Fixing Congress?

I don't know if Congress needs fixing so much as parties need to win the majority to get anything done, and that's not mentioning that you'd better have a president of your party in the White House. If you get that, you'll have a fully functional Congress. Absent that, you'll get what we're having: lots of people unhappy at the slow pace of "progress" and continued moaning about the dysfunction of our government. Sounds like a never ending cycle.

In any case, an interesting piece, at Politico, "When Impeachment Meets a Broken Congress":

The most essential branch of the U.S. government is collapsing before our eyes — right as it faces a historic showdown https://t.co/6HBdUg46XO

— POLITICO (@politico) September 30, 2019

Even before getting into the weeds of its myriad other problems—poor staff retention, centralized decision-making, generational logjams—it’s not difficult to understand why the legislative branch is struggling to function. From the moment they launch their first campaigns, future members of Congress are entering into one giant warped incentive system that deters any meaningful challenge to The Way Things Work in Washington. Most members will profess to despise The Way Things Work in Washington, of course, especially when they first get here. But it tends to grow on them over time—not because it’s working, but because it’s comfortable. Where else can someone draw a salary of $174,000; have a staff of several dozen catering to their (and their family’s) every whim; enjoy special access to information and resources at the highest levels of government; forge lucrative relationships with people of immense power and influence; take taxpayer-funded jaunts to all corners of the country and the world; and command constant attention from the local and national media—all in exchange for producing little in the way of tangible outcomes?

None of this is to say that all members of Congress are bad people who are bad at what they do. To the contrary, many of them are fine people who came here for the right reasons. And some of them are really, really good at what they do, hustling 16 hours a day to deliver for their constituents. But even honorable people with honorable intentions look out for themselves, for their families, for their careers. Members of Congress are no exception. They have wonderfully important jobs. They don’t want to lose them.

Few people come to Congress wanting to be enforcers of the status quo. Every two years, Washington welcomes a new crop of wide-eyed, idealistic lawmakers who believe—really, truly believe—that they’ve been sent to shake things up in the nation’s capital. They are going to take the tough votes. They are going to stand up to the special interests. They are going to do what’s right by their constituents, even if that means getting the boot after one term.

Naturally, that sort of idealism doesn’t last. Once a member of Congress realizes he or she will never find a better job — and most of them know they will never find a better job — many will accept that some compromises are necessary to keep it. They adjust. They adapt. They play the game. They convince themselves that a mindless vote here, or a hurtful decision there, is worth it to sustain their career. They hang around long enough to amass more power, to win a chairmanship, to exert influence over certain issues, to cash out and take a life-changing paycheck from a lobbying firm, all the while believing their ends were justified by their means.

“I won’t miss a lot of things about this place,” Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican who agitated constantly against his party’s leadership, said prior to his retirement last year. “I think some people lose their soul here. This is a place that sucks your soul. It takes everything from you.”

More at that top link.

Really Bad Joe Biden

And I mean so bad even WaPo ripped him.

At Twitchy:

'Oh my gosh this is really bad': A lot of details in Joe Biden's war story just don't add up https://t.co/X1CrcceQaR

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) August 29, 2019

Except almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect. Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.

iden visited Kunar province in 2008 as a U.S. senator, not as vice president. The service member who performed the celebrated rescue that Biden described was a 20-year-old Army specialist, not a much older Navy captain. And that soldier, Kyle J. White, never had a Silver Star, or any other medal, pinned on him by Biden. At a White House ceremony six years after Biden’s visit, White stood at attention as President Barack Obama placed a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, around his neck.

The upshot: In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.

The New Nativists: Rise of Far-Right Nationalism

You gotta read this at the link. It's long. Of course you know the New York Times does everything to demonize the "far right," while completely minimizing real and serious threats from unlimited migration to Europe's traditionally homogeneous societies, especially Sweden.

It's all a Russia-back plot to spread disinformation, you see.

At the Old Gray Lady, FWIW:

Sweden views itself as a moral and progressive superpower, but an anti-immigration backlash has allowed right-wing populism to take hold. Aiding the rise in far-right, national sentiment: a global disinformation machine. https://t.co/YD1jn8oU3S

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 10, 2019

Norman Podhoretz, Why Are Jews Liberals?

I donated my copy to the library a couple of years back, but maybe I shouldn't have. The Democrats are hatin' on the Jews like there's no tomorrow. We're going to see some partisan realignment in 2020's voting, or we should see some. If Jewish voters keep backing the racist Dems I'll be gobsmacked. *Shrugs.*

At Amazon, Norman Podhoretz, Why Are Jews Liberals?

And prompted by John Hinderaker's post, linked at Instapundit, "THEY’VE EMBRACED IT: John Hinderaker: Do The Democrats Hate Hate? No."

Like the Labour Party in Great Britain, the Democratic Party has become a haven for anti-Semites.

Seriously.

Regime Change Wars Have Disastrous Consequences (VIDEO)

She sounds more like a Ron Paul Republican, lol.

But still, I like her. She's genuinely sincere and very attractive. I hope she gains a lot of traction in the primaries. It remains to be seen, but if she's not out in front at New Hampshire, then forget it. It's going to be a massive field of candidates.

#SayNoToWar pic.twitter.com/3sv7Takreb

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) March 1, 2019

Democrats Won the Wealthy Suburbs

This is interesting.

At WaPo, "These wealthy neighborhoods delivered Democrats the House majority":

Analysis | These wealthy neighborhoods delivered Democrats the House majority https://t.co/LvZ2AT15n6

— Thomas Edsall (@Edsall) November 11, 2018

In Tuesday’s election, House districts on the outskirts of major American cities were the site of electoral shifts that propelled Democrats to power.

Wealthy and middle class voters delivered the suburban votes for enough Democratic pickups to secure a majority. In several cases, the battleground districts were wealthy and highly educated places that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, exposing the vulnerability of those Republican lawmakers.

The precinct-level results shown on the maps in this story show the most precise view of how voters within a district swung. This level of detail can also provide more insight into what caused a district to flip — or not.

These maps show how those neighborhoods handed Democrats the House.

We’ll start in Virginia’s 7th District, where Rep. Dave Brat (R) was challenged by ex-CIA operative Abigail Spanberger (D). This north-south district goes from above Culpeper to rural areas near the southern border of the state, but the voters are concentrated in the suburbs of Richmond and Fredericksburg.

Here are precinct-level results for the 2016 presidential election, with circles sized based on the margin of victory for the Democrat or Republican in each precinct.

The district backed Donald Trump by six percentage points in 2016. Democratic margins around Richmond were outweighed by the Republican tilt of the rest of the district.

But in 2018, those Fredericksburg and Richmond suburbs flipped to Spanberger, securing her the win.

In 2018, Brat’s support in wealthier neighborhoods softened ... while middle-class voters surged for Spanberger. Remember that there are many more voters around the cities in the east part of the district.

As with many of the districts shown here, the 7th District voted overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney, but less favorably for Trump.

“These are places that just don’t like the president that much, and I think that’s reflected in this House vote,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor at the nonpartisan political analysis site Sabato’s Crystal Ball...

Click through for the maps. This is a really cool article.

Polarization Makes Gains in Senate, But Costs Republicans the House

A good piece, at LAT, "Republicans depend on Trump’s polarizing approach to gain in the Senate, but it costs them the House":

Throughout his 22 months in office, President Trump has focused intensely on a single political priority — maintaining the support of his base, even at the risk of alienating millions of other voters.

Tuesday night’s election proved both the wisdom and the risk of that approach.

In a deeply divided country, Trump’s efforts to stoke his supporters’ enthusiasm helped his party expand its margin in the Senate. But his heated attacks on opponents and denunciations of immigrants also helped Democrats retake control of the House and make major gains in races for governor.

White House aides were quick to pronounce the outcome a victory for the president. But if it was, it came with ominous overtones for his next big political challenge, in 2020.

Democrats won significant victories statewide in each of the big mid-Atlantic and Midwestern industrial states where Trump secured his upset victory two years ago. Their control of the House will give them license to investigate him and his associates for the next two years, a prospect no president welcomes, especially not one seeking reelection.

Overall, Democratic congressional candidates won considerably more votes than their Republican opponents. Like winning the popular vote in the presidential race, that doesn’t give a party any additional power. But as a rough gauge of public sentiment, it sets a troubling marker for Trump.

In 2016, he became only the fifth person in American history to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. No one has pulled that off twice.

The night provided a split decision in which the country’s liberal, Democratic cities and its conservative, Republican rural areas moved further apart politically than ever, leaving neither side with the sort of clear majority needed to resolve major national issues.

That’s not just a political abstraction. Settling big national issues almost always requires one party having the political strength to put its ideas into law.

Without that, Congress can only tinker: Both Trump and Democratic leaders, for example, have said they might agree on more money to build and repair roads, bridges and other types of infrastructure.

But Tuesday’s results point to two more years of political trench warfare and the worsening of major problems — an immigration system that both parties decry as broken, a healthcare system that remains the world’s most expensive even as it fails to cover everyone, rapidly rising federal debt, festering inequality.

Unsurprisingly, roughly three-quarters of voters in exit polls conducted for the major television networks said that the country is becoming more divided politically. Fewer than 1 in 10 said Americans are becoming more united.

For a generation, despite the efforts of four consecutive presidents starting with Bill Clinton, neither party has been able to create a long-lasting electoral majority. This period stands as the longest in more than a century in which neither party has managed to maintain clear dominance, controlling both the White House and Congress.

People in both parties who run campaigns, as well as academic experts who study them, provide a surprisingly consistent list of the reasons why stalemate has proven so persistent.

Personal leadership shortcomings are not the main problem, said UCLA political science professor Lynn Vavreck, coauthor of a newly released book, “Identity Crisis,” which analyzes the causes of Trump’s 2016 victory.

“I don’t think this is a failure of these leaders” as individuals, she said.

Instead, successive presidents have been stymied by a fundamental shift in politics in which both of the two major parties have grown more homogeneous and the mix of national concerns increasingly has turned toward issues of identity. Those two trends hardened partisan lines, making bipartisan compromise tougher and complicating any effort to forge a broader coalition.

Legislators “can shave a dollar per hundred off a tax bill, but how do you get gradations of equality?” Vavreck asked. “These issues are harder. It’s harder to see what compromise would look like.”

As each party has grown more internally united — one liberal, one conservative — party membership has increasingly overlapped with other ways in which people identify themselves — race, religion, region, even occupation and the entertainment choices people make. That has alienated the two sides further from each other, said Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland.

“If you’re a Democrat, and you go to church with a Republican … it makes you understand them in a way that you wouldn’t have,” Mason said. As Americans have sorted themselves out along partisan lines, “we’ve seen a move away from cross-cutting identities” of that sort. As those dwindle, “people tend to be more intolerant” of those they see only as adversaries, she said.

Republican voters are now overwhelmingly white, conservative, older, rural, often evangelical Protestants. Democrats have have become the party of cities, of racial and ethnic diversity, of college graduates and younger people, and are largely secular. And politics increasingly revolves around “who you are, what your identity is,” Mason said.

Partisan media outlets and social media choices reinforce those identity lines.

A person watching CNN or MSNBC would find that “the world they’re reporting on is a different universe than the world Fox News is reporting on,” said longtime Republican strategist and pollster Whit Ayres.

“You have the ability to listen to only those outlets that reinforce what you already think” and emphasize “the rightness and goodness of your side and the evil and wrongness of the other side.”

Polling provides extensive evidence of the strain that sort of partisanship causes. Almost two-thirds of Americans, 63%, say that when they talk about politics with people with whom they disagree, they find they have less in common than they thought, according to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Over half of Americans, 53%, say they find such political conversations “stressful and frustrating,” Pew found.

That number has grown since 2016, when partisan divisions already ran deep...

Still more.

What's at Stake in Today's Midterm Elections? Both Sides Say 'Everything'

From Susan Page, "What's at stake in the midterms? Both sides warn the future of our democracy is at risk":

What's at stake on #ElectionDay? https://t.co/vZHzZA16Fy

— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) November 5, 2018

WASHINGTON – What's at stake?

Democrats warn that the midterm elections Tuesday will undermine the future of America's democracy unless President Donald Trump's authoritarian instincts are curtailed. Republicans argue that the nation's sovereignty is at risk if Democrats prevail.

"Fear is the dominant issue, bar none," said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

That's particularly remarkable because the economy is strong and the nation doesn't face an instant foreign policy crisis, although there are trouble spots around the world. Instead of a sense of peace and prosperity, the final weeks of the campaign have been dominated by violence and conflict: the mass murder of worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the mailing of improvised explosive devices to more than a dozen leading Democrats, the images of a caravan of Central American asylum seekers making their way across southern Mexico.

The campaign has crystallized clashing visions of what defines the nation: America First or an increasingly diverse population?

Keep reading.

Sabato's Crystal Ball: Final Picks for Election 2018

Larry Sabato and company got egg on their faces in 2016, like just about everybody else, of course.

But I think this projection sounds about right.

See, "Final Picks for 2018":

There is the shifting political landscape that emerged nationally in 2016, with some traditionally Democratic blue collar small cities and rural areas across the North moving toward Trump and the Republicans, and some traditionally Republican suburbs dominated by voters with high formal educational attainment breaking sharply away from Trump and the GOP. Those latter areas make up a significant share of the competitive House districts, many of which seem poised to deliver for Democrats on Tuesday, although some Trumpy, traditionally Democratic turf is part of the Democratic House calculus too.

Keep reading.

Why We're Headed for Huge Turnout

From Charlie Cook, at Cook Political Report:

A week before the midterm elections, both parties are filled with anxiety. Like football wide receivers who have been blind-sided one time too many, many Democrats are hearing real or imaginary footsteps—residual trauma from the 2016 election, when they thought things were going so well until they didn’t.

Similarly mindful of history, Republicans know that midterm elections are referenda on incumbent presidents and that President Trump is a particularly polarizing party leader, evoking the strongest emotions. They also know that in times of one-party rule across the White House, House, and Senate, it’s difficult to shift the blame to anyone else, so midterm elections are particularly explosive.

The Democratic nightmare of Nov. 8, 2016, a day in party history that will live in infamy, was triggered by overwhelming support for Trump in small-town and rural America, combined with white, working-class voters in trade-sensitive manufacturing areas. These were the places and types of people that Franklin D. Roosevelt attracted to the Democratic Party during the New Deal. They had begun flocking to the GOP before Trump came along, but with him as the face and the leader of the GOP, they shifted with much greater enthusiasm. Needless to say, ambivalence towards Hillary Clinton on the other side was a factor as well.

Education has become a key defining variable: The Republican Party has re-centered to those with less than a four-year college degree, and of course men, with ties to women and those with degrees loosening. This is what realignments look like. The gender gap that has been around at least since the days of Ronald Reagan is growing wider. Grievances among certain groups accumulated during eight years of President Obama, the rise of the tea-party movement being one obvious outward sign, then all exploded in 2016, with Trump lighting the fuse.

Any discussion of the voting patterns of these white, noncollege voters should note that this is a very big and broad group. It should be segmented into those who are and have long been conservative, middle-of-the-roaders, and finally those who are liberal and populist, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and are intrigued by Elizabeth Warren, with few sympathies for more-establishment Democratic figures. Noncollege whites are not a monolithic group. It is also important that those who are conservative, white, evangelical Christians—whether they are college-educated or not—are a very distinct and important voting bloc. At least for whites, the Democratic Party has become the secular party.

While many Democratic strategists accuse fellow party members of being bedwetters, overly fretting about what happened two years ago, some very smart Democrats who examine a lot of data and early-voting patterns privately say they are seeing some signs that more Republican/conservative-leaning white working-class voters are showing increased electoral interest that is reminiscent of 2016. Possibly they’ve been triggered by outrage over what they perceive to be unfair attacks on Brett Kavanaugh during the fight over his Supreme Court nomination or, more recently, the caravan of Central American immigrants working their way up through Mexico toward the U.S. border—something they interpret as a middle finger aimed at Trump and the United States...

Keep reading.

Mother of All Meltdowns: If No Blue Wave, Leftist Rage Will Be Off the Charts

Heh. This is great.

At American Greatness, "The Stages of (Liberal) Grief: Anger":

Hot off the presses: my take on how liberal ANGER will intensify after Nov. 6. https://t.co/S2fNoz6ZPE #TrumpDerangementSyndrome #Midterms2018 #Midterms #MidtermElections #MidtermElections2018 #RedWave #RedTsunami #RedWaveRising2018 #RedWave2018 #REDWAVECOMING #Republicans #gop

— Nicholas L. Waddy (@WaddyIsRight) November 4, 2018

Having explored the historical genesis of liberal derangement, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and having disclosed the role to be played by Denial after the probable failure of Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018, we now proceed to the next stage of our analysis. We turn our attention to the forms of liberal Anger that are likely after November 6th.

Anger is, as previously discussed, the dominant emotion discernible in the Left’s reaction to Trumpism. In fact, rage is rampant among liberals. What has kept this anger in check, however, is a sense of assurance that the Trump phenomenon is something akin to a death spasm among conservatives. Leftists have long assumed that “progress” of the sort they desire is inevitable, and indeed they can point to many victories won in the last few decades. Moreover, soaked as they are in identity politics, the Left puts great stock in America’s changing demographics. They presume—understandably, given their inveterate anti-white racism—that the “browning” of America can only foretell doom for Republicans.

They ignore the obvious counterargument: this country has been “browning” for a long time, and the Republican Party is today stronger than it has ever been since the 1920s. In any case, it cannot be overstated how integral it is to the peace of mind of liberals to assume that the Republican Party will soon die an ignoble death, and therefore, they believe, any upsurge in nationalism or conservatism is a temporary aberration. The march of history towards the broad, sunlit uplands of progressivism will soon resume.

The failure of the “blue wave” would be a punch in the gut to this attitude of complacency and self-satisfaction on the Left. The American people will have chosen Trumpism and Republicans not once, but twice. As leftists see it, this will mean an affirmation of “hate” and a rejection of their own worldview of “inevitable” progress. The liberal throng (sometimes understandably mistaken for a mob) will have expended vast energies, and donated vast sums, to achieve a victory that remains elusive if not utterly improbable. The bile will rise in leftist throats as it begins to dawn on them that the last gasp of conservatism, which they perceived President Trump to hail, may instead be an enduring realignment of American politics that is favorable to Republicans. They will despair at the fact that millions of women and minorities, who by rights belong on the Democratic plantation, deserted the cause. They will, in short, experience anger on a scale that will make 2016-18 seem like child’s play.

What will be remarkable about liberal anger post-November 6, however, is that for the first time most of it may well be directed inward rather than outward. What do I mean by that? Up to now, divisions and grudges on the Left have been deferred and subordinated successfully to the overarching project of reversing the effects of the 2016 election. The one thing on which the Left could agree was that it despised Donald Trump and everything he stood for (even if , in some instances, what he stood for was the exact same thing Democrats had long been supporting). A truce was arranged, whereby Democrats and liberals would sweep under the rug any lingering questions about the methods by which Hillary Clinton and the “moderates” in the Democratic Party defeated Bernie Sanders and the progressives in 2016.

Even Clinton’s appalling ineptitude in her conduct of the 2016 election would be forgotten. Liberals would let bygones be bygones, and they would refocus on the urgent task of discrediting and obstructing the work of the Trump administration, and of removing President Trump from office. This left-wing consensus, this facade of liberal unity, will soon collapse in a heap in the early morning hours of November 7, absent the prophesied “blue wave.” Consensus and unity were always understood to be necessary because they were the price of victory in 2018 and beyond. When that victory does not arrive, it will be bedlam.

Liberal anger, therefore, should crest in the weeks and months after the midterms, and it will engender a great deal of internecine fighting among leftists. The Democratic establishment will struggle mightily to tamp down this ugliness, and the media will struggle to conceal it. We can anticipate strident calls from the Sanders wing of the party for the resignation of DNC chairman Tom Perez. He may well heed these calls. Activists will push for the party to move to the left on major issues, and their insistence that a Democratic House, if one is elected, produce articles of impeachment against the President will be more akin to an ultimatum or a threat than a mere request. Impeachment, however, will be unlikely to materialize, because Democrats representing swing districts will not cooperate. These Democratic Congressmen will therefore be subjected to a steady stream of invective from their fellow Democrats. The Democratic caucus, in short, will be riven by divisions as serious as those scarring the Democratic Party as a whole. It is doubtful whether a Democratic House could even function under these circumstances...

Keep reading.

California Matters Tuesday

My district's in play, the 45th congressional, where two-term incumbent Mimi Walters has a good chance at being shown the door. Their campaign has not done door to door canvassing and outreach, while the Democrat Katie Porter's campaign has come to our house thrice in the last week, one time leaving voter information materials at our door when no one was home.

At LAT, "California hasn't mattered in national politics for a long time. Here's why this Nov. 6 is different":

Successive congressional wave elections have come and passed, cresting without ever breaching the Sierra Nevada.This year is different.
https://t.co/XjO3jkwkbg

— Jim Puzzanghera (@JimPuzzanghera) October 30, 2018

California — big, bounteous, beautiful — is pretty much used to irrelevancy come election day.

Sure, the state has produced many leaders of national import and helped countless more finance their political pursuits. But it’s been two decades since California was a presidential battleground, and longer still since the state played a meaningful role choosing a major party presidential nominee.

Successive congressional wave elections have come and passed, cresting without ever breaching the Sierra Nevada.

This year is different.

Unaccustomed as it may be, California stands at the center of the fight for control of the House, with at least half a dozen seats up for grabs, or more than a quarter of the 23 that Democrats need to seize the majority. A handful more could tip the party’s way if Nov. 6 produces a blue tsunami.

History favors the Democrats. With rare exception, the party holding the presidency loses House seats at the midpoint of a president’s first term. The current occupant could, of course, defy expectations; Donald Trump wouldn’t be in the Oval Office if he hadn’t managed to upend a number of political verities.

Trump won the White House while buried in a California landslide — no surprise there — and six of the seven congressional districts he lost to Hillary Clinton are key to Democrats’ hopes of taking over the House, which they last controlled in 2010. (The seventh, the mostly rural Central Valley district represented by three-term GOP incumbent and perennial target David Valadao, seems like a considerably further reach.)

Midterm elections are typically a referendum on the nation’s chief executive, and that dynamic has not helped Republicans in California, where the president remains deeply unpopular. Call it the Trump undertow.

Embattled GOP Reps. Mimi Walters in Orange County and Jeff Denham in the San Joaquin Valley would probably be headed to relatively easy reelection if the president hadn’t stirred such an outpouring of Democratic antipathy. Republicans would also be much better positioned to hang on to the northern Orange County seat of Rep. Ed Royce, who is retiring after more than 20 years in office.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who hasn’t faced much of a threat since his first election during the Reagan era, might not have his back to the wall in coastal Orange County but for his cozy relationship with Russia, which interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.

Setting the president aside, the competition also reflects political and demographic changes that have transformed California.

The state’s burgeoning Latino population has grown more politically active and pro-Democratic in response to the belligerent tone sounded by many Republicans. The GOP’s embrace of religious conservatism also pushed many live-and-let-live Californians away from the party.

That helped turn Orange County, a onetime Republican bastion, into a congressional battleground, along with the high desert outside Los Angeles, where two-term GOP incumbent Steve Knight is fighting for reelection, and northern San Diego County, where Republicans are struggling to hold the seat being vacated by Rep. Darrell Issa after nine terms...

More.

Partisan Realignment After the 2016 Election

This is the best piece I've read on our current crisis of political polarization.

It's not a crisis of governmental institutions. It's a crisis of the party system. What a great read.

From Stanford political scientists David Brady and Bruce Cain, at National Affairs, "Are Our Parties Realigning?":

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GOP

The election of Donald Trump was even more of a blow to any expectations of a new equilibrium than the back-and-forth elections of the prior decades. Not only was he not a standard Republican on free trade, taxes, entitlements, and so on, but the Republicans in Congress did not expect him to win. Their reaction to his victory was to try to pull together and pass the legislation they thought mandated by their 2010 wins six years earlier: end Obamacare, reform taxes, cut regulation, and increase energy production, among other longstanding Republican agenda items.

But the narrow Senate margin and Trump's lack of policy knowledge and legislative skill left Republicans with only a tax-bill victory. Obamacare is still the law of the land; immigration reform and budget policy remain problematic; and Trump is a more divisive president than either Bush or Obama. Thus our system — already burdened by partisan divisiveness, close elections, and few incentives for parties to cooperate on public policy — is saddled with an inexperienced, chaotic president and a governing party with no clear sense of what it wants or what voters want.

One result has been a struggle to define the GOP, which has sometimes seemed like a fight between the party's longstanding priorities and some of President Trump's particular emphases. But the battle lines have not been very clear — especially since neither the practical and contemporary meaning of the party's longstanding priorities nor Trump's beliefs are actually all that clear at this point, and since disputes about the president's character often overshadow internal policy debates.

If Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress in 2018, then the battle lines could be drawn more clearly, because those congressional Republicans who have held back criticism of Trump in order to pass legislation will no longer need to restrain themselves in the battle for the party. The 2018 and 2020 election cycles will, by and large, shape what Republicans become post-Trump. Republican incumbents might buy into Trump's views on immigration, deficits, trade, and so on to appease the Trump base, and thus change the party. Or the battle between Trump-like candidates and traditional Republicans could yield a new set of internal divisions and patterns. Or traditional Republican views might come to be reaffirmed.

The dimensions of the battle are revealed in survey data that YouGov has collected over the past few years. Starting in May 2015, they interviewed a panel of 5,000 Americans 17 times, with more interviews scheduled prior to the 2018 elections. The results have shown that Trump voters, compared to those Republicans who voted in the primaries for other candidates, are older, whiter, less well-educated, have lower incomes, and are disproportionately from the Southern, border, and Midwestern states. They are also, on average, angrier about politics, more likely to believe that many in the government are crooks, and  more dissatisfied with government. They are very anti-trade and anti-immigration and favor taxing the rich (those making over $250,000).

When asked about illegal immigrants living in the U.S. now, 70% of Trump supporters said they should be required to leave, while less than 35% of other Republicans agreed. In fact, a slight majority of other Republicans thought that they should be allowed to stay and acquire citizenship. On social issues such as gay marriage and the death penalty, Trump supporters were much more conservative than their fellow Republicans; in fact, a majority of other Republicans opposed the death penalty. In the post-election surveys, by a two-to-one margin, Trump Republicans favored a Muslim ban, while other Republicans opposed the ban. The battle for the heart and soul of the party is underway.

While these issues will be important, perhaps even more important is the extent to which Trump Republicans and other Republicans differ regarding the president. The August 2017 YouGov re-contact survey showed that 92% of early Trump supporters liked him, with 72% liking him a lot; Republicans who weren't early supporters, however, liked him less, with only 29% liking him a lot. The president's ability to retain the support of his base means those Republicans running for Congress must face the delicate task of appealing to that base in both the primary and general elections. Ed Gillespie's run for governor of Virginia in 2017 was an excellent example of such balancing. As one Washington Post article put it a few days before the election, "Gillespie is at the center of a civil war that is dividing his party, one pitting the Republican establishment he personifies with his four-star credentials against the anti-Washington forces that propelled President Trump's rise."

The battle between the Trump wing and other Republicans will play out numerous times over the next two election cycles, and the future of the party hangs on who wins. Crucial to Republican success will be suburban independents and Republican women who chose Trump over Hillary but today do not like the president. Off-year election turnout numbers in Virginia and Alabama confirm the importance of these voters.

THE RACE TO REALIGNMENT

In American political science, the standard party-change model has focused on "realigning elections," wherein one party achieves dominance that lasts long enough to resolve the key issues generated by the instability of the era. Those issues, in our time, appear to be challenges like immigration, inequality, family and social breakdown, worker insecurity, automation, trade, America's role in the world, and environmental challenges, among others.

Some observers suggest that Democrats have the best chance to arrive at a formula that captures a durable majority on most of these issues. As of this writing, the 2018 generic congressional poll favors Democrats by seven points (according to the RealClearPolitics average), and Trump's popularity is low. Historically, presidents in their first term often lose seats at the midterm election. And winning the House, the Senate, or both in 2018 would be seen as a harbinger of winning control of the government in 2020.

Control of all the elected branches would give Democrats a base of support from which to reduce inequality, reform the immigration system, and restore American leadership in the economic realm, on the environment, and in other respects. Nice scenario, if you ask any progressive. But there are many reasons why the Democrats are likely to fail in their efforts to create a new stable majority. The first and most obvious is that Democrats, like Republicans, are badly split on how the party should respond to both the Trump presidency and the dominant issues of our time. The result is that the number of Democrats running for president in 2020 may well be in the double digits, creating divisions that resemble those the Republicans faced in 2016.

Second, potential candidates are already favoring policies, like Medicare for all and free tuition, that even Californians know are not affordable. These views don't actually represent today's Democratic coalition all that well. In YouGov surveys, Democrats, by over two-to-one, favor cutting spending over raising taxes to balance the budget, and by almost two-to-one, they believe that quite a few in government do not know what they are doing. In regard to free tuition, 40% of Democratic voters are either against it or are not sure that it would work. Thus, the Democrats have not achieved agreement within their party regarding policies that deal with today's core challenges, and a multi-candidate presidential primary is not likely to resolve the issues and create a stable majority. That leaves the Democrats, like the Republicans, divided and not unified, and, just as with the GOP, the necessary changes seem more likely to occur in primary and general-election contests over the next few electoral cycles. The Democratic Party does not look ready to step up; the Republicans don't either.

Here again, a student of history would be reminded of the closing decades of the 19th century, when there were pro-silver Republicans and pro-gold Democrats (like President Cleveland) and the same intra-party mix on tariffs and immigration and many other prominent issues. Control of the government shifted back and forth between these unsteady parties over and over again. But by 1896, the sorting of the parties had occurred, and Republicans were pro-gold, pro-tariffs, and so on, while the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan were the opposite. The electorate, in that case, chose Republicans, and the ensuing stability gave rise to economic growth and a period of prosperity.

A broadly similar transformation is very likely in our future. The sorting process in the Republican Party has begun, with the Democrats to follow in 2020. This time the sorting will not be conservatives to the GOP and liberals to the Democrats, since that has already occurred and has defined the very order that is growing exhausted. Rather, the coming era will be defined by questions like what do conservatism and liberalism mean to Republicans and Democrats, and which vision will the American people support? Whichever way it turns out, the parties have finally begun the process of adjusting to the realities of the new global economy.

The shapes our parties are likely to take might be easier to see if we consider their most extreme possible forms — which aren't where we will end up but can show us the contours of possibility. For Republicans, these are the possible alternatives on either pole: a Trump-like Republican Party that is anti-immigrant, protectionist, anti-gay marriage, dependent on entitlements, white, old, not well-educated, and concentrated in the southern and central United States; or a party that favors markets and smaller government, and is not anti-immigration per se but is, rather, more libertarian and diverse in membership.

The Democrats, likewise, face a similar polar choice: a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren Party that pushes socialist-leaning policies (Medicare for all, free tuition, a smaller military, higher taxes, and more regulation) joined to an identity politics that excludes moderates from swing states; or a Democratic Party more like that envisioned by the Clinton-era Democratic Leadership Council, which is center-left on economic policy, inclusive on social issues, relatively moderate on defense and immigration, and somewhat resistant to identity politics.

The battles between these alternatives have already begun in some primaries. And the likely outcome is not any of the polar opposites, but a shuffling of the issues that gives shape to complex coalitions...

RTWT, at the link.

Republican Insiders Prepare for Electoral D-Day

I've been holding off on election projections, but as I always point out, the president's party normally loses seats in the midterms. Even with the strong economy, I don't expect this year to be all that different, especially in the House. I doubt the Democrats will take the Senate, though, since they're defending like 25 seats, and 10 are in states in which President Trump won (in some cases by double digits).

But we'll see.

We'll see.

At Vanity Fair, "“The House Is Already Lost”: G.O.P. Insiders Prepare for Electoral D-Day":

My latest for @VanityFair & @VFHIVE: https://t.co/LJgb3ucoCx

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) September 10, 2018

At this stage of the game, losing the House is the most likely proposition. It’s just a matter of how bad it gets,” said a disconsolate Republican strategist with clients on the ballot, describing the final, desperate scramble to rescue the G.O.P.’s 23-seat majority from an impeachment-happy opposition. In Washington, a familiar sort of fatalism has taken hold. Just weeks until early voting kicks off, a spate of fresh public-opinion polls show Democrats on the precipice of a resounding victory. Time is short; resources are dwindling, and the singular figure with the power to make or break the party—Donald Trump—seems pathologically incapable of standing down and letting a booming job market do the talking. “You have people imploring the president not to put them in a position that will harm them—and therefore harm him,” a veteran G.O.P. operative said of Republican congressional leaders.

The pendulum of political power, which historically swings against the White House during the midterms, could be especially savage this year, given the sharp dissatisfaction with Trump in America’s usually Republican-leaning suburbs. Washington’s high-powered consulting class is betting on it. The lobby shops and advocacy organizations that play both sides and thrive on proximity to power are preparing for a changing of the gavel and moving to forge connections with Democratic committee chairmen in the House beginning in January of 2019, when the 116th Congress is seated. “Downtown, there is a sense that the House is already lost for Republicans,” a G.O.P. lobbyist and former senior House aide told me. “There is a hiring spree for plugged-in House Democrats who want to lobby. So, downtown is already planning on the Democratic takeover; the bets are on how big the flip will be.

Democratic operatives aren’t being snapped up by K Street at quite the same rate as two years ago. Lobbying shops were chastened by Trump’s victory in 2016 and are awaiting more evidence to confirm what appears to be a surging blue tide. But professional Washington is not unconvinced. They’re privy to much of the same data being poured over by dialed-in Republicans, and believe an end to one-party rule is on the horizon. Whatever bump the Republicans enjoyed earlier this year, during the brief period of normalcy after Trump signed the historic, $1.3 trillion tax overhaul into law, appears long gone. So is the goodwill House Republicans anticipated when they pictured a fall campaign with a national economy growing at an annual clip of 4 percent, and an unemployment rate that had plummeted below 4 percent. “I’m advising clients to start covering their bases with would-be chairs,” said another Republican lobbyist, referring to the Democrats who are likely to take over powerful House committees, such as Energy and Commerce or Ways and Means.

The political forces battering the G.O.P. aren’t hitting the two houses of Congress equally. As I reported for the Washington Examiner and discovered during a summer swing through the Midwest, 2018 is essentially a tale of two campaigns, reflective of the balkanization gripping our politics. As bad as the midterms look for House Republicans, with dozens of seats in danger, their Senate colleagues begin the fall chase better positioned. The party’s 51-49 Senate majority, propped up by a battleground that runs right through the heart of Trump country, could actually expand, if Republicans can navigate a few molehills, and if those molehills don’t grow into mountains. Rep. Beto O’Rourke might upset Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, granted that has as much to do with the Republican’s own image problems as the Democratic Party’s Senate prospects.

Democrats are on the defensive in a handful of ruby red states a world away from restless, upscale suburbia...

 More.

Rep. Duncan Hunter Blames Wife (VIDEO)

That's pretty scuzzy. (*Shrugs.*)

At the San Diego Union Tribune, "Rep. Duncan Hunter points to his wife and 'whatever she did' in campaign finance scandal":

Duncan Hunter and his wife Margaret entered — and exited — the federal courthouse separately on Thursday.

Rep. Hunter, the Republican congressman from Alpine, rushed to his black suburban as crowds chanted, “Shame. Shame. Shame.”

Margaret left through a different exit. She had her head down. Onlookers said the 43-year-old mother of three looked as if she was about to cry.

A 60-count indictment, filed in federal court in San Diego, accuses the couple of illegally using a quarter of a million dollars in campaign money to fund their lavish lifestyles and filing false campaign finance records with the Federal Election Commission to cover it up.

They pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, falsification of records and aiding and abetting in the prohibited use of campaign contributions.

Congressman Hunter, 41, is well-known in California and on Capitol Hill. His grandfather, Robert Hunter, was a veteran who hosted a popular TV broadcast in Washington D.C. with Republican members of Congress who wanted to give weekly reports on their districts. After moving back to California in the mid-1950s, he developed the Jurupa Hills Country Club and Golf Course, and many surrounding communities in western Riverside, according to news reports.

Hunter’s father, Duncan L. Hunter, held the same congressional seat as his son for 28 years and had a short-lived bid for president in 2008.

By the time the youngest Hunter entered the race for what was then the 52nd District, he had the name recognition of three generations and ties to a massive support network from his father’s previous campaigns...

More.

Previously: "California's 50th District Now Competitive After Duncan Hunter Indictment?"

California's 50th District Now Competitive After Duncan Hunter Indictment?

I don't know?

You'd have to have a pretty mainstream Democrat running, and Democrats aren't mainstream, so there's that.

But see LAT, "Rep. Duncan Hunter's indictment opens door for Democrats in Trump country":

Rep. Duncan Hunter's indictment opens door for Democrats in Trump country https://t.co/wZjS6l3XZB pic.twitter.com/z1zhaIg90Z

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 23, 2018

Republican Dale Weidenthaler shook his head in disgust Wednesday when the conversation turned to Rep. Duncan Hunter.

The retired police officer has long distrusted the GOP congressman but voted for him anyway. Now that Hunter has been indicted on campaign corruption charges, Weidenthaler, 61, expects to skip the House race rather than vote for his Democratic rival.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s just too much smoke,” said Weidenthaler, who was sipping a Red Bull on a morning visit to a Temecula grocery store.

The Alpine congressman’s indictment Tuesday has suddenly turned this safe Republican House seat into a competitive race in a midterm election that was already looking grim for the GOP.

It threatens to depress Republican turnout in this largely rural district in San Diego and Riverside counties. The party now has to spend resources on a contest that GOP leaders would have normally ignored.

With Democrats across the nation already portraying President Trump’s Republican Party as a swamp of corruption, the charges against Hunter came the same day that Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies and his onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of bank fraud and other crimes...

More.

David Horowitz Make the Case Against the #NeverTrump Crowd

At the Other McCain, "David Horowitz Schools Jonah Goldberg: #NeverTrump as Moral Cowardice":

Politics is a team sport. In a two-party system, being a team player often forces us to make difficult choices. After the 2012 GOP primary campaign, when I twice went “all-in” on candidates (first Herman Cain, then Rick Santorum) trying to stop Mitt Romney as the “It’s His Turn” establishment candidate, it was understandably difficult for me to get fired up for Mitt’s fall campaign. And yet, I did. By late September, I’d convinced myself that Mitt had a good chance of beating Obama and, even though Romney was by no means my idea of a conservative, I spent the final weeks of the campaign in cheerleader mode, hoping against hope that Obama could be prevented from getting a second term. Alas, we were “Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption,” as I declared after Mitt’s loss.

That experience taught me something, namely that my efforts as a journalist to “make a difference” were futile. The primary voters had their own opinions which I was unable to influence, so I vowed to ignore the 2016 primaries and let the voters hash it out for themselves. This yielded Trump as the nominee and, rather miraculously, he won. Now, however, all the GOP pundit types who’d gone all-in trying to prevent Trump’s nomination are so butthurt about their lack of influence that they can’t get over it. They are like petulant children, ruining a birthday party with a tantrum because they didn’t get the gift they wanted.

Trump is not “my guy.” I have always been for free trade, and oppose protectionism on principle. As for Trump’s tone and temperament, I share many of the concerns of the #NeverTrump crowd, but there is one thing I like very much about Donald Trump: He wins.

Keep reading.

And here's the Horowitz piece, at American Greatness:

Here's my answer to Jonah Goldberg without the restrictions of a tweet:https://t.co/lbweUZUsV0

— David Horowitz (@horowitz39) August 20, 2018

The G.O.P.'s Bad Night

I'm not doing much election analysis these days, so check in with "the man," Sean Trende, at RCP:

My take on last night's elections: bad, bad, bad for the GOP.https://t.co/vg6MmICF5f

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 8, 2018

Capitol Gazette's Selene San Felice Drops F-Bomb During Interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN (VIDEO)

At Variety, "CNN Airs Uncensored F-Word During Interview With Annapolis Shooting Survivors."

She's bleeped on the YouTube upload, and on Twitter:

I guess this is what people thought I meant when I said I want more than thoughts and prayers. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/G3LQesVkRo

— Selene News Network 💁🏽‍♀️ (@seleniepanini) June 29, 2018

Jarrod Warren Ramos

I was really busy with family errands yesterday, although between trips to the doctor and what not I was able to follow the story out of Annapolis, Maryland, on the horrific quintuple murders at the Capitol Gazette newspaper.

What always strike me a vicious and evil is the premature speculation on the shooter, and it's almost exclusively leftists who engage in it. The Daily Caller had a great early roundup:

A sickening amount of people rushed to blame Trump for the shooting at the Capital Gazette yesterday despite knowing nothing about the shooter or his motives. We now know the shooter had a personal dispute with this paper. https://t.co/tp38zt1hhY

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) June 29, 2018

Featured there is Lauren Duca, a nasty wench:

The shooting today in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland cannot reasonably be separated from the President's mission to villainize the press as "the enemy of the American people."

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 28, 2018

It turns out the shooter was Jarrod Warren Ramos, who was the subject of a Capital Gazette profile in about 2011. It turns out the suspect had harassed a woman he knew from high school, and after the newspaper covered his harassment as a news story he sued for defamation and lost. He held a vendetta against the newspaper ever since.

See the Other McCain for the full story.

#JarrodRamos Identified as Shooter in Maryland Newspaper Mass Murder: https://t.co/axkX9CELPA … via @PatriarchTree #Annapolis #CapitalGazette #CapitalGazetteShooting 😢 pic.twitter.com/8hTtr5zvJA

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 29, 2018