Republicans Continue Tripping Over Their Own Feet

We no longer have the specter of Hillary haunting our upcoming electoral future. How are Republicans going to motivate the voters into turning out en masse to the Congressional elections next year when a) the momentum is with the Democrats, who are staunchly opposing Donald Trump (and any Republican initiative) b) Republicans are disunited and ready to eat each other alive c) many Republican Congressmen are retiring, so many of the spots will be up for grabs and d) Republicans have thus far failed spectacularly to deliver on their promises? You cannot keep scaring people with imaginary boogeymen forever, and you cannot keep feeding them incoherent and half-baked promises that your own state's constituents don't actually want or you are not ready to full-heartedly sell to them and to fight for in Congress. You also cannot keep backing Obama-lite foreign policy that leaves us and our allies less secure and dominated by aggressive and tyrannical powers. 

At the rate we are going, we are facing a massive and well-deserved blowout... which will not teach anybody, anything as Republicans, after each loss, will continue to use DOnald Trump's unpopularity or failure of any particular candidate to align with him, for this loss rather than engage in self-reflection on how party can do better. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can bully people into supporting a particular candidate at the Convention. You cannot bully them or the entire country into sharing the spirit of the message that candidate brings. That just doesn't work; GOP's messaging continues to be behind the times and poorly delivered, and the same "old hands" from their positions of looking down, continue to believe that charging after your own and forcefeeding cheap propaganda somehow translates into unity building are completely delusional. I do not hope that the Republican politicians will take any lessons from last night's electoral developments or the very obvious pattern easily observable on the ground, but I do hope that grassroots, sooner or later, and with however many election losses and intersectionality victories it requires, eventually figure it out.

The Contemporary Challenge of Campaign Gatekeepers

I'm actually pondering the role of presidential or other high level campaign gatekeepers. It seems to me, in recent years, especially, it is increasingly easier to get by these gatekeepers in the heat of the election, and to get to the candidate in some manner, if that's what you are looking to do. Informal advisers and consultants of every ilk are playing an increasing role.

 It's not a negative, if they bring in fresh outsider ideas to the solipsistic campaign bubble, but on the other hand, can be damaging if opportunistic careerists with no substantive merits or insights end up rising too quickly, as has been too often the case. Not sure how in today's climate good campaign managers and others can balance these considerations - having enough openness to identify, use, and cultivate talent from wherever it comes from, while carefully guarding the nature of the campaign from excessive outside influence by random self-interested wannabes.