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.

Democratic 2018 Cash Swamps House Republicans

There are many bad signs for the Republicans in the rum up to the 2018 midterm elections that range from party base enthusiasm gaps, frightening generic polls that significantly favor Democrats, to record numbers of House Republicans making the decision to retire. Now, on top of these signs there is the huge fundraising gap in favor of Democrats.  They say money is the "mother's milk of politics" and the costs of campaigns are soaring.  A piece in Politico looks at this latest welcomed sign that Trump may well be destroying the Republican Party.  Of course, simpletons like Devin Nunes are exacerbating the situation as are Republicans who silently stand by with their thumbs up their butts as the party assaults American institutions.  Here are article excerpts:

Is it time for Republicans to start freaking out?  

More than 40 House Republican incumbents were outraised in the final quarter of 2017 by one — or several — of their Democratic opponents, according to the latest round of fundraising numbers. And of that group, more than a dozen had less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers.

For the GOP, here’s the really disturbing part: The trendline is getting worse, not better. Despite the myriad advantages of incumbency and control of Congress, there are more House members with less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers than the quarter before.

 

“Those numbers should be concerning for all Republicans,” said Mike DuHaime, a GOP consultant based in New Jersey. “This is going to be the most challenging political environment since 2006, so you have to be ready. And lot of these members came in after 2006, so for many, this will be the most challenging environment they’ve ever run in. And that’s going to prove difficult.”

A flood of Democratic money poured into House races across the country in 2017, provided in large part by small-dollar, online contributors animated by opposition to President Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress. More than 80 Democratic challengers in Republican-held districts have at least $250,000 in cash on hand at the end of the year — a sign that the House battlefield may be wider than previously thought.

[Republicans] face significant structural challenges, the fundraising figures show. A slew of recent retirements in expensive media markets, like New Jersey and California, will force Republicans to spend more to defend open seats as they bid farewell to well-funded incumbents. But Republicans believe that the tax bill — passed in late December, so too late to affect these financial reports — will help them rebound in the first quarter of 2018.

Republicans acknowledged that some members are out of practice, leaving them behind with just over nine months left before Election Day.

“Sitting and dialing and pushing for money — they’re not used to doing that, and most of them don’t like to,” said Rob Stutzman, a California-based GOP consultant. “So some of this is fat, flabby and out-of-shape fundraising muscles. Those are districts where we should be raising more.”

Republican strategists stressed that falling behind in cash on hand — the amount sitting in a member’s bank account — is a serious problem because “the only thing that matters is cash on hand, and the Republican incumbent members who have Democratic challengers with a cash-on-hand advantage need to work harder and raise more money,”

Democrats, however, believe that the fundraising surge won’t diminish after the primaries because the “biggest injection of energy for Democrats is reading the front page every day, and that’s not going away,” said John Lapp, a Democratic consultant . . . . “The Democratic surge in fundraising is just another example of the Democratic surge in energy in this election overall, and that that energy is being monetized.”

 

Andy Kim, who served on Obama’s National Security Council, raised more money than Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), a self-funder who has easily won reelection since 2014.

“We have a ton of momentum in the district,” Kim said, noting that a thousand volunteers are working with his campaign. “That’s what happens when you’re running against the lead author on the Trumpcare bill and the only New Jersey congressman who voted for the tax bill.”  

Let's hope the Democrat momentum continues and additional GOP incumbents decide to hit the retirement button.  

 

GOP Insiders Brace for a 2018 Trumpocalypse

With the news that the Trump/Pence regime plans to issue new rules that would allow heath care providers to refuse to treat LGBT individuals, perform abortions or withhold treatment from anyone who offends their religious sensibilities (see the subsequent post to this one), it is more urgent than ever that Democrats, Millennials, minorities and, of course, LGBT citizens mobilize to deal Republicans a bloodbath defeat in the 2018 midterm elections.   Thankfully, indications are that social and other forces are coming together to make that needed electoral blood bath a reality.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the fear gripping veteran GOP operatives in the run up to November.  Frighteningly, Der Trumpenführer cited the 2002 midterms and suggested that a terror attack might help GOP prospects - a GOP equivalent to the Reichstag fire that Hitler used to assume dictatorial powers.   Here are highlights from Vanity Fair:

It doesn’t take a stable genius to comprehend the trouble that Republicans find themselves in 10 months before President Donald Trump’s first midterm election. Ignore the optimistic bromides about “fake news,” “fake polls,” and the political savior of a federal tax overhaul that Trump, and the Republican-controlled Congress, delivered late last year. . . . But veteran Republican operatives, scrambling to help the party survive the gathering storm, know better. The Democratic base is apoplectic and energized. The number of Republican lawmakers who are opting to retire, rather than walk into the electoral buzzsaw, is matched only by the surge of Democratic candidates running in suddenly competitive districts. And Trump, despite the occasional good news cycle, has become no less toxic.

“It’s bad,” a senior Republican strategist involved in a 2018 campaign told me flatly. “The environment is really bad. It’s challenging and it could get worse.”

Each of the dozen or so Republican strategists I spoke to offered a similar assessment. A Democratic base that couldn’t be bothered to show up to the polls for Hillary Clinton just 14 months ago is now supercharged. And a critical sliver of the traditional Republican coalition—the college-educated, upscale suburbanites, especially women—is disgusted with Trump despite the booming economy.

But as a senior Republican congressman told me during a recent conversation: with this president, Republicans have to navigate “political crosswinds.” Do Republicans run with Trump or against him? Do they run as traditional Republicans or Trump Republicans? How should Republicans on the 2018 ballot talk to all of the various voting blocs of G.O.P. voters, never mind swing voters and Independents, especially in instances where they have to hug a Trump-friendly primary electorate while appealing to a Trump-hostile crowd in the general election? “We’re not prepared,” the Republican congressman said. . . . . “If you don’t succeed in selling the middle-class tax cut, then the only villain is Trump.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are leaning on Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California to keep the blue tide at bay. . . . . Democrats are dismissive, noting that anti-Pelosi messaging failed in 2006, during President George W. Bush’s second midterm, in which they won control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.

And this year has all the hallmarks of a wave against the president and the ruling party. The G.O.P. didn’t just blow the gubernatorial race in purple Virginia, on its own not necessarily a death knell. The party lost 15 state legislative contests, many in seats gerrymandered for G.O.P. control, and nearly control of the legislature. The Republicans also saw their power upended in historically red suburban counties outside of Philadelphia and New York City.

Those are the warning signs before accounting for Trump and his Twitter feed, and why many Republican strategists are resigned to the crash that’s coming, absent an intervening event, like a war or something unexpected that would rally the country behind the president. All that’s left to do is mitigate the damage. “It’s impossible to navigate Trump,” a Republican consultant said. “And it’s all about him.”

Democrats need to replicate the Northam grassroots organizing effort in Virginia in 2017 and Millennials - who will suffer the most from GOP/Trump/Pence policies long term - minorities and LGBT citizens mobilize to get people registered to vote and to the polls in November to deal Republicans an electoral bloodbath defeat in the 2018 midterm elections.