Last Call For Not A Monolith And Never Was

Just like the black vote, the Hispanic vote isn't a monolithic thing.  There are plenty of issues and reasons why people vote, ranging from economics to terrorism to schools to immigration, and a new Gallup poll that breaks down Hispanic voters into immigrants and US-born finds a big difference in how they vote and why.  Aaron Blake at the Washington Post crunches the numbers and finds some surprising results.

A Gallup poll shows that Hillary Clinton maintains a very big advantage among Hispanic voters — just as you might expect. Democrats, after all, have won this group by increasing margins in presidential elections, and that's a major GOP sore spot, givenhow quickly the U.S. Hispanic population is rising.

But the poll also shows that there is a significant split in the Hispanic community between Hispanic immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics.

If you focus just on Hispanics born outside the United States, 87 percent have a favorable view of Clinton, while just 13 percent have a favorable view of Trump.

If you focus just on Hispanics born in the United States, though, it is much, much closer. Clinton's favorable rating drops to 43 percent, while Trump's jumps to 29 percent.

That second group, US-born Hispanic voters, have a view of the candidates much closer to that of the rest of the country.   Pew Research made a similar distinction between Spanish-speaking/bilingual and English-speaking Hispanic voters and found similar results.

The Pew Research Center last month broke this down in a slightly different — but equally telling — way. It compared Clinton's lead on Trump among Hispanics who are English-dominant with those who aren't.

While bilingual and Spanish speakers preferred Clinton in a head-to-head matchup by a massive 80 percent to 11 percent margin, English-dominant Hispanics were actually relatively evenly split, with 48 percent picking Clinton and 41 percent picking Trump.

The latter group's seven-point margin for Clinton looked, again, a lot like the rest of the country, which favored Clinton by a nine-point margin — 51 percent to 42 percent — in the same poll.

Indeed, if you look at these numbers, there doesn't seem to be a distinguishable "Hispanic vote" at all. The real difference-makers are Hispanic immigrants and those who don't speak English as their first language.

The issue of course is that in 2016, the group of Spanish-speaking or bilingual Hispanic folks are nearly 60% of Hispanic population in total, and they strongly favor Clinton.  The rest though look like America's population as a whole.

So which group will turn out in greater numbers in November?

We'll see.

Getting The Full Brazilian Done

After nearly 12 hours of testimony and hours of deliberations, the Brazilian Senate has voted 61-20 to impeach suspended president Dilma Rousseff and remove her from office.

Brazil's Senate removed President Dilma Rousseff from office on Wednesday for breaking budgetary laws, ending an impeachment process that has polarized the scandal-plagued country and paralyzed its politics for nine months. 

Senators voted 61-20 to convict Rousseff for illegally using money from state banks to boost public spending, putting an end to 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule in Latin America's largest economy.

Conservative Michel Temer, the former vice president who has run Brazil since Rousseff's suspension in May, will be sworn in on Wednesday to serve out the remainder of the presidential term through 2018.

In a separate vote, the Brazilian Senate decided not to bar Rousseff from public office.

Brazil's Senate decided that former President Dilma Rousseff, who was removed from office earlier on Wednesday, should not be barred from holding public office.

Senators voted 42-36 to allow Rousseff to maintain her political rights, short of the two-thirds needed to bar her. Under Brazilian law, a dismissed president is prevented from holding any government job, even teaching posts at state universities.

Regardless, I would think her political career is over, you don't really come back from impeachment to be President of Brazil again.

Well, mostly.

We'll see.

Prosecutorial Discretion

If the name "Angela Corey" sounds familiar, she's the woman who botched the George Zimmerman prosecution, prosecuted Marissa Alexander for self-defense, and is the woman The Nation magazine's Jessica Pishko called "The Cruelest Prosecutor in America" just two weeks ago.

During her eight-year tenure, Corey has garnered national attention in a pair of controversial trials. Her press conferences, for which she often wears a large gold cross like a Benedictine nun, have been broadcast nationwide. In 2012, she made headlines with her prosecution of Marissa Alexander, the mother who fired a gun to scare off an abusive husband (no one was injured in the incident). Corey charged Alexander with aggravated assault, which carried a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. Her prosecution of Alexander spurred online petitions and protests from domestic-violence groups, who argued that Alexander was being overcharged for protecting herself. Alexander ultimately served three years in prison. In an interview, Corey told me that she didn’t understand why her actions were “newsworthy,” arguing that Alexander had endangered her children, who were in the next room. “How am I the bad guy in that situation?” she asked.

Then, in 2013, Corey failed to convict George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. Some critics, like the now-retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, said in no uncertain terms that Zimmerman went free because Corey had overcharged him. (Corey responded by calling Harvard Law School and threatening to sue for libel.) As the special prosecutor in the case, Corey charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder, which requires intent, rather than a lesser charge like manslaughter. Corey’s office also concealed information from the defense that had been taken from Trayvon Martin’s cell phone, which was later revealed by one of her staff members. (Corey subsequently fired him.)

But these high-profile cases only hint at the governing ethos in Corey’s office. In nearly every relevant category, Duval County (by far the largest in the Fourth Circuit) embodies the outdated ideas that have fueled mass incarceration in this country—theories that everyone from the Obama administration to the Koch brothers have declared useless. In 2010, Duval had the highest incarceration rate in Florida—significantly higher than every jurisdiction of comparable size or larger, even though crime everywhere in the state was at a historic low. Despite this fact, Corey has opposed efforts to change the sentencing structure for nonviolent offenses to alleviate overcrowding at local jails. 

Duval is one of the few counties in America in which the number of death sentences hasn’t decreased—a significant outlier during a decade of nationwide decline. One in four Florida death sentences comes from Duval, even though it has less than 5 percent of the state’s population; per capita, it’s the highest in the nation. Corey’s top homicide prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, is known for seeking the death sentence even when circumstances seem to weigh against it. For example, Michael Shellito was convicted of homicide and sentenced to death in the 1990s, when he was 19. There is extensive evidence that Shellito was suffering from severe mental illness and has a low IQ. The Florida Supreme Court overturned the death sentence, yet de la Rionda, acting at Corey’s behest, filed an appeal in the decision. One recent case is that of James Xavier Rhodes, a now-24-year-old man who is facing a death sentence for shooting a young woman at a MetroPCS store. Darlene Farrah, the victim’s mother, has asked Corey to grant her daughter’s killer a plea deal for a life sentence—to no avail.

During her first year in office, Corey doubled the number of felony cases in which minors were tried as adults. According to Human Rights Watch, the Fourth Circuit sends 75 percent of the young people charged as adults to prison or jail—the highest rate in the state. (By contrast, Miami-Dade County weighs in at around 12 percent.) This suggests that Corey is less likely than other state attorneys to consider alternatives to prison time.

Yet Corey argues that her decisions as a prosecutor couldn’t possibly be to blame for these disproportionate numbers. “We have so many sets of rules we are bound to follow,” she said. “There are so many checks and balances.”

And now, two weeks after that article was written, Angela Corey has been removed from office by voters. Part of last night's Florida primary vote saw state prosecutor Angela Corey go down in flames to a relatively unknown challenger, Melissa Nelson, who rolled over Corey in the contest.

The election caps a dizzying rise for Nelson and an equally shocking fall for Corey, one of the most polarizing political figures in Jacksonville history who generated national attention and enormous criticism for her prosecutions of George Zimmerman, Marissa Alexander, 12-year-old Cristian Fernandez and many others. Corey will depart office in the first week of January as the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election.

Nelson must still defeat write-in candidate Kenny Leigh in the general election before she officially becomes the state-attorney elect, but no write-in candidate has ever been elected to a state attorney position in Florida and Leigh has not raised any money or made any campaign appearances.

Until Nelson entered the race Corey was largely seen as a lock to win a third term despite numerous controversies and low public approval ratings. But Nelson hit the ground running, raising over $1 million and getting support from many in the legal and business community.

Corey attempted to counter by hyping the support she had received from elected officials like Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams and other current and former elected officials. Williams and other law enforcement officers touted Corey, her experience and toughness in ads supporting her. But that support never seemed to convince voters they wanted to keep Corey.

The first poll that came out after Nelson entered the race showed her with a 10-point lead. That expanded to a massive 32-point lead in a poll that was released last week.

Nelson campaigned on a platform of bringing integrity to the office and said Corey had lost the trust of the community with her actions.

For once, Florida does the right thing.  Good job Gunshine State.

StupidiNews!

• Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio, and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz all survived primary challenges from voters in Arizona and Florida last night.
• New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie has vetoed a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage from $8.38 to $15 an hour, saying the bill would eliminate tens of thousands of jobs. 
• Donald Trump will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto today, then deliver a speech on immigration in Phoenix, Arizona.
• Coca-Cola workers in France found a surprise in a shipment of orange juice from Costa Rica: hundreds of kilos of cocaine that were being illegally smuggled into the country.
• Michigan state lawmakers are considering legislation to allow driverless cars on the streets and highways of the Wolverine State.

Last Call For Strickland From The Record

Things aren't looking good for Ted Strickland in Ohio in his race to unseat GOP Sen. Rob Portman this fall, so much so that Democrats are holding off on ad spending for now to see if he can't find a way to get back in the race that currently has him down by about 8 points.

The Democratic Party’s national Senate campaign arm has canceled more than a week of television ads that were set to run next month in the key battleground of Ohio, where former governor Ted Strickland (D) has struggled to gain traction against incumbent Sen. Rob Portman (R). 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had reserved advertising time on Ohio TV stations starting Sept. 13. Now, according to political ad trackers in both parties, the national Democrats won’t launch that campaign until Sept. 22. 

The DSCC has not withdrawn its support from Strickland entirely — the committee is currently funding a Strickland campaign ad through its limited coordinated-spending accounts that seeks to tie Portman to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — but the delay in unleashing ads from the committee’s more substantial independent expenditure arm comes amid rising doubts about Strickland’s viability against Portman. 

Strickland campaign spokesman David Bergstein said the delay represented a shift in tactics, not a vote of no confidence from party honchos in Washington. 

“The DSCC is spending the same amount of money they were slated to spend, it’s just being used to help fund our existing ad instead of through an independent expenditure,” Bergstein said.

If it's truly a move to backload ad spending to hit Portman in late September and October, that's one thing.  But it also gives the DSCC time to reduce that spending, too.  That's where I think we're headed, as Strickland isn't doing himself any favors lately, as Portman has been hitting him hard on Strickland's time as governor preceding John Kasich.

We'll see if Strickland can get his act together or not. Doing things like saying how awesome Gov. Kasich is for not backing Trump for example isn't going to get too many additional votes for him, but that's Strickland's way.  He's a nice guy, and totally unsuited to the Year of Trump.  If Democrats do get control of the Senate back, I just don't see that path going through Ted Strickland and Ohio right now.

State (Elections) Of Chaos

This Michael Isikoff story on Yahoo! News about foreign hackers hitting state election databases  demonstrates we may have an extremely serious problem on our hands in 2016.

The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials. 

The FBI warning, contained in a “flash” alert from the FBI’s Cyber Division, a copy of which was obtained by Yahoo News, comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility of cyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections. 

Those concerns prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to convene a conference call with state election officials on Aug. 15, in which he offered his department’s help to make state voting systems more secure, including providing federal cyber security experts to scan for vulnerabilities, according to a “readout” of the call released by the department. 

Johnson emphasized in the call that Homeland Security was not aware of “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the election, officials said. But three days after that call, the FBI Cyber Division issued a potentially more disturbing warning, entitled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” The alert, labeled as restricted for “NEED TO KNOW recipients,” disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the “exfiltration,” or theft, of voter registration data. “It was an eye opener,” one senior law enforcement official said of the bureau’s discovery of the intrusions. “We believe it’s kind of serious, and we’re investigating.” 

The bulletin does not identify the states in question, but sources familiar with the document say it refers to the targeting by suspected foreign hackers of voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois. In the Illinois case, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for ten days in late July, after the hackers managed to download personal data on up to 200,000 state voters, Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections, said in an interview. The Arizona attack was more limited, involving malicious software that was introduced into its voter registration system but no successful exfiltration of data, a state official said.

So yes, this is kind of a big deal.  My first question is "which foreign power is behind this" and the obvious answer is Donald Trump's friends in Moscow, although that may not be the correct answer. But the thought that foreign hackers are mucking around in state voting databases should be disturbing to everyone.  The potential for dirty tricks here could be devastating, especially in a contested state like Arizona or majorly populated one like Illinois.

We'll see how the FBI handles this.

Maine Turning The LePage

In a radio interview this morning, embattled GOP Gov. Paul LePage admitted that he may not finish out his term after his most recent racist tirades.

Gov. Paul LePage raised the possibility Tuesday that he may not finish his second term, amid mounting pressure from Democrats and members of his own party to amend for his recent actions. 

“I’m looking at all options,” the Republican governor said while appearing on WVOM, a Bangor talk radio station. “I think some things I’ve been asked to do are beyond my ability. I’m not going to say that I’m not going to finish it. I’m not saying that I am going to finish it.” 

He later said, “If I’ve lost my ability to help Maine people, maybe it’s time to move on.” 

LePage also apologized repeatedly to Rep. Drew Gattine and his family for leaving a threatening voicemail last week. 

He said he plans to invite the Westbrook representative to a face-to-face meeting to talk further. 

“When I was called a racist I just lost it, and there’s no excuse,” the governor said. “It’s unacceptable. It’s totally my fault.”

I'm not sure if this means LePage is expecting this to be enough and for him to get off the hook, or if he really means any of this.  Given his propensity and repeated racist remarks over the years, I can't imagine his sincerity level is very high at all.

Still, we'll see if this leads Maine Democrats to dig in and call for LePage to do the right thing and step down.  Here's hoping.

StupidiNews!

• Astronomers are taking a closer look at a radio signal from a star 94 light-years from Earth to see if there's any indication that the signal could indicate a distant civilization.
• The Obama administration says it will meet its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the US a month ahead of schedule.
• An attack on the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan's capital of Bishkek appears to have been a suicide car bomber, three were wounded in the attempt to breach the compound's gates.
• The EU has hit Apple with a $14.5 billion tax bill after regulators determined that Ireland illegally cut the tech company's taxes, both Apple and Ireland are expected to appeal the deal.
• Drugmaker Mylan says it will offer a cheaper generic version of its EpiPen, but the alternative will still retail for $300 for a two-pack of the injectors.

Last Call For Weiner Dog

Well it wouldn't be the 2016 election season without former Dem Congressman (and husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin) Anthony Weiner showing up with poor impulse control once again and embarrassing himself nationally with his sexting addiction.

Weiner, whose career ended after a sexting scandal, was reportedly exchanging messages with a woman on July 31, 2015, when he changed the subject of the explicit conversation, saying, "Someone just climbed into my bed," the New York Post reported. 

He then attached a picture of his crotch, with his son curled up nearby. 

“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman responded, according to the Post. 

Earlier this month, Weiner gave his phone number and offered to share his location with a college student during a private online chat, according to the Post.

So yeah, last summer he was still at it, and probably since then, once again cheating on his wife and making an asshole out of himself.  Oh hey, and his kid was in the picture too, because he's a family guy.

Yes, I know the Democrats aren't perfect and the Republicans are far worse, but it sure would be nice for Weiner to stop behaving like a horny frat boy jackass, you know? This is wrong, this is stupid, and frankly I'd like to never hear about this little carbuncle again.

Go away, man.

In A World Of Pure Imagination

Legendary comedian, actor, producer, director and movie legend Gene Wilder has passed away today at the age of 83.

Gene Wilder, who regularly stole the show in such comedic gems as “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Stir Crazy,” died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said he died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83. 

His nephew said in a statement, “We understand for all the emotional and physical challenges this situation presented we have been among the lucky ones — this illness-pirate, unlike in so many cases, never stole his ability to recognize those that were closest to him, nor took command of his central-gentle-life affirming core personality. The decision to wait until this time to disclose his condition wasn’t vanity, but more so that the countless young children that would smile or call out to him “there’s Willy Wonka,” would not have to be then exposed to an adult referencing illness or trouble and causing delight to travel to worry, disappointment or confusion. He simply couldn’t bear the idea of one less smile in the world.

He continued to enjoy art, music, and kissing with his leading lady of the last twenty-five years, Karen. He danced down a church aisle at a wedding as parent of the groom and ring bearer, held countless afternoon movie western marathons and delighted in the the company of beloved ones.”

He had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1989. 

The comic actor, who was twice Oscar nominated, for his role in “The Producers” and for co-penning “Young Frankenstein” with Mel Brooks, usually portrayed a neurotic who veered between total hysteria and dewy-eyed tenderness. “My quiet exterior used to be a mask for hysteria,” he told Time magazine in 1970. “After seven years of analysis, it just became a habit.” 

Habit or not, he got a great deal of mileage out of his persona in the 1970s for directors like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, leading to a few less successful stints behind the camera, the best of which was “The Woman in Red,” co-starring then-wife Gilda Radner. Wilder was devastated by Radner’s death from ovarian cancer in 1989 and worked only intermittently after that. He tried his hand briefly at a sitcom in 1994, “Something Wilder,” and won an Emmy in 2003 for a guest role on “Will & Grace.”

Needless to say, with all the Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor and Willy Wonka references I make around here, Gene Wilder was one of my favorite actors.

Here's hoping you're in a place of pure imagination, sir.

The Counties That Count In November

If there's one thing the rise of targeted voter informatics has given us, it's that inside swing states that will determine the White House is the theory that those states are controlled by swing counties.  I've mentioned before that as goes Hamilton County and Cincinnati goes Ohio when it comes to presidential elections, but Hamilton is not the only swing county out there, and the 2016 election may be determined by who votes in these largely suburban counties.

Americans have heard that the election of the next president will be determined by a few battleground states, with Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania as 2016’s leading examples. But what if it’s not simply a handful of swing states but swing counties, with less than 500,000 swing voters, that truly matters?

That’s the provocative assessment from David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in Minnesota and editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. Schultz co-edited a book on swing states and now predicts fewer than 20 counties will tip the balance to pick the next president.

Where are 2016’s deciders? In Ohio, it’s Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati. In Pennsylvania, it’s Bucks and Chester Counties, to the north and south of Philadelphia, and also Lackawanna and Luzerne counties. In Florida, it’s Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, surrounding Tampa and St. Petersburg. In Wisconsin, it’s Brown County, where Green Bay is; nearby Winnebago County, further inland; and Racine County to the south near Chicago suburbs. In Iowa, it’s rural tiny Bremer County, and in New Hampshire, it’s Hillsborough township, inland on the Massachusetts border.

There are a few more: population epicenters such as Nevada’s Clark County, home of Las Vegas; Virginia’s Prince William County, outside Washington D.C., North Carolina’s Wake County, with Raleigh and Durham; New Mexico’s Bernalillo County, containing Albuquerque; and surprisingly, Dona Ana County near Las Cruces, which has a big state university.

“These seem to be the counties within the swing states where the candidates go,” said Schultz. “They view them as battlegrounds. They seem to be pretty good bellwethers, in the sense of predictors of how that state is going to vote… Even if they appear blue or red, there’s a question of how great the turnout will be.”

These counties, which cast 2,485,793 votes for Barack Obama in 2012, compared to 2,106,985 votes for Mitt Romney, seem to be their state’s 2016 tipping points or bellwethers for a variety of reasons. They sit in between red and blue belts. They’re often suburban, experiencing major demographic shifts, including young and better-educated people moving in, and some are more racially diverse.

“What we are seeing in these counties, at least right now, is relatively balanced, in terms of Republicans and Democrats,” Schultz said. “We have a small portion of the population of these counties that are going to be the swing voter. When I say swing voter, I don’t necessarily mean swinging from Democrat to Republican. They might be swinging in to vote, or swinging out from voting.”

So turnout is just as important to these counties as the voting tallies, and they are large enough to decide an entire state.  It makes sense to me, there's four and a half to five million votes in these swing state counties alone, which can certainly affect the outcome of an election.

We'll see if the theory holds true again in 2016.  Knowing how important Hamilton County is to deciding Ohio's elections, I'm not surprised at all to find other counties in other swing states also being key areas.

By the way, Trump still doesn't have an office in Hamilton County.

StupidiNews!

• Los Angeles police say reports of gunfire overnight at an LAX airport terminal were unfounded as no evidence of a shooting has been found, police are looking into what happened.
• Two are dead and 41 injured in a bus crash involving firefighters and flood relief volunteers in Louisiana, the bus driver is in custody on multiple violations.
• Turkish army forces have crossed into northern Syrian areas controlled by US-supported Kurdish rebels, killing 35 and further complicating the situation along the border.
• Iceland's largest volcano may be rumbling to life after a series of tremors rocked the Katla caldera over the weekend, the dormant volcano last erupted in 1999.
• A Russian hacker found guilty last week in a Seattle federal courtroom of 38 counts involving nearly 3 million stolen credit card numbers is the son of a Russian Parliament member.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump in Iowa over the weekend promised to start rounding up and deporting "criminal illegal immigrants" within one hour of taking office if elected. 

"We are going to get rid of the criminals and it's going to happen within one hour after I take office, we start, okay?" Trump said according to a report from the Washington Post. "In this task, we will always err on the side of protecting the American people. We will use immigration law to prevent crimes."

Trump's statement came after several flip flops this week. Last weekend it was reported that Trump told hispanic leaders at a private meeting that he would consider giving immigrants in the country illegally a path to legalization. That position was contrary to the mass deportation plan he had run on in the Republican primary. Then later in the week, Trump said that individuals would have to return to their home countries before being allowed back in adding to confusion.

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump did say he would strengthen the country's E-verify system as well as put forth other plans to track immigrants coming in and out of the country. His plan for what to do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country remains unclear.

Trump will say whatever at this point in order to get elected.  No wonder the smart money is already on his campaign being out of time.

The Republican nominee — three months after clinching the nomination — has begun frantically trying to reposition himself in the last week, installing a new campaign manager and controversial CEO to help him escape the straitjacket that his 14 months of incendiary comments and hard-edged policy positions have him in.

His task, GOP insiders readily concede, seems close to impossible. In an interview Wednesday night, Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, recognized how long it may take to improve the public’s negative perceptions of the GOP nominee, likening her turnaround project to turning a tanker.

Trump may not have that kind of time. Early voting begins in 28 days in Minnesota and in 32 other states soon after that. And already as summer inches to its end, 90 percent of Americans say they’ve decided. For all the televised daily drama this race has provided, the final outcome itself is shaping up to be less dramatic than any presidential election since 1984.
“Kellyanne is good at this, but she’s got a very damaged candidate and it’s very late in the game,” said Tony Fratto, a GOP operative in Washington and former deputy press secretary to President George W. Bush. “I think it’s too late, in fact. I don’t believe he can change. All of this is trying to trick voters into thinking there is a better Donald Trump out there. There is no better Donald Trump.”

The Republican big money donors are now turning to save Congress and are refusing to give Trump another dime.

Several leading Republican donors and groups that spent large sums in the 2012 presidential campaign are either wavering or opting outright not to back Donald Trump this year. Instead, they are spending tens of millions of dollars on congressional races as fears mount that the candidate’s poor poll numbers and incendiary gaffes are placing majorities in the House and Senate in danger.

“I believe there’s an emerging consensus in the party that Trump isn’t going to win,” Vin Weber, a former Minnesota representative turned lobbyist who helps raise money for House candidates, told the Guardian. “We need to shift resources as much as we can to help down-ticket candidates including members of Congress.”

Should Hillary Clinton defeat Trump, Democrats would need only four more Senate seats to take control through the vote wielded by the Senate president, Clinton vice-president Tim Kaine. The Republicans’ House majority is stronger, but not safe.

The Guardian can reveal that the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who is said by well-placed sources to be worried about losing control of Congress, met Trump in New York last week.

The donor, who one friend said has been “irked by a lot of things”, had already met Trump privately at least twice this year. He has pushed for the candidate to visit Israel, which has not happened, and supported former House speaker Newt Gingrich for vice-president. Trump chose the governor of Indiana, Mike Pence.

Earlier this summer, Adelson endorsed Trump, reportedly signaling that he was willing to spend up to $100m on the presidential contest. To date, however, he has not given money to any Super Pac. Three fundraising sources with good ties to Adelson said he is focused on trying to keep control of Congress, though he could donate to Trump if his gaffes are eliminated and his poll numbers improve.

Which will not happen.  Trump's close to done, and everyone knows it.

Sunday Long Read: Drowning In Louisiana

As Louisiana cleans up from flooding that affected thousands of homes, this week's Sunday Long Read is a Mother Jones excerpt from an upcoming book by Arlie Russell Hochschild that details a five-year long profile of the people living in the area that happens to be the most affected by the flooding.

Needless to say, it's about as Trump Country as America gets, where Louisiana's poor white oil industry and manufacturing workers try to make it day by day.

In a framed photo of herself taken in 2007, Sharon Galicia stands, fresh-faced and beaming, beside first lady Laura Bush at a Washington, DC, luncheon, thrilled to be honored as an outstanding GOP volunteer. We are in her office in the Aflac insurance company in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Sharon is heading out to pitch medical and life insurance to workers in a bleak corridor of industrial plants servicing the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and petrochemical plants that make the plastic feedstock for everything from car seats to bubble gum. 

After a 20-minute drive along flat terrain, we pull into a dirt parking lot beside a red truck with a decal of the Statue of Liberty, her raised arm holding an M-16. A man waves from the entrance to an enormous warehouse. Warm, attractive, well-spoken, Sharon has sold a lot of insurance policies around here and made friends along the way.

A policy with a weekly premium of $5.52 covers accidents that aren't covered by a worker's other insurance—if he has any. "How many of you can go a week without your paycheck?" is part of Sharon's pitch. "Usually no hands go up," she tells me. Her clients repair oil platforms, cut sheet metal, fix refrigerators, process chicken, lay asphalt, and dig ditches. She sells to entry-level floor sweepers who make $8 an hour and can't afford to get sick. She sells to flaggers in highway repair crews who earn $12 an hour, and to welders and operators who, with overtime, make up to $100,000 a year. For most, education stopped after high school. "Pipe fitters. Ditch diggers. Asphalt layers," Sharon says. "I can't find one that's not for Donald Trump."

These are the folks who have been convinced by Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones and FOX News and the GOP that everything that has gone wrong in their lives in this slice of the bayou is the fault of Democrats, specifically Barack Obama, that there's a grand conspiracy by the Obama administration to take what little they have and to give it to poor black and Latino people who "don't deserve" it.

There really is a grand conspiracy to take what little they have, it's just being conducted by the corporations that run the oil derricks, shop floors, refinery tanks and strip malls that cover the landscape here to enrich their owners.  But they are very angry, and they want Donald Trump to fix it by hurting everyone who isn't them.

There really is anger out there, not all of the people who are voting for Trump care about race.  But they are convenient cover for the ones who do, and in my book, that makes them just as bad if not worse.  Getting poor white people to vote against their own self-interests has been at the heart of Republican politics for nearly 60 years now, and there's no better example of it than the part of Louisiana that just got wasted by the worst flooding in generations earlier this month.

If they somehow didn't all hate Barack Obama before, they will forever hat him now.  If you want to know how these folks can blame Obama for Katrina, this excerpt does a pretty good job of explaining it.

Last Call For Dump Trump

Republicans, smelling a Goldwater-style electoral bloodbath in November, are so desperate now that they're actually putting money into swing state ads calling for Trump to step down as the Republican nominee.

The ad, titled "Keep Your Word," features footage of Trump during the Republican primary in which he suggested he'd drop out if he saw his poll numbers decline.

"Number one, I'm not a masochist, and if I was dropping in the polls where I saw I wasn't going to win, why would I continue?" Trump said in an October NBC interview featured in the ad. A graphic displaying political handicappers' predictions of a landslide Trump loss accompanies his remarks. The ad ends with a plea: "Resign the nomination. Let the RNC replace you so we can beat Hillary."

The 30-second spot is marked for a limited run on broadcast networks in suburban Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Michigan, according to Regina Thomson, a Colorado Republican activist and leader of Free the Delegates, the organization that failed to stop Trump's nomination at last month's national convention. All four states are central to Trump's path to the White House, though he's trailing in most polls of those states.

The ad is backed by a five-figure buy, according to Thomson, but the group is hopeful to eventually expand its run to Fox News Channel. It's initially set to air on broadcast news channels beginning on Tuesday. It's marked for the four states' suburban media markets, according to Free the Delegates, because they're areas that typically lean Republican but appear to be tilting in Hillary Clinton's favor this year.

Of course by now you've figured out the real plot here: the plan is to try to help vulnerable Republicans in the House like Carlos Curbelo and David Jolly in Florida and Senate Republicans like Ohio's Rob Portman to be able to keep their seats amid a Trump iceberg in the path of the GOP ship this year.  They're trying to plug the cracks in the dam before the river wipes them out of down-ticket races completely.

In other words, we're in sheer panic mode. It's no longer a question of whether Trump loses, but by how badly and if he will take the GOP Congress with him.

That all depends on how much the Dems can run up the score in November, and that means getting out the vote.  We'll see.