President/National:
2020: The New Jersey Advance Media lists 11 ways in which Sen. Cory Booker (D-Spineless) is wooing socialists progressives in his expected bit to become the presidential nominee in 2020. My take: The former centrist and friend of Chris Christie (R-Fuck You) has degenerated changed from a consensus seeking, business friendly politician to an unhinged #resistance fighter who opposes things merely because they’re suggested by people he doesn’t like.
Black power: Harry Enten over at the lyin’ CNN has an analysis of Trump’s standing among black voters. Although Enten does pick apart some of the best numbers reported, it would seem His Orangeness has increased his support somewhat, although from a very low starting point.
Election Clairvoyants: Election Insider has moved 30 House ratings toward the Democrats and only two (TX-23 and NE-2) towards the GOP. It’s like they think 2018 isn’t going to be a neutral year, or something.
How many seats will the GOP lose?: The guessing game will continue until November, of course. Nevertheless, The Hill has attempted to calculate the net loss, based on the 2016 results and special elections, and has concluded that the worst-case scenario would net the Dems a 72-seat gain. This would be the largest loss of seats since the 1948 wipeout, when Truman ran against the “do-nothing Congress”. The Hill also looks at the numbers for best case and finds the losses to be around 10 seats. The American Presidency Project has a neat page with an overview of the losses a president’s party has suffered in midterm elections, going back to 1934.
More speculation: CBS is out with a poll of 57 swing districts that puts the odds for control of the House at about 50/50. The aggregated result of the poll suggests a Dem majority of 221 seats, mainly due to overwhelming opposition to Trump among women. However, there are still enough undecided voters, and as RRH readers know, enough local variance that the end game is still very much open.
A fool and his money: Uber-wealthy GOP donor Richard Uihlein has wasted quite a bit of money trying to get his preferred candidates to win in various primaries this cycle. While he has notched a couple of wins, mainly in MT and WV, he has lost bigly in races like AL-Sen, IL-Gov and MI-Sen. Sources describe Uihlein as “frustrated” and “questioning the political judgment of people around him”, which of course are bloodsucking leeches of the political consulting complex, eager to steal as much of a rich idiot’s money as possible….