The big blue bi-coastal vise closeth

There is a big blue bi-coastal voter vise that is closing in on Republicans for the 2020 Presidential Election and it is comprised of four states on the West coast (plus Hawaii) and thirteen on the East Coast(including D.C.). Given past voting history, probably all these states will cast their popular and electoral votes for the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2020. Altogether, that's 153 electoral votes.

Some of the states on the West coast were narrowly won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. She walked away with California with 62% of the popular vote, but she only won Washington State by 52.6%, Oregon by 50.7% and Nevada by about 48%. Over on the East coast, the picture for the Democrats was also predictable: Clinton won New York with 59%, Massachusetts with 60% and New Jersey with 63%, among others. The Nation's Capitol gave Clinton a whopping 86.8% of the popular vote while neighboring Virginia gave her 49.7%, but Donald Trump earned 44.4% making the win in Virginia a slim one for the Democrats in a solidly Blue state.

The Midwestern states weighed in with Illinois giving Clinton 55.8% of their vote while Donald Trump only managed to earn 38.8%, making the margin a large, 17% one. Clinton's margin in Minnesota was a razor thin 1.5% (Minnesota also had the largest voter turnout of any U.S. state with 75%)! Trump's win in Wisconsin was a surprise. He garnered 47.2% to Hillary Clinton's 46.5%. Michigan was also a big surprise; Trump took the state by a 0.23% margin (10,704 votes). We all know that the Republicans won in Florida and Texas and in the mountain states and in the Mid-Atlantic states and in the South, but they lost Colorado and New Mexico. The loss in Colorado was expected, but so was New Mexico as the state was already Republican oxygen-deprived and was 'turning blue' during the second Martinez administration.

What's in play for 2020, and where should the President turn his attention, assuming that the 'Big Blue Bi-coastal Vise' keeps tightening against the Republicans?

In my last book on the Republican Party, "Breaking Republican," co-authored by a long-time D.C. pollster, Lance Tarrance, we laid out several scenarios by which a Republican could win in 2016. We also predicted that a 'third wave' or non-traditional Republican candidate had the best chance of winning. Unlike many political analysts at the time, we were right. On election eve in November of 2016, I sat outside the Marriott Hotel in NYC overlooking Times Square on a TV stage as part of a panel of experts organized by the Danish National Broadcasting System. We were sending our program live to Denmark and southern Sweden all through the evening, commenting as the state totals came in. I was the token American on the stage and fielded many questions that night. As the evening wore on, I was asked what I thought Trump's chances were. I said 60% (Pennsylvania hadn't been called yet). I could hear the chuckles and see the grins from the other panelists and the host who then turned to me and said, "Are you sure? Do you want to revise your prediction?" I looked at her and said, "Yes, I do. I'll give him an 80% chance." A short while later, we closed down the set and I walked back to my hotel and fell fast asleep. When I awoke, the networks were calling Trump the winner.

Sometimes it's good to be right and sometimes it's even wonderful, but if the Republicans think they're going to give Donald Trump another four years without an all-out street fight they're wrong. Crystal ball gazing is one thing, but elections are won through hard work. Republicans will need to:  1. shore up their base in the big electoral vote states, 2. recruit a lot more conservative voters, 3. make an appeal to the college-age voter with a powerful message that resonates with their generation, 4. make a concerted effort to turn out Black and Hispanic voters, 5. start now with messaging to middle-age and older women, 6. concentrate some of their firepower on a few of the states in the 'Blue Vise' where they almost won in 2016 (like Washington, Oregon and Nevada), 7. spend some time with - and download some money to - a few GOP state organizations in promising 'purple' states that could be turned in 2020 and, finally, 8. get to know the individual states' local issues and electorates better and work with Republican leaders to identify ways to solve them with a true national/local effort.

Much can - and will - happen before the 2020 primaries, but Republicans have an advantage; they will not be choosing a candidate. Democrats will, and their contest promises to bring out all their skeletons from their very spacious walk-in closet. Like Indiana Jones in the movie 'The Last Crusade,' they must choose wisely in order to reach the Holy Grail of the Presidency. If the Dems want to re-capture the Midwest and hang on to the states they barely won in 2016 they will not do so by nominating an ultra-Progressive or Socialist-leaning candidate. That kind of candidate will not rip Texas, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania from the clutches of the Republicans. Relying solely on the Blue Vise will not be enough. While it may once again win them the battle of the popular vote, it will most assuredly lose them the electoral vote war.

Stephan Helgesen is a former career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in thirty different countries, specializing in export promotion. He is now a political analyst and strategist and author of nine books and over 1,000 articles on politics, the economy and social trends. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com

The dangers of self-censorship

Growing up, I'm sure that one of your more compassionate relatives told you, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Well, God bless him or her for that, and while that was probably the right thing to say for the time, times have changed. No one bothers to count to ten anymore before giving you both barrels. Total annihilation is the aim of the political fascist who can't seem to keep his vile comments about your sincere beliefs to himself. His colostomy bag of pent-up anger about Donald Trump or those awful moronic conservatives runneth over.

I hasten to add that I'm not talking about our more moderate friends who are perfectly willing to discuss issues and not personalities with you without exploding. Rather, it's those hyper-partisan ideological crazies who are growing more agitated with each passing day I'm referring to. You know them. They're everywhere: at small intimate dinner parties, at large banquets, even in church. You're just chatting with a friend about the problems at the southern border when someone from the next table overhears your conversation. She leans over and says, "If we didn't have a numbskull for a President, we might not be making enemies everywhere," and then swiftly goes back to her goulash. THAT is what's known as a drive-by attack and it's happening with increasing frequency.

These political ninjas must all go the same school to learn their craft much like the terrorists of the seventies from the non-aligned countries that all went to Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow (now called the People's Friendship University of Russia). Wherever they go, they all seem to be saying the same thing to us conservatives...SHUT UP! True, some of us do provoke them by talking too loudly or maybe it's our "I love America" buttons and MAGA hats that does it, but that is our right, isn't it? Of course it is, but to Lefties that is the red flag that riles them up so they dig in their hooves and snort wildly as they charge towards us, horns first.

Social intercourse aint what it used to be. Times were when people could disagree without pulling out a weapon, even if that weapon was barbed words. We chilled, walked away or got ourselves another drink. Now one of us gets bloodied if we dare to stand our ground. Have Americans just gotten more aggressive, indignant and intolerant or do we just disagree on everything? I think it's all of them. We no longer give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Our college students need 'safe spaces' while we, their parents, avoid attending events where there could be people with widely differing views. The only place we dare talk politics is to the TV set or to ourselves (much to the displeasure of our spouses). I'm convinced that this self-censorship is THE most destructive element in our society today. While I'm not advocating for a return to the pre-PC times when we made Polish jokes or laughed at Archie Bunker's ethnic appellations, I'm simply saying that sometimes what we don't say can get us in more trouble than what we do say.

Case in point. You're part of a group that is discussing something controversial. A person makes an outlandish generalization. You think about countering it with a simple, "How do you know that, for sure?" But, you don't. You let it pass and it's not because your wife elbowed you in the ribs, either. You chose to avoid conflict. Your therapist would be sooo proud, but later, on the way home in the car you say to your spouse, "I should have said something, anything, to stop that jerk." (I forgot to mention, that 'jerk' is your best friend, and if you can't speak truth to best friends, than to whom can you?) I think that regret is a prohibitively high price to pay for self-censorship. I'm willing to concede that as we get older, we tend to choose our battles more carefully. Maybe it's because we hear the clock ticking away the seconds of our lives louder and louder, or it could be that we've actually realized there are more important things in life than being right all the time. That said, we should not subordinate our principles out of fear of conflict. There are many ways to disagree with people without a midnight trip to the ER for myocardial infarction. Why not think of some that might work for you? Breathe deeply.

Stephan Helgesen is a former career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in thirty different countries, specializing in export promotion. He is now a political analyst and strategist and author of nine books and over 1,000 articles on politics, the economy and social trends. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com

Living as neighbors in the state of 'D'enial

Cute headline, but it's not funny when, according to a recent NBC/Wall St. Journal poll, only 29% of Americans say they believe that the President has been cleared of wrongdoing in the 'Russiagate' collusion scandal. Despite an exhaustive two-year plus study that cost 25 million dollars and 40 investigators' time, most Democrats have pulled the covers over their heads and are clicking their ruby slippers in bed while muttering to themselves "there's no place like home, there's no place like home" (back to the safety of their own self-made reality).

Seems like most Democrat Congressional Representatives are following the yellow brick road path laid out by the troika of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell (all Californians I might add). This goes for House Judiciary Committee Chairman and resident nabob of negativism, Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has pinned a target on the President and offered a bounty to anyone who can produce a smoking gun of wrongdoing that will give him the blond locks of Donald Trump on a silver subpoena.

Living in the state of 'D'enial is something the Democrats have perfected. We saw it happen for eight years under George W. Bush and we're experiencing it again with Donald Trump. It's more than a mantra and much more than a childish tantrum. It's destructive behavior...for all of us. Putting one's head in the sand is the equivalent of pretending it's not your bid in poker instead of playing the hand you've been dealt. People with real psychological problems gleefully enter the world of make-believe and pretend that they're epic heroes from the past (like FDR, JFK or Napoleon Bonaparte). To enter that world, they must sever all connections to reality, say goodbye to their surroundings and disappointments and get their ticket punched in the parallel universe of group-think where all the other 'D'eniars are waiting for them. If you think this is no threat to the rest of us, you're wrong. Anytime anyone chooses to live in denial they diminish our collective chances of coming together (now there's laugh for you, as if Americans are ever going to come together again save for a national catastrophe).

No, the truth is too hard to admit, especially for the Democrats who still insist that Hillary was robbed. They have chosen disbelief over belief, their facts over THE facts and have adopted selective amnesia when it comes to owning up to their responsibility as citizens to make the machine of government work better. They've refined the art of name-calling and character assassination and justify their actions by citing their unassailable goal of making the rest of us buy into their concept of America...using any means necessary to achieve it.

In their game, the refs have been fired and banned from the stadium. The rulebook has been burned as half-time entertainment. Each team's fans must now sit on opposite sides of the field. No one is allowed to mingle, lest some of the dreaded 'Make America Great Again-ness' rubs off on them. It's fourth down and ten and the 'Ds' are busy moving the down marker chain back a few yards, claiming that it's their right to do so since no one trusts anyone anymore anyway. American politics has indeed become a death match in which it's better to destroy than to build, to diminish rather than increase and to reject uncomfortable disagreement by assuming an alternate reality.

To the casual observer, we Americans must appear to be a schizophrenic lot, incapable of dealing with our problems as if we are motivated by two entirely different competitive ethos. One team is coached by Charles Darwin and the other by Billy Graham. You can guess which is which. That leaves conservatives in a quandary: "Should we let the Dems live in their heads and hope they don't see the folly of their ways while we re-build our defenses, or should we help them out of their cells into the sunlight?" Our principles of neighborliness and charity for all should answer that question for us, but if we do help them will that not only prove that it is us that are living in denial - denial of the Democrats' basic instincts to win at any price? I hate questions of morality, don't you?

Stephan Helgesen is a former career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in thirty different countries, specializing in export promotion. He is now a political analyst and strategist and author of nine books and over 1,000 articles on politics, the economy and social trends. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com

Don't just do something; stand there

It's truly amazing how fast our elected officials can react when they sense a better job is in the offing. Like the Aesop's fable of the dog with the bone who sees his reflection in the stream, they will happily drop theirs to get a bigger one. New Mexico is renowned for recycling its people from one cushy job to the next. This is especially true in economic development jobs. I know because I worked with fifty or so economic development representatives back in 2006-2010. It seemed that whenever a better job opened up (or their current job was abolished) they just packed up their Banker's Box and moved house into another office and hung out their 'open for business' shingle.

People keep telling me that we are a small state and that our pool of candidates for government jobs is equally small, and because of that we can't afford to be picky when it comes to exchanging one government job-holder for another. It can be exasperating, though, especially now, when we need fresh ideas and new energy instead of the 'recycled hot air' we get from job high-jumpers who wouldn't know a new idea if it came to them by registered mail. This game of musical chairs is not confined to economic developers. If anything, it is more widespread with elected officials - politicians - who believe they are entitled to hop from one position to another, and woe betide the citizen who questions their motives for doing so. As an example, our current governor announced her intention to run for the state's highest office two weeks after she won re-election to the House of Representatives in 2016! 

Our current Congressman from Congressional District 3, Mr. Ben Lujan (D), is expected to announce his bid for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Tom Udall (D) on Monday, April 1st - April Fools' Day. What appropriate timing. Both Lujan and Udall have been in their seats, voting with their party in the 95+ percentile range since 2009. New Mexican political watchers like myself are reminded that political families like the Lujans and the Udalls feel entitled (by name recognition if nothing else) to sup at the government table. They are part of the New Mexico Way which is characterized by the patron system of servitude. Kiss the right ring in our state and you will be taken care of (read: be given a job or something else of real value) especially if you are a Democrat. In the spirit of fairness, I must say that Republicans have had their own problems with patronage in years past, but nothing can equal the Democrats'. They are truly the gold medalists in the patronage olympics.

This incestuous behavior by the New Mexico True one-percenters does nothing to move us forward. Instead, it forces the rest of us to walk round in circles, because their price of admission to power is nailing one of our feet to the old patron's floor. We must break this vicious cycle of entitlement power. Maybe the only way to do so is to insist on term limiting them and by creating a new wave of voters that believe in ideas instead of ideology and who will reject the patronizing of our state by people who are more concerned with electing agendas than live, thinking human beings.

In the election of 2018, the New Mexico Republican Party supported a number of excellent candidates for national office. One of them was former State Representative, Janice Arnold-Jones. She ran a respectable and professional campaign for CD1, but she lost to a die-hard Progressive Democrat, Deb Haaland, who happened to be half Native American and who was financially supported by billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Haaland's resumé was tailor-made for her district which is predominantly Blue. Like Arnold-Jones, she was a military 'brat' and spent most of her early life up to and through her teen years following her father's assignments in the Marine Corps, never living in the Pueblo where she and her mother were members. While Ms. Haaland did nothing wrong in using her Native American connection to win an election, I believe that she bought into the same kind of identity-based politics that we are now infamous for, here in New Mexico.

Janice Arnold-Jones is a remarkably astute and wise person. I know her, personally, and view her as fair and balanced to a fault, someone who always looks for the best in people. Her back story is one of merit-based success, and while that makes her an amazing person, it was not enough to counter the opposition's identity plus ideology onslaught. 

Janice has never been a predatory political animal. That's why most of us who are conservatives wanted her to represent us in Washington. Unfortunately, neither she nor anyone else like her can win in our state by simply being, smart, honest and forthright. To win, you need some combination of the 'right' ethnicity, race, family ties, or ideology. Conversely, if you are already elected and are looking for the next juicier fruit on the political tree you can just run in place, vote with your party and do nothing until the right seat opens up and then stake your claim on it.

The Alaskan Klondike has nothing on the New Mexican high desert. It's just a shame that most of our gold is of the fool's variety.

Stephan Helgesen is a former career U.S. diplomat who lived and worked in thirty different countries, specializing in export promotion. He is now a political analyst and strategist and author of nine books and over 1,000 articles on politics, the economy and social trends. He can be reached at: stephan@stephanhelgesen.com