He’s the straw that stirs the drink

UPDATE: Not to be left behind, Madison Common Council considers banning plastic straws. Story here.

My friends who are Trump supporters (which is to say, most of my friends) echo Abraham Lincoln. Enemies of U.S. Grant encouraged the Great Emancipator to cashier the general. Lincoln responded, “But he fights.” 

Donald Trump fights, sometimes unnecessarily, sometimes counter-productively. But he plays offense, which is the best defense. The man has an unerring sense of poking his adversaries’ soft under bellies with the sharpest of sticks, then cackling with delight at their pavlovian howls of outrage. 

You fashion yourself a sanctuary city? We’ll ship you busloads of sanctuary seekers. Ban plastic straws? Trump will sell you plastic straws (Made in America!) — far superior to your “liberal paper straws.” (Story in The Hill.)

Pack of 10 just $15 (“Cheap” as Mad Magazine [RIP] would say.) Hey, they’re reusable. Trump/Pence has sold over 140,000 plastic straws in just two days. You do the math. Vanity Fair is apoplectic:

Trump is now selling merchandise specifically designed
to destroy the environment

Yes, progressivism is a target-rich environment. On the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, The Nation magazine asks: “Is space flight colonialism?”

Which is how, we are told, to understand Trump’s twitter tirade over The Squad. Make Nancy Pelosi jerk like frog legs on a plate of salt water to defend A.O.C., Omar, Tlaib, and Pressley. Trump wants to make “The Squad” (aka The Gang of Four) the face of the Democrat(ic) party.

It’s a trap!

“This is a trap for Democrats,” Gerald F. Seib writes in the Wall Street Journal. The journalist notes that Hillary lost the white workers who did not attend college “by a stunning 67% to 28% nationally.” These, of course, are her “deplorables” who gave Trump narrow victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

It’s less clear that the progressives now dominating the conversation can offer lessons in how to prevail in crucial swing states. A.O.C. … won in a district that is 57% more Democrat(ic) than is the nation overall.

Today (07-23-19) the House of Reps is scheduled to vote on Reps. Omar and Tlaib’s boycott, divest, and sanction resolution aimed squarely at Israel. Both Democrats are Muslim. Even most Democrats will vote against it, but most Democrats are not the face of the party. The Squad, if Trump has his way, is. 

Wisconsin may go Trump again

Over at the rabidly anti-Trump New York Times, number cruncher Nate Cohn posits that the incumbent’s “advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote, may be even larger than it was in 2016.”

For now, the mostly white working-class Rust Belt states, decisive in the 2016 election, remain at the center of the electoral map, based on our estimates. The Democrats have few obviously promising alternative paths to win without these battleground states. [Worse for Democrats,] The president’s approval ratings remain higher in the Sun Belt battlegrounds than in the Rust Belt, despite Democratic hopes of a breakthrough. …

In both Wisconsin and Florida, the president’s resilience seems grounded in two regions: the Milwaukee area and Miami-Dade County.

The president’s average approval rating in the Milwaukee media market stands at 48% — virtually unchanged from what it was in 2016, in a compilation of Marquette University polls since October. The president’s approval rating in Miami-Dade may even be better than his standing there in 2016. 

More straws to break the camel’s back

Congratulations to Boris Johnson, the U.K.’s new prime minister. He joins Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Austria’s Sebastian Kurz, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the Czechs’ Andrej Babis, Shinzo Abe in Japan, Andrzej Duda in Poland, and Scott Morrison in Australia (who beat back the climate change zealots). 

For further study: “Why Are Right-Wing Populists Winning Everywhere?”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Will the Trump store offer mail-order Manholes? (Shipping extra.)