Nation's Larges Naval Shipbuilder Scores High on LGBTQ Polices

As the crow flies, I live perhaps 5 or 6 miles from Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia's largest employer and the builder of America's nuclear powered aircraft carrier fleet and many of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarines.   For the last several years the company has been a champion of LGBT rights locally and a presenting sponsor for the HR Pride event each summer.  The Christofascists, of course, must be having conniption fits.  Unlike Virginia Republicans, Newport News Shipbuilding when your policies are welcoming to all and discrimination is banned, you can hire the best and the brightest employees.  Who they love really should play no role whatsoever in employment decisions.  Moreover, such policies make a region and/or state attractive to other progressive, forward looking businesses.  A piece in U.S. News & World Reports looks at the company's LGBT friendly polices.  Here are highlights:

One of the nation's leading gay rights groups is praising the LGBTQ-friendly policies of the nation's largest military shipbuilder.

The Daily Press in Newport News reported Friday that Huntington Ingalls Industries received a 100 rating on a corporate survey from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

The survey evaluated policies that include domestic partner benefits and transgender-inclusive medical benefits. The company builds aircraft carriers and submarines. It was one of 609 major businesses that earned a top rating.

The shipbuilder first participated in HRC's survey last year and scored an 85. The company's score was higher this year for a few reasons.

One was the addition of medical benefits for gender transition. The benefits include surgery, mental health services or other measures.

A piece in the Daily Press provides more on the views of the company's leadership and that of its parent company, including opposition to GOP backed license to discriminate laws masquerading as "religious freedom" laws:  

The nation’s largest military shipbuilder began ramping up efforts on diversity and inclusion several years ago at the behest of CEO and President Mike Petters.

He has vowed to change the culture of a corporate giant built on a foundation of shipyards, a traditional, male-dominated workplace. At Newport News, senior shipbuilders started walking the waterfront decades ago — back when attitudes on race, gender and sexual orientation were far different — so things won’t change overnight.

Changing the culture also means speaking out when necessary.

When the state of Mississippi advanced what supporters termed a religious freedom law, LGBTQ advocates rallied to oppose it.

Major business interests in the state opposed the bill, including MGM Resorts International, which operates casinos in the state, and Nissan North America. HII joined the opposition on behalf of its Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss. 

Senate GOP Tax Bill Hurts Poor More than First Thought

The Congressional Budget Office ("CBO") has further analyzed the GOP Senate tax proposal and surprise, surprise - well, actually not surprising at all - the impact of the bill would hurt the poor more than originally believed.  Sadly, the bill is typical of the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from the poor and middle class and giving lavish tax cuts to the wealthy.  So much for Orrin Hatch's disingenuous lie that he works to benefit the poor and working class.  His rant at Sen. Sherrod Brown is definitely an example of he doth protest too much.  Here at the holiday season, the GOP is showing that its claimed deference to "Christian values" is nothing more than a charade. Indeed, Republicans like Hatch are little more than self-laudatory modern day Pharisees. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the new CBO analysis and its unsurprising consequences.  Here are article highlights:

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt.

Democrats have repeatedly slammed the bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor. In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and many individuals, the Senate bill also makes a major change to health insurance that the CBO projects would have a harsh impact on lower-income families.

By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.

The main reason the poor get hit so hard in the Senate GOP bill is because the poor would receive less government aid for health care.

The CBO has calculated that health insurance premiums would rise if this bill becomes law, leading 4 million Americans to lose health insurance by 2019 and 13 million to lose insurance by 2027.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the other official nonpartisan group that analyzes tax bills, put out a similar report showing how lower-income families are hurt by the loss of the health-care tax credits. But the CBO goes a step further than the JCT. The CBO also calculates what would happen to Medicaid, Medicare and the Basic Health Program if the Senate GOP plan became law. The CBO is showing even worse impacts on poor families than the JCT did.

Republicans, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), have argued that their bill helps Americans across the income spectrum. . . .  They also argue that lower-income families are not losing any money in their wallets.

But Democrats and advocates for the poor say these lower-income Americans are going to be worse off if they no longer have health insurance.

Nowadays, like the Christofascists who dominate the GOP base, if a Republican elected official's lips are moving, the safest assumption to make is that they are lying.  The biggest irony is that evangelical Christians who park their sanctimonious asses in church pews each week are the ones most loyal to the GOP which pushes policies that are the antithesis of Christ's social gospel message.   It is long past time that the media stop giving these people deference and maintaining the myth that they are decent people. 

Democrats Lead by 10.7 Points in Generic Ballot Polls

The most recent RealClearPolitics average of available polling data provides encouraging news for Democrats vis-a-vis the 2018 midterm election.  In a generic poll, Republicans lag by almost 11 percentage points.  The rejection of Republicans seemingly stems from continued voter revulsion toward Donald Trump, but also is fueled by growing public rejection of the Republican Party's two main goals: (i) repealing the Affordable Health Care Act and leaving millions of Americans without health insurance, and (ii) passing a tax bill that will shower benefits on the wealthy and large corporations at the expense of average Americans.  Democrats need to be optimistic, but need to work harder than ever to make a GOP debacle a reality.  A piece in The Hill looks at the poll findings.  Here are highlights:

Republicans head into the holiday season with a daunting number hanging over their heads — 10.7 percent. 

Democrats lead their Republican rivals by 10.7 percent on the generic congressional ballot, according to the most recent RealClearPolitics average of available polling data. That mark is the highest that average has gone since just before the 2010 elections, where Republicans netted 63 House seats. 

It’s a gloomy sign for Republicans, and one that dovetails with President Trump’s sagging approval rating to boost Democratic optimism about taking the House and raises questions about whether Republicans will be able to take advantage of Democratic weakness on the Senate map.

[I]t seems clear we are heading in a bad direction” said former Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye.

“What we’ve seen so far this year that the constant is massive Trump unpopularity, a growing unpopularity, and we are starting to see that electorally. Knowing there’s never going to be a Donald Trump pivot in any sense, what would tell us that anything in this midterm is different?” 

Democrats are pointing to victories in the off-year elections earlier this month as a promising sign for 2018.

A resounding Democratic win in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, as well as strong showings among suburban voters, topped the headlines. But there was more promise down the ballot in other states, too. 

In Pennsylvania, Democrats cleaned up in most of the “collar counties” that make up the Philadelphia suburbs. Voters elected Democrats to serve on the Delaware County council for the first time since 1980. Democrats saw similar success in other nearby counties like Chester County, and local Democratic candidates specifically pointed to Trump as one reason for their success. Most of those suburbs are represented by Republicans. 

In Maine, voters in the more conservative 2nd Congressional District — home to Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R) — narrowly backed a state ballot question on expanding Medicaid, amid protests from Republicans. 

“In the legislative races where people don’t necessarily know who they are voting for — they just vote Republican or Democrat, which makes it a semi-generic ballot — we got our clocks cleaned,” he said.

Much of the Democratic enthusiasm has been organized around opposition to Trump, as well as concerted efforts to oppose the two Republican legislative priorities — a repeal of ObamaCare and the GOP tax-reform plan.

Democrats have used both GOP legislative pushes to accuse Republicans of taking the side of big business and the wealthy over the little guy. 

“The enthusiasm, surge in participation, and increased activism, a lot of it is its a real rejection of the Trump and Paul Ryan policies that are really toxic,” Kelly said. 

But while an uptick in Democratic enthusiasm is apparent, what’s unclear is whether that will be enough to win them the House.   Last week, Amy Walter, a writer for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, wrote that the generic ballot numbers look like “a wave is building” but that “Democrats have a narrow path to 24 seats — even with a big wave or tailwind.”

A few days later, Nate Cohn with The New York Times’ “The Upshot” pegged the race for the House majority as a “toss-up.”

Again, Democrats cannot be complacent and need to start mobilizing no to make sure Republicans experience an electoral blood bath in November, 2018. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Mueller May Have Flipped Michael Flynn

While Der Trumpenführer continues to lie and claim that the Russiagate investigation is based on "fake news," special counsel Robert Mueller continues to relentlessly follow the financial leads that link members of the Trump/Pence regime to Russia and other foreign agents.  Now, some believe that Michael Flynn is poised to flip on Trump and turn states evidence.  Obviously, I hope these conjectures prove accurate and that Flynn sings like a canary in order to save himself and his son.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the possibility.  Here are excerpts:

Michael Flynn is itching for some snitching. Or so his lawyers have led the president’s legal team to believe.

On the night before Thanksgiving, Flynn’s attorneys notified Trump’s that they could no longer discuss the special investigation into Russian interference in last year’s election. The president’s lawyers took the call as a sign that Trump’s former national security adviser is, at the very least, negotiating with special counsel Robert Mueller over the possibility of turning state’s witness, according to the New York Times.

That suspicion is sound. It’s common for defense attorneys representing different clients targeted by the same investigation to share information with each other. But once the interests of those clients diverge — say, because one is trying to rat out the other to keep his (large adult) son out of prison — then such chatter becomes unethical. If Flynn has decided to formally consider cooperating with prosecutors, then it would be standard practice for his lawyers to quit talking shop with Trump’s team.

[T]he evidence points to Flynn flipping. Earlier this month, NBC News reported that Mueller has enough evidence to bring charges against Trump’s former national security adviser. This makes sense: Flynn was on the Turkish government’s payroll for most of the 2016 campaign, a fact he failed to disclose until after he left the White House. Mueller has already indicted Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort for similar failures of disclosure. Further, Flynn’s early exit from the White House was triggered by lies he told to the FBI.

Last December, Flynn spoke to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against the Putin regime. In January, he told federal investigators that he had done no such thing. Unfortunately for Flynn, Kislyak was under routine surveillance by the U.S. government, and a recording of their phone call exposed his fib (eventually, the Washington Post did, too). Lying to the FBI is a federal crime, one that Mueller nailed former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos for, before securing his cooperation.

The special counsel is also eyeing Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., for offenses far more severe. . . . According to the Times, Flynn has “expressed serious concerns to friends that prosecutors will bring charges against his son, Michael Flynn Jr.” in recent weeks.

So, Flynn has plenty of motivation to make himself useful to the feds. And he almost certainly has information they’d find interesting. Flynn was an early high-ranking member of the Trump campaign, and played a lead role in the transition. 

Turning on Trump makes sense.  Trump has no loyalty to others, so why should Flynn sacrifice himself for Trump who would cast him aside in a heartbeat. 

More Sunday Male Beauty

The Republican Created Health Crisis for 10 Million Children

GOP Senator Orrin Hatch

Recently GOP Senator Orrin Hatch ranted when Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown suggested that Hatch and GOP policies were harming millions of regular Americans.  Hatch basically lied and said that he had worked to benefit poor Americans throughout his career. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are working to take from the poor and middle class and lavish tax cuts on the extremely wealthy and large corporations. A case in point is Republican refusal to renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program that benefits poor children otherwise lacking health coverage.  A piece in Think Progress looks at this latest Republican travesty.  Here are excerpts:

Fifty-six days after Congress failed to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), some American children are at risk of losing their health insurance. The deadline to renew the program’s funding was Sept. 30, and Congress hasn’t granted the program $15 billion to continue.

As a result, the popular state-level insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women is facing a funding cliff. While some states may be able to keep the program going through some of next year, half a dozen are projected to run out of funding by late December or early January.

States closest to the funding cliff are preparing to warn customers that funding might disappear, leaving kids in the lurch. There are a few options for those families who rely on CHIP once the funding disappears.

States decide if those families could be enrolled in Medicaid or covered through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace offerings. But Republicans — Trump in the executive and members of his party in Congress and at the state level — have tried hard block access to both of those alternatives, by sabotaging Obamacare, eliminating support for enrollment, blocking Medicaid expansion, etc.

The program has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, but Republicans, in control of both chambers of Congress and steering a massive tax bill through a lightning-fast approval process, are now unable to the program the funds it needs to survive.

At the center of both House and Senate Republicans’ tax bills is a giant, unnecessary tax cut for corporations: a 20 percent corporate tax cut at a price tag of nearly $1.5 trillion dollars. The Senate has decided one way its bill will raise enough money to fund this is by repealing the ACA’s individual mandate provision, a move that would leave nearly 13 million Americans uninsured.

Trump’s tax proposal would sharply reduce the federal government’s ability to match state funds (the ACA expanded matching) and would cut billions from CHIP’s funding.

During a heated exchange with Sen. Sherrod Brown over the facts of the GOP tax plan, Brown highlighted that it doesn’t include any funding for CHIP, and any tax plan that truly wasn’t geared towards wealthy individuals would include that funding. Hatch replied sharply, “I’m not starting with CHIP.” 

Increasingly, voting Republican is to me a sign of one's moral bankruptcy.  Children don't matter, impoverished elderly do not matter.  No one matters except the wealthy and right wing Christian extremists.  

The Far Right's Refusal to Admit Its Racism

A very lengthy article in The Atlantic looks at the issue of the rising racism of the Republican Party and far too many whites who, if asked, would argue that they are not racists even as they support politicians who promote a racist agenda.  The piece - which I view as 100% on point - debunks the excuse/myth that white economic angst and financial struggles caused white working class voters to support Donald Trump.  Stated another way, the data simply does not support the myth that provides a convenient smoke screen for the white nationalism racial prejudice that was actually the principal motivator for many white voters.  By his openly racist, anti-immigrant campaign and its slogan "Make America Great Again" which translated to this audience as "make America white again" Trump tapped into this toxic and dangerous undercurrent.  Trump voters may deny that race was important to them or motivated their vote, but the statistics argue otherwise.  I can name "friends" who voted for Trump who I believe fall into this category.  They may not like to face the truth, but things will never improve in this country until this unpleasant truth is faced.  Here are article highlights:

THIRTY YEARS AGO, nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, and the media struggled to explain why. 

It was 1990 and David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, astonished political observers when he came within striking distance of defeating incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston, earning 43 percent of the vote. If Johnston’s Republican rival hadn’t dropped out of the race and endorsed him at the last minute, the outcome might have been different.

Was it economic anxiety? The Washington Post reported that the state had “a large working class that has suffered through a long recession.” Was it a blow against the state’s hated political establishment? An editorial from United Press International explained, “Louisianans showed the nation by voting for Duke that they were mad as hell and not going to take it any more.” Was it anti-Washington rage? A Loyola University pollster argued, “There were the voters who liked Duke, those who hated J. Bennett Johnston, and those who just wanted to send a message to Washington.”

Duke’s strong showing, however, wasn’t powered merely by poor or working-class whites—and the poorest demographic in the state, black voters, backed Johnston. Duke “clobbered Johnston in white working-class districts, ran even with him in predominantly white middle-class suburbs, and lost only because black Louisianans, representing one-quarter of the electorate, voted against him in overwhelming numbers,” The Washington Post reported in 1990. Duke picked up nearly 60 percent of the white vote. Faced with Duke’s popularity among whites of all income levels, the press framed his strong showing largely as the result of the economic suffering of the white working classes.

By accepting the economic theory of Duke’s success, the media were buying into the candidate’s own vision of himself as a savior of the working class. He had appealed to voters in economic terms: He tore into welfare and foreign aid, affirmative action and outsourcing, and attacked political-action committees for subverting the interests of the common man.

Duke’s candidacy had initially seemed like a joke. He was a former Klan leader who had showed up to public events in a Nazi uniform and lied about having served in the Vietnam War, a cartoonishly vain supervillain whose belief in his own status as a genetic Übermensch was belied by his plastic surgeries. . . . . Many of Duke’s voters steadfastly denied that the former Klan leader was a racist. . . . Duke’s rejoinder to the ads framing him as a racist resonated with his supporters. “Remember,” he told them at rallies, “when they smear me, they are really smearing you.”

While the rest of the country gawked at Louisiana and the Duke fiasco, Walker Percy, a Louisiana author, gave a prophetic warning to The New York Times.  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking David Duke is a unique phenomenon confined to Louisiana rednecks and yahoos. He’s not,” Percy said. “He’s not just appealing to the old Klan constituency, he’s appealing to the white middle class. And don’t think that he or somebody like him won’t appeal to the white middle class of Chicago or Queens.”

A few days after Duke’s strong showing, the Queens-born businessman Donald Trump appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live. . . . Trump later predicted that Duke, if he ran for president, would siphon most of his votes away from the incumbent, George H. W. Bush—in the process revealing his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.

Even before he won, the United States was consumed by a debate over the nature of his appeal. Was racism the driving force behind Trump’s candidacy? If so, how could Americans, the vast majority of whom say they oppose racism, back a racist candidate?

During the final few weeks of the campaign, I asked dozens of Trump supporters about their candidate’s remarks regarding Muslims and people of color. I wanted to understand how these average Republicans . . . had nevertheless embraced someone who demonized religious and ethnic minorities. What I found was that Trump embodied his supporters’ most profound beliefs—combining an insistence that discriminatory policies were necessary with vehement denials that his policies would discriminate and absolute outrage that the question would even be asked.

It was not just Trump’s supporters who were in denial about what they were voting for, . . .  These supporters will not change their minds, because this is what they always wanted: a president who embodies the rage they feel toward those they hate and fear, while reassuring them that that rage is nothing to be ashamed of.

The specific dissonance of Trumpism—advocacy for discriminatory, even cruel, policies combined with vehement denials that such policies are racially motivated—provides the emotional core of its appeal. It is the most recent manifestation of a contradiction as old as the United States, a society founded by slaveholders on the principle that all men are created equal. . . . . had racism been toxic to the American electorate, Trump’s candidacy would not have been viable.

In his own stumbling manner, Trump has pursued the race-based agenda promoted during his campaign. As the president continues to pursue a program that places the social and political hegemony of white Christians at its core, his supporters have shown few signs of abandoning him.

One hundred thirty-nine years since Reconstruction, and half a century since the tail end of the civil-rights movement, a majority of white voters backed a candidate who explicitly pledged to use the power of the state against people of color and religious minorities, and stood by him as that pledge has been among the few to survive the first year of his presidency. Their support was enough to win the White House, and has solidified a return to a politics of white identity that has been one of the most destructive forces in American history. This all occurred before the eyes of a disbelieving press and political class, who plunged into fierce denial about how and why this had happened. That is the story of the 2016 election.

A bleak vision, but one that any regular Fox News viewer would recognize.  The white-supremacist journal American Renaissance applauded Trump’s message. “Each political party proposes an implicit racial vision,” wrote one contributor. “A Trump Administration is a return to the America that won the West, landed on the moon, and built an economy and military that stunned the world. Non-whites can participate in this, but only if they accept the traditional (which is to say, white) norms of American culture.”

Most Trump supporters I spoke with denied that they endorsed this racial vision—even as they defended Trump’s rhetoric.

The plain meaning of Trumpism exists in tandem with denials of its implications; supporters and opponents alike understand that the president’s policies and rhetoric target religious and ethnic minorities, and behave accordingly. But both supporters and opponents usually stop short of calling these policies racist. It is as if there were a pothole in the middle of the street that every driver studiously avoided, but that most insisted did not exist even as they swerved around it.

Trump’s great political insight was that Obama’s time in office inflicted a profound psychological wound upon many white Americans, one that he could remedy by adopting the false narrative that placed the first black president outside the bounds of American citizenship. He intuited that Obama’s presence in the White House decreased the value of what W. E. B. Du Bois described as the “psychological wage” of whiteness across all classes of white Americans, and that the path to their hearts lay in invoking a bygone past when this affront had not taken place, and could not take place.

Americans act with the understanding that Trump’s nationalism promises to restore traditional boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality. The nature of that same nationalism is to deny its essence, the better to salve the conscience and spare the soul.

Among the most popular explanations for Trump’s victory and the Trump phenomenon writ large is the Calamity Thesis: the belief that Trump’s election was the direct result of some great, unacknowledged social catastrophe . . . . White people without college degrees are living in deprivation, and in their despair, they turned to a racist demagogue who promised to solve their problems.

This explanation appeals to whites across the political spectrum. On the right, it serves as an indictment of elitist liberals who used their power to assist religious and ethnic minorities rather than all Americans; on the left, it offers a glimmer of hope that such voters can be won over by a more left-wing or redistributionist economic policy. It also has the distinct advantage of conferring innocence upon what is often referred to as the “white working class.”

But the research does not support the conclusions many have drawn from it—that economic or social desperation by itself drove white Americans to Donald Trump. . . . a closer look at the demographics of the 2016 electorate shows something more complex than a working-class revolt sparked by prolonged suffering.

The most economically vulnerable Americans voted for Clinton overwhelmingly; the usual presumption is exactly the opposite.  If you look at white voters alone, a different picture emerges. . . . . Trump won white voters at every level of class and income. He won workers, he won managers, he won owners, he won robber barons. This is not a working-class coalition; it is a nationalist one. . . . . the controlling factor seems to be not economic distress but an inclination to see nonwhites as the cause of economic problems.

When you look at Trump’s strength among white Americans of all income categories, but his weakness among Americans struggling with poverty, the story of Trump looks less like a story of working-class revolt than a story of white backlash. And the stories of struggling white Trump supporters look less like the whole truth than a convenient narrative—one that obscures the racist nature of that backlash. . . .

Even before Trump, the Republican Party was moving toward an exclusivist nationalism that defined American identity in racial and religious terms, despite some efforts from its leadership to steer it in another direction. . . . White Backlash, a study of political trends, and found that “whites who hold more negative views of immigrants have a greater tendency to support Republican candidates at the presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial levels, even after controlling for party identification and other major factors purported to drive the vote.” . . . Trump is a manifestation of this trend rather than its impetus, a manifestation that began to rise not long after Obama’s candidacy.  

Chesterfield, Virginia - A Potential Bell-Weather of GOP Troubles

Kim Drew Wright is the founder of Liberal Women of Chesterfield County and Beyond, a grass-roots organization that helped deliver the Richmond suburbs to the Democratic candidate for governor for the first time since 1961.

Since the blue wave in November 7, 2017's Virginia elections, Virginia has received more political focus than at any time I can think of in recent memory.  Areas that were once reliably Republican - e.g., Virginia Beach, Chesterfield County and Loudoun County - flipped to the Democrat column.   Many, especially Republicans, try to lay all the blame at the feet of Der Trumpenführer, perhaps the most morally bankrupt individual to ever occupy the White House.  While Trump has indeed motivated women voters who find him repulsive and a down right horrible individual (I share this view), I would argue that the shift to Democrat involves much more.  Trumpism, which now defines the Republican Party, has finally caused many who were formerly marginally involved politically to belatedly open their eyes and realize that the Republican agenda is toxic for most Americans. Unless one is a Christifascists, a white supremacist, a vulture capitalist or very wealthy, the GOP has nothing to offer.  Indeed, it is probably harmful for you and your family.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Ed Gillespie's loss in Chesterfield County, Virginia, a former Republican bastion, and what it might foretell for the 2018 midterms.  Here are excerpts:

For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades.

“Are we done?” Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trump’s election last year.  “Noooooo!” the women shouted back.

Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.

Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.

The results in Chesterfield are also a potential harbinger of what looms beyond Virginia, in suburbs where anger toward Trump is motivating voters bent on defeating Republican candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

“That’s a huge red flag for Republicans and an opportunity for Democrats,” said Jesse Ferguson, a national Democratic strategist. “There’s opportunity in these traditionally conservative suburbs with college-educated white voters who are unwilling to back a Republican candidate. It’s a function of and proof that Trump has tainted the rest of the Republicans running for office.”

Chris LaCivita, a Richmond-based GOP strategist who works on national campaigns, said . . . . “Midterm and off-year elections are defined by whose base is more animated and engaged and right now it’s the Democrats,” he said. “You’re going to have to work harder than ever if you’re a Republican in this environment.”

[T]he growth in Republican turnout was overwhelmed by the ballooning number of Democratic voters. Northam received 16,000 more votes than Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) got in the county in 2013.

The Liberal Women of Chesterfield County is an example of a new breed of Democratic activism in the Richmond suburbs. The group, which says it has admitted nearly 3,000 followers to its private Facebook page, has established 13 neighborhood chapters and canvassed more than 50,000 homes in a get-out-the-vote effort. On Election Day, the group worked with the local Democratic committee to staff all 75 of the county’s polling places, something that the local party on its own had previously been unable to accomplish.

Besides championing Northam and the statewide ticket, they pushed local residents running for the first time, including the first openly gay woman elected to the House of Delegates . . . “I wouldn’t have done this every day for the past year if I hadn’t gotten so angry about Trump,” said Wright, 46, a mother of three who observed politics from the sidelines before last year’s presidential election. “Once you wake up and see how important local elections are, it’s hard to go back to the shadows and stick your head in the sand. Now we have our eye on everybody, from dogcatcher on up.”

The group’s next target is Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), whose district includes Chesterfield and who earlier this year complained that “the women are in my grill no matter where I go” — a reference to the activists who protested against efforts by Brat and other House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The last Democratic candidate to carry Chesterfield was former governor Albertis Harrison — 56 years ago. . . . . But the county evolved as its population mushroomed by nearly 25 percent between 2000 and 2016. While the number of whites in Chesterfield declined by 10 percent from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of blacks grew by 4 percent and Latinos more than doubled from 3 percent to more than 7 percent.  At the same time, Republicans’ victory margins steadily declined.
 “I don’t think this election was generally about demographics, but in Chesterfield it was,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. “In the next 10 years, it’s not going to be the Chesterfield where you slap an ‘R’ next to someone’s name and they win.” . . . “The challenge for Democrats is, ‘Can you transcend Trump?’ ” Kidd said. “A lot of this is driven by women voters, but can Democrats translate that to a more permanent voter? Or is that woman going back to voting Republican once Trump is gone?”

Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the results suggest that voters’ rejection of “Trump’s brand of Republicanism” is potent in suburban areas that are “increasingly diverse and/or highly educated.”  “These results should scare them,” Skelley said of Republicans inside Chesterfield and beyond. 

By acking a presidential candidate who is utterly bankrupt morally and unfit for office and pushing policies harmful to the majority of voters, Republicans have set themselves up for disaster and I hope they reap the whirlwind in 2018 and beyond.  The GOP cannot be reformed from within given what its base has become, it has to die.   

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1