Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

The unstoppable Obamacare analysis machine that is Richard Mayhew takes a look at Gov. Matt Bevin's new Kentucky HEALTH Medicaid waiver and nails him to the wall in one paragraph:

The only way money is being saved as per person costs are either the same or higher is by covering fewer people. The way that Kentucky will cover fewer people is by putting up half a dozen barriers to enrollment. Premiums, health savings accounts, limited open re-enrollment periods, benefit lock-outs and job training requirements all are barriers. Individually any of those barriers might only knock a few people out from the pool, but they are a bewildering array of complexity when put together. The goal of this type of waiver design is to reduce costs by making more people go without insurance.

And if all that sounds familiar, that's the same exact plan Republicans are using to keep people from voting, to keep people from getting abortions, and to keep people from taking advantage of a host of other government programs.  If you make it too obnoxious to get, then people will start going without it.

Bevin is no different.  His plan is designed to kick people off the Medicaid rolls, period, and claim that they're too lazy to jump through the hoops he set up to get back on.  It's not his fault people aren't going to do all the things he's making them do in order to get health coverage, you see, it just weeds out the bad ones.

The reality is far different, but Bevin doesn't care.  Once again, we punish the poors and tell ourselves that if we ever needed Medicaid, that we would follow all the rules out of "dignity".

And this state will buy that line of crap every time.

Is Kaine Able?

Hillary Clinton will be here in Cincinnati on Monday at a fundraiser with Mayor John Cranley, which isn't super weird with Ohio very much being in play in November or anything. She'll be here along with Elizabeth Warren, which is definitely making people ask if Clinton has made her VP selection already.

Hillary Clinton will campaign Monday in Cincinnati with progressive U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – marking Clinton's first public appearance in Cincinnati this election cycle and her first campaign stop with Warren, a possible vice presidential pick. 

Clinton will also appear Sunday night without Warren at a twice-postponed fundraiser at Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley's home, with contribution levels ranging from $1,000 to $33,400. 

On Monday, Clinton and Warren will appear at 10:30 a.m. at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. The two women "will discuss their shared commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top," Clinton's campaign said in a statement. Tickets to the event are available at hillaryclinton.com/events. 

Clinton and her supporters have touted Warren's endorsement as the former first lady seeks to unite Democrats after a long primary battle with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders' progressive ideas won support, and primaries, all over the country. But Clinton won more delegates in primaries and won the support of most of the party's superdelegates, emerging this month as the presumptive Democratic nominee. 

Warren, a longtime progressive leader, waited until this month to endorse the former secretary of state over Sanders. She could help Clinton pull more Sanders supporters to her side.

But having Warren actually by her side isn't enough apparently to stop the rumors that Clinton really wants Virginia's Tim Kaine as her running mate.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is emerging as the leading candidate atop Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential short list, according to Democratic allies and operatives close to the campaign. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and HUD Secretary Julian Castro are also top prospects for the Democratic ticket — both representing nods to important Democratic constituencies.

But they have serious drawbacks that make them less appealing for Clinton than the Spanish-speaking, Terry McAuliffe-endorsed, former missionary and swing state governor, who was a finalist in Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting process eight years ago. 

Kaine currently towers over other top-tier candidates still in consideration like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, California Rep. Xavier Becerra and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

“Tim Kaine was a finalist eight years ago because of his executive experience, solidity, values, standing in a critical state and overall profile as someone who would be a good governing partner to Obama,” said former Obama senior strategist David Axelrod, who was involved in the selection process eight years ago. “He was very much in contention and highly regarded.”

Which is weird, because that's exactly what Politico said 8 years ago about him being Obama's veep.

As Senator Barack Obama turns to the choice of his running mate, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has emerged as one of the campaign’s potential finalists, sources familiar with conversations in Richmond and in Chicago said. 

Kaine, an early Obama supporter whose biography nicely dovetails with the Illinois senator’s, "ranks very, very high on the short list," said a source who has spoken recently to senior Obama aides about Kaine. 

Kaine "is getting a critical examination," the source said.

That turned out to be utter BS, and we already know that Politico is happily printing warnings from Wall Street that they will abandon the Democrats completely if she picks Liz Warren.

So no, I wouldn't worry about Kaine, rather than Clinton campaigning in a swing state with somebody on her short list.

Anarchy In The UK

A little Sex Pistols this morning in honor of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson (who will most likely be the net PM) and the rest of the Brexit crew managing to convince the UK to leave the EU and wreck their own economy for a decade or so. 



I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it
I want to destroy the passerby

Apart from causing a sharp, short-term hit to Britain’s economy, the first consequence of Thursday’s vote to leave the EU will be a government crisis in London. David Cameron is now almost certain to resign as prime minister and Conservative party leader — most probably sooner rather than later. A new Conservative administration, distinctly more anti-EU in tone, would replace him.

Unless carefully managed, this process will damage relations between London and other EU capitals. The latter will interpret the Brexit vote as a hammer blow to Europe’s unity. For the sake of protecting that unity, they will be in no mood to offer generous post-Brexit deals for Britain. Negotiations will be in danger of turning into an acrimonious tug of war, distracting Europe from other urgent business.

Second, Brexit will make financial markets more sensitive to the vulnerabilities of the 19-nation eurozone. Sterling has already plunged to a 30-year low. Investors will ask whether, in the light of the Brexit shock, eurozone governments have the political will and public support to strengthen the architecture of European monetary union.

One test will be whether Europe’s banking union, including a plan for common deposit insurance, makes progress over the next 12 months. At present it is blocked. More ambitious proposals, such as an Italian plan for common EU “migration bonds” to finance the EU’s response to the refugee and migrant crisis, will have little chance of being turned into action.

Individual eurozone countries will be under intensified market scrutiny. Ahead of the British vote, yield spreads widened between German government bonds and those of less financially solid southern European countries.

The outlook for Portugal, which is ruled by a shaky coalition of the moderate and radical left, is unsettling investors. The deep-seated troubles of Greece have never gone away. In Spain, which holds a general election on Sunday, the prospects for stable government and economic reform are clouded by a fragmented political party system and Catalan separatism.

Not to mention the almost assured rise of Marine Le Pen and the French nationalists in Paris. Count on other countries to hold referendums as well, and it's not going to be pretty.

Now it's still possible that the next government will find a way to stay in and will not invoke Article 50 and leave the EU within two years, but the odds of that are pretty low.  We won't know the full damage from this for several years at the minimum, but this is a cautionary tale: fear of the other won an historic victory in the UK last night.  I'm thinking at some point it will win here in the US, too.  Maybe not Trump, but somebody far worse.

StupidiNews!

• In a stunning 52-48% vote, the UK elected to begin the process of leaving the European Union in last night's referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron will resign in October.
• The US Supreme Court has deadlocked 4-4 on President Obama's deportation deferrals, all but ending the programs and leaving the legal status of millions of families in doubt.
• Tornadoes in China have killed nearly 100 in Yancheng, Jiangsu province as high winds and hail destroyed dozens of buildings and injured hundreds.
• Drivers for Lyft in California will remain contractors and not become employees under a $27 million settlement agreement approved this week.
• Volkswagen will pay upwards of $10 billion to settle damages from the automaker's diesel emissions scandal, the money will go to car owners as well as government penalties.

Trump Cards, Con't

It's finally soaked in under The Donald's neoprene hairpiece that the best way to get Republicans to stop hating him is to make them hate Hillary Clinton as much as possible. That it took this long for him to deliver a conspiracy-laden tirade against her in a speech is telling, but it was the red meat the Pretty Hate Machine wanted to chew through, and they got it by the truckload. NPR's Mara Liasson was very impressed.

Donald Trump did what Republicans have begged their presidential candidate to do for months — lay out the case, from A to Z, against Hillary Clinton. 

Trump didn't hold back in a blistering speech Wednesday. He went through chapter and verse of every criticism — based in fact or conspiracy theory — against the Clintons. In sum, Trump said, Hillary Clinton may be a "world-class liar" and "the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States." 

The speech will be fact-checked, and before it was even delivered, the Clinton campaign and its allies were pushing back with a detailed rebuttal. Nevertheless, the political significance of the speech is undeniable. After wasting the first six weeks of his time as the presumptive nominee of the GOP — getting sidetracked almost daily by petty personal feuds and provocative statements — Trump finally laid out a case against Clinton on foreign and domestic policy. 

This speech should quiet some of the angst inside Republican circles about the quality of the campaign Trump is running (or not running). Opposition to the Clintons is one of the strongest strands in the GOP's DNA — and now that decades-long animus seems to have found a focused champion in Donald Trump. 

It's the speech Republicans have been itching to hear, in a crystallized way, since the 1990s. Trump gave them exactly what they wanted and likely quelled some fears about his candidacy. They might not be totally behind him, but Republicans are virulently opposed to her. 

And the best way to galvanize people who should be on your team is to find a common enemy.

So we're congratulating Trump for being a standard, hateful Clinton-bashing Republican? Mara definitely misses the 90's. Ironically, it took this long for Trump to focus on Clinton because his overweening narcissism prevented hm from talking about anyone other than himself for a year.

And let's not overlook the fact that the speech itself was basically one giant bucket of lies.

Look, Trump figures his only shot is to try to drag Clinton down to his level.  It will probably work to keep the "Never Trump" rubes (including Liasson, apparently) in line, but it's not going to help him with anyone else.  Still, to have any shot in November, Trump has to get his party behind hating Clinton 24/7.

We'll see how that works out for him.

Ryan In The Reign Storm

So how did Rep. John Lewis and House Democrats get away with their sit-in protest over forcing a vote on gun control legislation on the floor of the chamber yesterday, and why were House Republicans so utterly unprepared to deal with it?  Two reasons: social media, which allowed the Democrats to broadcast even after the GOP pulled the plug on proceedings in the House, and Paul Ryan being the most inept House Speaker in decades. 

A Democratic protest demanding votes on gun-control legislation led to pandemonium in the House chamber that did not end until early Thursday, when Speaker Paul D. Ryan and his fellow Republicans reclaimed control long enough to force through a major spending bill. They then abruptly adjourned and left the Capitol.

Furious Democrats remained on the House floor, where they huddled around their leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who praised their stand as a “discussion heard around the world.”

Ms. Pelosi expressed bewilderment at the Republican position. “What could they be thinking?” she asked. “Whatever it is, they don’t want to tell anybody about it. That’s why they left in the dead of night.”

The standoff, which began with a Democratic sit-in on the House floor just before noon on Wednesday, did not end until about 3 a.m. Thursday when Mr. Ryan — barreling over Democrats’ objections — took the rare and provocative step of calling a vote on a major appropriations bill in the wee hours and without any debate. He then adjourned the House, with no legislative votes scheduled until July 5.

The House approved the bill, which includes $1.1 billion in emergency financing to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus — and more than $80 billion in other government spending — by a vote of 239 to 171 shortly after 3 a.m.

Republicans dashed from the chamber into the sticky heat gripping Washington and were met by protesters who jeered, with some shouting, “Do your job!”

All I have to say is that John Boehner, for all his incompetence in getting rolled by Nancy Pelosi and sometimes even his own party on a regular basis, never would have let John Lewis get this far in the first place.  He would have known this was coming after Senate Democrats tried a similar move, moved the Zika vote up, and would have placated Lewis with a promise to vote before the Dems got hours of free publicity making the GOP look like a bunch of savage assholes.

But this was Paul Ryan's show, and he failed the tests from the get-go. Instead of taking control of the House immediately, Ryan went to CNN to talk to Wolf Blitzer, when Republicans had been avoiding the media for the month of June in order to dodge Donald Trump questions.

Speaker Paul Ryan to @wolfblitzer: House sit-in on guns is a "publicity stunt" https://t.co/44kEXII1KZ https://t.co/fJHSNpBcG2

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 22, 2016

Amid Ryan's bluster about due process, which should come as a real surprise to the families of  the victims of Orlando's massacre, was the fact that Ryan was pleading with media to call foul on the whole affair and side with him in order to help shut Lewis down.

No such luck. Meanwhile, the Senate is introducing bipartisan legislation that would block gun sales to people on the No Fly list.

Maine Republican Susan Collins and a bipartisan group of senators have introduced a compromise bill that would authorize the Justice Department to deny gun sales to individuals on two terror watch lists; while the proposal's chances of passage are still unknown, it's the first congressional response to the Orlando attack that has had the backing of figures from both parties. (Four other gun-control bills failed along party lines in the Senate earlier this week.)

The bill—technically an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act—would apply restrictions to individuals on the no-fly and "selectee" lists, a narrower group than would have been covered by a failed amendment proposed by Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The proposal attempts to address concerns about Constitutional-rights issues related to the watch lists by including "a process for Americans and green card holders to appeal a denial in U.S. Court of Appeals and to recover their reasonable attorneys fees if they prevail."

So by shutting down the House, Ryan now gives the Democrats in the Senate the opportunity to move this bill forward and continue their narrative, with Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine already on board.

Ryan got rolled, plain and simple.  For once, it's working in America's favor.

StupidiNews!

• Voters in the UK go to the polls today to vote on a referendum to determine whether or not Britain will remain in the European Union.
• House Republicans adjourned two days early for the July 4th holiday in order to stop a 15-hour House Democratic sit-in to force a vote on gun control legislation.
• The solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 airplane continued its quest to circle the world, completing its leg from New York to Seville, Spain in a little under 3 days.
• Demand for gasoline in the US reached a record in June as lower fuel prices mean more Americans are hitting the road this summer.
• Aerospace giant Boeing says that their next generation spacecraft, the Starliner, will see an early 2018 launch as the company enters the commercial spaceflight arena.

Last Call For Crossing The Rubio Con, Con't

It's official, Sen. Marco Rubio really is going to run for re-election after his disastrous presidential run.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will seek reelection to a second term, sources familiar with the decision said Wednesday, a complete reversal from his earlier plans that gives the GOP a significant boost in its efforts to block a Democratic takeover of the Senate. 

Rubio becomes the immediate frontrunner in a battleground race that Democrats had been slightly favored to win, though he faces a primary and a potentially tough general election to secure a second term.

Indeed, the first Quinnipiac poll measuring Rubio getting back in the race after his heavily rumored return last week finds Rubio coasting to an easy win over both his potential Democratic opponents.

In Florida, Sen. Rubio leads U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy 47 - 40 percent and tops U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson 48 - 40 percent. Murphy and Grayson are ahead of several largely unknown Republican contenders.

That's somewhat surprising, but we'll see how long this lasts once Rubio comes under attack.

"With Republican national leaders worried about keeping control of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio might ride to their rescue if he decides to reverse field and seek re-election," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"This Quinnipiac University poll finds Sen. Marco Rubio in good shape when matched against his two potential Democratic opponents," Brown added.

"None of the other Republican candidates for Sen. Rubio's seat has a lead over either of the two Democrats, Congressmen Patrick Murphy and Alan Grayson. But if Rubio's last-minute decision is to seek re-election, he could be in the driver's seat."

Until he crashes the car.  We'll see.

Bevin Dis-Kynects Medicaid In Kentucky

And so seven months after taking office, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin makes good on his threat to wreck the country's most successful Medicaid expansion under the ACA and replace it with Indiana's broken plan where everyone pays a monthly premium for Medicaid "out of dignity".

Gov. Matt Bevin announced Wednesday he's seeking a Medicaid waiver from the federal government. 

If the Medicaid waiver is approved, Bevin said it will result in $2.2 billion in taxpayer savings. 

Bevin announced his "transformative and sustainable program" called Helping to Engage and Achieve Long Term Health, or HEALTH. Under the plan, Kentucky would impose premiums on able-bodied adults from $1 to $15, depending on their income levels. 

Bevin said requiring Medicaid expansion users to pay for their own premiums will give them "dignity and respect." The program is about teaching people, he said, emphasizing it is a "learning experience."

One catch though, for people who have been on Medicaid for "years" it seems that $15 a month may not "fully cover" benefits.  Also, it seems that Gov. Bevin will "use health care dollars" to address the state's opoid addiction epidemic, but he doesn't say how.  On top of that, there are several things that will no longer be covered by HEALTH that Medicaid in Kentucky covers now, like "non-emergency transportation". Also, Bevin says that the program will go statewide but start as a "trial" in "select counties" first, by which I'm betting he means Fayette and Jefferson counties. You know, Lexington and Louisville.  Where those people live.

That's how he'll get away with it with the voters until after he's up for re-election in 2019.

Oh, and finally, he's taking 400,000 hostages.

Bevin said if the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not grant the waiver, he will still move ahead with his plan to repeal Medicaid expansion in the state.

Understand that this is an open threat to 400,000 Kentuckians: accept being one of the poorest states in the nation where Medicaid recipients have to pay monthly premiums, or Bevin will kick them off health coverage completely.

Because "dignity".

By the way, you can laugh at Kentucky being stupid all you want to, but I won't spend too much time on it. Should the Republicans win in November, the Bevin HEALTH plan is coming to your state, too.

King Of Money

Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King decided he wanted to score some cheap points by introducing legislation stopping the Treasury from putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, but not even his fellow House Republicans want to touch that one in an election year.

U.S. Rep. Steve King has introduced anamendment in Congress that would prevent Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage, from replacing President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

However, the House Rules Committee agreed Tuesday night to deny floor consideration of proposal, which would have prevented the Treasury Department from spending money to redesign paper currency or coins.

The Iowan Republican's amendment, which was first reported by the Huffington Post, would scrap the federal government's plans to replace Jackson on the $20 bill with a picture of Tubman, a black woman who was born in to slavery in 1822 and later escaped. She subsequently made repeated missions on the Underground Railroad to rescue black people from slavery. During the Civil War, she served as a Union Army scout and spy.

"It's not about Harriet Tubman, it's about keeping the picture on the $20," King said Tuesday night, according to Politico, pulling a $20 bill from his pocket and pointing at President Andrew Jackson. "Y'know? Why would you want to change that? I am a conservative, I like to keep what we have."

Politico quoted King as saying it is "racist" and "sexist" to say a woman or person of color should be added to currency.

"Here's what's really happening, this is liberal activism on the part of the president, that's trying to identify people by categories and he's divided us on the lines of groups. … This is a divisive proposal on the part of the president and mine's unifying. It says just don't change anything."

Well, refusing to change anything is the definition of political conservatism alright, but I'm not sure what's more directly insulting, that King feels a famous civil rights leader who risked her life to help end slavery shouldn't be on the $20, or that the Treasury department honoring her is "divisive" in some way.

When your proposal is so transparently racist, sexist, and stupid that it can't even get out of your own party's House Rules Committee, you might want to re-examine your political stunt checklist, Steve.

StupidiNews!

• North Korea has fired two more Musudan medium range test missiles yesterday, the first appears to be a failure while the second could have gone about 250 miles before crashing.
• Peruvian President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski reportedly joked that his country would "grab a saw" to cut ties with the US in case Donald Trump wins in November.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin says that the world refuses to join militarily with Moscow to defeat terrorism and that instead, Russia will strengthen its military to deal with NATO threats.
• Polls in the UK are divided ahead of tomorrow's referendum whether or not to remain in the EU, but investors are betting heavily that the Remain side will win.
• California utility officials say they will not relicense the state's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, meaning the state's last remaining reactors could be offline by 2025.

Last Call For Chaka Convict

It's official: Philadelphia Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah has been rung up on all corruption charges that he faced in federal court this afternoon.

Fattah, 59, had been charged with bribery, racketeering, money laundering, bank fraud, mail and wire fraud, and filing false statements as part of a years-long criminal scheme that even included Fattah lobbying President Barack Obama for an appointment for one of his co-conspirators. Fattah was found guilty on all charges, as were four co-defendants. 

The guilty verdict brings to a stunning end Fattah's three-decade career in Philadelphia politics, and is a major victory for the Justice Department and Zane David Memeger, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Memeger's office prosecuted the case against Fattah, who was first elected to Congress in 1994. 

“Chaka Fattah Sr. and his co-defendants betrayed the public trust and undermined our faith in government,” Memeger said. “Today’s verdict makes clear that the citizens of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania expect their public officials to act with honesty and integrity, and to not sell their office for personal gain. Hopefully, our elected officials in Philadelphia and elsewhere hear today’s message loud and clear.” 

Fattah is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 4. He could face as long as 20 years behind bars on the bribery charges alone, but it is not yet clear how much prison time prosecutors will seek. Fattah is likely to appeal his conviction.

So what becomes of Fattah's seat?  He had already lost his April primary to Pennsylvania state Rep. Dwight Evans, so should Fattah be forced from his office (and I can't see how he stays now with these convictions) it would be up to Gov. Tom Wolf to set a special election date.

Wolf can set the election date as the next regular election if he wants, he just can't set it any sooner than 60 days from the point where the seat is certified to be open according to state law, so yeah, Wolf can stretch it along if he wants to, but he can't appoint anyone to the office in the interim as state law doesn't allow it.

I would think that neither party would complain too much about the election happening in November as usual, so we'll see if Fattah leaves now or later.

Once again, not all corrupt politicians are Republicans, not by any stretch of the imagination. I've no pity or sympathy for the man ripping off his constituents for years, and hope he serves as an example in a very unpleasant section of substandard federal housing.

Gunmerica The Beautiful

USA Today's editorial board is really disappointed that Senate Republicans (and more than a few Senate Democrats) are in the pocket of the NRA. Guys? Where the hell have you been for the last 15 years?

You'd think that if there was one step both parties in Washington could support in the wake of the nation's worst mass shooting, it would be to close a yawning gap in federal gun background checks — a strategy supported by nearly 90% of Americans. 

Yet in an extraordinary act of cowardice on Monday evening, 56 senators — 53 Republicans joined by three Democrats — threw away yet another opportunity to keep guns out of the hands of more felons, fugitives, the mentally ill or people prone to domestic violence. 

These spineless lawmakers voted against advancing a commonsense measure to expand background checks to virtually all sales of guns, not just those sold by federally licensed dealers. The existing gap allows buyers who purchase from private sellers at gun shows, online or from newspaper ads to simply avoid the federal background check system. 

That system, run by the FBI, is efficient for buyers: More than nine of 10 gun buyers get a yes or no within minutes. And the system is effective for screening out those barred by federal law from buying firearms: It has denied guns to 2.4 millionprospective buyers since it was created in 1994. The largest category is felons and people who've committed serious misdemeanors. 

This was the third time since the fatal shooting of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 that the Senate has derailed similar measures. (Senators also rejected three other gun amendments on Monday.) 

Would expanding background checks be a panacea? Of course not. The Orlando killer, a security guard, was able to purchase his guns legally. But no one should buy into the absurd notion, pushed by the gun lobby, that to be worthwhile a measure must demonstrate that it could have prevented the most recent atrocity or all mass murders.

I'll say this again for the cheap seats: nothing will happen until lawmakers start getting voted out of office for supporting the NRA. Until that happens, nothing will get done on background checks, nothing will pass on smart gun technology, nothing will happen on weapon or clip/magazine restrictions nationally.

Yes, 90% of Americans support background checks.  The 10% who don't have enough power in the Senate from low-population red states to prevent anything from ever being signed into law. Until that changes, nothing will get done, and you can copy and paste this editorial after the next bloody, hideous mass shooting.  And the next. And the one after that.

And all the rest that will come.

Yes, Trump Is Flat Broke, And No, It Won't Matter One Bit

As TPM's Josh Marshall keeps saying, all the sturm und drang over Donald Trump's fired campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and the bad month of June in the polls so far really are symptoms of the fact that the Trump campaign is effectively broke, and that's because Trump himself has been conning the world about his wealth.

So it all comes down to, where's the money? We tend to look at Trump's threadbare campaign as a product of epic disorganization or the candidate's mercurial personality. But as the mammoth TV ad campaigns ramp up unanswered and field operations fail to materialize, those explanations are really no longer sufficient.

Trump may be unwilling to abase himself by dialing for dollars and his digital fundraising may be anemic. But at the scale of Trump's purported wealth, the sums in question are actually paltry. It may take a billion dollars to run a presidential campaign. But at this moment Trump is in dire need of a few million dollars. To go back to cash on hand, Trump currently has $2.4 million and Clinton has just over $30 million. Remember, Trump is allegedly worth $10 billion, which at the risk of stating the obvious means he is worth ten thousand million dollars. Someone in that position might be hard pressed to quickly produce billions of dollars or even hundreds of million in actual cash. But we're talking tens of millions or even just a few million dollars he needs right now.

Trump may be stingy. He may be saying that the RNC should take responsibility for fundraising, which is something it's clearly not capable of doing. (The RNC has massive fundraising capacity but it can't simply take on singlehanded what the candidate was expected to raise.) But as big a disaster as Trump's campaign is at the moment he stands a real shot at being the next president of the United States. It is simply not credible that he is standing on principle in not giving his campaign any more money at such a critical moment when his bid is being so deeply damaged.
The only credible answer is that it is difficult or perhaps even impossible for him to produce these comparatively small sums. If that's true, his claim to be worth billions of dollars must either be a pure sham and a fraud or some artful concoction of extreme leverage and accounting gimmickry, which makes it impossible to come up with actual cash. It's true that he's already loaned his campaign over $40 million, which at least suggests a substantial amount of liquid assets to draw on. But we've never really known where that money came from or whether it needs to be repaid to some other party. Indeed, Trump's unwillingness to give up his right to be repaid, essentially reimbursed for the primary campaign, by GOP high rollers has always been a telling but largely ignored detail.

It's been a subject of endless fascination for many to try to make sense of Trump's business empire and a producer of schadenfreude on an epic scale for those poking holes in his account of his billions. Perhaps later this week he'll prove me totally wrong and announce he's loaning himself another $100 million or $200 million. But I doubt it. If he could, why would he have allowed himself to get into this money crunch? This is now perhaps the critical question in the campaign: what happens if Donald Trump is effectively broke and can't produce critical funds for his campaign at make or break moments let alone self-fund the whole endeavor?

We've seen what happens: he blames other people and will continue to.  This is why Lewandowski was fired, and this is why when things magically fail to improve heading into the GOP convention next month, Paul Manafort will most likely get the axe too.

The reality is that Trump is a broke con man running the most ambitious con in American history, a guy who is running on being a self-sufficient paper billionaire who doesn't have two nickels to rub together when it comes to funding the day-to-day operations of his own campaign.

Here's the dirtiest secret of the 2016 election: Trump is broke but it doesn't matter one bit. Since facts don't matter to his supporters, he'll continue to run with the grift as long as they let him, and he's most likely right that the GOP now has no choice but to play along or be destroyed by the same voters. They will turn on the party so rapidly that the blood won't have time to hit the floor. The rough beast slouching its way towards Cleveland won't be denied.

Since we have empirical evidence that Republicans and their supporters are moral cowards (that they let Trump get this far is all the evidence you need) again, we're somehow counting on Republican establishment donors and major players to show courage here and cut him off?  Hardly. The marks bought into the Ponzi scheme and now they have to keep it going or they get ruined too.

Believe me when I say that while GOP donors with big pocketbooks are supposedly standing up to Trump now (and it's helping that Trump is too lazy to do fundraising, his all-consuming narcissism means that it's beneath him to go begging to anyone who doesn't automatically agree how great Trump is) once Trump becomes the nominee, the donors will fall in line just like the rest of the party, and they will do so out of abject fear.

Yes, Trump is broke, but he'll get the money he needs anyway from the party, or his fanatics will abandon the Republicans and take the GOP's hard-fought power at the state and congressional level with it. The GOP knows it. They talk a big game, but they've already beaten and were beaten on this months ago. They will fold.

At some point next month, Reince Preibus will have a conference call with the Super PACs and say "If you don't support the guy at the top of our ticket, then we'll lose it all. Pay up." And they will. They have no choice.

All Trump has to do right now is get through the convention and whatever money problems he has will vanish, out of necessity. If not, he takes the entire Republican apparatus down with him, and 2016 will become the biggest national landslide in generations...for the Democrats.

It still may.  He's broke, but he still wins.  Trump's a winner, you see. And if the GOP's not going to go along, that makes them losers by default.

And nobody likes a loser. Losers get fed to the rough beast.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon is looking into a series of deadly military crashes that have cost lives as well as billions of dollars, citing reduced maintenance budgets and aging vehicles.
• As expected Senate Republicans blocked a series of legislative amendments that would have tightened gun control regulations, mostly along party lines.
• A car bomb in Syria killed six Jordanian border guards and wounded 14 others as the explosion happened just a few hundred meters away from a refugee border camp.
• House Republicans will decide whether or not to begin impeachment proceedings against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over lost e-mails relating to possibly targeting political groups.
• Cadillac's new flagship CT6 sedan comes with multiple cameras for recording scenic moments as well as safety and surveillance.