"Whatever Trump Wants" -- Twitterman Tries To Boost Cawthorn

My favorite thing about the Republican National Convention in Charlotte so far -- it's not their "high-risk" gathering in the same room of some 326 official state delegates (six from each state) with assorted functionaries and facilitators, nor the shocking surprise that they intend to renominate Donald J. Trump this very morning -- it's their decision not to write a party platform for 2020. Well, to be fair, they submitted three words: "whatever Trump wants." 

Dudes! You really want to proclaim your total lack of any anchor holding you to A Rock? You want to announce to the voters that you hold nothing in particular sacred any more? Oh, I know you said the 2016 Platform is readopted for 2020 -- and those are your positions still, thank you very much, and "You may go now" -- depart in peace and don't notice that the old 2016 platform contains statehood for Puerto Rico and that little plank on Crimea that got edited to make it more advantageous for Russia. 

We pretty much knew it all along, that you're a colony now under imperial rule. You used to believe -- stoutly and without equivocation -- in certain tenets of foreign policy, of monetary policy, of personal responsibility. Then Trump arrived. Whatever Trump didn't like, you had to not like too, and how humiliating is that, shedding conviction like a snake sluffs skin?

(The 2020 Platform of the Democratic Party was controversial too because -- as usual -- the Democrats wanted to write too much rather than nothing at all, so there were arguments to the death. Progressives gave up the most. The Biden moderates wouldn't adopt "Medicare for All," but tried to placate the progressives: "We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach." The Bernie Sanders camp was actively involved in drafting the platform, and they decided to lose gracefully, a boon.)

Cawthorn met Trump at a July fundraiser
for the president. Still photo from
video published by The Sun.
Cawthorn is seated to the left.

I know well enough that party platforms are wallpaper and nobody pays them any attention except for partisans like me looking for ammunition. It's still a bad look for a major political party to shirk the responsibility of declaring "These Are the Values We Know, We Know."  

Trump will be in Charlotte at noon to accept the nomination, and then he plans to travel to the 11th Congressional District to give young Madison Cawthorn a boost in his campaign to take Mark Meadows' old seat. Trump's been petting Cawthorn like a new mascot. The lad's been given a speaking slot on the convention program. I look for him to play the victim to get past the awkwardness of being called out publicly in recent days for claiming acceptance to enter the Naval Academy when he was never accepted there, and the serial testimony of several young women who've said that Cawthorn pushed himself on them as God's gift to their gender.

Cawthorn's Democratic rival, Col. Moe Davis, has come on strong and relentlessly. Davis has not been afraid to confront Cawthorn's character flaws, his lack of experience even at holding down a job, his willingness to become a partisan puppet. Cawthorn looks increasingly like a would-be Lothario surfer trying to get next to important people.

Trump's actually landing in the small town of Mills River in Henderson County, where Democrat candidate for the state Senate Brian Caskey is also a town commissioner. Caskey tweeted: "I’ve been invited, since I am the Mayor Pro Tem. If you see me in photos, I’ll be the one wearing the
@JoeBiden mask." I'll be watching Caskey's tweets this afternoon.

If the Blue Wave Rolls Bigly, Brian Caskey Could Bring an Upset in SD48

Prognosticators consider North Carolina Senate District 48 as "Safe Republican" (although Bitzer rated it only "Lean Republican" at some point late last fall -- I have the print-out but don't ask me for the URL). Trump took 59.36 percent of the district vote in 2016. That's enough to sober anybody up -- ice water to one's tenderest aspirations. But Democrat Brian Caskey has been making a campaign there, and anyone should have seen it coming. 

I followed the rise of Caskey starting on December 31, 2019, shortly after the close of candidate filing. He was the frontrunner then, I thought, and has never stopped. He won the Democratic primary in March. In July, he called out Republican incumbent Chuck Edwards for being in Duke Energy's pocket. A scrapper, and that's what it will take to upset this incumbent. If anything, Caskey should do more of that hell-raising with Edwards' record.

The mathematical question: Does Democratic/Independent enthusiasm for voting (i.e., disgust with Trump) equal a 5 percent bump for Caskey? And does a downward trending enthusiasm gap among mountain Republicans equal another 5 percent advantage for Caskey? (Political observers whose roots run deep in the mountains say things aren't so keen for many Republican voters. There's a palpable sense of exhaustion.) Together, Democratic enthusiasm and Republican depression could wipe out Trump's 10 percent advantage from 2016. Is it possible? Hell, in a year when the very bedrock of our Republic, the Post Office, is threatened, I'll believe almost anything is possible

There's another factor impacting on Caskey's chances to flip this Senate district: SD48 overlaps with HD113 and HD117 where Democratic candidates have been mounting energetic campaigns -- Sam Edney in the 113th and Josh Remillard in the 117th. Edney especially is rallying the troops. Edney, Remillard, and Kim Bost over in the 96th District (Catawba County) have teamed up for their own "Breaking the Majority" campaign. The energy is noticeable for mobilizing "sometime" voters, new voters, independent voters (who hold the balance of power), and with Caskey assaulting the Senate, there's every promise of culmulative force applied against The Matrix.

The Elections of March: Democratic Primary in NCS48

Until March, we'll be focusing our attention on coming primaries that might signal strong Democratic contenders who could conceivably flip Republican districts next November. NC Senate District 48 includes eastern Buncombe County (but not Asheville) and all of Henderson and Transylvania counties -- discouraging ground for a Democratic insurgent. This was the district occupied for many terms by Republican iron first Tom Apodaca before he retired in 2016.

In March, former Democratic House member and former chair of the NC Democratic Party Patsy Keever announced that she would be running for the District 48 Senate seat in 2020. Keever's well known in western NC and might have been the instant frontrunner for the nomination, but she was actually late to announce her candidacy. Democrat Brian Caskey was already in the race. He had announced his intention to run all the way back in February. Then another court-ordered redistricting dealt Keever a fatal blow. The most recent remapping of NC House and Senate districts drew Keever out of the 48th, leaving the field to Caskey. But he's now been joined by two other Democratic hopefuls who are competing with him for the nomination.

Brian Caskey

Caskey is a 48-year-old Gen-X-er (born in 1971) and a town council member (the first Democrat ever!) for the little town of Mills River in Henderson County. He and his wife Stacey own Biltmore Tutoring which employs professionals to "help many students improve grades, achieve higher SAT and ACT scores, and earn admissions (and scholarships) to prestigious colleges throughout the world." As a Mills River councilman, Caskey has been particularly active with environmental enhancements, supporting the establishment of walking trails and greenways and the restoration of streams. He has also served on the Henderson County Transportation Advisory Committee, the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization, and the Carolina Veterans Coalition.

From all appearances, Caskey is running an energetic and effective campaign and is probably the frontrunner in the primary. He has a website, a Facebook page, and a very active Twitter account.


Najah Underwood

Najah Underwood is a 23-year-old millennial idealist ("The Voice for the Voiceless") born in 1996. She has an under-developed website (which includes no information about her background, her education, her working life) and a Facebook page. She thinks inspirationally about "uplifting" her community but seems pretty unprepared for a political campaign.







Cristal Figueroa

Figueroa is a 25-year-old millennial born in 1994. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants, a 2018 graduate of UNC-Asheville, and she says she is currently working three different jobs -- as a legal aid to an immigration attorney, as a registered behavior technician who works with children with learning disabilities, and in retail. She's also driven by idealism and a fierce determination to be heard: "Cristal, like so many of us, has been told that she doesn’t deserve a seat at the table. Well, she’s decided to build her own. Pull up a chair and join her."

In addition to her website, Figueroa has a Facebook page and a Twitter account.


The Republican Incumbent -- Chuck Edwards

Edwards was appointed to the Senate seat in 2016 upon Tom Apodaca's retirement and subsequently ran that same year in his first successful election. He was easily reelected in 2018. He's a 59-year-old boomer (born in 1960). He owns a string of McDonald's franchises and is otherwise a standard-issue western North Carolina conservative Republican.

District 48 remains a "Lean Republican" seat.

In Your Face, Duke Energy! Democrat Brian Caskey Bringing Heat in NC Senate District 48

You wanna see the new Democratic determination to change things in Raleigh? Look no further than Brian Caskey of Mills River in Henderson County. He's been an announced candidate for the NC Senate since February of this year, and he's built out an impressive Facebook feed and website that display a full-blown and serious campaign.

He's certainly gotten the attention of Duke Energy:

"You know you’re pushing the right buttons when you link Duke Energy to corruption and immediately get a letter from them. I added the part in the middle to show how much they gave [Republican incumbent Senator] Chuck Edwards last year."

Brian Caskey

There is no disputing that Duke Energy has powerful friends in the NC General Assembly who are always maneuvering to let Duke Energy off the hook for coal ash pollution, and there's no disputing that Duke Energy gives them lots of cash. You can call that "cake icing" if you want to, but I think you'd be justified in calling it "corruption" of the legislative process.

Caskey looks like a scrapper, and we like that in a Democrat. He's an elected member of the Mills River town council, and he introduced the resolution to support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in North Carolina. "I am determined that my daughters will have a level playing field, and that they will know that they are equal to men in the classroom as well as in the work environment."

Meanwhile, the incumbent Republican Chuck Edwards looks like a tool (and not just with reference to the Duke Energy campaign contributions). As co-chair of the Senate Commerce and Insurance Committee, Edwards helped kill (just yesterday!) a House bill that would have banned the use of handheld cellphones while driving.

Chuck Edwards

A few days ago while Edwards was chairing the Senate Commerce Committee, the bill to allow alcohol sales in shopping malls statewide came up for consideration, and interestingly (in light of the many Republican teetotalers in Edwards' district), he pushed the bill forward despite the committee's majority vote against it. According to Lauren Horsch, "A voice vote on the bill was divided, with seemingly more “no” votes than “aye” votes, but Chairman Chuck Edwards, R-Henderson, ruled in favor of supporters and moved the bill forward. There are no recorded or roll call votes in state Senate committees."

That looks like corruption too, O my brethren!

Edwards was appointed to the Senate late in 2016 to replace the retiring Tom Apodaca, then won on his own in November 2016, and ran for reelection in 2018 and got 56% of the vote. That frankly looks like a soft percentage for a Republican in that district, but it's still an uphill haul for Caskey. We'll be watching how he pulls that load and wishing him the best.