Republicans Escalate Voter Suppression Efforts

What do you do when you belong to a political party that finds its message and policies rejected by the majority of voters?  You try to limit those who can vote to those who are buying your agenda of exclusion, racism, homophobia and economic war on the poor, the non-white and anyone your base deems "other."  This is precisely what the Republican party is seeking to do across the country, especially in states where Republicans still control state legislatures.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, Texas - where the growing urban areas are increasingly voting Democrat and are nearing a point of being able to out vote the backward rural regions of the state - is a prime example.  Rather than change their agenda, Republicans simply want fewer and fewer people to be able to vote if they might not be buying the GOP's toxic agenda.  To be totally candid, the GOP no longer believes in democracy. Here are column highlights on the GOP voter suppression effort:

MOBILE POLLING places that popped up on college campuses and other population-dense areas were “the most effective program we had,” Dana DeBeauvoir, the chief elections official in Travis County, Tex., told the New York Times. That would explain why Texas Republicans shut them down.

The Times reported last week that, as Texans head to the polls, it will be substantially harder for college students to vote. A new state law required all polling places to remain open for the state’s full 12-day early-voting period. Localities could not afford to keep the pop-up sites open that long, so colleges in Austin, Brownsville, Fort Worth and elsewhere have had to close them. That guarantees lower turnout among people whom Republicans do no want voting: Democratic-leaning students.

Early voting is meant to enable more people to vote: Shift workers, for example, who cannot wait in line at a polling place on a Tuesday can still have a voice. Texas’s law turns that vote-enabling system into a vote-suppressing weapon. Republicans throughout the country have embraced voter suppression as a strategy for party survival, and this is one more sad example.

In Florida, Republicans have tried repeatedly to end early voting on state campuses. They also tried to circumscribe the reach of a law that allows former felons to vote, even after voters overwhelmingly approved the law in a referendum. Republicans in New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin have made voting difficult for students in various ways; Republicans often use voter identification laws to exclude student voters, rejecting forms of ID that college students are likely to have. Typically, the pretext is the need to block in-person voter fraud — a practically nonexistent problem in the United States.

Citizens are citizens, whether they are 18 or 88. All should be encouraged to vote. But year in, year out, even jurisdictions not run by people seeking to discourage voting have trouble keeping lines reasonable, equipment functional and the experience less than excruciating. As 171 George Mason University students who recently had their registrations rejected can tell you, as The Post reported, registering from a campus address can be particularly difficult.

States should be trying to fix such problems, starting with competent staff and convenient polling locations and hours, rather than removing opportunities for eligible voters. Congress should require states to register people automatically when local government authorities have the information needed to do so — DMV records, for example. And the Republican Party should stake its future on offering policies and candidates that can attract voters — not on keeping potential voters away from the polls.

The GOP in its present incarnation needs to die - the sooner, the better.  This from a former Republican. 

Democrats Seem Set to Equal or Exceed Republicans in Turnout

One of the most maddening things to me is the fact that Millennials and minority voters - those most likely to be harmed by the Trump/Pence/GOP agenda in the long term - do not vote and, as a result, contribute to self-harm.   Voting may not halt the regressive, racist GOP agenda, but not voting definitely furthers the agenda that seeks to take from the poor and give to the rich and restore white/Christofascist privilege not seen in decades (indeed, they Jim Crow laws would be restored if the federal courts would allow it - one reason Trump is packing the courts with reactionaries).  Polls indicate that Democrats may be poised to vote in record numbers for a midterm election, but Millennial and minority voters remain less likely to vote than their self-interest should dictate.  A piece in the New York Times looks at surging Democrat turn out in white suburban districts that may match or exceed Republican turn out levels.  Here are article highlights:

A wide range of evidence indicates that Democratic voters are poised to vote in numbers unseen in a midterm election in at least a decade.

Democrats have largely erased the turnout deficit that hobbled them during the Obama presidency, according to results from more than 50 New York Times Upshot/Siena College polls of the most competitive House battleground districts.

Democrats may even be poised to post higher turnout than Republicans, a rarity, in many relatively white suburban districts on Nov. 6.

But it’s not clear if this blue turnout surge will extend much further, particularly among young and nonwhite voters. Whether Democrats turn out broadly could make the difference between a fairly close fight for control of the House and sweeping Democratic gains of 40 or more seats.

Across the Times/Siena polls, Republicans have a six-point lead among voters who turned out in 2014. But Democrats counter with a 10-point advantage among voters who didn’t turn out in that election. Those voters are poised to represent more than one-third of the electorate, enough to essentially eliminate the Republican turnout advantage of the last decade.

A Democratic turnout surge would be consistent with the long history of midterm elections. When Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans generally have a big midterm turnout edge, based on voter file and survey data stretching back to the 1970s. And when Republicans hold the presidency, Democrats fight back to parity.

A similar pattern has played out in the special and general elections during the Trump presidency: Democratic turnout has surged over 2014 levels to essentially match that of Republicans.

Over the last two years, 60 percent of Democrats (defined by either party registration or primary vote history) voted compared with 58 percent of Republicans in the New Jersey and Virginia general elections, along with the special congressional elections in Kansas’ Fourth District, Pennsylvania’s 18th, Ohio’s 12th, Georgia’s Sixth and Arizona’s Eighth. In these same jurisdictions in 2014, Republicans had an eight-point edge, with 62 percent voting versus 54 percent of Democrats.

[T]urnout among young and nonwhite voters always trailing older and white turnout by a wide margin. That tends to cut against Democratic strengths. Across our polls, 58 percent of white registered voters say they’re “almost certain” to vote, compared with 50 percent of black registered voters and 43 percent of Hispanic voters. These figures are somewhat lower than in other surveys, in part because the Times/Siena surveys make a considerable effort to reach lower-turnout voters who respond to polls in low numbers. And just 38 percent of registered voters who are 18 to 34 years say they’re almost certain to vote, compared with 62 percent of those over age 65. It is entirely possible that these generational and racial turnout gaps will narrow over the election’s final weeks, as the campaigns work to mobilize irregular voters. There may also be individual races or states, like Georgia, where black voters turn out in large numbers. But there is no historical precedent for those gaps to close to the extent they do in a presidential election, at least not nationwide. Yet Democrats have still managed to fare extremely well in Trump-era special and general elections, in no small part because of a surge in well-educated voters. That’s what the Times/Siena polling shows as well. Over all, college-educated Americans represent 47 percent of likely voters in the districts we’ve polled, well above their 38 percent share of registered voters. And white voters without a degree — the president’s base — slip to 41 percent of the likely electorate, down from their 45 percent share of registered voters. The diverse districts in Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico and Virginia include more than one-third of the tossup districts. If Democratic turnout remains somewhat depressed, these districts could help the Republicans fend off a blue wave and at least keep them in striking distance of retaining their majority. Democrats, though, can regard the districts as offering plenty of opportunities heading into the final stretch. The Democrats there are saying they’re less likely to vote and are likelier to be undecided, reflecting low political engagement.

If Democrats can lure additional young and nonwhite voters off the sidelines and out of the undecided column, the party could be poised to break through in many of the districts where they’ve struggled the most to this point.

If you have Millennial or minority family members of friends, stress to them the importance of voting and of thwarting the GOP agenda that is decidedly against their best interests. 

The Only Way to Stop the GOP/Trump

If readers are like me and fearful for the future under the misrule of Trump and the now thoroughly foul Republican Party, there is only one way - actually two to stop the madness.  The first is to get as many sane, non-Trump base Americans of voting age to register to vote as possible.  The second step is to make sure they go to the polls in November and vote for Democrats with a goal of defeating as many Republicans as possible and putting fear into those who manage to survive by their fingernails.  Two pieces look at this issue, one in the Washington Post and one in the New York Times.  First, these highlights from the Times piece:

We got it wrong in 2016. We can get it right in 2018. There’s a far side to this American disgrace, a way to contain the damage, and it’s both utterly straightforward and entirely effective.

It’s called voting. And from now until Nov. 6, we must stay fanatically focused on that — on registering voters, turning them out, directing money to the right candidates, donating time in the right places.

The moral of the Helsinki freak show, the NATO tragicomedy and the children in cages near the border isn’t just that Donald Trump lacks any discernible conscience, real regard for this country or mature appreciation of history and our exalted part in it. It’s that this next election matters — immeasurably.

There’s no hyperbole in the frequent assertion that it’s the most important midterm in a generation. And those of us rightly appalled by this president must devote as much energy to giving Democrats control of at least one chamber of Congress — and the ability to restrain him — as to finding fresh methods for mocking him. A blimp in a diaper is a hoot. A legislature with its foot on his throat is an insurance policy.

My plea isn’t a partisan one, nor am I romanticizing the Democratic Party, which has problems galore. I’m recognizing that when it comes to babysitting this president, the Republican Party is a lost cause. 79 percent of Republicans approved of Trump’s sycophantic performance at the news conference with Vladimir Putin, while 85 percent deem the investigation of Russian intrusion into our elections a distraction. They bear less and less resemblance to the followers of a coherent ideology and more and more to the members of a cult. Congressional Republicans have decided that to cross Trump is to commit suicide. They need to be convinced that not crossing him is as fatal a course. That’s what a big-enough blue wave would do, and that’s why once loyal Republicans who cannot abide him — the columnist George Will, for one prominent example — have gone from chastising the Republican Party to cheerleading for the Democratic Party and urging Americans to support it in November. It’s the last resort.

I don’t believe, nor see any evidence, that more Americans wanted him as our president than wanted Hillary Clinton. But roughly 40 percent of Americans who were eligible to vote didn’t. Clinton was much preferred by the youngest voters, ages 18 to 29. But fewer than one in two of them cast a ballot. We can’t count on Robert Mueller, the special counsel, because we don’t know what he’ll ultimately report or whether, after the perfervid campaign to discredit him, it will stick to Trump. But elections do stick. Ask Hillary Clinton.

To blunt Trump’s attack on our democracy, we have to use our democracy. We can restore faith in it by showing faith in it. For all its corruptions and imperfections, it still gives us a power — through our ballots — that exceeds even the most power-hungry president’s.

The piece in the Post echos similar exhortations.  Get registered to vote and turn out and vote in November.  No excuses and no procrastinating.  Simply do it.  Here are highlights from the Post piece:

Last week it was Russia, Russia, Russia. This week began with a bombastic, all-caps screed about Iran — and, of course, more wailing about the purported “Mueller Witch Hunt.” In between was a stray tweet about football and the national anthem, just to stir the racial pot. President Trump is wagging the dog so hard, . . . Through it all, we must keep our eyes on the prize.

There is just one realistic way to constrain this lunatic administration and hold it accountable: Vote in November to snatch control of Congress away from the quisling Republicans and hand it to the Democrats.

If I sound like a broken record on this subject, too bad. You can shut me up by generating a gigantic midterm turnout and flipping at least the House. Otherwise, prepare to be reminded, repeatedly and perhaps obnoxiously, that I told you so.

It is possible that Mueller will reveal something so shocking that even House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will choose country over party. But it is not likely. 

Presciently, the framers of the Constitution gave Congress the power to check an erratic or power-mad president. But Congress has to be willing to use that power, and Republicans seem afraid to do so. We can only hope that Democrats are up to the task. 

Democrats can systematically level the playing field — once they achieve power. To do so, they need to win elections.  And to win elections, they need new faces, new ideas and a new attitude. Fortunately, all three are present — and must not be quashed.

There will be plenty of time to worry about the 2020 presidential election. Right now, the Democratic Party’s exclusive focus should be on registering new voters and ensuring that constituencies with a habit of voting only in presidential years — especially minorities and young people — come out in November.

Are you registered? Do you not just plan to vote but swear you will vote? Do you know where your polling place is? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you are not part of the solution. You’re part of the problem.

If you love this country and/or want to make it better, it is utterly crucial that you register to vote, if not currently registered, and actual get to the polls and cast your ballot in November. Vote Democrat whenever and wherever possible.  Republicans have betrayed this country and its future and must be driven from office. It is really that simple.

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.  

Do Democrats Have a Gentrification Problem?

One of the results of Donald Trump's take over of the Republican Party which now counts right wing Christian extremists and white supremacists as its core base is that educated whites, especially those who are college educated have fled the GOP.  Many of these exiles have joined into the Democrat Party, especially in East Coast and West Coast cities and large cities in the blue archipelago in between.  Some now argue that the Democrats risk alienating less educated whites - or at least those who haven't already rallied to Trump's embrace of Christofascists and  racism - and racial minorities as a result of the so-called gentrification of Democrat circles.  Among the reasons for this supposed intra-party strain is housing and income inequality and the increased importance of affluent whites as donors for the Democrats.  A column in the New York Times looks at this question which I personally has been somewhat overblown.  Here are excerpts:

The nation’s largest cities and metropolitan areas — home to a majority of Democratic voters — are at the forefront of the party’s most vexing racial, ethnic and class conflicts.
Last week, in an essay for CityLab, Richard Florida, a professor of urban planning at the University of Toronto, described how housing costs are driving the growing division between upwardly and downwardly mobile populations within Democratic ranks:

The rise in housing inequality brings us face to face with a central paradox of today’s increasingly urbanized form of capitalism. The clustering of talent, industry, investment, and other economic assets in small parts of cities and metropolitan areas is at once the main engine of economic growth and the biggest driver of inequality. The ability to buy and own housing, much more than income or any other source of wealth, is a significant factor in the growing divides between the economy’s winners and losers.

Allies on Election Day, the two wings of the Democratic Party are growing further estranged in other aspects of their lives, driven apart by the movement of advantaged and disadvantaged populations within and between cities. These demographic patterns exacerbate intraparty tensions.

Florida, writing with Benjamin Schneider of CityLab, expands on this point:

While the advantaged members of the knowledge, professional, and creative class have enough money left over even after paying the cost of housing in these cities, it’s the less-well-paid members of the service and working classes who get the short of end of the stick, with not nearly enough left over to afford the basic necessities of life. They are either pushed to the periphery of these places or pushed out altogether.

The competition for housing between rich and poor has become a critically important and divisive issue in urban America.

One of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country, San Francisco, is also one of the most Democratic sections of the country, (San Francisco County: Clinton 84.5 percent, Trump 9.2 percent). According to Romem, between 2005 and 2016, those moving into the San Francisco area had median household incomes averaging $12,639 a year more than the households of the families moving out, $70,015 to $57,376.

Conversely, in the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area (Clinton 53.9 percent, Trump 40.1 percent), families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 — $7,229 less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448.

Research that focuses on the way city neighborhoods are changing by income, race and ethnicity, while not specifically addressed to political consequences, helps us see the potential for conflict within the Democratic coalition.

In firmly Democratic neighborhoods across the country, the economic status of those moving in and out began to shift radically starting at the beginning of this century.

[T]he core of the nation’s cities is being taken over by members of the affluent wing of the Democratic Party at the expense of the less affluent, disproportionately minority wing of the party:

Central neighborhoods of most U.S. metropolitan areas experienced population decline 1980-2000 and population growth 2000-2010. 1980-2000 departures of residents without a college degree accounted for most of the decline while the return of college educated whites and the stabilization of neighborhood choices by less educated whites drove most of the post-2000 rebound.

. . . . neighborhoods surrounding cities’ central business districts have experienced a turnaround.

A similar pattern has emerged in the urban West. “Gentrification in the Bay Area, Portland and Seattle,” Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, told me in an email, “is definitely pushing disadvantaged populations out of old neighborhoods and into far-flung exurbs.”

Upscale liberal whites “who consider themselves committed to racial justice” tend to be “NIMBYists when it comes to their neighborhoods,” Cain wrote, “not living up to their affordable housing commitments and resisting apartment density around mass transportation stops.”

Michael Lind, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas in Austin, wrote in a prescient 2014 essay, “The Coming Realignment: Cities, Class, and Ideology After Social Conservatism,” that “high-density downtowns and suburban villages are coming to have an hourglass-shaped social structure.”

“Wealthy individuals” are at the top, according to Lind, with a “large luxury-service proletariat at the bottom.”  . . . Lind’s point raises a fundamental question for the Democratic Party: Can it find a way to hold its “hourglass-shaped” political coalition together?

[A] Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also — as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate — to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House.

In other words, Democratic strategists looking to piece together a 21st century political alliance have to consider the unintended consequences of taking the easy route: constructing a coalition explicitly dominated by elites.

I say easy because — compared to the average resident of the United States — the affluent are “vastly more engaged politically,” as Douglas S. Massey and Jacob S. Rugh, sociologists at Princeton and Brigham Young University, write in a forthcoming paper, “Isolation at the Extremes”: Whereas 99 percent of the wealthy voted in the 2012 presidential election and 60 percent gave money to a political candidate, the corresponding figures were just 78 percent and 18 percent for Americans in general. As a result, the affluent are far more likely to have their political preferences reflected in public policies than other Americans.

The hurdle facing those seeking to democratize elite domination of the Democratic Party is finding voters and donors who have a sustained interest in redistributive policies — and the minimum wage is only a small piece of this. Achieving that goal requires an economically coherent center-left political coalition. It also requires the ability to overcome the seemingly insuperable political divisions between the white working class and the African-American and Hispanic working classes — that elusive but essential multiracial — and now multiethnic — majority. Establishing that majority in a coherent political coalition is the only way in which the economic interests of those in the bottom half of the income distribution will be effectively addressed.

“The Canaries Are Dying”: Republicans Pick Their 2018 Poison

Donald Trump  - along with his chief sycophant, Mike Pence - continues to be a blight on America.  Outside the toxic core of the Republican Party base which is comprised of religious extremists and white supremacists, Der Trumpenführer remains unpopular and it would seem that he is doing all in his power to further alienate minorities, the LGBT community, those concerned about gun control or moral decency.  Indeed, the list goes on and on, leaving Republicans up for reelection forced to choose between embracing Trump to appease the ugliest elements of the party base or distancing themselves from him at the risk of those same ugly elements staying home on election day.  Meanwhile, Democrats have been raking up surprise wins in a number of traditionally red districts. A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the choices facing the GOP as the 2018 mid term elections approach.  Here are highlights: 

These races are like canaries in the coal mine,” Steve Israel, a former New York congressman and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told me last week. “For Republicans, the canaries are dying.”

The day before we spoke, Democrats had picked up a statehouse seat in a deep red district in Missouri, the latest in a series of electoral upsets the G.O.P. has suffered across the country in recent months.

Republican candidates are facing an impossible strategic choice, one that is to some degree independent of the president’s approval rating or any economic factor: tack toward Trump, and potentially lose the center, or forgo Trumpian red meat and watch the base stay home. “What you do when you appeal to that 33 percent is you peel off another 50 percent of the voters who will go, ‘Fuck you, I will crawl over broken glass to vote against you because you are a goddamn Donald Trumper,’” Rick Wilson, a G.O.P. strategist and vocal Never Trumper, told me, adding that without Clinton, Trump “has to stand on his own two feet.” And although Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, every Republican candidate this fall will be viewed as a Trump proxy. Meanwhile, Democrats will have the luxury of focusing their energy elsewhere. “They get to do that because they’re out of power. That’s a big advantage to them,” the Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me. “They let the national environment take care of it and they run on issues that are local and important.” Since Donald Trump took office, Democrats have flipped 36 statehouse seats from red to blue—a solid down payment on the the ones they lost under Obama—and are aiming to rob the G.O.P. of 24 House seats to secure the majority in the lower chamber. Holding the upper chamber, however, is a lighter lift for the G.O.P., which enjoys several structural advantages. “It’s a poor environment for us. I think the real question is, do we hang onto the Senate?” Terry Sullivan, a G.O.P. strategist who served as Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign manager, told me. “I don’t think it’s a guarantee. I know the math is in our favor, but I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that we do.” A string of Democratic upsets in conservative strongholds in special elections since the New Year have opened G.O.P. eyes to the challenge. Last month, Democrat Patty Schachtner secured a nine-point victory in a contentious battle for a state Senate seat in Wisconsin’s 10th District, which Mitt Romney and Trump won by 6 points and 17 points, respectively. Trygve Olson, a G.O.P. strategist who previously managed campaigns in the district, warned on Twitter, “A wave is coming . . . This a suburban-rural district. If the G.O.P. is losing WI-10 lookout!” Republicans were similarly rattled by the Democratic performance in two Missouri special election races. Democrat Mike Revis edged out his opponent by three points in Missouri’s 97th District, which Trump won by 28 points and Romney won by 12 points. Strategists have also noted a trio of elections for bellwether seats in Florida—the state’s 40th Senate District in Miami-Dade, the St. Petersburg’s mayoral race, and Florida’s 72nd House District—in which Democrats triumphed. “This is beyond a trend. The results are in. Also troubling for the G.O.P. is the rate at which Democrats are outraising Republicans. In the final quarter of 2017, more than 40 House Republicans were outraised by at least one, if not multiple, Democratic opponents. The fear is that the Republican Party will be forced to defend traditionally safe states, such as Texas where Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke outraised Senator Ted Cruz last quarter in the race for the former presidential hopeful’s Senate seat. The Democratic Party is also recruiting higher quality candidates than in past cycles. “One of the effects of the Trump administration’s negativity is that [there is] a record-breaking number of people who want to run for office . . . . And, Israel noted, whether it’s a result of higher quality Democrats or Trump fatigue, Republican incumbents are bailing. Thirty-five House Republicans have called it quits—roughly half of whom are vacating vulnerable seats—and three G.O.P. senators, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Orrin Hatch of Utah, have announced plans to retire. While the political environment may seem primed for a blue wave in the fall, anti-Trump sentiment alone won’t be enough to flip the House. And, fortunately for Republicans, Democrats have struggled to coalesce around a party message.          
For Republicans, meanwhile, the political calculus becomes whether Trump suppresses turnout, or whether voters—Republican women, in particular—ignore the current White House occupant and vote on other issues. “I think [suburban Republican women] voters are critical in order for Republicans to win their seats because it’s whether they turn out or not. It’s not that they’re going to necessarily vote for the Democrat, it’s whether they stay home,” Sullivan said. “It’s a demographic that Donald Trump did not do well with at all. We’ve got to.

The contours of any potential blue wave will begin to show over the summer. Wilson says Republican lawmakers will begin putting daylight between themselves and the president around August, while television-advertising buys closer to the election will reveal where both parties are focusing their efforts. “You will start to see some Republicans finally start to discover that they weren’t Donald Trump sycophants all along—they were actually strong, principled Republicans,” he said, the sarcasm palpable.

If More LGBT People Had Voted, Hillary Would Be President

I continually find it utterly mind numbing that a considerable percentage of LGBT individuals - the same goes for other minorities targeted by Republican policies - fail to register to vote and get themselves to the polls on election day or fail to vote via an absentee ballot.  With the GOP and its Christofascist and white supremacist base posing an existential threat of LGBT and minority rights, it is tantamount to a slow moving form of suicide to not register and vote.  New analysis suggests that had more LGBT citizens registered to vote and gone to the polls and cast votes against anti-LGBT Republicans, Hillary Clinton would be in the White House now and the LGBT community would not be facing an all out war against our civil rights. Of course, more Millennials getting registered to vote and voting against GOP policies harmful to their long term future could also have prevented the current national nightmare.  A piece in LGBT Nation looks at how the Trump/Pence scurge on America might have been avoided. Here are article excerpts:

Trevor Burgess was the first out gay man to lead a publicly traded bank in the United States. Now he’s turning his attention to a different numbers game.

Burgess has launched a digital voter registration platform for the LGBTQ community in a bid to increase the community’s involvement in the political arena. While big money organizations regularly endorse and stump for their chosen candidates, the real power is in the ballot box and getting people there to cast their votes.

“We’ve seen it time and time again, one vote can make all the difference. Our community has a duty to the next generation to make sure we are heard at the ballot box,” Burgess said in an emailed statement.

The #QTHEVOTE initiative aims to register as many queer voters as possible before the 2018 midterm elections.

Burgess points out that while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the last presidential election, her small losses in five states tipped the balance in favor of Donald Trump. With the results amounting to less than 1.5% of the vote in each state, the #QTHEVOTE initiative estimates that there were more unregistered LGBT voters in each state than the amount of votes that cost Clinton the election.“It’s simple math, analyzing data from Gallup and Project Vote, if every LGBT American had voted in 2016 we would not have our fundamental rights under attack today,” Burgess said. “We can and should be the most powerful and passionate voters in America.”

In Michigan alone, for example, Clinton lost by 13,000 votes but the group estimates there are over 87,000 unregistered LGBT voters.

The group will target potential voters through social media, online advertising and partnerships with other organizations.

The laziness and irresponsibility of  a minority is harming the entire LGBT community.  And as for gays who vote Republican, in my view it is long past time that they let go of their internalized homophobia, racism, and/or greed and stop voting against their own interests and those of our community.  They need to remember that there were wealthy and influential Jews in 1930's Germany that thought they were safe from the Nazi regime.  History proved them wrong and it cost many of them their lives.  No sane LGBT American, in my view, should ever vote Republican given the current toxic and hate driven nature of the GOP.   For those who don't like this assessment, I'm sorry, but you need to get your head out of your ass. 

2018 Women's Marches Need to Lead to Voter Turnout Surge

2018 crowds in Washington DC

On the anniversary of the inauguration of the most vile and unfit individual to ever occupy the White House, hundreds of thousands of protesters against Trump/Pence and the GOP turned out in cities across America.  The message they seek to send is lost on that individual and the congressional Republicans who have forced the federal government into shutdown through their high handed demands and noxious policies.   While it is encouraging to see that the resistance to the foul forces embodied by Trump/Pence and today's GOP is alive and well, the true test will be whether the energy can be successfully translated into a voter surge in November that will send countless Republicans to defeat at the polls at all levels of government.  Only a GOP electoral bloodbath can reset the direction of the nation.  In Virginia, Republican suffered a massive defeat last November, but it may take more than one election cycle to turn the corner - Virginia Senate Republicans are continuing their toxic policies and need to be decimated in the 2019 election cycle.  The Washington Post looks at some of the huge turnout across the country:

From Beijing to Buenos Aires, from Denver to Dallas, from California to the Carolinas, hundreds of thousands of activists once again took to the streets to protest the policies and presidency of Donald Trump. The number of participants might not have eclipsed the millions who marched in cities a year ago, but the “resistance” still brought out swarms of people from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

Saturday’s march made clear how a movement that began as a protest has evolved. A year of the Trump presidency, coupled with the galvanizing experience of the #MeToo moment, has made activists eager to leave a mark on the country’s political system. As a result, a key component of Saturday’s demonstrations was an effort to harness the enthusiasm behind the Women’s March and translate that into political sway at the polls this fall.

“Last year it was about hope. This year it’s about strength,” said Diane Costello, 67, a retired teacher and member of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that advocates for gun violence prevention, said as she marched through Manhattan.

“2018 is going to be a great year to get more progressive people elected,” said Julie Biel-Claussen, 59, executive director of the McHenry County Housing Authority in northwest Illinois, as she marched through a chilly Chicago morning.

Outside Washington, one of the biggest demonstrations on Saturday unfolded in New York.

Nearby, demonstrators gathered near the Lincoln Memorial and along the still-frozen reflecting pool on the National Mall. The group heard from speakers such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who told the crowd, “It is women who are holding our democracy together in these dangerous times.”

Although many protesters were returning for a second year, many came for the first time — some so young they had not been able to vote in the 2016 election.

Across the river in Morristown, N.J., a line of charter tour buses unloaded marchers behind the town hall, an overflow crowd that Police Chief Peter Demnitz estimated had reached 15,000 by 11:30 a.m., along with some counter protesters.

Organizers say they chose Morristown because of its Revolutionary War history as the winter encampment site of George Washington’s army. Last year’s event in Trenton drew an estimated 7,500.

By late morning, crowds in Chicago stretched from Jackson Street two blocks south to Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park, and clogged Congress Parkway to Michigan Avenue. Organizers claimed to have eclipsed the 250,000 marchers from last year, despite only 40,000 signing up online.

The majority of signs protesters carried through Chicago focused on the Republican Party and Trump. Among them: “Ikea has better cabinets,” “The GOP is responsible for making America hate again” and “GOP, OMG, WTF.”

All this energy needs to be harnessed and used to turn out a huge surge in the minority and Millennial vote in November.  If this happens, the marches will have really accomplished something lasting.  Virginia showed that it can be done.  P.S. Our new Governor joined the marchers in Richmond:

Elizabeth Melson (left) holds a banner with recently elected Governor Ralph Northam on their march through Carytown on Saturday, Jan. 20.

Trump Will Cost Conservatives in the Long Run

As Donald Trump and the Republican Party become increasingly toxic in the eyes of Millennials - now the largest generation of voters - the long term prospects for the GOP are dimming notwithstanding the propaganda one sees on Fox News - viewing it from time to time, it's an alternate universe with little connecting it to reality.  Republicans have bet the farm on aging, racist and evangelical voters, all of which are slowly dwindling in numbers.  The fluke of the 2016 election has been interpreted as a mandate even though only something just under 26% of registered voters cast ballots fro Trump/Pence.   As for GOP policies, the quest to take from the poor and working class and giving to the rich and a refusal to reauthorize the CHIP program for children's health insurance and the refusal to fix the DACA situation show the ice cold hearts that are the norm among Republicans despite protests to the contrary.  Actions speak louder than words and the younger generations are watching and judging based on GOP actions.  Erick Erickson, a right wing conservative with whom I mostly disagree has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the long term costs that will eventually over take the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Being a conservative who does not cheerlead President Trump can make one feel like the Prophet Amos. Amos went to Israel at a time of great prosperity to tell the nation God would destroy it for failing to care for its widows, its poor, its orphans and its refugees. Everyone looked around at the success, riches, and plenty and mocked the prophet. Like the people of Israel in a time of plenty, it is easy for conservatives right now to focus on the successes of Trump’s first year in office. But those on the right should consider the long-term costs.

Like many conservatives, I am delighted with a number of achievements in Trump’s first year. His administration has steered numerous good judges into the federal judiciary. . . . . Congress has passed a tax reform bill allowing U.S. businesses to repatriate tens of billions of dollars, give bonuses and pay raises to employees and invest in U.S. business infrastructure. These changes are inarguably good.

But there are many costs. Conservatives are reveling in their successes and increasing their immorality concurrently. The conservatives who 20 years ago wanted to chase President Bill Clinton out of town for having sex in the Oval Office are now trying to ignore the current president reportedly cheating on his current wife with a porn star. It has become far easier for conservatives to believe lies than believe truths, and it has become far easier for conservatives to turn a blind eye to injustices than speak up. More and more conservatives are modeling Trump’s bad behaviors. His vulgarity, his thin skin, his willingness to insult and demean, and his willingness to degrade his office are now reflected in conservative political leaders who increasingly see their goal as beating the other side instead of advancing ideas and sound public policy.

The party of small government is perfectly happy to grow government as long as Trump is spending the money. The party of limited government is perfectly happy to have a powerful chief executive as long as Trump is wielding the power. . . . . Trump now seems to revel in the idea of shutting down whole networks whose coverage he hates. Republicans who decried the left’s hostility to free speech in the Obama years now champion censorship of their opponents.

It is safe to say many of the president’s supporters have concluded that arguments and debates no longer work, so they will take what they can get as quickly as they can before the tide rolls in and washes this administration away. While perhaps an honest way of looking at things, those gains will be fleeting. The short-term gains of this administration, like those of the last, are being achieved by executive order and appointment. So too then can the gains of this administration be wiped out as easily as those of the last.

Conservatives have to worry about those in the middle who are persuadable. They have to worry about minority voters increasingly skeptical of the secular drift of the Democratic Party. They have to worry about younger voters. All of these people are not only increasingly alienated by Trump’s behavior but also by his defenders’ constant justifications for it.

At a time of growing hostility to people of faith in the United States and a collapse of morality, the evangelical embrace of Trump hurts their Christian witness and minimizes the number of sympathetic ears to their cause. It has become harder to make the case for family and morality as prominent evangelicals applaud and justify the bad behaviors of a thrice-married adulterer who believes immigrants should be judged based on their nation of origin, not the content of their own character.

Though many conservatives, myself included, have cheered the successes of this administration, most of them are easily reversible and, along the way, it will be harder and harder to separate the successes from the low character and behavior of the man whose name is connected to them. Conservatives may no longer care, but for most Americans, character still matters. At some point, those on the right will pay the price.

Republicans Fear Democrats Could Win Big in 2018

Back when I was a GOP activist years ago, the theme was that the purpose of the Party was to win elections and grow the base of support for the Party and its candidates.  Now, it increasingly appears that the only concern is to appease the most toxic and vile elements of the GOP base and to lie to everyone else about the foul nature of the base and the party agenda.  There seems to be little thought about building a long term sustainable base, hence the almost deliberate effort to alienate Millennials and as the pandering to aging Christian extremists and white supremacists continues to ramp up.  Now, some Republicans seem to be waking up to the reality that 2018 may be the year that the Republican Party and its short sighted leadership  reap the harvest of their misogyny.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing fear - which I must admit I savor since it is so deserved - that is taking hold among Republicans.  Here are highlights:

A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November.

The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a “sobering” slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months, White House officials said.

But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.

And by the end of the week, many Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the president after he spoke of “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting . . . . Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), a rising star in the party who faces a strong Democratic challenge this year, quickly denounced Trump for apparently denigrating Haiti, the birthplace of both her parents. . . .

In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House “and lost it big,” in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats.

Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map . . . . But other indicators are clearly flashing GOP warning signs. Democrats have benefited from significant recruitment advantages — there are at least a half dozen former Army Rangers and Navy SEALs running as Democrats this year, for example — as Republicans struggle to convince incumbents to run for reelection.

At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November . . . . The president’s own job approval, a traditional harbinger of his party’s midterm performance, is at record lows as he approaches a year in office, according to Gallup. Polls asking which party Americans want to see control Congress in 2019 show a double-digit advantage for Democrats.

“When the wave comes, it’s always underestimated in the polls,” said a conservative political strategist who has met with GOP candidates. “That is the reason that Republicans are ducking for cover.”

“The monthly metrics are bad, from the generic ballot to the Republican retirements to the number of Democratic recruits with money,” said one Republican political consultant . . .  the major metrics point to us losing at least one house of Congress.”

Republicans have struggled to narrow their Senate fields, with big and sometimes-nasty primary fights shaping up in Indiana, Montana and Arizona. The recent announcement that former Phoenix-area sheriff Joe Arpaio would run for the Senate has raised some Republican concerns about holding onto the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.).

Trump continually reminds advisers that he remains popular in a number of states, including West Virginia, Montana and North Dakota, according to aides. But slow fundraising and anemic candidate recruitment have caused tensions between the White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, White House advisers said.

White House officials said they expect a full plunge in upcoming weeks into a special House race in Pennsylvania, with trips from Trump, Vice President Pence and Cabinet members. The race has taken on a larger-than-life role in the White House because officials want to stem the tide of the losses they suffered last year in Virginia and Alabama.

And they have begun exploring ways to inject “wedge issues” that could trouble Democrats in more conservative states. Those could include immigration votes, requirements for welfare, sanctuary-city reform and revisions to the guest-worker program.

Despite all that, political handicappers have gradually increased the odds that Democrats will retake the House, where they need to pick up 24 seats to do so. Democrats must net two seats to take control of the Senate, a harder task

Republican strategists said they want to spend the next eight months talking about the economy. . . . But maintaining that message can be a challenge, as the president showed this week when his vulgar comments about some developing countries sparked international outrage.

Ed Gillespie tried using "wedge issues" in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race (as did his GOP ticket mates) and it did not end well.  Indeed, it likely increased the Democrat turn out among minorities and Millennials.  Let's hope that effort fails again.