2018 Midterm Snapshot: Dems Score at the Polls

Phil Murphy, New Jersey Democratic governor-elect

It's been damp, cool and rainy most of the day here in Hamilton, New Jersey.

Reflective, perhaps, of the fact that almost a year ago the lowest American presidential voter turnout in 20 years elected a man who may well be the most unqualified, unpopular, divisive and ethically-repugnant candidate ever elected to the highest office in the land.

But today is another election day, and this morning I felt a measure of quiet political optimism for perhaps the first time since inauguration day back in January.

As I usually do if I'm in the office and don't have an appointment scheduled or phone calls to make, this morning I started off my day at work listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.org.

While I was particularly interested to listen to what other New Jersey voters had to say about election day during a segment when Brian fielded calls from Garden State listeners, his overview of the elections in New York and around the country were informative and got me fired up to cast my own vote.

Knowing it was going to rain, I cut out at about 11:20am to drive over and vote at the local senior citizens center that serves as my local polling place - fortunately it's only a three-minute drive from work so I was there, signed in, cast my vote and was back in the office in about eight minutes.

Now obviously I'm eager to see the lackluster, remarkably unproductive, scandal-plagued era of Republican Governor Chris Christie come to a merciful end, but I think Phil Murphy is the best candidate to represent the changes that most New Jerseyeans want to see.

Overall, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno, Christie's lieutenant governor since 2009, ran a fairly unimaginative and uninspiring campaign.

NJ Republican candidate Kim Guadagno 

With the state hovering dangerously close to the border of fiscal crisis with issues like massive infrastructure spending needs and a looming pension crisis that keeps getting kicked down the road (including by Christie...), Guadagno tried to dazzle voters.

Not with innovative ideas, sound fiscal policy or a plan to boost sagging wages, but with vague promises to cut taxes by eliminating unidentified "government waste".

Which is little more than Republican code-speak for cutting state government jobs and gutting social spending programs - the same kind of "Starve the Beast" nonsense that sent the Kansas economy spiraling into fiscal free-fall under Republican anti-tax fetishist Gov. Sam Brownback.

Aside from Guadagno's divisive xenophobic fear-mongering about immigration, Guadagno followed her notoriously short-tempered boss' unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign tactic and took a hard ideological-right in an attempt to drum up support among the hardcore right-wing conservatives that went for Trump here in New Jersey last November.

Desperate to close the gap between her and Murphy, in the final weeks of the campaign she finally sunk to the level of running bogus attack ads falsely claiming that Murphy's support for making New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants (NJ is one of the most diverse states in America) meant he wanted to shield violent criminals who are in this country illegally.

A simplistic bush-league Republican tactic that's been used by the GOP in campaigns around the country (including by Virginia Republican candidate for governor Ed Gillespie) to try and gin up the irrational conservative paranoia peddled by Trump and his cadre of xenophobic advisers and cabinet members. 

Virginia Democratic governor-elect Ralph Northam
and Republican Ed "Dixie Boy" Gillespie (right)

That same strategy backfired on Gillespie in Virginia tonight too, the former Republican National Committee chairman was soundly beaten by 54% - 45% by Democratic candidate for governor Ralph Northam.

Who, as NBC reported, benefitted from the boost of strong opposition to Republican attempts to destroy healthcare, Trump, and a strong state economy guided by outgoing popular Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Like Guadagno donning the cloak of xenophobia, Gillespie really misread the temperature of Virginia voters.

Especially when he took up a pro-Confederate statue cause in the waning days of the election to try and draw support from Trump voters - as RNC chairman, he was actually fairly moderate and advocated for more inclusiveness.

Frankly I find it remarkable that with all the challenges we face in this country, Trump and his chief of staff John Kelly seem consumed with making a revisionist view of the Civil War and the Confederacy the main domestic focus of a White House trying to pull off a massive tax giveaway to corporations and the wealthiest percentage of Americans by Christmas.

Guadagno never strayed into "Confederate statue territory", but trying to embrace Trump's anti-immigrant hysteria at the last minute backfired for her here in New Jersey too - she won a mere 14% of the Hispanic vote and a paltry 9% of the African-American vote based on today's election results.

There are a healthy amount of Trump voters here in Jersey, but overall Garden State Republicans tend to be more moderate in the mold of my Congressman Chris Smith.

Chris Christie argues with a voter outside a polling
station earlier today

So I think Guadagno resorting to hate and bigotry to boost her sagging poll numbers didn't do much for her image as someone who was going to unify the state and bring something different to the NJ Governor's Mansion.

She's a pretty good communicator with some solid experience as a prosecutor and Monmouth County Sheriff, but regardless of what she did, it was going to be tough for her to get the stench of Christie and Bridgegate off of her.

Did you hear about him getting into a public argument with a NJ voter outside a polling station earlier today?

Believe it or not, Christie is so unpopular (14% approval rate according to one recent poll) that the most unpopular presidential candidate in modern American history is actually has a higher approval rate here in the Garden State.

Aside from the weight of the Christie baggage, Guadagno was also clearly a sounding board for people who might not have been all that excited by Phil Murphy, but hated Trump more and were eager to send a message to the Embarrassment-in-Chief and the Republican Party that tapped him as their candidate.

But the polls are closed in the east and the voters have spoken.

While professional pollsters and analysts will dig deeper into today's election results in the coming days over an election in which strong Democrat turnout led to decisive victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races and the mayoral race in New York City by Bill de Blasio, there's little doubt that the Democratic base is fired up.

From my perspective tonight's results are a clear reflection that a majority of Americans are fed up with Trump and a Republican-majority House and Senate who've yet to pass a single piece of meaningful legislation on behalf of the American people in over nine months.

Next year's midterm elections are a long ways away, and a lot can happen before then, but if today's results are any indication, November 6, 2018 could be a rude awakening for Trump - one he won't be able to shrug off as "fake news" with a tweet.

As I said, I was quietly optimistic this morning, and I'll sleep much more soundly tonight than I did on election night last November.

Republican Math - Schock Resigns, Jindal Courts Grover & The GOP's Fantasy Budget

Congressman Aaron Schock lecturing on Capitol Hill

As much time as Republicans spend lecturing Democrats, American voters and even themselves about fiscal discipline, runaway spending, bloated budgets and the ubiquitous "government waste", it seems like they have an awful lot of politicians who struggle with basic math.

Aaron Schock, the 33 year-old conservative 'wunderkind' Republican Congressman representing the Illinois 18th District, announced his resignation effective March 31st in the wake of embarrassing Congressional spending scandals that first surfaced after a Washington Post article detailing the thousands of taxpayer dollars he spent redecorating his Congressional offices in a lavish "English country manor" motif inspired by the PBS series 'Downton Abbey'.

After ducking awkward questions from reporters for weeks about his stays in expensive hotels, flights on private planes and dinners in fancy restaurants improperly billed to the American people, Schock finally relented after a well-researched article on Politico.com by Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan showed that Schock requested mileage reimbursement for 170,000 miles racked up on his Chevy Tahoe that only had 80,000 miles on the odometer when he sold it.

Oh, and as the Politico.com article notes, "In November 2009, less than a year after Schock took his seat in Congress, the lawmaker bought the 2010 Tahoe from Green Chevrolet in Peoria. The dealership is owned by Jeff Green, a contributor to Schock who has flown the congressman around his district in his airplane and helicopter."

When the story started to break last month, it was like manna from Heaven for progressive bloggers.
I too feasted upon it back in a February post, but not to make light of Schock's personal troubles.

Part of what drew the media to this story of financial excess was the fact that Schock positioned himself as one of those spend-thrift conservatives who treat any kind of government spending as taxpayer waste - yet view tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans paid for by the same taxpayers, like some kind of religious mantra.

Surfs up! Aaron Schock hangs ten

So while Schock was supporting Republican bills to cut spending for education, IRS enforcement, food stamp assistance for families and Medicare; he was using his own Congressional expenditure allowances to live some kind of fantasy rock-star life style (pictured left).

Seriously, you gotta read the Politico.com piece; it's almost like he's a character right out of the Netflix series 'House of Cards'. 

Speaking of things that don't quite add up, Republican Louisiana Governor/presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal is making some news of his own, and it's not good.
 
Jindal has dutifully played the good little Republican soldier with the hopes the GOP's rainmakers would bestow their ble$$ings upon his presidential aspirations.

In any kind of international crisis he's always been good for a generic anti-Obama quote when Republicans want to undermine the Commander-in-Chief's foreign policy decisions and need someone to make soundbite-worthy cheap shots to replay for the Fox News audience.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

Back in 2013 Jindal was quick to weigh in on the 'Duck Dynasty' debate when cast member and family patriarch Phil Roberts came under fire for his controversial remarks in an interview about homosexuals and African-Americans.

Even though most Americans were pretty shocked at Roberts' comments and A&E suspended the show, Jindal quickly joined the ranks of conservatives who viewed the backlash against Roberts' comments as an attack on his religion.

Jiudal publicly defended Roberts' right to use his unusual interpretation of Christianity to act like a homophobic bigot.

But Jindal set himself up for fiscal problems when he signed up for non-elected anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist's draconian "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" to never raise taxes under any circumstances.

As reported by Politico.com, Louisiana is now facing a daunting $1.6 billion budget shortfall and even Republican members of his state legislature are at odds with his stubborn refusal to raise tax revenues because of his allegiance to Grover Norquist.

According to the Politico article, Jindal even consulted with members of Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) on how to solve the revenue gap without violating his "pledge" to Norquist; who elected Bobby anyway, Grover or the people of Louisiana?

Even though Norquist's "TPP" pledge is akin to a revered Holy Grail for conservatives, the economics behind Norquist's tax policy simply don't work in the real world; as numerous economists have proved.

The "TPP" is more of an ideology, or a philosophy (Utopian fantasy?) than it is a viable economic strategy, but that hasn't stopped over 279 Republican Congressman and Senators from signing it.

The "Starve the Beast" economic model delights Tea Partiers as an affirmation of the enduring Republican myth that Ronald Reagan's "Trickle Down Economic" theories worked; but they actually didn't - Republicans seem to have forgotten that Reagan actually raised taxes in his 2nd term and left enormous federal deficits when he left office. 

As Wikipedia notes: "Historian Bruce Bartlett, former domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, has called Starve the Beast "the most pernicious fiscal doctrine in history", and blames it for the increase in US government debt since the 1980s.

Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback unleashed the Norquistian tax nonsense on his own state with absurd tax breaks on businesses and wealthy individuals that have left the state crippled financially, woefully short of revenue and lagging far behind neighboring states in job creation and job growth. In short, a disaster.

But now the music has stopped in Louisiana and Bobby Jindal is struggling to find a chair.

The same inter-party squabbles that Jindal is facing in his own state, are reflective of massive disagreement over federal spending in Washington as well.

The budget proposal that the Republican-majority House of Representatives released yesterday was filled with sweeping cuts to government spending so absurd in scope, it not only has zero chance of passing; even a number of Republicans are flabbergasted John Boehner had the nerve to release it.

President Obama promptly rejected it and stopped just short of mocking the loony Republican proposal to trim a staggering $5.5 TRILLION in Federal spending through savage cuts in food stamps, Medicaid and privatizing Medicare; THAT should go down with well with seniors in the 2016 elections.

Where did they even come up with that? Maybe Paul Ryan left it in his locker in the Congressional gym.

Even Republican Senators, many of whom are up for re-election in 2016, blasted Boehner's House budget as out of step with reality. But as the nation and the world have seen with the new Republican Congressional and Senate majorities; being in step with reality is not a GOP strong point, or a priority.

You can't govern if you can't do the math.