Mountain Mama... Is Richard Ojeda Gonna Win On Tuesday?

Emerson released a poll of West Virginia likely voters yesterday. The state's PVI is R+19 and Trump beat Hillary statewide 489,371 (68.5%) to 188,794 (26.4%). He crushed her in every single county-- even in the counties where Bernie had taken more votes than Trump in the primary. The polling shows conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin winning against Trumpist challenger Patrick Morrisey 47-42% while all three Democratic House candidates are losing. The closest of the three congressional races is in the southern third of the state-- WV-03-- where the poll shows Trumpist Carol Miller ahead of Democrat Richard Ojeda 52-45% for the open red seat. Polling has been mixed in the district, but 538 gives Ojeda just a 1 in 12 chance to win Tuesday.

He's a fascinating political character in some ways and I think he may do better than the forecast predicts. As of the October 17 FEC reporting deadline, Ojeda had outraged Miller $2,239,213 to $1,568,226 and VoteVets and the DCCC had put $1,914,533 into sliming Miller, more than Trump's SuperPAC-- America First Action Fund-- had put into sliming Ojeda ($1,117,786). Ojeda himself is an anomaly-- a working class guy and veteran, like Randy Bryce but an angrier version without the incredible campaign team Bryce put together. Both had been Bernie supporters in the primary but after the primary, Bryce backed Hillary and Ojeda... backed Trump.

Eventually, the DCCC added Ojeda to their Red-to-Blue page but-- as with almost all working class candidates-- they refused to put any money into his campaign. (He has that in common with Bryce as well.) Blue America endorsed Bryce... but not Ojeda. We're rooting for him to beat Miller, of course, but... I know what kind of a congressman Bryce is going to be. I have a very strong feeling that Ojeda would have more in common with Manchin than with Bernie. Not everyone believes him when he tells a bunch of coal miners in a parking lot that "It's so easy to steal from the bottom 99 percent but try stealing from the top one percent and they put you under the jail." On Wednesday, the World Socialist Web tore into him, perhaps not completely fairly, referring to him as "part of a raft of military and intelligence operatives being promoted in order to divert social opposition behind candidates that are aligned with the foreign and domestic policy prerogatives of the Democratic Party." A little paranoid? So is this: "The promotion of 'outsiders' like Richard Ojeda and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is part of a Democratic Party rebranding effort, to recapture this 'disillusionment vote.' Fully backing this effort are a menagerie of sham progressive and left groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and the International Socialist Organization, along with the trade unions." Oh well; sorry I brought it up.

TheWashington Post's Greg Jaffe brought Ojeda up yesterday as well, in terms of how to make ads that get across the candidate's real essence. Jaffe claimed the DCCC "was sending consultants to southern West Virginia to help with more professional looking campaign ads and media buys. The money and attention were helping Ojeda to blast out his pro-union, anti-establishment message." If the DCCC is, they're breaking the law by not reporting it. And if they are, they'll kill whatever chance he has as coming across as authentic-- which is why more Democratic candidates than ever have told the DCCC to take their consultants and staffers and shove them up their ass. One told me this morning that the DCCC consultants and staffers "have demonstrated an ability to lose, not an ability to win, Why would I want those [explitive deleted] infecting my campaign, which already won a primary without their help and is on track to win on Tuesday-- without their help?"

Wednesday night, ABC News presented the Richard Ojeda story to their audience as though no one had ever heard of him. It's probably worth reading, if you haven't and want a better perspective on what will happen in the Trumpiest-contested district in America:

Richard Ojeda is a tattooed and tough-talking former paratrooper who lifts weights in his campaign videos and shares his personal mobile phone number with the public.

A Democratic House candidate in West Virginia's 3rd district in the upcoming US midterm elections, Mr Ojeda's tactics have him within a single-digit polling margin in a district where almost three-quarters of the population voted for Donald Trump.

Mr Ojeda himself was a Trump voter in 2016.

Though they stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum, the President and the candidate share a similarity: Neither considers himself to be a true politician.

"The people know that I resonate with the people," Mr Ojeda said. "I come from a family of coal miners. I don't have a silver spoon in my backside."

Despite his campaign style and rhetoric, Mr Ojeda doesn't call himself populist in the mould of Mr Trump, although others do.

But, like many of his supporters, he says, he hungers for a return to an era of American politics when improving people's lives was paramount.

He first attracted national attention when West Virginia teachers went on strike earlier this year.

Then a state legislator, Mr Ojeda emerged as a leader for the cause, rallying with teachers in the state capitol for three weeks and joining in song when they won.

The teachers ended up with a salary increase of 5 per cent. Mr Ojeda gained a platform to build a campaign.

Jake Fertig, a public school teacher in the small town of Belle, fills a cupboard in his classroom with everything from snacks and bottled water to toiletries and sewing kits-- things that his high school students often can't get at home.

"We have a lot of children that are in crisis," he said.

"A lot of kids that have homes where there is a lot of drug addiction, a lot of extreme poverty, alcoholism, abuse."

Like his students, Mr Fertig's worry doesn't stop when the school bell rings.

He once worked four simultaneous jobs to make ends meet for his family. With a disabled child and chronically ill wife, he's had to choose between buying medicine and paying bills. There's not always money for both.

Mr Fertig was one of the 20,000 teachers whose strike shut down schools across the state, affecting some 250,000 students.

Though he makes more than the average teacher in West Virginia, the state as a whole is still ranked 48th in US teacher salaries.

He and his fellow teachers' union members are motivated to vote blue on election day.

They're hardly the only labour group in West Virginia hoping for political change, motivated by a very specific desire for increased salaries and better conditions.

Coal mining, once West Virginia's premiere industry, has declined substantially in recent years in part due to environmental regulations passed by former President Barack Obama and rising demand for renewables and natural gas.

Despite the cleaner energy options, Mr Trump has vowed to bring the coal industry back from the brink of extinction.

At an August campaign rally for Mr Ojeda's opponent, Mr Trump renewed such promises before a crowd wearing hard hats and waving "Trump Digs Coal" signs.

For West Virginia voters, jobs in the coal industry are top of mind.

Coal production has risen 27 per cent since 2016, mostly to meet demand for overseas steel production. Over 3,000 coal industry jobs have been recreated.

Yet they're among 52,000 jobs in the industry compared to 90,000 at its peak. And only 13,000 jobs are in West Virginia-- a state with a population of nearly 2 million.

Experts predict the uptick won't last. A recent report by West Virginia University forecasts that the states' coal production will level out in the next two years, then sharply decrease over the next two decades.

Mr Fertig has seen firsthand the need for a new industry in the state and feels his work as a teacher could be all for naught if change isn't near.

"For a student coming out of high school, it's really fast food or the military or just leave and find something somewhere else," Mr Fertig explained.

"Even if you get a college degree, there really isn't a lot of jobs outside of working in the school system you can use those for."

And walk into a fast food outlet, he says, and you're more likely to see adults rather than teenagers serving burgers, because that's the only work that's available.

Mr Fertig recognises his support for Mr Ojeda is similar to the trust and faith many on the other side of the aisle see in Mr Trump and the Republican Party.

"A lot of West Virginians … they're horribly depressed. We're in a terrible situation. Why would they not cling to that hope?" he says.

"Taking care of the working-class citizens, supporting our unions wholeheartedly, taking care of our sick, giving them a non-addictive form of pain management, taking care of our elderly, not letting people stick their hands in things like Medicare, social security, taking care of our veterans.

"That's not what the Democratic Party has always been. That's how they fell from grace. We got to get back to that."

Mr Ojeda remains an outsider to win in West Virginia, but for Democrats, he's one of those carrying hopes that there'll be a Blue Wave of voters across the country next week.

The GOP 2018 Congressional Campaign: The Stench Of Desperation

When politicians don't have anything to say about issues that will appeal to voters they go negative in the hope that they will disgust voters enough to discourage election day participation. That's what the GOP is doing now. They read the same polls the rest of us do and they know the only way to win is to keep Democrats and independents away from the voting booth next month. Even Politico noted that the ads they're running are ugly distortions of reality. They're not meant to change any minds... just to create confusion, apprehension and disgust so that people don't want to vote. Paul Ryan's SuperPAC alone has poured an unbelievable $3 million into a smear campaign against Randy Bryce in Wisconsin hoping to persuade workers and women not to vote.

Earlier this morning Randy Bryce reminded us that Bernie and his policy agenda are extremely popular in his corner of Wisconsin. "He won 71 out of 72 precincts in the 2016 primary election. Both events he did with me packed the venues to capacity on opposite sides of the district. Having been endorsed early by Senator Sanders has been a huge help. Republicans think that the progressive ideals both of us fight to advance are 'radical.' If making sure people can see a doctor is radical or, if promising not to make cuts to Social Security is 'far left' I’ll take that title. It just shows how out of touch these extremist Republicans really are." And that's a good description of how the Republicans are trying to turn the world topsy-turvy. Paul Ryan disparages Medicare-For-All supporters as off the rails, counting on voters not remembering that he has-- for a decade-- tried to dissolve Medicaid and Medicare and whittle away at Social Security. Ryan, using the talking points all Republican have been using, blasted Democrats this week: "Democrats propose to abolish our health-care system as we know it. And it is the best representation of how far today’s Democratic Party has gone off the rails... Everyone-- no matter how much you like your plan-- would have their plan taken away. The only way to control costs would be to ration care, and restrict access to doctors and treatments. All of these decisions would be made in Washington."

None of that is true, but it doesn't stop GOP robots-- from Bruce Poliquin in Maine to Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington state-- from parroting the same frightening-sounding bullshit in their ads. Here's how Poliquin's progressive Democratic challenger, Jared Golden, threw Poliquin's lies right back in his face. And, by the way, the healthcare lie is far from the only way the Republicans are bullshitting the voters. 

Democratic House candidate Jason Crow received a Bronze Star for heroism in Iraq and a “lawyer of the year” award for his veterans advocacy. But according to his GOP adversaries, he has “neglected” Colorado veterans.

Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger spent nearly a decade fighting terrorists as an undercover CIA officer. But to hear Republicans tell it, she harbors terrorist sympathies.

Attacks ads have always been a staple of campaign season. But Republicans have twisted facts in some ads to an extraordinary degree as they fight to save their House majority, weaving narratives about Democratic candidates that are misleading at best-- or blatantly false at worst.

In several ads, military vets-- who count as some of Democrats' best recruits to defeat sitting Republicans this year-- have had their patriotism called into question. One spot insinuates that Spanberger, who is challenging Rep. Dave Brat’s (R-VA), has ties to extremists because she taught at a Saudi Arabian-funded Muslim school where two infamous terrorists once attended. The CIA not only knew about the job, but later hired Spanberger and employed her for eight years.

Democrats say the spots, aired mostly by the outside GOP super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund and the National Republican Congressional Committee, smack of desperation. In some cases, local Republicans, religious leaders and newspaper editorial boards have have denounced the attacks.

The aggressive tactics highlight a party grappling to save its majority. Many of the Democrats who've come under attack have short or nonexistent records in political office, leaving Republicans to pick over their personal lives for any scraps to use against them.

“Republicans are having a heck of a time right now, and they’re just looking to attack anywhere they think they might be able to.... throwing whatever they have at the wall to see what sticks,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) told reporters at a Bloomberg breakfast last week, calling the attacks “smears.”

Targets of the ads have called for them to be taken down, and spent time and resources trying to rebut the claims. Republicans involved in making the ads say that's exactly their intention: to keep Democrats on the defensive.

They also argue that Democrats would be doing the same thing if the roles were reversed.

"The mere fact that Democrats are complaining about CLF ads speaks to the effectiveness of the ads and the degree to which it’s taken Democratic candidates in key races off their message," CLF spokeswoman Courtney Alexander said.

Democrats argue that the charges have backfired and helped Democratic candidates raise money and gain ground on their Republican rivals. Spanberger’s campaign is now in a dead heat with Brat, according to a Sept. 24 internal poll, and raised more money after the terrorist ad launched than she did in the entire first quarter of 2017. Among likely voters, she's up 5 points, her campaigns says.

But Republicans say their Terror High ad actually helped reverse Brat's fortunes: They say he now has a narrow lead after being tied with Spanberger in August, according to their polling.

realistic polling by Monmouth

Both parties, of course, always spend heavily on opposition research to sniff out their opponents’ weaknesses and flash them before voters. But it’s one thing to highlight flaws in a candidate’s record, like Republicans have done with Wisconsin Democrat Randy Bryce’s drunk driving arrest. It’s another to connect dots that aren’t there.

CLF’s recent attack on Ohio Democrat Aftab Pureval, for instance, accuses the Indian-Tibetan, first-generation American of aiding his former employer in making “millions” by “helping Libyans reduce payments owed to families of Americans killed by Libyan terrorism.”

But Pureval wasn’t working for the Washington law firm that reached the restitution agreement when it was initially struck. When he did join the firm, Pureval worked on anti-trust litigation, not payments to the families of victims of the 1988 Lockerbie terrorist attack.

Not mentioned in the ad was the fact that former President George W. Bush backed the settlement negotiation with Libya-- and that Rep. Steve Chabot, Pureval’s GOP opponent, did not object when it was approved in the House.

Local media called the attack "misleading." And one American family who lost their father in the Libyan attack was so outraged by the video that they reached out to donate to Pureval’s campaign.

“My response to the CLF ad involved words that are best not repeated here,” Scott Rosen wrote in a letter to Pureval’s campaign. He was 5 years old when his father, Saul Mark Rosen, was killed in the Lockerbie bombing, leaving his mom to raise two children. “The attempt to connect you to the murder of my father was utterly beyond the pale."

CLF says the ad has helped Chabot stretch his lead over Pureval, according to their internal polling.

But they haven't seen the same results in other races-- particularly in Colorado, where many Republicans believe Rep. Mike Coffman is going to lose. There, CLF portrayed Crow as a willing bystander to the massive Veterans Affairs Department backlog scandal. (The group recently pulled its ads from the district.)

Crow sat on the local department’s board from 2009 to 2014, and Republicans have highlighted his absence from more than a dozen board meetings to say he’s at fault.

“While veterans suffered from the VA scandal, Crow didn’t show up for work,” one ad said. “Jason Crow neglected Colorado veterans.”

Crow’s campaign said his wife was either on bed rest due to pregnancy complications or that they’d had a new baby at the time of the missed meetings.

Backlash was swift. Local veterans who know Crow showed up at Coffman's office to protest. Crow’s campaign highlighted the thousands of pro-bono hours he’d dedicated to helping veterans with substance abuse issues, as well as the “lawyer of the year” award he received in 2010 from the Denver Bar Association for his veterans advocacy.

In Spanberger's case, CLF ran a commercial calling attention to her onetime position as a substitute teacher at the Saudi school. Spanberger never worked with the two would-be terrorists, having left the school before it came under congressional scrutiny. She later received a top-secret clearance with the CIA.

“So dangerous, even Chuck Schumer called for the school to be shut down,” the ad nonetheless warns. “But Abigail Spanberger cashed her paychecks like nothing was wrong.”

Some Republican candidates have launched similar attacks impugning the motives or patriotism of their opponents. West Virginia Republican candidate Carol Miller ran a clip of her Democratic rival, Richard Ojeda, saying “the United States of America is not the greatest country.” One vet in the spot accuses Ojeda, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, of “stepping on the graves of every dead soldier.”

What Ojeda actually said is that U.S. isn't the greatest country because homelessness is rampant, the health care system is lacking and the opioid epidemic has been allowed to fester. Ojeda issued his own ad in response, talking about the names of fallen soldiers tattooed his back.

“My military record and my love of country has come under fire … by Carol Miller,” an angry Ojeda said in the video filmed before a veterans memorial. “How dare she! A millionaire, who has enjoyed a life of privilege under the very freedoms that I have fought for.”



In New York, Republicans have accused Democratic hopeful Antonio Delgado of “attacking our democracy” because the former rapper once sung about finding peace in the Middle East. In the years-old anti-war jam, Delgado, who went on to graduate from Harvard Law School and become a Rhodes Scholar, says “God bless America, God bless Iraq, God bless us all.”

But an NRCC ad highlights only the “God bless Iraq” line. Delgado is running against vulnerable GOP Rep. John Faso.

The party has also hit Delgado for being a “big city rapper” and not “like us,” depicting the lawyer wearing a dark hoodie and playing his old rap songs that reference sex and drugs and use of the “N” word.

Nearly 20 local clergy members denounced the attacks for their racial undertones; Delgado is African-American. A local radio station said it recently pulled an ad sponsored by CLF for their “inaccuracy.” (CLF disputes that the ad was removed, arguing that PAC officials took it down of their own accord.) Even the district’s former Republican congressman, Chris Gibson, has expressed discomfort.

“Shame on you!” the religious leaders wrote to Faso, asking him to denounce the ads, which he has not done. “This tactic should be called out for what it is, a thinly veiled, racist attack for the purpose of insinuating fear in the voters in our district.”

to count the number of exclamation points, click on the image

Above is an ugly Republican Party Facebook entry from a typical GOP official-- well, not really that typical, 'cause most of them are smart enough not to do it so publicly. This was was created by a Republican precinct committeeman, Michael Kalny from Shawnee. He was stupid enough to send it to Anne Pritchett, president of the Johnson County Democratic Women’s Club. Supporters of Kevin Yoder are weepy because the Paul Ryan just tossed the Yoder campaign overboard as a lost cause. Democrat Sharice Davids is way ahead in polling.

Dig Coal, Sell Dope, Or Join The Army

WV-03-- the southern third of West Virginia-- had two populist landslides in 2016. First Bernie beat Hillary by over 20 points and, in many counties, Bernie got more votes than Trump did on the same day in the GOP primary. Then, in the general, the 3rd was Trump's biggest district in the state. He beat Hillary by a shocking 72.5% to 23.3%. The PVI of West Virginia is R+19. The PVI of WV-03 is R+23. But this cycle a Democratic state senator, Richard Ojeda, is leading in many polls. Huh? Yeah. He picked the presidential candidate voters there backed both times-- Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general. And he's been very tight with arch-conservative U.S. Senator Joe Manchin who won every single county in the district last time he ran. I have very mixed feelings about this race.

The latest poll of West Virginia from Emerson shows Manchin strongly ahead of Republican Patrick Morrisey, 45-33% with 16% undecided. And it shows Ojeda ahead of Republican Carol Miller 36% to 31%-- but with a monstrous 33% undecided. Other polls show Miller gaining on or leading Ojeda. The DCCC just announced they're going to spend significant money in the district, easily the reddest district they're contesting this cycle. Odd that the DCCC should jump in since this is from the FiveThirtyEight.com forecaster:

1 in 10? That's daunting. But 538 has it wrong on this one and Ojeda is undaunted anyway. He may not win, but this is going to be a very close race.

TV news bureaus have been covering the race with interest. This week Fox reported that West Virginia 'Trump Democrat' congressional hopeful 'threatened' Republican delegate on Facebook messenger. For Fox fans is that even negative? Probably more confusing. "A Democrat seeking a U.S. House seat in deep-red West Virginia," reported Lukas Mikelionis, "made an apparent physical threat to a state delegate, saying 'when I’m done with you, you will beg me to ease up.' Richard Ojeda, an Army veteran and state senator who’s been branded as a 'JFK with tattoos and a bench press' and a so-called 'Trump Democrat' for voting for the president during the 2016 election, has been accused of physically threatening Rupie Phillips, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates since 2013.

Phillips is a Democrat-turned-Republican who ran for the party’s nomination for U.S. Congress but lost to Republican Carol Miller-- Ojeda’s opponent in the upcoming midterm election in November. He shared the threatening message in a Facebook post on Sunday. Ojeda initially blocked Phillips on Facebook after sending the message but unblocked him after the messages were posted by Phillips.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, he said the threat from Ojeda was prompted after Miller attended an annual craft beer tasting and a chili cook off festival in his area where he introduced her to the local crowd.

“What boils down to, [Ojeda] had some family members at the cookout and they’re talking about me taking Miller around to his hometown and introduce her to people. I guess he thought he could scare me and I guess I hurt his feelings,” Phillips said of what could have prompted Ojeda to send him the message.

The Ojeda campaign did not deny the message was sent by the candidate, but pushed back against its meaning.

“This is absurd and obviously not a threat of physical violence,” the campaign’s spokeswoman told Fox News. “Richard was speaking about exposing Del. Phillips for his corruption in the West Virginia legislature.

“Richard has stood against corruption in government from the beginning of his political career and that will never change. It’s truly sad that families in our communities are being ripped apart my opioids and devastated by poverty and Delegate Rupie Phillips has chosen to focus his attention on this. It’s obvious where his priorities are and it is not with the people of West Virginia."

Phillips claims this isn't the first time Ojeda has targeted him. In August, the Democratic candidate suggested he was a bootlicker by sending him a cartoon of a character licking a boot.

“Ever since 2014 when I wasn’t supporting him when he ran against [Democrat Rep.] Nick Rahall for U.S. Congress, he’s been against me,” Phillips said, noting that he’s never engaged with him.

“He has verbally attacked me many times on his social media over the past four years and I just bit my tongue, being a bigger person and going down the road,” he added.

The local lawmaker said he read the message as a threat of physical violence and called Ojeda a “school yard bully” who doesn’t “know what to do when someone stands up to him.”

Ojeda is running in a district that Trump won by 50 points. Despite the deep-red district, Ojeda has been making gains, with the latest poll claiming he’s leading his Republican opponent by five points. An earlier poll, meanwhile, said Miller is leading by eight points.

His campaign carries a populist theme, including his support for the coal industry and hopes of seeing Trump succeed as the president. But despite such comments, he also made numerous anti-Trump remarks.

“He hasn’t done shit,” Ojeda told Politico about Trump, expressing regret at having supported the Republican presidential nominee. “It’s been a friggin’ circus for a solid year,” he continued, claiming that Trump hadn’t changed anything for the people.

“All he’s done is shown that he’s taking care of the daggone people he’s supposed to be getting rid of,” Ojeda added.

As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Miller had raised $743,092 to Ojeda's $514,796, although she's very wealthy-- and wrote her campaign a check or $220,400 out of her personal bank account-- and he's a working class guy. Last week Bloomberg News ran a piece by Albert Hunt, How to Be a Democrat in Trump Country. "Southern West Virginia is the heart of coal country and cultural conservatism, with gun shops, Assemblies of God churches and American flags dotting the landscape," he wrote. "The region's congressional district is dominated by white, non-college-educated voters. President Donald Trump carried it by 50 percentage points in 2016. Yet Richard Ojeda, a grandson of an illegal Mexican immigrant, has an even chance this November to take over the area's Republican-held seat in the House of Representatives. The one-term state senator is a tough-talking, decorated military veteran espousing the economic populism that enabled Democrats to dominate the state's politics during the second half of the 20th century."


UPDATE: Trump Brings West Virginia Worse Poverty

CBS News reported today-- just as Trump and Fox were headed off to Wheeling-- that West Virginia has a growing poverty problem, and experts there who study the issue say Americans in every state should pay attention. Trump will be touting his economic accomplishment even as "West Virginia's poverty rate climbed to 19.1 percent last year from 17.9 percent, making it just one of four states with a poverty rate above 18 percent." Señor Trumpanzee has said he's "very proud" of the state and claimed that he "turned West Virginia around." His administration has focused on reviving jobs in the coal industry, which has added about 2,000 jobs across the U.S. since Mr. Trump's inauguration." 

West Virginia's dismal trends point to an economic issue that's impacting states across the country: Workers at the bottom of the pay scale aren't benefiting from the growing economy. Their issues range from low pay to unstable and scanty work hours, which makes it difficult to earn a living wage. Almost one in four West Virginians is employed in a low-wage job, the WVCBP found.

Trump Is Proving To Be Absolutely Toxic For Republicans In Swing Districts Currently Held By Republicans

More Democrats need to run on this and NOT on Pelosi's insane idea of restoring PAY-GO

Two very different polls with interesting information came out this morning, one from Quinnipiac and one from Monmouth. Both carry very bad news for the GOP. I bet you haven't seen this before: American voters believe 55% to 28% that the allegations "anonymous" made-- and that were made by anonymous senior White House staffers in Fear that Trump's top aides work behind his back "to keep him from making what the aides believe are bad decisions"-- are true. Even 27% of Republicans believe it! Normal Americans seem much more certain than Republicans are. Among Democrats, 82% believe the assertions and among Independent voters 52% believe (and 33% don't believe). Asked if Trump is honest or not, 32% of Americans say he is and 60% understand that he's a congenital liar, incapable of opening his filthy mouth without lying. Among Republicans, only 17% understand he's a liar, but 92% of Democrats and 63% of Independents do. Nor is dishonesty the only trait polled that contributes to Trump's overall 38/54% approval/disapproval rating.

• Good leadership skills- No- 57%
• Cares about average Americans- No- 55%
• Level-headed- No- 65%
• Strong- Yes- 57%
• Intelligent- Yes- 51%
• Shares your values- No- 60%
• Mentally stable- Yes- 48% (42% say he's out of his mind)

The all-important fit to serve as president question- 41% say he is and 55% understand he isn't. By a 90-7% margin Republicans think he is fit to serve. 96% of Democrats say he isn't. Among independent votes, 42% say he's fit to serve and 53% say he isn't. That's a pretty bad hand Republicans are going into the midterms with. And that's what the Monmouth Poll dealt with-- but in just 8 key Republican-held battleground districts polled between June and August.

Unfortunately, Monmouth doesn't seem to be releasing the specific information by congressional district. I called them and tried, unsuccessfully, to get it out of them. These are the districts they polled: CA-48 (Rohrabacher), PA-01 (Brian Fitzpatrick), PA-17 (Keith Rothfus), NJ-03 (Tom MacArthur), NJ-11 (Rodney Frelinghuysen), OH-12 (Troy Balderson), VA-10 (Barbara Comstock), WV-03 (Evan Jenkins). Let me give you the information they reported (the average more or less of the 8 districts combined) and then I'll get into what I could find by scrounging around their site about the individual districts.

Among likely voters in the 8 districts, Democrats lead 47-43%. The two italicized incumbents are not running for reelection. The pollster reminds us that in all 8 districts Republican candidates won-- routinely-- by double digit margins in recent cycles. Findings:

• Where voters live has an impact on the margin of support. GOP House candidates are underperforming in Republican precincts relative to the Democrats’ performance in their base precincts. The Republican lead is between 4 and 13 percentage points in precincts that Romney/Trump carried, with the range depending on the size of the GOP presidential ticket’s margin. The Democratic lead is much stronger at 15 to 28 points in districts carried by Obama/Clinton.  In competitive districts – those where the average margin was less than 5 points for either party’s presidential ticket-- Democratic House candidates have a slim lead of 4 points. Also, the Democratic House candidate does better overall in precincts where Trump did worse than Romney even after controlling for the precinct’s partisan lean.
• Race, education and gender define key voting groups. Republicans’ core voting bloc is comprised of white men without a college degree, while Democrats can count on strong support from white female college graduates as a well as women of color regardless of educational attainment. White women without a degree and white male college graduates are more competitive groups, as are, to a lesser degree, men of color. White men without a degree who are registered Democrats and women of color who are registered Republicans are the most likely to cross party lines in their 2018 House vote.
• Partisan differences in election interest. High interest is more prevalent among voters supporting the Democratic candidates (62%) than it is among those supporting the Republicans (54%) in these eight races. The highest levels of interest come from college educated white men (75%) and women (72%) who are supporting a Democratic House candidate.
• Strongly held opinions of Trump lean negative. While voter opinion of Trump is evenly divided at 49% approve and 48% disapprove, there is a negative gap when looking only at strongly held opinions-- 33% strongly approve and 40% strongly disapprove in these eight districts.

Nw let's look at the district by district information I was able to cobble together within a reasonable time-frame relative to the above information.

• NJ-03- Trump's approval is 46% (33% strongly) and his disapproval is 49% (41% strongly). 48% of NJ-03 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 43% say they support him.

• PA-17- Trump's approval is 44% (28% strongly) and his disapproval is 51% (43% strongly). 49% of PA-17 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 46% say they support him.

• CA-48- Trump's approval is 46% (32% strongly) and his disapproval is 49% (39% strongly). 48% of CA-48 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 45% say they support him.

• NJ-11- Trump's approval is 47% (31% strongly) and his disapproval is 49% (43% strongly). 43% of NJ-11 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 49% say they support him.

• VA-10- Trump's approval is 42% (24% strongly) and his disapproval is 53% (47% strongly). 39% of VA-10 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 45% say they support him.

• PA-01- Trump's approval is 47% (31% strongly) and his disapproval is 49% (43% strongly). 49% of PA-01 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 44% say they support him.

• WV-03- Trump's approval is 66% (49% strongly) and his disapproval is 30% (23% strongly). 29% of WV-03 voters say they oppose Trump on "most issues" and 65% say they support him.

Wondering what this translates to nationally? It's impossible to be precise but it's a lot more than the 23 seats the Democrats need for a House Majority. In fact, it's more like something between two or three times more. There are always special circumstances in every race. In WV-03, as you can see, Trump has very high approvals. The PVI there is red, red, red-- R+23-- and Trump slaughtered Hillary, 72.5% to 22.5%. But you know who else slaughtered Hillary there? Bernie. And the colorful Democratic candidate in the district, state Senator Richard Ojeda, supported Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general-- just like so many WV-03 voters did. He's also created a unique brand for himself. That's likely to be the reddest district in the country won by a Democrat, but it's proof that if the DCCC keeps out of primaries, anything can happen.

And today's last poll-- this one from CNN-- was more bad news for Trumpanzee and his GOPzee. Over the last month, Señor T’s approval rating has dropped six points 36% from 42%. His disapproval is now 58%. And for Republicans running in the midterms, the worst part of this is that Trump's troubles are coming from... independent voters. "Among independents, the drop has been sharper, from 47% approval last month to 31% now. That's 4 points below his previous 2018 low of 35% approval among political independents in CNN polling, and 1 point below his previous all-time low among independents in CNN polling, reached in November 2017."sn't around messing up races and thwarting the wave, virtually anything can happen.

How Does A Democrat Run In West Virginia? And How Does A Democrat Get Reelected?

Ojeda and Manchin

WV-03-- the southern third of West Virginia-- had two populist landslides in 2016. First Bernie beat Hillary by over 20 points and, in many counties got more votes than Trump did on the same day in the GOP primary. Then, in the general, the 3rd was Trump's biggest district in the state. He beat Hillary by a shocking 72.5% to 23.3%. The PVI of West Virginia is R+19. The PVI of WV-03 is R+23. But this cycle a Democratic state senator, Richard Ojeda, is leading in all the polls. Huh? Yeah. He picked the presidential candidate voters there backed both times-- Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general. and he's been very tight with arch-conservative U.S. Senator Joe Manchin who won every single county in the district last time he ran.

I first heard from the Ojeda campaign last April and I was... confused. He voted for Trump? They wanted a Blue America endorsement. His platform looked good and he was fighting-- fighting HARD-- for the teachers in their strike. Several teachers union members told me he was fighting harder for them than any other elected official. But I needed him to explain the Trump vote before we could endorse him. He never did-- and we never endorsed. I'm still rooting for him to win-- just not raising money for him. Those are two different things.

My question has always been the same-- my responsibility to Blue American contributors-- how will he vote when he gets to Congress? Like Joe Manchin? Like Bernie? I don't know. He says he's lost faith in Trump. OK, that's good. I don't know a single Democratic candidate running for Congress who has any faith in Trump.

Ojeda seems to be confused too. He says different things to different audiences. Talking to conservatives he said "When you hear about illegal aliens getting benefits and you have people here starving to death and can’t get nothing, it’s just a slap in the face. When you start talking about bringing in refugees and when they get here they get medical and dental and they get set up with some funds-- what do we get? So when people hear Donald Trump saying we’re going to take benefits away from people who come here illegally and give them to people who work, that sounds pretty good." But when he addresses progressives he says that his policy regarding immigration is that "open arms is what we should be all about. Let’s show people love regardless of where they’re from." Still, even during this interview, Ojeda made not one criticism of the policies, deregulations, corporate tax cuts, and war policies Trump has initiated. So I don't know. The DCCC added him to their Red-to-Blue list and, believe me, if he was a die hard Bernie populist-- in a district like that-- there would be no chance that that would have happened. The DCCC hates populists (more than they hate Republicans).

Yesterday, Evan Halper," writing for the L.A. Times called him a "fiery populist" and contrasted him to his political mentor, Manchin, who they dubbed "a business-friendly centrist"-- Contrasting paths toward a Democratic resurgence in West Virginia. "A cauldron of populist anger, the 47-year-old Ojeda breaks most every rule the Democratic consultant class has laid out for winning back coal country," wrote Halper. "He is nowhere near the playbook of West Virginia’s Democratic U.S. senator, Joe Manchin III, the folksy centrist and on-again, off-again President Trump ally who many in the party see as one of the last hopes for steering Democrats back to power in Appalachia."

Both Ojeda and Manchin are-- at least for now-- defying conventional wisdom by leading in polls in places where the 2016 election results suggest Republicans should be far ahead. Trump won this state by nearly 42 points. He won Ojeda’s district by nearly 50. A recent poll by Monmouth University showed Ojeda six points ahead of his Republican opponent, Carol Miller. Manchin holds a similarly sized lead in recent polls.

Their campaigns reflect two very different paths Democrats are testing as they seek a way back to relevance in white, working-class communities that abandoned the party for Trump, and where support for the president remains strong.

Both candidates are keenly aware that a poll-tested policy agenda alone won’t cut it here. For all their differences, their campaigns display at least one belief in common: Sharp instincts for the identity politics of the region will be needed to cut Trump’s coattails short in the upcoming midterm. It’s a point that many party activists in coastal Democratic strongholds struggle to comprehend at a time when Democratic candidates feel intense pressure to take up the talking points of the Resistance.

Ojeda voted for Trump. West Virginia politicos generally agree Manchin’s biggest career misstep may have been endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Manchin has spent the last 18 months trying to make amends with his electorate. He endeared himself to Trump enough to warrant consideration for the post of energy secretary. When Trump, instead, nominated Rick Perry of Texas for the job, Manchin introduced him at the Senate confirmation hearing.

Ojeda, for his part, has soured on Trump since the election, but it irks him that party leaders remain perplexed about how a fiery progressive like him could cast a ballot for the New York billionaire.

It’s simple, Ojeda said: The economic vision the Democrats offered for Appalachia was insulting and hopeless.

“You can’t take a coal miner making $95,000 a year, the only work in these parts where you can support a family without having to hold down three jobs at once … and tell them you can make minimum wage or we can give you job training for jobs that don’t exist in West Virginia,” Ojeda said during an interview at his threadbare office in his hometown of Logan.

Sure, he said, Trump’s promises were overblown. “But when one person says we will train you in something that does not exist here, and another person says, ‘I can keep coal alive, I can help you maintain the job making $95,000 a year and help you take care of your wife and children,’ what are you going to do?”

...“This is not about the message, it is about the messenger,” said Robert Rupp, a professor of history and political science at West Virginia Wesleyan College. “He is one of us. Even if voters don’t like what Ojeda is saying, they like where he stands.”

The message is a form of in-your-face populism stylistically similar to Trump’s, but different in the targets of his anger.

“We have to stop letting people come in here and make millionaires and billionaires of themselves off of West Virginia while West Virginia remains poor,” Ojeda said, as he launched into one of his signature indictments of big energy and big drug companies.

“You deploy to other countries and fight this nation’s wars because you have this sense that maybe these people can enjoy what we have in America because we are the greatest. And then you retire one day and you return and realize it was all a bunch of garbage. It was a lie.”

That populism marks a turnabout from West Virginia’s tradition of electing less volatile politicians, like Democratic Sens. Robert C. Byrd, John D. Rockefeller IV and also Manchin, valued for their ability to work within the system. Now, the system no longer works for most voters here.

Ojeda, a first-term state senator, shot onto the radar of labor leaders last year after unflinchingly taking up the cause of West Virginia’s teachers, who went on a strike that rattled school systems nationwide. He is angry that as teachers struggle to pay rent, energy companies eager to extract the state’s massive deposits of natural gas balk at an extraction tax that could be used to boost their pay.

As his community reels from the opioid crisis, he says to any politician “helping or protecting big pharma while they are killing our people, you are a murderer.” He blames feckless legislators beholden to drug interests for delaying implementation of a medical marijuana law Ojeda muscled through the Legislature.

In his own, more measured way, Manchin is also seizing on healthcare. The potential unraveling of the Affordable Care Act by Republicans and a more conservative Supreme Court is a key campaign issue for him in a state where 800,000 people have preexisting conditions, and most of them can’t afford insurance without government help.

“If insurance companies can go back to playing the games they played before, they can decide the fate of most of West Virginia,” Manchin said Wednesday at a Washington conference held by the Economic Innovation Group. “Whether they can buy insurance, afford insurance or whether they are one illness away from catastrophic ruin. These are the things we deal with.”

But the senator made clear his frustration with his own party, a theme that plays well at home. He recalled how Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked him after Trump’s election, “What happened to the West Virginia Democrats?”

“I said, ‘Not a thing. They want to know what happened to the Washington Democrats,’” Manchin said.

When the ringing of his mobile phone interrupted Manchin, fellow panelist Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) joked that the caller was probably Trump. Not skipping a beat, Manchin replied that it probably was.

Manchin, who is running for reelection against West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey, is sitting on an impressive campaign war chest. Money is a bigger problem for Ojeda. His race against Miller, a wealthy Republican legislator expected to have considerable resources, is fast becoming a test case of how far modern grass-roots fundraising can take an unconventional candidate.

Help has also come from an unexpected place: Silicon Valley. Last year, as his campaign got underway, Ojeda found himself at a Palo Alto wine bar, pitching his vision to tech innovators at an event sponsored by the People’s House Project, a political action committee established by the journalist Krystal Ball to boost working-class Democrats running for office. Ball worked with Rep. Ro Khanna, the Democrat who represents much of the Silicon Valley, to introduce Ojeda to the tech world.

“That trip was unbelievable,” said Ball. “Richard had been all over the world with the military, but he had never been to California. He got in a room with these tech lawyers and entrepreneurs and executives and said, ‘I don’t know why you don’t think we have smart people in West Virginia.’

“These were progressive people who saw themselves as open-minded and not bigoted. They realized they had a lot of stereotypes about what West Virginians are like.”

Khanna, who has been travelling to coal country in an effort to build economic and political alliances, said Ojeda has a message the rest of the party should listen to.

“We default to the same platitudes and talking points people have been running on for the last 20 years,” the congressman said in an interview. “Party leaders can learn from [Ojeda]. Here is someone doing well in a part of the country where we have not been doing well.”

I know how Manchin is going to vote when he's reelected-- like a moderate Republican, just the way he's been voting. I still don't know how Ojeda's going to vote. No one does. I'm not even sure if he knows himself. It sure will be interesting to see though. As of the June 30 FEC filing deadline, he had raised $514,796 and Carol Miller had raised $463,818-- although $205,400 of that had come right out of her own fat bank account. The most recent poll, late June by Monmouth, shows Ojeda beating her among likely voters 47-41% or, if the Blue Wave hits West Virginia, 48-39%. And then we'll all find out how he'll be voting.

When Dylan Ratigan Said He Might Have Voted For Trump, Everyone's Jaw Dropped. When Richard Ojeda Said He Did Vote For Trump, He Won The Democratic Primary

Elisse Stefanik's North Country district (NY-21) is the biggest in New York State. Obama won it both times he ran but in 2016 it saw a big red swing. An even PVI is now R+4. Trump crushed Hillary 53.9% to 40.0%. And Stefanik was reelected in a landslide-- 65.3% to 30.2%. The DCCC had insisted on another conservative candidate to replicate their last congressman in the district, an exceptionally bad Blue Dog Bill Owens, who had retired in 2014.

The district includes all of Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Lewis, Hamilton, Essex, Warren, Washington and Fulton counties and parts of Saratoga and Herkimer counties. Democrats up there don't go for status quo, establishment conservaDems. The district vote overwhelmingly for Zephyr Teachout against Andrew Cuomo in the last gubernatorial primary and this is how each county voted in the 2016 presidential primary:

• Clinton- Bernie- 73.5%; Hillary- 26.5%
• Essex- Bernie- 73.2%; Hillary- 26.8%
• Franklin- Bernie- 70.95%; Hillary- 29.1%
• Fulton- Bernie- 61.1%; Hillary- 38.9%
• Hamilton- Bernie- 63.1%; Hillary- 36.9%
• Herkimer- Bernie- 56.0%; Hillary- 44.0%
• Jefferson- Bernie- 50.9%; Hillary- 49.1%
• Lewis- Bernie- 59.1%; Hillary- 40.9%
• Saratoga- Bernie- 55.8%; Hillary- 44.2%
• St. Lawrence- Bernie- 58.9%; Hillary- 41.1%
• Warren- Bernie- 61.7%; Hillary- 38.3%
• Washington- Bernie- 64.1%; Hillary- 35.9%

So, you've probably noticed by now, that every single county-- most in landslides, voted for the progressive, not for the establishment mode4rate who had been the state's senator. Does that make the DCCC stop and think about what kind of a candidate Democrats want in that district? Of course not; DCCC staffing decisions favors morons and conservatives.

Currently there are five Democrats competing in the June 26 primary for the opportunity to go up against Stefanik. Not all of them have raised enough money to run a competitive campaign against Stefanik, who is sitting on a $1,301,870 warchest.

• Tendra Cobb- $293,256
• Emily Martz- $215,084
• Katie Wilson- $166,464
• Dylan Ratigan- $150,948
• Patrick Nelson- $53,620

The only candidate who had raised substantial money, Don Boyajian ($492,873) withdrew this month to run for an Assembly seat instead. and the candidate with the most name recognition, former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan, made a possibly fatal error a couple of weeks ago at a Democratic women's luncheon. He didn't voted in 2016 but told the audience that if he had he might have voted for Trump.

The statement is significant because Trump remains deeply unpopular and even toxic among many of the rank-and-file Democrats in the 21st House district who will decide next month's primary.

“It’s mind-boggling that a Democratic candidate asking for my vote would say this,” said Julie Wash from the town of Stillwater. She told North Country Public Radio that Ratigan made the comment in response to questions she posed.

“He said, I would have voted for Trump,” Wash recalled. “There was silence and everyone’s jaw dropped.”

...Asked by NCPR to detail her exchange with Ratigan, Wash said it began when she asked who he would have supported in the 2016 presidential race, if he had voted. He first named Bernie Sanders, she recalled.

Wash reminded Ratigan that Sen. Sanders wasn’t on the general election ballot and asked again who he would have chosen. That’s when Ratigan voiced a preference for Trump, she said.

Three other people at the table that day corroborated Wash’s account: “She kind of pressed [Ratigan] to choose between Clinton and Trump,” said Alan Stern, a Democrat from Greenwich. “He said, I would have voted for Donald Trump. I was pretty shocked as I think most of the people at the table were.”

“He said Donald Trump,” agreed Stern’s wife Mary Lou. “We all kind of looked at each other, like, did we hear that correctly?”

A fourth Democrat, Jill Nadolski from West Hebron, wasn’t interviewed by NCPR, but sent a public letter to the Glens Falls Post Star last week describing the exchange. Nadolski, who is Mary Lou Stern’s sister, wrote that she heard Ratigan voice support for Trump, while comparing himself to the Republican as “an outsider like me.”

Later, on a radio show, he tried worming out of it by saying he was joking and that the reports are part of a dirty tricks campaign designed to harm his campaign. He said "Somebody is trafficking in rumors to try to take me down because they’re threatened by my candidacy, which is part of our broken political system."

The Democrats who recounted the conversation are all supporters of Tedra Cobb of Canton, one of Ratigan’s primary opponents. All voiced anger about his Trump comments, but denied being part of an orchestrated effort to weaken his candidacy.

They described themselves as average voters, low-level unpaid volunteers and small-scale donors for the Cobb campaign, not the kind of experienced operatives who would take part in a political hatchet job.  None attempted to contact NCPR, but agreed to be interviewed after being telephoned by a reporter.

During those interviews, they also pushed back against Ratigan’s assertion that he spoke about Trump in jest. “In no way did I get that this was sarcastic or humorous,” Wash said.

“This is not a joke. Our republic is falling apart and for him to even insinuate that he was joking [about voting for Trump] inflames me.”

Trump remains a deeply polarizing figure in the North Country. After his surprise victory in November 2016, many Democrats in the 21st district joined marches and protest rallies focused on issues ranging from immigrant and women’s rights to healthcare and climate change. In interviews with NCPR, many Democratic voters say opposition to Trump has energized them ahead of the mid-term election.

On one level this reminds me of the battle in southern West Virginia where Democrat Richard Ojeda is facing off against Carol Miller in the third district. Ojeda-- like the 2016 primary voters in his district-- went heavily for Bernie. In the general election the district went heavily for Trump (a 72.5% to 23.3% landslide, one of Hillary's most catastrophic performances anywhere in the country). Ojeda was one of the Democrats who voted for Bernie in the primary and flipped to Trump in the general election. In the May 8th primary, he beat the 3 other Democrats combined.

• Richard Ojeda- 29,837 (52.05%)
• Shirley Love- 14,251 (24.86%)
• Paul Davis- 9,063 (15.81%)
• Janice Hagerman- 4,176 (7.28%)

He also beat the top Republican running, eventual GOP nominee Carol Miller, who got 8,936 votes. In fact, Ojeda took more votes than the 3 top Republicans combined. 57,327 Democrats were motivated to get out and vote in the primary but just 37,585 Republicans bothered showing up. Ojeda could actually win this thing. He's running on Bernie's economic populism but on the social conservatism that has helped Democrat Joe Manchin win both gubernatorial and Senate races deep in the heart of Trump country.

Will the same dynamic propel Ratigan to a victory next Tuesday in upstate New York? He's been trying to explain why he has disdain and contempt for the Democratic establishment and how that establishment has enabled Trump. We'll see if that works for him and short circuits the DCCC.