Democrats Could Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

(This chart is from a Gallup Poll done in 2018 of 13,852 adults with a 1 point margin of error.)

I am a proud progressive Democrat. I would love it if a significant majority of American voters believed as I do. But I am also a realist, and I know that we progressives are not a majority among voters. One thing that helps though -- conservatives are not a majority either.

It's pretty obvious that Democrats will vote for their candidate in 2020, and most Republicans will vote for Trump. But neither group will decide the 2020 election for president. The presidency will be decided by the Independents, and like it or not, the largest group among Independents are moderates. Those Independents moderates will vote for the candidate (and party) they consider to be the least extremist (most moderate).

Right now, I believe the public considers the GOP to be the most extreme party, and they don't like Donald Trump. But don't let that fool you. Trump could be re-elected if the Democratic Party scares the public by the candidate they choose or the issues the choose to campaign on. Democrats must convince the moderates they have reasonable solutions to U.S. problems -- not pie-in-the-sky dreams.

Charles Sykes is a moderate-conservative commentator, and frankly, much of the time I disagree with him. But he has written an op-ed telling Democrats how they could lose the election and get Trump re-elected, and I think Democrats should give careful consideration to what he says. Here is part of his post:

Trump’s numbers are unmovable, but yours are not. He doesn’t need to win this thing; he needs for you to lose it. There are millions of swing voters who regard Trump as an abomination but might vote for him again if they think you are scarier, more extreme, dangerous, or just annoyingly out of touch. . . .

Despite the favorable poll numbers and the triumphalism in your blue bubble, you’ve already made a solid start at guaranteeing another four years of Trumpism. Last week’s pile-on of Joe Biden was a good example of how you might eat your own over the next 16 months. . . .

This week’s debates give you two more chances to form circular firing squads, turn winning issues into losers, and alienate swing voters.

Here are 11 pointers on how to guarantee that the most unpopular president in modern polling history wins reelection next year.

1. Hold firmly to the idea that Twitter is the beating heart of the real Democratic Party.

Woke Twitter is convinced that anger over Trump means that voters want to move hard left. You should ignore polls showing that most Democrats, not to mention swing voters, are much more likely to be centrist.

2. Embrace the weird.

George Will carries around a small card listing all the things that you have said “that cause the American public to say: ‘These people are weird, they are not talking about things that I care about.’” A short list:

Terrorists in prison should be allowed to vote. End private health insurance. Pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College, ‘Green New Deal,’ … reparations for slavery.

“The country hears these individually,” says Will, “and they say I’m not for that.”

3. Keep promising lots of free stuff and don’t sweat paying for it.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have run up massive deficits, but you can make them look like fiscal hawks by outbidding one another. People like free stuff, but they are less keen on having to pay for free stuff for other people, so talk as much as possible about having taxpayers pick up the tab for free college, day care and health care.

4. Go ahead and abolish private health insurance.

Health care should be a huge winner for Democrats in 2020, as it was in 2018. But you can turn that around by embracing a Bernie Sanders-like ‘Medicare for All’ plan.

5. Spend time talking about reparations.

There may be no magic bullet to guarantee Trump’s reelection, but support for reparations for slavery may be awfully close. Even before Charlottesville, Trump’s record on race was horrific, and his winking appeasement of the white nationalist alt-right has been a running theme of Trumpism. But Democrats can neutralize Trump’s most glaring weaknesses by redoubling their support for reparations.

The problems here are obvious. No one really knows how reparations would work. The historic wrongs committed against African Americans are undoubtedly unique, but as the debate heats up, the questions will be: Who pays? Who is owed? How do we pick the winners and losers? And then there are other inevitable questions: Who else? The Irish? Jews? Native Americans? Asian Americans? Gays and lesbians?

What is clear, however, is that reparations are opposed by somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of white voters, so your support is a huge gift to Trump’s reelection campaign, which would like nothing more than to drive a deeper wedge between black and white Americans.

6. Trump thinks that immigration and the crisis at the border are winning issues for him. They aren’t. But you can turn that around.

Trump is actually underwater on the immigration issue. In a recent Fox News poll, 50 percent of Americans said Trump has gone too far, more than double the number of voters who think he hasn’t been aggressive enough. Family separations continue to shock the conscience of the nation and his threats to round up millions of illegals could backfire badly on him. Moreover, huge majorities favor giving legal status to the so-called Dreamers.

But you can flip the script: instead of talking about Dreamers, talk as much as possible about your support for sanctuary cities, double down on proposals to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and be as vague as possible about whether or not you really do support open borders.

7. Lots more focus on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

By no means allow voters to hear more about centrists who actually swung the House like Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey or Dean Phillips in Minnesota. Trump wants nothing more than to make AOC the face of the Democratic Party. You can make it happen.

8. Socialism.

Trump will accuse Democrats of being socialists who want to turn the United States into Venezuela. This is a tired, implausible trope. But you can make it work for him by actually calling yourself socialists and loudly booing your fellow Democrats who suggest that “socialism is not the answer.”

9. Turn the abortion issue from a winner into a loser.

Polls suggest that there is wide opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade and Republicans have drastically overreached in states like Alabama where they have outlawed abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

But here again, Democrats can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by moving to a hard-line maximalist position. While the public leans pro-choice, its views are quite nuanced. So, instead of talking about abortion as “safe, legal, and rare,” you should demand the legalization of late-term abortions, focus on taxpayer funding and express as much contempt as possible for people with different views.

10. You can also turn a winner into a loser on the issue of guns.

There is a growing bipartisan constituency for reasonable restrictions on guns, including overwhelming support for expanded background checks. Trump’s GOP is especially vulnerable here because it remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Rifle Association, which is stumbling under the weight of its own extremism and grift these days.

But you can easily turn this into a firewall for Trump by joining Senator Cory Booker’s call for vast expansions of the licensing of guns and banning certain kinds of weapons. Under Booker’s plan, “a person seeking to buy a gun would need to apply for a license in much the same way one applies for a passport.”

Let’s see how that plays in Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan.

11. As you try to get Americans more alarmed about Trump’s attacks on democratic norms, make sure you talk as much as possible about your support for court-packing.

Tinkering with the makeup and independence of the Supreme Court hasn’t been a winning issue since 1937, but, waving the bloody shirt of Merrick Garland as often as possible still feels satisfying, doesn’t it?

Given Trump’s deep unpopularity, losing to him won’t be easy. But don’t despair; remember, you managed to pull it off in 2016.

Trump Caves - Will Open Government Without Wall Money

(This caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

Donald Trump had shut the government down because Congress had not given him any money to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. He said he would not reopen the government until Congress gave him at least $5.7 billion to start building the wall -- and his shutdown lasted for 35 days, about two weeks longer than any previous shutdown in U.S. history.

But the shutdown didn't work out as Trump expected. He found he was unable to bully Speaker Pelosi into giving him wall money (and Minority Leader Schumer stood solidly with Pelosi). The public blamed Trump for the shutdown, and his poll numbers started going down.

In the end, Trump caved in to the Democrats for the second time this week. The first was when he tried to force Speaker Pelosi into letting him give a State of the Union speech in the House without opening the government. Pelosi shot him down, and he backed off (saying her position was "reasonable"). Yesterday, Trump held a news conference in the White House Rose Garden and again caved. He said he would sign a measure that would open the government until February 15th, while Republicans and Democrats negotiated "border security".

He then spent most of his speech telling a massive number of lies to try and justify that border security including a wall. It's not going to happen. Pelosi (and Schumer) are NOT going to give him any money for a wall. They will agree to more money for border security. Trump will have to be happy with that.

He said if he doesn't get wall money by February 15th, there could be another government shutdown. I don't think he will do that. he was hurt too bad by this shutdown. He might try to declare an emergency and steal military funds and soldiers to try and build his wall without congressional approval. But I think the courts would quickly stop that.

The best Trump can hope for is to try and claim the extra border money is a victory for him. It's not. It's a surrender -- the biggest political loss of his administration. It's now Pelosi-2 and Trump-0. Expect Her to now run up that score.

Ryan/Trump Withdraw Plan -- Obamacare Safe (For Now)

(This AP photo is by Alex Brandon and was found at Think Progress.)

After years of Republicans saying they would "repeal and replace" Obamacare, and Trump promising to make it the first big accomplishment of his administration, the GOP plan has been abandoned. After conferring with each other, Trump and Ryan chose the coward's way out of the mess they created. Instead of bringing their terrible plan to the House for a vote (where it would have gone down in ignominious defeat), they just withdrew it.

Both Trump and Ryan are trying to pass the blame for their failure to Democrats. As a Democrat, I wish that was true. I would love for the Democratic Party to be able to claim they defeated this bad plan, but it just isn't true. The Republicans have a substantial majority in the House of Representatives, and the only reason the plan could not be passed is because (after seven years of trying) the Republicans are still incapable of agreeing on any health care plan.

The reason, of course, is because the Republicans don't think American citizens have a right to decent health care. For them, health care is just a product which is available to those who can afford it. And those who can't afford it don't deserve to have it. The right to life is not a right that Republicans believe in -- or at least it's a right they believe should be reserved for the rich.

That means Obamacare is safe -- at least for now. Obamacare will continue without any changes made by the Republicans. That is both a good and a bad thing. It is good because it's much better than the broken system it replaced. It's bad because Obamacare has a couple of big flaws.

First, while it reduced the amount of Americans without health insurance, it doesn't cover all American citizens. The United States remains the only developed nation that doesn't cover all its citizens with health insurance or a guarantee for decent medical care.

Second, it doesn't do anything to control the rising costs of health care. The United States spends substantially more per capita on health care than any other developed nation, and that spending continues to rise unabated.

These flaws could be fixed, but they won't be as long as the Republicans control both houses of Congress. They aren't interested in fixing the flaws in Obamacare -- only in destroying the program. They have made that very clear.

The TPP Didn't Pass Last Week - But It's Not Dead Yet

(This cartoon image, found at The Daily Call, is by Brian Duffy.)

The GOP House leadership wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to pass, even though it is being negotiated by the president they hate. They want it because the giant corporations want it -- and they get too much money from those corporations to oppose anything they want. But they had a problem -- they weren't at all sure that they had the votes to pass it. Many in their own party didn't like the provision in the bill that would supply help to workers that lost jobs because of the TPP, and many Democrats didn't like the portions of the bill that would give enormous power to corporations and encourage more offshoring of jobs.

So those GOP House leaders thought up a "brilliant" plan to get it passed. They decided to divide the Senate-passed bill into three parts -- with part one providing funds for displaced workers, part two giving the president fast-track authority, and part three punishing nations that tried to subvert the agreement by doing things like manipulating their currency. They figured the Democrats (with a few Republicans) would provide a victory for part one, and they could count on their own party members (with a few Democrats) to pass parts two and three.

But House Democrats saw through the devious plan, and they turned the table on GOP leaders. They joined the right-wing Republicans who hated part one, and voted against it. That meant part one went down to a crushing defeat, with over 300 "no" votes. Parts two and three were passed, but the bill could not be sent to the president without part one -- and that left House leaders in a quandary.

Speaker Boehner immediately called for another vote on part one of the bill, and it was thought that vote could happen as soon as this week. But over the weekend, it became clear they could not get enough members to change their votes in time to get it passed this week. The best they could do is extend the deadline for passage of the bill to July 30th -- giving them another month-and-a-half to find a solution and get the TPP bill passed.

They have three options, which are described below by Scott Long and Mike Lillia in The Hill. I don't think option three is viable, because Senate Democrats would not accept it. Option one is also a long shot, because it would require most of the Democratic caucus to change their votes. That leaves option two, which I believe is the avenue they will finally choose -- but it is not a sure thing either. It will be interesting to watch the political machinations regarding this bill in the next few days (or weeks). It still could go either way -- a victory or a defeat for the TPP. Here are their options:

VOTE ON TAA AGAIN

What might be the easiest of several options is still a heavy lift for backers of the president’s trade agenda.

As GOP leaders have suggested, the House could soon vote again on the workers aid program — a vote that, if successful, would send the fast-track legislation to Obama’s desk.

The challenge is that, following Friday’s 126-302 vote against TAA, Obama and Boehner need more than 90 lawmakers to switch their votes from no to yes. And after bucking the president and voting to derail his trade package on Friday, there are few political upsides for Democrats to reverse course now.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas), a pro-trade Democrat, said Monday that he’s pushing the idea of sweetening TAA to provide Democrats more incentive to get on board — something along the lines of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) recent proposal to include a highway funding bill alongside trade legislation.

“I think we could get a few more Republicans, but the question is: How do you get more Democrats over here?” Cuellar said.

While it’s highly improbable Democratic rebels would switch their TAA votes en masse, there are a handful who expressed a willingness to reconsider their votes the second time around.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, who like Obama is a Chicago Democrat, initially told his colleagues during a closed-door caucus meeting last week he would vote for the aid bill and against fast-track. But when the vote was called Friday, he reneged and voted against both.

His spokesman said Gutiérrez “wanted to make clear that he opposed TPA.”

On the GOP side, leadership aides have said they don’t expect to add many more Republicans to their TAA tally. They’ve topped out at around 93 GOP yes votes, and Democrats must vote for TAA if they don’t want the multibillion-dollar program to expire in September, aides said. But one GOP lawmaker predicted there were dozens of other Republicans prepared to switch their votes to yes if there was movement on the Democratic side of the aisle.

“I think that there are probably 30 to 40 Republicans that would change their vote from no to yes, and so they are trying to get another 30 to 40 Democrats from no to yes so that they can move it forward,” the GOP lawmaker said Monday.

Lawmakers watching Friday’s failed TAA roll call on the electronic vote board said there was a group of Republicans who waited until the last second to cast their vote, suggesting they might be open to supporting the aid legislation.

They included North Carolina Reps. Richard Hudson and George Holding, GOP sources said, though a Hudson aide denied he would flip his vote. Another possible yes vote is conservative Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who had been whipping support for the fast-track bill but voted no on TAA.

“People like that could potentially switch,” the GOP lawmaker said.

VOTE ON ENTIRE SENATE TRADE PACKAGE

The Senate-passed trade bill, which combined TAA and TPA, was cobbled together to attract enough bipartisan support to defeat a Democratic filibuster. It just squeaked by, with 62 senators — including 14 Democrats — voting in favor.

House GOP leaders decided to split the package into separate votes, hoping there would be enough Democratic support to move the TAA piece, while Republicans would do the heavy lifting on TPA. That strategy collapsed when Democrats, behind Pelosi, killed TAA.

If TAA fails a second time, GOP leaders might decide to push the Senate package as a whole. Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), another pro-trade Democrat, predicted Monday that they have the votes to pass it, though it would be a nail-biter due to opposition on both sides of the aisle.

“I don’t think there’s some magic formula that President Obama can put on the table and make all of the Democratic concerns about TPA disappear. And I don’t think there’s some magic formula that John Boehner can put on the table to make all of the Republican concerns about TAA disappear,” Connolly said. “I don’t think there are any easy options here.”

A House Democratic leadership aide said Monday that there wouldn’t likely be any significant Democratic defections, making the whip counting easier for Republicans whipping the vote.

“Any Democrat who is already on the record supporting TPA has a very clear, vested interest in seeing it pass,” said the aide, whose boss supports Obama’s trade agenda.

VOTE ON A STAND-ALONE TPA BILL

A third option: The House could vote again on just the fast-track bill and either send it to the Senate or try to merge it with the Senate-passed package.

But both of those scenarios have their challenges.

Because a stand-alone TPA bill would not be tied to a workers’ aid provision, aides believe the legislation would lose support from the 14 Senate Democrats who helped pass it last time.

The absence of the TAA legislation would also erode support in the White House. Cuellar said he’s been in several conversations with administration officials since Friday’s vote, and they’ve vowed not to back any trade package that excludes the additional help for workers displaced by trade deals.

“They personally told me they’re not going to deal without TAA,” he said.

GOP Turns Victory Into Humiliating Defeat

(The cartoon above is by John Cole in the Scranton Times-Tribune.)

A few days ago, it looked like the congressional Democrats had once again come near a deadline and folded (like they have too many times in the past). They had wanted to do away with the sequester cuts to the federal budget, because that austerity program was hurting the economy and stifling recovery. Once again the Democrats called for bipartisanship and begged the Republicans to negotiate a fair compromise. And once again, as they have so many times in the past five years, the Republicans refused to even consider compromise.

So, as the deadline for passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded neared, the Democrats folded. They agreed to continue that funding at the sequestration level. The Republicans had won again. They could have taken that victory back to their teabagger base and bragged about it, but they got greedy. The victory was so easy that they became convinced they could squeeze even more out of the Democrats.

But then the Republicans overreached. They got too bold in their naked greed, and demanded the one thing the Democrats could not give them -- the destruction of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). They wanted to destroy the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration. So the House Republicans sent the Senate a continuing resolution that completely defunded Obamacare.

But with their backs to the wall, the Democrats found their backbone. They stripped the defunding of Obamacare out of the resolution and sent it back to the House. That was the only thing the Senate Democrats could do, since agreeing to destroy Obamacare was unthinkable. The Republicans should have known that's what would happen, but they were drunk with power and deluded by past victories -- and the Democratic action shocked them. Now the Republicans' blunder put them on the defensive. They could not retreat without angering their own party base, but found themselves in a fight they could not win.

They tried again. Instead of defunding Obamacare completely, they added an amendment to the continuing resolution that would just delay the implementation of Obamacare for a year. But the Democrats were having none of it. Senate Democrats realized that the Republican blunder had given them the edge in power, and they once again stripped the amendment out of the resolution and sent it back to the House.

Now the Republicans got desperate. They realized they had thrown away their victory, but couldn't retreat. So they sent a third continuing resolution to the Senate -- this time asking that only Obamacare's individual mandate be delayed for a year. It took Senate Democrats less than an hour to deal with that -- stripping the offending amendment out and returning the resolution back to the House. Then, as a last ditch effort to save face, the House Republicans asked for a conference committee to negotiate a "solution".

But the Senate Democrats quickly rejected that. They had already compromised as much as they could by agreeing to the sequestration level of funding, and they weren't about to "negotiate" any kind of damage to Obamacare. So the government was shut down, and the entire nation could see it was Republican intransigence that caused it.

Now the Republicans are left with trying to save face by passing small pieces of government funding. But that won't work either. The GOP finds itself being rightly blamed by the public for shutting down the government. They have put themselves between a rock and a hard place -- because they will have to give in sooner or later or risk damaging their party further next year in the general election. But when they do they will anger the teabaggers and might not survive a party primary. As the old saying goes, the GOP has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Now the Democrats are in the position of power. And if they're smart, they will demand the Republicans fold not only on the funding of government, but also on raising the debt ceiling. It would make no sense to get the government funded only to let the Republicans repeat this hideous exercise in a couple of weeks by trying again to hold the nation hostage on the debt ceiling issue.

I have read some articles saying the Republicans got outsmarted by Majority Leader Reid. That's just not true. The Republicans did this to themselves. They took a victory and turned it into a humiliating defeat.