toxicity of Donald Trump

This has been some week for Doug Applegate, the former Marine colonel who's running for the congressional seat in Orange and San Diego counties, currently held by the very unpopular Trump surrogate Darrell Issa.

You may have read yesterday that new polls are showing Democrats surging in gubernatorial races. The Trump effect looks like it will be kicking in up and down the ballots, even in the Republican-friendly states like Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri, that have gubernatorial races this year.

Dave Brat and the Donald. "I'll tell ya, this guy.""Noooo... this guy." Thick as thieves, those twoIt seems that standing too close to Donald Trump can have an adverse effect on one's brains.

Keith Olbermann: "It has long been anticipated that the runaway train quality of the Trump campaign would eventually claim as its collateral damage all or most of the GOP and its leaders... To the Republican leaders I ask again, when will you disavow this anti-democratic demagogue? When will you defund him? When will you deny him?

If I'm right about people being fed up with the negativity and sheer dysfunction of the Republican Party, there really will be a wave in three weeks, nothing affirming about the almost-as-bad Democrats, but one that should send the GOP reeling. The party bosses will blame Trump-- and the media and Democrats who "forced him" on their party-- but the rejection I see coming is not just about Trump; it's about the Republican Party itself.

Trump has turned his brand to crap. He's going to have to start selling Trump Fried Chicken or blowup sex toys for his new crowd, but the upscale consumers he's always cultivated seem done with him.

The Salt Lake Tribune isn't a mouthpiece for the LDS Church; but it is Utah's biggest newspaper and yesterday it endorsed Hillary Clinton.

This hasn't been a good election cycle for Paul Ryan. He got muscled out of the early running for the presidential nomination by a a bunch of buffoons The Deep Bench and then he wound up jumping on the Trump Train to nowhere.

Yesterday afternoon we talked a little about the congressional race in central Nevada (NV-04) pitting progressive state Senator Ruben Kihuen against freshman sociopath and Trump fanatic Cresent Hardy. Today one thing has changed about Hardy. He's still a freshman and a far right sociopath... but he's suddenly no longer a Trump fanatic.

Doug Applegate, unlike his opponent, wasn't stealing cars when he was in the militaryCalifornia, as you probably know by now, has an open-- or jungle-- primary. All candidates, regardless of party, are on the same ballot and the two top vote-getters-- also regardless of party-- go on to the general election in November. Most of the top candidates the DCCC was pushing against Republican incumbents did pretty poorly.