Democrats Poised to Dominate Next Round of Redistricting

Terry McAuliffe who is working to win Democrat control
of the Virginia General Assembly.

One can be hopefully optimistic that Democrats have finally awakened to the reality that state level elections matter just as much as presidential elections.  It is maddening that Democrat voter turnout soars in presidential election years yet historically stayed home and given away the farm the the Republican Party fueled by extremists and zealots. A piece in Politico looks at how Democrats may be poised to do unto Republicans what the GOP did in 2010.  Ultimately, it is STATE elections that determine congressional district maps, so every state house seat matters.  Now, with its off year elections, Virginia is garnering lots of attention and money to push the Democrat effort to take control of the Virginia General Assembly to not only control redistricting but to also pass common sense, progressive legislation that has been killed by Republicans, particularly in the House of Delegates.  Here are highlights from Politico:

Democrats were caught napping in the 2010 election ahead of the last round of redistricting — and it cost them control of Congress for nearly a decade.

Now Republicans are warning the same thing could happen to them.

Senior Republicans concede they’re at risk of losing dozens of state-level elections that will determine who wields power over the post-2020 congressional map — and potentially which party controls the chamber for the following 10 years. While Republicans are establishing a massive national infrastructure devoted to reelecting President Donald Trump and winning congressional majorities, party officials say the state legislative races are being overlooked. The trepidation comes as an array of well-funded Democratic groups — including one with the backing of former President Barack Obama and ex-Attorney General Eric Holder — are flooding cash into Virginia, a key redistricting battleground that's holding state legislative elections this fall.

The GOP's redistricting troubles represent a complete turnabout for the party. In the run-up to the 2010 election, Chambers’ group outspent its Democratic counterpart nearly 3-to-1, helping Republicans net nearly 700 seats and flip control of 20 legislative bodies. The party that year benefited from a broad backlash against Obama's first years in office, particularly his health care overhaul.

Republicans used their control of line-drawing to solidify and protect their newly won House majority, which remained intact through 2018.

This time around, it’s Democrats who are playing big. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee outraised the RSLC during the first half of 2019. And unlike a decade ago, Democrats are getting help from a galaxy of outside groups and allies, especially Obama.

Others warn that overlooking statehouse elections could have long-lasting implications for the party, which was wiped out in 2018 legislative elections.

The Democratic deluge is being felt most immediately in Virginia, where Republicans are trying to defend one-seat majorities in both legislative chambers. Democrats out-raised Republicans during the second fundraising quarter, and a handful of outside liberal groups, including the Michael Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund and the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen America, have pledged to spend more than $5.5 million combined ahead of the November contests.

Other Democratic heavyweights are getting involved, too. Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former national party chairman and a fundraising powerhouse, has steered $400,000 to Virginia candidates through his political action committee.

Some Democrats say the attention to down-ballot races reflects lessons the party learned after two devastating losses: In 2016, when it became clear it isn’t enough to just play in presidential elections, and in 2010, when they were devastated in state-level races.

Personally, I hope it is the GOP that suffers devastating losses both in November, 2019, and in November, 2020. 

Will Trump's Racist Nativism Backfire?

Donald Trump's rallies in the run up to the midterm elections on Tuesday increasingly sound like Klan rallies or something out of a Hitler rally attacking Jews.  The racial animus - and lies - is off the charts and, hopefully, will be found repulsive by decent people (which sadly excludes most evangelicals).  Some Republicans who basically hold the same views as Trump but who are concerned first and foremost with re-election are concerned that Der Trumpenführer's anti-Hispanic immigrant/refugee obsession will drive voters to Democrats, particularly in affluent suburban districts with college educated white voters.  Indeed, one would hope Trump's spewing of hatred will galvanize Hispanic and Millennial voters to go to the polls and punish Republicans. A piece in Politico looks at the controversy.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump hammered his hard line on immigration again on Thursday, but some Republicans wish he would shift focus to the economy, lest he drive away suburban voters and mobilize Latino communities against the GOP.

Several Republican operatives and officials described a growing sense of fear within the party over Trump’s hard-line rhetoric on border security, which he has repeated nearly every day for the past three weeks.

“You’re playing at the margins with Republicans on the issue of immigration, but there are very many more Democrats that might be mobilized by his rhetoric,” said conservative radio host and The Resurgent editor Erick Erickson, who called Trump’s immigration-heavy closing pitch “not smart politically” in a tweet earlier Thursday.

Operating under the assumption that talking tough on immigration can energize enough Republicans to stymie a “blue wave” of Democratic midterm voters, Trump has spent the past week unveiling restrictive immigration policies at a dizzying pace and making erroneous declarations about a caravan of Central American migrants.

Restating his vow to deploy thousands more troops to the southwest border, Trump fumed over border-crossers and said he had instructed U.S. military personnel to “consider it a rifle” if incoming migrants hurl stones at them: “Anybody throwing stones, rocks … we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”

The speech came on a day when he tweeted a dramatic campaign ad featuring an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who murdered two California sheriff’s deputies in 2014 and laughed about it in a courtroom. “Democrats let him into our country,” the ad declares [even though the man entered America during the George W. Bush regime].
Democrats slammed the ad as exploiting stereotypes about immigrants, and even some Republicans condemned it.

“The kind of voters Trump is talking to right now, there aren’t enough of them in these areas to get us over the finish line,” said one GOP campaign official.  . . . the official told POLITICO, adding that Trump “is solidifying swing voters who were already leaning Democratic and are now definitely going vote for Democratic candidates.”

Top Republican leaders have long urged Trump to make better use his rallies by highlighting the strong economy and reminding voters of the extra cash in their pockets from last year’s GOP tax cuts. As opposed to stoking fear over an “immigration crisis”, they want him to boast about the unemployment rate slipping below 4 percent, middle-class incomes returning to pre-recession levels, and surging consumer confidence.

“There’s just not enough base voters in a place like Miami to hand Carlos Curbelo a win,” said one Republican operative, pointing to a recent New York Times poll showing Curbelo, the GOP incumbent, trailing his Democratic opponent by a single percentage point in Florida’s 26th congressional district, which is nearly 70 percent Latino.

Some Republicans retiring from districts won by Hillary Clinton have also expressed dismay at the president’s decidedly anti-illegal immigrant closing argument. . . . . POTUS, out of nowhere, brings birthright citizenship up. Besides being basic tenet of America, it’s political malpractice,” said retiring GOP Rep. Ryan Costello, whose suburban Philadelphia district is ranked “solid D” by FiveThirtyEight.

Meanwhile, Democrats are claiming that Trump’s immigration obsession is only throwing momentum to their side.

“Two or three weeks ago, the No. 1 thing people were quietly worried about was apathy or low turnout with Latino voters and you’re not hearing that anymore,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a bipartisan immigration advocacy group.

An MPR News/Star Tribune poll taken last month in Minnesota, where both Senate seats are up for grabs and Republicans are competing for the governor’s mansion, found that 52 percent of likely voters disapprove of the president’s direction on immigration, versus 42 percent who approve.

Cruz Allies Sound Alarm About Texas Senate Race

Grandpa Munster look-a-like Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke.

As politicians go, GOP Texas Senator Ted Cruz has got to rank very high on the list of the most foul and most lacking in basic honesty and morality - Trump and Pence are in a league of their own - and, therefore, it would be a true delight to see him defeated in November, 2018. For a long time many thought that Cruz going down to defeat was near impossible given the reactionary nature of Texas, but Beto O'Rourke has surged in the polls and by some polls is even in a statistical dead heat with Cruz.  While not yet to the point where Virginia is in terms of urban areas being able to out vote the backward, knuckle dragging areas of the state, Texas' cities are moving in that direction.  Add to that a Hispanic population that, if it has any sense of self-preservation, should vote for any Democrat against any Republican.  Now, Cruz allies are panicking and the insidious and misnamed Club for Growth - which wants even more tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations - has announced that it will launch an attack ad campaign against O'Rourke.  Politico looks at this high profile contest.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans are sounding the alarm about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s closer-than-expected reelection contest, with an influential conservative group racing to his aid.

The Club for Growth, a Washington-based anti-tax group, is drawing up plans for a major TV ad campaign boosting Cruz — the first such intervention by a Republican outside group in this race. The move comes as Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, an online fundraising behemoth who has attracted national support, continues to narrow the gap in polling.

David McIntosh, the Club for Growth’s president, said on Tuesday the organization is planning a seven-figure-plus offensive targeting O’Rourke. McIntosh was speaking from Texas, where he is meeting with pro-Cruz donors who could help fund the effort.  “In the last five weeks, it’s become clear that the race has tightened,” said McIntosh.

Republican officials once saw Cruz, a failed 2016 presidential candidate, as safe given Texas’ conservative tilt, and in public, they have largely derided O’Rourke’s candidacy and public polls showing a close race. But, privately, they have grown increasingly concerned. An NBC News/Marist poll conducted earlier this month showed Cruz leading O’Rourke by a narrow 49 percent to 45 percent margin.

O’Rourke has emerged as a national liberal cause célébre. An online video of O’Rourke defending the right of NFL players to kneel during the national anthem has gone viral in recent days, and it was announced on Tuesday that O’Rourke would appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in September.

The extent of the rescue effort remains an open question. While a pro-Cruz super PAC, Texans Are, has been established, other conservative outside groups have remained focused on other Senate contests.

The White House, meanwhile, has been monitoring the contest. Two senior Republicans said they expected President Donald Trump, who fought bitterly with Cruz during in the 2016 presidential race, to hit the trail for the Texas Republican ahead of the November election.

McIntosh said it had not been determined when the Club’s campaign would begin. But he said it would focus heavily on casting O’Rourke as an establishment figure who, contrary to the nonpolitical and outsider persona he has cultivated, is eager to climb the ranks of political power.

To some Cruz backers, the help cannot come soon enough, and many of them are eager to see Cruz’s donor network, which he forged during his 2016 presidential bid, activated for his reelection.

“I don’t think you can count anybody out at any point. This world is changing so rapidly. It’s pretty unbelievable,” said Lee Roy Mitchell, a Dallas-based Cruz donor and founder of the Cinemark movie theater chain.

“We’re solidly behind the senator, and I would like to think most Texans are. I believe they are,” said Mitchell, who with his wife Tandy has donated a combined $1 million to the pro-Cruz super PAC. “But there’s a tremendous amount of money being poured in here to change people’s opinions.”

One can only hope that Trump campaigning in Texas for Cruz will only further energize the Democrat base and convince the must go to the polls and vote Democrat as a means to strike back and the racist Trump. 

Democratic 2018 Cash Swamps House Republicans

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

Is it time for Republicans to start freaking out?  

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Hillary Clinton Launches "Alt-Right" Attack on Trump

While the self-prostitution of the Republican Party to right wing extremist groups has been going on for years, much of the activity went on under the radar to those who are not political junkies.  The GOP establishment always tried to at least put a little bit of limp stick on its dog whistle racism and empowerment of Christian Dominionist.  With the rise of Donald Trump, all pretense of civility and decency was thrown out the window and ugly elements of right wing society were openly welcomed or at least not spurned as Trump sought to win the vote of every angry white voter, every white supremacist, and every Christofascist extremest.  Now, Hillary Clinton has released an ad that ties Donald Trump to all of these horrible, scary people that can be found here.   A piece in New York Magazine looks at Clinton's move and why it is a calculated risk, but likely a smart idea.  Here are highlights:

From the very beginning of the 2016 general election, it has been obvious that Hillary Clinton’s campaign would go after Donald Trump with a claw hammer. He presented too ripe a target to ignore even momentarily, and given Republican misgivings about him it made obvious sense to exploit Trump’s weaknesses in order to both detach potential supporters and to frighten the Democratic base into showing up to vote. Beyond that, it seemed logical in a contest between two relatively unpopular pols to do everything possible to ensure that media coverage revolved around the other candidate.

But while a negative (or if you wish, “comparative”) campaign was a no-brainer, HRC’s campaign still had to decide on its scope and focus. They could simply underline Trump’s out-there rhetoric and unpopular issue positions again and again. They could instead make him out as a conventional Republican with a conventional Republican’s weaknesses — as a sort of rough-hewn and profane version of Mitt Romney. They could execute a combo platter of the above strategies.

Or they could Go Big and attack Donald Trump the way shocked elites in both parties tend to think of him: as the representative of a new and scary departure in conservative politics that replaced the usual litany of limited-government priorities with ethno-nationalism and a violent reaction to cultural change. 

With the new ad Clinton unveiled yesterday and her speech in Reno, Nevada, today, it’s clear that for the moment at least her campaign is indeed Going Big.

The ad does not begin with much subtlety, as noted on Politico:

“The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in,” a robed man identified as the Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the Ku Klux Klan says at the top of the video, followed by images of a Confederate flag fluttering in the wind, Trump waving after a speech, and a man performing a Hitler salute at what appears to be a Trump rally.

But then the ad seeks to do two fairly complicated things very briefly: explain the ethno-nationalist background of Trump campaign chairman and Breitbart News exec Stephen Bannon; and introduce the concept of “alt-right” as the broader movement backing Trump.

Clinton’s subsequent speech in Reno followed the same tack with significantly more detail. She spent considerable time presenting what you might call Trump’s racist prehistory, before his presidential candidacy, concluding with his support for the “racist conspiracy theory” of birtherism.

Her key argument was that Trump had, time and time again, resisted opportunities to repudiate racism and racists, and was only now ineffectively trying to change his tune. Her best sound-bite was suggesting that Trump’s slogan could well be: “Make America Hate Again.” And she concluded with a very direct challenge to Republicans to reject the “takeover,” citing Bob Dole’s call for racists to leave the GOP and George W. Bush’s defense of American Muslims.

All in all, it was a pretty compelling pitch that aggregated a lot of negative material on Trump’s unsavory comments and associations; the ad made more sense once you listened to her explanations. But this tack is not without risks.

For one thing Clinton and her campaign will need to devote far more resources to the kind of explanations she gave in Reno before it will begin to “stick” with voters who aren’t already hip to the ins and outs of white nationalism and Trump’s association with it. There are opportunity costs associated with that investment as well: It won’t leave as much time as she once had to focus on his dubious personal business record, his irresponsible tax plan, his climate-change denialism, and his incoherent foreign policy views.

[T]he great virtue of what Clinton is doing now is that it brings the widespread elite horror at Trump in both major parties down to earth and into the mainstream of the campaign. In the chattering classes it’s been an open and incessantly discussed question as to whether Trump represents the sudden advent of of an alien strain of crypto-fascism, or merely a crude version of old-school American right-wing populism.

For Republican elites, it hasn’t just been a matter of deciding whether to support or not support Trump as their leader; some conservative thinkers and opinion leaders view the mogul as an existential threat to everything they believe in. Bringing this mostly negative furor about Trump to actual voters instead of shouting about it over their heads isn’t the easiest choice, but could be the best choice.

What will be most interesting is whether these tactics shake the (mostly) stubborn loyalty of Republican voters to their nominee, and even turn a significant number of them to a one-time vote for a Democrat.

But either way, Clinton certainly knows that going after Trump in so visceral a manner will be wildly popular with Democratic activists starved for a presidential candidate willing to give as good as she gets in partisan warfare. And when it comes to “energizing the base” and perhaps deterring progressives from a vote for Jill Stein, you cannot get much more galvanizing than a warning that indifference or apostasy could elect a racist monster to the cheers of Nazis, Klansmen, and Vladimir Putin. From that perspective, Clinton’s new tack may well be a carefully calculated risk.