RUTHFULLY YOURS

Democrats thought they could pick up a GOP-leaning House seat by turning Tuesday’s special election in Georgia’s sixth congressional district into a referendum on the Trump Presidency. The lesson of the GOP’s four-percentage-point victory is that Republicans can preserve their congressional majority despite doubts about Donald Trump—if they deliver on their agenda.

Republicans staved off what the press would have portrayed as a catastrophe and portent of a GOP wipeout in next year’s midterm elections. And they did so with a weak candidate in Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state who lost bids for Governor in 2010 and U.S. Senate in 2014.

Democrats thought they could steal the seat because it is full of the upscale, college-educated Republicans who dislike Mr. Trump. While Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was re-elected last November by 23 points, Hillary Clinton came within two points of beating Mr. Trump. Democrats—who, by the way, favor limits on campaign spending—poured $31 million into the district to turn out liberal voters.

Yet Republicans managed to turn out their voters by portraying Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional aide who doesn’t live in the district, as a foot soldier for Nancy Pelosi. Conservative voters showed they aren’t ready to hand the House back to Mrs. Pelosi whatever their doubts about Mr. Trump.

One immediate benefit is that the victory might deter some Republican retirements that would create more open seats in 2018 if they fear a Democratic wave. But Democrats are still likely to turn out in big numbers next year. The challenge for Republicans will be to give their voters a reason to match that liberal enthusiasm. That’s all the more reason to put accomplishments on the board that voters can see on health care, taxes and more.

As for Democrats, the defeat underlies the contradiction between the total resistance to Mr. Trump needed to win a primary and the centrist coloration needed to flip a GOP-leaning seat in areas like northern Virginia (held by Barbara Comstock ) and Upper Hudson Valley New York ( John Faso ). Mr. Ossoff energized progressives by promising “to make Trump furious.” After the primary he tacked to the middle by running as a fiscal conservative and against tax increases on the rich.

But by then Republicans were already defining him as a Pelosi pawn. It didn’t help that so much of his cash came from liberal redoubts like San Francisco or that he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. Some groups on the left like MoveOn.org are now saying that the lesson from Mr. Ossoff’s defeat is that Democrats need to run as pure left-wing populists in 2018.

This left-center tension in the Democratic Party is likely to intensify, especially if the GOP racks up some policy victories, which could propel Democrats to nominate candidates who are too far left for the districts they need to win in 2018. But Republicans can’t afford complacency, and their best defense against an anti-Trump wave is legislative success.

Leave it to John McCain to pour fuel on an anti-Trump fire. Said the senator yesterday on Fox News:

With the appointment of Mr. Mueller, we are now at that stage of a scandal. And now the question is how is it handled. Is it handled the way Watergate was where drip, drip, drip with every day, more and more?

Or do we handle it like Ronald Reagan handled Iran-Contra? It was a scandal. He fired people. He went on national television and said we made mistakes, we did wrong, and we’re not going to do it again and the American people let him move forward.

Here’s the video:

For all the talk of scandal, McCain and his establishment friends are glossing over the major detail: there is absolutely no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to win last year’s election.

Yes, he’s a bit too friendly toward Putin for my taste, but attempting diplomatic relations with an adversary does not a traitor make. If it did, Hillary Clinton should’ve been jailed years ago when she gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a bizarre “reset” button in 2009.

McCain and the rest of the irrational Trump opposition — there’s a difference between being critical of the man, as I am, and being unable to assess his performance reasonably — are making fools of themselves with talk of “scandal” and “Watergate.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome is clearly an even worse malady than Bush Derangement Syndrome, the version that infected so many liberals in the first decade of this century. And that’s saying something.

Republicans in Congress can’t control President Trump’s rolling controversies, but they are getting plenty of bad advice on how to handle them. Democrats and Never Trumpers agree that the GOP should denounce Mr. Trump, try to remove him from office, and if that fails wait for the Pelosi Democratic Congress to arrive in 2018. This is supposed to be requisite punishment for trying to work with a duly elected if deeply flawed President.

We trust Republicans will reject this counsel of suicide, because there is a better way: Get on with passing the agenda they campaigned on. The Trump investigations will proceed at the same time, and Republicans can respond to new facts as they develop. Whatever happens on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Republicans have an obligation to fulfill their reform mandate while they still have the political power to do so.
***This has the added advantage of being good for the country. The U.S. has struggled with subpar economic growth for more than a decade, and Republicans won in part because they said they’d do better.
Tax reform and deregulation are prime opportunities to unlock the growth and business investment that increase middle-class incomes. On Obama Care, the GOP can provide relief from surging insurance premiums and diminished choices by replacing the failing entitlement with a more market-based system.

Confirming conservative judges would correct for President Obama’s progressive tilt on the federal bench and perhaps restrain the runaway administrative state. And rebuilding the military is crucial to U.S. security in a world of increasing threats.

Going on policy offense is also the best defensive politics. Democrats want to talk about Mr. Trump all the time because they know this gives the public the impression that nothing else is happening in Washington. Paralysis is their strategy.

If Republicans start to move on policy, they automatically change at least some of the political conversation away from Mr. Trump. Debating tax cuts sure beats discussing Michael Flynn. Democrats would have no choice but to respond on the issues, and even the media would have to cover the tax and health debates. OK, maybe not the media, but that would also mean less relentless opposition on policy.

Speed is also increasingly vital as Mr. Trump’s difficulties mount. Perhaps he’ll recover if the Russia charges are overblown, but the news could also get worse and the media will play up every detail as potential impeachment fodder. Republicans can’t wait for Mr. Trump’s approval rating to rise.

Health care and tax reform would ideally both pass this year so their impact will be visible in 2018. The tax cut should be effective immediately so it doesn’t delay investment decisions as businesses wait for lower rates to kick in later; no phase-ins as with the 2001 George W. Bush tax cut.

Republicans also have to assume they’ll contest next year’s midterms with an unpopular President and a Democratic base eager to repudiate him by retaking Congress. Republicans are bound to suffer some collateral damage if the Trump scandals are still florid, but that’s all the more reason to have something else to talk about. The best defense against scandal by association with Mr. Trump is to point to accomplishments that Republicans and independents will support. That’s also the only way to get enough GOP voters to the polls.

Democrats and the Never Trumpers will continue to berate Republicans for not being sufficiently anti-Trump, but Republicans shouldn’t apologize for trying to work with a GOP President on shared goals. His character flaws aren’t theirs. Republicans in Congress ran on their own agenda, and House Republicans won millions of more votes than Mr. Trump did. They have every right to follow through on that agenda.

It would certainly help if Mr. Trump behaved better and controlled himself, but Republicans can’t count on that. Their best option is to plow ahead anyway and present Mr. Trump with legislation to sign. That’s what Democrats did when they controlled Congress while they investigated Richard Nixon, and they piled up significant policy wins.

No one knows how the various Trump investigations will play out, but Republicans can adapt and criticize or defend as new facts arise. Whatever happens, they’ll be in a stronger position if they don’t squander their current majorities as Democrats hope they will.

What is being described as one of the biggest voter fraud investigations in Texas history is currently unfolding in Dallas.

For the past couple of months prosecutors in the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office have been looking into allegations of voter fraud. Their investigation accelerated last week when more criminal and voter fraud allegations stemming from the May 6 election emerged. The D.A.’s office last week filed a notice of investigation of criminal conduct which reads in part:

The Dallas County Elections Department has in excess of 700 “Mail-In Ballots” that are directly linked to applications assisted by “Jose Rodriguez,” or are suspicious in nature.

Workers say the volume of complaints about questionable mail-in ballots has been “off the charts.”

“It’s totally frustrating,” said Dr. Pat Stephens of West Dallas. “You know, we all feel violated.”

Stephens is speaking out. She is still bothered about her signature being forged on an mail-in ballot application.

She’s among the 60 to 90 Dallas residents who investigators say have come forward over the past month, saying they received mail-in ballots which they did not request.

Stephens says red flags were raised when a suspicious man came to her home, saying he worked for Dallas County and wanted to pick up the ballot.

“I got a knock on my door and the guy was saying that he was coming to pick up the mail-in ballots and I told him, ‘Well I didn’t order one,'” she tells WFAA.

“Our forefathers fought for us to have this privilege, and for somebody to come along at take it away from us,” she continued.

The probe is beyond frustrating, not only for residents. It’s also keeping District Attorney Faith Johnson’s staff busy.

“There have been persistent rumors of voter fraud and messing around with mail-in ballots for years. But to the extent that I’ve been involved in Dallas County, this is off the charts,” Assistant District Attorney Andy Chatham said.

Dallas County prosecutors have been trying to discover the identity of the man who signed perhaps hundreds of the mail-in ballots, the mysterious “Jose Rodriguez.” Now a whistleblower has come forward, saying he knows who the culprit is.

Before the election, Sidney Williams, 33, made secret audio recordings of his interactions with Jose Barrientos, a campaign worker who suggested on tape that he pay off someone inside the county elections office to find out when mail-in ballots get sent out. “He’s not supposed to but yeah,” Barrientos told Williams. “But then you’ve got to drop a hundred or two or three. Whatever it is. He can’t do it for free.”

Barrientos also suggested in a phone call with Williams that he was the mysterious Jose Rodriguez, admitting that the signatures on the absentee ballots look just like his own. “You’re talking to the master, bro,” he boasted.

Williams shared the tape with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and WFAA ABC. According to his Facebook page, Williams also had an interview with the FBI.

Barrientos back-pedaled furiously when asked for comment: “I don’t do that stuff. I know that looks bad, me and Sidney talking s*** or trash. That looks bad. And I know it does, but that’s just talk,” he told WFAA.

Williams explained how he thinks Barrientos does it:

“He goes in there. He speaks to this county employee. The county employee tips him off by ZIP code, lets him know which precincts are dropping,” explained Williams. “Either he’s stealing them from the mailbox, yanking them from a little old lady who probably has them, says he’s going to assist her in a specific way for a specific candidate.”

In the secret recordings, Barrientos gave county prosecutors a lot to work with:

Williams: What do we do, chase the mailman or how does that work?

Barrientos: Your homeboy that’s at the elections office. He tells you when the f*****g ZIP codes are dropping. He’ll tell you like 75221 fixing to hit. Today. They’re going out.

Williams: He tells you that?

Barrientos: He’s not supposed to, but yeah. But then you’ve got to drop a hundred or two or three. Whatever it is. He can’t do it for free.

Barrientos also strongly suggested he has forged applications for mail-in or absentee ballots.

Williams: Where did you get this from?

Barrientos: Umm. You ask too many questions. What are you trying to be a cop or something?

Williams: No.

Barrientos: I just got a copy of it. That’s the first absentee ballot that was filed as a fraudulent absentee. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance political agendas.”

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said the disclosure of corporate political spending would have “obvious value” for America’s democracy.

“It adds transparency – cleans up campaign finance and it keeps the election process fair and free of super-funded outside influences here in the United States or from elsewhere. But even setting aside the benefits to democracy, the case for disclosure is clear and convincing, purely as a matter of corporate governance and investor protection,” Menendez said on a conference call briefing last week that focused on attempts to require the “largest mutual fund companies” to disclose political spending records.

“This information is material to how shareholders decide where to invest their money and how to vote in corporate elections. As it currently stands, corporations can funnel shareholders’ money to organizations that do not have to disclose their political contributions, and investors have no way of knowing whether executives are spending their money on political causes that may be directly adverse to the shareholders’ interests,” he said. “Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance their personal political agendas without any oversight from shareholders.”

For the last six years, Menendez said he’s been “pushing” the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin working on a rule to require public companies to disclose all of their political spending to shareholders.

“Some corporations have stridently fought this initiative. They’ve sounded the alarm bell and called upon their allies in Congress to fight common sense disclosure,” he said.

Menendez said new SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has not provided any “assurances” that he would take public support for a disclosure rule seriously. Menendez voted against Clayton’s confirmation.

“He wouldn’t commit to holding an innocuous public roundtable on the issue. He wouldn’t comment on whether he believes this disclosure is material to shareholders and I find that to be entirely inadequate when so many investors, both retail and institutional, are demanding this information,” he said. “Investors can’t rely on the shareholders’ proposal process alone to affect corporate change on this issue.”

Menendez, a member of the Senate Finance and Banking Committees, said the nation needs an SEC that will truly “stand up for investors and corporate governance principles and finally require this disclosure.”

“At the end of the day, those that choose not to support such a disclosure are working to silence the voices of hardworking Americans in favor of amplifying the speech and magnifying the influence of corporations in our politics, and that just simply can’t be the case,” he said.

Menendez said the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision “opened the floodgates” for unlimited, unchecked and “often undisclosed” corporate spending on campaign advertisements, federal and state advocacy efforts and other political communication methods. CONTINUE AT SITE

Scene: The lab-coated man comes in from the room. “It was a troubling case,” he admits. “This question of why you voted for Trump.” He snaps on his surgical glove and probes his patient’s mouth in the usual way “A real brain crusher! The boys and I really went a few rounds on the diagnosis. Were you the sympathetic sort? You know, just down on your luck, jobless maybe. Suffering from inequality. Or were you the ‘take my country back’ type. You know? Worked up about Central Americans or whatever. In other words, were you more a case of inequality?”

“You mean you wanted to know whether I had problems or whether I was the problem?” the patient offers.

The doctor: “More or less. So, we came up with a new battery of tests. A whole new data set!” The man in the lab coat was clearly excited about the new spreadsheets — he loved them. But then he turned to the man in the chair and started to wince. “We’ve run the numbers, and it turns out . . . ”

“No, doc, give me a chance!” the patient protests.

“You’ve come back deplorable,” the doctor sighs. “It’s really unfortunate.

“If the test had shown that you were financially put-out enough, we might have tried a trade policy, some shovel-ready infrastructure projects, or maybe a handout. But, owing to your manifest condition, I can recommend only a limited number of options.”

The patient: “Diversity training?”

The doctor laughs, “Oh no! Liable to make things worse, really. You’d resist. It’s complicated. No, perhaps we could try the implementation of a fairness doctrine, to turn off your Fox News. After observing your gut health, that’s an option we should explore. But the other way is just to let nature take its course, you know. Deplorables are generally older and so, closer to the end.”

“I’m a goner, then? No future.”

“It’s painful to contemplate. But pain, we can treat. Would you like a prescription opioid?” the doctors says with a faint leer.

And . . . scene!

And so it goes. The political and chattering classes, mostly exiled from official positions of power are still trying to figure out why they lost. And so they’ve returned to a debate that never needed to take place: Were Trump’s base of voters motivated primarily by “economic anxiety” or by racism and a host of other backward cultural attitudes?

Emma Green, a staff writer at The Atlantic, summed up the new surveys conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and her magazine.

Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety — feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment — that best predicted support for Trump.

Green adds:

Polling is a notoriously clumsy instrument for understanding people’s lives, and provides only a sketch of who they are. But it’s useful for debunking myths and narratives — particularly the ubiquitous idea that economic anxiety drove white working-class voters to support Trump.

She goes on to argue that working-class white voters are “attuned to cultural change and anxiety about America’s multicultural future.” It’s a very strong conclusion and the Twitterati immediately jumped all over it, essentially saying, “They’re just racists after all.”