Virginians will head to the polls this November 5, to decide the fate of the closely contested state legislature. Polling suggests a race leaning in Democrats’ favor and the Republican response has been to turn to the same strategy that failed them in the last two election cycles. Virginia...
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A deep dive by Ron Brownstein explores part of the reason Despite the fretting of some pundits and observers, Donald Trump’s harsh statements and even harsher policies towards immigrants and immigration may not be the secret ingredient that unlocks reelection for him and the GOP. Dating back to state...
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It’s clear that racial incitement and xenophobia will be the animating force of President Trump’s 2020 re-election effort. As political observers assess the related ugliness and implications, it’s worth noting that: Xenophobia backfired badly in 2018 after Trump – and most GOP candidates – closed with ugly and cynical...
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In a must-read piece, Alex Shephard of The New Republic captures the fact that the GOP is repeating the errors of the 2018 midterms by leaning on racism and xenophobia. It backfired then, and it is backfiring again. Shephard’s piece is excerpted below and available in full here. Ahead...
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Never mind what the election results say. Dr. Matt Barreto, political scientist and co-founder of Latino Decisions, is out with an op-ed in today’s New York Times that highlights the massive turnout of Latino voters in 2018, and the massive rejection of Trump’s xenophobia by the majority of voters,...
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David Drucker of the Washington Examiner writes a new piece with the headline neither Donald Trump or Stephen Miller wants to see and White House enablers are afraid to repeat. The headline: “Leading GOP pollster: Trump’s focus on immigration sunk House majority.” Drucker quotes findings from leading Republican operative...
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President Trump’s brilliant plan to shut down the government over his wasteful and offensive border wall vanity project ignores the 2018 midterm results, is sharply at odds with the wishes of the American public, and manages to both divide Republican elected officials and unite Democrats. As leading voices are...
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Our take: xenophobia backfired Republican pollster David Winston writes an important midterm post-mortem in Roll Call. Entitled “2018 Midterms: A Missed Opportunity for Republicans,” Winston argues that the GOP’s fatal mistake was to focus on immigration and the caravan — an issue that drove voters in the middle away...
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Leading political observer Ron Brownstein’s latest CNN column explores how “Trump’s alienation of younger voters is a generational gamble for GOP.” Brownstein’s assessment echoes the recent Washington Post “Monkey Cage” analysis by University of Maryland associate professor Stella Rouse, who wrote how Republicans’ hard-line stance on immigration may alienate...
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“While Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric might have energized Republicans in red states, polling shows it alienated everyone else” Let’s not forget. In the 2018 midterms Trump and his party closed with an ugly and unprecedented deluge of racism and xenophobia: hysteria about a caravan of bedraggled refugees a thousand miles...
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