News Domestic and International

Midwestern Democrats are concerned the national party’s focus on Trump and collusion with Russia is going to hurt them in 2018. Buzzfeed reports some Democratic strategists think the DNC should lay off the topic:

“The DNC is doing a good job of winning New York and California,” said David Betras, the Democratic county party chair in Mahoning County, Ohio, home to Youngstown. “I’m not saying it’s not important — of course it’s important — but do they honestly think that people that we just laid off another shift at the car plant in my home county give a shit about Russia when they don’t have a frickin’ job?”

Trump and Russia, Betras said, is the “only piece they’ve been doing since 2016. [Trump] keeps talking about jobs and the economy, and we talk about Russia.”

The DNC has filed a lawsuit against Trump, Russia, and Wikileaks which, even to Democrats, seems like a lame PR move to keep the public focused on the topic.

“I’m going to be honest, I don’t understand why they’re doing it,” said one campaign strategist in the Midwest of the DNC’s suit. “My sense was it was a move meant to gin up the donor base, not our voters. But it was the biggest news they’ve made in a while.”

Though he doesn’t see it hurting his campaign now, the strategist said, “I wouldn’t want to see something like this coming out of the DNC in October.”

The suit is “politically unhelpful,” another strategist in the Midwest said. “I haven’t seen a single piece of data that says voters want Democrats to re-litigate 2016 … The only ones who want to do this are Democratic activists who are already voting Democratic.”

I’m not sure there is anyone left in the United States who hasn’t heard about this story. There may be a few people who still haven’t formed an opinion about it but I doubt they’ll be changing their minds based on another year of focus on this topic.

My guess is that the real concern here is that the DNC needs to keep the excitement level at a fever pitch in order to drive their people to the polls. But as Allahpundit pointed out last week, the blue wave may be running out of momentum. The RCP average of the generic congressional ballot shows Dems with the smallest advantage they’ve had in nearly a year. It’s not clear why the GOP is rebounding but Russia exhaustion seems like as plausible an explanation as any.

Democrats have been promising a world-changing scandal that would effectively undo the Trump administration since last January. MSNBC and CNN have done their best to capitalize on the story, trumpeting every new piece of news as a potential breakthrough. But here we are more than a year later and there’s still nothing concrete. Billionaire Tom Steyer and Rep. Maxine Waters are still talking about impeachment at every opportunity, but the moment never seems to arrive.

Of course, everything really could change if Robert Mueller comes up with something damning, but that’s not in the hands of the DNC. In fact, they likely have no idea what’s coming next. All they can do is keep banging out the collusion drumbeat and hope the weary base will keep marching to it for another seven months.

So is there a “blue wave” coming in November? It’s still far too early to say and the forecasts of the Democrats may prove to be overly optimistic, but Republicans around the country are still acting nervous. There’s one notable exception to that trend, however. Maryland, one of the bluer states in the nation, has a GOP governor in the person of Larry Hogan and he’s not looking nervous at all. In fact, the guy’s approval ratings dwarf those of almost anyone else in politics today and a new poll shows that none of his likely Democratic challengers are coming within spitting distance of him. (Baltimore Sun)

Gov. Larry Hogan is currently dominating all of his prospective Democratic rivals by double digits as voters say the first-term Republican has effectively distanced himself from President Donald J. Trump, according to a Goucher Poll released Tuesday.

With a 69 percent job-approval rating, Hogan remains widely popular among Maryland voters, who mostly identify him as a moderate, the poll shows.

The poll of 449 likely Maryland voters found that Hogan would easily defeat any of the seven major Democratic contenders seeking to challenge him. The winner of the June 26 Democratic primary election will face Hogan in November.

Hogan is most popular among white voters, but amazingly, he even gets a thumbs up from 30% of black voters. That’s not a huge number, but it’s far better than most other Republicans do.

So what’s the secret? Should we be sending Hogan on a cross-country tour to instruct other GOP governors and gubernatorial candidates in how to make the people love them and sweep all of this year’s races?

Probably not. As with all things in the American Game of Thrones, all politics is local. Hogan is a popular Republican governor in Maryland. If you transplanted him to most of the rest of the country it wouldn’t work. The Democrats in the Old Line State, by a wide margin, consider Hogan a moderate, as shown in the poll. That means that most conservatives wouldn’t even recognize him as a Republican. You might be able to run a Hogan clone in some other blue states and come up with a win, but you wouldn’t get very many conservative victories out of the effort.

He’s also obviously not on board with the whole #MAGA thing. For the most part, Hogan pretends that Donald Trump doesn’t even exist and he comes down in opposition to him on the rare occasion the President’s name comes up. But for what it’s worth, he does push for lower spending, tax cuts and stronger law enforcement, at least as far as the legislature will let him run on that leash. He’s even vetoed the occasional bill which runs far to the left, but the legislature generally moves to override him anyway.

Still, having him in office drives the Democrats in his state crazy and he does provide something of a moderating influence, so that’s a win for the GOP either way.