The Suburban Backlash Against the GOP Is Growing

I recently wrote about the Virginia Republican Party's slow suicide in Virginia where the population of the urban/suburban areas is surging while the number of rural voters is either stagnant or declining sharply. In statewide races, the Virginia GOP now finds it near impossible to win and losses in redrawn districts will pile up further following the 2021 redistricting which will reflect the population shifts. What the GOP is selling may win the hearts of racists and religious extremist in rural areas, but it is simply repulsive to more and more urban/suburban residents.  As a quote of a former NRCC chair in The Atlantic indicates, the GOP’s transformation from "a party of the country club to the country” does not add up to long-term success.  All indications are that Donald Trump's 2020 campaign effort may accelerate the process across the country and, even if Trump pulls of another Electoral College win while losing the popular vote, the long term trend is clear as urban/suburban populations soar in even states like Texas where sooner or later, the rural vote will not be enough to win statewide elections - or carry states in presidential elections.  Here are some article highlights:

The shift of metro areas away from the Republican Party under President Donald Trump rumbled on in yesterday’s elections, threatening the fundamental calculation of his 2020 reelection plan.

Amid all the various local factors that shaped GOP losses—from Kentucky to Virginia, from suburban Philadelphia to Wichita, Kansas—the clearest pattern was a continuing erosion of the party’s position in the largest metropolitan areas. Across the highest-profile races, Democrats benefited from two trends favoring them in metro areas: high turnout in urban cores that have long been the party’s strongholds, and improved performance in white-collar suburban areas that previously leaned Republican.

“When Trump was elected, there was an initial rejection of him in the suburbs,” says Jesse Ferguson, a Virginia-based Democratic strategist. “We are now seeing a full-on realignment.”

In that way, the GOP’s losses again raised the stakes for Republicans heading into 2020. In both message and agenda, Trump has reoriented the Republican Party toward the priorities and grievances of non-college-educated, evangelical, and nonurban white voters. His campaign has already signaled that it will focus its 2020 efforts primarily on turning out more working-class and rural white voters who did not participate in 2016.

But yesterday’s results again suggested that the costs of that intensely polarizing strategy may exceed the benefits. Republicans again suffered resounding repudiations in urban centers and inner suburbs, which contain many of the nonwhite, young-adult, and white-collar white voters who polls show are most resistant to Trump. If the metropolitan movement away from the Trump-era GOP “is permanent, there’s not much of a path for Republican victories nationally,” former Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, who chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee about two decades ago, told me. Trump’s effort to mobilize his nonurban base around white identity politics is having the offsetting effect of turbocharging Democratic turnout in metropolitan areas, which are growing faster than Trump’s rural strongholds. Unique local conditions contributed to each of yesterday’s most disappointing results for Republicans. . . . . But looming over all these local factors was the consistency of the metropolitan movement away from the GOP. Not only in urban centers, but also in suburban and even some exurban communities, Democrats reaped a double benefit: They increased their share of the vote even as turnout surged. The legislative elections in Virginia show the same pattern of the suburban erosion for the GOP in the Trump era. Democrats overthrew narrow Republican majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly by capturing at least five state House seats (while leading narrowly in a sixth) and two in the state Senate. They included seats in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Northern Virginia and near the state capital of Richmond. But those new gains were probably less telling than what didn’t change: Democrats didn’t lose any of the previously Republican seats that they captured in suburban areas—particularly Northern Virginia and Richmond—in their landslide win in the state in 2017, which foreshadowed Democrats’ gains in the 2018 midterms. That widening separation between the GOP’s strength outside of metro areas and an intensifying tilt toward Democrats inside of them continues the underlying pattern of geographic polarization that has defined politics in the Trump era. Rather than looking to court urban areas, Trump has more frequently denounced places such as Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in an attempt to energize his mostly nonurban base. He continues to aim his message preponderantly at culturally conservative whites, and his campaign has signaled that it considers increasing turnout among such voters central to his reelection hopes.

Few in either party dispute that such a strategy could allow Trump to squeeze out another Electoral College victory, even if he loses the popular vote . . . But yesterday’s results underscore how narrow a wire [Trump] the president is walking with that strategy. Even taking into account Bevin’s personal unpopularity, Bitecofer says the Kentucky result should caution Republicans about a plan that accepts metropolitan losses to maximize rural and small-town gains. “If it can’t work in Kentucky … you cannot do it in Wisconsin or Michigan,” she says. Beyond Trump, the urban/nonurban divisions evident in this week’s elections “should scare the ever-loving bejesus” out of 2020 Republican Senate candidates in states with large metropolitan populations, including Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina. In 2016, the strategist noted, Trump benefited not only because rural and non-college-educated white voters turned out in big numbers, but because turnout was weak among minorities and mediocre among young people. But in 2018—and again last night—large turnout in metropolitan areas swamped strong showings for the GOP in rural communities, the strategist noted. That raises the question of whether even big turnout in nonmetro areas will suffice for Trump if the metropolitan areas moving away from him continue to vote at the elevated levels evident in 2018 and 2019. Davis, the former NRCC chair, likewise believes that the GOP’s transformation from a party of “the country club to the country” does not add up to long-term success. “What’s happening is that the fast-growing areas [are] where the Democrats are doing better,” he told me. “There aren’t enough white rural voters to make up the difference.” Despite the GOP’s recent metropolitan losses, Trump’s approach has generated astonishingly little dissent inside the party. Yesterday’s results are unlikely to break that silence. But Weaver, like other GOP strategists dubious of Trump, says the party cannot indefinitely ignore the implications of prioritizing rural strength at the price of losing ground in the urban centers, which more and more are driving the nation’s economic innovation and its growth in population and jobs.

“Politics is a free-market enterprise. You have to sell a product,” Weaver says. “And Republicans are going to find themselves, by their own decision making, eliminated as an option for many, many voters, many, many demographic groups for generations to come.”

The Virginia GOP's Slow Suicide

As a former Republican and Republican activist - I held a City Committee seat in Virginia Beach for eight years roughly two decades ago - watching the Virginia GOP's slide from power has been watching a form of slow moving suicide, a process which, as I have said before, began when Republicans foolishly began embracing far right Christians and, worse yet, voting them onto city and county committees. To my mind, that move that focused on short term advantage set the stage for the exodus of moderates and educated suburban voters from a party that became increasingly defined by an embrace of ignorance, rejection of science and knowledge and hatred to anyone deemed "other" - a category that includes basically anyone who is not a white right wing Christian.  The move also ushered in the beginning of the GOP's embrace of white supremacy since so may evangelicals in my experience are racist as exemplified by The Family Foundation which traces its roots to supporters of "Massive Resistance" when confronted with school desegregation.  As Virginia's urban and suburban areas have grown, a critical mass was reached where these regions can out vote the racist, knuckle dragging rural regions.  This new reality is not going to change and unless the Virginia GOP can reform itself - something not likely in my view given the grip the Christofascists have on the party even as Millennials exit religion entirely - Virginia will be a "blue state" for the foreseeable future (a view confirmed by Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball).  A Washington Post editorial looks at this new reality.  Here are highlights: 

IN POLITICAL terms, Virginia is no longer a Southern state; it’s an Eastern one that tilts heavily Democratic. That transformation, affirmed in Tuesday’s watershed elections that flipped both state legislative chambers to the Democrats’ control, was long in the making and helped by Republicans who fell radically out of step with the increasingly diverse voters who populate the state’s booming suburbs.

Long before anyone imagined Donald Trump in the White House, Republicans such as Corey A. Stewart, last year’s failed GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate and the soon-to-be-former top official in Prince William County, rose to prominence as right-wing culture warriors. Mr. Stewart, assessing this week’s Democratic gains, said Republicans would be “toast” in Virginia for 10 years. That may be right; if it is, Mr. Stewart himself was a prominent toaster.

Mr. Stewart’s brand of Republicanism — immigrant-bashing, Confederate-monument-revering, gun-loving, abortion-blocking, trash-talking and, lately, Trump-lionizing — has been ascendant in Richmond and elsewhere. It has methodically alienated moderate and swing voters, especially in the vote-rich suburbs of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads. In a state that won the competition for Amazon’s second corporate headquarters partly on the strength of a well-educated, multicultural workforce, Republicans who threw red meat to their base by attacking undocumented immigrants found their appeal waning.

[T]he GOP’s problems have deep roots. No Virginia Republican has won a statewide election in a decade. And in Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties — Washington suburban localities that together comprise nearly a quarter of Virginia’s population of 8.5 million — elected Republicans at any level are now an all-but-vanished breed.

The party’s enfeeblement was accelerated by its rejection of moderate, substantive GOP officeholders such as former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling and former congressman Thomas M. Davis III. And it signed its political death warrant by blowing up the summer’s special legislative session on gun safety after just 90 minutes, without considering a single bill. That act of cluelessness and arrogance came weeks after a mass shooting in Virginia Beach left 12 people dead.

Virginia Republicans are at a defining moment. If they reverse course and tack to the center, they may again become a force in a state that would benefit from a vibrant two-party competition. If not — if they double down by continuing down the Trumpian path blazed by Mr. Stewart and his like — they might become “toast” not for a decade but for a generation.

New Study: Only Two Thirds of Gen Z Is Straight

The findings of a new study ought to have Christofascists and their Republican political whores terrified.  Even as these extremists press their anti-LGBT agenda, the study finds that younger generations are increasingly saying that they are not exclusively heterosexual.  In the case of Generation Z - those born after 1995, a full one-third say that they are not exclusively heterosexual. It goes without saying that as this generation ages and votes more consistently, the news will not be good for the GOP which will also be facing growing numbers of non-white voters. Thanks to the Trump/Pence regime, the GOP is becoming irrevocable linked with racism and homophobia.  A piece in The Advocate.  Here are excerpts:

The youngest generation is proving to be the most tolerant and the most fluid, as same-sex couples and numerous sexual identities are given a platform in newer media and information is becoming increasingly accessible. 

Only 66 percent of young people today identify as exclusively heterosexual - which is the lowest of any generation up until this point,  according to a study from Ipsos Mori.

Baby boomers prove to have the highest percentage, with 88 percent identifying as solely heterosexual, whereas that number drops to 85 percent with Gen X, and 71 percent among millennials, the study says.

"In particular, this generation of young has grown up at a time when gender as a simple binary and fixed identity has been questioned much more widely – this is new, and will affect wider views of gender, sexuality and much broader aspects of identity," Hannah Shrimpton, one of the authors of the report, told the Daily Telegraph.

Shrimpton also said that there is "greater exposure to communications on the variety of lifestyles available to young people today through social technology.”

The study has labeled Gen Z “the liberal generation” and finds that 10 percent of the generation regards prejudice toward the LGBT community as one of the most pressing issues in the world today, as compared to only 2 percent of Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers who believe the same.

Other studies published by Ipsos Mori suggest that over 70 percent of Gen Z is comfortable with homosexual relationships, as compared to the 43 percent of Baby Boomers.

Figures from other organizations confirm Ipsos Mori’s suggestion that younger generations are more likely to either identify as LGBT or be accepting of the LGBT community, and that the percentage of the younger generation is more likely to do either continues to rise over time. 

The Ipsos Mori study also reports that young people are more likely to have a “less binary view of sexuality,” which suggests that younger generations do not feel as strong a pressure to use the label “gay” or “straight” but are comfortable with viewing sexuality as a sliding scale that they can fall somewhere in the middle of.

With popular figures such as Tessa Thompson, who came out as bi at the end of June, and Janelle Monae, who came out as pansexual earlier this year, young people have more popular figures in the media to look up who fall somewhere in between binaries when it comes to sexuality.

The GOP despite the Trump/Pence regime continues its slow moving suicide by alienating the growing and up and coming generations.  Its death cannot come soon enough.

Young Voter Turnout - A Growing Problem for Republicans

In the wake of the previous post's rant, there is encouraging news in Virginia which, if the nation is lucky, can be replicated in other states.  What is it?  Young voter turn out which helped put the Democrat statewide ticket over the top in the elections earlier this month.  Between pandering to religious extremists, racists and misogynists in general, and in pushing policies that are anathema to younger voters, the Republican Party has pretty much burned all bridges with the significant majority of younger voters.  Meanwhile, with attacks on Medicare, the same may happen with senior voters.  I truly cannot comprehend how a major political party seemingly has no long term plan to remain viable beyond the next decade at most.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's apparent suicide pact.  Here are highlights:

As bad as the overall outcome of Virginia’s recent election was for Republicans, there was one facet of the vote that raises special alarm for the party’s future.

That’s the performance of young voters, who came out in historic numbers and overwhelmingly cast their ballots for the Democratic candidate for governor, Ralph Northam.

While Republicans have been wrestling with an aging demographic for some time, analysts say the unpopular actions of President Trump are pushing away a new generation.

“One of the biggest challenges facing the Republican Party in Virginia and nationwide is that the Republican Party has become toxic to a lot of young voters,” said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political scientist. “I think Trump has exacerbated a trend that was emerging, and it has become very problematic.”

Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie by an overall margin of 54 percent to 45 percent, as certified this week by the state Board of Elections. Young voters — who are often among the least-engaged, especially in a nonpresidential election — had a turnout rate of 34 percent, according to an analysis of exit polling by a group at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. That’s up from 26 percent in the 2013 governor’s race and double the youth turnout in 2009. And that surge of millennials was a windfall for Democrats: Sixty-nine percent of those voters supported Northam, vs. 30 percent for Gillespie.

The same trend held when measured in different ways. In precincts adjacent to college campuses, turnout was up 8 points over 2013 and Northam won 72 percent of the vote, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

In precincts not adjacent to colleges but where voters age 40 and younger make up more than 60 percent of the population, turnout was up 7 points and Northam won more than 81 percent of the vote, the VPAP analysis found.

Virginia’s results suggest that the rise of young voters is a serious problem for Republicans nationwide.  Recent studies by the Pew Research Center found that millennials — generally defined as those age 18 to 35 in 2016 — are fast becoming the largest single bloc in the electorate. By 2020, there will be more millennial and Gen X voters than baby boomers.  And millennials have routinely polled as more left-leaning than other segments of the population.

The only other statewide election this year was in New Jersey, where Democrat Phil Murphy was a prohibitive favorite for governor. Young voters didn’t surge in New Jersey . . . . but 73 percent of them voted for the Democrat, according to the Tufts analysis.
 “Young people have increasingly moved away from the Republican Party, given its perceived status as being the anti-immigrant party and not being tolerant of alternative lifestyles,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. . . . “As long as the Republican Party is seen as not embracing or accepting people as they are, be they gay, transgender, immigrants and the like, that’s a big turnoff to young voters these days.”
 The Virginia results, he said, are “a wake-up call to the Republican Party about the way things are going to go for them next year” in congressional races across the country.  Some Republicans get the message. . . . I’ll summarize that with one word for the GOP: trouble.” . . . Ramadan has long warned that his party has a problem wooing minority voters. “But this election shows that it’s not just a minority problem, it’s a youth problem” — and even broader than that, he added.  Those problems were accelerated this year by “the Trump effect,” he said.

“Unless Republicans get back to mainstream issues instead of sanctuary cities and Confederate statues, we’re going to lose elections,” he said.

Republican pollster Gene Ulm said he was most concerned about “young suburbanites” in the Virginia results. “We basically had 300,000 people show up who don’t normally vote in a gubernatorial election,” he said. “We won 85,000 of them and lost the other 215,000.”

But the overall trend of young, white and suburban voters is a bad sign for the party going into next year’s congressional races, he said. “That affects certainly Barbara Comstock,” he said, referring to the Northern Virginia congresswoman, a Republican whose district went for Northam. “But there’s a lot of other districts in America where that’s going to play a role,” Ulm said.

There are a host of progressive and grass-roots groups aiming specifically to get a large turnout of young voters for Democratic candidates, . . . .  If anger at Donald Trump and the GOP continues to drive turnout up through the 2018 election cycle, when young people will be the largest bloc of eligible voters, we could be looking at a progressive wave powered by millennial voters.”

"Half these new delegates [in the Virginia House of Delegates] are probably millennials,” he said. “The impact of the millennial generation on the electorate is going to be pretty profound, and Democratic candidates tend to be the beneficiary of this far more than Republicans are.”

A piece in Gay Star News reveals that Virginia Republicans for the most part learned nothing from the election results as the Republican House of Delegates leadership is going out of its way to find a method to avoid referring to Delegate elect Danica Roem as female.  

  

How to Build a Consistent Democratic Majority

Last night as the husband and I baked cookies and other food items that he will use to cater his salon between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, we chatted with our Ralph Northan staffer who has lived with us since July 4th.  The conversation revolved in part about whether he thought he be back in Virginia next year - he is from Florida and leaves us on Tuesday - and what the Democrats needed to do to expand last Tuesday's election victories to Virginia's congressional districts, guaranty Tim Kaine's reelection to the U.S. Senate, and how to turn more states "blue."  In my view (which is based on my experience first as a GOP activist and now as someone actively opposing the toxic agenda of today's GOP), the ground game that Ralph Northam put in place should be replicated next year nationwide, especially in suburban areas.   A column in the New York Times by David Brooks - a long time GOP apologist who far too belatedly became a critic of the Christofascists and and worse elements of the GOP - lays out why this strategy could be the key to making progressive and the Democrats the majority political force going forward.  Here are column excerpts:

We’re all familiar with a certain political geography. Democrats win the cities, Republicans win the rural areas, and the battlegrounds are in the suburbs. In general, Democrats win the denser inner-ring suburbs where there are lots of professionals — doctors, lawyers, teachers. Republicans win the sprawling outer-ring suburbs, where there are lots of office parks and midlevel corporate managers.

Northern Virginia has always embodied this familiar suburban divide. Democrats have done well in inner-ring towns like Arlington. Republicans have done well in outer-ring boomburbs like Loudon County.

But we’re living in an age of global populism, a historic transition as profound as those in 1848, 1905 and 1968. Around the world, the old political divides are being replaced, and political geographies are being redrawn. One way to capture the emerging divide is by using the British writer David Goodhart’s distinction between Somewheres and Anywheres.

Somewheres are rooted in their towns and have “ascribed” identities — Virginia farmer, West Virginia coal miner, Pennsylvania steelworker. Anywheres are at home in the global economy. They derive their identity from portable traits, like education or job skills, and are more likely to move to areas of opportunity.

Somewheres value staying put; they feel uncomfortable with many aspects of cultural and economic change, like mass immigration. Anywheres make educational attainment the gold standard of status and are cheerleaders for restless change.

The thing about this new set of battle lines is this: It redraws the political map. The cities are dominated by Anywheres. The rural areas are dominated by Somewheres. But the growing suburbs are no longer divided. They are Anywhere all the way through. Last Tuesday, exurban Loudoun County went Democratic 60 to 40 percent. That’s nearly the same as inner-ring Fairfax County, which went Democratic 67 to 31 percent. These days, only a tiny percentage of Northern Virginia workers are government employees. Instead, the region is defined by the two big drivers of Anywhere culture: highly educated information age workers and fiercely energetic immigrants. Trump’s party is not at home on this ground and can’t play on it. Trumpians just want to wall it off. “DC should annex NOVA and return the governance of Virginia to Virginians!” Jerry Fallwell Jr. tweeted, referring to Northern Virginia, after the election results.

Populism has made the Republicans a rural party and given the Democrats everything else. In Virginia, Democrats won by a landslide among anybody who grew up in the age of globalization. Among voters 18-29, they won by an astounding 69 to 30 percent. Among voters 30-44, they won by 61 percent to 37 percent.

We could be seeing the creation of a new Democratic heartland, exurbia, and this alignment could hang around for a while.

The Democrats won because the Republicans decided to shrink their coalition. . . . . . The crucial question going forward is what will the Democrats do? Will they make places like Loudon County their heartland, or will they amputate themselves the way the Republicans did, and retreat back to the cities?

Here’s how you can tell which way the Democrats are going. If they talk mostly about oligarchy and rich financiers, they are retreating to their base. But if they talk about mobility — geographic mobility, economic and social mobility, intellectual and spiritual mobility, they are talking the language of the suburbs. And if they have practical plans to enhance universal mobility, the age of Democratic dominance will be at hand.

The GOP's Suicide Pact with Trump Isn't Playing Well in Iowa?

All around the country Congressional Republicans are facing outright hostile crowds of their constituents who are none too happy with Der Trumpenführer,'s regime and/or the GOP agenda (locally, GOP Congressman Scott Taylor got an earful).  Yes, the GOP has a slim control of Congress, but the party's toxic and, in my view, mentally unbalanced, leader received votes from less than 30% of all registered voters and lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.  That does NOT equate to a mandate no matter how badly self-serving Republicans may try to pretend otherwise.  From Obamacare repeal to the packing of the Cabinet with religious extremists and racists the majority of Americans are appalled and fearful for the nation's future.  Throw in possible collusion with Russian intelligence to swing the election to Trump and it makes for an explosive mix.  A piece in Daily Kos by Facebook friend Kerry Eleveld looks at the growing dissatisfaction and fury.  Here are excerpts:

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who helped stoke a wave of paranoia over so-called "death panels" back in 2010, got a sense at his town hall Monday of just how well Donald Trump's month-old administration is playing in the Midwest.

"It's like taking a shower in bad news every day," one woman told New York Times video reporter Thomas Kaplan, "it's exhausting."

The woman—who had never before felt compelled to attend a town hall—not only expressed terrible disappointment in how inaccessible Grassley had been, she was also frustrated with Republican lawmakers' total disregard for providing checks on Trump's power. Asked if she thought Sen. Grassley had "stood up" to the administration, she responded:

I don't think he's stood up to the administration at all. It feels to me like he used to be a moderate Republican, but that seems to be over now. He's definitely toeing the party line, which is disturbing.

In fact, the main reason she made the 100-mile trek to the Iowa Falls town hall was to hold Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to account on investigating Trump's ties to Russia—an action the GOP has been stonewalling.

But she also sounded a cautionary note about how Trump's policies are playing in the state’s agricultural and manufacturing communities.

A lot of people who originally thought that they were going to help get better jobs and all that are starting to realize that it's not working out that way at all. That actually, it's driving business away, and they're very concerned about what's going to go on in Mexico if there's a trade war. We have pork, we have corn—it's a big deal around here.

Iowa exports through the Trans-Pacific Partnership—the deal Trump swiftly pulled out of via executive order—totaled $7.8 billion in 2015.

But beyond the TPP, a trade war could disrupt the state's entire export market, which is one of the foundations of Iowa's economy. The interview suggests that it’s not just Iowa’s industry representatives who are fretting about job losses.

So far, Republican congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are sticking to Trump like glue. The more they ignore their constituents (as McConnell did Monday and GOP members sitting in Clinton districts have been doing all along), the higher the price Republicans will pay in 2018.

 A trade war with Mexico could be devastating for Midwest agricultural states. Mexico has already made it clear that it may look to shift purchases of grain and beef from America to Brazil and Argentina.  If that happens, states like Iowa will be hit hard.  Grassley and others in the GOP may want to claim that the large hostile crowds are "paid protesters" but the reality is that they are not - at least not once one leaves the Fox News/Breitbart bubble..  

GOP Insiders: Trump Can't Win

I know that one should not get cocky until after the election results are in, but as a former Republican who is disgusted with what the GOP has become, I can't help but take some glee in the panic and despair raking GOP insiders over what Donald Trump.    My favorite comment comes from an Iowa Republican: "'Trump is under performing so comprehensively...it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of ‘Death to America’'"  Trump is the culmination of the GOP's selling of its soul to Christofascists, white supremacists, and other misogynists for the last several decades while seeking short term gain with no thought of the cancer they were injecting into the party long term.  Politico looks at the desperation that seems to be growing.  Here are excerpts:

Republican insiders are more convinced than Democrats that Donald Trump is so far behind Hillary Clinton that he can't win in November.
 Roughly half of Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states — believe that Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes is basically shut off after another week in which the GOP nominee appears to have ceded ground in national and most battleground state polls.

Democrats, however, aren’t breaking out the champagne just yet. Seventy-two percent of Democratic insiders said despite Clinton’s clear advantage at this stage of the race, the presidential election isn’t effectively over. . . “We are in a great place,” added a Florida Democrat, “but nothing is over 89 days out, particularly with Clinton's trust issues.”

GOP insiders were virtually split, however: 49 percent said the race was already effectively over, while 51 percent said that it wasn’t.

“While it's true that previous candidates have come back from greater deficits to win, it won't happen in 2016. The electorate is far more base-driven, with fewer persuadables,” said an Iowa Republican. “Trump is under performing so comprehensively across states and demographics it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of ‘Death to America!’

“Trump has failed to demonstrate he has a plan and path to 270” electoral votes, added a Wisconsin Republican. “Considering the disadvantage a GOP candidate starts with, the work in key targeted states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania has to be error-free. There is no evidence that Trump has done that or that he has much of a ground game to begin with.”

Slightly fewer than half of Republican Caucus panelists, 47 percent, said Trump is right to suggest his participation could hinge on the dates, times, identities of the moderators and other details — while 53 percent said Trump is making a mistake by not committing to the debates without conditions.

“The old adage is you cannot win an election through debates, but you can lose them. Donald Trump, as with anything, is the exception to this rule,” said an Iowa Republican. “He has GOT to win the debates or he will lose. Forfeiture is not an option. Last time he skipped a debate, he lost the Iowa caucuses.”

Other Republicans agreed with the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 85 percent, who said threatening to hold out of the debates was a mistake. One Michigan Republican said Trump “looks petty and scared.” Two Florida insiders — one from each party — called the GOP nominee “chickens---t.”

Added an Iowa Republican: “Someone has failed to teach Trump the basics of candidate school. He doesn't understand that he's no longer negotiating with [RNC chair] Reince [Priebus] and a single cable network. This is an entirely different thing. And leaving an empty chair against Hillary would be a complete disaster. He would look weak and scared and like a loser, which he would never allow around his brand. It would literally put a wooden stake in the heart of his entire campaign.”

Paul Ryan Bursts the GOP Establishment Bubble

I loath Paul Ryan who I perceive as a child of privilege reverse Robin Hood.  To many in the GOP establishment who see a brokered convention as the sole route to save the party from the insanity that the establishment created by allowing lunatics to hijack the party base, Paul Ryan was to be the draft savior of the GOP.  Yesterday, Ryan basically said that there was no way, no how that he would accept the party presidential nomination if it were offered at the GOP convention this summer. If Ryan is being truthful - always a big if with the man, the GOP establishment will have to cast about for a different savior.  Meanwhile the anger and discord within the party continues to ferment and grow.  A column in the New York Times looks at the establishment's no-win situation.  Here are highlights:

If Paul Ryan really meant what he said, the Republican Party has lost its best chance to take the White House and maintain control of the Senate.

“Let me be clear: I do not want nor will I accept the nomination for our party,” Ryan told reporters on Tuesday afternoon at a news conference held in the Republican National Committee’s headquarters on Capitol Hill.

Even after Ryan’s declaration, there were some political figures who still consider Ryan a possible nominee. Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Clinton, envisaged a scenario in which Ryan would find himself having difficulty turning down the nomination.

“He does not want to be seen as derailing any candidate. He plays ball, and I suspect this is the art of playing ball,” Ickes said:

If it gets down to a deadlocked convention, and party leaders come to him and say, “Paul, we are going to go down in flames, we are going to lose the Senate and lose ground in the House. Only you can help redeem the party,” it would be pretty hard for him to say no.

Without Ryan at the top of the ticket, the Republican Party faces the likelihood of disaster on Nov. 8, assuming that either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is the nominee.

What makes Ryan’s statement painful to Republican leaders and a welcome relief to Democrats is that there is a consensus in both parties that Ryan is far better equipped to capitalize on Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities than either Trump or Cruz — both of whom have negative ratings that come close to or exceed Clinton’s.

The exceptionally hostile views of all three leading candidates gave momentum — at least until Tuesday afternoon — to speculation among Republican leaders about a Ryan nomination. They do not want to blow the opportunity of a winnable contest. That their speculation can no longer focus on Ryan does not mean that their speculation will end.

At the same time, all the talk split members of the Republican establishment into two camps: those who hoped to see Ryan or some other noncandidate nominated and those who see any attempt to nominate Ryan or another noncandidate as a rejection of the 14.6 million votes cast for Trump and Cruz so far.

As John Feehrey, a Republican lobbyist and party operative, told me,

People inside the beltway are dreaming. It’s going to be either Trump or Cruz. We are in a populist moment in this country. Unless Trump completely collapses in the next couple of months, he will be the nominee. Ryan doesn’t want the nomination under these circumstances.

Rich Lowry, editor of the anti-Trump National Review, believes it would be politically suicidal, given the level of support the two have received in the primaries and caucuses thus far, for the Republican Party to nominate anyone other than Trump or Cruz.

Republican voters “are not interested in someone who’s embedded in the party’s leadership, they’re not interested in someone who is donor friendly, and who’s soft on immigration,” Lowry declared on Meet the Press on April 10th. “It would be one thing if Ryan was a compromise between Cruz and Trump. He’s a rejection of both of them and of 70 percent of Republican voters.”

If no dark horse Republican candidate emerges and if Bernie Sanders does not catch up to Hillary Clinton, the election will feature either Clinton vs. Trump or Clinton vs. Cruz. In that case, the next president is likely to win not because he or she is the most loved, but because he or she is the least hated.

Stopping the GOP Apocalypse

But for the danger posed to the country, the hand wringing among Republicans over the Party's descent into insanity and the rise of Donald Trump might be almost humorous.  Certainly well deserved misfortune.  A piece in The Daily Beast joins the chorus of those lamenting the situation and proposing a means to block a Trump nomination.  The piece which equates the GOP with European powers bumbling their way into World War I fails, however, to concede that the current state of affairs was self-created and is the result of years of pandering to lunatics and extremists, not some chance mistake.  Here are column highlights:. 

These are, as the Chinese curse goes, interesting times. In a Republican presidential debate, the leading candidate defends the size of his penis and attacks the Constitution, asserting that he will order the U.S. military to commit war crimes. A few days earlier the same candidate said on national television that he had to “do research” on the KKK, David Duke, and white supremacism before he could take a position. During the week, the frontrunner threatened Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, because the Post had dared write articles he thought critical. “And believe me, if I become president,” Trump said, “oh, do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”

Welcome to Donald Trump’s world. Trump isn’t the first ridiculous character to run for president—Al Sharpton ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004—nor the first openly bigoted candidate—George Wallace ran for president three times. But Trump is the first ridiculous, openly bigoted candidate who stands a very good chance to win a major party’s nomination.

How did this happen? 

It’s everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. There were some who welcomed Trump onto the presidential scene, confident that he could help scold an out-of-touch establishment slow to grasp the problems of a troubled America. In a July 2015 Politico piece, National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote that Trump had hit “on an important truth that typical politicians either don’t know or simply fear to speak. “When Mexico sends its people,” Trump said, “they’re not sending their best.” That’s obviously true,” wrote Lowry who compared him to “Herman Cain squared—an early-nominating-season phenomenon with a massive media megaphone.”

By January, Lowry’s magazine was dedicating an entire issue to the urgency of stopping the threat of Trump, who “would destroy the conservative movement.” And I was just as wrong, if not more so. I wrote that facing a loss in Iowa, Trump’s ego would tilt him toward leaving the stage before being proven a loser. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For various reasons, the Republican candidates have enabled Trump’s rise, slow to launch a concerted attack, largely giving him a clear path. Each candidate seemed more obsessed with this currently popular but insane notion of winning a “lane” rather than winning a race, while Trump was focused on winning a race.

Logic dictates that the remaining candidates should focus on holding Trump as far below 1,237 as possible, with the goal of pushing the convention to a second ballot. While some speculate a second ballot might be a scenario for a new candidate like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan to enter the race, that strikes me as unlikely. The far more plausible outcome would find two candidates joining together to form a ticket, pooling delegates to get over 1,237.

There are rules for securing the nomination, and as long as the rules are adhered to, the game has been played fairly. In 1976, the great conservative Ronald Reagan took his fight to the convention and came within one delegation (Mississippi’s) of defeating a sitting Republican president, Jerry Ford. Surely if a convention strategy is good enough to challenge a Republican president, it’s good enough to challenge a major Clinton donor like Donald Trump.

As the process moves into a slate of winner-take-all states, the key to the convention strategy—call it the Reagan Strategy, not the brokered convention strategy—is for Rubio and Kasich to win their home states. But in what strikes me as a bizarre move, Ted Cruz is moving resources to Florida and attacking Marco Rubio on the air. Why? Does Cruz think he can win Florida? It seems the longest of shots. Much more likely is that he helps hand the state to Donald Trump. That will all but finish any chance Cruz has of becoming the Republican nominee.

So the madness and miscalculation apparently continues. The Republican Party is lurching toward the Somme, where death and destruction will replace hopes for a November victory. Dig your trench. Get your gas mask. The boys aren’t going to be home by Christmas.

GOP Choices: Suicide by Gunshot or Poison

Trump supporters

The GOP establishment has been pleading for voters to reject Donald Trump.  Yesterday, some did so.  The problem? They gave Ted Cruz wins in Kansas and Maine.   Meanwhile, Marco Rubio turned in lack luster 3rd place wins in three states and came in last in another.  So much for the supposed GOP savior.  The result is that the establishment may be looking at a choice between the equivalent of suicide by self-inflicted gunshot to the head versus ingesting poison.  Either way, death is the result.  A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP establishment's horrific choices.  Here are some excerpts:

Just when you think it can’t get any worse for the sober-minded, cool-headed traditionalists in the Republican Party, it does. They see their gold-plated gate crasher taken down a peg, only to find themselves faced with the prospect of kissing up to Ted Cruz.

On Saturday he matched Donald Trump’s two victories, in Louisiana and Kentucky, with two of his own, in Kansas and Maine. He got substantially more delegates from the four contests overall than Trump did.

And it was like the cosmically mischievous twist in an O. Henry story. The prayers, pleading and plotting of G.O.P. elders were answered: A rival candidate indeed gathered some steam, restrained Trump’s momentum and staked an equal claim to at least one news cycle’s headlines. But that candidate was a creature they find every bit as loathsome as the crass billionaire, if not more so.

And then there was Marco Rubio.  What in the world ever happened to Marco Rubio?

To the Rubio who was supposed to be the party’s savior and hope, I mean. The Rubio who made donors’ hearts beat faster. The Rubio they kept foisting on Republican voters, except that the donors didn’t see it as foisting. They saw it as benevolent instruction in which candidate was really best for all involved, which candidate could deny Democrats a third consecutive term in the White House.

Rubio is essentially the Christmas fruitcake of the 2016 cycle: presented as a gift, received as something neither appetizing nor especially nutritive.

It [Rubio's] was a performance so poor, particularly in terms of the expectations that once swaddled Rubio, that Trump called on him to end his campaign, saying that the race was effectively down to two men, so why not make that the formal reality?

At this point neither Rubio nor Kasich can hope for a majority of delegates or even, really, a plurality of them. They’re after enough of them to prevent Trump from getting a majority himself.

But Cruz can’t get cocky. Scratch that. He can — he’s Ted Cruz, after all — but he shouldn’t.  . . . . The states ahead of Cruz are less favorable to him, all in all, than the states behind him. Barring the implosion of Trump, he doesn’t have a promising path to the nomination. Saturday’s results didn’t change that. They just solidified his standing as the most successful — so far — of the Republican candidates doing battle with Trump.

With his [Trump's] tantrums, his apostasies, his vulgarity, his abundant flip-flops and his transparent lies, he has certainly done all he can to sabotage himself. It hasn’t worked. And his Saturday victories came after a triumphantly odd debate performance on Thursday night and several days of increasingly impassioned anti-Trump appeals from an all-star Republican cast.

There’s another debate this coming Thursday. If Trump and Rubio continue their puerile trajectory, one of them will almost certainly give the other a wedgie, and the 2016 road to the White House will swerve yet again into uncharted and previously unimaginable terrain.

Yet again, today's GOP meltdown shows the consequences of courting extremists and uninformed and uneducated idiots and allowing them into one's party.

Joe Scarborough: Lifelong Republicans Tell Me They'll Vote for Hillary

I and my extended family left the Republican Party years ago.  For my late mother, the straw that broke the camel's back was John McCain's selection of the Alaska idiot, Sarah Palin, as his vice presidential running mate.  I recall her stating that she "was done" with the party.  Other life long Republicans have tried to close their eyes and hold their noses and pretend that the GOP was still what it once was despite the accumulating evidence to the contrary.  Some did this simply for semi-social reasons: their social lives revolved around GOP activities.  Others found it impossible to walk away from "tradition."  This election cycle, more are being forced to belatedly admit that the GOP has become one large insane asylum occupied by religious fanatics and would be KKK members. For country club Republicans (and the husband and I know quite a few), these elements are anathema.  Now, former GOP Congressman and talk show host Joe Scarborough is stating that he is having life long Republicans telling him the will vote for Hillary Clinton over GOP candidates. Here are highlights from  Newsbusters:

Joe Scarborough prefaced his remarks this morning by saying "this is the sort of thing that right-wing bloggers get very angry about."  So let's oblige him . . . 

On Morning Joe, Scarborough said "I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz or Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton."

Although Scarborough included Trump in the mix, his focus was on Republicans who supposedly wouldn't vote for Cruz. 

Here's some of the transcript from the show:

MIKE BARNICLE: I am mystified by the process on both sides, to tell you the truth. Especially the Republican side. And I'm -- the Cruz aspect of the campaign, we were talking about, Joe. I'm wondering, and maybe someone here can answer my question, does his support in the primaries, his growing support in the primaries, especially in Iowa, does it translate to the fall, to a general election? 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: No. It does not. I am shocked, I'm shocked—and this is the sort of thing hat makes right-wing bloggers get very angry about—I'm just telling you, I said it about Romney, when I said Romney was going to lose. They got really, really angry with me. This is a different category. I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz, or, um, Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. Hell no! No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton before those two." Shocked: lifetime Republicans saying that.

WILLIE GEIST: Why not Cruz? He checks so many boxes.

JOE: Just too harsh. I've heard two things: I've heard that he's too harsh, first of all. And secondly--and I hear this from a lot of Republicans that don't follow politics every day--they think it's an act. They think it's staged. 

. . . 

JOE: Joey [his son] called and asked who are you going to support, and they say "we will vote for Hillary Clinton. We will vote for the first Democrat in our life before we vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump." Don't shoot the messenger! I hear it anecdotally. I've been saying like this on this show for years, and 99% of the time it turns out to be right.

 The GOP is committing a slow form of suicide.  I hope death comes sooner as opposed to later.