Nothing but Politics: The Republicans’ Donald Trump Problem.

Last week’s revelations make it more difficult to come to any conclusion other than that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election. Although there is still much more to learn about exactly what was involved and how high up it goes, the fundamental question has changed.  We should no longer be asking, why do the Trumps do what they do? Instead, we need to ask, what if anything will be done to stop them?

Although some have argued previously that Republicans’ refusal to do anything about Trump stems from a desire to see their particular policies put into place, that no longer holds up. The current reality is that keeping Trump as President is entirely about political calculus and nothing more. The deeper you dig into this problem, the more that becomes exceptionally clear.

At this very moment, Republicans in the House could begin an investigation leading to impeachment proceedings related to obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey. Obstruction was the charge on which President Clinton was impeached without any accompanying criminal charges. The whole process could be concluded in about a month fairly easily. Were this to take place, unified Republican control of the government would not be affected at all. Mike Pence would become President. If anything, the Republican agenda would be easier, not harder to pass, without Trump’s delay, distractions and confusions.

This is before we even consider how much more might come out about Trump and Russia. Senator McCain, who is not winning any courage awards but is doing well with one-liners, talks about the scandal like a centipede with many shoes still to drop.  

The vast majority of Congressional Republicans understand this is a calamity. Certainly, there are 30 or so House members and 19 Senators who do – the number needed to join with Democrats to end him.

These people now have the power to end this nightmare. So what is stopping them? There is only one logical answer, and it has been the same answer since Trump came onto the political scene.

When Trump emerged in 2011 as a right-wing Republican talking about Birtherism, Republicans by and large decided to let it go for two reasons: one, they thought he was doing some damage to then President Obama and two, they worried about what would happen if he turned his fire on them.

 This was Romney’s strategy in accepting Trump’s endorsement in Vegas into 2012 1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwzGMmGcJw: Sure, Romney kept Trump at arms distance from then on, but the damage was done. Trump was in the Republican tent.

In 2015, when Trump launched his Presidential campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, Ted Cruz said that he thought Donald Trump was terrific, rather than casting him out of the party, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2015/06/30/ted-cruz-donald-trump-is-terrific-shouldnt-apologize-for-comments/?utm_term=.507830a4c0d4. 

Donald Trump’s threat to run as an independent induced all Republican candidates to unite in a pledge to support him should he win. Not everyone kept this pledge, but it still provided Trump incredible leeway to say whatever he wanted. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/09/donald_trump_s_loyalty_pledge_to_the_republican_party_how_the_real_estate.html His extremism was accepted. 

 By the time Trump transgressed our constitutional norms with his Muslim ban http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-ban-immigration/index.html, the Party was already yoked to him. Things did get nastier in the primaries but, in the end, Donald Trump was victorious, receiving more than 14,000,000 votes. 

Republicans were stuck. If Trump were abandoned, those 14,000,000 people would be enraged. Republicans needed every one of them to win. If Trump was supported too enthusiastically, Republicans risked alienating too many upscale voters and losing anyway.  They accepted him and tried to have it both ways: being supportive and then being a bit distant and then being supportive.  Then he won, and Republican leaders have stuck with him despite his multitudes of controversies while in office because: a) they know enough of their voters love him, beginning with the primary; b) they have propagandized the voters who initially weren’t so enamored to like him even if they know better; c.) they understand he tapped into a group of voters they couldn’t easily reach. In the 2016 exit polls, Republicans were viewed favorably by 40% of the electorate and unfavorably by 55% of electorate, but Trump was able to win 20% of those who held unfavorable opinions of the Republican party. 

That amounts to a relatively massive 14 million votes. Those voters probably overlap somewhat with the 14 million people who voted for Trump in the primary. The Trump base,therefore is probably in the neighborhood of 20 million people more or less. There is very little that can be done to pry them loose.   Exit polls also suggest that roughly 12 million people voted for Trump despite having an unfavorable opinion of him.  The three groups of voters, Trump Base Republicans, Trump People who don’t like the Republican Party and Trump voters who disapproved of Trump all matter.

So Donald Trump commands somewhere around 20 million voters who are loyal to him.  Estimates suggest at last 5,000,000 and as many as 10,000,000 who are more loyal to him than to the Republican Party. It is the fear of these people’s reaction and only the fear of their reaction that is keeping Donald Trump as President. The parties are so evenly divided that the Republican Party does not feel it can afford to alienate these voters at any cost. It is this political calculus above all else that enables Donald Trump to cling to power. 

Explaining the Ossoff Campaign

Jon Ossoff’s failure to take the 6^th Congressional Distirct in Georgia last month was a tough loss, no doubt about it. I went down there for two days. I know, losing is just hard. What is incredibly important, however, is that lessons are learned from such defeats. And, as importantly, they need to be lessons based on the particular facts and circumstances of this campaign. We shouldn’t apply the broad brush of past campaigns to this result. 

Starting with Candidate Recruitment

The Georgia 6^th has historically been an exceptionally red district. In the 2012 presidential election, it voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 23 points. In the absence of Donald Trump, this district would never have made anyone’s list of places Democrats needed to challenge first. But this district had one of strongest aversions to Trump in the country, shifting the margin from Romney plus 23% to Trump by about 2%.  A similar collapse was seen in a decent number of similarly well-educated districts across the country. (Depressingly, they were matched by a corresponding large drop in rural districts with less educated voters.) 

 The appointment of the 6^th’s Congressman, Tom Price, to be Health and Human Services Secretary created an opening.  Complicating this opportunity, however, was the fact that the first round involved a top-two election, meaning that if Democrats did not quickly coalesce around a candidate Republicans might get two candidates in the runoff.

This, more than anything else, explains how Jon Ossoff came to be the Democrats’ candidate. We needed a candidate quickly. Democratic Congressmen John Lewis and Hank Johnson, from nearby Atlanta and who together speak for a large part of the Georgia Democratic Party, stepped in and chose Ossoff. For them, he fit the model of a winning candidate: young, articulate and with broad experience, including having worked for both of them as a congressional aide. Ossoff also seemed likely to be able to stay relentlessly on message – which he did. Yet, Ossoff, who was without a doubt from the Georgia 6^th, was a liberal, not the type of solid Republican voter who dominated the district before Trump. The simple fact that Atlanta Congressmen chose Ossoff didn’t help either. White flight out of Atlanta created the North Fulton based district in its current form.

National Democratic groups, from the DCCC to Daily Kos, quickly ratified the choice -- Jon Ossoff was our guy. He had to be. Local Democrats, in addition to Lewis and Johnson, accepted the overwhelming national decision. But to some degree they also had no choice if they hoped to have a candidate in time for the runoff. As a result, the party bypassed almost entirely the kicking the tire phase of the campaign. Ossoff was driven off the lot because he was the only car Atlanta Democrats knew and could trust

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The Right Message and Strategy but a Problem with Execution

Jon Ossoff came incredibly close to winning this race. In the first round, he took 48% of the vote, less than 10,000 votes away from wining outright. In the second round, he was just about 9,200 votes short of winning. Between April 19^th and June 20^th, his campaign added 33,000 votes to his total. Purely from the perspective of an Ossoff candidacy, it feels like not a lot more could not have been done. (Admittedly, getting some of those 33,000 people in the first round might well have been enough to win then. Playing to get 50% in a field with a large number of candidates does seem a little nuts on its face, however, even if it ended up being best strategy.)

In terms of execution, to appeal to what was at its core a red district, Ossoff had to run a cautious campaign and not really say much. Many on the left are arguing that this was the cause of his defeat. But this argument does not really hold up to scrutiny. To carry the argument that a bolder message would have gotten more base Democrats to vote, there have to have been more base Democrats to turnout. There likely weren’t. Turnout in this special election was considerably higher than it was in the 2014 midterm election. Although turnout didn’t quite get to presidential year levels, that was true on both sides. In fact, Democratic turnout was higher than Republican turnout; there just are not as many Democrats. In addition, despite what some have been saying, the Ossoff campaign made youth and non-white turnout a priority and met with success in those communities rarely seen in a Congressional campaign, let alone a special election.

For those who claim Bernie Sanders’ message would have done better here, as DFA in particular articulated in a post-election memo, it is worth pointing out that Sanders competed in the Georgie 2016 primary and got just shy of 23,000 votes in the district, a far cry from the 125,000- plus votes that Ossoff received. The Sanders voter in the Georgia 6^th is just 20% of the Democratic vote. There were likely there as many Romeny-Ossoff voters in the district as Sanders-Ossoff voters. The Sanders campaign ran on a message urging progressives to come out, come out wherever you are. When more progressive don’t come out, as they didn’t in the presidential primary, it’s fair to conclude they probably don’t exist.

The Democratic Party establishment fares no better here. Ossoff was without a doubt a product of that machine. Although in his rhetoric he tried to bite the hand that fed him (more like a nibble), he was not particularly convincing. A problem with running a young candidate without a serious track record, such as Ossoff, is that the opposition can turn him into whatever they wish. The specter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made that task even easier. It should be said here that Pelosi has done a very good job. She deserves tons of credit for among other things getting the ACA passed. The problem is that after a billion dollars of negative ads, her brand is damaged. It becomes easy to attach her battered image to a candidate who has no brand.

Even more disturbing is that the DCCC ran this race as a chance to raise money for itself, including ostensibly soliciting money for Ossoff the day of the election long after it could do any good. It also ran its regular play book without considering the context of the campaign. Democratic field operatives continued to believe that a phone call was a phone call and a door knock was a door knock and that 900 out-of-state canvassers were a good idea. The Handel campaign’s core message more than anything else was that “outsiders” were trying to tell Georgia what to do. The Ossoff campaign didn’t really try to block that shot because so much of its money did come from outside of state (including some of mine). The national Democratic Party needs to turn down the presence and the noise in places where we frankly are not popular. The opposite happened in the 6^th

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Despite all of this, it did almost work. Still, if we do not learn to be more local, more adaptable, and less insistent on using tactics that once worked but now probably don’t, it will be hard to win all the places we need to to retake the House in 2018 and save our democracy.  Voters need to see themselves in our candidates. That can be particularly challenging when decisions are made from Atlanta in this case (not the district) and from D.C. more broadly. 

What’s the best play in the special election in Georgia’s 6th district?

For those who don’t know me, I am a special election junkie. In case you need proof, I drove from Hartford to Buffalo (400 miles one way) and spent four days with Kathy Hochul as she won a congressional seat in 2011. 

In the Trump era, special elections are more important than ever. The only thing that will scare Congressional Republicans into acting responsibly is for the fear of defeat. And a special election is on the horizon in the Georgia 6^th. The seat is being vacated by Congressman Price to become HHS secretary. The district saw one of the largest swings toward Democrats from 2012 to 2016, handing Donald Trump a one-point margin of victory 48% to 47%. That’s down from Romney’s 24-point margin in 2012. So this is a seat that Democrats can win in a special election but it is also historically quite Republican.

And there’s an interesting wrinkle in how the election will be held that is being missed. This Georgia election is being held using the California and Washington system whereby the two candidates who receive the most votes regardless of party advance to the runoff, barring a candidate receiving 50%. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/georgia-special-house-election-still-gops-race-to-lose.html

Filing for this election closed Wednesday, and 11 Republicans, 5 Democrats and 2 Independent candidates have signed up for the race. In theory, a candidate could receive 50% of the vote and avoid a runoff all together, but in a candidate field this big that almost never happens. There is no reason to think that it will this time. 

The first round is being held on April 18^th, and the runoff will be held on June 20^th. Although Democrats seem to be banking on the strategy of winning the race in the June 20^th runoff, it seems to this humble observer that winning both spots in the runoff is a better play, though they are of course not mutually exclusive.

Even if there is an anti-Trump sentiment in the district, we are stilling looking at a 60% to 40% split with Republican candidates taking 60% in the first round and Democrats getting 40%. If the 11 Republicans split their vote evenly, and the five Democrats split their vote evenly, Democrats take the top two in a walk. That is not likely to happen. 

The initial take seems to be that the Republican have three strong candidates (Karen Handel, Judson Hill and Dan Moody). It also seems likely there are more votes in the Republican second tier (Bob Gray, Amy Kramer, Bruce Levell) than for the comparable Democratic also rans. This leaves Democrats with a quandary. 

Thanks to support from Congressmen John Lewis and Hank Johnson, as well as the Netroots’ community, the leading Democratic candidate is former congressional staffer and filmmaker Jon Ossoff. At the moment, he is best positioned to win a run-off. But it is the second best running Democratic candidate, former Democratic State Senator Ron Slotin who interests me now.  The other three Democrats who declared seem to be also rans, but Slotin at least on paper looks like he might be able to put on a credible campaign. It is unclear why he was passed over by Atlanta Democrats, but regardless, if he can put together a solid campaign then a Republican split could allow Democrats to win both spots in the runoff and take the seat on April 18^t. This means shifting resources to boost Slotin and away from Ossoff, who likely has enough money to make the runoff spot now. (If he doesn’t, than the odds of winning the runoff would be low anyway). 

If there are locals on the ground who could convince me otherwise, I am happy to hear from them. But it seems more likely we can take advantage of an 11 –to-5 candidate spilt and a 3-to-2 split in serious candidates than it is to get 50% in a runoff. It seems like we need to build up Ron Slotin. 

The Supreme Court Fight.

Deciding how best to fight Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, is an exceptionally difficult problem and one where I see both sides.

 Let’s start with what should clearly happen. Senate Democrats should vote no on Trump’s nominee. (Possible exceptions are the five Democrats who hold seats in states Romney won, particularly Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Joe Manchin in West Virginia.) Gorsuch should be grilled at the hearing as thoroughly as possible. Pressure should be put on the perhaps three or four Republicans who could in theory be persuaded to vote no if the nominee was to spring an ethics or other leak. Anything less would mean they’re not doing their job.

But from that point on, the decision becomes murkier. A fierce debate will ensue over what should happen next. Democrats control 48 Seats in the U.S. Senate. (As a quick reminder in the years 2012 and 2014, Democrats lost three seats and thus majority control by a grand total of 56,000 votes.) So that means a filibuster will be required to block Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. With a filibuster, comes the risk that the Senate will vote to end the filibuster on Supreme Court nominee, claiming only 50 votes are required. They would thus vote to permanently end filibusters on Supreme Court nominees and likely end the filibuster altogether. A filibuster currently requires 60 Senators to invoke cloture to close debate otherwise debates can continue on, in theory forever. Ending it would mean that 50 plus the vice president might be all Trump needs for everything he wants to do.  Ending the filibuster could mean the Senate would not be able to slow down the functioning of government. 

Democrats also face a very serious Senate challenge in the long term. The states are currently aligned against Democrats both in the coming election in 2018 but also in many elections to come. Trump won 30 States, Clinton won 20 States. Even moving the four states Trump won by the closest margin to the Democrats  (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin) would still give Republicans 26 states, to Democrats 24 states. Democrats currently hold five seats in states Romney-won; Republicans hold three seats in states Clinton won. In states that voted for Obama twice but Trump this year, Democrats hold six seats and Republicans hold six seats. This gives the Republicans an advantage in retaining and perhaps even expanding their Senate control.

The reasons to filibuster are as plain as day. Republicans refused consideration of a reasonable nominee so they could in effect steal this seat. With this seat stolen, the cases coming out of the Supreme Court will be much worse and Supreme Court damage is among the absolutely hardest to change. Once a case has been decided, it often takes upwards of 50 years, if not more, to ever see it overturned. It is unclear just how long Democrats could hold this seat open but a desire to see it held open for as long as possible makes incredible sense. Forcing Republicans to blow up the institution to get what they want also makes some sense. The filibuster has been abused for years and certainly during the Obama presidency. Its death, while incredibly painful in the short term, might work to make the government function which is essential for small d, democratic health. So ending the filibuster might be worth it, regardless. 

Yet, our eye needs to be focused on the 2018 Senate elections. Democrats are defending 10 of their 11 Trump state seats, versus Republicans defending one Clinton state seat.  So the Supreme Court will clearly be a vocal point of the election. To persuade Montanans and Missourians, from two of the seats in play, we need a strong argument for why we are filibustering and why a vacancy needs to be held up indefinitely. Although the Republican argument for blocking Merrick Garland was quite weak, they had a majority and thus their blocking of his nomination did not require a filibuster. They thus did not have to consume all the Senate’s time and prevent the body from functioning, as a Democratic filibuster inevitably will. The presidential campaign also overshadowed the fight over Obama’s nominee. Midterms lack a consistent story line and thus the Supreme Court fight, if it is waged, will be center stage in 2018.

The proper strategy to pursue is exceptionally difficult. People who come down on either side of it should be treated with good will and not be considered traitors on the one hand or nasty partisans on the other. Being able to work with people who disagree on something like this is essential to a successful Trump opposition. 

Don’t believe a poll conducted before an event occurs.

The President signed an executive order Friday temporarily barring refugees and residents of seven countries from entering the United States. This action has led many people to be detained, spurred protests at major airports, and prompted multiple court rulings barring its enforcement.

Into this maelstrom comes a poll asking people what they would think about just such an order and finding the response to be widely positive. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316914-poll-over-half-back-trumps-refugee-ban. The huge catch: the poll was conducted before the order was actually signed.

It is exceptionally important that this poll be given absolutely no credence. The court orders, the protests, the political statements, and the extensive media coverage of all this, has gone a long way to shape and reshape how Americans see this matter.  Finding out  something as simple as, almost all Democrats oppose this order, will take Democrats who supported it in the poll and turn them against it  because they want to follow what the party thinks. Stories of particular people barred under this order can change minds radically.

Ideas that may sound good in theory collapse when put into practice all the time, and as the collapse occurs and is witnessed so does the public support for the idea.

This ridiculous poll serves as a good reminder to always check the dates on a poll when trying to measure what it is telling you and to ignore it if conducted before the event occurred. 

No Shortcuts to Persuasion

         This past week marked the beginning of what will be, if we are a lucky, an incredibly challenging four years. One skill that has been lacking in our movement, but which our Party will absolutely need to rebound during these four years, is the ability to persuade.  Our struggles along these lines are not surprising.  Genuine persuasion is exceptionally difficult, and the sad truth is that for a minority to persuade a majority to care about their set of issues is exceptionally difficult. (We are a party built up of minorities)

But what we have learned in recent times is that while our constitutional republic sometimes offers shortcuts around persuasion (such as courts) there can be downsides to these alternative routes.  Put simply, the majority has a way of expressing its displeasure and reversing gains that are achieved without authentic consent.

There are three other short cuts that can also serve as surrogates for true persuasion.  The first is party capture. When your political party prevails you might be able to force through a position that is profoundly unpopular with the country as long as that position is essential to a wing of your party.   If that doesn’t work, another trick, used almost universally by interest groups and even some  political parties, is to claim majority status regardless of voting outcomes or results.  “The true people, the true party, agrees with us” and when something gets in the way of that story, the impediment is described not as a reflection of popular sentiment but instead as either a ruse or undemocratic.  

This can be made particularly effective through phrasing of issues.  So the NRA can, for example, oppose gun safety efforts on grounds that the “true majority” supports “the Second Amendment” without acknowledging that many quite popular gun safety measures are perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.   

The third and final one is a bit more difficult.  A group may acknowledge that the public does not share the group’s agenda and yet it may appeal to moral or constitutional rights which allegedly justify bypassing popular opinion and thus undermine the need for persuasion. Sometimes this approach is truly necessary.  After all, our constitutional system exists so that in the words of many, “we don’t vote on rights.” It’s hard to quarrel with this logic and there’s no reason to give up on basic rights.  But no one should be fooled into thinking that rights can be relied on over a long period of time in the face of strong majoritarian opposition.   The reality is that the electorate ultimately turn political results in the direction it wishes and almost no piece of paper can make someone safe if the Government refuses to honor it.

 The alternative to the political risks inherent in attempts to misconstrue or bypass public opinion is to truly get better at persuasion.  This means that when it comes to decisive issues such as  global warming  the goal should be to build such a strong consensus among the voting public that elected officials would not dream of denying its existence.  In our current polarized climate, however,  it has become too tempting to spend more time on trying to make that consensus appear real than on actually doing the hard work of persuading people to the point of building consensus.

   Persuasion is arduous, hard to measure, and even harder to get donors to wait for as opposed to selling them on a manufactured consensus that they can get behind.  And changing minds may be harder than ever because rather than remaining open to persuasion issue by issue, people are starting to embrace global partisan views both on the positive side (I go with my team) and even more on the negative side (I am opposed to whatever the other side wants).

  In this vein, the challenge becomes persuading voters on the other side to adopt a whole new world view and not just a particular position.   Despite the heavy lifting this may require, the hard work of persuading people we are right is going to have replace the bold assertions that we are right.  The fundraising machines now fueling promotion of what might be called the progressive point of view must refuse to settle for assertions and begin to think about which of our opponents we can persuade and what is the best way to persuade them.  This does not mean compromising our values or positions, but it might mean making compromises on language to be more persuasive and thinking more about being persuasive.

  None of this is easy.  It might not feel good at first, although there is much value in connecting with others who hold different views.  But whatever the cost, persuasion is what is required if we want to regain power. And we have no choice but to pursue this goal with everything we have.