wrath about the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election are nothing new. But the raids on Monday on Mr. Cohen’s Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room have sent the president to new heights of outrage, setting the White House on edge as it faces a national security crisis in Syria and more internal staff churn."

A Lot Could Happen Between Now And November, But Chances Are Good That They Will All Conspire To Make The GOP Lose Even More Seats

If this guy can win next week, any Democrat can win in November

The special election to replace Tim Murphy in PA-18-- southwest Pennsylvania, including the suburbs south of Pittsburgh-- is a week from today. It's a very red district. McCain beat Obama 55-44%, Romney beat Obama 58-41% and then Trump eviscerated Clinton 58.1% to 38.5%. The PVI is R+11, beyond what a Democrat can win, even in a wave election. And Lamb, a Blue Dog Democrat who sounds as weak and unconvincing as Jon Ossoff and is running a terrible campaign. The election next week will be held under the gerrymandered old boundaries which favor the GOP and the Republicans have spent almost $10 million on a district that should be a freebie, while outside Democratic groups have spent pocket change. (As of the February 21 FEC reporting deadline Lamb had raised $3,869,247 to Saccone's $916,392.) I would have bet that Saccone would win by close to double digits-- and I would have lost the bet. This race is now incredibly tight... neck and neck. How is that possible? Have you heard of Donald J. Trump, the psychopath voters hate?

Mike Allen went so far, yesterday, at Axios as to assert that "top Republicans sound increasingly resigned to losing" the race. I'm dumbstruck. I mean no one is a bigger believer is a Blue Wave than I am and no one predicted it before I did. But in an R+11 district? In a district where Clinton couldn't even score 40%? 20 point swings in a series of basically inconsequential legislative districts is one thing but the GOP giving up a district like PA-18 in the middle of Trump Country and to a truly mediocre and uninspiring candidate... that's something else entirely.

If Lamb wins next week, the race for the exits-- and to K Street jobs-- among GOP congressmen will get really serious. And Paul Ryan will announce by spring that he's retiring from Congress to spend more time teaching his sons how to hunt with bows and arrows. No, I'm not joking. Mike Allen wrote that "It's one of the increasingly bearish signs for the GOP ahead of November's midterms, with mammoth stakes for the West Wing: If Dems take the House and there's a Speaker Pelosi, President Trump faces endless subpoenas and perhaps impeachment proceedings. We had a very clarifying conversation with an analyst who's reliably ahead of the curve, and he agreed to share his findings with Axios. Chris Krueger, managing director of Cowen & Co.'s Washington Research Group, said he sees four "glaring red flags for the House GOP majority":

1- The correlation between the president’s approval number and first-term midterm losses by the president’s party: In the six times that the president’s job approval was under 50%, the average loss was more than 43 seats. The Democrats need 24 to flip the House.

2- CA + PA = half-way there: California is the citadel of the resistance, which has 14 House Republicans. Between retirements, losing state-and-local tax deductions in the tax bill, and Trump’s California disapproval, the Golden State could lose half its GOP delegation. The new Pennsylvania redistricting map-- and similar anti-Trump trend lines-- could cost Rs as many as six seats. These two states get you halfway to a Democratic House.

3- Suburban danger zones: 2018 could make the suburbs great again for the House Democrats. The Democratic victories in last year's Virginia and New Jersey governor's races could well be the canaries in the coal mine. Remember that there are 23 House Republican seats in districts Clinton won-- and most are suburban.

4- Trump Coalition Unique to Trump: This is the biggest wildcard. Just like we saw with Obama voters in the midterms of 2010 and 2014, we suspect the unique coalition that supported the president will not turn out for generic House members of that President’s party. Just as Obama voters didn’t turn out for generic House Democrats, Trump-centric voters won’t come out for generic House Republicans. You do not drain the swamp by reelecting the establishment and the deep state.

If you follow DWT regularly, you may have noticed that last June, when many Beltway prognosticators were poo-pooing the idea of a wave or tepidly admitting the Dems might win a bare 24 seats to win back the majority, we were already talking about progressive Democrats winning in seats like OK-05, a district the DCCC hasn't considered in decades. Trump beat Hillary there 53.2% to 39.8%. That seems like a lot more favorable to the PA-18 race. And OK-05 was Bernie country. It won't be too long before those Beltway prognosticators gradually put GOP incumbent Steve Russell on the endangered species list. The key now-- with these districts the DCCC is ignoring-- is to make sure the nominees are progressives, like Tom Guild in OK-05, not Republican-lite corporate shills, like the DCCC is installing wherever they can. Please consider helping the progressive Democrats by tapping on the ActBlue thermometer on the right and contributing what you canto the candidates who appeal to you. Let's not wind up with a Congress filled with Blue Dogs and New Dems who will all lose their seats in 2022 and stick us with a Republican Congress again.