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Rick Wilson has worked to elect Republicans for 30 years, but he will no longer use those skills to serve the party I once loved. That party is gone.

He has not become a Democrat, but Wilson is adamantly anti-Trump. His book, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats from Themselves, is a rant against President Donald Trump as the worst president in history. The explosion of Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the United States this past month and the surging popularity of Wilsons Lincoln Project PAC indicates that he is not alone in frustration with the countrys direction.

Wilsons message is serious, but his delivery is hilarious, with over-the-top snarky comments and profanity. Its a fun book to read, but the bottom line is that the Democrats must stop Trump from winning a second term. Wilson sees Congress as unable to respond other than sending Trump a strongly worded letter.

Wilsons example of Trumps corruption is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking bipartisan efforts to stop Russian election interference in the 2020 election. It occurred right after a Russian oligarch announced that he would build a new aluminum plant in Kentucky, where McConnell is unpopular and faces a close reelection.

According to Wilson, Democrats must not focus on the national vote. Instead they must remember to run 15 disciplined state campaigns; it is absolutely necessary to win in the targeted swing states. Their messaging and strategies cannot rely on miracles. Nor should they waste energy releasing anger, even though [Trump] deserves it.

He advises that Democrats must stop insisting on picking candidates based on what policies they love, versus what wins, and to him, that means Do not scare the [crap] out of the Republican squish voters, as in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. They cannot afford to choose a candidatewho strokes their ideological happy place.

Wilson drapes his strategy with a string of poll findings. A January 2019 Pew survey asked Democrats if they wanted their party to become more moderate or more liberal. While 40% wanted a more liberal approach, 53% said they wanted a more moderate approach. Data shows socialism may not frighten the populace like communism did in the 1950s, but in the swing Electoral College states for 2020, it could stop the Democrats from attracting the key voters that flipped the House from Republican to Democrat control. For instance, according to a February 2019 Public Opinion Strategies poll, 54% of the voters in 11 of those swing states oppose socialism, as did 57% of suburban women and 56% of independents.

From his prior experience leading Republican campaigns, Wilson believes Trumps advisers want to make this election about a core package of issues, NOT a referendum on Trumps personality, leadership and accomplishments.Consequently, if Democrats run on detailed policies, they will be appealing to the brain and will lose; instead, Wilson argues, they need to appeal to the heart by focusing on Trumps faults.

In brief, Wilson is saying Trump is a flawed president, but a clever one who has brilliantly exploitedthe grievance culture of everyone is coming to get you. They are the immigrants, Black Lives Matter, antifa, Muslims, women.

Running Against the Devil, with dry, cutting humor on every page, will probably not persuade many Republicans to vote against Trump. And Wilsons advice to the Democrats runs directly counter to the progressive drift of the party, which often pushes a progressive agenda to the front lines, no matter what surveys say about its effectiveness in getting votes.

Wilson may convince Democrats that Bidens victory is not about a popular vote. Hillary Clinton got that and still lost. Trump made the election about her, not her policies. Wilson knows how that was done, and he is doing it now to Trump. He has co-founded the Lincoln Project with other well-known Republicans to produce and run attack ads against the president. By provoking anxiety and fear about Trump, they hope to persuade enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states to abandon him and perhaps even vote for Biden.

Whether Wilsons predictions and advice hold water remains to be seen. But as November approaches, Running Against the Devil is a fitting primer for the true start of the race.

_____

Running Against the Devil by Rick Wilson, Crown Forum, 352 pp., $28

Nick Licata served on the Seattle City Council for 18 years until his retirement in December 2015.

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Longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson lays out his road map for the 2020 election in Running Against the Devil - Seattle Times

He grew up in an area that was dominated by Democratic politics and yet still had many of the socioeconomic issues that you see in other urban centers, Mr. Andrews said. Hes said, I asked myself why does this exist, and if what weve been doing isnt working, then why not try something different?

Starting with Mr. Watts and later working for Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the future vice president, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Mr. Smith made a name for himself on Capitol Hill for his ambition, his drive and his willingness to work with Democrats, according to over a dozen friends, colleagues and White House officials who spoke for this article. He was offered a job in the Trump White House as an urban affairs policy adviser in 2017.

A lot of people didnt want to subject themselves to the criticism and the scrutiny, said Darrell Scott, a minister and informal Trump adviser, recalling the backlash that he and other Black people, including the musician Kanye West, have received for expressing interest in working with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Smith was not deterred.

Until recently, Mr. Smith largely flew under the radar, while Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a White House aide, and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, became known as the most prominent Black officials in the overwhelmingly white upper reaches of the Trump administration.

Ms. Manigault-Newman left the White House after less than a year and wrote a tell-all book calling the president a racist. Mr. Carson has maintained a relatively low profile, though nothing compared to Mr. Smith.

In a 2018 television appearance, Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, did not appear to know Mr. Smiths last name when asked to list high-ranking Black administration officials. We have JaRon, she said.

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JaRon Smiths Balancing Act: A Black Republican Navigates the Trump White House - The New York Times

Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa was a titanic failure. He promised to bring thunder and lightning to the BOK Center in Tulsa but instead there was only abrief trickle of rain.

Apparently, TikTok users, largely teenagers, successfully trolled the Trump campaignby reserving hundreds of thousands of tickets for the Tulsa rally online, leading Trump and his campaign manager to brag about the enormous crowd they expected.

In reality, only 6,200 of the most diehard Trump followers would be in the audience for their Great Leader's disjointed airing of grievances, racism, threats of violence, bloviating ignoranceand narcissistic self-pity.

Trump and his campaign organizers were (and remain) shocked and enraged that their boasts about close to a million attendees resulted from an activist prank at their expense.

Trump looking disheveled, enraged, shrunkenand sad arrived back in Washington later that Saturday evening. As he walked across the tarmac, the president appeared to bea broken and defeated man.

If the rumors are to be believed, Trump's White House and campaign are now in disarray after the debacle in Tulsa.

That failedrally reflects bigger problems for Trump, who now trails Joe Biden by double digits in mostpolls, and also trails in battleground states likely to decide the election, includingFlorida, Michigan and Wisconsin. He is losing support among key groups such as suburban whitewomen, evangelicalsand older voters.

Evan Siegfried of NBC News summarizes this:

Reliable Republican voters likesuburban womenandsenior citizenshave been increasingly drifting toward Democratic candidates in both polls and elections since Trump took office, not because Democrats have been winning them over, but because Trump and Republicans have been losing them. And a recent Fox News poll showing Biden with a10-point leadover Trump among voters 65 and older only confirms thegrowing problemfor him.

The economy teeters on the edge of a second Great Depression. Trump's willful and malevolent failure torespond to the coronavirus pandemic is revealed to be something even worse: Trump has now repeatedly admitted that he urged a reduction in virus testing in an effort to hide the true number of casesand improvehis re-election chances.

At present, the mainstream news media's dominant narrative is thatTrump is in "retreat", "disarray," "failing," and "losing." Pundits have largely concluded that his re-election in November is increasingly unlikely.

Liberal schadenfreude feels good, especially for those Americans who have been under siege and made miserable from the many calamities inflictedby Donald Trump and his regime.

But liberal schadenfreude even in combination with Trump's own self-inflicted wounds will not by itself win the 2020 election. To accomplish that will require hard questions, uncomfortable truthsand lots of hard work by the Democratic Party and its voters.

It is true that only 6,000 or so people attended Trump's Tulsa rally. But there shouldhave been no one there to celebratea president with obvious fascist leanings, a global embarrassment whose decisions have brought ruin to the American economy and killed more than 120,000 people.

The race remains too close for comfort. In some polls, Trump trails Biden by as few as seven points. They appear to be tied in Ohio, and Biden's edge is within the margin of errorin Pennsylvania and Arizona.

FiveThirtyEight shows in its "poll of polls" that as of June 23, Biden leads Trump by approximately ninepoints, 51to 41.7 percent.

Consider the context: For the four years of his presidency so far, Gallup reports that Donald Trump has an average presidential approval rating of 40 percent. He continues to command the highest built-in level of support of any president in the history of modern public-opinion polling.

Consider these warnings from the recent past: although their situations are distinct from one another and from the present both 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton appeared to holddouble-digit leads over their Republican opponents in the summer. Both went on to lose in November.

Exceptfor his white supremacist counterrevolution against America's multiracial democracy, Trump has fulfilled few of the promises he made to hisfabled"white working class" voters. Again, by conventionalrubrics Trump should be much less popular than he currently is.

Ultimately, the four months between nowand Nov. 3are an eternity in politics. Many things are likely to occur,to Trump's advantage and Biden's disadvantage.

In resisting premature pronouncements that Trumpism hasbeen vanquished, there are importantvariables to consider.

The United States is a failing democracy, struggling to resist the gravity of Trump and his movement's authoritarian assault on the country's political norms, institutionsand values. Thatis a cruciallens for viewing andunderstanding the Age of Trump and the 2020 Election.

On Twitter, conservative pundit Bill Kristol, a "Never Trumper,"summarized theperil:

You look at the polls and think "he can't win." But Trump's path to victory doesn't depend on persuading Americans. It depends on voter suppression, mass disinformation, foreign interference, and unabashed use of executive branch power to shape events, and perceptions, this fall.

Any analysis of the 2020 presidential election that fails toproceed from these basic assumptions is fundamentally flawed.

Social scientists have shown that Donald Trump's supporters and other authoritarian conservatives are especially vulnerable to manipulation by death anxieties. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, such fears will likely make Donald Trump more attractive, not less, to his supporters.

Donald Trump is viewed as a type of god ordivine figure by manyright-wing Christian nationalists and evangelicals. Hemeets all the criteria of being a political cult leader.

Social science research has shown that people who manifest what is known as the "dark triad" of behavior Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism are also more likely to support fascistand authoritarian leaders.

White supremacy and racial authoritarianism are also key variables (if not the most important ones) that helpexplain the enduring power of Trump's movement. Such sentiments and beliefs, and their influence on political decision-making, are not easily dispelled or broken.

Trump also commands a vast news media disinformation and propaganda machine which he uses to manipulate and control his followers,and to shape the contours of American public discourse more broadly. The power of such an apparatus is not to be underestimated.

Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom at this point,Trump is certain to draw on a large reservoir of support on Election Day.

Instead of being seduced by the happy pills of liberal schadenfreude and those who peddle such intoxicants, what shoulddecent Americans do to ensure that Trump is defeated?

Confirm ahead that you are registered. Show up to vote. Make sure that relatives, friendsand neighbors are also voting against Trump and the Republicans. Use a combination of positive social pressure andsocial stigma to influence fence-sitters in your social circle. Only an overwhelming defeat at the polls not a narrow or disputable outcome in the Electoral College can prevent Trump and his minions from declaring the election result to be fraudulent.

Participate in local organizations which are working to create positive social change. Social democracy must be nurtured from the ground up as both a bulwark and prophylactic against the poison of Trumpism and other forms of fake right-wing populism.

Resist purity tests from those voices who demand a perfect candidate. Such standards are a gross luxury in a time of crisis. Joe Biden will be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Whatever his flaws and there are many Biden is now the last and therefore bestoption to remove Donald Trump from office.

Do not succumb to the undertow and churn of the 24/7 cable news cycle. Its relentless focus on the outrage of the day is an exhausting distraction from the long-term crisis and existential threat to democracy represented by Trump, his partyand their followers and allies.

Internalize the warnings of Noam Chomsky (among others), who has said: "Trump is the worst criminal in history, undeniably. There has never been a figure in political history who was so passionately dedicated to destroying the projects for organized human life on Earth in the near future. That is not an exaggeration."

In the end, the choice on Election Day is between America and Donald Trump. Nothing more. Nothing less. The American people must vote as if their lives depend on it because they do.

Yes, Trump can certainly be defeated. Butdeclaringvictory too early is a pathway to inevitable defeat, and aguarantee that Donald Trump will remain president for at least another four years, bringing America into one ofits most perilous times.

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After Tulsa: Liberal schadenfreude may feel good, but it won't win the November election - Salon

WASHINGTON - Tim Scott, the only black Republican member of the U.S. Senate, said on Sunday he is open to exploring whether to enact a new law that would decertify bad police officers as part of a larger law enforcement reform package.

Speaking on CBS "Face the Nation," Scott said a new policy to decertify police who engage in misconduct could be a compromise as he negotiates with Democrats, who have called more drastic measures such as ending the "qualified immunity" legal doctrine which helps shield officers from liability.

"I think there's a way for us to deal with it," he said. "Decertification would be a path that I would be interested in looking at."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week tapped Scott to oversee the drafting of new policing reform legislation in response to public outrage over high profile police killings of African Americans including George Floyd, who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck.

Floyd's death has led to protests in cities and smaller communities nationwide, as well as rallies in countries around the world, with demonstrators demanding legislative change to combat racial injustice and hold police more accountable.

In the latest case to trigger anger among activists, protesters shut down a major highway in Atlanta on Saturday and burned down a Wendy's restaurant where a black man was shot dead by police as he tried to escape arrest.

Democrats who control the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled their own draft legislation last week which would allow victims of police misconduct to sue officers for damages, ban chokeholds, require the use of body cameras by federal law enforcement officers, and restrict the use of lethal force.

Scott is due to unveil his own draft this week.

On Sunday he said the Republican party viewed eliminating qualified immunity as a "poison pill" but he still felt optimistic that a compromise could be reached.

He also cited other areas of reform he is considering, including requiring police departments to provide the Justice Department with more data on excessive use of force, mandated de-escalation training and provisions to deal with police misconduct.

"If we could blend those three together, we might actually save hundreds of lives and improve the relationship between the communities of color and the law enforcement community."

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Lone Black Republican Senator Says He Is Open to 'Decertification' of Bad Police - Voice of America

After two weeks of police violence and protests, Republican politicians have been pretending to have a fainting spell over the phrase defund the police.

There wont be defunding, said a pearl-clutching Donald Trump, as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy similarly faked outrage over protesters pushing public officials to reevaluate the nations bloated $115 billion police budget.

Republican leaders would have us believe they love law enforcement and cops, but that is belied by an unmentioned fact: These are the same greedheads who have eagerly pushed to defund the police charged with protecting us from the worlds most dangerous and powerful criminals.

Specifically, they have pushed to defund:

The US Chemical Safety Board, which polices major industrial accidents.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices corporations compliance with civil rights laws.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission, which polices industries to make sure their products dont harm or kill people. The agency now acknowledges that its funding level has been insufficient to keep pace with the evolving consumer product marketplace.

The Internal Revenue Service, which polices the tax system and which is responsible for making sure the wealthy and large corporations pay the taxes they owe. Thanks to this successful effort to defund the police, the agency conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent, according to ProPublica. With 30,000 fewer tax cops on the beat, a recent Treasury Department report found that 800,000 high-income households have not paid more than $45 billion in owed taxes.

The Department of Labor, which polices employers and makes sure they arent stealing wages, breaking workplace safety rules, ignoring overtime laws, and/or violating workers union rights. Amid this particular Republican effort to defund the police, there are now fewer cops scrutinizing employers than ever before and workplace inspections have plummeted as workplace injuries, deaths and disasters have increased.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which polices the accounting industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commissions reserve fund, which was established after the financial crisis to bolster the agencys work policing Wall Street. The agency reports that the number of law enforcement staff supporting our investigation and litigation efforts remained almost 9 percent lower today than it was at the start of Trumps term and now white collar prosecutions have hit a historic low.

The law enforcement agencies that police corporate mergers. This effort to defund the antitrust police has come as mergers have accelerated (and there has been some recent effort to reverse the defunding).

The independent law enforcement agency that policed agribusiness monopolies.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which polices the financial industry and works to protect consumers from fraud.

The law enforcement offices that police federal agencies and root out waste, fraud and abuse.

The federal program that polices local law enforcement agencies.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for policing polluters. Trumps first budget proposed to reduce EPA spending on civil and criminal enforcement by almost 60 percent, and laying off 200 environmental cops, according to the New York Times. By the middle of Trumps first year in office, the EPA had fewer than half of the criminal special agents on the job during the George W. Bush administration, according to one environmental advocacy group. Bloomberg News noted that Trumps most recent budget cuts could hamper the EPAs efforts to link contamination at hazardous waste sites to companies and others that may be responsible for the pollution. The result: environmental prosecutions have now hit a historic low.

Trump has called himself the president of law and order, but these efforts to defund the police have created lawlessness and disorder. And yet, that hasnt been mentioned by the politicians and pundits pretending to be scandalized by protesters demands for a change in criminal justice priorities.

Apparently, were expected to be horrified by proposals to reduce funding for the militarized police forces that are violently attacking peaceful protesters but were supposed to obediently accept the defunding of the police forces responsible for protecting the population from the wealthy and powerful.

David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and Jacobin editor at large who served as Bernie Sanders presidential campaign speechwriter. He also publishes the Too Much Information newsletter, where a version of this article first appeared

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Republicans are hypocrites. They happily 'de-funded' the police we actually need - The Guardian