toxicity of Donald Trump

Dan McCarthy, a right-wing Arizona Republican skincare company executive who is challenging Martha McSally for her Senate seat next year, told a Phoenix radio audience this week that "the Washington DC establishment, Mitch McConnell... the swamp creatures of Washington, DC-- they've given us two choices, McSally or Kelly. I'm a conservative outsider. I've been looking at this for a little while and I said, 'I'm not so sure if that's acceptable to me; I'd don't know if the status quo's OK...

Not likely to vote Republican this cycleI don't usually turn to Charlie Cook for words of wisdom, but after the sheer nonsense I read the other day from Jeremy Peters at the New York Times-- Republicans’ Messaging on Abortion Puts Democrats on the Defensive, any palliative will do.

Babies In Cages-- Donald Trump Child Immigrant Detention Center by Nancy OhanianLet me begin by going out on a limb.

A few days ago, the Cook Report published a piece by Amy Walter about the 2020 prospects of a Blue Wall, basically that "the 'easiest' or least risky electoral path for the Democratic nominee in 2020 is to reconstruct the so-called 'Blue Wall' in the industrial midwest. If the Democratic nominee wins every state Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, plus Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, that Democrat would win 278 electoral votes-- eight more than the 270 needed to win.

-by Audrey Denney,Candidate for Congress, CA-01I spent the last year traveling around beautiful California District 1. I had the privilege to sit in coffee shops, on farms and in community centers with the good people who live here. One of the most common concerns I heard from people across the political spectrum was that Congressman Doug LaMalfa does not effectively do his job of representing the real people of our communities. Two days ago, we saw that exemplified. Rep.

This morning, ABC News and the Washington Post released a new national poll that should serve as a warning for congressional Republicans: voters blame them (and Trump of course) for the shutdown and are very much not buying the national emergency bullshit. And by a wide enough margin to signal it could be electorally relevant. In short, "53% say Trump and the Republicans are mainly at fault, and 29% blame the Democrats in Congress.

Will voters have had enough of the circus in 2020? In a recession?In a manner of speaking, 2020 is just around the corner.

Ron Brownstein, reporting for CNN, offered the GOP a ton of bad news yesterday. Young voters were out in force last month-- and whether they like Democrats or not-- they punished the GOP severely, primarily for Trump.

Yesterday in this time slot, we looked at the most unexpected congressional win of 2018, Kendra Horn's in Oklahoma City. But there was an almost an unlikely a win in another deep red state: South Carolina. OK-05 has a PVI of R+10... and so does SC-01.

Last summer, as part of a discussion of some election themes, I suggested to this year's top political cartoonist in the country, Nancy Ohanian, to consider a graphic that depicts Trump as an albatross around the neck of the GOP. Above are a couple of her interpretations.