Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently watched a series of focus groups of white working class voters in rural Wisconsin, the Mahoning Valley region in Ohio, northern Maine and suburban Macomb County, Michigan, all swing areas where Trump did well. Vote-rich Macomb County, for example, gave Trump a 53.6-42.1% victory over Hillary in 2016, after going for Obama both times he ran.
Moscow Mitch and Putin's Bitch say "Nyet" to DC statehoodAs of last July, the population of Washington DC was 705,749, about the same as Alaska, North Dakota and Vermont. The population of Wyoming was 578,759. Each of those states has 2 senators-- just like California (pop- 39,512,223), Texas (pop- 28,995,881), Florida (pop- 21,477,737) and New York (pop- 19,453,561).
Hole-in-One by Nancy OhanianDuring the 2016 election, a putative Democrat from the South Bronx, Rubén Díaz, Sr., backed Ted Cruz for president and invited him to speak in his district. It didn't do Cruz much good. In the Republican primary, Cruz came in third-- with just 1,022 votes, in New York's bluest county.
The U.S. has made another blunder in the Middle East which will impact us for years to come. Will it lead to a much wider war? That’s hard to say, though speaking as a historian of the Middle East and an analyst of its politics, I would say it is not especially likely. But it will have severe consequences, and it will cost us in blood and treasure.
We hope everyone's going to have a great holiday season and a wonderful kickoff to 2020. This is going to be our last candidate endorsement of the year, although we are in the middle of the vetting process for nearly a dozen more candidates for 2020. We also want to announce the winner of our Nirvana/Pramila contest, which ended last night: Venetia R. of Seattle. In all, over 400 of you contributed around $8,000. Thanks very much.
A couple of weeks ago, we met Liam O'Mara, through my own lens. Now lets revisit him through his own. "I am running as a progressive populist in a red district in California," he began.
CA-42 is one of the last remaining red districts in California. The district voted against Obama both times he ran and last year gave Trump a 53.4-41.4% win over Hillary. The district, entirely in western Riverside County has an R+9 PVI. The main population centers are Corona, Norco, Eastvale, Menifee and Murrieta. A weird crooked Republican, Ken Calvert, has been in office there since 1992.
When Ken Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992, CA-42, the western Riverside County district, was in the heart of a deep red swathe of Republican California. Today, Calvert is surrounded by Democrats. To the east is CA-36, the Palms Springs district, today Raul Ruiz's D+2 seat. To the north, he's bordered by Mark Takano's CA-41 (D+12) and Norma Torres' CA-35 (D+19). To the west are 3 districts that just flipped from red to blue last year-- CA-39 (Gil Cisneros), CA-45 (Katie Porter) and CA-49 (Mike Levin).
