Gay Porn Star Threatens to Out Lindsey Graham

I have caught flack over the years for referring to GOP Senator Lindsey Graham as the "Palmetto Queen."  Generally, I believe that when one comes out is a personal decision with one exception: if you hold elected office and are in the closet and supporting anti-gay policies and/or anti-gay politicians, then you are open game for "outing."  It's a simple matter of exposing hypocrites.  Rumors have swirled around Lindsey Graham for years, but his self-prostitution to Donald Trump, a man who is waging war on LGBT Americans, has made outing him a high priority if he's a closeted gay and aiding those harming the LGBT community.   If Graham is a closeted hypocrite, then he deserves to be outed.  FitNews based in South Carolina) has details on the latest rumors about about Graham.  Here are excerpts:

Around the time most South Carolinians were sitting down to their evening meals on Thursday night, a gay porn star by the name of Sean Harding fired off a tweet that set tongues-a-wagging across the Palmetto State (and in the nation’s capital).

“There is a homophobic republican senator who is no better than (Donald Trump) who keeps passing legislation that is damaging to the LGBT and minority communities,” Harding tweeted. “Every sex worker I know has been hired by this man. Wondering if enough of us spoke out if that could get him out of office?” Wait … what?

“I cannot do this alone,” Harding added in a follow-up tweet. “If you’d be willing to stand with me against LG please let me know.”

Considering there is only one member of the U.S. Senate with those initials, speculation quickly turned (again) to U.S. senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has been dodging rumors like this for the better part of the last decade. This time, though, the allegation quickly took on a life of its own. By Friday afternoon, the hashtag “Lady G” – which is purportedly Graham’s nickname among male sex workers – was trending on Twitter.

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any crazier, right?

For years (most recently in October 2018), Graham has denied being a homosexual.

“I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men – I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge – but I ain’t available,” he famously told The New York Times Magazine in 2010. “I ain’t gay. Sorry.”

Still, the rumors have persisted … with many of Graham’s conservative opponents espousing the theory that he was being manipulated (or blackmailed) politically due to secrets surrounding his sexuality.

To be clear: This news outlet does not care about Graham’s sexual orientation. In fact, the sooner we can stop contemplating whatever might turn on the 64-year-old Central, S.C. native, the better.

We are much more concerned with Graham’s chameleon-esque inability to settle on a political orientation. An erstwhile #NeverTrumper, he flip-flopped and began supporting Trump in late 2017 when it became clear he was about to lose his seat.
Were we surprised? No … everything with this guy is calculation.

Thankfully, there are those in Trump’s orbit who are able to see this career chameleon for what he is … an ally in name only.

We think his votes are bad … and we would like to see him out of office. But we are not going to vilify him over something in his personal life without a damn good reason. Like abuse of power. Something involving tax money. Overt hypocrisy. Or maybe … a clown mask?

Graham is facing a tougher-than-expected fight this fall from Democrat Jaime Harrison, who has attracted significant national support (and raised some serious cash) in his bid to oust the third-term lawmaker. Harrison, incidentally, has been the focus of similar rumors over the years … which we care as much about as the rumors surrounding Graham.

Still, something about this particular installment of the “Lindsey Graham is about to be outed” rumor that seems … different. Lots of national reporters are clearly chasing it (including several who have called our news desk), and the chatter about numerous male escorts contemplating the consequences of violating alleged nondisclosure agreements seems curiously (disturbingly) specific.

Stay tuned … we will have to wait and see what the future holds for the senior senator from South Carolina as he battles the latest (and greatest) round of rumors.

Lindsey Graham's Transformation From Trump Critic to Lap Dog

Few members of the Republican Party have more debased themselves and prostituted themselves to Donald Trump than South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen. Graham went from critic of Trump to apologist and cheerleader seemingly simply so as to not offend the racist and knuckle dragging base of the GOP in his home state.  Honor, integrity and simple honesty were all jettisoned as Graham raced to pander to Trump and the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A new ad by a PAC working for Graham's defeat in his reelection bid in November highlights Graham's two faced conduct and the limitless way Graham willing prostitutes himself to Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in The Advocate looks at Graham's moral and ethical decline.  Here are article excerpts: 

A new ad opposing the reelection of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina uses his own words against him, noting that he’s gone from calling Donald Trump a “kook” and a “bigot” to deeming him “a damn good president.”

The ad highlighting “the two faces of Lindsey Graham,” from a super PAC called Lindsey Must Go, contrasts “old Lindsey” with “new Lindsey.” It shows, among other things, “old Lindsey” referring to Trump as “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” then “new Lindsey” saying the president “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”

The three-term Republican senator is facing a serious challenge this year from Democrat Jaime Harrison. Super PACs can’t coordinate with candidates, but Harrison is likely to benefit from the ad, Jonathan Capehart writes in The Washington Post.

“We believe that we can make the case that Lindsey Graham has been a failure to South Carolina,” Harrison told Capehart a few months ago. The ad, Capehart writes in a Friday column, “makes the case better than anyone else could — especially since Graham does all the talking.”

Graham has always been a solid conservative, but he once exhibited at least a degree of integrity and was one of the few Republicans willing to criticize Trump; now he’s become a sycophant. “Here’s a guy that many of us had tremendous respect for. Because when John McCain was alive, we thought in the end of the day he would do the right thing for either the state or the nation when the rubber met the road,”

“But what we have now seen is that this guy’s only interest is in Lindsey O. Graham. His only interest is being in the middle of things, to have power.”

“Lindsey Graham has done both the impossible and the unthinkable: He went from being the late John McCain’s best friend to Donald Trump’s best friend,” Jimmy Williams, senior adviser to the Lindsey Must Go PAC, told the journalist. “We’re simply tired of his snarling, revengeful, dirty payback politics down here, and I promise you we will do whatever we legally can to make his last nine months in the U.S. Senate a miserable hell.”

Could COVID Insider Trading Scandals Cost Republicans the Senate?

Loeffler with Der Trumpenführer.

Martha Stewart went to prison for insider trading - using non-public information - in the sale of $230,000 of stock, an amount that pales in comparison to the amounts of stock sold by Republicans in the U.S. Senate after an special intelligence briefing on the coming pandemic and just before the stock market collapsed.  Using this privileged information, these senators avoid millions of dollars of losses while the rest of the public and retirement funds were slammed as the market cratered. Now, these individuals are under FBI and Security and Exchange Commission ("SEC") investigation for these "insider" deals.  Vanity Fair looks at the possible repercussions for Republicans.  Here are excerpts:

On Thursday, Senator Kelly Loeffler provided information to federal law enforcement about controversial stock trades she made just before the coronavirus-induced market crash. As Politico reported, the Georgia Republican turned over documents to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Senate Ethics Committee. According to a statement released by her spokesperson on Thursday, the documents showed that she and her husband, New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher, “acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law”—something Loeffler has maintained throughout, even as accusations of insider trading have swirled.

Loeffler’s decision to turn over documents came as another of her Republican Senate colleagues faces similar questions. On Thursday, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr announced he would step down from his position as Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman. Burr is being investigated for up to $1.72 million in stock sales he conducted just before coronavirus caused the market to plunge in February. The FBI has reportedly served a warrant for Burr’s cell phone, part of the Justice Department’s inquiry into whether he violated a law prohibiting members of Congress from acting on intelligence they’ve gleaned from their official work. Burr, like Loeffler, denies any wrongdoing.

As the Burr and Loeffler probes escalate, the Senate is facing fundamental questions around whether some of the most powerful lawmakers in the country should buy and sell stock at all. As my colleague Abigail Tracy reported last month, “the perception that anyone in Congress profited off of the coronavirus crisis is a blow to the institution.” In recent weeks, a bill that would prohibit members of Congress from owning individual stocks has gained traction, though Tracy notes that passing such a ban at the moment is unlikely.

The twin controversies have also inspired concern from senior Republicans about their ability to retain control of the Senate. The Washington Examiner’s David Drucker reported on Friday that the GOP is worried about its prospects, fearing that the investigation into Burr’s financial transactions could prompt his resignation before September 4. In that case, Drucker says, “a November special election would be triggered to fill the remainder of his term, multiplying the challenges Republicans face as they scramble to protect their 53-seat majority.” According to a Republican insider, “people still don’t know exactly what transpired, which is why the current review is important. But North Carolina already features what will be a very expensive Senate race, and another one would be quite challenging for Republicans.”

Will Trump Help Democrats Win the Senate?

If America is to end its national nightmare two things need to happen in November: (i) Trump is defeated, and (ii) the U.S. Senate must flip to Democrat control, removing the toxic influence of Mitch McConnell, a man who along with Trump has done much to destroy the nation's reputation and who has waged a relentless war against working and middle class Americans (I view Trump as mentally ill, whereas McConnell is just plain evil).  As of now, polls are encouraging in terms of Trump's weakness and the improved chances of a Democrat controlled Senate come January, 2021. Better yet, Trump's unpopularity appears to be harming GOP Senators who have prostituted themselves to his cult of personality and the ugliest elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the current situation.  Here are highlights:

Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a 57-page memo that appeared to suggest candidates distance themselves, at least a little, from Donald Trump. “Don’t defend Trump,” the memo read. “Attack China.” Faced with outrage from the president’s team, the NRSC claimed it was all a big misunderstanding—the coronavirus talking point was poorly worded, they said, and there was actually “no daylight between the NRSC and President Trump.” Still, the memo seemed to reflect Republican fears that the president’s catastrophic mishandling of the COVID crisis could not only cost them the White House, but the Senate, as well.

Recent polling suggests those fears are warranted. Democrats need to nab five of eight Republican-held seats in competitive races to gain control of the upper chamber; they hold leads in five of the contests and trail by just a point in another. High-profile Republicans are among those who find themselves in jeopardy; Thom Tillis, a Trump ally, is trailing Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham by nine points in North Carolina, according to a poll released Tuesday, and Maine’s Susan Collins is behind Sara Gideon 2.5 points in an average of polls.

[T]he spate of positive numbers for Democrats in swing races has put the Senate, under Republican control since 2015, in play. “I think it’s become very competitive,” Kyle Kondick, managing editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told the Hill last month.

As Axios reported Wednesday, Democrats have shown momentum in key Senate races as the president’s path to reelection grows increasingly perilous. On Tuesday, polls showed Montana Governor Steve Bullock, who launched his Senate campaign after exiting the 2020 Democratic primary, leading incumbent Steve Daines by seven points in the state Trump carried by more than 20 in 2016, and Cunningham leading Tillis by nine.

In Arizona, Mark Kelly leads Republican Martha McSally by an average of eight points; in Kansas, Barbara Bollier leads possible Republican nominee Kris Kobach, a staunch ally of the president, by two; and in Maine, Gideon narrowly leads Collins.

Even before the coronavirus crisis hit, Trump was a historically unpopular president who made not only himself, but his party vulnerable to defeat—thanks to his corruption, incompetence, and despicable behavior. But his mishandling of the pandemic has accentuated all those shortcomings, perhaps even eroding some support within his previously rock-solid base. “We are starting to see more evidence that suburban voters disapprove of the way Trump is handling the coronavirus pandemic,”

[W]hatever political protection Trump’s cult of personality affords him, personally, may not extend to his allies in down-ballot races.

I hope the anti-GOP trend continues and, better yet, intensifies.

Is McConnell Trying to Lose the GOP Senate Majority

Mitch "the Grim Reaper" McConnell - huge tax cuts to the
wealthy, but no concern for working Americans.

More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs, America's GDP dropped 4.8% in the first calendar quarter, and consumer and business spending has dropped significantly, and states and localities are teetering financially as the coronavirus pandemic continues.  Meanwhile, Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican, is sounding the alarm that Georgia is in play and could go blue.  Yet what is Mitch "the Grim Reaper" McConnell's top priority? Having the Senate back in session to work on judicial nominees, no doubt to appoint more far right, anti-LGBT and anti-abortion ideologues to the federal bench. Considering more spending and aid to states and localities - and by extension, thousands and thousands of public employees - is seemingly nowhere on McConnell's radar. A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at McConnell's bizarre priorities that seem to want states to implement draconian employee layoffs further driving up the ranks of the unemployed while dangerously cutting necessary public services.  Here are column highlights:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) first suggested that instead of receiving any more federal funding, state and local governments should go bankrupt — which would entail layoffs and pay cuts for firefighters, police, public health officials and other critical personnel. Now comes word that when the Senate returns to the Capitol . . . . it will focus “not on the coronavirus but instead on judicial nominations that have long been a priority for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell," NBC News reports.

Let’s review where things stand. The economy shrank by 4.8 percent in the first quarter, which includes only a couple of weeks of coronavirus-related disruption. The second quarter’s GDP in all likelihood will look like something from the Great Depression (as much as a 30 percent drop, according to some experts).

The Post also reports, “Spending by Americans tumbled 7.6 percent, and business investment shrank 8.6 percent, according to the Commerce Department report, which gives the first comprehensive look at how painful the economic fallout from the pandemic has been.” We are buying groceries, but not much of anything else. McConnell and Republicans seem to have learned nothing from economic history: It took three years to climb out of the Great Recession and more than a decade to recover from the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economists say the government was too slow to act and too stingy with aid in the past, mistakes that should not be repeated now.

So McConnell’s response to all this is to tell states to go bankrupt and confirm judges just as matters are about to get much worse for state and local employees. (The Post reports: “Some local governments have already started laying off or furloughing thousands of their workers, and the numbers are likely to grow markedly in the absence of federal aid. . . . Between 300,000 and 1 million public-sector workers could soon be out of a job or sent home without pay.”) The only jobs McConnell seems anxious to fill are lifetime federal judges.

McConnell’s indifference to the burgeoning train wreck in state and local government, we see in poll after poll, is out of sync with voters’ desire for more government involvement and federal aid. The latest Morning Consult poll shows that "74 percent of registered voters, including 84 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of Republicans, agreed that the federal government should be responsible for providing financial support to states during the coronavirus pandemic.” Note, that’s 65 percent of Republicans.

It’s not clear this is even popular in Kentucky, where McConnell is standing for reelection. The University of Kentucky is already laying off and furloughing employees, and the state assembly is cutting libraries and forgoing raises for public K-12 teachers. In Louisville . . . . If no solution is worked out by October 1, the mayor said they will have to consider [laying] off about 1,000 city employees which equals about 20% of all city workers.”

His Democratic opponent, Amy McGrath, is pummeling McConnell for his willingness to bail out large corporations but not his state’s teachers, firefighters, health-care workers, etc. . . . One wonders how Republican incumbents already facing tough reelection races (e.g. Susan Collins of Maine, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona) are going to explain this to laid-off first responders, teachers, nurses at city hospitals, librarians and others. Even if McConnell tried, it would be hard to come up with a position and set of priorities more likely to enrage his members’ constituents.

Trump's Grip on the GOP is Causing Republicans to Flee

The Republican Party began its descent into becoming a moral cesspool long before Donald Trump declared he would run for office in 2015. It began with the slow infiltration of the party by Christofascists - perhaps the most racist and morally bankrupt group I've ever encountered - near the end of my time in the GOP and accelerated as white supremacists (often one and the same as the Christofascists) were also made welcome in the party.  Trump merely was the culmination of a moral rot - a cancer, if you will - that had been spreading and metastasizing for years.  Now, the cancer in the form of Trump and his base of support has a complete grip on the GOP.  The result is that, if one has a shred of morality and decency, it is becoming difficult or impossible to remain a Republican.  Those who have remained to date by deluding themselves that the GO still stands for limited government, fiscal and personal responsibility, and personal freedom (something that, in reality is questionable).  Now, the GOP is all Trump, racism, white supremacy and misogyny 27/7.  As a result, record numbers of the Congressional Republicans in the House are heading for the door.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing exodus.  Hopefully, Republican "friends" will begin similar soul searching. Here are highlights: 

Republican Rep. Paul Mitchell’s surprise retirement began with a President Trump tweet. 

Moments after Trump’s July 14 missive telling four U.S. congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries of origin, the congressman from Michigan phoned a fellow House GOP leader and asked him to get Trump to stop. “It’s the wrong thing for a leader to say,” he told the leader, whom he declined to name. “It’s politically damaging to the party, to the country.”

Three days later, Mitchell was awaiting a prime-time CNN appearance when he saw footage of Trump rallygoers chanting “send her back,” aimed at one of the congresswomen, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Stunned, Mitchell said he scribbled question marks on a notepad to silently ask an aide: “How do I even respond to this on TV?” 

But one of the final straws was the unwillingness of people in Trump’s orbit to listen. Mitchell implored Vice President Pence, his chief of staff, Marc Short, and “any human being that has any influence in the White House” to arrange a one-on-one conversation between him and the president so he could express his concerns.

It never happened. And 10 days after the Trump tweet, Mitchell — a two-term lawmaker who thought he’d be in Congress for years to come — announced his retirement.
“We’re here for a purpose — and it’s not this petty, childish b------t,” Mitchell, 62, said in an interview in early September. Pence’s office declined to comment.

Mitchell is among a growing list of House Republicans — 18 to date — who have announced plans to resign, retire or run for another office, part of a snowballing exodus that many Republicans fear is imperiling their chances of regaining control of the House in the 2020 elections.

And the problem for the GOP is bigger than retirements. Since Trump’s inauguration, a Washington Post analysis shows, nearly 40 percent of the 241 Republicans who were in office in January 2017 are gone or leaving because of election losses, retirements including former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), and some, such as Mitchell, who are simply quitting in disgust.

The vast turnover is a reminder of just how much Trump has remade the GOP — and of the purge of those who dare to oppose him. Former congressman Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) lost his June 2018 primary after challenging Trump; he’s now a Republican presidential candidate. Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), the only Republican to accuse Trump of impeachable acts, quit the GOP in July citing the “partisan death spiral.” His political future is uncertain. The retirement numbers are particularly staggering. All told, 41 House Republicans have left national politics or announced they won’t seek reelection in the nearly three years since Trump took office. That dwarfs the 25 Democrats who retired in the first four years of former president Barack Obama’s tenure — and Republicans privately predict this is only the beginning.

Most of the departing Republicans publicly cite family as the reason for leaving. But behind the scenes, Republicans say the trend highlights a greater pessimism about the direction of the party under Trump — and their ability to win back the House next year. 

[Trump] The president has doubled down on an all-base strategy for his reelection campaign, making some Republicans ask whether Trump has put his own political future ahead of the long-term viability of the party . . . . “If the party doesn’t start looking like America, there will not be a party in America,” said Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), the only black House Republican, who announced his retirement in August.

House Republicans knew Trump was going to be a problem in the suburbs well before they lost 29 incumbents and their majority in the 2018 elections. In a private meeting at Camp David in early 2018, then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tried to explain to Trump why the suburbs were key to the GOP keeping the House. 

“He has not been a net positive for suburban House Republicans, I mean, that’s a truism,” said former congressman Ryan Costello (Pa.), a moderate Republican who retired in 2018 rather than face a difficult reelection in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Down ballot, for the Republicans, you are basically judged by whatever [Trump] the president does, and not by what you do.” 

Even in leadership circles, there’s an admission that Trump isn’t helping the party in the suburbs. No one, however, is willing to say it aloud.

The aide said such knowledge has been driving many of the recent retirements: “I think a lot of members are pretty nervous that Trump doesn’t win reelection. And then we’re in the minority and we have a Democrat in the White House. . . . We’re in the wilderness right now, but if you lose the White House, then that is the extreme wilderness.”

“He’s turned [the GOP] into a personal vessel for his brand,” Curbelo said. “[Trump] The president seems to be doubling down on an all-base strategy; perhaps that can work for him . . . but it certainly makes it very difficult for Republicans to win a majority of seats in the House.”

Hurd, a former CIA official who would have faced a difficult reelection in a Democratic-leaning district, has been increasingly vocal about the direction of the party. He told a Republican LGBTQ group in June that the GOP wasn’t expanding in some places because unnamed people weren’t following “real basic things that we should all learn when we’re in kindergarten”: “Don’t be a racist. Don’t be a misogynist, right? Don’t be a homophobe.”

Hurd said in an interview. “It’s women in the suburbs, minorities and young people — those are going to be the key groups and key voters in 2020.”

Ominous Signs For Republicans' Retaking the House

In Virginia, the immediate focus is on ending Republican control of the Virginia General Assembly in November, 2019, and allowing Virginia to finally become the progressive state the majority of its population wants.  Longer term the focus is on 2020 and hopefully ending the political career of Donald Trump and numerous Republicans.  Outwardly, Congressional Republicans are boasting that they will retake control of the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections.  Privately, many are singing a different song - one that I and decent Americans should hope proves accurate, namely that such a GOP win is unlikely and there are numerous signs that such bragging is little more than hot air.  A piece in Politico looks at some of the danger signs facing the GOP which is powerless to change the dynamics as long as Trump is in the White House and the party base remains controlled by white supremacists and "Christian" religious extremist (often, the two are one and the same group).  Here are article highlights:

A parade of Republican retirements. Red flags about the economy. President Donald Trump’s approval ratings under water. A nail-biter race in a GOP stronghold.

House Republicans are grappling with a string of ominous warning signs from over the past month that could spell doom for the party’s chances of clawing back power in 2020, an unsettling prospect for the GOP conference as it prepares for its annual retreat in Baltimore on Thursday.

[T]he big picture for Republicans remains dim. Even some of Trump’s top allies on Capitol Hill recognize that it’s going to be an uphill climb in flipping the 18 seats they need to win back the House. . . .  there are a host of reasons for Republicans to be rattled by Bishop’s 2-point victory. The GOP had to go all-out to save the seat in a district that Trump won by 12 points in 2016 and which has been in Republican hands since the 1960s. And Bishop performed poorly in the suburbs, a key battleground where voters fled the GOP last year.

Even more ominous for the party: There are 35 GOP-held House seats that are even less Republican than North Carolina’s 9th District, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

“This is like a five-alarm fire for Republicans in prosperous suburbs,” Dave Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report, said in an interview. “[The GOP] averted disaster, but there’s nothing in the results to persuade House Republicans who are sitting on the fence about running for reelection that they are any likelier to take back the majority.”

A mix of veteran and vulnerable Republicans have called it quits in recent weeks, a sign that GOP lawmakers may be growing less confident about their chances of seizing back the House next year. Some Republicans — two-thirds of whom have never served in the minority — would rather call it quits than continue to roam the political wilderness.

Several of the retirements have been especially devastating for the GOP. The party is losing Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, a rising young star and the only black Republican in the House; . . . .

[A]t least three of the races have become more competitive in the wake of the retirement announcements, and more endangered members could jump ship if they don’t want to duke it out another term — especially if the GOP’s prospects look bleak in 2020.

GOP leadership, however, has downplayed the recent wave of retirements and maintains they are in a strong position to flip the House.

The GOP is banking on strong economic growth and low unemployment rates to serve as their calling card in 2020.

But Trump has thrown that strategy into question. [Trump] The president escalated his trade war last month, slapping a new round of tariffs on China that directly hit consumers for the first time — though on Wednesday he announced he would delay imposing an additional 5 percent duty on about $250 billion of goods from China. And there have also been signs of a possible economic recession, including a shrink in the manufacturing sector and the so-called inverted yield curve.

[T]he public doesn’t seem to have as much confidence in the economy. Six in 10 Americans think a recession is likely in the next year, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. Trump is also lagging behind his top 2020 Democratic rivals, while his approval ratings have dipped 6 points, down to 38 percent, according to the same survey.

“In both 2018 and last night, House race results have been highly correlated with Trump’s approval ratings,” Wasserman said. “It’s unlikely that [Republicans] win back control of the House either way. Right now, I would put the chances at somewhere between 25 and 35 percent.”

Let's hope the odds shrink even more.

GOP Extremist Narrowly Wins North Carolina 9th District

With North Carolina roughly 30 miles or less from where I set, like many in Southeast Virginia and along Virginia's southern border, I pay attention to North Carolina politics particularly since the state has veered to the far right and made itself hostile to LGBT individuals. Thus, seeing the architect of North Carolina's anti-transgender bathroom bill - who was backed by anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim organizations and white supremacist groups - narrowly win (after rallies by both Trump and Pence to rally the ugliest elements of the right) doesn't make me want to visit that state anytime soon. The loss for Democrats suggests that the party's base still doesn't grasp the need to get out and vote in every election, not just presidential elections.  That said, the silver liming may be that Dan Bishop barely squeaked by in a district Trump won by almost 12 points in 2016.  A piece in Politico looks at why Bishop's win should not necessarily make Republicans hopeful for 2020.  Here are highlights:

Republicans went all-in to keep hold of a key congressional district in a special election Tuesday, and they won — but they still have good reason to be concerned about the result.

While the GOP can celebrate the election of a new congressman, Dan Bishop, his 2-point victory in a district President Donald Trump carried by 12 points in 2016 continues a worrisome trend for the party, which suffered heavy losses in the 2018 midterms and has not seen the political environment improve as Trump gears up for reelection.

Tuesday’s results outlined the path to 2020 victory for both parties, cut along the fundamental trend of politics in the Trump era: cities and suburbs swinging more and more Democratic, while the president’s appeal brings exurbs and rural voters deeper into the GOP fold. Trump pushed harder on one side of the scale to win in 2016; Democrats pushed back on the other side to take the House last year. And next year, it will decide whether Trump gets another term or a Democrat takes the White House for four years.

Trump’s election-eve rally for Bishop brought thousands to Fayetteville on Monday night on the eastern edge of the district, and it’s hard to argue with results: McCready had carried the surrounding county, Cumberland County, by more than 4 percentage points last year. But Bishop won it by the narrowest of margins on Tuesday, also making improvements in neighboring counties far from the Charlotte suburbs where McCready was strongest.

“The rest of the party is going to live or die based on how the president, in ’20, performs,” said Patrick Sebastian, a GOP consultant in the state. “If Trump can win North Carolina by a point or two, that’s excellent news for party.”

Meanwhile, Democrats were quick to find the silver lining in McCready’s narrow defeat. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee noted that there are nearly three dozen GOP-held House seats that are less Republican-leaning than North Carolina’s 9th District.

“We fell an inch short tonight, but it took more than $6 million in outside Republican spending and a last-minute Trump rally to scrape by in a district that the president carried by 11.9 points,” Bustos said.

“If we don’t connect with rural voters — if we don’t show up in 2020 and win these places back — then Trump wins,” Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted late Tuesday night.

Republicans were quick to trumpet the success of their coordinated effort — from last-minute visits from Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, all the way down to the congressional leaders and the constellation of official and outside groups and super PACs — in pushing Bishop across the finish line.

That may not be replicable in November 2020 all the way down the ballot. But Trump’s robust campaign operation — which he continues to build as Democrats fight for their party’s nomination — will be formidable, despite the president’s low political standing compared to past incumbents.

“We may not have won this campaign, but that does not mean we were wrong,” McCready said in his concession speech. “And as long as there are people who thrive off our division, there is still work to be done.”

Congressional Republicans Are Dropping Like Flies

Ben Wiseman.

While today's Republican Party has become a moral cesspool as noted in a prior post, there are seemingly some positive signs: congressional Republicans are opting to not seek re-election at a rate on pace to equal or exceed the number who chose to leave office in the run up to the 2018 midterm elections. Some electing to retire seem disgusted with what the party has become, others fear electoral defeat in the face of changing demographics, and others simply do not want to serve in what they expect will remain the minority party in the House of Representatives after the 2020 elections.  Whether or not these exits from office are an indication of Trump's chances in 2020 remain to be seen, but at lease bode well if the House remains in Democrat control. A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

There was no home for Representative Will Hurd in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

For a while he tried to make one. For a while he succeeded, if success means preserving some of your dignity while steering clear of Trump’s wrath and surviving politically. Although Hurd’s Texas congressional district voted narrowly for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he held on to his seat that year and again in 2018, but by slim margins. It was anyone’s guess how he’d fare in 2020, and now no one will know. Hurd, 42, isn’t seeking re-election — he and a big, expanding bunch of his Republican colleagues in the House.

We talk and write all the time about the Never Trumpers: . . . . But they’re not the best gauges of his and the party’s political fortunes. Their estrangement and emotional pitch have been changeless. The more interesting and maybe predictive group are the Republicans who, to varying degrees, tried to make do with Trump, found ways to rationalize him and still won’t acknowledge how offensive he is but have fled or are fleeing government nonetheless. He made their participation in political life joyless. He so thoroughly befouled their party’s image that they reek by association. And, thanks largely if not entirely to him, many of them faced or face punishment at the polls. In the cause of figuring out whether, in November 2020, Trump will be rewarded with a second term, many numbers and dynamics get tossed around: the unemployment figures, the Dow Jones, the trade war, the advantages of incumbency, the peculiarities of the Electoral College and Trump’s approval ratings, consistently low but not entirely static. 

But at least one constituency is unconvinced of that: Republicans in Congress, especially in the House. They’re making their predictions with their feet, and they’re heading for the exit.

To recap: Before the 2018 midterms, 46 Republicans but only 20 Democrats decided not to seek re-election to their offices in Congress, and among those, 32 Republicans and 11 Democrats weren’t doing that in order to run for some higher, different post. They were just bolting. The discrepancy between the Republican and Democratic numbers amounted to a weather forecast — and an accurate one at that.

Heading into the 2020 election, 19 Republicans in Congress have already announced that they won’t seek another term in their current office, a number higher than at the same point two years ago. Of the 19, 17 aren’t retiring from Congress to pursue some kind of political promotion. Meanwhile, only four Democrats in all are retiring from Congress. Maybe Trump’s fortunes are untethered from his party’s. . . . His campaign associates go to jail; he goes to the Group of 7. The most principled Republicans are driven from the fold; he reigns without principle over a party that has largely bent to his wishes rather than stand up for what it purported to believe. The departures this time around speak volumes about looming threats to the Republican Party. Five of the House Republicans who aren’t running again, including Hurd, are from Texas, a red state whose demographic composition fills Democrats with more and more hope. Two of only 13 Republican women in the House are stepping down. Hurd is the only black Republican in the House — a detail that he underlined in a sort of farewell note that he wrote and posted on his website. Hurd announced his decision not to run again shortly after Trump attacked “the squad” of four congresswomen of color by tweeting that they should “go back” to where they came from. He was one of only four House Republicans who voted to condemn those remarks, which he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour were “racist and xenophobic.” But he’s in a much larger crowd of House Republicans who, for all their usual silence, privately bristle or gasp at Trump’s behavior. [Representative Paul] Mitchell has at this point apparently had enough. He announced in late July that he’d leave the House at the end of this term, which is only his second. He cited the “rhetoric and vitriol” that dominate our politics now. Make no mistake: Those are synonyms for President Trump.

Voodoo Economics May Be Catching Up with Trump/GOP

The stack market - actually the bond market - has been showing signs that the economy is slowing and that a recession might well begin in 2020 or before.  Recently job growth and GDP figures have been revised downward and manufacturers and consumers are feeling the adverse effects of Trump's insane trade wars with China and other nations.  And then there are America's farmers who have been dealt the double blow of Chinese tariffs and the impacts of climate change, particularly in the Mid-West, even as the GOP denies climate change is occurring.  To what ought to a shock to no one, the Trump/GOP tax cut for the wealthy and huge corporations - which only scattered crumbs for everyone else - has yet again proven that huge tax cuts for the top income brackets (i) do not pay for themselves, (ii) explode the deficit, and (iii) do not strengthen the economy overall. These three realities have been known since the days of Ronald Reagan, yet the GOP continues to live in a fantasy world.  A column in the New York Times looks at the slowing economy and the efforts of Trump and the GOP to shift blame from themselves.  Here are excerpts:

Almost four decades ago then-candidate George H.W. Bush used the phrase “voodoo economic policy” to describe Ronald Reagan’s claim that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself. He was more prescient than he could have imagined.

For voodoo economics isn’t just a doctrine based on magical thinking. It’s the ultimate policy zombie, a belief that seemingly can’t be killed by evidence. It has failed every time its proponents have tried to put it into practice, but it just keeps shambling along.

[W]henever tax cuts fail to produce the predicted miracle, their defenders come up with bizarre explanations for their failure.
 My favorite until now came from Art Laffer, the original voodoo economist and recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Why did George W. Bush’s tax-cutting presidency end not with a boom, but with the worst economic slump since the Great Depression? According to Laffer, blame rests with Barack Obama, even though the recession began more than a year before Obama took office. You see, according to Laffer, everyone lost confidence upon realizing that Obama might win the 2008 election.
 Trump has gone one better. As it has become increasingly clear that the results of his tax cut were disappointing — recent data revisions have marked down estimates of both G.D.P. and employment growth, to the point where it’s hard to see more than a brief sugar high from $2 trillion in borrowing — Trump has invented ever more creative ways to blame other people. In particular, he’s now claiming that the promised boom hasn’t arrived because his opponents are hexing the economy with bad thoughts: “The Democrats are trying to ‘will’ the Economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election.”
 [B]laming the Fed for the tax cut’s fizzle won’t wash. For one thing, the Fed has actually raised rates less than in previous economic recoveries. Even more to the point, the Trump economic team was expecting Fed rate hikes when it made its extravagantly optimistic forecasts.
 The Trump tax cut was supposed to create a boom so powerful that it would not only withstand modest Fed rate hikes, but actually require such hikes to prevent inflationary overheating. You don’t get to turn around and claim betrayal when the Fed does exactly what you expected it to do.
 Since the Fed is unlikely to oblige, what else might Trump do? Officials have floated, then retracted, the idea of a cut in payroll taxes — that is, a tax break for ordinary workers, rather than the corporations and wealthy individuals who mainly benefited from the 2017 tax cut. But such action seems unlikely, among other things because top administration officials denounced this policy idea when Obama proposed it.

Trump has also suggested using executive authority to reduce taxes on capital gains (which are overwhelmingly paid by the wealthy). This move would have the distinction of being both ineffectual and illegal.

What about calling off the trade war that has been depressing business investment? This seems unlikely, because protectionism is right up there with racism as a core Trump value. And merely postponing tariffs might not help, since it wouldn’t resolve the uncertainty that may be the trade war’s biggest cost.

The truth is that Trump doesn’t have a Plan B, and probably can’t come up with one. On the other hand, he might not have to. Who needs competent policy when you’re the chosen one and the king of Israel?

Funny how the last GOP administration engaged in massive tax cuts and George W. left the country with the largest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.  The GOP truly never learns. 

Can an Anti-Gun Youth Voting Surge Save Us in 2020?

To drive a car, one needs to take both a written test and a test behind the wheel.  Once licensed, at varies periods one has to renew the license and your car must be registered every year.  To practice law or many other professions, one needs to be licensed annually and typically must take a minimum amount of continuing education. Yet, in most states, one can buy a military style assault weapon capable of rapidly killing significant numbers of people without any license or even a background check. Why?  Because of (i) a twisted reading of the 2nd Amendment, and (ii) the lobbying influence of the NRA, a front organization funded by gun manufacturers - and as we learned in 2016, even foreign interests. Meanwhile, mass shootings are on the rise and one literally cannot feel fully safe anywhere. Now, the survivors of the Parkland, Florida mass shooting are pushing for both common sense gun control and a voter registration effort that could wreak havoc on Republicans who prostitute themselves to the NRA and perhaps end the misrule of Donald Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at their effort.  Here are article highlights:

The student activists who crashed the political arena after the mass shooting last year at their high school in Parkland, Fla., are throwing their weight behind a new and ambitious gun-control program that they hope will set the tone for the debate following the most recent mass shootings and headed into the 2020 elections.

The students are speaking out for the first time since 31 people were killed in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. They hope their plan — unveiled Wednesday morning — will be considered by President Trump as well as his Democratic presidential rivals and will serve as a catalyst for a surge of youth voters next year.

“You see these shootings on TV every day and very little happening around it. It’s painful to watch. And I think it’s been really hard for me and many of the other students and people that we work with to find hope in this time. . . . “But I think that this plan is something that we can truly — as a country and as Americans united against violence and fighting for peace — can get behind.”

March for Our Lives has been focused on voter registration and outreach across the country over the past year and a half, building a national infrastructure with more than 100 chapters centered on grass-roots organizing. They hope to turn that into droves of voters at the polls next year.

Called “A Peace Plan for a Safer America,” the ambitious platform, which was obtained by The Washington Post, goes much further than the current debate over universal background checks and “red flag” laws, which would apply to people who could be a danger to themselves and others.
 The Peace Plan would create a national licensing and gun registry, long a nonstarter with gun rights advocates; ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; implement a mandatory gun buyback program; and install a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the president and coordinate the federal response to what advocates call a national public health emergency.
 It calls for a “multi-step” gun licensing system, overseen by a federal agency, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. The license would be renewed annually.
 The Peace Plan takes a holistic approach to gun violence by also calling for automatic voter registration when those eligible turn 18, along with the creation of a “Safety Corps,” which the authors compare to a Peace Corps for gun violence prevention. The plan also proposes community-based solutions like mental health services, as well as programs to address and prevent suicide, domestic violence and urban violence.
 The issue of gun violence has recently become a much more dominant concern for the 2020 presidential candidates. Raw emotions have hit many of them as they have met advocates from Moms Demand Action and other groups whose members have been affected by gun violence.
 “My hope is that they focus like a laser on youth turnout,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of March for Our Lives’s 2020 efforts, after reviewing the proposal. “The election is over the minute young people decide to turn out. The only reason that Trump would get reelected is if young people stay home. The issue of gun violence is one of the only issues that truly motivate young people to shake off their indifference and aversion to voting.”

Democrats, who in the past would at least nod toward gun owners and do photo ops while hunting, are embracing gun control with greater urgency than they have in any election in recent memory, a sign that they are sensing movement among voters. . . . . nearly 70 percent of registered voters said gun policy was “very important” to them, ranking the issue ahead of taxes and immigration, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

March for Our Lives is calling for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons and a voluntary buyback of handguns and other firearms.

NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter, commenting on the plan, said: “The gun-control community is finally being marginally honest about their true wish list. The simple fact remains their proposals and ideas are out of the mainstream, and most people will understand their real intent goes beyond what they publicly state.”

Hogg called the NRA “the big tobacco of violence in the U.S.” and claimed that “they don’t care about gun owners, like my father.” “The NRA cares as much about gun owners’ safety as the tobacco industry cared about smokers not getting cancer,” Hogg said.

Hogg is 100% correct in his assessment of the NRA.

Democrats’ Justified Growing Frustration with An Irresponsible News Media

“He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists
and criminals,” Beto O’Rourke said of Trump.

The mainstream media's false equivalency in news coverage during the 2016 presidential election helped elect Donald Trump.  Sadly, the problem continues and belatedly Democrats are beginning to call out lazy and irresponsible journalists and media outlets. There is ZERO equivalence between Trump/GOP lies and fact, data and science based Democrat  positions, yet one would rarely get that message from even outlets like the New York Times that fail to take on outright lies and/or continue to broadcast untrue propaganda.  If one is a responsible journalist, you do NOT merely parrot a lie or hate speech and never call out the individual lying or disseminating false and/or racist statements. The Founding Fathers saw the free press as the bulwark of protection against dishonest politicians and policies, yet too much of the media has failed to fulfill its critical role in safeguarding both the truth and democracy itself. A piece in Politico looks at the long overdue backlash against an often complicit media.   Here are excerpts:

A liberal backlash against the news media’s coverage of Donald Trump and the 2020 race was already brewing when the New York Times published a five-word headline Monday night summarizing the president’s reaction to the mass shootings over the weekend: “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.”

“Unbelievable,” steamed Beto O’Rourke. “That’s not what happened,” wrote Kirsten Gillibrand. “Lives literally depend on you doing better,” Cory Booker tweeted.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said senior editors quickly recognized problems with the original headline Monday night and rewrote it. “The fact that Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker didn’t like it didn’t influence me,” Baquet said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t need the entire political field to tell me we wrote a bad headline. It was evident.”

Still, the furious response capped an outpouring of frustration lately from 2020 candidates, Democratic strategists and left-leaning columnists over everything from CNN’s handling of last week’s primary debate to coverage of race and white supremacists to the years-old gripe that news organizations are too willing to amplify Trump’s words.

O’Rourke channeled that discontent best Sunday with an exasperated reaction to a reporter’s question about what Trump could do in response to the deaths of 22 people in El Paso at the hands of a suspected white nationalist.

“He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals,” O’Rourke responded. “Members of the press, what the fuck?”

Neera Tanden, the president of the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, told POLITICO that O’Rourke “spoke for millions of liberals” with those three words.

“If you’re thinking, ‘Can Trump make this better?’ you’re absolving him of his role in this, and it makes people think you don’t get it,” Tanden said.

Democrats and progressives expressed some frustration with the media in 2016, claiming that journalists neglected Sen. Bernie Sanders early on and that they were obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s emails. And Democrats are quick to distinguish their critique of the news media from that of the right, especially Trump’s attacks on journalists as “the enemy of the people.” O’Rourke, for one, has told crowds that the media is not the “enemy,” and nearly every Democratic campaign has vowed to bring back White House press briefings if elected.

Still, the critique of the news media is cropping up more as the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, including during the primary debates hosted by CNN. And it has the potential to hurt the news business’ reputation with a large chunk of the electorate, just as Republican voters became less inclined to trust the mainstream media after years of candidates decrying what they viewed as liberal bias.

“A vast swath of Democratic voters are pretty angry at the media,” . . . . They see a media obsessed with Trump voters who like his rhetoric and little interest in those targeted by his rhetoric. I think Beto's comments spoke to a feeling that media as currently constructed is not up to the moment we are living in." Brian Fallon, who served as deputy press secretary for Clinton’s 2016 campaign and is now executive director of progressive organization Demand Justice, told POLITICO on Monday afternoon that “a lot of Democrats are understandably exasperated about the broken state of the media in the age of Trump.” “Instead of the media standing up against his lies, we get thought pieces about whether the truth really matters anymore,” he continued. “Instead of calling out Trump's racism, we see headline writers engaged in acrobatics designed to achieve some false measure of objectivity.”

On Monday night, Fallon was one of the prominent progressive critics to pounce on the Times’s initial headline choice about Trump’s press conference on the shootings. Editor Baquet "cares more about being seen as impartial by diehard supporters of Donald Trump than he does about faithfully representing what is happening in American politics,” Fallon tweeted.

Some liberal Times subscribers, however, disagree. The hashtag #CancelNYT was trending Tuesday morning. Adam Jentleson, who served as deputy chief of staff to former Sen. Harry Reid, said on Twitter that he was going to do just that.

“I resisted for a long time but I’m cancelling my NYT subscription today,” he tweeted. “Great reporters but terrible editorial judgment on headlines and social media, which is all most people read. It can’t be the paper of record anymore if it doesn’t accurately report the news.”

Appeasing Trump and/or his base is NOT what a responsible journalist does. Instead, exposing lies and racist and misogynist fear mongering is what needs to be done.

The Republican Exodus From Congress

Sabato's Crystal Ball notes that one forecasting model based on postwar electoral history along with the president’s approval rating and the House generic ballot - which shows an 11 point advantage for Democrats - points to Democratic gains in 2020. Add to that Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to alienate everyone outside of his racist and religiously extreme base and it is perhaps little wonder that a number of Republican House members are announcing their retirement from Congress. Some believe there will be many more retirements which, in competitive districts offers Democrats potential seat pickups. A piece in the New York Times looks at what will hopefully be a worsen problem for Republicans - assuming, of course, Democrats do not seize defeat from the jaws of victory, always a big if.  Here are highlights from the New York Times: 

On Wednesday afternoon, Representative Mike Conaway, Republican of Texas, announced that he would not run for re-election next year. At a news conference in Midland, Mr. Conaway expressed distress at the partisan dysfunction in Congress, nodded to the term limits that his party places on committee leadership positions and said he’d been pondering retirement for a year or so. He said he wanted to leave on his “own terms.”

After eight terms in the House, the 71-year-old Mr. Conaway is entitled to a new adventure. But as the fifth congressional Republican to issue a retirement announcement in the past two weeks — and the eighth this year — his decision is being received as more than a personal choice. It’s being seen as evidence that Republican lawmakers are not feeling upbeat about retaking control of the House in 2020. Some party strategists have said they expect the trend to accelerate, with another round of announcements after members return from the August recess.

Besides Mr. Conaway, Utah’s Rob Bishop confirmed his retirement on Monday, and Alabama’s Martha Roby announced hers on Friday, one day after the announcement by Pete Olson of Texas, which came one day after the announcement by Paul Mitchell of Michigan. Indiana’s Susan Brooks announced her retirement in June. Georgia’s Rob Woodall did the same in February. And in January, just two weeks after being sworn in, Pennsylvania’s Tom Marino resigned. And let’s not forget Justin Amash of Michigan, who switched from Republican to Independent in disgust on July 4. [L]awmakers often start eyeing the exits with special longing when stuck in the minority with little hope of escape. Unlike in the Senate, where every lawmaker has some ability to influence — or at least disrupt — operations, life in the House minority tends to be a soul-crushing experience. Add to this the strain of endlessly being asked to defend the rantings of a volatile president who prides himself on being offensive. While some Republican lawmakers seem to thrive in the role of Trump apologist, others find it “exhausting and often embarrassing,” as one confided to The Hill this week. “Serving in the Trump era has few rewards,” said the member.

In terms of electoral impact, not all retirements are created equal. Ms. Roby and Mr. Conaway hail from blood-red districts that the party is expected to hold. But Ms. Brooks’s district is more competitive, and Mr. Woodall’s and Mr. Olson’s are considered tossups.

Some of the departures are problematic for the party’s overall brand. Ms. Brooks and Ms. Roby are two of only 13 women in a Republican conference with 197 members. (Eighty-nine of the House’s 235 Democrats are women.)

[T]he 2020 fight promises to be bloody. Republican leaders may want to be extra nice to their team. Who knows how many other members might decide to leave on their own terms?