-by Tim Russo Listen....oooh wah ooohSome folks know I used to have a pretty good Dem rolodex. Thus, in summer 2016 I tried in vain to raise the alarm with the highest-up Democrats I could reach, for months, that Ohio was trending heavily Trump. As a leading indicator in presidential elections my entire lifetime, Ohio trending Trump meant the entire Midwest was trending Trump, too.
They may regret it, but I don't see any Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from Trump. Quite the contrary. In primary races across the country-- and at every level-- Republicans are arguing that they are the most Trump-like and that their opponent is a faux-Trumpist. There are even red-state Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- say Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp-- who have gone out of their way to draw attention to the fact that they often vote for Trump's proposals and work well with him. But when it comes to Republicans...
There was no primary or special election in North Carolina yesterday and the Democratic candidate, Dan McCready, is a Blue Dog who will be voting frequently with the GOP when he gets into Congress-- Blue Dogs always do. But with the existential danger of Trump hanging over us, with have to hold our noses and hope congressional candidates like McCready win. And in this case, we probably don't have to hope too hard, because he's very likely to win.
On Tuesday there's a congressional special election in a very gerrymandered deep red district (OH-12) in central Ohio. It shouldn't even be competitive. But it is. The last time the district voted for a Democratic presidential candidate was just over a century ago.
What a waste of time this morning! I called a couple of dozen campaign managers all over the country, almost entirely campaign managers for candidates who had already won their primaries. And I had an identical simple question for each one: "Have you talked to your DCCC Regional Vice Chair?" Except for the ones in California, I got the same answer from every campaign manager. "Who's that?" or "What's that?" No one knew.
Who gives Trump his political advice? I mean the day to day stuff? Whoever it is is definitely an amateur. See that tweet below? You won't see the generic one-size-firs-all endorsement on Trump's Twitter feed. He took it down when someone mentioned to him that though Steve Stivers' district is also in the Columbus area, he isn't the faceless candidate Trump is going to flying into Columbus to back this weekend.
Trying to out wing nut each other in a moderate districtOn Saturday we took a look at one of the districts Republicans in the Ohio legislature has effectively gerrymandered to protect their own party, OH-12.
OH-12 should be a competitive district. But the Republican-controlled legislature gerrymandered it in such a way as to make it safe for Republicans. Pat Tiberi, first elected in 2000, has never had a competitive race, not just because the Ohio Democratic Party died some years ago, but because Democrats knew the boundaries made running there a waste of time. A Republican has held the congressional seat since 1983.
We've been talking about a big primary day coming up-- May 8-- and focussing on lively primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, where Democrats have an opportunity to elect valient progressives Dan Canon and Jenny Marshall. May 8th, though, is also primary day in Ohio.
