Donald Trump
This from Jonathan Martin is unusual because he’s usually a confirmed “Democrats in disarray” guy. Here he talks about how Trump is the kiss of death in swing states:
Neither Earle-Sears nor Ciattarelli are Christie-level political talents, to put it mildly. But it makes the races all the more difficult when Trump is a get-out-the-vote machine for Democrats and puts his own party’s candidates in a vise in which they’re squeezed between his enthusiasts who expect loyalty and more skeptical voters who demand independence.
It’s hardly a new story. Democrats dined out on this exact same dynamic in almost every election between 2017 and 2020, the first time Trump was president. As the ever-insightful Charlie Cook recently noted, “In the four elections since Trump was first elected president, Republicans have lost 17 of the 21 Senate races” in the country’s seven presidential swing states.
What’s remarkable is that Republicans have been here before, and they still just take it.
Sherrill and Spanberger can scarcely believe how easy their rivals have made it to link the Republicans to Trump.
In an interview at an Oktoberfest in South Jersey earlier this month, Sherrill told me with an element of wonder that Ciattarelli has “not separated himself an inch” from Trump (which is quite the full circle turn for someone who said in 2016 that Christie should consider resigning if he was going to spend so much time stumping for then-candidate Trump).
Even more than before, it is required that Republicans bend the knee to Dear Leader. And the only people who like that are members of the cult.
People always talk about how the Democrats are purists and demand total adherence to the left agenda but it’s really the Republicans who are the purists. And it’s not even to a set of ideas or values — it’s to one freaky old man who tells them that windmills cause cancer. You tell me which party is off the rails.
So far, the Republicans in Congress are actually saying no to this demand that they nuke the filibuster so they can be forced to put their own names and reputations on all the extremist lunacy he wants to pass. We’ll have to see if they can withstand demands like the one above — and how the cult responds if they do.