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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">belated? see middle class</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/tracing-the-roots-of-city-boy-trumps-racist-suburban-dream-nonsense-all-the-way-to-rush-limbaugh"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/tracing-the-roots-of-city-boy-trumps-racist-suburban-dream-nonsense-all-the-way-to-rush-limbaugh</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White House is running for reelection on racism. Given his track record, it would be a surprise if he weren’t. Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric has always centered on fearmongering around crime, going back not just to the start of his presidential campaign in 2015, but back to the 1980s. Now he’s at it again, this time with a focus on the suburbs and, in anachronistic language that evokes June Cleaver or Carol Brady, ”suburban housewives.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Based on his rambling, Trump seems to think the suburbs are still filled with white women in aprons making their kids PB&J on Wonder BreadTM with the crusts cut off, dutifully fixing after-work martinis for their husbands. Trump thinks he can scare those white-lady aprons right off with tales of Black and brown criminals descending upon their neighborhoods, and present himself as the white (orange?) savior who will keep their neighborhoods safe by keeping them white. This particular dog whistle is not one Trump invented, of course. Among others, Rush Limbaugh has been blowing it for years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Let’s start with Trump’s current campaign. On June 30, President Shitgibbon tweeted that he was “studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact” on the suburbs. He also claimed that his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, wants to make things “much worse”—correction: “MUCH WORSE.” Trump added that he “may END!” the AFFH.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The AFFH refers to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, enacted in 2015, under the Obama-Biden administration. Barack Obama’s AFFH rule updated a previous regulation governing discrimination in housing and real estate, which wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do as required by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>What Obama did was mandate that local governments that received federal money to build housing must “identify and address patterns of racial segregation outlawed under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by creating detailed corrective plans.</b>”<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In other words, he simply wanted to make sure that cities and towns followed existing law. Radical, I know. To clarify, the AFFH would not destroy, abolish, or even fundamentally alter the nature of housing in the suburbs. It’s just a boogeyman Trump’s using because he thinks it will scare the white ladies of Westchester County and beyond into voting for him.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few weeks after the initial tweet, on July 23, this appeared on Herr Twitler’s feed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Less than a week later, on July 29, the White House announced that it was revoking the AFFH</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> This formal revocation came on top of action Trump took in January 2018, which de facto blocked the rule from taking effect by pushing back its effective start date to at least November 1, 2020. The Trump administration has taken numerous other steps to hamstring the federal government’s efforts to enforce fair housing and desegregate neighborhoods.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The same day the rule’s revocation was made public, Trump followed up with a tweet that, as many have noted, said the quiet part out loud.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That same day, Trump echoed his tweet in remarks to an audience in Midland, Texas. “There will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs,” he declared, adding that “it’s been going on for years. I’ve seen conflict for years. It’s been hell for suburbia.</span>”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Whereas Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson and his minions have portrayed the gutting of Obama’s fair housing rules as merely making things simpler by reducing unnecessary paperwork, President Charlottesville just came right out and revealed the real motivation for these changes. He’s vowing to make sure the people he considers undesirable from “low-income housing” projects can’t move in next door—and assuming it’s an effective strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apparently, Trump convinced himself that his previous tweets were too subtle. He decided that it would help if he named someone who would supposedly help Joe Biden take aim at the suburbs if he was elected. Since President Barack Obama is no longer on the ticket, the Orange Julius Caesar must have figured he needed a substitute of a similar hue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div>[twt]</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When pressed on what he meant by that tweet, Trump, as The New York Times put it, “told on himself.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“They’re going to, in my opinion, destroy suburbia, And just so you understand, 30 percent-plus of the people living in suburbia are minorities,” Trump rambled. “African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic American—they’re minorities. Thirty percent. The number is even higher, it’s—they say 35, but I like to cut it a little bit lower. You know why? That way I can never get myself in too much trouble with the fake news.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Women of all races have been calling Trump out on this hate-filled nonsense. “I think people may make assumptions,” one white Kentucky stay-at-home mother of three told the Daily Beast. “And I think that’s something the president has done, unfortunately, is make assumptions that all white women are going to support him. And we’re not.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Writer Ally Henny, on the other hand, was explicit in her explanation of why Trump is choosing his words so carefully.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Most recently, perhaps having decided that race-baiting the suburbs from Trump’s own mouth and tweets needed some fleshing out as a campaign strategy, the impeached president and his HUD secretary “wrote” an op-ed piece, placed behind The Wall Street Journal paywall. It’s a bit more subtle, and makes passing mention of Americans of color also living in the suburbs, but this slick product can’t unsay what the racist-in-chief already put out there.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>As Media Matters laid out, Trump’s racist suburban shtick strongly echoes the work of right-wing author and commentator Stanley Kurtz. In 2012, Kurtz published a book called Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities.</b> If you’re wondering whether Kurtz has spent a lifetime studying housing policy, don’t bother. His previous book was 2010’s Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. There is something that is definitely not “expertise in housing policy” running through both tomes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Back to 2020. On the morning of June 30, Kurtz published a National Review piece claiming that if Biden won the presidency, he would go beyond the AFFH and adopt a policy advocated by Cory (not “Corey”) Booker; he further asserted that Biden’s true intention is to “abolish the suburbs.” Trump’s tweet saying the same went live about 12 hours later. Media Matters’ Bobby Lewis pointed out the connection between Kurtz’s article and the Trump tweet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Stanley Kurtz leads us to the other right-wing blowhard mentioned at the beginning of this post, namely the man with whom Trump defiled the Medal of Freedom: Rush Limbaugh</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In doing research for my recent book, I analyzed multiple examples of Limbaugh slamming Obama over his policies regarding the suburbs—most of the time citing Kurtz. A week before Kurtz’s book came out in 2012, Limbaugh started talking about it, quoting from it, and using it to paint President Obama as anti-suburban and, in so many words, anti-white. This went on for the remainder of Obama’s time in office.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On July 26, 2012, Limbaugh offered lengthy quotations from the Kurtz book, which regaled its readers with lies about Obama’s “lifelong hostility to the suburbs.” The 44th president apparently had it in for suburb dwellers, whom he supposedly believed “were just greedy racists who didn’t want to share their tax money with the urban poor.” We know exactly which group of people Limbaugh means when he talks about “the suburbs,” and who he means when he talks about “the urban poor.” This is the very same dog whistle Trump is blowing now, eight years later, when he’s fighting to keep the presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Limbaugh did this over and over again. The next day he claimed that suburbanites were Obama’s “real enemies,” and six days after that, Limbaugh predicted that the first Black president would “abolish” the suburbs</b>. In September 2013, the racist host said that President Obama would “destroy the suburbs,” and in July 2014, Limbaugh spouted off about “Obama’s war on the suburbs”—during a segment where he specifically went after the AFFH rule Trump so desperately hates, which was then under consideration. In a July 2015 master class on race-baiting, the host tied his suburbia-based attacks on Obama to “forced busing,” as well as to “attacks on the South” and “attacks on the Confederate flag.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This went on and on. In addition to the examples above, Limbaugh threw out similar suburban dog whistles during the Obama presidency here, here, here, here, here, and here—each “here” represents a different day’s broadcast. And of course, Limbaugh is still at it in 2020. He even blew his dog whistle during his reaction to Rep. John Lewis’s funeral.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Thanks to reporting from New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, we know that Trump got many of the specific topics for his race-baiting rhetoric from talk radio. In the run-up to the 2016 campaign, onetime top Trump aide Sam Nunberg did a “deep dive into talk radio</b>”—listening for “thousands of hours” and then giving “reports” to Trump on what was really motivating the right-wing base. Limbaugh has the largest audience in talk radio, and has for as long as such ratings have been measured. Trump’s recent dog whistles on the suburbs and Biden are wholly unoriginal: They’re virtually a carbon copy of Limbaugh’s language on the suburbs and Obama—language which itself was cribbed from Stanley Kurtz.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When it comes to the suburbs, and other policies that relate to race and economics more broadly, Limbaugh and Trump have sought to win over middle- and working-class white Americans by falsely claiming that former President Obama and future President Biden want nothing more than to take away what they have earned—whether it’s money or safe neighborhoods—and give it to Black and Latino Americans who supposedly don’t deserve it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Playing to racial anxieties and ginning up fear and hatred are the only ways the Limbaugh-Trump Republican Party can get the support of those voters, given that GOP policies actively work against their economic interests while favoring those of the real elites—the top 1%.</b> To defeat Trump and the Republican Party made in his image, Democrats must help these voters recognize that Republicans are spewing hate in order to keep white Americans and Americans of color from coming together on the basis of shared interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One way to do so is to point out what the Trump party actually does when it gains power. The Trump presidency’s singular legislative accomplishment is a multibillion dollar tax giveaway to millionaires and billionaires, that does little to nothing for the average American of any race. The other major legislative effort undertaken by Trump & Co. was repealing the Affordable Care Act, which expanded coverage to tens of millions of Americans. Thankfully, that effort failed, but it too would have mostly helped the wealthy by giving them a tax cut, and harmed the folks—again, Americans of every race—earning around or just below the national median income who had gained coverage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans can’t sell their economic policies to middle- and working-class white voters, so all they have left to peddle is hate. That’s why Trump is now trying to scare white suburbanites with tall tales about poor people moving in from cities, or, as he did just a few days ago, revisiting some of his worst rhetoric from the 2016 campaign about immigrants and crime.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When thinking about where Trump comes from, most people associate him with the city. Trump Tower, his erstwhile home, sits in midtown Manhattan. He claims to have “built” skyscrapers, but mostly he just got paid to place his name on other people’s buildings. <b>However, he grew up in 1950s Jamaica Estates, a neighborhood that, although it was located in Queens, New York City, much more resembled a wealthy suburban enclave. It was, according to a New York Times article, “an exclusive and nearly all-white place, resistant to outsiders and largely impenetrable to minorities.” Trump himself described it as “safe” and “an oasis” when compared to other parts of Queens, which he viewed as “rough.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This mindset—the idea of a suburban environment as a place where white people with enough money to escape the inner city’s poor neighborhoods of color, as well as enough power to keep non-whites from moving in—is at the core of Trump’s race-baiting on the suburbs. Trump understands, and hopes to exploit in this year’s election the very racist fears that once motivated the white flight from American cities in the 1950s and ‘60s. So does Rush Limbaugh, whose racist rhetoric throughout the Obama presidency laid out the blueprint that Trump is now using to attack Joe Biden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Two months before Election Day, it appears that the white suburban women who elected Trump in 2016 (and to whom Trump thinks this hate-filled nonsense will appeal) are not responding to his dog whistle, at least not in large enough numbers to reelect him. Perhaps they’ve evolved in terms of their fears and prejudices. Or perhaps they’ve simply come to realize that The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote poses a far greater danger because of his manifest unfitness to lead our country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Making sure they remember that and come out to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket is one thing we can all help to make happen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)</font></div></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">dn 720&nbsp; dog whistle to suburbs</font></p><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; background-color: rgb(241, 242, 243);"><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/30/headlines/trump_accused_of_blatant_racism_after_trumpeting_end_of_fair_housing_rule" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Trump Accused of “Blatant Racism” After Trumpeting End of Fair Housing Rule</font></a></li><li class="hidden-xs" style="text-align: left; box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/30/headlines/police_raid_camp_for_unhoused_residents_of_denver_displacing_200" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Police Raid Camp for Unhoused Residents of Denver, Displacing 20</font></a></li></ul><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-has-awakened-a-sleeping-giant-and-hell-live-to-regret-it/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trump-has-awakened-a-sleeping-giant-and-hell-live-to-regret-it/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">moms but not so much soccer? futbol maybe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/texas-suburbs-are-slipping-away-from-the-gop-these-women-for-trump-want-to-win-them-back/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/texas-suburbs-are-slipping-away-from-the-gop-these-women-for-trump-want-to-win-them-back/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Texas’ suburbs are slipping away from the GOP. These women for Trump want to win them back</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by The Texas Tribune December 23, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An audible groan erupted in the lounge area of Houston’s Gulf Coast Distillers in late October when high-profile Trump campaign operative Mica Mosbacher invoked the idea of a Democratic presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mosbacher encouraged the audience of roughly 50 GOP women — a group that included a millionaire Texas congressional candidate, the owner of a gun store and a Gov. Greg Abbott political appointee — to turn their grumbling into action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s not the boy’s club anymore,” she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas Republicans need women on their side if they’re going to keep the state red in 2020, but recent polls suggest President Donald Trump’s support among women is plummeting. A secret recording of outgoing House Speaker Dennis Bonnen laid bare the GOP’s anxieties about the president: “He’s killing us in urban-suburban districts,” Bonnen told a Republican activist in late June.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s campaign seems to take the risk seriously. At the October Women for Trump panel discussion, a group of female surrogates — mostly white, some living in D.C. — parachuted into a historically black neighborhood in the heart of Texas’ biggest city to sip drinks and implore Republican women: “We need your help.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mosbacher, whose resume includes stints working for GOP fixtures like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and the late John McCain, turned to one of the women next to her to bring the point home.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What would you tell people who are on the fence about President Trump?” Mosbacher, a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board, asked Women for Trump member Karen Henry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It would be hard for me to be nice to ‘em,” Henry, a mother of four and Houston-area business owner, quipped. “But if you want somebody who’s going to stand up to the media, who does what he says he’s going to do … he’s the only person you can vote for.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Onstage next to Henry was fellow member Melanie Luttrell. “Don’t you want your kids to grow up in the America you grew up in?” she asked the crowd. Many women nodded their heads solemnly in agreement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The visit to Houston was one of many that Trump campaign surrogates have made in recent months as part of a broader national outreach to suburban women, a voting bloc that will be essential to Trump’s reelection campaign. But a majority of Texas women said in October they would definitely vote for someone besides Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll. And 46% of people living in the suburbs said the same thing, according to the poll, compared to 41% who said they would definitely vote for him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First: Panelists address attendees during a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training hosted by Women for Trump at Gulf Coast Distillers in Houston on Oct. 29, 2019. Last: Women for Trump Advisory Board Member Mica Mosbacher asks a question to panelists during a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training hosted by Women for Trump at Gulf Coast Distillers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The goal of the Houston gathering was two-fold: energize existing supporters and encourage them to spread the gospel of Trump campaign’s promises — lower taxes, free-market health care, less government regulation, telling off the “fake news” media, and cleaning up “the swamp that is Washington D.C. bureaucracy” — to their friends and neighbors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We need every one of you to replicate yourselves,” said<b> Penny Nance, the CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, who also said she is an evangelical Christian.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Texas has the largest group of new voters,” she continued. “So guess what? We need to get them signed up.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But beyond the four walls of the Houston distillery, that might be easier said than done. Even Texas’ historically conservative suburbs now appear competitive: A Houston-area congressional seat flipped to Democrats in 2018, and both Harris and Fort Bend Counties are overwhelmingly blue. In the Dallas region, Republicans lost a second congressional seat last year, along with a slate of state House seats and a state Senate one.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For 2020, Democrats are targeting six congressional seats and have their sights set on nearly two dozen seats they hope to flip in the Texas House — most of which are in the suburbs. If the minority party can win nine state House seats next year, they’ll gain control of a chamber in the Texas Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Trump is going to help win back the seats Texas Republicans lost last year, the effort may hinge on suburban women, their neighbors and friends. But it’s in those suburban enclaves where some experts believe the gender gap is the widest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The numbers are pretty clear that the level of support among suburban women for the Republicans and for President Trump has dropped,” said Texas GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There’s the gender gap and we’re aware of it and we all see it,” he said, noting a summer NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that found a huge drop in support for Trump among women. “It’s based on the personality and the behavior of the most prominent figure in the Republican Party.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Women for Trump event, the president’s surrogates nonetheless shrugged off the notion that their candidate is lacking for support in the suburbs. When Mosbacher asked how women have succeeded under Trump’s economy, Henry told a story about her Salvadoran housekeeper. The woman, who has a green card, Henry said, had complained during the Obama presidency that Henry was “not paying as much.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Henry’s answer: Blame the Democrat and his “raising the taxes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump’s 2018 tax breaks gave Henry noticeably more disposable income — and as a result, her housekeeper “saw a little raise in her paycheck,” Henry said. (Research shows the tax cuts have primarily benefited the wealthy.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First: Women for Tump members cheer from their seats during the organization’s holiday celebration featuring a keynote speech from President Donald Trump’s 2020 Senior Campaign Adviser Katrina Pierson at the Holiday Inn Tyler Conference Center in Tyler. Last: President Donald Trump’s 2020 Senior Campaign Adviser Katrina Pierson greets the crowd during a Women for Trump Holiday Celebration at the Holiday Inn Tyler Conference Center in Tyler.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Other panelists said Trump’s appointment of judges who oppose abortion rights to the Supreme Court was enough to sway their friends and acquaintances. They also touted his focus on fighting sex trafficking and a proposed $1 billion one-time investment to increase the supply of child care in underserved populations — all things Mosbacher said appealed to women.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m a policy wonk, and I really, truly believe his policies are working,” said Jacquie Baly, an Abbott appointee to his University Research Initiative advisory board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Baly, Nance and Mosbacher are just some of the many high-profile Republicans the Trump campaign has deployed to Texas ahead of next year’s election cycle. For a Women for Trump “Holiday Celebration” in Tyler this month, Trump’s senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, who hails from the Dallas suburbs, was the special guest. And when Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. headlined a San Antonio rally earlier this year, his girlfriend and former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle was at his side.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s a strategic change from Trump’s 2016 election, which relied primarily on Facebook and a select number of high-profile male campaign surrogates. Since then, the White House has increased the number of women in public-facing roles, and has relied upon a litany of GOP women onto his campaign to speak on his behalf, including <b>Guilfoyle, Lara Trump, social media stars Diamond and Silk and Kellyanne Conway.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texas Democrats say it’s evidence of Republican fears about the state turning blue. Democrats hope to weaponize Trump’s record — particularly the fallout from his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — against him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase, ‘alternative facts’ and I think that the president and his team basically relies on alternative facts,” said Mustafa Tameez, a Houston-based Democratic strategist. “While he’s vulnerable and has lost support among women, his supporters will disregard any evidence proving that.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the Trump campaign hopes to galvanize a different profile of a suburban woman, one who might have gone unnoticed by pundits and strategists: the silent voter who will turn out for the president in 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Democratic and Republican strategists painted a profile of such a voter: She is a fan of Trump’s brash personality and likes that he behaves more like a businessman than a politician. She probably comes from a higher-income household and is college educated. She also might have a family and has seen her or her husband’s business thrive economically over the last few years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This woman might not show up to events like the one organized in Houston, and she might live in an area where the president’s message is a tougher sell. But if the campaign can make sure she votes on Nov. 3, 2020, the hope is, they can help prove pollsters wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There’s a silent majority of people who don’t speak what they really believe and they’ll go to the polls and they’ll vote for Trump because of who he’s running against,” Henry said in an interview.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats concede that it’s this brand of silent supporter that helped springboard Trump to the White House in 2016, something they’re trying to account for ahead of next year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what remains to be seen for GOP strategists is whether they can court new voters, a demographic coveted by both parties. Republicans are already trying to correct for this. Earlier this year, a super PAC named Engage Texas launched to register hundreds of thousands of new Texas voters here and convince them to help them keep the state red.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Houston event, after Mosbacher concluded the panel discussion and some of the room had emptied, Kayla Hensley, the regional director for the Republican Party of Texas, kicked off a PowerPoint presentation about how women could get out the vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hensley’s message spoke directly to women like Rhonda Velders, who has lived in Nassau Bay for the last 30 years. Velders is the type of woman the campaign is hoping will thrill to its message: She’s a lifelong Republican, a mental health therapist who said she’s seen economic success under Trump’s presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Velders was shaken when she saw her hometown vote blue in 2018 but believes things will turn around next year. “As women, we’re going to rise up, and be able to say, ‘I don’t have to be ashamed of being a woman.’ And frankly, I don’t have to be ashamed that I’m white because I feel like sometimes you’re shamed for being white.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump loyalists hope the results of the 2018 midterms, in which Cruz eked out a win over Democrat Beto O’Rourke, were an anomaly and enough to motivate conservative women to turn out for the GOP next year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s not rocket science,” Velders said. “But if we’re not careful, we’re going to lose everything we know.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pollsters say there’s no magic number for how many women like Velders Republicans need to pursue in order to maintain their stronghold over the state. At the very least, they say, Trump needs to perform with women as well as he did in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” Nance, the CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, said. “It’s now or never, ladies.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disclosure: The University of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/20/women-donald-trump-suburbs-houston.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/conservative-writer-explains-why-suburban-polls-in-battleground-states-should-worry-republicans/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/conservative-writer-explains-why-suburban-polls-in-battleground-states-should-worry-republicans/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Conservative writer explains why suburban polls in battleground states should worry Republicans</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Nov. 5 2019 elections brought some major disappointments to the Republican Party, which lost both houses of the Virginia State Legislature and found Democrats becoming even more prominent in the Philadelphia suburbs (which used to be much more GOP-friendly than Philly itself). Many suburban districts that leaned Republican in the past, from Virginia to Colorado, have been becoming more Democratic. And conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, looking ahead to 2020, stresses that if recent polling data and research are any indication, Republicans have good reason to be worried about suburban districts in battleground states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Never Trump conservative, in a Friday morning column, points to research by the group Priorities USA — which has released a poll on voters in battleground states. Acknowledging that the poll is “partisan,” Rubin explains why Priorities’ data on suburban areas doesn’t look good for President Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party. Priorities found that “roughly half of respondents across Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they live in the suburbs” — and among that group, Trump enjoys only 40% favorability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If you are either a Democratic primary voter or a campaign operative,” Rubin asserts, “the message here should be that voters are winnable, but not sewn up. Moreover, what is true for Republicans — extreme, base-pleasing positions turn off winnable suburban voters — is also true for Democrats.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rubin also points to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Blue Wall Voices Project and the insights it offers on Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Kaiser found that “majorities of swing voters” in those states have a favorable view of “a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in this country illegally” (70%), the Green New Deal (67%) and banning the sale of assault weapons (66%).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rubin adds, however, that according to Kaiser, 62% of the suburban voters surveyed had a negative view of a Medicare-for-all plan — which the two leading progressive candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are in favor of.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The conservative journalist wraps up her column by asserting that while Democrats run the risk of alienating the suburbs by going too far to the left, the overall data shows that Republicans have a major problem in suburbia.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rubin writes, “Democrats are rightfully excited by the shift in suburban voting patterns, but the best way to lose them or to depress turnout would be to feed into the narratives Trump propagates: ‘open borders’ and ‘socialized medicine’…. The question does boil down to how much Democrats really do want to win.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">women are becoming politically engaged at an earlier point than ever before. More than 1 million women have donated to 2020 presidential candidates thus far, following the rise of fundraising participation by women in the wake of President Donald Trump's election.

But women are not a monolithic fundraising or voting bloc, and there are key differences in fundraising patterns from women in different pockets of the country. Suburban women, who power a significant electoral battleground, are a key demographic for 2020.</span><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://opensecrets.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=aa7cf182bf7041258bb250f9d&id=b1fd1395fb&e=44dfb36771" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="font-family: lato, " helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" arial="arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><strong>Read more</strong></span></a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div>