Dem
47
GOP
53
We've actually had this item on the "to do" list for a few weeks. If ever there is a day to run it, today's definitely that day.
Both the Republicans, led by Donald Trump, and the Democrats, led by no one, are trying to hammer out their midterm messaging. And both sides are getting pretty serious about the same issue, albeit a slightly different word for it on each side. To wit, the Democrats think that "corruption" is a potential winner, while Trump and the Republicans quite like "fraud."
We'll begin by talking about the Democrats' side of that, since they will have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. Here's a list of ten instances of corruption from Trump and other prominent Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list, by any means, and we are attempting to include both recent examples and particularly egregious examples (of course, some examples are both recent AND egregious):
Again, the blue team has a veritable smorgasbord of things to choose from here.
Of course, there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." And the Democrats do have a history of tripping over their own feet, and failing to distill their message down to something manageable. Put another way, it is probably not wise to make hay out of all of these things. The savvy thing to do, in our view, would be to pick about three or four particularly bad grifts—the ones that really get voters hopping mad—and to hit on those over and over. All the better is if it can be boiled down into a pithy sound bite, like: "slush funds and airplanes and pardons for sale, oh my!" We are confident that the slush fund is Trump's biggest Achilles' heel on this front, and we assume that Democrats are focus grouping to see what other grifts particularly land with voters. If they are not, they should call up Sarah Longwell from The Bulwark, and let her figure it out.
When it comes to Republicans, and "fraud," the story is rather different. The general plan is to make broad and basically unsubstantiated claims of fraud against Democratic states, with "Fraud Czar" J.D. Vance taking the lead. These fraud claims will apparently focus on two things: fraud in the spending of federal money, and fraud in voting. The administration will publicize its claims, and show it's "serious," by withholding certain funds from certain blue states. For example, a $100 million+ Medicare payment to California has already been delayed.
So, which approach is going to work best? Obviously, at a glance, the Democrats would seem have the upper hand here, and then some. However, scary and non-specific things can sometimes be more effective than irritating and highly specific things. Further, the voters that Republicans are trying to reach tend to be far less concerned about evidence. If the White House says there's fraud, then there's fraud, as far as many of these folks are concerned.
That said, while we concede the Republican approach could work, particularly if the Democrats don't get their messaging ducks in a row, we see some serious problems with the plan. The first is that the punitive actions that the administration takes, to highlight its position, are going to hurt people. Those people are not going to be happy. And so, the shenanigans might actually backfire on the GOP, and cost them more votes than it gains them.
On top of that, it's hard to think of a worse point person for this crusade than J.D. Vance. People don't like him, people don't trust him, and he just can't "sell" the way Trump can, or even the way that, say, Marco Rubio can. There is, of course, time for someone else to take over, but the fact is that the Trump administration bench isn't very deep, especially since the half-dozen or so people that Trump really trusts either already have six jobs (Rubio) or are looney tunes (Pete Hegseth).
And finally, when we started planning this item, we could squint and see how the GOP approach just might work. But we think that the $1.776 billion slush fund brought that line of thinking to a conclusive end. The billion-dollar grift is going to be the bright sun in the universe of grift, outshining all else by many orders of magnitude. It's like this famous cartoon about notorious Gilded Age spoilsman Richard Croker:
All you have to do is replace "CROKER" with "TRUMP, $1.776 Billion."
In the end, the slush fund is just so egregious, and is such obvious self-dealing. Even if you believe California is committing fraud (beyond the usual level of Medicare fraud that every state deals with), nobody has suggested that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is personally lining his own pockets. So we think, on corruption/fraud, it's going to be "advantage Democrats" for the rest of the cycle, and beyond. (Z)