Two Campaigns Kick Off In The Midwest: Ben Sasse (R-NE) And Nikki Foster (D-OH)

Let's start with Nebraska, where conservative Republican Ben Sasse began his reelection bid yesterday. He was first elected in 2014 against Democrat David Domina, 64.4% to 31.5%. 347,636 Nebraskans voted for him. Sasse was the first sitting senator to announce he wouldn't support Trump if Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016. Trump easily won Nebraska anyway-- with 495,961 votes (58.75%) to Hillary's 284,494 (33.7%). Sasse won all 93 counties in the state. Trump won 91, losing just the biggest and second biggest counties-- Douglas (Omaha) and Lancaster (Lincoln) to Hillary.

There was some talk of billionaire Trump-supporting wing-nut Pete Ricketts, the current governor, primarying him but Ricketts endorsed Sasse yesterday when he announced. Former Lancaster County Republican Party chairman, Matt Innis, a certifiably insane person, is running against him-- as are 2 Democrats (with two more thinking about jumping in). Innis: "You can’t find anything he’s really accomplished other than bashing the president and giving up his (Senate Agriculture Committee) seat for something more glamorous... I want to make sure that Nebraska is in good hands and they have somebody in Washington that will put their interests first."

As a Judiciary Committee member, Sasse has been a strong proponent of Trump’s judicial appointments, and has piped down about Trump lately, not criticizing all the racism and white nationalism, apparently in the hope that hard core Trump supporters will back him. He's gotten something of a reputation for being all bark and no bite when it comes to Trump.

A few days ago, we looked at how Omaha state Senator Hohn McCollister (R) had called on his fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump's racism. The response from the Nebraska GOP came swiftly, in the form of a press release:

They want him out of the party-- a sitting state senator. Amazing! No big tent there-- ad no standing up to Trump's racism will be tolerated!

The video up top was released yesterday as a campaign announcement for Nikki Foster, a Democrat running for the OH-01 seat (most of safely blue Cincinnati and the very red Warren county suburbs and small towns north of the city) against incumbent Steve Chabot, who would absolutely be vulnerable against a strong Democratic opponent. Is Foster? I haven't spoken with her-- and the video looks good-- but... The former Air Force vet looks more like an identity politics candidate with a nice bio than the kind of candidate who can win a tough race against an incumbent. Her weak garden variety platform isn't going to excite anyone other than committed Democrats who vote for any Democrat who runs, not enough to win OH-01. I suppose some people will want to vote for her because she flew 200 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan or because she was an All-American rugby player. But... no mention of Medicare-For-All or any other motivating policies on her website. Last year she lost a state house race last year against incumbent Paul Zeltwanger in a redder district north of the city. That same year, another weak Democrat afraid to take any strong policy positions, Aftab Pureval, lost to Chabot in the middle of the "Blue Wave." The other Democrat in the race this cycle, Kate Schroder, is the same kind of thing, afraid to motivate the base with any talk of Medicare-for-All or the Green New Deal. Both, like Pureval was, appear to have been persuaded by Republicans and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to not coming out swinging for cutting edge policies. So they'll get Democrats and some independents who hate Trump, but the kind of people who have given up on the two corporate parties... neither Foster nor Schroder is offering them anything, or at least not anything that's going to change their mind about voting.

What a shame! It looks like a winnable district. The PVI is R+5 and Trump only beat Hillary 51.2% to 44.6%. Trump did worse than either McCain or Romney in the district. If only there was a better candidate who understood what it takes to motivate voters!

Last time, Pureval outraised Chabot $4,069,489 to $1,949,962 and outspent him by a over a million dollars. The DCCC and its allies put another $2,289,840 into slamming Chabot. (The NRCC and it's allies put $3,537,280 into smearing Pureval.) The Republicans are not going to give up this district without a fight to the death and neither Nikki Foster nor Kate Schroder appears to be the kind of candidate who could fight that kind of battle. Again... what a shame. This is just the kind of year and environment where a strong progressive candidate could beat Chabot.

What Part Of Trump's Real Base Is Made Up Of Lonely And Violent Right Wing Misfits He Manipulates With Ease?

History is filled with lonely, alienated misfits acting out in the public square-- sometimes with dire consequences. 19 year old Gavrilo Princip came from a desperately poor peasant family in Bosnia, lived alone in Sarajevo, joined violent fanatic groups, got expelled from school and assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, setting off a chain of events which led to the biggest deal in world history 'til then: World War I which, in turn, led to the deaths of tens of millions of people, the collapse of political stability throughout the world and, eventually, to World War II. If Gavrilo had only eaten better, had a better body-- he was a scrawny, malnourished little guy-- had a girlfriend! Today, the NY Times published an OpEd by Arthur Brooks, How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart-- When People Have A Hole In Their Life, They Often Fill It With Angry Politics. In America today, we all have an a-hole in our lives and his classic, weak man's divide-and-conquer style of management has turned our country into a bubbling cauldron of angry politics.

Brooks himself is a bit of a misanthrope. He's a right-wing kook-- head of the neo-fascist American Enterprise Institute-- who grew up a musician when Seattle was rockin' and rollin'-- except his instrument was French horn. Perhaps if he had taken up guitar or drums, America would have turned out less insanely right-wing itself. Jimi Hendrix was getting all the girls. Bassonists and French horn players don't necessarily get laid after a gig. Violent right-wing domestic terrorists are virtually all lonely, desperate and mentally impaired males. They're also the tip of the Trumpist spear. "America," wrote Brooks "is suffering an epidemic of loneliness."

According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.” Thirteen percent of Americans say that zero people know them well. The survey, which charts social isolation using a common measure known as the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, shows that loneliness is worse in each successive generation.

This problem is at the heart of the new book Them: Why We Hate Each Other-- and How to Heal, by Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. Mr. Sasse argues that “loneliness is killing us,” citing, among other things, the skyrocketing rates of suicide and overdose deaths in America. This year, 45,000 Americans will take their lives, and more than 70,000 will die from drug overdoses.

Mr. Sasse’s assertion that loneliness is killing us takes on even darker significance in the wake of the mail-bomb campaign against critics of President Trump and the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, both of which were perpetrated by isolated-- and apparently very lonely-- men. Mr. Sasse’s book was published before these events, but he presciently described what he believes lonely people increasingly do to fill the hole of belonging in their lives: They turn to angry politics.

In the “siloed,” or isolated, worlds of cable television, ideological punditry, campus politics and social media, people find a sense of community in the polarized tribes forming on the left and the right in America. Essentially, people locate their sense of “us” through the contempt peddled about “them” on the other side of the political spectrum.

There is profit to be made here. The “outrage industrial complex” is what I call the industries that accumulate wealth and power by providing this simulacrum of community that people crave-- but cannot seem to find in real life.

Why are we becoming so lonely? One reason is the changing nature of work. Work is one of the key sources of friendship and community. Think of your own relationships; surely many of your closest friendships-- perhaps even your relationship with your spouse-- started in the workplace. Yet the reality of the workplace is rapidly attenuating, as people hop from job to job, and from city to city, as steady work becomes harder to find and the “gig” economy grows.

Mr. Sasse worries even more, however, about a pervasive feeling of homelessness: Too many Americans don’t have a place they think of as home-- a “thick” community in which people know and look out for one another and invest in relationships that are not transient. To adopt a phrase coined in Sports Illustrated, one might say we increasingly lack that “hometown gym on a Friday night feeling.”

Mr. Sasse finds this phrase irresistible and warmly relates it to his own life growing up in Fremont, Neb., a town of 26,000 residents. He describes the high school sports events on Friday nights that drew the townspeople together in a common love for their neighbors and community that made most differences-- especially political differences-- seem trivial. He relates with deep fondness the feelings he experienced, after moving away for a couple of decades for school and work, when he returned to Fremont’s small-town life with his family, and the deep sense of belonging it created.

In what might be called “the social capital of death,” Mr. Sasse charmingly describes the sense of being rooted that it gives him, at a robust and healthy 46, to own a burial plot for himself in Fremont’s local cemetery. A précis of Mr. Sasse’s recommendations to America thus might be this: Go where you get that hometown-gym-on-a-Friday-night feeling, put down roots and make plans to fertilize the soil.

That can be a tricky proposition for many of us. On reading the book, I asked myself where I might get that hometown-gym feeling, where I have natural roots, where I can imagine being buried. No specific place came to mind. I have no Fremont-- not even Seattle, my hometown, which is a perfectly nice place, but one I unsentimentally left behind 35 years ago.

All this is particularly germane to my wife and me at the moment, as we prepare to move from Maryland to Massachusetts in the coming months. We fear the loneliness we are sure to feel as we enter a completely new place where neither of us grew up or has ever lived. Is a thick community and the happiness it brings out of reach for rootless cosmopolitans like us?

I recently put these questions to Mr. Sasse. He told me I had it all wrong-- that moving back home and going to the gym on Friday aren’t actually the point; rather, the trick is “learning how to intentionally invest in the places where we actually live.” In other words, being a member of a community isn’t about whether I have a Fremont. It isn’t about how I feel about any place I have lived, nor about my fear of isolation in a new city. It is about the neighbor I choose to be in the community I wind up calling my home.

And there lies the challenge to each of us in a country suffering from loneliness and ripped apart by political opportunists seeking to capitalize on that isolation. Each of us can be happier, and America will start to heal, when we become the kind neighbors and generous friends we wish we had.

A Primary Against Trump In 2020? I Have A Better Idea

Even some of the elite Republicans who actually liked Trump have started to rethink themselves... some, not lots. But Republican voters? Brain-dead or brainwashed or both. And they love him. So Bill Kristof is wasting his time and his donors' money to build an anti-Trump war-machine-- Defending Democracy Together-- to take him on in the 2020 primaries. Kristof says he's in discussions with 2 conservative senators, Ben Sasse (NE) and Jeff Flake (AZ) and with Ohio Governor John Kasich and if none of them bite he'll go to governors Charlie Baker (MA) or Larry Hogan (MD).

"We are thinking of and doing preliminary work to prepare for a primary run against Trump," Kristol said in an interview on Thursday. "People aren't going to say they will run against Trump unless they have the infrastructure but I've been trying to persuade people that it may not be that difficult."

If DDT is serious about ousting Trump, they should run someone in the general where they could possibly peel off some votes in enough states to throw the election to Bernie. Who would vote for Sasse, Flake or Kasich. Republicans who don't like Trump and a small number of bitter Hillary dead-enders who hate Bernie. The DDT candidate wouldn't win any states but could do Trump some harm around the edges in a few states if Trump continues getting worse as he's done since his first day in the White House.

Sasse, Flake and Kasich have shown interest, according to Kristol, but they've also echoed what they've said publicly which is that they are focused on serving their constituency and helping Republicans maintain their majorities in Congress throughout the congressional midterm elections.

Kristol is also readying a super PAC for 2020 GOP candidates which would allow his team to raise unlimited amounts of cash and push out campaign advertisements backing a particular nominee.

A spokesman for Sasse did not deny the two have spoken about a prospective 2020 run.

"I'm not going to comment on what other people decide to bring up in their personal conversations with the senator, but-- like we've said for a long time-- Ben doesn't pay any attention to the 2020 Washington rumor mill," James Wegman, a spokesman for Sasse, said.

...Kristol and his allies, including former New Hampshire GOP chairwoman Jennifer Horn, have been gauging voters on their receptiveness to a primary challenge against Trump.

"I think it's likely that Donald Trump will have a primary and that it is entirely his own doing," Horn said in an interview. "His behavior as president is damaging and demeaning to the presidency. I believe it has damaged our nation."

While their internal polls continue to reflect Trump's growing popularity within the Republican Party, there are many, particularly in New Hampshire, who say it's time for someone to step up to battle Trump. Kristol pointed to the latest public poll as an example of what they're seeing in the Granite State.

The poll by the New Hampshire Journal found that 4 in 10 Republicans surveyed believe a GOP challenger to Trump "would be a good thing," while 56 percent of overall respondents supported the idea. Trump lost the state by under a point to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.

New Hampshire. I remember that state in 2016. Hillary barely scraped by-- 348,521 (47.6%) to 345,789 (47.2%). But go back to the primaries. Bernie didn't just beat Hillary overwhelmingly 151,584 (60.4%) to 95,252 (38.0%). He also drew far more votes than Trump that day. Trump, though he won the primary, took just 100,406 votes-- 51,000 fewer than Bernie. Kasich (44,909 votes) was the only other Republican who did semi-decently in the state-- and Bernie alone beat Trump and Kasich combined. Just sayin'.

Señor Trumpanzee Finally Gets His Witch Hunt

The most dysfunctional and chaotic regime in American history is now breaking down entirely, as Trump sets employees against one another, like some Orwellian nightmare. They are scouring Bob Woodward's new book, Fear, line by line to see if they can identify anyone who has been disloyal to the would-be Führer. Speaking of which, in 1934 there was no going back for Germany when Hitler changed the Reichswehreid, the military pledge , to the Führereid. The original:

I swear loyalty to the Reich's constitution and pledge, that I as a courageous soldier always want to protect the German Reich and its legal institutions, (and) be obedient to the Reichspräsident and to my superiors.

The shiny new authoritarian version:

I swear by God this holy oath, that I want to offer unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, and be prepared as a brave soldier to risk my life for this oath at any time.

Trump is going batshitcrazy over the Woodward book and is lashing out in every direction. CNN reported that "he's privately on a mission to determine who did-- and didn't-- talk to Woodward." Who's going to stop him? Lindsey Graham? Chuck Grassley? Ben Sasse? I wouldn't count on it.

Two officials who have spoken directly to the President say he is pleased with the denials offered by chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

In Trump's eyes, what makes or breaks aides who are reported to have made disparaging comments about him is how strongly they push back on the accusations.

But he is also taking note of the silence from several other former administration officials.



"He wants to know who talked to Woodward," one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity amid the highly tense atmosphere in the West Wing in the wake of the book.

The search for leakers inside the administration contrasts with the White House's defense that the book was fueled by "disgruntled employees," offered by press secretary Sarah Sanders and others.

One source close to the White House said people inside the administration are "frustrated because they know it's true."

Trump has talked openly with allies about his suspicion that former national security adviser H.R. McMaster cooperated, suggesting that McMaster likely turned over his notes to Woodward. The President has aired a similar belief about Gary Cohn, the former chief economic adviser.

Both men, of course, play key roles in the book.

The President is directing the response strategy personally, officials say, in consultation with top communications official Bill Shine and other aides. At this point, it seems unlikely that anyone is immediately fired because of the book, one official says, because that would "lend credence to a book he is trying to discredit."

...[T]he White House's emerging strategy to push back against Woodward's reporting seems to be going after those former officials suspected of sharing documents and stories, according to several people familiar with the game plan.

"You don't discredit Bob Woodward. You discredit the motives of the people" who provided the information, one person said.

Evidently caught off guard by the level of detail in the book, White House officials were soliciting advice from allies on how to respond to the book as recently as this weekend, a person familiar with those conversations said. One Republican who Trump doesn't think of as an ally-- although he votes for all Trump's crap, is Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. He was on the Hugh Hewitt Show today: "The drama of this op-ed, the drama of the Woodward book, the drama of the Omarosa tapes, the drama of Cohen, the drama of Manifort, the drama of just the three-ring circus that is the White House almost every day, I think that it exhausts the American people. And I know that the founders would regard anything like this as you know, really unhelpful. You don’t run the country as a soap opera."

Perhaps Senators Who Are Uncomfortable With Trump Turning The U.S. Into A Banana Republic, Should Stop Behaving Like Banana Republicans

Nancy Ohanian: Emperor With Fig Leaf

Yesterday, Bernie was at an AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he told the crowd that Señor Trumpanzee is a "pathological liar." What's the difference between a pathological liar and a congenital liar? Bernie also reminded the folks that Trump "works night and day on behalf of his fellow billionaires... And most reprehensible, we have a president who is not doing what almost every president in American history has done: When you make it into the Oval Office, you understand you’ve got a sacred responsibility to bring the American people together. Today we have a president who for cheap political reasons is trying to divide us up."

Trump spent the day pouting and tweeting his regular hateful bullshit. Like, for example, this:

I mean, what's wrong with this jackass (his middle name)? I'm not a Jeff Sessions fan, but compared to Trump he seems like a normal human being. Trump thinks the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are supposed to be weaponized to serve his whims and political agenda. He was bitching about Chris Collins (R-NY) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the first and second members of Congress to have endorsed him being indicted for serious crimes because they are "two very popular Republican Congressmen." He's complaining that "Two easy wins now in doubt." I'm sure he doesn't even know he's doing anything wrong. Because of course, to the 30-something percent of American voters who support him and to whom he caters, he isn't doing anything wrong. Only Jeff Sessions and the DOJ did something wrong. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the tweet by itself "may be an impeachable offense. This is such a disgrace. This is so contrary to the traditions of the Department of Justice." And recall, about a week or so ago he was whining that he needed Sessions to indict someone "from the other side."

No concept of what justice is all about. Sam Nunberg, a former aide, reported that when he tried to read the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to Trump, and only got as far as the 4th Amendment before Trump started fiddling with his lip. He's eyes rolled back in his head and the session was over. Trump always lies and says he finished at the top of his class at Wharton but one of his professors, William T. Kelley has told people over and over that "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had." More recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump is "a moron," which upset Trump so much that he challenged Tillerson to a IQ test battle and then fired him.

Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), who is known to be driven crazy by this kind of crap from Trump-- but is too frightened to ever do anything about it but whine-- was whining yesterday that "The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice-- one for the majority party and one for the minority party. These two men have been charged with crimes because of evidence, not because of who the President was when the investigations began. Instead of commenting on ongoing investigations and prosecutions, the job of the President of the United States is to defend the Constitution and protect the impartial administration of justice."

Yesterday, Trump ordered up a motorcade, went outside to get in a car, seemed dazed and confused, turned around and went back into the White House. I can't understand why he doesn't have a minder.

Earlier in the day than his attack on Sessions, he got into a little shadow boxing-- it being Labor Day-- with Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO. He was angry that Trumka was on his own TV station telling the truth about the Regime's poisonous behavior towards workers.

Ian Kullgren, writing for Politico in the middle of Trump's studio tweet storm against Trumka, reported that though the illegitimate moron "president" came into office "pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health. But almost two years in, the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs and line speeds in meat processing plants, among others. Trump's deregulatory moves on worker safety are at odds with his public stance as a champion of working class Americans, but consistent with his naming two management-side attorneys bent on rolling back economic protections for workers to the National Labor Relations Board, which regulates labor unions, and with his nominations of two reliably pro-management jurists to a now-Republican-majority Supreme Court that recently dealt a heavy financial blow to public-employee unions." That was one of the items that Trumka brought up on Fox.

Since Trump took office, OSHA also scrubbed a running list of worker deaths from its home page.

A notable exception to the administration’s resistance to worker-safety regulation was its decision to defend in court an Obama-era rule regulating crystalline silica-- a mineral dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments. After some initial delays, the rule took effect for most employers in June.

That action was more in tune with Trump's earlier rhetoric. "We need regulations for safety and environment and things,” President-elect Trump assured workers at an Indianapolis air-conditioner plant in December 2016. “We want to protect our workers,” President Trump repeated one year later in a speech touting the cancellation or delay of 1,500 regulatory actions.

At EPA, Trump officials are working on new rules to limit asbestos exposure as part of a congressionally mandated update to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. On its face, it would seem to be strengthening safety.

But advocates worry that the rules, intended by Congress to limit asbestos, could open the door to new products containing the toxin.

EPA’s significant new use rule, proposed in June, lists 14 uses of asbestos that would trigger scrutiny by EPA. All were used at one time but have been halted by industry voluntarily, said Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s science and technology office.

But the rule doesn’t require every new use of asbestos to be approved by the EPA, though advocates believe Congress gave the agency authority to do so. That means a company conceivably could develop at new use for asbestos and not have to notify the agency, said Southerland, who resigned in 2017.

“You never know what industry is going to come up with,” Southerland said. “They could want to use it to create new chemicals in the future.”

In addition, the EPA’s proposal for evaluating asbestos risks doesn’t consider so-called legacy hazards-- for example, particles of asbestos insulation or asbestos tiles that could be inhaled by workers when removed. That means workers could be more highly exposed than the general public if and when the EPA approves new uses.

“What the Trump EPA has done is essentially cooked the books to undervalue the risks posed by asbestos,” said Scott Faber, a top lobbyist for the Environmental Working Group, which has opposed a variety of Trump policies. “You don’t need to be a toxicologist to understand that you can’t determine whether a chemical is safe or not if you don’t understand the whole picture.”

In industry and industry, the regime is just telling owners and management to regulate themselves, something that has always cost workers' lives, a risk Trump-- though not Trumka-- funds acceptable.

Sasse v Señor Trumpanzee In Nebraska?

How horrible would this be-- for the country?

Ben Sasse (R-NE) is a lot of hot air when it comes to his criticism of Señor Trumpanzee. He's like a barking toy poodle from Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska. For all the heartfelt late night Facebook posts yipping and yapping about Trump's disgustingness, Sasse's Trump adhesion score is 87.7%, quite a bit Trumpier than Rand Paul's, Bob Corker's, Mike Lee's, Lisa Murkowski's, John McCain's, Jeff Flake's or Susan Collin's. Not that that stopped publication of a melodramatic puff piece by Alex Isenstadt in Politico yesterday. He's trying to create a stir for the sales of a book coming out in October but already on sale at Amazon now, Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal. Isenstadt note that Sasse has refused to "bow down" to the illegitimate "president" that Putin installed in the White House and that Trump still hasn't "publicly flogged" the Nebraska senator. They should make a TV about it. "As the 'never Trump' faction of the Republican Party dwindles to a lonely few," wrote Isenstadt in his sleep Saturday night, "the Nebraska senator has shown little interest in backing down-- leaving him vulnerable to a Trump-fueled primary challenge in 2020, when he’s up for reelection." Oh my God! Oh my God! "[H]e might launch a Hail Mary bid for president rather than seek another term in the Senate-- promises to be the next intra-GOP drama." Not even worthy of an LOL... unless Sasse votes NO on the Trump SCOTUS nominee-- which not one single person in the universe thinks he will even consider doing-- not ONE.

Isenstadt's big scoop: Trump once referred to Sasse as "that guy." Let me get some smelling salts; I'll be right back.

[A]t a time when Trump has moved aggressively to consolidate the Republican Party behind him-- and get rid of his enemies-- some of the president’s staunchest backers are eager for him to take a hard line against the first-term senator.

"I just don't think Sasse has been a Trump supporter and I don't think he's been a good representative of the state because of that," said Debby Brehm, a Lincoln real estate executive who was a delegate at the 2016 Republican National Convention and served as a “Nebraskans for Trump” co-chair.

Brehm, who supported Sasse during his 2014 general election bid, said she was interested in recruiting a primary opponent to unseat the senator.

"Trump won our state handily and I think Sasse should get on board with that," she added. Trump carried Nebraska in 2016 by 25 points.

Sasse, a 46-year-old Harvard and Yale-educated former university president, has established himself as a fiery anti-Trump figure. During a Dec. 2015 speech on the Senate floor, he derided then-candidate Trump as a “megalomaniac strongman.” Later in the campaign, he called Trump “creepy” and said he was running to become a “king”; said he doesn’t think Trump has “any core principles”; and skipped Trump’s nominating convention to “instead take his kids to watch some dumpster fires.”

More recently, Sasse has called the president’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports “dumb,” and has described Trump’s escalating trade war with China “nuts.” His opposition to the tariffs is shared by other farm-state Republicans, though they’ve used far less pointed language.

...In a move that’s sure to further stoke speculation about a presidential campaign, Sasse has started a new tax-exempt political group, America 101, whose mission states: “We believe that in order to prepare ourselves for the challenges of decades to come, fundamental changes are needed. It’s time to get back to basics.”

Sure to stoke speculation? That description could just as easily be on Trump's website-- or on the website of any political in America, from Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders to Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell. Sasse refused to be interviewed for the Politico puff piece. If Sasse, or any other congressional Republicans hope to use Trump's growing toxicity against him, the way Democrats are doing, they better start with some high-profile votes now that show their foresight and courageousness.



Better news in Nebraska: Kara Eastman, the Omaha progressive who won the primary against the DCCC-backed Blue Dog, Brad Ashford, is in a statistical tie with Republican incumbent Don Bacon. Today she was endorsed by People for the American Way, adding to a long list of respected organizations inside and outside the district-- from Panned Parenthood, NOW, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Justice Democrats to Move On, Climate Hawks Vote, NARAL, DFA, the Working Families Party and, of course, Blue America, despite continued sabotage from the DCCC, which should be supporting all Democratic Party primary winners, not grousing about and undermining progressives beating their Blue Dogs and New Dems.

Are Trump's Concentration Camps For Immigrant Children Going To Further Damage The GOP Brand?

Meet Jesuit priest, James Martin author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage and Building a Bridge. He's also an editor of the Jesuit magazine America. You may know him for his appearances on Colbert's show. He has a lot of influence in the Vatican and it's worth reading between the lines in the tweet storm above. It's also worth reading Barbara Bush's Washington Post OpEd from Sunday night, Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’. "I live in a border state," she wrote. "I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history... "Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents-- and to stop separating parents and children in the first place."

A few hours earlier White House communications director Stephanie Grisham announced that Melania "hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart." Both sides of the aisle? Really. Her husband, Señor Trumpanzee, keeps asserting the child stealing and incarceration was forced on him by some imaginary Democratic law, instead of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions' "zero tolerance" policy meant to "send a message."

[O]ver the weekend his secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, flat-out denied that such a policy existed.

"We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period," Nielsen tweeted.

But the Department of Homeland Security does separate children from their parents at the border, and it just put out a press release about it on Friday, explaining its new "zero tolerance" policy for border crossers. And why have they been building concentration camps (that are now filled with children)? And why is Trump's policy tearing his own party apart?

Yesterday AP reported that Trump's ugly and inhumane policy "is also starting to divide Republicans and their allies as Democrats turn up the pressure." Susan Collins (R-ME) has signaled she won't work with the Democrats to fix anything but-- always trying to have it both ways-- said "What the administration has decided to do is to separate children from their parents to try to send a message that if you cross the border with children, your children are going to be ripped away from you. That’s traumatizing to the children who are innocent victims, and it is contrary to our values in this country."

Former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said in a weekend interview that the child separation interview could be dangerous for Trump. He said the president “should be immediately fixing this problem.”

“This is a fuse that has been lit,” he said. “The president is going to get hurt by this issue if it stays out there very, very long.”

The signs of splintering of GOP support come after longtime Trump ally, the Rev. Franklin Graham, called the policy “disgraceful.” Several religious groups, including some conservative ones, have pushed to stop the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents.

Trumpanzee is meeting with House Republicans today and said he'll sign whichever bill Ryan gets through Congress, a vaguely conservative bill or the one the neo-Nazis from the Freedom Caucus and the crackpot Trumpists are pushing.

The Republicans are in a bit of a pickle here. A new poll from Ipsos shows that most Americans oppose Trump's policy, the Republican base are just fine with it. 27% of Americans-- normal people plus Republicans-- like the child grabbing policy. 46% of Republicans favor and just 32% disagree. Among normal people, there's a very different story. Just 14% of Democrats and 29% of Independents support support what Trump is doing. Congressional Republicans are feeling the pressure-- especially from independent voters who they have to win over to be reelected.

As Caitlin Owens explained at Axios, Ryan is allowing a vote on 2 different immigration bills this week: one written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte that the neo-Nazis and other Trumpists favor and a sort of compromise bill that's still hideous but that mainstream conservatives like a little more than what Goodlatte came up with. It's not likely either will pass. Ryan "agreed to do this to avoid the worst-case scenario of moderates filing a discharge petition-- a way of forcing votes on bills they don’t like-- which could have resulted in passage of the Democrats’ preferred immigration bill... Even the optimists say that the compromise bill’s chance of passage is probably in Trump’s hands: He alone has the power to pressure reluctant House Republicans into voting for it. (Democrats are unlikely to support it.)"

Today the Economist suggested that people who really want to raise the stakes in this scriptural to-and-fro might consider turning to a verse in Matthew’s Gospel which warns of the dire consequences that may befall anybody who does spiritual harm to children: "If anyone causes one of these little ones…to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

Paul Clements, the progressive running for the southwest Michigan congressional seat occupied by Trump enabler Fred Upton, put it like this: "We are a nation of immigrants. So why are we watching ICE separate families and detain human beings in inhumane conditions? Why are we watching them put frightened children in mass detention for months at a time?

This isn't how we ought to respond to immigrants and refugees. Regardless of your political leanings, human beings shouldn't be treated this way--especially when there's a better way:

• A pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have not committed crimes after entering the United States
• Permanent DACA protections
• Compassionate and sound refugee policies following international human rights standards and emphasizing cooperation with other nations

We need elected leaders in Congress who will stand up and say no to this inhumanity, and demand accountability and decency."

I wonder how long it's going to take Republican rubber stamps too scared of Trump to do their jobs to get this message. American voters sure have. Now it's just a matter of how many Republican congressmen are going to be looking for jobs on K Street in 2019. Lobbyists already love old-timers like Upton but what are Trump enablers like Steve Russell in Oklahoma, Ron Estes in Kansas, Don Bacon in Nebraska and Dan Donovan in New York going to do to make a living?

This reporting won't make Trumpanzee happy if someone reads it to him: GOP Governor Charlie Baker said Monday that "members of the Massachusetts National Guard will not be sent to the Mexican border to assist the Trump administration in what the Republican called its 'cruel and inhumane' policy separating migrant children from their families."

A few Republicans are starting to criticize Trump. Florida governor Rick Scott, in a tough Senate race, told the Tampa Bay Times on Monday that "What the country is witnessing right now is the byproduct of the many years of bi-partisan inaction and failure from our federal government. Let me be clear-- I do not favor separating families. Washington is to blame for this by being all talk and no action, and the solution is to secure the border. Anyone seeking to enter our country illegally needs to be sent back, with the exception of those who are truly seeking asylum from an oppressive regime." A Miami area Republican congressman, Mario Diaz-Balart, went a little further, though, like Scott, was too frightened to mention Señor T: "It is totally unacceptable, for any reason, to purposely separate minor children from their parents. Any and every other option should be implemented in order to not separate minors from their parents, which I believe is unconscionable. We cannot allow for this to continue happening, and it must stop. I continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that the provision included in this week's immigration bill puts an end to this cruel practice."

Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did mention Trump by name though: "President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call." Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse (R): "Family separation is wicked. It is harmful to kids and absolutely should NOT be the default U.S. policy. Americans are better than this... The administration’s decision to separate families is a new, discretionary choice. Anyone saying that their hands are tied or that the only conceivable way to fix the problem of catch-and-release is to rip families apart is flat wrong. There are other options available to them. The other options are all messy (given that some overly prescriptive judges have limited their administrative options), but there are ways to address this that are less bad than the policy of family separation they’ve chosen. There are many senior folks in the administration who hate this policy, and who want to do something better. But some in the administration have decided that this cruel policy increases their legislative leverage. This is wrong. Americans do not take children hostage, period... The President should immediately end this family separation policy."

UPDATE: Who's Taking Care Of The Kidnapped Kids?

Guys like Deputy Sheriff Jose Nunez, a 10-year veteran of the Bexar County Sheriff's Department. According to the Dallas Morning News Nunez (not Devin Nunes this time) sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl and threatened the victim's mother into staying quiet about the assaults.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said the girl had been assaulted multiple times over the course of several months. The mother is an undocumented immigrants and Nunez said she'd be deported if she told anyone.

Who Thinks Congress' Function Is To Write Señor Trumpanzee A Series Of Blank Checks?

Monday morning, NPR and Marist released a new poll that looked into some questions beyond just Señor Trumpanzee's cascading disapproval numbers. For example, 61% of voters don't trust the Trumpanzee Regime, 68% don't trust the Republican-led Congress and a full 70% say that since Trumoanzee somehow managed to get into the White House, "the overall tone and level of civility in Washington between Republicans and Democrats has gotten worse." Now you know.

A new week begins! Let's look at two responses to the Regime's and Congress' determination-- some believe suicidal determination-- to strip over 20 million Americans of healthcare so they can give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. First from a "respected" Republican senator, Trump-critic and GOP agenda supporter Ben Sasse of Nebraska and then one of the hack Fox News commentators, Lisa Kennedy Montgomery (or, if you used to listen to Nirvana and Depeche Mode on KROQ back in the day, just... Kennedy). Sunday, Sasse was on CNN's State of the Union. He's the guy who seems to have persuaded Trumpanzee to do an about face on his insistence for "repeal and replace" and go back to the original GOP plan of just "repeal" and see what can be done sometime down the road in never-never land. Sounds like a real right-wing jackass, right? He is-- always has been too. BUT... Sasse is known nationally, thanks to our media geniuses, for serially being offending by Trump's manners and speaking out against his crudeness, even as he pushes Trump's murderous agenda forward on every front.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said Sunday that he is troubled by President Donald Trump's latest attacks on the news media because he is concerned about the danger of "weaponizing distrust," which can harm the freedoms that define a democracy.

"There's an important distinction to draw between bad stories or crappy coverage and the right that citizens have to argue about that and complain about that and trying to weaponize distrust," Sasse said in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union. "The First Amendment is the beating heart of the American experiment, and you don't get to separate the freedoms that are in there."

The Republican freshman senator's remarks come after Trump spent the past week relentlessly attacking the news media-- including CNN, MSNBC, CBS and the Washington Post-- in a barrage of tweets and at event honoring veterans Saturday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

"The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them," Trump said, without offering any evidence that journalists-- who cover every public remark made by the President-- have attempted to silence him.

"The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House," Trump said. "But I'm President and they're not."

Sasse added that while "(t)here are a whole bunch of particular journalists who should be called out for particular stories that aren't good enough," it is "not helpful to call the press the enemy of the American people"-- a direct reference to language used by the President to describe journalists.

Trump has referred to the media as "the enemy of the people" several times since taking office, telling the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last winter, "A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are-- they are the enemy of the people."

Trump used the same language in February, tweeting, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!"

Sasse said that while he agrees with Trump "that there's a lot of crappy journalism out there," if Americans are not open to hearing differing views, it's "going to be possible for people to surround themselves only with echo chambers and silos of people that already believe, only believe what they believe."

"We differ about really big and important things in this country and then we come together around the First Amendment, which is an affirmation of the fact that people are free before government," he added. "I mean, this is the Fourth of July weekend. The Declaration of Independence is pretty dang clear about this-- that we think government is just our shared tool to secure those rights."

The morally outraged and sagacious Señor Sasse has a ZERO ProgressivePunch crucial vote score for the entire 6 months since Trump got into the White House. He hasn't voted against a single Trump nominee nor has he been at variance with a single Trump initiative. (Like Sasse, most Senate Republicans just serve as rubber stamps for every single thing Trump wants. Only 16 Republicans have voted at least once-- and most of them, only once-- against something-- anything-- Trump-related.)

I don't know where Fox News is on my TV-- and I haven't heard Kennedy's voice since she was a KROQ dj but Think Progress reported a couple days ago that she was on-air excusing her party's decision to take healthcare away from over 20 million Americans-- thinning the herd-- as "progressive hysteria" that didn't really matter since "we're all," in her very, very, very GOP words, "going to die" anyway. "We’re all going to die. And they can’t predict--  there’s no way unless they are absolutely psychic and have a party line to heaven, they don’t know who’s going to die or when or how many people." Fox is so amazing. There wouldn't be a Trump-- couldn't be a Trump-- without it. Thanks, Bill Clinton for giving that to America, your most enduring legacy. How'd that deal work out for you?

Unless you live in the Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia Beach area, you probably never heard of Scott Taylor, another hapless Paul Ryan rubber stamp and unaccomplished backbencher, basically a waste of a congressional seat in a district Obama won twice but that the DCCC just keeps botching up. Last year Hillary lost to Trump there 48.8-45.4%. Taylor is a freshman, who last year defeated Democrat Shaun Brown, 61.3% to 38.5% in what everyone would agree is a swing district. Why that big disparity? Was it the DCCC's fault? Yeah. Brown raised $27,892 to Taylor's $839,485 for the open seat race. The DCCC spent zero on her race, hating her because she's a strong advocate of progressive policies and, worse in their eyes, a former Bernie delegate. It looks like she'll be running against Taylor again this year. Yesterday Taylor, who has voted in lockstep with Trump 100% of the time, was on CNN. When Alisyn Camerota asked him about Trump, his response was "I did not come on here to defend the president." No he's out on the media circuit to help push the idea that loyal Republicans have to give Trump a blank check... on everything. His vote score is ZERO, rare in a swing district. His ProgressivePunch voting record summary is pretty breathtaking:

Who thinks we need a more competent, better-led DCCC?

If We Had An Actual Democracy, Trump Would Be Repealed And Replaced In A Week... Just Based On His Healthcare Madness!

If your daddy was a crooked multimillionaire who left you a bundle, healthcare isn't that complicated... at least for yourself. You just go to the doctor-- even a silly one-- and you write a check. If an incompetent and ignorant son of a crooked multimillionaire hoodwinks enough people to get elected president, healthcare gets more complicated. Who knew?

All that nonsensical babble about the best healthcare, more for less and guarantees to not touch Medicare or Medicaid... all pure hot air to sucker low-info, desperate voters. And it worked. Trump acquiesced to GOP predators Tom Price, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence come up with "his" plan? What could go wrong. Well, only 12% of Americans like what they've come up with for starters. The new Senate version, TrumpCare 3.0, is a bust. McConnell couldn't cobble together the 50 votes he needed to pass it. So far, it doesn't look like he was able to cobble together even 40 votes. So Trump seems to have bought into the Rand Paul-Ben Sasse plan-- just repeal the Affordable Care Act, kick 32 million Americans off healthcare and come up with "something" at some point in the future... somehow. That plan won't even get 12%.

Señor Trumpanzee, wrote Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear for the NY Times "gave his blessing in a Twitter post after a Republican dissatisfied with the current repeal bill, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, floated it as a backup plan. Mr. Sasse sent a letter to the president and made a pitch on Fox News on Friday as an agreement on a new version of the Senate’s repeal bill remained elusive." Rand Paul, the Koch Brothers and other predatory Republicans who are eager to thin out the herd, have been for this all along and they applauded the meeting of the tiny minds, "presenting a new headache to Senate leaders who are trying to focus their conservative and moderate troops on finding a compromise. Republican leaders in Congress had embraced the repeal-now-replace-later mantra in January, envisioning legislation that would end the Affordable Care Act in several years as they work on a replacement. But that plan was blown up quickly when Mr. Trump publicly demanded a replacement be adopted simultaneously. Since then, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have meticulously set up a timeline using special Senate rules to fulfill Mr. Trump’s repeal-and-replace wishes."

But Señor Trumpanzee has changed his drug-addled mind again. The radical right Republicans seem to have freaked out this week when more mainstream GOPers "veered away from their original approach and said they were discussing whether to keep a tax imposed by the Affordable Care Act on the investment income of the most affluent Americans. The revenue could be used to increase insurance subsidies for lower-income people." To the far right, that would mean war.

In his letter to the president, Mr. Sasse said that if a deal on a revised health care bill had not been struck by the time the Senate returns from its Fourth of July recess on July 10, Mr. Trump should call on Congress to “immediately repeal as much of Obamacare as is possible” under the rules that must be followed to avoid a filibuster, with a one-year delay on the repeal bill’s implementation.

Then, he said, lawmakers should get to work on replacing the health law, and should scrap their planned August recess.

“On the current path, it looks like Republicans will either fail to pass any meaningful bill at all, or will instead pass a bill that attempts to prop up much of the crumbling Obamacare structures,” Mr. Sasse wrote. “We can and must do better than either of these-- both because the American people deserve better, and because we promised better.”

...Subsidies in the Senate bill were already beginning to look like those in the Affordable Care Act, which are tied to a person’s income and local insurance costs. However, the Senate subsidies are less generous than those under current law.

The repeal bills written by House and Senate Republicans would both provide tens of billions of dollars in assistance to health insurance companies to help stabilize insurance markets and hold down premiums. Many of the same Republicans attacked such payments, when made by the Obama administration, as a bailout for the insurance industry.

But as senators tried to come to an agreement, Mr. Trump effectively tossed in a distraction that may not be possible anyway. This winter, Congress passed a budget resolution for the current fiscal year that included special parliamentary language that allows passage of one health care bill without the possibility of a filibuster in the Senate. If senators use that language to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement, Congress would have to go through the entire process again, with another budget, another set of instructions and now a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But the parliamentary language-- known as reconciliation instructions-- in the next budget was supposed to ease passage of an overhaul of the tax code, not health care.

Besides, a clean repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement could have even more trouble clearing the Senate than the current effort.

Mr. Trump’s foray on Twitter only underscored to some Republicans how inconsistent he has been as a partner. In May, he cheered passage of a House plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, only to later denounce the House bill as “mean.”

Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have also vacillated over how to sequence the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

In December, House Republican leaders outlined an extended timetable to repeal now, replace later, only to watch Mr. Trump reject that in January as unacceptable.

“It’ll be repeal and replace,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably, the same day, could be the same hour.”

Trump is certainly confused about government's role in healthcare. North Carolina congressional candidate Matt Coffay definitely isn't. He's a dedicated single-payer advocate and it's part of the platform he's running on-- against anti-healthcare fanatic Mark Meadows. Last night Matt told us that "Meadows is largely responsible for the provisions in the House health care bill that will allow insurance companies to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions. He pushed for a massive Medicaid cut. He's responsible for the 23 million people who will lose health care coverage, including more than 100,000 people here in our district alone. He falsely believes that this trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy will somehow lead to better health care. Well, he's wrong. My position is simple: we need to ensure that every single person in this country has access to quality health care. We need Medicare for All. When I'm in Congress, one of my first acts will be to co-sponsor HR 676, the House Medicare for All bill. It's long past time we joined every other developed country on the planet and created a universal health care system." You can support Matt's campaign by tapping on the Blue America thermometer on the right.

GOP Senators Still Struggling With The Consequences Of Voting For The Hated TrumpCare Bill

Paid for by Mike Pence

Sunday afternoon we asked a question about Trump’s deranged, uncontrolled vengefulness in regard to the GOP’s ability to hold onto the crucial Nevada Senate seat of Dean Heller who has flatly stated he won’t vote for TrumpCare. A very shady Trump/Pence controlled SuperPAC, America First Policies, announced they would retaliate against Heller with a million dollars worth of TV, online ads and a very lame social media effort that has completely and hilariously backfired, tying him to Schumer and Pelosi, just about the worst thing you can say about a Republican in the claustrophobic little world of Trump die-hards. (By the way, it's illegal for Trump and Pence to be coordinating with a SuperPAC.) The goal is probably not to get Heller to change his vote-- he’s probably been granted dispensation by Myrtle the Turtle in light of his uphill reelection prospects-- as much as it is to punish him and to warn other Republicans-- particularly Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH) Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK)-- not to mess with Señor Trumpanzee. Trump despises Heller, because Heller told the media he won’t vote for him in the 2016 election, and doesn’t care if he’s jeopardizing his seat or not. He just wants revenge, something driving McConnell-- who threw his hands up in disgust today-- insane, driving him to postpone the vote until... they can round up enough Republicans to vote for this turd. Meanwhile, McConnell made sure tp blame it all on Trump's lack of ability as a closer.

America First Policies has already launched a social media campaign to turn Trump supporters against Heller for “standing with Pelosi” and warning him-- and other senators-- “If you’re opposed to this bill, we’re opposed to you.” The NRSC is supposedly furious at the White House and feel this is a pure Bannon move that plays directly into Trump’s infantile id. Trump is revealing in their discomfort since he blames them for the disaster his Regime has already turned into and for his inability to snap his fingers and get whatever he wants immediately and without question. One DSCC staffer told me this is completely demoralizing and that his wife is urging him to quit for the sake of his own emotional stability. “We’ve been spending an inordinate amount of energy trying to save this seat and-- poof, in one stroke, Bannon has destroyed all of our efforts… I doubt that even Collins or Portman will be bullied by this and I know for a fact that Murkowski won’t be.”

Others are blaming Mike Pence, since, as their chief fundraiser, he’s been in control of the America First Policies purse-strings and because Pence staffers are calling the shots for the group. The Pence people were chastised by Bannon for not being aggressive enough against the small handful of mainstream Republicans who opposed TrumpCare in the House and insisted America First Policies make up for it in the Senate, irrespective of the fact that senators are very prickly creatures who don’t take kindly to being pushed around, especially not publicly.

John Ralston was rather definitive about Heller’s situation. Heller, he wrote Sunday, “is dead. Five hundred days before voters decide his fate, Nevada’s senior senator needed a life preserver. So with his poll numbers in the subterranean region, below President Trump’s in Nevada, Heller grabbed onto one named Brian Sandoval, an immensely popular governor. It’s hard to describe the surreality of Friday’s scene in which Sandoval, who was the first GOP governor to expand Medicaid and who has credited it with putting 200,000 more Nevadans on the health care rolls, protecting Heller, who has more than once called for a phase-out of the program. Suddenly, the protean Heller was against the cessation of expanded Medicaid after he was for it, against the new Obamacare repeal after saying he wanted to get to yes, and against losing his Senate seat after being willing to give it up to run for the job his new protector holds. (Heller really wants to be governor, not U.S. senator.)”

Politics is no different than life: If you try to please everyone, you please no one.

And that is where Heller is now: He has a base problem because he was similarly equivocal during 2016 about the president and now is on record opposing the bill Donald Trump supports. And even though he is now on the side that indies and Democrats like on health care, they don’t trust him to stick to his word.

…People can say that Heller did this out of raw political expediency and doesn’t believe anything he said Friday. He has earned that skepticism… [S]ome of Heller’s biggest backers are billionaires who work on Las Vegas Boulevard South, and they can be none too happy that their man just came out against their tax cuts.

A billionaire here and a billionaire there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money against him… Of course, any anger directed at Heller by these donors is foolish. If they would pause counting their money for a few minutes and stop obsessing about how much more lucre they need, they might realize that the only chance to keep that seat in GOP hands is for Heller to do what he did.

Heller is a mainstream conservative, what the media loves calling a “moderate” (which he really isn’t). No one will ever refer to Iowa freshman senator Joni Ernst as a moderate or as remotely mainstream. She’s a far right walking freak show who has been firmly allied with Trump. But she’s also coming to grips with the swingy nature of her state and has been noticeably quiet on whether or not she’s support the Senate version ion TrumpCare. No one ever mentions her name as someone who might not. But Sunday The Hill reported that she’s decided to poll Iowans on how she should vote. Iowans strongly oppose TrumpCare so this should be an interesting-- and probably dishonest-- exercise.

She e-mailed Iowans-- which Iowans I’m not certain-- with a typical GOP talking points slam against the Affordable Care Act, hoping, no doubt, for a vote in favor of TrumpCare. I doubt we’ll ever find out the results of her poll and no one expects her to vote against it no matter what. Meanwhile, next door in Nebraska, the very conservative and very anti-Trump senator, Ben Sasse was at the Koch brothers summit over the weekend and echoed their line that TrumpCare isn’t conservative enough. He says he’s not committed to voting for it. I would call it extremely unlikely that Sasse will vote no.