An Anti-Trump Wave Is Going To Change Both Houses Of Congress In November

You've probably been reading about how a Mitch McConnell to cling onto power in the Senate has been telling his colleagues to run as fast and as far as they can from Trump and his collapsing reelection campaign to save their seats. "While this may give some senators the flexibility to draw a distinction between themselves and the President," reported CNN, "it also forces them to walk a tightrope. Trump remains enormously popular with the Republican base, and any attempts to undercut him risks alienating those voters. 'These vulnerable senators can't afford to explicitly repudiate Trump,' said one senior Republican on Capitol Hill. 'They just need to show they are independent on issues important in their states.' Still, Trump continues to give GOP senators ways to make their break with him easier. The President's sustained assault on mail-in voting lacks GOP allies. And his suggestion on Thursday morning to delay the election drew open rebukes from many top Republicans, including multiple senators up for reelection, as well as McConnell." Incumbent Republican senators who are losing support because of their Trump enablement to the point of endangering their reelections include Susan Collins (ME), Cory Gardner (CO), Martha McSally (AZ), Thom Tillis (NC), Steve Daines (MT), Joni Ernst (IA), David Perdue (GA), Dan Sullivan AK) and even Lindsey Graham (SC) and Miss McConnell (KY-Jelly) himself.

Graydon Carter: "Mitch McConnell and his Republican cohort are, most surely, to the Trump regime what Ghislaine Maxwell was to Jeffrey Epstein. They are the enablers, participants, and cheerleaders of a president who, through avarice, incompetence, and blithe ignorance of science and looming dangers, may wind up doing more damage to more Americans than any other living human being."

Can congressional Republicans hide from this?

In a NY Times piece yesterday, Alienated by Trump, Suburban Voters Sour on G.O.P. in Battle for the House, Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson, described how voters in the St Louis suburbs are turning away from Republican Ann Wagner, a mainstream conservative-- not a neo-fascist-- who has been dragged into an uncomfortable position of enabling Trump's highly unpopular excesses. "Suburban districts like these," wrote Cochrane and Edmonson, "have long been critical bases of Republican support, packed with affluent white voters who reliably chose Republicans to represent them in Congress. Democrats seized control of the House in 2018 by making inroads in communities like these, and Republicans have tied their hopes of reclaiming power to preserving their remaining footholds there. But as Mr. Trump continues to stumble in his response to the pandemic and seeks to stir up racist fears with pledges to preserve the 'Suburban Lifestyle Dream,' such districts are slipping further from the party’s grasp, and threatening to drag down congressional Republicans in November’s elections."

Trump has continued to alienate voters, including independents and even conservatives and "particularly women and better-educated Americans-- who are turned off by his partisan appeals and disappointed in his leadership. From the suburbs of St. Louis to Omaha to Houston, they expressed deep concern about Mr. Trump’s approach to twin national crises, lamenting his confident declarations that the coronavirus was under control and his move to stoke racial divides after nationwide protests over police brutality against Black Americans. One result is that House Republicans, who began the election cycle hoping to win an uphill battle to recapture their majority-- or at the very least, claw back some of the competitive districts they lost to Democrats in 2018-- are instead scrambling to shore up seats that once would have required little effort to hold."

They care now. Poster by Chip Proser

They even used the T-word-- "tsunami"-- to describe what's headed towards the Republicans in November, placing "once safe Republican incumbents on an 'anti-Trump wave watch list.'"

In the suburbs of Douglas County in Nebraska, Derek Oden, 23, the executive director of the local Republican Party, said he was working feverishly to expand his party’s outreach, acknowledging that the national rhetoric fueled in part by Mr. Trump’s inflammatory language “definitely convolutes things.” Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, has recently begun to distance himself from the president, openly breaking with him by leading the charge to remove the names of Confederate figures from military bases, a move that Mr. Trump has condemned.

“I think they’re leaning away from what used to be Republican standards-- instead of leading the culture, they’re letting the culture lead them,” Nora Haury, 87, said of Republicans in an interview outside her home in Omaha. “I feel a bit discouraged,” she added, though she said her concerns about how much the Democrats were influenced by their party’s left flank would keep her voting red come November.

Mr. Bacon will again face Kara Eastman, a progressive activist and nonprofit organizer, after defeating her by two points in 2018. Armed with fliers and an arsenal of pork-related puns, the congressman spent one recent afternoon knocking on doors in blistering heat, trying to persuade moderate and independent voters that he deserved their votes.

Cheerfully reminding those who answered the door that their votes could make a difference, he made little unsolicited mention of the president, responding to entreaties to make the pandemic go away with reassurances about the promising, yet early, success of a vaccine trial and pointing to the $2.2 trillion stimulus law that Congress approved in March.

“I can just control my message and control my work ethic,” Mr. Bacon said, adding that he believed Ms. Eastman’s support for “Medicare for all” and other progressive proposals would repel independent voters. “Trump will be a factor in this discussion, and I don’t know where it will be in four months, so I can’t worry about that.”

...In Texas, where Democrats are targeting five seats that once were Republican strongholds explicitly gerrymandered to capture large sections of the suburbs, some steadfast conservative voters are now preparing to cast their first votes for Democratic congressional candidates, infuriated by the administration’s handling of the pandemic.

...In Houston’s northern suburbs, Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee who won re-election in 2018 by five points, is facing a rematch from Mike Siegel, a progressive civil rights lawyer. Republican strategists say that Mr. McCaul’s campaign this cycle is far stronger, but privately acknowledge Mr. McCaul could fall if an exceptionally strong Democratic wave sweeps across the country.

They are worried about voters like Wade Miller, 51, in Cypress. Mr. Miller, in an interview, described himself as a longtime Republican, but said he was reluctant to support Republicans in the coming election, citing their response to the pandemic. He and his wife had stopped watching national television news because listening to the president’s talk “made us angry for a little bit there,” he said.

“I have always been a mostly straight-ticket voter-- I don’t think I will be this coming election,” Mr. Miller said. “We’re talking about human lives here, and if people aren’t willing to do what it takes to save lives, what else aren’t they willing to do? I will definitely be changing my vote come November.”

The other big Texas campaign is the effort to replace crooked Trump enabler Roger Williams with progressive Julie Oliver in a district that snakes down from Tarrant County into Austin and the Texas Hill Country. And not only did a recent Washington Post poll show that Julie Oliver is in a statistical dead heat with Williams, her campaign reported its largest fundraising month in July, nearly outraising all of the second quarter contributions in one month... and all donations were from individuals."

Julie's campaign manager, Julia Doubleday, noted that "People across this district are suffering, and they are more aware than ever that they have a representative in Congress who is looking out solely for himself. After taking $1-2 million in government funds for his own car dealership while small businesses across the district were forced to close, he loudly declared that unemployed folks should receive 'zero' in pandemic relief. And while he has ignored his constituents and put Donald Trump first, he found plenty of time in Washington to verbally harass Representative Ocasio-Cortez, a true champion for working people."

Now imagine if the Democrats about the be swept into office were progressives like Kara Eastman, Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver, who actually have something to offer, instead of more Blue Dog and New Dem careerists who will do no good for anyone and, in a repeat of 2010, be all swept out of office in 2022 for their utter uselessness. The Democratic Party Establishment is, clearly incapable of learning from its serial, always repeated mistakes. Yes, a Democratic White House, a Democratic Senate and a stronger Democratic House are all looming-- so what a horrific tragedy that it will be barely more interested in structural reform than the garbage we're dumping now.