How smart could Lara Trump be? After all, she married the dumbest member of the Trump clan, their Fredo. Lara Yunaska was born in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1982, and has only ever lived in Manhattan and North Carolina... but she's been to the Hampton's frequently enough to have a general idea where Long Island is. Lucky, because there's a week-old rumor circulating that wife of Eric may run for Peter King's seat, now that he's retiring. The rumor started at Bereitbart and has oozed into legitimate media like the New York Times and Newsday, Long Island's most widely read newspaper. The district includes much of blue-leaning Suffolk County and the south shore of Nassau County. As we saw a week and a half ago, swingy NY-02, is trending blue.Last year, Nassau County’s white population dipped below 60% for the first time ever, as Latino, African-American and Asian populations across Long Island grew while the number of non-Hispanic white residents continued to decline. Less than 30 years ago, Long Island--then classic white flight suburbs-- was more than 84% white, according to the 1990 census. In 2018, about 59% of Nassau County residents and 67% of Suffolk County residents were white, according to the new estimates. Democrats now outnumber Republicans on Long Island, a once unthinkable development in a traditional conservative stronghold where voters backed every Republican presidential candidate, bar two, from 1900 to 1988… The numbers on Long Island enumerate the challenges for Republicans. In 1996, registered Republicans in Nassau County outnumbered the Democrats, 360,000 to 257,000. By this year, the number of Democrats had rocketed to 411,000. The number of Republicans, by contrast, had dropped by more than 30,000. In NY-02, once all all-Nassau district is now mostly a Suffolk County district and the Democratic Party now has a registration advantage over Republicans. Obama won the district both times, although Hillary lost it to Trump by almost 10 points. Peter King was reelected in recent years because he was Peter King, beloved by the transpartisan super-corrupt Long Island establishment, not because he was a Republican per se. All things being equal, a Democrat is likely to win it in 2020.The Republicans are looking for a candidate to replace King and the Trumpist wing of the GOP is floating Lara Trump's name. There are 16 other Republicans in the primary-- Islip Town Councilwoman and ex-TV news reporter, state Assemblyman Mike LiPetri and Suffolk County election commissioner Nick LaLota-- or looking at it, particularly former Congressman for the North Shore district, Rick Lazio. The Democratic establishment seems to have settled for Babylon Town Councilwoman and Afghan War vet Jackie Gordon, a centrist, which is just what the DCCC wants.The shady Club for Growth poll that Breitbart claims to have seen shows Lara Trump with 53% compared to 19% for Lazio. The poll showed that 60% of respondents had a favorable opinion of her while only 13% had an unfavorable opinion of her and 18% never heard of her. Although Trumpanzee's own approval rating on Long Island is in the dumpster, 78% of Republicans in NY-02 favor him and only 19% view him unfavorably. (And since this is an all GOP poll, yes, 1% said they have never heard of Donald Trump.)These are the November 1, 2019 NY-02 registration numbers by party:
• Suffolk part of the districtDemocrats- 38,110Republicans- 59,075Decline to state- 33,238• Nassau part of the district
Democrats- 124,904Republicans- 93,231Decline to state- 85,086• Total, district-wide, shows that if Democrats turn out their base and continue turning independent voters against Trump, the district is unwinnable for a Republican, especially one with the last name Trump.
Democrats- 163,014Republicans- 152,306Decline to state- 118,324
Now, remember, this Obama district flipped red for Trump (or against Hillary) in 2016. A Biden nomination might be as bad but there's no way to be certain what made NY-02 voters turn against Hillary so strongly. Over a year ago, John Pavlovitz had already begun giving up on the hardcore Trump fanatics. "There's an old saying," he wrote: 'When the horse is dead-- dismount. It’s time to stop beating that horse, America. It’s not going anywhere. I’ve tried for three years now. I’ve tried to understand them. I’ve tried to listen to them. I’ve tried not to assign motive to them, not to speculate as to why they voted the way they voted, not to believe they consented to every cruel thing their vote birthed and enabled. I’ve tried not to caricaturize them; not to make them into one-dimensional stereotypes, not to treat them as some fictional other whose presence posed a threat. I’ve tried appealing to their sense of decency, to their capacity for compassion, to their faith in Jesus." As I'm sure you can imagine, basically none of that has worked for Pavlovitz.
I’ve quietly endured thousands of their racist outbursts and homophobic rants on Twitter and at neighborhood picnics and across the Thanksgiving dinner table-- in the hopes that I could find some vulnerable place beneath their fear to access later.I’ve tried buoying pep talks and firm tough love and expressions of kindness and straight-talking challenge and attempts at affirmation.I’ve tried discussing theology, tried sharing stories of oppressed communities, tried to offer facts in the face of a million lies generated by their President, tried to show the lessons History has already taught us about the slope we’re currently sliding precipitously down.They have all failed to reach fertile ground.Nothing has worked. It’s all been fruitless.I think it’s time to stop saying that we need to understand these people. I think we do understand them:We understand that they have dug in their heels so deeply, they will not be moved by anything-- not facts or data or truth or their own eyes. We understand that there is no political scandal massive enough, no President’s Tweet reckless enough, no legislation predatory enough to alter their allegiance. We understand that the past two years of viciousness and ineptitude haven’t tempered their passions but ignited them.We understand that the image of an angry white, American male God is so burned into their brains, that they see no conflict with a religion devoid of love or a world absent diversity or a theology made of malice. We understand that infidelity, dishonesty, obscenity, and cruelty are no longer liabilities to those they would have lead them. We understand that the FoxNews poison has so fully circulated through their systems that truth is no longer necessary.We understand that white supremacists in the Cabinet and Russian infiltration in our elections and children separated from their parents are acceptable collateral damage to winning.We understand that their capacity to rationalize away human rights atrocities now borders on complete delusion.People have warned that we should treat these people with kid gloves; that explicitly expressing anger or pointing out criminality or vocally opposing injustice right now will only drive them deeper into their entrenched positions. That’s a fairly dire assessment.If adults are that fragile in the face of reality, that willing to deny country and humanity simply because they’re offended, that thin-skinned and prone to mutiny-- their dispositions aren’t really a burden the rest of us should or could bear.We don’t come to this understanding with any joy or self-satisfaction-- we come to it with sober despair and the deepest grief, because we know practically speaking that right now they are unreachable.It’s one thing to have held out hope for them on November 9th, 2016, but at this point, I’m not sure any miraculous moral awakening or conversion of the heart is possible.If their consciences and compassion and reason have not been accessed and unearthed by now, I’m concerned those things will never be forthcoming.And since these people will not be moved, the rest of us need to move together.Democrat, Republican, and Independent, the deeply devout and the passionately irreligious, people of every pigmentation and persuasion-- we need to move in concert, to affirm our shared regard for one another, and to vote to restore balance in something we all love that is teetering wildly.This isn’t a battle to change the minds of the few who refuse to be changed. That horse is dead.It also isn’t a test to see if we can manufacture the same hatred and vitriol for them as they dispense toward us.This is a golden moment for the vast, sprawling army of good people who believe in the beauty of diversity and in a fully accessible America to speak unequivocally-- on our social media profiles, at family gatherings, in our church meetings-- and most of all, in the voting booth.We don’t need to convince or coddle or win over hatred, and we don’t need to outdo it either.We need to outnumber it.We need to outlast it.We need to outlove it.We need to outvote it.
