Democratic Candidates Veer Left, Ignoring Winning 2018 Strategy

Having been involved in both the GOP and the Democrat parties over the last three decades, I often think that at various times, each party has shown itself to be its own worse enemy.  Now, in the lead up to the 2020 presidential and federal elections, Democrat candidates seem to be quickly becoming a potential threat to defeating Donald Trump and holding the House of Representatives and gaining control of the U.S. Senate.  As a prior post noted, some are jumping on board the reparations bandwagon which I perceive to be an absolute loser in the 2020 general election.  Similarly, many of the would be presidential nominees are lurching leftward seemingly oblivious to the realities that (i) one most be able to win the general election, not just the primary, and (ii) voters - and especially GOP attack ads - will not allow far left statements and positions to go forgotten come the 2020 general election.  What plays with the so-called liberal elites doesn't play well in key states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at what drives me to distraction as candidates pander to extreme elements of the Democrat base with no thought to what will happen once the winner of the primary contest is selected.  Here are highlights:

With a full embrace of liberal positions on hot-button issues from immigration to health care, taxes and abortion, the Democratic presidential field has effectively abandoned the strategy that propelled the party to a landslide victory in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats flipped 43 GOP House seats and won 31 districts that Trump carried in 2016. The sharp shift to the left, laid bare over the course of two nights last week on the Miami debate stage, has scrambled the country’s political dynamics headed into a 2020 campaign in which Democrats hope the 2018 results, combined with Trump’s relatively low approval ratings, would put them in a strong position to retake the White House.

Last year’s midterm strategy focused on what party leaders viewed as a sensibly moderate message designed to attract centrist voters. In that campaign, Democratic congressional candidates denounced GOP tax increases for the middle class in Trump’s 2017 tax cut and blasted Republican plans to take away federal protections for preexisting conditions in private insurance.

But many of the leading Democratic presidential candidates are running on a Medicare-for-all plan that would replace private insurance entirely for most Americans and raise middle class taxes to pay for it. Several of the candidates support plans to not just increase background checks for guns but buy back guns already in circulation. They are also elevating social issues Trump has embraced politically in the past like police misconduct, transgender rights and immigration.

“These are not mainstream proposals. Think about it. They are way to the left of Barack Obama,” said Jim McLaughlin, a pollster working on Trump’s reelection campaign. “They are talking about middle class and small business tax increases, no restrictions on abortion. How do you think these things are going over in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio?”

Democratic strategists from the 2018 campaign agree there is a danger.

“We should not be deploying strategies right now that make the national battlefield smaller,” said Dan Sena, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. His research on the electorate after Trump’s 2016 win concluded it was a mistake to get into a simple base turnout fight against Trump, who has proved remarkably successful at motivating non-college educated white voters to go to the polls.

In the short term, the new Democratic messaging is aimed less at suburban swing voters in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan than at liberal donors clustered in coastal cities and nonwhite voters in the party’s base, who tend to be more liberal and hold significant sway over the nominating fight.

Last year’s midterm strategy focused on what party leaders viewed as a sensibly moderate message designed to attract centrist voters. In that campaign, Democratic congressional candidates denounced GOP tax increases for the middle class in Trump’s 2017 tax cut and blasted Republican plans to take away federal protections for preexisting conditions in private insurance.

But it is not clear how dramatically the candidates plan to pivot if they do win the nomination, and whether they will be successful. Many reject the argument that more liberal policies will alienate needed voters. They point to Trump’s inability to use immigration fears of migrant caravans to stop a Democratic wave in 2018.

Warren and Sanders, in particular, have cast Trump as a symptom of broader rot in the American political system, not the root cause. The larger problem can only be fixed, they argue, with dramatic policy changes that shift resources from the wealthy, including new taxes on Wall Street, corporate profits or the richest Americans. They contend that message will ultimately resonate with many of the same working-class white voters who supported Trump in 2016.

[S]ome veterans of Obama’s 2012 reelection also chimed in with concern, not just for the coming election but for the prospect of governing, even if Democrats recapture the Senate and hold the House.

“I wonder if we’re solving a problem that is not there and spending the vast majority of our political capital on it,” said Obama’s former campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt, who is unaffiliated in the 2020 race. “Expanding upon and improving Obamacare accomplishes the vast majority of goals that Democrats are looking for.”

Polling shows that single payer health care remains a confounding idea for many Americans. Recent Kaiser Family Foundation polls have found that 56 percent of the nation favors the Medicare-for-all, compared to 74 percent of Americans who support expanded Medicare as an option for younger Americans in addition to private insurance.
When the same people were told that a Medicare-for-all plan would raise taxes and eliminate private health insurance, support fell to 37 percent.

Rick Tyler, a conservative Republican strategist who has become a vocal critic of Trump, said he believes Democrats are playing right into Trump’s hands.

“They are not talking to the blue collar workers that I understand that vote in Pennsylvania and Michigan,” Tyler said. “Are they seriously capable of choosing a nominee who is going to beat Donald Trump? Right now, I have my doubts.”

Anti-Gay House of Delegates Speaker Cox to Be Targeted in November Elections

Anti-gay Speaker Kirkland Cox

The Washington Post is reporting that the, in my view, utterly toothless Equality Virginia ("EV"), is planning on targeting House Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) and Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) for defeat in November after Virginia Republicans yet again killed all non-discrimination protections for LGBT Virginians.  Yes, Cox and Gilbert need to be defeated, but don't hold your breath waiting for EV to pull it off, especially if the Democrats do not field top quality candidates to oppose them.  Meanwhile, if EV had placed more focus on securing passage of these bills and less time attacking Governor Northam, the strongest ally EV has ever had in the governor's mansion, and riling up its own donor base in the process, perhaps the bills might have succeeded this legislative session. EV also needs to grasp that with Republicans, bipartisanship doesn't work.  They only understand the threat of electoral defeat,  

Democrats will be headed into the November elections suffering from self-inflicted wounds, thanks to national Democrats who butted into Virginia's affairs and self-aggrandizing organizations like the Human Rights Campaign which I suspect talked EV into attacking Northam.  Personally, I've had enough and I have stopped my monthly donations to EV and will likely end up going to the Commonwealth Dinner in April - we had already bought tickets before EV's attacks on Northam - solely so the husband and I can give the EV board members and Democrat elected officials in attendance a piece of our minds face to face.  Here are excerpts from the Post story:

Gay and transgender activists, fed up with four consecutive defeats in trying to ban discrimination in housing and government employment, say they will now turn to the ballot box, targeting GOP leaders who have failed to support them. “No one has taken a more bipartisan approach than we have,” said James Parrish, executive director of Equality Virginia, which lobbied for the bills that passed the Senate but died in a House subcommittee. . . . The only solution we see now is new leadership.”

State Republicans hold a two-seat majority in the Senate and a three-seat majority in the House, with one seat open for a special election in a district previously held by a Democrat. A federal court approved a new redistricting map Thursday that is expected to favor Democrats.

Equality Virginia says it will work to unseat House Speaker Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) and Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) because it blames those leaders for blocking a full committee hearing of the bills.

The bills would have prohibited discrimination in all state and local government jobs on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and barred housing discrimination against people in those same groups, with exceptions for rentals in single-family homes, property owned by religious organizations or private clubs.

Advocates thought they had a better-than-average chance for passage this year given the Republicans’ determination to try to win back seats in November and attract suburban swing voters, who are more open to supporting gay and transgender people than some constituencies within the Republican Party.

“We don’t live in 1980 anymore, and it’s time for us to get past this and not discriminate against a community when most people don’t have a problem with this community,” Del. Roxann L. Robinson (R-Chesterfield), who sponsored the legislation, said earlier this year.

Conservative groups, including the Virginia Catholic Conference and the Family Foundation [Virginia's leading hate group], opposed the effort. . . . “Once again, the speaker and majority leader said ‘nope, under our watch this is not going to happen,’ ” Parrish said.

Cox “is only the speaker because his name was drawn out of a bowl,” he said, referring to how state officials broke a tied legislative race and handed control of the House of Delegates to Republicans. “He did not have a mandate . . . Now we will pivot, look at the new maps. Speaker Cox is in a very different district this year. That will be a priority of ours.”

Trump's Greatest Blunder

Outwardly Donald Trump has made one blunder after another since January, 2017, but most were not blunders if he is indeed a Russian asset.  Rather, they have all been pieces in the agenda of weakening the USA and the West - e.g., disrupting NATO, trade wars that harm the US economy, and pushing Russian talking points - much to Vladimir Putin's delight.  Some have had the added benefit of thrilling the white supremacists and Christian extremists who now comprise the shrunken base of the  Republican Party.  His game of chicken over his border wall - perhaps he saw it as a monument to himself - and the government shutdown, however, was just plain stupid given the opposition it faced from a strong majority of Americans, 71% of whom viewed the wall as not worth the economic havoc of the shutdown. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Trump's caving happened the same day that air traffic controllers began to cancel flights on the East coast.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the stupidity of Trump's blunder and self-inflicted harm - harm that also extends to the worthless GOP.  Here are excerpts:

There is no way around it: President Trump lost.  He lost his gamble on shutting down the government. And though he will pretend otherwise, he has also lost his grandiose plan to build a border wall that most of the country does not want.

Trump walked away with nothing more than an assurance from congressional Democrats that they will sit down with Republicans for three weeks and try to come up with a border security plan that both parties can agree upon. There’s a reasonable chance they will come up with a solid proposal. But there’s just as much likelihood that Trump’s dream for a wall will die a quiet death there.

Nonetheless, this is the consequence of Trump’s obsession with satisfying the red-hatted, nativist throngs who chanted “build the wall” at so many of his rallies.

Not only do 6 in 10 Americans now disapprove of the job that [Trump] the president is doing, but his party has also lost the 10-point edge it once held over the Democrats on the question of which party to trust on border security, according to a fresh Post-ABC News poll.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has shown that she better than Trump understands the art of the deal in Washington. She is the one who succeeded in building a wall — and Trump ran right into it.

Now, as Trump surveys the shambles that his greatest blunder has made of his presidency, the question is whether he and the Republicans learned anything from the five-week calamity that they caused. Will his party be as willing to follow him the next time he leads them toward the edge of a cliff?

If there is even a thin silver lining to the travesty of the longest-ever government shutdown, it is this: The Republicans’ slander of public servants has been exposed for what it is. . . . By its final day, there was turmoil at airports, slowdowns at the Internal Revenue Service and countless individual stories of federal workers who were forced to find sustenance at food pantries and face agonizing choices between whether to pay for heat or medicine this month.

Republicans have long portrayed them [government employees] as the enemies of reform and efficiency. But Trump targeted them as no one did before. From his earliest months in office, he and his allies have portrayed those who dedicate their lives to serving their country as the corrupt, subversive “deep state” — the bottom-feeders of a swamp in need of draining.

Where a little empathy might have been in order as the shutdown continued, Trump’s team revealed a callousness that would have made Marie Antoinette blush.

So it was noticeable that when Trump made his Rose Garden announcement Friday that the government was opening again, he began it by thanking federal workers who had displayed “extraordinary devotion in the face of this recent hardship. You are fantastic people. You are incredible patriots.” . . . . Which is why they deserve much better than a chief executive who would wager so recklessly with their lives and their livelihoods.

The GOP's Limited Options to Destroy Trumpism

For decades now the so-called GOP establishment held its nose and closed its eyes as it cynically and short shortsightedly welcomed one ugly constituency into the party base, always believing that the establishment could control the unwashed welcomed in in order to win short term electoral victories.  First came the Christofascists, next the white supremacist, and now the Al-Right and downright insane. The end result is the presidency of Der  Trumpenführer and a party base where truth, knowledge and objective facts are ignored - indeed, they are condemned, both by the occupant of the White House and the knuckle draggers of the base.  How this cancer is removed without the death of the GOP itself is a difficult question, with no easy solutions.  A column in the Washington Post looks at  some of the limited options.  Here are column highlights:

Nearly 150 days into the Trump era, no non-delusional conservative can be happy with the direction of events or pleased with the options going forward.

President Trump is remarkably unpopular, particularly with the young (among whom his approval is underwater by a remarkable 48 percentage points in one poll). And the reasons have little to do with elitism or media bias.

Trump has been ruled by compulsions, obsessions and vindictiveness, expressed nearly daily on Twitter. He has demonstrated an egotism that borders on solipsism. His political skills as president have been close to nonexistent. His White House is divided, incompetent and chaotic, and key administration jobs remain unfilled. His legislative agenda has gone nowhere. He has told constant, childish, refuted, uncorrected lies, and demanded and habituated deception among his underlings. He has humiliated and undercut his staff while requiring and rewarding flattery. He has promoted self-serving conspiracy theories. He has displayed pathetic, even frightening, ignorance on policy matters foreign and domestic. 

Trump has made consistent appeals to prejudice based on religion and ethnicity, and associated the Republican Party with bias. He has stoked tribal hostilities. He has carelessly fractured our national unity. He has attempted to undermine respect for any institution that opposes or limits him — be it the responsible press, the courts or the intelligence community. He has invited criminal investigation through his secrecy and carelessness. He has publicly attempted to intimidate law enforcement. He has systematically alarmed our allies and given comfort to authoritarians.

For many Republicans and conservatives, there is apparently no last straw, with offenses mounting bale by bale. . . . He is the general, so shut up and salute. What, after all, is the conservative endgame other than Trump’s success?

[H]ope for a new and improved Trump deteriorates into unreason. The idea that an alliance with Trump will end anywhere but disaster is a delusion. . . . . Both individuals and the Republican Party are being corrupted and stained by their embrace of Trump. The endgame of accommodation is to be morally and politically discredited. Those committed to this approach warn of national decline — and are practically assisting it. They warn of decadence — and provide refreshments at the orgy.

So what is the proper objective for Republicans and conservatives? It is the defeat of Trumpism, preferably without the destruction of the GOP itself. 

Creating a conservative third party — as some have proposed — would have the effect of delivering national victories to a uniformly liberal and unreformed Democratic Party. A bad idea.

A primary challenge to Trump in the 2020 presidential election is more attractive, but very much an outside shot. An unlikely idea.

It is possible — if Democrats take the House in 2018 — that impeachment will ripen into a serious movement, . . . . A theoretical idea.

A Democratic victory in the 2020 election would represent the defeat of Trumpism and might be a prelude to Republican reform. But Democrats seem to be viewing Trump’s troubles as an opportunity to plunge leftward with a more frankly socialistic and culturally liberal message.

Or Republicans and conservatives could just try to outlast Trump — closing the shutters and waiting for the hurricane to pass — while rooting for the success of a strong bench of rising 40-something leaders . . . .  This may be the most practical approach but risks eight years of ideological entrenchment by Trumpism, along with massive damage to the Republican brand. A complacent idea.

Whatever option is chosen, it will not be easy or pretty. And any comfort for Republicans will be cold because they brought this fate on themselves and the country.

The last sentence is telling - all of this was self-inflicted.  The country is the real loser because of GOP irresponsibility.

Trump Supporter Could Learn From Britain's Self-Inflicted Wounds

Many British voters who supported the Breixt vote to have the United Kingdom exit the European Union acted from with motivations akin to those of Trump voters: racism, anti-immigrant animus, religious based hatred, the embrace of ignorance, and fear of modernity and globalization.  Now, many of these voters are having second thoughts about their vote and may yet rue the consequences of their vote.  Not only is Scotland pushing to now have a vote to leave the UK so that it can remain in the European Union as an independent nation, but today German Chancellor, Angela Merkel signaled that the trade consequences of the Brexit vote could wreak havoc on the United Kingdom's international trade.  Falling for appeals to racism, religious based animus, and a false sense of superiority can bring about severe financial consequences as I believe many Trump voters will ultimately learn.  The Independent looks at today's action by Merkel which will without a doubt likely harm Britain's economy and, in my view, deservedly so.  Here are highlights:

Angela Merkel has dealt an instant blow to Theresa May's plan for Brexit by rejecting the PM's plan for trade talks to take place at the same time as Article 50 secession negotiations.

Britain will be put into the slow lane for discussions about any future trade deal with the EU following an intervention by the German Chancellor, who intervened just hours after the UK invoked Article 50.

Ms May had called for talks on a future comprehensive trade deal between the EU and UK to take place at the same time as the so-called 'Article 50' talks on how Britain will exit the bloc.

Ms Merkel today however said that talks on British divorce terms would take place first, after which talks on a future relationship would "hopefully soon" take place. The intervention could potentially make the Brexit process significantly more arduous for the UK.

The German Chancellor told reporters in Berlin: "The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship... and only when this question is dealt with, can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship."

Ms Merkel's unpicking of Ms May's plan also comes as European Parliament chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt explicitly ruled out giving the UK a better trade deal in exchange for better security or defence arrangements. The Prime Minister had also repeatedly and explicitly linked "economic and security cooperation" in her Article 50 letter.

If the German leader gets her way Britain might not see a final comprehensive trade with with the EU for years, and almost certainly not before the next general election in 2020. The UK would also likely have to rely on a transitional arrangement with the bloc after it leaves but before a separate trade deal can be negotiated. 

The German Chancellor pledged that she would do all she could to make sure the talks were “fair and constructive” and said she hoped British negotiators would do the same.

Britain now has two years to negotiate a divorce deal with the European Union, which will cover issues such as whether Britain owes the bloc any money.

If Trump voters in West Virginia and Kentucky can pry themselves away from Fox News, they might like to read up on what the British counterparts have likely doe to themselves.

The RNC: A Bunch of Suckers and Sellouts

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is off the GOP reservation again, this time writing a column that places the blame for Donald Trump's rise and the metastasizing cancer within the Republican Party at the feet of the Republican National Committee ("RNC") which sold out to Trump or allowed themselves to be suckered and played for fools.  The indictment, while certainly true, also applies far down the GOP's party structure and began years ago when those who should never have been elected to local party committees or allowed to win nominations were welcomed instead of being firmly rejected if not openly condemned.  Trump is merely the logical extension of a failure of leadership that applies up and down the party hierarchy.  Short turn opportunism and a refusal to reject extremists of all stripes - and a refusal to face objective reality - are what set the GOP on its march to insanity.  Here are column highlights:

Perhaps the strongest indicator that Trump will lose is his own premature distribution of blame. As far as he is concerned, defeat couldn’t be his fault.

The obvious truth is that Trump never should have been the Republican nominee, as even Trump probably would admit. When he descended the escalator to announce his candidacy, he was at just 1 percent — a barely perceptible speck on the continuum of Republican candidates.

He was ignored — or at least not taken seriously — by nearly everyone for good reason. And when he started spouting hot rhetoric, few in the GOP leadership worried much since he’d surely be moving along any day. This was not to be, in part because, as Trump commented laughing to a friend, who told me: “I had no idea it would be so easy.”

Translation: Once he realized he was dealing with a bunch of suckers, he continued to play them. What fun — and, voila.

The suckers of whom he was speaking are the party leadership, specifically: Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and RNC communications director Sean Spicer. If these names don’t ring a bell, congratulations, you don’t watch TV. Because Priebus, when not jetting around with Trump on his gold-plated private plane, and Spicer are on one talk show or another nearly every time you look at a cable news screen. They’ve worn more makeup the past year than most women do in a lifetime.

They’re the elephants in the green room, in other words. Everyone sees them clearly but manages to avoid speaking openly of the obvious — that Priebus has presided over the ruin of the Republican Party. Why isn’t he being held accountable? Why isn’t he being called to the mat for allowing Trump’s rise, which might not have been possible had the party chair done his job?

Why was everyone willing to stand by and watch this reality-TV character take charge?

“Because [Priebus] is their boy,” a disgruntled top Republican told me. “He’s given them what they wanted. He’s kept the money flowing.”

The RNC gang sold out. When Trump launched his campaign by ranting about undocumented Mexicans as murderers and rapists, the party leadership should have shouted him down. Priebus should have summoned Trump to Washington and explained how things were going to go. He might have handed Trump the GOP’s autopsy report from the 2012 election and referred him to the “Hispanics” section of the chapter on cultivating “Demographic Partners,” saying: This is what you’re going to do from now on.

Would Trump have agreed? Probably not. But then Priebus should have said: Well, then, I’ll have to break you down during the primaries. At every opportunity, Priebus should have made the case that Trump, who eventually alienated not just Hispanics but also African Americans and women, doesn’t represent the Republican Party. Instead, Priebus and others feared a base that hadn’t formed around Trump yet and, by their inaction, contributed to Trump’s success.

By letting Trump rise to the top, as oil slicks tend to, Priebus has left the party in such a gelatinous mess Republicans will need a hazmat team to clean it up. And for this, he’d like to serve a third term?

GOP Does Clinton Favor with FBI Director Comey Hearings

One would thing that House Republicans would have learned a lesson from the Benghazi hearings where they grilled Hillary Clinton for 11 hours and allowed Clinton to leave as the victory.  Such lessons happen routinely in the real world, but nowadays, Republicans do not live in the real world. Instead, conspiracy theories run amok and, thanks to Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, and other defacto Republican news outlets, help members of the GOP to live in a fantasy world that is detached from objective reality.  Today's interrogation of FBI Director James Comey was a case in point where Republican blindness and Clinton derangement syndrome drove House Republicans to hand a favor to Hillary Clinton.   While some of Comey's remarks on Tuesday were outwardly damaging to Clinton, today's hearing circus allowed Comey to walk back some of what were at first glance gifts to the GOP.  MSNBC looks at the House Republican's self-inflicted wounds.  Here are highlights:

GOP lawmakers had clearly identified protagonists and antagonists. Just as importantly, they’d convinced much of the media that their tale was as important as it was riveting. Today, however, Republicans lost the plot. On Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey announced that while Hillary Clinton’s email server protocols were careless, no sane prosecutor would find her actions worthy of an indictment. House Republicans, who were counting on an indictment to improve the GOP’s election chances, were apoplectic and hastily threw together a hearing, forcing Comey to go to Capitol Hill to explain himself. What Republicans didn’t realize is the degree to which they were doing Clinton and Democrats a favor. NBC News reported on the proceedings:

FBI director James Comey stuck to his guns Thursday and defended his decision not to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. Summoned to appear before the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Comey insisted again that Clinton “did not break the law” and that there was not enough evidence to charge her with a crime. “That’s just the way it is,” Comey said.

I honestly have no idea what Republicans thought they were going to achieve with this spectacle. Did GOP lawmakers expect Comey to declare, “Now that you’ve yelled at me for a few hours, I’ve changed my mind and now support criminal charges against Clinton”? Before the hearing Republicans had a series of fairly specific talking points: Clinton lied to the FBI; she created a national security threat; she plays by a different set of rules than everyone else. But instead of simply repeating those talking points, GOP lawmakers invited the FBI director – a lifelong Republican, whom GOP officials have repeatedly praised for his honesty – to testify about how wrong the party’s arguments are. “We have no basis to believe she lied to the FBI,” Comey said. Asked about Clinton benefiting from a different set of rules, he responded, “It’s not true.” Asked about classified emails, Comey said there were only three messages – each of which were not properly marked classified when she received them. In other words, congressional Republicans had the bright idea of holding a hearing with a credible witness who was perfectly happy to explain to them how wrong they are. Making matters worse, GOP lawmakers forgot who the villains and heroes were supposed to be in their story. Republicans were supposed to make Clinton the scoundrel of this narrative, but today, they decided instead to go after the director of the FBI – because he had the audacity to say a Democrat didn’t commit a crime.

Now the story is Comey vs. Republicans – GOP lawmakers had some baseless allegations and reckless conspiracy theories, some of which targeted Comey directly, and they asked the FBI director to give testimony knocking down each of their bad arguments. For their part, Democrats suddenly found themselves keeping up with Republican attempts to change the subject – talking about Clinton’s emails is suddenly less important than talking about Comey’s credibility and reliability. When congressional Republicans take stock this evening and reflect on their failed gambit, one wonders whether they’ll appreciate the fact that this Comey hearing was a bad plan, executed poorly. The last time Democrats were this pleased with GOP hearing, it was Clinton’s 11-hour Benghazi Committee testimony – in which Republicans made fools of themselves and their conspiracy theories, and Clinton turned her entire presidential campaign around. It helps sometimes to be blessed with incompetent enemies.

Brexit Economic Disaster Ought to Be Cautionary Note to Trump Supporters

There are significant parallels between British voters who favored leaving the European Union and the low information, low education supporters rallying to Donald Trump's sound bit of >Make America Great Again."  Trump, of course has no specifics as to how he would deliver on the campaign promise.   Neither did those advocating Britain's exit from the European Union.  Like Trump they offered platitudes and sound bites and now that the leave vote has prevailed, they are already changing their tune on what they had promised.  Meanwhile, a slow moving catastrophe is overtaking the British economy thereby showing that feeling good about one's self or wanting "change" doesn't necessarily translate into something good or viable.  Will Trump supporters be chastened by what is happening to Europe?  Probably not.  Their xenophobia, racism and fantasies about restoring a lost past will likely overwhelm rational thinking.  The New York Times looks at some of what this "feel good vote" is wreaking on Great Britain.  Here are excerpts:

A few weeks before Britons voted on whether to remain part of the European Union, Michael Gove, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, was asked why he should be trusted over the overwhelming number of economists and international authorities who opposed Brexit. “People in this country have had enough of experts,” he replied.

Experts are, of course, known to make mistakes. But in this case, the people who voted for Brexit will pay a big price for ignoring economic expertise. The harmful effects of this vote are both immediate and lasting.

Britons are already worse off. The pound has — so far — plunged by nearly 9 percent against the dollar, slashing the value of British assets, with higher import prices likely to follow. The stock market has also taken a hit. The prices of property, most British people’s main asset, are almost certain to fall, too. While Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has already pledged 250 billion pounds (about $345 billion) to support the financial system and has said he could offer more if necessary, central bankers cannot protect against an enduring economic shock.

Now, a country renowned for its political and legal stability is descending into chaos. The future prime minister is unknown, as is the direction his or her policies will take. The favorite to replace David Cameron, Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London who opportunistically campaigned for Brexit, styles himself as pro-market and pro-globalization, but in the lead-up to the vote he said he supports curbs on European Union migration, tariffs on Chinese steel and higher public spending. The future terms on which Britain will trade with both the European Union and all the countries with which it has negotiated trade deals on Britain’s behalf are uncertain. Domestic regulations on everything from finance to environmental protection may change.

All that uncertainty is amplified by the prospect of a second referendum on Scottish independence, which may this time be won.

The resulting downturn will cause the government’s budget deficit, already large, to swell. The pound’s depreciation, which might have been expected to boost exports, is unlikely to do much to cushion the blow. Its huge decline in 2008 failed to boost exports and Brexit will dent them.

This unpredictable situation will not be brief. Once triggered, the formal process of leaving the European Union is supposed to take two years. But extricating the union’s second-biggest economy from 43 years of European Union legislation is a daunting task.
Brexit’s supporters are deluded when they argue that Britain could cherry pick what it likes about the European Union and discard the rest. Since exports to the European Union (13 percent of G.D.P. in 2014) matter much more to Britain than exports to Britain (3 percent of G.D.P. in 2014) do to the European Union, the European Union will call the shots. Other governments have every incentive to be tough, both to steal a competitive advantage and to deter others from following Britain out the door.

The young, the higher educated and city dwellers, the most dynamic members of Britain’s economy, voted to Remain. They were outvoted by the old, the less educated and non-urban English, who often rely on taxpayer largess. With economic opportunities stunted, everyone will suffer for Leave voters wrongly blaming hard-working, taxpaying European migrants for everything they dislike about modern Britain and wrongly trusting economic charlatans like Mr. Gove.

Again, look at the British voters who voted to Leave and you see mirror images of Donald Trump's base.  They seek to do the same damage to America that the proponents of Leave have inflicted on Britain.  And, like Gove, Trump is a charlatan. 

Good News: The Whole Other Trump Disaster

Yes, there is some good news on the 2016 campaign front which boils down to Donald Trumps refusal to date to set up his own team on the ground.  While his lack of a ground game may have worked with the base of support that he was courting during the GOP nomination process, many in the Republican Party are fearful that it will not work in the general election.   Better news yet is that Trumps approach could be a drag on down ticket GOP candidates.   Yes, by some fluke Trump's approach might work, but it ignores the usual need to get every possible voter out to the polls on election day.  A column in Talking Points Memo looks at this situation.  Here are highlights:

It's hard not to fixate on Donald Trump's string of galactic unforced errors on the campaign trail. But there's a whole different story playing out on the campaign mechanics front - and one that has Republicans rightly worried. According to this new story out from AP, the Trump campaign estimates that it currently has a nationwide field staff of 30 people. 30. This in a country with 50 states.

It is difficult to overstate just how many crazy notions are embedded in this package. No presidential campaign can really outsource its field operation to the party. That just means that the party has to build a whole additional field staff in addition to the one its already building (set aside not being able to control its strategy, quality of work etc.) That's not possible, or at least not possible to do well. The way this works in the modern campaign is that the presidential campaign has its field operation, the party has an additional field operation and they are coordinated together and in some ways integrated together in the fall for maximal impact.

Down ticket races are heavily, heavily dependent on these two massive field operations; they get pulled along with the wave of turnout these and other campaign committees coordinate.

Trump seems to have decided he's just not going to have one. Maybe he'll decide that's ridiculous and he wants to build on after all. But you can't just build a campaign operation overnight. And Trump is way, way behind.

It will have a substantial impact beyond the presidential contest itself. And that is assuming Trump gets into gear now and starts building. But that assumption itself seems highly, highly questionable.

The Ugliness of Donald Trump's Poor White Supporters

But for the threat it poses to the country as a whole, it would almost be entertaining to watch the civil war that is consuming the Republican Party.   Moreover, some of us would  - and do - tell the GOP leadership that all of the woe they perceive themselves to be facing in the form of Donald Trump's candidacy is a self-created problem.  For years the GOP leadership cynically pander to and inflamed the hate and misogyny of elements of the party base.  Worse yet, they welcomed the Christofascists, white supremacists and those who embraced ignorance into the party ranks and, in far too many instances, voted them onto city and county committees (I recall a local Christian Coalition leader being voted onto the Virginia Beach city committee).  Now, this rabble, if you will, is out of control  and the GOP elites are horrified at what they have wrought, although they seek to place blame on anyone but themselves.  More interestingly, they are now turning on and attacking those who they previously sought to recruit and coddle through efforts to encourage a feeling of victim hood.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights: 

Conservatives who once derided upscale liberals as latte-sipping losers now burst with contempt for the lower-income followers of Donald J. Trump.

These blue-collar white Republicans, a mainstay of the conservative coalition for decades, are now vilified by their former right-wing allies as a “non-Christian” force “in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture,” corrupted by the same “sense of entitlement” that Democratic minorities were formerly accused of.

Kevin Williamson, a columnist for National Review, initiated the most recent escalation of this particular Republican-against-Republican power struggle. In a March 13 essay, “The Father-Führer,” Williamson portrays Trump’s struggling white supporters as relying on their imaginary victimhood when, in fact, he contends:

They failed themselves. If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog— you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be.

Less well-off white voters have only themselves to blame, Williamson continues:

It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that. Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America.

Not satisfied to stop there, Williamson adds:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs.

Finally, determined to blow a hole in the Trump hot air balloon, the columnist hits hard:

The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Williamson’s bitterness over the refusal of Trump’s supporters to get in line behind a more acceptable candidate is echoed across the right.

In a prescient Jan. 14 essay, “To Attract Disillusioned Voters, the GOP Must Understand Their Concerns,” Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, wrote:

America’s self-appointed best and brightest uniformly view the passions unleashed by Trump as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval peasants’ revolt. And, like their medieval forebears, they mean to crush it. That effort is both a fool’s errand for the country and a poisoned chalice for conservatives and Republicans.

In Olsen’s view, disparaging Trump’s lower-income white supporters “will simply intensify the masses’ rage and ensure that their political spokesmen become more intransigent and radical.” Even worse, keeping blue-collar white Americans out of political power will result in exactly what Washington elites have wanted for years: a series of grand bargains that keep the status quo largely intact and the Democratic party in power.

Only now are major party leaders and contributors beginning to recognize the full depth of this intraparty conflict.

On March 28, my colleague Nick Confessore documented in crushing detail how Republican leaders, donors and strategists disregarded the mounting discontent of white working class Republicans, thus setting the stage for the Trump campaign.

The history, Confessore wrote, is one of a party elite that abandoned its most faithful voters, blue-collar white Americans, who faced economic pain and uncertainty over the past decade as the party’s donors, lawmakers and lobbyists prospered. From mobile home parks in Florida and factory towns in Michigan, to Virginia’s coal country, where as many as one in five adults live on Social Security disability payments, disenchanted Republican voters lost faith in the agenda of their party’s leaders.

These setbacks have provided fertile recruiting opportunities for Republicans. David Wasserman, writing at fivethirtyeight.com in December 2015, found that of five voting groups (whites with college degrees, whites without college degrees, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians/others), whites without college degrees are “Republicans’ best group by far.” In 2008, John McCain carried these voters by 14 points, and in 2012 Mitt Romney won them by “a whopping 26 points.”

The virulent attacks on less affluent Republican voters by Williamson et al raise the question: As a matter of practical politics, how can a party that is losing ground in virtually every growing constituency — Hispanics, Asians, single women and the young — even consider jettisoning a single voter, much less the struggling white working class?The Republican Party has seen its core — married white Christians — decline from 62 percent of the population of the United States to 28 percent in 2015, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

Trump has won his biggest primary margins among less financially secure, less educated voters, turning the traditional winning coalition in Republican primaries upside down. 

The comparatively low levels of support for Trump among college-educated Republicans, women, young voters and those with incomes above $100,000 suggest that these voters are most likely to sit out the election or to vote Democratic if Trump is the nominee. Conversely, groups that gave him higher than average support in the primaries — the less well educated, those with incomes below the median, men and rural voters — are likely to deliver his best margins in the general election.

If there are two key themes in the election so far, one is Trump’s ability to enrage; the other is his ability to exceed expectations. The disregard of liberal and conservative elites for working and middle class voters has manifested itself in a consistent underestimation of the anger, resentment and pessimism of these voters — and hence of their electoral power.

It is an irony of history, then, that [Martin Luther] King’s language [about the two Americas]  perfectly describes the conflict today between the privileged establishment and the hard pressed rank and file of the overwhelmingly white Republican Party — a conflict between haves and have-nots that is taking the Republican Party to a place it has never been.