Then: Mitt Romney says Donald Trump will change America with 'trickle-down racism'

The big fight in 2017 will be Medicare, Medicare, Medicare.

The House Republicans sense that this is their last shot to privatize it--they may never have this kind of House Majority, with a Republican president, with the Democrats so leaderless, again.

Though they'd be well-advised to avoid such overreach, Trump's appointment of Tom Price indicates he's all aboard the Medicare Phaseout Train.

The Democrats are going to be united in opposition.

Here's an early tell: Joe Donnelly is a conservative Democrat. He represents a state that Trump won by 19%. He's up for re-election in 2018.

Today he publicly stated his intent to vote against Tom Price over the Phaseout/Privatization of Medicare.

http://www.donnelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press/donnelly-to-oppose-price-nomination

The other ConservaDems--Joe Manchin, Jon Tester will join.

Why?

Because opposing Medicare phaseout is a political no-brainer. Trump's attempt to gut Medicare will be a horrendous betrayal of the working class voters who thought he was a populist. He made a big show of protecting Medicare during the Republican primaries.

This is a big fight, and one the Democrats need to win, and will win

How many Republicans in the Senate will stick their necks out to get rid of Medicare?

Are we tilting at windmills re: national gun laws?

It seems pretty clear that the more central the role guns play in an election, the worse the election goes for us.

Not hard to see why--the areas where we're the most fragile or vulnerable to swings against us on the gun thing are in the small towns and rural areas. Areas that are already disproportionately powerful due to the electoral college and the Senate and the concentration of our voters in urban areas.

The moral and policy arguments for increased gun regulations are self-evident to most here. But, what kind of regulations can we enact while in the minority? Zero.

So, it seems that either we do next to nothing in the majority or we do absolutely nothing in the minority.

In retrospect, Clinton's strong stand on guns in the primary and the general election may have hurt her chances in the general election.

It seems we're better off trying to legislate on the state level and appointing better SCOTUS justices.

Hard to see the argument that what we're doing is working.

2008 Barack Obama would not be surprised by Trump's win.

Don't get mad at Trump and his enablers: Get even in 2017 and 2018.

There are 38 governors races between now and this time in 2018.

Here's a list of Governor seats we can plausibly pick up between now and 2018 (states that were at least close in 2016):

2017:
New Jersey (FU Chris Christie)

2018:

Arizona
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Iowa
Maine
Maryland
Michigan
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Vermont
Wisconsin

We only have a few tough races to defend--Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, maybe Connecticut.

The states are our best line of defense against a tyrannical federal government. Resistance begins now. Let's play offense.

Not buying the "Tough Guy Trump dresses down media bigwigs" story

1) NY Post.
2) Sounds like a wingnut's wet dream
3) Language/description sounds like a Trumper sycophant
4) Trump chokes when faced with tough opponents--e.g. President of Mexico.

Click bait designed to distract from the scandals.

what's our plan for helping people in small towns and rural areas get jobs in the service economy

and benefit the way people in urban centers are doing?

Not talking about "higher wages at Walmart" talking about quality jobs that can provide a good income and meaningful opportunity.

Most of the economic benefits of the service economy accrue in areas where there is innovation and where there's demand for services machines can't do--professional services for example. Those areas are almost exclusively urban and suburban.

The cliché is that globalism creates winners and losers. Well, maybe the winners should start figuring out a way to make it possible for more people to become winners. And to make sure people can live wherever they want and still be a winner, rather than having to move away from their hometowns and to large cities with very high costs of living.

Certainly not an easy problem to solve, but with all of the brainpower being used to solve problems in technology, we should really get to work on solving the problems in our society and economy.

Because if we don't, Trumpism--making false promises and offering up scapegoats instead of solutions--will continue to carry the day in large parts of the country.

Beating Trump in 2020 will not be easy, but it will be simple.

Why won't it be easy? He'll be the incumbent, and has already proven to have better political instincts and ability to reach swing voters in swing states better than our party's political class does. He'll have the full array of rightwing media on his side, and the mainstream press will suck up to him. Plus, he'll have state GOP and the DOJ conspiring to make it harder for minorities to vote.

But, beating him will be simple enough: attack his strengths, i.e. why the non-racist swing voters decided to vote for him. Attack him for not bringing real change. Attack him for failed leadership. Attack him for corruption in office. Attack him for cozying up to the billionaires and the cutting their taxes. Attack him for making the economy worse. Attack him for the US being a less respected and less safe country.

Those are the issues where he'll be vulnerable--where he made promises he won't be keeping.

Trump shattered the record for most votes in Florida.

Hillary beat Obama's totals there by around 250,000 voters. Difference was that Trump improved on Romney by 500,000 voters.

Similarly, in Pennsylvania Trump improved on McCain/Romney by 230-250,000 voters.

It'll take a while to sift through the data to figure out whether how many were people who switched from 2012 and how many were new voters.

But our big problem was not a lack of turnout. It was that Trump attracted a huge amount of voters who hadn't been voting Republican before.

That is not an easy fix, and it should scare the hell out of us.

Mike Huckabee said set to be US envoy to Israel, tasked with moving embassy to Jerusalem