As The Republican Party Collapses...

Last week, Morning Consult polled registered voters and found a wide gap between voters who have a favorable opinion of Biden (55%) and those who have an unfavorable opinion (41%). Among Democrats, 90% have a favorable opinion of Biden while 7% have an unfavorable opinion; among independents it is 49% to 43%; and among Republican voters... well 82% have a negative opinion of him. 17% have a positive opinion. That last number is the one that interests me today. 17% of Republicans like Biden's moderate, bipartisan approach-- Republican males (20%) much more so than Republican females (14%).

That gender disparity may seem counter-intuitive but, think about it. Many Republican women have already left the party of hatred and bigotry and the left-behinds-- the women who dislike Biden and worship Trump-- are the dregs at the bottom of the barrel. In fact, 76% of Republican men say they have a favorable opinion of Trump, but among the Republican women... a whopping 85% like him... that same gender disparity.

In a tweet last night, life-long conservative propagandist Bill Kristol boasted that he had "voted (early) in VA's Democratic primary." He didn't say who he voted for in the gubernatorial election, but one might assume it wasn't socialist Lee Carter or ever so slightly left-of-center moderate Jennifer Foy but one of the conservative establishment candidates, either front-runner Terry McAuliffe or also-ran Jennifer McClellan. And that's the problem Democrats-- real Democrats-- face as the Republican Party disintegrates into a QAnon cult.

Conservatives/Republicans who decide to vote in Democratic primaries are going to swing the balance towards conservatives and away from progressives. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party, largely financed by Wall Street and corporate interests and already spouting conservative ideas, will continue moving further away from Democratic Party ideals and values-- as it becomes more dominant.

Kristol once worked as the campaign manager for far right sociopath Alan Keyes when he ran against Paul Sarbanes in Maryland and soon after became chief of staff for Vice President Dan Quayle-- remember when he was known as "Dan Quayle's brain?-- and was later one of America's loudest war-mongers advocating for an attack on Iraq. He record of political contributions was, until recently, 100% Republican, including neo-fascist Texan Dan Crenshaw. More recently he started giving to conservative Democrats like Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA), Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA), Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY) and Barbara Bollier, a conservative Republican who switched to the Democratic Party and ran for a Kansas Senate seat, losing to the kind of neo-Nazi Kristol would have once supported.

On Friday, Kristol penned a piece for The Bulwark, Towards A Real Democratic Majority, in which he encouraged conservative Republicans to take over the Democratic Party. "While Trump," he wrote, "has picked up even more white, non-college voters, a number of mostly suburban and better-educated, and often female, anti-Trump Republicans have moved over to become, in effect, a wing (or a mini-wing) of the Democratic party-- the Red Dogs, ideologically, the same putrid garbage as the Blue Dogs.

What Kristol is drooling over is more Barbara Bolliers-- Democrats like Schumer "recruiting 'future former Republicans' to run for office as Democrats in seats and states where traditional progressive Democrats are likely to lose. These candidates don’t have to be literal former Republicans, though they could be. But they have to appeal to the, let’s say, 12 percent of Republicans who like Liz Cheney. Because if you can hold the traditional Democratic voters and pick up some of those Republicans, you can win Senate and House seats." In the open Kansas Senate election last year, former GOP state Senator Bollier-- despite Kristol's contribution-- was buried. Neo-fascist Roger Marshall beat her 727,962 (53.2%) to 571,530 (41.8%). She won 5 of Kansas' 105 counties. Kristol forgot to mention her in his Bulwark piece.

He continued that "there is a pool of ex-Republican voters (and conceivably, office holders) available to the Democratic party. Many current Democratic voters are open to including these future former Republicans in their coalition. It would be good to move the relative strength of the two parties off the current knife’s edge, and for the Democrats to become the nation’s majority party as quickly and as decisively as possible."

Silver-lining: progressives would finally understand that the corrupted, corporate Democratic Party is not the vehicle for systemic social and economic change so longed for. The Democrats are no longer the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt; it is the party of Bill and Hillary Clinton... And Bill Kristol.