"Bloodbath" Is Just A Scarier Way To Say "Wave" Or "Tsunami"-- And Whatever You Want To Call It, Trump Is Bringing One Down On The GOP

 

Congressional Republicans deserve what's headed their way. What's the opposite of pity? That's what I feel for them now. Call me coldhearted but by enabling Trump since 2016, men and women like Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Kelly Loeffler, Steve Daines, John Cornyn, Shelley Moore Capito, Ben Sasse, Miss McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Martha McSally, David Perdue... the whole rotten bunch of these traitorous swine. And that's just from the Senate. How sweet will it be to see the smiles wiped off the smug faces of the likes of Roger Williams, Donald J Bacon, John Katko, Doug LaMalfa, Chris Jacobs, Crooked Ken Calvert and Michael McCaul. And speaking of the last on that list of Trump lackeys... there's a song for him now:





In his election run-down piece for Vanity Fair yesterday, Peter Hamby looks at how Trump’s self-destructive candidacy could blow up the electoral map. If it does, it isn't because people necessarily give a damn about Biden-- although he seems to be growing on people-- as much as it is how much people have come to loath Trump. nd they loath the enablers as well. Hamby doesn't quite get the difference between a "blue wave," which will probably never happen (at least not in my lifetime) and an anti-red wave, which we saw in 2018 and we are seeing again now. So let him call it a "blue wave" if it makes him happy... Democrats’ massive fundraising, downballot energy, and seniors turning against Trump signal a potential blue-wave election with unexpected flips."

In 2012, one of the worst Blue Dogs in the House, Joe Donnelly, was looking at a sure thing: he was about to lose his newly gerrymandered Indiana seat. He decided that if he was going to lose, he would lose big. He made a Hail Mary pass and ran for the U.S. Senate instead. Very far right Republican primary voters had tossed out forever incumbent Richard Lugar and nominated an off-the-rails neo-fascist Richard Mourdock. Hail Mary indeed-- Donnelly won 1,268,300 (50%) to 1,126,727 (44%). Donnelly was never going to be more than a one-term senator and he tended to vote with the GOP an awful lot, but the Dems won an "impossible," largely because of Obama, who was at the top of the ticket-- and drew 1,152,887. Those people voted for Donnolly-- and so did many Lugar supporters who could not get behind a crackpot neo-fascist, like Mourdock but had no problem voting for Mitt Romney, who won 1,420,543 votes, far more than Mourdock.

Hamby noted that 4 years earlier "Obama’s campaign was gifted an election-night surprise on its way to 365 electoral votes: It won Indiana. The state hadn’t voted for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide, and just four years earlier, George W. Bush crushed John Kerry in Indiana by 21 points. But in the wake of the economic crash, Democrats were surfing a wave, and Obama eked out a narrow 28,391-vote win over John McCain in the Hoosier State. It was a holy-shit moment, both for the national media and Obama high command, neither of which had identified Indiana as a key battleground heading into Election Day. The win didn’t come out of nowhere, exactly: Obama had plowed resources into registering new voters there during his primary fight with Hillary Clinton; the polls were always close; and corners of Indiana shared media markets with the more competitive states of Michigan and Ohio. But the polling was also spotty, and McCain led by a final average of 1.4 points... [T]here’s a lesson in that fluke Indiana win, too, as Democrats head into the final two weeks of an election in which Joe Biden continues to gain strength against a stalled-out Donald Trump: Even as the two campaigns and the political media focus their attention on certain core battleground states, weird things tend to happen at the margins in wave elections, outside the agreed-upon field of view. And 2020 is shaping up to be a wave of seismic proportions. As veteran election handicapper Stuart Rothenberg told me back in 2018, 'The thing about wave elections is that they manifest themselves in places you didn’t think were competitive.'"

Rothenberg is correct and the DCCC may be as surprised as the NRCC when "safe" Republican seats in Texas, California, New York, and Florida that they didn't notice, turn blue. Hamby attributes it in part to "A slew of political fundamentals-- fundraising, explosive early-vote numbers, late-spending decisions, candidate travel, surging downballot Democrats, the Republican rush to confirm a new Supreme Court justice, and the ugly fact that Trump is dueling with Gerald Ford for the title of most unpopular incumbent since World War II-- point to what’s coming. If the polls are correct, the president is about to get schlonged, bigly. 'Trump right now is just so vulnerable to a complete collapse,” said one respected Democratic number-cruncher working with a variety of outside groups. “He is so close to the edge in all of these states, if there is another tick down, it’s a total bloodbath.' Trump only narrowly won the 2016 race, within the margin of error in a handful of swing states. Since then the president’s support among his strongest demographics, including working-class white women, white men, and even white evangelicals, has deteriorated. Every election since 2017, every swing state poll and every fundraising quarter have favored Democrats, with independents and college-educated women rejecting Trump by powerful margins. Trump was already on thin ice. But if there’s a blue wave, it won’t just be because the coalition that powered Democrats in 2018 showed up again in a big way. It’s also that seniors have abandoned Trump for Biden during the coronavirus pandemic, a well-reported phenomenon but one that still seems curiously underplayed in the preelection narrative. By building a coalition of suburbanites, college-educated voters, and seniors-- voters who actually vote-- Biden isn’t just on the cusp of denying Trump a second term. He’s obliterating the voting base that’s undergirded the Republican Party for the last 30 years. 'If you were going to concoct a Molotov cocktail to toss and blow apart a party’s key coalitions, right now the GOP is dealing with it,' said Ohio-based Republican consultant Nick Everhart."

Recent polls from CNN and NBC showed Biden with a more-than-20-point lead among voters over the age of 65. Democrats haven’t won that age group since the 2000 election, and seniors became a reliable voting bloc for Republicans during the Obama era. Trump won seniors by nine points over Clinton in 2016. Today Biden is winning seniors in the aging upper Midwest-- Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania-- by healthy margins. In the Sunbelt states-- Georgia, Texas, and Arizona-- Trump is still winning the olds, but his edge has diminished since 2016. Biden, his fellow senior citizen, is chewing into Republican margins. In Florida, where the old vote is crucial, Trump defeated Clinton by 17 points among seniors last time. Today, thanks to COVID-19 and the president’s hapless response to it, Biden is either winning or tied with Trump among Florida seniors, depending on the poll.

“Seniors are a good strength to have because they’re big in terms of expansion,” Biden pollster John Anzalone told me. “The six core battleground states are older than people realize. Certainly people think of Arizona and Florida as having big senior populations, but so does the upper Midwest. Even when you expand into Iowa, you‘re still looking at a lot of senior voters.” The shift among seniors is not just an interesting cross-tab-- it’s a wholesale realignment of the Democratic electorate. It puts Iowa and Ohio firmly back on the electoral map, diminishes Trump’s support everywhere else, and even makes states like Kansas and Missouri-- which have only been lightly polled but have plenty of suburbanites and aging voters-- look like tempting flips for optimists tinkering with the 270toWin map.

In most years the lament on the left is that Republicans vote and Democrats don’t. But Biden and the pandemic have collided to form a coalition of voters who actually return ballots and show up to the polls. “You have the 2018 loss of college-educated and suburban female support that has further eroded, coupled now with a pandemic-driven drop not in just seniors but white seniors across the country, in emerging battleground states like Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and Arizona,” Everhart told me. “It’s having a devastating impact on the electoral math. And not just Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida, which were already swing states. This isn’t isolated to the presidential race. It’s tearing apart crucial coalitions and putting races in play from South Carolina to Kansas to Alaska.” Iowa and Ohio, now competitive, were left for dead by Democrats four years ago. The very fact that Texas and Georgia are competitive presidential contests is a huge tell about the state of the race and the mood of the country. Houston’s Harris County has already cast more than 50% of the total number of votes in the 2016 election, and Biden is currently polling better in Texas than Beto O’Rourke was in 2018, when he lost statewide to Ted Cruz by only 2.6 points. There are 38 electoral votes at stake there, second only to California. Unlike other states, because it counts absentee ballots ahead of time, Texas will report its results on election night itself. If Trump loses Texas, he has lost the election. The possibility of Biden winning more than 400 electoral votes is not out of the question.

Michael McCaul and his boss shoveling the bullshit

And in Texas, Biden is being helped by tremendous down-ballot activity. Think about Mike Siegel, Julie Oliver, Sima Ladjevardian, Candace Valenzuela, Gina Ortiz Jones, Lulu Seikaly, Adrienne Bell, Wendy Davis and Sri Kulkarni flipping red seats blue. They won't all, but it's just a matter of how many at this point. That is not a uniquely Texas story wither-- even if we are talking about a Trump-enabled 7,8, even 9 seat flip!

Robert Gibbs, an Obama campaign veteran and former White House press secretary, said the dynamics of the race-- Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus and the contrast in temperament between the two candidates-- “have changed the political map in ways once thought impossible in 2020.” Gibbs told me, “States that weren’t on anyone’s radar just a few months ago are now states Biden may well win, and the electoral impact of those changes are likely to be felt in Senate, House, and important state-level races ahead of redistricting. It’s a potentially disastrous result not just for the president but the entire Republican Party.” Democratic Senate candidates are already running strong in Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, Alaska, North Carolina, Arizona, and South Carolina, doing the hard work of voter registration and turnout with or without Biden, potentially creating a reverse coattails effect for Democrats at the top of the ticket. That’s on top of the myriad House, state, and local candidates in those states who have been tilling the soil for Democrats going back to the peak #Resistance era of 2017.

Even Missouri, which hasn’t been competitive on a presidential level since 2008, is too close for GOP comfort. Inside Elections just moved that state, and Kansas, from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican,” not exactly what Republican strategists want to see two weeks before an election. Those shifts don’t mean the Biden campaign should suddenly start spending money in St. Louis and Wichita. But they do suggest an election tilting away from Trump, with a new Democratic electorate pollsters haven’t quite prepared for. If Biden is within the margin of error in any of these red states heading into Election Day, he could add to his electoral-vote total in a way that would make Obama’s 2008 campaign jealous. Again: Waves manifest themselves in places you didn’t think were competitive.





The fact that terminally nervous Democrats, still spooked by 2016 and clinging to their rubber sheets, are going public with their optimism is remarkable enough. But Republicans, too, have begun ringing alarm bells, after coddling Trump for four years despite his obvious political baggage. Texas senator Cruz said the GOP could be facing a “bloodbath of Watergate proportions.” Nebraska senator Ben Sasse was caught on tape last week telling supporters that “we are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami,” putting the blame directly on Trump. There’s a reason Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party’s most canny strategist, is trying to jam through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court before the election: He reads the public polls like we do and sees polls that we don’t. Cruz reads the polls in Texas, where his Senate colleague John Cornyn might lose. And Sasse reads the polls in Nebraska, where Biden could win the Omaha-area Second Congressional District’s single electoral vote [and drive worthless Trump ass-licker Donald Bacon out of his congressional seat].

Even in Kansas, private polling also tells the story of Trump’s demise. In Kansas’s Third Congressional District, a suburban district on the Kansas side of Kansas City that was a toss-up House seat in 2018, Biden is currently leading Trump by a 55-40 margin, according to internal polling provided to Vanity Fair by a Democratic strategist working on the race. Clinton won the district by a single point in 2016. The same internal poll showed Biden’s net “Favorable” rating at 55%, with his “Very Favorable” rating growing 10 points between June and October, from 27% to 37%. Trump’s “Very Favorable” rating has been stalled at between 28-32% over the same time period. In other words, Biden is kicking the shit out of Trump in eastern Kansas. If that’s happening in Olathe, it’s unlikely Trump is faring much better outside Atlanta, Des Moines, Charlotte, or Houston.

That’s precisely why the National Republican Congressional Committee yanked its spending from the Houston media market a month ago, abandoning its House candidates in Harris County, maybe the biggest early tell that red states were slipping away from the GOP. At this stage in a campaign, the flow of money tells you a lot about where things are going. Biden and Democratic Senate campaigns have more money than God. Biden and his outside groups are even outspending Trump allies two to one in the Florida panhandle, which is basically Alabama but with better bars. Biden entered the final month of the race with $432 million to spend, meaning that he’s carpet-bombing every corner of every swing state with TV, digital, and radio ads and direct mail pieces. Black churches across America will have gassed-up buses to the polls sitting in their parking lots the next two Sundays. Trump, in comparison, only had $251 million in the bank. In his case it seems the campaign is running on fumes, which is why Trump has canceled his ad buys in competitive states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa in recent weeks. The president even took precious time off the campaign trail last weekend to raise money in person in Orange County, which doesn’t signal anything positive about his cash flow or the investment sensibilities of the lip-filler crowd in Newport Beach. Meanwhile, Republican outside groups are funneling cash to red states to help prop up their Senate candidates in Alaska, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona-- and yes, even Kansas.

In a “blue tsunami” scenario, one or several of those red states could end up blue, like Indiana in 2008, on the electoral college map. But if that happens-- and it’s still an enormous “if”-- it will happen because the national political environment aligned with downballot Democrats already doing work in red states. Biden is narrowly running behind Democratic Senate nominees in South Carolina, Alaska, Kansas, and Arizona, and he’s narrowly running ahead of them in Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and North Carolina. “Biden supporters in red states are hopeful,” said Amanda Loveday, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina working for Biden’s super PAC, Unite the Country. “He has given us a reason to be excited by building momentum in these unlikely states. The benefit of having a candidate that is motivating is that they also galvanize voters for downballot races. In 2020 all the candidates are intertwined. In these red states where Senate and congressional candidates are exceeding expectations, they are being helped by Biden being on top of the ticket, but also Biden is being helped by their campaigns as well.”

Like in neighboring North Carolina and Georgia, South Carolina Democrats are benefiting from demographic trends: The state is becoming younger and more suburban. Biden, though, cruised in South Carolina’s Democratic primary back in February by defying an assumption in the media that Democrats could only win by activating younger voters and progressives. That was the lesson of Obama’s victories, and the lesson of Clinton’s failure in 2016. Instead Biden won the nomination by weaving together a coalition of people who reliably vote: older Black voters and college-educated suburbanites. With the election only two weeks away, Biden needs voters of color and young people too. But he’s expanded his base in a way that would have seemed unthinkable back during the Democratic primaries, when his opponents said he couldn’t excite the kinds of voters Democrats need to beat Trump. It turns out, with a helping hand from a self-destructing president, Biden did just that. They just weren’t the voters we were all thinking about at the time. It’s another reminder that campaigns are unpredictable, having an inconvenient way of defying expertise and savvy. If Biden sails into Election Day with a 10-point national lead and America’s most dependable voters at his back, Republicans might need to invent a new synonym for “bloodbath.” Maybe Sasse will come up with one, but only in private, of course.

 

What Trump's Toxicity Is Costing The Republican Party-- Let's Take Omaha And The Surrounding Suburbs, For Example

 

NE-02 can deliver more than just a member of Congress; it can also deliver one presidential electoral vote. That vote has only gone to a Democrat-- Obama in 2008-- one time. Polling indicates that electoral vote is going to go to Biden this cycle, as the district flips blue in both the presidential and congressional contests. Kara Eastman looks like she'll be replacing Trump shill Donald J Bacon in Congress and she's working hard to turn out voters who will support not just her own campaign but Biden's and other Democrats as well. Kara, who's perspective is far more populist and progressive than Biden's is being helped by Biden, just as Biden is being helped by her. Syncronicity. But both candidates owe one man the lion's share of credit for their good polling: Trump.

Politico writer David Siders reported yesterday that it's Trump's collapse in red-leaning Omaha suburbs that has resulted in a 6-7 point overall polling deficit for him. He'd wrote that what's happening in NE-02 is a case study of "how the president’s alienation of a traditional Republican constituency is proving costly to his reelection campaign-- and how his increasingly desperate last-minute appeals to suburbanites are going unheeded."

“If you look at the struggle that Trump has going on in the suburbs, it’s just super consistent,” said Ryan Horn, a Republican media strategist based in Omaha. “What you see in Nebraska 2 you’ll see in Dallas, Texas, you’ll see in Charlotte, North Carolina, you’ll see in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, you’ll see in Orange County, California … It’s super, super consistent.”

The Omaha World-Herald, which until endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016 hadn’t backed Democrat for president since 1932, endorsed Joe Biden recently, pleading for a break from Trump’s “recklessness.” And Don Bacon, the district’s Republican congressman, has been forced to remind voters that he is not in lockstep with Trump.

“Kara Eastman frequently on TV and on radio says I’ve sworn a loyalty oath to the president,” Bacon complained in a recent debate with Eastman, his Democratic challenger. “And it’s a lie.”

Not long ago, Nebraska Republicans couldn’t have fathomed such a problem at the top of the ticket in their state, which awards one electoral vote in each of its three congressional districts and two electoral votes to the statewide winner. But in 2008, Barack Obama, carrying the 2nd District, picked off one of the electoral votes, marking the first time in 44 years that a Democrat had accomplished that feat.

Stunned, Republicans in the state’s legislature re-drew the 2nd District lines to make it safer for the GOP, adding the more conservative, western suburbs of Sarpy County to the city of Omaha. Obama lost the reconfigured district to Mitt Romney in 2012, and Trump carried it narrowly four years later.

Today, despite the advantage of a favorable map, Trump is on the cusp of undoing the entire scheme. A New York Times/Siena College poll last month put Trump 7 percentage points behind Biden in the district, losing women by 11 percentage points and independent voters by 28 percentage points. Though Trump remained ahead of Biden in Sarpy County, the margin was not wide enough to compensate for his shortcomings in Omaha and the surrounding communities of Douglas County.

...Bacon, the 2nd District congressman who’s facing a rematch with Eastman, a progressive Democrat, said competing in urban and suburban areas can be a “challenge” for any Republican. What Trump has going for him, Bacon said, is “a thing in Nebraska where we are a little more conservative in nature.”

The unemployment rate in Nebraska is lowest in the nation, and Bacon said, “I tell people, ‘Who do you trust to bring the economy back?'"

However, Bacon said, “We’re also Nebraska nice... and we want more diplomacy and decency, and I think that’s what hurts the president.”

...Former state Sen. Burke Harr, a Democrat who represented central Omaha in the state legislature, said that unlike four years ago, “even chamber of commerce people I talk to are freely admitting they’re having a hard time justifying voting for Trump.” And the World-Herald seemed to have that chamber of commerce crowd in mind when it endorsed Biden, too.

The paper appealed directly to conservative readers in its endorsement of Biden this past weekend. “Trump’s departure from the White House,” the paper opined, “would benefit not only the country but also the Republican Party, by unshackling GOP officeholders from the slavish deference they’ve felt obligated to display to the president’s years-long series of eccentricities and embarrassments.”

The 2nd District’s single Electoral College vote is unlikely to tip the balance on Election Day. But there are scenarios in which a victory in the district could push Trump or Biden to the decisive number of 270 Electoral College votes.

Last month, when Republican Voters Against Trump, a group founded by former Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, announced a six-figure digital ad buy in Nebraska’s 2nd District against Trump, it called the area a “tipping point,” noting that if “Joe Biden were to pick up Pennsylvania and Michigan, a victory in NE-2 would secure him the 270 votes he would need to clinch a presidential victory.”

“We’ve seen models that show that this district will make the difference in the presidential race,” said Kyle Clark, Bacon’s political director. “We are at ground zero.”

Flush with cash, Biden has spent about $2 million on advertising in the district since Labor Day, about six times what Trump has spent, according to the ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics. Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, Sen. Kamala Harris’ husband, have appeared in recent weeks in Omaha. So have Karen Pence and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law. On Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. was there lacing into Biden and the “radical left.”

The full effect of Trump’s suburban deterioration on the rest of the GOP ticket remains unclear in Nebraska-- and across the country. But it is being tested in the congressional race between Bacon and Eastman... Eastman is working relentlessly to yoke Bacon to the president. In recent debates, she goaded Bacon for voting with Trump more than 90 percent of the time. She asked him if it was still an “easy choice” to endorse Trump.

Bacon, a co-chair of Trump’s re-election campaign in Nebraska, said that it was easy, contrasting Trump with Biden on economic and social issues.

However, he added, “I do not support the rhetoric. I don’t like the name calling.”

Cowardice And A Grotesque Bargain With The Devil Is The Heart And "Soul" Of The Republican Party

 

AOC & Pramila-- Starting To Lose My Temper by Nancy Ohanian

On Friday, we noted that spineless Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has shown over and over again that he knows just how dangerous Trump is for America. On a taped conference call, Sasse said that Trump had mishandled the coronavirus response, "kisses dictators' butts," "sells out our allies," spends "like a drunken sailor," mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs. Trump, he went on "flirted with white supremacists," and his family "treated the presidency like a business opportunity." In response to this accurate indictment, Sasse, obviously without a patriotic bone in his body, helped block removing Trump after he was impeached.

Trump reacted on Twitter in exactly the way you would expect, giving Sasse a nickname and sending a nasty signal to his Nebraska followers to not vote for him. (Luckily for Sasse, Schumer and the DSCC decided to give him a free-pass to reelection.)

NY Times reporter Catie Edmondson noted the exchange and interpreted it as Republican senators distancing themselves from Trump in fear that he's threatening their own political survival. A little too late for that. They're all on the record of enabling him and voting against convicting and removing him. "For nearly four years," wrote Edmondson, "congressional Republicans have ducked and dodged an unending cascade of offensive statements and norm-shattering behavior from President Trump, ignoring his caustic and scattershot Twitter feed and penchant for flouting party orthodoxy, and standing quietly by as he abandoned military allies, attacked American institutions and stirred up racist and nativist fears. But now, facing grim polling numbers and a flood of Democratic money and enthusiasm that has imperiled their majority in the Senate, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to publicly distance themselves from the president. The shift, less than three weeks before the election, indicates that many Republicans have concluded that Mr. Trump is heading for a loss in November. And they are grasping to save themselves and rushing to re-establish their reputations for a coming struggle for their party’s identity."

She also noted that Sasse said Trump is "alienating voters so broadly that he might cause a 'Republican blood bath' in the Senate. [Note to Ben Sasse: in the House too.] Edmondson noted that Sasse "was echoing a phrase from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who warned of a 'Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions.' Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House.

Even the normally taciturn Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has been more outspoken than usual in recent days about his differences with the president, rejecting his calls to “go big” on a stimulus bill. That was a reflection of the fact that Senate Republicans-- who have rarely broken with the president on any major legislative initiative in four years-- are unwilling to vote for the kind of multitrillion-dollar federal aid plan that Mr. Trump has suddenly decided would be in his interest to embrace.

“Voters are set to drive the ultimate wedge between Senate Republicans and Trump,” said Alex Conant, a former aide to Senator Marco Rubio and a former White House spokesman. “It’s a lot easier to get along when you’re winning elections and gaining power. But when you’re on the precipice of what could be a historic loss, there is less eagerness to just get along.”

...[T]heir recent behavior has offered an answer to the long-pondered question of if there would ever be a point when Republicans might repudiate a president who so frequently said and did things that undermined their principles and message. The answer appears to be the moment they feared he would threaten their political survival.

If some Senate Republicans have written off Mr. Trump’s chances of victory, the feeling may be mutual. On Friday, the president issued his latest Twitter attack on Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the most endangered Republican incumbents, apparently unconcerned that he might be further imperiling her chances, along with the party’s hopes of holding on to the Senate.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Romney assailed the president for being unwilling to condemn QAnon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy movement that the F.B.I. has labeled a domestic terrorism threat, saying the president was “eagerly trading” principles “for the hope of electoral victories.” It was his second scathing statement this week criticizing Mr. Trump, although Mr. Romney coupled both screeds with critiques of Democrats, saying the two parties shared blame.

Yet Mr. Romney and other Republicans who have spoken up to offer dire predictions or expressions of concern about Mr. Trump are all sticking with the president on what is likely his final major act before the election: the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of conservatives, to the Supreme Court.

The dichotomy reflects the tacit deal congressional Republicans have accepted over the course of Mr. Trump’s presidency, in which they have tolerated his incendiary behavior and statements knowing that he would further many of their priorities, including installing a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.

Still, the grim political environment has set off a scramble, especially among Republicans with political aspirations stretching beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency, to be on the front lines of any party reset.

“As it becomes evident that he is a mere political mortal like everyone else, you’re really starting to see the jockeying taking place for what the future of the Republican Party is,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who did not support Mr. Trump in 2016. “What we heard from Senator Sasse yesterday was the beginning of that process.”

In an interview, Mr. Curbelo said that his former colleagues have known for months that Mr. Trump would one day become “subject to the laws of political gravity”-- and that the party would face the consequences.

“Most congressional Republicans have known that this is unsustainable long term, and they’ve just been-- some people may call it pragmatic, some may call it opportunistic-- keeping their heads down and doing what they have to do while they waited for this time to come,” he said.

It is unclear whether Republicans will seek to redefine their party should the president lose, given that Mr. Trump’s tenure has shown the appeal of his inflammatory brand of politics to the crucial conservative base.

“He still has enormous, enormous influence-- and will for a very long time-- over primary voters, and that is what members care about,” said Brendan Buck, a former counselor to the last two Republican House speakers.

What Mr. Sasse and Mr. Cruz may be aiming for, he added, is a last-ditch bid to preserve Republican control of the Senate.

“If you’re able to say it out loud, there is an effective message that a Republican Senate can be a check on a Democratic-run Washington,” Mr. Buck said. “It’s just hard to say that out loud because you have to concede the president is done.”

On the campaign trail, Republicans are privately livid with the president for dragging down their Senate candidates, sending his struggles rippling across states that are traditional Republican strongholds.

“His weakness in dealing with coronavirus has put a lot more seats in play than we ever could have imagined a year ago,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and consultant. “We always knew that there were going to be a number of close Senate races, and we were probably swimming against the tide in places like Arizona, Colorado and Maine. But when you see states that are effectively tied, like Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina, that tells you something has happened in the broader environment.”

In 2016, when Mr. Trump, then a candidate, looked increasingly likely to capture the party’s nomination, Mr. McConnell assured his members that if he threatened to harm them in the general election, they would “drop him like a hot rock.”

That did not happen then and it is unlikely to now, with Republicans up for re-election readily aware that Democratic voters are unlikely to reward such a rebuke, especially so close to Election Day. But there have been other, more subtle moves.

Despite repeated public entreaties from Mr. Trump for Republicans to embrace a larger pandemic stimulus package, Mr. McConnell has all but refused, saying senators in his party would never support a package of that magnitude. Senate Republicans revolted last weekend on a conference call with Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, warning that a big-spending deal would amount to a “betrayal” of the party’s base and tarnish their credentials as fiscal hawks.

A more personal rebuke came from Mr. McConnell last week when the Kentuckian, who is up for re-election, told reporters that he had avoided visiting the White House since late summer because of its handling of the coronavirus.

They must be wiped out, not just on the level of the White House and Senate, but also in the House, in state legislatures and in local offices up and down the ballot. They have all been enablers and they should all be held accountable. Listen to Ben Sasse's own voice and remember that he has backed Trump on everything.

11 Points Is Very Big

 

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of registered voters shows Trump losing in a 53% to 42% election-- an 11 point deficit. That's a lot. In the 1968 presidential election, the first time I was allowed to vote, Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey by seven-tenths of a point, about half a million votes. Carter beat Ford by 2 points. Four years later, Reagan's landslide win over Carter was 9.7 points. Clinton beat George HW Bush by 5.6 points and then beat ole Bob Dole by 8.5 points. Gore actually beat George W Bush 50,999,897 (48.4%) to 50,456,002 (47.9%) but the Republican Supreme Court blatantly stole the election for Bush. Four years later, Bush beat Kerry by 2.4 points. In 2008 Obama beat McCain by 7.2 points and then beat Romney by 3.9 points in 2012. Hillary beat Trump 65,853,514 (48.2%) to 62,984,828 (46.1%) but was denied the presidency because of the purposely anti-democratic electoral college (which should have been abolished long ago-- and would have been if it ever worked against a Republican or if the Democratic Party ever grew a pair).





Wall Street Journal reporter Eliza Collins wrote that "The poll holds warning signs for Republicans down-ballot, as well. Democrats came out ahead of Republicans by 8 points when voters were asked which party they planned to support for Congress... Biden continues to gain with groups that backed Mr. Trump in 2016, such as seniors and white women. At the same time, Mr. Trump’s lead has weakened among some core parts of his base, including white men without college degrees. A majority of voters are unhappy with the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some 41% approve of his handling of Covid-19 in the latest poll, compared with 57% who disapprove."

Even in states where a statewide loss is not likely for Trump, his unpopularity in suburban districts is going to kill his GOP enablers from coast to coast. It's what the silly Beltway prognosticators-- including at the DCCC-- don't understand about a wave. Even the very worst and least-deserving-of-reelection Democrats, like Blue Dogs Anthony Brindisi (NY), Kendra Horn (OK), Joe Cunningham (SC), Ben McAdams (UT) and Abigail Spanberger (VA), are all probably going to be reelected because of widespread antipathy towards Trump and his lackeys.

Progressive challengers in deep red districts who the DCCC wrote off early in the cycle, are now on the verge of defeating powerful entrenched Republican incumbents-- and some have even been embraced, albeit reluctantly, by the DCCC! Look at these 7 candidates. All are running in prohibitively red districts gerrymandered to elect Republicans; all were entirely ignored by the Democratic establishment; all are in districts where Trump's support is collapsing; and all are pulling even or surpassing their Republican opponents. These are the candidates whose campaigns we should be pouring resources into right now:

• Adam Christiansen (FL-03) R+9
• Audrey Denney (CA-01) R+11
• Nate McMurray (NY-27) R+11
• Julie Oliver (TX-25) R+11
• Liam O'Mara (CA-42) R+9
• J.D. Scholten (IA-04) R+11
• Mike Siegel (TX-10) R+9

7 races with an average PVI of about R+10... all once considered out of reach and absolutely impossible, but all now very much within reach and very much possible and worth investing in. For example, Julie Oliver's "impossible race" has now been endorsed by the DCCC, which is starting to get excited about seeing her replace one of the most vile of the Trump enablers in the House. "Everyone knows big money and the ultra-wealthy have too much power in Washington," Julie told me this morning, "and I’m a political outsider who has refused all PAC money and isn’t afraid to stand up to corrupt special interests and leaders in both parties. We need to end the culture of corruption in Washington, and Roger Williams has shown a disturbing pattern of unethical behavior-- whether it’s being investigated for amending a bill to support car dealerships by letting them rent out dangerous vehicles under active safety recall, cutting to the front of the line to take millions in bailouts for his car dealership while Texas small business owners lost everything and voting to keep that hidden from the public, or abusing his position to make backroom deals on behalf big money donors."

Progressive Democrat J.D. Scholten is running a campaign in Iowa based on the same kinds of ideas. Last night he told me that "All farmers can agree that we need to enforce our antitrust laws in agriculture because right now corporations are controlling the inputs, outputs, and choices for farmers. In my first year in Congress, my goal is to introduce legislation to modernize the Packers and Stockyards Act, level the playing field for farmers, and hold corporations accountable. Meanwhile, my opponent takes corporate PAC donations from Tyson, Smithfield, and Syngenta-- the very corporations that are helping to push farmers off the farm and into bankruptcy. My strong, unwavering support for enforcing antitrust laws has earned me support from farmers across the political spectrum."

This morning California progressive Audrey Denney told me that she has "consistently been running on: 1) Forest health and fire prevention, 2) Truly universal healthcare and an emphasis on rural health, 3) COVID recovery and economic growth, 4) Rural broadband. All with the underlying theme of the essential need to get money out of politics and fire corrupt self-serving politicians. Our message is getting through to voters and we are going to win... Since we sent Rep. LaMalfa back to DC for his 4th term:

• He voted against HR 968 that would have protected people with pre-existing conditions.
• He voted against HR 3 that would have lowered prescription drug prices.
• He voted against HR 1 which among many other things, would have strengthened ethics rules for members of Congress.
• He voted against S47 wildly bipartisan public lands funding bill-- when half of his district is public lands.
• He voted against the HEROES Act twice-- even though besides desperately needed COVID relief it would have provided: $500 million for Safer Grants (Fire emergency response), $500 million for Fire Fighter Assistance grants, assistance to livestock producers (we are now losing 4th generation cattle ranches), money for rural hospitals, and rural broadband.

Finally: Panic Washes Over GOP... But They Will Still Persist In Their Hateful And Unpopular Agenda

 

Republicans in Congress are preparing to triage Trump-- but not Amy Coney Island Baby. That's the hill they all seem happily willing to die on, a hill that symbolizes anti-Choice fanaticism, anti-healthcare mania, a pro-corporate and anti-regulatory extremism and, of course, the religious bigotry the GOP has wrapped itself in over the past two decades.

Republican Senators, Congress Members, state legislators, local officials, operatives and donors are all blaming Trump for their predicament. I hate Trump as much as anyone but if they want someone to blame for the tsunami headed their way, they should look in the mirror, not just to the White House. There was no time when they could not have said, "Wait, you are a fucking fascist and I am not and neither is my party." Too late for that now, though, because now their party is fascist and they have been enabling a fascist agenda-- eyes wide open.

The phrase on the lips of virtually all Beltway Republicans this month: "sinking ship," a way to describe the Trump reelection campaign, a battle being fought not in states Hillary won narrowly like New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, Nevada and Maine but in states that were firmly in the Republican column way back then-- Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Alaska, Ohio... even Texas.

And now, down-ballot Republicans are realizing-- too late-- they they are going down with that sinking ship. Some are even hoping to start showing their "independence" from Trump by breaking with his policies might help, after after their years of willing spineless subservience. Foolishly, they've chosen the wrong policy to break with. Trump, desperate to offer something to the voters, has ordered-- or re-ordered-- Mnuchin to work with Pelosi on a pandemic relief package that will include stimulus checks for struggling Americans (voters). For Mitch McConnell and his Senate colleagues that's a step too far. On Friday, Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene reported for Axios that McConnell refuses to be tethered to Trump's growing desperation and that the president "has zero leverage to push them to support a bill crafted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and congressional Republicans aren’t inclined to wrap themselves any tighter to a sinking ship." McConnell's camp says "You’re never going to get a deal out of Pelosi that Republicans can support. So do you really want to divide your party within days of an election? This entire exercise from Pelosi is basically trying to jam up the Senate in the midst of a Supreme Court confirmation. They know that from a procedural standpoint McConnell can drive this train to conclusion, so what they’re trying do is throw as many roadblocks in the way as possible-- and the best way to do that is get the president focused on some extraneous issue." Swan and Treene concluded that even if Pelosi and Mnuchin were to strike a deal, "there is little chance the Senate GOP would get on board with it... Senate Republicans remain far apart on what they want as a conference. They also view Trump and Mnuchin as far more willing to give more to Pelosi than what they're comfortable with-- both numbers-wise and on policy." And to make matters worse, "McConnell doesn’t want to do anything to interrupt the only visible Republican win before the election in his chamber-- the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court."


Americans have been voting-- and in much biggest numbers than ever before this early. No one needs a debate. This is a referendum on Trump and his enablers. Biden is horrible. People don't care. The majority of the Democrats recruited by the DCCC are horrible-- as are all the Democrats recruited by Schumer. No one cares. (They will in 2022, but not now. Now they only care about Trump and those who allowed him to run amok.) In early voting reporting yesterday's NY Times, a trio of writers noted that early returns give Democrats a 10 point advantage among the 275,000 first-time voters nationwide who had already cast ballots and an 18-point lead among 1.1 million "sporadic voters" who had already voted.

As of Saturday, more than 8.8 million ballots had already been received by elections officials in the 30 states that have made data available. In five states-- including the battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Minnesota-- the number of ballots returned already is more than 20 percent of the entire 2016 turnout.

The L.A. Times headline was hardly unique: As Trump’s fortunes sink, Republicans start to distance themselves in bid to save Senate. Evan Halper wrote that as "Trump skids deeper into political peril, anxious Republicans have started to try to distance themselves from his fate, appealing to voters to elect them as a check on a Joe Biden administration. As they make closing arguments in a desperate bid to keep control of the Senate, even Trump loyalists are chafing when asked how deep their support for the president runs. Senate campaigns, which long focused on electing candidates who would be loyal to Trump, now pitch a darker message to Republican voters-- one that assumes Trump won’t be there. 'If we lose the Senate, there will be no firewall to stop the Democrats from implementing their Armageddon plan to pack the courts with activist judges and to add four new Democrats to the Senate by giving statehood to DC and Puerto Rico,' said a fundraising appeal from the Senate Conservative Fund."

Halper noted that McConnell, who has been "one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, abruptly jumped off the Trump train this week to stake out a politically-- and medically-- safer position on the coronavirus crisis that is Trump’s biggest political liability. McConnell said at a news conference Thursday in Kentucky that he had not been at the White House for more than a month because he did not think its safety standards were stringent enough. 'My impression was that their approach to how to handle this is different from mine and what I suggested that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing,' said McConnell, who is 78 and in an expensive fight for reelection this year. Veteran Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, in his pitch for an endorsement from the Houston Chronicle, scolded Trump for downplaying the dangers of the coronavirus. The paper, which had endorsed Cornyn in the past, ultimately opted to support Democrat MJ Hegar."

“I think Trump might cause us a tidal wave,” said one top Republican strategist and Trump supporter, who asked not to be named discussing internal party matters. “He is ankle weights in a pool on Senate candidates.”

The move away from Trump resembles the strategy Republicans followed in 2016, when many party leaders assumed he would lose, and in 1996, when the party’s nominee, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, badly trailed President Clinton.

In both cases, the approach was to avoid directly criticizing the nominee for fear of alienating his loyalists, while appealing to voters to keep a Republican Congress to deny Democrats a “blank check.”

...“A lot of Republicans are now having to walk this line where they don’t want be too critical of Trump and anger his base, but they need to reach out to moderates and independent,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor at the political forecasting journal Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Yesterday, GOP lifer Ed Rollins, chair of Trump's Great America PAC, told CNN that the jig is up. "I'm afraid the race is over... What happened after the first presidential debate is every Senate race saw a 3- to 4-point drop for Republican candidates across the board. So campaigns are panicking and it’s the first time in a long while that they are being outraised. The potential is there to lose not only the presidency but the Senate as well… and to see the kind of wipeout we haven’t an experienced since the post-Watergate year of 1974." How could it can any worse for Trump. Well the Taliban could endorse him. Actually, they did.

NBC News reported that "some Republican operatives and donors" have given up on Trump's reelection and are "proposing that the party shift focus to protecting seats in Congress." Former NRCC staffer Ken Spain told NBC's Sahil Kapur that he sees "growing chances of a tsunami that drowns congressional Republican candidates," calling Trump's unpopularity "an anchor" for GOP candidates and worrying not about races in Colorado, Arizona and Maine-- that Republicans have given top on winning-- but in South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas and Alaska that they are in danger of losing.

Brendan Buck, a Republican consultant, who was a top adviser to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, said it would be a rational response to steer resources to saving endangered incumbents.

“We need to protect the Senate and limit the damage in the House,” he said. “They can’t say it out loud, but the president is likely toast, and a Republican Senate can serve as a check on a Biden administration and Democratic House. Republicans also need to keep the House in reach of flipping it back in 2022.”

If Republicans are struggling to protect an incumbent in the deep-red Palmetto State, it means the seat of Sen. John Cornyn in electoral vote-rich Texas may not necessarily be safe either, along with about a dozen others in a cycle in which Democrats need to pick up four seats to secure control, or three if they win the White House.

Biden’s campaign appears more bullish on Texas, purchasing $6.3 million in ads on TV and radio in the Lone Star State from Wednesday through Election Day, according to Advertising Analytics. His wife, Jill Biden, plans to travel to the state next week, the campaign announced Friday, with an itinerary a Biden campaign spokesperson said would include stops in Dallas, Houston and El Paso.

“Trump is definitely helping us,” Beto O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman and presidential candidate, told NBC News. “They have been neck and neck for weeks now, and Biden’s chances are only improving after his and Kamala (Harris)’s strong debate performances.”

O’Rourke, who came within 3 points of winning a Texas Senate race in 2018, insists the state and its 38 electoral votes are in play, and has been pleading with the Democrats to invest more there.

Democrats running for Republican-held congressional and state legislative seats are on the attack in Texas and closing in on Republican incumbents. Yesterday, Julie Oliver, progressive Democratic candidate running against crooked conservative Roger Williams in an R+ 11 district that the DCCC has completely ignored, told me that "We're in the middle of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many of our kids' schools are still closed. Women are having to leave their jobs. We've lost millions of jobs. And meanwhile, both Donald Trump and Roger Williams have consistently put themselves and their financial interests before the people in Texas. This presidency has been an unmitigated failure-- and Roger Williams has enabled him, every step of the way." Polling has turned so positive towards Oliver that last week the DCCC felt compelled to add her to their Red-to-Blue program. Same just happened in the district next door, TX-10, where Mike Siegel has battle the wealthiest man in the House, Trump lieutenant Michael McCaul to a dead heat. (You can contribute to both Siegel and Oliver here.)

Although Democrats stand to pick up a half dozen Texas congressional seats-- and win back the state House to boot-- Texas isn't the only "red" state preparing the shed more seats to the Democrats. Kapur's report noted Beltway imbeciles-- he was more polite-- who long believed the GOP would gain seats are now confronting the prospect that their minority might shrink. "Cook Political Report’s forecast gives Democrats a better than even chance of expanding their House majority." That can be interpreted as "even the conservative fools at Cook fear Democrats are on the verge of winning dozens of seats we scoffed at the idea of flipping just a few weeks ago."

Beltway insiders like Cook and the DCCC have never taken Audrey Denney's race against Trump appendage Doug LaMalfa seriously. After all, CA-01, in the northeast corner of rural California where it borders on Republican parts of Oregon and Nevada, has a daunting PVI of R+11. It was one of only 2 districts in California where Hillary took less than 37% of the vote and in the midst of 2018's "Blue Wave," neither Gavin Newsom nor Dianne Feinstein won a single one of CA-01's eleven counties. But look a little closer at the 2018 results and you'll notice that in both the biggest and third biggest counties in the district-- Butte and Nevada-- Denney beat LaMalfa with substantial majorities. This cycle, she's been expanding her base into Shasta, Placer, Siskiyou and Placer counties and is poised to make up the 9 point vote deficit from 2018. Her latest tracking poll by Lake Research, one of the most consistently accurate polling firms in the country, shows her and LaMalfa in a dead heat. Please consider contributing to Denney's campaign here and take a look at this analysis from Lake, an analysis that shows exactly how a deep red district flips progressive blue:

A Sinking Ship-- Trump's-- Drags Down All Boats With It

 

Kansas is a very red state. In fact, the candidate Schumer recruited to run as a putative Democrat, Barbara Bollier is, in fact, a Republican. She served as a Republican in the state House from 2011 to 2017 and has been in the state Senate since 2016. At the very end of 2018, she switched parties, no doubt with Schumer promising her the U.S. Senate nomination. He forced former United States Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom to drop out of the race and endorse her as soon as Bollier declared a few months later. A new GOP internal poll shows her beating Trump-aligned Republican Congressman Roger Marshall 45-42%.

The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was an exceptional circumstance. Before he triggered the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover picked Kansas Senator Charlie Curtis to be his VP. After Hoover and Curtis were inaugurated, the governor, Clyde Reed, appointed ex-Gov. Henry Justin Allen as interim Senator. When Allen ran to complete the rest of Curtis' term 6 months later, the Republican Depression was in full swing and Allen was defeated (as was the GOP gubernatorial candidate). Democrat George McGill was elected and was reelected in 1932, the last time a Kansas Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Many voters in traditionally super-red areas think Trump is as bad as the Great Depression. He is losing millions of dependable Republican voters across the country-- and dragging Republicans down the toilet with him. In Kansas' case, Trump beat Hillary 671,018 (56.16%) to 427,005 (35.74%). This year, it's likely Biden will do significantly better than Hillary, though not better enough to win the state's 6 electoral votes. Bollier, an actual Republican just pretending to be a Democrat, could very well win the Senate seat. Why, you ask?

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, former top Republican political operative, Stuart Stevens wrote that Republicans have lied so much to constituents about Trump as he led the party to ruin that they are seen as his enablers. Many still have their heads up his ass-- although Stevens politely calls what they're doing as genuflecting. "As he turns his own covid-19 diagnosis into a reality TV show, mocking his administration’s own public health guidance, showing the Americans who have suffered that he doesn’t give a whit for their plight," wrote Stevens, "[t]hey know they’re defending the indefensible, and they know if the president were a Democrat, they wouldn’t hesitate to condemn him. With a straight face in Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Pence claimed, 'From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.'" Wednesday Kansas had 1,095 new cases, bringing the state total to 65,010-- 22,315 cases per million Kansans. And there were 17 more deaths reported, bringing the total to 723. Kansans who heard Pence on Wednesday night, knew he was full of shit and knew Trump had made very wrong decision that could me made during the pandemic. But, as Stevens wrote, Republican officials are "so used to this routine that co-signing Trump’s bad behavior is now habit and shooting straight is completely foreign."

Even after the party’s turn away from time-honored Republican principles, I couldn’t have imagined a party that would abandon any pretense of standing for conservative values, decency or common sense. Having spent four years defending their guy at every turn, they’re stuck. In for a penny, in for a pound: Republicans can’t tell the truth about Trump anymore. Even if they wanted to.


Many GOP candidates know they face near-impossible odds this year. Across the nation, every morning there are campaign team calls on which political professionals try to think of ways their bosses might escape impending electoral doom. I’ve been on calls like this more times than I’d care to remember, and I know they will take on an increasingly desperate tone as reality sinks in. In a week or two, it’ll be all gallows humor from here on out as they mask the pain. Even the normal conversations about where campaign staffers might go to unwind after the campaign will be abnormal: Paris? Nope. How about Serbia?

Their 2020 plans were shattered by a combination of incompetence and fate. What was intended to be an election celebrating a booming economy, waged against an opponent who could legitimately be tagged as a socialist, has turned into a defensive battle for Trump and Republicans: Trying to justify dramatic job losses and business failures against the backdrop of more than 210,000 Americans, so far, dying in a badly managed public health crisis. Instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), they drew former vice president Joe Biden, a man so unthreatening that even Trump, the master of nicknames, is reduced to calling him “sleepy”-- a snoozer of a put-down if there ever was one. In recent weeks, Biden’s polling lead has widened. Senate Republicans in once-safe seats are fighting to hang on. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC), running in a solid-red state, has been reduced to begging for money on Fox News. Five years ago, he accurately tagged Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” Now he’s Trump’s semiregular golf patsy.

Instead of covid-19 fading as an election issue, the pandemic has struck the president’s inner circle, a cluster of his family members, favorite White House staffers, his campaign manager, members of his debate prep team and the GOP chair.

...Every day Trump makes it worse: After his first debate with Biden, instead of focusing on jobs and the economy, campaigns had to scramble just to prove that their bosses weren’t fond of a group of thugs founded by the author of How to Piss in Public. After springing himself from a brief hospital stay, Trump’s tweets and videos ham-handedly and disrespectfully implied that those who have fallen to covid-19-- those who didn’t have a president’s access to experimental drugs and round-the-clock care-- are weak. He says he’s calling off coronavirus relief talks with congressional Democrats because he can’t get his way. (Art of the deal, right?) His staged White House return from Walter Reed military hospital created a gold mine for mockery, and I confess it was great fun to pan some of that gold.

Like Americans abroad who can’t speak the language, Republicans are saying the same thing they’ve been saying for at least four years, only louder. In his debate last week with challenger Jaime Harrison, Graham had the gall to babble that “the people running the Democratic Party today are nuts” at the same time that he’s trying to win reelection in a party headed by a man who suggested household disinfectant might cure covid-19.





With the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), no office-holding Republican with a national profile has even tried to establish an identity separate from Trump. With a combination of cowardice and convenience, Republicans went quietly into the night of Trump’s instability, grievances and immorality. Their occasional gestures at restraining the president-- I have very serious concerns. I wish he’d spend less time on Twitter-- are the stuff of late-night comedy. Their words have only served only to highlight their pathos. There could be no better metaphor for their fecklessness than justifying their enabling ways by touting the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. You think a Justice Barrett will save you, Republicans? You couldn’t even get through her Rose Garden ceremony without a coronavirus outbreak.

Republicans should start telling the truth. They should go in front of the cameras and say what the public knows just from living their daily lives: Trump has failed on covid-19. We need a national strategy. Give me a second chance. I was wrong to put my faith in the president. They should take some responsibility. But you can’t really say you’re quitting drinking while ordering another round at the bar.

So why won’t they? Call it the flight, flee or freeze syndrome wired into our DNA. Most politicians call themselves “fighters,” but in truth, almost all of them are starved for approval. These Republicans would cut and run, but where would they go? On the Trump battlefield, there’s no safe zone. So, they freeze, hoping something will magically save them.

The few Republican consultants who still talk to me begin most conversations with: “What a terrible year,” like farmers who’ve been hit by drought. Behind the scenes, that’s the mood. Everyone sees where we’re headed. No one dares challenge their king.

On Wednesday Greg Sargent, also for The Post, wrote that "When you step back and survey the last two years of U.S. politics, one of the biggest story lines that comes into view is this: One after another, a whole string of deeply corrupt schemes that President Trump has hatched to smooth his reelection hopes have crashed and burned. In all these cases, Trump has either blown up the schemes himself or compounded the damage they did to him when they self-destructed. In some cases he did both... When you view these things in one place, the true scale of Trump’s commitment to winning the election through corrupt means becomes a lot more striking. And, since many of them are doing great damage to the country, his sheer destructiveness also comes into much sharper relief."

And now even sports-prognosticators who think they know more about politics than they do-- and who just a few short months ago were arguing among themselves about how the GOP would probably not win enough seats to win back the House majority-- are on the cusp of admitting that the anti-Trump/anti-GOP wave is going to destroy dozens of Republicans' careers. And it's only early October. Yesterday, Cook, Sabato and Silver all seemed to wake up-- somewhat stunned-- to what's happening to the GOP as it crumbles and starts fall apart. By November 4th or 5th they will all have it-- or most of it-- right.

The Donald Drag

 

We've been writing extensively about Trump's electoral toxicity for 4 years. I checked and noticed that I started using the tag "toxicity of Donald Trump" in early June, 2016. Now, as election day 2020 approaches, Republican operatives and funders have largely given up on Trump himself and are freaking out over how to save down-ballot Republicans in places that haven't been truly competitive in the recent past.

Over 6 million Americans have already voted-- far more Democrats than Republicans-- and the only changes in the electoral outlook that time is bringing is a further collapse of support for Trump and the party that has shamelessly enabled him. If polls are to be believed, the public thinks it's time for the GOP to step up and take its bitter medicine. This morning, NY Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote about how Trump's alienation of women, suburbanites and seniors is killing Republicans across the Sun Belt. "The inflammatory behavior that has alienated voters beyond his base," they reported, "has long posed the most significant impediment to Mr. Trump’s re-election. But one week after he rampaged through the first presidential debate and then was hospitalized with the coronavirus, only to keep minimizing the disease as it spread through his White House, the president’s conduct is not only undermining his own campaign but threatening his entire party... He is trailing not just in must-win battlegrounds but according to private G.O.P. surveys, he is repelling independents to the point where Mr. Biden has drawn closer in solidly red states, including Montana, Kansas and Missouri, people briefed on the data said. Nowhere has Mr. Trump harmed himself and his party more than across the Sun Belt, where the electoral coalition that secured a generation of Republican dominance is in danger of coming apart."

Fine, but Biden doesn't need-- nor will he likely get-- electoral votes in Montana, Kansas and Missouri. What this is about at this point is if Trump's electoral collapse will, for example, flip the Florida state Senate, flip the Texas state House, elect Democrats like Texas' Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas districts once considered safely red-- districts carefully drawn to be safely red.

No one imagined that when Ted Yoho announced his retirement-- for whatever shady reasons-- his north central Florida district could flip blue and send a 26 year old super-progressive, Adam Christensen, to Congress, now a distinct possibility as the campaign of Trumpist shill Kat Cammack circles the drain. When voters look-- instead of voting by rote-- Florida's Cammack, Texas incumbents Michael McCaul and Roger Williams and California corrupt conservative Crooked Ken Calvert are all extremely unattractive candidates. And Trump is causing voters in their districts to end the old habits of just voting Republican without thinking.

“There are limits to what people can take with the irresponsibility, the untruthfulness, just the whole persona,” said Jeff Flake, the former Republican senator from Arizona. Mr. Flake is crossing party lines to support Mr. Biden, who made his first visit of the general election here Thursday.

Many of the Sun Belt states seemingly within Mr. Biden’s reach resisted the most stringent public-health policies to battle the coronavirus. As a result, states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas faced a powerful wave of infections for much of the summer, setting back efforts to revive commercial activity.

...Biden is mounting an assertive campaign and facing rising pressure to do more in the historically Republican region. He is buttressed by a fund-raising gusher for Democratic candidates, overwhelming support from people of color and defections from the G.O.P. among college-educated whites in and around cities like Atlanta, Houston and Phoenix [as well as Gainesville and Austin].

“Cities in states like Arizona and Texas are attracting young people, highly-educated people, and people of color-- all groups that the national Republican Party has walked away from the last four years,” said the Oklahoma City mayor, David F. Holt, a Republican. “This losing demographic bet against big cities and their residents is putting Sun Belt states in play.”

...On Thursday, in a conference call with a group of lobbyists, Mr. McConnell vented that the party’s Senate candidates are being financially overwhelmed because of small-dollar contributions to ActBlue, the online liberal fund-raising hub.

Let me break in here and remind readers that the ActBlue thermometer on the right is meant to make it easy for potential contributors to send campaign funds-- whether $10 or $100 or $1,000 to well-vetted progressives like Adam Christensen in Florida. Liam O'Mara in southern California, and Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas, 4 candidates on the cutting edge of flipping "safe" red seats in the Sun Belt, all in districts that Trump won in 2016 because of suburban voters-- who have now become distinctly unenamoured of him since then. These are shifting districts and if Cammack, Calvert, McCaul and Williams are unattractive candidates-- and are they ever-- Christensen, O'Mara, Siegel and Oliver are as good as democracy can serve up.

Democrats did well in the Sun Belt in 2018, winning Republican seats across the region and coming very close in others that are highly competitive right now. Martin and Burns wrote that "Now Republicans are at risk of that wave cresting again, and even higher... [I]f Mr. Trump loses across the South and West, it would force a much deeper introspection on the right about Trump and Trumpism-- and their electoral future in the fastest-growing and most diverse part of the country."

Polls show the presidential race in Texas is effectively tied, and congressional polling for both parties has found Mr. Biden running up significant leads across the state’s once-red suburbs. A Biden victory there could be transformational, providing Democrats an opportunity to enlarge their House majority, shape redistricting and deliver a devastating psychological blow to Republicans.





“Texas is really Biden’s to lose if he invests now, and that must include his time and presence in the state,” [Beto] O’Rourke said in an interview. “He can not only win our 38 electoral votes but really help down ballot Democrats, lock in our maps for 10 years, deny Trump the chance to declare victory illegally and send Trumpism on the run.” ... Biden is increasing his ad spending in the state and is expected to dispatch his wife, Jill, and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, there in the coming days, according to Democrats familiar with the planning.

Texas’s growth has been explosive: Over 1.5 million new voters have registered since 2016, a third of them in the diverse, transplant-filled counties that include San Antonio, Houston and Austin. The anger toward Mr. Trump has emboldened Democratic candidates to run more audacious campaigns.

In a Dallas-area House district held by a Republican who’s retiring, the Democratic Party is sending mailers telling voters that their nominee will “stand up to President Trump.” Senator John Cornyn, running for re-election, has lamented privately that Mr. Trump is stuck in the low 40s in polling, holding back other Republicans, people familiar with his comments said.

"We're in the middle of a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people," Julie Oliver reminded me this morning with an effective message she's using across her district. "Many of our kids' schools are still closed. Women are having to leave their jobs. We've lost millions of jobs. And meanwhile, both Donald Trump and Roger Williams have consistently put themselves and their financial interests before the people in Texas. This presidency has been an unmitigated failure-- and Roger Williams has enabled him, every step of the way."

Many Republican Candidates Are Paralyzed With Fear-- Fear Of Normal Voters On The One Hand And Fear Of Trump And His Element On The Other

 

Trump isn't dead yet and hasn't used his COVID diagnosis as an excuse for backing out of the race. He insists otherwise, but he was hurt badly by Tuesday's debate. This is very typical post-debate polling coverage: "Trump hurt himself more than his rival with Tuesday night's theatrics in what's been called the worst U.S. presidential debate in history."

Now, try to imagine the "Fake News" tantrum the criminally, clinically insane Donald must have thrown Wednesday night when he saw Gabe Sherman's Vanity Fair report, "The Family Is Worried Brad Will Start Talking": TrumpWorld Panics Over Debate Fiasco As Campaign Turmoil Mounts. It sounds pretty dire: "Over three days, the New York Times dropped a tax bombshell, Florida cops cuffed Brad Parscale, and the president just couldn’t help himself onstage. 'Trump didn’t win over any voters,' said a prominent Republican, 'and he pissed off a lot of people.'"

Sherman asserts that while the campaign is still assessing the political damage from the debate, particularly Trump's "refusal to condemn white supremacists," the Orange blot "didn't win over any voters, and he pissed off a lot of people."

Worse yet, "Republicans are resigned to the fact that Trump is unlikely-- or unwilling-- to course-correct. 'Trump thinks he won. He didn’t,' said another Republican with ties to the campaign. 'But does anyone have the balls to tell him that? No. They’d be fired.'"

Trump doesn’t accept the consensus that the debate was a disaster because, sources said, he was unabashedly himself. “The thing about the debate is people got to see why no one that has any integrity can work for Trump. This is what Trump is like in the Oval Office every day. It’s why [John] Kelly left. It’s why [Jim] Mattis quit,” said the prominent Republican. “Trump doesn’t let anyone else speak. He really doesn’t care what you have to say. He demeans people. He talks over them. And everyone around him thinks it’s getting worse.”

Inside Trumpworld there’s a view that the past week is an inflection point in the campaign. It started on Sunday night with the bombshell New York Times report that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. “For Trump the Times story was worse than losing reelection,” said the second Republican. “If you had told Donald back in 2015 that his tax returns would be exposed and he’d have all these investigations, I guarantee you he wouldn’t have run.”

As the Times story lit up cable news and Twitter, news broke that Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale had been taken into custody outside his Ft. Lauderdale home and hospitalized after threatening to commit suicide and allegedly beating his wife days prior. Police body camera footage showing an officer brutally tackling a shirtless, 6’8” Parscale to the pavement instantly became a visual metaphor for the chaos engulfing the Trump campaign. One campaign adviser I spoke with was shocked by the amount of force the police used to subdue and cuff Parscale. “If Brad had been Black, there would be riots all over the country,” the source said. (In fact, police have killed unarmed Black men in far less hostile situations.)

Parscale’s public meltdown happened while he is reportedly under investigation for stealing from the Trump campaign and the RNC. According to the source close to the campaign, the Trump family is worried that Parscale could turn on them and cooperate with law enforcement about possible campaign finance violations. “The family is worried Brad will start talking,” the source said.

And the shit show is just getting started... for Republicans who have earned-- and continue to earn-- every bit of it. Writing for the Washington Post, Robert Costa and Matt Viser reported that the aftermath of the debate "triggered a reckoning among Republicans on Wednesday about the incumbent’s incendiary remarks on white supremacy and his baseless claims of electoral fraud, with GOP officials privately expressing alarm about the fallout with key voters." Republican elected officials, though, were muted, tepid and largely non-existent "reflecting how the GOP remains convinced that an alliance with Trump and his voters is crucial for its survival. But hewing too close to him is also seen as a mistake by some Republicans, particularly for those who wish to court moderates and independent voters."

Utterly out-of-touch, brow furrowed, Susan Collins, who is losing her reelection bid to an uninspiring moderate Democrat, made the probably-fatal error of telling reporters that "There was fault on both sides. The interrupting on both sides, the name-calling was very unbecoming for a presidential debate." When pressed, she admitted it was "a mistake" for Donald to not condemn the Proud Boys and his other white supremicist supporters.

Tim Scott (R-SC) is the only black Republican in the Senate. (He was appointed.) He say Trump "misspoke" and "should correct it. If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak." That was about as close to a rebuke Donald got from a Republican senator-- and Scott isn't up for reelection in November. Donald's post-debate attempt at a "correction" was to lie to the media and claim he doesn't know who the Proud Boys are. "I mean, you’ll have to give me a definition, because I really don’t know who they are. I can only say they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work." Yeah, so I guess he didn't misspeak.

Trump’s comments did little to encourage Republicans about the political turbulence they face in the final stretch of the campaign as Trump seizes on matters of race and urban unrest and unfounded allegations of voter fraud.

“This election is drifting toward what feels like a blowout [victory for Biden], and there needs to be some type of event that changes that. The debate was a chance to change the direction, and while it might be too early to be seen, there is no real reason to believe it was a game-changer,” said Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to the past two Republican House speakers, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and John Boehner of Ohio.

Former senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), a Trump critic who stays in touch with former colleagues, said the private alarm in Senate GOP circles “is palpable.”

“People are voting already, so they know it’s going to be tough to put forward a new narrative,” Flake said. “They’re more than a little worried because it feels like even if you go in a different direction, it’d be too little, too late. That’s devastating.”

Polling shows the GOP Senate majority at risk with strongholds in the Deep South, such as South Carolina and Georgia, highly competitive. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison tied as Graham seeks a fourth term in the Senate.

One veteran Republican Senate strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are working on a Senate campaign, said, “We’re all kind of prepared to be responsible for our own performances and our own words. You’re not going to see anybody say it was a bad performance, but they’ll consider it like Trump’s really crazy tweets. They’ll say, ‘That’s not my kind of campaign, didn’t really see it.’”

The strategist added that several campaigns are already deliberating on how to address Proud Boys questions at upcoming Senate debates and are trying to figure out how to deflect the issue and shift to more favorable topics.

At the Capitol on Wednesday, where Senate Republicans are working swiftly to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, reactions ranged from venting about the debate to sidestepping challenges to Trump.

“It was awful,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told reporters, while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) offered a descriptive expletive.

“I was actually watching the Yankees,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD). When asked if he was disturbed by Trump’s response to the Proud Boys question, Rounds said, “He should have been very clear,” whether talking about “far-left” groups or “far-right” groups.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is in a difficult reelection race, said of Trump’s handling of the Proud Boys question: “I’ll leave it to the president. I know he’s not racist. I’m sure he doesn’t approve of their activities.”

Like Collins, Tillis is being challenged by an uninspiring moderate-to-conservative establishment Democrat and, like Collins, Tillis is losing his reelection bid. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Cunningham ahead by a daunting 6 points. And the most recent poll, by YouGov for CBS News, sounds like a death knell for Tillis. Cunningham is beating him 48% to 38%-- ten points!

And right on cue, Sabato's Crystal Ball stepped a little closer to reality-- just a little-- in its predictions for November. Cory Gardner hasn't had a shot for reelection for over a year and Sabato's outfit seems to have almost figured it out, moving its rating from "leans Democratic" to "likely Democratic." On November 4th they will move it to "safe Democratic." They seem to be recognizing that Al Gross is going to beat Trumpist coward Dan Sullivan in Alaska, moving Sullivan's reelection bid from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican." And in House races they made 12 changes-- all but one in favor of Democratic candidates. And the one was just a reflection of Sabato's unwillingness to understand what the nature of a wave is when even shit candidates like worthless New Dem T.J. Cox, are swept across the finish line by voters who want to see the enemy-- this year Republicans-- vanquished.





Sabato shows 30 Republican-held seats on the verge of flipping-- and that includes career-ending defeats for 18 House Republican incumbents. Blue America House candidates most likely to win next month-- according to Sabato's predictions-- are Jon Hoadley (MI-06), Kara Eastman (NE-02), Dana Balter (NY-24) and Mike Siegel (TX-10). The only Democrats Sabato sees in actual jeopardy are half a dozen Blue Dogs and New Dems: T.J. Cox (CA), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL), Collin Peterson (MN), Anthony Brindisi (NY), Max Rose (NY) and Kendra Horn (OK), the last 4 of whom the Democratic Party would be much better off without. My suggestion to people who want their contributions to go to candidates on the verge of winning-- and just using Sabato's criteria-- but who need that extra little push: click on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right and give $10 each to Kara Eastman, Mike Siegel and Jon Hoadley. BONUS: here's Mike Siegel speaking at an online Bernie congressional fundraiser Wednesday evening: