Month: August 2019

When Trump panicked

by digby

This story about Trump and the Evangelicals is well worth reading. I had forgotten all about this episode, which apparently was just fine with all the caring Christians of the evangelical right:

The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2014

Ebola patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days – now I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2014

Stop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2014

Ebola is much easier to transmit than the CDC and government representatives are admitting. Spreading all over Africa-and fast. Stop flights

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2014

I am starting to think that there is something seriously wrong with President Obama’s mental health. Why won’t he stop the flights. Psycho!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2014

I have been saying for weeks for President Obama to stop the flights from West Africa. So simple, but he refused. A TOTAL incompetent!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2014

We have been lucky not to have a national emergency with this lunatic in the White House. But I think that gives you an idea of what will happen if we have one.

.

3 Potential Mass Shootings were foiled, let’s stop more

By Spocko

I’m always going on about how preventing gun deaths doesn’t make the news. But this time it did! Maybe because CNN put three of them together, and in the news business, three’s a trend!

James Patrick Reardon, Ohio. Tristan Scott Wix, Florida. Brandon Wagshol, Connecticut

There could have been three more mass shootings if these men weren’t stopped, authorities say

(CNN) Authorities this weekend announced they had foiled three potential mass shootings after arresting three men in different states who expressed interest in or threatened to carry them out.

All three cases were brought to authorities’ attention thanks to tips from the public.

This is a good thing.  Let’s stop more shootings.  In the story we learn about how members of the public went to the police with what the men allegedly said on social media and in text messages. In the story we learn more details about their cache of weapons and ammo.  Each was arrested based on slightly different charges.

Read the article. LINK You will see that there are some questions left unanswered, but what is answered is that all of them had the guns and ammo to carry out a threat. 

Knowing the media and the gun lobby as I do, instead of focusing on the rock solid underlying connection between these three–THE GUNS–the focus will shift to the novel.

“What exactly was said? Is this a free speech issue? What if they were “just blowing off steam? What role did social media play? Are they involved with white supremacists? Anti-semites ? Are they Trump supporters?  Is this a ‘pre-crime’?”

If you see any follow up on this story it will be about the government arresting people on the basis of their speech. “What’s to stop someone from taking a joke comment on Facebook seriously and taking away my gun? This is a slippery slope!” (What’s the opposite of a slippery slope? Grippy floor?)

If these guys were in another country and making these same threats the police response would be different. They could have the exact same motive and opportunity, but they likely wouldn’t have the means. It’s about the guns!

All three suspects had guns. Lots of them. The gun lobby wants us to see military weapons and high capacity magazines as normal.

The President wants to talk about a mental health problem and deny any racist, white supremacy connections found.

The lawyers for these men will want their case to turn on what they didn’t do vs what they said in their threats.  “They didn’t shoot anyone! It was a joke! They didn’t mean to scare anyone!”  There will be discussions about threats, true threats and the meaning of each word.

The NRA doesn’t really care about protecting these men’s 1st Amendment rights, but they will get others to argue about protecting them on their behalf so they don’t have to acknowledge that what makes the difference when these men make a threat are the guns they have.

We could be reading about their victims today.  The good news is we are reading about their arrests.

What can we do to stop more shootings? Take away guns from those who shouldn’t have them.
Read more about how it’s being done in California.
San Diego’s city attorney is taking away hundreds of guns from those who shouldn’t have them

.

Synthesizing the message

by digby

I guess the CW is that he’s going nowhere in this campaign, but Beto O’Rourke has a way of synthesizing the Democratic message in a way that I think is useful. This is how he put it on Meet the Press on Sunday:

CHUCK TODD:I feel like this is a conundrum that faces many of you running for president, which is, on one hand, you see the president, in some ways, as an existential threat to the American story, our culture. So does it seems silly, at times, to be debating whether or not there should be a public option, when you feel as if the president is a bigger threat on other issues? Is that what’s made this campaign sometimes seem, seem tonally off for the entire, for the entire field, at times?

O’ROURKE: No. Because I’ll tell you, if we don’t deliver on universal, guaranteed, high-quality healthcare, on a minimum wage that’s a living wage, on paid family leave, on those issues that restore dignity to the lives of our fellow Americans, then we have not only failed them, we have provided fertile ground for the kind of demagogue that Donald Trump is, who will channel that anger and frustration at our government’s dysfunction and our inability to get something done — against immigrants, as he’s done, warning of invasions and infestations and animals and predators.

Having somebody, at one of his rallies, say, “We should shoot them.” And the crowd roars their assent. And Donald Trump smiles because he doesn’t want you to focus on the fact that you’re working two or three jobs right now just to make ends meet, or that you live in the wealthiest country on the face of the planet, but you can’t afford to take care of your diabetes.

Yes, Democrats have to address those issues and deliver on those issues. But we also have to call out the existential threat, to use the word that you just employed, that Donald Trump represents right now. Not only are we going to lose more lives, I’m confident that we will lose this country and our democracy, the longer he stays in office. So that is the urgency behind what I’m talking about.

Basically, it’s not really “kitchen table issues” vs “Donald Trump is a menace.” They are two sides of the same thing.

.

Watch your wallet

by digby

This piece by James Downie in the Washington Post sums up the current thinking by the White House’s economic brain trust:

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Kudlow to assess Wall Street fears about the economy. “I don’t see a recession,” answered Kudlow. “And let me add just one theme, Chuck. … Let’s not be afraid of optimism.” He cited strong “consumer numbers,” low oil prices and low interest rates and predicted “the economy’s going to be very good in 2019.”

That may sound good. But given that we’re well into 2019, Kudlow’s silence about 2020 is concerning. Furthermore, Kudlow’s confidence has some eerie echoes with the last downturn, as Todd pointed out:

But, you know, you actually said that in 2007 right before the second-worst downturn in American history. This is what you wrote. “There’s no recession coming.” This is in December of ’07. “The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come.”

Here’s the problem: Kudlow and others failed to see a recession coming because they refused to believe housing and other markets could really collapse. Others learned from that mistake; it seems Kudlow hasn’t.

As for Navarro, he was asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to explain a presidential contradiction: If tariffs don’t really hurt U.S. consumers, as Trump likes to claim, then why did he delay tariffs until Dec. 15 out of concern for hurting consumers? “I was there in the Oval Office when a group of business people came in and made the following very persuasive argument,” Navarro replied. “They had already bought everything that was going to be on our shelves, but they’d done it in dollar contracts, which means they weren’t able to shift the burden back to the Chinese.”

Assuming that those business leaders are telling the truth, it’s good that the Trump administration would finally recognize reality. Then again, why didn’t someone at the White House make any effort to find this out beforehand? Why go through the whole charade of these tariffs if they weren’t even going to hit China in the first place?

Whether another recession is coming is an open question: Strong consumer spending and low unemployment may continue to keep things afloat. But all Navarro’s and Kudlow’s answers offered was more evidence that, if the economy does go south, this administration is acting without thinking. Kudlow is wrong: No one is “afraid of optimism.” We’re afraid of the team in the White House.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In the past, there was always the chance that allies and trading partners could work together to try to mitigate the worst of a global downturn. It didn’t always work out (austerity anyone?) but there were open lines of communication and the possibility was there for a somewhat softer landing.

Needless to say, that will not happen this time. Nobody trusts Trump and no one on the planet has any reason to want to work with the US on anything. So good luck everyone.

.

It isn’t just Trump. The GOP mainstream is overwhelmingly anti-immigrant

by digby

There’s been a lot of criticism of the Post and the Times for their twin cover stories about the malevolent xenophobe Stephen Miller, but I thought the Times thesis was actually quite good. They pointed out that Miller didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. The GOP mainstream has been growing more and more anti-immigrant over the past couple of decades:

When historians try to explain how opponents of immigration captured the Republican Party, they may turn to the spring of 2007, when President George W. Bush threw his waning powers behind a legalization plan and conservative populists buried it in scorn.

Mr. Bush was so taken aback, he said he worried about America “losing its soul,” and immigration politics have never been the same.

That spring was significant for another reason, too: An intense young man with wary, hooded eyes and fiercely anti-immigrant views graduated from college and began a meteoric rise as a Republican operative. With the timing of a screenplay, the man and the moment converged.

Stephen Miller was 22 and looking for work in Washington. He lacked government experience but had media appearances on talk radio and Fox News and a history of pushing causes like “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” A first-term congresswoman from Minnesota offered him a job interview and discovered they were reading the same book: a polemic warning that Muslim immigration could mean “the end of the world as we know it.”

By the end of the interview, Representative Michele Bachmann had a new press secretary. And a dozen years later, Mr. Miller, now a senior adviser to President Trump, is presiding over one of the most fervent attacks on immigration in American history.

The story of Mr. Miller’s rise has been told with a focus on his pugnacity and paradoxes. Known more for his enemies than his friends, he is a conservative firebrand from liberal Santa Monica, Calif., and a descendant of refugees who is seeking to eliminate refugee programs. He is a Duke graduate in bespoke suits who rails against the perfidy of so-called elites. Among those who have questioned his moral fitness are his uncle, his childhood rabbi and 3,400 fellow Duke alumni.

Less attention has been paid to the forces that have abetted his rise and eroded Republican support for immigration — forces Mr. Miller has personified and advanced in a career unusually reflective of its times.

Rising fears of terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks brought new calls to keep immigrants out. Declining need for industrial labor left fewer businesses clamoring to bring them in. A surge of migrants across the South stoked a backlash in the party’s geographic base.

Conservative media, once divided, turned against immigration, and immigration-reduction groups that had operated on the margins grew in numbers and sophistication. Abandoning calls for minority outreach, the Republican Party chose instead to energize its conservative white base — heeding strategists who said the immigrant vote was not just a lost cause but an existential threat.

Arriving in Washington as these forces coalesced, Mr. Miller rode the tailwinds with zeal and skill. Warning of terrorism and disturbed by multicultural change, he became the protégé of a Southern senator especially hostile to immigration, Jeff Sessions of Alabama. And he courted allies in the conservative media and immigration-restriction groups.

Mr. Miller, who declined to comment for this article, affects the air of a lone wolf — guarded, strident, purposefully provocative. But he has been shaped by the movement whose ideas and lieutenants he helped install across the government as he consolidated a kind of power unusual for a presidential aide and unique in the Trump White House.

“I don’t agree with his policy on reducing legal immigration, but I’m in awe of how he’s been able to impact this one issue,” said Cesar Conda, who battled Mr. Miller on Capitol Hill as an aide to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “He’s got speech writing, he’s got policy, he’s got his own little congressional-relations operation, he’s got allies whom he’s helped place across the government.”

“Years ago, the restrictionist movement was a ragtag group” with no strong ties to either party, he added. Mr. Miller “embodies their rise into the G.O.P. mainstream.”

Trump had never been a big immigrant basher before entering politics.  His racism was much more targeted toward blacks over the years. Not that he wasn’t an all-around bigot. He was. But the anti-immigrant rhetoric he employed to get elected in 2016 came right out of right wing talk radio. His former assistant Sam Nunberg kept him up to date on what all the haters were talking about and this issue was at the top of the list.

Miller, of course, is a true believer. He really, truly seems to loathe foreigners and has since he was making an ass of himself at Santa Monica High. But he wasn’t alone.

I wrote about this for Salon a few years back:

Right-wing obsession with undocumented workers from Mexico has been waxing and waning for decades. It is sometimes attached to economic insecurity but more often it seems to be the result of free floating anxiety that isn’t attached to any particular circumstance. During the Bush years, before the crash, it bubbled up in communities around the nation which had little experience with Latinos who were branching out from the traditional migration pattern to places where new work was available. There were a number of stories done around 2005 about the town of Herndon, Virginia, where a militia had grown up to defend the town against illegal immigrants:

Bill explains that he “slid into the Minutemen” because he was disturbed by the way his neighborhood was changing, and the other Minutemen standing with him nod in agreement. “Dormitory-style homes” have popped up on their streets, Bill says, and the residents come and go at strange hours. Their neighbors’ children are intimidated and no longer like to play outside, in part because “we’ve got about 17 cars coming and going from our neighbors’ houses.” Matt, another Minuteman who lives in nearby Manassas, claims that the police have busted prostitution rings operating out of nearby properties…Even on the coldest mornings, more than 50 workers often convene at the 7-11, and Bill judges that sometimes only 10 or 20 get hired. “When,” he asks me, “is it ever a good thing for 40 men to hang out together?” [“Outside In: The Minutemen Are More Mainstream Than You Think,” The New Republic, November, 2005]

(I always thought that was a funny quote coming from a guy who had joined a militia.)


But this was a big story 10 years ago — immigrants were gathering in our small towns and suburbs and changing the culture with their strange language and dirty ways. To people who live in the Southwest or Florida or any big city, it was a bizarre concept. Even if it’s contentious for economic or political reasons, immigrants are part of the fabric of life in those places. But it was a culture shock to a lot of folks who hadn’t dealt with it before. And they didn’t blame the Democrats — they blamed George W. Bush:

The retired social studies teacher said she got involved because houses in her neighborhood had become packed immigrant dormitories. She suspects that most tenants in the rooming houses, including the one next door, are illegal. She deals with roosters crowing and men urinating in the yard, loud parties and empty beer cans dumped outside. She fears it’s driving down the value of her house.

“I’m angry,” said the 60-year-old widow. She said the fight against illegal immigration was deeply personal and broadly political. “George Bush is in it for the Hispanic vote, and we’re on the receiving end,” she said. “That’s not fair. Before, everybody looked out for everybody else; no one locked doors,” she said of her neighborhood. “Now we all have security systems.”

Jeff Talley, 45, an airplane maintenance worker who lives across the street from Bonieskie, also joined the Minuteman chapter. “When you start messing with the value of people’s houses, people get really upset,” he said. As Talley sees it, illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans  whom it would cost companies more to employ and that will have long-term effects on American society.

“There’s a disappearing middle class,” said Talley, a Republican. “George Bush is a huge disappointment to this country. The Republican Party used to be for ordinary people, but no more.”

I bring all this up just to preface what’s led up to the current predicament in the Republican Party and their fraught relationship with Latinos. There was a time when the party thought it had made substantial inroads with that community and were hopeful they would be able to gain the loyalty of enough of them to be able to compete nationally in a world in which whites are no longer a majority. It didn’t work and reading that piece about the Hernden Minutemen you can see how it happened.


The issue continued to vex Republicans throughout the Obama administration as they found themselves caught in the cross-current of changing demographics and a base that was growing more and more hostile to immigrants. GOP politicians who had championed comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship — a mainstream position with both parties — were pressured to abandon their position. Not that it really mattered if they did. Anyone who had once advocated for reform was now seen as a conservative movement heretic, never to be trusted again.


This issue finally boiled over in 2014 when the Republican majority leader of the House, Eric Cantor, unexpectedly lost his seat in a primary to an anti-immigrant Tea Party upstart, David Brat, a novice politician heavily promoted by national conservative talk radio. Stars like Laura Ingraham had been pushing the anti-immigration line for quite some time and homed in on Cantor as a perfect example of a squishy establishment sell-out. Not that Cantor actually was a particularly immigrant-friendly politician. He had tepidly supported legalization of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, and once said that he thought immigrants should be allowed to enlist in the military “in principle,” but voted against allowing them to serve. That was all it took. As far as talk radio was concerned he was a dead man walking.

The GOP mainstream is now overwhelmingly anti-immigrant. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s not just Trump. He rode their wave not the other way around.
.

Trump ditches Barrack because he didn’t get his cut

by digby

So Trump isn’t speaking to his good pal Tom Barrack anymore and Politico tells us why:

The key issue driving the two men apart: Barrack’s role as chairman of the president’s 2017 inauguration fund, which is under investigation by prosecutors.

Trump was “really upset” to read reports about Barrack’s role in allegedly making it easy for some foreigners and others to try to spend money to get access to Trump and his inner circle and whether some of the inauguration money was misspent, according to a senior administration official.

“The president was really surprised to read all about the inauguration and who was trying to buy access and how, because the president doesn’t get any of that money,” said the official.

It is perfectly normal now to read about how the president is upset about some corrupt practice in his administration, not because it’s against the law and totally unethical, but because he didn’t get his cut.

These two have been friends for 40 years. In fact, Barrack may be his only real friend. Oh well.

Of course, the falling out may also be due to some other factors too. Barrack has cooperated with federal investigators. With Bill Barr in charge, Trump undoubtedly knows everything the witnesses have told the feds. And Politico speculates that Trump was upset that Barrack employed Rick Gates right up until he was indicted, which is dumb. Barrack surely employed him on Trump’s behalf to keep him happy.

But this may be part of it as well:

Several sources said Trump’s falling out with Barrack, who hasn’t yet donated to Trump’s re-election campaign, began even before the damaging reports about the inaugural committee.

“Barrack is the kind of guy who would tell him things he didn’t want to hear, so Trump stopped talking to him,” a former senior White House official said.

Barrack has also made some critical remarks about Trump’s performance in office and said in Trump’s first year that his friend was “better than this” (referring to Trump’s rhetoric toward Muslims and immigrants), and that he was “shocked” and “stunned” by some of the remarks.

Yeah, whatever. If they really aren’t speaking, it’s because nobody gets to sell access to Trump, but Trump. That’s what his personal appearances at his golf clubs every weekend are for.

Update: Well, he actually did get a cut. I guess it wasn’t enough:

The Trump hotel in DC got more than $1 million from the inaugural committee. https://t.co/kTEcnyKUMf— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 19, 2019

.

Smell the isolationism

by digby

Trump is still obsessing about Venezuela

President Trump has suggested to national security officials that the U.S. should station Navy ships along the Venezuelan coastline to prevent goods from coming in and out of the country, according to 5 current and former officials who have either directly heard the president discuss the idea or have been briefed on Trump’s private comments.

Driving the news: Trump has been raising the idea of a naval blockade periodically for at least a year and a half, and as recently as several weeks ago, these officials said. They added that to their knowledge the Pentagon hasn’t taken this extreme idea seriously, in part because senior officials believe it’s impractical, has no legal basis and would suck resources from a Navy that is already stretched to counter China and Iran.

Trump has publicly alluded to a naval blockade of Venezuela. Earlier this month he answered “Yes, I am” when a reporter asked whether he was mulling such a move. But he hasn’t elaborated on the idea publicly.

In private, Trump has expressed himself more vividly, these current and former officials say. 

“He literally just said we should get the ships out there and do a naval embargo,” said one source who’s heard the president’s comments. “Prevent anything going in.”

“I’m assuming he’s thinking of the Cuban missile crisis,” the source added. “But Cuba is an island and Venezuela is a massive coastline. And Cuba we knew what we were trying to prevent from getting in. But here what are we talking about? It would need massive, massive amounts of resources; probably more than the U.S. Navy can provide.”

Hawkish GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, has a different perspective about the value of a show of military force. “I’ve been saying for months that when the Venezuelan military sees an American military presence gathering force, this thing ends pretty quickly,” he told me.

Meanwhile, this is perfectly normal:

Some State Department officials are concerned about the idea of communicating with an alleged drug lord, per a source familiar with the situation. It’s also the case that some administration officials have assessed that Cabello purportedly sending messages is a positive sign and suggests Maduro’s circle is gradually cracking.

Only the best people.

He’s very frustrated because he really wanted a military option before now:

Now that he has Bolton and Pompeo on board, all options are on the table. So far, Trump hasn’t ordered an invasion so that’s good.

It’s so reassuring that we don’t have an interventionist president. Blockades, trade wars, insulting allies and a massive military build-up — it’s all good.

.

Looney on the runway

by digby

From the White House transcript of President Trump's gaggle with reporters earlier: pic.twitter.com/2N74vgeMqZ— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 19, 2019

I watched that whole runway gaggle yesterday and he was as looney as I’ve ever seen him.

President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed his preferred news network over recent unfavorable poll results, saying: “There’s something going on at Fox [News], I’ll tell you right now. And I’m not happy with it.”

Trump’s comments to reporters in New Jersey were in response to a question about the network’s recently released survey showing the president losing head-to-head match-ups against four of the top Democratic presidential primary candidates.

Trump said he didn’t “believe” the poll that was published, adding: “Fox has changed. My worst polls have always been from Fox.”

He also complained about how Democrats had barred the network from hosting or televising the party’s 2020 primary debates, and then signaled a warning about the the general-election cycle.

“And I think Fox is making a big mistake,” the president said when asked about the polling and the network’s leadership. “Because, you know, I’m the one that calls the shots on that — on the really big debates.”

The president’s criticisms are a continuation of a larger attack on one of his favorite targets, the news media. But Trump has increasingly lumped in Fox News, a network known for its conservative bent, in recent months for what he views as unfavorable coverage.

He has squared off with the network as it devoted time to forums with Democratic presidential candidates earlier in the year. Trump took jabs at Fox News in April over the network’s town hall with Bernie Sanders, and again in May, ahead of its town hall with Pete Buttigieg.

This time, Trump’s annoyance with an unfavorable poll led him to wrongly assert that he had control over the 2020 presidential debates.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which is not controlled by any political party or outside organization and does not endorse, support or oppose political candidates for parties, has sponsored general-election presidential debates in every election since 1988.

He’s not going to debate is he? Not that it matters much. He trainwrecks everything …

How about this?

President Trump told reporters on Sunday that Apple CEO Tim Cook privately made a “very compelling argument” that the administration’s tariffs on Chinese-assembled goods have made an unfair impact on the California-based tech giant, because its chief rival, Samsung, has conducted most of its manufacturing in South Korea and did not have to pay the levy.

The president also issued a stern warning to China, saying there might not be an end to the trade war if the government resorts to “violence” to crush demonstrators in Hong Kong.

Trump announced last week he would delay major new tariffs on China for three months, and his latest comments hinted that more concessions may be forthcoming. The new ten-percent tariffs had been slated to go into effect Sept. 1, and would have affected Apple’s signature iPhones and iPads.

In May, Trump increased tariffs on roughly $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, but later nixed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico. In June, China hiked its retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. by more than 15 percent.

“I had a very good meeting with Tim Cook,” Trump said at an airport in New Jersey, on his way back to the White House. “I have a lot of respect for Tim Cook, and Tim was talking to me about tariffs. And, one of the things, and he made a good case, is that Samsung is their number-one competitor, and Samsung is not paying tariffs because they’re based in South Korea.”

Trump continued: “It’s tough for Apple to pay tariffs if they’re competing with a very good company that’s not. I said, ‘How good a competitor?’ He said they’re a very good competitor. … I thought he made a very compelling argument, so I’m thinking about it.”

Cook and Trump have met several times in the past year. Earlier in the day, Trump had sounded a note of optimism on China, tweeting, “We are doing very well with China, and talking!”

It never occurred to him until now that American companies might be impacted this way by his tariffs?

It sounds like he’s looking for an excuse to fold…

TRUMP: You have a lot of voter fraud. The way you stop it is voter ID.

REPORTER: But your commission on voter fraud didn't find any actual fraud.

TRUMP: Well, the commission was having a tremendous problem getting papers from California … it was just a quick commission. pic.twitter.com/SaYgaCMhkH— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2019

Trump, seemingly making it up as he goes along, says he will "probably" wait until after the upcoming Israeli election to release his Middle East peace plan. #DontHoldYourBreath pic.twitter.com/3KICLMGlHd— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2019

TRUMP: You have a lot of voter fraud. The way you stop it is voter ID.

REPORTER: But your commission on voter fraud didn't find any actual fraud.

TRUMP: Well, the commission was having a tremendous problem getting papers from California … it was just a quick commission. pic.twitter.com/SaYgaCMhkH— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2019

Trump concludes his vacation-ending media availability on a humble note pic.twitter.com/5tGHx6zoE9— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2019

.

.

2020: It’s the Trumpism, stupid
by Tom Sullivan

“So I think the concept of mental institution has to be looked at.”

Rachel Bitecofer’s prediction on the 2018 “blue wave” was “numerically close to perfect,” writes Paul Rosenberg in an interview for Salon. The assistant director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia estimated Democrats would gain 42 seats. The do-over election in NC-9 scheduled for September 10 could make Democrats’ final count 41. On August 6, Bitcofer released a preliminary list of 18 House seats that with the right campaigns Democrats could pick up in 2020.

Her explanation for the size of the tsunami contrasts with conventional wisdom still on display among Democrats in Washington.

Bitecofer tells Salon, “I don’t know why Nancy Pelosi, the DCCC or many of these moderate members are convinced that moderate Republicans crossed over and voted for them. I have the data for some of these districts and the data tells a very different, very clear story: If Republicans voted in huge numbers, they voted for Republicans.”

And Republicans did turn out in large numbers. Turnout among Democrats and independents was simply higher. What made them turn out was not health care, but negative partisanship. It was Trump, Inc. By Bitecofer’s reckoning, not understanding the effects of that on turnout may have cost Democrats an additional half dozen seats they may have successfully contested in 2018.

She writes in her August 6 posting (emphasis mine):

Although Trumpism has been an effective rallying cry for the GOP base, it has galvanized a previously complacent part of the electorate; white, college educated millennial women as well as all voters under age 40, who represent a far more diverse and liberal voter universe than their older counterparts. As such, any district with high levels of college educated voters was extremely vulnerable for Republicans in 2018, even those that had long been in the hands of the Republican Party such as the six Orange County districts in Southern California which my model was quite clear would uniformly flip to the Democrats.

Two takeaways from Bitecofer’s Salon interview. First, the percentage of college-educated voters in the district. Bitecofer explains, “we have college-educated voters moving towards the Democrats, and white working-class voters moving away from them.” And in suburban districts, that trend advantages Democrats. Basically, the electorate model is shifting.

Second, Democrats’ preference for Blue Dogs in more conservative districts is misplaced:

I’m also able to show that even in these districts where Democrats ran Blue Dog candidates who were as unobtrusive as possible — with, exactly as you stated, the goal of not riling up Trump voters — the turnout for Republican voters in those districts was huge.

In fact, not only did Democrats not get the benefit of not stirring up the Trump base — the Trump base was stirred up and showed up in huge numbers — but by not tapping into anti-Trump sentiment in their own campaign strategy, by not intentionally activating that Trump angst, they paid a price in terms of their own base turnout. It was depressed, compared to other districts.

Nine of the House seats on Bitecofer’s preliminary list are in Texas, making it “Ground 0 of the Democrats’ 2020 efforts.” That points up another weakness in Democratic strategies. Bitecofer explained August 6:

However, actually flipping these districts would require a massive investment in an area Democrats have continually under-invested in: Latino turnout. Democrats’ success in increasing the size of their House majority will largely depend on whether they come to recognize the need to maximize turnout among Democratic-friendly constituencies such as college-educated women, Latinos, African Americans, and Millennials and in their ability to understand that it is fear of Trump, not policy, that will best motivate these voters to the polls, no matter what the voters themselves may think.

Which is to say candidates’ policy proposals are simply icing on the cake. Democrats need to make 2020 a referendum on Donald Trump. Bitecofer’s July 1 projection for next year showed Democrats winning 278 electoral votes, eight more than necessary to secure the election, with several swing states still in play. But it is a long way to November 2020.

A key overlap across all those sub-groupings Bitecofer mentions is voters under 40, be they college-educated women, Latinos, African Americans, etc. That is where the nonvoters are, nonvoters with the numbers to control this country’s destiny and perhaps the world’s. Given the increasing decline evident in the acting president’s ramblings, the sooner the (non-white nationalist) youth take control the better. It’s something Democrats have to look at very strongly.

QOTD: an apostate

by digby

Ben Howe,former Red State writer and Never-Trumper has written a book called The Immoral Majority. This interview in The Atlantic features this quote which I think is exactly right:

In the minds of a lot of conservatives, the left exists to impugn their motives, and the Republican Party regularly lied to them and said they would defend them and then didn’t. And that was the establishment. Trump became their hero, because he hated the establishment, and he beat up on the media, and he was fighting back against all these forces. The more he fights, the more they feel justified, like, He’s our hero because we needed someone to do this for us.

Trump’s appeal is not judges. It’s not policies. It’s that he’s a shit-talker and a fighter and tells it like it is. That’s what they like. They love the meanest parts of him.

I guess this really is one of those chicken or egg situations. I see people who love a lying asshole like Trump because he’s a “shit-talker” and it seems obvious to me that they really are deplorable. And the truth is that, for me, this is a relatively new thing. I impugned the motives of their leadership over the years and rightly so. But it’s only with the advent of Trump and the ecstatic reaction from GOP voters to his disgusting Nuremberg rallies that I realized how far gone they really were.

I have always assumed that most Republicans were basically normal Americans with an ideology I opposed. I knew that some were racists but I never thought it would add up to 90% or more of the Party! I certainly assumed that they would be appalled by Trumps obvious psychological and intellectual insufficiency, much less his clear immorality. It’s very hard to have respect for people like this:

I know you are not supposed to say this. I get reprimanded every time I mention it. But it is my honest observation and in this day and age I think it’s important to be honest about what you see. The Republican rank and file is in thrall to an unfit racist demagogue and he’s not hiding it. So it’s on them.

.