Trump and Downballot Republicans

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  Convicted criminal Donald Trump does not care about GOP candidates in those races, except insofar as they can serve him.

Mia McCarthy at Politico:

Lara Trump, the Republican National Committee co-chair and daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump, dodged answering whether the RNC will support Maryland Republican Larry Hogan’s run for Senate after Hogan called for Americans to respect the verdict.

“I don’t support what he just said there. I think it’s ridiculous,” Lara Trump said when asked by CNN’s Kasie Hunt if the RNC will support Hogan on “State of the Union” Sunday morning. The former Republican governor of Maryland, who is facing Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in November, is looking to flip a Senate seat in a deep blue state.

Right before the verdict was announced, Hogan tweeted that he urged Americans to accept the verdict regardless of the outcome: “At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law,” Hogan said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And moments after Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts, Hogan was quickly met with backlash — specifically from GOP political strategist Chris LaCivita who replied to his post: “You just ended your campaign.”

Alex Isenstadt at Politico:

Donald Trump’s campaign is sending a blunt message to down ballot Republicans who are looking to fundraise for themselves off of the ex-president’s conviction: Back off.

Trump’s political operation views the guilty verdict in the New York hush money trial as a small-dollar goldmine — so much so that they are warning other Republicans not to raise money off it and siphon off money that could otherwise go to the Trump campaign.

“Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,” said Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. “We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.”

Is the Akin Ploy Working?

Our book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

In the 2012 Missouri  Senate race, incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ran ads during the GOP primary campaign saying that Todd Akin was "too conservative."  The idea of the "attack ad" was to drive GOP voters to Akin, her weakest potential foe.  It worked.  Other campaigns have tried variations of the "pick your opponent" ploy.

Democrats meddled in some 2022 GOP primaries in hopes of drawing weak opponents.

Myah Ward at Politico:

It was a risky bet, but at the moment, it appears to be paying off. In the six races where Democrats were successful in boosting hard-right candidates to the GOP nomination, many of the Republicans are lagging in the polls, struggling to raise money and forced to explain past controversial statements. In three governors races where Democrats played a role in shaping the primary outcome — Pennsylvania, Maryland and Illinois — cash-poor GOP candidates haven’t aired any TV ads since winning their primaries.

In the Illinois governor’s race, incumbent Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has led Republican Darren Bailey by double digits in nearly every poll since July. Even a recent poll sponsored by Bailey’s campaign showed Pritzker ahead by 7 percentage points.

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There hasn’t been much polling in Maryland’s gubernatorial race, but what’s out there shows a huge advantage for Democrat Wes Moore. You can tell Republican Dan Cox is feeling the heat: He’s upped his attacks against Moore since the unflattering numbers were published.

Popular outgoing GOP Gov. Larry Hogan has already predicted Cox’s downfall in November and said he won’t vote for him. Election forecasters have been equally dismissive: Last month, the University of Virginia’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball changed the race’s rating from “likely Democratic” to “safe Democratic.”

The closely watched race for Pennsylvania governor’s mansion has had a few more polls to examine than the other races. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro leading Republican Doug Mastriano by 10.4 points.

More Racist Rants about Baltimore

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty. The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. Earlier this month, he told several Democratic congresswomen to "go back" to their countries.  Yesterday, he attacked Elijah Cummings and his city of Baltimore.

“If it weren’t for Donald Trump, we would never know how corrupt these Democrats are, we would never know for sure that there was a Deep State. Now we know it.” @JudgeJeanine

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019

Someone please explain to Nancy Pelosi, who was recently called racist by those in her own party, that there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore. Just take...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019

....a look, the facts speak far louder than words! The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people. Now, lowest unemployment in U.S. history, and only getting better. Elijah Cummings has failed badly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019

“Elijah Cummings has had his chance to address it (crime & conditions in Baltimore) for decades, and he hasn’t gotten it done.” @PeteHegseth @foxandfriends How can he get it done when he just wants to use his Oversight Committee to hurt innocent people and divide our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2019

Not that it really matters but Cummings' district has above-average college education rates and home prices, along with a pretty good mix of urban and suburban areas (even some rural), and well-off, working-class and middle-class areas. https://t.co/33mH7JreHw https://t.co/8VWBWVkRRD

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 27, 2019

The Baltimore Sun:

Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

And a video response:

O'Malley

At The Los Angeles Times, Mark Z. Barabak writes of Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a potential liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton:

Fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton says she hasn't decided whether to run, and neither, O'Malley says, has he. In the meantime, he is running one of the most vigorous noncampaign campaigns of any 2016 possibility in either party — raising money, stumping in early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, traveling abroad to boost his foreign policy credentials and honing a message that might be characterized, for brevity's sake, as compassionate competence.

"People want problem-solvers," O'Malley, a former Baltimore mayor, said in a late-night interview after the first of two well-received speeches to Democratic activists in Des Moines. "They want leaders that will bring people together to solve problems, not people that will take their ideology and try to beat round pegs into square holes."

Noted for his data-driven approach to policy, starting when he used computer analysis to chart citizen complaints and fuel millions of dollars of new efficiencies in city government, O'Malley is a devout Roman Catholic grounded in the Jesuit emphasis on social justice. His religious faith, he suggests, informs his secular beliefs.

Obamacare Problems Persist into February

The New York Times reports:

With the federal online insurance exchange running more smoothly than ever, the biggest laggards in fixing enrollment problems are now state-run exchanges in several states where the governors and legislative leaders have been among the strongest supporters of President Obama’s health care law.

Republicans have seized on the failures of homegrown exchanges in states like Maryland, Minnesota and Oregon — all plagued by technological problems that have kept customers unhappy and enrollment goals unmet — and promise to use the issue against Democratic candidates for governor and legislative seats this fall.

“People see incompetence when they look at this,” said Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “Everyone that’s associated with it is going to have to deal with the consequences of this terrible law, including the state legislators who created these exchanges and the governors in charge of running them.”

Last month, the Republican National Committee filed public-records requests in Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oregon seeking information about compensation and vacation time for the exchange directors, four of whom have resigned. All five states have Democratic governors whose terms end this year. Three of them — Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon — are seeking re-election.

Amy Goldstein reports at The Washington Post:

Tens of thousands of people who discovered that HealthCare.gov made mistakes as they were signing up for a health plan are confronting a new roadblock: The government cannot yet fix the errors.

Roughly 22,000 Americans have filed appeals with the government to try to get mistakes corrected, according to internal government data obtained by The Washington Post. They contend that the computer system for the new federal online marketplace charged them too much for health insurance, steered them into the wrong insurance program or denied them coverage entirely.
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The Obama administration has not made public the fact that the appeals system for the online marketplace is not working. In recent weeks, legal advocates have been pressing administration officials, pointing out that rules for the online marketplace, created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, guarantee due-process rights to timely hearings for Americans who think they have been improperly denied insurance or subsidies.

But at the moment, “there is no indication that infrastructure . . . necessary for conducting informal reviews and fair hearings has even been created, let alone become operational,” attorneys at the National Health Law Program said in a late-December letter to leaders of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that oversees HealthCare.gov. The attorneys, who have been trying to exert leverage quietly behind the scenes, did not provide the letter to The Post but confirmed that they had sent it.