Report: Trump launching “full-throttle” campaign for 2018 midterms

According to a new report from The Washington Post, Donald Trump is planning a “full-throttle” campaign for 2018 midterms.

The Washington Post:

President Trump is not on the ballot in 2018, but the White House is planning a full-throttle campaign to plunge the president into the midterm elections, according to senior officials and advisers familiar with the planning. 

Trump’s political aides have met with 116 candidates for office in recent months, according to senior White House officials, seeking to become involved in Senate, House and gubernatorial races — and possibly contested Republican primaries as well.

The president has told advisers that he wants to travel extensively and hold rallies and that he is looking forward to spending much of 2018 campaigning. He has also told aides that the elections would largely determine what he can get done — and that he expects he would be blamed for losses, such as last week’s humiliating defeat that handed a Senate seat in Alabama to a Democrat for the first time in 25 years. 

“For the president, this isn’t about adulation and cheering crowds,” White House political director Bill Stepien said in an interview. “This is about electing and reelecting Republicans.”

(This is a winning strategy for the President. I’ll explain why further down in the article.)

Although they shouldn’t Democrats seem to be happy President Trump is getting himself involved in these midterms.

But getting deeply involved in the midterms could be a highly risky strategy for a president with historically low approval ratings, now hovering in the mid- to low-30s in many national polls, and might be particularly disruptive in primary contests pitting establishment candidates against pro-Trump insurgents. Last week’s upset in Alabama — where Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican nominee Roy Moore — came after Trump endorsed two losing candidates in both the primary and special election.

Many Democrats also say they relish the idea of being able to run against Trump.

“He absolutely is turbocharging the opposition. My guess is most of the people running for office in 2018 are not going to want to cleave too closely to him,” said David Axelrod, former president Barack Obama’s chief strategist. “He torques up both sides, but he torques up the opposition more. He is the greatest organizing tool that Democrats could have.”

Jared Leopold, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors’ Association, said “we look forward to everything that comes out of the president’s iPhone.”

The Democrats have this mindset. Donald Trump isn’t popular so him getting involved would make more Democrats come out to vote and therefore they’d win. There are two major issues with this thinking.

1. Democrats are going to come out to vote either way.

As we saw in Virginia and Alabama Democrats came out to vote in big, big numbers. A lot of that had to do with their anger surrounding Donald Trump and the Republican party. Republican voter turnout, however, was down. Those Republicans stayed home for two reasons. The first is bad candidates. In Virginia, Ed Gillespie failed to embrace Trump and therefore Trump voters failed to embrace him. I heard multiple testimonies from voters down there saying “I’ll never vote for another establishment Republican again so I didn’t vote for him”. Alabama saw Judge Roy Moore who became one of the worst candidates in recent memory. He was bad not because I believe the allegations against him(I’m highly skeptical) but he failed to disprove them. Bottom line was Trump couldn’t go full force for him and the allegations put voters in a tough spot. They either didn’t show up to vote for him or they wrote in someone else. If either of those things Moore would have won. Bottom line is that in both cases we saw the same thing. Democrats came out even if Trump wasn’t involved. Republicans stayed home because Trump wasn’t involved. That leads us to the second thing, Trump wasn’t on the ballot. Donald Trump is as popular as ever among Republicans and him not being on the ballot meant Republicans weren’t going to the voting booths in full force.

2. The Trump agenda is the agenda Americans want.

Do I believe the polls claiming Trump isn’t popular? No. Do I think Trump’s popular matters all that much? No. None of it matters because of how popular his agenda is. The majority of Americans don’t feel the way the media claims they do. The vast majority of Americans support tax cuts. The vast majority of Americans support welfare reform, in fact, 89% do. Many Americans want Obamacare repeal/ healthcare reform. The biggest winning issue is immigration. Although the media calls everyone who wants immigration reform a racist the majority of Americans support it. They use misleading questions to mistake Americans support for this issue.

The only way Republicans win in 2018 is if they have Trump on the ballot. Trump himself will bring out the Republican base and his agenda will allow even those who don’t like him to vote Republican.Democrats think everyone who has the title of Republican next to it is Trump so he is on the ballot in their eyes as long as Trump is on the ballot. The media and Democrats want to trick you into thinking Trump is a poison pill because they know he is the key to Republicans winning in 2018.