A key GOP insight is that there’s no such thing as “banking” in this regard. Gas prices are a soft target now, so they’re hammering that issue and playing up how winning it is, then if prices fall they’ll move on to the next attack, which they’ll also portray as winning.
Meanwhile if gas prices fall, and Republicans drop the issue, no one is going to make them pay any price for inconsistency or lying about who was to blame, and Dems may well not claim credit, because they’ll “bank” on the risk that prices will rise again.
Take it from an actual GOP practitioner. Then imagine how the Trump years might’ve played out if Dems had brought this mindset to a party led by the most despised, plainly corrupt man in America.
It isn’t just that Trump’s disapprovals we’re in the high 50s. His *strong* disapprovals (measuring the people who detested him) were over 50 on their own. The relentless cudgel strategy gets you a majority all by itself, plus whatever margin you add by bringing Trump low.
There’s this mindset that whatever Democrats do, and whatever happens consequently, represent the best of all possible decisions and outcomes.
But I remember Trump presided over catastrophe, lied about it, grifted through it, got hundreds of thousands of people killed, wrecked millions of lives. I can’t prove that beating him by 4 while he increased his vote share, wasn’t the best Dems could do—but I have my suspicions.

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More from @brianbeutler

18 Nov
I interviewed several San Quentin inmates a few years ago for a reporting project on felon disenfranchisement. All of them stipulated to their guilt. After the formal part was over we were shooting the shit and one of them asked me how I’d refer to them as a group in the writing.
I said I hadn’t thought about it, but probably a mix of terms like prisoners, inmates, and felons. They were to a person wounded by “felons,” since it defined them by their worst actions. But only one guy spoke up to request “people with felony convictions.”
I said (in essence) I wouldn’t go that far because the felony convictions didn’t just happen to them, and this was a series about the right to vote despite criminal history. He thought that was reasonable and that was the end of it and I used “prisoners” a lot and it was fine.
Read 6 tweets
15 Nov
“Too dangerous for American families” is something a computer programmed to go negative, but only in the language of kitchen-table issues, would spit out.
They left dead bodies in the halls of the Capitol when they lost the last election.
They cheat, and when they lose anyhow they lie and resort to violence. Just say that.
Read 4 tweets
5 Nov
NEW: The handwringing over tactics is fine and probably inevitable in a race as close as VA-gov, but it’s the definition of sweating the small stuff. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
The small-bore stuff might have actually made the difference between victory and defeat in VA, but it’s also the stuff we understand the worst. crooked.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=88…
Ultimately, though, McAuliffe (and Dems in NJ) were swimming against strong currents; some of which Democrats in Washington had no control over, but others of which they did.
Read 5 tweets
28 Oct
Dems ought to make a huge stink about things like this—the near-daily ritual of feral Trumpers assaulting flight attendants and servers. Instead of letting them play victim over COVID rules, hold a press conference every time a red-hatted thug attacks someone for doing their job.
We watched Republicans put on an insane performance in the Senate to the end of stopping DOJ from doing anything to protect school-board members and election officials from violence and threats. But the incidents are so frequent, this should be a huge liability for them.
This is what I was getting at yesterday RE the Garland hearing. Just because Republicans are pretending to be outraged doesn’t mean they’re on solid political terrain. But lots of Dems cower.
Read 4 tweets
27 Oct
Garland is a bad fit in many ways, including this instance, but this is just him acting like a pretty ordinary liberal, assuming that if Republicans are acting mad about something it must be weak ground for Democrats.
But of course the best response to “why do you treat parents like terrorists?!?!” isn’t to meekly deny the accusation, it’s to say, “why do you think violent people should get away with terrorizing teachers, school-board members, and election officials?”
Funny enough we just saw how this works with McAuliffe raising a righteous stink about Youngkin supporting book banning. So it’s not like the whole party cowers. But cowering is pretty standard.
Read 4 tweets
6 Oct
Schumer should thrill at the opportunity to say that Democrats gave Trump no grief over the debt limit for four years, and since this is how Republicans have repaid them, they can either end their filibuster or Dems will end it for them.
Read 5 tweets

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