Whoops – I thought I posted this back on 12/08/19 but found it still sitting in draft form today…
Is Trump’s base as strong as we are lead to believe?
I floated a search tab on Brad Parscale back in September, I remember floating it as I listened to the book Russian Roulette. At the time I wanted to research the whole idea of facebook advertising. Not just the ability to sow discord but its legitimate use by a campaign to actually “advertise”. Last night I went back and found this link in the tab. It is a pretty long read and interesting just in it’s story telling aspect of who this guy is and how he came to be. But to me the telling part was this:
“One previously unreported example: Since Trump’s election in 2016, critical “voter scores” — sophisticated polling-based analytics that the RNC provides to party committees and candidates — have conspicuously omitted an essential detail for any down-ballot race: how voters in specific states and congressional districts feel about Trump. Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump.”
The Myths of the “Genius” Behind Trump’s Reelection Campaign – Peter Elkind with Doris Burke, ProPublica (09/12/2019) – WallStreetWindow.com
So in other words Trump via the RNC has disconnected the House and Senate republicans from the polling data they have normally relied upon. I believe this means the unity of the base is pure speculation. I suppose the good news about this is if the Senate votes believing that they can’t go against Trump and the “base” then the 2020 election could sweep them out of office or give others a chance to run against them on principle when they are next up.
Lastly one of the things the Democrats are doing that really bothers me is this. Why not subpoena Bolton? Do so and let them, Bolton and others already subpoenaed, take it to court. Then we urge the court to expedite the cases as quickly as possible. The Democrats seem to be unwilling to push this through the court. To me as a layman that is the most important part of the impeachment, can the executive branch claim privilege and ignore subpoenas? The Nixon case already proves that the court is on the side of the legislative branch. Wouldn’t be just as important to prove that and have theses folks show up and claim the 5th? And then review the documents available to further prove the case. Whether this takes 6 months or 18 months isn’t making the case as solid as possible more important than expediency and to have played out the larger legal questions allowing all the branches of the governments to exercise their rights?