Stars and bars redux. https://t.co/6ZqGKTH14C
— Matt Kavanagh (@ProfMKavanagh) September 20, 2018
BS master-dealer gets high on his own supply. From the NYTimes, “Trump Sees a ‘Red Wave’ Where His Party Sees a Red Alert”:
During a discussion about his party’s legislative high points this year with a small group at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, expressed a new concern about an old habit of President Trump’s.
The many “distractions” generated by the president, Mr. McConnell said during the dinner, were preventing Republicans from having a coherent message for the midterm elections focused on the booming economy, according to multiple people who were briefed on the remarks.
Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, who also attended, expressed another concern — that the president’s talk with his supporters of a “red wave” in November was unfounded. All agreed that he should instead be sounding the alarm about the possibility of big Democratic gains…
Voters who are not die-hard Trump supporters may not “believe there’s anything at stake in this election,” Mr. Newhouse wrote. “Put simply, they don’t believe that Democrats will win the House. (Why should they believe the same prognosticators that told them that Hillary was going to be elected president?).”
Mr. Trump has alternately acknowledged to aides and supporters that the climate is troublesome and insisted that the worst will never happen. It is not clear that he actually believes his talk of a “red wave,” or if he is trying to will it into existence, advisers and allies say…
Some of this, of course, is poor-mouthing to gin up donations and scare the local precinct-walkers to up their efforts. But in his own clueless fashion, I think Conor Friedersdorf may have blundered into a salient point:
… Consider the Trump voters who strongly gravitated toward him in the 2016 primaries because they felt so alienated by the rest of the GOP establishment; or who voted for him in the general election due to his celebrity, or his status as a political outsider, or faith that he would “drain the swamp” of a corrupt, bipartisan, establishment elite, or confidence that he would be a good “dealmaker” once in Washington, or a desire to “shake things up,” or to stoke and then revel in chaos, or because of an unusually strong or visceral dislike of Hillary Clinton…
…[I]f what you like most about the Trump presidency is watching him drive the media crazy; or reading his steady stream of combative tweets ostensibly “owning the libs”; or having a white man rather than a black man back in the White House; or seeing a president unapologetically attack Muslims, Mexicans, and NFL players; or following along to Sean Hannity’s sycophantic analysis of daily events; or believing that Trump is keeping North Korea or Iran in check? Well, all of that will continue regardless of the 2018 election.
For the subset of Trump supporters mostly in it for the “are you not entertained” spectacle, Democratic victory might even enhance their enjoyment, with their champion stepping daily into an arena filled with new villains. “Here’s the question facing the voters this fall,” talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt, a perennial Republican Party partisan, wrote recently in a Washington Post op-ed. “Do they vote to ratchet up this culture of conflict and chaos, or to return Republican legislative majorities that have figured out how to work with this most unusual of presidents?”
For at least some of the Americans who put Trump into power, revealed preference would seem to suggest their choice is: Ratchet up the conflict! As the reality-TV POTUS preps for a new season, fans want plot twists…
And us sane people have things like this to look forward to (i.e., to encourage us to keep fighting for every vote)…
Dems: We'll probe Kavanaugh allegations if we win in November https://t.co/HnWOPODl6G via @politico
— colonygirl (@cdrtx) September 20, 2018
Friday Morning Open Thread: If We’re Lucky…Post + Comments (123)