President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

You sound extremely confident the party will have recovered from the ongoing flustercluck that started after Obama won in 2008. Just like with the country, it could take years to unravel what Trump has done over the last 20 months.

 

Trump losing in 2020 is *far* from certain.

The truest thing in national politics is the off-year Congressional surge by the party that lost the Presidency. The second-truest is how hard it is to beat incumbents.

Bush and Obama both won reelection after four full years of the other side gunning for them. Sure, Trump is different, but who really knows.

 

This is really, really, good - even if you disagree with the premise. The reporting is there.

Did Beto Blow It?

Somewhere along the line, the rock-concert crowds and record-setting fundraising and JFK comparisons obscured a basic contradiction between Beto O’Rourke the national heartthrob and Beto O’Rourke the Texas heretic. While the coastal media’s narrative emphasized his appeals to common ground, framing him as an Obamaesque post-partisan figure, the candidate himself tacked unapologetically leftward. He endorsed Bernie Sanders’ "Medicare for all" plan. He called repeatedly for President Donald Trump’s impeachment—a position rejected by Nancy Pelosi, and nearly every other prominent Democrat in America, as futile and counterproductive. He flirted with the idea of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He took these positions, and others, with a brash fearlessness that reinforced his superstardom in the eyes of the Democratic base nationwide. But it likely stunted his growth among a more important demographic: Texans.

Over the past six months, I spoke with a host of Texas Republicans about the U.S. Senate race. Many of them dislike Cruz. Some of them privately hope he loses. And all of them are baffled by the disconnect between the superior branding of O’Rourke’s candidacy and what they see as the tactical malpractice of his campaign.

Then this quote:

“It’s the worst campaign I’ve ever run against—or it’s the most brilliant," Jeff Roe, Cruz’s chief strategist, told me. “He’s the best and worst opponent we could have faced. He energized the left and raised tons of money, but had no plan for how to spend it and no plan for building the sort of coalition needed for a Democrat to win in Texas. He ran an entire campaign without pursuing a single Republican vote.”

 

I think the question would be, considering the times we live in, how many Republican votes are there to pursue in Texas? There are far too may dug in on the Trump/Cruz side that you are never going to get them to change, regardless of what you offer them.

It's an uphill battle regardless because of the location for any Democrat, so you gotta do something totally different. I don't believe that whole "building a coalition" for a Democrat to win in Texas. You can't build it. Too high of a percent just aren't going to vote for you

 

Texas Monthly with a counter to the Politico piece:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/did-beto-blow-it-politico-ted-cruz-beto-orourke-mark/

 

See, this assume Trump and Cruz are on the same side - or that Texans saw them that way.

I'm not sure that's the case.

 

Sorry I wasn't clearer -- I think if you are on Cruz's side, you aren't going to switch to Beto. And if you are on Trump's side, you may hate Cruz, but going for Beto/not voting at all because you don't want to for Cruz, could only hurt Trump depending on Senate numbers.

 

Alma, I think what the Politico piece shows is that a lot of Texas Republican officeholders and persons of influence hate Cruz, but their take that O'Rourke should've been more Republican is nuts. He'd be 20 points down now, not five or less. I think what these guys really wanted to say was, "we wish Beto was the Republican, not Ted."

 

More lying liars:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november-december-2018/selective-hearing/

 

I'm one of those outsiders who contributed to the O'Rourke campaign; what he's done is exactly what needed to be done, avoid the standard "national" blueprint/formula and do his own thing, be genuine. He's done that as shown by that Politico column, and I applaud him for doing so. He faced long odds at the start and has done a wonderful job of making this a competitive race.

As Texasmonthly writes, if he'd followed the "national" script, he'd be just another one of those standard Dem candidates who Texas voters dislike.