Get ready for an election about Trump's racism / GOP privately cheering the football/MS13 attacks

[Demovictory9]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/06/06/get-ready-for-a-brutal-election-about-trumps-racism-and-authoritarianism/?utm_term=.8cc54b9d92ad

Get ready for a brutal election about Trump’s racism and authoritarianism

THE MORNING PLUM:

Remember when Republicans were going to make their tax cut the centerpiece of their strategy for the midterm elections? That plan is no longer operative. The new plan: Bet that President Trump’s race-baiting attacks on Democrats for coddling immigrant gang members, and on football players protesting systemic racism, energize the GOP and Trumpist base just enough to enable Republicans to hold on.

There are multiple reasons why this may get much, much worse, in effect producing a midterm election that is to no small degree a referendum on Trump’s racism and authoritarianism.

Last night’s results out of multiple states confirm that the hot takes pronouncing Democrats dead and buried were premature. Democrats appear to have avoided getting locked out of any House races in California. They nominated strong candidates in New Jersey, meaning they have retained numerous pickup opportunities in both states. Democrats also flipped a state Senate district in Missouri in a landslide, swinging it by more than 20 points, suggesting that maybe the tightening generic House ballot, while certainly a cause for worry, isn’t the only metric that matters.

Meanwhile, this morning, the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker reports that Republicans are increasingly planning to rely on Trump’s culture-war attacks — particularly those involving MS-13 and football players kneeling during the national anthem — to goose the base in the midterms:

Trump’s habit of ignoring the economic message preferred by House and Senate Republicans in favor of the culture war tropes that propelled him to the White House is increasingly seen as an asset. Though provocative, the president’s rhetoric resonates with the base, offering Republicans a vehicle for matching the Democrats’ critical voter enthusiasm edge.

The Examiner notes that Republicans are privately cheering Trump for claiming that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) loves MS-13. And as GOP consultant Brad Todd put it, Republicans believe that “cultural cudgels” like Trump’s attacks on African American football players as anti-American and anti-military are “all upside for him.”

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. What I have been saying all along. His deplorable traitorous party and base

WANT harm to come to us and will to anything to make that happen.

[Hassler]

2. They know their base. Do we know ours?

[0rganism]

3. bummer - lately i've come to expect American voters to support increased racism and authoritarianism

if the election were a referendum on stupid tax cuts and trade wars, we might have an edge

but racism and authoritarianism (esp. Christofascism) are indeed "all upside for him". our transformation into Gilead appears to be well underway