Those Who Will Gain The Most If Trump Trashes Healthcare For Billionaire Tax Cuts, Are On The Warpath-- Against Dean Heller

Yesterday we embedded the TV ad the shady Trump-Pence SuperPAC, America First Policies, ran to slam Nevada Republican Dean Heller for standing up for Nevadans getting healthcare through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and refusing to vote for TrumpCare. Trump wants revenge and Pence wants to send a signal to other Republicans that there's a political price to pay for putting constituents ahead of party-- even for a weak and vulnerable incumbent in a swing state that went for Hillary over Trump 539,260 (47.92%) to 512,058 (45.50%). The targets of that ad were as much Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan or Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Jerry Moran of Kansas as just Heller. But Heller, reported Jonathan Martin in the NY Times was getting hell back home-- and not from angry Democrats and independents at town halls.

Two billionaire mob gangsters closely associated with the Trump Regime, Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn, are threatening to finance a Trumpist primary challenge against Heller, probably political laughing stock Danny Tarkanian.

“All of the Trump supporters I talk to are furious with Heller,” said Danny Tarkanian, the son of the legendary Nevada basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian and a frequent Republican candidate for office in the state. Mr. Tarkanian said he was considering taking on the senator next year and had been encouraged to do so by some of the president’s ardent grass-roots admirers.

The political fallout from Mr. Heller’s high-profile news conference a week ago offers a vivid illustration of the new fault lines on the right in the Trump era. After years of fierce clashing between Republican hard-liners and mainstream conservatives, the purity-versus-pragmatist wars have given way to a new, Trump-centered debate that highlights how fully the president has taken over the party.

On the other hand, Mr. Heller faces enormous grass-roots pressure to stand his ground against the bill. He has clung tightly to his state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, a staunch opponent of the repeal who accepted the Medicaid expansion dollars in the Affordable Care Act. More than 200,000 Nevadans have gained insurance through Medicaid since the passage of the health law.

What angered the Republican rank and file about Mr. Heller’s critique was not so much his unease with the compromise Senate legislation-- a measure that many on the far right are also displeased with-- but that he would so purposefully undermine the president’s agenda.

And it is not just party activists who are displeased with the senator.

Mr. Adelson and Mr. Wynn, two of Las Vegas’s leading gambling titans, each contacted Mr. Heller at the request of the White House last week to complain about his opposition to the Republican-written health overhaul, according to multiple Republican officials.

One ally of Mr. Heller’s acknowledged that Mr. Adelson and Mr. Wynn were unhappy with the senator at the moment and that their relationship needed some repair work.

Both billionaire donors are close to Mr. Trump, a fellow tycoon. Mr. Adelson played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s election, showering Republican groups last year with tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Wynn is the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and oversaw a fund-raiser on Wednesday at the president’s Washington hotel that Mr. Trump said had raised about $7 million for the party committee and his re-election campaign.

Earlier that day, America First Policies held a donor meeting for those who were in the capital for that evening’s fund-raiser. Every contributor who raised the issue of the anti-Heller campaign-- an extraordinary offensive against a vulnerable senator in one’s own party-- expressed approval of the attacks, according to an attendee.

Ronald M. Cameron, a major Republican donor who gave the maximum $5,400 donation to Mr. Heller’s re-election campaign this year, said he would consider investing in primary race challenges to Republican lawmakers who oppose the health care bill or other White House legislative priorities.

“I might support a challenger, and would certainly withhold support from someone that I thought was against Trump’s agenda,” said Mr. Cameron, an Arkansas poultry magnate who donated more than $2 million to committees supporting Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and attended the Wednesday fund-raiser for his re-election.

Mr. Cameron-- who was solicited by America First but said he had not donated to the group-- said that he was not familiar with the group’s ads against Mr. Heller, but that he did not object to the idea of publicly calling out lawmakers who oppose the health care bill.

They should “shape up or get out of the way,” he said.

Mr. Trump himself, while acknowledging the complaints of the Republican senators at the White House meeting, has in other private sessions with his aides and allies made clear that he very much approved of the onslaught against Mr. Heller. At the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last Saturday and then again in the White House this week, he told advisers that he supported the ad blitz, according to multiple Republican officials who have spoken to the president.

Officials with America First insist that Mr. Trump and the White House staff all supported their decision to target Mr. Heller. But there has been some unease in the administration over the strategy, which created a significant rift with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and other Republican senators at the very moment they were trying to forge consensus around the repeal bill.

...Mr. Trump and Mr. Heller have little in the way of a relationship. The senator never supported the president’s campaign, and Mr. Trump identifies him with a larger group of Nevada Republicans, including Mr. Sandoval, who either remained on the sidelines throughout 2016 or spurned him in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape disclosure last October.

The day after Mr. Trump was revealed to have boasted on that tape about sexually assaulting women, a pair of Republican lawmakers in Nevada made a show of abandoning their party nominee at a rally outside Las Vegas. In doing so, Representative Joe Heck, who was running for the Senate, and Representative Cresent Hardy, who was seeking re-election, enraged Mr. Trump’s supporters.

Both lost their campaigns, making Nevada a rare bright spot in an otherwise lackluster year for Democrats.

To Nevada conservatives, it was an instructive moment-- and one they said Mr. Heller appears not to have learned a lesson from.

“He’s making a tragic mistake that I thought had already been learned by the G.O.P. delegation in Nevada,” said Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative talk show host and columnist in Las Vegas. “When you abandon Trump, you don’t get one Democrat, but you lose Republicans.”

Root may be correct about Democrats and Republicans, but elections in Nevada are decided by independents-- and they are overwhelmingly opposed to Trumpcare and, at this point, to Trump himself. The 2 polls the American Medical Association hired Republican firms to conduct in Nevada found that only 18% of Nevadans think TrumpCare is a good idea. 36% of Republicans think it's a good idea, as do 4% of Democrats. Independents-- the key to Heller's chance at reelection-- by a margin of 55% ("bad idea") to 17% ("good idea") disapprove of TrumpCare. This is the reality Heller is looking at in his state:

The polling also found that "the Medicaid program in the state is viewed favorably (58%) or neutral (20%). There are very few voters with unfavorable (14%) views of the program in the state. A plurality of voters want to keep Medicaid funding levels where they are today (43%), 33% want funding to be increased, and only 10% want to decrease funding for the Medicaid program. It is important to note that nearly six in ten voters (59%) either themselves, someone in their household or they know someone who is covered by Medicaid."

How The Politics Of Healthcare Have Made Dean Heller Unelectable In Nevada

Dean Heller is a squishy mainstreamish Republican senator from Nevada. He was appointed to the seat by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval in 2011 when corrupt Republican John Ensign was forced to resign. Before getting into politics, Heller was a stock broker. In 2012 he was challenged by a corrupt New Dem, Shelley Berkley and managed to beat her 457,656 (45.87%) to 446,080 (44.71%)-- an 11,576 vote margin (against an incredibly weak and unattractive candidate who many Democrats just couldn't persuade themselves to vote for).

This cycle, Heller is a dead dog. He has a Trumpist opponent, Danny Tarkanian and another crappy DSCC-backed conservaDem just like Berkley (totally unqualified Jacky Rosen) and a Berniecrat the DSCC is trying to derail, Jesse Sbaih. Sarah Palin has already endorsed Tarkanian and the most recent poll of Republican voters shows Heller losing the primary to Tarkanian 39-31%. There is no doubt that Bannon's whole Roy Moore neo-fascist support team will be showing up in Nevada to destroy Heller as soon as they've finished destroying Luther Strange in Alabama-- and teaching Trump a lesson about where he gets his marching orders.

Unlike Heller, Rand Paul stood up to Trump's bullying and bribes

You know the TrumpCare bill that John McCain just torpedoed, commonly known as Graham-Cassidy? That was actually short for Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson. And that's weird for someone who made such a big deal about sticking with the very popular Governor who originally appointed him to the Senate, Brian Sandoval. Sandoval has denounced the bill as detrimental to Nevadans. This week the Nevada Independent report on this sounded like an early Dean Heller political obituary.

Gov. Brian Sandoval said Thursday that the flexibility fellow Republican Sen. Dean Heller promised will be good for Nevada in a health-care bill he’s sponsoring is a “false choice” because the legislation will also slash funding.

Sandoval, in a statement to the Nevada Independent, said he would not “pit seniors, children, families, the mentally ill, the critically ill, hospitals, care providers or any other Nevadan against each other” because of the steep cuts to federal funding the state would face if the Heller-sponsored measure were to pass. A state analysis, also obtained by the Nevada Independent, agrees with independent calculations from various health-care organizations estimating Nevada will lose between $600 million and $2 billion in federal funding by 2026 if the legislation passes.

As tensions mounted this week with Senate Republicans renewing a health-care debate thought to be laid to rest, Heller publicly touted the “flexibility” the measure would create by dividing up the federal dollars currently spent on the Affordable Care Act among the states in the form of a block grant. Where Sandoval only gently rebuffed Heller on Tuesday, saying he appreciated the “intended flexibility” of the bill, the careful, deliberative Sandoval-- not one to rush to the presses with a strongly worded statement-- didn’t mince words on Thursday.

“Flexibility with reduced funding is a false choice,” Sandoval said in the statement. “I will not pit seniors, children, families, the mentally ill, the critically ill, hospitals, care providers, or any other Nevadan against each other because of cuts to Nevada’s health-care delivery system proposed by the Graham-Cassidy amendment.”

Sandoval’s statement stands in sharp relief against one issued just two days earlier, in which the even-keeled governor attempted to soften the blow to Heller after authoring a letter with a group of nine other bipartisan governors urging Senate leadership not to consider the proposal. In the earlier statement, Sandoval said that Heller is “working in the best interest of the state” while gently, but firmly reiterating that he favors a bipartisan fix to the nation’s health-care system.

The recent rift between the two Republicans is also a sharp turn of events from June, when Sandoval and Heller stood side by side to harshly condemn Senate Republicans’ last repeal-and-replace plan, saying that it would strip health care away from millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans. Sandoval remained mum for weeks on the measure, initially drafted by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy and signed onto by Heller amid a week of heated health-care negotiations in the Senate in July.

Heller publicly touted that “Nevada wins” under the measure, which would divvy up the block grant annually based on states’ numbers of poor or near-poor residents as well as create a per capita cap on the half-century old Medicaid program. The Republican senator, who is up for re-election in 2018, has had to walk a fine line amid discussions in the Senate over the past couple of months about repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, facing a challenge from the more conservative Danny Tarkanian.

...[W]hile the bill sponsors compare the amount of money Nevada will receive in 2026 under Graham-Cassidy when the block grant ends to how much it will receive in 2020 when the block grant begins, the correct analysis would be to compare the projected funding Nevada will receive in 2026 under the Affordable Care Act under the status quo compared to what it would receive in 2026 under Graham-Cassidy. When that comparison is done, Nevada loses between $600 million to $2 billion by most organizations’ calculations, the state analysis says.

Over months of discussions about repealing the Affordable Care Act, Sandoval has repeatedly argued against touching the extra dollars the federal health-care law made available to states that chose to opt in to an expansion of Medicaid, a point he reiterated in the Thursday statement. Sandoval was the first Republican governor to opt in to Medicaid expansion, and the state has since entirely restructured the way it provides services, such as mental health care, to rely on those new federal Medicaid dollars.

“As Governor, I made a commitment to use all the tools available to ensure Nevadans had access to affordable and quality health care. I made the decision to expand Medicaid to never before covered populations, including childless adults and pregnant women,” Sandoval said. “I made the decision to leverage all the federal funding possible through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and to work to improve the health-care system for those with mental illness, addictions and disabilities.”

Before the state expanded Medicaid, the uninsurance rate was 20.7 percent, 27 percent for adults under 65 and 14.8 percent for children; after, the uninsured rate dropped by 9.3 percentage points, down to 11.4 percent in 2016. Between Medicaid expansion and the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange, nearly 400,000 Nevadans have gained access to health care, including more than 300,000 in Medicaid and nearly 90,000 on the exchange, Sandoval said.

According to the state’s analysis, more than 200,000 people currently receiving Medicaid will lose coverage when the block grant goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 and need to be moved to other coverage with unknown costs. An additional 90,000 Nevadans who purchase insurance on the exchange would also be left without access to subsidized coverage.

The per capita cap that Graham-Cassidy places on Medicaid funding, which organizations who have analyzed the bill do not believe will keep pace with the costs of providing health care, will “fundamentally” change the federal Medicaid program without analyzing the cost of long-term impacts to the state, the state analysis says.

The legislation will also reduce the ability for states to levy provider taxes from 6 percent to 4 percent over time, which will limit Nevada’s ability to help finance increased Medicaid payments to nursing homes. The reduction will result in a $10 million per year reduction in payments to nursing homes by 2025, according to the state’s analysis.

The state analysis says Graham-Cassidy will also reduce the $8 million in prevention and public health funding Nevada receives annually to pay for immunizations and conduct disease investigations to protect public health, as well as reduce Nevada’s hospitals from accessing Medicaid funds in retroactive months of eligibility in many cases, resulting in more uncompensated care and cost burdens being shifted to other parts of the health-care system.

“I have said many times before that I will not support legislation that may result in a cost shift to the State or result in Nevadans losing insurance coverage,” Sandoval said. “I cannot in good faith support the Graham-Cassidy amendment.”

I Don't Feel Sorry For Paul Ryan-- He Made This Bed

As I sat down to write this post, the big headlines at Bannon's and Mercer's extreme right website were a series of attacks on Trump chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kushner-in-law and on the Senate's most vulnerable Republican, Dean Heller. The anti-Heller diatribe was something that has many congressional Republicans wondering when they should break with the Trump Regime for their own political survival.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Danny Tarkanian for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, an endorsement Palin and Tarkanian provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release.

“Danny Tarkanian is a conservative outsider who will support the ‘America First’ policies our nation needs to survive and thrive, including building the border wall, ending sanctuary cities, and finally repealing Obamacare,” Palin said in the statement endorsing Tarkanian, provided exclusively to Breitbart News. “Commonsense Conservatives in Nevada and across America need to unite and help win this critical fight. I strongly endorse Danny Tarkanian for the United States Senate and look forward to helping him win this important election.”

...Tarkanian’s race against Heller comes as Heller, a far-outside-the-mainstream establishment Republican, has not stood with President Trump on most issues. For instance, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Heller “bragged about his dissent against the Republican-backed health reform bills” and he “stated he would continue to uphold” support for former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty for illegal alien youths.

In addition, Heller announced his opposition to the idea that President Trump would pardon Arizona’s former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Meanwhile, a top player inside the Mercer/Bannon operation contacted Blue America to ask if we would partner with them on a project to topple Paul Ryan who they hate with a fierce passion. They really hate Ryan-- probably as much as we do. The WI-01 congressional race will hinge on independent voters choosing between Ryan's increasingly ugly and deteriorating brand and the vibrant and sparkling everyman brand Wisconsin iron worker Randy Bryce has patiently built up for years. A little over a third of the midterm voters will be Republicans and a slightly smaller number will be Democrats. But over a quarter of the voters will be independents who are indicating in no uncertain terms they don't think Ryan has earned another reelection. Trump-leaning independents are as adamant as Democratic-leaning independents that Ryan is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Politico's Rachel Bade covers Ryan from a very sympathetic perspective. Yesterday she asked the country to feel sorry for his plight. "For all its power and prestige," she empathizes for her idol, "the speaker of the House is one of the most thankless jobs in Washington-- just ask John Boehner. Now, with Congress barreling toward major fiscal fights this fall, Paul Ryan is about to get a taste of the Boehner treatment-- and then some. Consider what's on the immediate horizon for the GOP wunderkind: President Donald Trump is ready to shut down the government over his border wall with Mexico. Breitbart has all but declared a renewed, Steve Bannon-led war on GOP leaders, with Ryan in its cross hairs. And conservative lawmakers are exhorting the speaker to play hardball on raising the debt ceiling-- even as the White House demands a no-strings-attached increase to calm nervous creditors."

"Conservatives aren’t going to roll over when it comes to the debt ceiling,” said Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker (R-N.C.) in a Tuesday interview. “I can tell you: It’s going to be a battle.”

Asked about Ryan’s leadership on such matters, Walker added: “I would like to see his genius in policy manifest itself… Behind closed doors, there are strong conversations when it comes to holding the line for the will of the bulk of the conference. And I would like to see some strength in that area.”

When Ryan reluctantly took the reins of the House Republican Conference in late 2015, he went out of his way to say he was only heeding the call of duty and didn't really want it. Two years later, he faces the most treacherous stretch of his speakership as September showdowns over the budget and debt ceiling approach.

Like Boehner, Ryan will be forced to mediate the long-running hostilities in his conference-- between the always-potent Freedom Caucus and a newly-empowered faction of centrists. Only this time, Ryan also has a demanding and unpredictable president thrown into the mix, too.

Trump isn't making it easy. On Thursday he attacked Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for rejecting his proposed strategy of pairing a debt ceiling increase, a toxic vote for Republicans, with a popular veterans bill to garner more support.

GOP leaders rejected the approach because they ran out of time before recess and worried some Republicans would fume that they got arm-twisted into voting for the debt bill they'd otherwise oppose but for the vets provision.

Trump didn't care about those sensitivities, tweeting Thursday: “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval.... They didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

That slight came just days after Trump said he'd be willing to shut down the government in order to secure funding for his border wall-- a strategy that could backfire on the Republican congressional majority in next year's midterms. And as if that's wasn't enough stress, Ryan will almost certainly be forced to rely on Democrats for the fall’s big fiscal votes-- a move that was eventually Boehner’s undoing.

No one is saying Ryan's job is in jeopardy. But the way he handles all these situations could well determine his standing and popularity within the GOP.

Meanwhile, frustration is mounting among Republican voters that Congress failed to deliver on campaign promises like repealing Obamacare. While Ryan points out that the House passed legislation and it was the Senate that came up short, the public isn't necessarily interested in that distinction.

Neither, it seems, are Trump and his allies. In fact, the president has shown he has no compunction about blaming Republicans in Congress for not enacting his agenda. And while Bannon engaged politely with Ryan and GOP leaders in the White House, he’s made clear that he plans to pound them relentlessly from his new perch atop Breitbart.

"You can see the emerging theme from Trump world is that Trump doesn’t fail; Trump has been betrayed," said longtime Ryan acquaintance Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative commentator based in Wisconsin. "They’re going to line up the scapegoats... No matter how much [Ryan] appeases Trump, it won’t take long for Trump for turn on him."

Most of Trump's ire has lately centered on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in retribution for failing to pass a bill to repeal Obamacare. But the Trump-Ryan marriage has always been one more of convenience than true love, so many are wondering how much longer it will last.

Here in Ryan’s southeast Wisconsin district, longtime Ryan supporters worry their congressman will be crippled from all the impossible demands and pressures. Marlene Lamberton, a Ryan constituent and retired manufacturing employee from Caledonia, Wis., said this week that Ryan is being “forced to do many unpopular things” and “make a lot of compromises" because his conference is so divided.

“Being speaker of the House has become a setback… It’s basically ruined his career for a while,” she said. “I think Paul Ryan is a good person. I think he’s one of the most honest politicians I’ve ever known and heard. But I think he is compromising his values a little.”

We contacted David Keith, Randy Bryce's Racine-based campaign manager about how this is playing out in southeast Wisconsin. He told us that "Ryan finds himself in a very precarious situation: does he hug the far right in the hopes of fending off a revolution from the Bannon-types, or does he dismiss the far right in the hopes of winning enough of the independent vote to get him to 50+1? The latter is the type of tactic Ryan is normally comfortable with. In Ryan world, his cookie-cutter style will be: dump millions of negative advertising on Randy Bryce while amplifying the 'aw-shucks' Mr. Nice Guy/I'm your wonky neighbor type to target milk toast moderates (a vote that I believe is becoming few and far between).

"There is a problem with this approach however. 1/3 (maybe slightly less) of the vote will be independent, meaning that he would have to win 75% of the independent vote in addition to winning ALL of the Republican vote. If Ryan deserts Trump and his Bannon-type extremists, he CAN'T win 100% of the Republican vote, or even anything remotely close to that. They may stay home. They may vote for the iron-worker, or they may vote for a third party...

"So this dynamic begs the question: is Paul Ryan nearing a check mate scenario? No matter how bad the Koch Regime and their money apparatus muddy up Randy's name, Democrats are eager to vote, Independents hate the President and his agenda so their vote will likely mirror the Democratic voter sentiment, and the far right hates Ryan. I don't see a majority coalition there for Ryan.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, might be the phrase increasingly playing in Lyin-Ryan's head for the next 15 months."

Republican Triage Hits Nevada

Two weeks ago we took a quick peak at how the NRCC had begun the triage process. I completely forgot serial loser Danny Tarkanian. Tarkanaian started running for office in 2004, when he ran for state Senate. He lost. Two years later he ran for Secretary of State. He lost. Then it was U.S. Senate in 2010, He lost. He ran for Congress in 2012 (and again in 2016). He lost both times. He ran for the state Education System in 2014. He lost. This year he decided to challenge Republican incumbent Dean Heller for the GOP Senate nomination. But, when polling showed him losing-- and when Trump told him not to run against Heller-- he pulled out and decided to run for the open congressional seat in NV-03. The last time he ran in the 3rd, this is what happened:

• Jacky Rosen- 146,869 (47.23%)
• Danny Tarkanian- 142,926 (45.96%)

On that same day Trump beat Hillary in that district by a full point.



His opponent in the R+2 district is New Dem and socialite Susie Lee, a really heinous, dreadful candidate, though perhaps not as heinous and dreadful as Tarkanian. As of June 30 she had raised $2,129,227 to his $1,186,612. They both won their June 12 primaries convincingly, Lee with 25,475 votes (66.9%) and Tarkanian with 15,257 votes (44.1%). 38,073 Democrats voted in the primary-- primarily because Trump had endorsed him-- but just 34,572 Republicans showed up. And that brings us to Jon Ralston's report that the NRCC had decided, despite Trump's backing to Tarkanian-- to toss him overboard. Aware they're going to lose their House majority, the NRCC wants to preserve their resources for candidates who can win. In their view, that doesn't include Tarkanian. They're putting their Nevada resources behind Cresent Hardy in his NV-04 race instead. In that re-run of the 2012 election, former Congressman Steve Horsford has raised $682,449 and former Congressman Cresent Hardy has raised $415,967. Unions have already spent $695,078 supporting Horsford and the NRCC is well aware they're going to have to drop millions of dollars into the district and feel they can't spend it in both the 3rd and the 4th.

Ralston found the decision to drop Tarkanian and stick with Hardy odd, "considering the difference in district demographics: In CD-04, where Hardy is trying to reclaim his old seat from the man he defeated four years ago, Steven Horsford, Democrats have a 9 percentage-point lead. In CD-03, where Tarkanian is taking on Democrat Susie Lee, Democrats have only a 2 percentage-point edge."

What this decision means practically is that whatever ad reservations and money already has been laid down in the market by the NRCC will not be split between the two districts but funnelled into the CD-04 race-- and all future investment will be to help Hardy.

Of course, if polling warrants, this decision is not irrevocable. But this withdrawal of support is a devastating blow to Tarkanian, who already is in a huge financial hole to Lee and needs outside help to be competitive monetarily and on the airwaves.

I’m told the NRCC has polling that shows both races close and thus could have made sound arguments for investing solely in either one. But this decision is a clear sign that the NRCC believes in Hardy and also has data that indicates:

1. Tarkanian, who has never won a race, is…Tarkanian; and 2. Horsford has identifiable vulnerabilities, some of which were exploited when Hardy beat him in 2014 in one of the biggest upsets in Nevada annals.

This will become evident in mid-September when the airwave ad glut takes hold here and elsewhere. House GOP strategists are optimistic that control could come down to a handful of seats, and Nevada is one of the few places they can play offense instead of defense (two open Democratic seats) so naturally they want to focus all of their energies and resources on one race so as to not dilute their efforts.

Clearly the NRCC wasn't just looking at the odds. 2 in 7 (27.4%) is pretty piss poor odds to gamble on:

But 1 in 7 (15.2%  is far worse:

In the other big Nevada races, a new Suffolk poll shows Democrat Steve Sisolak with a 2 point lead over Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in the governor's race, and conservative Democrat Jacky Rosen leading incumbent Dean Heller (R) by less than a percentage point in the Senate race. Trump's statewide approval/disapproval rating is 46/50%.

Both Political Parties Start The 2018 Primary Season Mired In Civil War

Instead of Heller vs Rosen, how about Sbaih vs Tarkanian?

Yesterday, you may have seen that an American Research Group poll of likely presidential primary voters in New Hampshire showed that John Kasich leads Trump 52-40%. And if Trump is replaced by Pence, the news is even better for Kasich. In a 2-man head to head, Kasich leads Pence 41-27%. Also yesterday morning, Nevada Trumpist-- and serial loser--Danny Tarkanian went on Trump's favorite TV show, Fox & Friends, to announce his primary challenge to Republican Senator Dean Heller. Heller, who vehemently opposed TrumpCare, was threatened by Trump and Pence-- threats that included a negative TV ad paid for by a PAC for which Pence raised the money-- and he flip-flopped and sold out Nevada voters rather than man up and take the heat the way Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) and John McCain (R-AZ) did. Heller, no doubt, imagined he would be safe from Trumpist rage by surrendering. That doesn't seem to be working out for him. GOP pollster Strategic National showed Heller having a tough time in a match with Tarkanian, edging him, 38-34%, within the poll's margin of error. In a 3-way match up including Rep. Mark Amodei, Amodei leads with 27% to Heller's 26% and Tarkanian's 21%.

David Drucker reported for the Washington Examiner, a GOP website, that Trumpanzee and the GOP "are increasingly at each other's throats at a time when lawmakers are back in their districts for recess. Trump sometimes treats congressional Republicans as an opposition party, tweeting criticism of them and reprimanding them in public settings. Republicans have taken to doing the same-- ignoring the president as if his spotlight-grabbing tweets don't exist and rebuking him on key elements of his foreign and domestic priorities."

Trump's rise has elevated the populists, often working-class and rural voters, who tend to be less fiscally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy and more motivated by cultural wedge issues like guns and same-sex marriage, than traditional conservatives, who tend to hold down white-collar jobs and live in the suburbs.

The conflict has infected intraparty relations in the states and at the grassroots level as well, leading to factionalism and a group of party loyalists who are a separate and distinct group from Trump loyalists, although there is overlap.

"The populist-conservative fusion has been coming for some time," Republican strategist Brad Todd said. "The trick is going to be finding some things that each branch of the party wants that the other branch can live with."

The impact has been felt among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Whether on repealing Obamacare, controlling government spending or immigration reform, they periodically run into trouble in advancing their own agenda because of they can't agree among themselves. But Trump certainly controls the party apparatus.

The installation of Kayleigh McEnany as national spokesman for the Republican National Committee is the latest example of Trump's takeover. McEnany doesn't have experience as a professional GOP communications operative, as an individual in her position usually does.

But she is a Trump loyalist who excelled in an arena important to the president: on CNN as television surrogate.

Trump nevertheless remains, in many respects, a stranger in his own party. That's most evident in his reliance on Vice President Mike Pence, a traditional Reagan conservative, for political and policy outreach.

Pence was an essential tool Trump used during the general election to reassure skeptical Republicans that they could trust the GOP nominee. Pence also forged connections between with a standoffish party establishment whose work on the ground was important to helping Trump win.

The president's dependence on Pence has continued long past Election Day, however.

Two-hundred days into his administration, Trump hasn't developed the array of relationships with members of his party on Capitol Hill that the previous Republican other president had or, in place of those connections, strong personal and political loyalty.

Pence is still the president's conduit to many Republicans on Capitol Hill-- the White House figure congressional Republicans actually trust and prefer to deal with. As Sen. Jim Inhofe told the Washington Examiner during an interview in late June when asked what Trump could do to ensure passage of legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare:

"Keep in mind, his greatest ally in helping him is the vice president," the Oklahoma Republican said on June 22, roughly one month before the Senate GOP bill failed. "That's an area where he's going to be more prominent in trying to help get this through than the president, because he has the direct contact with the individuals."

The vice president is also Trump's go-to for much of the party-building activities outside of Washington that are normally overseen more directly by the president and his staff. It's that dynamic that created the atmosphere for speculation to flourish that Pence had ulterior motives for launching a leadership PAC and traveling the country to raise money and campaign on behalf off down-ticket Republicans.

"The party is damaged and fractured," a former House GOP leadership aide said. "Part of that was a pre-existing condition, and part of that is Trump throwing gas on the fire every day."

Good to know it isn't just the Democrats going through a primary season civil war. With Pelosi's DCCC and the DC establishment Democrats using Medicare-for-All-- and a progressive agenda in general-- as a litmus test to oppose congressional candidates, Beltway media outlets like Politico are helping them twist the framing to make it sound like progressives are enforcing a litmus test against the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. "House and Senate Democrats," wrote Gabriel Debenedetti, "have wondered for months whether Bernie Sanders’ supporters might choose to focus their energy on launching primary challenges to party moderates in 2018. They’re about to get an answer... The Vermont senator himself has not explicitly said he’ll support primary challenges to those who won’t support his push for a so-called Medicare-for-all health care plan. But there are plenty of signs that Sanders and his allies view the issue as a defining moment for Democratic lawmakers."

As we showed yesterday, the DCCC spends tens of millions of dollars backing Blue Dogs, New Dems, "ex"-Republicans and others from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, while starving progressives of any meaningful support. But for lazy, easily-spun Beltway types like Debenedetti, it is the Bernie backers who are about litmus tests. In his reporting about the Nevada Senate primary Debenedetti doesn't even mention that the extremely right-of-center establishment candidate, Jacky Rosen, is one of the Trumpiest Democrats in Congress with one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in the House and an "F" score from Progressive Punch.

[E]ven as leading party figures have drifted toward supporting a single-payer system similar to the one proposed by Sanders, almost none of them expect anything like it to become law while Republicans control Washington.

With Sanders promising to play a major role in 2018 races, that’s led many party officials to worry about the prospect of his involvement in primaries that could upend the Democratic establishment’s plans to win crucial House, Senate and gubernatorial seats.

The fears are acute enough that when the Nevada chapter of Our Revolution-- the political group spawned from the Sanders presidential campaign-- endorsed long-shot candidate Jesse Sbaih in the state’s Democratic Senate primary over party favorite Rep. Jacky Rosen, retired former Sen. Harry Reid felt the need to call Sanders directly.

Don’t endorse Sbaih, and don’t let the national Our Revolution group accept its Nevada chapter's recommendation to back him either, the former minority leader implored his friend. Sanders agreed, said a Democrat familiar with the interaction.

“There’s a concern that [Sanders allied] people will try to make a stir,” said a senior Democratic aide working on a 2018 campaign. “You can’t just be a liberal Democrat in a lot of these states and be elected. [So] the question is how we improve the lives of people instead of playing these political games."

Sanders allies don’t find that argument convincing.

“Any Democrat worth their salt that doesn’t unequivocally say Medicare-for-all is the way to go? To me, there’s something wrong with them,” said former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution. “We’re not going to accept no more hemming and hawing. No more game playing. Make your stand.”

...The Vermont independent has signaled that he expects serious resistance even from Democrats, but he has yet to spell out how he'll fight back.

“We will be taking on the most powerful special interests in the country: Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the corporate media, the Republican Party and the establishment wing of the Democratic Party,” he emailed supporters last Tuesday.

What’s clear is that Sanders’ large and politically active following has stopped Democrats from confronting him directly — including when it comes to offering alternatives to his Medicare-for-all measure. Many still remember the swift and angry January response from grass-roots progressives including Sanders supporters toward Booker for a symbolic drug importation vote, and toward Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her procedural vote in favor of Ben Carson’s nomination as Housing secretary.

“It represents the broader question of what the Democratic Party stands for, [so] this is a fundamental moment for Democratic senators. It’s an issue that everyone is going to be watching to see how they respond,” said Chuck Idelson, a senior operative for the National Nurses United union, which served as one of the most prominent backers of Sanders’ campaign and has long been a needle in the side of establishment Democrats.

Like many Democrats who are closely aligned with Sanders’ political operation, Idelson stopped short of primary threats. But he refused to rule out the possibility that his group might consider backing challenges of sitting Democratic lawmakers who don’t back the plan.

“Our organization, and plenty of other people out there, are going to be holding the Democrats accountable,” Idelson said. “What are we electing people for if they’re not going to be fighting for getting people health care when they need it?”

Other Sanders-allied progressives have been equally adamant on the need to give his Medicare-for-all push a starring role in forthcoming primaries after the recent Capitol Hill health care fights and the stalling of a much-publicized California state legislative proposal.

“We should run on Medicare-for-all in the 2018 and 2020 elections,” said Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna, a Sanders backer who has encouraged primary challenges. “The Democrats that are activists are there, the Democratic voters are there, but now we just need enough of the elected officials to listen to where their constituents are.”

The distrust between Sanders forces and the establishment is increasing the tension. Some Democratic senators privately bristled at the health care rallies that Sanders and others organized across the country in January: They were shocked to be greeted by angry Sanders backers in the crowds who loudly urged them to back a single-payer plan, according to several Democratic senators and aides. There is also longstanding grumbling over his refusal to share his campaign email list with other Democrats and, more recently, over his vote against a new round of sanctions against Russia and Iran.

On the other side of the divide, Sanders allies insist the party seldom acknowledges the role of the senator’s 2016 presidential bid in shaping the party’s new agenda, whether on health care, a $15 minimum wage, or free college. And they express frustration that Democratic gatekeepers are still slow to accept Sanders’ likely front-runner role if he chooses to run for president in 2020.

In the words of one senior aide to Sanders’ campaign, “A special cloud of denial formed over the swamp when polls started coming out showing Bernie was the most popular politician in the country."

Bannon And Mercer Team Up To Destroy The GOP Establishment

Want to know some senators who are really not into the Trump agenda? Just check out the official Trumpanzee adhesion scale. These are the ones who really don't agree with almost anything he's attempting to do:

• Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)- 8.2%
• Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)- 10.2%
• Jeff Merkley (D-OR)- 12.2%
• Bernie (I-VT)- 14.3%
• Cory Booker (D-NJ)- 14.3%
• Ed Markey (D-MA)- 14.6%

But leaving out an occasional, desultory crack about "Pocahontas," Trump rarely mentions any of them and has instead been reserving his most notable displays of animus for Republican senators he gets into childish tiffs with. And, it's looking like Trump allies Steve Bannon and the Daddy Warbucks of the alt-right and American neo-fascism, Long Island billionaire Robert Mercer, is preparing to pursue jihad-to-the-death against at least 4 Republican senators... who all voted for TrumpCare and who all have very high Trumpnazee adhesion scores:

• Bob Corker (R-TN)- 87.5%
• Dean Heller (R-NV)- 89.8%
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)- 91.5%
• Roger Wicker (R-MS)- 95.9%

[Note: Corker is not looking for this kind of fight and is threatening to retire if Trump allows Mercer and Bannon to carry out their threat to primary him.]

When Kelly first fired Bannon, he was widely quoted saying "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." He worried that the fascism, xenophobia, racism and disruption-for-the-sake-of-disruption would be over. Well, Bannon's influence has certainly waned by all that crap seems well-baked into the cake.

On August 18, Bannon said "We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

Bannon claims-- not without credibility-- that Trump encouraged him to take on the Republican establishment. "I said, 'look, I’ll focus on going after the establishment.' He said, 'good, I need that.'"

Over the weekend, Alex Isenstadt reported that Bannon and Mercer are plotting primaries against Republicans. They're "planning a slate of primary challenges against Republican senators, potentially undermining the party’s prospects in 2018 and further inflaming tensions between GOP leaders and the White House... an all-out war against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment. Bannon has begun holding private meetings with insurgent challengers, vowing his support. He’s coordinating with conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer, who is prepared to pour millions of dollars into attacks on GOP incumbents. Bannon has also installed a confidant at an outside group that is expected to target Republican lawmakers and push the Trump agenda." Anyone else find it odd that 60 Minutes didn't even mention the name Mercer in their much-ballyhooed segment on Bannon Sunday? Let's face it, Bannon is exactly nothing but Mercer's tool.

The activity has alarmed senior Republicans, who worry it will drain millions of dollars from the party’s coffers to take on Democrats in the general election. McConnell has repeatedly expressed concern to the White House about the danger primaries pose to his members, stressing that it could imperil his narrow four-seat majority, according to three people with direct knowledge of the discussions.

“The issue is: Do you invest your time and energy in attacking people who are carrying this president’s water in Congress to the benefit of people who are trying to impeach him? That seems like an incredibly short-sighted strategy,” said Josh Holmes, a former McConnell chief of staff.

Bannon is paying little heed to those warnings. On Thursday, he huddled with Danny Tarkanian, an attorney who is challenging Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), at the Capitol Hill townhouse that serves as a base of operations for Breitbart News, the conservative website that Bannon oversees.

Bannon made it clear during the 30-minute meeting that Tarkanian had his full backing in the race against Heller, according to one person familiar with the conversation. Heller refused to endorse Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Leading the target list is Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, an outspoken critic of the president who recently published a book lamenting the rise of Trump. Bannon is intent on unseating Flake, and David Bossie, the president’s 2016 deputy campaign manager and the president of the influential conservative group Citizens United, has embarked on an effort to recruit several potential primary challengers, including former Rep. Matt Salmon. The former congressman, however, has expressed reluctance to enter the contest.

The anti-incumbent effort could dramatically reshape the 2018 primary landscape if it materializes. It would pit a group of pro-Trump primary challengers against sitting lawmakers who are perceived as more mainstream.

Two other senators could come under attack. Behind the scenes, Bannon has proposed the possibility of targeting Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, and those close to the former Trump chief strategist are talking about the prospect of a challenge to Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker.

Corker had long been considered a Trump ally and had been in the mix to become secretary of state, but has since angered the president's supporters with recent comments in which he questioned Trump’s competence. Shortly after Bannon left the White House and returned to Breitbart last month, the site published a story promoting a potential Corker challenger, state Sen. Mark Green. The site has also hyped the possibility that state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a tea party favorite, will take on Wicker.

Bannon is firing his opening shot in the Alabama Senate special election, squaring off against McConnell in a race the Senate leader and his allies have spent millions of dollars to win.

While Bannon is behind controversial former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, McConnell has gone all in for Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed early this year to temporarily fill the seat after Jeff Sessions became attorney general. Speaking to prominent GOP activists at a Conservative Action Project meeting and on a Judicial Watch conference call recently, Bannon portrayed the Sept. 26 primary as a defining battle between the conservative base and GOP establishment.

Trump endorsed Strange before the first round of voting in mid-August but has since done little to promote him. Recent polling has shown Moore with a significant lead.

A Strange loss would be an embarrassment for McConnell and open the floodgates for other GOP primary challenges, Bannon has argued. On Thursday, Bannon and Bossie met separately with Moore in Washington.

It's not the first time Bannon has gone after the GOP establishment in Senate primaries. During the 2014 midterms, Breitbart, under Bannon’s leadership, promoted several insurgent challengers, including physician Milton Wolf in Kansas and former state Rep. Joe Carr in Tennessee. None of the Breitbart-backed candidates won, but the effort sapped the party leadership of millions of dollars.

This time around, Bannon is almost certain to rely on funding from Mercer, a reclusive hedge fund manager who has long funded his political projects. After exiting the White House, Bannon left Washington for Long Island, New York, where he spent five days meeting with the billionaire.

Mercer, who was one of Trump’s top donors during the 2016 campaign, has expressed a desire to go after sitting GOP lawmakers, according to three people with direct knowledge of his thinking. He has already donated $300,000 to an anti-Flake super PAC and has indicated that he’s interested in giving more to unseat the senator.

Bannon has taken preliminary steps to establish a political structure that could be used in 2018 races. It was recently announced that his political adviser, Andrew Surabian, was leaving the White House to take a job at Great America Alliance, a pro-Trump outside group.

“I don't think anyone should be surprised at primary challenges in GOP Senate races, especially against those senators that have appeared to be less than helpful to the Trump agenda. And I think those primary challengers will be well funded,” said Ned Ryun, a conservative strategist who has written for Breitbart. “It's a natural reaction by the base to what they've perceived as a perhaps intentional inability to pass any Trump agenda items.”

GOP leaders are racing to protect their lawmakers. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) recently organized a pair of fundraisers in his home state to jointly benefit Heller and Flake-- they were canceled after Hurricane Harvey but are expected to be rescheduled. One was set to be at the Dallas home of billionaire Robert Rowling, who owns Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym. It offered a reception and photo op and asked for contributions up to $44,700, according to an invitation.

Heller has taken steps to repair his relationship with the White House. After Trump delivered a speech before the American Legion in Reno in which he called for national unity, the senator called the president and complimented him on his remarks, according to one person familiar with the exchange. After initially attacking the Trump-led effort to repeal Obamacare, Heller ultimately backed legislation to reverse the law.

There are indications the offensive has paid off. On Friday evening, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, Trump’s handpicked Republican National Committee finance chairman, gave Heller a full-throated endorsement during a speech at a Nevada Republican Party fundraising dinner.

But Tarkanian is plowing ahead. He said that Trump supporters in Nevada felt betrayed by Heller and have been flocking to his campaign.

"I got in the race with the hope that there would be enthusiasm for my candidacy, and it's far exceeded my hope," Tarkanian said. “There’s a lot of frustration with Dean Heller.”

Last night Seung Min Kim reported, also for Politico, that Senate Republicans are warning Bannon that they'll be angry and hurt if he really goes to war against them.

Nevada's U.S. Senate Race Looks Wide Open-- Party Establishment Picks May Fail To Make The Final Ballot

The ad above by Save My Care started running yesterday in Nevada, where panic-stricken serial flip flopper Dean Heller is widely seen as the most vulnerable Senate incumbent up for reelection in 2018. After vowing to Nevadans to not help GOP extremists repeal Obamacare he was threatened by Trump and immediately buckled and voted against Nevadans. And now he's back with another bill he helped write that will rip healthcare away from even more Americans than the last one! Below is the ad a Trump SuperPAC, with money raised by Mike Pence, used as an effective cudgel to beat up Heller and force him to switch his postion from the pro-healthcare position that the popular Republican governor of Nevada, Brian Sandoval, embraces to flat-out a flat-out anti-healthcare stand that Nevadans hate:



Last year Clinton beat Trump in Nevada, 539,260 (47.92%) to 512,058 (45.50%). She won big in Clark County (Vegas)-- 52.43% to 41.72%-- and narrowly in Washow County (Reno)-- 46.39% to 45.14%-- enough to take the state's 6 electoral votes. On the same day Catherine Cortez Masto beat Republican Joe Heck for the U.S. Senate seat, also narrowly-- 521,994 (47.1%) to 495,079 (44.7%). Nevada is a swing state trending blue.

Schumer and Harry Reid have selected the worst possible candidate to run against Heller, conservative and utterly undistinguished and unaccomplished, Republican-lite freshman Jacky Rosen. Rosen has already earned one of the lowest "F" scores of any Democrat in Congress from ProgressivePunch, normally voting with the Blue Dogs on every important issue. In July Stanley Paher wrote in the Reno Gazette-Journal that it would be very unwise for the Democrats to run her. "For more than a half century," he wrote, "successful Nevada politicians have ascended from lower offices upwards into the U.S. Senate. These include Paul Laxalt, Harry Reid, Dick Bryan and Dean Heller. In contrast, a non-political background as touted by Rosen seldom translates into electoral success. How does synagogual leadership, computer programming skills, and familial experience translate into votes? Her lone electoral win last November was a 1% squeaker against a very weak Republican who had lost 5 elections over the past 8 years... The Rosen forces will point to Las Vegas’ large Democratic registration as an advantage for her statewide bid. But tell that to the bushel full of Nevada Democrats who lost in the 2014 midterm elections up and down ballot, as well as in 2010 when Joe Heck bested incumbent Las Vegas Congresswoman Dina Titus and Republicans Krolicki and Sandoval won in landslides for Nevada’s top two offices."

Rosen beat Danny Tarkanian, a crackpot Trumpist, for the open congressional seat last year, 146,869 (47.2%) to 142,926 (46%). The southern Clark County district, basically everything south of the airport, including Henderson and Boulder City, right down to the tip of the state where California, Arizona and Nevada meet in the Mohave Valley. Obama won the district both times but Hillary lost it to Trump 47.5% to 46.5%. Rosen's brief tenure in Congress has shown her to be, basically, everything that voters in NV-03 didn't like about Clinton. She's a disaster as a candidate and Reid and Schumer-- and EMILY's Lidt, of course-- stumbled right into it.

Meanwhile the Trumpist, Tarkanian, is primarying Heller with the support for Bannon and the rest of the whole nationalist fringe of the GOP. The most recent poll of Nevada Republicans-- which shows Trump with an 80% approval rating and Heller with a 34% approval-- indicates that Tarkanian would beat him 39-31% if the primary were held today.

Democrats do have a choice in their own primary as well. If they want to stand up to the party bosses-- Reid and Schumer-- they can vote for a Berniecrat in the race, Jesse Sbaih, someone who Reid rejected as a Democratic candidate last year because of his Muslim faith. When he was running for Congress, Reid told him to get out of the race because "a Muslim cannot win this race." Unlike Rosen Sbaih is a dedicated progressive and has pledged to fight for Medicare-For-All. Rosen is one of the minority of House Democrats who has refused to co-sponsor John Conyers' Medicare-For-All bill. Sbaih's wife is a physician and he has made Medicare-For-All one of the keystones of his campaign.