A very strange byproduct of the Kavanaugh saga is beginning to emerge out here in California. I wrote about it at New York:

Going into the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking minority member Dianne Feinstein had some things to think about related to her re-election bid this year. Her opponent (fellow-Democrat Kevin de León, who won a general election slot under California’s Top Two primary system by finishing a distant second to the incumbent on June 5) has criticized her explicitly for insufficient partisanship in the Senate, and implicitly for sticking around too long (she is 85 years old and has held her seat for 27 years). To combat this narrative, she needed to look like an alert and articulate leader of committee Democrats in the hearings, not a wobbly bridge to Republicans.

During the regular Kavanaugh hearings from September 4-7, Feinstein probably cleared both hurdles. She wasn’t as aggressive in questioning Kavanaugh as her California colleague Kamala Harris, or Cory Booker, or Mazie Hirono. But she wasn’t reticent in challenging Kavanaugh, either. And while Feinstein occasionally showed her age, she looked pretty sharp in the geriatrics ward occupied by senior Judiciary members like Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, and Pat Leahy.

Still, a PPIC survey of California taken just after the hearings (from September 9-18) showed her lead against de León shrinking to eleven points (40/29); she led him 44/12 in the primary (with 30 — that’s right, 30 — other candidates dividing up the rest of the vote). So it was at best a mixed blessing for her that she became a far more central figure in the subsequent hearing involving Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, whose letter alleging a sexual assault by the judge had been withheld by Feinstein out of concern for Ford’s privacy (it was ultimately leaked by an as-yet-unknown source after rumors had spread of its existence). She again handled herself well in questioning Ford, but then was subjected to an extended pummeling by Kavanaugh himself and most of her Republican colleagues for “sitting on”the Ford letter until so late in the confirmation process — with broad hints that she was the leaker.

Most Democrats in California and elsewhere defended Feinstein from the attacks over her handling of Ford. But not Kevin de León, who began criticizing his opponent from practically the moment the story about Ford started trickling out. CalMatters reported his arguments:

“De León — who last week called Feinstein’s approach a ‘failure of leadership’ — said that if he were in Feinstein’s situation, he would have shared a redacted version of the letter with fellow Judiciary Committee members.

“’I believe that Christine Ford’s confidentiality could have been kept and at the same time this issue could have been dealt with,’ he said. ‘But it was neither. And it wasn’t until the pressure mounted, because of the press, because of the leaks, that (Feinstein) started acting.’”

It’s unclear how many voters heard or agreed with de León’s critique; given the intense polarization surrounding the Ford and Kavanaugh testimony, it’s possible some Democrats will decide Feinstein was too hesitant in the whole affair. But de León also may have erred by opening himself up to counter-criticism concerning his own handling of sexual-harassment allegations in the state senate, for which he is responsible as Majority Leader. On the other hand, the Ford/Kavanaugh hearing and the fallout from it may have given help to his candidacy from an unexpected direction: Republican voters.

Powerline’s Steven Hayward made the case for what he called a “delicious possibility”:

“California Republicans have it in their power to punish Feinstein for her role in the Kavanaugh nomination process by voting en masse for de León. Since the Democrats are heading fast to the far left, why not help them out on this self-destructive course …

“There has been speculation that Feinstein launched the late stunt on Kavanaugh because she was worried about losing to de León. It would be the height of irony if it was Republicans delivered a humiliating blow and ignominious end to her long career as a result of that bad faith act.”

Would Republican voters actually want to “punish” Feinstein so badly that they’d vote for the progressive de León? It might seem counterintuitive, but then again, attendees at Donald Trump’s latest rally in Iowa seemed to be in a genuine hate-rage towards Feinstein, as The Hill reported:

“Attendees at President Trump’s campaign rally in Iowa on Tuesday night chanted ‘lock her up’ after the president questioned whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) leaked allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”

The PPIC poll that showed Feinstein’s lead over de León shrinking showed self-identified Republicans preferring the latter to the former, despite her centrist reputation. But here’s the more important thing: 52 percent of Republicans told PPIC they did not plan to vote for either Democrat. If they stampeded to de León out of anger at Feinstein, the race could get very interesting between now and November 6.

Since this is a subject I’ve written about on and off for years, I decided to address it at New York as we approach the midterms:

In a midterm election that is essentially a referendum on the presidency of Donald J. Trump, you might figure one demographic group would be a reliable source of strong Democratic support: Latinos. Trump’s signature political message, after all, is the demonization of Latino immigrants as presumed violent criminals preying on innocent citizens and turning our cities into hellscapes; so menacing that a physical wall must be built to defend the country against them. Aside from his general contempt for Latinos, Trump’s specific policies, particularly the separation of refugee families at the border and the deployment of ICE as an aggressive deportation squad far from the border, seem designed to repel Latino voters as much as they attract voters who fear them. With Republican resistance to anti-immigrant measures melting into insignificance, a strong Latino backlash against the GOP might be expected.

Instead, less than a month before the midterms, Democrats are fretting about the Latino vote — both the percentages they will receive, and more importantly, turnout levels — as a variable that could minimize or maximize their national gains. There is plenty of evidence that Trump’s rhetoric and policies have indeed angered a lot of Latino voters. But there is counter-evidence suggesting that a durable minority of Latinos will continue to support Trump and his party, as Leon Krauze notes this week:

“While Trump was enacting his anti-immigrant agenda, Latino voters seemed to have slowly warmed up to the president. In last week’s NPR/PBS/Marist poll, 41 percent of Hispanics approved of Trump’s performance (black Americans? 12 percent). This is no outlier. Another recent poll put Trump’s approval among Latinos at 35 percent. An average of both would put Trump—again, an overtly nativist president—within about 10 points of Barack Obama’s 49 percent approval among Hispanic at roughly the same time in his presidency.”

Having said all that, Latinos remain what they have been since at least 2008: a growing and solidly (if not monolithically) pro-Democratic demographic group. But they also participate in elections at a relatively low rate. And it’s not at all certain that anger at Trump will solve the Latino turnout problem for Democrats.

The specter of Trump himself did not frighten Latinos into turning out in big numbers in 2016: according to the Pew Hispanic Center, turnout in that demographic basically stayed the same in 2016 (47.6 percent) as in 2012 (48.0 percent). More to the point, Latino turnout in midterm elections has been miserable and steadily declining (as measured by percentages, not raw numbers; rapid population growth has guaranteed rising numbers). According to Pew, the percentage of eligible Latinos voting in midterms dropped from 38 percent in 1986 to 31 percent in 2010, and then to 27 percent in 2014. In that last midterm, turnout among whites was 46 percent, and among African-Americans was 41 percent.

Why is Latino turnout so low in midterms? There are various theories, ranging from general civic disengagement and mistrust of political institutions, to the high percentage of Latinos who are millennials — another group prone to underrepresentation in non-presidential contests. Some Latino activists blame the Democratic Party for a low level of investment in Latino turnout, contrasting that with opportunistic Republican outreach efforts.

The Latino vote could be crucial on November 6, as Al Hunt recently noted:

“Of the 10 states with the most competitive Senate races, four — Florida, Texas, Arizona and Nevada — have sizable but quite different Hispanic populations. There’s a large Cuban-American community in Florida that has tended to favor Republicans, while Democratic-leaning unions play a bigger role with Nevada’s Latino voters, who are mostly of Mexican descent.

“There also are up to a dozen competitive races in those four states for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In a few tightly contested ones, for example in Dallas and Houston, Latino voters could provide the margin to unseat veteran Republican legislators.

I”n California, a half-dozen Republican House seats are under challenge. In three of these districts — in the Central Valley, San Fernando Valley and Fullerton — Latinos comprise about a quarter of the voting-age population, a concern to Republicans. Around the country there are a few other districts — such as one around Aurora, Colorado, and another in the suburbs of Chicago — where a smaller Latino vote could nonetheless be decisive. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried all these Republican-held districts.”

The “midterm dropoff” problem for Democrats among minority and youth voters is not a new thing, or a minor thing; these voting categories have been under-represented in non-presidential elections for eons, but are now large enough and central enough to the Democratic coalition that the problem can be debilitating for the Donkey Party. The much greater proclivity to vote among older and whiter voters who are increasingly aligned with the GOP was a major factor in the Republican victories in 2010 and 2014. It’s entirely possible that Trump-related Republican losses among white voters —particularly college-educated women — will be so large this year that a relatively poor showing among Latinos will be of marginal concern. But in the long run, it’s a problem Democrats need to solve, particularly if Republicans decide nativism is a net electoral plus for them.

After a tense week of uncertainty, the Kavanaugh confirmation saga came to an abrupt end, as I  discussed at New York:

In a conventionally partisan floor speech that lacked any indication of the doubt one might have expected given her long refusal to take a public position, Maine senator Susan Collins announced her support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. Barring something really strange, this should clinch a victory for the beer-loving conservative jurist despite allegations of sexual assault and some serious discrepanciesinvolving his own testimony. Earlier today, another possible waverer, Jeff Flake, indicated he would vote for Kavanaugh. In the unlikely event that another late decider, Joe Manchin, decides to flip after voting to cut off debate on the confirmation, Democrats would still be short a vote. Once the Senate has worked out Steven Daines’s travel itinerary (he will be home in Montana Saturday morning to attend his daughter’s wedding), the final vote will be held as quickly as possible — perhaps as early as 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday.

Collins’ speech tracked every Republican talking point in defense against charges that the highly ideological vetting process that led to his nomination would produce a highly ideological Justice. As she has done before, she suggested at great length that Kavanaugh’s respect for precedent — or to use his misleading term, ”settled law” — would keep him from tampering with reproductive rights. She cited, moreover, the pro-choice positions of past Supreme Court nominees of anti-abortion Republican presidents as evidence that Kavanaugh might similarly outrage all the people — including the 49 of her Republican Senate colleagues — who hope he will help eviscerate a right to abortion that they do not themselves support. In an expression of either naïveté or cynicism, Collins did not acknowledge that the entire Federalist Society–run vetting process Trump used to select his SCOTUS nominee was designed precisely to prevent the possibility of any more “stealth” moderate Justices like the ones she lionizes.

In what sounded very much like a flank-covering compensatory effort, Collins concluded her speech with plenty of shout-outs to the #MeToo movement and to victims of sexual assault, and lots of pious centrist tut-tutting about polarization. But what it really confirmed was that Collins made up her mind to put on the party harness some time ago. All of her well-documented equivocation about Kavanaugh, which continued to the very end, was a waste of everyone’s time.

 

Like everyone else, I’ve been focused more on congressional than on state and local elections lately. But a dramatic story is slowly developing in midwestern gubernatorial races, which I wrote about at New York.

[I]n the very Rust Belt areas that gave Trump his crucial Electoral Vote margin in 2016, Democrats are poised to make major gains in gubernatorial races, reversing a red wave that captured statehouses across the region in 2010 and 2014. As Reid Wilson notes, the turnaround is dramatic:

“Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016, two of the “blue wall” states that had voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. He cruised to victory in Iowa and Ohio, swing states Barack Obama won twice. And he came within 45,000 votes of winning Minnesota, a state that last voted Republican when Richard Nixon was on the ballot.

“His wins added to a rightward drift that has happened in the Midwest in recent years. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature in all five of those states, and the party owns most of the U.S. House seats in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio.

“[F]ive weeks before Election Day, public polls show Democrats surging in races up and down the ballot in those Midwestern states, and even in less competitive states like conservative Kansas and liberal Illinois.”

Democrats could pick up six net governorships in the Midwest in November. They are strongly favored in Michigan, where outgoing two-term Republican governor Rick Snyder is very unpopular, and Democratic former state legislative leader Gretchen Whitmer has maintained about a ten-point lead over Attorney General Bill Schuette. They have an even bigger lead in Illinois, where Democrat J.B. Pritzker is outspending the deep-pocketed Republican incumbent Bruce Rauner. In Wisconsin, the steady survivor of many challenges Scott Walker may have finally run out of luck; he’s trailing Democrat Tony Evers by a steadily growing margin. And Democrats have been recently pulling even with initially favored Republicans in Ohio (where Richard Cordray has caught and maybe passed Mike DeWine in recent polling), Iowa (self-financed Fred Hubbell now leads steadily fading incumbent Kim Reynolds), and even Kansas (Democratic legislator Laura Kelly is dead even with Kris Kobach as a divided Republican Party splinters even further).

In Minnesota, Republican hopes of reclaiming the governorship declined when former Governor Tim Pawlenty lost his primary; his vanquisher, Jeff Johnson, is now well behind Democrat Tim Walz.

As Wilson observed, these gubernatorial races anchor tickets in states with a lot of other high-profile races going on. Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin all rank high on lists of battlegrounds where control of state legislatures (and future redistricting) are on the table. There are significant Senate races in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And there are competitive House races in nearly every midwestern state, including (according to the Cook Political Report) two in Iowa; four in Illinois; two in Kansas; two in Michigan; four in Minnesota; one in Missouri; two in Ohio; and one in Wisconsin.

Looking forward, trends in these heartland states could also tell us a lot about the shape of the 2020 presidential contest. Aside from Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump famously won by an eyelash in 2016, he won large victories in Ohio (by eight points) and Iowa (nearly ten points). If those states are turning against Trump’s party so quickly, his path to reelection could be treacherous indeed.

After a frantic and unpredictable week, I tried to figure out the new timetable for a Supreme Court confirmation this year, and shared it at New York.

[T]hanks to a surprise gambit from Senator Jeff Flake, a final Senate vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation for the Supreme Court will be delayed for roughly a week to allow for an FBI investigation of allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct against him, upsetting the confirmation timeline.

What happens next depends, of course, on what form the FBI investigation takes, what it produces, and how seriously various senators take the results. There are differences of opinion as to whether Flake (supported, so far, by at least one fellow Republican, Lisa Murkowski) is genuinely undecided, is looking for a reason to buck the party line, or is just checking a “due diligence” box before dutifully voting for Kavanaugh. It’s possible the FBI will raise so many additional questions that Democrats will push for a reopening of Judiciary Committee hearings, or essentially demand that the full Senate hold its own inquiry instead of just proceeding to a vote.

Assuming the investigation doesn’t turn everything upside down, the next question is whether Mitch McConnell will put the Senate through all the preliminary steps of confirming Kavanaugh while the investigation is going on, so that a final vote can be held immediately when the one-week pause has expired. We think of the Senate filibuster against Supreme Court confirmations as having been “abolished,” but technically all that happened when Republicans “nuked” it in 2017 is that a majority vote can cut off debate after a limited period of time. That time will still have to expire, which could add another week to the timetable unless McConnell starts right away and a majority of senators (meaning, likely, all the Republicans) back him up. We may actually get our best indication of where fence-sitters like Collins and Murkowski and Flake (and a few undecided Democrats like Joe Manchin) will wind up via these preliminary votes.

The Kavanaugh nomination itself will not expire until and unless (a) it is withdrawn by the president; (b) he is rejected by the Senate; or (c) January 3, 2019, when a new Congress is sworn in. Even if there are more brief delays, the Senate has plenty of time to deal with Kavanaugh before breaking for the midterm elections. Indeed, with significantly more Democratic than Republican senators in tough reelection races this year, McConnell may be happy to keep them around and off the campaign trail. And so long as Kavanaugh maintains strong support from Trump, Republicans will want to keep pressure up on Democratic senators in states where Trump is popular to vote for his nominee.

If, however, Kavanaugh confirmation remains in doubt, each passing day will add to Republican fears that if Democrats take control of the Senate on November 6, Trump and the GOP would have a compressed window for getting this crucial Supreme Court seat filled before January 3, when the new Congress arrives. Yes, a postelection lame duck session would most definitely be convened by Republicans, and there would be just enough time for vetting, Judiciary Committee hearing, and a Senate vote. There wouldn’t be any margin for error, however, particularly given holiday distractions. So there may be a strong temptation if Kavanaugh is in trouble after the FBI investigation to push a vote even if he’s likely to lose, or to withdraw his nomination altogether. Either way, the decks would be clear then for Trump to quickly pull another right-wing jurist from his pre-vetted SCOTUS prospect list, start the clock ticking again, and maybe even get his MAGA base excited about the new kid on the judicial block.

Should Republicans hang onto control of the Senate on November 6, however — and at present FiveThirtyEight projects them as having a 2 in 3 chance of prevailing — then they can relax a bit; if their nominee isn’t confirmed by January 3, then Trump can renominate him or her at that point. But nothing about this process so far has gone totally according to schedule.

After following primaries throughout 2018, I offered some thoughts at New York on lessons learned:

The long, eventful 2018 primary election season finally ended on Thursday, September 13, with New York holding its nominating contests for state offices. Some of the proposed narratives we’ve heard over the months for what it all means have faded or morphed, while others remain strong. But here’s a good summary of takeaways:

1) Voters were a lot more engaged than in the last midterm. According to the authoritative election analyst Reid Wilson, total turnout jumped from 29 million in 2014 to 43 million this year (a figure not that far off from the 57 million who participated in the 2016 presidential primaries and caucuses, which featured competitive contests in both parties). That doesn’t necessarily mean voters are “enthusiastic” or “excited,” since some of the uptick involves an increase in competitive races attributable to more open seats and more challengers to incumbents.

2) Democrats had a turnout advantage that may mean a general election advantage. According to Wilson’s estimates, Democratic turnout was up 72 percent from 2014. The Republican increase was 25 percent. The Democratic share of total turnout rose from 47 percent to 53 percent (the same as the GOP’s share in 2014). According to an analysis from the New York Times dating back to 2004, the party with the higher primary vote has won the House in all three midterms (2006, 2010 and 2014). But that’s a small sample, and again, the party with fewer incumbents might naturally have more competitive primaries driving turnout.

Primary turnout obviously varies by state. One tabulation of 2018 primary turnout in 38 states showed Democrats with higher increases in 30 and Republicans with higher increases in just eight. Most of the nation’s competitive House seats are in states where Democratic primary turnout increased disproportionately.

It’s also notable that the two Republican senators up for reelection this year who were the chilliest towards Trump, Arizona’s Jeff Flake and Tennessee’s Bob Corker, both retired.

4) It really was an extraordinary primary season for Democratic women. 15 women have won Democratic Senate primaries (as compared to seven Republicans); 182 have won Democratic House nominations (as compared to 52 Republicans); and 12 have won gubernatorial nominations (just four Republican women have won primaries). These are all record numbers; the previous high for House nominations by women was just 120.

If as expected women voters tilt Democratic in the midterms (said Ron Brownstein in August: “[F]or months, many public polls have shown that about 60 percent [of women]— sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less — prefer Democrats for Congress”), the plethora of women on the ballot could create a self-reinforcing trend in which more women elect more of their peers to congressional and statewide office as Democrats.

5) The “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” was oversold. Despite a lot of media talk about ideological clashes between “progressive” and “centrist” primary candidates, there was no clear pattern for who won primaries. Some of the notable “progressive” victories were in safe Democratic House districts (e.g., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s NY-14 and Ayanna Pressley’s MA-07) where district diversity and generational change were at least as important as ideology. Overall, “establishment” candidates did pretty well; an analysis of all Democratic House primaries by the Brookings Foundation showed 27 percent of “progressives” and 35 percent of “establishment” types winning.

6) There is, however, a new template emerging for Democratic success in diverse sunbelt states that should cheer progressives. The ancient formula for Democratic success or survival in southern and western red states with reasonably large minority populations was to run fairly conservative campaigns aimed at white swing voters, counting on minority voters to play along. This year there are several Democrats trying to break the mold in ways that could change the party regionally and nationally, such as African-American gubernatorial candidates Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Andrew Gillum of Florida–both of whom defeated “moderate” white opponents in their primaries–Latino gubernatorial nominee David Garcia of Arizona, and white progressive Senate nominee Beto O’Rourke of Texas. All these candidates are looking very competitive in their general elections.

7) Even in conservative states, the old cutting-taxes-and-spending agenda is losing steam. One of the more remarkable trends of the primary season, which accompanied and in some states affected primaries in both parties, was renewed public interest in teacher pay, educational investments, and expanded health care services. A wave of strikes and protests around education issues hit West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona and Colorado. Veteran government-bashing pols like Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker are in serious trouble. Initiatives to force Republican legislatures to expand Medicaid are on the ballot in Idaho, Montana, Nebraska and Utah.

8) A lot could still happen to affect midterm results. Despite a pretty clear pro-Democratic trend that is typical of the losses the White House party usually suffers in midterms (especially when the president’s job approval ratings are as low as Trump’s), there are a lot of close races. The authoritative Cook Political Report rates 30 House races, eight Senate races, and nine gubernatorial races as toss-ups. Despite signs of Democratic enthusiasm, there are still grounds for doubting that young and Latinovoters will shake their habits of skipping midterms. Economic trends, developments in the Mueller investigation, Supreme Court confirmations, and even a possible government shutdown could all create the kind of small but significant mini-trends that tip close races. The primaries were by-and-large encouraging to Democrats. But Republican turnout has been up as well, and November 6 could be a battle of polarized voter “bases” that are roughly equal in intensity.

Mississippi’s special election to replace Sen. Thad Cochran hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. But that could change in a big way, as I explained at New York:

In the various scenarios of what will happen to the Supreme Court if Brett Kavanaugh’s originally expected late-September confirmation runs off the rails, it’s obvious that a Democratic Senate takeover in November (which would take effect on January 3) would create a real crisis for conservative SCOTUS hopes….

But there is one scenario that’s especially fraught with uncertainty and peril. The odds are good that a special election in Mississippi for the seat currently held by appointed senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (and formerly held for forty years by Republican Thad Cochran, who resigned in ill health in March) will go to a runoff on November 27. At the moment, the election is a three-way battle between the incumbent, fiery conservative insurgent Chris McDaniel, and former congressman and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, a Democrat. If no one wins a majority of the vote on November 6, it’s runoff time, almost certainly between one Democrat and one Republican. And if control of the Senate hasn’t yet been determined at that point, every campaign operative in the country and every unspent dollar will flood into the Magnolia State for three weeks.

This particular race has settled down a bit in recent weeks. Initially, it looked like McDaniel, who lost to Cochran by an eyelash in 2014 (with a lot of help from crossover voting by Democrats), might ride his “anti-establishment true conservative” message past former Democrat Hyde-Smith and into a runoff with Espy. But Donald Trump’s “complete and total Endorsement” of the incumbent (who has a 100 percent pro-Trump voting record) in late August has taken a lot of the wind out of McDaniel’s sails. One internal Hyde-Smith poll in early August showed McDaniel trailing her by ten points. Other polls have shown her with an even larger lead.

If there’s a Hyde-Smith-Espy runoff, the incumbent will be favored, for sure; if McDaniel pulls the upset and makes the runoff, it’s anybody’s race. But either way, Espy is about as strong a candidate as Democrats could field in this red state. Back in 1986, he became the first African-American to represent Mississippi in Congress since Reconstruction, and burnished a centrist reputation before Bill Clinton appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. He was forced from that position by perhaps the least-well-regarded independent counsel investigation of the era, which eventually led to his speedy acquittal on charges of taking gifts from corporations with USDA business. It’s doubtful that this 20-year-old “scandal” will significantly harm Espy’s Senate hopes, but his party affiliation is definitely a problem in a state where no Democrat has won a Senate or gubernatorial race in this millennium.

Still, the last Senate special election, 2017’s contest in next-door Alabama, presented an even tougher landscape for Democrats. Roy Moore’s upset primary win over an appointed senator backed by Donald Trump has to be the inspiration for Chris McDaniel, a neo-Confederate who is nearly as notorious in Mississippi as Moore was in Alabama. And in the likely case of a runoff, Mississippi’s large African-American population would provide an even stronger base for Espy than Doug Jones could count on in winning his race.

It’s possible that Hyde-Smith could win without a runoff; that control of the Senate will be decided elsewhere; and that Anthony Kennedy’s SCOTUS seat will be filled before the deal goes down in Mississippi. But it’s also possible that for the second straight year, a special election in the Deep South will command everyone’s attention.

It was another day marked by strange presidential tweets. I wrote about the fallout at New York:

Republicans everywhere are running for the hills in the wake of the president’s bizarre, reprehensible tweets this morning describing generally accepted estimates of the death toll in Puerto Rico attributable to last year’s Hurricane Maria as a conspiracy hatched by Democrats. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s reaction was pretty typical:

“Ryan didn’t answer a question about whether Trump’s claim disturbed him or whether Trump should apologize to the victims’ families. He reiterated that there’s no reason to dispute the numbers.

“‘It’s a function of, this was a devastating storm that hit an isolated island,’ he said. ‘And that’s really no one’s fault. That is just what happened.’”

In other words, the president is lying again, but the real issue is that the Sun King should not fear that those 3,000 deaths dim the dazzling brilliance of his reign.

But while Republicans everywhere are probably rolling their eyes and wondering why on earth Trump would bring up his weird claims about Maria with both the midterms and another potential hurricane approaching, Trump’s tweets hit Florida politics like a stink bomb. The state’s large (an estimated 1.1 million) and politically pivotal Puerto Rican community — enhanced by post-Maria refugees, aside from the many Florida residents with family and friends on the island — is going to be enraged by Trump’s dismissive claims about the disaster and the suffering it caused. And already Florida Republicans are distancing themselves from their Maximum Leader with varying degrees of intensity, as Politico reports:

“’Mr. President. SHUT UP,’ Alan Levine, a Republican appointed by Gov. Rick Scott — a top Trump ally — to Florida’s university governing board, replied on Twitter.

“’Any death, whether one or 3,000 is a tragedy. That doesn’t mean you caused it, and its not about you. Show compassion for the families,” Levine wrote. “Learn what we can so future response can improve. Honestly…’.”

Florida governor and Senate candidate Rick Scott took a few beats to react, and did so firmly if calmly:

https://twitter.com/ScottforFlorida/status/1040265322270474242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1040265322270474242%7Ctwgr%5E373939313b73706563696669635f73706f7274735f616374696f6e&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fdaily%2Fintelligencer%2F2018%2F09%2Fflorida-republicans-repudiate-trump-tweets-on-maria-deaths.html

Scott has invested heavily in outreach to the normally Democratic-leaning Puerto Rican community. So he can be expected to defend that investment against offensive comments from Trump. A more interesting case is that of the Republican nominee to succeed him as governor, U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis:

“’Ron DeSantis is committed to standing with the Puerto Rican community, especially after such a tragic loss of life,’ his spokesman Stephen Lawson said in an email. ‘He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated. Ron is focused on continuing to help our Puerto Rican neighbors recover and create opportunities for those who have moved to Florida succeed.'”

There is no way Ron DeSantis would be the GOP nominee for governor without the early and avid support he received from Trump. Yet he’s basically calling his supreme benefactor a liar here. That’s how explosive this issue could be in Florida.

Marco Rubio came the closest of any prominent Florida Republican to offering an defense of Trump among early reactions:

“These days even tragedy becomes political. 3k more Americans died in #PuertoRico after Hurricane than during comparable periods before. Both Fed & local gov made mistakes. We all need to stop the blame game & focus on recovery, helping those still hurting & fixing the mistakes.”

So the president abruptly denies 3,000 deaths, but hey–everybody makes mistakes, and “we all” need to stop the “blame game.” As Trump himself might put it, that’s sad.

Republicans keep trying how to figure out how to help their midterm prospects from Washington. One strategem they’ve hatched may backfire, as I noted at New York this week:

[T]his apparent decision is a risky one.

“House Republican lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would make the 2017 tax cuts for individuals permanent in a bid to highlight their signature economic policy achievement ahead of the November elections.

“The legislation – released as Republicans are at risk of losing their majority in the House – is seen as a last-ditch effort by GOP lawmakers to convince voters of the benefits of their new tax code. Polls consistently show less than half of Americans approve of the tax cut.”

The bill, to be clear, is not going to be enacted; without the protection of a budget reconciliation vehicle like the one used to pass the first big Trump tax cut last December, it has zero chance in the Senate. So this is an election year “messaging” bill designed to tell voters: Hey, here’s some more money we’ve wrenched from the swamp. Don’t forget to say thank you on November 6.

There’s a problem, though: the original tax bill was very unpopular among higher-income voters in high-income, high-tax states because of its provisions reducing the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes (SALT) — notably California, New Jersey, and New York. Indeed, some Republicans were undoubtedly proud at their success in screwing over these states as havens of godless immigrant-coddling tree-hugging baby-killing liberals. Reminding them of this screwing-over shortly before the midterms has its perils.

Using the Cook Political Report’s ratings, there are 13 highly competitive (Lean D, Lean R, or Tossup) races in Republican-controlled districts in those three states where the SALT provisions are generally hated. There are another six in the Likely Republican category that could become competitive between now and November 6. Democrats need just a net gain of 23 seats to take control of the House.

To be sure, 11 House Republicans from California, New Jersey, and New York voted against the tax bill, mostly because of the SALT provisions. But it’s not going to help them very much if their constituents are reminded their party screwed them over, and if their own protestations grow too loud, “base” voters who love the tax cuts could be annoyed, undermining GOP turnout. As David Dayen put it:

“Brilliant work by the House GOP, forcing suburban Republicans to once again vote to either defy their party or raise taxes on their constituents.”

This could partially be a matter of the many lobbyists for industries and interests benefiting from the original tax cuts wanting to get Republicans locked into making them permanent while the bill is still viewed as a net plus. But if it helps lose them the House, that will be a pyrrhic victory of the highest order.

There’s a new wrinkle in the GOP attacks on single-payer health care proposals. I wrote about it this week at New York:

But what Trump and Scott are doing is asking seniors to selfishly (or resentfully) oppose giving younger people the same kind of health coverage they enjoy because it might somehow put their own “socialist” benefits at risk. And as with the attacks on Obamacare, there is more than a bit of a whiff of racism involved, as Cohen observes:

[T]aken literally, Trump was saying that Democrats want to raid socialism to pay for socialism, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But Trump was probably making a clumsy version of the pitch that helped him get elected and that continues to keep his base loyal ― namely, that Democrats want to shift money and status away from the kind of people who voted for him and give those things to others.

His message to supporters, in other words, was that Democrats want to raid your socialism to pay for theirs.

It’s not crazy to hear a racist dog whistle in there, given Trump’s history. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a Republican tried to rally white voters by telling them that Democrats were going to take their money and give it to nonwhite people.

You could argue that Republicans are simply appealing to the innate conservatism of old folks who fear change even if they would be helped very directly by that change. But the country could do without the lies told by those with bad intent towards Medicare posing as its champions.