Category: Elections

Forget how corrupt Trump’s first presidency was? Watch this

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The corruption of Donald Trump’s first administration was so constant that it’s easy to forget every scandal. Thankfully, on Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is here to remind us as Trump begins to stock his incoming White House with bigots, sycophants, and even a puppy killer.

"The first Donald Trump presidential term had so many cabinet officials forced out of office in disgrace and referred to the Justice Department to face criminal charges,” Maddow recalled. “It's actually hard to remember them all."

Maddow ran down some of Trump's original Cabinet secretaries:

  • Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke left his position after more than a dozen investigations into dubious dealings and potential ethical violations. (Zinke is now the representative for Montana’s 1st Congressional District.)

  • Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s tenure as the ineffective mouthpiece for Trump’s nonexistent infrastructure bill was filled with reports that she used her position to enrich her family. 

  • Energy Secretary Rick Perry was one of the Trump officials who resigned after Trump’s Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump’s first impeachment.

  • Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigned after having given sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal. (Trump then dragged his heels in replacing Acosta.)

  • Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price joined Trump’s administration as an ethically challenged secretary, then left office after multiple federal inquiries into his use of taxpayer money to fund extravagant travel.

  • EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, whose ethical integrity matched that of a wet piece of rice paper, left his position because he couldn’t manage the multiple ethics investigations into his activities.

And these were simply Trump’s first round of picks. One of Trump’s last scandal-laden cabinet members, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie, is leading Trump's Defense Department transition team. Wilkie’s time in the first Trump administration was marred by claims he orchestrated a smear campaign against a female veteran who alleged she was sexually assaulted at a V.A. facility.

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Here are 13 times right-wingers totally whiffed election predictions

Posted on by Oliver Willis

Conservatives—both media pundits and Republican officeholders—love to make election predictions. Curiously, most of those predictions tend to see an upside for Republicans. But many of the right’s most infamous predictions go wrong, spectacularly so. 

Here are 13 of the right’s worst predictions, plus one so wrong it had to be noted.

13. Karl Rove’s math

In the days ahead of the 2006 midterms, many of the early signs indicated that the Democrats would secure a majority in the House, largely based on opposition to the Iraq War. But Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political guru, was unmoved.

Appearing on NPR, Rove insisted, “I'm looking at all these, [NPR host] Robert [Siegel], and adding them up, and I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, I'm entitled to the math.”

Democrats took the House, and Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to be elected speaker of the House. Democrats also took the Senate, and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid became the majority leader.

Famously, Bush later referred to the result of the election as a “thumping” for him and the rest of the GOP.

12. Dick Morris’ Romney landslide

In 2012, conservative pundit Dick Morris confidently predicted that then-President Barack Obama would lose in a “landslide” to Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Obama was ahead in most national polls at the time, but Morris argued in an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” that there was “zilch, zone, zip nada” chance that Obama would be reelected.

Obama won reelection in November 2012, winning 51% of the popular vote and 26 states plus Washington, D.C., securing 332 of the 270 electoral votes he needed to win.

11. Hugh Hewitt’s Romney win

Conservative columnist and radio host Hugh Hewitt, who recently rage-quit The Washington Post after a confrontation with the paper’s liberal columnists, was also on the Romney train. Hewitt even wrote a book early in the 2012 cycle entitled, “A Mormon In The White House?” speculating on a potential Romney victory. (If Romney had won, he would have been the first Mormon president.)

In National Review, Hewitt predicted that Romney would win Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Obama won all six states.

10. Kathleen Parker: America will be “fine” under Trump

In 2016, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker said the United States would be “fine” if either Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Four years later, nearly a quarter of a million people were dead due to COVID-19 while unemployment was over 6%, and Supreme Court justices who would later overturn Roe v. Wade were installed on the Supreme Court.

9. Arizona Gov. Kari Lake?

Kari Lake, running for governor in Arizona in 2022, told reporters she would not only win that year’s election but also be the media’s “worst frickin’ nightmare for eight years.” Lake lost her election—even though she has denied she lost for years—and is currently trailing Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in this year’s Senate election.

8. Erick Erickson and Sen. Herschel Walker

Conservative pundit and radio host Erick Erickson confidently predicted in 2022 that Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker would soundly defeat Sen. Raphael Warnock, and by enough of a margin that a runoff election would be unnecessary.

Instead the Walker-Warnock race resulted in Warnock coming out ahead of Walker in November, triggering a runoff race the next month. In that one-on-one contest, Warnock won reelection with 51.4% of the vote.

7-3. The 2022 red wave that wasn’t

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the right convinced itself that a “red wave” would wipe out Democrats in the House. Instead, what occurred was more akin to a red trickle. While Republicans took a majority in the House, they flipped just 10 seats on net—far from the enormous victory the right expected. And since then, that majority has eroded, and Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker after an internal revolt. Republicans now hold a single-digit majority and are barely holding on.

Some notable punditry about the faux red wave:

  • Former Vice President Mike Pence: “The Red Wave is coming!”

  • McCarthy saw a red wave and large majorities on the way, and said so over and over.

  • Dick Morris (again!) said there would be a massive shift in power in favor of the GOP (and predicted a Senate boost that also failed to manifest).

  • For Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a wave was not enough: While campaigning with Republican candidates, Cruz insisted a “red tsunami” would soon show up.

  • Tucker Carlson, then a host at Fox News, took a break from racist rants and promised his viewers that Democrats were about to get “crushed.”

2. Condi vs. Hillary, according to Dick Morris

Dick Morris (yet again!) went all out ahead of the 2008 election, writing a book in 2005 that predicted both party’s nominees as “Hillary (Clinton) vs. Condi (Condoleezza Rice).

While Clinton did run in that cycle’s Democratic presidential primary, she lost to Obama. And in the 19 years since Morris’ prediction, Rice has never run for political office.

Special mention: Mark Halperin’s good news for John McCain

Journalist Mark Halperin is not openly conservative (though he has worked for right-wing network Newsmax), but before he left NBC News in a storm of sexual harassment allegations, he left a mark on the prediction game.

Throughout the 2008 campaign cycle, Halperin reliably found “good news” for Republican Sen. John McCain. The height of this came as Obama criticized McCain for not remembering how many homes he owned (as thousands of Americans were losing their homes in the foreclosure crisis). Halperin thought this would be a good moment … for McCain.

It was not. McCain lost to Obama by nearly 10 million votes.

1. The Wall Street Journal and Trump’s graceful concession

Ahead of the 2020 election, former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney wrote an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal that said if he lost, Trump would “concede gracefully.”

Not only did Trump infamously not accept his loss to Biden, but also Trump litigated the matter in court, has constantly whined about the topic since, and urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol building, leading to his second impeachment.

It would be difficult for any person or institution to get a prediction as wrong as Mulvaney’s column, but the right has shown that if anyone is up to the task, they are.

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Here’s how Republicans just might lose the House

Posted on by Andrew Mangan

This year, control of the House will be determined primarily by just 26 districts. And with 22 days to go until Nov. 5, neither party has a clear advantage.

Republicans took control of the House in 2022, with the slimmest of majorities—though “control” may be overstating things. Their majority has seen constant chaos, including the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (after less than a year in leadership!), a dramatic battle to replace him, a failed impeachment of President Joe Biden, early retirements by frustrated members like Colorado Republican Ken Buck, and so much more.

All of that has given Democrats confidence that they can take back the House this year—and race ratings by The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball suggest it’s possible. 

Overall, Democrats are favored in 202 districts and Republicans in 207, based on the median race rating between those three organizations. Race ratings are based on collections of polling, reporting, fundraising numbers, historical trends, and other data. The ratings generally break down into these categories: Solid Democratic or Republican, Likely Democratic or Republican, Lean Democratic or Republican, and Toss-up. (Inside Elections adds a “Tilt” rating, which lives between “Lean” and “Toss-up.” But for our purposes, that rating has been standardized to “Toss-up.”)

That means control of the House will most likely be determined by 26 toss-up districts. And the polling in them holds some glimmers of hope for Democrats—who need to pick up only four seats to take back the House—as well as a few warnings.

Here’s what you need to know. 

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Race ratings are historically accurate. Cook’s 2024 analysis of its own ratings since 1984 found that it accurately predicted upward of 90% of races for governor, House, Senate, and president. And the more confident the rating, the greater the accuracy.

The 26 toss-up districts are spread across the country. Democrats currently hold 12 of those districts and Republicans 14, meaning that the GOP has slightly more at risk. If Democrats can hold all of their current seats—a huge “if”—they would need to flip only four districts to have a majority, assuming that the three current vacancies will be filled by the party that previously held them.

But even with the high accuracy of race ratings, a couple “Lean” or even “Likely” seats could flip as well. Forty-two races are not a “Solid” seat for either party.

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Additionally, six districts are pretty likely to flip: Alabama’s 2nd, Louisiana’s 6th, New York’s 22nd, and North Carolina’s 6th, 13th, and 14th districts. These are districts where the median race rating conflicts with the party that currently holds the seat. For example, those three North Carolina seats are held by Democrats, but after the Republican state legislature passed a vicious gerrymander late last year, all three seats are now solidly Republican. 

However, Republicans’ expected gains in the Tar Heel State could be offset by potential Democratic flips in Alabama, Louisiana, and New York. Democrats are favored in the former two states due to a pair of court victories that overturned illegal gerrymanders (for this year, at least). 

In New York’s 22nd, though, incumbent Republican Brandon Williams faces off against John Mannion in a “Lean D” seat. Williams, an anti-abortion extremist who has flirted with election denialism, could prove too conservative for this swingy seat. Unfortunately, the race has seen only one poll so far, and it was fielded three months ago. It showed Mannion leading by 7 percentage points. But it was also paid for by the pro-Mannion House Majority PAC—so, grain of salt.

Williams has out-raised Mannion more than 2 to 1 as of the end of June. However, new FEC reports are due Oct. 15, so it’s possible Mannion closed the money gap since then.

Unlike Senate or presidential races, those in the House receive a lot less high-quality polling. Across 435 House races, only 131 polls have been conducted since May, according to 538’s polling database, as of Friday at 11:25 AM ET. Compare that to the Pennsylvania Senate race, which alone has seen 70 since May, or the presidential race, which has gotten 1,316 national polls in the same time period.

That being said, the polling that has come out looks promising for Democrats. There are 18 House races with two or more polls since May, excluding polls conducted on behalf of a candidate’s campaign, which are pretty unreliable. Of those 18, Democrats lead in 12, including five seats currently held by a Republican. One district, held by a Republican, shows a tie. And while Republicans lead in five races, they already hold four of those seats. 

Among these 18 races, the only Democratic incumbent polling underwater is freshman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, in Washington’s 3rd District. And even then, it’s by only half of 1 point. The median race rating of her seat says it’s a toss-up.

In other words, this limited data suggests Democrats could pick up some seats—and, if the rest of the map holds, retake the majority. But the operative words there are “limited data” and “if the rest of the map holds.”

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The most-polled House race is Nebraska’s 2nd District, where Democrat Tony Vargas, a former state senator, leads incumbent Republican Don Bacon by an average of nearly 4 points. 

Despite Vargas’ fundraising running slightly behind Bacon’s as of June, he’s surely being boosted by this district’s importance at the top of the ticket. Nebraska splits its five electoral votes, awarding two to the statewide winner and one to the winner in each of its three districts. And because the 2nd District’s electoral vote could decide the presidential election this year, Democrats are really leaning into outreach there. (Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris with a consistent lead.) All that Democratic energy is no doubt helping Vargas.

But there are mixed results when it comes to the general congressional ballot, which measures whether survey respondents want a Democrat or Republican in Congress. 

The good news for Democrats? On July 21—the day that President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid—Republicans led Democrats on the generic ballot by 0.6 points, according to 538’s average. 

But now? Democrats lead by 1.3 points as of Friday. In fact, they’ve consistently led since Aug. 2, suggesting the lead is fairly solid. 

The bad news? Democrats’ generic-ballot advantage has slipped since Sept. 10, when they were leading by 2.7 points. And perhaps more importantly, they’re underperforming their polls at this time in 2020, when they led on the generic ballot by 6.8 points. 

While Democrats narrowly maintained control of the chamber in 2020, winning 222 seats to Republicans’ 213, House polls in that cycle heavily overestimated Democrats, according to analysis by 538’s Nathaniel Rakich. In fact, Rakich found that House polls overestimated Democrats in 10 of the past 13 cycles, though those amounts range from D+0.2 in the 2022 cycle—very accurate!—to D+6.1 in the 2020 cycle. Very not accurate! 

Put simply, if polling error this year resembles that in 2020, Republicans would almost certainly grow their House majority. And possibly by a lot.

At the same time, Democrats could very well retake the House if polls are as accurate as in 2022—or, better yet, if they’re overestimating Republicans. After all, Rakich’s analysis shows it’s happened three times since 1998. It could happen again.

Donate now to take the House back from Republicans!

Trump’s refusal to change up his campaign only helps Harris

Posted on by kos

A very limited number of people like Donald Trump, and his handlers have finally come to terms with that. Yet their answer—to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the muck with him—only works if he focuses his attention on her. 

Instead, he can’t get past me, me, me. 

This is hardly an original thought. Our own Mark Sumner wrote about it Tuesday, saying, “[Trump is] caught in a trap of reacting to Harris, and when he tries to struggle out, he and his arrogant campaign staff make things all the worse.” But the notion is certainly worth exploring even more. 

There is an old political adage, “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” No one wants to hear excuses, and by responding to an attack, it inherently both restates it once again, and validates it.” A smart politician knows when to ignore an attack and when to engage it. 

BASH: Trump suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity. HARRIS: Same old tired playbook. Next question, please. BASH: That's it? HARRIS: That's it. pic.twitter.com/RTNin7siVL

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2024

By ignoring the question about race and asking CNN’s Dana Bash to move on, she not only starved Trump’s sad attempt at an attack line of oxygen, but she made Bash look the fool for even asking it. 

There was no way for the media to even talk about it without being utterly scorched, as Politico found out to its chagrin, when it changed the headline to a corresponding story three times to avoid being dragged by commenters. Here is White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre giving Fox News’ Steve Doocy the same treatment. 

For all the legitimate attacks Trump faces such as on his illegal Arlington National Cemetery campaign video stunt, his flailing on abortion rights, his pledge to be a dictator on Day One, or his claims that this is the last election anyone has to vote, he also faces a ton of stupid, niggling ones. A smart politician would ignore all that noise and focus on salient attack lines. The old Trump was able to do that. 

But today’s Trump, haunted by his litany of grievances, cannot escape the gravitational pull of even the slightest criticism. Rather than entertain his base with his old formula of crass bigotry and childish schoolyard taunts, he now bores people to tears responding to slights they have no clue even existed. 

For example, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump is incapable of holding a coherent thought in his brain, and more and more people are discussing whether he is suffering from cognitive decline. Trump could ignore those attacks. Instead …  “I do the weave,” Trump responded at a rally, likely confusing attendees and leaving them wondering what he was prattling about. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together ... and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.”

Democrats have been getting a lot of traction calling the Republican ticket weird. "[Gov. Tim Walz] is weird, right? He's weird. I'm not weird. No, he's a weird guy, a weird dude, you know?” Trump said at a Wisconsin town hall. “They always come up with sound bites, and one of the things they say is that JD [Vance] and I are weird. But wouldn't that guy, who's so straight, say that? JD is doing a great job—he's smart, a top student, a great guy, and he's not weird. And I'm not weird either. I mean, we're a lot of things, but we're not weird, I will tell you. But that guy is weird. Don't you think?"

Trump can’t handle Michelle and Barack Obama criticizing him at the Democratic National Convention, complaining about it here, here, and here. The former president’s joke about Trump’s manhood broke him. 

He can’t even get over President Joe Biden passing the baton over to Harris. As recently as last week, on Aug. 26, he whined about Biden while visiting a campaign office in Michigan.

"It's so disappointing" -- Trump is currently at his Michigan campaign office whining that he's no longer running against Biden pic.twitter.com/2pCZovIjmI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2024

“They basically take away his nomination,” he said. “No one has ever seen anything like that before.”

You can feel the lack of energy in the room. 

No one cares about his thoughts on Biden’s campaign exit or Obama’s convention dick joke, but by repeatedly bringing up those and other items, he gives new life to the attacks. Frankly, it makes them even funnier. 

But his campaign isn’t laughing. “Americans’ views of the Republican nominee have barely budged over the past nine years, spanning three White House bids, two impeachments, an insurrection, four indictments and an assassination attempt. He remains deeply divisive, with enthusiastic support and intense opposition,” The Washington Post reported Monday. “With little chance of improving Trump’s standing, Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.”

CNN had its own version of that story. “Donald Trump is trying to crush Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ persona as a force of change and to destroy her personal credibility as a potential president as their still-fresh competition careens into the final nine weeks before Election Day,” the network reported. “In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.”

There are 61 days until Election Day. These Trump advisers are right—Trump needs to drag Harris down in order to win the race. So far it hasn’t happened. Every single day that Trump is fixated on responding to Democratic attacks, big and small, is one day less that Republicans have to hurt Harris.

And yet Trump can’t focus. Even when he does, screeching about Harris being a “communist” is so patently absurd, it doesn’t land with anyone outside the MAGA bubble. 

The consequences of Trump’s inability to focus speak for themselves. In the 538 polling aggregate, Harris had a favorability rating of 37.8 favorable, 52.4 unfavorable on July 21, when Biden dropped out, or a net negative 14.6 percentage points. 

Today? She’s at 46.3% favorable, 46.8% unfavorable, a net improvement of almost 14 percentage points despite the combined mighty efforts of the entire right-wing noise machine. The last seven polls all have Harris either in net positive territory except one, which has it even. The trend is unmistakable. 

Trump is at 43% favorable, 52.5% unfavorable. That is far better than he deserves, but still well underwater. That disparity in the candidates’ favorabilities will cost Trump the election unless they are reversed.

Yet no one can convince him to focus on Harris. He still has feelings about Biden’s exit he needs to process … and he’s doing so very publicly. 

So it seems they’re doomed to watching their nominee waste valuable days by focusing on the most trivial, irrelevant topics, like arguing how attractive he is in response to jokes about his appearance (especially compared to Harris). “I was sort of like a hot guy,” he said to his confused audience. “I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know.” 

Trump: I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know pic.twitter.com/7SA1wWkZ4w

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) May 23, 2024

In any case, tired old Trump isn’t campaigning much these days. His next campaign rally isn’t until Saturday, after having just seven campaign events last month. His people will point to all the media he’s doing, but it’s a combination of Fox News, right-wing podcasts, and other assorted MAGA media hanger-ons. 

Those audiences already hate Harris. He’s not damaging her where Republicans need to kneecap her, among the broader mainstream. 

Let's Kamala Harris keep Trump on the defensive, and put more states in the blue column with a $5 donation to the Harris/Walz campaign.

Morning Digest: Another top-two disaster could befall Washington Democrats in a statewide race

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● Primary Night: Tuesday brings us one of the biggest primary nights of the cycle, and as always, Jeff Singer previews the big contests to watch—including the eight races where Donald Trump is supporting a total of 12 different candidates.

Trump issued yet another dual endorsement over the weekend when he wrote that he was now supporting motivational speaker Tiffany Smiley's intraparty bid against Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 riot. Trump, though, made it clear he was also sticking with the man he backed back in April, former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler, ahead of the top-two primary for this conservative seat.

But while Trump offered up his "complete and total endorsement" to both Smiley and Sessler's efforts to beat Newhouse, whom MAGA's master called "a weak and pathetic RINO" that "stupidly voted to impeach me for absolutely no reason," the two challengers are anything but friends. Sessler has accused Smiley, who ran a well-funded but ill-fated 2022 campaign against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, of getting into the race in order to help Newhouse. Smiley, for her part, has run ads calling Sessler a vegan who "wants to tax our beef," allegations Sessler has ardently denied.

Meanwhile, the other Evergreen State Republican who voted to oust Trump in 2021 may be about to cost Democrats control of a statewide office months before the general election. Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler is one of two Republicans campaigning to succeed Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, a Democrat who is running for a House seat around Tacoma, in a race that includes five members of Franz's party.

Democrats lost control of the state treasurer's office in 2016 after a pair of Republicans advanced out of the top-two primary, and a late July survey from Public Policy Polling for the Northwest Progressive Institute gave them reason to fret about a repeat in the public lands race. That poll showed Herrera Beutler in front with 18% as Sue Kuehl Pederson, a Republican who badly lost to Franz in 2020, leads Democratic King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove 12-6 for second. A massive 48% remain undecided, but it remains to be seen if these voters would break for one of the five Democrats on the ballot.

It's possible, though, that a top-two disaster won't end Democratic hopes to keep this office. NPI head Andrew Villeneuve tells KUOW that his party would likely run a write-in campaign in the general election. Democrats, however, would prefer to avoid the financial and logistical obstacles of such an undertaking.

There's far more to watch in both Washington and three other states on Tuesday. A prominent progressive congresswoman in St. Louis is trying to overcome an onslaught in outside spending, while a challenger in Detroit is hoping that demographics will matter much more than money in her own battle against an incumbent.

We'll also find out if Republicans in Kansas' largest county are willing to do what their compatriots across the nation won't and oust a prominent incumbent who has spread election conspiracies. Check out Singer's preview for more―including why Darth Vader is playing a role in the contest to lead Missouri.

We'll be liveblogging the results at Daily Kos Elections on Tuesday night, starting when the first polls close at 8 PM ET. Join us for our complete coverage!

House

● AZ-03: Election officials completed their count of last week's Democratic primary on Monday, and former Phoenix City Councilmember Yassamin Ansari holds a 44.6-44.5 edge—a margin of 42 votes—over former state Sen. Raquel Terán in the safely blue 3rd District. Arizona requires a recount in races where the difference between the candidates is 0.5% or less, and the Arizona Republic's Sasha Hupka says it will be officially ordered after the Aug. 15 statewide canvas.  

● TX-18: The Harris County Democratic Party said Friday that its 88 precinct chairs will meet on Aug. 13 to replace Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died last month, on the general election ballot in this safely blue seat. The party says that no filing form or fee is required, though it will begin interviewing candidates on Aug. 6.

GOP Gov. Greg Abbott last week also scheduled the special election for the remainder of Jackson Lee's term to coincide with the Nov. 5 general election. The filing deadline for that contest is Aug. 22.

Several prominent Democrats launched bids last week to apply for the nomination to succeed Jackson Lee in the next Congress. One of them, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, announced Monday that he had the support of both of the congresswoman's children.

● UT-02: Utah election officials on Monday completed their recount of the June 25 Republican primary, and while GOP Rep. Celeste Maloy's lead shrunk from 214 to 176 votes, she still retained the edge over Green Beret veteran Colby Jenkins in the conservative 2nd District. 

Jenkins, though, did not concede, and he highlighted that the Utah Supreme Court is considering his lawsuit arguing that 1,171 mail-in ballots were improperly disqualified because the U.S. Postal Service was slow to provide a postmark. The Deseret News' Brigham Tomco writes that the justices have until Friday to reject Jenkins' suit or allow it to proceed.

Prosecutors & Sheriffs

● Los Angeles County, CA District Attorney: Political analyst Rob Pyers flags that former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, a Republican turned independent, ended June with a staggering $1.1 million to $47,000 cash on hand lead advantage over Democratic District Attorney George Gascón in the officially nonpartisan general election. Hochman also outraised Gascón $1.6 million to $166,000 from Feb. 18 to June 30.

Gascón, who's called himself the "godfather of progressive prosecutors," has spent his term as the top prosecutor for America's largest county defending his reforms from critics who argue they've made crime worse. Gascón took first in the 12-person nonpartisan primary in March, though his 25% of the vote was far short of the majority he needed to win outright.

Hochman, who took second with 16%, is running two years after he unsuccessfully challenged Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta in 2022 as a Republican. While Hochman lost Los Angeles County 67-33 in 2022, he's hoping that he'll have more luck now that he's shed his partisan label.

Poll Pile

  • PA Auditor: GQR (D) for Malcolm Kenyatta: Malcolm Kenyatta (D): 47, Tim DeFoor (R-inc): 43 (50-46 Harris with third-party candidates)

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Playing a starring role in Tuesday’s primaries: Darth Vader

Posted on by Jeff Singer

Voters across four states pick their candidates Tuesday for downballot offices, including in multiple House races where incumbents are in danger of losing, in one of the biggest primary nights of the year. Donald Trump is doing his part to make this night eventful by endorsing 12 candidates in eight competitive races—yes, you read that right. 

Below, you'll find our guide to all of the top primaries to watch, arranged chronologically by each state’s poll closing times. When it’s available, we'll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each race, but if we don't mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.

To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave's Redistricting App for four states: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington. You can find Daily Kos Elections' 2020 presidential results for each congressional district here, as well as our geographic descriptions for each seat. You’ll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states. 

We'll be liveblogging all of these races at Daily Kos Elections on Tuesday night, starting at 8 PM ET, when polls close in Missouri as well as in most of Kansas and Michigan. Join us for our complete coverage! 

Kansas

Polls close at 8 PM ET / 7 PM local time in the portion of the state located in the Central time zone, where virtually all Kansans live, and an hour later in four sparsely populated counties along the state's western border with Colorado. Individual counties have the option to keep their polls open an extra hour.

• KS-02 (R) (57-41 Trump): Republican Rep. Jake LaTurner surprised just about everyone in April when he announced his retirement from Congress at the ripe age of 36, but a familiar name quickly emerged as the favorite to replace him. Former state Attorney General Derek Schmidt, despite his narrow loss to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in 2022, retains plenty of name recognition and establishment support, and he picked up Trump's endorsement late in the contest. 

A few other Republicans, however, are hoping Schmidt isn't as strong as he looks in this constituency, which includes the state capital of Topeka, Kansas City, and parts of eastern Kansas. Businessman Shawn Tiffany is airing ads unsubtly attacking the former attorney general's record as a "smelly pile of Schmidt," while former LaTurner staffer Jeff Kahrs also hopes to succeed his old boss.

• Johnson County Sheriff (R) (53-45 Biden): Sheriff Calvin Hayden, who has spent the last few years spreading election conspiracy theories, faces a Republican primary challenge from former undersheriff Doug Bedford in Kansas' largest county. 

Bedford, who has expressed faith that votes are being counted fairly, is arguing that the incumbent is wasting taxpayer money on his quest. The challenger has the support of former Sheriff Frank Denning, who has declared that Bedford's win is essential to restoring faith in the office.

The winner will take on Prairie Village Police Chief Byron Roberson, a Democrat who was the first Black person to lead a police department in the county. Johnson County, which is based in the Kansas City suburbs, is a longtime GOP bastion that backed only Republican presidential candidates for the 100 years before Joe Biden's historic 2020 win there. Roberson has cited this, as well as his party's continuing success in the county, to make his case that he can defeat either Republican. 

Michigan

Polls close at 8 PM ET in the portion of the state located in the Eastern time zone, where almost all Michiganders live, and an hour later in four small counties in the Upper Peninsula along the state's western border with Wisconsin.

• MI-Sen (D & R) (51-48 Biden): Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers are preparing to face off in a competitive race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, but they each have to dispatch a notable intraparty opponent first. 

Slotkin's foe is Hill Harper, an actor who is best known for his role on "The Good Doctor." Harper, though, has not been a good fundraiser, and he hasn't benefited from any major outside spending. 

Rogers' opponent is former Rep. Justin Amash, who over the past few years has switched his party affiliation from Republican to independent to Libertarian before ultimately rejoining the GOP. Trump and Senate Republicans are supporting Rogers over Amash, who voted to impeach Trump in 2019 and hasn't brought in much money for his new campaign.

• MI-08 (D & R) (50-48 Biden): Both parties have contested primaries to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee in this swing seat, which is based in the Flint and Tri-Cities areas, but this is another race where there's a front-runner for each side.

The Democratic favorite is state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who has the support of Kildee, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and the DCCC. Her main rival appears to be businessman Matt Collier, an Army veteran who was elected mayor of Flint in 1987 but lost reelection four years later. State Board of Education President Pamela Pugh is also in, but she's struggled to bring in money to run a serious effort. A late June poll for a pro-Collier group showed McDonald Rivet leading him 32-19, and we haven't seen any data since then.

The Republican's main candidate is Paul Junge, a former Trump administration official who picked up his old boss' endorsement in late July. Junge, though, has run for the House twice already without success: In 2020 he lost to Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin 51-47 in the old 8th District, while he fell to Kildee 53-43 two years later, following redistricting. (Despite sharing a number, the two incarnations of the 8th District don't include any of the same territory.)

Republicans looking for an alternative to Junge, whom Kildee successfully attacked as an outsider, got some welcome news in April when retired Dow Chemical Company executive Mary Draves launched her own campaign. Junge, though, has used his personal wealth to finance ads attacking Draves for serving on Whitmer's Council on Climate Solutions and for donating to McDonald Rivet's own political action committee. Junge has released several surveys showing him easily beating Draves, and his opponent has not publicized any polls showing her in better shape. 

• MI-10 (D) (50-49 Trump): Four Democrats are on the ballot to take on freshman Republican Rep. John James in this competitive seat based in Macomb County, though none of them have raised much money to flip this suburban Detroit seat.

The most familiar name on the ballot is former Macomb County Judge Carl Marlinga, a longtime local politician who held James to an unexpectedly tight 49-48 victory in 2022 despite receiving little outside help. But while Marlinga is arguing that close shave proves he can win, gun safety activist Emily Busch is arguing he's failed on abortion rights. The field also includes financial adviser Diane Young and state Board of Education member Tiffany Tilley. 

• MI-13 (D) (74-25 Biden): Freshman Rep. Shri Thanedar faces Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Waters in a volatile primary where the challenger is hoping her long service in local politics will help her overcome a truly staggering financial disadvantage.

Thanedar two years ago narrowly beat former state Sen. Adam Hollier for the Democratic primary, and his subsequent election meant that, for the first time since the 1950s, heavily Black Detroit did not have an African American member of Congress. (Thanedar is Indian American, while Detroit's other representative, Rashida Tlaib, is Palestinian American.) 

Hollier launched a rematch campaign last year against the new congressman, whom Tlaib accused of being "absent from doing his job," but the race took a shocking turn this spring when Hollier failed to submit enough signatures to make the ballot. Waters, who had been running an underfunded campaign, immediately became Thanedar's main opponent, and she picked up the support of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. 

But while Waters, who is Black, is arguing that the Motor City once again needs a Black member of Congress, she still has little money to get that message out against the wealthy Thanedar. A pair of super PACs, including the cryptocurrency-aligned Protect Progress, have also spent over $3 million to sink Waters. Some of this spending has gone to promote a third candidate, Shakira Hawkins, in what appears to be an effort to split the anti-Thanedar vote. 

Missouri

Polls close at 8 PM ET / 7 PM local time.

• MO-Gov (R & D) (57-41 Trump): Gov. Mike Parson is termed out of office, and three prominent fellows Republicans are competing in an expensive and nasty race to replace him: Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, and state Sen. Bill Eigel. A pair of polls conducted in late July for the nonpartisan political tipsheet Missouri Scout showed Ashcroft and Kehoe tied, with Eigel 9 to 11 percentage points behind them. 

Trump, who since late July has made it a habit to endorse multiple candidates for the same office, has thrown his support behind all three of them. This has allowed each member of this trio to run ads proclaiming that they're "endorsed by Trump," though they haven't been in a hurry to share that their rivals also have that distinction.

Ashcroft spent months as the favorite for the job that his father and namesake, John Ashcroft, held before becoming a U.S. senator and later George W. Bush's first attorney general. But while the younger Ashcroft attracted attention last year for, among other things, unsuccessfully using the power of his office to sabotage a series of proposed abortion-rights amendments, he's struggled to bring in money throughout the campaign. He got some welcome news late in the campaign, however, when a little-known super PAC deployed millions to aid him.

Fundraising has not been a problem for Kehoe, who has decisively outspent his rivals. The lieutenant governor has spent months attacking Ashcroft, though he's also focused on making sure Eigel doesn't emerge unscathed. But while the lieutenant governor is an ardent conservative who has Parson's endorsement, he's acknowledged he's not a "flame-thrower, or somebody who throws hand grenades."

That's a not-so-subtle knock on Eigel, who generated national attention last year when he deployed a flamethrower at an event and later said he'd use it to immolate books "on the front lawn of the governor's mansion." Eigel, who belongs to his state's branch of the far-right Freedom Caucus, has a horrible relationship with his chamber's leaders, whom he's compared to Darth Vader. ("[W]e're not Darth Vader," protested Senate Majority Leader Cindy O'Laughlin.)

Things are considerably quieter on the Democratic side, though two contenders are hoping GOP infighting will give them an opening in what used to be a swing state. Those two candidates are state House Minority Leader Crystal Quade and businessman Mike Hamra, whose company operates almost 200 restaurants nationwide.

• MO-01 (D) (78-20 Biden): Two-term Rep. Cori Bush is trying to turn back a well-funded challenge from St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell in what AdImpact says is the second-most expensive House primary in American history. Outside groups have spent over $12 million to defeat Bush in the St. Louis area, while her supporters have directed $3 million to help her. 

Most of this anti-Bush spending comes from AIPAC's United Democracy Project, which wants to defeat one of the most ardent critics of Israel's government, though other organizations like the crypto-aligned super PAC Fairshake are also running ads against her. The incumbent's main ally, by contrast, is the progressive group Justice Democrats.

Bush's detractors are utilizing a similar strategy to the one they successfully deployed against New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman this year in what remains the priciest House primary ever. Her opponents have taken her to task for voting against Biden administration priorities from the left, and they've accused her of taking credit for securing billions in federal aid from bills she didn't vote for. 

Those ads, however, have largely avoided attacking Bush over the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into allegations that she misused campaign funds to pay her husband for security services. The story may be hurting the congresswoman in another way, however, as she's used her campaign account to pay for legal fees rather than to support her reelection effort.

Bush's side is fighting back by trying to argue that Bell's support from AIPAC, which receives much of its funding from Republican donors, is too close to the GOP. The congresswoman is also airing a commercial where the father and sister of Michael Brown accuse Bell of lying to them by going back on a pledge to charge Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed their loved one in 2014.

The only recent poll we've seen was a late July survey for Bell's allies at Democratic Majority for Israel that showed him outpacing Bush 48-42. That survey showed little support for the other two candidates, former state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal and 2022 hopeful Ron Harshaw, though their presence could end up mattering in a tight contest.

• MO-03 (R) (62-36 Trump): While seven Republicans are on the ballot here, the primary to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer in this central Missouri seat is essentially an expensive duel between two former state senators, Bob Onder and Kurt Schaefer. 

Trump has endorsed Onder, who was a member of the predecessor to the state legislature's Freedom Caucus. Luetkemeyer, though, is supporting his old ally Schaefer over Onder, whom the now-congressman defeated in a bitter 2008 race for the now-defunct 9th District. A mid-July poll released by Onder’s campaign gave him a 34-14 advantage over his intraparty rival, but Schaefer's hoping a well-financed offensive will help him change that. 

Schaefer has benefited from around $5 million in outside support, including from a group that has devoted itself to stopping hard-line candidates who could cause headaches for the House GOP leadership and from a super PAC partially funded by Luetkemeyer. (The outgoing congressman also is no fan of the national Freedom Caucus.) Pro-Onder outfits, including the far-right Club for Growth, have spent a smaller but still substantive $3 million to aid him.

• MO-AG (R) (57-41 Trump): The Republican primary for attorney general of Missouri is an expensive proxy battle between state party leaders and some of the party's most influential national donors. In one corner is incumbent Andrew Bailey, whom Gov. Mike Parson appointed after their fellow Republican, Eric Schmitt, was elected to the Senate in 2022. His opponent is Trump attorney Will Scharf, who is a protégé of powerful conservative Leonard Leo.

There's little policy difference between the two Republicans, who have both spread lies about the 2020 election and each has Trump's endorsement. Scharf, though, is arguing that the party needs an attorney general who isn't connected to what he's portrayed as a corrupt state government. Bailey, meanwhile, is highlighting how Scharf grew up in New York City and Florida and his 2007 arrest for serving alcohol to underage college students.

AdImpact reports that Scharf and his allies have outspent Bailey's side $9.7 million to $7 million on advertising. Every poll that's been released, however, has shown the attorney general ahead, including a late July survey for the Missouri Scout that gave him a 41-30 advantage.

• MO Ballot (57-41 Trump): The Missouri Supreme Court this spring declared that a new vote was required for a 2022 state constitutional amendment that empowered the state legislature to require Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its general revenue on its police because the original version included a flawed fiscal summary. But while this marked a legal victory for Kansas City, which is the only major city in America that doesn't have control over its own police force, it would still be a surprise if Amendment 4 failed two years after statewide voters approved it by a 63-37 margin.

Washington 

Polls close at 11 PM ET / 8 PM local time.

Washington’s top-two primary requires all candidates to compete on one ballot rather than in separate party primaries. The two contenders with the most votes, regardless of party, advance to the Nov. 5 general election. Candidates cannot win outright in August by taking a majority of the vote.

• WA-Gov (58-38 Biden): While a grand total of 28 people are on the ballot to succeed Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who is retiring after three terms in office, there's little question that the general election will be between Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson and former Republican Rep. Dave Reichert. 

Each man, though, still faces one notable intra-party foe. The State Republican Party is backing Semi Bird, a far-right Army veteran who was one of three Richland School Board members recalled last year for defying the state's COVID protocols and make it optional to wear masks in local public schools. Democratic state Sen. Mark Mullet, who is one of the most prominent moderates in the legislature meanwhile, has benefited from some heavy outside spending on his behalf. Polls, though, show neither Bird not Mullet posing a threat to their respective parties' frontrunners. 

• WA-03 (51-47 Trump): Both parties have long anticipated a general election rematch between freshman Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and election conspiracy theorist Joe Kent two years after Gluesenkamp Perez's 50-49 upset helped Democrats win every House seat that touches the Pacific Ocean. Kent, though, first needs to get past another Republican, Camas City Councilmember Leslie Lewallen, who is arguing, "He had his chance, he lost."

Lewallen's pitch, however, doesn't seem to be resonating with conservatives in southwestern Washington or nationally. A late June internal poll released by Kent’s campaign showed him beating her 34-6 for the second general election spot, with Gluesenkamp Perez at 38%. Trump went on to endorse Kent the following month.

• WA-04 (57-40 Trump): Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, faces two intraparty rivals in a chaotic race for this conservative seat in central Washington. Those opponents are former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler, who unsuccessfully ran here in 2022, and Tiffany Smiley, who was the GOP’s nominee against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray that same year.

Sessler, until Saturday, was Trump's only endorsed candidate in this race. But while Sessler has accused Smiley of running only to help Newhouse, Trump announced over the weekend that he was also supporting her. Smiley, for her part, has run ads attacking both Newhouse's impeachment vote and calling Sessler a vegan who "wants to tax our beef," allegations Sessler has ardently denied.

It's possible that two of these three Republicans will advance because, unlike in 2022, there's no one candidate for the district's Democrats to consolidate behind. Instead, three other candidates are campaigning as Democrats, while a fourth will be listed on the ballot as a "MAGA Democrat." 

• WA-05 (54-44 Trump): Six Republicans and five Democrats are facing off in a packed race to replace retiring GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers in the Spokane area. 

The top fundraiser is Spokane County Treasurer Michael Baumgartner, a former Republican state senator who came nowhere close to unseating Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell in 2012. His main rival appears to be state Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber, who is the rare Republican who has the support of the Washington State Labor Council. (The AFL-CIO affiliate is also backing one of the Democrats, former Spokane County Democratic Party Chair Carmela Conroy.) 

The GOP field also includes former Trump administration official Brian Dansel, Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle, and Rene' Holaday, a radio host who has called for turning the eastern part of the state into a separate theocracy—even if "bloodshed" is necessary.

In addition to Conroy, the Democratic side includes physician Bernadine Bank and businesswoman Ann Marie Danimus. While it would be difficult for any of these candidates to prevail in a seat this conservative, though it's possible one of them could secure one of the general election spots that might have otherwise gone to a Republican.

• WA-06 (57-40 Biden): Two prominent Democrats, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz and state Sen. Emily Randall, are campaigning to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer in a seat based in the Olympic Peninsula and Tacoma. Republican state Sen. Drew MacEwen is also in, and while he's raised little money, he may be able to grab one of the general election slots.

Franz has Kilner's endorsement, and she's brought in more money than Randall. Randall, though, has the backing of Sen. Patty Murray and several labor groups, including ones that represent Franz's employees in state government. 

The state senator has also benefited from over $2 million in outside spending, while there's been no serious overlay for Franz. Much of the pro-Randall ads have come from the cryptocurrency-aligned Protect Progress, which has informed viewers that she "would make history as the first LGBTQ Latina in Congress."

• WA Commissioner of Public Lands (58-38 Biden): While Evergreen State Republicans don't hold a single statewide office, the state's top two primary rules give them a chance to flip the commissioner of public lands office well before the November general election.

Two Republicans and five Democrats are campaigning to replace Democrat Hilary Franz as the head of a post that, among other things, runs the state's Department of Natural Resources and handles Washington's wildfire-fighting efforts. The most prominent candidate in the race is former GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who lost renomination in 2022 after voting to impeach Donald Trump. The other Republican is Sue Kuehl Pederson, who lost to Franz 57-43 in 2020.

A late July poll for the Northwest Progressive Institute showed Herrera Beutler and Kuehl Pederson respectively at 18% and 12% in a race where no Democrat has emerged as the party's front-runner. King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove was a distant third, with 6%, compared with 5% each for state Sen. Kevin Van De Wege and Redmond City Councilmember Jeralee Anderson. Two DNR officials, Patrick DePoe and Allen Lebovitz, clocked in with 4% and 3%.

Democrats are hoping that one candidate can surge ahead and stop Republicans from winning this post by default. If they fail, though, there is talk of progressives waging a write-in campaign to stop the general election from being only a choice between Herrera Beutler and Kuehl Pederson, though state law would bar any of the five current candidates from filling that role.  

Morning Digest: Wyoming’s GOP establishment fights to hold off ‘authoritarian’ Freedom Caucus

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● WY State House: While Wyoming has long been one of the most conservative states in America, the local affiliate of the nihilistic House Freedom Caucus is calling on GOP primary voters to move the Equality State even further to the right next month. WyoFile's Maya Shimizu Harris details how the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is targeting several seats in the state House of Representatives on Aug. 20 as part of its long-term effort to replace a party establishment it has denounced as "liberals."

The state Freedom Caucus' intraparty enemies, though, have organized their own Wyoming Caucus to counter an organization they've derided as "authoritarian." Speaker Pro Tempore Clark Stith, who chairs the Wyoming Caucus, argued to the Jackson Hole News&Guide's Jasmine Hall, "[I]f the Freedom Caucus takes over there will be a dismantling of programs that ordinary citizens come to depend on." Stith, who is trying to fend off a primary challenger, added, "It would be very destructive."

The battle between these two factions began well before this cycle. "Everything started with the failed Tea Party movement," state Rep. Pat Sweeney told reporter Ben Jacobs in 2022 as Sweeney himself was trying to fend off a primary challenge from the right that year. "[I]t moved the needle in my mind to Campaign for Liberty, Ron and Rand Paul. So that element gained a little more traction and a little more traction."

Former state Rep. Tim Stubson, though, argued to Jacobs that this battle wasn't about actual policy differences. "I mean, everybody’s gonna say ‘pro-Second Amendment,’ everybody’s gonna say ‘we’re pro-life.’ Everybody’s gonna say ‘we’re pro-oil, -gas, and -coal," he said. "It’s [about] who is flipping those levels of power? It’s as simple as that."

The far-right went on to score some big wins in that year's primaries on the same night that attorney Harriet Hageman overwhelmingly defeated U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, whose vote to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot left her with few friends in either wing of the state GOP. State Rep. Chuck Gray, who insisted the 2020 vote was “clearly rigged," won the primary for secretary of state, while Sweeney overwhelmingly lost renomination to challenger Bill Allemand.

There still weren't enough hard-liners in the state House after the general election to prevent a member of the establishment, state Rep. Albert Sommers, from narrowly winning the GOP caucus contest for speaker. However, the faction that soon dubbed itself the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is one of several state affiliates of the eponymous national organization, does have more than enough members to cause trouble.

Harris writes that, of the 57 Republicans in the 62-member chamber, 26 of them are "relatively consistent Freedom Caucus-aligned lawmakers." (She adds that the official membership of this group, which keeps its list hidden from public view, "is less than that.") That's a massive increase from less than a decade ago: Hall writes that this faction had just five members when it began to take shape in 2017.

Because it takes two-thirds of the chamber to introduce measures during budget sessions, the Freedom Caucus has used its influence to negotiate the passage of plans that Harris says seemed doomed to failure, including "legislation to restrict crossover voting and an abortion ban that’s now held up in court." However, a bill to require a minimum age to get married did become law over the objections of several far-right legislators, including state Rep. Scott Smith, a Freedom Caucus member who said that the children in his district "seem to be pretty mature."

The bloc, though, is now hoping primary voters will help it gain enough members to hold a majority in the chamber. The group is targeting several incumbents as well as open seats, including the one that Sommers is giving up to run for the state Senate.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is getting an assist from state GOP Chair Frank Eathorne, Gray, and Hageman. The Freedom Caucus' PAC and Make Liberty Win, which is an affiliate of the libertarian organization Young Americans for Liberty, are also paying for mailers to boost its candidates. One such message targets hostile lawmakers by accusing them of voting "with the radical left to remove" Donald Trump from the ballot; Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson writes of this line, "Calling this claim a stretch would be generous."

The Koch network's Americans for Prosperity, though, is intervening on the other side. AFP is sending out its own mailer to Republicans that bash the Freedom Caucus' candidates for "bringing Washington’s failed values to Wyoming."

One powerful Republican who wants this clique to fail is Gov. Mark Gordon, who has feuded with the bloc and received a censure from the state party in April for vetoing a property tax cut and a bill that would have abolished gun-free zones. The Freedom Caucus, though, is already planning for the 2026 cycle when Gordon will be termed out. "If we want to change how this land is governed," said state Rep. Jeanette Ward, "we need to change the butts in the seats, including the governor."

And the group may have its sights set further afield than just two years down the line. "The Freedom Caucus has gone so far as to endorse candidates for [the University of Wyoming's] student government," student Tanner Ewalt wrote in WyoFile earlier this year. "Make no mistake," Ewalt warned, "the Freedom Caucus is meddling in our student elections because they are 'building a bench' for tomorrow so that one day people who share their radical ideology will be running for the Wyoming Legislature and even U.S. Congress."

The Downballot

● We've strived mightily to stick to down-ticket elections since launching our show more than two years ago, but the universe finally forced us to discuss the presidential race on this week's episode of "The Downballot"! But it's for a good reason: The new surge in Democratic enthusiasm for the top of the ticket is likely to have a salutary effect further down the ballot. And the events of the last few weeks are a reminder, as host David Nir and guest host Joe Sudbay say, that things can change awfully fast and we all need to remain humble.

But have no fear: We haven't forgotten our true calling! Our guest this week is Inside Elections publisher Nathan Gonzales, who is as devoted to downballot races as anyone. Gonzales tells us how the world of election analysis has changed over the last two decades and explains how his publication's widely followed race ratings are actually put together. He also talks about Inside Elections' efforts to fill a major data gap by polling key House races—and even breaks a little news about where they'll be polling next!

Never miss an episode! Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts. You'll find a transcript of this week's show right here by Thursday afternoon. New episodes every Thursday morning!

Governors

● MO-Gov: Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has shared an internal poll from The Tyson Group with the far-right site Newsmax arguing that he remains the front-runner in the Aug. 6 Republican primary for governor despite getting badly outspent by Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe's forces.

The survey, which was conducted from July 14 through July 16, finds Ashcroft outpacing Kehoe 29-18, with another 13% going to state Sen. Bill Eigel. That's much closer than the secretary of state's 36-11 advantage in Tyson's April poll, though it's better than what more recent surveys from other firms have shown. This is the first poll we've seen of this contest from July.

Eigel, for his part, is hoping a xenophobic new ad will help him gain the type of attention he needs to pull off an upset in two weeks. Eigel pledges to jail and deport undocumented immigrants, much to the increasing consternation of a Latino man tasked with translating that message into Spanish.    

● NH-Gov: Former state Senate President Chuck Morse is using his opening TV ad to argue that former Sen. Kelly Ayotte has betrayed Donald Trump and New Hampshire conservatives, a message he's hoping will help him turn around his fortunes ahead of their Sept. 10 Republican primary for governor.

The spot reminds viewers that Ayotte announced in October 2016 that she wouldn't be voting for Trump, a declaration that came one day after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape seemed to doom his campaign. Ayotte went on to narrowly lose reelection to Democrat Maggie Hassan, but she returned to Trump's good graces months later when he recruited her to guide Neil Gorsuch's successful confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The commercial goes on to attack Ayotte's record in the Senate, with the narrator declaring, "She voted with President Obama to give amnesty to 11 million illegals, and turned her back on both Donald Trump and us." The rest of the commercial touts Morse as an ardent conservative.

House

● AZ-01: The cryptocurrency-aligned group Protect Progress has deployed over $400,000 to boost businessman Andrei Cherny in next week's six-way Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. David Schweikert, which makes Cherny by far the largest recipient of outside support. We do not yet have a copy of the ad Protect Progress is running in Arizona's 1st District.

● AZ-08: While state House Speaker Ben Toma's campaign for Arizona's conservative 8th District has largely been overshadowed by the truly ugly battle between venture capitalist Blake Masters and attorney Abe Hamedah, Toma's outside group allies are hoping their combined $1 million investment will help propel him to an upset next week.

One of those groups is an entity called National Interest Action Inc., which has not yet disclosed its donors. The only other race this organization has gotten involved in is the Aug. 6 GOP primary for Missouri's 3rd District, where it's aiding Kurt Schaefer against another former member of the state Senate, Bob Onder. The other major pro-Toma outfit is the Koch network's Americans for Prosperity.

Two Masters internal polls conducted in recent weeks show Toma, who has the support of outgoing Rep. Debbie Lesko, in third place but still within striking distance.

A survey from Fabrizio Lee that was conducted July 8 to July 9 finds Masters edging out Hamedah 27-26. Toma and former Rep. Trent Franks, who resigned from Congress following a 2017 sexual harassment scandal, respectively clock in at 17% and 16%; another 4% goes to state Sen. Anthony Kern, who was one of 11 Arizona Republicans indicted in April for serving on a slate of fake electors as part of Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election.

While Masters argued that this poll shows "this race is close, and I’ve got the momentum," Fabrizio Lee shows both Hamedah and Toma making gains since May. That last poll gave Masters a 28-16 advantage over Hamedah, with Franks grabbing 14% as Toma took just 8%.

The GOP firm Data Orbital, meanwhile, shows Masters outpacing Hamedah 23-20 as Toma and Franks respectively clock in at 17% and 13%. The poll, which was publicized by ABC 15's Garrett Archer, was conducted July 17 and 18, and the firm tells us it was conducted for Masters.

While Donald Trump is supporting Hamedah, Masters is hoping his commercials will convince voters that he's the candidate that MAGA's master is behind. A new spot features footage of Trump praising Masters as an ardent conservative and concludes with the two men smiling next to one another. The spot does not note that Trump's testimonial about this "incredible person" was filmed in 2022, when Trump endorsed Masters' failed campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

● MO-01: Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin reports that the pro-cryptocurrency group Fairshake has launched a $1.1 million ad campaign attacking Rep. Cori Bush ahead of her Aug. 6 Democratic primary against St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell. The opening commercial accuses Bush of "dishonesty," with the narrator declaring that the congresswoman took credit for securing billions in federal aid from bills she didn't vote for.

KSDK's Mark Maxwell reported last month that while Bush claimed to have delivered $2 billion for the 1st District, the figure includes money provided by bills that passed long before she joined Congress following her 2020 win. Bush's team pushed back and argued that because the congresswoman voted to continue those programs, she should be credited for the funds they've continued to provide. Maxwell also discovered other issues with the list provided by Bush's office, including "duplicate entries."

Fairshake's offensive makes what was already an imposing advertising advantage for Bell's side even wider. AdImpact reports that, with this new ad campaign factored in, Bell and his allies have spent or reserved $12.2 million on the air, compared to $2.1 million for Bush and her backers. The main pro-Bell group remains AIPAC's United Democracy Project affiliate, while the progressive group Justice Democrats is responsible for most of the outside spending directed toward helping Bush.

● NJ-10: Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell's chief of staff told the New Jersey Globe on Wednesday that the 87-year-old congressman remains in intensive care following his July 14 admission to St. Joseph’s Medical Center for a fever, but that doctors believe his condition is improving.

"While recovering from a respiratory infection in the hospital, Congressman Pascrell had a setback," said Ben Rich. He continued, "Since then, the medical professionals at St Joe’s have given the congressman breathing assistance and are monitoring his condition. Doctors tell us he continues to improve and remain hopeful for a complete recovery."

● NM-02: Former Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell and her allies at the NRCC have released a mid-July internal poll from The Tarrance Group that shows her edging out freshman Democratic Rep. Gabe Vasquez 48-46 in their rematch from two years ago. This survey, which was first publicized by the National Journal, is the first we've seen of this contest all year.

President Joe Biden carried New Mexico's 2nd District, which is based in the western Albuquerque area and southern part of the state, 52-46 in 2020. Two years later, Vasquez unseated Herrell, who had been elected in a more conservative version of this constituency, by a narrow 50.3-49.7 margin.

● TN-05: The super PAC Conservatives With Character is using its newest ad to attack GOP Rep. Andy Ogles for claiming to be an economist―which is one of many apparent fabrications he's made to his life story―with the narrator declaring, "[T]he only expertise Andy Ogles has with taxes is raising yours and ignoring his own." The commercial, which shows a picture of the disgraced George Santos alongside his now-former colleague, goes on to accuse Ogles of repeatedly failing to pay his property taxes.

Conservatives With Character has spent over $380,000 so far to attack Ogles or promote his intraparty opponent, Davidson County Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston, ahead of their Aug. 1 Republican primary battle for Tennessee's 5th District. Pro-Ogles groups have deployed around $290,000 to help him, with most of that coming from Americans for Prosperity. (Ogles is AFP's former state director.)

Johnston herself has massively outraised Ogles since she launched her campaign for this gerrymandered Middle Tennessee seat in April, but the congressman is hoping that his endorsement from Donald Trump will help him overcome the obstacles to his renomination. Ogles, who curiously spent almost nothing during the first 12 days of July, also tried to secure some free publicity for himself this week by introducing articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris―a doomed effort that comes a year after he first tried to impeach President Joe Biden and Harris.

● TX-18: Houston City Councilwoman Letitia Plummer tells the Texas Tribune that she's considering running to succeed her fellow Democrat, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, though she said she'd need to find out if the city's resign-to-run law would apply. Meanwhile, former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, who decisively lost the March Democratic primary to Jackson Lee, said she didn't want to say anything about her political future so soon after the incumbent's death.

The leadership of the Harris County Democratic Party has until Aug. 26 to select a new nominee for the general election, but party head Mike Doyle tells the Houston Landing's Paul Cobler this decision will likely take place on Aug. 15 or Aug. 17. While it's not clear yet when any interested names would need to declare for this safely blue seat, a candidate forum is scheduled for Aug. 10.

Ballot Measures

● AR Ballot: The state Supreme Court handed Arkansans for Limited Government a partial victory on Tuesday evening when it ordered Republican Secretary of State John Thurston to tabulate the roughly 87,000 signatures that volunteers gathered to get an abortion rights amendment on the fall ballot. The decision, though, did not apply to the more than 14,100 signatures collected that Thurston disqualified on technical grounds.

AFLG needs election officials to both validate that it turned in 90,704 signatures statewide and that the campaign met certain thresholds in 50 of Arkansas' 75 counties. State law gives campaigns an extra 30 days to gather signatures if election officials say they're 75% of the way to the target both statewide and in 50 separate counties, but it's not clear if this cure period could apply to this situation.

● MT Ballot: The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday all but ensured that voters would get the chance to decide a proposed constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights—as well as two amendments to change the state's electoral system—when it unanimously rejected a petition from Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen.

Jacobsen sought to disallow signatures from "inactive" voters—those who haven't voted recently and haven't responded to attempts to confirm their address but still have valid registrations on the voter rolls. However, all three campaigns appear to have submitted enough signatures from active voters to earn their respective spots on the ballot even if Jacobsen had gotten her way.

● OH Ballot: The Ohio secretary of state's office confirmed Tuesday that a proposed state constitutional amendment to end Republican gerrymandering would appear on the ball ballot. We recently detailed how this amendment, which needs a simple majority to pass, could dramatically reshape the Buckeye State's congressional and legislative maps starting with the 2026 elections.

Legislatures

● TN State Legislature: The hard-line Club for Growth announced earlier this month that its School Freedom Fund affiliate would spend $3.6 million ahead of Tennessee's Aug. 1 primary to help five Republican legislative candidates who support using taxpayer money to pay for private schools. SFF is largely funded by Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania-based conservative megadonor who is an ardent charter schools advocate.

The effort comes months after the Club waged a similar and largely successful campaign in Texas, though it narrowly failed to defeat state House Speaker Dade Phelan.

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GOP calls Harris ‘weird.’ These 19 moments prove Trump’s the weird one

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has some dazzling guidance for attacking Vice President Kamala Harris now that she is considered the front-runner to face convicted felon Donald Trump this November. According to a memo obtained by Axios, the vice president should be described as a “radical” progressive and an architect of the border crisis. And she’s “weird.”

The memo also includes a "weird" category—mocking Harris's "habit of laughing at inappropriate moments," her self-proclaimed love of Venn diagrams and her call to ban plastic straws, among other things.

Trump’s policy record is garbage, his immigration record is one of human rights violations, and his tendency to be “weird” is off the charts. Here are 19 times Trump was … weird.

1. Praising “the late, great, Hannibal Lecter.” 

Trump has repeatedly conjured up fictional serial murderer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter during rally speeches—he even did so in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Famously played by Anthony Hopkins in the film “The Silence of the Lambs,” it is hard to parse exactly what Trump is getting at when he praises the psychopathic character.

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2. His strange preoccupation with the “genius” of realizing that the word “us” appears in the acronym “U.S.A.”

“You know, you spell us right? You spell us U-S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that? A couple of days [ago] I’m reading and it said us. And I said, you know, if you think about it, us equals U-S.”

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3. Remember that photo, alongside the Saudi King, with his tiny hands on the glowing orb?

Trump’s first foreign tour as president began in the Middle East where he met with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, and the two men did this:

Picture of really rich guys putting their hands on a lit up orb depicting the earth. Totally normal. Nothing to see here.

4. When Trump sorta curtsy-bowed before the Saudi King? 

After he had attacked President Barack Obama for leaning over to receive a similar Saudi welcome, Trump did this?

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5. “Melania’s son.”

Trump was delivering remarks to the press on vaping, when he referred to Barron Trump—who is his third son—as “Melania’s son.” What is that about?

6. Humping the American Flag on various stages across the country.

Why does he do that so much?

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7. Saluting a North Korean general.

We all know that Trump loves him some dictators, but it was strange when he decided to give a military salute to an adversarial country’s general. The strangeness took place during a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Trump when the salutation occurred. 

8. Electric boat versus battery versus shark?

Do you remember where you were when Trump offered up a thought experiment about whether you would prefer to be electrocuted in water or eaten by a shark? And that tangent was in response to Trump explaining the problems with electric vehicles?

So I said, so there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, ‘I think it’s a good question.’ I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that.

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9. Trump’s toilet claim: Americans need to flush “10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once.”

That was Trump rambling about toilets, sinks, and showers. “You turn on the faucet and you don’t get any water. They take a shower and water comes dripping out. Just dripping out, very quietly dripping out,” was just one of the many odd facts Trump gave out during his attacks on water-saving regulations. The ranting went on well past the White House, as Trump took his mystifying takes on the road to rallies—all the way through his second impeachment.

10. Doctoring a weather map with a black Sharpie.

Trump’s bizarre attempt to frighten Alabama residents by crudely doctoring a map, forecasting the path of a hurricane, will always go down as both ridiculous and insidious.

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11. Making Clorox great again.

It was April 2020, and while COVID-19 was ravaging countries around the world, Trump took to the world stage to suggest to the press, and his own officials, that disinfectant might be injected into the human body to kill the virus.

So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting. Right? And then I see the disinfectant, it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.

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12. How do magnets work?

It is hard to compete with this Trump statement from January: “All I know about magnets is this, give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that's the end of the magnets.” 

13. Does Trump not know who Frederick Douglass was, or did he just find out?

“I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things,” Trump said. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”

14. The time when the Continental Army took over the airports.

Trump blamed his teleprompter, but his retelling of the American Revolution, including the heroic takeover of airports over 100 years before the airplane was invented, was very peculiar.

“Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.”

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15. Trump hates windmills and thinks televisions turn off if there isn’t enough wind.

Trump has frequently railed against windmills but he’s also shown a curious understanding of how renewable energy functions in the real world. Here he is in 2019, explaining a theoretical conversation a couple has after installing windmills.

“Let's put up some windmills. When the wind doesn't blow, just turn off the television darling, please. There's no wind, please turn off the television quickly.”

16. When Trump shoved a world leader out of the way in order to be in front for a photo.

Who does that????

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17. When Trump asked a 7-year-old if he still believed in Santa.

Real War on Christmas vibes here.

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18. Trump seems to believe we have invisible planes.

Trump’s comments in 2017, coupled with comments he’s made since, sure implies he is under the impression that we have Wonder Woman technology.

"With the Air Force, we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is, you know, almost like an invisible fighter," he said. "I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, 'How good is this plane?' They said, 'Well, sir, you can't see it.' I said, yeah, but in a fight —you know, a fight, like I watch in the movies —they fight, they're fighting. How good is this? They say, 'Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to it, it can't see it.' I said, 'That helps. That's a good thing.'"

19. Robert E. Lee was a pirate shanty singer?

Finally, who could forget Trump’s attempt to give his own wow-filled Gettysburg Address in April. That’s when he recounted American history like … this:

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There’s an infinite amount of examples detailing the strangeness of Trump. The GOP going after Harris for laughing sounds like a desperate recipe for failure. Here’s a bonus memory for the QAnon traveler who happens upon this article, because Trump hangs with only the best people:

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Pitch in what you can to help Kamala Harris win the White House this November.

Biden says he won’t step aside. What happens next?

Posted on by kos

Despite continuing calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee, President Joe Biden says he’s not going anywhere. A significant contingent of Democratic leaders disagrees with that decision.

So where do things stand now?

This year’s presidential race was already neck-and-neck heading into a June 27 debate that Biden requested, using rules he established. The result was not great, as I wrote at the time. “President Joe Biden had one job Thursday, one job only—prove to America that he still has what’s needed to be president, despite rampant questions about his age. He didn’t do that. Instead, he validated the worst criticisms.”

Three weeks later, the debate rages on inside the Democratic Party: Should Biden stay or should he go?

The problem is, there is no real mechanism to force him out. Some have said that delegates can take it upon themselves to ditch Biden, given the party rule stating that “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That sounds good on paper, except that it’s not as simple as that.

There are 3,979 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. To oust Biden, 1,990 would have to not just abandon Biden, but do so for a single other candidate. This means there would have to be an actual campaign, with all the trappings that would entail—public appeals for support, clearing the field, and managing the inherent divisiveness of such a move. (Disclosure: I’m a California delegate to the convention.)

In other words, forcing Biden out of the race against his will would require an organized rebellion and unity in purpose that is well beyond the Democratic Party’s ability. You can see it even in the statements of those demanding that Biden quit—few are clearly advocating for the obvious alternative, Vice President Kamala Harris. They all talk about some truncated primary process because the second an actual Biden alternative is named, it generates opposition from supporters of other potential replacement candidates.

That’s why on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff called for Biden to “pass the torch” without explaining how and to whom. The second he named a name, people would disagree with that alternative, starting a debate that does nothing to help us win in November.

Timing is important here, as there are several deadlines approaching. One is the party’s decision to nominate Biden in a virtual roll call, first agreed on to avoid the filing deadline in Ohio. Like Alabama, Ohio’s deadline has since been moved to after the convention, so efforts to continue with the virtual roll call appear to be motivated by the desire to shut down Biden’s intra-party detractors and lock in Biden’s nomination ahead of the late-August Democratic convention.

That doesn’t mean that Biden, even after being nominated, couldn’t drop out and release his delegates by the convention’s start. The bigger timing issue is simple: We’re less than four months away from Election Day, and every single day that the focus isn’t on Donald Trump is a day that he has effectively won the news cycle.

Elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent. This year, we effectively have two incumbents—a sitting and a former president. So in order to win, we have to make this election about Trump and ask voters whether they want to return to the chaos, incompetence, and fascist tendencies of the Trump administration … but supercharged.

538’s polling average has shown a roughly 2-point drop for Biden post debate, a relatively small effect given his disastrous performance and the media’s near-constant coverage of it. But the explanation is simple: It’s about the narrative.

Before the debate, Democrats said Trump was a dangerous liar, and Republicans said Biden was cognitively addled and old. Then the debate happened, and what did voters see? They saw that Trump was a dangerous liar, and Biden was old and suffering from cognitive decline. The narrative had been set, and the debate confirmed it. Biden missed a golden opportunity to reset that narrative, but it wasn’t to be.

Ultimately, voters saw nothing in the debate that they didn’t already assume was true.

And because of that, some Democrats’ efforts to push Biden out of the race have largely proven self-destructive. The news cycle is speeding past at a dizzying pace. An assassination attempt on Trump four days ago is now old news. Had Democrats shrugged off Biden’s performance and quickly moved on, the whole debacle would now be ancient, mostly forgotten news. Instead, Democrats have insisted on replaying the ordeal in the news every single day.

I get it—we have a lot more at stake than Republicans do. Democrats recognize that our rights and our very democracy are on the line. As for Republicans: What do they have to fear from Biden? Just look at Trump’s nickname for Biden—”Sleepy Joe.” We are fearful of losing our rights, they are fearful of what—a president that falls asleep?

We even have data on this. A March AP poll found that around 70% of Democrats were fearful of another Trump presidency, while a significantly fewer 56% of Republicans said the same about a Biden presidency. He’s just not that scary.

That’s why conservative memes often portray Biden as a puppet being manipulated by George Soros or Bernie Sanders (the Jews!), or Barack Obama or Harris (the scary Blacks!). Or maybe all of the above.  

Trump and his MAGA ilk really don’t know how to run against an old white man, someone who looks just like the Republican base. They prefer to run against the “other.” That’s always been the case, and that’s why Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, to try to manufacture a fake investigation against Hunter Biden. That was the same phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

At that time, Biden was polling in the high 20s or low 30s in the Democratic primary. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were polling high, and had they united the left wing of the party, could’ve posed a serious threat. But Trump wasn’t worried about them: He was worried about Biden, and actively working to kneecap his candidacy early. Turns out, Trump had every reason to fear Biden the most.

For his part, Biden is through listening to his party’s critics. He wanted to run for president in 2016, but party leaders pushed him aside in favor of Hillary Clinton. When he geared up to run in 2019, the same voices claimed he was too old and archaic to defeat Trump. Heck, I was saying those things. Yet Biden proved his critics wrong, and did something that has only been done five times since 1912—he defeated an incumbent president.

Biden is done listening to critics.

So the critics in the Democratic Party are saying he should step aside, and he’s thinking, “They were wrong in 2016, they were wrong again in 2020, and they’re wrong again today.”

Of course, the Biden of four years ago is a different one than today’s Biden. Heck, he even seems different from the Biden who nailed the State of the Union address back on March 7. So yeah, people have reason to be freaked out, but the fundamentals of the race haven’t changed. Swapping out a candidate won’t reset the race for the Democrats; it’ll just create strife and ill feelings at a time when we need to be focused on Trump and his Project 2025 agenda. And much of what I wrote pre-debate about why Biden is not looking as bad as the polls indicate? It still holds up today.

Democrats have been overperforming polling since 2020. That includes 2022, when everyone declared that a red wave was inevitably going to sweep Democrats out of power in Congress, state houses, and state legislatures across the country. That certainly didn’t happen. And in regular and special elections, Democrats continue to overperform. Meanwhile, Trump underperformed his polling during the contested part of the Republican primary season.

Even globally, the far right has underperformed polling and expectations in India, Poland, and most recently, in France. (The right was swept out of office in the United Kingdom, but that was well predicted by the polling.) We’re consistently seeing that when facing right-wing authoritarian fascism, voters turn out in greater numbers than predicted, no matter what the polls say.

None of that means Biden is a shoo-in, but we’re not facing a calamitous situation. Indeed, Biden’s chances of winning in 538’s election model have inched up in recent days, to 54%. That’s a coin flip, within the margin of engagement. That was true before the debate, it’s true after the debate, and it will be true after the Republican convention and even the Democratic one.

The winner of the 2024 presidential election will come down to which side out-hustles the other one on the ground, turning out their vote in just a handful of battleground states. There isn’t a single potential candidate (pie-in-the-sky nominee Michelle Obama doesn’t count) that would significantly change the dynamics of this race. The country is locked into hyperpartisanship so strong that few people’s minds will be changed by anything—not even the attempted assassination of one of the candidates. (It’s true: Trump got zero bump.)

With Biden fully committed to his reelection campaign, it serves little purpose for senior Democrats to continue undermining the sitting president. You don’t have to like it (most don’t), you can think it sucks (and you might be right!), but Biden is holding all the cards. We either get back to focusing on Trump and Project 2025, or we give Trump a big assist in his bid to reoccupy the Oval Office.

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Morning Digest: Vulnerable Washington Republican plays 3D chess to keep career afloat

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● WA-04: Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, has launched an ad attacking one of his intraparty foes ahead of Washington’s Aug. 6 top-two primary—but not the one endorsed by Trump.

The congressman's target instead is Tiffany Smiley, who was the GOP’s nominee against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in 2022. Newhouse's spot, which appears to be his first negative ad of the campaign, does not mention Trump's choice in the conservative 4th District, former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler.

Rather, Newhouse's ad features a cast of voters in central Washington arguing that Smiley "deceived" her donors following her defeat last cycle.

"Tiffany Smiley started a PAC claiming to raise money to support conservative candidates," one declares, "but contributions were funneled to pay off her own multimillion-dollar campaign debt."

Smiley raised $20 million for her Senate race, a contest that, according to several conservative pollsters, had a real chance to succeed in an otherwise blue state. Despite those optimistic numbers, though, she finished on the wrong end of a 57-43 landslide and wound up with $1 million in unpaid bills.

Smiley took to conservative media a few months later to announce the launch of a group called Endeavor PAC to aid "political outsiders," and she pledged that "every dollar amount goes directly towards helping candidates." The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner, however, reported that donations to the group were directed toward paying off Smiley’s remaining debts to a Virginia-based consulting firm.

Brunner noted that Endeavor PAC's website did explain how donations would be prioritized—albeit in the "eighth paragraph of tiny print on the PAC's donation page."

"If you are not familiar with this stuff, it all looks like a bunch of gobbledygook," said Brendan Glavin of the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, who nonetheless agreed that Smiley appeared to be adhering to the law.

Smiley, for her part, recently debuted her own commercial in which she argues that voters can "secure our border and make life affordable again by picking better people to fight for us in Congress." A different ad explicitly attacks Newhouse for his 2021 impeachment vote and calls Sessler a vegan who “wants to tax our beef.” 

Sessler tells The Spokesman-Review that the claim about him wanting to tax beef is “a complete lie.” He also says that, while he’s tried to eat “a lot of raw, fresh, organic food” after being diagnosed with cancer 25 years ago, he still consumes beef. Sessler does not appear to have launched any TV ads of his own yet.

The only poll we’ve seen is a late June internal for Smiley from Newton Heath, a firm we don’t often come across, that the Tri-City Herald first reported about on Friday. The survey places Smiley in first with 30% as Newhouse beats out Sessler 21-11, with Democrats Mary Baechler and Barry Knowles at 9% each. 

While this is just one survey, there was already reason to think the general election could be an all-Republican affair, just as it was in both 2014 and 2016. In more recent cycles, only a single Democrat has appeared on the primary ballot: This time, however, Baechler, Knowles, and another contender named Jane "Birdie" Muchlinski are each campaigning as Democrats. (This doesn't include John Malan, a perennial candidate who will be listed on the ballot as a "MAGA Democrat.")

With such a crowded field, the vote could be badly fractured, but that's likelier to keep Democrats from advancing rather than Republicans: Given that Trump carried the 4th District 57-40 in 2020, there are simply fewer left-leaning votes to go around.

And not only are we almost entirely flying blind in terms of polling, there hasn't been much money to follow either: So far, outside groups have spent just $50,000 to boost Newhouse and around $75,000 on behalf of Smiley. That could, however, change during the final weeks of the contest.

Newhouse is hoping to avoid the fate of his former Evergreen State colleague, Jaime Herrera Beutler, who made history the hard way two years ago in the neighboring 3rd District. Until her race, no incumbent had ever failed to advance out of a top-two primary since Washington adopted the system in 2008.

But like Newhouse, Herrera Beutler supported impeaching Trump, who responded by endorsing her MAGA challenger, Army veteran Joe Kent. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez consolidated the Democratic vote, while Kent narrowly edged past Herrera Beutler, only to lose to Gluesenkamp Perez in an upset in the fall.

Herrera Beutler was one of eight pro-impeachment Republicans who never returned to Congress, with several losing primaries and several others opting to retire. Just two held their seats: Newhouse and California Rep. David Valadao, who is a top Democratic target this fall.

Governors

● DE-Gov: An outside group called Citizens for a New Delaware Way released a poll on Thursday arguing that Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long is beatable in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for governor and said it would seek deprive her of the nomination.

The survey, conducted by Slingshot Strategies, shows Hall-Long deadlocked 27-27 with New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer while National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O'Mara take 7%. A 34% plurality are undecided, while the remaining 5% opt for "someone else."

Citizens for a New Delaware Way said it would spend "upwards of $1 million" in this year's elections, though it hasn't said how much it plans to commit specifically to the primary to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. John Carney. The organization, which says it "promotes transparency, accountability, diversity, and inclusion in Delaware's state government and court system," said it was targeting Hall-Long because of what it called her "failure to support judicial diversity." It does not appear to have endorsed Meyer or O'Mara.

House

● WA-06: State Sen. Emily Randall has publicized an endorsement from former Gov. Christine Gregoire, a fellow Democrat who led Washington from 2005 to 2013, ahead of the Aug. 6 top-two primary for the open 6th District.

Poll Pile

  • WI-Sen: North Star Opinion Research (R) for American Greatness: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 41 (46-44 Trump in two-way, 38-36 Trump with third-party candidates) (April: 49-40 Baldwin)

  • IL-11: Cygnal (R) for Jerry Evans: Bill Foster (D-inc): 41, Jerry Evans (R): 34 (38-37 Biden with third-party candidates)

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