The Big Blue Wave? Not So Fast

By Steven Jonas

As the Trump Presidency seems to be sliding into the mud in the real world (although not in the Alternative Reality of Right-Wing TV and talk radio) and Republican policies (or lack thereof, e.g. the "massive infrastructure program") are becoming increasingly unpopular, there is much talk of a "Blue Wave" coming in the 2018 Congressional elections. It would appear to be fairly certain in the House of Representatives, which is the primary reason why so many Republicans are retiring, even some with safe seats like the sterlingly reactionary Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. (You remember him. He poked around "Benghazi and Clinton" endlessly and found --- nothing. Well, actually because it was a CIA operation gone wrong from the git-go he found nothing that he could talk about publicly.) Recently there has been talk even about the Senate flipping. This is so even though while the Repubs. hold only a two-seat majority most of the seats up for re-election this time around are Democratic, many in normally Red states. 

But, let us not count our chickens before they hatch. Major Republican powers, this time around especially some huge donors of both light and dark money like the Kochs and the Mercers have been preparing for this eventuality. First of all, there will be tons of Repub. money from these folks. Second of all, they still have what MSNBC's Chris Hayes like to call "Trump TV" plus that endless supply of right-wing talk radio. Third of all the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, founded in 2007 for the express purpose of taking over state legislatures, so that the Repubs. could control much of the re-districting that occurred in 2010, is still very much in play. And so is the gerrymandering as well as the restrictive "Voter I.D." laws that they have sponsored. (Quite obviously that objective of the latter was not to improve the security of voting. Otherwise, getting a photo I.D. would been made readily available --- as in having camera-equipped photo I.D. offices in every locale and neighborhood --- paid for by the state governments. It wasn't.) And of course, there is the tried and true technique, used by all political parties of motivating "the base" to come out and vote.  

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Source: OpEdNews.com