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Notwithstanding predictions of a Democratic Senate bloodbath in 2018, Heidi Heitkamps favorability rating in North Dakota is 60 percent, while Republican Jeff Flakes popularity in Arizona is underwater. Photo: U.S. Senate

Perhaps as a tonic for the troops at a time when Senate Republicans are being engulfed by chaos of their own making, veteran spinner Karl Rove devoted a Wall Street Journal column to a baleful assessment of the reelection prospects of Senate Democrats running in states carried handily by Donald Trump last year.

Theres a certain dated quality to Roves analysis; he writes as though these senators are fresh from gazing in awe at Trumps 2016 victory and are trying to decide whether to fight back or run for the hills. In reality, these pols have for the most part chosen to oppose every unpopular thing Trump and the congressional GOP have proposed this year, which fortunately for red-state Democrats is nearly their entire agenda. Still, the 2016 numbers are indeed daunting for some:

The 25 Democratic senators who face re-election in 2018 are already gearing up for a fight. Their latest quarterly fundraising reports, released over the past two weeks, show impressive totals, ranging up to $3.1 million. But for the 10 Democrats from states carried by President Trump, a well-stuffed war chest may not be enough.

This is especially true for six senators in states where Mr. Trumps victory last November was huge. He won Joe Manchins West Virginia by an astonishing 42 points; Heidi Heitkamps North Dakota by 36 points; Jon Testers Montana by 20; Joe Donnellys Indiana and Claire McCaskills Missouri by 19, and Sherrod Browns Ohio by 8.

Rove goes on to make a very dubious assertion that we are going to hear a lot from Republicans between now and November of 2018:

They must all keep an eye on the presidents favorability ratings. On Election Day, Mr. Trump was viewed favorably by 37.5% of voters and unfavorably by 58.5%, according to the RealClearPolitics average. As of this Wednesday, his ratings stood at 40.4% favorable and 53.6% unfavorable.

Mr. Trump is likely to be more popular in states he won than his national average: The larger his margin in those states last November, the better he stands now. If this trend holds through 2018, Democrats in states Mr. Trump won by double or nearly double digits could face stiff re-election contests.

This argument ignores the rather pertinent fact that Trump was running against a rival who was almost as unpopular as he was. In 2018, Republicans wont have the luxury of running against Hillary Clinton. Instead, they will be up against well-known Senate incumbents with their own public profiles, and in a midterm environment where there is usually a wind blowing against the party controlling the White House.

So while we should indeed keep and eye on the presidents favorability ratings, those of the senators in question are even more relevant. As it happens Morning Consult just released an update of its home-state favorability assessments for all 100 U.S. senators, and the very Democrats Rove thinks are in inherently deep trouble are actually doing quite well. Joe Manchins ratio is 57/31; Heidi Heitkamps is an even more impressive 60/28. Jon Tester (50/39), Joe Donnelly (53/25), and Sherrod Brown (50/29) are at or above the magic 50-percent level that often connotes future victory, with limited unfavorables, and Claire McCaskill (46/38) isnt exactly plumbing the depths of unpopularity, either.

In fact, the one senator up in 2018 whose favorability numbers are underwater is a Republican, Jeff Flake of Arizona (37/45).

Another problem for the GOP is that it is struggling to find credible challengers to theoretically vulnerable Democrats in some states (as in Missouri, where consensus GOP favorite Representative Ann Wagner decided not to take on McCaskill), and is facing potentially fractious Republican primaries (as in Indiana, where Representatives Luke Messer and Todd Rokita are already attacking each other) in others.

There is plenty of time for things to change in the months ahead, and nobody on the Democratic side has any reason to feel complacent about holding onto Senate seats in one of the more lopsided landscapes in living memory. But for now, a Democratic red-state bloodbath in 2018 looks unlikely. And if congressional Republicans continue to flail around in the clumsy pursuit of an unpopular agenda, the odds of survival for Democrats in Trump Country will only go up.

Peter W. Smith was found dead with a suicide note shortly after talking to a reporter about his plot to get Russian-hacked Clinton emails.

The favorite lost the yellow jersey, and things are getting interesting.

Sebastian Gorka says the White House may give back Russian diplomatic compounds that the U.S. seized to punish the Kremlins election interference.

Hes also not kidding about those solar panels.

Six Senate Democrats running for reelection in states easily carried by Trump last year are benefitting from strong popularity and GOP fecklessness.

I already know where you live, Im on you. You might as well call me.You will see me. I promise. Bro.

Ed Rogers: lobbyist, Washington Post columnist, and Trump defender.

By giving conservatives long-term Medicaid cuts and then telling moderates they wont be implemented, McConnell may be too clever for his own good.

He addressed the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm that advocates against LGBTQ rights.

John Roberts set a very favorable precedent for the former State Assembly speaker, who was sent to jail for public corruption.

At a press conference in Paris, he couldnt escape the big controversy here at home.

It has a few extra tweaks, but the essence remains intact. And, like its predecessor, it seems dead in the water.

The Trumps Paris trip begins.

Its asking Donald Trump Jr. to testify about his meeting with the Kremlin-connected lawyer, possibly as early as next week.

He revealed at an event in D.C.

Ahead of Trumps visit to Paris, the French president says that the Western world has been cracking up since the American election.

This is the worst episode of Schoolhouse Rock! weve ever seen.

An appeals court used a recent Supreme Court precedent to say the jury had been given incorrect instructions in the case.

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Things Are Looking Up for Democratic Senators in Trump Country - New York Magazine

Sen. Tom Carper Explains How Democrats Could Work With GOP On Health Care NPR NPR's Kelly McEvers talks with Democratic Sen. Tom Carper about how his party might work with Republicans to improve health care. Facebook; Twitter. Google+. Email. Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on NPR One · Apple Podcasts · Google ...

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Sen. Tom Carper Explains How Democrats Could Work With GOP On Health Care - NPR

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she believes Christopher Wray should get a committee vote next week. | Getty

Senate Republicans are pushing for a speedy vote on Christopher Wrays confirmation to lead the FBI and at least one powerful Democrat is willing to help.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she believes Wray should get a committee vote next week, although any senator who sits on the panel could ask that it be held over for seven days.

Story Continued Below

Its been the tradition, Feinstein said, referring to the fact that nominees for FBI director have rarely faced the one-week delay. And I think theres no reason not to.

Feinstein noted that the nine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee hadnt yet discussed whether Wrays nomination should be delayed a routine practice in the committee that gives senators more time to vet candidates. Still, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday that nominees for FBI director generally havent been delayed, and he scheduled a committee vote for Wray for July 20.

Earlier this week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview before the confirmation hearing that he would favor a delay, because I think as with any hearing, there will likely be questions.

A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox.

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Still, the comments from Feinstein show just how little opposition and concern there is from Democrats about Wray, currently a lawyer in private practice who also served in the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.

A handful of Democratic senators said during Wrays hearing before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that they would back his confirmation to replace James Comey, who was abruptly fired by President Donald Trump in May.

And Wrays Democratic support grew on Thursday, when Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would vote for his confirmation after meeting privately with him.

I am likely to support his confirmation, added Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) in an interview Thursday. He answered, directly and clearly, a whole series of questions about his independence, his willingness to resist an overreaching president and his determination to provide [special prosecutor] Bob Mueller with the resources and freedom to continue his investigation that he needs and deserves.

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Democrats signal support for quick vote on FBI nominee Wray - Politico

But more so than other recent Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton tested the conscience of a lot of Catholics who see abortion as immoral. She dropped the pledge that pro-abortion rights Democrats have offered to make abortion rare. Instead, she advocated voiding the Hyde Amendment so that federal funds could be used to pay for abortions. Even Clintons running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, opposed repealing the Hyde Amendment.

The Pew survey released this week did not detect a similarly large divide over religion in the GOP; it found that sixty-eight percent of moderate and liberal Republicans said religion had a positive impact.

The survey of 2,504 adults also looked at attitudes toward other major institutions, including the national news media, financial institutions, labor unions and colleges.

The two wings of the Democratic Party had somewhat similar responses in certain areas, such as colleges, where large majorities saw a positive influence: seventy-two percent favorable, and; nineteen percent, negative. That broke down to seventy-nine percent favorable for liberals and sixty-seven percent for moderates and conservatives.

In contrast, Republicans divided over colleges, with a breakdown of fifty-one percent positive and forty-three percent negative for moderate-liberal Republicans and twenty-nine to sixty-five for conservatives.

Partisan differences over banks and financial institutions have widened, since, according to Pew, it was the first time since 2010 that more Republicans had a positive view of the businesses than negative. In this survey, forty-six percent of Republicans saw the financial institutions in a positive light, and thirty-seven percent viewed them as a negative for the country. Among Democrats, fifty-four percent had a negative view and thirty-three percent, positive. As recently as 2015, Pew found that there were no partisan differences on this issue. Now, there is a thirteen-point gap.

What all this tells us is that attacking colleges and the national news media and defending churches would seem to be effective to attract, or perhaps pander, for conservative Republican votes. For Democrats, the same can be said of attacking banks and financial institutions. The survey shows that if anything, the ideological gap between the parties is widening. Catholics are known to serve as a moderating influence on both parties, but the countrys drift is toward deeper partisan division.

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The Democrats' Religion Problem - Commonweal

By Richard A. Moss By Richard A. Moss July 13 at 11:47 AM

Donald Trump Jr. appeared on Fox News's "Hannity" on July 11 to defend his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign, and his father jumped to his defense on Twitter. (Amber Ferguson,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Yesterday, President Trump suggested in a Reuters interview that there wasnt anything surprising or wrong about his sons enthusiasm for learning secrets that he had been told were part of a Russian effort to help Trumps presidential campaign. He said:

I think many people would have held that meeting. Most of the phony politicians who are Democrats who I watched over the last couple of days most of those phonies that act holier-than-thou, if the same thing happened to them, they would have taken that meeting in a heartbeat.

Trump is right that foreign powers have tried to influence U.S. politicians in the past. Foreign powers have many ways to exercise influence in representative democracies. Some of these may be public, and others surreptitious. 2016 certainly wasnt the first time the Kremlin tried to influence a U.S. election, and Moscow is by no means alone in attempting to sway U.S. politics. However, these efforts have worked in complicated ways, andAmerican politicians have not been as quick to accept their help as Trump suggests.

Russia tried and failed to support the Democrats in 1968

In 1968, Moscow feared that the staunchly anti-communist Richard M. Nixon would be elected. To forestall that, the Kremlin decided to reach out to Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey. As Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, revealed in his memoir,In Confidence, two decades ago: The top Soviet leaders took an extraordinary step, unprecedented in the history of Soviet-American relations, by secretly offering Humphrey any conceivable help in his election campaign including financial aid. Dobrynin explained:

I received a top-secret instruction to that effect from [Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei] Gromyko personally and did my utmost to dissuade him from embarking on such a dangerous venture, which if discovered certainly would have backfired and ensured Humphreys defeat, to say nothing of the real trouble it would have caused for Soviet-American relations. Gromyko answered laconically, There is a decision, you carry it out.

The opportunity soon arose for the well-connected ambassador at a breakfast at Humphreys home. Dobrynin subtly raised the issue of Humphreys campaign finances during a discussion of the election, but the vice president deflected the issue. Humphrey, I must say, Dobrynin wrote, was not only a very intelligent but also a very clever man. He knew at once what was going on. Humphrey told Dobrynin that it was more than enough for him to have Moscows good wishes which he highly appreciated. Dobrynin felt relieved that he had followed his orders and Humphrey had avoided the potentially explosive issue.

Humphrey did not mention the Soviet election outreach or even Dobrynin in his 1991 memoir, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics.

Russia had tried to hurt Nixons chances in 1960

Russian worries about Nixons anti-communism did not begin in 1968. At their first face-to-face meeting in Vienna, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev joked with the new U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, that the Soviet Union had cast the deciding ballot in [Kennedys] election to the Presidency over that son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon, in 1960. When Kennedy asked for clarification, Khrushchev explained that he had waited until after the U.S. election to release Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 spy-plane pilot shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, to undercut Nixons claim that he could work with the Soviets.

Khrushchev may have conflated Powerss release which didnt happen until 1962 with two American survivors of an RB-47H spy plane that was shot down in July 1960. Both Nixon and Kennedy had called upon the Soviet Union to release the American pilots. Nevertheless, as Adam Taylor previously wrote in The Washington Post:

Noting that the two candidates were at a stalemate, Khrushchev recalled saying that if Powers or the other Americans were released before the election, it could give Nixon a boost. It would be better to wait until after the election, the Soviet premier thought.

My comrades agreed, and we did not release Powers, he wrote. As it turned out, wed done the right thing. Kennedy won the election by a majority of only 200,000 or so votes, a negligible margin if you consider the huge population of the United States. The slightest nudge either way would have been decisive.

Even 57 years later, the consequences of Khrushchevs actions remain difficult to assess. However, the Soviet Unions activities apparently were indirect, and did not involve any quid-pro-quo.

China possibly tried to influence U.S. politics in 1996

Moscow isnt the only foreign power that has probably tried to influence U.S. politics. The China Lobby the efforts of the Republic of China (Taiwan) under the Kuomintang has been well-documented (for example) as soliciting political, economic and military support from the 1940s to the 1970s for Chiang Kai-shek and Taiwan in opposition to Mao Zedong and the Peoples Republic of China. In addition to Taiwans efforts, and possibly to counter them, the PRC may have been involved in U.S. congressional and presidential elections during the 1990s.

In February 1997, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and Brian Duffy wrote of alleged efforts by the PRC to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 presidential campaign. The 1996 U.S.campaign finance controversy resulted in congressional and FBI investigations but did not lead to the appointment of an independent counsel. The Peoples Republic of China consistently denied any involvement in the U.S. election campaign.

These are the games nations play

In his interview with Reuters, Trump also said: I am not a person who goes around trusting lots of people. But [Putins] the leader of Russia. It is the second most powerful nuclear power on earth. I am the leader of the United States. I love my country. He loves his country. It should come as no surprise that Russian leaders saw it in their interests to support him.

Trumps statement suggests that countries will pursue their interests when and where they can. This reflects the pragmatic realpolitik (devotion to interests above ideals) embodied by Lord Palmerstons famous quip in 1848: We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

In its influence campaign and possibly more direct efforts to shape the 2016 election, Russian leaders were almost certainly opposing a candidate, Hillary Clinton, who they saw as an impediment to their interests, much as the Kremlin opposed Richard Nixon in 1960 and 1968. One of the ironies of history is that the Soviet Union was able to achieve a relaxation of tensions dtente with the United States with the very person it had opposed, Nixon.

Other great powers have attempted to influence or have actually influenced elections including the United States in places like France and Italy in 1948, Latin America and elsewhere. Great powers will do so as long as it is in their interests and as long as they feel they can get away with it.

The problem is that if you are caught doing it, you, and the politicians you support, may face serious blowback, as Anatoly Dobrynin recognized in 1968 when he did his utmost to dissuade the Kremlin from attempting to support Hubert Humphrey.

Richard A. Moss is an associate research professor at the U.S.Naval War Colleges Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He is grateful to John B. Turner Jr. of Memphis for reminding him about the section of Dobrynins memoir on the 1968 election

Authors note: The views presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or its components.

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Donald Trump is wrong. When Democrats were offered secret help ... - Washington Post