John Kerry can make major gains among key demographic groups of discontented white voters: women blue and pink collar workers; rural voters; those under age 30; and senior women, according to a study of post-Labor Day polls by Democracy Corps reported 9/28. The study also identified other demographic groups Kerry should target for significant gains.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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February 7: Musk is Bad, But Russ Vought May Be Worse
In watching and trying to make sense of Trump 2.0, I sought at New York to focus on the low-key but very radical man controlling the “nerve center of the federal government.”
His reputation for being “Trump’s Holy Warrior” during the 45th president’s first term didn’t stop him. His intimate involvement with the Project 2025 agenda for Trump’s second administration, which became so controversial that the Trump campaign all but disavowed it, didn’t stop him. His espousal of radical ideas about presidential power during his confirmation hearings didn’t stop him. His suspected association with a wildly unpopular federal funding freeze imposed by the agency he was nominated to run didn’t stop him. And Senate Democrats, who belatedly mobilized a boycott of the a committee’s vote endorsing him and then launched an all-night “talk-a-thon” on the Senate floor to warn of his malevolent designs, couldn’t stop him. And so on Thursday night, with a vote along party lines, Russell Vought was confirmed to return to the directorship of the Office of Management and Budget, which he has described as the “nerve center” of the federal government.
With this vote a very important piece of the Trump 2.0 machinery was snapped into place. Other Cabinet-rank appointees are much flashier and get more attention. Their departments do things that everyone understands and that touch millions of lives directly. But far beyond his specific responsibilities (preparing the president’s budget and reviewing fiscal and regulatory decisions), the new OMB director is a particularly valuable player in the planned MAGA transformation of the federal government. To borrow a sports term, Vought is a “glue guy.” He’s the team member who lifts the performance of everyone around him without necessarily being the big star himself. And if you are alarmed by the counter-revolutionary ambitions of this administration, that should make him a very scary man for real.
In the shake-up of the federal government that MAGA folk generally call an assault on the “deep state,” there are three main forces. One is a Congress controlled by a Republican Party that has sworn an unusually intense allegiance to Trump, and that has its own ideological reasons (mostly related to the need to pay for tax cuts and Trump’s mass deportation program, while making at least a stab at reducing deficits and debt) for taking a sledgehammer to the parts of the federal government that don’t involve GOP sacred cows like Social Security and defense. Another is DOGE, Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency that is already wreaking havoc in agency after agency as he applies his radical corporate-takeover methods to the public sector with a giant social-media troll army at his back. Each is engaged in demolition work that could be at least temporarily stopped by federal court orders (in Musk’s case) or by internal wrangling (in Congress’s). Vought’s OMB is the third force that will make sure Trump’s agenda moves forward one way or the other. And he is perfectly equipped to coordinate these disparate forces and supply blows to the bureaucracy if and when others fall short.
The funding freeze showed us what a single memo from OMB can do, spawning nationwide chaos and panic. A more sustained effort, and one that relies less on “pauses” and more on a true freeze of grants and contracts backed up by explicit presidential executive orders, can do a lot more damage to the programs and services that MAGA folk don’t like anyway. Meanwhile OMB can exchange intel with DOGE on potential targets in the bureaucracy, while OMB will definitely guide congressional Republicans as they put together massive budget-reconciliation and appropriations bills.
Vought’s personality, worldview, and experience make him a lot more pivotal than his job description, believe it or not. He’s in sync with deep wellsprings of the conservative infrastructure as a committed Christian nationalist (he is a graduate of the old-school fundamentalist Wheaton College, and is closely associated with the theocratic neo-Calvinist wing of the Southern Baptist Convention), a think-tank veteran (at the Heritage Foundation and his own Center for Renewing America), an heir of the budget-slashing tea-party movement, and as someone who perfectly synthesizes the hardcore right of both the pre-Trump and Trump eras.
Just as importantly, Vought is the one person other than Trump himself who may be able to keep his budget-cutting allies working together and not fighting for power. He spent many years working on Capitol Hill and knows the House GOP culture particularly well; he is a natural ally of the fiscal radicals of the House Freedom Caucus, who currently have enormous influence (and perhaps even control) of 2025 budget decisions thanks to their willingness to blow up things if they don’t get their way. But he’s also as radical as Musk in his antipathy to the deep state, as the chief apostle of the idea the president should have vast powers to usurp congressional spending decisions if he deems it necessary. And unlike Musk and his team of software engineers, he knows every nook and cranny of the enemy territory from his earlier stint at OMB. Vought has also forged personal links with the turbulent tech bro, according to The Wall Street Journal:
“A senior administration official said Vought and Musk have been building a partnership since just after Trump’s victory in November.
“’They share the same passion for making the federal government more efficient and rooting out waste, corruption and fraud, so I think they are very aligned,’ said Wesley Denton, a longtime adviser to former Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and a Vought friend.”
So Musk may get the headlines, and Mike Johnson and John Thune may flex their muscles on Capitol Hill as they compete to turn Trump’s lawless impulses into laws. But the hand on the wheel may really belong to Russ Vought, who is trusted implicitly by a president who isn’t interested in the details of governing and appreciates a loyal subordinate who shuns the spotlight as much as his radical views allow.
I think Bush is ahead, but only by a couple of points. The country wants change, but isn’t sold on Kerry. Remember, it was only on election day 1980 that a race that was truly to close to call suddenly became a landslide for Reagan. In hte Carter/Reagan race the only pollster who got it right was President Carter’s polster Pat Caddell
Jazz
I don’t know who will win this one, but if Zogby shows Kerry ahead in a couple of weeks or more, you’d better listen to Aretha Franklin and give the Zogster r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
Find out what it means to me and roughly half the electorate.
He’s got the track record. Gallup does not.
From another jazz fan.
Another thing. Although I haven’t been too optimistic about Kerry’s chances in the past, some things have given me pause lately. The debates: Kerry’s expectations have been so lowered for these debates he can’t but exceed them. It looks like he’ll “win” no matter what happens, unless he spontaneously combusts. Secondly, Bush’s numbers seem to have mostly topped around 47%-48%. It’s almost as if he can’t get much higher. Kerry’s lower numbers may simply be a function of a de-energized base. If the debates re-energize them, his numbers will come roaring back.
Yeah, Zogby has a new poll out – Kerry has all the momentum now.
DanF, if proves they’re counting too many Republicans and not enough Dems.
I noticed something interesting about the 9/27 WaPo poll that gives Bush a 7 point lead:
Poll results by region
Bush and Cheney
East 44%
Midwest 58%
South 55%
West 41%
All 51%
Kerry and Edwards
East 51%
Midwest 35%
South 41%
West 53%
All 44%
So, if we are to believe this, Kerry leads large in the east and the west – the most populous regions of the country. The south is split very close to the “All”, so the only place that is lopsided is the Midwest. The LEAST populate region of the country. If we look at the most populated midwest states, it’s close in Ohio, but it’s a Kerry blow out in Illinois. It’s close in Michigan (but still solid Kerry lead). So what to make of this? People who live in populated regions DON’T talk to polsters.
And remember, people who live in populated regions are overwhelmingly Democrats.
Zogby just released a poll among under-30 males that does not look good for Bush. Sounds like another ripe target for Dems.
http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=871
To anyone and everyone who’s getting down about our chances or who’s worried, let me remind you:
Back in December 2003, Dean was said to be inevitable, and everybody had written off Kerry as the “dead man walking,” with no chance of winning.
But then, he and Edwards (also written off) clobber both of the suposed “leading” candidates in Iowa (Dean and Gephardt). When they say Kerry closes the deal they mean it.
Man, I can’t wait to see all the pollsters and talking heads who wrote off Kerry eat crow like they did last year.
Re:
“New Study Targets Key Groups for Kerry Gains”
To this non-statistician and Kerry supporter this doesn’t sound very rosy for Dems. Am I missing something?