Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

151
I think we all learned that the Senate is more important than the House. The Senate is also much less democratic (small d) due to the 2 per state rule.

The Dems are playing defense in the Senate 2018. 2020 will be a different story. At least 20 Republican seats will be on the ballot.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... on_map.png
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

152
K9s wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 2:03 pm I think we all learned that the Senate is more important than the House. The Senate is also much less democratic (small d) due to the 2 per state rule.

The Dems are playing defense in the Senate 2018. 2020 will be a different story. At least 20 Republican seats will be on the ballot.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... on_map.png
You're presuming we will still be allowed to vote by 2020.
"Being Republican is more than a difference of opinion - it's a character flaw." "COVID can fix STUPID!"
The greatest, most aggrieved mistake EVER made in USA was electing DJT as POTUS.

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

153
Totalitarianism will never again be overt but look like Russia where voting still occurs but only as a show. The public votes to “confirm” what the oligarchs have already determined as policy or for the approved candidate.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

154
President Donald Trump, whose time in office has been defined in large part by his frequent falsehoods and misleading statements, claimed Wednesday he tries to be truthful. "I remember, you remember well in the campaign, you made a promise. You said, 'I will never lie to you,'" ABC News' Jon Karl said to Trump in a new interview. "So can you tell me now, honestly, have you kept that promise at all times? Have you always been truthful?" "Well I try. I mean, I do try. I think you try, too. You say things about me that are not necessarily correct," Trump replied. "I do try, and I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth." I mean sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that's different or there's a change. But I always like to be truthful," he added.
Last week, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, a strong supporter of the President, said Trump "is a liar" and that he "should probably dial down the lying." "OK, well we both know that he's telling lies. So if you want me to say he's a liar, I'm happy to say he's a liar," Scaramucci told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/politics ... index.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

155
Bisbee wrote: Thu Nov 01, 2018 2:32 pm Totalitarianism will never again be overt but look like Russia where voting still occurs but only as a show. The public votes to “confirm” what the oligarchs have already determined as policy or for the approved candidate.
Ummm... You just described the corporatist Dem vs industrialist Rep elections in almost every state and district since the '90s (the 1790s, that is). :laugh: :shock:
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

156
Throughout this year, Chuck Schumer met every few weeks with the five most endangered senators in his caucus. The chatty Democratic leader was mostly in listening mode as he talked them up, according to people familiar with the sessions: What were they seeing back home? Which issues were getting voters excited? The meetings informed Schumer’s legislative strategy: Give the red-state Democrats as much room as possible to break from the party, if it meant better aligning with their states and improving their shot at winning. Tuesday’s election will offer a verdict on Schumer’s gambit and his first two years as Democratic leader — as well as begin to answer the more fundamental question of whether moderate Democrats can survive in the Trump era.

The quintet of self-proclaimed moderates represents the most powerful bloc of centrists in Congress, as well as the cornerstone of any Democratic Senate majority in future years. And at least four of these senators have an even chance or better to win re-election. If Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Jon Tester of Montana suffer a wipeout, the number of moderates in the Senate would plummet to its lowest total in recent history, while further polarizing the chamber. A loss by three or four of the five would be a huge setback for the party. “I hope that we get our vote out and we don’t lose them. I hope that people understand … that blowing the system up can only take you so far,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.). “These are not easy jobs people have from these purple and red states.”

The five senators are taking desperate measures to emphasize their moderate virtues as Republicans call them Trump-hating liberals. Donnelly is expressing openness to limiting birthright citizenship for immigrants and touting his support for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Manchin is playing up his battles with Senate liberals and declaring “both sides are guilty” of uncompromising politics. And McCaskill has amped up her border security rhetoric to line up with Trump. If she loses, she warned voters, Missouri will “probably get written off as a bright red state” for years. “I don’t want to be Arkansas, how about you?” she implored voters in Lee’s Summit, Mo., last week. Yet despite those tacks toward the center, Trump is doing all he can to hurt the staying power of political moderates. Democrats’ opponents are essentially doing nothing to moderate their records other than embrace protections for pre-existing conditions.

Trump has tried to blow up the senators’ careful attempts to straddle both parties: If a lawmaker is for what the president does and says, that person is a conservative. Anything else is viewed by Trump and his supporters as the actions of a “liberal.” “He’s not a moderate. He’s a liberal. A superliberal,” Donald Trump Jr. said of Tester last week. Those efforts and the demographics of the states in play have Republicans feeling bullish about knocking off at least two of the five senators. They hope Trump’s final-week sprint through states with close Senate races will put several Republican challengers over the top. But there are pockets of apprehension. Polls have shown Heitkamp trailing by a wide margin in North Dakota. But Trump is skipping the state this week, reflecting fears among some Republicans of overconfidence. Heitkamp’s opponent, Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), is “now worried about complacency from some of the polls. That’s really not helpful to him,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).

The five red-state Democrats have already shown they know how to traverse unforgiving political terrain. All of them won in 2012 in states Mitt Romney carried. Tester and McCaskill won in 2006, too, part of a wave of Democrats elected as a check on President George W. Bush. The question at the heart of their campaigns this time is whether the five adequately reflect the conservative makeup of their states. They call themselves independents and point to votes where they broke ranks with Schumer and caucus liberals. Republicans say anything but full cooperation with Trump doesn’t cut it. Donnelly boasts about the number of his bills Trump has signed, often mentions his support for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and touts voting with Trump more than 50 percent of the time. To his opponent, Republican Mike Braun, though, none of that matters. On the important stuff, he's been with Schumer,” Braun said in a recent interview.

Manchin is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, occasionally even tilting to the right of a pair of high-profile moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. A solid favorite in his race, the anti-abortion Democrat says of liberals: “I look at things very different than they do.” But his opponent, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, argues that Manchin’s profile is still at odds with a state that Trump won by 42 points. “A conservative fighter who’s going to help President Trump versus a dishonest Washington liberal,” is how Morrisey sums up the race. In Missouri, Republican Josh Hawley called McCaskill a “liberal Democrat” at least 10 times during their final debate. In response, she highlights her votes that align with Trump’s positions, and her willingness to work with him. “Josh Hawley has decided in this campaign that he is going to win or lose by being 100 percent, never wavering from President Trump,” McCaskill said. By contrast, she added, if “I agree with the president, great. If not, I’m not afraid” to oppose him. For Schumer to ever rise to majority leader, he needs McCaskill's strategy to resonate with voters in states that Democrats barely contest in presidential elections. He’s taken heat from the left for cutting deals on judges, allowing his members to support some deregulation efforts and freeing them to vote for high-profile nominees, all in service of keeping as many seats as possible.

Democrats have an outside shot on Tuesday to take the chamber and an even better one in 2020. But the task will be exponentially harder if Democrats lose more than one or two seats on Election Day. It’s a fact not lost on Republicans: Hawley has branded his closing trip around the state as the “Stop Schumer, Fire Claire” tour. “The choice is between what you voted for in 2016," Hawley said last week, "and the radical left agenda that Claire McCaskill and her liberal allies like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi want to impose on this country. That’s what’s at stake.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/ ... 018-955183
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

157
Some of the ballot measures on state ballots.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fo ... his-week/

Lousiana has a ballot measure to change their state constitution to require all 12 jurors vote for conviction and not at least 10. Civil rights groups and the NRA are both in favor of the change, strange bedfellows.
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/66352224 ... ot-measure
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

158
highdesert wrote: Sun Nov 04, 2018 4:54 pm Some of the ballot measures on state ballots.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fo ... his-week/

Lousiana has a ballot measure to change their state constitution to require all 12 jurors vote for conviction and not at least 10. Civil rights groups and the NRA are both in favor of the change, strange bedfellows.
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/66352224 ... ot-measure
Yeah, the LA one makes sense if you understand the history.

We have a "victims rights" referendum on the ballot that is not just about victims rights. Of course, they don't want you to know that.
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

165
Donald Trump wants you to desperately believe that Tuesday’s midterms elections were a “Big Victory” for him and the GOP. But like so much of what Trump says, that’s simply not true.

--snp--

The reality is that Tuesday’s election was truly a blue wave. In fact, it’s getting bigger and bluer by the day. Since election night, Democrats have picked up even more seats as close races become finalized in their favor. As of now, Democrats have officially picked up 33 seats in the House. And with nearly a dozen House races still too close to call, Democrats could pick up closer to 40 when all is said and done.
https://beta.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ ... ncna935136

The truculent little child is going down, in public with 24/7 coverage.

FDT

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

166
CDFingers wrote: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:19 am
Donald Trump wants you to desperately believe that Tuesday’s midterms elections were a “Big Victory” for him and the GOP. But like so much of what Trump says, that’s simply not true.

--snp--

The reality is that Tuesday’s election was truly a blue wave. In fact, it’s getting bigger and bluer by the day. Since election night, Democrats have picked up even more seats as close races become finalized in their favor. As of now, Democrats have officially picked up 33 seats in the House. And with nearly a dozen House races still too close to call, Democrats could pick up closer to 40 when all is said and done.
https://beta.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ ... ncna935136

The truculent little child is going down, in public with 24/7 coverage.

FDT

CDFingers
Yes, Trump is reported to be depressed over the results of the midterms along with Mueller and his investigation still ongoing and upcoming Democratic House investigations. As I've said his Achille's Heel is his financial dealings, there are decades of financial transactions in the US and abroad some that may be seriously criminal on a state and federal level.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html

Republicans in two Orange County, CA races are playing Trump's fraud & fake tactic.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-p ... story.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

167
Democrats and Trump opponents are significantly happier about that outcome than are Republicans and Trump voters, according to a new USC-Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

Asked to rank their reaction to the congressional election results on a 0-100 scale, voters who said they cast ballots for the Democrats were, on average, 26 points more positive than were Republican voters.

The election drew the largest turnout of any midterm in more than a century — almost 50% of those eligible cast ballots — and the poll provides insights into why the other half didn’t participate: A feeling that they didn’t know enough about the candidates or issues far outweighed other concerns.

Trump continues to tout his own role in helping Republicans win some Senate seats, but as Democrats have emerged on top in a series of contests that remained unresolved on election day, he has become increasingly sullen about the results, lashing out at his staff and angrily tweeting about Democrats.

In an interview published Thursday by the conservative Daily Caller, Trump complained bitterly about Democratic gains and repeated his often-debunked claims that widespread illegal voting had hurt his side.

“This is a problem in California that’s so bad of illegals voting,” Trump said, according to a transcript the Daily Caller published. “This is a California problem, and if you notice, almost every race — I was watching today — out of like 11 races that are in question they’re gonna win all of them.”

He appeared to be referring to six heavily contested congressional elections in the state, some of which remain too close to call. No evidence of fraud has marred those races.

“The Republicans don’t win, and that’s because of potentially illegal votes, which is what I’ve been saying for a long time,” he added. “I have no doubt about it.”

Last year, after Trump raised similar claims of illegal voting, the White House established a commission to look into the issue. The panel disbanded after it failed to document any widespread illegal voting in California or elsewhere, backing up previous inquiries that have found illegal voting to be a rare and isolated problem. The day after the election, Trump asserted that Republicans could pick up a net of five seats in the Senate, crediting himself with the victories. So far, the party has picked up a Senate seat with a potential to gain another: Florida remains undecided pending a hand recount of ballots. The GOP is heavily favored to win a runoff to keep its seat in Mississippi.

In the House, Democrats have gained at least 36 seats and seem likely to end up netting around 39.

The Democrats picked up their 36th seat Thursday when Democrat Katie Porter was declared the winner in an Orange County district over Republican Rep. Mimi Walters.

Earlier Thursday, the Democrats defeated another GOP incumbent when officials in Maine conducted a so-called instant runoff to determine the winner in a contest in which neither Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin nor Democrat Jared Golden had gotten 50% of the vote.

Poliquin has gone to court to try to block Maine’s use of a ranked-choice voting system, in which voters faced with multiple candidates can cast ballots for their first and subsequent choices in order of preference. Under state law, those second-choice votes get redistributed between the top candidates if no one gets 50% of the first-choice votes.

Golden’s victory, if it holds, would mean Republicans no longer have a single congressional seat in the six states of New England, which was once a Republican stronghold — just as the Deep South, now mostly in Republican hands, was a Democratic bastion.

At least six more races remain unresolved, with Democrats likely to pick up at least one more in California by the time final votes are counted.

Ballots counted since election day have moved most of the unresolved races toward the Democrats. At least one, in Utah, has moved the other way in recent days.

The Republican who is narrowing the gap in the Utah race, Rep. Mia Love, is one who Trump singled out by name at his postelection news conference, saying that she lost because she had failed to support him.

“Mia Love gave me no love, and she lost,” Trump said, prematurely. “Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

The Democratic victories in the House mark the biggest pickup for their party since the post-Watergate election in 1974. Not surprisingly, Republicans aren’t happy with the results.

On the 0-100 scale, Republican voters on average listed their feeling about the outcome at a tepid 47. Democrats averaged 73, the USC/L.A.Times poll found.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-p ... story.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

168
And, just to give the Orange shit-stain MORE agita, Cal 45 was declared for Katie Porter, ousting steadfast Trump stalwart, Mimi Walters. The sweep of Orange County was STUNNING, and no way would all those well-to-do and rich folks TOLERATE any kind of election funny business. Porter is a professor in the Law School at UC Irvine, where my older son is a student.

The only places Trump won decisively ALL are either heavily gerrymandered, like Ohio, or have (theoretically) unconstitutional laws suppressing voting and have heavily purged the rolls of likely Democratic voters, like Floriduh and Georgia.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

171
CDFingers wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:35 am Kelly Anne's husband George called the t admin "a shit show in a dumpster fire."

:roflmao:

CDFingers
Sounds like it might be the direction their marriage is headed!
Disagreeing with your spouse, even on politics is one thing (Matlin-Carville) but when you clearly have different fundamental moral codes, I don't see how the marriage survives.
I also don't see how the shit-stain tolerates her, given she "can't control her husband!" (from the stain's POV).
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

172
YankeeTarheel wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 12:18 pm
CDFingers wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:35 am Kelly Anne's husband George called the t admin "a shit show in a dumpster fire."

:roflmao:

CDFingers
Sounds like it might be the direction their marriage is headed!
Disagreeing with your spouse, even on politics is one thing (Matlin-Carville) but when you clearly have different fundamental moral codes, I don't see how the marriage survives.
I also don't see how the shit-stain tolerates her, given she "can't control her husband!" (from the stain's POV).
Would you throw away the most comfortable pair of shoes you've ever owned in your life because they occasionally squeak?
She's demonstrated on numerous occasions that she can be counted on to say things that are entirely divorced from reality (beautiful, beautiful alternative facts) to portray Trump in the best possible light at all times and, unlike demented grandpa Ghouliani, she generally doesn't say/do anything herself that reflects poorly*.

*Poorly in Trump's eyes, not necessarily poorly to the rest of us.
He roughed us, then he cuffed us
And he took us off to jail
No picture on a poster, no reward, and no bail

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

173
Darwinchip wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 1:06 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 12:18 pm
CDFingers wrote: Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:35 am Kelly Anne's husband George called the t admin "a shit show in a dumpster fire."

:roflmao:

CDFingers
Sounds like it might be the direction their marriage is headed!
Disagreeing with your spouse, even on politics is one thing (Matlin-Carville) but when you clearly have different fundamental moral codes, I don't see how the marriage survives.
I also don't see how the shit-stain tolerates her, given she "can't control her husband!" (from the stain's POV).
Would you throw away the most comfortable pair of shoes you've ever owned in your life because they occasionally squeak?
She's demonstrated on numerous occasions that she can be counted on to say things that are entirely divorced from reality (beautiful, beautiful alternative facts) to portray Trump in the best possible light at all times and, unlike demented grandpa Ghouliani, she generally doesn't say/do anything herself that reflects poorly*.

*Poorly in Trump's eyes, not necessarily poorly to the rest of us.
We can't assume anything because unlike relatively sane persons, the Orange Shit Stain is NOT logical, nor rational. The only thing you know is sooner or later he throws everyone under the bus--including 2 wives and at least one daughter.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

174
The conservative Republican bastion of Orange County, CA went blue, all seven congressional seats moved into Democratic hands during the midterm.
Democrat Gil Cisneros has defeated Republican Young Kim in the race for California's 39th Congressional District, officially turning the former GOP stronghold of Orange County entirely blue.

Democrats, who needed a net gain of 23 seats to reclaim the House from Republicans, have now picked up 38 seats. The contest between Cisneros and Kim was the last House race of the 2018 cycle yet to be decided in California.

Cisneros' win follows a victory Thursday by Democratic House candidate Katie Porter, who unseated two-term incumbent Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in California's 45th Congressional District — the penultimate Orange County district to fall out of Republicans' hands.

Cisneros will replace retiring Rep. Ed Royce, a Republican.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/ ... ue-1000533

"RIP, California GOP: Republicans lash out after midterm election debacle
‘There is no message. There is no messenger. There is no money. And there is no infrastructure,' says one top Republican."

In the wake of a near-political annihilation in California that has left even longtime conservative stronghold Orange County bereft of a single Republican in the House of Representatives, a growing chorus of GOP loyalists here say there’s only one hope for reviving the flatlining party: Blow it up and start again from scratch. That harsh assessment comes as Republicans survey the damage from the devastation of a “blue tsunami” in California which wiped out five GOP-held House seats — with more still threatened — while handing every statewide seat and a supermajority to the Democrats in both houses of the state legislature this week. The latest blow came Thursday, when Democrat Katie Porter, an UC Irvine professor, defeated Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in a district which represents the beating political heart of Orange County.

“I believe that the party has to die before it can be rebuilt. And by die — I mean, completely decimated. And I think Tuesday night was a big step,’’ says veteran California GOP political consultant Mike Madrid. “There is no message. There is no messenger. There is no money. And there is no infrastructure.” Republicans like Madrid also mourned another low point this week: the defeat of Southern California Assemblyman Dante Acosta, marking the demise of the last GOP Latino legislator — in a state where Latinos comprise the fastest-growing electorate. “The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time. The Grand Old Party is dead,” wrote former state GOP Assembly leader Kristin Olsen, who startled fellow Republicans with a brutally frank op-ed this week saying Republicans must acknowledge their “serious problem” in California, particularly the effects of toxicity of President Trump.

GOP strategist John Weaver, who has worked California races and also has represented the presidential campaign of Ohio governor John Kasich, seconded Olsen’s view, tweeting that the effects of the Trump presidency have doomed any chance of resurrection. “In one fell swoop Trump & Republicans who willingly handcuffed themselves to him have turned Orange County into a GOP wasteland,’’ he tweeted this week. “You want to see the future? Look no further than the demographic death spiral in the place once considered a cornerstone of the party.” Madrid argues that many California Republican leaders remain in complete denial of the fact that their continued support of Trump presidency has sealed the fate of the GOP — and last week’s midterm elections revealed the true extent of the GOP’s rot in California, where the state party has now shrunken to third party status.

“Now, it’s just open warfare. The barbarians have broken through the gates. The army is in full retreat,’’ said Madrid, who adds there’s no hope left for a party that for years has been on a path toward destruction. “Burn it to the ground. I want to reconstitute.’’ Republicans looking at the ashes of the midterm results say they must envision what a new party will look like — after the current structure and its leadership has been entirely disassembled. “That’s the question: how do you start over?,’’ said Joel Fox, a longtime GOP strategist who publishes the “Fox & Hounds Daily” commentary site. He says the answer will be more wide-ranging than finding “one dynamic leader” — celebrity or billionaire — to rescue their cause. “The rise of the Republican Party may really depend on the Democratic Party,’’ Fox said, and how it handles the heady times of having a $14 billion surplus and a supermajority under the leadership of the incoming Governor-elect Gavin Newsom. If progressives try to push their agenda too far, and land too many pro-tax ballot measures in front of the voters in future ballots — including revisions of the landmark property tax measure Prop. 13, soda taxes and oil taxes — it’s possible they will create an opening for the GOP to return to viability.

Not everyone agrees that Trump is the cause for the party’s bottoming out. This week, former state GOP chair Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee, argued in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner that “it’s not Trump” who lost Orange County dominance for the party. He laid the blame on millions of dollars in “dark money” raised by Democrats, who he said were aided by better organization and help from the tech industry in Silicon Valley. And — without any substantiation — Steel also claimed Democratic voter registration drives produced “borderline fraudulent turnout rates” in some key districts. Already, a leading pro-Trump Republican voice — former gubernatorial candidate Assemblyman Travis Allen, a far-right conservative who fully supports the president’s wall and immigration policies — has kicked off his campaign to head the state GOP, announcing that it’s time to “take back California.” But a growing number of Republicans in the party’s #NeverTrump wing — which includes prominent strategists like Rob Stutzman and Luis Alvarado — insist that a new beginning will rely heavily on a full-throated repudiation of Trump’s caustic divisiveness. They believe the rebuilding process could require years, if not generations, to rid the state GOP of the taint of a president who is blamed for ramping up anti-immigrant sentiment in a state that is home to more immigrants than any other in the country.

This isn’t the first time the dilapidated Republican Party in California has faced a dire outlook — or debated the notion that it must be completely overhauled. In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was lambasted by Republicans when he delivered an address to their state convention warning that the GOP was “dying at the box office’’ because they lacked inclusive messaging and policies, particularly to minorities who now dominate the state’s demographics. And in assuming the leadership of the party in 2013, former state Sen. Jim Brulte predicted it would take at least six years to rebuild the structure and fundraising strength of Republican in California. He warned then that Republicans would need to “either stop the bleeding and/or start turning it around” in 2014 --- or the party will be in the pits “for the rest of the decade.” None of that altered the party’s downward trajectory, however, or caused a wholesale rethinking among some leading candidates and party leaders. Madrid cites the recent gubernatorial contest in which Republican nominee John Cox, who described himself repeatedly as a “Jack Kemp” Republican, pushed for Trump policies that are abhorrent to many Californians.

“It is completely unfathomable...for a Republican nominee to run on building a wall,’’ said Madrid, a nationally recognized expert on Latino voting trends who noted that the party has spent 20 years trying to extricate itself from the damage done by Prop. 187, the anti-illegal immigration ballot measure that eviscerated Latino support in the state. “And everyone acts like it’s normal...Cox was running on that, in California. Are you out of your mind?” Madrid, who most recently advised the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, said the party needs to stop looking for silver bullets — like a gas tax repeal — and confront the disintegration of some of the state GOP’s once most reliable electorates, especially college-educated voters and women. “We hemorrhaged college-educated Republican voters on Tuesday night. The ‘diploma divide’ is a very real thing,” he said. “The smaller it gets, the more monolithic is gets. The whiter it gets. The more populist-nationalist it gets. What you’re seeing in the Republican Party is that it’s the party of white identity politics.”

Democratic political strategist Darry Sragow says if the party continues on its current path, its complete disintegration is entirely predictable. “They’re down to 24 percent registration. And the reason is that they have a huge deficit with Latinos, with African Americans...and with Asian Americans. And they now have a deficit with whites,’’ he said. “You’re talking about a party where 77 percent of Republican likely voters in California are white. And the population that’s white here is 39 percent.” His advice: “They have to take down the ‘whites only’ sign from the clubhouse door,’’ Sragow says. “And if they’re willing to allow people who aren’t white into the club, they may be able to recover.’’ “I think that the GOP is capable of turning itself around, because it’s a well-established brand,’’ he said. “The problem is, the people who manage the party are going to have to be willing to do that. And by definition, they are the opposite of that. They have no interest in that.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/ ... le-1000481
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: A 2018 wave is building, but will it fizzle?

175
They keep talking about how Gil Cisneros beat Young Kim in CA39 and how Young Kim would have been the first Korean-American in the House. That is not true. She would have been the first Korean-American WOMAN in the House! ( probably the 1st Republican, too.)

Yet here in New Jersey, in the highly contentious race to oust Tom MacArthur, that reactionary asshole who led the fight to kill Obamacare (remember the "party" the House GOP had with the Orange shit-stain, before the late Sen. McCain turned his thumb down on them?), Andy Kim, also a Korean-American, won. Kim is not the first Korean-American in the House, but the first Dem since 1999. It was a close, but glorious win over overtly racist ads by MacArthur, claiming Kim, who was born in the district to immigrants, "isn't one of us!" ie, somehow, not 'Murcan enough.

Like Orange County, CA, NJ swept all but one Republican from the House (Ocean County is VERY conservative). PA, where gerrymandering had given Rethugs 13 of 18 seats despite there being more Dems in the state, after court-mandated non-partisan re-districting, now has 9 and 9! Next, they have to that in NC, GA, and, of course, Texas.

What looked like a fizzling Blue Wave has, at least in the House, turned into a slow-moving Tsunami after all, well outpacing the 2010 Tea Party "shellacking". But the Orange Shit-Stain never admits defeat, he just rages and blames other people.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests