The Trade War’s Risks for Trump

For years now the Republican Party has used appeals to racism, homophobia and evangelical Christian extremism to convince voters in their base to vote against their own economic interest.  Donald Trump has embraced this playbook with gusto and ramped it up to new levels, with outright appeals to white supremacists and Christian dominionists. Now, the question is whether his ill-conceived trade wars and the damage being wrought on agriculture and manufacturing in swing states be enough to finally convince some in the GOP base to rethink their blind support for Trump.  Given that Trump's Electoral College win - a demonstration why that antiquated system needs to be repealed - was roughly 70,000 votes spread across three states, even a slight erosion in farming and manufacturing worker support could prove fatal.  A piece in Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball looks at the situation and the evidence that at least so far, policies embracing racism, homophobia and religious extremism are still working for Trump.  Here are excerpts:

Trump has taken a hard line on trade. He’s imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, and on a wide variety of Chinese products. In response, China has slapped tariffs on American products.

If Trump’s trade strategy poses risks for the economy, it also poses risks for his reelection strategy. That’s because farmers and manufacturers in battleground states are facing retaliatory tariffs on their products.

To measure Trump’s degree of risk, we analyzed 14 battleground states — 10 of them won by Trump in 2016 and four won by Hillary Clinton.

Eight of the battleground states we studied are reliant on manufacturing and agriculture to a greater degree than the nation as a whole. In descending order, these eight states are Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Minnesota, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

Notice anything about these states? Trump won seven of them in 2016, making the core of his Electoral College majority at special risk from fallout from tariffs. Especially notable is the inclusion on this list of the three narrowly divided states that made his victory possible: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

[O]nly one state saw agricultural production grow between 2017 and 2018 — Georgia. The other 13 states saw declines in the agricultural sector during that period.

And the worst-performing agricultural states? Six of the seven worst-faring farm states were won by Trump in 2016 — those same three cornerstone states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) plus Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina . . . Two other Trump states, Iowa and Ohio, also fared worse than the national average.

[T]he most recent data available — the annualized change between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 — shows a broad manufacturing slowdown.

Ten battleground states saw lower annualized manufacturing growth in the first quarter of the year than they saw during the previous full year. These included seven Trump-won states, three of which were the pivotal ones — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.A key question, though, is whether any of this will matter electorally. When we checked with political observers in these states, they said that losses among farm and factory families pose a risk to Trump’s electoral prospects, but they added that there’s little hard evidence of that happening yet.

University of Northern Iowa political scientist Christopher Larimer — who calls this “the fundamental question heading into the 2020 election” — said he has “yet to see anything” that would suggest these voters are going to abandon the GOP in significant numbers. That could change as more polls are fielded as the election approaches.

One unknown is whether Democrats make a play for these demographic groups, said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College poll in Pennsylvania.

“The Democrats still have not been regularly courting the working class, except for an occasional foray into places they predominate,” he said. In Pennsylvania, he said, Democratic gains seem more likely to come from Republicans in suburban areas turning against the president.

Depressed turnout among disaffected farm and factory voters might be more likely than actually switching rural and blue-collar Republicans to support whoever the Democratic nominee is.

Especially in the three pivotal states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it wouldn’t take much to shift the balance.

Craig Gilbert, a political journalist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has reported extensively from the swing rural areas of western and southwestern Wisconsin. He said he hasn’t encountered any sign of mass defections from the historically strong levels of Trump support in 2016, but he added that it remains an open question whether more modest shifts could occur.

Bottom line: Trump’s trade policy could weaken his support in key states, but for now at least, there’s little evidence of widespread damage to Trump’s standing among the farm and factory demographics. Until further notice, cultural issues appear to be taking prominence over economic ones.

Has the Republican Party Rejected Democracy?

As the Democrat presidential veer to the left, the Republican Party has veered far right and, as a column in the New York Times, suggests looks to a form of authoritarian rule to maintain its power.  Indeed, in today's GOP, the goal is to thwart the will of the majority of voters and restrict the voting of anyone outside of its increasing racist and religiously extreme white base. The GOP tools to accomplish this?  Voter ID laws, gerrymandering, using legislative rules to block bills that otherwise have popular support - think Mitch McConnell - and outright intimidation. Frighteningly, while today's GOP bears no resemblance to the party I and my family once belonged to and actively supported, far too many Americans refuse to open their eyes to what the GOP has become.  Those who do, seemingly embrace minority rule and the shredding of American institutions.  Here are some column highlights:

A number of observers, myself included, have written pieces in recent years arguing that the Republican Party is no longer simply trying to compete with and defeat the Democratic Party on a level playing field. Today, rather than simply playing the game, the Republicans are simultaneously trying to rig the game’s rules so that they never lose.

The aggressive gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court just declared to be a matter beyond its purview; the voter suppression schemes; the dubious proposals that haven’t gone anywhere — yet — like trying to award presidential electoral votes by congressional district rather than by state, a scheme that Republicans in five states considered after the 2012 election and that is still discussed: These are not ideas aimed at invigorating democracy. They are hatched and executed for the express purpose of essentially fixing elections.

The idea that one party has become so radically different from the other, despite mountains of evidence, is a tough sell.  It’s a hard sell to make for one very simple reason: It doesn’t have a name, this thing the Republicans are trying to do. It’s not true democracy that they want. But it’s also a bit much to call them outright authoritarians. And there’s nothing in between.

Or is there?

A couple of weekends ago, I tripped across a 2010 book called “Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War,” by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. If you pay close attention to such things, you will recognize Mr. Levitsky’s name — he was a co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of last year’s book “How Democracies Die,” which sparked much discussion. “Competitive Authoritarianism” deserves to do the same.

What defines competitive authoritarian states? They are “civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents.” Sound like anyone you know?

But today, incredibly, the phrase has begun to bring to mind the United States of America. I literally gasped as I read certain passages, notably the part about the important role of a strong party in winning elections and in controlling legislatures. “Legislative control is critical in competitive authoritarian regimes,” the authors write. They list four reasons. You can bet Mitch McConnell knows every one of them, and probably a couple more. For one, there’s President Trump. Think of his efforts to do things like politicize the institutions of the executive branch, to try to turn the Department of Justice into his personal law firm. Think of his threat in 2016 that he would honor the results of the election “if I win,” and his recent musings about staying beyond two terms. Think of his commerce secretary’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, which would benefit the Republicans electorally. These are all manifestations of competitive authoritarianism. Second — and maybe even more so — there’s the Republican Party. The gerrymandering enabled them to maintain their House majority during the Obama years even as Democratic House candidates were winning more votes. But there’s much more. “Recent Republican behavior — from the 2016 stolen Supreme Court seat to the legislative shenanigans that followed gubernatorial defeats in North Carolina and Wisconsin to voter suppression efforts across numerous states — suggests a party whose commitment to democratic politics has weakened,” Mr. Levitsky said.
 “The fact that the Republican Party has grown increasingly authoritarian poses a greater threat to American democracy than Donald Trump.”

White Extinction Anxiety is Killing the GOP

The exodus of sane, rational - and I would argue, decent and moral - people from the Republican Party is accelerating as the party base becomes more racist and religiously extreme.  While Donald Trump (with Mike Pence quietly cheering in the background) intensifies his calls to racial hatred and ramps up his pandering to Christofascists, moderates are fleeing the party in droves. The fear - or perhaps psychosis that is fueling the GOP's lurch further and further toward something akin to a mix of fascism and fear mongering straight out of the KKK playbook is described in one column in the New York Times as "white extinction anxiety."  Sadly, the term aptly describes I suspect the bulk of Trump's supporters - including some of our "friends" who, in my view, threw aside morality and voted for the man - who simply cannot see the common humanity in others if they do not have the same skin color (or same sexual orientation).  Personally, as someone living in a white minority city, I simply do not comprehend the fear.  The only thing that springs to mind is what my former New Orleans belle grand mother: some whites simply must have others to look down on and discriminate against to feel good about themselves.  Superior if you will.  My grandmother held such whites in the lowest regard imaginable - white trash was the term she used.  Some may be offended, but the term increasingly describes the GOP base that now revolves around evangelical extremists and white supremacist.  Here are column highlights: 

Strip all the other rationales away from this  draconian immigration policy [Trump's family separation policy]. This is at the core: White extinction anxiety, white displacement anxiety, white minority anxiety. This is the fear and anxiety Trump is playing to. Politico Magazine dubbed Trump “Pat Buchanan With Better Timing.”

[T]he new numbers show that for the first time there are more children who are minorities than who are white, at every age from zero to nine. This means we are on the cusp of seeing the first minority white generation, born in 2007 and later, which perhaps we can dub Generation ‘Z-Plus.’”

America will soon be a majority-minority country. White America is growing older, there are fewer white women of childbearing age, and the white fertility rate is lower than that of Hispanics and blacks. 

All manner of current policy grows out of this panic over loss of privilege and power: immigration policy, voter suppression, Trump economic isolationist impulses, his contempt for people from Haiti and Africa, the Muslim ban, his rage over Black Lives Matter and social justice protests. Everything.

Trump is president and is beloved by his base in part because he is unapologetically defending whiteness from anything that threatens it, or at least that’s the image he wants to project. It is no more complicated than that. These immigrant children crying out for their mothers and fathers are collateral damage, pawns in a political battle to wring strict legislation out of Congress — medieval torture displays meant to serve as deterrents. These immigration policies are for people who conflated America with whiteness, and therefore a loss of white primacy becomes a loss of American identity.

But as noted above, for every new deplorable that Trump recruits to the GOP, more are leaving.  If the racism doesn't drive them away, the conflating of GOP policy with right wing Christian extremism does so.  Of course, it's no coincidence that many - likely a majority - the leaders of the "Christian" "family values" groups rallying to Trump are also all about white extinction anxiety also embrace white supremacy.  A second column in the New York Times looks at the exodus this entwining of the Christofascists' agenda is engendering.  Here are highlights: 

When the obituary for the Republican Party is written, the year 1980 will be cited as the beginning of the end. Reaganism was in full flower, but the big tent was already folding. Republican leaders endorsed a constitutional ban on abortion at the convention that summer, ending the party’s historic commitment to women’s rights and personal freedom.

As pro-choice Republicans, we refuse to support a party that has rightly earned the labels anti-woman and anti-common sense. . . .  As Republicans, we spent four decades working inside the party to produce effective policies helping women and families. Despite growing malice from an anti-choice faction, we kept our disagreements within the family. We redoubled our efforts to find common ground, rather than simply walk away.

But these successes were dismissed by party leaders who became increasingly beholden to the social extremists who were winning primaries in our broken, gerrymandered electoral system.

Our argument was simple: True fiscal conservatives should embrace family planning because it reduces poverty, increases educational attainment and work force competitiveness, improves health and provides people the opportunity to make educated moral choices. We incorrectly assumed that our fellow fiscal conservatives would join us in applauding the reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies, which saved taxpayers billions of dollars spent on the welfare state.

Instead, the policies and programs that led to these outcomes came under constant fire. The far right was more interested in conflating abortion and birth control for political purposes. It is fiscally disingenuous to deny birth control coverage and then bemoan unintended pregnancies and abortion.

The nastiness escalated to personal attacks on men and women who had dedicated countless hours and dollars to the party.

We don’t have the space to outline President Trump’s transgressions, but it is important to understand that his rise is an inevitable result of the hostility to women within the Republican culture. Women’s reproductive freedom has shifted with the wind: Remember that Ronald Reagan once supported abortion rights, as did George H. W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump himself.

We can no longer support a Republican Party that is shutting down low-cost health care clinics offering cancer screenings, basic health services and much-needed family planning services. It has become a party that wants to punish pregnant women by limiting their economic choices, that wants to reduce access to sex education programs that prevent unintended pregnancy and disease.

It is no wonder that women are voting with their feet. According to a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center, 56 percent of women identify as or lean toward Democrats. The gap is even wider among college graduates and minority voters.

It has become taboo within the party to even say “pro-choice.” Most of our supporters gave up on the party as it moved to the extremes not just on abortion but also on other social and fiscal issues.

This Republican Party is no family of ours. And so we say goodbye.

The Republican Myth That it Represents "Real Americans"

It is hard to tell when the myth began, but it certainly gained traction among Republicans with John McCain's disastrous selection of Sarah Palin - the idiot of Wasilla.  What myth?  The myth that the Republican party speaks for "real Americans" while the Democrat Part speaks for effete liberals and  those who are "other."   Never mind accurate facts and history.  Take Donald Trump, the supposed champion of these "real Americans."   All of his grandparents and his mother were born in Europe.  Meanwhile, most American blacks can traces their ancestry in America back a century or more longer.  In my own case, some of my ancestors were in America close to a century longer than Trump's.  Why am I not a "real American" while Trump with a short term family history in America claims he is?  Sadly, it is all a lie and when stripped of all of the smoke and hypocrisy, the myth is a coded message driven my race and in some cases religious extremism.  Despite their protestations to the contrary, many of my Republican "friends" ultimately bought into this race based myth.  A  column in the Washington Post  looks at the disingenuousness of the myth peddled by the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

The most offensive and corrosive idea in our politics today is that some Americans are more “real” than others. Don’t you dare buy it.

Republicans are cynically peddling this un-American conceit. “Real Americans” elected and continue to support President Trump, they claim, in defiance of snooty “coastal elites” who are hopelessly out of touch with the country. It’s a total crock, and shame on those using it for political gain.

The whole point of democracy is that every citizen’s voice is supposed to have equal weight — even voices in favor of fair and compassionate immigration policy, universal health care, fighting racism, promoting gender equality, enshrining LGBT rights and other progressive causes. There is no need to be tentative about these views for fear they somehow make you, I suppose, “unreal.” They do not.

 

Nor does living within some arbitrary distance of an ocean, having a college education or preferring big-city life deprive anyone of standing as an American.

 

The notion has taken hold that because the miner is a “real American,” his views must therefore be more authentic — and the barista, if he does not share or accede to those views, is “out of touch.”

 

With world-class hypocrisy, Republican officeholders and activists are selling this load of bull while themselves, by and large, being “coastal elites.”  One recent illustration: No group is supposedly more elitist and clueless than the so-called mainstream media. At the media’s biggest social event of the year, last month’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, comedian Michelle Wolf made some biting jokes about the Trump administration. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, and his wife, Mercedes, the White House director of strategic communications, conspicuously stood up and walked out.

 

“It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite,” Mercedes Schlapp harrumphed on Twitter. She sent the tweet while she and her husband were in a limousine, on their way to a glittering after-party thrown each year by NBC.

 

I know the Schlapps. . . . they recently purchased a $3 million home, as I certainly did not. Both have advanced college degrees. Matt Schlapp was a top lobbyist for Koch Industries before taking over at the ACU. The couple also founded their own public relations and lobbying firm. How are they anything but “elite,” according to the false dichotomy they espouse?

 

To put icing on the cake, Mercedes Schlapp reportedly said at a recent White House meeting that “I stand with Kelly Sadler” — referring to the White House aide who said of Sen. John McCain’s opposition to CIA nominee Gina Haspel that “it doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.” Schlapp is awfully selective about what she finds offensive.

 

Think for a moment about how ridiculous this whole thing is. Trump is a billionaire who started life as a millionaire, his father having been a wealthy developer. His Cabinet is a coven of plutocrats. His administration’s most consequential achievement thus far is a tax cut that showers corporations and wealthy citizens with lavish benefits, leaving just peanuts for the middle and working classes. The administration is also waging a relentless campaign to punish immigrants and the poor, apparently for existing.

But Trump cleverly uses cultural, racial and geographic markers to define who is “real” and who is not. And the Republican Party, to its eternal shame, has decided to go along.

Yes, it matters a great deal what people think in small-town Pennsylvania or rural Texas. But it matters just as much what people think in the rebuilding inner cores and thriving suburbs of our major cities, even if those cities happen to be on or near a coast.

Progressives have to speak to those left behind by wrenching economic and social change. But our voices are as authentic, and as worthy, as anyone else’s. I am a real American, too. Deal with it.

California: A Cautionary Tale for the Virginia GOP

The Virginia GOP 2018 lineup of extremists primary candidates.

In last year's gubernatorial race, Ed Gillespie in the end ran a campaign based of racism and religious extremism with an added dash of tax cuts for the wealthy.  He lost by 9 points.  In this year's U.S. Senate race, all three Republican candidates for the Virginia GOP nomination are extremists and at least one, if not two, of them, in my opinion, needs a mental health intervention.  Cory Stewart is running on a neo-Confederate platform, E.W. Jackson is unhinged, thus leaving Nick Freitas looking at least slightly sane in comparison.  However, given the rabid dog nature of the GOP base nowadays, it is all to possible that the most extreme candidate could walk away with the nomination, much to the delight of Democrat incumbent, Tim Kaine. A cautionary tale for the Virginia GOP can be found in California where there is a possibility that the California GOP may not even be able to field statewide candidates this year.  Part of the reason is due to California's unique nomination process, but a larger part is the GOP's extremism.  A piece in the New York Times should be required reading for leaders of the Virginia GOP.  Here are excerpts:

For anyone wondering about the state of the Republican Party in California these days, consider this: There may be no Republican candidate for governor or United States senator on the state’s ballot this November.

It’s no secret the state’s Republican Party has been in a decline for 20 years. Its challenges have been aggravated by the election of President Trump, as he has pushed tougher policies on such issues as immigration and the environment, running up against strong and often bipartisan sentiment in California.

A field of Republican candidates for the United States Senate and governor is struggling against these headwinds as they seek to end a more than 10-year drought and elect a party member to statewide office. Under the California election system, candidates compete in an open, nonpartisan primary on June 5. The two candidates who get the most votes — regardless of party — advance to the November general election.

If Republicans fall short in capturing one of those two November slots next month, which members of both parties say is a strong possibility, it would apparently be the first election since 1914 where a major party had no candidate in either the race for senator or for governor.

“You would think that if Republicans are shut out, it will be time for some serious soul-searching.”

Two of the most powerful Republican members of the congressional leadership represent central California: Kevin McCarthy, a close ally of Mr. Trump, who is in line to become the next speaker should Republicans hold the House this November, and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee. Both are popular in their districts and wield plenty of influence in Washington.

But the Republican Party holds no statewide offices. Democrats control both houses of the State Legislature. Party registration is on the decline. And one of the potential Republican candidates for Senate who some polls suggest has at least a theoretical shot of making it to the November ballot is Patrick Little, an extremist who has called for the country to be “free from Jews.”

There have been hard-line strains in the California Republican Party for years, centered around law and order, taxes and immigration issues. But this is also a state with a moderate wing.

A group of Republicans led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, and Chad Mayes, the former Republican Assembly leader, have begun a campaign to move the party to the center . . . But that effort has run up against Republican candidates and elected officials who have tied their success to Mr. Trump and his administration’s policies.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans like Mayes are completely wrong,” Travis Allen, a Republican candidate for governor and member of the Assembly, said in an interview.

The division over the future of the party was on full display the other night at a forum sponsored by the North Orange County Republican Women’s Federated Dinner for Mr. Allen and another Republican candidate for governor, John Cox, a businessman — the only two Republicans in a very crowded field who appear to have a chance to capture one of the top two spots in the primary.

A few moments later, both candidates told the moderator that they firmly supported Mr. Trump’s call to build a wall along the Mexican border. . . . Mr. Mayes, who was ousted as the Republican leader of the State Assembly after he negotiated a Republican vote-delivering compromise with Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, on legislation to curb greenhouse emissions, said that sentiment threatened to further distance the party from voters.

Mr. Mayes added. “We need to come to grips with reality and understand the electorate in California has changed. We have to go to them. We are not going to win elections until we figure that out.”

The prospect that there may be no Republican candidate for Senate or governor this November casts both short-term and long-term threats for the party.

For this election, it could complicate efforts to draw Republicans to the polls in a year when Democrats are looking to oust as many as seven endangered Republican members of Congress. . . . For the long term, it is a reminder of just how little influence the party has statewide. Republicans failed to win a spot on the 2016 ballot for Senate as well.

One of the key points of contention with the Republican Party in the state is immigration. It has been a complication for Republicans since California voters passed an initiative pushed by the Republican governor, Pete Wilson, in 1994 to prohibit illegal immigrants from getting state social services. That initiative, which was thrown out in court, was seen as one of the critical reasons for the party’s decline, as the Latino population in this state has continued to grow, and as California became more Democratic.

Democrats make up nearly 45 percent of the total number of registered voters in the state. Republicans account for about 25 percent, just slightly ahead of the percentage of voters who declined to pick a party registration.

Trump himself has emerged as a critical issue as Republicans try to chart a path forward. Mr. Trump lost California by nearly four million votes, and he remains consistently unpopular overall. But he is popular with Republican primary voters, and candidates have lined up behind him.

Frankly, until the GOP ejects many of the Christian extremists and white supremacists from its base, I see little changing.  Hopefully, in both California and Virginia, 2018 will be a bad year for Republicans. 

John Kasich: The Republican Party left Me

While his record on LGBT rights is abysmal, Ohio Governor John Kasich is one of the few Republicans who did not rush to prostitute himself to Donald Trump and betray everything the Republican Party once stood for.  Like myself, most of my extended family and many friend who are former Republicans, Kasich says that he did not leave the GOP.  Rather, the GOP left him.  Just like it left so many others who reject religious extremism, racism, defunding public education and a rapacious economic structure that benefits the wealthy while harming the less fortunate.   CNN has excerpts from Kasich's comments on "State of the Union":

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich expressed frustration with the current state of the Republican and Democratic parties Sunday amid rumors that he could pursue a 2020 presidential run.

"I'm still a Republican. I didn't leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me," Kasich said on CNN's "State of the Union." "In my state we have balanced budgets, surplus, we're up half a million jobs and then people say, 'Well Kasich's not a conservative.' What does that mean?"

"Come home to where we basically live," the 2016 presidential candidate added. "We should care about people from top to bottom, not just those at the top, but everybody. I can bring that party back. That's what I'm going to do in one way or another."

Kasich hasn't ruled out a presidential run in 2020, saying that he's keeping his options open. And though he's been rumored to be pursuing an independent candidacy, he told CNN earlier this month that it was unlikely.

The governor also said Republicans face a tough fight in this year's midterm elections because of voters' distaste for President Donald Trump's "harsh language" and "division." Kasich said he foresees "a big ocean of people in the middle who are up for grabs in November.  "These are people who are objective. These are people who are rational," Kasich said.

Sadly, "objective" and "rational" more or less exclude those who now comprise the core of the Republican Party.  I will not be holding my breath for Kasich to pull ff his restoration of the GOP.  

Republicans Fear Democrats Could Win Big in 2018

Back when I was a GOP activist years ago, the theme was that the purpose of the Party was to win elections and grow the base of support for the Party and its candidates.  Now, it increasingly appears that the only concern is to appease the most toxic and vile elements of the GOP base and to lie to everyone else about the foul nature of the base and the party agenda.  There seems to be little thought about building a long term sustainable base, hence the almost deliberate effort to alienate Millennials and as the pandering to aging Christian extremists and white supremacists continues to ramp up.  Now, some Republicans seem to be waking up to the reality that 2018 may be the year that the Republican Party and its short sighted leadership  reap the harvest of their misogyny.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing fear - which I must admit I savor since it is so deserved - that is taking hold among Republicans.  Here are highlights:

A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November.

The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a “sobering” slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months, White House officials said.

But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.

And by the end of the week, many Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the president after he spoke of “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting . . . . Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), a rising star in the party who faces a strong Democratic challenge this year, quickly denounced Trump for apparently denigrating Haiti, the birthplace of both her parents. . . .

In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House “and lost it big,” in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats.

Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map . . . . But other indicators are clearly flashing GOP warning signs. Democrats have benefited from significant recruitment advantages — there are at least a half dozen former Army Rangers and Navy SEALs running as Democrats this year, for example — as Republicans struggle to convince incumbents to run for reelection.

At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November . . . . The president’s own job approval, a traditional harbinger of his party’s midterm performance, is at record lows as he approaches a year in office, according to Gallup. Polls asking which party Americans want to see control Congress in 2019 show a double-digit advantage for Democrats.

“When the wave comes, it’s always underestimated in the polls,” said a conservative political strategist who has met with GOP candidates. “That is the reason that Republicans are ducking for cover.”

“The monthly metrics are bad, from the generic ballot to the Republican retirements to the number of Democratic recruits with money,” said one Republican political consultant . . .  the major metrics point to us losing at least one house of Congress.”

Republicans have struggled to narrow their Senate fields, with big and sometimes-nasty primary fights shaping up in Indiana, Montana and Arizona. The recent announcement that former Phoenix-area sheriff Joe Arpaio would run for the Senate has raised some Republican concerns about holding onto the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.).

Trump continually reminds advisers that he remains popular in a number of states, including West Virginia, Montana and North Dakota, according to aides. But slow fundraising and anemic candidate recruitment have caused tensions between the White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, White House advisers said.

White House officials said they expect a full plunge in upcoming weeks into a special House race in Pennsylvania, with trips from Trump, Vice President Pence and Cabinet members. The race has taken on a larger-than-life role in the White House because officials want to stem the tide of the losses they suffered last year in Virginia and Alabama.

And they have begun exploring ways to inject “wedge issues” that could trouble Democrats in more conservative states. Those could include immigration votes, requirements for welfare, sanctuary-city reform and revisions to the guest-worker program.

Despite all that, political handicappers have gradually increased the odds that Democrats will retake the House, where they need to pick up 24 seats to do so. Democrats must net two seats to take control of the Senate, a harder task

Republican strategists said they want to spend the next eight months talking about the economy. . . . But maintaining that message can be a challenge, as the president showed this week when his vulgar comments about some developing countries sparked international outrage.

Ed Gillespie tried using "wedge issues" in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race (as did his GOP ticket mates) and it did not end well.  Indeed, it likely increased the Democrat turn out among minorities and Millennials.  Let's hope that effort fails again. 

Hate-Filled, Irrational Roy Moore Wins Alabama GOP Senate Primary

Moore waving a gun at a campaign rally

I continue to be shocked and appalled over what has become of Alabama since I lived in that state in the late 1970's and early 1980's.   The state has become so insane that George Wallace (who I once met) could not win election if he were to return from the grave. He'd be considered "too liberal" since he did not denounce objective facts and reality.  Now, Roy Moore, a man twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court because of his refusal to comply with U.S. Supreme Court rulings, has won the GOP primary for the special election to replace Jeff Sessions (who looks saner and reasonalby compared to the insane Moore).  Of course, the fact that Moore was ever elected to that Court is a testament as to why elected judges is never a good idea.   Moore holds the rule of law in contempt, is the minion of the most toxic elements of the evangelical scamvangelists, and in my opinion, is probably certifiably insane.   Even more frightening than his primary victory is the reality that Moore will likely win the general elction now that drug laced Kool-Aid seems to have replaced the water supply in broad areas of Alabama.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the horrific primary outcome:

Democrats might be tempted to crack a smile at Roy Moore’s Tuesday night victory in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary runoff. The Republican base is so nuts that even President Trump’s late intervention could not persuade GOP primary voters to support sitting Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who is merely an extreme Trump supporter. Instead, they had to pick one of the most divisive figures in American politics to represent them.

This is an embarrassment for the GOP and a loss for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom the White House may shortly blame. If Moore wins the general election, the likely result would be even more chaos in the Senate, with McConnell even less able to marshal his caucus to pass Republican bills. That may not seem so bad to Democrats, for whom a gridlocked Senate may be preferable to a functional one at the moment. Alternatively, Moore’s fringe-ness could help Democratic candidate Doug Jones win the Senate seat that Jeff Sessions vacated to become attorney general.

[L]ike Trump, Moore would make an unusually toxic addition to Washington. A man who brandished a revolver in one of his recent campaign rallies, Moore touts politics that are raw and identity-based, appealing to those who believe that conservative Christian religious culture should infuse the civic institutions that govern all of us.

Moore captured national attention with his campaigns for religious symbols on public property and against same-sex marriage. Support for the former and opposition to the latter are unremarkable in GOP circles. But Moore went much further than others who share his beliefs: As the chief of the Supreme Court of Alabama, he rejected federal court orders based on his apparent view that his personal religious convictions superseded the nation’s civil law. Moore’s refusal to distinguish the public interest from his private agenda was a brazen assault on the country’s core institutions, the likes of which even Trump has not matched.  Moore’s empowerment will encourage zealotry and lawlessness.

Unburdened by a sense of responsibility or institutional tradition, Moore will have opportunity to use the considerable powers that individual senators possess to mangle the process of government. When votes will be needed to keep the government open, pass a budget or respond to a natural disaster, Moore is likely to join bomb-throwers 

Roy Moore stands for anarchy, disorder, disunity and conflict. His platform just got higher, and his power more considerable. Every minute he is in a position of national prominence, the country loses.

Trump Voters Brought Us This Fiasco

In my view, Trump voters - and Republican voters - were motivated in 2016 by many things, and few of them good.  Talk of smaller government and/or fiscal conservatism were merely smoke screen used by those who sought to cloak their real motivations: racism, religious extremism, ignorance due to laziness and reliance on right wing "news" sites, rebellion against modernity, the decline of white privilege.  The list goes on and on, but at root all of the motivations circle back to being an embrace of misogyny.  Worse yet, those who disclaim their real motives the loudest are likely those actually motivated by the ugliest motives.  The result is that the nation now has a madman in the White House and Republicans are too concerned with pushing their anti-working and middle class and pro-polluter agenda.  Where the nightmare ends - hopefully short of a dictatorship - is hard to tell.  A piece in Salon lays the blame for this national crisis at the feet of Trump supporters who I hope history will judge most harshly.  Here are excerpts:

Columnist Michael Gerson has described President Donald Trump as living in “the eternal now.” In other words, Trump doesn’t really consider the past or the future in his decision-making, especially when it comes to his kneejerk blurtings, be they on Twitter or during a rally or whenever he’s within spitting distance of a microphone. Everything for Trump is about getting through the moment. Everything is a reaction to something he just watched on television.

Not surprisingly, “the eternal now” also rings true of the modern conservative movement which has, for many years now, abandoned integrity in favor of saying the exact opposite of whatever the opposition is saying, even if that means flagrantly contradicting previous conservative positions. For example, Obamacare was mostly a Republican plan, a proto-version of which was implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. But since it was passed by Obama, it must be killed. Or, naturally, the sudden affection for Russia and Vladimir Putin by Trump conservatives, even though so many of them are on record having previously criticized Putin’s strongman leadership. Call it “opposite day politics.”

Trump’s “eternal now” is also illustrated by the fact that he routinely and accidentally engages in perhaps the dumbest politics we’ve ever seen from a chief executive. Specifically, Trump has repeatedly verified the authenticity of leaks by screeching about the leaks being a violation of national security and classified information.

Likewise, during his usual weekend excursion to Mar-a-Lago, Trump accused former President Obama of personally ordering wiretaps at Trump Tower. We’ll get into why he did this presently. But once again, Trump undermined his own case . . . . Trump has successfully if inadvertently coaxed his most loyal fanboys to support a complete and thorough investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election cycle, believing the findings will confirm Trump’s ludicrous claims about Obama administration wiretaps. Instead, investigations may well lead to evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to hack the Democrats and skew the election using the “damn emails.”

What we’ll all soon learn, if we haven’t already, is that the presidency isn’t something to be monkeyed with. Trump is proving with every blurt and every drip-drip of the Russia revelations that 62 million American voters frivolously experimented with the presidency, and this is what we get when the electorate gets suckered into a historically colossal mistake.

The consequences of this mistake have yet to be fully revealed, but they will be. And soon. Trump’s shocking tweets about wiretaps and Obama’s (unproved and likely nonexistent) involvement could very easily slip into a constitutional crisis in which one side of the debate is calling for the arrest of Trump while the other side is calling for the arrest of Obama. The only problem here is that the latter’s argument is silly and the former’s argument is entirely plausible,, according to former NSA analyst John Schindler. Unless Trump makes a move to shield himself from prosecution, it’s an increasingly likely scenario. Oh, and there’s a really solid chance he’ll abuse his power to keep himself out of jail. Obviously.

[W]ith no evidence or substantiation, the White House is pursuing this Obama angle. We have a president who is willing to accept without question things he sees on Fox News or reads on Breitbart. One of Trump’s other often-cited sources is “Fox & Friends,” which rivals “Vanderpump Rules” as the least intellectual show on television.

So — who will stop him? Who will stand up to Trump when he takes all this too far? (And he will.) It certainly won’t be the ignorant voters who think he’s righteousy disrupting the system. It doesn’t appear it’ll be Republican leadership either, since John McCain and Lindsey Graham are the only Republicans showing the balls to watchdog Trump from the GOP side of the aisle.

Now that Trump thinks his mandate is to disrupt the system, a million unforeseen things could come crashing down on our heads. Not to mention on the heads of those 62 million voters who thought the presidency and the free world needed a tyrannical Batman villain in the White House. 

Trump Rolls Out Anti-Semitic Closing Ad

Journalist Julia Ioffe, as hideously re-imagined by
anti-Semitic Trump supporters. Credit: http://www.haaretz.com/  

Donald Trump began his campaign spouting hate and bigotry against Hispanics and now he is closing his campaign with an anti-Semitic ad that plays to the vilest elements of Trump's base.   On our recent cruise, the husband and I met many wonderful, hard working people, most of whom were non-white and many of whom were non-Christians.  In Donald Trump's America, such people are less than human and undeserving of civil rights.  That conservative "Christians" are flocking to Trump's standard shows the moral bankruptcy of than strain of Christianity.   Talking Points Memo looks at Trump's ugly closing effort. Here are highlights:

From a technical and thematic perspective it's a well made ad. It's also packed with anti-Semitic dog whistles, anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic vocabulary. I'm not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whistles. The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO).

These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary lined up with high profile Jews as the only Americans other than Clinton who are apparently relevant to the story. As you can see by my transcription, the Jews come up to punctuate specific key phrases. Soros: "those who control the levers of power in Washington"; Yellen "global special interests"; Blankfein "put money into the pockets of handful of large corporations."

This is an anti-Semitic ad every bit as much as the infamous Jesse Helms 'white hands' ad or the Willie Horton ad were anti-African-American racist ads. Which is to say, really anti-Semitic. You could even argue that it's more so, given certain linguistic similarities with anti-Semitic propaganda from the 1930s. But it's not a contest. This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas. That's the only standard that really matters.

This is intentional and by design. It is no accident.

Trump has electrified anti-Semites and racist groups across the country. His own campaign has repeatedly found itself speaking to anti-Semites, tweeting their anti-Semitic memes, retweeting anti-Semites. His campaign manager, Steven Bannon, is an anti-Semite. The Breitbart News site he ran and will continue running after the campaign has become increasingly open in the last year with anti-Semitic attacks and politics.

Beyond that, this shouldn't surprise us for a broader reason. Authoritarian, xenophobic political movements, which the Trump campaign unquestionably is, are driven by tribalism and 'us vs them' exclusion of outsiders. This may begin with other groups - Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, Muslims. It almost always comes around to Jews.

It's true there is son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Jew and Ivanka, who converted to Judaism. But this isn't terribly surprising. Kushner appears to be conscienceless. And as I noted here, there is a storied history of anti-Semites being happy to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews.

There's been a lot of discussion of anti-Semitism and the Trump campaign but a fierce resistance to coming to grips with the fact that anti-Semitism is a key driving force of the Trump campaign, that the campaign itself is an anti-Semitic one even though the great majority of Trump's supporters are not anti-Semites. When he closes out his campaign with a blatantly anti-Semitic ad, it's time to rethink that resistance.

Hitler promised to make Germany Great Again too.  We all know where that led.

The RNC: A Bunch of Suckers and Sellouts

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is off the GOP reservation again, this time writing a column that places the blame for Donald Trump's rise and the metastasizing cancer within the Republican Party at the feet of the Republican National Committee ("RNC") which sold out to Trump or allowed themselves to be suckered and played for fools.  The indictment, while certainly true, also applies far down the GOP's party structure and began years ago when those who should never have been elected to local party committees or allowed to win nominations were welcomed instead of being firmly rejected if not openly condemned.  Trump is merely the logical extension of a failure of leadership that applies up and down the party hierarchy.  Short turn opportunism and a refusal to reject extremists of all stripes - and a refusal to face objective reality - are what set the GOP on its march to insanity.  Here are column highlights:

Perhaps the strongest indicator that Trump will lose is his own premature distribution of blame. As far as he is concerned, defeat couldn’t be his fault.

The obvious truth is that Trump never should have been the Republican nominee, as even Trump probably would admit. When he descended the escalator to announce his candidacy, he was at just 1 percent — a barely perceptible speck on the continuum of Republican candidates.

He was ignored — or at least not taken seriously — by nearly everyone for good reason. And when he started spouting hot rhetoric, few in the GOP leadership worried much since he’d surely be moving along any day. This was not to be, in part because, as Trump commented laughing to a friend, who told me: “I had no idea it would be so easy.”

Translation: Once he realized he was dealing with a bunch of suckers, he continued to play them. What fun — and, voila.

The suckers of whom he was speaking are the party leadership, specifically: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and RNC communications director Sean Spicer. If these names don’t ring a bell, congratulations, you don’t watch TV. Because Priebus, when not jetting around with Trump on his gold-plated private plane, and Spicer are on one talk show or another nearly every time you look at a cable news screen. They’ve worn more makeup the past year than most women do in a lifetime.

They’re the elephants in the green room, in other words. Everyone sees them clearly but manages to avoid speaking openly of the obvious — that Priebus has presided over the ruin of the Republican Party. Why isn’t he being held accountable? Why isn’t he being called to the mat for allowing Trump’s rise, which might not have been possible had the party chair done his job?

Why was everyone willing to stand by and watch this reality-TV character take charge?

“Because [Priebus] is their boy,” a disgruntled top Republican told me. “He’s given them what they wanted. He’s kept the money flowing.”

The RNC gang sold out. When Trump launched his campaign by ranting about undocumented Mexicans as murderers and rapists, the party leadership should have shouted him down. Priebus should have summoned Trump to Washington and explained how things were going to go. He might have handed Trump the GOP’s autopsy report from the 2012 election and referred him to the “Hispanics” section of the chapter on cultivating “Demographic Partners,” saying: This is what you’re going to do from now on.

Would Trump have agreed? Probably not. But then Priebus should have said: Well, then, I’ll have to break you down during the primaries. At every opportunity, Priebus should have made the case that Trump, who eventually alienated not just Hispanics but also African Americans and women, doesn’t represent the Republican Party. Instead, Priebus and others feared a base that hadn’t formed around Trump yet and, by their inaction, contributed to Trump’s success.

By letting Trump rise to the top, as oil slicks tend to, Priebus has left the party in such a gelatinous mess Republicans will need a hazmat team to clean it up. And for this, he’d like to serve a third term?

Trump is Now the Face of the GOP

Over the last 20 years, the base of the Republican Party has become uglier and uglier and increasingly misogynistic.  How did it happen?  Yes, some of the hideous elements that we see on proud display were likely always lurking in the shadows of the party base, but they were never embraced by and encouraged by the party leadership.  That began to change as the Christofascists were increasingly voted into positions on local committees and then began to work their way up the party structure.  As the religious extremism increased and the GOP became a defacto sectarian party, sane and rational people fled and became independents or Democrats.  Once this happened, the path was open for other ugly elements to assert themselves, including white supremacists, although many were already in the party given the overlap between the Christofascists and open racists.  The culmination of the trend is Donald Trump's presidential nomination.  Even if Trump loses on November 8th, these ugly elements will still control the GOP.  It is important that this reality not be forgotten.  Republicans who do not want to face this reality are merely deluding themselves.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at this toxicity and moral bankruptcy that exists across the GOP.  Here are highlights:

The presidential campaign is entering its final weeks, and unless the polls are completely off, Donald Trump has very little chance of winning — only 7 percent, according to the Times’s Upshot model. Meanwhile, the candidate continues to say disgusting things, and analysts are asking whether down-ballot Republicans will finally repudiate their party’s nominee.

The answer should be, who cares? Everyone who endorsed Mr. Trump in the past owns him now; it’s far too late to get a refund. And voters should realize that voting for any Trump endorser is, in effect, a vote for Trumpism, whatever happens at the top of the ticket.

First of all, nobody who was paying attention can honestly claim to have learned anything new about Mr. Trump in the last few weeks. It was obvious from the beginning that he was a “con artist” — so declared Marco Rubio, who has nonetheless endorsed his candidacy. His racism and sexism were apparent from the beginning of his campaign; his vindictiveness and lack of self-discipline were on full display in his tirades against Judge Gonzalo Curiel and Khizr Khan.

[A]ny politicians who try after the election to distance themselves from the Trump phenomenon — or even unendorse in these remaining few days — have already failed the character test. They knew who he was all along, they knew that this was a man who should never, ever hold any kind of responsible position, let alone become president. . . . That’s a huge moral failure, and deserves to be remembered as such.

Of course, we know why the great majority of Republican politicians supported Mr. Trump despite his evident awfulness: They feared retribution from the party’s base if they didn’t. But that’s not an excuse. On the contrary, it’s reason to trust these people even less.

[W]hat we learned during the Republican primary was that the party’s base doesn’t care at all about what the party establishment says . . . Nor does the base care at all about supposed conservative principles like small government.

What Republican voters wanted, instead, were candidates who channeled their anger and fear, who demonized nonwhites and played into dark conspiracy theories.

Trumpism is what the party is all about. Maybe they’ll find future standard-bearers with better impulse control and fewer personal skeletons in their closets, but the underlying nastiness is now part of Republican DNA.

And the immediate consequences will be very ugly. Assuming that Hillary Clinton wins, she will face an opposing party that demonizes her and denies her legitimacy no matter how large her margin of victory.

[T]he modern G.O.P. is Mr. Trump’s party, with or without the man himself.