Former G.W. Bush Staffer: Latinos Must Vote Trump Out

Decent,moral Republicans for the most part have left the Republican party in the age of Trump.  Those who remain are (i) delusional and pretending the GOP is the party it once was several generations ago, or (ii) totally subscribe to the racism, misogyny and xenophobia Trump uses as his stock in trade. Either way, there truly is no excuse for remaining in the GOP, a party I once served more than a generation ago.  The Trump/GOP tax cuts for the wealthy - which created a huge surge in the federal deficit - destroyed any fig leaf for the pretense that one votes Republican "supports fiscal responsibility."  Likewise, the Trump/Christofascist effort to inflict right wing religious beliefs on all shows the falsity of the pretense that the GOP stands for smaller government.  Now, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, an apparent former Republican who served as associate director of public liaison in the George W. Bush White House from 2001-2004 is urging Hispanic Americans to register to vote and go to the polls in 2020 to voted Donald Trump out of office.  Here are excerpts:

Sept. 15 was the start of Hispanic Heritage Month — a time that celebrates a community built on faith, family and a strong work ethic. We are teachers, doctors, lawyers, judges, members of the military, police officers and even astronauts. All contribute greatly to the United States.

The feeling is not reciprocated by today’s Republican Party. It is no place for Latinos. We don’t feel welcome in a party that condones racism and looks away while the president degrades our community and destroys America. The once-proud party of Lincoln, established to abolish slavery, has been transformed into a comatose crew brainwashed by white identity politics and narrow-minded nationalist nostalgia.

I know a little about this. I am a Republican. I worked in the George W. Bush White House. And I say to my fellow Latinos: I’m not asking you to become a Democrat. But I am asking you to vote President Trump out of office.

Some of us have already left the GOP, of course, disgusted by Trump and his accomplices. Others among us remain alienated and aloof, waiting out the Trump tornado.

But the wait-him-out approach is no longer viable. Republicans have lost control of the monster they helped create. Trump hasn’t changed. From day one, Trump spewed his white-supremacist views, promising to halt the invasion of immigrants and spurring a rhetoric of resentment and retaliation against the “other.” No matter our background, we have been vilified as invaders, marked as illegal and degraded as subhuman. The silence from prominent Republicans is deafening. They have allowed Trump to normalize bigotry and use it as a winning strategy for their benefit. They enabled him to turn racist rhetoric into racial conflict, dividing our nation.

Worse than saying nothing or tolerating his tantrums, some even protect Trump, colluding with the devil for fear of political demise.

And now, they have blood on their hands. The Walmart shooting in El Paso on Aug. 3 was the inevitable outcome of 30 straight months of hate speech coming from the White House. Fueled by the president’s vitriol, a killer sought out immigrants to slaughter. The shooting isn’t just a tragedy; it’s a massacre, a direct hit against our community.

Republicans will pay a price for this situation and for their silence. By the 2020 election, Hispanics will be the largest racial or ethnic minority group in the electorate — 32 million will be eligible to vote. At the same time, 1 in 10 eligible voters will be Generation Z, those between the ages 18 and 23, who are socially liberal and more racially and ethnically diverse. A vote against Trump is a stand for human freedom and a future where America is again known for its ideals and not ignorance.

Republicans need to dust off their moral compass and remember what they stand for — and what they stand against. If they do not, they will lose Latinos forever and relegate themselves once more to minority status, likely unable to regain control of Congress or the White House again. If countering racism is not motivation enough for the GOP to act, perhaps its looming political demise will be.

The United States is a great country. Hispanic Heritage Month honors the contributions the community has made — and will keep making — to keep it that way. And without Trump, the United States will be even better.

I urge all decent and moral Americans eligible to vote to register and cast votes against Trump and the GOP in 2020.  We are no longer talking about political differences.  The choice is between morality and decency and immorality and hate.    If you live in Virginia, strike a blow for decency and morality this November: vote a straight Democrat ticket and send the GOP a strong message.

The Democrat Quandary of Hispanic Voters

One of the big quandaries for Democrats as they approach the 2020 elections - here in Virginia, the same applies to the 2019 elections - is how they increase their margin of support among Hispanic voters.  With Trump in office, one would think Hispanic voters would be flocking to the polls to vote for almost any Democrat yet in Florida, Republicans wooed Hispanics and increased their margins while Democrat candidates failed to adequately campaign for the Hispanic vote and seemingly took it for granted.  The other issue that applies to all Millennials, but Hispanic Millennials in particular is the lower turn out among younger voters even as they will be the ones most harmed by Trump/GOP policies over time. A column in the New York Times looks at this issue (while not mentioned, I suspect GOP appeals to conservative Catholic Hispanics is also a problem).  Here are column highlights:

The future success of the Democratic Party depends on the crucial — but unsettled — allegiance of the nation’s growing Hispanic electorate.

Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster and podcast host based in Miami, addressed the party’s Latino quandary in a December interview with The Associated Press: The question is not are Democrats winning the Hispanic vote — it’s why aren’t Democrats winning the Hispanic vote 80-20 or 90-10 the way they are winning black voters?

In the 2018 midterms, Democrats showed gains among Hispanic voters in most states, compared with 2014. Party operatives are concerned, however, about the slow rate of growth of these improved Democratic margins. They are equally worried about turnout — at a time when many thought that President Trump’s rhetoric and policies would produce impressive gains among Latino voters for the Democratic Party.

Take turnout. Hispanics are one of the fastest growing ethnic constituencies in the United States, but their level of political participation is not keeping pace with their overall population numbers.

[T]he number of Hispanic voters in midterm elections has grown steadily, from 2.9 million in 1986 to 6.8 million in 2014. At the same time, however, turnout — measured as a percentage of total eligible adult citizens 18 and over — has experienced a relative decline.

In a preliminary analysis of Hispanic voter turnout last year, Catalist, a Democratic firm that builds voter lists, found significant increases in turnout of three to five percent, comparing 2018 with the 2014 midterms. Texas, Nevada and California saw five percent increases, Florida four percent, New Mexico and New York three percent.

Turnout rates and levels of support are two key (but quite different) political measures. While Latinos had a turnout rate of 27.1 percent in 2014, their support for Democratic House candidates that year was 62 percent. Their support for Republican House candidates was 36 percent, according to exit polls.

Republicans won two close statewide races in Florida in 2018, one for senate and one for governor — despite the gradual erosion of Republican support among Cuban-Americans in the state and despite the continuing influx of pro-Democratic Puerto Ricans in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Nationally, Democrats went from 62-36 (26 pts) in 2014 to 69-29 (40 pts) this election. In Florida, Democrats went from 58-38 (20 pts) in 2014 to 54-44 (10 pts) this year. . . . this shift occurred despite the fact that Trump did everything possible to alienate Latinos, along with undercutting Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, the winning Republican candidates for Senate and governor.

By all accounts, Scott and DeSantis campaigned almost daily in Hispanic precincts, while their Democratic opponents, Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum, took the Hispanic vote for granted.

“We had no infrastructure,” Christian Ulvert, Gillum’s director for Spanish-language media, told Politico:

And honestly, Democrats have been playing catch-up on Hispanic outreach for two decades, because Republicans have invested in it. You can’t close that gap overnight.
Despite the decline in Republican support among Cuban-Americans, Michelson emphasized that [t]here has always been a contingent of Latinos who identify as Republican and are more interested in Republican/conservative (or anti-Communist) policies than in immigration issues or racism.

Revealing a contrast to Florida, Matt A. Barreto, a political scientist at U.C.L.A. and a co-founder of Latino Decisions, analyzed turnout and voting patterns in Texas. In a March report, Barreto described a huge pro-Democratic turnout increase there, ranging from 105 to 125 percent in eight counties where Hispanics make up more than 90 percent of the population. There were significant gains in counties with white majorities of 83 to 91 percent too, but these upturns were smaller, in the 35 to 55 percent range.

The ability of two conservative Florida Republicans to make such inroads simply by campaigning diligently suggests that the Democratic hold on Latinos is less firm than many believed.

The data, provided to The Times by Public Opinion Strategies, one of the two firms that conducted the survey, found that Trump’s approval among Hispanics was highest among men and among the affluent — 40 percent for both — and among men without college degrees, at 39 percent.

While many Democrats expected Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, especially the family separation debacle, to produce a decisive shift to the left among Hispanics, that has not proved to be the case.

Asked about the declining share of eligible Hispanics turning out on Election Day, Barreto countered that the growing numbers of eligible Latinos are almost entirely driven by U.S. born young Latinos turning 18 and entering the eligible voter pool.

In a common pattern, Barreto pointed out, “young people have very low rates of voter registration and voter turnout — especially in midterm elections.” Because of that, Barreto said that in order to get a better picture, the data should be age-adjusted so that turnout levels of older voters of different races and ethnicities could be compared.
What conclusions and what questions remain in the wake of these complex and sometimes conflicting trends in the Hispanic electorate?

First and foremost, Latinos remain a decisively Democratic constituency, with important caveats.

Latinos’ partisan loyalties are much less hard and fast than, say, those of either African-Americans or white evangelicals. The results in Florida demonstrate that Democrats risk defeat if they fail to campaign heavily in Hispanic communities, and Republicans stand to gain at the margins if they are prepared to invest time, money and energy.

The major question mark going into 2020, assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, is whether Hispanic opposition to his presidency will prevent a recurrence of the Florida 2018 phenomenon. Will Trump’s presence so nationalize the election that down-ballot Republicans will face a brick wall when they try to make modest inroads among Hispanics?

To date, Trump has shown every intention of turning the election into a referendum on himself, and all the baggage he carries, with no regard for the political survival of fellow Republicans.

If anything, he appears determined to drive up hostility to him among Latinos. For the past two days, for example, the president has ranted on Twitter, attacking Puerto Rico and its political leaders.

Behaving this way, Trump may succeed in driving up support among “his people,” as he likes to call his voters. But if he keeps it up, he will be doing both his Democratic opponent and the Democratic Party as a whole a huge favor as far as the Latino vote goes.

Searching for Hope in Frightening Times

The last few days have been enough to make a thinking person feel depressed as the U.S. Supreme Court has issued horrific rulings, followed by the announcement of the retirement of Justice Kennedy which could make such horrors the norm for future Court rulings for years. Public reaction falls into four categories: (i) jubilant Christofascists and white supremacists who foresee a Court that will further their anti-democratic agenda, (ii) Democrats and progressives feeling literally physically ill at the prospect of the far right's agenda moving forward, (iii) those realizing the extreme danger ahead looking for what to do to try to stop, and (iv) the indifferent soccer moms and those who were too lazy to get themselves to the polls and vote in November 2016 who are as clueless as many Germans were in the 1930's (hence why I re-posted the image above from Facebook).  A column in the New York Times lays out what in categories (ii) and (iii) need to do immediately to try to turn around a frightening future.  Here are column excerpts:

In fact there are three things they [Democrats and progressives] need to do.

First of all, they need simply to reflect on their recent history and understand why they’re in this situation. The time to play hardball was 2016. Maybe there’s nothing they could have done, given that the Republicans ran the Senate. But consider this counterfactual.

I argued at the time that President Obama should have nominated not Judge Garland but Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, then 43 years old and an associate justice on the California Supreme Court. Justice Cuéllar would have been an aggressively political choice in exactly the way Judge Garland was not. As a young, impeccably credentialed Mexican-American — by far the largest of the Latino voting blocs — Justice Cuéllar would have been someone to whom the Democrats’ core constituencies would have developed an emotional attachment. Someone they’d fight for. . . . . [McConnell] wouldn’t have given Justice Cuéllar a vote either. But in that case, the refusal would have carried a higher political price. It would have energized the Latino vote. It would have made the Supreme Court a more central voting issue to Democratic constituencies than poor Judge Garland ever became.

That it never became that central issue is not all Mr. Obama’s fault. Hillary Clinton’s campaign shares the blame for that, and in fact the Democratic Party generally. I kept waiting in the fall of 2016 for Mrs. Clinton and all of her surrogates to emphasize to liberal voters: Don’t you see, this is our chance! They’ve had the Supreme Court for 30 years. We win, it’s ours! Voting rights, abortion rights, contraception, L.G.B.T. rights, union rights, money in politics, Second Amendment interpretations — if we get this one vote, all of those and more will change in our direction!

The argument never really came. On the other side, it was a key argument, and quite possibly the key argument. All of those “Christian” conservatives knew very well they were voting for a man who was about as Christian as Larry Flynt. But they voted for Donald Trump en masse. . . . Democratic politicians and their voters did not.

So that’s the first thing Democrats must do — learn from the past. We might not be in this situation if they’d played for keeps in 2016.

The second thing the Democrats have to do is fight this nomination to the bitter end. Maintain, even if it’s manufactured, some aura of optimism and eagerness for the battle. Mr. Schumer said all the right things Wednesday afternoon, but if you watch the video, you’ll see he wasn’t exactly breathing fire.

A sports team that’s behind and sees it’s likely to lose can give up midway through the fourth quarter or it can fight until the final second. Doing the former is always remembered as shameful, the latter always as noble. Besides, it’s not the fourth quarter. It isn’t even the end of the first quarter.

President Trump could name someone so extreme that he or she will instantly be controversial. Democratic and progressive groups will have ample opportunity to pressure the four or five Republican senators who might become no votes.

And don’t forget Robert Mueller, the special counsel, or think he isn’t relevant here. If he issues a report in July or August, as many now expect, and if that report presents evidence that Mr. Trump did indeed obstruct justice, Mr. Schumer and the Democrats can make a strong case that a president governing under such a cloud — who might yet be found to have colluded with Russia in his election — has no business making Supreme Court nominations. That nominee, if confirmed, may well be ruling on matters relating to the investigation of the president. No, it’s not clear that will work as a gambit. But if the situation were reversed, the Republicans would try it.

Yes, chances are the Democrats will lose this one, which brings us to the third thing they must do. They need to get their core constituencies to understand the stakes and to vote with the Supreme Court, and really all federal judges, at top of mind.

[H]ere we are, contemplating the end of Roe v. Wade, the reversal of the Obergefell v. Hodges same-sex marriage decision and God knows what new levels of darkness on money in politics, gun rights and even age-old precedents like one person, one vote. If you don’t know much about that, go read about Reynolds v. Sims; a very conservative court could put that precedent at risk, and it would be a nearly incalculable disaster for democracy.

And the sad truth is that apparently it will take these developments, or some of them, for liberals to see why they should care about the Supreme Court. Or let’s hope it will just take the threat of them happening. If Democrats and liberals want to choose a date to begin caring again, Nov. 6, 2018, would be a good day to start.

Part of caring will be finding a message that will get those in category (iv) above to get off their asses and begin caring about their larger community and the nation.  Indifference and laziness at some point become complicity in evil.  These people need to be convinced that they must act to oppose it at the ballot box.  

Hispanics Are Poised For Historic Voter Turnout

If Donald Trump goes down to defeat tomorrow - which I fervently hope will be the case - his undoing may track to Hispanics whom he has demonized and attacked from day one of his campaign. True, Hispanics have not been Trump's only target for slander and denigration - add blacks, women, gays, non-Christians and others to the list - but Hispanics have been the target of choice.  As a piece in the Washington Post reports, indications are that Hispanics will be turning out in record numbers to send Trump to defeat.  Hopefully others who believe in morality and decency will turn out as well in force.  Here are article highlights:

MIAMI — Five undocumented domestic workers, all named Maria, fanned out across Little Havana delivering a desperate, last-minute plea to Hispanic voters: We can’t vote, but you can. Vote early to ensure a President Trump does not deport us.

In Hialeah, a traditional stronghold for Cuban American Republicans, backers of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton drove a colorful, Colombian-style chiva party bus with bongo drums and rumba dancers handing out Cuban pastries and “Hispanics for Hillary” signs.

And in ritzy Coral Gables, Maria Ballaster, a 60-year-old Cuban American who has always voted Republican reflected on why she had just split her ballot — sticking with her party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, Marco Rubio, while casting a vote for Clinton.
“I trust Rubio, but I don’t trust Mr. Crazy,” Ballaster said.

[T]here are early indications that Hispanics have mobilized for this election like no other in U.S. history. Activist groups and Clinton allies, motivated largely by a deepening fear of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, are deploying new voter outreach strategies and hoping to take advantage of growth in the Latino electorate.

In Nevada, thousands of voters lined up outside an early-voting site at a Latino market Friday night, prompting voting hours to be extended at the end of what has been a record-breaking early-voting surge in the state. Turnout was so high in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, that Democrats enter Tuesday with an advantage similar to the one they held there four years ago when President Obama won Nevada by seven points. 

Early voting is not necessarily an indication of final results, given that those who have turned out so far are highly motivated and that the election will be decided by the millions more who cast ballots Tuesday.

Nonetheless, the increase has taken place even in states such as Texas, where Democrats have not focused on galvanizing voters. The spike appears to be the result of the rising number of Hispanic voters and the increasingly aggressive efforts to organize what has long been considered a potent voting bloc whose numbers have never lived up to their potential. Adding to the fervor is widespread anger at Trump’s incendiary rhetoric about Hispanics and Mexico, suggesting that Clinton could outperform Obama’s 71 percent share of the Hispanic vote from 2012.

“Trump has built a wall, indeed,” said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who specializes in Latino voters. “And it is a new firewall for Democrats.”

In Florida, early-voting data suggests that Hispanics are emerging as a larger force in the state’s electorate — and that many Latinos are participating for the first time.

The Hispanic share of overall early voters is sharply higher this year, reaching about 15 percent from about 10 percent at this stage four years ago, according to an analysis by University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith. Another examination of the numbers, by Democratic strategist Steve Schale, found that more than half of the Hispanics who have voted so far have either never voted before or voted only once previously.

Across Miami-Dade County, Hispanics seemed to be heavily favoring Clinton.

Marilyn Ralat-Albernas considered the stakes in the election so high for her Hispanic community that she took a month off work to volunteer for Clinton.

One of the most persuasive strategies for Clinton allies has been to send undocumented workers to knock on the doors of potential Hispanic voters to explain the stakes of the election.

The GOP is Past the Point of No Return

As noted in numerous posts, I believe that the Republican Party is beyond the point of no return.  The cancer of Christofascists, white nativists, and outright open racists within the party - and its local city/county committee base - has metastasized to a point where there is no realistic possibility of reform.   The GOP faces either a slow and agonizing death or perhaps a massive flame out in the wake of what will be a historic defeat for Donald Trump and, with luck, many down ticket Republicans.  A piece in Slate looks at the spectacle of the death of a major political party.  Here are highlights:

For most of the now almost-forgotten vice presidential debate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence kept his cool, ignoring, deflecting, or outright denying any effort by Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine to tie him to his running mate, Donald Trump. But it’s hard to keep your composure for the length of a debate. It takes work. And toward the end of the 90-minute showdown, Pence began to falter, and then with a single infelicitous phrase he evoked the only wall Trump will ever build: the one between the Republican Party and Latino voters. It happened after Kaine returned to Trump’s rhetoric, pressing Pence to answer for his running mate’s insults and bigotry. “When Donald Trump says women or Mexicans are rapists and criminals … or John McCain is not a hero, he is showing you who he is,” said the Virginia senator, to which Pence had a reply. “Senator,” he said, “you’ve whipped out that Mexican thing again.” Adding, “There are criminal aliens in this country, Tim, who have come into this country illegally who are perpetrating violence and taking American lives.” That Mexican thing. That Mexican thing, to be precise, is Trump’s anti-Hispanic demagoguery, which stretches back to the beginning of the campaign. . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Hispanic voters, who see Trump as an unacceptable risk. This is no small thing. Political parties can make inroads with groups that disagree with them—that’s just persuasion. But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to make gains with groups that see you as a danger to their futures. By placing Donald Trump at the top of the ticket and indulging his nativism and xenophobia, the Republican Party has said with its actions that it doesn’t want Latinos in its tent. Republicans may thus end up estranged from another group of nonwhite voters. . . . . the GOP has shown itself hostile to the idea of a pluralistic, multiracial America with room and opportunity for Americans of all origins.
 For Trump, Latino immigrants join Muslims and Syrian refugees as potential threats, fundamentally incompatible with American life. If they’re here, they have to be removed, and if they’re not here, they need to be kept out. In turn, for Latino Americans and their families, this makes Trump an existential threat to their lives and livelihoods. Only 21 percent of Latinos say the GOP cares about their community, and 70 percent say that Trump has made the Republican Party more hostile to them. . . . . Eighty-two percent of respondents agreed with the first statement, that Trump makes them fear for their families and their country. The repudiation of Goldwater [in 1964] would be the last step in a realignment of black Americans that had begun in the days of Franklin Roosevelt. From then on, the national Republican Party would struggle to crack double digits with black voters, despite the strength of traditional beliefs and practices among black communities, from religious practice to traditions of self-help and self-reliance. The reason was straightforward: Goldwater wasn’t just offensive; he articulated a vision of national life that would inevitably leave black Americans on the margins as second-class citizens, subject to the whims of segregationists and their allies. And if Goldwater didn’t see it, his explicitly anti-black allies did. Republican politics—is a white ideology. Unresponsive to the particular concerns of nonwhites—around issues of discrimination and racial inequality—it is a drive to preserve a status quo built around the political and economic dominance of white Americans. This is more explicit in the age of Donald Trump, but it’s always been true, from Goldwater to the present.  The Great Recession supercharged anti-immigration—and anti-immigrant—sentiment among GOP voters, and Republican lawmakers followed along, passing restrictive new laws after the party swept statehouses in the 2010 midterm elections. Indeed, we saw an inkling of rising anti-Latino sentiment in 2009, when Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court was met with a wave of racist criticism.  [V]oting and party affiliation are habits. Once set, they tend not to change. And looking forward from the present, there’s a real chance that Latino voting takes the same path as black voting, with routine and overwhelming support going to Democratic presidential candidates. Again, California gives us a glimpse of what this looks like. Following Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s anti-immigrant crusades in the 1990s, Latino Californians moved decisively into the Democratic column. By the end of the last decade, the state was a Democratic stronghold, . . .
 And for those Republicans who don’t want Trump or Trumpism? It may be too late. The thing about a lily-white Republican Party is that it doesn’t have the diversity it needs to resist white resentment and white rage. Republicans crossed a point of no return. Raw ethnonationalism is their future, even if they don’t want it.

Will Trump's Purported Rise in the Polls Boost Hillary's Turnout?

While I continue to be dumbfounded as to how anyone sane, decent, and moral can be a Donald trump supporter, some polls suggest he is rising in the polls - thanks in part by a media that continues to engage in false equivalency and that allows itself to be played by Trump's antics.  That said, some conjecture that Trump's rise in the polls may be a boon to Hillary Clinton as it motivates those who detest and/or are terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency to redouble their efforts and make sure that they get themselves to the polls on November 8, 2016.  Based on the social media activities of two of my children, both so-called Millennials, they are pulling out the stops when it comes to urging friends to support Hillary Clinton and ditch all thoughts of voting for a third party candidate as a futile act of protest.  A piece in Politico makes the case that perhaps Hillary Clinton's by some accounts lackluster September will benefit her in November.  It also looks at the stupidity of voting for a third party candidate.  Here are excerpts:

You can choose one or more of the explanations for what has happened to Hillary Clinton in recent weeks as Donald Trump has closed in on her in the polls.

But what is especially bedeviling the Clinton campaign is that, at least until now, constituencies most critical to her campaign seem to have no sense of urgency about keeping the Donald Trump out of the White House. While Hispanics, who backed Obama in 2012 by a more than 2-1 margin, support Clinton by a similar margin, they seem far less inclined to vote than they did four years ago.

That is what could change now that Trump threatens to actually take the White House.

Younger voters, who not only backed Obama by landslide margins but turned out in record percentages in 2012, have until now expressed relative indifference to the campaign or have turned to the alternatives: Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

And remember: without massive support and a heavy turnout among younger voters, Obama’s margins in Florida and other key states would have been wiped out.

Yes, support for minor party candidates tend to fall when the leaves do; yes, the Clinton campaign has a get-out-the-vote machine whose reputation—yet untested—is formidable.

But what may be their most powerful weapon is the clear possibility that Trump could win, which is why Clinton’s very bad few weeks could, in the end, be very good for her. Trump’s climbing numbers could finally motivate her complacent Democratic base and other voters who have never been crazy about her and not especially motivated to come out to the polls, especially if she were running away with the race.

Clinton campaign’s most plausible argument to its wavering voters: Get real, folks.
 “You’re looking at Johnson and Stein as a way of rejecting a corrupt, unresponsive two-party system,”  . . . . But please be willing to consider that you might be mistaken. Look back 16 years, and see what a similar vote—for Ralph Nader—did. His 94,000 voters in Florida would have wound up giving Gore a net of about 20,000 votes—more than enough to make butterfly ballots and hanging chads irrelevant. Now, between launching the Iraq War and the two Supreme Court justices Bush appointed, did it really make no difference?”

If you vote as a Libertarian for Johnson, you will materially increase the chances of a Trump presidency. Look at the list of potential judges. On everything from gay rights to abortion to his own views of the First Amendment, Trump is on record as rejecting core libertarian principles. If you vote for Jill Stein as a progressive, you are helping to put in power a president whose tax plan makes the rich richer, who thinks climate chance is a hoax, who wants to abolish whole swaths of environmental protection laws. So voting for Johnson or Stein means you’re voting for a label—a ’libertarian,’ or a ‘progressive’—without realizing that the consequence of that vote could lead to a president who rejects everything you claim to hold dear.”

Of course, it’s possible that Trump’s own character and temperament, revealed on the debate stage or in his bizarre-world campaign appearances, will convince voters that in the end , he is a risk they are not prepared to take. But for voters unsure about Clinton, relying on Trump to self-destruct after what he has survived is a risk they cannot take. So, even though the Scottish Presbyterians rejected Cromwell’s plea, and even though the officials at Wimbledon did not change their call, their pleas still suggest that Trump’s rise in the polls could be a powerful argument for Clinton.

The GOP Fears Its Future in the West

In states all across America, demographic change is changing the face of the voter base, yet the Republican Party continues to focus almost solely on pandering to right wing white Christians - many, if not most of whom are racists - and white supremacy supporters.  Now, with the rise of Donald trump, this is creating an existential danger for the GOP in the west (other than the Pacific coast states).  The problem for the GOP, of course, is that now that the party base is controlled by the Christofascist/white supremacist factions, changing the course of the party's agenda and platform is near impossible.  There's a reason that the 2016 GOP platform is the most anti-LGBT in history.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the GOP's western challenge.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans in Western states fear that Donald J. Trump could imperil their party for years to come in the country’s fastest-growing region as he repels a generation of Hispanics, Asians and younger voters who have been altering the electoral map.

Mr. Trump, with his insult-laden, culturally insensitive style of campaigning, is providing fuel for the demographic trends that are already reshaping the political composition of this once-heavily Republican territory. And now many Republicans are contemplating the possibility that states like Colorado or Nevada could soon become the next California: once competitive but now unwinnable in presidential contests.

In few places are the party’s woes over their nominee more immediate than here in Arizona, a state that has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate only once in the last 68 years.

Recent polls show Hillary Clinton is close to tying Mr. Trump here. And her campaign has responded by teaming up with local Democrats on a statewide get-out-the-vote operation, which has grown to 160 staff members across 20 offices.

While flipping Arizona has been a Democratic fantasy for years — and one that Clinton supporters acknowledge remains quite difficult — their efforts to register and recruit voters are part of a longer-term plan to capitalize on the Republican Party’s vulnerabilities with younger and minority voters.

Nonwhites are growing as a share of the electorate faster in the West than they are elsewhere. For the first time, minorities in 2012 accounted for at least 30 percent of the eligible voting population in Arizona, Nevada and Alaska — all states where Republicans currently hold top statewide offices.

The demographics were already daunting. But many Republicans now say Mr. Trump is only accelerating the flight of minority voters to the Democratic Party, like dry underbrush feeds an Arizona wildfire.

Asked how fellow Republicans could win election to statewide office in the West, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona offered some blunt advice: “Distance yourself from Donald Trump.” . . . . Otherwise, Mr. Flake said, “this will last decades.”

Most demographers did not believe Arizona could be truly competitive for Democrats in a presidential election until 2020 at the earliest. But Mr. Trump’s unpopularity has spawned a demographic double threat that has implications in Arizona and beyond: He is not just weak among Hispanics, but also with with educated white professionals who have moved to places like Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix in search of better jobs and a lower cost of living.

The entire West Coast is already a wasteland for Republicans. The last time one of the coastal states — with the exception of Alaska — went to a Republican nominee was California in 1988. Moreover, losses in Arizona and possibly Utah would leave Republicans safe in just Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. The peril for Republicans is evident looking at the Electoral College: Those states only have a combined 13 of the total 538 electoral votes. And even in the likely event that Republicans continue to carry Utah, a win in November would yield only six more electoral votes.

[E]ven his [Trump's] supporters acknowledge what they are up against in Arizona and across the West. “I am concerned about my party going forward,” said Sean D. Reyes, Utah’s attorney general. Mr. Reyes is a Republican and backs Mr. Trump. He is also part Hispanic, Japanese and Filipino, and a Mormon.

So he was naturally taken aback when he heard Mr. Trump insult Filipinos this month. Mr. Trump told a crowd in Maine that the United States had to stop letting in “animals” from “terrorist nations,” among them the Philippines. Mr. Reyes said he called the campaign to register his displeasure.

Is Florida Even a Swing State Anymore?

While Virginia has been often called a "swing state" in presidential elections, this cycle, the polls are showing Hillary Clinton running well ahead of Donald Trump.  Indeed, the chairman of the RNC recently more or less conceded that Virginia was a lost cause for the GOP in 2016.  Now, a piece in The Daily Beast suggests that Florida is poised to follow Virginia and become a blue state in 2016 and beyond.  The facts set forth make sense and ought to strike terror in what's left of the so-called Republican establishment.  Here are story highlights:

Remember a couple months ago when Reince Priebus tweeted that electoral college map showing how he thought Donald Trump could get to 270?

The RNC chairman had Trump winning Ohio and Pennsylvania. And Michigan. And Wisconsin. And Minnesota. Yes, Minnesota. Which is going to be such a blowout that no one’s even polled it since April.

There was lots of chortling about all that, as you might expect. But the chortlers missed what was by far the most interesting thing about Priebus’s map: He ceded Virginia. The chairman of the Republican Party acknowledged that Virginia is gone. It’ll still elect Republican governors, of course, but for presidential election purposes, Virginia is now blue. To give you an indication of how blue: Hillary Clinton has temporarily stopped running ads there.

You know what they say about Florida: must-win state. The urgency is there even in the way they say the word, is it not? Close your eyes now and conjure with me the image and sound of Wolf Blitzer saying: “And breaking news from the must-win state of Flo-rida...”

Actually, it’s only a must-win for Republicans, as I’ve noted before. Democrats have plenty of paths to 270 without Florida. Republicans, none.

You will also hear them say a kajillion times until Election Day that Florida is a swing state. Well, yes. It has been historically. But the combination of massive demographic changes since 2012 and Trump’s anorexic performance among college-educated whites makes me wonder if Florida is a swing state this year at all. And while the Republicans might nominate a normal candidate in 2020, the state’s demography is galloping away from the GOP.

In sum, 2016 could be the year that Florida stopped being a swing state.

First, demography. Florida’s minority population is now above 40 percent, with the Hispanic population at around 25 percent (PDF). In addition, Hispanics are registering to vote in large numbers, and they’re heavily Democratic.

This is partly because younger Cubans lean strongly Democratic, an obviously sharp departure from their grandparents. All South Florida Cubans support the normalization of relations with Cuba, for example, except those older than 65, and even among them it’s awfully close. . . . And the change is also because of a huge influx of Puerto Ricans into the state. 

One recent Florida poll put Trump at 13 percent among the state’s Hispanics. If that’s close to right, Clinton gets 80 to 85 percent of the fifth of the overall vote that’s Latino, and 95 percent of the 14 percent that’s African American. That’s 30 percent right there, and it would mean she’d need only around 35 percent of the white vote to win, maybe even a little less. [S]aying that it will take an unusual occurrence for Trump to have a good shot of winning Florida—is significant. It’s basically saying that at least in presidential years—clearly not in off years, until Democratic constituencies vote in larger numbers—Florida leans blue. And although the Republicans presumably won’t nominate a sociopath in 2020, the demography is just going to be that much worse for the white people’s revenge party.

Because everybody knows that if Florida is over, the race is over, and no one’s going to care, and ratings will suffer, and ad revenues will tank. So it’s of vital importance, to the cable news nets especially, that Florida be held in the “too close to call” category for as long as possible, which means that—you’ve seen this movie before—there may be six polls showing Clinton up by seven to 12 points, but when that one comes along showing it at four, it’ll get 17 times the airtime as the other six combined.

The second moral has to do with the Republican Party and Reince Priebus. Just as I was finishing up this column Monday afternoon, I saw that the chief spokesman of the Florida GOP, a son of Honduran immigrants, was quitting his post to pursue a “new opportunity to continue promoting free-market solutions while avoiding efforts that support Donald Trump.”

The cowardice of Priebus and the whole GOP establishment this past year has richly earned them defeat in Florida. Once upon a time, the GOP at least came close enough in Florida that they could steal it, banana-republic style. Looks like those days may be gone.

The GOP’s Hispanic Crucible

As a long time political activist, first for the GOP and now for LGBT rights issues, I continue to be stunned at the shortsightedness of the GOP's continued focus on the shrinking, aging and poorly educated white voting block at the expense of the growing Hispanic and non-white population.  Do the numbers and extrapolate out in the future and it is a recipe for political extinction unless the party plans on imposing a right wing dictatorship under someone like Donald Trump so that voting no longer matters.  I simply do not understand the logic - or more accurately, the lack thereof.   An editorial in the New York Times looks at the baffling shortsightedness.  Here are excerpts:

Republican leaders laid out a blueprint for the revival of their party after the defeat of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. “If Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies,” the so-called autopsy report warned, noting that Mr. Romney had received 27 percent of the Latino vote, down from George W. Bush’s 44 percent in 2004. Quoting Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader from Texas, the report cautioned, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you.”

Yet now, Republicans are doing just that. Donald Trump has emerged as the party’s standard-bearer while scapegoating Latinos and other minorities to stoke the fears and resentment of working-class white voters. . . . He recently created another wave of consternation by accusing an American-born federal judge of being biased because of his Mexican ancestry.

The Trump candidacy has put other Republican candidates in a bind. They can tie their lot to his immigrant-bashing campaign and hope that voter-suppression tactics will blunt the growing segments of the electorate galvanized by the prospect of defeating him. Or they can disavow him, recognizing that further alienating nonwhite voters will do severe damage to the party in the long run.

Besides being self-defeating, vilifying groups of people is morally abhorrent. Republicans are signaling to millions of citizens and aspiring Americans: You’re not welcome here; this is not your home.

This hostility has invigorated a decades-long effort by Latinos and other groups to increase political participation. More than 27 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in November, a 60 percent increase from a decade ago. Civic groups and Spanish-language media are making a huge push to register voters and get permanent residents to become citizens in swing states, hoping to unlock the power of a voting bloc that has historically had low turnout.

California’s political evolution offers a lesson for Republicans. In 1994, Pete Wilson, then the governor, championed a ballot initiative to bar unauthorized immigrants from public services as he ran for re-election in a tight race. He won, and the initiative, known as Proposition 187, passed. But the highly divisive campaign over the measure, which was thrown out by the courts, set off a surge of political participation by Latinos that has kept the Democratic Party dominant in the state ever since.

Republican leaders in other states watched California with alarm. While some have tried to make the party more inclusive, the prevailing tactic has been to underhandedly discourage minority voters.

Whites now make up 70 percent of the electorate, down from 85 percent in 1980. Demographers project that by 2060, whites will make up 46 percent of the voting pool, while the Latino bloc will have grown from the current 13 percent to 27 percent. Given those trends, it’s astounding that the Republican Party has taken a harder line on immigration.

“It’s a self-defeating strategy in the long term,” said Representative Joaquín Castro, a Democrat from Texas. “But the focus for a lot of politicians here is the short term. A lot of them don’t think they’ll be in politics in 20 years.”

Maybe things will change after the November election, said Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona. “The way to push back on all this is to have an absolute victory at the ballot box and force the Republican Party to have a conversation about what it needs to do in order to survive,” he said. Of course, that is the same conversation they had, and then ignored, in 2012.

Things Hillary Must Cannot Do If She Wants to Win In November

As I watch Donald Trumps surge and Republicans who I once believed had some minimal level of sanity and decency swear fealty, I wonder if this is how thinking, moral Germans felt in the late 1920's and early 1930's as Hitler rose to power.  Did they too wonder how their countrymen - and neighbors - became so fueled by hate and resentment that they were willing to put a narcissistic egomaniac who had no background to lead the nation into office? I continue to believe that we are living in a very dangerous time and that America could become an unrecognizable horror story if Trump and his forces are not stopped.  That said, a piece in Politico looks at four things that Hillary Clinton needs to avoid doing if she is going to defeat Trump in November.  Here are article excerpts:

If Clinton pushes away some of her potential supporters; fails to energize others to vote; and fires up Trump’s base by pandering to her own—well, she just might be able to make the numbers work out for him. If he does pull off the election of the century, Trump’s path to 270 Electoral College votes will begin with 164 practically in the bank, from 21 solid-red states generally considered sure things for the Republican nominee. And here’s how Clinton could push more than enough additional states onto Trump’s side of the ledger—Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan—one mistake at a time.

Step 1: Take Hispanic enthusiasm for granted

It’s been a matter of faith in Democratic circles: Trump’s grotesque demonization of Latin-American immigrants will boost Hispanic turnout and Clinton’s share of their vote. As a result, you’re already hearing a lot less about Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, once the odds-on favorite to become Clinton’s vice presidential running mate. Castro was supposed to be part of a big Democratic push for Hispanic votes this year. Now, the thinking seems to be, those votes will take care of themselves.

A new Fox Latino poll shows Clinton leading Trump by an impressive-sounding 39 points: 62 to 23. But there’s a problem: That 39-point spread is actually less than the 44 by which Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012.

Yes, their numbers are growing. But Hispanics simply don’t like Clinton nearly as much as they like Obama: Her favorable/unfavorable is a net +15 in that Fox Latino poll, while Obama’s is +46. Colorado, where the fast-growing Hispanic population gave 75 percent of its vote to Obama in 2008, is a similar story to Florida. So is Nevada, where all of the major analysts still rate the Senate race between Republican Joe Heck and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto a tossup—suggesting that they aren’t yet foreseeing a torrent of Democratic-voting Hispanics rush the polls in November.

Oh, and did we mention that Hispanic voters are disproportionately young—a staggering 44 percent of eligible Hispanic voters this year are millennials, compared with 27 percent of non-Hispanic whites, according to Pew—and that Sanders has been pulling large numbers of them away from Clinton, just as much as others their age.

Step 2: Alienate the young

Millennials, being both more numerous and less cynical than their Generation X predecessors, once seemed likely to usher in a substantial advantage for Democrats among young voters. Except then they stopped turning out. In 2012, the number of 18-to-29-year-old voters dropped by 1.8 million from the previous presidential election year. “It seems likely that the observed young-adult voting surge of 2004–2008 was temporary,” a U.S. Census study concluded, “and not representative of a permanent shift towards greater young-adult engagement in presidential elections.”

In 2016, this is likely to affect Clinton’s performance in several college-heavy states that have had relatively high turnout—and high Democratic voting rates—among those age groups. That includes swing states such as Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia.

To see how much young-voter turnout matters, look at North Carolina. In 2008, Obama had a net advantage there among 18-to-29-year-olds of 368,000 votes—and eked out a 14,000-vote victory overall. In 2012, with dampened enthusiasm, Obama’s advantage in that age group dropped by 120,000, and Romney coasted to a 92,000-vote win. What’s more, those young voters are especially likely to be swayed to third-party alternatives, which—see below—could become more enticing this time around.

Step 3: Let establishment Republicans find another place to go

The key to a Clinton landslide is turning red voters blue. And once it became clear that conservatives didn’t have the guts to put forward a #NeverTrump protest candidate, “Republicans for Hillary” was beginning to have a bit of a ring to it. But there’s another possibility: A plausible moderate-right candidate could emerge as a genuine alternative. 

Take, for example, former Massachusetts Republican Governor Bill Weld, whose history with Clinton goes back decades. Weld is exactly the type of GOP moderate Clinton has reportedly been wooing as Trump edged closer to the nomination. He endorsed Obama in 2008. He compares Trump’s rhetoric to Nazism. And there are plenty of Republicans like him this year, particularly in the Northeast. Not too many years ago, you could imagine considerable appeal for Clinton among Weld-ian Republicans. But thanks to her primary run, a combination of issues—Sanders pushing her left on economic issues, her unsatisfactory answers on the email scandal—has made that a tougher sell.

Step 4: Fumble on trade

As soon as the votes were tallied in 2012, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO and Mary Kay Henry of SEIU were claiming unions had delivered Obama’s victory. They argued, with justification, that Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada got into the blue column because of a massive turnout effort from labor. But earlier this year, both Trumka and Henry expressed concerns that Trump could flip that script.

“Our members are responding to Trump’s message,” Henry said in one interview. “Donald Trump is tapping into the very real and very understandable anger of working people,” Trumka said in a speech.

It’s not just that these workers are drawn to the raw emotion of Trump’s “you’ve been screwed” rhetoric. Polls show that union households tend to oppose free trade quite strongly. Sanders has made free trade a centerpiece of his primary campaign against Clinton. Trump, hoping to woo Sanders voters, frequently praises his position on that issue.

Union voters largely agree with Trump that trade deals—including those negotiated by Democratic Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton—have taken their jobs away. Hillary Clinton has yet to counter this attack in any meaningful way. Her history on trade has been careful and political, which has left her struggling to articulate a strong argument against Sanders, let alone Trump. The Final Tally

It’s not hard to see how quickly this could start costing her Electoral College votes in the Rust Belt, where Trump hopes to improve on past Republican performance. (And where, you may remember, Clinton had to apologize for threatening to put coal companies out of business.) In Ohio, for example, 22 percent of 2012 voters came from union households, and 60 percent of them voted for Obama. In Wisconsin, a similar share of the electorate voted 2-to-1 for Obama over Romney. In 2016, both states went for Sanders over Clinton in their primaries. In Pennsylvania, where Trump is planning a major effort, union households provided Obama more than half his net margin.

For what it’s worth, it’s also possible Clinton wins in a landslide, as an increasingly unstable Trump shrinks deeper and deeper into racism, xenophobia and conspiracy theories. But what’s clear is that Democrats can no longer count on a lopsided race that even a problematic candidate running a clumsy campaign can’t lose.

Again: It’s a long way to November, and Trump could always self-destruct. But he probably won’t, and 2016 is shaping up as a contest that a careful Clinton campaign can easily lose, state by state, even as she piles up the popular vote in California and other sure-win places. Demographics are not destiny. In fact, they can be a disaster waiting to happen.