Mark Sanford Says He Doesn't Want To Be A Human Piñata, But...

About 3 weeks ago, former South Carolina governor and congressman announced he would probably be announcing a primary challenge to Trump. A practiced liar and career-long phony-- kind of a southern, more genteel version of Trump-- Sanford made a concerted attempt to sound authentic and accessible in his campaign video: "You can track me down at 843-737-1888..." I called and spoke with his secretary for 10 minutes. She said she's have him call me back. It's been 3 weeks; still waiting.

This morning he officially announced he's running on Fox News (video below). His campaign theme is "Sanford: Fiscal Conservative."

[The announcement] comes less than 24 hours after the South Carolina Republican Party voted nearly unanimously not to hold a GOP primary election in the state next year in a sign of loyalty to Trump-- a move being replicated by three other states.

But Sanford has indicated he’s aware of the daunting challenges ahead and the extent to which he will be marginalized by members of his own party, including those in his home state.

He said he plans to run on a platform of restoring fiscal discipline to government decision-making, arguing that politicians-- including the current president-- are doing little to protect the country from an economic meltdown under the weight of the rising national debt.

“No one ‘leading’ in Washington is leading, or even speaking of, our financial predicament,” Sanford said in his email message.

“Presidential races focus our attention to politics and have historically been the stage on which we debate where we go next as a country,” he continued. “If we don’t do it this year, we put that national debate off until the next presidential election cycle. I don’t believe we have five more years before inaction guarantees a day of financial reckoning.”


...In declaring his candidacy, Sanford emphasized he would not make the race personal to Trump. It’s a notable strategy given that the president has gone out of his way to publicly criticize and humiliate Sanford-- on Twitter, at campaign rallies in South Carolina and even in front of Sanford’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill.

“Can you believe it? I’m at 94% approval in the Republican Party, and have Three Stooges running against me,” Trump tweeted most recently, referring to former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, two other Republicans pursuing primary challenges. “One is ‘Mr. Appalachian Trail’ who was actually in Argentina for bad reasons.”


...Sanford’s desire to make the race issue-focused could ultimately have the effect of failing to energize and mobilize disenchanted Republicans who desperately want to beat Trump in large part because they find his character and behavior unbecoming of the presidency.

Walsh, for instance, has called Trump “completely unfit” for the office in which he serves-- a rallying cry the “Never Trump” contingent longs to hear from one of their own.

Sanford, in contrast, recently told NBC that while he didn’t believe Trump deserved a second term in office, he would still vote for Trump in 2020 if the president gets re-nominated.

As of Sunday, it was still unclear who, if anyone, Sanford has hired to help run his campaign, beyond volunteers or a couple of communications aides.

Members of the close-knit team he fostered during his previous political endeavors have said they don’t plan to join him on this campaign. In a sign of what support he’ll get from fellow South Carolina Republicans, a crowd of conservatives heckled him in late August when he attended U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan’s annual Faith and Freedom Barbecue in Anderson.

It was the the says after my primary loss last June that a buddy of mine called and said 'God just cleared your calendar for a reason; I know what it is." But, no, the buddy didn't want Sanford to come over to help him re-paint his house. He told him God wanted him to primary Señor Trumpanzee. So he is-- on one issue-- the federal deficit. And Trump immediately dubbed him, along with Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, "the three stooges." The GOP, now the Trump Party, reacted with hostility. On Saturday, the South Carolina Republican Party declared there would be no primary next year and Kansas and Nevada are doing easily manipulated causes instead of primaries. The Arizona GOP has also promised the Trump campaign that they will do something to prevent any expression of negativity towards Trump.

"They're more worried than they let on," said Bill Kristol, a #NeverTrump Republican who is trying to encourage primary challengers.

"If you are confident, if you're Donald Trump, if these are just minor irritants, you know what, you beat them all, you crush them all in the primaries and everyone says, 'Wow, look how strong Donald Trump is,' " Kristol said. "If you're shutting down primaries, you're a little nervous about how the dynamic of these primary challenges could go."

Kristol's hope is that one of these long-shot candidates starts to gain traction-- or that someone else gets into the race with an even better chance-- and that somehow, Trump is denied the nomination.

Kristol readily admits "that's unlikely." So a secondary goal is to bruise Trump enough to hurt his chances come November 2020.

That's what happened, most recently, in 1992, when Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary and earned enough delegates to get a prominent speaking slot at the convention. Bush lost that November to Bill Clinton. Since then, presidents of both parties have successfully avoided a similar fate.

Joe Walsh Knows He's Not Going To Be President-- What Does He Want?

More Republicans are starting to realize that the existence of their party-- as well as their country-- is in jeopardy because of the dangerous psychotic narcissist they put in the White House. Some-- take Scaramucci-- realize Biden is virtually a Republican in many of his views and they can back him instead, while staying in the GOP. Teabagger and former far right congressman, Joe Walsh, on the other hand, has decided to primary Trump, more a publicly stunt than of any expectation of ever living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I don't doubt Walsh wishes he hadn't voted for Trump in 2016, picking who he thought was the lesser evil. "We have someone in the White House," he said in his campaign kickoff video (above), "who we all know is unfit, someone who lies virtually every time he opens his mouth. And someone who places his own interests above the nation's interests at every single turn. We cannot afford four more years of Donald Trump. No way!" The video is an appeal to Republicans to be brave and stand up, even when that vast, vast majority of Republicans are thrilled with Trump and absolutely worship him. Trump is not an aberration; he is the personification of what Republicans have turned their party into.

"I'm a conservative," said Walsh. "Im running because Donald Trump is not who we are. In fact he's the worst of who we are." Depends how you define "we." He certainly is who Republicans are and who this era's conservatives are. He's not who most Americans are, if that's the direction Walsh was going with his appeal.

There's a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out which deals with who Americans think they are. 70% of respondents said they feel angry because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington, rather than it working to help everyday people get ahead.

There were some questions about race relations worth looking at. First was how race relations stand right now:

• WHITES

• very good- 6%
• fairly good- 34%
• fairly bad- 35%
• very bad- 21%

• AFRICAN AMERICANS

• very good- 5%
• fairly good- 14%
• fairly bad- 34%
• very bad- 47%

• HISPANICS

• very good- 8%
• fairly good- 28%
• fairly bad- 25%
• very bad- 36%

Here's another: "Since Donald Trump has been president, do you believe that race relations in the country have gotten better, gotten worse or stayed about the same? Start by comparing how whites, blacks and Latinos respond to "stayed about the same" question in relation to Trump's occupation of the White House.

• WHITES

• gotten better- 11%
• gotten worse- 47%
• stayed out the same- 41%

• ARICAN AMERICANS

• gotten better- 5%
• gotten worse- 86%
• stayed out the same- 9%

• HISPANICS

• gotten better- 7%
• gotten worse- 74%
• stayed out the same- 19%

Meanwhile the small number of Republican centrists still left in Congress are going through an identity crisis-- and worse-- that is helping persuade some of them-- and anyone even vaguely part of mainstream conservatism, like Sean Duffy (R-WI) this morning, to just give up and quit. As the GOP gets more and more radical and shrinks and shrivels, soon no one will be left but people like Steve King and Jean Cramer. Good? No, not at all. The Democratic Party leaders see that as an opportunity for more corruption and for embracing more conservatism. How long after that will it take for progressives to recognize the Democratic Party for what it (already) is?

It's Not Like If Trump Disappeared Everything Would Be Hunky-Dory With The GOP

Early Monday morning, the Wall Street Journal warned that Trump's government shutdown "is curtailing infrastructure projects, food-processing inspections and economic data used by Wall Street. But on a more micro level, it is showing signs of disrupting commerce as hundreds of thousands of federal workers missed out on their first payday of the closure late last week... While the economic gashes aren’t enough to derail the recovery, now in its 10th year, they appear to be at least temporarily diminishing the vigor of an expansion that was already projected to slow in 2019. Output is now expected to grow at a 2.2% pace in the first quarter, less than an estimated 3.1% growth recorded in 2018." A couple of hours later the Washington Post reported that Republicans are worried that the shutdown is doing the party some harm and is just one manifestation of "the difficult balancing act Senate Republicans will probably face over the next two years, trapped between a mercurial GOP president and an emboldened new House Democratic majority."

The Bulwark, a new neocon website, looked at it from a different perspective, running a throw-away piece calling for their readers to get ready for the Trump primary!. The list 5 who might take up the call: Jeff Flake (DEFCON 5), Nikki Haley (DEFCON 2), Jim Mattis (DEFCON 1), Mitt Romney (DEFCON 3) and Jon Kasich (DEFCON 4). "If Mattis were to run," wrote Jonathan Last, "it would be an existential threat to Trump because he would run not as an anti-Trumpite, but as a whistleblower. The message would be: I served this president. I was on the inside. I know what it looks like. And he’s not fit for office. It’s one thing to have some undersecretary of agriculture making that argument. Having it come from a beloved general who is regarded as one of the great military minds of his generation? Yikes." He's considerably less concerned by a Kasich challenge:

Funnily enough, Kasich probably helped Trump in 2016 by hanging around in the primaries and siphoning off anti-Trump votes that otherwise could have consolidated around Ted Cruz.

Also funnily enough, Kasich’s brand of centrist reform-ish conservatism is not all that far from Trump’s. (Never forget that Trump campaigned on leaving Social Security and Medicare untouched and said that repealing Obamacare the way Cruz wanted to would leave people “dying in the streets.”)

The difference, of course, is attitudinal. Kasich is laid-back and genial, so people take his centrism for cuckitude. Trump is crude and aggressive, so people take his centrism as True ConservatismTM.

As such, Kasich is probably the least-threatening mainstream challenger for Trump. By running to Trump’s left as an anti-Trumper, Kasich wouldn’t put any of Trump’s base in play. And many of the potential Kasich supporters may have already fled the GOP. So why have him this high on our list? Because he’s the most likely to actually run.

Most likely for sure. And Last may or may not have already read Kasich's Monday morning dire OpEd in USA Today, Republican Party is mired in the 1950s and ignores today's America at its peril, when he wrote that. Kasich doesn't seem to have much regard for the movers and shakers of his own party, earning them that they need to stop bitching and start doing stuff for people.

It’s a new year and almost two decades into a new century, yet so much about American life and our political leadership-- notably in my own Republican Party-- seems stuck in the 1950s. While nearly every aspect of the world around us has been changing, sometimes with breakneck speed, and while the complexion and complexities of our demographics have shifted so dramatically, those who fancy themselves as leaders are plodding far behind the march of time. Sadly, too many Americans are content to plod along with them.

Perhaps they think denial is protection from the change that swirls around them. No doubt they’re threatened by the new diversity of voices that have joined the public chorus, by the long-ignored problems that a new generation wants to solve, by an unsettled world that no longer follows America’s lead. But they’ve learned absolutely nothing from their skunking in the midterm elections. They didn’t watch, or chose to ignore, the new Congress being sworn in the other day. It was a more energetic, diverse and self-assured group than those chambers have seen before.

But ignoring change like that won’t stop it. And failing to find solutions to our problems will only lead to greater challenges down the road. A case in point: Opponents of Obamacare ask how such a thing came to be, oblivious to the fact that their own inaction is to blame. By ignoring giant holes in America’s health care system and failing to find a ways to fix them with hard work and compromise, they watched that vacuum filled with a behemoth they deplore.

Yet people like these at all levels of government find themselves caught on the same, well-worn treadmill time and again. By failing to come up with fresh ideas and real solutions for our most vexing problems, congressional Republicans, the White House and other power structures in Washington let those problems fester or reluctantly patch them up with half-baked solutions that only make things worse. That same change-ignoring inertia holds back progress in our states.

Think of the problems that cry out for solutions: health care, immigration, deficits and debt, income inequality, urban violence, drugs, climate and environment, free trade, prescription costs, infrastructure decay, cybersecurity, education and workforce readiness, student debt… how many pages do I have to go on?

These aren’t new problems, but many have grown worse. And none can be ignored any longer in a younger, more diverse and more demanding America that’s increasingly impatient with the old way of thinking. This emerging leadership won’t be put off, ignored or disenfranchised, but I’m confident that they will be open to new ideas and the kind of commonsense approaches that truly solve problems-- and solve them for all Americans, not just a privileged few.

In this changing world, successful leaders must look each problem squarely in the eye, listen to their customers, and realize how dramatically those customers have changed. No one will survive by practicing politics the way Sears or RadioShack practiced retail, stuck in the 1950s while the world moved on with Amazon, Uber and others who have broken the mold. For Republicans, this means breaking their own self-made mold of being naysayers instead of doers. It means designing market-driven, center-right solutions that actually solve problems while revealing their compassion.

Kasich, now an ex-governor, just signed with CNN as a senior political commentator (expect a Trumpanzee rant within 24 hours) and just hired United Talent Agency to represent him. The UTA press release, distributed Monday quotes Kasich saying he's excited to keep his voice active "across the world" and to share his experiences and observations "to help improve the lives of others." So will he run as a Republican or as an independent? UTA says it will "help Kasich navigate the next phase of his career in civic engagement, by continuing to inspire audiences to lead purpose-driven lives of service."

Guess who!

Everyone Is On The Edge Of Their Seat To See How The Trump Regime Finally Comes Crashing Down

By this weekend, even Fox viewers were finding out about Trump-- or at least his campaign-- conspiring to collude with the Russians. This Shep Smith segment on the video above could literally be on MSNBC or any other legitimate news outlet.

By last night everyone was going crazy over Greg Miller's story in the Washington Post about how Trump had concealed details of his meetings with Putin from senior officials in administration. Is that news? We didn't know that already? Yeah, Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Putin. Oh, but this... on at least one occasion he took "possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials." I guess that's new information, albeit probably not to Mueller. That episode was "after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson. There is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader over the past two years… Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference."

OK, that's kind of a big deal and maybe why right-wing journalist Stephen Hayes decided to explain to Post readers on Friday why his party needs to mount a primary challenge to Trump in 2020. Successful or not he wrote that "If ever there were a time for a serious intraparty challenge, it’s now. He has strong support from elements of the Republican base, but he has alienated virtually everyone else, especially those segments of the electorate that are growing the fastest. The ideal challenger would be a committed, articulate conservative-- maybe a governor, such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan, or a senator, such as Nebraska’s Ben Sasse-- who would make a case for limited government that will otherwise go unmade, and who would show voters that conservatism and Trumpism are not one and the same... The 2018 midterm elections were a clear and unmistakable rebuke of the chaos of his first two years as president. And it’s getting worse. Trump’s steady stream of lies has picked up over the past six months. His Twitter feed is more unhinged... There’s reason to believe this will all get worse over the next year. The Mueller investigation is testing whatever sanity Trump still possesses. Democrats controlling the House will use their newfound power to investigate every corner of the Trump administration-- an administration already marked by malfeasance and corruption."



And that brings us right to Andrew Sullivan's question at New York Magazine: Welcome to Act III of the Trump Tragedy: "When is the moment we can say that Trump has clearly gone over the line in erasing democratic and constitutional restraints on his personal power?" He posits it would be declaring a national emergency just because he can't get Congress to fund his vanity wall. "He couldn’t manage to get his wall funded," wrote Sullivan, "when his own party controlled the entire government. He even turned down a bipartisan offer to build a “wall” in return for a path to citizenship for Dreamers last year, because he wanted a reduction in legal immigration as well. He petulantly refuses to accept greater funding for border control and immigration enforcement if his symbolic wall isn’t part of the package." He warned that "We all knew this was coming. Our liberal democracy is in abeyance. We now wait to see what the replacement will be. It could come sooner than we think." OK, but how many acts in this play?

Republicans Have A Sense Of Foreboding About 2020-- And They Should

Trump still has a motley collection of apologists-- the Fox News crew, hate talk radio hosts, self-serving politicians, neo-Nazi crackpots and their partners in the white evangelical movement-- but there is no longer anyone with an ounce of intellectual integrity defending Trump or unwilling to admit that he is, far and away, the worst "president" in American history-- off the scale (or on an entirely different scale) relative to unworthy past presidents like Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Calvin Coolidge, George W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, James Buchanan, JohnTyler and Warren G. Harding. And now things are going to get even worse. Early Sunday morning, Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhei, writing at Axios, noted that with the departure of John Kelly, the tidal wave of fake news emanating from Señor Trumpanzee has "escalated." Kelly controlled the paper flow in and out of the Oval Office and that process has now collapsed into complete anarchy. [Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is running the United States government.]

Wednesday was Kelly's last formal day in the White House, but his influence had declined since he announced his departure on Dec. 8.

Since then, Trump has made several unusually specific factual assertions that were quickly shown to be inaccurate, suggesting more unvetted information may be reaching him than had been the case in the heyday of Kelly's control:

• Arguably the most notable one ... During Wednesday's devil-may-care, 95-minute Cabinet meeting, Trump said that back in 1979, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan "because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there." A Wall Street Journal editorial scolded: "We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President." [Watch Maddow explain what happened.]

• And then there's the president's depiction of how tariffs work. "China is paying us tremendous tariffs. We’re getting billions and billions of dollars of money pouring into the Treasury," he said Friday at a Rose Garden news conference. The N.Y. Times points out: "The United States does not send China a bill for the cost of tariffs, which are often passed on to American importers or consumers."

The Washington Post called the Cabinet meeting "a fact-checking nightmare." ...The president believes he pays no price for escalating inaccuracies, even ones that have been repeatedly debunked...With most of his human guardrails gone, the unvetted language of Trump's rallies is once again a staple of his governing.

Are congressional Republicans abandoning him in droves? Not yet. The first House votes of the new session are always rules packages and it's always a party line vote. 3 Republicans-- Tom Reed (NY), John Katko (NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)-- broke with their party and voted with Pelosi on her changes. Then came the appropriations bills to reopen the government without giving Trump money for his wall. You can rest assured he understood what this serious of votes meant better than the ones about the rules package. 8 Republicans abandoned him on all or some of the 3 roll calls-- Will Hurd (TX), John Katko (NY), Chris Smith (NJ), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Greg Walden (OR), Peter King (NY), Elise Stefanik (NY) and Fred Upton (MI). He'll notice. These was the percentage of the vote each of these members got in November (along with Trump's 2016 percentage):

• Will Hurd- 49.2% (46.4%)
• John Katko- 53.1% (45.3%)
• Chris Smith- 55.8% (56.8%)
• Brian Fitzpatrick- 51.3% (47.1%)
• Greg Walden- 56.5% (56.5%)
• Peter King- 53.3% (53.0%)
• Elise Stefanik- 56.7% (53.9%)
• Fred Upton- 50.2% (51.3%)

Upton, Katie, Hurd, Fitzpatrick and King are all seriously vulnerable for 2020 and have to walk a fine line between being seen as disloyal by Republicans and as too enabling by independents. All 5, perhaps all 7, will be targeted by the Democrats. On the Senate side, two Republicans up for reelection in blue-trending states, Susan Collins (ME) and Cory Gardner (CO), have called for reopening the government without money for Trump's wall. Matt Gorman who was this past cycle's NRCC communications director remarked that "You’re not just walking a tight rope, you’re eating, sleeping, and breathing on it."

This evening, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris reported for Politico that dozens of Republicans may cross the aisle and vote with Pelosi against Reump's government shutdown. "White House officials and Republican congressional leaders," they wrote, "worry that GOP support for the shutdown is eroding, weakening President Donald Trump’s hand as he seeks billions of dollars for a border wall that Democrats have vowed to oppose, according to GOP lawmakers and aides... Despite the White House PR blitz, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and other senior Republicans believe that 'a significant bloc' of House Republicans could vote with Democrats on the funding measures, according to GOP lawmakers and aides." McCarthy says between 15 and 25 will vote against Trump.

GOP leaders say they can keep that number below 55, a key threshold. That many Republican defections, coupled with all House Democrats, would reach 290 "yes" votes, a veto-proof majority. House Democrats can't overcome Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) refusal to bring up their bills, but such a vote would signal the House can override a Trump veto, a major blow to the president and his allies.

NBC News reported that "Cracks in the GOP ranks have already emerged as skittish Republicans, many of whom face difficult elections in 2020, have begun asserting their independence.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) who might have the most difficult race in in 2020 in a state that is edging more Democratic each election, was the first Republican to say that Senate should vote on the House bills to reopen the government.

He acknowledged the perils of opposing Trump but said that the president understands that he has to broaden his support if he’s going to win re-election, which would in turn help him.

“The president also has to win the states he either barely carried or didn’t carry to win re-election,” Gardner told NBC News in an interview. “While this (border funding fight) is maybe more a base-appealing measure, there are other issues he’s going to have to do to broaden the base.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another member up in 2020 who is looking for a solution to the stalemate, wrote an op-ed in The Hill floating the idea that agreement on a border wall could be coupled with relief for Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Democrats plan to try and put pressure on vulnerable Republicans on controversial issues by painting them as allies with a president who is increasingly less popular among independent voters, starting with the shutdown. The Democratic campaign arm in the Senate, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has already begun targeting potentially vulnerable Republicans like Gardner and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

“Senate Republicans own every miserable consequence of their pointless shutdown and those up for election this cycle have a choice: join Democrats in reopening the government by passing the legislation they’ve already supported or give voters another reason to throw them out of office in 2020,” said David Bergstein, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman.

Collins has said that she’d support the House bills if Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell brings them to the floor, telling reporters she sees “no reason why the bills that are ready to go, on which we’ve achieved an agreement, should be held hostage to this debate over border security.”

In the House, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who narrowly won his re-election and whose border spans 1,500 miles of the Texas border with Mexico, voted to reopen the government. Political strategists have said that the last-minute attention on immigration and the caravan by the president nearly cost Hurd his re-election.

And Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who easily won her re-election in her upstate New York district, is positioning herself as an independent voice in the Republican Party, said she voted for the bills because “I oppose government shutdowns.”

Perhaps an indicator of the challenge for some Republicans, two veteran Republican senators from red states-- Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Pat Roberts of Kansas-- have already announced that they won't seek re-election in 2020. Both are conservative senators who have a history of working across the aisle.

“I’ve learned that being true to myself and sticking to my principles will always win the day,” Roberts said in his speech announcing he would not run in 2020.

And others are seeking their own independence from the president. Freshman Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah started his congressional career with a strong statement of opposition to the president in an op-ed. While he doesn't have to run for re-election for six years, he does have to serve with a president who he said has fallen short of presidential leadership.

And Trump himself? He's probably going to have a primary coming. In an Op-Ed for CNN, Joshua Spivak, an academic at Wagner College, wrote that Trump may be a shoo-in for renomination but, "if history is any judge, an intraparty battle-- even if the challenger is unsuccessful-- could be devastating for the incumbent. No sitting President who sought his party's nomination has been denied it since Chester Arthur in 1884-- Arthur only got the office following President James Garfield's assassination. And presidents who face a serious re-election challenge have regularly gone down in defeat in the general election."

While the story of 19th century presidents is generally a tale of one-termers, presidents since McKinley have been very successful at winning re-election. It's notable that none of the 13 presidents (including the four VPs who moved up following the death of a president) who won re-election faced a serious primary challenge. They all were essentially handed the ballot line.

The presidents who did not win re-election tell a much different tale. Five presidents lost in their quest for another term (in the case of Gerald Ford, it was a first full term). Four of them-- all but Herbert Hoover-- faced a noteworthy challenge in their party's primary. In addition, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both pulled out of the race after seeing serious primary challengers emerge.

Even when sitting presidents prevailed in the primaries against serious contenders, their authority was often undermined and they went on to lose in the general election. In addition to William Howard Taft in 1912, this was the case for Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Ford, Carter and Bush all faced difficulties in their first terms, which created an opening for a primary challenger to run. But beyond those challenges, the primary fight forced the President to dirty his hands with politics early on, instead of staying above the fray and focusing on governing.

Even worse, it shows that the president does not have complete control over his party. A challenger also pushes the president to take on positions that alienate centrist voters at exactly the time he needs to be wooing independents in the center.

Trump, of course, has been dirtying his hands every minute of every day since he managed to worm his way-- likely with Russian help-- into the White House. A significant number of Americans don't consider him a legitimate president and would rather see him imprisoned or dead than back for a second term. He's been an Oval Office occupant like no other and you can count on his reelection campaign also being like no other. At this point I'd bet almost any of the leader Democratic contenders could beat him. Note: there's more than just beating him; it will all be for naught if we aren't also thinking about what come after him? Want your cake and the ability to eat it too? Please help bake the winning cake-- winning for 2020 through 2025.

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'.