Pete Buttigieg Ascendant; Apologists for Black Homophobia

Prior post on this blog looked at the issues of (i) black homophobia presenting an obstacle to Pete Buttigieg, especially in the early primary state of South Carolina, and (ii) Buttigieg has jumped to the lead in Iowa based on the most recent polling. I return to the first topic because statistician wonk Nate Silver has put together data (see the chart above) that suggests that black homophobia is real even as two prominent black columnists in the New York Times and the Washington Post have tried to depict reporting on the reality of black homophobia as a lie promoted by "white liberals."  Here's a portion from the Times piece:

Reducing Pete Buttigieg’s struggle to attract black support solely to black homophobia is not only erroneous, it is a disgusting, racist trope, secretly nursed and insidiously whispered by white liberals with contempt for the very black people they court and need.

The Post piece isn't any better as this quote indicates: "all the armchair pundits — and actual pundits — perpetuating the lie that blacks are more homophobic than anyone else are smearing African Americans as a whole, . . . "  

Like it or not, Silver's data indicates that there IS a serious gap in support of LGBT rights among blacks as a whole compared to other racial demographics that actively vote in primaries.  Does this mean that all blacks are homophobic?  Of course not, but it does suggest that blacks' demand support for their rights that they are not willing to extend to others who are targets of society at large.  Here in Hampton Roads we recently saw this double standard writ large when Virginia Beach Human Rights Commissioner LaKendrick El who is black said horrible things about LGBT individuals as a class of people.  El was eventually forced to resign but in the process damaged the image of the Commission he had served on and possibly alienated some in the LGBT community from being supportive of black civil rights and/or black politicians.  Lurking behind such homophobia is religion, one of the most toxic forces in the world.  In the case of El, he is a Muslim and in the case of many blacks they belong to evangelical churches that are often anti-gay. 

The second topic merits further consideration for several reasons.  One is Buttigieg's fundraising prowess.  As Outwire757.com is reporting and the graph above indicates, here in Virginia, Buttigieg has raised more money - in some cases far more money - than any of the other Democrat presidential primary candidates.  This, combined with the recent Iowa poll results have made Buttigieg a target for his rivals and their supporters as explored by a piece in Vanity Fair:

Pete Buttigieg entered the 2020 race as a longshot. But the 37-year-old South Bend mayor has since demonstrated exceptional staying power, captivating moderates and many in the donor class, and establishing himself as part of the top tier of candidates. Now, he’s doing more than surging in polls; he’s starting to lead them. 

While that surely sends a jolt through the other Democrats vying for the party nod, it has also sounded alarms among Republicans. “He’d be a fresh face with a message of unity and a more traditional Democratic program that’s not as scary to suburbanites,” Karl Rove told Axios Monday. Some top Trump advisers are reportedly worried that Buttigieg is “more talented than Joe Biden” and “will be harder to brand as a leftist radical.”

 

Buttigieg’s star has risen in tandem with increasing concern among the party establishment that Biden is carrying too much baggage to defeat Donald Trump, and that Warren and Sanders are too far left. Buttigieg has appealed to the party’s moneyed centrists by taking a middle-of-the-road approach, relying less on a bold agenda and more on soaring rhetoric evoking Barack Obama’s calls for unity.

 

Such appeals have earned him large crowds, growing support, and the attention of big donors. But they’ve also rankled other Democrats . . . . Many of Buttigieg’s detractors view his approach as an inadequate response to an openly corrupt president who’s left some Americans feeling uniquely vulnerable. He’s invited serious questions about his ability to tackle those issues, struggling to make inroads among black and minority voters.

That could weigh Buttigieg down in the early primary state of South Carolina. But a win in Iowa, the first contest of the Democratic primary, could deliver him significant momentum, forcing the political world to take him seriously, and potentially damaging the campaigns of the other leading candidates. A Buttigieg victory, after all, would raise questions both about Biden’s electability—his primary selling point—and the electorate’s appetite for the progressive visions of Warren and Sanders. With plenty at stake, Buttieg may start getting the frontrunner treatment—particularly at Wednesday night’s Democratic debate.

Where all of this goes, nobody knows.  That said, if the black community displays homophobia towards Buttigieg, they may well undermine support for their own cause among some in the LGBT community and turn a situation where two groups that should be allies find themselves something less and as a result are less cohesive and effective at creating much needed change.  Trump and Republicans need to remain the focused enemy.

Buttigieg’s $7 Million Fundraising Haul Puts Democrats on Notice

Openly gay South Bend (Ind.) Mayor Pete Buttigieg continues to surprise Democrats and pundits alike.  First, one poll showed that 68% of respondents said that they were comfortable with a gay candidate (while seniors are more likely to voice reservations about gay candidates, a majority (56 percent) now say they have no objections).  Second, Buttigieg announced that he had raised over $7 million during his first months on the campaign trail.  Neither of these things were expected and, indeed, on fundraising, Buttigieg is doing better than a number of candidates thought to be more formidable.  A piece in Politico looks at Buttigieg's continued ability to surprise.  Here are excerpts:

Pete Buttigieg’s Monday fundraising announcement carried an unmistakable message to his 2020 rivals: He’s here to stay.

The South Bend (Ind.) mayor has jolted the 2020 presidential campaign with growing media attention and rising public polling, and he did it again Monday by saying he raised over $7 million during his first months on the trail, seeding his campaign with the resources to take advantage of the early burst of national attention.

Buttigieg’s fundraising haul is the clearest sign yet that he’s emerging as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in an unorthodox way. The 37-year-old, openly gay candidate is raising millions online and capturing the attention of national Democrats in a string of viral moments in recent weeks, while also leaning on a network of fellow mayors to build roots on the ground.

“He’s disrupting the entire 2020 race,” said Jon Soltz, president of VoteVets, a progressive group that hasn’t endorsed a 2020 candidate. Soltz added: “The more and more people hear from him, the more they think he’s the fresh face that they’ve been waiting for.”

Buttigieg is the first presidential candidate to offer a glimpse at his fundraising totals from the first quarter of 2019 — garnering significant cable news coverage all day Monday.

Sanders and O’Rourke’s total first-quarter numbers will also likely dwarf Buttigieg’s. But the mayor is likely to surpass several senators and governors also running for the Democratic presidential nomination, which “is quite extraordinary for a mayor,” said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic consultant who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid.

Unlike some of his 2020 primary opponents, Buttigieg didn’t start with a ready-made digital fundraising program to tap into. In an email to supporters, Buttigieg said he “started with just about 20,000 people on our email list, and not many people even knew who I was.” In contrast, Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand sunk millions into their programs during their Senate bids, while O’Rourke built an enormous list of supporters during his Texas Senate bid last cycle.

Buttigieg dropped only $15,000 on Facebook ads in the past three months, near the bottom of the 2020 field.

“Buttigieg’s first-quarter numbers are the stuff of a very real organic phenomenon that establishes him as a surging candidate who has achieved real liftoff.” . . . . It’s also a network that Buttigieg can return to, quarter after quarter, so the small-dollar component of Buttigieg’s early fundraising “is worth so much more than that over the next year,” said Soltz, who also warned that Buttigieg’s newfound status will also likely “start drawing attacks from other candidates.”

[F]or Buttigieg, this fundraising haul “means he’s viable, and at the very least, he’s going to be around for a while,” said Julianna Smoot, a Democratic strategist who served as the national finance director on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“That’s the kind of money that means you can actually start building a strategy for the early states,” Smoot added.

Buttigieg’s viability is also showing up in the polls, where he’s jumped to 4 percent nationally, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released last week. An Iowa-based poll released by another progressive group, Focus On Rural America, also showed Buttigieg moving from 0 to 6 percent support among Democrats in the state.

Former Ambassador David Jacobson, a Democratic donor who donated to the mayor during his failed bid for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017, said the fundraising haul will help bring more donors to Buttigieg.

“What it does is it [provides] evidence — not just to me and my fundraising friends but to people in general — that, you know what? This guy's got something and I need to look more closely at it,” Jacobson said. “Like everything else, success breeds success. I do think that his number that he released today is going to encourage people to look his way.”

Buttigieg is also surging at a time when another Democrat with deep roots in the industrial Midwest is stumbling.  . . . . “The thing about Mayor Pete is he doesn’t have baggage,” said Democratic activist Molly Jong-Fast, who’s planning to host a fundraiser for Buttigieg.

Beto O'Rourke Raises $6.1 Million on First Day, Topping Sanders

So far I have not decided which would be Democrat nominee I support, although I have most certainly decided on who I do NOT support.  Leading in this category are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.  I do see the first two as remotely electable despite the views of Sanders' cult like followers who in their own way are as blind to reality as Trump's base. Thus, I was delighted to see Beto O'Rourke out raise Sanders on his first day of fundraising, clearly sending a message that Sanders' may have passed his shelf-life.   Ditto for Elizabeth Warren who has already done herself in with her idiotic claim of Native American ancestry.  A piece in NBC News looks at O'Rourke's fundraising hall.  Here are excerpts:

WASHINGTON — Beto O'Rourke raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate, according to his campaign, surpassing Bernie Sanders and every other 2020 Democrat who has disclosed their figures.

O'Rourke's campaign announced Monday that he had taken in $6,136,763 in online contributions in the day after declaring his candidacy Thursday morning.

"In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president — a campaign by all of us, for all of us, that answers not to the PACs, corporations, and special interests but to the people," O’Rourke, who has sworn off PAC donations of any kind, said in a statement.

That's a strong showing for the former Texas congressman who lost a Senate race last year to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, while setting a new fundraising record.

Sanders beat expectations and stunned observers by raising a then-record-setting $5.9 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate last month.

Meanwhile, Sen. Kamala Harris collected $1.5 million, which was seen as impressive haul for the California Democratic lawmaker. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., raised $1 million in 48 hours, as did former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. It took Jay Inslee 72 hours to raise more than $1 million, but that still surpassed expectations for the Washington governor.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised at least $300,000 on New Year's Eve, her first partial day in the race, according to filings from the online donation clearinghouse ActBlue. But her campaign declined to disclose their complete one-day fundraising picture.

O'Rourke's campaign did say he had collected money from every state and territory in the union before noon on the day he declared his candidacy.

The Texan built a massive email fundraising list during his failed campaign against Cruz and some allies wondered if donors would be as eager to support his presidential campaign as they were to try to oust the Texas GOP senator.

O'Rourke and Castro on Collision Course in Texas

Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro.

Following up on the theme of the last post, two possible 2020 Democrat contenders are on a collision course in their home state of Texas of all places: Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro.   Ironically, Castro may have hurt himself by not running against the loathsome Ted Cruz, thereby giving O'Rourke the opening to become a surprising darling of Democrats both within and outside of Texas. Where the contest between the two will go is anyone's guess, but should be interesting to watch.  The goal for Democrats, of course, should be selecting a candidate to defeat Trump and/or Pence if  they avoid indictment or impeachment.  A piece on Politico looks at the coming collision course.  Here are excerpts:

The Democratic Party’s dream of a resurgence in Texas has long run squarely through San Antonio and the Castro brothers — Joaquin, the third-term congressman, and Julián, the city’s ambitious former mayor.

But that was before Beto O’Rourke catapulted himself into the party’s national consciousness this year.

Now, O’Rourke and Julián Castro are both inching toward presidential campaigns, an unlikely bounty for Texas Democrats accustomed to near-irrelevance at the statewide and national levels. O’Rourke and Castro would likely run on different platforms and rely on different donors, limiting the likelihood of direct combat.

But assuming they both run and don’t flame out, the presence of the two Texans in the race would test the allegiances of state Democrats in a way that could be a significant factor in the fight for the nomination. Texas will hold its primary relatively early in the 2020 calendar, timing that will likely make the diverse and delegate-rich state a big prize in a competitive contest.

Until now, the two have operated worlds apart despite their home-state ties. In San Antonio, Castro cultivated a local following while steeping himself in policy and traditional fundraising practices. Five hundred miles and one time zone to the west in El Paso, O’Rourke became an instant sensation with his charismatic, closer-than-expected U.S. Senate run and a national following of small-dollar donors.

“They’re not only from two different parts of Texas, they’re from two different parts of the country,” said Colin Strother, a Texas Democratic strategist who has advised Castro in previous campaigns. “This idea that there’s a finite constituency that they’re going to chop up, I just don’t see it … I see them as two completely different types of candidates.”

Castro and O’Rourke have cast each other as nonfactors in their decisions whether to run. But Castro has moved aggressively to climb out from under O’Rourke’s shadow.

But the uphill climb facing Castro has been exacerbated by O’Rourke’s attention-grabbing run against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke is now soaring in early 2020 polls, often running behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, while Castro is barely a blip on the national landscape.

Even in Texas, the last time Castro appeared in a University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, when he was still mayor of San Antonio in 2013, a majority of Democrats statewide did not know him well enough to form an opinion of him. In the midst of a supercharged Senate race five years later, O’Rourke’s favorability rating among Texas Democrats hit 93 percent.

Jeff Roe, who was Cruz’s chief strategist, said after the November election that Democrats “don’t have anyone of [O’Rourke’s] caliber on the national stage.”

Castro, on the other hand, is “the Bobby Jindal of the Democrat cycle,” Roe said. “He’s pound cake. He’ll run, he’ll raise like $3.2 million, he’ll be out by August and they’ll recruit him to run against [Republican Sen. John] Cornyn” in 2020.

Castro could hardly have foreseen O’Rourke’s rise. Long viewed by Democratic Party activists and donors as an emerging star in Texas, Castro was a significant surrogate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign and made her shortlist for vice president, while O’Rourke served in relative anonymity as a backbench member of the House minority.

But in a cruelty of political timing, the Castros themselves may have helped open a door for O’Rourke. Many Democrats were courting Joaquin to run for U.S. Senate, and had he opposed O’Rourke in the primary, his appeal in heavily Latino swaths of the state — areas where O’Rourke struggled — might have stamped out O’Rourke.

Republicans Trash Their Candidate in Pennsylvania Special Election

Democrat candidate Conor Lamb.

Next Tuesday will see a special election in Pennsylvania that, with luck will see the GOP candidate lose and start a trend that will carry through through November, 2018.  What is interesting is that with the election not even yet past, Republicans are trashing their candidate as if setting the stage to throw him under the bus and blame the electoral loss on the individual candidate rather than the toxicity of today's GOP.  One can only hope that the intra-party backbiting and backstabbing continues - indeed, let's hope the phenomenon escalates. True, the Democrats have a telegenic candidate who has raised lots of money.  But the GOP's real problem is that its main message - GOP/Trump tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - doesn't energize voters.  Worse yet, voters who crossed party lines to vote for Trump are seemingly having a major case of buyer's remorse.  A piece in Politico looks at the drama playing out around next week's special election. Here are highlights:

Shortly after the new year, Rep. Steve Stivers, the House GOP campaign chief, delivered a stern message to Rick Saccone, the party's special election candidate in Pennsylvania.  You need to start pulling your weight, Stivers implored Saccone, the mustachioed 60-year-old state legislator who is carrying the weight of the Republican Party in a crucial contest next week.

Stivers’ warning, described by two people familiar with the discussion, was intended to put the candidate on notice. The national GOP would be helping him out substantially, Stivers said. But if Saccone didn’t start upping his fundraising game and getting his sluggish campaign in order, he could lose a race that should be a gimme for the party.

Tuesday’s special election, which is being held in a district President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points, has emerged as the latest testing ground of whether Republicans are headed for a midterm bloodbath. A loss would be wholly embarrassing, many Republicans privately acknowledge, given that it would take place in a state that Trump made a cornerstone of his 2016 victory. And the themes that the GOP has highlighted in the special election — namely tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are the centerpieces of the party’s 2018 campaign plan.

But as election day grows closer, the national GOP is increasingly pinning the blame on Saccone. In interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, senior House Republicans and top party strategists, Saccone was nearly universally panned as a deeply underwhelming candidate who leaned excessively on the national party to execute a massive, multimillion-dollar rescue effort.

They describe a candidate who largely ignored pleas to raise the money he needed, who blindsided the White House and the national party with his choice of a political strategist, and whose amateur-style social media feed included low-quality videos of him at a local bar and yukking it up with Santa. To make matters worse, Saccone is up against a Democratic rival the party could hardly have engineered had it tried: Conor Lamb, an Ivy League-educated 33-year-old Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor.

Lamb has used a nearly $4 million war chest to cast himself as independent of his party, airing slickly produced TV ads underscoring his aversion to Pelosi and his fondness for shooting machine guns. He has a campaign staff of 16 full-time employees, compared with just four for Saccone. . . . .The Saccone campaign declined to comment.

Many Republicans expect that Saccone will ultimately prevail, thanks largely to the conservative nature of the southwestern Pennsylvania district and the national GOP’s effort. Yet three senior party strategists said they’d reviewed internal polling data in recent days pointing to a narrow Lamb lead, raising alarms. And this week, the Republican National Committee conducted a data analysis finding that just 47 percent of voters in the district viewed Saccone favorably, 3 percentage points lower than Trump.

With Trump set to campaign with Saccone on Saturday evening, some White House officials have questioned whether the president should scrap the trip, fearful that a Saccone loss would be seen as even more of a rebuke to the president. But Trump has told aides in recent days he’s going anyway, convinced that he’ll likely be blamed for a defeat regardless.

Capitol Hill Republicans had hoped for another nominee. But late last year, when Pennsylvania Republicans selected their candidate to run in the race, the two prospects favored by House GOP leaders — state Sens. Guy Reschenthaler and Kim Ward — lost to Saccone.

Short on campaign cash of his own, Saccone has relied almost entirely on the national party and outside groups to wage a media blitz on his behalf. Those involved in the effort have been horrified at the candidate’s few attempts at TV advertising, one of which featured him sitting at a kitchen table next to a coffee mug emblazoned with the American flag.

While Saccone has a compelling biography — like Lamb, he served in the military — the outside groups have found that introducing him to voters, rather than having Saccone do it himself, has proven challenging. The telegenic Lamb, meanwhile, has used his extensive campaign bank account to air a series of commercials highlighting his military service.

Even more troubling for Republicans, because Pennsylvania’s congressional map is being redrawn, the special election district will likely no longer exist by the time of the November election. But with so much attention trained on the race, House GOP leaders determined they had little choice but to spend whatever is needed to pull Saccone over the finish line.

Some Republicans say it’s unfair to pin the blame solely on Saccone. They argue that his struggles reflect the broader challenges the party is facing as the midterms approach.

Particularly concerning, they say, is the fact that the millions of dollars Republicans have spent — much of it highlighting the GOP tax cuts and attempting to tie Lamb to Pelosi — has failed to move the needle.

Others note that Lamb has adroitly cast himself as a conservative figure, allowing him to win over the scores of blue-collar Democrats in an area that has voted Republican in recent elections.

“This is a seat that is certainly more competitive than it ought to be,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican. “Democrats are very energized both in Pennsylvania and nationally, and that’s really the issue.”

If they come up short on Tuesday, House GOP leaders say it will reinforce that candidates need to pull their weight in such a toxic environment for the party.

“In a tough political environment, candidate quality matters more than ever. In an anti-GOP year — which this is shaping up to be — the Republican candidates will need to run much stronger campaigns or be prepared for the national party to cut them loose,” said Ken Spain, who served as a senior aide at the NRCC during the GOP’s 2010 House takeover.

After Labor Day, Spain added, there would likely be dozens of seats in play. And the national party, he said, would be “unlikely to prop up weak candidates by doling out millions in political welfare like they did in this race.”

I sincerely hope that Lamb wins the election and sends even more Republicans into panic mode - perhaps causing more incumbents to decide on retiring rather than run the risk of electoral defeat. 

Democratic 2018 Cash Swamps House Republicans

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

Is it time for Republicans to start freaking out?  

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

GOP Consultant: Donald Trump Is Committing Political Suicide

Mike Murphy, a Republican Party consultant, has a piece in the Washington Post that looks at the train wreck that Donald Trump's campaign is quickly becoming.  It is caustic but right on point given my years of working on campaigns back in the days I was a Republican.  Hopefully Trump continues his out of control ways and, if the GOP does somehow manage to tell Trump "you're fired!," I for one hope that Trump's misfit supporters revolt and sit out the election.  As noted in a prior post, those who have analyzed Trump view him as having narcissistic personality disorder, so it is unlikely that he will listen to others since in his mind, he is always right and "huugely wonderful" just as he is.  The one lack in the column is that it ignores the fact that the GOP establishment created an atmosphere where a demagogue like could win the party base which no consists largely of white supremacists, anti-government nutcases, and the ignorant and uneducated (which is why Trump is so popular with many evangelical Christians).  Here are column highlights:

Here’s a pitch for a new reality TV show. Political neophytes run for office; then, when the harsh reality of running a serious national campaign thoroughly punctures their cocky naiveté, they are fired. Donald Trump is already starring in the pilot.

Forget, for a moment, all of Trump’s epic character flaws. A new question has seized the campaign: Can the self-proclaimed world-class business wizard actually manage anything? His campaign’s spiral into collapse proves he cannot. Let us count the ways:

Basic targeting. Presidential campaigns come down to a handful of swing states and a relatively small group of persuadable swing voters who ultimately decide the election. That’s why campaigns invest so much money in paid advertising and on-the-ground organizing in those key states. Trump has done neither. Instead he is careening around the country in his beloved jet, chasing elusive high-dollar donor support in Republican base states. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is gleefully beating his brains out in swing states with harsh but effective negative advertising — none of which is being answered and rebutted by the Trump campaign as his polling numbers tank.

Fundraising. Even if Trump wanted to rebut those Clinton attack ads, he lacks the money to fire back.  . . . Meanwhile, what relatively little money the braggadocious billionaire has invested in his campaign has mostly been structured as a loan from, you guessed it, Trump. So despite his endless promises during the primary, Trump is showing no actual interest in self-funding his effort. Instead he’s hoping donors pay him back for the cost of bouncing around in his garish airplane. It’s no surprise that so few donors are falling for this suckers’ ploy.

Message. Trump’s pitchfork rhetoric played well in the GOP primary; winning him about 44 percent of the voters. But the voters he needs most now — college-educated white women and Hispanics — are giving Trump record unfavorable ratings in recent polls. It’s almost as though he is trying to offend them. Well, it’s working.

Ground war. Person-to-person campaigning is effective, but it doesn’t happen without a well-run ground organization heavily linked to the metrics provided by modern digital marketing technology. Trump is doing none of this. He seems to think holding rallies with voters who already support him is the campaign activity that counts. That’s not strategy; it’s egomania.

What is Trump’s biggest failure? He lacks any real strategy. Trump appears to totally miss the fundamental fact that the general-election electorate is much larger and demographically very different from the small electorate he captured in the Republican primaries.

So as the Trump campaign moves into full meltdown, Republicans are seeing a presumptive nominee on a mission of political suicide. Nobody in the party wants a nominee with the Secret Service code name “Certain Train-wreck.” The question is: Can anything be done about it? The answer is yes. If Trump rolls into the convention broke and with a terrible deficit in the polls, the delegates may indeed act. Under convention rules, they have the power to do so. GOP conventions are party affairs empowered to pick the best candidate to win the general election. If Trump’s incompetence doesn’t change, he may well get fired in Cleveland.

Trump's Campaign Is Becoming a Dumpster Fire

I had one reader who question whether or not Donald Trump actually wanted to be president or if, instead, all that we have seen to date is a narcissistic, ego driven reality TV game for the man.  One has to wonder when one looks at the current state of Trump's campaign, both in terms campaign funds on hand and the lack of a staff equal to the task of a national campaign.  A piece in Politico looks at the disaster that is the Trump campaign - something that may fuel the "Dump Trump" movement and keep GOP donors clutching their closed wallets.  Oh, and note how Trump continues to pay himself and his organization with campaign funds.   Some say that Trump will self-fund, but will he?  His money may be too precious for him to part with.  Here are some story excerpts:

Donald Trump's campaign started the month with a paltry $1.3 million in cash — a mere fraction of Hillary Clinton's $42.5 million war chest — putting the GOP frontrunner at a sharp disadvantage heading into the general election against Clinton's money machine.

On the same day that Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, amid a steady stream of reports of campaign infighting and disorganization, the latest batch of Federal Election Commission filings show that the real estate mogul has a long way to go to establish a financial operation that can compete at the national level.

And it's not just money — the filings revealed a campaign staff of less than 70, a number was dwarfed by Clinton's nearly 700 paid employees, and few of the campaign's expenses suggested work had begun to build out a more robust operation. All together, it's the most lopsided fundraising start to a presidential election in the modern campaign finance era.

[T]he campaign showed no clear path for improving its financial picture. Trump raised just $3.1 million from donors (including almost $2 million in amounts less than $200) and lent his campaign another $2.2 million, though he said he won't continue self-funding through the general election. Trump has now loaned his campaign a total of$45.7 million, almost exactly the same amount that Mitt Romney loaned his 2008 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

Though his campaign trimmed spending from $9.4 million in April to $6.7 million in May, it finished May with just $1.3 million cash on hand. By contrast, the Clinton campaign ended the month with $42.5 million in the tank. Even the defunct campaigns of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson had more cash on hand than Trump's.  In fact, several House members running for reelection have more cash on hand than Trump's campaign.

The campaign's disarray doesn't stop with its finances: On Monday, Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after a turf war with chairman Paul Manafort paralyzed the campaign's ability to staff up and hone its general-election message.

The May FEC report showed just 69 people on payroll, to Clinton's 685. And the Trump campaign's spending offered no signs of building a national campaign infrastructure.

By comparison, the campaign spent only $48,000 on data management and $115,000 on online advertising.

The Trump campaign has yet to reserve any airtime for advertising in the fall, and he may not be able to rely on super PACs. The real estate mogul's inflammatory attacks on a federal judge and renewed calls for a ban on Muslim immigration have failed to endear him to the party's leading donors, and one of the main outside groups supporting him, Great America PAC, raised just $1.4 million in May.

The Atlantic - There Is No Trump Campaign

Now that President Obama has endorsed Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders after an hour meeting with Obama somewhat coyly said he will do all in his power to make sure that Donald Trump is never president of the United States, things seem to be settling down somewhat on the Democratic side of the aisle.  On the Republican side, things remain highly unsettled and Donald Trump was set to meet with major GOP donors today.  Time will tell how that played out.  Meanwhile, there is much GOP angst over the lack of any real Trump campaign organization.  Throughout the primary Trump largely relied on free media coverage and rallies with little get out the vote or grass roots organization.  Now, as Trump perhaps in some fantasy thinks he can win both California and New York, the concern in GOP circles is that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats will run circles around Trump.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the situation which I for one will equate to a huge loss come November.  Here are highlights:

What is concerning for Trump backers and Republicans (the Venn diagram of overlap between those groups seems to be in perpetual flux) is that it [Trump's focus on New York and California] appears to be distracting from the rest of the crucial work of building a presidential campaign. For most intents and purposes, there appears to be no Trump campaign. 

CNN has a blockbuster report Thursday digging into this. For example, Trump has no state-level campaign director in Ohio or Colorado, two top-shelf swing states. Across the map, Republican officials say they’re just waiting to hear on what to do from either Trump or the Republican National Committee, but so far they’re hearing very little. “I'll say that as far as building the infrastructure of a campaign, the RNC has been doing it for many years,” Trump said at a press conference in May.

As my colleague Molly Ball points out in an insightful tweet storm (not a contradiction in terms!), there’s some confusion, or at least opaque wording, in the CNN piece, revolving around the difference between having state-level organization and putting together a ground game. In 2012, Mitt Romney most certainly had state offices, but he also largely left ground game to the RNC.

“The Romney campaign doesn't do the ground game,” then-RNC Political Director Rick Wiley told Ball in 2012. “They have essentially ceded that responsibility to the RNC. They understand this is our role.” (You may recall Wiley as the guy Trump recently hired, then unceremoniously fired a few weeks later.)

Perhaps the Romney 2012 campaign isn’t an example that Republicans would want to emulate, but that’s different from suggesting that what Trump is doing is unprecedented. The RNC offers a degree of continuity that a presidential campaign can’t, and disagreements between state party committees and campaigns can make for tension, as the Democrats ably showed after the 2012 campaign. Moreover, the RNC has been focused on building its ground-game capacities since the post-2012 autopsy report. To be clear: None of this means that the RNC is especially great at building a ground game. It just means Trump isn’t crazy to cede the ground to it, especially given how weak his campaign was at things like voter turnout during the primaries.

Insofar as the lack of state organization goes, is this simply a symptom of a rookie campaign? Growing pains that began after Trump clinched the nomination? Not really. Back in April, with Trump’s campaign faltering, he laid off scads of staffers in early states, whereas Clinton has maintained her organization, laying groundwork for the general. Then in May, Politico reported on the increasing heartburn of state-level Republican operatives who’d been promised cavalry from the RNC and were getting increasingly anxious about the silence from Washington.

A related and intertwined problem is Trump’s lack of fundraising. Although he once said he’d raise $1 billion, his new fundraising team—mostly constituted by the RNC, of course—is working to depress expectations, saying there’s little chance he’ll raise that much. In fact, many members told The Wall Street Journal they haven’t even done any work yet. There’s a vicious cycle at work here, which is that as donors see the Trump campaign in chaos, they’re unwilling to fork over their hard-earned cash. Why back a candidate who’s rending the Republican Party apart, doesn’t follow conservative orthodoxy, and seems to have no idea what he’s doing with the money?

Trump, naturally, says he’s unperturbed. . . . “I just don’t think I need nearly as much money as other people need because I get so much publicity. I get so many invitations to be on television. I get so many interviews, if I want them.” In an interview with The New York Times, he cited social media as a replacement: “He noted that he is nearing the ability to reach 20 million people by himself through his personal Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, providing an alternative way to reach the public, even if it’s largely a one-way conversation.”

That seems to represent a basic misunderstanding of what campaigns do. It’s hard to imagine that Trump could replace media buys, from television to web advertising, through his simple star power and social media; using a single national portal for his message skips over the opportunity to hammer home locally important messages. And it leaves out all the other stuff that campaigns spend on, like going out and identifying prospective voters, winning them over, getting them to register, and then convincing them to vote. Let’s see a Twitter account do that!

[W]hat Trump is attempting to pull off here isn’t refining or improving best practices for what we know can win a campaign today. It’s throwing it all out the window. Since Trump is trying something so different, it’s hard to completely reject it as foolhardy. Maybe he can really pull this off. But by all of the known metrics, it makes no sense.

The flap over Trump’s racist attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel has kept the attention away from how little Trump is doing to build up state teams and raise money, and so has his focus on places like California and New York. But he doesn’t seem to be using the time he’s bought to build up anything resembling a real presidential campaign.

As a former Republican who opposed the racism, homophobia and  celebration of ignorance that became increasingly accepted by the GOP from 2000 forward - I ultimately resigned in utter frustration - I hope Trump destroys the GOP.  I truly believe it is beyond saving.  The question is, what party will arise to replace it. 

Will the Democrats Look to a Kennedy for a Boost?

In the wake of last Tuesday's horrific results, Democrats are casting about for some fresh leadership to energize the party base - and campaign donors.  Two names are being bandied about: Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy (Kennedy is pictured above).  Politico looks at the maneuvering and souls searching.  Here are excerpts:

After a nationwide thumping that leaves them with their smallest House minority in over 80 years, Democratic leaders are considering two rising stars in the party — Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy — to lead a 2016 recovery effort.

Senior Democratic aides say the two have emerged as strong possibilities to take on the role of chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a critical position tasked with overseeing the party’s political apparatus in the next election. The selection of either man by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, 74, would be designed to give House Democrats, who lack an obvious path back to power, a badly needed infusion of energy and excitement, not to mention fundraising prowess.

Castro, 40, and his twin brother Julian Castro, the Housing and Urban Development secretary and former San Antonio mayor, are widely seen as the party’s future leaders in Texas. They took their star turn at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, when the Stanford-and-Harvard-educated Joaquin Castro, a former state legislator, introduced his brother, who gave the keynote speech. Julian Castro is one of the highest profile Hispanic figures in the Democratic Party and has been mentioned as a possible 2016 vice presidential pick.

If Kennedy, the 34-year-old grandson of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, were chosen, it would be the second time in just over a decade that a Kennedy has chaired the committee . . . In the weeks leading up to the midterms, Joe Kennedy, a Harvard Law-educated former prosecutor, doled out thousands of dollars to candidates.

The high-wattage Castro and Kennedy surnames would also presumably help with fundraising — perhaps the most important component of the job — at a challenging time to persuade donors to open their wallets, given the long odds of Democrats winning back the House in two years.

While Castro and Kennedy have obvious assets, they also have drawbacks. Castro, Democratic aides say, may be more interested in positioning himself for an eventual statewide campaign than immersing himself in the minutiae of congressional politics. And while many are talking up Kennedy, one of the youngest House Democrats, as a future leader, that time may not be now.

Tapping either could also ruffle the feathers of more senior lawmakers who’ve been eyeing the slot. Castro and Kennedy, who were reelected last week, are only finishing their first terms.

Call me shallow, but I might shell out some money to attend an event with Joe Kennedy. :)

Upstart Groups Challenge Rove for G.O.P. Cash

The ongoing warfare within the Republican Party continues to provide an entertaining spectator sport as the so-called Republican establishment strives to fight off the Frankenstein monster it created when the establishment shortsightedly allowed the influx of the Christofascists and the Tea Party (a repackaged version of the Christofascists) into city and county committees and caucuses.  Besides primary contests by deranged GOP candidates who have gulped down far too much laced Kool-Aid, the intra-party battles have spilled over into fights about money, or more accurately, who is going to monopolize PAC money.  As the New York Times reports, upstart groups are challenging Karl Rove in the money race.  Here are article highlights:

A quiet but intense struggle over money and influence is roiling the Republican Party just as the 2014 election season is getting underway.

At least a dozen “super PACs” are setting up to back individual Republican candidates for the United States Senate, challenging the strategic and financial dominance that Karl Rove and the group he co-founded, American Crossroads, have enjoyed ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 cleared the way for unlimited independent spending. 

In wooing donors, the new groups — in states like Texas, Iowa, West Virginia and Louisiana — are exploiting Crossroads’ poor showing in 2012, when $300 million spent by the super PAC and a sister nonprofit group yielded few victories. Some are suggesting that Crossroads’ deep ties to the Republican establishment and recent clashes with conservative activists are a potential liability for Republican incumbents facing Tea Party challengers. 

The conflicts echo broader unease within Republican circles, as establishment figures like Mr. Rove seek to reassert their authority and expand the party’s appeal amid a searing internal assault from Tea Party-inspired conservatives. 

The fragmentation threatens not only the position of Mr. Rove and Crossroads as the dominant Republican players in the world of outside spending, but also the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business that has flowed from Crossroads to a small circle of consultants and advertising buyers. 

[S]ome potential pitfalls for the new groups are already evident. Because they are raising money chiefly from local donors, they may be more vulnerable to criticisms of pay-to-play. One of the groups, Grow NC Strong, has already drawn scrutiny for raising large contributions from three donors, including Mr. Mitchell, who were appointed last spring to the University of North Carolina board of governors by a vote of the House. 

Moreover, it is not always clear which groups have the blessing, informal or otherwise, of the candidates in whose name they were founded.

More Good News: Cuccinelli's Growing Money Woes

The main groups that have heretofore catapulted Ken Cuccinelli into politics have been far right religious extremists best exemplified by The Family Foundation, a sinister organization with ties to hate groups and anti-contraception extremists, and the ignorant and racist Tea Party elements in Virginia.  But Cuccinelli's slavish obedience to the frightening agenda of these factions has alienated business interest that recognize that giving Virginia of a state that wants to institute a modern day Inquisition is not good for business (Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms seemingly recognizes that tourists avoid destinations deemed too extreme).  The result has been business leaders either jumping aboard the Terry McAuliffe campaign or at minimum, not giving money to Cuccinelli who has had to rely on out of state money.  But that hasn't been enough.  A piece in Politico looks at Cuccinelli's worsening money woes.  Here are excerpts:

Ken Cuccinelli is getting crushed on the Virginia airwaves, and it’s probably only going to get worse – a major factor thwarting the Republican’s hopes of a comeback in a governor’s race that’s been slipping away.

The left has spent $7.5 million more on television than the right up to this point, according to sources tracking the air war. The totals are $20.2 million from Democrats and affiliated outside groups to $12.7 million from the Republicans and their allies.

The attorney general is himself a relatively weak fundraiser who never adequately cultivated the major donors he needed in the business community. He’s also running against former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, one of the most prolific fundraisers in modern political history.

A string of polls showing Cuccinelli trailing — including a POLITICO poll conducted over the weekend that had him down by 9 points — has only made it harder to raise cash, while deterring some outside groups from spending as much as they might have in the year’s marquee contest.

The result is that Cuccinelli’s campaign has been making smaller and smaller ad buys over the past three weeks.

McAuliffe has already reserved about $2 million in airtime over the final four weeks, while Cuccinelli has not reserved any time past this week. The Democrats, for instance, claimed $700,000 of choice broadcast airtime for the final week of the race in the state’s four largest markets, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Cuccinelli operatives note that they have placed their buys on a week-to-week basis since April.

The disparity doesn’t mean the race is over for Cuccinelli, but it’s an enormous obstacle in a race that’s already tilted heavily against him. The simple reality is that TV ads matter a lot in a big state, where a limited number of voters get to see the candidates in person and with broadcast media that many Republicans see as predisposed to favor Democrats.

This helps explain why 56 percent of likely voters hold an unfavorable view of Cuccinelli in the POLITICO poll, compared to 34 percent who view him favorably.

I personally hope that (i) Cuccinelli goes down to a crushing defeat that ends his political career and (ii) that post election he comes out of the closet - no one is so hysterically anti-gay unless they are a serious self-loathing closet case.