Trumpanzee Toxicity Continues Threat To Congressional Republicans-- But Why Isn't Hillary Helping Democrats

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Despite the Sabato Crystal Ball's warning this morning that no anti-Trump tsunami is forming, recent polling seems to confirm that Trump is dragging a number of Republican senators down the electoral toilet with him. Meanwhile, all the regular shady Republican SuperPAC donors are diverting their contributions from the Republican presidential race to Senate and House races. Even as vulnerable Republican senators-- like Rubio (FL), Burr (NC), Portman (OH), Ayotte (NH), Kirk (IL), Toomey (PA), Blunt (MO), McCain (AZ), Johnson (WI) and Grassley (IA)-- voted on their first day back in DC to continue holding Zika funding hostage to their anti-Choice psychosis, GOP SuperPACs were bragging that they've raised tens of millions of dollars to bolster these same clueless incumbents.

Two top outside groups designed to support Senate Republicans raised $42 million in August, a massive haul that shows the fervor with which GOP donors are training their focus-- and dollars-- on maintaining control of the upper chamber.

The gigantic fundraising number by Senate Leadership Fund and the related One Nation, groups with strong ties to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), helps underscore a driving dynamic this election: Donors, skeptical of Donald Trump and increasingly convinced he will lose in November, are turning away from the presidential race in an effort to save their legislative firewall on Capitol Hill.

The two groups have raised nearly $100 million this election cycle and August-- a typically slow fundraising period-- was their best month.

...Mike Shields, who runs a constellation of groups supporting House Republicans and their candidates, said donors turned off by Trump “are relieved that they can take part and do something very constructive.” He added, “I think that we have benefitted from both a combination of [donors] not necessarily taking part in the top of the ticket and their desire to see the speaker succeed.”

Shields' pitch is simple: No matter what happens, Republicans need to hold the House.

"[W]e have an uncertain top of the ticket and regardless of how you feel about that, regardless who gets elected president, you're going to need a strong House with the largest functional majority that the speaker can have. And we're the only organization that funds House races on the outside," he said Tuesday. "And we need to build a [firewall] in the House to keep protected from terrible policies of Hillary Clinton and the Bernie Sanders party that has been created under her. And we need to provide Speaker [Paul] Ryan with as many votes as he can possibly have to enact his new Better Way agenda."

Meanwhile, Clinton, who's been aggressively courting Republicans horrified with Trump and Trumpism, has been pulling her punches towards the Republican Congress. Bob Cusack reported for The Hill that the GOP-coddling "dismays some Democrats who think a more pointed attack from Clinton would help the party win back the Senate majority and pick up a lot of seats in the House." Neither her nor Trump seems to be thinking much about who wins House and Senates races, only about thrown races.

Clinton’s primary goal, however, is to win the White House. And while her message is focused on demonizing Trump, it does not seek to demonize the GOP, which might turn off Republican voters.

At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, a number of Republicans came onstage to voice support for Clinton. Her message was that country is more important than party, and that Republicans should cross party lines to vote for the former secretary of State and against Trump.

According to emails released by WikiLeaks, senior Democratic officials objected to plans by Clinton to distinguish Trump from Ryan and other GOP elected officials.

Then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda sent an email to Amy Dacey, then the DNC CEO, stating that Clinton’s campaign officials didn’t “want us to tie Trump to other Republicans because they think it makes him look normal.”

“That’s a problem,” Miranda added in the email, titled “Problem with HFA,” an acronym for Hillary for America.

“We would basically have to throw out our entire frame that the GOP made Trump through years of divisive and ugly politics,” Miranda wrote. “It just doesn’t work from the Party side.”

It “would ALSO put us at odds with … basically all of our Congressional Democrats who have embraced our talking points … to point out that GOPers in Congress have been pushing these ugly policies for years,” he claimed.

It’s a different strategy from the one President Obama used in 2012, when the party seized on Mitt Romney’s selection of Ryan as his running mate to rip the Wisconsin Republican’s controversial budgets. That year, Democrats picked up eight House seats and retained control of the Senate.

...“Hillary Clinton is the type of person who wants to get things done and has shown an ability to work with Republicans in Congress towards a greater aim,” said David Goodfriend, a former Capitol Hill aide who served as deputy staff secretary to then-President Bill Clinton. “But if the Republican-led Congress this fall drags the country into another government shutdown or fails to act on the Zika outbreak hitting Florida and other important states, it will be hard for any of us to avoid talking about what the Trump-led Republican Party would do to the United States if he were elected.”

Bill Clinton struck many deals with Republican-led Congresses, including on welfare reform and a balanced budget act. On the campaign trail, the 42nd president has noted that his wife worked with Republicans when she served in the Senate. That kind of message from the Clinton campaign, which doesn’t work in a competitive primary, is likely to be emphasized over the next couple of months.

Republicans have taken note of Clinton’s tactics. During an appearance on CNN in August, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis said Clinton’s strategy is centered on governing.

Lewis said, “The partisan temptation is to vanquish your enemy. Hillary’s not doing that. It’s a surgical strike against Donald Trump... I’m sure the Democratic Senatorial [Campaign] Committee would prefer Hillary to do something different.”

It's crucial that electing House members not be left up to a DCCC that is obsessed with remaking the House Democratic conference into a New Dem/Blue Dog-dominated operation of conservative Democrats. They're almost as anti-progressive as the Republicans are! By tapping the thermometer below, you'll get some of the progressives who won their primaries but who are being studiously ignored by the DCCC, regardless of how well Hillary is doing in their districts (especially PA-07, NY-02, TX-21 and WI-07):