Midterms DA

*** 1NC shells

 1NC---general
Next off is the midterms da
Dems win now, but it’s close – midterms forecasters, toss-ups
Scott 7-24 - Dylan Scott, 7-24-2018 ("The odds that Democrats will take the House in the 2018
midterms keep looking better", Vox, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/7/24/17607138/2018-midterm-elections-predictions-generic-ballot-democrats, accessed
7-25-2018, GB)

With a little more than three months left until Election Day, Democrats seem to be strengthening their
position to win control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Two data points will suffice to
explain the situation right now: On Tuesday, the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball, one of the nation’s
premier election forecasters, changed its ratings for 17 House districts — and all of them moved in favor
of Democrats. Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot, if you go by the RealClearPolitics polling average,
has quietly doubled (and then some) since the beginning of June, from a mere 3.2 percentage
points to a healthy 7.1 points. That is roughly the margin political science nerds think they need. Real
Clear Politics If you want to add a third point, Democrats have been posting very strong fundraising
numbers, with Democratic challengers outraising GOP incumbents in some of the nation’s most
competitive districts, as Vox’s Tara Golshan recently noted. “Put it all together,
and the Democrats now look like soft favorites to win a House majority with a little more than 100 days
to go,” the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik wrote on Tuesday. He emphasized how reluctant they have been to
move the odds from 50-50, but the indicators for Democrats keep looking better and better. A quick
assessment of the House battleground further supports the case. One GOP-held seat — in now de-
gerrymandered Pennsylvania — is considered a Safe Democratic win; two others are considered Likely
Democratic pickups. Four Republican districts — three of which are open seats with no incumbent — fall
in the Lean Democratic camp, and 33 GOP-held seats are rated as toss-ups, according to the Crystal Ball.
If you added the 16 seats that merely Lean Republican, then the 2018 House battlefield equals around
60 districts. Democrats need to flip 24 Republican seats to take back the House. By the looks of things,
they could win less than half of the competitive districts and still pull it off. Just one Democratic seat is
considered a Safe Republican win (again, a result of the Pennsylvania redistricting) and only two
Democratic-held seats are rated as toss-ups. In other words, almost the entire 2018 campaign will be
fought over GOP-held territory. On the one hand, good Democratic odds shouldn’t be such a shock. The
minority party’s gains in midterm elections are a fact of life in American politics. President Trump, in
spite of relatively strong economic indicators, is pretty unpopular. Issues like health care promise to
dominate the campaign, and voters prefer Democrats to Republicans in key policy debates. But
Democrats are still facing a heavily gerrymandered House map, and the frank reality that their (younger)
supporters have historically been less reliable voters in midterm elections than the GOP’s (older) base.
Recent polling underscored the real risk that millennial voters won’t turn out as hoped. So everything
could still go wrong for Democrats in the 2018 midterms. But with about 100 days left in the
campaign, they havea lot of reasons to be optimistic.

The plan gives the GOP a platform beyond tax reform---that guarantees GOP victory
Bush 6-6-2018 – former presidential candidate (Jeb, “Jeb Bush: Delaying Immigration Reform Is a
Missed Opportunity for Republicans,” TIME, http://time.com/5302970/jeb-bush-daca-immigration-
reform-republicans-midterms/)//BB

Despite the urgency of our nation’s immigration crisis, politicians on both sides of the aisle cynically
employ immigration as a wedge issue, election after election, for their own benefit. Meanwhile, our
inability to fix a broken system has tremendous real world costs, both human and economic. As
Republicans consider whether they will hold off taking up immigration in advance of November, I offer a
cautionary hypothetical: What happens if Congress doesn’t address the issue this year, and Republicans
lose the majority? Do we really want to risk waiting to see what a Democratic House and an
unpredictable White House may do? As opposed to caucus infighting over a vote on the fate of
DREAMers — just one of many issues that must be addressed — why not embrace conservative,
comprehensive immigration reform now? Piecemeal legislative efforts haven’t proved successful to
date, so let’s advance a suite of reforms that will return our immigration system into a functioning and
economically advantageous institution. President Donald Trump — who has displayed a striking lack of
consistency on immigration policy but deserves credit for remaining focused on border security — has
indicated multiple times he is open to a striking a deal, something President Obama failed to do when
his party controlled Congress. The politics of the issue may be tough, but the solutions are far from
elusive. First, it is past time to truly secure our border, and there are new technologies to supplement
physical barriers that can be more effective at a dramatically lower cost than constructing a 2,200-mile
wall— an unrealistic idea that has little chance of coming fully to fruition, regardless of who pays for it.
Considering the latest idea is to “crowdfund” the estimated $21.6 billion project, it would seem
pragmatic to focus on the achievable, including bolstering drone surveillance and improving
infrastructure that will allow for better monitoring of our border. Second, we must end the diversity
lottery — which results in 50,000 visas annually — and narrow family reunification to what every other
country allots for: spouses and minor children. Chain migration accounts for a substantial portion of
immigrant entrances into our country with no respect to merit or prospective benefit to our nation.
Countries like Canada and Australia have prioritized economic-driven factors in their immigration
systems, with substantial benefits for their economies. Based on current research, we already know
legal immigrants are almost twice as likely to start a business than individuals born here, comprise a
quarter of all entrepreneurs in the country and are three times more likely to file patents for
innovations. Dramatically cutting legal immigration isn’t the answer. We need a guest worker program
linked to market demand. We need to make it easier for foreign students gaining valuable college
educations here to obtain work visas. And we must reform the H-1B visa program to help address the
6.7 million job openings that remain unfilled because employers can’t find enough skilled workers. Third,
we must modernize our system, overhaul the bureaucracy and effectively enforce our immigration laws.
The biggest immigration problem we face is the large population of immigrants who overstay their visas,
accounting for a full two-thirds of those here illegally in recent years. Investments in our court system
and law enforcement are critical — currently, there is a backlog of more than 700,000 cases before
immigration judges. E-Verify, a Department of Homeland Security resource that enables businesses to
check if prospective employees are eligible to work in the U.S., must be enhanced and made mandatory
to use; employers who don’t should face sanctions. We also have to improve the William Wilberforce
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act so it no longer provides an unintended incentive for
sending Central American children into the country illegally. Finally — and likely the most difficult
element to achieve consensus on — we need to address the full population of illegal immigrants in our
country today. For all law-abiding DREAMers, there should be a path to citizenship. But the same should
not be extended to their parents or other undocumented immigrants who broke laws to come here.
Rather, we should develop a framework that allows for them to come out from the shadows, apply for a
provisional green card, pay a fine, pay taxes (as many already do) and, over an extended period of time,
earn legal status. Rhetoric aside, our country has no realistic plans to deport millions of people, and it’s
time we address what we actually can do. Refusing to address the status of the majority of illegal
immigrants in the country will only prolong our challenges. Meaningful tax reform was a huge win for
the American people in 2018, but it doesn’t have to be the only one. If congressional Republicans want
to be masters of their own fate on election day, they need to keep working. Tackling immigration and
other issues of high priority to voters — including finally repealing Obamacare, as promised — would
provide conservatives the platform guaranteed to win in 2018.
Dem House win guarantees impeachment and removal
Goldberg 17 (Jonah, 6-14-2017, National Review senior editor, bestselling author and columnist and
fellow of the National Review Institute, Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC), "Trump Will Probably Be Impeached if Republicans Lose the House"
National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448590/democrats-take-back-house-2018-
trump-probably-impeached)
Unless it steps up soon, Democrats will probably take back the majority in 2018 — and take down the
president. The 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich. Since Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a
midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made the election a referendum on
impeaching President Bill Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly, voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do
it.” The White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then–
White House chief of staff John Podesta was running in Washington’s Rock Creek park when it hit him:
GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat and beat and beat
on them until they vote for impeachment.” It fell to Podesta to tell the still-celebrating White House
staff that the midterms meant nothing, that the push to impeach the president in the House was a
runaway train that could not be derailed. “This thing is rigged,” Podesta announced at a Monday-
morning staff meeting. “We are going to lose.” President Trump’s White House could use a John Podesta
about now. Because no one seems to have told Trump’s team that the Democrats are every bit as
committed to impeaching Trump as the GOP was to impeaching Clinton. The difference, of course, is
that the Democrats don’t control the House — yet. If they did, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York
rightly noted recently, impeachment proceedings would already be underway. And if the Democrats
take back the House in 2018, it won’t matter to most members whether the country as a whole supports
impeachment, because the voters who elected them — and the donors who supported them — will be
in favor of it. (A recent Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans support
impeachment while 43 percent oppose it.) Personally, I think it would be folly to impeach the president
given what we know now. But that’s meaningless. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors”
notwithstanding, the criteria for impeachment have little to do with criminal law and everything to do
with politics. If 218 members of the House think it is right — or simply in their political interest — to
impeach the president, he can be impeached. Whether two-thirds of the Senate decides to remove the
president from office is also an entirely political decision. Given the likely composition of the Senate
after the next election, however, that remains unlikely. Then again, who knows? Given how Trump
responds to criticism and political pressure, would you want to bet that the tweeter-in-chief would be a
model of statesmanlike restraint during an impeachment ordeal? So many of his current problems are
the direct result of letting his ego or frustration get the better of him. What fresh troubles would he
mint when faced with removal from office? What might he say under oath to the special counsel?
Clinton, recall, was impeached and disbarred because he perjured himself in a deposition. The only
hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. House minority leader
Nancy Pelosi has cautioned against making the midterms a referendum on impeachment. But that is an
electoral strategy, not a plan for when she gets the speaker’s gavel. And even if she declines to go
straight to impeachment hearings on Day One, a Democratic-controlled House would still be a
nightmare for the White House. Any hope of passing a conservative agenda would die instantaneously.
Worse, once Democrats gained the power to subpoena documents and compel testimony from
members of the administration, the Hobbesian internal politics of today’s White House would look like a
company picnic by comparison. In short, the only hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to
maintain control of the House. According to various reports, the GOP thinks it can hold on by running
“against the media” in 2018. As pathetic as that would be, it might work. Though I doubt it. A better
strategy would be to actually get things done. And the only way for that to happen is for both houses of
Congress to get their act together. Voting bills out of the House may be enough to justify a Rose Garden
party, but it will do little to sway voters who’ve been told for years that the GOP needs control of all
three branches to do big things. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, but his presidency will hang in
the balance.

Trump foreign policy implodes liberal order and causes global war
Rosendorf 17 – Neal Rosendorf, Associate Professor of International Relations, New Mexico State
University, Ph.D., Harvard University, “ÜBERMAN AMERICA: THE SINISTER SOFT POWER OF TRUMP’S
FOREIGN POLICY”, CPD Blog, 2-27, https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/%C3%BCberman-america-
sinister-soft-power-trump%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy
Hence soft power, undergirded by American values, has correctly been seen as a preponderantly
positive force in international relations, in which transparent, free-market, representative democracies
that are open to the world have a baked-in advantage over repressive autocratic regimes. But what
happens if the U.S. becomes one of the world's leading bad guys? Can the U.S. still maintain soft power
if it is extolling hard-edged nationalism and xenophobia, disdaining longstanding alliances and
fomenting the breakup of the entire post-World War II system that America put in place seven decades
ago? What would it look like? Who would it attract? And where will it take the world? In fact, although a
number of prominent figures have warned against the American abdication of liberal world order
leadership and the related erosion, or even the end, of American soft power, I would argue that in
hewing to the Trump foreign policy line the US will in fact continue to maintain a considerable “ability to
shape the preferences of others”. But it won’t be via the sort of attraction, persuasion, ideas and ideals
that analysts and policy formulators weaned on postwar bipartisan consensus U.S. internationalism (this
writer included) will be remotely comfortable with, nor will they (we) celebrate the sort of leaders,
activists and publics who respond positively to this version of American soft power. They (we) won’t like
the results, to put it exceedingly mildly. With the Trump administration violently casting off U.S. fealty to
such watchwords of the exceptionalist American faith as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,”
“the last best hope of earth,” “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,” or “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming
with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” it can be hard to imagine that the U.S. could still
hold soft power, albeit of a dramatically different cast, attractive to a disturbingly different audience. As
an aid to the (nightmare) imagination-challenged, an apt metaphor for what lies ahead for U.S. soft
power, should the Trump Administration succeed in its radical recasting of American values and policies
at home and abroad, can be found in the Classics—of comedy, that is: Saturday Night Live, and a
hilarious, terrifying sketch featuring “Überman.” No, this has nothing to do with a car ride service.
Überman was the brainchild of Al Franken, an SNL writer-performer before his election to the U.S.
Senate. In 1979 Franken posed the counterfactual question, “What If….Superman Grew Up in Germany
instead of America?” In Franken’s re-imagination of Superman’s origin story, young Kal-El’s rocket lands
during the interwar years in Prussia rather than Kansas, where he is raised by ardent Nazis who, as his
adoptive father reminds him, “taught you how the Fatherland was stabbed in the back at Versailles, how
Jews are parasites, how Germany will one day bring order to the world!” Thus inspired, Klaus Kent, “a
mild-mannered clerk for the Ministry of Propaganda,” becomes Überman, proudly declaring to Adolf
Hitler his fight for “Untruth, Injustice and the Nazi Way,” saving Der Führer from a hidden bomb he
discovers with his X-ray vision, and denouncing Jimmy Olsteyn as a Jew—whose secret he also uncovers
with his X-ray vision (get it?). After depositing the hapless Jimmy at Auschwitz Überman wins the Battle
of Stalingrad in five minutes, singlehandedly rounds up two million Jews, and “Kills Every Person in
England—U.S. Next”, as the headline blares in Der Daily Planet. The longer Donald Trump holds on to
power, and hence the longer the sinister soft power Trumpism manifests is projected around the world,
the greater the encouragement to, and impact on, the unsavory populist nationalist movements and
authoritarian regimes to which America is now perversely offering inspiration. Donald Trump’s
unabashed “America First” foreign policy is the metaphorical equivalent of Überman’s gruesome
reversal of Superman’s biography and principles. Al Franken’s sketch encapsulates the unfolding Up-Is-
Down, Black-Is-White, Good-Is-Evil and Evil-Is-Good disjunction and the global havoc the U.S. is in the
process of wreaking. It isn’t necessary to rehearse at length the list of the Trump administration’s head-
snapping, system-shattering statements and policy shifts that is by now painfully well-known to readers
even as it grows daily like The Blob (Steve McQueen’s, not Ben Rhodes’). The last time influential
Americans and their supporters among the public unapologetically embraced unpalatable policies and
values like immigration restriction, racism and anti-Semitism, the results included Adolf Hitler sending a
fan letter to the anti-immigrant “scientific” eugenicist Madison Grant, a Nazi medal for Henry Ford in
honor of his vicious published attacks on Jews, and the modeling of the Nuremberg Laws on Jim Crow
segregation codes —indeed, there was more than a touch of Überman to the United States even at the
dawn of the Age of Superman. But at least at America’s helm during most of the decade prior to U.S.
entry into World War II was Franklin D. Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor and a host of New Dealers, who
endorsed, if disappointingly imperfectly at times, equality and inclusiveness for African-Americans, Jews
and recent immigrants —rather than far-right incubus counterfactual presidents like Buzz Windrip in
Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Charles Lindbergh in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.
However, with Donald Trump in the White House there is no presidential moral counterpoise, but rather
a celebration of some of the most disturbing pathologies embedded deep in American politics and
society, raging back in the open after many decades of disreputability. And as Überman doesn’t cease to
be, well, super, because of his malevolent predilections, Trumpian America will not not cease to possess
soft power. But it will be of a dark, sinister cast: Lionizing, legitimating and inspiring populist nationalist
leaders (Austrian far-right party head Harald Vilimsky preened after Trump’s inauguration, “He is a
winner, we are winners: Frauke Petry, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, all of us here are winners”);
Providing moral cover for foreign publics’ xenophobia; Setting an example for would-be strongmen of
delegitimizing the press (“the enemy of the American people”) and demonstrating the efficacy and
impunity of pedaling the most brazen disinformation; Confirming longstanding extreme left- and right-
wing accusations that the U.S. has no special redeeming qualities, even vis-à-vis the autocratic,
sanguinary Putin regime (“We’ve got a lot of killers—you think our country is so innocent?”);
Encouraging and steering the weakening or even the break-up of the European Union, NATO and the
WTO; Legitimating Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a defender of Western values; And stoking a racial-ethnic-
religious Western civilizational antipathy toward Islam in toto and the broader non-Western world. If
you think all of this is dispiriting to read, imagine what it was like to write it—Sad! (Utterly
heartbreaking, actually.) But is all in fact lost? Is American soft power destined to henceforth be a
malign, destabilizing force in the world? Perhaps not. If Donald Trump rapidly falls out of favor with
the bulk of the American electorate—and remember, he’s already rather more than halfway home in
this regard—he could be rendered a political loser in short order and tossed out of the White House,
taking foreign policy Trumpism down with him. The 2018 and especially 2020 elections will be pivotal
in this regard. It would be essential for the speediest possible resuscitation of U.S. soft power that
Trump as a one-termer (or less) be succeeded by a president, whether Republican or Democratic,
dedicated to a firm re-commitment to the traditional American values, ideas and ideals that Trump &
Co. have so blithely cast aside. In this scenario, the U.S. would still be dealing with long-term fallout
from its misadventure in international illiberalism. As Warren Buffett famously noted, “It takes 20 years
to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” Still,
while it would indeed probably take a couple of decades to well and truly live down the damage done
even in four years (or less) by the Trump administration, it would not be the most difficult national
reputation-rebuilding effort ever undertaken—think of what West Germany faced in the years following
World War II. However, if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020 and is thus given a mandate by the
American public to continue the radical recasting of U.S. foreign policy—and with it the overturning of
the extant international order—then the fundamental shift in the nature and effects of American soft
power is likely to be, in practical terms, permanent for a half-century or more. This will be especially so
if this shift is accompanied by an incremental domestic turn toward authoritarianism and the
concomitant erosion of the political opposition's ability to reclaim power. There's another factor to
reckon with as well: the longer Donald Trump holds on to power, and hence the longer the sinister soft
power Trumpism manifests is projected around the world, the greater the encouragement to, and
impact on, the unsavory populist nationalist movements and authoritarian regimes to which America
is now perversely offering inspiration. Even if the U.S. were to rapidly regain its ideological bearings once
a hypothetical two-term Donald Trump has left office and go back to manifesting its traditional values-
based soft power, it could find itself up against a bevy of formerly pro-liberal internationalist states that
have metastasized into Trumpian soft power-inspired illiberal democracies or cold-out dictatorships
now cleaving to Russia and/or China—which will remain autocracies seeking to undermine U.S. global
power. Thus, a resuscitated Superman America might well end up facing the daunting threat of
Überman World.
 1NC---TPS
Next off is the midterms da
Dems win now, but it’s close – midterms forecasters, toss-ups
Scott 7-24 - Dylan Scott, 7-24-2018 ("The odds that Democrats will take the House in the 2018
midterms keep looking better", Vox, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/7/24/17607138/2018-midterm-elections-predictions-generic-ballot-democrats, accessed
7-25-2018, GB)

With a little more than three months left until Election Day, Democrats seem to be strengthening their
position to win control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Two data points will suffice to
explain the situation right now: On Tuesday, the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball, one of the nation’s
premier election forecasters, changed its ratings for 17 House districts — and all of them moved in favor
of Democrats. Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot, if you go by the RealClearPolitics polling average,
has quietly doubled (and then some) since the beginning of June, from a mere 3.2 percentage
points to a healthy 7.1 points. That is roughly the margin political science nerds think they need. Real
Clear Politics If you want to add a third point, Democrats have been posting very strong fundraising
numbers, with Democratic challengers outraising GOP incumbents in some of the nation’s most
competitive districts, as Vox’s Tara Golshan recently noted. “Put it all together,
and the Democrats now look like soft favorites to win a House majority with a little more than 100 days
to go,” the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik wrote on Tuesday. He emphasized how reluctant they have been to
move the odds from 50-50, but the indicators for Democrats keep looking better and better. A quick
assessment of the House battleground further supports the case. One GOP-held seat — in now de-
gerrymandered Pennsylvania — is considered a Safe Democratic win; two others are considered Likely
Democratic pickups. Four Republican districts — three of which are open seats with no incumbent — fall
in the Lean Democratic camp, and 33 GOP-held seats are rated as toss-ups, according to the Crystal Ball.
If you added the 16 seats that merely Lean Republican, then the 2018 House battlefield equals around
60 districts. Democrats need to flip 24 Republican seats to take back the House. By the looks of things,
they could win less than half of the competitive districts and still pull it off. Just one Democratic seat is
considered a Safe Republican win (again, a result of the Pennsylvania redistricting) and only two
Democratic-held seats are rated as toss-ups. In other words, almost the entire 2018 campaign will be
fought over GOP-held territory. On the one hand, good Democratic odds shouldn’t be such a shock. The
minority party’s gains in midterm elections are a fact of life in American politics. President Trump, in
spite of relatively strong economic indicators, is pretty unpopular. Issues like health care promise to
dominate the campaign, and voters prefer Democrats to Republicans in key policy debates. But
Democrats are still facing a heavily gerrymandered House map, and the frank reality that their (younger)
supporters have historically been less reliable voters in midterm elections than the GOP’s (older) base.
Recent polling underscored the real risk that millennial voters won’t turn out as hoped. So everything
could still go wrong for Democrats in the 2018 midterms. But with about 100 days left in the
campaign, they havea lot of reasons to be optimistic.

Trump’s anti-immigration stance is a political loser as 81% of Americans support path

to citizenship for non-criminal immigrants; Aff gives Republicans a way out from
Trump’s agenda
Eric Levitz, 7-11-2018, ("Abolishing ICE Is About As Popular As Trump’s Immigration Agenda," Daily
Intelligencer, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/abolish-ice-poll-majority-opposes-
unpopular-trumps-immigration-agenda.html, DRS)
American voters have long evinced a tacit belief that deporting law-abiding, longtime U.S. residents is a
cruel and needless enterprise. For years, polls have shown strong majorities of the American public
favoring a pathway to citizenship for non-criminal, gainfully employed undocumented immigrants. Just
last week, a Washington Post–Schar School poll found 81 percent of Americans — including a majority of
Republicans — saying that all undocumented immigrants who pass a criminal background check should
be given legal status.
Dem House win guarantees impeachment and removal
Goldberg 17 (Jonah, 6-14-2017, National Review senior editor, bestselling author and columnist and
fellow of the National Review Institute, Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC), "Trump Will Probably Be Impeached if Republicans Lose the House"
National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448590/democrats-take-back-house-2018-
trump-probably-impeached)
Unless it steps up soon, Democrats will probably take back the majority in 2018 — and take down the
president. The 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Since
Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made
the election a referendum on impeaching President Bill Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly, voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do it.” The
White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then–White House chief of staff John Podesta was
running in Washington’s Rock Creek park when it hit him: GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat
and beat and beat on them until they vote for impeachment.” It fell to Podesta to tell the still-celebrating White House staff that the midterms
meant nothing, that the push to impeach the president in the House was a runaway train that could not be derailed. “This thing is rigged,”
Podesta announced at a Monday-morning staff meeting. “We are going to lose.” President Trump’s White House could use a John Podesta
about now. Because no
one seems to have told Trump’s team that the Democrats are every bit as committed
to impeaching Trump as the GOP was to impeaching Clinton. The difference, of course, is that the
Democrats don’t control the House — yet. If they did, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York rightly noted recently,
impeachment proceedings would already be underway. And if the Democrats take back the House in
2018, it won’t matter to most members whether the country as a whole supports impeachment,
because the voters who elected them — and the donors who supported them — will be in favor of it. (A
recent Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans support impeachment while 43 percent oppose it.) Personally, I think it
would be folly to impeach the president given what we know now. But that’s meaningless. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors”
notwithstanding, the criteria for impeachment have little to do with criminal law and everything to do with politics. If
218 members of
the House think it is right — or simply in their political interest — to impeach the president, he can be
impeached. Whether two-thirds of the Senate decides to remove the president from office is also an
entirely political decision. Given the likely composition of the Senate after the next election, however, that remains unlikely. Then
again, who knows? Given how Trump responds to criticism and political pressure, would you want to bet that the tweeter-in-chief would be a
model of statesmanlike restraint during an impeachment ordeal? So many of his current problems are the direct result of letting his ego or
frustration get the better of him. What fresh troubles would he mint when faced with removal from office? What might he say under oath to
the special counsel? Clinton, recall, was impeached and disbarred because he perjured himself in a deposition. The only hope for the
Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has cautioned
against making the midterms a referendum on impeachment. But that is an electoral strategy, not a plan for when she gets the speaker’s gavel.
And even if she declines to go straight to impeachment hearings on Day One, a Democratic-controlled House would still be a nightmare for the
White House. Any hope of passing a conservative agenda would die instantaneously. Worse, once Democrats gained the power to subpoena
documents and compel testimony from members of the administration, the Hobbesian internal politics of today’s White House would look like
a company picnic by comparison. In short, the only hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. According to
various reports, the GOP thinks it can hold on by running “against the media” in 2018. As pathetic as that would be, it might work. Though I
doubt it. A better strategy would be to actually get things done. And the only way for that to happen is for both houses of Congress to get their
act together. Voting bills out of the House may be enough to justify a Rose Garden party, but it will do little to sway voters who’ve been told for
years that the GOP needs control of all three branches to do big things. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, but his
presidency will hang in the balance.
Trump foreign policy implodes liberal order and causes global war
Rosendorf 17 – Neal Rosendorf, Associate Professor of International Relations, New Mexico State
University, Ph.D., Harvard University, “ÜBERMAN AMERICA: THE SINISTER SOFT POWER OF TRUMP’S
FOREIGN POLICY”, CPD Blog, 2-27, https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/%C3%BCberman-america-
sinister-soft-power-trump%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy
Hence soft power, undergirded by American values, has correctly been seen as a preponderantly positive force

in international relations, in which transparent, free-market, representative democracies that are open
to the world have a baked-in advantage over repressive autocratic regimes. But what happens if the U.S.
becomes one of the world's leading bad guys? Can the U.S. still maintain soft power if it is extolling hard-
edged nationalism and xenophobia, disdaining longstanding alliances and fomenting the breakup of
the entire post-World War II system that America put in place seven decades ago? What would it look like? Who would it
attract? And where will it take the world? In fact, although a number of prominent figures have warned against the American abdication of liberal world order leadership and the related
in hewing to the Trump foreign policy line the US will in fact
erosion, or even the end, of American soft power, I would argue that

continue to maintain a considerable “ability to shape the preferences of others”. But it won’t be via the sort
of attraction, persuasion, ideas and ideals that analysts and policy formulators weaned on postwar bipartisan consensus U.S. internationalism (this writer included) will be remotely
comfortable with, nor will they (we) celebrate the sort of leaders, activists and publics who respond positively to this version of American soft power. They (we) won’t like the results, to put it
exceedingly mildly. With Trump
the administration violently casting off U.S. fealty to such watchwords of the exceptionalist American faith as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness,” “the last best hope of earth,” “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” or “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept,
God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” it can be hard to imagine that the U.S. could still hold soft
power, albeit of a dramatically different cast, attractive to a disturbingly different audience. As an aid to the (nightmare) imagination-challenged, an apt metaphor for what lies ahead for
U.S. soft power, should the Trump Administration succeed in its radical recasting of American values and policies at home and abroad, can be found in the Classics—of comedy, that is:
Saturday Night Live, and a hilarious, terrifying sketch featuring “Überman.” No, this has nothing to do with a car ride service. Überman was the brainchild of Al Franken, an SNL writer-
performer before his election to the U.S. Senate. In 1979 Franken posed the counterfactual question, “What If….Superman Grew Up in Germany instead of America?” In Franken’s re-
imagination of Superman’s origin story, young Kal-El’s rocket lands during the interwar years in Prussia rather than Kansas, where he is raised by ardent Nazis who, as his adoptive father
reminds him, “taught you how the Fatherland was stabbed in the back at Versailles, how Jews are parasites, how Germany will one day bring order to the world!” Thus inspired, Klaus Kent, “a
mild-mannered clerk for the Ministry of Propaganda,” becomes Überman, proudly declaring to Adolf Hitler his fight for “Untruth, Injustice and the Nazi Way,” saving Der Führer from a hidden
bomb he discovers with his X-ray vision, and denouncing Jimmy Olsteyn as a Jew—whose secret he also uncovers with his X-ray vision (get it?). After depositing the hapless Jimmy at Auschwitz
Überman wins the Battle of Stalingrad in five minutes, singlehandedly rounds up two million Jews, and “Kills Every Person in England—U.S. Next”, as the headline blares in Der Daily Planet.
The longer Donald Trump holds on to power, and hence the longer the sinister soft power Trumpism
manifests is projected around the world, the greater the encouragement to, and impact on, the
unsavory populist nationalist movements and authoritarian regimes to which America is now perversely
offering inspiration. Donald Trump’s unabashed “America First” foreign policy is the metaphorical equivalent of Überman’s gruesome reversal of Superman’s biography and
principles. Al Franken’s sketch encapsulates the unfolding Up-Is-Down, Black-Is-White, Good-Is-Evil and Evil-Is-Good disjunction and the global havoc the U.S. is in the

process of wreaking. It isn’t necessary to rehearse at length the list of the Trump administration’s head-snapping, system-shattering statements and policy shifts that is by now
painfully well-known to readers even as it grows daily like The Blob (Steve McQueen’s, not Ben Rhodes’). The last time influential Americans and their supporters among the public
unapologetically embraced unpalatable policies and values like immigration restriction, racism and anti-Semitism, the results included Adolf Hitler sending a fan letter to the anti-immigrant
“scientific” eugenicist Madison Grant, a Nazi medal for Henry Ford in honor of his vicious published attacks on Jews, and the modeling of the Nuremberg Laws on Jim Crow segregation codes
—indeed, there was more than a touch of Überman to the United States even at the dawn of the Age of Superman. But at least at America’s helm during most of the decade prior to U.S. entry
into World War II was Franklin D. Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor and a host of New Dealers, who endorsed, if disappointingly imperfectly at times, equality and inclusiveness for African-Americans,
Jews and recent immigrants —rather than far-right incubus counterfactual presidents like Buzz Windrip in Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Charles Lindbergh in Philip Roth’s The Plot
Against America. However, with Donald Trump in the White House there is no presidential moral counterpoise, but rather a celebration of some of the most disturbing pathologies embedded
deep in American politics and society, raging back in the open after many decades of disreputability. And as Überman doesn’t cease to be, well, super, because of his malevolent predilections,
Trumpian America will not not cease to possess soft power. But it will be of a dark, sinister cast: Lionizing,
legitimating and inspiring populist nationalist leaders (Austrian far-right party head Harald Vilimsky preened after Trump’s inauguration, “He is a
winner, we are winners: Frauke Petry, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, all of us here are winners”); Providing moral cover for foreign publics’

xenophobia; Setting an example for would-be strongmen of delegitimizing the press (“the enemy of the American people”)
and demonstrating the efficacy and impunity of pedaling the most brazen disinformation; Confirming longstanding extreme left- and right-wing accusations that the U.S. has no special
Encouraging and steering
redeeming qualities, even vis-à-vis the autocratic, sanguinary Putin regime (“We’ve got a lot of killers—you think our country is so innocent?”);

the weakening or even the break-up of the European Union, NATO and the WTO; Legitimating Vladimir
Putin’s Russia as a defender of Western values; And stoking a racial-ethnic-religious Western
civilizational antipathy toward Islam in toto and the broader non-Western world. If you think all of this is dispiriting to read,
imagine what it was like to write it—Sad! (Utterly heartbreaking, actually.) But is all in fact lost? Is American soft power destined to henceforth be a

malign, destabilizing force in the world? Perhaps not. If Donald Trump rapidly falls out of favor with
the bulk of the American electorate—and remember, he’s already rather more than halfway home in this regard—he could be rendered a
political loser in short order and tossed out of the White House, taking foreign policy Trumpism down
with him. The 2018 and especially 2020 elections will be pivotal in this regard. It would be essential for the
speediest possible resuscitation of U.S. soft power that Trump as a one-termer (or less) be succeeded by a president, whether Republican or
Democratic, dedicated to a firm re-commitment to the traditional American values, ideas and ideals that Trump & Co. have so blithely cast aside. In this scenario, the U.S. would still be dealing
with long-term fallout from its misadventure in international illiberalism. As Warren Buffett famously noted, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think
about that, you'll do things differently.” Still, while it would indeed probably take a couple of decades to well and truly live down the damage done even in four years (or less) by the Trump
administration, it would not be the most difficult national reputation-rebuilding effort ever undertaken—think of what
West Germany faced in the years following World War II. However, if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020 and is thus given a mandate by the American public to continue the
radical recasting of U.S. foreign policy—and with it the overturning of the extant international order—
then the fundamental shift in the nature and effects of American soft power is likely to be, in practical
terms, permanent for a half-century or more. This will be especially so if this shift is accompanied by an
incremental domestic turn toward authoritarianism and the concomitant erosion of the political
opposition's ability to reclaim power. There's another factor to reckon with as well: the longer Donald Trump holds on to
power, and hence the longer the sinister soft power Trumpism manifests is projected around the world,
the greater the encouragement to, and impact on, the unsavory populist nationalist movements and
authoritarian regimes to which America is now perversely offering inspiration. Even if the U.S. were to rapidly regain its
ideological bearings once a hypothetical two-term Donald Trump has left office and go back to manifesting its traditional values-based soft power, it could find itself up

against a bevy of formerly pro-liberal internationalist states that have metastasized into Trumpian soft power-inspired
illiberal democracies or cold-out dictatorships now cleaving to Russia and/or China—which will remain autocracies seeking to undermine U.S. global power.
Thus, a resuscitated Superman America might well end up facing the daunting threat of Überman World.
*** Uniqueness
 UQ---2nc wall
Dems win now, but it’s not a guarantee
- History
- Top Political Scientists

Cillizza 18 - Chris Cillizza, CNN Politics Reporter and Editor-at-Large ,7-25-2018 ("Every sign is pointing to a Democratic wave in November ",
CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/politics/house-2018-midterms/index.html, accessed 7-25-2018, GB)

The 2018 election is in 105 days. And the playing field continues to tilt toward Democrats. On
Tuesday, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia moved 17(!) House seats in Democrats'
favor -- eight of which went from a "leans Republican" rating to a "toss-up." That means that of the 36
races rated as "toss-ups" by the Center of Politics, 34 are held by Republicans. Remember that
Democrats only need a 23-seat pickup to regain the majority they lost in 2010. "Democrats are now a
little better than 50-50 to win the House," concludes Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of UVA professor
Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball. "This is the first time this cycle we've gone beyond 50-50 odds on a House
turnover." He adds later: "At this point, we see the Democrats with slightly better odds to get their
required share of the 'toss-ups' based largely on the environment, but also because they appear to have
well-funded and credible challengers in these districts that can capitalize on that environment." LIKE
WHAT YOU'RE READING? Check out the latest analysis from The Point with Chris Cillizza: The President's
Russia distraction game reaches new heights Donald Trump's Iran tweet is a BIG DEAL The definitive
ranking of 2020 Democrats What is 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' -- and do you have it? Why on
earth would Trump invite Putin back for more? Some theories... This week in politics, GIF'd These moves
are broadly consistent with how other non-partisan handicappers see the current state of play. The
Cook Political Report carries 34 seats that are either "toss-ups" or lean toward party that doesn't
currently control the seat; 31 of those are GOP districts. Inside Elections sees 26 Republican-held seats
in serious jeopardy as compared to just 5 for Democrats. In CNN's own ratings, there are 43 Republican-
held seats in serious jeopardy as compared to six Democratic-held seats. It's reflective of polling from
swing districts. Take Pennsylvania's 17th District in the southwestern part of the state where Reps.
Conor Lamb (D) and Keith Rothfus (R) are facing off. Even though President Donald Trump narrowly
carried the seat in 2016, Lamb leads Rothfus 51% to 39% in a new Monmouth University poll. And
national generic ballot polling where -- after a brief Republican resurgence in late spring/early summer --
Democrats' edge on the question is now consistently in the high single digits. The building Democratic
wave is also revealed in fundraising reports filed last week. At least 55 Democratic challengers outraised
their Republican incumbent opponents during the second fundraising quarter which covers April 1 to
June 30. 55! Fundraising is not, obviously, the sole determining factor when it comes to who wins and
who loses, but it does tend to be an expression of passion and energy within the two party bases. When
so many Democratic challengers are outraising so many Republican incumbents, you can't ignore it.
CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. By subscribing,
you agree to our privacy policy. Enter email address Candidate fundraising also matters in another way:
Expanding the playing field. While many of the more than four dozen Democratic challengers who
outraised their GOP incumbent opponents are already in targeted races, others remain on the periphery
of the landscape of what are commonly accepted as competitive districts. But if the horizon continues to
slide toward Democrats, some Republican House members who may not think they are in trouble right
now could find themselves suddenly vulnerable. And if their Democratic opponent already has enough
money in the bank to run ads and ensure voters know they have a choice, it could be curtains for people
who no one is even thinking about possibly losing right now. Add it all up -- and throw in the weight of
history that suggests the President's party loses, on average, 33 seats in midterm elections -- and you
have a devil's brew for Republicans. "Think it's safe to say the odds of a D House takeover have never
been higher this cycle," tweeted National Journal politics editor Josh Kraushaar. "Time is running out for
Rs to turn things around." But 105 days is an eternity in politics, you say! And it is -- sort of. But the
history of midterm elections won't be changing between now and November 6. Fundraising tends to be
momentum driven, meaning that if you don't have a lot of cash, it's harder to just go and get it (unless,
of course, you are independently wealthy). And once the playing field shifts in a particular direction, it
usually takes a cataclysmic event to shift it back in any meaningful way. All of which is to say: The cake
isn't totally baked on the 2018 election yet. But it's getting close to finished and the final product isn't
likely to be to Republicans' liking.

Dems up by 12 points in the Midterms on the generic ballot

Scott 7/25, Dylan Scott @Vox 18, 7-25-2018, Reporter for Vox that covers health care and other
domestic policy, ("2 new polls give Democrats a double-digit lead in the 2018 generic ballot", Vox,
https://www.vox.com/2018/7/25/17613518/2018-midterm-elections-polls-generic-ballot-democrats-
kff, accessed7-25-2018, JR)
The evidence just keeps piling up: Democrats are in a good position to take the House in the 2018
midterm elections. Two new data points arrived on Wednesday: Both Quinnipiac University and the Kaiser Family Foundation found
Democrats with a 12-point lead in the generic congressional ballot. That is well above what political
scientists think they need to win back the House (7 points or so). The specific results: The Kaiser Family Foundation showed
Democrats leading Republicans 49 percent to 37 percent, up from an 8-point 46-38 lead in April. Quinnipiac
had Democrats leading 51 percent to 39 percent over Republicans, up from a 9-point lead in late June. As
Vox reported on Tuesday, with a little more than three months left until Election Day, Democrats seem to be
strengthening their position to win control of the House. Three other recent pieces of evidence add to the case: On
Tuesday, the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball, one of the nation’s premier election forecasters, changed its ratings for
17 House districts — and all of them moved in favor of Democrats. Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot,
if you go by the RealClearPolitics polling average, has quietly doubled (and then some) since the beginning of June, from a mere 3.2 percentage
points to a healthy 7.8 points. Real Clear Politics Democrats have been posting very strong fundraising numbers, with
Democratic
challengers outraising GOP incumbents in some of the nation’s most competitive districts, as Vox’s Tara
Golshan recently noted. “Put it all together, and the Democrats now look like soft favorites to win a House
majority with a little more than 100 days to go,” the Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik wrote on Tuesday. He emphasized how
reluctant they have been to move the odds from 50-50, but the indicators for Democrats keep looking better and better.
A quick assessment of the House battleground paints the same picture. One GOP-held seat — in now de-gerrymandered Pennsylvania — is
considered a Safe Democratic win; two others are considered Likely Democratic pickups. Four Republican districts — three of which are open
seats with no incumbent — fall in the Lean Democratic camp, and 33 GOP-held seats are rated as toss-ups, according to the Crystal Ball. If you
added the 16 seats that merely Lean Republican, then the 2018 House battlefield equals around 60 districts. Democrats need to flip 24
Republican seats to take back the House. By the looks of things, they could win fewer than half of the competitive districts and still pull it off.
Just one Democratic seat is considered a Safe Republican win (again, a result of the Pennsylvania redistricting) and only two Democratic-held
seats are rated as toss-ups. In other words, almost the entire 2018 campaign will be fought over GOP-held territory. On the one hand, good
Democratic odds shouldn’t be such a shock. The
minority party’s gains in midterm elections are a fact of life in
American politics. President Trump, in spite of relatively strong economic indicators, is pretty unpopular.
Issues like health care promise to dominate the campaign, and voters prefer Democrats to Republicans
in key policy debates. But Democrats are still facing a heavily gerrymandered House map and the frank reality that their (younger)
supporters have historically been less reliable voters in midterm elections than the GOP’s (older) base. Recent polling underscored the real risk
that millennial voters won’t turn out as hoped. So everything could still go wrong for Democrats in the 2018 midterms. But with about 100
days left in the campaign, they have a lot of reasons to be optimistic.
Dems win elections thanks to the Russians – Russia doesn’t like Trump
Wilkie 18 - Christina Wilkie, political Reporter for CNBC.com, 7-24-2018 ("Trump makes a wild claim: Russians don't want him to be president, so they will help
Democrats", CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/24/trump-russia-fighting-very-hard-to-help-democrats-in-midterm-electi.html, accessed 7-25-2018, GB)

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was "very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard
to have an impact on the upcoming Election." But rather than benefit his own party, as Russia sought to
do in 2016, Trump claimed without offering any evidence that Russia "will be pushing very hard for the
Democrats" because, Trump said, "no President has been tougher on Russia than me." Donald J.
Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an
impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than
me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump! 10:50 AM - Jul
24, 2018 97.6K 118K people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy The tweet represented a
new type of rhetorical gymnastics for the president, one where America's greatest geopolitical
adversary is not, in fact, interfering in the election to help Trump, as it did in 2016, but is instead
launching attacks aimed at helping Trump's opponents. The president's tweet followed a two-week
period marked by intense scrutiny of Trump's relationship with the Kremlin and with Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Trump has long insisted that the United States would benefit from a closer relationship
with Russia, an opinion which is not universally shared by U.S. diplomats, intelligence officials or
congressional leaders. A summit between the two leaders in Helsinki this month backfired on Trump,
however, after the president refused to hold Putin accountable for Russia's 2016 election attacks, its
annexation of Crimea or its backing of the Assad regime in Syria. During a joint news conference with
Putin after the summit, Trump also appeared to put more faith in the Kremlin's denial that Russia had
engaged in widespread election interference, than he did in the findings of his own intelligence services,
who concluded that Russia did, in fact, attack the 2016 presidential election. At the same news
conference, when Putin was asked whether he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, he said,
"Yes, I did. Because [Trump] talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal." “You do
not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start.” Hear what else Buffett has to say After Trump's
victory, the newly minted then-president elect tweeted out Putin's criticism of his opponent, Hillary
Clinton. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: "In
my opinion, it is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity." So true! 7:13 PM - Dec 23, 2016
104K 61.9K people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy Trump's claim that "no president
has been tougher on Russia" is a phrase that's become his standard response to critics who question
why the president is so reluctant to publicly denounce Kremlin attacks on U.S. infrastructure, U.S.
elections and U.S. allies. As evidence of this toughness, the president often points to sanctions on
Russian oligarchs that he signed into law in August 2017, and to the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats
from the United States in March 2018, in response to the nearly fatal nerve agent attack on a Russian
former double agent in Britain. What Trump does not say, however, is that he has personally opposed
nearly all of these measures. He only agreed to sign new sanctions into law in 2017 when it was clear
that Congress had a veto-proof majority. And he was reportedly furious in March when he realized the
full scope of his administration's expulsion of Russian diplomats in response to the U.K. nerve agent
attack. Meanwhile, Trump has lavished praise on Putin for years, calling him "a strong leader" and
predicting the two men would have a great relationship. In a memorable exchange with reporters in
August 2017, Trump actually thanked Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats from Russia, a move seen by
experts as an affront to the United States. But not to Trump, who argued that the Russian leader had
actually helped the U.S. government to "cut our payroll" costs. Even as Trump boarded his plane bound
for NATO meetings and then the Helsinki summit, the president said he would likely have an easier time
talking to Russia, which NATO considers its greatest threat --- than he would talking to leaders of
America's NATO allies. President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands
during a meeting at the Presidential Palace, Helsinki, July 16, 2018. Mikhail Metzel | TASS | Getty Images
President Donald Trump (L) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting at the
Presidential Palace, Helsinki, July 16, 2018. Trump's warm embrace of Putin and Russia is all the more
baffling given the dark cloud that has hung over Trump's entire presidency: Special counsel Robert
Mueller's investigation into whether Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia to subvert the
2016 presidential election. In a little over a year, the investigation has uncovered scores of previously
unknown contacts between Russian agents and many of Trump's closest advisors, aides and business
partners. As of Tuesday, the special counsel had issued indictments against 32 individuals and three
Russian companies. But while Trump's affinity for Russia has fostered divisions within the GOP,
Democrats have set aside deep divisions caused by the 2016 primary contest between Hillary Clinton
and Bernie Sanders. Now, the Democrats are unified behind a view that Russia is a mortal foe of the
United States, and that Putin represents the greatest living obstacle to the spread of democracy in
Europe, rule of law and respect for human rights. Practically from the moment Trump took office,
Democrats have called on the Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress to impose
tougher measures against Russia. The most recent call came last week, when Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer demanded that Republicans in Congress increase sanctions against Russia and
pressure the president to request that the Kremlin extradite 12 Russian spies who were recently charged
with hacking American targets during the 2016 election.

Dems are gaining momentum

Rubin 7-24 July 24, 2018 ("Look out, Republicans. Democratic voters are angry and energized.",
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/07/24/look-out-republicans-democratic-
voters-are-angry-and-energized/, accessed 7-25-2018, GC)

Republicans’ prospects for holding on to the House majority, already dim, have gotten bleaker of late.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball notes: “We’re making 17 House ratings changes this week, all in favor of the
Democrats. … One of those comes in OH-12, where the last nationally-watched special House election is
taking place in a couple of weeks.” The report looks at the larger trend: Election Day is getting closer,
and the president’s approval rating is still largely stuck in the low 40s, a big red warning sign that has
bedeviled the party of similarly-situated presidents in past midterms. The House generic ballot, which
has generally been at around a Democratic lead of between six to eight points, is at the higher end of
that range right now. But more importantly for the House battle, for most of this election cycle the
generic ballot has shown a consistent Democratic lead that suggests a very competitive battle for the
majority. A high number of open seats — the highest number of any postwar election save 1992 — give
Democrats many more targets than the GOP (Republicans are defending 41 seats without an incumbent,
while Democrats are defending only 22). Success builds on success. Large turnout in 2017 and 2018
special elections generated more enthusiasm, which in turned opened the campaign donation spigots.
The availability of money and sunny prospects for Democrats encouraged solid Democratic candidates
to run — and Republican incumbents to retire. There are more specific factors as well: the failure of tax
cuts to result in higher wages; economic pain inflicted by President Trump’s trade wars; the #MeToo
movement (which gets energy with each Republican’s misogynistic insult); rising health-care costs
(which in part can be attributed to Republicans’ assault on the Affordable Care Act); Republicans’
continued indulgence of Trump’s erratic, dishonest and unhinged conduct, coupled with a sense that
Trump needs to be checked, not enabled; and the disgust felt by college-educated voters, women and
millennials over Republicans’ assault on human decency (e.g. family separations, “dreamers”). The
Democrat's new platform is a raw deal for minorities, says Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah. (Gillian
Brockell, Kate Woodsome, Karen Attiah/The Washington Post) Republicans insist that they can rely on
the generally strong economy, and to be sure, without it the party and presidency would be in free fall.
But getting Republicans out to vote for “more of the same” — especially when “more of the same” is
not uniformly positive in all sections of the country — is a tougher task than getting highly energized,
angry Democrats out in November. It is not any single issue, then, that will make or break the GOP
majority; it’s the dozens of small and medium factors pushing in Democrats’ favor. “Voters don’t live in
issue silos,” cautions the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter. “And, they don’t vote that way either. An
election is about the sum, not the individual parts. In 2018, voters will either want Congress to support
Trump’s turn-the-card-table-over style of governing, or they want to see Congress as a check on Trump.”
She finds, “Right now, polls suggest more voters want Congress to provide a check on Trump.” The
caveat that “things can change” itself requires a caveat. “The Nov. 6 election is now 15 weeks away. .
But in the nine midterm elections that I have covered with The Cook Political Report, and a total of 12
midterm elections that I have watched closely, we’ve never seen the dynamics change much after
midsummer,” Charlie Cook writes. “Whatever the trend was by this point was pretty much in place on
Election Day. To the extent that things have changed, it generally has been waves intensifying, growing
larger, not diminishing or disappearing.” Finally, voter intensity may be the most critical factor for
Democrats. With each new perceived outrage (e.g., Trump’s betrayal in Helsinki, insults directed at
Democratic women, the prospect of reversing Roe v. Wade, new lies about the Russia investigation),
members of the Democratic base are reminded how desperately they want to end their Trumpian
nightmare. If they cannot get rid of him in 2018, they can at least rid themselves of many of his enablers
and apologists. For Republicans, the outrage machine seems to have played out. Each “Fake News” or
“Russia hoax” tweet has less impact than the previous one; the inability to come up with new hot-
button issues leads Trump to go back to tired retreads. (NFL players not kneeling!) To put it in TV terms
that Trump would surely appreciate, his presidency has lost its novelty; getting his fans to tune in
becomes a chore — and everyone else would be delighted if the show got canceled.
 Blue Wave
Blue wave likely – even if predictions are imperfect, the evidence is there – special
elections,
Schneider 6/15 ---- Christian, political columnist for USA Today, former Senior Fellow at the
Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, former Policy Analyst for the Wisconsin State Legislature, M.A. in
Political Science (Marquette University), B.S. in Political Science (University of Utah), “Losing the
November elections might be the only way to save Republican Party,” 2018,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/06/15/losing-midterms-save-republican-party-trump-
blue-wave-column/702567002/

Yet while pro-Trump forces dominate GOP primaries, Republicans nationally continue to hemorrhage
seats when those Trumpist candidates run in general elections. Consider the fact that Alabama (!) has a
Democratic U.S. Senator, which seems about as likely as the NAACP electing Roseanne Barr as its next
president.
Granted, there are still signs a “blue wave” may not be imminent, and nobody can predict what’s going to happen in one month,
much less five. But the early returns are disastrous. Just as Trump wore the Republican Party to his political benefit, the party must
now wear Trump to their likely demise.
Dems can roll – Trump unpopularity and Dem strategy
Sargent 5/8 ---- Greg, national politics writer for The Washington Post featured in Talking Points
Memo, New York Magazine, The Denver Post, and Huff Post, “Trump Is a Disaster, and That’s Helping
Democrats. But Not How You Think.,” The Washington Post, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/08/trump-is-a-disaster-and-thats-
helping-democrats-but-not-how-you-think/?utm_term=.11d87b55d882

In other words, Trump is doing part of the work for Democrats without their help, allowing them to focus on things such
as improving health care or fortifying social insurance (as Conor Lamb did) or even on hyper-local issues (as many state
legislative candidates have done). If Democrats are running against Trump, it’s subtle: They are trying to project calm,
stability, decency and respect for tolerance and the rule of law, drawing an implicit contrast with Trump, and are
challenging their Republican foes when they dabble in Trumpist xenophobia and veiled racism, as opposed to
making it overtly all about the president.
These campaigns are unfolding outside of our debates inside the Beltway and on Twitter over how much
Trump’s scandals will matter in the midterms and what Democrats should and should not be doing. Indeed, to find clear evidence of
what Democrats are actually doing, look no further than how Republicans are responding to it. Savvy
Democrats think that Republicans are cycling out of their tax-cut messaging, and that Trump is doubling down
on the xenophobia and attacks on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, precisely because they are trying to adapt to how these
Democratic candidates are actually being run by falling back on a last-ditch juice-the-base strategy.
“Trump is leaning hard into Mueller and his brand of white nationalism, which is born of the growing GOP
realization that Democrats are running and winning on health care and cleaning up Washington — the things that really matter to
voters,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told me today.
None of this is to say Democrats will necessarily win the House and/or the Senate, though right now the
former looks very plausible and the latter looks at least possible. But let’s at least get it right on what Democrats are actually doing
to make it happen.
Blue wave now, but it’s not locked-in – Dem enthusiasm, lack of GOP strategy,
structural characteristics of midterms, models, special election trends, momentum and
national favor
Gaillard 6/13 ---- Scott, former Senior Legislative Assistant in the US House of Representatives,
politics correspondent, J.D. (Florida State University College of Law), B.A. in Political Science (University
of Florida), “Democrats Predict Sweeping Elections in November … but Maybe Only They Can Screw It
Up,” Folio Magazine, 2018, http://folioweekly.com/stories/is-the-blue-wave-for-real,19973

Asked about the Blue Wave, local Democratic activist Luis Zaldivar says, "I can answer straight-up; the
Wave is 100 percent for real, especially because Republicans don't have anything going on; they are
deeply divided." Zaldivar, who has knocked on thousands of doors in the last two years, is president of
the local Democratic Progressive Caucus. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez recently
stated, "We are winning everywhere." Democrats are hoping this year's election will resemble the one
in 2006, when they regained majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, and among governorships.
Democrats also won a majority of state legislatures and picked up seven seats in the Republican-
dominated Florida House. There's a lot of enthusiasm among activists, but what do the numbers say?
Democrats need 24 victories to take the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and two victories
to take back the U.S. Senate. This is an off-year, aka mid-term election, in which the presidency is not on
the ballot, which is typically better for the party out of power. Since World War II, the opposition party
has, on average, gained 26 seats in off-year elections. One prediction model suggests Democrats will
gain between 45 and 50 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It also predicts the Democrats will
flip between 15 and 20 state legislatures. This model accurately predicted big Democratic gains in 2006
and Republican wins in 2010, and has been correct about most elections since 1950. A Swelling Wake
Some of the early races after Trump's inauguration were disappointing, but by November 2017,
Democrats had snapped back, winning gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. A political
earthquake sent aftershocks around America when Democrat Doug Jones bested Roy Moore in the
Alabama special election to replace Jeff Sessions in the U.S. Senate. Alabama had not voted for a
Democratic presidential candidate in more than 30 years and was considered among the safest states
for Republicans. Jones' support came from all over the U.S., including from local activist Nathan McKay,
who contacted nearly 10,000 voters urging them to support Jones and to turn out to vote. McKay
explained, "I got inspired to get involved because someone has to do it." He spoke of the danger of
"sitting on the sidelines," mistaking social media posts for genuine activism. Republicans hoped Jones'
victory was simply because they had a weak candidate in the former judge who faced multiple
accusations that he'd sexually preyed on teenaged girls when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Though
Moore strenuously denied any predatory or inappropriate behavior, many believed the scandal tanked
his candidacy. Three months later, Democrats scored another upset in a Pennsylvania district heavily
favoring Republicans. The district is gerrymandered to elect Republicans-Donald Trump carried it by
nearly 20 percent in 2016—plus their candidate, Rick Saccone, had no such scandal. Nevertheless,
Democratic former Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Lamb defeated Saccone, a candidate who'd claimed he
was "Trump before Trump was Trump." The Blue Wave appeared to be gaining momentum. In a widely
cited article, FiveThirtyEight's Henry Enten wrote, "You don't see this type of consistent outperformance
unless there's an overriding pro-Democratic national factor." Another special election was held near
Sarasota to elect a new member to the Florida legislature. Republican voters outnumbered Democrats
by 10 percentage points and had carried the district in the last two presidential elections. Yet
Democratic attorney Margaret Good won by a comfortable margin in a race that included appearances
by national figures from both parties. The Democrats also pulled off impressive state legislative
elections in deeply red Oklahoma and conservative Iowa. Trump's former campaign manager Cory
Lewandowski complained, "Fifty seats have already changed hands from Republican to Democrats since
Donald Trump was elected." On April 8, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said the Republicans would lose
the House and Senate if the election were held today. "I think the Republicans are in deep trouble ... ,"
Luntz mused. Locally: Ripples or a Swell? State legislative and Jacksonville City Council seats in Northeast
Florida have been gerrymandered to elect a majority of Republicans and a minority of black Democrats.
This year, a number of candidates are looking to storm the gates of the status quo. Local Democratic
Party Chair Lisa King is excited that the party has fielded candidates for every Florida House seat in Duval
County for the first time in years. Democratic hopefuls Navy veteran Tim Yost and Dr. Tracye Polson are
running for State House seats held by Republicans for many years. Polson leads the race in fundraising
and the polls. A.G. Gancarski recently wrote, "[T]here are early suggestions that a Blue Wave may splash
onto Jacksonville shores." Since November 2016, nationally and locally, the country has seen increased
activism by liberals and other progressives. The Women's March in Washington, D.C. in January 2017
included more than four million participants worldwide. February's mass murder in Parkland galvanized
gun safety advocates, including many progressives. The March For Our Lives events brought many
passionate and dedicated young activists together for a cause that's considered more in tune with
progressives. Inspired by marches and events, many more have joined the ranks of progressive
organizations and election teams. With the wind at their backs, millions of activists lining up to make
dramatic changes, and the president's historically low approval ratings, what could possibly go wrong?
Everything. This is the Democratic Party and it's fully capable of screwing up a one-car parade.
Ideological, racial and gender purity tests are being conducted among members across the nation,
including here in Jacksonville. (See "The Fall Guys," Folio Weekly, April 11.) As political analyst Michael
Kinsley once said, "Conservatives are always looking for converts; liberals are always looking for
heretics." When the Constitution was written, Benjamin Franklin was asked what type of government it
included. He responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." Have the Democrats been handed an election
victory? The answer will be clear in November.
 Blue Wave---A2: Economics
Economic conditions won’t protect the GOP – most metrics don’t impact voters
Bedford 6/1 ---- Tori, Associate Producer at Boston Public Radio, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Democratic
"Blue Wave" Won't Be Stopped by Trump's Economic Claims,” 2018,
https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2018/06/01/sen-elizabeth-warren-democratic-blue-wave-wont-
be-stopped-by-trumps-economic-claims

“People say unemployment is down, and boy I’m glad to hear that unemployment is down, except you’ve got to pause for a
minute," she said. "When it’s down because people are working two and three part-time jobs, that’s not such good
economic news. When it’s down because we don’t count all the people who’ve dropped out of the labor
force for a whole host of reasons, that’s not very good economic news.”
Analysts say the Labor Department’s May jobs report shows a strong economy with some of the best employment numbers in almost 20 years, and President
Trump says that he’s driven stock markets and the economy to historic highs.
“The stock market is rising, everyone says, ’Yay, the stock market is up!’ — only, most Americans don’t have any shares of stocks. Fewer than
half of all Americans actually have a share of stock, and that includes in their pension funds,” Warren said. “So a rising stock
market leaves behind at least half of America.”
Some political pundits say robust job growth in May could dull any Democratic wave in the upcoming midterm elections, but
Warren thinks voters will see beyond the numbers.
“I believe in statistics,” Warren said, “You can live your life there, or you can go out and see how people are living it, day-to-day, and ask
them, do you think you’re better off than you were a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago? Do you see a possibility for paying for your kids to go to school? Do you
see a possibility of a retirement where you’ll be able to maintain the life that you’ve built right now? Do you see a possibility when the time will come, where your
mortgage will be paid off and you ... can kick back a little?”
 Blue Wave---A2: Generic Ballot
Dems wave possible despite generic ballot results – cool the hot takes!
Zhou citing Murray 6/7 ---- Li, Congressional reporter for Vox, Patrick Murray is the director of the
Monmouth University Polling Institute, “Is the Blue Wave Crashing? 11 Experts on Democrats’ Chances
in 2018,” Vox, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/6/7/17427014/blue-wave-democrats-generic-ballot-
midterms

The data has changed for the Democrats — but it could still go either way
Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, says the influx of recent data has, indeed, tempered the
Democratic lead in the generic ballot. He emphasized, however, that a lot more information was likely to
continue affecting the polls in the months to come until Election Day.
“Let’s pour a little water on the hot takes,” he said. “The generic House ballot seems to have improved for
the Republicans … although this average is driven largely by a few polls that have been bouncing around
a lot.”
Murray says this variability is what makes it tough to make any sort of definitive call at this point in the race. “In reality, the generic ballot has been pretty stable
since March but is significantly worse for Democrats than where it was at the start of the year,” he said. “The Democrats
are not in the same
enviable position they were five months ago, but that doesn’t mean we have any idea what the next five months
will bring.”
 Dem Wave – Swing Districts
Dems win New Jersey House and Senate – fundraising and Trump approval rating
WNYC 18 – WNYC is America's most listened-to public radio station and the producer of award-
winning radio programs and podcasts, including Radiolab, On the Media, Freakonomics Radio, Here's the
Thing with Alec Baldwin, The Brian Lehrer Show, The Leonard Lopate Show and many others. “This Week
in Politics: New Jersey's Campaign to Flip House,” 2/10/18. https://www.wnyc.org/story/week-politics-
jersey-dems-prepare-assault-house/]//Justin
Will Democrats who are angry with President Trump and Republican control in Washington be able to
take back the majority in Congress in the midterm elections in November? Signs of a potential blue wave
are already being seen - and nowhere more than in New Jersey.
A flood of Democratic candidates have entered races in congressional districts that, for years, were
viewed as shoe-ins for Republicans. November is a long way off. But right now, Democratic candidates in
the Garden State are out-fundraising Republican incumbents in advance of the primaries in June.
Max Pizarro, the Founding Editor of Insider NJ, has been tracking the campaigns at the local level.
Speaking with host David Furst, Max says with Donald Trump's approval rating running so low in New
Jersey, there are "a ton of Democratic candidates running for vulnerable Republican-held seats."

Dems win house seats now but GOP candidates are moderating their position on
family separation – swing districts in Colorado and Pennsylvania prove
Barrow 6/19 – Bill, KXAS-TV, virtual channel 5, is an NBC owned-and-operated television station
licensed to Fort Worth, Texas, United States and serving the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. “'We Are
Talking About American Values': Border Separations Ripple Through Midterm Campaigns,” 6/19/2018.
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/politics/Border-Separations-Ripple-Through-Midterm-Campaigns-
485918151.html]//Justin
Wrenching scenes of migrant children being separated from their parents at the southern border are
roiling campaigns ahead of midterm elections, emboldening Democrats on the often-fraught issue of
immigration while forcing an increasing number of Republicans to break from President Donald Trump
on an issue important to the GOP's most ardent supporters.
Kim Schrier, a Democrat running for a House seat outside of Seattle, said Trump is pushing an
"absolutely unethical, inhumane" policy.
"We are talking about American values, not Democratic values or Republican values, and this is
something that will flip people to a Democrat in this election," Schrier said.
That prospect was enough for House Republicans' national campaign chairman, Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers,
to offer cover Monday to vulnerable GOP members. Stivers said in a statement that he's asking "the
administration to stop needlessly separating children from their parents" and suggested he'd examine
legislative options if Trump doesn't budge.
Children are being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. This is what happens once
they're separated.(Published Wednesday, June 20, 2018)
Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, whose suburban Denver district is often a battleground, took the cover
Stivers provided. He didn't mention Trump, but said the border policy "is antithetical to the America I
grew up in." He said he's willing to co-sponsor a House version of a Senate proposal from Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., that would halt the family separations, and he echoed claims Democrats had made
for days: "History won't remember well those who support the continuation of this policy."
Democrat Jason Crow, a leading candidate to unseat Coffman, said the congressman can't run from
his previous support for "zero-tolerance" border security. "This is what that looks like," Crow said,
adding that as "an American and as a father" he finds the border situation "immoral."
With control of the House — and potentially the Senate — up for grabs, the searing images coming from
the border have the potential to scramble midterm politics. Though controversy has dominated Trump's
presidency, the growing furor over the separations struck a deeply emotional chord in both parties that
may not calm anytime soon — even in districts that don't have large immigrant or Hispanic populations.
Pennsylvania's Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, another vulnerable Republican, said he plans to visit the border
"to see what's going on down there with my own eyes." He called the detainees "our planet's children"
and said they shouldn't be punished "for things that their parents do or don't do."
The political reverberations from the separations could last well beyond the midterms. Sen. Kamala
Harris, D-Calif., a potential 2020 presidential candidate, said Monday that Homeland Security Secretary
Kristjen Nielsen should resign. She was joined by House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Sen. Tina
Smith, D-Minn., and several other Democrats.
 Dem House
Dems win the house now---Republicans have more toss-up seats, recent polls, Dem
enthusiasm, and Trump blocking GOP immigration efforts
[John Bowden, 6-22-2018, "GOP pollster: Democrats are poised to take back the House,"
http://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/393735-gop-pollster-democrats-are-poised-to-take-
back-the-house-in-the]//Rank
A Republican pollster says Democrats have a "better than ever" chance of taking back the House this fall,
despite President Trump's predictions of a "red wave" in November's midterms. Ed Goeas, president and CEO of The Tarrance Group, a GOP

research and polling firm, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha that the president is poised to lose his majority in the House,
warning that Democrats could take as many as 23 seats in November. "Well, the Democrats have to win 21 seats to take control. I think it's a
better than even chance at this point that that will happen," Goeas said. "Of the 32 seats that are toss-up seats, only four are Democrat, are Democratic

seats," he added. "So I'm going to say 23." President Trump has frequently predicted a "red wave" of GOP victories in November both on Twitter and in media appearances, dismissing Democratic

enthusiasm and recent polls that show Democrats with an edge on generic House ballots. In a tweet earlier this month,
Trump pointed to John Cox's win in California's GOP gubernatorial primary as evidence of a coming red wave, adding that "the Trump impact was really big." "Great night for Republicans! Congratulations to John Cox on a really big
number in California. He can win," he tweeted. "Even Fake News CNN said the Trump impact was really big, much bigger than they ever thought possible. So much for the big Blue Wave, it may be a big Red Wave. Working hard!" In

the president threw a wrench in GOP Congress members' efforts to address immigration
another message,

issues, calling for Republicans to "stop wasting their time" voting on immigration legislation until after what he
expects to be a "Red Wave." "Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing
anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!" he tweeted.

Dems take the House – fundamentals, popularity, year-long trends, Dem mobilization
– assumes strong economy and foreign policy successes and says structural factors
outweigh “too soon” concerns though uniqueness doesn’t overwhelm the link –
GOP/Trump response possible
Rothenberg 6/13 ---- Stuart, Ph.D. in Political Science (University of Connecticut), former professor of
political science (Bucknell University and Catholic University of America), “Analysis: The House Blue
Wave Is Alive and Well,” Roll Call, 2018, https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/analysis-house-blue-
wave-alive-well

But even
if voters are giving Trump some credit for the economy and North Korea, they could still prefer a
Democratic Congress next year.
After all, there has also been plenty of troubling news from the White House, including Trump’s disturbing attack on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his
tweets about the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the administration’s trade and tariffs policies, and the president’s divisive comments on
cultural issues and immigration, to name just a few.
Most voters critical of Trump and his agenda will find plenty of reasons to continue to dislike him and to promise to vote Democratic in the fall.
Of course, given the president’s unpredictability, his likely campaign messaging between now and November, and all of the unknowns, it’s still too
early to be certain where the public will be on control of Congress at election time.
But the fundamentals remain very much with the Democrats, as they have been for more than a year.
Midterms are almost always about the president. Twenty-three Republicans sit in districts carried by Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump’s job approval ratings are mediocre at best.
Democrats are angry and energized, as demonstrated by high-profile recent elections in Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as well as from many local races around the country.
GOP House retirements mean fewer incumbents who would be best prepared to swim against the tide.
And, voters see the midterms as an opportunity to “check” Trump. That’s a formula for substantial
Democratic House gains and control of the chamber next year. The burden is still on Republicans and the
White House to change the midterms’ dynamics.
California’s primary, generic ballot and special elections
Yglesias 6/6 ---- Matthew, syndicated political correspondent featured in The American Prospect, The
Atlantic, and Slate, degree in philosophy (Harvard University), “California’s Primary Results Suggest
Democrats Are on Track for a House Majority,” Vox, 2018, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/6/6/17433846/california-primary-results-democratic-majority

Tuesday night’s California

primary election results confirm that, as best we can tell, Democrats are on track to secure a
narrow House majority in the 2018 midterms.
Here’s how we know.
Under California’s “top two” primary system, it’s possible to look at any given district and see the total number of
votes for the Republican candidates and for the Democratic candidates. In the crowded CA-49 primary, for example, Republican
candidates as a whole netted 48 percent of the vote to Democrats’ 51 percent. (Some absentee votes are still being counted, and the Democratic share will likely
rise somewhat.)
We know from history that there’s a systematic relationship between the cumulative primary ballot performance
and general election performance in November, with Democrats usually doing a percentage point or two better in
the general election because that’s when more young people vote.
Based on how Democrats performed overall in the primary, we can project what California’s general election results
will probably look like. And even though California is obviously not a microcosm of the entire United States, there is a systematic
relationship between the state’s election results and national results. The way Nate Cohn calculated it for the
Upshot: “Democrats would be favored to win control of the House if they could gain an average of 4.5 points
across the country, according to our estimates. A 3.5-point improvement between the 2016 general election and the California top-two primary results
might put them on track to do so.”
And guess what? Across the seven key targeted races, Democrats secured an average swing of 5 points
— enough to be favored for the majority.
Now, to be clear, using results in seven seats to project the outcome in 435 seats is a dangerous business. There’s a lot of uncertainty here, and
while the odds favor the Democrats, they do not do so overwhelmingly.
But this is about as good a method as looking at generic ballot polling. It’s significant that generic ballot
polling also tells roughly the same story: Democrats are more likely than not to secure a narrow House
majority, but the odds are not overwhelming.
Special election results, again, tell a similar story. Democrats have, on average, made big gains here (though with
a lot of variance from state to state). But in special elections, they have the luxury, by definition, of running in an open seat. Accounting
for incumbency effects, the large Democratic edge in special elections translates to a small edge in the
overall race.
 Dem House---A2: Generic Ballot/Trump Ratings
House goes blue – common sense, generic balloting, and Dem energy are decisively
neg – their ev is misleading surveys and snapshots
Rothenberg 6/13 ---- Stuart, Ph.D. in Political Science (University of Connecticut), former professor of
political science (Bucknell University and Catholic University of America), “Analysis: The House Blue
Wave Is Alive and Well,” Roll Call, 2018, https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/analysis-house-blue-
wave-alive-well

For the last couple of months, I’ve

heard from many quarters that the “blue wave” has dissipated. Meh.
Advocates of that view usually point to the RealClearPolitics generic ballot average or Donald Trump’s job approval ratings,
which suggest the president’s popularity has risen and the Democratic House advantage fallen.
An April 16 Washington Post article was headlined “Poll: Democrats’ advantage in midterm election support is shrinking.”
The National Review went much further in a May 22 piece, hyping a laughable Reuters poll that found the GOP with an
advantage in the generic ballot.
“The dramatic shift is bad news for Democrats, who were a full ten points on the generic ballot as recently as the end of April. If the trend holds, their hopes of
regaining control of Congress atop a blue wave in November could be dashed,” the writer observed.
Vox had a bevy of journalists, academics and analysts warning in a June 7 story that the blue wave was in trouble.
Less surprising is that the day after the June 5 primaries, the Republican National Committee sent out an email cherry-picking media tweets and comments (even
from media organizations not friendly to Trump) that suggested the California results demonstrated Democratic enthusiasm was exaggerated and the Democratic
wave didn’t exist.
Keeping the edge
In fact, there is an abundance of evidence that Democratic House prospects are as good as they have been
for months and the House is still very likely to flip.
Often, a healthy dose of common sense is more useful than a single misleading public opinion survey. Less than two
months ago, I wrote “It seems very unlikely that there has been a fundamental shift in sentiment (in the
generic ballot) among registered voters,” and “If I were you, I’d wait for the next round of generic ballot tests from the major pollsters
before getting too excited about the most recent [Washington Post-ABC News] generic ballot result,” which showed a dramatically narrower 4-point
Democratic advantage.
Two months earlier, on Feb. 12, my
column — “The Generic is Falling! The Generic is Falling!” — had expressed skepticism that things had
changed much and estimated that “the generic ballot probably now sits in the mid-single digits, in the 5- to 8-
point range,” which I thought put the fall campaign on a trajectory toward Democratic control of the House.
Well, the newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has the Democrats with a 10-point advantage in the
generic ballot, Fox News has it at 9 points and Quinnipiac at 7 points — all very reasonable numbers and all generally
consistent with my view that Democrats have a clear and consistent advantage in the generic somewhere in the mid-
to upper-single digits.
Poll truths
Skeptics of this assessment might point to the president’s job approval in the NBC/Journal survey, asking how the survey’s
generic ballot favoring Democrats could inch up from an advantage of 7 points to 10 points while Trump’s job approval
increased to 44 percent (from 39 percent in April).
The answer is easy.
First, the NBC/Journal’s generic ballot has been remarkably stable for months. The percentage of respondents who
want a Democratic-controlled Congress has fluctuated between 47 percent and 50 percent in multiple surveys since April 2017.
So, the survey’s generic ballot hasn’t really “moved” at all. That
makes sense, given how starkly the partisan battle lines have
been drawn for months.
Key Democratic and swing groups — including younger voters, college-educated whites and suburban
voters — continue to look energized and prepared to deliver a message to the White House.
Just as important, the NBC/Journal poll found many voters from key voting groups would be more likely to
support a candidate for Congress who opposes Trump and much of his agenda.
Second, Trump has gotten good news recently, both on the economy and from North Korea, and that could easily explain his improved job
approval numbers. But even this assessment must be tentative.
The Trump approval numbers have bounced around for the past six months in NBC/Journal polling — 44 percent in June, 39 percent in April,
43 percent in March and 39 percent in January — so
it is hard to know exactly where the public is now on the president’s performance.
 Dem Senate
Dem momentum towards Senate majority – huge media presence, record fundraising,
voter perceptions,
Connolly 6/11 ---- Griffin, political columnist for Roll Call, Bachelor’s degree in History (Boston
College), “Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC Sinks $80 Million Into 9 Key States,” 2018,
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/democrats-senate-majority-pac-sinks-80-million-9-key-states

The Democratic Senate Majority PAC announced Monday it will sink $80 million for TV ads into nine states with
battleground Senate races this fall in an initial wave of spending for the 2018 midterms.
SMP will air ads beginning on Labor Day and continuing to election night on Nov. 7 in races for three Republican-held seats in Nevada, Arizona and Tennessee, and
six Democratically controlled seats in Indiana, Florida, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia.
SMP President J.B. Poersch attributed the massive initial TV ad package to “record fundraising” this cycle.
As of April 30, the group had raised more than $50 million to spend on winning back Democratic control of the Senate, per OpenSecrets.org.
“Democrats’ chances in Senate races across the country continue improving because voters see that they are
the candidates fighting for hardworking, middle class families,” Poersch said in a statement.
“We are implementing an aggressive media strategy to combat the Republicans’ baseless, partisan attacks and promote
our candidates that are fighting for higher wages and lower health care premiums,” he said. “ We look forward to building off our existing
momentum with smart, tactical planning to ensure victory in November.”
Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates seven of the nine races SMP will target as Toss-ups.
Montana, rated Tilts Democratic, and Tennessee, rated Leans Republican, are the only states where Inside Elections has one party with a slight edge.

Dems can take the Senate – trends, insiders, democratic enthusiasm, and fundraising –
assumes GOP map advantages
Taylor 5/7 ---- Jessica, lead digital political reporter for NPR, “Republican Fears About Holding the
Senate Start To Sink In,” 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/05/07/608649799/republican-fears-about-
holding-the-senate-start-to-sink-in

Democrats are going into the 2018 elections with the wind at their backs, which could even be enough to
flip a Senate map heavily stacked for Republicans come November.
In conversations with several top GOP strategists, nearly all conceded that the overwhelming Democratic
enthusiasm they're facing this November is incredibly worrisome. Most still think it's a better than even chance that they do keep the
Senate — albeit narrowly — but it's no longer out of the realm of possibility that the upper chamber could change hands,
especially given the volatility of the GOP's two-seat majority.
"Generally speaking, close races aren't won by the party with the wind in their face. That's not the way it
works," said one top GOP Senate race veteran. "If we lose 40 to 50 seats in the House, you can't pick up three
to four Senate seats."
"If we hold the Senate, I think it will be close. It will be closer than it should be when the cycle started," said another longtime Republican Senate operative.
"There's
no question it's far more in play than it was a year ago."
Moreover, lackluster fundraising as of late from GOP challengers and stronger-than-expected hauls from
Democratic incumbents has further stoked worry among Republicans.
Many Republicans are already beginning to make the argument in some surprisingly volatile states like
Tennessee that the Senate majority is on the line — hoping to woo voters to the polls by hammering home the implication that something as
important as another Supreme Court vacancy could be left in the hands of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

Member tallies go neg

Taylor 5/7 ---- Jessica, lead digital political reporter for NPR, “Republican Fears About Holding the
Senate Start To Sink In,” 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/05/07/608649799/republican-fears-about-
holding-the-senate-start-to-sink-in
Overall though, Republican fortunes in keeping the Senate aren't as good as they should be, especially given the
near-perfect map they were gifted this cycle. Democrats are defending 26 seats — 10 of which are in states that President Trump carried — while
Republicans have nine seats on the ballot, and only one (Nevada) in a state that Hillary Clinton carried.
Most Republicans believe Sens. Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Claire McCaskill in Missouri are their best chances to win seats
currently held by Democrats. In recent weeks, one of the best bits of news for Republicans was when Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced that he
would challenge Sen. Bill Nelson. The billionaire Scott can give freely to his own campaign, forcing Democrats to perhaps divert resources from other contests.
In the next tier are Democratic incumbents in states President Trump won by more than 20 points — North
Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Montana's Jon Tester. But even Republicans admit all three have
strong political identities distinct from the national Democratic Party and that they won't be as easy to knock off as
once thought.
In addition, once-competitive states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania have slipped from being realistic
opportunities, according to multiple GOP sources, both in part because Republicans have struggled to attract strong
candidates. Some Republicans still mention Wisconsin as a possible sleeper race, where Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is running for re-election.
Meanwhile, Republicans are at risk of losing as many as three of their own seats. The most endangered is
Sen. Dean Heller's seat in Nevada, a state won twice by Barack Obama and by Hillary Clinton in 2016. The contest to replace retiring
Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona worries many Republicans because a late unsettled primary contest could weaken the
party's nominee in a state that's changing rapidly. And what should be a safe seat in Tennessee is becoming anything but
a sure thing, rocketing up the list of GOP concerns.
All in all, everything has to go right for Democrats to flip the two seats they need to win control of the Senate, including hanging on to
most of their own endangered incumbents. But Republicans are growing increasingly pessimistic about their chances come
November — and as many privately note, the environment is probably going to get worse for them before it gets
better.
 Dem Turnout
Trump’s driving turnout
Sargent 5/8 ---- Greg, national politics writer for The Washington Post featured in Talking Points
Memo, New York Magazine, The Denver Post, and Huff Post, “Trump Is a Disaster, and That’s Helping
Democrats. But Not How You Think.,” The Washington Post, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/08/trump-is-a-disaster-and-thats-
helping-democrats-but-not-how-you-think/?utm_term=.11d87b55d882

There is an additional nuance that should be noted, and it gets at how Democrats actually are capitalizing on
Trump’s unpopularity.
What we have seen in the last year of elections, in Virginia, in Alabama, in Pennsylvania’s 18th District and in dozens of
state legislative races, is that Trump’s unpopularity is driving Democratic turnout and Democratic
volunteering, and is turning white, better-educated, suburban swing voters and independents against the
GOP — because alienation from Trump has led such voters to give Democrats more of a hearing. The
intensity of this outpouring against Trump is undoubtedly driven in part by Trump’s scandals and his response
to them, and crucially, it is happening even as Democratic candidates are not particularly focused on Trump
in their own campaigns.

Dem activism is massively expanding – huge presence

Gaillard 6/13 ---- Scott, former Senior Legislative Assistant in the US House of Representatives,
politics correspondent, J.D. (Florida State University College of Law), B.A. in Political Science (University
of Florida), “Democrats Predict Sweeping Elections in November … but Maybe Only They Can Screw It
Up,” Folio Magazine, 2018, http://folioweekly.com/stories/is-the-blue-wave-for-real,19973

Since November 2016, nationally and locally, the country has seen increased activism by liberals and other
progressives. The Women's March in Washington, D.C. in January 2017 included more than four million participants
worldwide. February's mass murder in Parkland galvanized gun safety advocates, including many progressives. The
March For Our Lives events brought many passionate and dedicated young activists together for a cause that's
considered more in tune with progressives. Inspired by marches and events, many more have joined the ranks of
progressive organizations and election teams
 No GOP Turnout
GOP turnout down and Dem increases outweigh
Clement 2/4 ---- Scott, polling director at The Washington Post, B.A. in Political Science (Vanderbilt
University), M.S. in Survey Methodology (University of Maryland), “Early Gauge of 2018 Turnout Shows
Good Signs for Democrats,” 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
fix/wp/2018/04/04/early-gauge-of-2018-turnout-shows-good-signs-for-
democrats/?utm_term=.581f62d74d62

Democrats are just about as likely as Republicans to say they plan to vote in this year’s congressional
elections, a break from the two previous midterm elections, in which Republicans were significantly
more inclined to vote, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in January.
Democratic congressional leaders hope anti-Trump sentiment can boost the party to regain control of the House and
possibly the U.S. Senate, and the poll finds many fellow partisans feel a similar urgency. Just over half of
Democratic-leaning registered voters, 51 percent, say it is “more important to vote” this year than in previous
elections, compared with 34 percent of Republican-leaning voters who say the same.
In the past two midterm years, Republicans parlayed heightened conservative enthusiasm and
disapproval of President Barack Obama into consecutive victories and control of the House and Senate. Post-ABC polls in 2014 found that,
on average, Republican-leaning voters were 10 points more likely to say they were “absolutely certain to vote” than were voters who leaned toward the Democratic
Party. In 2010, Republicans held a 12-point advantage on this question.
But turnout appears to be shaping up differently this year, with President Trump in the White House and most
Americans disapproving of his performance. Sixty-five percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning
independent voters say they are certain to vote, compared with 63 percent of Republican-leaning voters.
Among Republicans, motivation to vote appears to be down from the past two cycles, while Democrats have
changed less, although this may reflect the fact that the surveys in previous years were conducted later in those election years.
Turnout in midterm elections overall is far lower than turnout in presidential-election years, with fewer than 4 in 10
eligible voters casting ballots in 2014. Enthusiasm to vote this year ranges sharply within each party. The Post-ABC poll finds 54
percent of Americans who say that at the least they will “probably vote” also say it is more important to vote in 2018 than in previous midterm elections, while 44
percent say it is about as important as in the past and only 1 percent say it is less important.
 Trump Unpopular
Trump is historically unpopular – don’t be fooled by snapshots
Sargent 5/8 ---- Greg, national politics writer for The Washington Post featured in Talking Points
Memo, New York Magazine, The Denver Post, and Huff Post, “Trump Is a Disaster, and That’s Helping
Democrats. But Not How You Think.,” The Washington Post, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/05/08/trump-is-a-disaster-and-thats-
helping-democrats-but-not-how-you-think/?utm_term=.11d87b55d882

But this narrative is entirely wrong, and two new pieces this morning help set the record straight. Taken together, they point to a much more accurate version of
what’s happening: Trump’s
unpopularity does in fact remain historically abysmal. This and Trump’s many scandals
are in fact helping Democrats — but not in a way that is immediately apparent and not in a manner that betrays any unhealthy Democratic obsession
with those things.
The first article is by Nate Silver, and it puts Trump’s job-approval numbers in their proper perspective. You
constantly read headlines and punditry claiming that Trump’s approval is rising. But, while Silver agrees that
Trump’s approval has “increased slightly,” the big picture is this:
For the past 66 days, Trump’s approval rating has been somewhere between 40.0 percent and 42.1 percent,
according to our tracker. It’s been toward the higher end of that range recently — but that isn’t much of range. Indeed, over the whole
course of his presidency, the range Trump’s approval ratings travel in has been remarkably narrow.
If Trump’s numbers are rising, they are only doing so inside a very narrow range that remains abysmally
low. And don’t forget the polling that shows strong disapproval of Trump is running higher than strong approval,
which could impact disparities in voter engagement.
 GOP Anti-immigrant
Republicans are running on anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals this fall
Zachary Mueller, 7-17-2018, "The Jeff Sessions Campaign Tour: How the AG is Traveling Around the
Country Demonizing Immigrants — And Candidates Are Echoing Him," America's Voice,
https://americasvoice.org/blog/sesssions-campaigns/, DRS)
Since at least April of this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been out across the country giving
speeches that are helping to lay the foundation for an anti-immigrant political strategy in the 2018
midterms. Republicans have already made it clear that this is what they will run on this fall, even though
has already backfired in several elections since November 2017. Sessions, of course, has long been a
“leader” in attacking immigrants, and has been using his role as Attorney General to promote the false
conflation of immigrants with crime. Traditionally, at least since Watergate, US Attorney Generals do not
engage in campaign work, but Sessions has made it a point to advance the anti-immigrant narrative in
upcoming 2018 races across the country. He is developing a pattern spreading anti-immigrant talking
points in speeches made to battleground districts and states — which many Republican candidates then
echo. He has repeatedly called for building the wall, used MS-13 as an immigration bogeyman, claimed
that immigration is a main culprit in the opioid crisis, and repeated misleading talking points about safe
cities. From the middle of April 2018 to this writing, 19 of the 21 speeches Sessions has given while on
the road have had anti-immigrant themes. Sessions was also delivering anti-immigrant speeches in
Northern Virginia and in Philadelphia, right across the river from New Jersey, last October. Many
Republican candidates in the states he’s visited have made a point to show they are onboard with his
strategy and echoed his anti-immigrant talking points.
 AT: XO Thumps
Trump’s XO doesn’t thump the DA – wasn’t a complete solution and still leaves the
GOP mired in the immigration crisis.
Voght 6/22 – Kara Voght, editorial fellow in Mother Jones' DC bureau, 2018 (“Democrats Are Going to
Make Family Separation a Big Issue in the Midterms”, Mother Jones, June 23rd,
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/democrats-family-separation-immigration-midterms-
congress-trump/, Accessed 6-23-2018 // jk)
Public opinion was not on the side of Republican lawmakers this week. Two-thirds of Americans, and
nearly 60 percent of Republicans, disapproved of the Trump administration’s policy that separated
children from undocumented parents prosecuted for entering the United States. And Democrats, vying to take control of the
House this fall, pounced on that public outcry as they hammered Republicans for their tacit complicity with the
administration’s policy. “House Republicans have seemed to walk away from a piece of legislation that would allow us to address this issue and
to fix it,” Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on ABC this past Sunday. “I
think this is going to be devastating for House Republicans that made promises to their constituents.” On Wednesday, President Trump
signed an executive order that keeps families together while parents face criminal charges. But the order did not
end the “zero-tolerance” initiative that arrests undocumented parents for crossing the border, nor did it
clarify how long these families would be detained. The order also didn’t reunite families that had already been separated.
And so, while the family separation practice may have ceased, Democrats running for Congress plan to
capitalize on those linger questions in hopes of channeling outrage into votes for the 2018 midterms.
Immigration reform has been a key issue for both parties over the course of primary season. Most Democrats have
campaigned on a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers”—people brought into the country without authorization as
children—while more progressive candidates have called to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement altogether. Until this point,
however, immigration had been a more prominent point of discussion among Republicans: GOP candidates have aired more than
14,000 advertisements that emphasize a need to crackdown on illegal immigration, a quantity that dwarfs
Democratic ad spending on the subject. But a spokesperson for the DCCC says the committee has observed a new visceral reaction
to the subject among voters, one stirred by the images and audio recordings of children in detainment, that pulls
the matter out of a policy frame and makes it real. The DCCC expects to keep the emphasis on the need for a Congress that’s willing to
create permanent laws around the issue, so immigration policy isn’t driven solely through executive branch action. That’s also where
Democrats seeking office kept their focus this week. Jennifer Wexton, who’s seeking to replace Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock in Virginia’s
10th District, took to Twitter to pressure Comstock into condemning the separation, then slammed the Republican’s eventual press release for
“using many words to say nothing.” Jason Crow, who’s hoping to unseat Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), held a protest outside of a US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Aurora, Colorado, on Wednesday, where he read Coffman’s voting record alongside what the
Republican has said about family separation in order to contrast his opponent’s political action with his promises to voters. Even as the
executive order defanged the matter to a degree, candidateshave fought to keep the memory of the policy in voters’
minds. Marc Friedenberg, who’s running against incumbent Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.), advertised on Facebook an immigration town hall
he’s hosting on June 30 that will seek to remind voters of the more than 2,000 children still separated from their parents. Even with an
executive order, Friedenberg’s ad said, “it
is clear that President Trump’s order is not a comprehensive solution to
the immigration crisis and it cannot make up for the thousands of families that have been torn apart.”
George Franklin, one of the Democrats vying to replace Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Mich.) in what’s viewed as a flippable district, invited voters to sign
a petition “to demand answers and solutions to inhumane policies at our border,” because even though the president issued his executive
order, “he hasn’t touched the issue of reuniting families his policies have torn apart.” Josh Harder, who’s running to replace Republican Rep.
Jeff Denhem in California’s 10th District, notes that the
end of the policy doesn’t actually address the systemic concerns
that could be tackled by comprehensive immigration reform. Immigration bills have languished during this session of
Congress, even when public outcry has reached new heights. “Family separation policy is just one symptom of a much larger disease, which is
that this administration and our current Congress has shown no courage to do comprehensive immigration reform,” Harder tells Mother Jones.
“I’m glad it seems like it may be ended, but it seems like there’s a way bigger problem here.” His campaign began running an
ad on Friday on those lines, one that aligns his Republican opponent with the Trump administration and blames him for “doing nothing in
Washington to solve the problem.”
 AT: Future Legislation Thumps
Trump killed any new immigration legislation, but the plan would save Republican
incumbents in swing districts Dems win now
[Chris Cillizza, Cnn Editor-At-Large, 6-22-2018, "How Donald Trump killed the immigration bill with 1
tweet," CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/politics/donald-trump-immigration-
tweet/index.html]//Rank
For weeks, House Republican leaders have been working to thread the needle on an behind closed doors

immigration bill On Friday morning Trump ended all that with a tweet
that could secure the support of the bulk on their conference. , President Donald .

"Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after November we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in ,"

The so-called
Trump tweeted. "Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!" And, boom goes the dynamite. Now.

"compromise" legislation -- constructed by House Speaker Paul Ryan to make moderates and conservative happy -- was already on life support before Trump came in and pulled the plug. A vote on the measure was originally scheduled for

is dead now
Thursday. It was then set for Friday. Then late Thursday, it was postponed until next week as GOP leaders insisted they saw a glimmer of hope to write a bill that might actually pass the House. That hope . Imagine you are a conservative Republican
resistant to the "compromise" bill because it provides a path to citizenship for DACA recipients. You now have every reason in the world not to come to the table and take a tough vote. The President literally said there was no point! The question before Ryan and the rest of his leadership
team is whether there's even any merit in trying to push for a vote on the compromise bill next week -- or even if it's worth making some of the changes on things like E-verify that their members expressed a desire for over the past 48 hours. The problem with pushing for a vote on a bill
that's doomed is you put your members in a very difficult place. Please vote for this legislation -- that includes $25 billion to fund Trump's border wall -- even though it has zero chance of passing in the Senate and the President is on record as saying the fight is pointless. On the other

moderates -- and many members in swing districts

hand, want to be able to vote on something -- within the conference

regarding DACA before November so that they can go back to their constituents and say they are
working hard to address the immigration problem .
 AT: Economy Determines Midterms
The economy won’t decide the midterms — political science consensus.
Kilgore 17 — Ed Kilgore, Columnist at New York Magazine, former Senior Fellow at the Progressive
Policy Institute, former Policy Director for the Democratic Leadership Council, former Communications
Director for U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, holds a J.D. from the University of Georgia, 2017 (“Will the
Economy Save Trump and His Party?,” New York Magazine, September 7th, Available Online at
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/will-the-economy-save-trump-and-his-party.html,
Accessed 06-23-2018)
But how much help would a healthy economy offer the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections?
It certainly wouldn’t hurt. But the consensus of political scientists is that the performance of the
economy does not have the kind of impact on congressional elections as it has on presidential elections.
Rather, the effect of the economy is indirect: a strong economy increases president’s approval rating,
which in turn brightens the electoral prospects of the president’s party. And it’s worth remembering
that the president’s party almost always loses House seats in midterms (the only exceptions since the
Great Depression, in 1998 and 2002, were at times when the president’s approval ratings were
unusually high—a situation the highly polarizing Trump probably won’t enjoy no matter how well the
economy is doing). But the extraordinarily pro-GOP Senate landscape in 2018 could well insulate
Republicans from Senate losses next year, but a growing or even humming economy won’t necessarily
protect GOP control of the House.

Especially in 2018 — Trump.

Lu 5/29 — Chris Lu, Senior Fellow at the Miller Center—a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of
Virginia that specializes in U.S. presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history, former
Deputy Secretary of Labor during the Obama Administration, former White House Cabinet Secretary and
Assistant to President Obama, former Executive Director of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, former
Legislative Director for Senator Obama, former Deputy Chief Counsel of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2018 (“Why a strong economy
won't save Republicans in the 2018 midterms,” CNBC, May 29th, Available Online at
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/in-2081-midterm-elections-a-strong-economy-wont-save-
republicans.html, Accessed 06-23-2018)
For the Trump Administration, the centerpiece of its economic record is strong jobs numbers, with the
unemployment rate now at the lowest level since 2000. Last year's tax cut also allows the White House
and congressional Republicans to argue they're putting more money in people's pockets.
Not surprisingly, Trump has used every occasion to tout his economic record. He even marked Memorial
Day by boasting that fallen soldiers would be "happy and proud" about low unemployment numbers.
The problem for Trump, however, is that strong jobs numbers don't necessarily tell the full economic
story for most people in this country.
According to a recent Monmouth University poll, only 12 percent of Americans said their family has
benefited a great deal from recent economic growth. A whopping 53 percent said they've been helped
"not much" or "not at all" by economic growth. These figures are virtually the same as when Trump took
office in January 2017.
Despite the strong unemployment numbers, the percentage of working-age Americans who are
employed today is actually lower than in 2008. College graduates hitting the job market this year will
find 1.3 percent fewer jobs waiting for them, compared with last year. And wages are growing at a
meager 2.6 percent rate, which won't make up for a long period of wage stagnation.
As for the much-touted tax cuts, the law remains unpopular. In a troubling sign for Republican
candidates, only about one-fifth of Americans said they've seen any financial benefit from the tax cuts –
a not-unexpected result given that the tax benefits were aimed at corporations and wealthier
Americans.
At the same time, the price for everything else is going up. Gas prices have risen over 50 cents over the
past year and are now at the highest level since 2014. An average household is expected to spend $248
more on gas this summer compared to last year. For the bottom one-fifth of households, the rise in gas
prices has already offset whatever windfall they received from tax changes.
The cost of other necessities is rising as well. Rent prices are soaring in cities like Orlando, Las Vegas, and
Sacramento. Health care premiums for Americans on Obamacare will increase an average of 15 percent
this year, largely because of Trump's actions to undermine the law. In individual states, the premium
increases are much higher. One health plan has asked to boost rates by 64 percent in Virginia and 91
percent in Maryland.
For the least fortunate in this country, the Administration is engaged in a systematic effort to make
Medicaid, food stamps, and federal housing assistance more difficult to receive. Overall, four in ten
Americans can't cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing money or selling something.
When you consider all aspects of a typical household budget, it's no wonder that, despite low
unemployment, only about one-third of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction,
compared with 52 percent who say it's on the wrong track.
Certainly, low unemployment numbers can provide Trump with an important rhetorical weapon against
a potential Democratic wave. However, unless the rosy picture presented by Trump and his allies
matches the reality for most Americans, a strong overall economy won't be a decisive issue for
midterm voters, especially given the constant swirl of controversy, chaos, and divisiveness surrounding
Trump.
Much can change over the next five months. But if Donald Trump thinks that low unemployment alone
will ensure Republican control of Congress, he'll be in for a rude awakening the morning of November 7.
This year, understanding voter sentiment won't be as simple as reading a few pieces of economic data.

Post-‘90s history proves.

Lu 5/29 — Chris Lu, Senior Fellow at the Miller Center—a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of
Virginia that specializes in U.S. presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history, former
Deputy Secretary of Labor during the Obama Administration, former White House Cabinet Secretary and
Assistant to President Obama, former Executive Director of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, former
Legislative Director for Senator Obama, former Deputy Chief Counsel of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee, holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2018 (“Why a strong economy
won't save Republicans in the 2018 midterms,” CNBC, May 29th, Available Online at
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/29/in-2081-midterm-elections-a-strong-economy-wont-save-
republicans.html, Accessed 06-23-2018)
, former Deputy Secretary of Labor
One of the best-known slogans in recent political history is: "It's the economy, stupid."
This simple message helped propel Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 and later sustained his
popularity when he faced impeachment.
Candidates over the past quarter century have harkened back to this catchphrase – as incumbents
running when the economy is strong or as challengers when the economy is weak. This year, Donald
Trump and congressional Republicans are banking on the strength of the U.S. economy to defy the
history of big midterm losses for the president's party.
But what if "It's the economy, stupid" turns out not to be so meaningful this year?
Arguably, this slogan didn't even apply after Clinton's successful presidential campaign. Despite a
booming economy in the late 1990s, Democrats couldn't win back control of Congress. Clinton's vice
president, Al Gore, wasn't able to translate a strong economy and huge stock market gains into victory
in 2000.
More recently, Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 when the country was still climbing out of a
recession. Four years later, Hillary Clinton couldn't leverage a fully-recovered economy into an electoral
victory.

The political science consensus is robust.

Enten 14 — Harry Enten, Senior Political Writer and Analyst for FiveThirtyEight, former Columnist at
The Guardian, holds a B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College, 2014 (“Why We Aren’t Talking
About The Economy In 2014,” FiveThirtyEight, October 6th, Available Online at
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-we-arent-talking-about-the-economy-in-2014/, Accessed 06-
23-2018)
In 2012, two sets of journalists eagerly awaited the jobs report each month: economics and election
reporters. In 2014, the economics reporters are still following the news with great interest. Yet Friday’s
jobs report was the last before the midterm elections, and we barely heard a peep about it from
politicos. In fact, I think I’ve written the word “economy” just once (or twice) to explain this year’s
election trends.
The reason is simple: Accounting for the state of the economy doesn’t hold much, if any, predictive
value for congressional elections. It’s not that the economy doesn’t affect House or Senate races —
Democrats might be doing even worse if the economic recovery wasn’t somewhat decent. It’s just that
other variables already sufficiently account for the economy’s effect.
We can see this when looking at FiveThirtyEight’s presidential and Senate models. Both rely primarily on
the polls — and more and more so as we get closer to the election. Both also take into account
“fundamental” variables that help us better understand the races. Both have been back-tested to ensure
that including fundamentals makes for more accurate projections.
In the presidential model, FiveThirtyEight includes an economic index variable. This index combines
seven different measures of economic strength in the lead-up to the presidential election. In the Senate
model, FiveThirtyEight looks instead at the generic congressional ballot and congressional approval
ratings. Right now, the generic ballot is not looking good for Democrats, while congressional approval is
a little bit more hazy given the split control of Congress.
FiveThirtyEight is not alone in its different treatment of congressional and presidential elections. This
year’s American Political Science Association conference showcased three well-known forecasting
models for the midterms — none of them uses an economic variable, but the same authors include an
economic growth variable in their presidential models.
Emory University Professor Alan Abramowitz’s Senate model looks at the generic ballot in early
September, seat exposure (i.e. the number of seats each party has among the seats up for re-election)
and whether or not the election is a midterm. His presidential model includes a variable for GDP growth
in the second quarter of the election year.
SUNY Buffalo Professor’s James Campbell’s House and Senate models look at the number of seats in
trouble (as measured by the Cook Political Report), the president’s approval rating in late August and
the number of seats held by each party going into the election. His presidential model also includes
second quarter GDP growth.
For midterm elections, Dartmouth College Professor Joseph Bafumi, Columbia University Professor Bob
Erikson and University of Texas Professor Chris Wlezien’s House model looks at the generic ballot at
different points of the midterm cycle and which party controls the White House. Erikson and Wlezien’s
presidential model includes a variable for the cumulative growth of an index of leading economic
indicators.
The distinction between how the authors treat congressional and presidential elections is clear.
Importantly, their explanation matches our reasoning behind not including an economic variable in our
model. As Bafumi, Erikson and Wlezien note, “economic performance has no clear effect on the
midterm vote. We tried two economic measures. … Neither variable (multiplied by presidential party) is
significant when added to our models.”
Put it all together and you can see why we haven’t spoken that much about the economy in regards to
the Senate elections this year. Other measures tell us far more about where the election is going to end
up.

Voters care more about immigration than the economy — latest polling.
Nilsenella 6/20 — Ella Nilsenella, Politics and Policy Reporter at Vox, 2018 (“Poll: immigration has
become the No. 1 issue for voters in 2018,” Vox, June 20th, Available Online at
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/17485162/pew-research-center-poll-immigration-issue-2018-
midterms, Accessed 06-21-2018)
Democrats have been hammering home two issues in particular ahead of the 2018 midterms: jobs and
health care.
But between the recent outrage over the Trump administration’s family separation policy and House
Republicans taking up a comprehensive bill aimed at fixing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program, one new poll finds that voters thinking about 2018 care most about immigration.
Out of 2,002 Republican and Democratic adults (including 1,608 registered voters) surveyed by the Pew
Research Center from June 5 to 12, immigration emerged as the top issue they most wanted to hear
2018 candidates talk about. In fact, about one in five voters mentioned immigration — more than
mentioned either health care or the economy.
Republican voters or those who lean Republican were slightly more likely to mention immigration as
their most important issue than their Democratic counterparts; 21 percent of Republicans mentioned
immigration as their top issue, compared to 18 percent of Democrats.
Health care was the next most important priority for Democratic voters, while Republicans were focused
on the economy and economic issues. Democratic voters were twice as likely as Republicans to mention
health care as a key issue.
Americans tend to vote pretty reliably on the economy, but polls leading up to the 2018 midterms have
been all over the map with voter issues. In May, a Morning Consult poll found that while the majority of
registered voters identified the economy as their top priority in 2018, Republican voters were more
likely to say they were concerned about national security.
And the Pew poll was conducted just as the family separation issue was starting to blow up, which
shows that voters are responsive to the Trump administration’s most controversial policies.
 AT: Gerrymandering
*Note the James card under the “AT: UQ O/W” header also assumes Gerrymandering*
Dems win despite Gerrymandering
[The Economist, 5-26-2018, "We think the Democrats are favoured to take the House," Economist,
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/05/26/we-think-the-democrats-are-favoured-to-take-
the-house]//Rank
America’s mid-term elections in November will be hugely important. Every
ALTHOUGH they lack the intense personal drama of a presidential race,

seat in the House is up for grabs of Representatives , along with 35 out of 100 Senate seats. A Democratic takeover of either chamber would unleash a flurry of investigations into President Donald Trump and wreck his hopes of

If Dem s take the House Trump might be impeached

passing more conservative laws on a partisan basis. the ocrat , Mr also . This year’s mid-term campaign is extraordinary in another way. It is

Thanks to
expected to be closely fought. gerrymandering, most individual House races are
Americans’ tendency to separate into like-minded communities and to deliberate

one-sided . Historically, control of the lower chamber has been a foregone conclusion as well. In every contest from 1954 to 1992, the Democrats won at least 232 seats, well above the 218 needed for a majority. Since 2002 the winning party has always claimed at least

this year’s contest appears to be poised on a knife-edge

229 seats, with the results predictable (mostly in the Republicans’ favour) months before election day. By contrast, .

Because district lines favour the Republicans, most estimates suggest the Democrats could wrest
control of the House if they win 53- % of the total votes cast pollsters have
manage to 54.5 for the two major parties. For most of 2018,

reported that about 53.5% of people who express an opinion intend to vote Democratic . The Republicans appear likely to keep
control of the Senate, but a Democratic wave could also put it into play.

Gerrymandering makes a Dem wave more likely – lowers the threshold to swing GOP
districts
[Conor Sen, Bloomberg View columnist. He is a portfolio manager for New River Investments in Atlanta
and has been a contributor to the Atlantic and Business Insider, 2-17-2017, "Republicans'
Gerrymandering Could Help Democrats," Bloomberg, Available online at
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-17/republicans-gerrymandering-could-end-up-
helping-democrats]//Rank
But drawing districts with the intention of helping
The Tea Party wave of 2010 cost the Democrats the House, and then Republicans gerrymandered congressional districts to remain in power.

your party is an act of statistical modeling, and all models have assumptions, biases and flaws. A
midterm election with an unpopular Republican president will reveal some of the flaws in the
Republican Party's gerrymandering The redrawn lines may even benefit Democrats. The House .

gerrymander is mostly a phenomenon in five states

that Democrats complain about Obama -- Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. President Barack

carried all five states in 2008 , yet after the 2010 Census, Republicans in those states drew district maps that were very favorable to their party. Those five states have a combined 73 seats in the House -- currently 52 Republicans and 21

The Cook PVI measures how much a district leans

Democrats. Those 73 seats are all held by the party favored to hold those districts, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

Republican or Democrat relative to the national average If Democrats won a , as measured by an average of the most recent two presidential elections.

national election by two percentage points , a Cook PVI score of D+2 would mean that a district is , as they did in 2016

2 percent more Democratic than the national average If , or a nominal Democratic margin of four points. Drawing districts in such a way that your party benefits is a delicate operation.

you're a Republican and you have 10 districts to work with, you might be tempted to tilt as many of
them as possible toward your party -- say, by creating eight R+1 or R+2 districts But those eight seats .

would be vulnerable If instead you choose to make four of the 10 districts solidly Republican
. -- for instance, R+10 districts --

you give yourself some safe seats but put extra territory in play for Democrats to take advantage of. With
partisanship as entrenched as it currently is, the sweet spot has been around R+4 or R+5, a margin presumed to be safe in normal elections. The five heavily gerrymandered states mentioned above show this in action. Of the 21 Democratic seats, 19 are D+8 or higher, with the other two

Yet the Republican list looks much different Fourteen seats are
being a D+4 and a D+6. Even in a historic Republican landslide, Democrats might only have those two seats at risk. .

R+4 or less, with an additional 10 seats being R+5 or R+6 Trying to distribute their supporters across as .

many districts as possible, Republicans created many weakly Republican districts rather than a few
strongly Republican districts. The party gambled on politics as usual then Donald Trump became . And

president Polarization is high in the recent political climate, but so is congressional

. If you're a Democrat, this is where your ears perk up.

turnover Democrats picked up 30 seats

. and another 21 in 2008 in the 2006 midterms . Then Republicans picked up 63 seats in 2010, and after giving a few seats back in 2012,

Republican-leaning working-
expanded their margin in 2014. Midterm elections tend to have lower turnout than presidential years. We don't yet know what the demographic makeup will be of a Trump midterm election. For all we know,

class white men will stay home while Democratic-leaning women and college-educated voters are
,

mobilized. Trump is currently the least popular president ever.

And at this point in the presidency, But if Much can change over the next 21 months.
things don't improve for him, there's no reason to think he and his party would be any different than
every other unpopular president heading into a midterm election In a big . Here's where the "Republican gerrymander" could help Democrats.

enough anti-Trump wave, the R+4 districts intended to favor Republicans could tip toward Democrats.
Its gerrymander could cost it the
After the Democratic waves of 2006 and 2008, the Republican wave of 2010, and Trump's unexpected election, pundits must question their assumptions -- and those of the Republican Party.

House.
 AT: UQ O/W
Democrats have a narrow lead in the house race now, but there is enough time for
Republicans to steal back the majority
[W. James, 6-18-2018, "Democrats know their 'blue wave' is no sure thing," Washington Examiner,
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/democrats-know-midterm-blue-wave-is-no-sure-
thing]//Rank
At the beginning of the year, things looked pretty grim for Republicans. Down by double digits in the
generic ballot the Republicans' House majority looked all but gone
— polls that measure which party respondents would like to see control Congress — . The Senate

polling
wasn’t much more secure, as the GOP was reduced to a 51-49 margin after a special election loss in deep-red Alabama. President Trump’s job approval ratings were dismal. An election was coming in November. Then the Republicans’ fortunes began to improve. CNN’s ,

found the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage dwindling

for example, to just 3 from an eye-popping 16 percentage points in February to 6 points in March down last

Democrats have rebounded since

month. By the end of May, a Reuters poll actually had Republicans leading the Democrats for the first time this election cycle. Trump’s job approval, while still anemic, hit an 11-month high.

then Their lead in the

. average of polls has climbed back up to 7.7 points
RealClearPolitics But 7.3 points. It sits at in the FiveThirtyEight polling average.

because Democratic voters tend to be concentrated in populous metropolitan areas — and yes, also
gerrymandering — that margin might just barely be enough to win the House . It likely wouldn’t constitute some massive blue wave. Policy Bosses:
Jim Nussle, President and CEO of the Credit Union National Association Watch Full Screen to Skip Ads “I think the blue wave has receded somewhat,” said Pat Caddell, a longtime Democratic pollster and consultant who is now a Fox News contributor. “I still think that as long as this
election remains unclear about how it’s focused, there is an instinct in off years for anybody who disapproves of anything about the incumbent to vote no” on the president’s party. Historically, that has proved true. In 18 out of the last 20 midterm elections, the president’s party has lost
seats. The exceptions were 1998, when congressional Republicans launched an unpopular attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton, and 2002, when President George W. Bush still boasted astronomical approval ratings following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But how many seats are lost
varies. Trump’s approval ratings are hovering between a lower range that would traditionally result in enough losses to cost Republicans control of the House and a higher one in which Democrats would be expected to come up just short. And that’s assuming tradition still applies with
Trump, whose personal approval rating was just 37.5 percent — lower than it is on average right now — on the day he was elected president. Combined with “right track” numbers some pollsters say are higher than tends to be seen in wave elections and a Democratic generic ballot lead
that is lower, the current environment has Republicans feeling pretty good. “Democrats can’t wish themselves into the majority,” said National Republican Congressional Com mittee spokesman Matt Gorman. “The fact is that record low unemployment, record high wage growth, and a
historic summit with North Korea has put Republicans in a position to defy history and hold the House.” “Democrats are using the ‘blue wave’ moniker as a rallying cry because they have no other message to run on,” said Sarah Dolan of America Rising PAC. “The economy is booming
while tax cuts are putting money back in Americans' pockets and running on the issue of impeachment won't sway voters. In the Senat e, the red state Democrats have resoundingly low favorables and the tightening generic ballot shows that Democrats haven't shored up this cycle as
much as they'd like to pretend.” Indeed, Republicans have an opportunity to actually gain seats in the Senate with 10 Democrats running for reelection in states Trump won in 2016 — including several he carried by big margins and where he remains popular. Sen. Joe Manchin, for
instance, is trying to hold onto a Senate seat in West Virginia, where Trump won by 42 points and still has an approval rating in excess of 60 percent. A May Morning Consult poll showed the challenge. In six competitive Senate races — five in states Trump won, the sixth in a state he lost
narrowly with an appointed incumbent — the sitting Democrat fails to register plurality support for “deserves reelection.” Only Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has an approval rating above 50 percent and even in his case “deserves reelection” and “time for a new person” are evenly split at 43
percent apiece. In every other contest, the poll found plurality support for electing a new person. That option led 46 percent to 31 percent for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.; 43 percent to 30 percent for Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.; 30 percent to 25 percent for Al Franken replacement Sen. Tina
Smith, D-Minn.; 49 percent to 35 percent for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; and an amazing 53 percent to 29 percent for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is also 7 points underwater in her job approval rating. Karl Rove dismisses the idea of a blue wave even in the House. “Instead, 2018
will be a brutal district-by-district battle,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Each outcome will be determined as much by the quality of candidates and their campaigns as by the national climate.” The intensity gap That doesn’t mean all is well for the GOP, however.

Republican strategists conceded to the Washington Examiner that there is still an “intensity gap” that
favors the Democrats . “Voters are motivated by three things: greed, anger and fear,” said Brian O. Walsh, president of the pro-Trump outside group America First Action and a former NRCC political director. Republicans aren’t greedy because they

Republicans have underperformed in

have just gotten a tax cut, they aren’t angry because they are in power in Washington and they aren’t afraid because they are not yet convinced those majorities are in jeopardy.

special elections dating to last year, even when they have won. And they have lost their share: a Senate seat in Alabama, where Trump won by 27.8 points; a Wisconsin state senate seat where Trump won by 17; a Pennsylvania congressional seat in a district
Trump won by 20. Pennsylvania is a problem because of court-imposed redistricting Democrats say reverses Republican gerrymandering and Republicans contend merely re-gerrymanders the state for the Democrats’ benefit. Either way, it is likely to lead to a net loss in Republican seats in

a year where the party doesn’t have many to spare. “With the majority of primary elections behind us, it’s clear that Democrats have nominated incredibly strong candidates
who uniquely fit their districts and have built top-tier campaigns,” said Tyler Law, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “With a huge pickup in Pennsylvania, highly effective maneuvering of the
California top-two system, and a historically unpopular House Republican agenda on healthcare and taxes, Democrats have all the momentum heading into the midterms. That said, we take nothing for granted given that Republicans will have a massive resource advantage with all of their
dark money outside groups.” California is a good example of the mixed signals this election cycle has sent. Democrats feared their overcrowded primary fields, riven by ideological divisions between factions loyal to 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton and her progressive challenger Bernie
Sanders, would deprive them the opportunity to contest some Clinton-won districts in the state currently represented by GOP congressmen. Because California had adopted a top-two “jungle primary” system regardless of party affiliation, the concern was that Democratic votes would be
so split in some of these districts that none of their candidates would make it to the general election ballot. Instead Democrats advanced in all these districts. “First, we didn’t get locked out of anything,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “This gives Democrats an opportunity to
play to November. … Second, if you look at some the Republican incumbents, yeah they finished way ahead of their Democratic opponents, but they ended up in the high 40s. The reality is, they’re going to have to do better than that to win in November. " On the other hand, in most of
the contested districts the combined Republican vote total exceeded that of all the Democrats on the ballot. One exception was the district represented by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who advanced to November with plurality support. In his race, all the Democrats combined
managed to win 50.6 percent of the vote. Another is in the seat being vacated by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., where the Democrats took 50.9 percent. “In both states where [the top-two system is] used — California and Washington state — the total primary vote for all Republicans versus
the total primary vote for all Democrats has almost always been within a couple points of the November result,” John Fund wrote for Fox News. Then again, maybe this year the resistance and the blue wave materialize in November rather than June. America First’s Walsh believes

Republicans face a “math problem” in the House and a “money problem” in the Senate. Redistricting
and retirements mean that at least seven of the GOP’s 23-seat majority are already gone . Democrats will have Republicans
playing defense in at least 40 districts. “We lose half of them, we lose,” Walsh continued. “If you look since 2009, we’ve gutted the Blue Dogs. There’s almost none of them left. … The House has basically sorted itself where most of the R-plus districts are represented by Republicans and
the D-plus districts are represented by Democrats. We don’t have that much legitimate offense.” Walsh said that when he was at the NRCC during the Tea Party wave, Republicans identified 125 potential pickup opportunities. This year, he thinks the party may have five. “They're going to
have to make a hard run on us and we're going to have to make a hard run on them,” he added. “It’s all going to come down to how people feel in like 20 districts.” On the Senate side, Walsh sees a “big, beautiful red map” that is there for Trump and th e Republicans’ taking. “The biggest
concern there is money,” he said. Can Republicans spread enough of it around to ensure their best challengers and candidates for at-risk seats all have the funding they need to compete — especially with so many expensive media markets involved? “We know we’ve got a legitimate shot
at the Missouri Senate race,” Walsh said, “but in the last filing period Claire McCaskill filed $11.5 million in the bank, [likely Republican nominee] Josh Hawley filed $2.1 million in the bank. Before we can even get to the battle of the titans, we’ve got to close that gap . ... We’ve got great
opportunities in the Senate, we’ve just to make sure we can financially afford them.” The Trump-Pelosi question Republicans also have a conflict in their messaging. Trump is an asset in the Senate races that will decide t he majority but a liability in some of the at-risk congressional

districts. That means different approaches to the president not only for each race, but arguably each legislative chamber. Trump and congressional Republicans are also split on the winning formula. The latter would like to focus almost exclusively on the tax cut. Trump
mentions taxes but also wants to talk tough on immigration , trade, MS-13 and national security, emphasizing his full agenda. Caddell contended the tax cut is still “too controversial” and recommended
“weaponizing the economy, impeachment, raising taxes and [the Democrats'] defense of many things that I think are indefensible. Otherwise, the natural structural tendency is to favor the Democrats.” He also suggested Republicans could sharpen their critique of House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., by picking their own successor to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., before the election. Pelosi has emerged as a powerful GOP counterweight to the Democrats’ use of Trump to motivate voters. Republicans credit anti-Pelosi ads with helping save a seat in Georgia’s
6th Congressional District last year. But some GOP operatives fear their base doesn’t take the threat of a second Pelosi speakership seriously enough to turn them out. “The Democrats can’t have it two ways,” Caddell said. “They can’t say ‘I’m not for her, but I’ll see what happens. Uh-uh.”
Pelosi’s grip on the caucus could be loosened if Democrats win a small majority, amplifying the influence of a small number of defectors, or a particularly large majority where the amount of new blood makes things unpredictable — and she is certainly at risk if her party doesn’t capture
the majority at all. Democrats are going to force a similar choice on Republicans regarding Trump. In Virginia, where as many as three GOP-held House seats may be at risk, that will be magnified by the candidacy of Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart, who is arguably more prone
to controversy than the president. This isn’t good for vulnerable incumbents such as Rep. Barbara Comstock, who already faces criticism for being insufficiently pro-Trump — an argument her primary challenger made on his way to winning 40 percent of the vote. “Everybody bet against
the guy in 2016,” Walsh said of Trump. “Just because you don’t like his style, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. People ar e over-analyzing and under-appreciating the relationship that he has with the people who cast ballots for him. ... He’s not traditional, he’s not conventional, he’s never

strategists on both
going to be, the American people elected him for that reason, so stop trying to put the guy in a box.” ADVERTISEMENT Even as the primaries rage across the country, it is still very early in the midterm election campaign and

sides of the aisle agree that things could change. There is almost as much time between now and
November as elapsed when Republicans slowly crept back into contention. It is still too early to know definitively whether November will bring a blue wave or just a trickle.
 AT: Russia Hacks
Increased DHS efforts solve
[Derek B. Johnson 18, staff writer at FCW, covering governmentwide IT policy, cybersecurity and a
range of other federal technology issues., 1-11-2018, "3 ways DHS is helping states with election
security," FCW, https://fcw.com/articles/2018/01/11/3-ways-dhs-helps-states-voting.aspx]//Rank
A Department of Homeland Security official said the federal government is substantially more prepared
to deal with a nation-state attack on election systems today than it was in the lead-up to the 2016
election. In a Jan. 10 speech to the Election Assistance Commission in Washington D.C., Bob Kolasky, acting deputy under secretary for the National Protection
and Programs Directorate, said the department has worked to expand its communication and outreach to state and local governments, which are primarily
responsible for administering elections. "The
Department of Homeland Security is in a much better position to work
with our interagency partners and the election community to respond to any lingering threats that
emerge going forward," he said. Kolasky said DHS has focused on improving election security assistance
to states and localities in three key areas: establishing sound working partnerships with state and local
governments, boosting information sharing through a mix of declassification and increased security
clearances and dedicating more departmental resources to critical federal election security resources
that states rely on. He likened 2016 efforts to coordinate with states on malicious cyber activity to building relationships "in the middle of a hurricane"
as officials attempted to communicate with intelligence agencies, process classified information, establish relationships with states and provide them tools or
expertise all at the same time. Since
then, the department has worked to establish a pair of councils to ensure
better coordination between every organization involved in the election system. The first consists of
federal, state and local government election officials. The second council, still pending, will be designed
to engage the private sector, namely voting machine manufacturers and software providers. "A lot of
state and local officials buy from the same groups of people," Kolasky said. "We want to make sure
there is an ability for us collectively to have conversations with vendors about security challenges." The
department is also looking to boost information sharing between the federal government and state and local election offices. DHS came under criticism from some
states during the 2016 election for subpar information sharing. Earlier during the summit, Kim Wyman, secretary of state for Washington, recounted the frustration
she felt in 2016 when the department briefed states on an assessment that found Russian hackers had scanned election systems in 21 states, but declined to specify
which states had been targeted. "I mention this not to throw [DHS] under the bus because they're wonderful, it's just they're not used to operating in this world of
transparency like we do," said Wyman. Kolasky
didn't mince words when discussing the department's need to improve
the threat intelligence it shares with state and local governments. The department said it is working on
sponsoring and encouraging election officials in all 50 states to apply for security clearances and will
push intelligence agencies to be more aggressive about declassifying information that can be used by
state and local election officials. "We have improved on that, we will improve on that going forward,"
he said. "We will always prioritize getting security information out to the people who make security
decisions." Finally, Kolasky said DHS has dedicated more departmental resources to programs and tools
designed to assist states. He mentioned one of the most popular tools: risk and vulnerability
assessments that involve deploying federal cyber experts to work with states, gain familiarity with their
systems and make key security recommendations. The department has experienced a backlog of states
requesting the service, so many that it would have prevented DHS from providing assistance to some
states until weeks before the mid-term elections. Kolasky said the department has responded to those
concerns by undergoing a "significant shift in resources," dedicating more personnel to the program.
The department now expects to assist all 14 states with pending requests by April 2018. "We want the
rest of the states to sign up, and if they do, we believe we'll be able to do those on-site assessments
before the mid-term elections," he said.
*** AT: Thumpers
 2NC – Immigration Key/AT: Thumpers
Immigration is the top issue among voters
Andrew R. Arthur 7-10-2018, "Poll: Immigration a Leading Issue Heading into
Midterms," CIS.org, https://cis.org/Arthur/Poll-Immigration-Leading-Issue-Heading-
Midterms, DRS)
On July 5, 2018, Reuters reported the results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that immigration was the
top issue for U.S. voters heading into the November 2018 midterm elections, edging out the economy
on the list of Americans' concerns. While this is not surprising given the media attention paid to the
issue of immigration the last few weeks, the poll reveals some interesting facts. In my last post, I wrote
about the "Abolish ICE" movement among certain Democrats who are railing against the president's
policies, and immigration enforcement in the United States itself. The heated rhetoric surrounding
various administration policies, and in particular the so-called "separation of families" at the border
would suggest that this is a significant issue for voters on the liberal end of the spectrum. That poll bears
this out, but not to the degree one would expect. While Reuters reported that 15 percent of registered
voters indicated that "immigration was the top issue determining how they will cast their ballot in
November," the issue did not break down evenly along party lines. Instead, while 26 percent of
registered Republicans "cited immigration as the most important issue likely to determine their vote,"
only 7 percent of Democrats identified immigration as their main concern. In fact, immigration was
number three on the list for Democrats, behind healthcare (16 percent) and the economy (14 percent).
Moreover, immigration appears to be gaining momentum as an issue among Republicans heading into
the midterm elections.

Immigration is the top issue among voters

Nilsen 6/20 (Ella Nilsen covers Congress and the Democrats for Vox and also writes the daily Vox
Sentences newsletter. Before coming to Vox, she worked at the Concord Monitor newspaper in New
Hampshire, where she covered Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the 2016 primary. “Poll:
immigration has become the No. 1 issue for voters in 2018.” Vox.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/17485162/pew-research-center-poll-immigration-issue-2018-
midterms)
Democrats have been hammering home two issues in particular ahead of the 2018 midterms: jobs and
health care. But between the recent outrage over the Trump administration’s family separation policy
and House Republicans taking up a comprehensive bill aimed at fixing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program, one new poll finds that voters thinking about 2018 care most about immigration. Out of 2,002
Republican and Democratic adults (including 1,608 registered voters) surveyed by the Pew Research Center from June 5 to 12,
immigration emerged as the top issue they most wanted to hear 2018 candidates talk about. In fact,
about one in five voters mentioned immigration — more than mentioned either health care or the
economy. Republican voters or those who lean Republican were slightly more likely to mention
immigration as their most important issue than their Democratic counterparts; 21 percent of Republicans
mentioned immigration as their top issue, compared to 18 percent of Democrats. Health care was the next most important
priority for Democratic voters, while Republicans were focused on the economy and economic issues.
Democratic voters were twice as likely as Republicans to mention health care as a key issue. Americans tend to vote pretty reliably on the
economy, but polls leading up to the 2018 midterms have been all over the map with voter issues. In May, a Morning Consult poll found that
while the majority of registered voters identified the economy as their top priority in 2018, Republican voters were more likely to say they were
concerned about national security. And the
Pew poll was conducted just as the family separation issue was starting
to blow up, which shows that voters are responsive to the Trump administration’s most controversial
policies.

Trump will make immigration a key issue

Lucey et al 6/19 (CATHERINE LUCEY, JONATHAN LEMIRE and JILL COLVIN, Associated Press. “With
eyes on midterms, Trump embraces immigration fight.”
https://apnews.com/a13439e023e340ee8885b5e43871563d)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Calling the shots as his West Wing clears out, President Donald Trump sees his hard-line immigration
stance as a winning issue heading into a midterm election he views as a referendum on his protectionist policies. “You
have to stand for something,” Trump declared Tuesday, as he defended his administration’s immigration policy amid mounting criticism over
the forced separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The chorus of condemnation includes Democrats, as well as
Republicans, who are increasingly worried that reports about bereft children taken from their parents could damage the GOP’s chances in
November. Still, Trump
believes that his immigration pledges helped win him the presidency and that his
most loyal supporters want him to follow through. He made a rare trip to Capitol Hill late Tuesday to meet with GOP
legislators and endorse a pair of bills that would keep detained families together, among other changes, but he remains confident that
projecting toughness on immigration is the right call, said five White House officials and outside advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “It’s amazing how people are surprised that he’s keeping the promises he made on the
campaign trail now,” said Trump political adviser Bill Stepien. While the White House signaled Trump may be open to a narrow fix to deal with
the problem, the president spent the day stressing immigration policies that he has championed throughout his surprise political career. He has
resisted calls to reverse the separation policy, saying any change must come through Congress. In a speech to a business group earlier Tuesday,
Trump said he wanted to see legislation deal with family separation, which, he said, “We don’t want.” He also emphasized border security and
again made the false argument that Democrats are to blame for the family separation problem. Said Trump: “Politically correct or not, we have
a country that needs security, that needs safety, that has to be protected.” Several White
House aides, led by adviser Stephen Miller,
have encouraged the president to make immigration a defining issue for the midterms. And Trump has
told advisers he believes he looks strong on the matter, suggesting that it could be a winning culture war
issue much like his attacks on NFL players who take a knee for the national anthem. Former Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon said the
president is emphasizing the policies that brought him to the White House. “I think this is one of his best moments.
I think this is a profile in courage. This is why America elected him,” Bannon said. “This is not doubling down, it is tripling down.” Still, Trump, a
voracious watcher of cable news who is especially attuned to the power of images, appeared to acknowledge later Tuesday that the optics
could be doing damage. During his closed-door meeting with lawmakers on the Hill, Trump said his daughter Ivanka had encouraged him to find
a way to end the practice, and he said separating families at the border “looked bad,” according to several attendees. “He said, ’Politically, this
is bad,’” said Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas. “It’s not about the politics. This is the right thing to do.” Trump’s immigration standoff comes as he
escalates his nationalist trade moves, imposing new tariffs on imports and threating more. With few powerful opposing voices remaining in the
West Wing, Trump is increasingly making these decisions solo. Some key advisers have left, and chief of staff John Kelly appears sidelined.
Republicans, particularly those in more moderate districts, are worried they will be damaged by the searing images of children held in cages at
border facilities, as well as by audio recordings of young children crying for their parents. The House Republicans’ national campaign chairman,
Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, said Monday that he’s asking “the administration to stop needlessly separating children from their parents.” Other
conservatives also raised concerns, but many called for Congress to make changes instead of asking Trump to directly intervene. Ralph Reed,
chairman of the Faith & Freedom coalition of evangelical voters, added to the drumbeat to end the child separation policy Tuesday, calling on
Congress to pass legislation that would end the process as part of a broader immigration overhaul. But asked
if the border policy
was bad for Trump politically, Reed suggested core supporters remain on the president’s side. He said the
group’s members are “more than willing to give the president and his administration the benefit of the
doubt that this is being driven by a spike in people crossing the border, a combination of existing law and court
decisions require this separation, and the fact that the Democrats refused to work with the administration to increase judges so that this can be
dealt with more expeditiously.” Trump on Tuesday mocked the idea of hiring thousands of new judges, asking, “Can you imagine the graft that
must take place?”
 2NC – AT: Healthcare Thumper
Dems won’t have a unified push on healthcare – and it’s not the key issue
Cunningham 18 (Paige Winfield, Washington Post. “The Health 202: Why Democrats won’t have a
unified health care message in the midterms.” 3/23,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/03/23/the-health-
202-why-democrats-won-t-have-a-unified-health-care-message-in-
2018/5ab3db1e30fb045e48d05b5c/?utm_term=.595fa531764f)
It's unclear how Democrats can leverage health care to their advantage on the campaign trail this year,
even as Republicans face a difficult conundrum in how to talk about the issue with their repeal-replace
message now deflated. It’s definitely good news for Democrats that a majority of Americans say they
prefer a national health plan, such as the “Medicare for All” approach pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and some of the more
liberal members of the party. In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this morning, 59 percent of respondents — including one-third of
Republicans — said that’s where they’d like to see health reform go next. But
when Democrats talk about health care on the
stump, they will face a choice as to how moderate or liberal they should position themselves, as their
voters are divided over what should happen next with health-care restructuring. Forty-eight percent of
Democratic respondents to the Kaiser poll said they want a national health plan, while 46 percent said they’d prefer for the Affordable Care Act
to be improved. And
other issues are more important to voters than health care. Only 7 percent of voters,
and 11 percent of Democratic voters, said a candidate’s position on a national health plan is the “single
most important factor” in deciding who they’ll support in the midterm elections. Most respondents said
they care about the issue, but it’s not their top concern. Democrats are certainly trying to test the waters. Many senators who are
eyeing a presidential bid in 2020 have signed on to Sanders’s bill, including Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts. Last month, the liberal and influential Center for American Progress released a “Medicare Extra for All” plan that comes very close to a single-payer
system. This week, Warren released her own measure to boost the ACA’s premium subsidies by basing them on “gold” plan premiums instead of “silver” premiums.
The bill, dubbed the Consumer Health Insurance Protection Act, would also cap out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs at $250 and subject insurers to stricter
requirements for how much of their premium dollars must be spent on medical claims. But pollsters
warn that voters are extremely
malleable in their views when it comes to health care — which is exactly the problem Republicans ran into last year when
they proposed several replacements to the Affordable Care Act. People quite logically tend to base their judgments on
how a particular plan would affect them. So when voters learned last spring and summer the GOP plans would reduce subsidies
for marketplace coverage and pull back on Medicaid, they came out overwhelmingly against the bills — even though majorities of Republicans
wanted the ACA repealed, and still do. Likewise, asking people how they feel about the general idea of more
government involvement in health care might yield positive results now, but support could look
different once Democrats try to pass specific proposals. Medicare for All might prove more politically durable, but the
jury’s still out. “From a research perspective, there really is no such thing today as a fully informed public opinion
verdict on single-payer insurance or Medicare for All,” Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told my colleague Dave Weigel this
week. “More than any other issue, voters litigate health-care policy on a personal basis and really sweat
the details.” c
 2NC – AT: Mueller Thumper
Mueller charges and firing are already baked in
Thomsen 18 (Jacqueline Thomsen, The Hill. “Fox News poll: Majority think Mueller will find Trump
committed criminal or impeachable offenses.” 4/25,
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/384925-fox-news-poll-majority-think-mueller-will-find-
trump-committed)
A Fox News poll released Wednesday reported that a majority of Americans believe that special counsel Robert Mueller will find
that President Trump committed criminal or impeachable offenses. Fifty-six of respondents in the poll said
they believed Mueller’s probe will find that Trump committed the offenses. And 67 percent say they
believe it’s at least somewhat important that Mueller’s investigation continues. However, 71 percent
said they think that Trump will fire Mueller before the probe is over. Democrats polled were far more likely than
Republicans to predict Mueller would find Trump committed such offenses, at 85 to 22 percent. But a majority of both Democrats
and Republicans expected Mueller to be fired, at 82 percent of Democrats to 61 percent of Republicans. Sixty-four
percent of respondents in the poll overall also said they believe Mueller is treating the White House
fairly. The latest poll results come amid ongoing speculation that Trump could fire Mueller. Trump has pushed back against reports that he's
considering dismissing Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after the FBI raid on Trump's personal attorney's office. Mueller
gave a partial referral for the raid and Rosenstein personally signed off on it. The White House said earlier this month that Trump believes he
has the power to fire Mueller.

GOP will enable Trump to bury the Mueller report

Sargent 18 (Greg, The Washington Post. “Could Trump bury Mueller’s findings? Yes — if Republicans
help him do it..” 4/25, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/04/25/could-
trump-bury-muellers-findings-yes-if-republicans-help-him-do-it/?utm_term=.c8013e6ca7d7)
I’ve obtained the relevant language. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is backing an amendment
to the Mueller protection bill that requires the special counsel to prepare “a report detailing the factual findings
of the investigation,” after it is over, to the attorney general and to the bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate
Judiciary Committees. This goes farther than the current regulations governing the special counsel, which merely call for Mueller to
provide a “confidential” report to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein (who is overseeing the Mueller probe because Attorney General
Jeff Sessions has recused himself) and provide for Rosenstein to then explain the decision to end the probe to Congress. Those current
regulations, then, give the deputy attorney general great discretion over what to reveal, setting up the possibility that Trump could remove
Rosenstein and replace him with a loyalist who would send a very limited explanation to Congress that keeps most of Mueller’s findings secret.
But the new amendment would change this. “The Grassley amendment effectively cuts the deputy attorney general out of the process of
deciding which reports by the Special Counsel get shared with Congress,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin,
tells me. “That would prevent even a Trump loyalist from burying potentially adverse findings by Mueller.”
Here’s the problem But there’s a problem. The
Grassley amendment also contains language that would require the special
counsel to notify the heads of the Judiciary Committee whenever “any change is made to the specific
nature of scope of the investigation.” The problem here, Vladeck says, is that this language is so loosely worded that it could
require Mueller to give Congress new information whenever minor investigative decisions are made.
This, Vladeck says, could lead to selective leaking and other mischief along the lines of what we’ve already seen from House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “The question is whether the bill can be crafted to strike a balance between keeping
Congress in the loop while preventing it from micromanaging the investigation,” Vladeck says. Sources say Democrats are privately objecting to
this provision on these grounds, something that Politico also reports. It’s important to stress that the provision requiring the special counsel to
report the “factual findings of the investigation” to Congress is good — and really could prevent a Trump loyalist from burying Mueller’s
findings. But the amendment sets up several ways Republicans could actually prevent that from happening or do damage to the investigation in
other ways, on Trump’s behalf. If
Republicans continue to insist on the measure that facilitates micromanaging by
Congress, that could drive away Dems and tank the amendment, killing the aspect of it that is salutary. Or, if the
amendment does pass in this form, it actually could end up facilitating such GOP micromanaging. Separately, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) have both said they will not allow a vote on a Mueller
protection bill at all. While it remains to be seen whether that’s true, this, too, would prevent the
provision requiring disclosure of Mueller’s findings from becoming law. And that could enable Trump to
bury those findings.
*** Links
 2NC – Increasing Immigration
Republicans passing immigration reform means they will win the midterms
Liz Peek, 1-18-2018, "Do Democrats really care about Dreamers? No, they will do
anything to score political points," Fox News,
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/18/do-democrats-really-care-about-
dreamers-no-will-do-anything-to-score-political-points.html, a financial columnist who
also writes for The Fiscal Times, DRS)

Here is the reality: Democrats are scared to death that a Republican Congress and a Republican president may
actually effect some reform of our flawed immigration system. They have pursued the Hispanic community vigorously for many years,
seeking to solidify their support within the country’s fastest growing demographic. Part of the Democratic strategy has been to demonize the

GOP as racist and anti-immigrant. Trump’s candidacy and his careless comments about Mexicans greased the skids. In their eagerness to curry favor with Hispanics,
Democrats have increasingly abandoned their earlier professed support for secure borders. Though they continue to pay lip service to protecting against illegal immigration, many have

opposed the use of E-verify and other approaches that might reduce the allure of entering the U.S. without authorization. The Democrats have also encouraged
the spread of sanctuary cities, where local governments limit their cooperation with federal officials on the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. And they just hate
Trump’s proposed wall along our southern border. Now many Democrats are insisting they will not vote for a spending bill needed to keep government operating beyond Friday night unless it
includes a lopsided DACA fix proposed by Senators Durbin and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., which allows Dreamers a path to legal status but skimps on border enforcement. Though nearly
everyone supports protecting Dreamers against deportation, Republicans and the White House want to couple that with enhanced border security, to make sure that what some are calling
“amnesty” does not result in great numbers of new people flooding in without permission. Democrats are taking a risk. Most Americans are compassionate and welcoming to immigrants,
recognizing the invaluable contributions of those who have come to the U.S. from other nations legally. But, at the same time, most Americans favor border enforcement. Hillary Clinton found
that out the hard way, when WikiLeaks exposed her making this comment in 2013: "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future.…”
Those remarks gave candidate Trump the ammunition he needed to paint his opponent as weak on protecting our borders; it didn’t help that the lines came from a paid speech Clinton made

Polling has shown that 65 percent of Americans favor coupling legal status for the Dreamers
to a Brazilian bank.

with tougher immigration enforcement. Some 79 percent of those surveyed think employers should have to verify the legal status of their workers, for
instance. Democrats balking at such a compromise are on the wrong side of this issue. Many in the liberal media argue that the GOP will be blamed for any spending impasse that forces a
government shutdown, since Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress and occupy the White House. But Americans understand that passing a budget requires 60 votes in the
Senate, which Republicans do not have. Republicans will need at least 10 Democratic votes. Democrats are in a pickle. They can anger the nation by blocking a proposed spending resolution
that lacks a DACA fix but that would fund our military and provide a six-year extension of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program. Or they can infuriate Hispanics by keeping the

federal lights on and working to resolve the Dreamer problem as part of a broader immigration package. Latinos do not look to Republicans to fix this
problem; they expect Democrats to do so. It isn’t the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that has attracted a protest demonstration by
immigration activists – it is Chuck Schumer’s. Everyone wants changes to our immigration system, including the White House. And nearly everyone wants to protect the Dreamers. There’s lots

Trump has signaled support for a compromise. But a compromise – a win – on

of room to negotiate, and President

immigration would be another nightmare for Democrats. The optics of President Trump hosting a
signing ceremony in the White House to celebrate passage of an immigration bill, which has eluded the
past several presidents, would be unimaginably valuable for Republicans as we approach the November
elections. A new immigration law would be almost as valuable for Republicans as the millions of workers getting bonuses and wage hikes because of the GOP tax bill that President
Trump signed into law. A few more wins and Democrats are going to have a hard time persuading voters that President Trump and a Republican Congress aren’t indeed Making America Great
Again.

Trump and the Republicans are running on anti-immigration and will lose; Aff plan
allows them to be perceived as pro-immigration
Zachary Mueller, 7-5-2018, ("When Will GOP Candidates Learn that Scapegoating Immigrants Won't
Work?," America's Voice, https://americasvoice.org/blog/scapegoating-immigrants-wont-work/, DRS)
Since the election of Donald Trump a number of other Republicans have tried to mimic his style of anti-
immigrant ugliness to win elected office. But, many of their attempts have failed or backfired, showing
repeatedly that — despite Trump’s election — attacking immigrants is not a path to electoral victory.
After over a dozen electoral losses, the viability of this strategy should be in serious doubt and those
seeking elected office should think twice about using this fraught path. Instead, Trump and his top aide,
Stephen Miller, have vowed to double down on this strategy and infuse it into the 2018 GOP campaigns.
With that in mind, here are a number of the recent elections from around the country where voters
showed the ugly anti-immigrant strategy to be a losing one: Virginia The Virginia’s 2017 governor’s race
is clear case of an anti-immigrant strategy backfiring, as evidenced by the results and election eve
polling conducted by Latino Decisions. Republican Ed Gillespie was pulled to the right during a contested
primary with Corey Stewart (now the GOP candidate for Senate), but in the general election Gillespie
doubled down on the anti-immigrant attacks rather than move to the center. His campaign tried to use
the threat of the international gang MS-13 as the lens to view all Latino immigrants, and tried to claim
that Democratic candidate Ralph Northam was weak on crime. Gillespie pressed the issue attacking
‘sanctuary cities’, of which there are none in the state. This strategy backfired among voters of nearly
every demographic, and Northam won by 9 points. As Matt Barreto from Latino Decisions wrote in a
New York Times op-ed: By a 23-point margin (52 to 29), whites in Virginia also said the MS-13 ads turned
them away from Mr. Gillespie, as did African-American and Asian-American voters by larger margins.
Data speaks louder than punditry, and our regression analysis of survey data paints a clear picture.
Exposure to Mr. Gillespie’s MS-13 ads actually helped drive white college-educated voters away from
the Republicans. When we analyzed findings for white independents and Republicans, voters who were
aware of the MS-13 ads were significantly more likely to vote for Mr. Gillespie’s Democratic opponent.
What made the Virginia gubernatorial race so critical is how political observers and pundits, including
Steve Bannon, believed Gillespie’s strategy would work — and would serve as a model for other
Republicans. The reality was that it didn’t work, but the GOP persists in using it. It wasn’t just the
Governor’s race in Virginia where racist ads were used. A number of the Republican candidates running
for the Virginia state legislature followed Gillespie’s strategy and shared his failures. In HD 93,
Republican Heather Cordasco also attempted to use Virigina’s nonexistent sanctuary cities in a failed
effort to beat Democrat Mike Mullin. Scott Lingamfelter of HD 31 lost his seat to Democrat Elizabeth
Guzman after his attempt to equate undocumented immigrants’ ability to obtain a driver’s license with
violent crime. Democrat Jennifer Foy won HD 2 after an attempt to attack her support for in-state
tuition for undocumented students fell flat. Overall, despite the onslaught, Democrats picked up 15
seats, narrowing the GOP’s control from 66-34 to 51-49. Pennsylvania An anti-immigrant strategy did
not even work in the March 2018 special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, which went for Donald
Trump by 20 points. Democrat Conor Lamb won the seat after a super PAC connected to Republican
House leadership ran TV ads that said Lamb supports “amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants … Lamb
worked in the Obama administration that encouraged sanctuary cities, which put illegal immigrants who
commit crimes back on the street.” The Republican candidate Rick Saccone’s attempt to pit union
workers against immigrants on jobs did not work either. Florida The anti-immigrant strategy backfired in
the February 2018 special election in Florida’s House District 72. The district went in favor of Trump by 5
points in 2016, but Democrat Margaret Good won by 7 points after her Republican opponent tried to
attack her pro-immigration positions using mailers that said her “very progressive beliefs on
immigration” will be a “danger to us all.” New Jersey In a last-ditch effort to pull out a victory in the
2017 New Jersey governor’s race, Republican Kim Guadagno deployed an aggressive anti-immigrant
strategy. It did not work, and Democrat Philip Murphy won. Guadagno had previously been supportive
of a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but wrongfully believing that attacking
immigrants would turn out the Republican base, and she switched her strategy. She called for a ban on
‘sanctuary cities’ and ran TV ads that attempted to equate all Latino immigration with crime. Alabama
Injecting anti-immigrant ugliness was not a winning strategy in the December 2017 special Senate
election in Alabama either. At the end of his campaign, extremist Republican Roy Moore and right-wing
outlets that supported his campaign attempted to focus on ‘sanctuary cities’ and the Kate Steinle verdict
to save his campaign. It did not work. Doug Jones won, making him the first Democrat to win an
Alabama Senate seat in 25 years. New York Two different failed attempts to attack Democrats on
immigration were made at the county level in New York, in races for Nassau County executive and the
10th Assembly District seat. Democrats Laura Curran and Steve Stern, respectively, won their seats after
mailers were sent using the strategy of MS-13 to scare voters and stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. The
New York Times reported that Curran may have received a boost to her campaign from the backlash to
the ads. One mailer featured a photo of three Latino men covered in tattoos that read “Meet Your New
Neighbors!”, adding that Curran was “MS-13’s choice for county executive!” who would “roll out the
welcome mat” for gangs. Missouri In a June 2018 special election in Missouri’s 17th Senate district,
Democrat Lauren Arthur defeated Republican Kevin Corlew after his anti-immigrant strategy backfired.
“Robin Martinez, a 54-year-old attorney from the Village of Oaks, said that the attack ads against Arthur,
including ones that linked illegal immigration to violence, turned him off Corlew’s candidacy,” the
Kansas City Star reported. Polling Recent polls give additional support that an anti-immigrant political
strategy is not a path to the majority. The Gallup poll: record-high 75% think immigration is a good thing,
up from last year Pew poll: Democrats have 14% advantage over Republicans on issue, up from 6% last
fall CNN Poll: By 83-12%, Americans want dreamers protected Those currently running for office should
remember the above elections as a cautionary tale. The message voters have been sending in these
elections is clear: that anti-immigrant scapegoating is a not a winning strategy.
Aff plan allows Republicans to rally around support of legal immigration which is a
political winner with the electorate
William A. Galston, 6-18-2018, ("As Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy backfires, Republicans
are in jeopardy," Brookings Institute, William A. Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings
Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow. Prior to January 2006 he
was the Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland,
director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information
and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National
Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former
Senator Sam Nunn. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy
Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy. Galston is the author of nine books and more than
100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics,
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/18/trumps-zero-tolerance-immigration-policy-puts-
republicans-in-jeopardy/, DRS)
This is just one more instance of how the White House hardline posture on immigration is out of step
with the sentiments of the American people. Congressional Republicans haven’t been able to coalesce
around an alternative to it. Most recent public opinion polls on immigration reiterate years of prior
findings. According to a Quinnipiac survey released last week, 76 percent of Americans support allowing
undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to remain in the country
and eventually apply for citizenship. This figure includes strong majorities of every group, including 60
percent of Republicans, 74 percent of Independents, and 71 percent of whites without college
degrees—the core of the Trump coalition. These sentiments extend to illegal immigrants as a whole: 60
percent of Americans favor allowing them to stay and eventually apply for citizenship, compared to only
26 percent who believe they should be required to leave the United States. Surveys show weak support
for key pillars of President Trump’s agenda. Barely one-third of Americans support the president’s
proposed wall along the southern border; only 17 percent believe that the level of legal immigration
should be decreased; opinion on the “diversity lottery” is mixed and dependent on the way the question
is posed.
Trump’s anti-immigration stance is a political loser as 81% of Americans support path
to citizenship for non-criminal immigrants; Aff gives Republicans a way out from
Trump’s agenda
Eric Levitz, 7-11-2018, ("Abolishing ICE Is About As Popular As Trump’s Immigration Agenda," Daily
Intelligencer, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/abolish-ice-poll-majority-opposes-
unpopular-trumps-immigration-agenda.html, DRS)
American voters have long evinced a tacit belief that deporting law-abiding, longtime U.S. residents is a
cruel and needless enterprise. For years, polls have shown strong majorities of the American public
favoring a pathway to citizenship for non-criminal, gainfully employed undocumented immigrants. Just
last week, a Washington Post–Schar School poll found 81 percent of Americans — including a majority of
Republicans — saying that all undocumented immigrants who pass a criminal background check should
be given legal status.
Republicans are going to lose this fall in the midterms as they are anti-immigrant; Aff
plan gives them someone to run on that wins
Av Press, 7-17-2018, "The GOP’s Failing Strategy to Win Elections By Attacking Immigrants," America's
Voice, https://americasvoice.org/research/gop-failing-strategy-immigrants/, DRS)
---- NOTE: Gillespie, a republican governor candidate, lost to his democrat challenger in Virginia
The Republican attacks on immigration and sanctuary policies are not working, and in some cases, are
backfiring. Still, Republicans are expected to run on xenophobia this fall, in part because they have so
little else to run on. Red state and district Democrats need not take the bait, run for the hills or adopt
hardline positions in the face of these attacks. As Conor Lamb and Doug Jones show, candidates can win
by remaining disciplined on core messaging priorities and maintaining support for common sense, pro-
immigrant policies when asked. Blue and purple state Democrats can and should lean in on immigration,
in recognition that Republican attacks motivate key base voters and alienate swing voters. As we saw in
Pennsylvania this week and in Virginia last year, a bottom-up mobilization efforts that turn out base
voters, combined with persuasion strategies targeting a broader universe of voters, is key to winning—
even in tough “Trump” districts. In Virginia, CASA and other pro-immigrant groups responded to anti-
immigrant attacks by marginalizing Gillespie and mobilizing their new American base. The combined
efforts included a robust field and earned media campaign, including door-to-door canvassing, phone
banking, text messages, radio and television advertisement, mailer program, digital and earned media,
and mobilization events.
Aff plan helps GOP get elected; Only 29 percent of Americans support Trump’s crusade
to reduce legal immigration.
Eric Levitz, 7-11-2018, ("Abolishing ICE Is About As Popular As Trump’s Immigration Agenda," Daily
Intelligencer, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/abolish-ice-poll-majority-opposes-
unpopular-trumps-immigration-agenda.html, DRS)
Lost in the debate over whether abolishing ICE is a radical, fringe position is the reality that most the
elected government’s current immigration policies poll just as — if not more — poorly. In February, a
CNN poll found that only 12 percent of American voters believe that Barack Obama’s Deferred Action
For Early Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — which provides temporary legal status and work permits
to Dreamers — should be ended (the Trump administration has officially ended the program, but court
rulings have kept it alive in zombie form). The White House believes otherwise. And Trump’s crusade to
slash legal immigration in half is only marginally more popular than abolishing ICE, according to a recent
Gallup poll, which put support for reducing legal immigration at just 29 percent.
 2NC – Immigration big issue
Immigration is the number one issue in the midterms for Dems and Republicans.
Racke 7-19 (Will Racke, reporter at the Daily Caller,7-19-2018, The Daily Caller, "Gallup: Immigration Is
The Top Issue For Voters Heading Into Midterm Elections", http://dailycaller.com/2018/07/19/gallup-
immigration-voters-midterms/, accessed 7-25-2018, GB)

Immigration is the number one answer when Americans are asked what issue is the most pressing
problem facing the country, according to Gallup’s latest poll. In fact, the share of people who say
immigration is the most important issue is higher now than at any time in the past 17 years that Gallup
has been asking the question. The Gallup poll, released Wednesday, found that 22 percent of Americans
said in July that immigration tops their list of concerns, edging out the 19 percent who said
“dissatisfaction with the government.” That is an eight-point bump since June, when just 14 percent put
immigration at the top of the list. The sharp rise comes as the nation is embroiled in a debate over
President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including a recent crackdown on illegal border crossings
and tighter asylum standards that exclude most Central American migrants. The Trump administration
says the tough approach is needed to deter illegal immigration, but activists and the president’s political
opponents say the policies are cruel and, in some cases, illegal. Rising concern over immigration is a
bipartisan phenomenon, according to the Gallup poll. Among Republicans, Democrats, and self-
described independents, more than twice as many respondents in July said immigration was the top
issue as they did in August 2017. Even so, the share of Republicans citing immigration as the most
pressing issue was about twice as large as the share of Democrats, according to Gallup. Among
Republicans, 35 percent said immigration was their top concern, while 18 percent of Democrats said the
same. The discrepancy could play to the advantage of the GOP as it seeks to retain majorities in both the
House and Senate. GOP candidates who identify with Trump’s immigration policies will likely enjoy
strong support heading into the November elections because Republican voters continue to place a
comparatively high importance on immigration. “If the general immigration focus continues through the
fall, GOP candidates may be able to fire up the enthusiasm of the part of their base highly concerned
about immigration and that in turn favors the Republican approach to this issue,” Gallup noted in an
analysis of its survey. The Gallup poll is based on telephone interviews conducted July 1-11 with a
random sample of 1,033 adults in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. It has a margin of error
of 4 percentage points and a 95 percent confidence level.

Trump has made immigration THE issue – his hardline stance boosts dems margins
Silver et al 6/20
“Can Trump Use Hard-Line Immigration Policies To Turn Out GOP Voters?” June 20, 2018 Nate Silver is
the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. Clare Malone is a senior political writer for
FiveThirtyEight. @claremalone Perry Bacon Jr. is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. @perrybaconjr,
Micah Cohen is the politics editor. @micahcohen
micah: We’re talking about immigration today. There’s a lot going on. The family separation issue, first and foremost, but also some House
votes. There’s reporting that the
White House wants to make immigration the issue for the 2018 midterms,
and that they’re planning further hard-line immigration moves. From Tuesday’s Playbook: “The White House
is making the conscious decision that divisive immigration policy — not a booming economy — should
be the focus of the 2018 midterms. We can’t tell you how dumb many Republican leaders think this is.” So, here’s the
question: Is that dumb? Will a hard-right immigration message and/or policy help the White House/Republicans in 2018?
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): In general elections, I think it’s going to hurt them.
The current administration policy just seems miscalibrated — taking this really hard-line approach (separating children from
families) that doesn’t even seem to appeal to the entire ideological base (i.e., most Americans, including about half of Republicans,
think this is a bridge too far). And this issue could engender more anti-Republican sentiment come November. So
there, I just made the Republican leaders’ argument. natesilver: There’s maybe a world in which the White House could use
immigration dexterously as a “wedge issue” to turn out its base, but that’s not the world the White
House inhabits. They’re too clumsy, too indifferent as to whether individual policies are popular and too eager to fight ideological
battles that they might trick themselves into believing are good politics. perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Can I briefly reject the premise
here, that the White House has some brilliant strategy or is making a “conscious decision” to make the midterms about immigration? There is
often “Trump-did-something-crazy-so-he-must-have a strategy” coverage that likely overstates Trump’s political planning and understates his
desired policy goals, like stopping NFL players from kneeling or limiting immigration. natesilver: Yeah, I certainly think the Playbook/Axios/NYT
“news analysis” style is too quick to attribute strategic motives instead of ideological ones. Or what may just be people being dumbasses and
faking their way through the strategy. micah: I mean, they’re certainly pursuing a bunch of hard-line immigration policies. perry: I suspect a ton
of Republican candidates will run on the economy in the fall. I have no idea what Trump will say during the fall campaign, but my guess is he
doesn’t either. I doubt he has a message calendar that he’ll be following, like George W. Bush or Barack Obama might have had. natesilver: I
guess one could argue that the economy (and maybe North Korea?) can be used to help Republicans hold ground among swing
voters, but that won’t turn out the base. micah: Yeah … Nate, intentional or not, you said in one of these chats a few weeks ago that if
you were a Republican strategist, you would focus on ginning up base turnout. That, most likely, Democratic base turnout will be
high, and so the best strategy is probably to try to counter that with your own base. clare.malone: I said this on the podcast, but I guess it
makes sense in some way to run all the Trumpy anti-immigrant ads, etc., now, during primary campaigns. But come September, you’d better
have more of a message than that if you’re a Republican. perry: Yeah, I also think that the GOP should run on cultural issues. But I’m not sure
we are seeing that right now, as opposed to an ex post facto explanation for a policy blunder. micah: OK, let’s leave aside intent for the
moment though. natesilver: But that gets to the issue of clumsiness. Like, if you’re laser-focused on sanctuary cities, maybe you could do OK.
Maybe you could use that issue as enough of a dog whistle to your base, without necessarily turning off moderates. But stuff
like
separating families at the border? Curtailing legal immigration ? Shutting down the government over the wall? Those are
extremely unpopular measures. clare.malone: This particular issue seems to have brought the various White House “wings” back
into the foreground, and in the post-Bannon age, we mostly seem to have forgotten about the wings. But some people think this is great
policy/politics (like White House policy adviser Stephen Miller), and a lot of other people (like Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen) are
trying to get their way around a pretty ugly policy while not getting the president mad at them. It just seems sort of like a) bad politics and b)
perhaps a sign of bad internal organization. natesilver: I do wonder how much of it is borne out of a view — from Trump and from other senior
officials in the White House — that the polls are fake and the media outrage is fake and they have their finger on the true pulse of American
opinion. perry: I think that’s closer to where I am. They are doing this because they believe in deterring illegal immigration by basically any
means necessary. But they also believe the backlash is overstated by a press that is often hypercritical of them. micah: OK, I’m going to play
devil’s advocate. clare.malone: Great movie. micah: Forget the separating families — that’s prima facie horrible and seems like bad politics too.
But isn’t the idea that Republicans need something beyond the economy and North Korea actually correct?
clare.malone: Why? Rule of threes? micah: Yup. haha, no… Because
the GOP base isn’t as enthused as the Democratic
one right now. clare.malone: You’re saying they need something that tides over the tribal identity issue. natesilver: So talk about Colin
Kaepernick or some shit. clare.malone: ^^^^ Or just focus on wall funding. You don’t need to do this child separation thing. natesilver: The wall
is pretty darn unpopular, though. clare.malone: I would guess it’s more popular than separating 2,000 kids from their parents. perry: Sanctuary
cities/MS-13/NFL national anthem protests — these are all issues that 1. Trump wants to tweet/talk about instead of reciting boring economic
stats; and 2. play into the negative partisanship stuff that will be used for base turnout. But talking about how terrible San Francisco or Nancy
Pelosi is would do the trick as much as sanctuary cities. I don’t think Republicans need immigration policies necessarily to gin up negative
partisanship, as much as they need reminders to their base that “Democrats are the party of all that stuff you hate.” Republicans know Trump
wants to talk about this kind of stuff anyway, so they have to find a way to make that part of the 2018 strategy. micah: But it’s interesting to me
that some of you — Nate, at least — seem to think that the NFL anthem stuff or Pelosi stuff is maybe a better option than immigration. (Again,
put aside separating families — I feel like they’ll have to retreat on that pretty soon.) perry: There are very few immigration ideas
that unify all Republicans. The national anthem issue, in contrast, is very unifying among Republicans: 86 percent of Republicans say
kneeling during the national anthem is “never appropriate,” according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll earlier this year. So
is anti-Pelosi sentiment: 72 percent of Republicans view her unfavorably, according to a recent Ipsos poll. clare.malone: Couldn’t he talk about
wall stuff or, I don’t know, talk about E-Verify, things like that? I can’t help but think that coming up with a more refined Trumpian take on
immigration could help them through both the primaries and the general. perry: Republicans probably should run on identity issues writ large,
with some anti-immigration rhetoric as a part of that. That kind of messaging is challenging for Democrats. Do Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill
want to defend sanctuary cities? natesilver: I think when you asked me to put my Republican strategist hat on a few weeks ago, Micah, the
tricky part wasn’t finding something that turns out your base, but something that turns out your base
without simultaneously hurting you among swing voters and also turning out the Democratic base. Lots of
people might think Trump’s NFL stance is sort of dumb, but it’s not likely the sort of thing that’s going to turn out Democrats to vote or that will
greatly influence a swing voter’s decision. micah: I bet the same is true for sanctuary cities, E-Verify, etc. clare.malone: Basically, they picked the
worst possible issue angle to make the story. I know politicians get a lot of shit for poll-testing things but … there’s a reason to do it! micah:
“Should we do terrible shit to children?” Yes No Not sure Yeah, that question could have saved everyone a lot of heartache. perry: Trump
seems to be in some danger of overlearning lessons from 2016. I don’t think he won the general election because of the wall and the Muslim
ban. (The primary, yes.) I do think, in general, that it helped that he was seen as taking on the cultural left. I also think it’s different when you
are the person running the government and implementing policy. I’m not sure people voted for Stephen Miller-ism, even if Miller thinks they
did. clare.malone: Do we attribute any of this to, say, Chief of Staff John Kelly checking out and no one being awake at the wheel when it comes
to this kind of across-the-board strategy stuff? I’m a little curious as to how this actually got this far without the ramifications being thought
through. micah: I tend to ignore most of this kind of reporting, but there have been some stories lately about Kelly basically giving up.
natesilver: Didn’t Kelly mention the child separation policy last year as part of a plan to deter immigration? perry: I think this policy was thought
through. There is a lot of reporting about the administration having long considered it. clare.malone: Yeah, fair point. I take that back. But in
general, who’s doing the political strategy thinking? Miller? If so, yikes. micah: No one? perry: Miller and Trump are driving this. There is some
reporting to indicate that. micah: But Miller is thinking in terms of policy, not politics, right? clare.malone: Right. I mean politics. Who’s driving
that? No one maybe? natesilver: I wonder if the fact that Trump has had a few successes — or at least things he can claim to be successes — is
making him feel as though he can be a little bolder. clare.malone: Yeah, but this was in motion before North Korea. perry: Miller thinks the
politics are fine here. So does Trump. They think they won because of this stuff in 2016 and that they are doing pretty well now and this is a
media storm that will blow over. clare.malone: I think my point is, if Miller is your person running overall political strategy, not just policy, that’s
a problem. He’s an ideologue. perry: Yeah, Clare, you make an important point: Are there are any establishment-style people left at the White
House to say no to this kind of thing? Kelly favors get-tough immigration policies. But even if he opposed this, he could not kill it. He has limited
power, particularly now. natesilver: It would be sort of ironic if Republicans were on track to just barely hold the House — and maybe make
gains in the Senate — because of an improving economy, but Trump blew it over a border wall fight and a trade war with China. Or maybe not
“ironic” — just that I think that’s a plausible course of events. micah: That seems like the likely course of events! perry: To switch this a bit, the
Democrats I talk to really want this campaign to be about health care/tax cuts/cronyism — anything but this race/identity stuff. Their general
view is that every day talking about health care is good for them, and that every day talking about cultural stuff broadly is good for Trump
(minus this exact policy). Are they right? micah: Yeah, I guess I do worry a little bit that we’re underrating how hard-line an immigration policy
Americans will support — Republican in particular, but also white Democrats. I just feel like maybe this is an area where I actually don’t trust
the polling all that much? 😬 clare.malone: Immigration? micah: Yeah. natesilver: I don’t know — maybe the fact that we’re in a Manhattan
office building watching the World Cup and eating food from a fancy falafel place makes us out of touch with Real America™. But maybe that
out-of-touchness manifests itself in applying our own stereotypes to Real America™ instead of trusting the polling. clare.malone: Well,
Democrats seem to be steering clear of immigration stances on the campaign trail beyond “protect Dreamers and kids.” natesilver: Most people
in Real America (where several of us are from, after all!) have fairly nuanced views toward immigration. micah: I’m actually thinking of white
Democrats more than anyone else. clare.malone: What I’m saying is that Democrats are in primary mode on immigration too. They can’t be
seen as being too appeasing to Republicans on the issue because the GOP is popularly viewed as having gone full-throttle ideological/racial on
that issue by a lot of Democratic base voters. perry: The polling is fine. But maybe the questions are not quite framing the right discussion. The
underlying question is really: “Do we have too many immigrants in America?” And I think that question is more contested than, “Should we
separate kids from their parents at the border?” There
is a sliver of Democrats who want to see decreased
immigration levels, although that bloc is declining pretty sharply as immigration has become more an issue dividing the
parties and the Democrats are generally the pro-immigration party now.
 2NC – Suburban Voters Link
Hardline anti-immigrant status will kill GOP house chances now – the plan flips that
Martin and Haberman 6/18 (Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, New York Times. “Forget Tax
Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally the G.O.P. Base Over Immigration.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/trump-immigration-midterms.html)
The issue of Germany and migrants has resonated for Mr. Trump for more than a year, people close to him say. When he thinks of Chancellor
Angela Merkel, he is reminded of her difficulties with immigration far more than his clash with her at the G-7 or any bilateral issues. The
danger for Republicans is that the political map this year is sharply bifurcated: the most competitive
House and Senate contests are taking place in strikingly different parts of the country. Mr. Trump’s
broadsides against Hispanic migrants, like his criticism of black athletes who will not stand for the national anthem, may
resonate in the deeply red states where the battle for control of the Senate is playing out. But such
culture war attacks will likely alienate voters in the affluent, heavily suburban districts Republicans must
win to keep control of the House. Further, some in the party believe that by pursuing a hard-line approach to families at the border
— a policy that is deeply unpopular among independent voters, according to polls — Mr. Trump is handing Democrats the high ground on
immigration instead of making them defend their support for less popular immigrant protections like sanctuary cities. “Somehow I don’t think
that putting kids in cages is likely to go over very well with suburban moms,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster uneasy about running on
the culture wars. Mr. Ayres said his party should campaign on “the concrete accomplishments of a Republican-held government.” “A fabulously
strong economy, a record stock market, ISIS defeated and a world without any major wars that are killing lots of Americans on a weekly basis,”
he said, laying out the case. Republicans
got a lesson last year about the risk of elevating immigration in
campaigns where they depend on suburbanites. In the Virginia governor’s race, the Republican nominee, Ed Gillespie, thought
women in vote-rich Northern Virginia could be won over with a get-tough message on MS-13, the gang with ties to Central America that has
gained a foothold in the Washington, D.C., region. But voters in suburban Fairfax and Loudoun counties overwhelmingly rejected these
appeals, supporting Gov. Ralph S. Northam with landslide margins in large part to send a message about
their disdain for Mr. Trump. The unease with a hard-line approach on immigration is strongest among
House Republicans who hail from diverse districts. Many of these lawmakers signed a discharge petition that would have
forced a vote offering legal status for Dreamers, children brought to the country by undocumented immigrants. And as Liesl Hickey, a veteran
Republican strategist who previously ran the House congressional campaign arm, pointed out, it is Republican lawmakers like Representatives
Carlos Curbelo of Florida, Will Hurd of Texas and Steve Knight of California who face some of the most daunting re-election challenges. “I think
it’s pretty clear that this is not a winning issue in the form that some want to take it,” said Ms. Hickey, alluding to the hard-line approach. In a
sign of the Republican alarm about the family separations at the border, Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, the chairman of the National
Republican Congressional Committee, said Monday that he would ask the Trump administration “to stop needlessly separating children from
their parents.” Yet some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have told the president he needs to live up to what he promised voters on immigration. These
aides have told him that what he is doing is similar to what President Obama did, and suggested that the news media is cherry-picking images
of children that can be used to portray Mr. Trump’s policy in the harshest of lights. Mr. Trump, absorbing these arguments, has related to allies
that he thinks he is being mistreated by the media and sought to shift the conversation to the broader immigration debate. But Democrats
believe he is making a costly mistake by taking his rhetoric too far. “He has taken an issue that is a
decent wedge in swing places for Republicans and turned it into this preposterous notion that Democrats are
responsible for family separation, Democrats are responsible for all immigrant crime, and Democrats are responsible for MS-13,” said Anna
Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “Nobody believes that.”
 2NC – Dem Turnout Link
Trump policies are producing backlash among independents and democrats; aff plan
takes that away
Sargent 18--- (July 13, Greg, columnist, Education: Hunter College, BA in English, Sargent writes The
Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant — what you might call “opinionated
reporting” from the left. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York
Magazine and the New York Observer, " Trump’s cruelty and hate are creating a defining moment for
Democrats" Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-
line/wp/2018/07/13/trumps-cruelty-and-hate-are-creating-a-defining-moment-for-
democrats/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.50e5076e5001, DRS]
At the same time, Gourevitch says, Democrats also want to stand up firmly against Trump’s immigration
attacks and policies, because they are a “motivator for our side,” and because they are producing a
“backlash” among college-educated Republican-leaning independents and suburban women who “are
uncomfortable with Trump on these issues.” Democratic pollsters found that MS-13 ads produced a
backlash among those voters in the Virginia gubernatorial race. At the center of all this strategizing
should be the fact that Trump’s white nationalism is manifesting itself in cruel policies that are hurting a
lot of people. The explicitly stated rationale for Trump’s family separation policy is that the horrible
prospect of children getting separated from parents will dissuade people from trying to cross the border
— desperate refugees included. We know from three years of public and private statements from
Trump that the desire to keep away desperate people fleeing horrible conditions — and the effort to cut
legal immigration, and the thinly veiled Muslim ban — are rooted in white nationalism, bigotry and hate.
Democrats need to rise to this moment, and it shouldn’t be too hard to get that right.
Hardline immigration policies hurts the GOP – key to mobilizing Dem votes
Taylor 6/5 (Ramon Taylor is a New York-based video journalist for VOA News. His coverage includes
U.S. elections, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and President Obama’s visit to Cuba. He has also produced
for CNN en Español and Telemundo in Washington. “Will Immigration Get Trump Voters to Midterm
Polls?” https://www.voanews.com/a/will-immigration-get-trump-voters-to-midterm-
polls/4425267.html)
But choosing to focus much of their attention on Trump’s hardline immigration policies this year comes
with risks, explains Diana Mutz, a professor of political science and communication at the University of Pennsylvania, whose research
explores electoral behavior in 2016. “[Trump] is operating on the premise that being extremely anti-immigration
actually won him votes. Our analyses actually suggest just the opposite — that yes, things like trade did
win him votes but things like immigration actually did not,” Mutz told VOA. “They lost him votes because he
was far too extreme.” According to Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Americans say immigrants strengthen the
United States “because of their hard work and talents,” while 26 percent consider them a burden “because they take jobs, housing, and health
care.” Among Republicans, views are more evenly split — 42 percent hold favorable views, 44 percent unfavorable. Trump’s message
on immigration may be problematic in districts with large college-educated populations, says Cox. That
includes those who may have initially supported Trump with reservations and are critical of his more
controversial policies, such as separating families at the border or repealing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — a program
that allows some 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to live and work without fear of deportation. But
in addition to mobilizing moderate and Independent voters, a strong turnout among Hispanics could be
another important factor, given typically low voting rates among the bloc. “Usually in midterms, people
do play to the base because those are the only people who bother turning out … this year may be
different,” Mutz said. “Everything I’ve seen suggests that people may come out in far greater numbers than they
usually do.”
 2NC – Racism Link
Dems will win because GOP-leaning and suburban voters are opposing Trump – that’s
the uniquely key demographic
Barrow 18 (Bill Barrow, The Associated Press. “Democrats banking on suburban discontent in 2018
mid-term elections.” 3/23, http://www.delcotimes.com/article/DC/20180323/NEWS/180329828)
From the old steel communities around Pittsburgh to the lakefront communities of Chicagoland, Republicans are facing an
increasingly clear reality: They’ve got trouble in the suburbs. In the last two weeks, Democrats scored an upset
in southwest Pennsylvania and dominated the voting in the Republican suburbs outside Chicago. President
Donald Trump, who never won over suburbia, continues to get poor marks from the educated, upper income
Americans who often call it home. After Democratic victories in state legislative contests in Virginia and special
elections across the country — even a stunning Senate election in Republican-dominated Alabama —
Republicans have plenty of reason to worry that commuter country may be their undoing in the fight for
control of the House in November’s midterm elections. “Across the board, every single indicator points to one
thing: a Republican bloodbath,” said Republican strategist Terry Sullivan. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to take the majority —
a task made particularly challenging by the way House districts currently are drawn to favor Republicans. Still, any House majority is
built on suburban success. Republicans control most rural and small-town districts, where Trump finds
his strongest political support. Democrats dominate districts anchored in big cities, where Trump
opposition is fiercest. The party in charge will be the one that wins the battle in between, where the
electorate often is the sort of ideological and demographic mix that defines a two-party battleground. In
2014, when Republicans successfully defended their House majority, GOP nominees won 52 percent of
the suburban vote, according to exit polls. Recent polling suggests that support is slipping. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll
conducted earlier this month found just 43 percent of suburban residents prefer a Republican-run Congress to a
Democratic majority. Democrats’ target list starts with nearly two dozen Republican-held seats where
Hillary Clinton bested Trump in 2016. The list is heavy on seats in California and the northeast —
suburbs outside Philadelphia and New York — corners of Democratic-leaning states where Trump didn’t
win over wealthier, moderate Republicans. Now the GOP fears that those weaknesses are spreading
further from big-city centers and also into suburban districts around mid-size and smaller metropolitan
areas. Democrat Conor Lamb is the nightmare. He won in a Pittsburgh-area district where Trump won by nearly 20 percentage
points. The Allegheny County portion of the district, the most populated portion just outside of Pittsburgh, had gone to Trump by just 4 points.
Lamb won there by 17 percentage points. The race demonstrated that suburban Republicans, even those who
voted for Trump, will vote for a Democrat, in the right circumstances. Lamb was strong candidate who stayed focused on
economic issues, and didn’t focus on talking down the president. That formula combined with anti-Trump fueled enthusiasm on the left, could
mean trouble for the GOP. “President Trump isn’t on the ballot for us, but he is on the ballot for them,” said Georgia Republican Chip Lake, a
veteran of congressional campaigns across the South. “The
president has good numbers with his base, but not with
independents and swing voters, and they live in the suburbs.” In Illinois primary elections on Tuesday, the five counties
that wrap around Chicago’s Cook County saw Democrats cast almost five times as many ballots as they did four years ago, ahead of a midterm
romp for the GOP. Republicans, meanwhile, saw their turnout drop by almost a quarter of what it was in 2014. The
national
Republican money machine is focusing heavily on defending the suburbs. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a
political action committee aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan, has opened field offices in 30 Republican-held districts, with plans eventually to
spend more than $100 million in as many as three dozen. The group’s first wave of offices overlapped heavily with the Clinton-GOP districts.
But they’ve effectively acknowledge the creep of the suburban with their expansion into places like Rep.
Andy Barr’s Kentucky district that includes Lexington — population 318,000 — and its surrounding suburbs. “We’re not going to get
the benefit of the doubt in this environment,” says the group’s director Corry Bliss. There’s no consensus on how
many of the districts will end up truly competitive. National Democrats tout dozens of challengers who
outraised Republican incumbents in recent months, putting them in position to wage serious campaigns.
Those voters specifically are turning away because of Trump’s racism – the plan flips
that
Garofoli 18 (Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. “People calling Trump
a racist, but will it affect him at the ballot box?” 1/12
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/People-calling-Trump-a-racist-but-will-it-affect-
12495330.php)
The nation is experiencing an extraordinary moment — many Americans are openly calling their
president a racist. The question is whether enough voters will be sufficiently outraged to punish
President Trump or his supporters at the ballot box. The racism displayed this week when Trump
referred to Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries” isn’t unique among his predecessors.
America’s Founding Fathers owned slaves, and another president, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, ordered the internment of thousands of
Japanese Americans during World War II. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon frequently used racial slurs. But Trump is the
first president to be defined in large part by his outright hostility to people who are not white and are
not Christian. He dive-bombed into the national political conversation by falsely accusing President Barack Obama of being born outside
the United States, then opened his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and proposing a blanket ban on Muslims
entering the country. As president, he has attempted to turn these sentiments into policy. Trump and his supporters have frequently tried to
explain away his past statements as being misunderstood or awkwardly phrased. But the reaction to Trump’s demand, during a policy meeting
with members of Congress, to know why the United States should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” — most with majority black
populations — is what makes his remarks so toxic and powerful. “It denies the ability to deniers to continue to say that racism is a thing of the
past,” said James Taylor, a professor of political science at the University of San Francisco and author of “Black Nationalism in the United States:
From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.” “Donald Trump
is showing — at the most important symbolic position in the country — that this
kind of racial feeling and resentment is alive and can’t be dismissed.” The failure of Republican leaders
to condemn Trump — there has been silence from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while usually talkative Sen.
Lindsey Graham, who attended the meeting, went no further than saying the media accounts of the president’s words were being “basically
accurate” — normalizes language that has offended so many people in the United States and around the world. And that
could drive
voters in the other direction. A December survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 60 percent of
Americans feel Trump’s election has led to worse race relations in America. And while the president is fond of
saying that his base of supporters is unswervingly with him — “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t
lose voters,” he said during the 2016 campaign — his attitudes on race are increasingly alienating his fellow
Republicans. “Most of the increase in negative opinions has come among Republicans and Republican-
leaning independents,” the Pew survey’s authors wrote. Others say Trump’s vulgar description could indeed hurt him
with the voters he needs to survive politically. He doesn’t have much room for error, as his approval
rating is at 39 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics.com average of major polls. “It will hurt him with college-
educated female (Republican) voters. And don’t rule out college-educated male Republican voters,
either,” said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in
Pennsylvania, a state Trump narrowly won. “This is the type of stuff that drives the suburban voters away. They’re
much more attuned to the language that’s used.”
 2NC – Trump Cooperation Link
Cooperating with Trump on the aff dooms the Dems
Stancil 18 (Will Stancil is a research fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School. “Democrats'
'Resistance' to Trump Is Eroding, and So Are Their Poll Numbers.” The Atlantic. 2/9,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/democrats-resistance-to-trump-is-eroding-and-
so-are-their-poll-numbers/552845/)
But for the Democratic Party, the current moment of elite acquiescence to Trump presents unique and profound dangers. A Democratic
midterm wave has never been inevitable. Democrats have advanced this far because they have
positioned themselves to take advantage of widespread anger at Trump. Recent shifts in elite opinion do
not seem to reflect any change of public sentiment. Trump is nearly as unpopular as ever. Voters
disapprove of the president by huge margins. Opinion polling consistently finds that over half the country “strongly
disapproves” of him. Indeed, loathing for Trump is so profound that he is able to move public opinion towards almost any position, simply by
taking the other side. (In one striking example, Trump’s opposition to NFL protests appeared to make those protests more popular.) Tellingly,
there does not seem to be a single high-profile policy dispute in which the president’s position
commands majority support. Until now, Democrats have capably exploited this political opportunity.
They have, in effect, employed the same obstructionist tactics that were utilized by Republicans against
President Obama. By declaring the president anathema, Democrats electrified their party and mobilized everyone who is frightened of him.
This is a particularly canny tactic because, as was demonstrated in the Obama era, even voters frustrated with gridlock and chaos mostly blame
the president and his party. In 2010 and 2014, unrelenting Republican opposition to Obama preceded huge midterm gains for the GOP, despite
the fact that he was much less unpopular than Trump is today. While opposition to Obama helped mobilize the partisan base, opposition to
Trump is a true majoritarian position. “The Resistance” has been mocked from the left as naïve and Trump-obsessed, and mocked from the
center and right as dogmatic, unpractical, and melodramatic. It’s an easy target: it relies heavily on political newcomers with old-fashioned
ideas about democratic process and American values; it’s propelled by Trump’s vulgarity as much as his policy proposals; it is apt to celebrate
anyone who shares their contempt for the president, including no small share of cranks and charlatans. Perhaps because of this,
tastemakers and party leaders have overlooked that the anti-Trump movement’s core political
prescription—uncompromising opposition—has proven itself the single most effective way to frustrate
the Trump agenda and elect his opponents. In 2017, nothing unified voters more than their aversion to the president. When
anti-Trump sentiment was peaking last December, the Democrats’ generic ballot advantage actually
exceeded the gaps produced by economic collapse and mass unemployment in 2010 and 2008. This is no
parochial gang of partisans: It’s fully half the country, highly mobilized, and the proximate cause of recent Democratic strength. As a result,
Democratic electoral fortunes depend on maintaining Trump’s unpopularity, much more than any rhetoric of their own. Uniform and
unequivocal opposition has helped weigh Trump down in the public eye; abandoning this successful strategy for
equivocation and compromise might lift him up. Facing a gerrymandered House and a bad Senate map,
it doesn’t take much to put Democrats’ predicted wave at risk. Already, their huge polling lead is
shrinking. Democrats worry that a single-minded focus on Trump will leave them without an agenda after he’s gone. But a new, conciliatory
approach will mean that “after he’s gone” gets further away. The anti-Trump coalition may not last forever, but at this moment, it represents,
in raw vote-getting terms, the most powerful force in American political life—the unified inverse of the nation’s reactionary minority. As
Democrats’ stubborn resistance wanes, they risk eroding that unified coalition, and prolonging the crisis
of the Trump presidency indefinitely.
 2NC – Diversity Visa Lottery Link
Voters strongly oppose the diversity visa lottery
Torbati and Kahn 17 (Yeganeh Torbati, Chris Kahn, Reuters. “Most Americans oppose visa lottery but
favor other openings for immigrants: Reuters/Ipsos poll.” NOVEMBER 9, 2017.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-poll/most-americans-oppose-visa-lottery-but-
favor-other-openings-for-immigrants-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1D92Y6)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans oppose the use of a lottery system for giving immigrants permanent
U.S. residence, but a majority support allowing immigrants to obtain green cards through sponsorship by U.S. employers, according to a
Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll. The poll, released on Thursday, found that only 25 percent of Americans support allowing
immigrants to obtain U.S. green cards or permanent resident status through a lottery system, while 60
percent oppose it. The green card lottery, also called the “diversity visa” program, aims to diversify the U.S. immigrant population by
allotting 50,000 immigrant visas each year to citizens of countries that do not send many people to the United States. The program has
long been criticized by immigration hardliners in Congress, and came under renewed attack by Trump and
some Republicans after Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek national who came to the United States on a diversity visa in 2010, was charged in an attack
last week in New York City that killed eight people. Trump has urged Congress to kill the diversity visa lottery, which has
drawn fire for being vulnerable to fraud and for posing national security risks. A 2013 bipartisan effort to reform immigration would have done
away with the program, but was killed by the Republican-led House. The recipients of the visas are chosen randomly by lottery, though they
have to go through standard security checks before they are granted permission to enter the United States. Seventy percent of all adults
support allowing foreign spouses of U.S. citizens to obtain green cards, and 61 percent support allowing immigrants to obtain permanent
resident status through their work for U.S. businesses. Though 60 percent of all adults said they opposed allowing immigrants to obtain green
cards through a lottery, a smaller percentage, just over half, said they would support a proposal to end the program.
The Trump administration has targeted both legal and illegal immigration. An April executive order by Trump called for reforming the program
awarding H-1B visas for skilled workers, and the administration has challenged applications for the visas more often than at nearly any point in
the Obama era. Chrystal Wilkins, 54, said she disagreed with ending the green card lottery. Wilkins, a Democrat, is married to a Senegalese
immigrant who is now a U.S. citizen. Her husband did not come through the visa lottery but has a friend who did, she said. “Immigration is good
for the country,” said Wilkins, who lives in New York. “People should be allowed to come into the country through a lottery visa.” Angel Hall,
18, who described herself as a moderate Republican, said she agreed with ending the green card lottery but supported other forms of legal
immigration, including employment-based green cards, “because they (immigrants) are coming here to work and be part of our economy.”
“It’s a little bit weird to just randomly pick people,” said Hall, a student in Michigan. “It should be more ordered than the
random lottery that it is.”
 2NC – DACA Link
The Aff’s addressing of DREAMERS means Republicans will retain majority in the
House for midterms
William A. Galston, 6-18-2018, ("As Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy backfires, Republicans
are in jeopardy," Brookings Institute, William A. Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings
Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a Senior Fellow. Prior to January 2006 he
was the Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland,
director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, founding director of the Center for Information
and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), and executive director of the National
Commission on Civic Renewal, co-chaired by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and former
Senator Sam Nunn. A participant in six presidential campaigns, he served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy
Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy. Galston is the author of nine books and more than
100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, and American politics,
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/18/trumps-zero-tolerance-immigration-policy-puts-
republicans-in-jeopardy/, DRS)
Republican moderates have little choice but to force the issue. They believe—rightly, polls suggest—that
their constituents will hold them responsible for failing to address the Dreamers’ plight. If conservatives
do not relent, they may end up with a bill they detest—or with the loss of their party’s majority in the
House. This is Speaker Ryan’s moment of truth. If he cannot produce a compromise bill that enjoys
President Trump’s unequivocal public support and bring it to the floor, he risks leaving endangered
members of his majority defenseless against the wrath of their constituents. But to reach this
compromise, he will have to persuade the Freedom Caucus and other hardliners to place the interests of
their party ahead of ideology purity, which they have long refused to do. If Mr. Ryan fails, his legacy may
well be the end of his party’s House majority.
Plan flips it – takes away a key motivator of Latino turnout
Khalid 18 (Asma Khalid is a political reporter for NPR. “How Immigration Could Motivate Democrats In
2018.” February 18, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/02/18/586475474/how-immigration-could-
motivate-democrats-in-2018)
So maybe heated rhetoric alone does not turn out voters, but Lopez says policy changes might, such as when the
DACA program was first introduced the summer before President Obama's re-election. "Obama in 2012 was under this cloud of being a
'deporter-in-chief,' — at least many Latino leaders had described him as such," said Lopez. "So
when he does DACA many analysts
say that was just enough the motivator to get many Hispanics who were perhaps on the fence about
voting out to vote." But even if there was a post-DACA bump, it was a minor bump. Chris Zepeda-Millán, a political scientist at the
University of California, Berkeley, says history proves that Latinos are more likely to mobilize against a legislative threat
than for legislative action. He points to the mass Latino mobilization in 2006 because of the Sensenbrenner bill, which threatened to
make it a federal crime to aid someone who entered the country illegally. "Latinos tend to come and out vote, and
immigrants, when there's anti-immigrant legislation on the ballot," said Zepeda-Millán. "We saw this in California.
We've seen it in other states as well. When there's anti-immigrant legislation looming, Latinos tend to come out at
higher rates." A similar thing happened in California in the 1990s when Republicans backed Proposition 187, a ballot measure to deny
public services to people in the country illegally. Midterm consequences The key difference between Donald Trump's
election and the upcoming midterms is that it's a fundamentally different political landscape. This
November, elections will be held in discrete districts. The Republican pollster Whit Ayres points out that much of how immigration is discussed
in a local contest comes down to the demographic context of the local area. And in many key suburban swing districts, immigration may not be
as much of a lighting rod in either direction. Many of these analysts on the topic of immigration say that Republicans
could benefit in
those areas by merely getting the issue off the table. Any immigration solution, even if it's merely a
short-term DACA fix, could suffice. "Most voters don't list immigration as their number one voting issue," said Erickson-Hatalsky.
"So, I think if Trump signs a deal that probably diffuses the issue politically, in general."
 2NC – Trump Popularity Key
Trump’s popularity is the key question for the midterm
Cook 18 (Rhodes Cook, Senior Columnist, Sabato's Crystal Ball. “Donald Trump’s Short Congressional
Coattails.” UVA Center for Politics. 3/1, http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/donald-
trumps-short-congressional-coattails/)
While long coattails may no longer be in their quiver, presidents still have ways to influence national
campaigns. They can use the “bully pulpit” to fashion campaign themes, something that Trump is trying
to do now for 2018. He is also raising money, endorsing Republican candidates (most recently Senate aspirant Mitt
Romney in Utah), and seeking to cajole and intimidate both friends and foes alike. With the Gallup Poll showing the
president’s mid-February approval rating to be above 85% among Republicans, Trump will likely have his greatest impact this
year in molding the party’s message and helping to define the list of nominees that Republicans will put
before the voters in November. But with a Gallup approval rating of just 30% among independents, and
barely 5% among Democrats, his role in the 2018 general election looks to be problematic. There is little
doubt that the controversial Trump will be the central player of the 2018 campaign. Even while his name is
not on the ballot, this year’s elections will offer a highly charged referendum on Trump and his
presidency. Love him or hate him, it could result in a midterm variation of presidential coattails, or a lack
thereof.
 2NC – AT: Link N/U
Trump will continue pursuing hardline immigration policies now
Cook 6/18 (Nancy, Politico. “Trump aides plan fresh immigration crackdowns before midterms.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/18/trump-aides-plan-fresh-immigration-crackdowns-before-
midterms-652246)
Top aides to President Donald Trump are planning additional crackdowns on immigration before the November
midterms, despite a growing backlash over the administration’s move to separate migrant children from parents at the border. Senior policy
adviser Stephen Miller and a team of officials from the departments of Justice, Labor, Homeland Security and the Office of Management and
Budget have been quietly meeting for months to find ways to use executive authority and under-the-radar rule
changes to strengthen hard-line U.S. immigration policies, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former
administration officials and Republicans close to the White House. The goal for Miller and his team is to arm Trump with enough
data and statistics by early September to show voters that he fulfilled his immigration promises — even
without a border wall or any other congressional measure, said one Republican close to the White House. Among the fresh ideas being
circulated: tightening
rules on student visas and exchange programs; limiting visas for temporary
agricultural workers; making it harder for legal immigrants who have applied for welfare programs to
obtain residency; and collecting biometric data from visitors from certain countries. Details of the ideas are still
being worked out, one White House official said. In one of the most closely watched plans under discussion, DHS has proposed a new rule that
former Obama administration officials and immigration advocates worry could be used as an end run around a 1997 court settlement that
limits the time migrant children can be kept in government custody. Putting a formal government rule in place, lawyers and advocates say,
could in effect supersede the settlement, allowing the administration to get rid of it altogether by dropping the rule a year or two later. “Once
you rescind that regulation, then you go back to being able to do whatever you want and the detention becomes the complete discretion of
ICE,” said Leon Fresco, former deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Department of Justice. “That is
where people think this is headed.” The president and his top aides have framed the family separation issue as something Democrats could end
by signing on to Republican legislation addressing Trump’s priorities, including funding the border wall — even though the separation moves
are solely the outgrowth of a Department of Justice decision and not grounded in a particular law. Miller, who was instrumental to Trump’s
early travel ban — which, like the border separations, triggered widespread public outrage and was put into effect without sufficient logistical
planning — is among those who see the border crisis as a winning campaign issue. “That is the fundamental political contrast and political
debate that is unfolding right now,” Miller said in an interview with Breitbart News published on May 24. “The Democratic Party is at grave risk
of completely marginalizing itself from the American voters by continuing to lean into its absolutist anti-enforcement positions.” And some in
the Trump administration are not inclined to back down from any of its immigration policies because they’ve been planning them for more than
a year, according to one White House official and a Republican close to the administration. On Jan. 25, 2017, Trump signed an executive order
that called for the arrest and detention of people caught crossing the border illegally — a broad preview of the Department of Justice’s April
“zero-tolerance” decision to refer all border-crossers for federal prosecution, which has led to the separation of children from parents being
sent into criminal courts. Many of the ideas for enacting more aggressive immigration enforcement or tweaking old government rules
originated with the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, which Miller effectively runs. Other participants in the effort include John Walk, a
lawyer in the White House counsel’s office and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ son-in-law; Thomas Homan, the soon-to-retire head of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Gene Hamilton, a former staffer to
Sessions and ex-DHS official, who’s now at the Department of Justice; and officials throughout DHS. In his Breitbart News interview in May,
Miller called for closer examination of H1-B visas, which allow U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for certain specialized
jobs. OMB is currently reviewing a proposal to make it harder for immigrants with visas to obtain
permanent residency, including a green card, if they or their children have used government benefits such as Medicaid, food
stamps or tax credits. Advocates fear this would keep people from seeking necessary help or medical attention.
 2NC – Plan = GOP Credit
Midterms are referendums on the party on power – the plan makes them look great
Cook 17 (Charlie, Founder of the Cook Political Report – Political Analyst, “Midterms Are About the
Party in Power, Not Issues”, 8/1/17, http://cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-
politics/midterms-are-about-party-power-not-issues)
Democrats can take a different tack next year. They can nationalize their races, make them a
referendum on Trump and Republicans in Congress, stay away from local issues, and run as “send-
them-a-message” candidates. In other words, do exactly what Republican candidates did to Democrats in
2010 and 2014. It’s fashionable these days to say that Democrats have to stand for something if they’re going
to win a House majority and break even in the Senate. Balderdash. I have never seen a party win a
midterm election on the issues; midterms are always a referendum on the party in power. The party in
the White House has gained House seats in only two modern elections, and the circumstances both times were
special. In 1998, Democrats rode a backlash against the Republican majority in Congress that was preparing to
impeach President Clinton. In 2002, 14 months after the 9/11 attacks, the GOP made modest gains in an election that was about
patriotism after a national emergency. Some political buffs might ask about 1994 and the Contract with America
that Newt Gingrich and Republicans ran on. Many forget, or never knew, that the Contract with America was
announced only six weeks before the election, after it was already clear that the election was going to
be a disaster for Clinton and congressional Democrats. The proportion of people who were aware of
the Contract before the election was actually quite small. If memory serves, it was mainly distributed as an insert in TV
Guide. Gingrich deserves an enormous amount of credit for taking the fight to Clinton and Democrats and creating the atmosphere that helped
rout them, but to say it was about issues is to overstate things by a ton. Clinton’s
job-approval ratings had been in the high
30’s and low 40’s for much of the two years leading into that midterm, and the election was a
referendum on him and his party. The Republicans’ strong suit was that they weren’t Democrats and were against Clinton. Those
are the kinds of things that decide midterm elections.
 2NC – AT: GOP Base Link Turn
The GOP base doesn’t matter – it’s a question of turnout and independents – sitting
party approval matters, and the plan improves Trump’s approval
Enten 17 (Harry, senior political editor at the five thirty eight, “Democrats don’t need Trump’s voters
to retake the house,” Five Thirty Eight, May 23, 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-
dont-need-trumps-voters-to-retake-the-house/)
Stop me if you’ve seen a headline (or five) that proclaims something along the lines of: “Most Trump voters still support Trump.” Typically, the
article includes quotes from Trump voters in Pennsylvania or Michigan. Sometimes it revolves around polling showing people don’t “regret”
voting for Trump. The takeaway is usually: Trump still has the support of his base, which means Democrats haven’t
cracked the Trump nut yet. But here’s the thing: Democrats don’t need to crack that nut by 2018; Trump can
hang on to most — if not all — of his base, and Democrats could still clean up in the midterm elections.
Checking in with Trump’s supporters is worthwhile. But don’t mistake their level of satisfaction for a
political prediction. Let’s start with the basic fact that Trump won just 45.9 percent of the vote in 2016. That doesn’t make his victory
any less legitimate — winning (the Electoral College) with less than a majority is still winning — but Trump has a smaller base than
every president elected since 1972, except for Bill Clinton in 1992. Trump voters are not a majority. More importantly
for the sake of 2018, they don’t represent the majority of voters in the majority of congressional districts. Trump
won more than 50 percent in 205 of 435 districts. If House Republicans won every district where Trump won a
majority in 2016 but lost every other one, Democrats would control 230 seats. Among seats won by a
Republican in 2016, Trump fell short of a majority in 40 districts. Democrats need to win only 24 of those
to win control of the House. Of course, Democrats are unlikely to run the table in districts where Trump got
less than a majority. He still won a plurality in 25 of those districts. And Democratic candidates probably won’t win every voter who cast
a ballot for Hillary Clinton or a third-party candidate in 2016. The larger point is just that Republicans need more than Trump
voters to hold onto the House. Which is why judging the political climate by looking only at how Trump’s voters are feeling is
misleading. Most presidents hold on to most of their base. But even a little erosion among base support can make a
difference. Moreover, turnout matters, as does whether independent voters approve of the president’s
job performance. In the last three midterm wave elections (1994, 2006 and 2010) that resulted in the president’s party losing
the House, for example, the president’s party won at least 84 percent of the president’s voters. But that wasn’t
enough. In 1994, voters who cast a ballot for a third-party candidate in 1992 (mostly for Ross Perot) turned against the Democrats, going
more than 2-to-1 for GOP House candidates. The 2004 election was close enough that Democrats holding on to a bit more of their voters in
2006 was enough to make huge gains. In 2010, poor turnout among then-President Barack Obama’s 2008 voters (though its effects are often
overstated) hurt Democrats across the country. In short, how
independents vote in 2018 and who turns out will play
roles just as big as that of how satisfied Trump voters are. Even if the latter are super happy with Trump,
if everyone else is super unhappy, Democrats will likely do well. The GOP’s problem again comes back to
Trump’s base being relatively small to begin with compared to the base support of past presidents. The
latest poll from YouGov, for example, shows 88 percent of respondents who said they voted for Trump approve of his job performance. But 88
percent of the 46 percent of 2016 voters who chose Trump is just 40 percent. Overall, the YouGov survey found 54percent of
registered voters disapprove of Trump so far. If every person who currently disapproves of Trump’s job
performance voted against the Republican Party’s House candidates in 2018, Democrats would almost
certainly take control of the chamber.1 Obviously, how someone feels about the president isn’t a perfect
proxy for how they’ll vote in a House election. Fortunately for House Republicans, they’ll probably hold
some voters who don’t like Trump. Candidate quality still matters, and there is still a small incumbent advantage in House
elections. That’s how Republicans won the House popular vote by 1 percentage point in 2016 even as Trump was losing the popular vote. That
said, opinions of the incumbent president and House voting patterns have become more closely linked
in recent midterms. The president’s party has lost at least 83 percent of voters who disapprove of the
president’s job in every midterm since 1994. In none did the president’s party win more than 87 percent of those who
approved of the president’s job.2 These statistics are not good news for Republicans if Trump’s current approval rating (40 percent among
voters) and current disapproval rating (55 percent) holds through the midterm. Even if Trump’s Republican Party wins the recent high water
mark of 87 percent of those who approve of the job the president is doing and loses only 83 percent of those who disapprove, Republicans
would still lose the House popular vote by 7 percentage points.3 That could be enough for them to lose the House. We still have well
over a year until the midterm elections. President Trump’s approval rating may recover. But if
Republicans want to hold onto the House in 2018, they had better hope it gets at least a little better —
no matter how much Trump’s 2016 voters still approve of him.
 2NC – AT: GOP Not Tied to Trump
Voters will tie GOP to Trump
Gaby 17 (Keith Gaby explores the intersection of politics and climate change for the Environmental
Defense Fund. “Congress almost always votes with Trump as 2018 midterms loom. Bad idea, polls
suggest.” June 28, 2017. https://www.edf.org/blog/2017/06/28/congress-almost-always-votes-trump-
2018-midterms-loom-bad-idea-polls-suggest)
Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. It’s a remarkably
dismal number for a president at any time, but especially so early in his term. It’s clear that the
dissatisfaction is not only because of scandals and poor behavior, but also because his policies are
deeply unpopular. Consider this: Just 28 percent of Americans support Trump’s decision to withdraw the
United States from the Paris climate agreement. The health care bill he celebrated has approval ratings
in the teens. And a full 62 percent disagree [PDF] with his attacks against the Clean Power Plan and other Obama-era pollution limits. In
spite of this, hundreds of members of the U.S. House and Senate, many of whom face re-election next year,
continue to vote with the president nearly all the time. Here’s why this matters: Presidential approval is one of
the most important determining factors in midterm elections, and Trump’s ratings could have
consequences for lawmakers who now follow his lead. Unpopular presidents a risky bet As the Gallup Poll noted in advance
of the last midterm election 2014, a president’s “standing with voters is usually a significant predictor of election
outcomes.” When presidents are unpopular, Gallup reported, “their party typically loses a substantial number
of seats in the House of Representatives.” That makes congressional voting patterns in 2017 so much more remarkable. Even
“moderates” support Trump 90% of the time According to analysis by FiveThirtyEight, 229 House members sided with Trump’s
position more than 90 percent of the time – and 102 have a 100-percent Trump score. With some important exceptions, even
members who like to be considered moderates nearly always support the president’s positions, as
FiveThirtyEight shows in its breakdown of who voted how.
Impeachment Impact
 1NC – Impeachment Impact
Dem House win guarantees impeachment and removal
Goldberg 17 (Jonah, 6-14-2017, National Review senior editor, bestselling author and columnist and
fellow of the National Review Institute, Robert J. Novak Journalist of the Year at the Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC), "Trump Will Probably Be Impeached if Republicans Lose the House"
National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448590/democrats-take-back-house-2018-
trump-probably-impeached)
Unless it steps up soon, Democrats will probably take back the majority in 2018 — and take down the
president. The 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Since
Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made
the election a referendum on impeaching President Bill Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly, voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do it.” The
White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then–White House chief of staff John Podesta was
running in Washington’s Rock Creek park when it hit him: GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat
and beat and beat on them until they vote for impeachment.” It fell to Podesta to tell the still-celebrating White House staff that the midterms
meant nothing, that the push to impeach the president in the House was a runaway train that could not be derailed. “This thing is rigged,”
Podesta announced at a Monday-morning staff meeting. “We are going to lose.” President Trump’s White House could use a John Podesta
about now. Because no
one seems to have told Trump’s team that the Democrats are every bit as committed
to impeaching Trump as the GOP was to impeaching Clinton. The difference, of course, is that the
Democrats don’t control the House — yet. If they did, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York rightly noted recently,
impeachment proceedings would already be underway. And if the Democrats take back the House in
2018, it won’t matter to most members whether the country as a whole supports impeachment,
because the voters who elected them — and the donors who supported them — will be in favor of it. (A
recent Public Policy Polling survey found that 47 percent of Americans support impeachment while 43 percent oppose it.) Personally, I think it
would be folly to impeach the president given what we know now. But that’s meaningless. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors”
notwithstanding, the criteria for impeachment have little to do with criminal law and everything to do with politics. If
218 members of
the House think it is right — or simply in their political interest — to impeach the president, he can be
impeached. Whether two-thirds of the Senate decides to remove the president from office is also an
entirely political decision. Given the likely composition of the Senate after the next election, however, that remains unlikely. Then
again, who knows? Given how Trump responds to criticism and political pressure, would you want to bet that the tweeter-in-chief would be a
model of statesmanlike restraint during an impeachment ordeal? So many of his current problems are the direct result of letting his ego or
frustration get the better of him. What fresh troubles would he mint when faced with removal from office? What might he say under oath to
the special counsel? Clinton, recall, was impeached and disbarred because he perjured himself in a deposition. The
only hope for the
Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has cautioned
against making the midterms a referendum on impeachment. But that is an electoral strategy, not a plan for when she gets the speaker’s gavel.
And even if she declines to go straight to impeachment hearings on Day One, a Democratic-controlled House would still be a nightmare for the
White House. Any hope of passing a conservative agenda would die instantaneously. Worse, once Democrats gained the power to subpoena
documents and compel testimony from members of the administration, the Hobbesian internal politics of today’s White House would look like
a company picnic by comparison. In short, the only hope for the Trump presidency is for the GOP to maintain control of the House. According to
various reports, the GOP thinks it can hold on by running “against the media” in 2018. As pathetic as that would be, it might work. Though I
doubt it. A better strategy would be to actually get things done. And the only way for that to happen is for both houses of Congress to get their
act together. Voting bills out of the House may be enough to justify a Rose Garden party, but it will do little to sway voters who’ve been told for
years that the GOP needs control of all three branches to do big things. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, but his
presidency will hang in the balance.

Trump foreign policy implodes liberal order and causes global war
Rosendorf 17 – Neal Rosendorf, Associate Professor of International Relations, New Mexico State
University, Ph.D., Harvard University, “ÜBERMAN AMERICA: THE SINISTER SOFT POWER OF TRUMP’S
FOREIGN POLICY”, CPD Blog, 2-27, https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/%C3%BCberman-america-
sinister-soft-power-trump%E2%80%99s-foreign-policy
Hence soft power, undergirded by American values, has correctly been seen as a preponderantly positive force

in international relations, in which transparent, free-market, representative democracies that are open
to the world have a baked-in advantage over repressive autocratic regimes. But what happens if the U.S.
becomes one of the world's leading bad guys? Can the U.S. still maintain soft power if it is extolling hard-
edged nationalism and xenophobia, disdaining longstanding alliances and fomenting the breakup of
the entire post-World War II system that America put in place seven decades ago? What would it look like? Who would it
attract? And where will it take the world? In fact, although a number of prominent figures have warned against the American abdication of liberal world order leadership and the related
in hewing to the Trump foreign policy line the US will in fact
erosion, or even the end, of American soft power, I would argue that

continue to maintain a considerable “ability to shape the preferences of others”. But it won’t be via the sort
of attraction, persuasion, ideas and ideals that analysts and policy formulators weaned on postwar bipartisan consensus U.S. internationalism (this writer included) will be remotely
comfortable with, nor will they (we) celebrate the sort of leaders, activists and publics who respond positively to this version of American soft power. They (we) won’t like the results, to put it
exceedingly mildly. With Trump
the administration violently casting off U.S. fealty to such watchwords of the exceptionalist American faith as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness,” “the last best hope of earth,” “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” or “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept,
God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace,” it can be hard to imagine that the U.S. could still hold soft
power, albeit of a dramatically different cast, attractive to a disturbingly different audience. As an aid to the (nightmare) imagination-challenged, an apt metaphor for what lies ahead for
U.S. soft power, should the Trump Administration succeed in its radical recasting of American values and policies at home and abroad, can be found in the Classics—of comedy, that is:
Saturday Night Live, and a hilarious, terrifying sketch featuring “Überman.” No, this has nothing to do with a car ride service. Überman was the brainchild of Al Franken, an SNL writer-
performer before his election to the U.S. Senate. In 1979 Franken posed the counterfactual question, “What If….Superman Grew Up in Germany instead of America?” In Franken’s re-
imagination of Superman’s origin story, young Kal-El’s rocket lands during the interwar years in Prussia rather than Kansas, where he is raised by ardent Nazis who, as his adoptive father
reminds him, “taught you how the Fatherland was stabbed in the back at Versailles, how Jews are parasites, how Germany will one day bring order to the world!” Thus inspired, Klaus Kent, “a
mild-mannered clerk for the Ministry of Propaganda,” becomes Überman, proudly declaring to Adolf Hitler his fight for “Untruth, Injustice and the Nazi Way,” saving Der Führer from a hidden
bomb he discovers with his X-ray vision, and denouncing Jimmy Olsteyn as a Jew—whose secret he also uncovers with his X-ray vision (get it?). After depositing the hapless Jimmy at Auschwitz
Überman wins the Battle of Stalingrad in five minutes, singlehandedly rounds up two million Jews, and “Kills Every Person in England—U.S. Next”, as the headline blares in Der Daily Planet.
The longer Donald Trump holds on to power, and hence the longer the sinister soft power Trumpism
manifests is projected around the world, the greater the encouragement to, and impact on, the
unsavory populist nationalist movements and authoritarian regimes to which America is now perversely
offering inspiration. Donald Trump’s unabashed “America First” foreign policy is the metaphorical equivalent of Überman’s gruesome reversal of Superman’s biography and
principles. Al Franken’s sketch encapsulates the unfolding Up-Is-Down, Black-Is-White, Good-Is-Evil and Evil-Is-Good disjunction and the global havoc the U.S. is in the

process of wreaking. It isn’t necessary to rehearse at length the list of the Trump administration’s head-snapping, system-shattering statements and policy shifts that is by now
painfully well-known to readers even as it grows daily like The Blob (Steve McQueen’s, not Ben Rhodes’). The last time influential Americans and their supporters among the public
unapologetically embraced unpalatable policies and values like immigration restriction, racism and anti-Semitism, the results included Adolf Hitler sending a fan letter to the anti-immigrant
“scientific” eugenicist Madison Grant, a Nazi medal for Henry Ford in honor of his vicious published attacks on Jews, and the modeling of the Nuremberg Laws on Jim Crow segregation codes
—indeed, there was more than a touch of Überman to the United States even at the dawn of the Age of Superman. But at least at America’s helm during most of the decade prior to U.S. entry
into World War II was Franklin D. Roosevelt, his wife Eleanor and a host of New Dealers, who endorsed, if disappointingly imperfectly at times, equality and inclusiveness for African-Americans,
Jews and recent immigrants —rather than far-right incubus counterfactual presidents like Buzz Windrip in Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Charles Lindbergh in Philip Roth’s The Plot
Against America. However, with Donald Trump in the White House there is no presidential moral counterpoise, but rather a celebration of some of the most disturbing pathologies embedded
deep in American politics and society, raging back in the open after many decades of disreputability. And as Überman doesn’t cease to be, well, super, because of his malevolent predilections,
Trumpian America will not not cease to possess soft power. But it will be of a dark, sinister cast: Lionizing,
legitimating and inspiring populist nationalist leaders (Austrian far-right party head Harald Vilimsky preened after Trump’s inauguration, “He is a
winner, we are winners: Frauke Petry, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, all of us here are winners”); Providing moral cover for foreign publics’

xenophobia; Setting an example for would-be strongmen of delegitimizing the press (“the enemy of the American people”)
and demonstrating the efficacy and impunity of pedaling the most brazen disinformation; Confirming longstanding extreme left- and right-wing accusations that the U.S. has no special
Encouraging and steering
redeeming qualities, even vis-à-vis the autocratic, sanguinary Putin regime (“We’ve got a lot of killers—you think our country is so innocent?”);

the weakening or even the break-up of the European Union, NATO and the WTO; Legitimating Vladimir
Putin’s Russia as a defender of Western values; And stoking a racial-ethnic-religious Western
civilizational antipathy toward Islam in toto and the broader non-Western world. If you think all of this is dispiriting to read,
imagine what it was like to write it—Sad! (Utterly heartbreaking, actually.) But is all in fact lost? Is American soft power destined to henceforth be a

malign, destabilizing force in the world? Perhaps not. If Donald Trump rapidly falls out of favor with
the bulk of the American electorate—and remember, he’s already rather more than halfway home in this regard—he could be rendered a
political loser in short order and tossed out of the White House, taking foreign policy Trumpism down
with him. The 2018 and especially 2020 elections will be pivotal in this regard. It would be essential for the
speediest possible resuscitation of U.S. soft power that Trump as a one-termer (or less) be succeeded by a president, whether Republican or
Democratic, dedicated to a firm re-commitment to the traditional American values, ideas and ideals that Trump & Co. have so blithely cast aside. In this scenario, the U.S. would still be dealing
with long-term fallout from its misadventure in international illiberalism. As Warren Buffett famously noted, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think
about that, you'll do things differently.” Still, while it would indeed probably take a couple of decades to well and truly live down the damage done even in four years (or less) by the Trump
it would not be the most difficult national reputation-rebuilding effort ever undertaken—think of what
administration,

to continue the
West Germany faced in the years following World War II. However, if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020 and is thus given a mandate by the American public

radical recasting of U.S. foreign policy—and with it the overturning of the extant international order—
then the fundamental shift in the nature and effects of American soft power is likely to be, in practical
terms, permanent for a half-century or more. This will be especially so if this shift is accompanied by an
incremental domestic turn toward authoritarianism and the concomitant erosion of the political
opposition's ability to reclaim power. There's another factor to reckon with as well: the longer Donald Trump holds on to
power, and hence the longer the sinister soft power Trumpism manifests is projected around the world,
the greater the encouragement to, and impact on, the unsavory populist nationalist movements and
authoritarian regimes to which America is now perversely offering inspiration. Even if the U.S. were to rapidly regain its
ideological bearings once a hypothetical two-term Donald Trump has left office and go back to manifesting its traditional values-based soft power, it could find itself up

against a bevy of formerly pro-liberal internationalist states that have metastasized into Trumpian soft power-inspired
illiberal democracies or cold-out dictatorships now cleaving to Russia and/or China—which will remain autocracies seeking to undermine U.S. global power.
Thus, a resuscitated Superman America might well end up facing the daunting threat of Überman World.

Independently, Impeachment key to solve deterrence – the alternative is war and

escalatory prolif
Joschka Fischer 17, served as Foreign Minister and as Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005
and he is a Senior Strategic Counsel at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, “The age of
nuclear deterrence is over” https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-age-of-nuclear-deterrence-is-
over-2017-08-23
In this new environment, the “rationality of deterrence” maintained by the United States and the Soviet
Union during the Cold War has eroded. Now, if nuclear proliferation increases, the threshold for using nuclear weapons
will likely fall. As the current situation in North Korea shows, the nuclearization of East Asia or the Persian Gulf could
pose a direct threat to world peace. Consider the recent rhetorical confrontation between North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un
and President Donald Trump, in which Trump promised to respond with “fire and fury” to any further North Korean
provocations. Clearly, Trump is not relying on the rationality of deterrence, as one would have expected
from the leader of the last remaining superpower. Instead, he has given his emotions free rein. Of course,
Trump didn’t start the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula. It has been festering for some time, owing to the North Korean regime’s
willingness to pay any price to become a nuclear power, which it sees as a way to ensure its own safety. In addition, the regime is developing
intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching the West Coast of the U.S., or farther. This would be a
major security challenge for any U.S. administration. Ultimately, there are no good options for responding to the North Korean threat. A
U.S.-
led pre-emptive war on the Korean Peninsula, for example, could lead to a direct confrontation with China
and the destruction of South Korea, and would have unforeseeable implications for Japan. And, because the China-South Korea-Japan triangle
has become the new power center of the 21st century global economy, no country would be spared from the economic fallout. Even if the U.S.
continues to allude to the possibility of war, American military leaders know that the use of military force is not really a viable option, given its
prohibitively high costs and risks. When North Korea achieves nuclear-power status, the American security
guarantee will no longer be airtight. A North Korea with nuclear weapons and the means to use them would add pressure
on South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear capacity, which they could easily do. But that is
the last thing that China wants. The situation in Asia today has the nuclear attributes of the 20th century and the national-power
dynamics of the 19th century. That could prove to be a highly inflammatory cocktail. And at the same time, the
international system is becoming increasingly unstable, with political structures, institutions, and alliances around the
world being upended or called into question. Much will depend on what happens in the U.S. under
Trump’s wayward presidency. The investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia ahead of the 2016
presidential election, and the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have shown the administration to be unstable
and ineffective. And agenda items such as tax cuts, the Mexican border wall, and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade
Agreement — to say nothing of Trump’s own emotional outbursts — are fueling America’s radical right. Instability within the U.S. is
cause for global concern. If the U.S. can no longer be counted on to ensure world peace and stability,
then no country can. We will be left with a leadership vacuum, and nowhere is this more dangerous
than with respect to nuclear proliferation. Another nuclear danger looms this fall. If the U.S. Congress
imposes new sanctions on Iran, the nuclear agreement between that country and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council, plus Germany) could fail. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani publicly announced just last week that Iran
could abandon the deal “within hours” in response to new sanctions. In light of the North Korea crisis, it would be the
height of irresponsibility to trigger a gratuitous nuclear crisis — and possibly a war — in the Middle East. And a
return by the U.S. to a strategy of regime change in Iran would likely be self-defeating, because it would strengthen the country’s hardliners. All
of this would be taking place in a region that is already riven by crises and wars. And, because Russia, China, and the Europeans would stick to
the nuclear deal, the U.S. would find itself alone and at odds with even its closest allies. Today’s
nuclear threats demand exactly
the opposite of “fire and fury.” What is needed is level-headedness, rationality, and patient diplomacy
that is not based on dangerous and fanciful threats of force. If the last superpower abandons these virtues,
the world — all of us — will have to confront the consequences.
 2NC – Trump = Extinction
Trump causes extinction – nuclear war, climate change, and disease
Baum 16 – Seth, is executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank
that Baum co-founded in 2011. Baum’s research focuses on risk, ethics, and policy questions about
major threats to human civilization, including nuclear war, global warming, and emerging technologies,
December 9th ("What Trump means for global catastrophic risk," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Available online at http://thebulletin.org/what-trump-means-global-catastrophic-risk10266, MSCOTT)
In 1987, Donald Trump said he had an aggressive plan for the United States to partner with the Soviet Union on nuclear non-proliferation. He
was motivated by, among other things, an encounter with Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s former pilot, who convinced him that at least
some world leaders are too unstable to ever be trusted with nuclear weapons. Now, 30 years later, Trump—following a presidential
campaign marked by impulsive, combative behavior—seems poised to become one of those unstable
world leaders. Global catastrophic risks are those that threaten the survival of human civilization. Of all
the implications a Trump presidency has for global catastrophic risk—and there are many—the prospect of
him ordering the launch of the massive US nuclear arsenal is by far the most worrisome. In the United
States, the president has sole authority to launch atomic weapons. As Bruce Blair recently argued in Politico, Trump’s
tendency toward erratic behavior, combined with a mix of difficult geopolitical challenges ahead, mean
the probability of a nuclear launch order will be unusually high. If Trump orders an unwarranted launch, then the only
thing that could stop it would be disobedience by launch personnel—though even this might not suffice, since the president could
simply replace them. Such disobedience has precedent, most notably in Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet submarine officer who refused to
authorize a nuclear launch during the Cuban Missile Crisis; Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who refused to relay a warning (which turned out
to be a false alarm) of incoming US missiles; and James Schlesinger, the US defense secretary under President Richard Nixon, who reportedly
told Pentagon aides to check with him first if Nixon began talking about launching nuclear weapons. Both Arkhipov and Petrov are now
celebrated as heroes for saving the world. Perhaps Schlesinger should be too, though his story has been questioned. US personnel involved in
nuclear weapons operations should take note of these tales and reflect on how they might act in a nuclear crisis. Risks and opportunities
abroad. Aside from planning to either persuade or disobey the president, the only way to avoid nuclear war is to try to avoid
the sorts of crises that can prompt nuclear launch. China and Russia, which both have large arsenals of
long-range nuclear weapons and tense relationships with the United States, are the primary candidates
for a nuclear conflagration with Washington. Already, Trump has increased tensions with China by taking a phone call from
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. China-Taiwan relations are very fragile, and this sort of disruption could lead to
a war that would drag in the United States. Meanwhile, Trump’s presidency could create some interesting opportunities to
improve US relations with Russia. The United States has long been too dismissive of Moscow’s very legitimate
security concerns regarding NATO expansion, missile defense, and other encroachments. In stark defiance of
US political convention, Trump speaks fondly of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian leader, and expresses little interest
in supporting NATO allies. The authoritarianism is a problem, but Trump’s unconventional friendliness nonetheless offers a valuable
opportunity to rethink US-Russia relations for the better. On the other hand, conciliatory overtures toward Russia could backfire. Without US
pressure, Russia could become aggressive, perhaps invading the Baltic states. Russia might gamble that
NATO wouldn’t fight back, but if it was wrong, such an invasion could lead to nuclear war. Additionally,
Trump’s pro-Russia stance could mean that Putin would no longer be able to use anti-Americanism to
shore up domestic support, which could lead to a dangerous political crisis. If Putin fears a loss of power, he
could turn to more aggressive military action in hopes of bolstering his support. And if he were to lose power,
particularly in a coup, there is no telling what would happen to one of the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
The best approach for the United States is to rethink Russia-US relations while avoiding the sorts of military and political crises that could
escalate to nuclear war. The war at home. Trump has
been accused many times of authoritarian tendencies, not least
due to his praise for Putin. He
also frequently defies democratic norms and institutions, for instance by
encouraging violence against opposition protesters during his presidential campaign, and now via his business
holdings, which create a real prospect he may violate the Constitution’s rule against accepting foreign bribes. Already, there are signs that
Trump is profiting from his newfound political position, for example with an end to project delays on a Trump Tower in Buenos Aires. The US
Constitution explicitly forbids the president from receiving foreign gifts, known as “emoluments.” What if, under President Trump, the US
government itself becomes authoritarian? Such an outcome might seem unfathomable, and to be sure, achieving authoritarian control would
not be as easy for Trump as starting a nuclear war. It would require compliance from a much larger portion of government personnel and the
public—compliance that cannot be taken for granted. Already, government officials are discussing how best to resist
illegal and unethical moves from the inside, and citizens are circulating expert advice on how to thwart
creeping authoritarianism. But the president-elect will take office at a time in which support for democracy may be declining in the
United States and other Western countries, as measured by survey data. And polling shows that his supporters were more likely to have
authoritarian inclinations than supporters of other Republican or Democratic primary candidates. Moreover, his supporters cheered some of his
clearly authoritarian suggestions, like creating a registry for Muslims and implying that through force of his own personality, he would achieve
results where normal elected officials fail. An
authoritarian US government would be a devastating force. In theory,
dictatorships can be benevolent, but throughout history, they have been responsible for some of the largest
human tragedies, with tens of millions dying due to their own governments in the Stalinist Soviet Union,
Nazi Germany, and Maoist China. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, an authoritarian United
States could wield overwhelming military and intelligence capabilities to even more disastrous effect.
Return to an old world order. Trump has suggested he might pull the United States back from the post-World
War II international order it helped build and appears to favor a pre-World War II isolationist mercantilism that would have the
United States look out for its unenlightened self-interest and nothing more. This would mean retreating from alliances and attempts to
Such a retreat from globalization would
promote democracy abroad, and an embrace of economic protectionism at home.
have important implications for catastrophic risk. The post-World War II international system has
proved remarkably stable and peaceful. Returning to the pre-World War II system risks putting the
world on course for another major war, this time with deadlier weapons. International cooperation is
also essential for addressing global issues like climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, arms
control, and the safe management of emerging technologies. On the other hand, the globalized economy can be fragile.
Shocks in one place can cascade around the world, and a bad enough shock could collapse the whole system, leaving behind few communities
that are able to support themselves. Globalization can also bring dangerous concentrations of wealth and power. Nevertheless, complete
rejection of globalization would be a dangerous mistake. Playing with climate dangers. Climate change
will not wipe out human populations as quickly as a nuclear bomb would, but it is wreaking slow-motion
havoc that could ultimately be just as devastating. Trump has been all over the map on the subject, variously supporting
action to reduce emissions and calling global warming a hoax. On December 5th he met with environmental activist and former vice president
Al Gore, giving some cause for hope, but later the same week said he would appoint Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who denies the
science of climate change, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s energy plan calls for energy independence with development
of both fossil fuels and renewables, as well as less environmental regulation. If
his energy policy puts more greenhouse gas
into the atmosphere—as it may by increasing fossil fuel consumption—it will increase global
catastrophic risk. For all global catastrophic risks, it is important to remember that the US president is hardly the only important actor.
Trump’s election shifts the landscape of risks and opportunities, but does not change the fact that each of us can help keep humanity safe. His
election also offers an important reminder that outlier events sometimes happen. Just because election-winning politicians have been of a
particular mold in the past, doesn’t mean the same kind of leaders will continue to win. Likewise, just because we have avoided global
catastrophe so far doesn’t mean we will continue to do so.
 2NC – Yes Impeachment
Russia investigation will ensure GOP senators turn on Trump if they get shellacked in
the midterms
Antle 18 (W. James Antle III is politics editor of The Washington Examiner and author of Devouring
Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?. “Why Senate Republicans might just impeach Trump.”
The Week. 2/1, http://theweek.com/articles/752058/why-senate-republicans-might-just-impeach-
trump)
Political obsessives in Washington and around the country are waiting with bated breath to see whether Congress will "release the memo" that
House Republicans say proves FBI impropriety in the Russia-related investigation of President Trump. The FBI, for its part, has warned of "grave
concerns" in releasing a memo with severe "omissions of fact." It will be up to President Trump whether to heed them. But if the memo does
see the light of day, let's be honest about who the real target audience is. It's just 51 people — the
Republican members of the
Senate. Trump's fate rests more in their hands than Special Counsel Robert Mueller's. It seems more likely than
not that Democrats will retake the House in November, with the building wave of GOP retirements perhaps the
best indicator that Republicans themselves are expecting a rout. If Democrats win control of Congress, they will then have the
simple House majority required to impeach Trump. What they almost certainly will not have, however, no matter how well
the midterms go, is the two-thirds Senate majority needed to convict and remove him. Given the difficult map this year,
Democrats may not even be able to take control of the Senate. But for the sake of argument, let's say they win a
52-48 majority. They would still need 15 Republicans to vote to remove Trump from office. Would
Senate Republicans ever turn on Trump? That's a tall order. But contrary to the expectations of liberals who believe all elected
Republicans indiscriminately enable Trump, it may not be an impossible one, at least compared to the last two presidents
threatened with impeachment. Remember the '90s? Even with 55 votes in the Senate, Republicans were never going to be able to complete
their impeachment drive against President Bill Clinton because there were no Democratic senators willing to vote to remove him. Only five
House Democrats voted for any of the Clinton articles of impeachment. The GOP was never going to get 12 senators. Similarly, if party leaders
had allowed antiwar Democrats to move forward with their efforts to impeach President George W. Bush, they might have won over
Republicans like Ron Paul or Walter Jones in the House, but zero Senate Republicans could have been persuaded to convict Bush. In Clinton's
case, Democrats simply did not believe that the underlying offense that led to the president's perjury and alleged obstruction of justice —
consensual sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — was serious enough to justify removing him from office. And in Bush's
case, Republicans would have regarded the president's impeachment as the criminalization of policy disagreements (particularly over the so-
called war on terror), and they overwhelmingly still agreed with the Bush policy in question. Things might be different with Trump. If
Mueller is able to present clear and compelling evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump
campaign, with the president's knowledge, Republican votes for impeachment really are gettable in a
way that they were not in past cases. This situation would be fundamentally different than the impeachment talk around Clinton
and Bush. And some Senate Republicans really might turn on the president. Obviously, the threshold for GOP senators to turn on Trump would
be much higher than for Democrats, for whom the Trump Tower meeting alone suffices. For Republicans, "collusion" would likely have to mean
some direct involvement in stolen Democratic emails, cooperating with the creation and distribution of Russian fake news, or at bare minimum
a well established awareness of and coordination with what the Russians were doing.
They would have to see a clear quid pro
quo. For many GOP lawmakers, even that wouldn't be enough. Many have indeed shown that they'll back Trump no matter what. But it is
not that hard to imagine a set of facts that would cause principled Russia hawks like Ben Sasse, Marco
Rubio, and Lindsey Graham to turn against the president. And once a few dominos fall, it makes it easier
for the others to topple in turn. Remember, too, that the two biggest reasons that Republican lawmakers continue to back Trump is
that they see him as a vehicle to accomplish their legislative goals, and they fear a backlash from the Trump-loving base were they to turn on
him. But in a post-midterm world in which Republicans have been roundly shellacked, Trump's legislative agenda would be dead
on arrival, and his base would be disillusioned. Republican senators might well see fewer reasons to
stand by their man. Of course, a lot would have to happen to get us to this point. What little we know of the Mueller probe suggests we
are presently far from this outcome. None of the indictments handed down so far even attempt to establish the existence of a broader
conspiracy between the Russians and the campaign, not even in the case of George Papadopoulos, who appears to have at least attempted
collusion. Cooperators could be rewarded with sentencing leniency while pleading to things more significant than process crimes — maybe the
fact that they weren't charged with worse offenses doesn't mean anything, maybe it does. All the intrigue surrounding the Trump White House
points to an obstruction investigation, centering around the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. That's where the memo, the anti-Trump
FBI texts, and the complaints about former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whatever their merits, come into play: The more doubts
Republicans have about the impartiality of the investigation, the more evidence they will demand of Mueller. The degree to which Senate
Republicans can be persuaded that the Justice Department, even under Trump, is sketchy and stonewalling also strengthens the president's
hand. Firing Mueller, as he reportedly considered doing last year, is still a no-go zone that could turn Senate
Republicans against him. So, for the moment, is firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, though there is now a constituency for his
removal among House conservatives. The man to watch is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing Mueller and would
ultimately decide what to do with any report he produces. If he emerges as a villain among Republicans in the fight over the memo, it is
valuable impeachment insurance for Trump. If Trump
is instead goaded into overreaching against Rosenstein and
Mueller, it could make his position more precarious. And it might just encourage some senators to pick
principle over party.
 2NC – Yes Impeachment – Resignation
House win causes Trump to resign – Dems release of damaging tax returns compels it
Graham 17 (Luke, political reporter @ CNBC, CNBC, 8/21, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/21/donald-
trump-president-may-resign-over-tax-returns-if-democrats-win-in-2018.html)
A Democrat win in 2018 could end the Trump presidency, says analyst A win for the Democrats in Congress
next year would allow them to publish Donald Trump's tax returns, according to IHS Markit's John Raines If there is
some damaging information in the returns, President Trump may decide to resign Tony Schwartz, the ghost-writer behind
Trump's 'Art of the Deal', told CNN he predicts Trump will quit the job in months A win for the Democrats in Congress next
year will cause problems for the Donald Trump administration that may even result in the president
resigning from his post, a political risk analyst has suggested. "If the Democrats win in 2018 as far as the
House of Representatives, they can then actually publish the tax returns of the president," John Raines, head of
political risk at IHS Markit, told CNBC. "So is there something in those tax returns that could actually cause
damage to the president? All of a sudden he feels compelled to do something like resign." If the
Democrats gained a majority in Congress, they could take control of certain Congressional committees.
Some of these committees have the power to request anyone's tax returns, including those belonging to
the president. These committees could then share the returns with other members of the committee or
make them public. The president's tax returns have been a hot button political issue since the election
campaign, when Trump became the first major presidential candidate since the 1970s not to release his tax returns. The president claimed
he could not release them because he was under audit by the IRS. Raines says there would have to be a major issue within the tax returns for
the majority of the Republican Party to turn against him. "At this point, 80 to 85 percent of Republicans are still with this president. Republican
congressmen, whether it be senators or house members, it's going to be very difficult for them to make that (decision on impeachment) unless
there's some real smoking gun there." Raines added that the actual prospects of impeachment remain quite low at this point. Last week, U.K.
betting firm Paddy Power cut odds on Trump to resign from office, after Tony Schwartz, the ghost-writer behind the president's memoir 'Art of
the Deal', told CNN he predicts Trump will quit the job in months. He also said on Twitter that he would be "amazed" if the president lasts until
the end of the year. Bookmaker Paddy Power said large amounts of money was being bet on odds of 6/4 that Trump
will resign, forcing the company to cut the odds to even money (where the profit on the bet will be the same as the
amount staked). "Tony Schwartz spent 18 months with Trump when helping ghost-write his memoir and while that
must have been totally unbearable – it also means he knows The Donald pretty well," Paddy Power said in a press release on
Friday. "After an awful week for the president that has seen other issues like North Korea pushed into the shadows it's no surprise punters are
latching onto the fact Trump might call it a day."

If there’s a threat of impeachment, Trump will resign

Batchelor 17 (Tom, The Independent. “Donald Trump likely to resign before Congress can impeach
him, says senior Democrat.” 4 August 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politics/donald-trump-impeach-congress-resign-before-russia-democrat-jackie-speier-intelligence-
committee-a7876416.html)
Donald Trump would resign before Congress is able impeach him, a senior US representative has said, as
pressure mounts over his team's alleged links to Russia. Jackie Speier, who sits on the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, said attempts by the President to pardon members of his family or fire the man
appointed to investigate Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election could trigger an
impeachment vote. “I have always thought that he was never going to fulfil his full term,” she said. “I am more convinced that
he will leave before any impeachment would take place.” On Friday it emerged that the special counsel
appointed to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 vote, Robert Mueller, was using a grand jury –
suggesting his probe was entering a new, more serious, phase. The move piled further pressure on the
President, whose seven months in office have been dogged by accusations that his team worked with Russia to swing the vote. Speaking on
Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Speier said: “I do think the potential for the House to start to think in terms of impeachment is not outside the
realm of possibility. “It is not something that would be happening any time soon but if
the President were to act precipitously
at any of these situations, pardoning his family members, taking actions to try and get rid of Mr Mueller, I
think those would be tipping points and could end up in the House calling for impeachment.” In order for Mr
Trump to be impeached, a simple majority (50 per cent plus one representative) is needed in the House. A trial would
then take place in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is needed to remove him from office. Ms Speier said the current makeup of
the House of Representatives meant only 24 Republicans were needed to join with Democrats in order to pass an
impeachment vote. Describing the similarities between the Mr Trump and Richard Nixon, who resigned following attempts to impeach
him, as “stark”, she said the investigation into the incumbent president “could get very muddy very quickly”,
adding: “You can’t make this up, that is what is so mind boggling.” Mr Mueller was appointed special counsel in May by the justice department
following the firing by Mr Trump of FBI director James Comey. He has since assembled a team of more than a dozen
investigators, including current and former justice department prosecutors with experience in international bribery, organised crime and
financial fraud. News of the grand jury came as senators introduced two bills aimed at protecting Mr Mueller from being fired by Mr Trump,
with both parties signalling resistance to any White House effort to derail the investigation into Russian meddling in last year's election.
 2NC – Yes Impeachment – AT: Dems Won’t Do It
Dem base will convince the leadership to back impeachment
Bacon 18 (Perry Bacon Jr. is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. “The Midterms Could Set Trump On A
Path Toward Impeachment.” 3/1, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-midterms-could-set-trump-
on-a-path-toward-impeachment/)
I can imagine House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who was leading the Democrats well before the so-called resistance emerged,
advising a Democrat-controlled House against going the impeachment route. She voted against both of the Green-sponsored
measures and has spoken out against pushing for impeachment if Democrats win control of the House. Also, Democrats who win seats in
November in districts previously held by Republicans might want the party to take a more cautious course. By definition, they don’t hail from
liberal strongholds; otherwise, their districts would already have a Democratic representative. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York is
the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee (where impeachment processes have started in the past) and has
said publicly that
Democrats should not push for impeachment unless that effort will get some Republican support. Nadler argued that an
impeachment in the House that is guaranteed to fail to get the two-thirds required in the Senate for removal serves little purpose. And since it’s
very unlikely that Democrats will have 67 Senate seats anytime soon (the party controls 49 right now), that means many GOP senators would
need to back Trump’s removal along with Democrats. But I don’t think Nadler’s and Pelosi’s current reluctance about
impeachment is necessarily a great predictor of how House Democrats overall will view the issue at this
time next year. The number of House Democrats in favor of impeachment could grow. I think it will. Why?
First, current Democratic members of Congress could be pushed by their constituents to adopt the pro-
impeachment position. Democrats hate Trump, who has a 9 percent approval rating among them, according to Gallup. A
recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 70 percent of Democrats want the House to hold impeachment hearings. Trump is
showing few signs that he’ll start appealing to Democrats, and his conduct amid the Russia investigation (such as sharply
criticizing the FBI and Justice Department for continuing the probe) is likely to reinforce the feeling among Democrats that he is impeding the
investigation. Also, California businessman Tom Steyer is funding a national campaign of television commercials calling for Trump’s
impeachment (reportedly over Pelosi’s objections), which could move liberal-leaning voters to urge their members of Congress to push for
Trump’s ouster. And by
early 2019, there will likely be numerous Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa and
New Hampshire whipping up even more anti-Trump sentiment among party activists. Secondly, if Democrats win a majority in
November, there will be new members coming to Congress. Most congressional primaries have not happened yet, but it will
be worth watching how many of the Democrats who win the primary in districts currently held by Republicans back impeachment. The number
I’m watching for is 150. Taking back the House means that Democrats will have at least 218 seats. And if
the number of Democrats
in favor of impeachment proceedings grows from the 66 who supported Green’s second measure to 150
over the next year, that would give the pro-impeachment group a clear two-thirds majority of the
party’s House members. I’m not sure that Nadler or Pelosi can stop an impeachment push if it has that
kind of backing. In that case, I expect that the vast majority of Democrats would fall in line and back
impeachment rather than irritate liberals back home — likely resulting in enough pro-impeachment
sentiment to impeach Trump. I’m suggesting that the Democratic Party is showing signs of being more like the
Republican Party, with its more pragmatic leaders being pushed to take more controversial stands by a
fiery base. Democratic leaders kind of stumbled into a government shutdown over immigration policy in January
after party activists made a very aggressive case that defending young undocumented immigrants was a moral imperative for the party and
congressional leaders didn’t make a strong anti-shutdown case. Will
Pelosi really be able to convince Democratic activists
to look to the 2020 elections to stop Trump when they see him as an immediate danger? I doubt it.
 2NC – AT: Pence Doesn’t Solve
Pence is our only hope and solves every existential risk – he would replace Trump’s
irrational and ballistic rhetoric with a balanced approach to foreign policy
Amr & Feldstein 17 (Hady Amr served in the Obama administration as deputy special envoy for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and as deputy head of the Middle East Bureau at USAID. He is a
nonresident senior fellow at Brookings.. Steve Feldstein served in the Obama administration as a deputy
assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor. He is the incoming Frank and Bethine Church
Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University. “What would US foreign policy look like under President
Pence?” 05/25/17, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/335160-what-would-us-
foreign-policy-look-like-under-a-president)
With President Trump lurching from crisis to crisis, each more unsettling and damaging than the last, it is time to ask
what has previously seemed improbable: Are we approaching the end of the Trump presidency? If Vice
President Pence ascends to the top job, what would his foreign policy look like? This may seem
premature. Much depends on what actually emerges from special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry. An actual impeachment may need to
wait until after midterm elections are held. Then, they might only proceed if the Democrats regain the majority. But if the unpredictable first
120 days of the Trump presidency are any guide, there is no telling what the coming period will bring. Indeed, it took essentially 120 days —
from May 9, 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee opened formal impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, until his resignation
on August 9 — for the Watergate scandal to conclude. Beyond impeachment, there's a chance Trump may simply resign. The two of us have
spent a combined 20 years in the United States government, in key foreign policy institutions — Defense, Homeland Security, State, the Agency
for International Development and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — and one of us hails from Pence’s home state of Indiana.
Given
the current volatility, we thought it important to share ideas on what President Pence’s foreign policy
might look like. Two major aspects would characterize Pence’s foreign policy: a re-embrace of the
Republican establishment and an aggressive uptake of Christian social conservative thought. Among the
Republican establishment, particularly the neoconservative wing, Pence has an impeccable reputation. Many describe him
as a “hawk’s hawk.” He was a strong proponent of the Iraq War, has vigorously stood up for a strong
military and "American values" and, as vice president, has taken on an informal role as an emissary to
NATO and other alliances. All of this contrasts starkly to what candidate Trump said on the campaign
trail. Likewise, Pence’s evangelical Christian faith is central to his identity. He has proudly built up a reputation as one of
the most conservative lawmakers in the country and frequently describes himself as “a Christian, a
conservative and a Republican, in that order.” There is a high probability that Pence would explicitly
embed religious morals in U.S. foreign policy and push an activist social conservative agenda. For example,
as the governor of Indiana, Pence signed one of the strictest abortion provisions in the country and approved a controversial law intended to
allow businesses to deny services to members of the LGBT community for religious reasons (only after intense blowback did he backtrack).
Translated into the foreign policy realm, it is not hard to imagine Pence defending Christian minorities around the world, possibly to the
exclusion of other religious groups. He will undoubtedly continue Trump’s expansion of the “global gag rule," and it is possible he may try to
push a “clash of civilizations” strategy, primarily seeking alliances with countries that have a “Judeo-Christian” character. But a
Pence
presidency could also mean re-adopting a “values agenda,” with a greater emphasis on human rights,
democracy and development that would be closer in line with President George W. Bush’s policies.
Under Bush, funding for development — particularly global health programs — expanded, bringing
together an unlikely coalition of secular development advocates and faith-based stakeholders. It is not
hard to envision a similar coalition coming together under Pence’s watch. A Pence presidency also may
lead to a shoring-up of security and economic alliances. Just as Trump has cast the free-trade regime into jeopardy,
castigated NATO (at least before an abrupt about-face last month) and signaled massive funding cuts to the Bretton Woods Institutions, Pence
may reverse many of these pronouncements. In the current configuration of the Trump administration, three separate groups tangle for foreign
policy primacy: the economic nationalists/populists led by Stephen Bannon, the military pragmatists represented by Secretary of Defense James
Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and the economic globalists fronted by National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Under
Pence, the Bannon wing would likely make a quick and graceless exit.
The economic globalists and the military pragmatists would stay entrenched in strong positions, but old
groups would likely return, such as the neoconservatives and religious faith leaders. A Pence presidency would
bring big style changes. Gone would be the late night tweets and blustery rhetoric. More than likely, “America First” would gradually disappear,
with a return to a more traditional form of American exceptionalism. The impulsivity, erratic swings of policy and casual disregard for
intelligence and briefing material would also likely pass. These
changes alone would considerably ease fears about an
accidental stumble into a major war or nuclear confrontation. On the other hand, the divisive culture wars that have
framed Pence’s political career would presumably return in a major way and likely spill over into the foreign policy arena. On a regional basis,
we can also expect significant differences. In
the Middle East, President Trump has focused on three issues thus far:
Israeli-Palestinian peace, countering ISIS and containing Iran. While it is unlikely that President Pence
would jettison any of these efforts, what is likely is that he would reprioritize and change the tenor of
engagements. On the Israeli-Palestinian front, Pence might be less likely to swing for the fences to achieve an
unlikely peace and might side even more closely with Israel. He would also most certainly continue to
counter ISIS, but would do so in a manner less aligned with Russia, which might mean more direct
pressure on the Syrian regime. On Iran, President Pence would likely not reverse Trump’s policy to both stick to the nuclear
agreement but build pressure on Iran through closer ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council, but he might inject a push for
greater democracy and human rights, which would certainly strain ties. Turning to Asia, Pence’s
approach to North Korea may
not vary appreciably from the current strategy — ramp up economic pressure and sanctions and
convince China to play a more assertive role in reigning in Kim Jong-un — but Pence will refrain from
Trump’s Twitter baiting and will tamp down the bellicose rhetoric. Instead, expect a more concerted,
behind-the-scenes effort to force the North Korean regime to the negotiating table. When it comes to
China, we can anticipate more consistent pushback from Pence, including reestablishing clear markers
on the South China Sea and efforts to put together a TPP-like economic alliance to counter China’s
ambition.
Populism Impact
 1NC – Trump Populism/Liberal Order Impact
Democratic wave’s key to symbolically delegitimize Trumpian populism globally and
shore up the liberal order
Fukuyama 17 (Francis, the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies (FSI), and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and
the Rule of Law, Stanford University, 12/4/17, “The Future of Populism at Home and Abroad,”
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/04/future-populism-home-abroad/)
Few populist nationalist parties have appeared across the developed world, and threaten to undermine the liberal
international order. What is the likelihood that they will succeed? For better or worse, a lot depends on what will
happen in the United States. American power was critical in establishing both the economic and political pillars of the
liberal order, and if the United States retreats from that leadership role, the pendulum will swing quickly in
favor of the nationalists. So we need to understand how populism is likely to unfold in the worlds leading
liberal democracy. The American Constitution’s system of checks and balances was designed to deal with the problem of “Caesarism,”
that is, a populist demagogue who would accumulate power and misuse it. It is for this reason that vetocracy exists, and so far into the Trump
Administration, it appears to be working. Trump’s attacks on various independent institutions—the intelligence community,
the mainstream media, the courts, and his own Republican party—have only had modest success. In particular, he has not been able
to get a significant part of his legislative agenda, like Obamacare repeal or the border wall, passed. So at the moment he looks like a
weak and ineffective president. However, things could change. The factor most in his favor is the economy: wages have
been growing after stagnating for many years, and growth has reached 3 percent for two quarters now. It may move even higher if the
Republicans succeed in passing a stimulative tax cut as they seem poised to do. All of this is bad policy in the long run: the United States is not
overtaxed; the stimulus is coming at the exactly wrong point in the business cycle (after eight years of expansion); it is likely to tremendously
widen fiscal deficits; and it will lay the ground for an eventual painful crash. Nonetheless, these consequences are not likely to play themselves
out for several years, long enough to get the Republicans through the 2018 midterm elections and even the 2020 presidential contest. What
matters to voters the most is the state of the economy, and that looks to be good despite the President’s undignified tweeting. Foreign policy is
another area where Trump’s critics could be surprised. It is entirely possible that he will take action on some of his threats—indeed, it is hard to
see how he can avoid action with regard to North Korea’s nuclear ballistic missile program. Any U.S. move would be highly risky to its South
Korean and Japanese allies, but it is also possible that the U.S. will call North Korea’s bluff and force a significant climbdown. If this happens,
Trump will have lanced a boil in a manner that has eluded the last three presidents. Finally, it is not possible to beat something with nothing.
The Democrats, under a constant barrage of outrageous behavior from the Administration, have been moving steadily to the left. Opposition to
Trump allows them to focus on the enemy and not to define long-term policies that will appeal to voters. As in Britain, the party itself in
increasingly dominated by activists who are to the left of the general voter base. Finally, the Democrats have lost so much ground in
statehouses and state legislatures that they do not have a strong cadre of appealing, experienced candidates available to replace the Clinton
generation. Since American elections are not won in the popular vote but in the Electoral College (as Bruce Cain has recently pointed out in
these pages), it does not matter how many outraged people vote in states like California, New York, or Illinois; unless the party can attract
centrist voters in midwestern industrial states it will not win the Presidency. All of this suggests that Trump
could not just serve out
the remainder of his term, but be re-elected in 2020 and last until 2024. Were the Republicans to experience
a setback in the midterm elections in 2018 and then lose the presidency in 2020, Trump might go down
in history has a fluke and aberration, and the party could return to the control of its elites. If this doesn’t
happen, however, the country’s polarization will deepen even beyond the point it has reached at present.
More importantly, the institutional checks may well experience much more significant damage, since their
independence is, after all, simply a matter of politics in the end. Beyond this, there is the structural factor of technological change.
Job losses among low skill workers is fundamentally not driven by trade or immigration, but by technology. While the country can try to raise
skill levels through better education, the U.S. has shown little ability or proclivity to do this. The Trump agenda is to seek to employ 20th
century workers in their old jobs with no recognition of how the technological environment has changed. But it is not as if the Democrats or the
progressive Left has much of an agenda in this regard either, beyond extending existing job training and social programs. How the U.S. will cope
with this is not clear. But then, technological change is the ultimate political challenge that all advanced societies, and not just the democratic
ones, will have to face. Outside the United States, the populist surge has yet to play itself out. Eastern Europe never
experienced the kind of cultural liberalization experienced by Germany and other Western European countries after World War II, and are
now eagerly embracing populist politicians. Hungary and Poland have recently been joined by Serbia and the Czech
Republic, which have elected leaders with many Trump-like characteristics. Germany’s consensus politics, which
made the country a rock of EU stability over the past decade, appears to be fraying after its recent election, and the continuing threat in
France should not be underestimated—Le Pen and the far-left candidate Melenchon between them received half the French vote
in the last election. Outside Europe, Brazil’s continuing crisis of elite legitimacy has given a boost to Jair Bolsonaro,
a former military officer who talks tough and promises to clean up the country’s politics. All of this suggests that the world will be in for
interesting times for some time to come.

Discrediting Trumpian populism’s key to avoid extinction

de Waal 16 (Alex, Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School at Tufts
University, 12/5/16, “Garrison America and the Threat of Global War,” http://bostonreview.net/war-
security-politics-global-justice/alex-de-waal-garrison-america-and-threat-global-war)
Trump’s promises have been so vague that it will be hard for him to disappoint. Nonetheless, many of his supporters will wake up
to the fact that they have been duped, or realize the futility of voting for a wrecker out of a sense of
alienated desperation. The progressives’ silver lining to the 2016 election is that, had Clinton won, the Trump
constituency would have been back in four years’ time, probably with a more ruthless and ideological
candidate. Better for plutocratic populism to fail early. But the damage inflicted in the interim could be terrible—even
irredeemable if it were to include swinging a wrecking ball at the Paris Climate Agreement out of simple ignorant malice. Polanyi recounts how
economic and financial crisis led to global calamity. Something similar could happen today. In fact we are
already in a steady unpicking of the liberal peace that glowed at the turn of the millennium. Since approximately 2008, the
historic decline in the number and lethality of wars appears to have been reversed. Today’s wars are not like World War I,
with formal declarations of war, clear war zones, rules of engagement, and definite endings. But they are wars nonetheless. What does a
world in global, generalized war look like? We have an unwinnable “war on terror” that is metastasizing with every escalation,
and which has blurred the boundaries between war and everything else. We have deep states—built on a new oligarchy of generals, spies,
and private-sector suppliers—that are strangling liberalism. We have emboldened middle powers (such as Saudi Arabia)
and revanchist powers (such as Russia) rearming and taking unilateral military action across borders (Ukraine
and Syria). We have massive profiteering from conflicts by the arms industry, as well as through the corruption and organized crime that follow
in their wake (Afghanistan). We have impoverishment and starvation through economic warfare, the worst case being Yemen. We have
“peacekeeping” forces fighting wars (Somalia). We have regional rivals
threatening one another, some with nuclear
weapons (India and Pakistan) and others with possibilities of acquiring them (Saudi Arabia and Iran). Above all, today’s
generalized war is a conflict of destabilization, with big powers intervening in the domestic politics of others, buying influence
in their security establishments, bribing their way to big commercial contracts and thereby corroding respect for government, and manipulating
public opinion through the media. Washington, D.C., and Moscow each does this in its own way. Put the pieces together and a global
political market of rival plutocracies comes into view. Add virulent reactionary populism to the mix and it
resembles a war on democracy. What more might we see? Economic liberalism is a creed of optimism and abundance; reactionary
protectionism feeds on pessimistic scarcity. If we see punitive trade wars and national leaders taking preemptive action to secure
strategic resources within the walls of their garrison states, then old-fashioned territorial disputes along with accelerated state-
commercial grabbing of land and minerals are in prospect. We could see mobilization against immigrants and minorities as a way of
enflaming and rewarding a constituency that can police borders, enforce the new political rightness, and even become electoral vigilantes.
Liberal multilateralism is a system of seeking common wins through peaceful negotiation; case-by-case power
dealing is a zero-sum calculus. We may see regional arms races, nuclear proliferation, and opportunistic power coalitions to
exploit the weak. In such a global political marketplace, we would see middle-ranking and junior states rewarded for the toughness of their
bargaining, and foreign policy and security strategy delegated to the CEOs of oil companies, defense contractors, bankers, and real estate
magnates. The United Nations system appeals to leaders to live up to the highest standards. The fact that they so often conceal their
transgressions is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. A
cabal of plutocratic populists would revel in the opposite: applauding
one another’s readiness to tear up cosmopolitan liberalism and pursue a latter-day mercantilist naked self-interest.
Garrison America could opportunistically collude with similarly constituted political-military business regimes in Russia,
China, Turkey, and elsewhere for a new realpolitik global concert, redolent of the early nineteenth-century era of the Congress of Vienna,
bringing a façade of stability for as long as they collude—and war when they fall out. And there is a danger that,
in response to a terrorist outrage or an international political crisis, President Trump will do something stupid, just as Europe’s leaders so
unthinkingly strolled into World War I. The multilateral security system is in poor health and may not be able to cope. Underpinning this is a
simple truth: the plutocratic populist order is a future that does not work. If illustration were needed of the logic of
hiding under the blanket rather than facing difficult realities, look no further than Trump’s readiness to deny climate change. We have been
here before, more or less, and from history we can gather important lessons about what we must do now. The
importance of defending
civility with democratic deliberation, respecting human rights and values, and maintaining a commitment to public goods and
the global commons—including the future of the planet—remain evergreen. We need to find our way to a
new 1945—and the global political settlement for a tamed and humane capitalism—without having to suffer the
catastrophic traumas of trying everything else first.
 2NC – Midterms k2 Populism
Dem win is necessary to prevent the collapse of American democracy into Trumpian
authoritarianism
Yglesias 18 (Matthew Yglesias co-founded Vox.com with Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell back in the spring
of 2014. He's currently a senior correspondent focused on politics and economic policy, and co-hosts
The Weeds podcast twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Before launching Vox, he was the author of
the Moneybag column for Slate and before that he wrote and blogged for Think Progress, The Atlantic,
TPM, and The American Prospect. Yglesias is the author of two books, most recently "The Rent Is Too
Damn High" about the policy origins of the middle class housing affordability crisis in America. “2018 is
the year that will decide if Trumpocracy replaces American democracy.” Jan 4, 2018,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/4/16841070/trumpocracy-or-democracy)
If Republicans hold on to both houses of Congress in this year’s midterm elections, the American system of
government could very well collapse into Donald Trump’s distinctive — and disturbing — vision of a
personalized, authoritarian state. Dozens of Republicans in Congress started out skeptical of Trump but
have fallen in line behind him as he signed their top initiatives into law, like a trillion-dollar giveaway to the very rich. In exchange
they’ve turned a blind eye to Trump’s significant financial conflicts of interest, repeated efforts to
undermine the integrity of the criminal justice process, and more. The few remaining critics plan to leave Washington. This
is one of Trump’s most underappreciated political achievements of the year: consolidation of power over a party to which he had scant
personal or institutional ties. And all signs are that if
Republicans win in 2018, slavish loyalty to Trump will only grow
more ingrained, especially because Trump himself makes no secret that loyalty to him is the key to access, and access is the key to policy
influence. In their new book How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt flag this as a key
threat to democratic stability. Institutions don’t typically collapse under sudden attack. Rather, “if a
charismatic outsider emerges on the scene, gaining popularity as he challenges the old order, it is
tempting for establishment politicians who feel their control is unraveling to try to co-opt him.” From
Mussolini to Hugo Chávez, authoritarians end up winning because these “fateful alliances” end up
leading establishment politicians to collaborate with the demagogue not just on their points of policy agreement but
on the demagogue’s desire to dismantle critical institutions. Public opinion polling suggests that the merged Trump-establishment
party is hideously unpopular and headed for electoral defeat. If that happens and Democrats gain
control of at least one house of Congress, then the system of checks and balances will begin to operate
as designed, and the various institutions of the American state will have their independence secured.
But if Republicans manage to hold the majority, the Trumpocracy will be upon us. “Ideological collusion”
threatens American democracy The relationship between Republicans on Capitol Hill and Trump is to an extent partisan politics as usual — the
majority party is backing their president, who supports their core policy agenda. But there’s something much more worrisome at play.
Congressional Republicans — including ones who said they didn’t vote for him, and ones like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake who’ve
pronounced him to be a danger to the Republic — have done more than stick with Trump on policy. They’ve also decided to stick with
Trump on topics like whether it’s appropriate for the president to have large secret income streams or
berate the Justice Department for declining to indict his political enemies. Right now congressional Republicans, who control
investigative committees that can send subpoenas for documents and can compel witnesses to come in and testify, are both completely
ignoring Trump’s financial conflicts of interest and, worse, using their oversight powers to push Trump’s narrative that the
FBI is biased against him. This is what Levitsky and Ziblatt term “ideological collusion,” when “the authoritarian’s agenda overlaps sufficiently
with that of mainstream politicians that abdication is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternatives.” That’s not an inevitable political
outcome. In the Austrian presidential election of 2016 and then again in the French presidential election of 2017, mainstream center-right party
leaders backed a center-left candidate over his far-right opponents. And the core underlying premise of America’s Madisonian system of
separation of powers is that congressional leaders of either party will play a role in safeguarding America’s institutional framework. But in the
United States right now, the Republican Party isn’t following suit. Instead, Republicans are playing the ideological collusion game. “Leading
national Republican politicians such as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump,” Levitsky and Ziblatt
write, and since his victory Republicans who didn’t endorse him have fallen in line. What’s particularly striking about this consolidation is that
Trump has only become less popular over time. One might expect basic political prudence to start pushing some congressional Republicans to
distance themselves from him in order to save their own necks. Instead, the GOP has drawn itself closer to him. This is disturbing. But it also
raises the prospect that Republicans will simply be beaten in the midterms and the balance of oversight will flip. Trump has consolidated power
inside the GOP Last winter, Donald Trump found himself in a peculiar position. He’d won the election, but he had the weakest personal ties to
the party he nominally led of any president in decades. A couple dozen GOP members of Congress declined to endorse his presidential
campaign, and dozens more were openly skeptical of him throughout 2016. That left him with a core cadre of personal retainers like his son-in-
law Jared Kushner and Breitbart founder Steve Bannon, rather than people in a position to really help him run the government. The hostility to
Trump generally took two prongs, exemplified by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s quip that nominating Trump would lead to certain electoral disaster —
disaster that the GOP deserved. Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.
4:03 PM - May 3, 2016 Two consequences flowed from this. One was that Trump was essentially forced to appoint a government composed
overwhelmingly of GOP establishment types, many of whom were not particularly loyal to him on a personal level. Rick Perry, Trump’s energy
secretary, once called him a “cancer” on the conservative movement, and some of Trump’s White House staff jobs even went to GOP staffers
who’d quietly voted for Hillary Clinton. The other was that Trump at least potentially faced an unusually high level of scrutiny for a president
whose party controlled Congress. Senate Republicans who’d pronounced candidate Trump unfit for office would surely hold his actual conduct
to a high bar. And there was at least a glimmer of this in the early move by GOP Russia hawks to launch a bipartisan inquiry into election
meddling and ultimately prevent Trump from implementing the kind of pro-Russian foreign policy he’d talked about on the campaign trail.
Those days are long gone. Graham, far from thinking that the GOP deserves destruction, now does unpaid product placement work for Trump’s
businesses. Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC Trump International Golf Club is a spectacular golf course. Great day of fun playing with
@POTUS @realDonaldTrump. https://twitter.com/AP_Politics/status/939905078013714433 … 5:39 PM - Dec 10, 2017 There has been
no oversight forthcoming from either house of Congress into the ways Trump sells access to the
presidency via his private clubs or the ways foreign governments are doing favors for Trump-owned businesses. These days, when
congressional Republicans speak about the Russia investigation, it’s typically to insinuate that the FBI is a
hotbed of anti-Trump sentiment, with some Republican lawmakers even explicitly calling for a “purge”
of the Justice Department. 2019 could show us Trump unleashed So far, Trump has been extremely long on
demagogic bluster but rather conventional — if extremely right-wing in some respects — on policy. But Levitsky and Ziblatt
note that this is entirely typical. Even Adolf Hitler was dismissed by many as a buffoon. But they argue that demagogues
typically do “eventually cross the line from words to action,” because “a demagogue’s rise to power
tends to polarize society.” You can see this in action in the shifting balance of power between Trump’s fealty to congressional
Republicans’ ideological agenda and their fealty to Trump’s demands for loyalty. Back in February, when Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to
a Supreme Court seat was pending, Gorsuch offered senators reassurances of his independence from Trump and denounced Trump’s attacks
on the judiciary as “demoralizing.” Trump was privately furious about this disloyalty — the Washington Post reported that he even mused
behind closed doors about rescinding the nomination — but he kept his doubts to himself, and Senate Republicans were elated with Gorsuch’s
responses. In May, Trump fired the FBI Director James Comey out of anger at his disloyalty. Republicans allowed that this was within his legal
authority, but generally endorsed calls for the appointment of a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation, and at Christopher Wray’s
confirmation hearings they were all at pains to emphasize their support for the FBI’s independence from the West Wing. But by
December, the fundamental basis of partisan politics in America had been rewritten around attitudes
toward Trump. Congressional Republicans were eagerly piling on with conspiracy theories about Robert
Mueller and dedicating their oversight hearings to the FBI. And when the Post’s story came out last month, there was no backlash at all.
The notion that federal judges should be evaluated based on their loyalty to Trump was no longer a
scandalous thought in Republican Party circles. And every Republican district court judge who might be interested in a
promotion to the appeals court knows it. By the same token, every field office chief in the FBI and every assistant US
attorney in America has seen the entire congressional Republican Party stand by the notion that
personal loyalty to Trump is the right benchmark for public service. 2 Jan Julian Sanchez @normative For the time
being, DOJ is staffed by professionals who know to ignore nonsense like this. I have no idea whether that will be the case in another 2 or 3
years. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/948174033882927104 … Julian Sanchez @normative I’ve said it before, but we’re coasting
to a great degree on the fact that senior/mid-level staff at most agencies are still normal, sane pros, not the sort of cranks who Trump attracts.
That seems bound to change over time. 2:17 PM - Jan 2, 2018 That doesn’t mean professionals will immediately start corrupting themselves to
serve Trump. But it does mean that whatever minority of judges and officials are genuinely Trump enthusiasts will know that they have the
green light to politicize their work. And whoever doesn’t want to work like that will know it might make sense to quietly head for the doors.
Mere careerists will just see what it takes to go along to get along. Democratic majorities could bury Trump in subpoenas Trump often acts as if
he is unaware of exactly how vulnerable he is on the investigative front in the event that Democrats win a majority in the House or Senate. He
has, for example, warned special counsel Robert Mueller not to go poking around in his family’s finances — arguing that should be off limits for
an inquiry that’s supposed to be about Russia and the 2016 election. But congressional committees can investigate whatever they want, and
the finances of the Trump Organization and the extended Trump family certainly fit the bill. Everything from Trump’s secret tax
returns to the secret membership rosters at Trump’s various clubs will likely come to light in the event
Democrats gain hold of the subpoena power. Democrats will also want to look into the sexual assault
allegations against Trump, giving his victims the ability to offer sworn testimony on the matter and forcing congressional Republicans
into the awkward position of explicitly defending the alleged groper-in-chief rather than simply ignoring the charges. This would all spell
trouble for Trump, both politically and financially, but it could also be paralyzing to his government. The
Trump White House has already seen unprecedented levels of turnover, which would only be accelerated by the legal bills that would follow
from a Democratic majority. Last and by no means least, congressional oversight would allow career government
officials — whether in law enforcement, the intelligence community, or the civil service — to bring forward complaints of bias,
abuse of power, and politicization of work that should be nonpartisan. Sunlight per se is no guarantee against abuses
of power, but it’s certainly a potent check on them. Conversely, if the newly Trumpified GOP holds power, the gloves
will really be off in terms of asserting control over the bureaucracy. This is, according to Levitsky and Ziblatt, often a
slower process than one might imagine — “the erosion of democracy takes place piecemeal, often in baby steps,”
composed of “quietly firing civil servants and other nonpartisan officials and replacing them with loyalists”
while packing the courts over time and eventually turning the intelligence and security services into
arms of partisan politics. Thomas Honan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Tuesday morning on Fox
News that elected officials in “sanctuary cities” should be arrested and held personally responsible if undocumented immigrants in their
jurisdiction commit crimes. That’s not actually going to happen, at least not in the near term. But Honan isn’t going to be fired for his clearly
inappropriate proposal. Nor will he be attacked in conservative media, presidential tweets, or GOP congressional hearings the way Wray has
been. And as more jobs open up and are consistently filled with Honans rather than Wrays, the unthinkable steadily becomes the
inevitable.
 2NC – Liberal Order Impact
US democracy is lynchpin of international order---alternative is revisionism and great
power war.
Kagan 17 (Robert, senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign
Policy program at Brookings “The twilight of the liberal world order”
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-twilight-of-the-liberal-world-order/)
However, it is the two great powers, China and Russia, that pose the greatest challenge to the relatively peaceful and
prosperous international order created and sustained by the United States. If they were to accomplish their
aims of establishing hegemony in their desired spheres of influence, the world would return to the condition it was in at the
end of the 19th century, with competing great powers clashing over inevitably intersecting and overlapping spheres of
interest. These were the unsettled, disordered conditions that produced the fertile ground for the two destructive
world wars of the first half of the 20th century. The collapse of the British-dominated world order on the oceans, the
disruption of the uneasy balance of power on the European continent due to the rise of a powerful unified Germany, combined with the rise of
Japanese power in East Asia all contributed to a highly competitive international environment in which dissatisfied great
powers took the opportunity to pursue their ambitions in the absence of any power or group of powers to unite in checking them. The result
was an unprecedented global calamity. It
has been the great accomplishment of the U.S.-led world order in the 70
years since the end of the Second World War that this kind of competition has been held in check and
great power conflicts have been avoided. The role of the United States, however, has been critical. Until
recently, the dissatisfied great and medium-size powers have faced considerable and indeed almost insuperable obstacles to achieving their
objectives. The chief obstacle has been the power and coherence of the order itself and of its principal promoter and defender. The
American-led system of political and military alliances, especially in the two critical regions of Europe and East Asia, has
presented China and Russia with what Dean Acheson once referred to as “situations of strength” in their regions that have
required them to pursue their ambitions cautiously and in most respects to defer serious efforts to disrupt the international
system. The system has served as a check on their ambitions in both positive and negative ways. They have been participants in and for the
most part beneficiaries of the open international economic system the United States created and helped sustain and, so long as that system
was functioning, have had more to gain by playing in it than by challenging and overturning it. The same cannot be said of the political and
strategic aspects of the order, both of which have worked to their detriment. The
growth and vibrancy of democratic
government in the two decades following the collapse of Soviet communism have posed a continual threat to the
ability of rulers in Beijing and Moscow to maintain control, and since the end of the Cold War they have regarded
every advance of democratic institutions, including especially the geographical advance close to their borders, as an
existential threat—and with reason. The continual threat to the basis of their rule posed by the U.S.-supported order has made
them hostile both to the order and to the United States. However, it has also been a source of weakness and vulnerability.
Chinese rulers in particular have had to worry about what an unsuccessful confrontation with the United States might do to their
sources of legitimacy at home. And although Vladimir Putin has to some extent used a calculated foreign adventurism to maintain his
hold on domestic power, he has taken a more cautious approach when met with determined U.S. and European
opposition, as in the case of Ukraine, and pushed forward, as in Syria, only when invited to do so by U.S.
and Western passivity. Autocratic rulers in a liberal democratic world have had to be careful. The greatest
check on Chinese and Russian ambitions, however, has come from the combined military power of the United States and its allies in Europe and
Asia. China, although increasingly powerful itself, has had to contemplate facing the combined military strength of the world’s superpower and
some very formidable regional powers linked by alliance or common strategic interest, including Japan, India, and South Korea, as well as
smaller but still potent nations like Vietnam and Australia. Russia has had to face the United States and its NATO allies. When united, these
military powers present a daunting challenge to a revisionist power that can call on no allies of its own for assistance. Even were the Chinese to
score an early victory in a conflict, they would have to contend over time with the combined industrial productive capacities of some of the
world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations. A weaker Russia would face an even greater challenge. Faced with these
obstacles, the two great powers, as well as the lesser dissatisfied powers, have had to hope for or if
possible engineer a weakening of the U.S.-supported world order from within. This could come about
either by separating the United States from its allies, raising doubts about the U.S. commitment to
defend its allies militarily in the event of a conflict, or by various means wooing American allies out from within the liberal world order’s
strategic structure. For most of the past decade, the reaction of American allies to greater aggressiveness on the part of China and Russia in
their respective regions, and to Iran in the Middle East, has been to seek more reassurance from the United States. Russian actions in Georgia,
Ukraine, and Syria; Chinese actions in the East and South China seas; Iranian actions in Syria, Iraq, and along the littoral of the Persian Gulf—all
have led to calls by American allies and partners for a greater commitment. In this respect, the system has worked as it was supposed to. What
the political scientist William Wohlforth once described as the inherent stability of the unipolar order reflected this dynamic—as dissatisfied
regional powers sought to challenge the status quo, their alarmed neighbors turned to the distant American superpower to contain their
ambitions. The system has depended, however, on will, capacity, and coherence at the heart of the liberal
world order. The United States had to be willing and able to play its part as the principal guarantor of
the order, especially in the military and strategic realm. The order’s ideological and economic core—the democracies of
Europe and East Asia and the Pacific—had to remain relatively healthy and relatively confident. In such
circumstances, the combined political, economic, and military power of the liberal world would be too
great to be seriously challenged by the great powers, much less by the smaller dissatisfied powers. In recent years,
however, the liberal order has begun to weaken and fracture at the core. As a result of many related factors—difficult economic
conditions, the recrudescence of nationalism and tribalism, weak and uncertain political leadership and unresponsive mainstream political
parties, a new era of communications that seems to strengthen rather than weaken tribalism—there has emerged a crisis of confidence in what
might be called the liberal enlightenment project. That project tended to elevate universal principles of individual rights and common humanity
over ethnic, racial, religious, national, or tribal differences. It looked to a growing economic interdependence to create common interests
across boundaries and the establishment of international institutions to smooth differences and facilitate cooperation among nations. Instead,
the past decade has seen the rise of tribalism and nationalism; an increasing focus on the “other” in all societies; and a loss
of
confidence in government, in the capitalist system, and in democracy. We have been witnessing something like the opposite of the
“end of history” but have returned to history with a vengeance, rediscovering all the darker aspects of the human soul. That includes, for many,
the perennial human yearning for a strong leader to provide firm guidance in a time of seeming breakdown and incoherence. This crisis of the
enlightenment project may have been inevitable. It may indeed have been cyclical, due to inherent flaws in both capitalism and democracy,
which periodically have been exposed and have raised doubts about both—as happened, for instance, throughout the West in the 1930s. Now,
as then, moreover, this crisis of confidence in liberalism coincides with a breakdown of the strategic order. In
this case, however, the key variable has not been the United States as the outside power and its willingness, or not, to step in and save or
remake an order lost by other powers. Rather it is the United States’ own willingness to continue upholding the order
that it created and which depends entirely on American power. That willingness has been in doubt for some time.
Increasingly in the quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, Americans have been wondering why they bear such an unusual and outsized
responsibility for preserving global order when their own interests are not always apparently served and when, indeed, the United States seems
to be making sacrifices while others benefit. The reasons why the United States took on this abnormal role after the calamitous two world wars
of the 20th century have been largely forgotten. As a consequence, the American public’s patience with the difficulties and costs inherent in
playing such a role has worn thin. Thus, whereas previous unsuccessful wars, in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and
previous economic downturns, such as in the mid- to late 1970s, did not have the effect of turning Americans against global involvement, the
unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis of 2007–09 have had that effect. President Obama pursued an ambivalent
approach to global involvement, but the main thrust of his approach was retrenchment. His actions and statements were a critique of previous
American strategy and reinforced a national mood favoring a much less active role in the world and much narrower definition of American
interests. With the election of Donald Trump, a majority of Americans have signaled their unwillingness to continue upholding the world order.
Trump was not the only candidate in 2016 to run on a platform suggesting a much narrower definition of American interests and a lessening of
the burdens of American global leadership. “America First” is not just an empty phrase but a fairly coherent philosophy with a long lineage and
many adherents in the American academy. It calls for viewing American interests through a narrow lens. It suggests no longer supporting an
international alliance structure, no longer seeking to deny great powers their spheres of influence and regional hegemony, no longer
attempting to uphold liberal norms in the international system, and no longer sacrificing short-term interests—in trade for instance—in the
longer-term interest of preserving an open economic order. Coming as it does at a time of growing great power competition, this new approach
in American foreign policy is likely to hasten a return to the instability and clashes of previous eras. These external challenges to the liberal
world order and the continuing weakness and fracturing of the liberal world from within are likely to feed on each other. The
weakness of
the liberal core and the abdication by the United States of its global responsibilities will encourage more
aggressive revisionism by the dissatisfied powers, which may in turn exacerbate the sense of weakness and helplessness and
the loss of confidence of the liberal world, which will in turn increase the sense on the part of the great power autocracies that this is their
opportunity to reorder the world to conform to their interests. History
suggests that this is a downward spiral from which
it will be difficult to recover absent a major conflict. It was in the 1920s, not the 1930s, that the most important and
ultimately fatal decisions were made by the liberal powers. Above all, it was the American decision to remove itself from a position of global
responsibility, to reject strategic involvement to preserve the peace in Europe, and neglect its naval strength in the Pacific to check the rise of
Japan. The “return to normalcy” of the 1920 U.S. election seemed safe and innocent at the time, but the essentially selfish policies pursued by
the world’s strongest power in the following decade helped set the stage for the calamities of the 1930s. By the time the crises began to erupt
in that decade, it was already too late to avoid paying the high price of global conflict. One thing for the new administration to keep in mind:
History tells us that revisionist great powers are not easy to satisfy short of complete capitulation. Their sphere of influence is never quite large
enough to satisfy their pride or their expanding need for security. The “satiated” power that Bismarck spoke of is rare—even his Germany, in
the end, could not be satiated. And of course, rising great powers always express some historical grievance. Every people, except perhaps for
the fortunate Americans, have reason for resentment at ancient injustices, nurse grudges against old adversaries, seek to return to a glorious
past that was stolen from them by military or political defeat. The world’s supply of grievances is inexhaustible. These grievances, however, are
rarely solved by minor border changes. Japan, the aggrieved “have-not” nation of the 1930s, did not satisfy itself by swallowing Manchuria in
1931. Germany, the aggrieved victim of Versailles, did not satisfy itself by bringing the Germans of the Sudetenland back into the fold. And, of
course, Russia’s historical sphere of influence does not end in Ukraine. It begins in Ukraine. It extends to the Baltics, to the Balkans, and to heart
of Central Europe. The tragic irony is that, in the process of carving out these spheres of influence, the ambitious rising powers invariably create
the very threats they use to justify their actions. The cycle only ends if and when the great powers that make up the existing power structure, in
today’s case, the United States, decide they have had enough. We know those moments as major power wars. The new
administration seems to be fixated almost entirely on the threat of radical Islam and may not believe its main problem is going to be great
power confrontation. In fact, it is going to have to confront both sets of challenges. The first, addressing the threat of terrorism, is
comparatively manageable. It is the second, managing great power competition and confrontation, that has historically proved the most
difficult and also the most costly when handled badly. The
best way to avoid great power clashes is to make the U.S.
position clear from the outset. That position should be that the United States welcomes competition of
a certain kind. Great powers compete across multiple planes—economic, ideological, and political, as well as military.
Competition in most spheres is necessary and even healthy. Within the liberal order, China can compete economically and successfully with the
United States; Russia can thrive in the international economic order upheld by the liberal powers, even if it is not itself liberal. But
security
competition is different. The security situation undergirds everything else. It remains true today as it has since the Second World War
that only the United States has the capacity and the unique geographical advantages to provide global security. There is no stable balance of
power in Europe or Asia without the United States. And while we can talk about soft power and smart power, they have been and always will
be of limited value when confronting raw military power. Despite all of the loose talk of American decline, it is in the military realm where U.S.
advantages remain clearest. Even in other great powers’ backyards, the United States retains the capacity, along with its powerful allies, to
deter challenges to the security order. But without a U.S. willingness to use military power to establish balance in far-flung regions of the world,
the system will buckle under the unrestrained military competition of regional powers. If
history is any guide, the next four
years are the critical inflection point. The rest of the world will take its cue from the early actions of
the new administration. If the next president governs as he ran, which is to say if he pursues a course designed to secure only
America’s narrow interests; focuses chiefly on international terrorism—the least of the challenges to the present world order; accommodates
the ambitions of the great powers; ceases to regard international economic policy in terms of global order but only in terms of America’s
bottom line narrowly construed; and generally ceases to place a high priority on reassuring allies and partners in the world’s principal strategic
theaters—then the collapse of the world order, with all that entails, may not be far off.
Foreign Policy Impact
 1NC – Foreign Policy Impact
Major Dem gains key to constrain Trump’s foreign policy
Kounalakis 17 (Markos, Ph.D., senior fellow at Central European University and visiting fellow at the
Hoover Institution, “2018 could lock-in Trump privilege, power in foreign policy.” 11/9/17,
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/article183516126.html#storylink=cpy)
Without the present and vibrant check Corker and McCain provide on Trump’s instincts and inclinations, the man is
granted full reign over global affairs. Indeed, there are almost no judicial checks on a president’s foreign
policy, and the checks within the administration are minimal. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is all but sidelined
and his State Department is going through a convulsing reorganization that makes diplomats cogs, not
wheels, of diplomacy. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has been given both full authority and responsibility for military matters, but
the decision to militarily deploy remains with the commander-in-chief. That leaves legislative
instruments available to congressional committees — the power of subpoena, confirmation, and budget.
But a 2018 rout by Republicans riding Trump coattails and parroting his messaging would further diminish
the majority party’s resistance and dwindle the number of critical senators keeping the administration
from usurping all power to decide matters of war and peace. Already, Congress’s check on presidential power in foreign
affairs and security is weak. The Constitution says only Congress can “declare war.” The reality, however, is that every American military
engagement fought since World War II was an undeclared war. It’s been a police action, a response, kinetic military action, extended military
engagement, but never a war. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and likely any fight picked by the current administration will find its legal
justification in the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which is in desperate need of an overhaul. Presidents end run
Congress on war powers, but what about legislation? Congress recently tried to tie the president’s hands on Russia and force him to up the
sanctions regime and punishment for Moscow’s multiple sins. He signed the bill, but undermined the legislative maneuver by sitting on his
hands. Few Republicans today have the fortitude or ability to debate, criticize or resist Trump’s foreign policy. The House has a foreign affairs
committee, chaired by Ed Royce (R-CA) who has so far voted with Donald Trump 96.1 percent of the time. In Royce, Trump has a reliable ally
and a rubber stamp. Presidential power is not absolute, however. A
president needs to sell his policies to the people and
maintain democratic support for those policies every two years so that elected representatives can return the citizens’
electoral verdict to Washington. This week’s results favoring Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere could indicate a brewing
midterm backlash against Trump next year. 2018 will determine whether Americans have faith in Trump’s conduct and character. If
that faith translates into Republican majorities, those representatives are likely to grant the president the unbridled
foreign policy power he sought when he declared, “I alone can fix it.” Trump could deservedly achieve more power before next
year’s election with a positive North Korea outcome, whether negotiated or otherwise. A North Korean success would prove to lawmakers and
the American people that his tough talk and confrontational style works. That would reinforce and strengthen the time-tested notion of
executive privilege in foreign affairs. Ironically, failure in North Korea could also favor Trump politically as an America threatened or under
attack would likely rally citizens behind its president. A 2018 Republican House and Senate would allow Trump to test Mel Brooks’s theory that
“it’s good to be the king.” Then again, if
this week portends a Democratic sweep next year, Congress will make
sure administration bad actors are investigated, foreign follies go unfunded, military actions are
constrained, and partisan appointments languish. Instead of king, Trump could become an emperor with no
clothes.

Unrestrained Trumpian foreign policy causes multiple scenarios for nuclear war
Rotner 17 (Philip, attorney and an engaged citizen who has spent over 40 years practicing law, 8/4.
“Trump’s Foreign Policy Is A Disaster.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trumps-disastrous-
foreign-policy_us_5981e471e4b0b35d274c5f02)
For all the dysfunction at home, it is Donald Trump’s ad-hoc, chaotic foreign policy that stands to do the most
damage. Showing no understanding of history or the complexity of the world, Trump has insulted our
allies, emboldened our adversaries, squandered American leadership, and confused the entire world.
Worst of all, if he doesn’t get serious about diplomacy, he could blunder into a catastrophic war with a
nascent nuclear power. Let’s start with our allies. Trump launched his presidential campaign by insulting Mexico. He accused the
Mexican government of exporting rapists and drug dealers into the United States. He promised to build a wall to keep them out, and he insisted
that Mexico would pay for it. Candidate Trump first met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last July. The meeting was so disastrous
that Pena Nieto’s domestic favorability ratings immediately dropped to an all-time low. Adverse public reaction in Mexico forced Pena Nieto to
cancel a scheduled meeting with Trump in January. As President, Trump finally met with Pena Nieto in July, some six months after he was
inaugurated. They met not on a state visit, but on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. Trump reiterated his insistence that
Mexico must pay to wall itself in. Big deal, right? So what if the President of Mexico got his feelings hurt, right? Wrong. There have already been
real consequences. An article in the May issue of The Atlantic, “Mexico’s Revenge,” describes how Trump’s bullying is drawing Mexico away
from the U.S. and closer to China. The “Trump effect” also has made it more likely that the bombastic left-wing populist, Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, will be elected next year as President of Mexico. The election of the so-called “Tropical Messiah” would radically change our
relationship with our southern neighbor, not for the better. Then there’s the NATO alliance. Trump’s performance at the NATO summit in
Brussels last May will go down in history as one of the worst presidential trips in modern history. Trump shocked our allies by omitting from his
speech any reference to our Article 5 commitment to mutual defense. Instead, he scolded them for their refugee policies, and humiliated them
as NATO freeloaders. Trump himself, possibly with an assist from the Xenophobic Steves, Bannon and Miller, decided to omit the Article 5
assurance at the last minute, without consultation or advance notice to his security team. Some two weeks later, Trump finally expressed his
commitment to NATO’s mutual defense pact. In a joint press conference with the President of Romania, Trump begrudgingly declared that he
was “committing the United States to Article 5,” as if that were something new. Perhaps Trump’s belated assurance mitigated some of the
damage he had done in Brussels. But what good could it possibly do to raise doubts in the minds of our allies about our commitment to mutual
defense? Why throw a “we’ll see” into the equation? However our
NATO allies sort through Trump’s inconsistent
signals, they won’t have the same confidence in the United States that they have had since the end of
World War II. They have already begun pulling back their reliance on the U.S., exploring alliances and trade
agreements with other powers. Trump’s Asia policy, if it can be called that, is even worse. Whatever window may have been open for a serious
diplomatic response to North Korea’s rapid emergence as a nuclear threat seems to be closing, if it has not closed already. Rather than
engaging in serious diplomacy with the one country that has real influence on North Korea, China, Trump harbored the notion that he could
charm China’s President Xi Jinping to do his bidding by chatting him up over dinner at Mar-a-Lago. When that brain-dead approach failed,
Trump began to publicly belittle Xi, expressing his disappointment that Xi didn’t just flip a switch to end the North Korea problem. After a brief
spell of moderating his rhetoric toward China, Axios reports, an irritated Trump
is now planning an aggressive trade
campaign against China. While a trade war with China may make Trump feel manly, it will only be an obstacle to any
diplomatic efforts to enlist China’s support in dealing with North Korea. War with North Korea may yet be averted.
Or it may have been unavoidable even if Trump had done everything right. But he hasn’t, and as a result there may soon be no other options.
Trump is pursuing an equally brain-dead, self-defeating course with Iran. As I wrote months ago, reasonable people
disagreed about the wisdom of entering the Iran nuclear deal in the first place. But once the deal was done, and now that our
side has performed its obligations, only Iran would benefit from blowing up the deal. Heedless of the
near-unanimous advice of his foreign policy team, Trump is now attempting to sabotage the deal.
According to the New York Times, he has assigned a team of White House staff members “to develop a case within the next three months for
declaring that Iran had violated the agreement.” If
Trump does blow up the Iran deal, Iran will walk away from its
obligation to abandon its nuclear program, and our European allies will continue to do business with Iran while moving farther
away from the United States. Trump will have succeeded in isolating America, not Iran. Trump has even bungled
our relationship with Russia. God (and maybe Robert Mueller) only knows what explicit or implicit promises Trump and his associates
made to Russia during the campaign, but whatever it was, it’s not working. Trump’s non-stop whining about being victimized by the press over
Russia, along with his creepy bromance with Vladimir Putin, have only strengthened the resolve of Congress to get tough on Russia, and of
investigators to get tough on Trump. Meanwhile, Putin continues to expand his sphere of global influence. And Trump has done nothing to
mitigate the danger that Russia will continue to interfere with our democracy. Quite the opposite. By refusing even to acknowledge Russia’s
interference with the 2016 election, much less to condemn it, Trump is displaying a weakness that can only encourage Putin to continue to
create mischief. I could go on, citing diplomatic blunders with Israel, Syria, Canada, and a dozen other countries. But the
worst of it isn’t
the damage done in any one country. Rather, it’s the spiritual harm to our country, and the
decline of America’s moral authority
resulting from Trump’s dishonesty, inconstancy, and casual promiscuity in tweeting out inconsistent policies without
thought, consultation, or even a working knowledge of the subject matter. He has put our allies and adversaries alike in the
awkward position of being unable to fathom what he believes in, if anything. This is an invitation to our
adversaries to test him, and to our friends to distrust, or even ignore him. All of this has already taken an enormous
toll on America’s standing in the world. The Pew Research Center’s recent survey of Global Attitudes and Trends tells a chilling story of
American decline since the beginning of the Trump presidency. Pew’s report, “U.S. Image Suffers as Publics Around World Question Trump’s
Leadership,” shows that global confidence in the U.S. president has fallen from 64% at the end of the Obama presidency to 22% after only a few
months of the Trump presidency. Trump’s global “no confidence” number is a whopping 74%. The decline is not just personal to Trump. He has
dragged the nation down with him. The greatest damage is with our allies. On Trump’s watch, U.S. favorability ratings have
dropped by 20 to 40 points in almost all of Europe, most of North America (with notably high drops in Canada and Mexico), India and Australia.
Our ratings have gone up in only two countries, Russia and Vietnam. Public opinion matters in democracies. It shapes a nation’s policies and
actions. What happens the next time the U.S. needs to cobble together a “coalition of the willing” to support us in a global crisis? Who will
support us if Trump blunders into a war with North Korea or Iran? And who would have thought that the
health care fiasco, tax cuts
for the rich, a phantom infrastructure program, Russiagate, and a White House in chaos would turn out
to be the least of our worries?
 2NC – Dem Win k2 FoPo
GOP win destroys U.S. foreign policy
Bacon 18 (Perry Bacon Jr. is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. “What Happens If Republicans Keep
Control Of The House And Senate?” MAY 22, 2018, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happens-
if-republicans-keep-control-of-the-house-and-senate/)
I suspect that a Republican win in the House, even if the majority of voters back Democrats (Republicans’ built-in
seat advantage makes it possible for the party to hang on to congressional control while losing the nationwide popular vote), would spur
some rethinking of that tactic. Coverage might go in a somewhat pro-Democratic direction, asking if something is amiss with the
electoral system if Democrats keep winning the national popular vote but remain shut out of power. But I think there will be renewed
questions about whether the media is out of touch with a country that not only elected Trump but also
kept his party in power in Congress despite intense coverage of the president’s foibles. Other important things
would happen, of course. GOP control of the Senate would allow Trump to continue to fill federal courts with
conservative judges. Moving the judiciary to the right has become one of the chief goals of the administration and a major part of
Trump’s appeal to more traditional Republicans who might otherwise be wary of his political style. Additionally, a good 2018 for the
GOP might send the message abroad that the American public has ratified Trump’s domestic and
foreign-policy approach, and world leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel might begin to more forcefully
distance themselves from the U.S. “For all those [foreign leaders] who have found reassurance in the
idea that this is a temporary aberration and that America will go back to its regularly scheduled
programming soon, it would be an argument for starting to recalculate,” said Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, the executive
editor of Foreign Affairs magazine. In any case, it’s worth thinking through the repercussions of various 2018 outcomes, even relatively unlikely
ones. As we all should have learned by now, unlikely isn’t the same as impossible.
 2NC – Trump FoPo Impact Ext.
Trump’s foreign policy causes WWIII
Kagan 17 (Robert Kagan is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the
Foreign Policy program at Brookings “Backing Into World War III - America must check the assertive,
rising powers of Russia and China before it’s too late. Accepting spheres of influence is a recipe for
disaster.” 2/6/17, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/06/backing-into-world-war-iii-russia-china-trump-
obama/)
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today. One is the increasing ambition and activism of the
two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the declining confidence, capacity, and will
of the democratic world, and especially of the United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in
the international system since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the United
States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing desire and capacity of the
revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at which the existing order collapses and the
world descends into a phase of brutal anarchy, as it has three times in the past two centuries. The cost
of that descent, in lives and treasure, in lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering. Where exactly we are
in this classic scenario today, how close the trend lines are to that intersection point is, as always, impossible to know. Are we three years away from a global
crisis, or 15? Americans
tend to take the fundamental stability of the international order for granted, even
while complaining about the burden the United States carries in preserving that stability. History shows that
world orders do collapse, however, and when they do it is often unexpected, rapid, and violent. The late 18th
century was the high point of the Enlightenment in Europe, before the continent fell suddenly into the abyss of the Napoleonic Wars. In the first decade of the 20th
century, the world’s smartest minds predicted an end to great-power conflict as revolutions in communication and transportation knit economies and people closer
together. The most devastating war in history came four years later. The apparent calm of the postwar 1920s became the crisis-ridden 1930s and then another
world war. Where exactly we are in this classic scenario today, how close the trend lines are to that intersection point is, as always, impossible to know. Are
we
three years away from a global crisis, or 15? That we are somewhere on that path, however, is
unmistakable. And while it is too soon to know what effect Donald Trump’s presidency will have on
these trends, early signs suggest that the new administration is more likely to hasten us toward crisis
than slow or reverse these trends. The further accommodation of Russia can only embolden Vladimir Putin, and the tough talk with China will
likely lead Beijing to test the new administration’s resolve militarily. Whether the president is ready for such a confrontation is
entirely unclear. For the moment, he seems not to have thought much about the future ramifications of
his rhetoric and his actions. China and Russia are classic revisionist powers. Although both have never
enjoyed greater security from foreign powers than they do today — Russia from its traditional enemies
to the west, China from its traditional enemy in the east — they are dissatisfied with the current global
configuration of power. Both seek to restore the hegemonic dominance they once enjoyed in their
respective regions. For China, that means dominance of East Asia, with countries like Japan, South Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia both
acquiescing to Beijing’s will and acting in conformity with China’s strategic, economic, and political preferences. That includes American influence
withdrawn to the eastern Pacific, behind the Hawaiian Islands. For Russia, it means hegemonic influence
in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which Moscow has traditionally regarded as either part
of its empire or part of its sphere of influence. Both Beijing and Moscow seek to redress what they
regard as an unfair distribution of power, influence, and honor in the U.S.-led postwar global order. As
autocracies, both feel threatened by the dominant democratic powers in the international system and
by the democracies on their borders. Both regard the United States as the principal obstacle to their
ambitions, and therefore both seek to weaken the American-led international security order that stands
in the way of their achieving what they regard as their rightful destinies.
Entitlements Impact
 1NC – Entitlements Impact
Dem win in either chamber stops GOP entitlement cuts
Prokop 18 (Andrew, Vox. “5 ways the 2018 midterms could change American politics.” 1/2,
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/2/16795804/elections-2018-midterms-consequences)
First off, if Republicans lose control of either the House of Representatives or the Senate in 2018, they’ll lose their
ability to send new bills to President Donald Trump’s desk with their party’s votes alone. That means,
basically, that the conservative legislative agenda would be dead. Practically, the Senate filibuster rule
already means 60 votes are required to advance most bills. And since the GOP only controlled 52 Senate seats, the party
was far away from that threshold. So for the vast majority of votes on legislation (say, on funding the government), some
Democratic support is already necessary. But in a limited number of instances each year, Congress can
use the special budget reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority vote, to pass a new law.
And Republicans aggressively used this process to try to enact their top two agenda items this year on a
party-line basis — Obamacare repeal (which ended in failure) and their tax bill (which succeeded). So if the GOP holds on to
both chambers of Congress in 2018, the party could very well make another attempt at repealing Obamacare
through reconciliation. (They were only one vote short of passing something through the Senate last time.) Some conservatives
have discussed trying to tackle cuts to welfare, food stamps, Medicare, or Social Security with
reconciliation as well. And more tax cuts are always a possibility with a Republican Congress — George W.
Bush and Republicans used reconciliation to pass tax cuts through Congress in both 2001 and 2003. Conversely, a Democratic takeover
of either the House or the Senate would kill all those ambitions. The practical consequences would probably be: no
Obamacare repeal; no major cuts to Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, or welfare; and no more big
tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Instead, we’d likely get gridlock. Even if Democrats won both chambers, they
wouldn’t be able to enact their own new partisan priorities, so long as President Trump remains in office and can wield his veto pen. So the
real stake on this front are: Do conservatives get more chances to enact their dream laws in 2019 and
2020 — laws that could have consequences for decades to come — or do they get stopped in their
tracks?

GOP entitlement reform would massively exacerbate poverty and inequality

Restuccia et al 17 (Andrew Restuccia, Sarah Ferris and Helena Bottemiller Evich, Politico. “Behind
Trump’s plan to target the federal safety net.” 12/11,
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/11/trump-welfare-reform-safety-net-288623)
Defenders of the safety net programs, meanwhile, fear the effort could rob Americans — including many
Trump voters — of a vital lifeline. “It would be a recipe for massively exacerbating poverty and inequality in
America in violation of all of Trump’s campaign promises,” said Rebecca Vallas, managing director of the Center for
American Progress’ Poverty to Prosperity Program. “The poor are under attack,” said National Community Reinvestment Coalition
President John Taylor, who accused Republicans of “rigging the system” for the top 1 or 2 percent at the expense of the middle class and poor.
“Most Americans, if they really understood what was going on, would not support it,” he said. Although the effort to reshape the country's
welfare system is all but guaranteed to produce powerful political backlash, it
appears to have broad backing from
conservative congressional Republicans, who are already coordinating with the White House on a
legislative agenda to complement expected executive actions. White House Domestic Policy Council staff, who are
working closely with congressional Republicans on legislation, are slated to meet this week with House Ways and Means Committee and Senate
Finance Committee staff. The exact provisions of any legislation are unknown, but a
conservative group closely aligned with
lawmakers said Republicans intend to pass broadly focused legislation. “They’re thinking about welfare reform in a
large, all-encompassing way, not a program way,” said Jason Turner, executive director of the Secretaries’ Innovation Group, a group of
conservative officials who run state-level social programs and met with Ways and Means Committee Republicans on the Hill last week. Turner
said he expects Republican
leaders will seek to combine their ideas with the vision House Speaker Paul Ryan laid
out in his A Better Way plan to create a “mega-idea” for reform with a focus on work. “In terms of scope, that is part of the
discussions that we are having with the committees,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said. “We are still running options through the
interagency process and consultations with Congress.” Ryan spokesman Doug Andres declined to offer more details, adding that Republicans
would discuss the issue at their January retreat. In recent days, Ryan said he hopes to embark on entitlement and welfare reform next year. He
has said entitlement reform — an overhaul of programs like Medicare and Medicaid that has been his priority since his days as Budget
chairman — is essential for tackling the debt, which is set to surge by $1 trillion under the Republican tax reform bill, according to the Joint
Committee on Taxation. “We have a welfare system that’s basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work, and
we’ve got to work on that,” he said in a recent radio interview. Democrats immediately pounced on Ryan’s comments. “Paul Ryan just admitted
that after providing $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and large corporations, Republicans
will try to cut Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid and help for the most vulnerable Americans,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on Twitter. It is
unclear whether Republicans will take aim at Medicare given Trump’s campaign promise not to touch it. Trump also promised not to cut
Medicaid or Social Security. The latter is trickier for lawmakers to change because of procedural rules designed to protect the program. If
Republicans steer clear of Medicare, they say they will need to cut deeper into programs like food
stamps and Medicaid. Despite Trump’s campaign vow on Medicaid, the GOP already placed the health
insurance program for the poor on the chopping block earlier this year as part of its failed push to repeal Obamacare,
proposing to siphon nearly $800 billion from the program over a decade. With strong Democratic opposition a certainty, GOP leaders will
need to rely on a budget tool that allows them to jam bills past their Democratic counterparts. That tactic,
known as budget reconciliation, allowed Republicans to pursue their successful push on tax reform this year, as
well as an unsuccessful one on health care. But unlocking reconciliation will require Republicans to almost unanimously agree to a budget
blueprint — unity that took months of wrangling by GOP leaders this year even on their longtime priority of tax reform. That unity might be
even more difficult to achieve in an election year. Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) recently confirmed to a small group
of D.C. conservatives that welfare reform would be the focus of the 2019 budget.
 2NC – Dems k2 Entitlements Ext.
Dem House saves safety net and increases minimum wage
Yglesias 6/7
Matthew, Vox, “The outlook for a blue wave, explained The generic ballot is tightening, but Democrats
are still narrowly favored.” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/7/17426576/blue-wave-
explained
There’s a lot on the line in November It’s impossible to say for sure what the policy consequences of different midterm outcomes
will be, but we can genuinely predict this with a good deal more certainty than we can forecast election outcomes. If Republicans stay
in control of the House and gain ground in the Senate, they will almost certainly make further attempts
to chip away at the Affordable Care Act and/or Medicaid. And they will keep pushing for something along the
lines of the nutrition assistance cuts that were in the House farm bill. Democrats, conversely, will use
even a very narrow majority to try to aggressively investigate Trump administration scandals while trying to
force the administration to moderate its course on immigration and health care. A Senate that continues in
Republican hands will keep confirming federal judges at a record pace and substantially reshape the federal judiciary, whereas a Democratic-
held Senate will slow confirmations down and force compromises on some key selections. A
Democratic Congress will try to raise
the minimum wage, and Trump may well agree. A Republican Congress will not. Details are unpredictable, but the
basic shape of policy change isn’t. By the same token, though we don’t know exactly who will win in November, we do know that the House will
be closely divided and Democrats will either gain or lose a seat or two on net in the Senate. We also know that even though 220 seats and 216
seats are similar numbers, the difference between a small majority and a large minority is very consequential in somewhat predictable ways.
And people would almost certainly be better off spending time debating those differences’ pros and cons than speculating about the odds.

GOP House passes major cuts to safety-net programs

Bacon 5/22
Perry Bacon Jr., Five Thirty Eight, “What Happens If Republicans Keep Control Of The House And
Senate?” May 22, 2018 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happens-if-republicans-keep-control-
of-the-house-and-senate/?src=obsidebar=sb_1
If Republicans control the House and Senate next year, I would expect them to push some kind of health
policy proposal that uses the so-called reconciliation process, which requires only a majority of votes in the Senate,
rather than a filibuster-proof 60. That legislation could be a full-scale repeal of Obamacare. Or it could be a bill that
doesn’t repeal all of Obamacare but both cuts spending on Medicaid and turns Medicaid into a block-grant program where states can
choose to spend the dollars they get from the federal government as they see fit. Overhauling Medicaid was a key plank of the various
Obamacare repeal bills Republicans pushed in 2017. Republicans in the House are currently trying to add requirements that food
stamp recipients be either employed or actively looking for a job in order to continue to receive those
benefits. That legislation is currently stalled, but it’s a long-held GOP goal. You might think that doesn’t sound like a particularly popular
agenda heading into the 2020 elections. And shouldn’t last year have convinced Republicans to give up on health care? After all, they struggled
to pass an Obamacare repeal bill in the House when they had more than 230 members, and it failed in the Senate. So why would Republicans
come back to this? Well, some conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, major party activists and officials in the Trump administration want to.
“They will be searching for an agenda, and health care is a natural place for them. And there will be pressure for them to act,” said Yuval Levin,
a conservative health policy expert who served in the Bush administration. And the
political environment in 2019 could shift in
ways that both force Republican party leaders to move in a more conservative direction and make it
easier to get conservative proposals through both houses of Congress. Sure, the GOP’s overall margin in the House
might narrow. But the House and Senate Republicans who are defeated in November will likely come from the bluer districts and states that
the party currently holds — including some where Clinton won in 2016. So the remaining Republicans will, on average, represent more
conservative constituencies than the current group does. They will not be scared to vote for an Obamacare repeal — after all, they voted for
one in the run-up to 2018 and kept their seats. And they may face intense pressure back home from conservatives if they oppose it. Moreover,
the more conservative factions among House Republicans, particularly the Freedom Caucus, are likely to
have more influence in 2019 if the party retains the majority. With Speaker Paul Ryan retiring, Majority Leader Kevin
McCarthy is the favorite to become the top Republican in the House, but Freedom Caucus members are looking for ways to either get one of
their own elected speaker or extract some concessions from McCarthy. The Freedom Caucus strongly pushed for an Obamacare repeal even
after the effort’s failure in the Senate, and the
caucus has also been pushing the party to be much more aggressive in
cutting federal spending. So McCarthy may have to pledge to pursue an Obamacare repeal and other conservative fiscal policies if he
wants to be the speaker. “They will be dominated by the Freedom Caucus and will get serious about slashing safety-net expenditures,” said U.S.
Rep. John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Kentucky. “The Senate will not go along, so it will be worse gridlock, I would think.” Yarmuth is right to
bring up the other chamber of Congress. Even with continued GOP control of the House, if the party’s advantage in the Senate stays narrow,
more moderate members like Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski remain potential barriers to major spending cuts.
 2NC – Entitlements Good
The social safety net is a crucial and irreplaceable good that improves millions of
peoples lives
Kaufmann 17 (Greg Kaufmann is the former poverty correspondent to The Nation and a current
contributor. He is a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress and editor of TalkPoverty.org. “The
Republican Plan Isn’t Just About Taxes—It’s About Shredding the Safety Net.” 12/19,
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-republican-plan-isnt-just-about-taxes-its-about-shredding-the-
safety-net/)
The skids for these cuts have been greased by decades of lies about anti-poverty programs and their effectiveness. Conservatives usually
refer to cutting the safety net as an attempt to reduce “waste, fraud, and abuse,” or end a “culture of
dependence”—but in reality it’s simply looking squarely at our neighbors, demonizing them, and then
turning our backs. The only thing missing is a spit in the eye for emphasis. The underlying problem is that Americans often buy into
conservative rhetoric about “welfare” and the media are all too often complicit. A long history of racially coded language has
painted people with low incomes as undeserving of assistance, and there is a persistent lack of
education about what our safety net is, and whom it benefits. How many Americans know that more than one in
two of us will experience at least a year of poverty or near-poverty during our working years? While conservatives say that
people are living off their food stamps, few Americans know that the average benefit is $1.40 per person, per meal. The notion of supporting a
family on that is absurd. The public also envisions extensive subsidized housing—it has no idea that only one in four families that qualify for
federal rental assistance actually receives it, and that their average income is approximately $12,500 per year. They think people are getting
“free cash,” but cash assistance (TANF) goes to only 23 of every 100 families in poverty nationwide, and the program is virtually nonexistent in
many states. (It’s little surprise that a gutted TANF “block grant” is the model for what congressional conservatives would like to do with
nutrition assistance, Medicaid, housing, and more—watch it lose value with inflation over the years, and watch fewer and fewer people receive
it.) Italso doesn’t matter a whit to conservatives what the evidence says about the kinds of things that
make a difference in people’s lives. It doesn’t seem to matter that our anti-poverty programs cut poverty in half—
that poverty would have been as high as nearly 30 percent in recent years without them; or that girls who had access to food stamps
(SNAP) saw increases in their economic self-sufficiency as adults—including less welfare participation—compared to
their disadvantaged peers who didn’t have access; or that a little assistance for children up to age 5 is associated with
boosted educational performance, and increased work and earnings as adults; or that children under 13 who were
able to use a housing voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood were 32 percent more likely to attend
college and earned 31 percent more annually as young adults, compared to their peers in families that didn’t receive a voucher. Or even that
expansion of Medicaid eligibility has reduced infant mortality and childhood deaths, and that children
eligible for Medicaid are more likely to go on to graduate college.
 2NC – AT: Entitlement Reform Before Midterm
GOP won’t get entitlement cuts or ACA repeal through before the midterm
CNN 18 (CNN Wire. “Congress is back, and here’s what’s on the agenda.” 1/2,
http://cw39.com/2018/01/02/congress-is-back-and-heres-whats-on-the-agenda/)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has provided few details of what he will put on the floor this
year but he has made clear he doesn’t plan to force controversial entitlement changes through his
narrowly divided chamber or make another attempt at a broad repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which failed
last summer. “I wish them well,” McConnell said bluntly when asked about the continued effort by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, to
push forward on his repeal proposal, which fell short of the necessary votes in September. McConnell added that he wanted Graham, and the
bill’s co-sponsor, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, to continue working to gather support for their proposal. But McConnell
noted that
without the votes — and there’s currently no sense among top GOP aides that the votes to advance the proposal exist — the top
Senate Republican is limited in what he can do. McConnell would also have to decide, likely soon, to push
forward on another budget reconciliation effort in order to provide a vehicle in which to move a new
repeal effort with a simple majority vote. At this point, there are no signs of any preparation for such an
effort, aides say. That bothers many House Republicans who pushed through an Obamacare repeal bill last year only to see it falter in the
Senate. “There is some debate between Republicans, even in the House, and certainly Mitch McConnell,” said Rep. Mark Walker of North
Carolina, who chairs the conservative Republican Study Committee. “But that’s a promise we have continued to make.”
Dems will refuse to support Trump’s agenda before the midterm
Frank 17 (T.A. Frank is a Vanity Fair contributor who covers politics and policy. “5 NIGHTMARISH
HEADACHES TRUMP FACES IN 2018.” 12/29, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/5-nightmarish-
headaches-trump-faces-in-2018)
When Trump got into office, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats greeted him with a detailed infrastructure proposal,
hoping to split Trump from Republicans and to get something passed on terms more favorable to them. Had Trump taken it up with a
counterproposal and reached a compromise, he could have enjoyed praise for a bipartisan moment (one that wouldn’t have bothered his own
base), played Santa Claus, and maybe even gotten a few miles of his border wall started. He likewise could have worked with both parties to fix
Obamacare and call it “repeal and replace.” Republicans would have been no less eager to do tax reform later. Now, however, Democrats
will be less willing to negotiate. They see the midterm elections coming in November and anticipate
winning back the House—possibly, despite long odds, even the Senate. So why not wait to cut a deal until
they can get something better? To be sure, Obamacare will need help after the latest tax bill eliminated the coverage mandate, and
Trump is hoping Republicans and Democrats will work together on health care going forward. But
Democrats can still afford to wait on that. As to be expected in an election year, a primary focus of
Democrats this year will be making Donald Trump and his allies look bad.
ACA Impact
 1NC – ACA Repeal Impact
GOP win ensures ACA repeal
Bacon 18 (Perry Bacon Jr. is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. “What Happens If Republicans Keep
Control Of The House And Senate?” MAY 22, 2018, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-happens-
if-republicans-keep-control-of-the-house-and-senate/)
That potential outcome didn’t get enough coverage in the run-up to the 2016 election. So let’s avoid repeating that mistake in 2018. How
would the political world react if Republicans maintained control of Congress in November? I can’t say for
sure, but here are four likely responses. Renewed GOP attempts to shrink government If Republicans control the House and Senate next year, I
would expect them to push some kind of health policy proposal that uses the so-called reconciliation process,
which requires only a majority of votes in the Senate, rather than a filibuster-proof 60. That legislation could be a full-scale
repeal of Obamacare. Or it could be a bill that doesn’t repeal all of Obamacare but both cuts spending on Medicaid and turns Medicaid
into a block-grant program where states can choose to spend the dollars they get from the federal government as they see fit. Overhauling
Medicaid was a key plank of the various Obamacare repeal bills Republicans pushed in 2017. Republicans in the House are currently trying to
add requirements that food stamp recipients be either employed or actively looking for a job in order to continue to receive those benefits.
That legislation is currently stalled, but it’s a long-held GOP goal. You might think that doesn’t sound like a particularly popular agenda heading
into the 2020 elections. And shouldn’t last year have convinced Republicans to give up on health care? After all, they struggled to pass an
Obamacare repeal bill in the House when they had more than 230 members, and it failed in the Senate. So why would Republicans come back
to this? Well, some conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, major party activists and officials in the Trump administration want to. “They will
be searching for an agenda, and health care is a natural place for them. And there will be pressure for them to act,”
said Yuval Levin, a conservative health policy expert who served in the Bush administration. And the political environment in 2019
could shift in ways that both force Republican party leaders to move in a more conservative direction
and make it easier to get conservative proposals through both houses of Congress. Sure, the GOP’s overall
margin in the House might narrow. But the House and Senate Republicans who are defeated in November will likely come from the bluer
districts and states that the party currently holds — including some where Clinton won in 2016. So the remaining Republicans
will, on
average, represent more conservative constituencies than the current group does. They will not be
scared to vote for an Obamacare repeal — after all, they voted for one in the run-up to 2018 and kept
their seats. And they may face intense pressure back home from conservatives if they oppose it. Moreover,
the more conservative factions among House Republicans, particularly the Freedom Caucus, are likely to have
more influence in 2019 if the party retains the majority. With Speaker Paul Ryan retiring, Majority Leader Kevin
McCarthy is the favorite to become the top Republican in the House, but Freedom Caucus members are looking for
ways to either get one of their own elected speaker or extract some concessions from McCarthy. The
Freedom Caucus strongly pushed for an Obamacare repeal even after the effort’s failure in the Senate,
and the caucus has also been pushing the party to be much more aggressive in cutting federal spending. So McCarthy may have to pledge to
pursue an Obamacare repeal and other conservative fiscal policies if he wants to be the speaker.

ACA repeal causes pandemics

Kahn 16 (Laura H., research staff of Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security
Laura, “Biodefense and the next presidency”, 12/13, http://thebulletin.org/biodefense-and-next-
presidency10280)
Our current strategy, if one can call it that, is to conduct surveillance and put out the “fires”—new disease
outbreaks—when they appear. This approach relies on robust medical and public health infrastructures, which do not exist
everywhere—even within the United States. That brings me to my final topic. Public health preparedness. In the preamble to the US Constitution, the authors

included “…promote the general Welfare…” as part of the government’s responsibility. Health is certainly necessary for general welfare, and requires

access to healthcare. Doctors and nurses are the eyes and ears of public health surveillance, but their
effectiveness depends upon whether they are available. If someone doesn’t have access to healthcare,
but has a deadly, communicable disease, then the risk of an outbreak spreading unchecked increases.
During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, a poor Liberian showed up at a Texas emergency room with a non-specific fever. He
was given antibiotics and sent home, and ultimately died of Ebola. Fortunately this incident didn’t lead to a widespread Ebola
outbreak in Texas, but it’s the kind of thing that could. Obamacare may have its faults, but one thing it does
right is provide millions of Americans with health insurance who would not have it otherwise. From a
public health perspective, access to healthcare is absolutely critical for pandemic preparedness. During the
election, candidate Trump repeatedly stated that Obamacare was a “disaster” and should be repealed. More recently, president-elect Trump

announced that he might keep parts of the Affordable Care Act. It’s hard to know what he believes or wants to do. But one thing is clear: If he repeals it, and we get hit

with a deadly pandemic, the public should hold him and the Republican Congress accountable. Better to
avoid that outcome, and keep in place a system that ensures more Americans have access to doctors . The health of

the nation literally depends on it.

Pandemics risk extinction – no burnout, human transportation is reaching the tipping

point for global contagion
Bar-Yam 16 (Yaneer, MIT PhD, Founding President of the New England Complex Systems Institute,
PhD in Physics, “Transition to extinction: Pandemics in a connected world,” NECSI, July 3, 2016,
http://necsi.edu/research/social/pandemics/transition)
Watch as one of the more aggressive – brighter red  –  strains rapidly expands. After a time it goes extinct leaving a black region. Why does it go
extinct? The answer is that it spreads so rapidly that it kills the hosts around it. Without new hosts to infect it then dies out itself. That
the
rapidly spreading pathogens die out has important implications for evolutionary research which we have
talked about elsewhere [1–7]. In the research I want to discuss here, what we were interested in is the effect of adding
long range transportation [8]. This includes natural means of dispersal as well as unintentional dispersal
by humans, like adding airplane routes, which is being done by real world airlines (Figure 2). When we
introduce long range transportation into the model, the success of more aggressive strains changes.
They can use the long range transportation to find new hosts and escape local extinction. Figure 3 shows that
the more transportation routes introduced into the model, the more higher aggressive pathogens are able to survive and spread. As we add
more long range transportation, there
is a critical point at which pathogens become so aggressive that the entire
host population dies. The pathogens die at the same time, but that is not exactly a consolation to the hosts. We call this the
phase transition to extinction (Figure 4). With increasing levels of global transportation, human civilization
may be approaching such a critical threshold. In the paper we wrote in 2006 about the dangers of global transportation for
pathogen evolution and pandemics [8], we mentioned the risk from Ebola. Ebola is a horrendous disease that was present only in isolated
villages in Africa. It was far away from the rest of the world only because of that isolation. Since Africa was developing, it was only a matter of
time before it reached population centers and airports. While the model is about evolution, it is really about which pathogens will be found in a
system that is highly connected, and Ebola can spread in a highly connected world. The traditional approach to public health uses historical
evidence analyzed statistically to assess the potential impacts of a disease. As a result, many were surprised by the spread of Ebola through
West Africa in 2014. As the connectivity of the world increases, past experience is not a good guide to future events. A
key point about
the phase transition to extinction is its suddenness. Even a system that seems stable, can be destabilized
by a few more long-range connections, and connectivity is continuing to increase. So how close are we
to the tipping point? We don’t know but it would be good to find out before it happens. While Ebola ravaged
three countries in West Africa, it only resulted in a handful of cases outside that region. One possible reason is that many of the airlines that fly
to west Africa stopped or reduced flights during the epidemic [9]. In the absence of a clear connection, public health authorities who
downplayed the dangers of the epidemic spreading to the West might seem to be vindicated. As with the choice of airlines to stop flying to
west Africa, our analysis didn’t take into consideration how people respond to epidemics. It does tell us what the outcome will be unless we
respond fast enough and well enough to stop the spread of future diseases, which may not be the same as the ones
we saw in the past. As the world becomes more connected, the dangers increase. Are people in western countries safe
because of higher quality health systems? Countries like the U.S. have highly skewed networks of social interactions with some very highly
connected individuals that can be “superspreaders.” The chances of such an individual becoming infected may be low but events like a mass
outbreak pose a much greater risk if they do happen. If
a sick food service worker in an airport infects 100 passengers,
or a contagion event happens in mass transportation, an outbreak could very well prove unstoppable.
 2NC – Dems Stop ACA Repeal
Dem win is key to stop the GOP agenda cutting social services and repealing the ACA
Alter 18 (Jonathan Alter is a columnist for The Daily Beast and an analyst for MSNBC. He worked at
Newsweek for 28 years as a senior editor and columnist. “Democrats Are Primed to Win Big, Reclaim the
House, and Save Our Democracy. Here’s How They Could Blow It.” 4/23,
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-are-primed-to-win-big-reclaim-the-house-and-save-our-
democracy-heres-how-they-could-blow-it)
Lest we forget: The stakes are the highest of any midterm election in memory . Imagine if House Republicans
sustain heavy losses but hang onto their majority (24 seats as of now) by a few seats. This confounding of baked-in
expectations would depress millions and have profound consequences for American life. At a minimum, it
would mean: The end of any investigation of Trump, whose presidency would be immediately
normalized, with all that implies for his I-told-you-so behavior; new life for a right-wing legislative agenda that would
include slashing social spending and, quite likely, finishing off Obamacare; even less oversight of federal
agencies emboldened to wreak havoc. Now imagine if Democrats, in the face of gerrymandered districts and financial
disadvantages, re-take the House. It then wouldn’t matter nearly as much if Trump fired Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and the rest of
the Department of Justice. The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee could hire a large staff to pick
up where Mueller left off and use its subpoena power to complete the probe. Even if a Democratic House didn’t
vote articles of impeachment (and it probably would), we might finally get to the bottom of Russian intrusion in
American elections and Trump’s myriad other assaults on the rule of law. When they speak privately, a surprising number of Republicans
agree that their party needs a whipping this year so the process of small-d democratic and small r-republican renewal can begin.
Accountability can’t wait. Imagine EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt having to answer for his corruption and vanity on Capitol Hill. He
literally wouldn’t have time to redesign his seal, much less trash the environment. Then multiply the idea of true congressional oversight across
the federal government. The lame questions aging senators asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have obscured just how potent an energized
majority can be when it wants to tie up a dangerous president in knots. All
the country needs is one house of Congress
under the control of Democrats to remove or reduce the threat Trump poses in every area except
foreign policy. Even there, a Democratic House would find ways to check his power, summoning national
security adviser John Bolton to answer for any warmongering.
 2NC – ACA k2 Disease
No resiliency – ACA repeal decks the entire preventative health industry
Young, Senior Reporter @ HuffPost, 12/6/16
(Jeffrey, “Hospitals Issue Dire Warnings About Repealing Obamacare Without A Backup Plan”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hospitals-issue-dire-warnings-about-repealing-
obamacare_us_58471202e4b016eb81d87cbf)
WASHINGTON ― The hospital industry has a warning for President-elect Donald Trump and congressional leaders: Eliminating the

Affordable Care Act without first crafting a “replacement” would create major hardships throughout
the health care system. Hospitals traded billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid payment cuts for
expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, reasoning it would be good for hospital finances to have fewer
uninsured patients who don’t pay for their care. Congressional Republicans are leaning toward a plan that would repeal the

law early next year, but delay enacting a new system for up to three years. That won’t work, according to two influential hospital lobbying groups. The American
Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals laid out their concerns in letters sent Tuesday to Trump,
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-
N.Y.), who will become minority leader next year. These groups are demanding that legislation repealing the law and creating an alternative pass simultaneously, or that Congress and the
Hospitals will be seriously threatened if neither action occurs, Tom Nickels,
incoming Trump administration restore the funding cuts from the law.

executive vice president for government relations and public policy, said Tuesday during a conference call with reporters.
“Repealing the ACA while leaving its Medicare and Medicaid cuts in place will have huge implications for

hospitals and the patients they serve,” Nickels said. “Losses of the magnitude that we’re going to
discuss cannot be sustained and will adversely impact patients access to care, decimate hospitals’ and
health systems’ ability to provide services, weaken local economies that hospitals sustain and grow, and
result in massive job losses.”

ACA creates a dedicated prevention fund that solves vaccines, health response, and
tracking – there’s a litany of scenarios for disease spread that make it extremely likely
Colman, J.D., former Washington State Department of Health employee, 16 (Victor, *note – the
author of this specific paper isn’t clear, but Colman is the director of the COPC, the firm that authored
it* “About the Prevention and Public Health Fund”, http://copcwa.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/About-the-Prevention-and-Public-Health-Fund.pdf)
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), for the first time in the nation’s history, created a dedicated fund for prevention. The
Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) provides backbone funding for programs and services in Washington State
that touch the lives of millions of people every day. Established under the Affordable Care Act, the Fund has provided funding to
States and communities to provide programs and services to: Prevent and control diabetes, heart
disease, and obesity Track and monitor disease trends, and provide data that communities and health
care partners use to identify vulnerable populations and address priority health problems Provide
training and incentives to the public health workforce and their healthcare partners to adopt evidence-
based disease prevention programs Support people in their efforts to quit tobacco Provide breast and
cervical cancer screening and early diagnosis Protect children and adults from vaccine preventable
diseases through immunization education, outreach, and reminder systems Work with health plans to
improve the delivery of clinical and other preventive services Enhance epidemiology and laboratory
capacity that enables state and local health officials to respond to infectious diseases and
emergencies that put citizens’ lives and health at stake – including natural disasters,
terrorist attacks, infectious disease outbreaks, and unsafe food, air and water . Why it’s
Effective, affordable health care is essential for improving health, but what happens beyond the
important

doctor’s office also has a major impact on how healthy we are. There is increasing understanding of how important
it is to combine good medical care with support in our daily lives to carry out a doctor’s advice. The
Prevention and Public Health Fund is the nation’s largest single federal investment in prevention and
takes an innovative approach by supporting cross-sector and public- private partnerships and
collaborations to improve outcomes. The Prevention Fund will provide $14.5 billion over the next 10 years to
improve public health and prevent chronic illnesses, including obesity and related diseases, through increased screenings, counseling and community-based prevention
programs. The Fund supports services and programs that allow health to be improved in communities, schools, workplaces and homes by supporting healthier lifestyles and eliminating
obstacles to healthy life choices.
Aff
Uniqueness
 GOP Win – Dem Candidates
GOP will maintain control – Dem candidates too liberal for general election
Brufke 5/25
Julie Grace, The Hill, “Election fears recede for House Republicans” May 25, 2018,
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/389459-election-fears-recede-for-house-republicans
House Republicans left town for the Memorial Day recess feeling more optimistic about their chances in the midterm elections, putting a spring
in their step as they head toward the heat of the campaign season. Recent polling and election forecasts have cast doubt
on the idea that a “blue wave” is building that will sweep Democrats into office this November. One recent
survey by Reuters found voters preferring a generic Republican candidate to a generic Democrat — the
first time this year that the GOP has led on a generic-ballot test, which is considered a key bellwether
for elections. In addition, the forecaster Cook Political Report announced Tuesday it was moving four seats —
Nebraska’s 2nd District, South Carolina's 5th District and California's 39th and 49th districts — toward Republicans. Cook’s analysis
cited “sub-optimal primary outcomes” as a key component in the shift, meaning Democrats are
nominating candidates who are less likely to win. Republicans have cheered several recent primary results, arguing that
Democrats are picking candidates who are too liberal for the general election. Those primaries include former
Rep. Brad Ashford's (D-Neb.) loss in Nebraska's 2nd District to a more liberal candidate, and Susan Boser’s victory over the more-moderate
Wade Jodun in Pennsylvania’s 15th District. Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee,
cited the two primary results when making the case that the
GOP has a strong chance of holding the House majority. "They nominated some
extreme people. We nominated pretty mainstream folks that will be great candidates in the general election,”
Stivers said. Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-Ind.) — a freshman member set to face progressive-backed candidate Liz Watson in Indiana's 9th
District — said he believes hard-left candidates will drag down Democrats in November.
 GOP Win – Probability
Dems will pick up seats but not control – stats and liberals too far left
Fund 6/10
John Fund is National Review’s national-affairs reporter, “Dislike of Trump May Not Drive Voters to
Democrats” June 10, 2018 https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/midterm-elections-trump-may-
not-drive-voters-to-democrats/
Voters also dislike the Left’s nonstop focus on impeachment and ‘resistance.’ Five months before the midterm
elections, predictions that Democrats will ride a “blue wave” to forcefully sweep away GOP control of the House of Representatives have
become hopes that a high tide can still bring them a bare majority of 218 seats. Last
week, political analyst Larry Sabato found 211
House seats at least leaning to the Republicans, 198 at least leaning to the Democrats, and 26
toss-ups. If the toss-ups break
evenly, Democrats would gain 17 seats, but the GOP would still have a 224-to-211 House majority. What has
changed to give Republicans a better-than-fighting chance to hold on? One explanation is the economy,
which may improve President Trump’s approval ratings and affect how voters plan to vote in November. In June 2016, only 32 percent
of Americans rated the economy as “good” or “excellent.” Today 62 percent do. The growth rate for President
Obama’s last year in office was only 1.6 percent; growth projections for the second quarter of 2018 are north of 4 percent. The stock market is
up 25 percent since Trump’s inauguration. Midterm elections that have occurred in a cycle featuring clear economic growth, such as those in
1998 and 1978, have seen the party that occupies the White House doing much better than in years when the economy was struggling.
Nonetheless, President Trump’s drama-prone leadership seems to be contributing to his less-than-stellar polling numbers, which are still
upside down. But his favorability ratings have improved. His job approval was only 37 percent in December. The average of polls
monitored by RealClearPolitics now has him at just under 43 percent approval, his highest in more than a year. Along with that improvement,
Republicans now are only about five to seven points behind in polls that ask voters which party they want to control Congress. That is
significantly below the 12.5 percentage point lead that Democrats had in June 2006, the last year they took back control of the House. MIT
political-science professor Charles Stewart, an expert on election data, recently told Vox: To
capture the House, Democrats
would have to see the biggest election swing [from presidential election to the next midterm election] in
their favor in the entire post–World War II era. And, even then, they would only have a 50–50 chance of
taking the House. I believe a big obstacle they have is that while many people don’t like President Trump, that doesn’t mean they want to
reward increasingly left-leaning Democrats at the polls in November. Ron Brownstein of CNN pointed out that in the latest Quinnipiac
Poll, 53 percent of college-educated whites disapprove of Trump, but only 47 percent say they plan to
vote Democratic in House races. This is “a continuing gap that bears watching,” he tweeted. “Other recent polls also find that gap.”
One explanation of the gap is that some voters don’t want to return to the big-government economic policies of the
slow-growth Obama years just because they dislike Trump. Why would someone cut off their nose to spite their face? Of
course, surprises are almost a daily occurrence in the Trump administration, and a series of nasty ones could shake up the current situation and
again give Democrats a clear advantage. Trump’s trade wars could spook investor and business confidence and lead to economic uncertainty.
The probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller could unearth major developments and lead to surprising indictments. But for now,
Republicans can look forward to a climate in which the economy continues to pick up steam and the
public is increasingly bored or unaffected by the Mueller probe. Democrats have put all of their chips on mounting
“resistance” to President Trump. They may find, however, that they should have spent the months after their stunning 2016 election loss in
retooling their party so that it offered an updated, positive message rather than merely the sour rhetoric of an angry #Resistance movement. By
responding to Trump’s provocations and baiting with overheated anger and epithets of their own, Democrats may have turned off
just enough voters to keep Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.
 GOP Win – Momentum
Dems will pick up seats – but they’ve lost momentum and won’t get control
Moyer 6/18
Liz, CNBC, “Goldman Sachs: Chances of a Democrat 'blue wave' in November are diminishing” June 18,
2018 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/goldman-sachs-chances-of-a-democrat-blue-wave-in-
november-are-diminishing.html
Goldman Sachs: Chances of a Democrat 'blue wave' in November are diminishing The prediction market-implied odds
of Republicans maintaining their majority in the House is 44 percent, up from 32 percent two months ago. Odds of the GOP holding
its majority in the Senate are 75 percent, up from 64 percent. The generic ballot, which asks voters if they prefer a
Republican or Democratic majority in Congress, peaked at a 12 percentage point Democrat advantage in December
and is back down to 5 to 6 points, Goldman said. Democrats still have an advantage in the November midterm election, but the
anticipated blue wave seen sweeping away the Republican majority in Congress has diminished from just a few months ago. Goldman Sachs
analysis of the current prediction market concluded that November will be a closer election than earlier forecast. Enthusiasm readings indicate
Democrats have lost some of their advantage.
 GOP Win – Senate
GOP will win the Senate – and Trump thumps
Martin 6/2 (Jonathan Martin, New York Times. “Senate Republicans Are Newly Hopeful About the
Midterms. For Good Reason.” June 2, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/02/us/politics/senate-
republicans-midterms.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur)
WASHINGTON — After a turbulent first year confronting friendly fire from President Trump, Senate Republicans are entering the
summer before the midterm elections feeling more hopeful about retaining their narrow majority than
at any time since the president’s election. And for good reason. Mr. Trump is enjoying a modest increase
in his approval ratings this year and, as important, is attacking Democrats rather than inciting the internecine
feuds that could depress Republican turnout. The economy continues to grow, as demonstrated by Friday’s
unexpectedly strong jobs report, while unemployment has fallen to levels unseen since 2000. Republicans, already on the
offensive thanks to a Senate map that includes 10 Democratic-held seats in states Mr. Trump won, have seen nearly every electoral
variable turn in their direction in recent months: They have averted disaster in the West Virginia primary,
successfully recruited their preferred candidates in North Dakota and Florida, and watched a renegade
Republican challenger wane in one of Mississippi’s two Senate races. This past week brought two developments that
drew little attention for their Senate implications but could prove pivotal in November. Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri resigned rather
than face a felony computer tampering charge, depriving Democrats of a political weapon they had hoped to wield in the
Senate race there. (A felony invasion of privacy charge against Mr. Greitens, who was accused of sexual misconduct, was dropped weeks
earlier.) And the ailing Senator John McCainremains in office, passing a crucial deadline that all but ensures there
will be only one Senate seat up for grabs in Arizona. “The Republican caucus in the Senate is feeling substantially
more optimistic now than at this time last year,” said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, predicting his party will gain a handful of seats. Not
everyone in the G.O.P. is as bullish, with worries that the president’s capacity for political self-sabotage, the Democrats’ fund-raising advantage
and the anti-Trump intensity propelling the left will make it difficult to do much more than break even and protect its one-seat Senate majority.
But that Republicans are even discussing the prospect of gaining Senate seats, in the first midterm
campaign of a president whose approval rating has never reached 50 percent, illustrates the wildly
divergent electoral landscapes for the House and the Senate. While the fight for control of the House is playing out
mainly in the affluent and highly educated suburban districts that have been hotbeds of anti-Trump fervor, many of them on the coasts, the
Senate campaign is taking place on much more Trump-friendly terrain. Six of the most competitive
Senate races are in states he carried by double digits: Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee and West
Virginia. (Democrats hold all of those seats except Tennessee’s.) A major question looming over the 2018 Senate contest is whether so-called
wave election years — in which one party makes significant gains in both chambers of Congress, as happened in 1994 and 2006 — can still exist
as the country grows more polarized and politics more shaped by hardening party preferences. With ticket-splitting fading,
especially in federal races, voters are increasingly turning to lawmakers who reflect the presidential
leanings of their state. That could spell trouble for Democrats representing largely conservative
electorates and states where surveys show that, unlike in much of the country, the president is viewed more favorably than unfavorably.
“In the middle of the country people are by and large center-right, and they see the national Democratic brand as really far left, which is a ball
and chain those senators have to carry around,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said. But Democrats argue that the well-
cultivated reputations and financial advantages of party incumbents like Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Jon Tester of Montana and
Joe Manchin III of West Virginia matter as much as the red-leaning nature of their states. And they say that what passes for good news on the
right — simply being competitive in states the G.O.P. otherwise dominates — underscores the Republicans’ weakness in a year when the map is
so favorable. “We’re feeling very good about our chances,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, adding, “At a
minimum, there’s a 50-50 chance we’re going to take back the Senate.” There are only nine Republican seats in play, but Democrats believe
they have the chance to win in three: Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee. Yet even some Democrats concede that Republicans have seen their
prospects brighten recently — thanks to their actions in some cases and their good fortune in others. “They are limiting their vulnerabilities,”
said Adam Jentleson, a Democratic strategist, conceding that “it’s entirely possible we lose two or three seats.” The sudden resignation of Mr.
Greitens delivered immense relief to Republicans, and none more than Josh Hawley, the attorney general of Missouri. Mr. Hawley has been
under fire for running a lackluster campaign against Senator Claire McCaskill, a wily political veteran trying to hang on in a state that has moved
sharply away from Democrats. Mr. Greitens, accused of making threats and sexually coercing a woman with whom he was having an affair, had
for months refused to resign, raising Democratic hopes that they could use him to tar the Republican ticket this fall. But by quitting, the
governor cleared the way for Mr. Hawley to run a more policy-oriented, head-to-head race against Ms. McCaskill, who won in 2012 thanks in
large part to self-inflicted Republican errors. “People will move very quickly to other issues that more normally would be part of a Senate
campaign,” Mr. Blunt said. He added wryly that “if we have learned anything from President Trump, it’s that people are willing to move on from
a topic pretty quickly.” The developing political landscape in Arizona could prove even more consequential. Because Mr. McCain, who is
battling brain cancer, remains in office, Republicans believe that they will have to defend only one seat there this
fall — that of Senator Jeff Flake, who is retiring. Even if Mr. McCain were to vacate his office before November, Republicans believe that the
governor would not be obliged to schedule a special election this year. They say that May 30 was the final day for candidates to submit
petitions to run and that there is no mechanism in state law to add candidates to the ballot. Mr. McCain’s
presence does not just
deny Democrats an opening to compete in two Arizona Senate races this fall — it may also strengthen
Republican chances to retain Mr. Flake’s seat. The Republican leadership is backing Representative Martha McSally and is
optimistic she will emerge as the nominee in part because hard-right voters are divided between Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County
sheriff who was pardoned by Mr. Trump, and former State Senator Kelli Ward. With no prospect of a second Senate contest, the two hard-
liners will most likely continue splitting voters because neither will be able to switch races. The unburdening in Missouri and the clarity in
Arizona capped a stretch in which the White House convinced Representative Kevin Cramer to reverse course and take on Ms. Heitkamp and
sidelined a primary challenger against Senator Dean Heller of Nevada. At the same time, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a multimillionaire who can
finance his own campaigns, entered the race against Senator Bill Nelson, and Republicans torpedoed the coal magnate and ex-convict Don
Blankenship in West Virginia. Chris McDaniel’s bid in Mississippi to resurrect his Tea Party-backed campaign for the seat he nearly won in 2014
has proved feeble. “It is a very low bar when you’re celebrating the fact that a governor resigned because of a sex scandal and the candidate
who had been criminally convicted in West Virginia is not your nominee,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who oversees the Senate
Democratic campaign arm. But after watching Mr. Trump’s approval rating hover in the 30s for much of last year, and absorbing his frequent
gibes, Republicans will take it. “That’s a very big deal,” Mr. Thune said with a chuckle about how Mr. Trump is turning his fire toward the
Democrats. He said Mr. Trump had come to realize that “attacking Republicans isn’t helpful.” But Mr. Thune also acknowledged that Mr.
Trump could undercut the economic gains if he goes through with his tariff threats and “retaliation is
leveled against farm states.” Indeed, even as they grow more optimistic, veteran Republicans know they are placing their fate in the
hands of an unpredictable leader. “We’re on the right track, things look pretty good today,” Charles R. Black Jr., a veteran
strategist, said. “But Trump is like a suicide bomber: He could still blow himself up the day before the
election and ruin everything.”
Link
 2AC – Link Turn – GOP Turnout
Anti-immigrant sentiment galvanizes GOP turnout – plan flips that
Khalid 18 (Asma Khalid is a political reporter for NPR. “How Immigration Could Motivate Democrats In
2018.” February 18, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/02/18/586475474/how-immigration-could-
motivate-democrats-in-2018)
Immigration appears thoroughly ingrained in the Democratic brand. When the center-left think tank Third Way conducted surveys after the
2016 election with voters, nearly all of them pointed to the same thing. "When
we asked people what Democrats stood for,
immigration was one of the biggest words that came up in the word cloud that people used to discuss Democrats," said
Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, vice president for social policy and politics at Third Way. "[Immigration] was a mainstay of how people saw the
Democratic Party." And so
the logical conclusion ahead of the 2016 presidential election was that Trump's
unfriendly immigration rhetoric would help Democrats. "One of the things that many analysts had pointed to is Donald
Trump's comments about immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants, might motivate Latino voters to turn out in record numbers," explained
Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of Hispanic Research at the Pew Research Center. That did not exactly happen. For one thing, the top
issue
for Latino voters — like all voters — was the economy. And the Latino turnout rate actually declined
compared from 48 percent in 2012 to 47.6 percent in 2016. Despite the assumption that immigration is a pillar of the Democratic Party, in the
last presidential election, it
galvanized Republicans far more than Democrats. Trump voters President Trump made
immigration the backbone of his campaign. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said at his
2015 campaign announcement. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're
bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Trump
successfully moved
immigration into the core of the Republican Party's identity. In the early 1990s, Republican and Democrats were almost
entirely in sync with how they felt about immigrants' contributions to the country, but as Democrats have become more progressive,
Republicans have become more conservative. Among
2016 voters who said "the most important issue facing the
country" was immigration, they heavily favored Trump — 64 percent to 32 percent — according to the exit polls.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres believes that immigration is politically potent not so much on its own, but as symbolic of broader emotional
issues that affect the GOP base. "For opponents of immigration, the issue taps into economic pressures that could
damage the blue-collar middle class, as well as fears that we're losing our culture — a country that's spoken
English since its founding is becoming bilingual," he explained. "Don't underestimate ... the frustration of many Trump
voters that we are losing our country. And that we are fundamentally changing it in ways that are unlike
anything we've had in the past." John Sides, a political science professor at George Washington University, conducted a survey after
the 2016 election where he interviewed the same voters he had spoken with in 2012 — so he knew how they felt about immigration and he
also knew how they had voted. "One of the reasons why Trump was able to win ... was by using the issue of
immigration to pull some white Obama voters over to his side," explained Sides. His research found that about a quarter
to a third of white Obama voters in 2012 had fairly conservative positions on immigration. "We were able to show among white voters
there were only a handful of things that were more strongly related to their choice between Trump and
Clinton than their choice between Obama and Romney, and those things had to do with their views of
race, and their views of immigration, and their views of Muslims," Sides said.
 1AR – Link Turn – GOP Turnout
Hardline anti-immigration stance is the ONLY way for the GOP to win – the plan flips
that
Martin and Haberman 6/18 (Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, New York Times. “Forget Tax
Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally the G.O.P. Base Over Immigration.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/trump-immigration-midterms.html)
WASHINGTON — As Republicans try to keep their midterm election strategy focused on the economy, tax
cuts and falling unemployment, President Trump sent his clearest signal yet on Monday that he intends to make
divisive, racially charged issues like immigration central going into the campaign season. Facing
bipartisan criticism over his administration’s family separation practice on the border, Mr. Trump
renewed the sort of bald and demagogic attacks on undocumented immigrants that worked well for him
politically in his 2016 presidential campaign. He inveighed against “the death and destruction that’s been caused by people
coming into this country” and vowed that “the United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility.”
Republicans typically handle immigration gingerly in an election year, as they try to appeal to Hispanic
voters, independents and moderates across divergent districts. But with more Americans still opposing the tax
measure than supporting it, Mr. Trump’s allies believe that trying to link Democrats to crimes committed
by undocumented immigrants and gangs like MS-13 will do more to galvanize Republican voters and get
them to the polls in November than emphasizing economic issues. “People don’t turn out to say thank you,” said
Corey Lewandowski, one of the president’s top political advisers. “If you want to get people motivated, you’ve got to give
them a reason to vote. Saying ‘build the wall and stop illegals from coming in and killing American citizens’ gives them an important
issue.” This fear-oriented approach reflects the degree that Mr. Trump has put his anti-immigration imprint
on the Republican Party. The same raw appeals Mr. Trump made in 2016 about immigrants illegally crossing the border have not
abated among most of his Republican supporters. And his supporters say the party has little choice in an election where Democrats
are eager to register their opposition to a president they despise — and that the only way to succeed in
a campaign driven by turning out the party base is to focus on what grass-roots conservatives care most
about. “It’s an issue folks are emotionally attached to,” said Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist and former Trump aide.
“I know that upsets some people in the donor class, but it’s the reality of where the party is.” Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks
are aimed at the conservative base of the party that elevated his candidacy and is dominant in red states
and House districts, especially those with largely white populations. The Republican grass-roots were already hawkish on immigration,
while the president’s takeover of the party has further diminished its pragmatist wing. And while hard-line Republicans are a minority of the
country’s voters, the G.O.P. cannot retain its grip on Congress without this bedrock of its base going to the
polls.

Immigration is key for the GOP – that’s the only way to turn out their base
Taylor 6/5 (Ramon Taylor is a New York-based video journalist for VOA News. His coverage includes
U.S. elections, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and President Obama’s visit to Cuba. He has also produced
for CNN en Español and Telemundo in Washington. “Will Immigration Get Trump Voters to Midterm
Polls?” https://www.voanews.com/a/will-immigration-get-trump-voters-to-midterm-
polls/4425267.html)
Republican House and Senate candidates are adopting one of President Donald Trump’s key issues – and his style
- to get themselves elected in November. Immigration has long been red meat to Trump’s base. At Nashville,
Tennessee’s Municipal Auditorium last Tuesday, 5,500 supporters eagerly chanted “build the wall” and Trump’s use of a controversial term to
describe MS-13 gang members — “animals!” “I believe in President Trump’s immigration ban, and I’ll fight with him every step of the way to
build that wall,” said current U.S. Representative and Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn in an online video ad, ahead of an expected tight
contest with Tennessee’s former Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen. So far this election season, House
GOP candidates
nationwide have mentioned immigration in 34.3% of TV spots, ranking a close second to Pro-Trump ads (35.5%),
according to an exclusive USA Today analysis of political ad data from Kantar Media. “There’s been a lot of debate about whether these same
[pro-Trump] voters will turn out to support other Republican candidates, and I think that’s why you’ve seen so many Republican candidates sort
of trying to emulate Trump’s tone and approach on some of these issues,” said Dan Cox, Director of Research for the Public Religion Research
Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. Rallying the base, alienating others “Midterm
elections typically are
about the base, and this issue really animates the Republican base,” Cox said. A 2018 ad released by Trump’s
reelection campaign recalls the history of Luis Bracamontes, an undocumented immigrant convicted of killing two California deputies, before a
narrator issues a dire warning: “Democrats who stand in our way, will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.” The
message falls in line with much of Trump’s recent rhetoric that Cox characterizes as “personal safety”-themed — one that
garners a nationwide audience among his base of white working-class Americans. According to a 2017 survey analysis
conducted by PRRI and The Atlantic, 62% among that demographic believe the growing number of immigrants
threatens American culture. Among the same group, voters who favored deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally were 3.3
times more likely to support Trump than those who did not. Historically, voter turnout rates drop precipitously in midterm
elections as compared to presidential election years. As a result, it is normal for candidates of either
party to focus on their base of reliable, energized voters during those years.

Plan kills GOP turnout – they strongly oppose all forms of immigration
Carl 18 (Jeremy Carl is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. “Democrats’
Immigration Radicalism: The Gift That Keeps on Giving for Donald Trump.” National Review. February 5,
2018. https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/democrats-immigration-mistake-radicalism-helps-
trump/)
It bears repeating that it’s not Republican partisans who have shifted radically on immigration; it is the Democrats — with a particularly abrupt
shift coming since 2012. About
80 percent of Republicans have long said they’re dissatisfied with current
immigration levels, with 70 to 80 percent of the dissatisfied saying they’d like to see levels reduced, not
increased. Democrats, by contrast, are increasingly likely to say the status quo is fine, and those dissatisfied
are less and less likely to say they want immigration to fall. In this year’s Gallup poll on the question, half of respondents
were satisfied with the way things are, and among the rest, just a quarter wanted to reduce immigration. With this shift the Democrats have
become radically out of sync with public opinion in the rest of the country. The Harvard-Harris poll showed that while there was strong support
for giving DACA recipients work permits and even a pathway to citizenship, 60 percent of Americans reject giving preference to parents and
relatives of amnestied DACA recipients, including four out of five Republicans and two out of three independents — but only two out of five
Democrats. Meanwhile, 80 percent of registered voters in that same survey rejected the premise of chain migration
in favor of skills-based migration. Those numbers include 90 percent of Trump voters, 79 percent of
independents, and incredibly even 72 percent of Democrats. An absolute majority, 63 percent (including 51
percent of Clinton voters!), want to admit fewer than 500,000 immigrants per year — last year we admitted 1.3
million — while only 12 percent want 1.5 million or more. Even a majority of Hispanics want annual
immigration below 500,000, versus 8 percent who want 1.5 million or more. Meanwhile 83 percent of Trump voters and 58 percent
of independents think border security is inadequate. And while Trump’s border wall has just 54 percent overall support, it was 89 percent
among Trump voters and 54 percent among independents. The people who hate the wall aren’t voting for Trump anyway. Sixty-eight
percent oppose the diversity visa lottery that Trump has proposed eliminating, including 76 percent of Trump voters and 65
percent of independents. In competitive states and districts in 2016, these numbers are doubtless even better. Pro-enforcement
numbers in the Harvard-Harris poll were consistently stronger for these proposals in suburban areas (which
constitute the vast majority of swing territory), while pro-amnesty numbers were inflated by large margins in urban areas with
few competitive house seats. Likely voters tend to be more conservative than registered voters, further suggesting that Harvard-Harris
underrates pro-enforcement sentiment. The polling numbers illustrate the central reality of the weakness of the Left’s immigration position. Its
viability depends almost entirely on gauzy sob stories put forth by left-wing activists and the liberal media. The more we talk about the actual
reality of U.S. immigration policy, the more we win. The more we talk about immigrants with skills we actually need, the more we win. The
more voters are informed, the more we win. The GOP should be pressing ahead on all fronts. In the meantime,
the GOP should be
pressing ahead on all fronts — for example, dramatically speeding up the deportation process, rooting out the funding
for far-left “refugee resettlement” agencies (most of which receive the vast majority of their funding from the federal government, and which
regularly engage in political rallies to the adoration of the left-wing media), and putting pressure on lawless judges who have substituted their
own personal views on immigration for U.S. law The GOP should also expand the immigration debate to include affirmative action and quotas:
Under current legal precedents (which emphasize “diversity,” not historical oppression in the U.S.), as well as standard practice at many
colleges and corporations, more than 90 percent of DACA recipients will immediately be eligible for racial preferences in education and hiring
over approximately 90 percent of Trump’s voters. Republicans should ask how that helps Americans of any race. The informed conservative
perspective on immigration continues to be: No amnesty — and if amnesty does become a necessary evil in an immigration deal, it must be
sequenced after enforcement and legal changes have taken place and are shown to be effective. Right now the best thing for
conservatives would be for Trump’s offer to fail and for the Democrats to pay for it at the ballot box in
2018. In the meantime, if the president stands firm on his offer, he is in a good place politically — he’s made the Democrats an offer they
shouldn’t refuse — but in thrall to their radicalism, they probably will.
 1AR – AT: Dem Turnout Link
Immigration is more important for GOP than Dem turnout
Tarrance 18 (V. Lance Tarrance, Jr. is Special Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Previously, he was Director of Research for the Republican National Committee, Deputy Director of
Research for the Republican National Committee, and Director of Research for the Texas Republican
Party State Committee. Mr. Tarrance is also author of the book The Ticket Splitter, A New Force in
American Politics, which he co-authored with Walter DeVries. “Previewing Base Voter Messaging for the
2018 Elections.” MARCH 7, 2018. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-
matters/228641/previewing-base-voter-messaging-2018-elections.aspx)
Given the political parties' limited time and resources, to make their points, each will most likely target
only two compelling messages for their national battle plan. The economic outlook issue is usually front and center in
every campaign, and as of today, the advantage on the economy seems to be with the Republicans for 2018. The Democrats have
more messaging energy from traditionally secondary topics like policies for the poor, race relations and
income distribution. Even though the midterm elections are eight months out, gun control could become a strong new message by
November. The big question for Democrats is: Will focusing primarily on opposition to Trump be sufficient to ensure victory in 2018? The
strongest countervailing issue determining Republican turnout may be immigration. The level of
immigration has a strong negative valence for the Republican base, in contrast to generating more
mixed reactions from Democrats. Government and immigration are also the two highest-ranking issues
in Gallup's February measure of the most important problems facing the United States, with government the clear top
issue among Democrats (named by 28%) and immigration the leading Republican concern (29%). This indicates political energy
behind these issues for each party. Despite all the other policies, new and old, that could be raised in
any midterm election year, these two issues could well be the hardened combat zone for the 2018
midterm elections.
 2AC – Link Turn – Plan Unpop
Immigration is broadly unpopular
Kirby 18 (Brendan Kirby, PoliZette senior writer. “Poll Shows ‘Extreme’ Immigration Proposals Are
Broadly Popular.” 02 May 2018, https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/poll-shows-extreme-immigration-
proposals-are-broadly-popular/
Proposals to reduce legal immigration, give preferences to immigrants with advanced skills and
education, and crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants are often considered “extreme” in
the nation’s capital. But throughout most of the rest of America, they are common sense, according to a new
poll measuring voter sentiment on the contentious issues ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The survey, conducted by The Polling
Company Inc. on behalf of NumbersUSA, found widespread support among likely midterm voters for proposals that are part of immigration
legislation offered House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). The survey included interviews with 1,000 likely voters and has
a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent. “Most of the political elite just totally haven’t understood that Americans for a long, long
time have wanted a legal immigration cut,” said NumbersUSA President Roy Beck, whose group lobbies for a reduction in
migration to the United States. Some highlights of the poll results include: Fifty-nine percent said new immigrants should be able to bring in
their spouses and minor children, but not extended family members. When
respondents were told the United States
awards 1 million green cards a year and gives six different choices for possible immigration levels, the most popular range
was 250,000 or less. Nearly half — 49 percent — chose that option, which is well below any proposed to date by politicians in
Washington. Only 17 percent chose the status quo or an immigration increase. Told Congress is considering eliminating
250,000 "chain migration" visas a year, respondents by a margin of 53 percent to 24 percent favored reducing
immigration rather than redistributing those visas to allow businesses to bring in more foreign workers. By a
margin of 52 percent to 24 percent, respondents favored requiring all businesses to use the E-Verity system to check the legal status of new
hires under legislation to grant amnesty to young adult illegal immigrants who came to America as children. By
a margin of 63 percent
to 20 percent, respondents rejected granting amnesty to the young illegal immigrants if the legislation
kept the status quo on chain migration, E-Verify, and current immigration levels. Pluralities and
majorities among Republicans, Democrats and independents, along with Hispanics, held those views on
nearly every question. Beck said the survey suggests that Americans do not support amnesty for so-called dreamers
— the nickname for people who would benefit from the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act — without those
concessions. "It's astounding, isn't it?" he said. "There's hardly any support for it." Advocates
for reduced immigration seized
on the poll as evidence that congressional candidates in the fall could ride the issue. "I think it could be a
winner, especially in communities where excessive migration has occurred," said David Cross, a spokesman for Oregonians for Immigration
Reform. Cross said he is not surprised there is a wide divide between the ruling class and the people. "The general public is much more
informed on immigration than people in Washington," he said. Although
some might dismiss the results since
NumbersUSA commissioned it, an official with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said it is hardly
an outlier. "It is consistent with other polls," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the group. "And it's just consistent with logic
and common sense."
 2AC – AT: Trump Cooperation Link
Dems don’t need to oppose Trump in every instance to win
Kilgore 18 (Ed, political columnist for Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine’s news and politics blog.
He was previously a regular contributor on politics and elections to The New Republic and
FiveThirtyEight and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. Earlier in his career, Kilgore was
policy director for the Democratic Leadership Council, communications director for U.S. Senator Sam
Nunn, and a speechwriter and federal-state relations liaison for three governors of his home state of
Georgia. “Is Democratic Cooperation With Trump Depressing Supporters?” 2/11,
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/is-democratic-cooperation-with-trump-depressing-
supporters.html)
It’s an interesting argument, particularly since nothing would be easier for Democrats than to ignore policy issues,
reject every opportunity for negotiations, stick a big hatpin through their frontal lobes, and just howl at
the moon until Congress is theirs and Trump is gone. But there are some problems with it. For one thing, it’s
not all that clear Democrats could have hung onto a strategy of total resistance in early 2018. The federal government had to be funded in
order to operate. There is no way to pass an appropriations bill without Democratic votes in the Senate. Yes, you can argue that Democrats
should have struck a better bargain with Republicans to reopen the government after it shut down. But it seems to be the very act of bargaining
with Trump and his allies to which Stancil objects. “Resign
or we’ll never let the government function” is not a winning
message even for a party whose core followers might initially cheer it. For another thing, projecting oneself as
the proud member of the uncompromising anti-Trump resistance just isn’t an option for members of
Congress from areas that were and remain pro-Trump enclaves. Yes, senators like Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp, Jon
Tester, Joe Donnelly, and Claire McCaskill need an energized anti-Trump “base” to turn out for them. But it’s not going to be
enough. And exhibiting a frustrated willingness to work across party lines — which is really what Senate
Democrats have mostly been doing, along with trying to form a coalition with those Senate Republicans
who are fighting Trump on immigration — is going to be more effective than heading to the barricades.
It’s also less than clear that the slightly more conciliatory tone of congressional Democrats has had much of anything to do with flagging poll
numbers. Senate Democrats called off the government shutdown on January 22. By then they’d already lost a large chunk of their congressional
generic ballot lead, which (according to the RealClearPolitics averages) peaked at 13 percent just before Christmas and had dropped below 8
percent by January 22. What else might have been going on? Well, a lot of things: more positive attitudes about the GOP tax bill (which
Democrats never stopped attacking); more economic optimism; and a stretch of time when President Trump didn’t dominate the news with
some fresh hellish screwup. Stancil is right that Democratic turnout needs an energized “base” that never loses its focus on reducing Trump’s
power. But much as“base turnout” is essential in midterm elections, it doesn’t eliminate the need for at least
some persuasion, and maybe more than some in very hostile territory. So it’s never going to be as easy or
as promising as it sounds to turn the Democratic Party into a pure and sweet instrument of total
opposition. That is particularly true since Democrats do not share the stridently oppositional psychology of a Republican Party whose base
hates government, hates the 21st century, and hates the very idea of “progress” as it’s come to be defined in this country. A lot of these
questions may work themselves out as 2018 proceeds. It may well be that no matter what Senate Democrats do to “normalize” Trump and
reduce the seething rage of activists toward the 45th president, said president — who has his own “base mobilization” needs — will keep the
“resistance” revved up at the failsafe point by his outlandish behavior. He is, after all, the reason for the resistance, which would exist and
thrive with or without the active help of the Democratic Party. I personally see no reason to believe that Democrats or those elements of the
news media or civil society who fear Trump’s excesses have gone soft on him. But those Democrats
who are in public office have
to pick and choose moments of loud opposition, and sometimes even have to sound conciliatory. Yes, if anyone voting in
November doubts Democrats are the anti-Trump party, that’s a problem. But snarling and snapping every minute until then is
probably not necessary to maintain confidence in the Donkey’s bite.
 2AC – AT: Red State Dems Link
Blue state GOP seats are key – not red states
Enten 18 (Harry Enten is a senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight. “Five Blue States Could
Determine Who Controls The House In 2018.” 2/1, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-blue-states-
could-determine-who-controls-the-house-in-2018/?src=obsidebar=sb_1)
New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen’s retirement announcement this week wasn’t a game changer in the battle for control of the House of
Representatives. Even before his announcement, Frelinghuysen, a Republican, was in danger of losing a re-election bid in the 11th
Congressional District, which President Trump won by a mere 1 percentage point in 2016. With Frelinghuysen out of the race, Democrats and
Republicans are expected to fight it out over the now-open seat. But even if the Frelinghuysen news isn’t earthshaking, it’s a reminder that
whether Democrats manage to win the House in 2018 could come down to how many seats they pick up
in the five most populous states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016: California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York
and Virginia. The vast majority of Republican House members don’t hail from these states, of course. In fact, of the 241 seats Republicans
controlled after the 2016 elections, just 42 (17 percent) were from these five states. That’s not surprising — this isn’t GOP territory; Clinton
carried all these states by at least 5 percentage points, and House and presidential voting are increasingly connected. But while California,
Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Virginia account for only a small percentage of Republican-held seats overall, they are home to a
disproportionate share of vulnerable Republicans. According to the Cook Political Report, these five states are
home to 38 percent of all the Republican-held seats that are truly in play in 2018.1 California has the
largest number of vulnerable Republican House seats with eight (out of 14 GOP-held seats in the state). But New
Jersey — Frelinghuysen’s state — has a higher proportion of flippable GOP seats (four of five). Even if we take
“likely Republican” seats off the table and look at just those seats in the lean and toss-up categories, a
majority of New Jersey Republicans still make the list. This includes Frelinghuysen’s seat, which is rated as a toss-up. The
most interesting thing about these states, though, is the total number of Republican seats that are rated as at least somewhat vulnerable.2 If
you add them all up, a total of 25 Republican seats in these five populous Clinton states could flip to the
Democrats. That’s one more seat than Democrats need to gain a majority. In other words, they could take
back the House without flipping a single seat in a state that Trump came close to winning in 2016. Now,
Democrats are probably not going to win a House majority based solely on heavily populated blue states. The competitive districts in these
Clinton states aren’t all alike. Some are well-educated, like Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. Others are best described as working-class, like
New York’s 22nd District. Some are whiter than the nation as a whole, like New Jersey’s 11th; others are majority non-white, like California’s
39th. The national political environment — what turnout looks like in November, and which groups Democrats over- or underperform with —
will therefore manifest itself differently in each of these districts. The chances are that Democrats
are going to lose at least a
few of these blue-state seats, while also flipping some seats in states that Trump won in 2016, such as
Arizona, Florida and especially Pennsylvania, where six Republican seats are vulnerable. It does seem pretty clear at this point, however, that
the 2018 midterm elections are going to be fought on very different turf than the special elections that
dominated the 2017 landscape, or even the 2016 election. Instead of national reporters rushing to red
states like Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Montana, or parachuting into the Rust Belt, they’ll be setting
up camp in well-populated blue states.3
 2AC – Immigration Not Key
Immigration’s not key – hurts both sides and doesn’t affect swing voters
Decker 18 (Cathleen Decker is a former politic analyst for the Los Angeles Times who wrote about the
Trump administration and the themes, demographics and personalities central to national and state
contests. “Trump's immigration moves complicate election strategies for both parties.” APR 05, 2018.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-immigration-analysis-20180405-story.html)
Immigration has historically affected the voting public much the way arguments over other cultural
issues such as gun control or abortion rights have done, pitting an activated minority of voters on both sides
against a majority far less motivated to cast single-issue ballots. Coupled with the firm views Americans
already have on the president — wildly popular among his base and unpopular overall — Trump's
actions may not lead to any huge swing of voters toward or against him. Yet his moves certainly complicate electoral
strategies for candidates heading into the 2018 midterm election and beyond. "It's very tricky for both sides," said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow
for the Center for American Progress, who has studied the voters who traditionally have most supported border security and opposed illegal
immigration. That is because immigration
pulls at threads that already threaten to unravel both parties. Both are
trying to balance their need for support from blue-collar voters and college-educated moderates, groups
with very different cultural outlooks and economic concerns. Those differences persist even as the distance between Democrats and
Republicans on immigration has grown dramatically. If
Trump succeeds in making immigration a bigger issue in this
year's midterm election, it could help Republicans in blue-collar, heavily white districts in the Midwest. It
would likely hurt them in suburban areas where college-educated moderates are already alienated from
Trump. That divide would echo the calculation the president made in 2016. For Republicans, Trump's moves will be greeted
enthusiastically among one of his key voter groups: white voters without a college education. Those voters sided with
Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 31-percentage-point margin in the 2016 election, according to an exhaustive survey of voter behavior that
Teixeira and others conducted last year. Trump's vows to close the border and deal harshly with immigrants, both
those here illegally and legally, hugely energized his core supporters in the presidential election, according
to studies by two nonpartisan organizations, the Pew Research Center and PRRI, a nonpartisan group that studies voter values. Among the
issues that drove voters to support Trump, "that was the one that had the largest impact," said Carroll
Doherty, director of political research at Pew. At the same time, Trump's tough rhetoric on immigration has had long-term
implications. Turned off college-educated voters contributed to Democratic victories in off-year
elections in 2017 and on into this year and are a much sought-after group in this year's midterm.
"Among a lot of other groups of voters, issues like this are seemingly hurting the president," said Rob Griffin,
associate director of research at PRRI. Among Democrats, the bulk of the party's voters are sympathetic to
immigrants in the country illegally and unmoved by the president's insistence that a closed border is
necessary for the nation's security. Those voters — including minorities, the young and those with
college educations — are already firmly in the anti-Trump camp, meaning that the greatest impact of his
recent immigration moves may be to further encourage them to cast ballots. But there's another group
of voters in play on the issue: those who often have voted for Democrats, but who share the cultural
concerns of those most supportive of Trump — white, less educated and centered in the key middle-
America states that flipped from Democratic to Republican in 2016 and gave Trump the presidency.
Many voters in those states cast ballots for President Obama in 2008 and 2012; then, finding their futures still insecure amid
the area's foundering manufacturing industries, they sided with Trump in 2016. More than other demographic groups, they fear what Griffin
termed "cultural displacement" by newcomers. "It's the politics of resentment that are really being tapped
here," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, speaking of Trump's rhetoric. "If you're in a state that is doing well, you don't have to worry as
much. If you are in a state that's in a downturn … then you have to worry more about it. It really depends on the economic trend of the state
and whether people feel like they are all in this together." Fresh from their humbling 2016 defeat, Democrats
have been divided
over whether to aim for the more liberal voters in the next elections or cast a wider net to try to reclaim
voters who backed Trump. That debate affects how party strategists approach immigration issues. Only a generation ago, Republican
and Democratic voters had a similar range of views on immigration. Yet over that span of time, the Republican Party has become dominated by
older and whiter voters, while the Democratic Party has grown younger and more diverse. The combination has driven them apart on the issue.
In 1994 — the year that California convulsed over Proposition 187, the measure that would have banned immigrants in the country illegally
from state services — just over a quarter of white, high-school-educated voters from both parties said they believed immigrants strengthened
the country, a Pew survey showed. In each party, nearly two-thirds of those voters said immigrants were a burden. Among white
college-educated voters, Democrats held more sympathetic views of immigrants — but not dramatically
so. By 2017, Republican views had remained fairly constant while Democrats had grown far more supportive of immigrants. Overall, a plurality
of Republicans still considered immigrants a burden more than a strength. But among Democrats, 85% said immigrants strengthened the
country, a jump of 52 points in support over a span in which Republican support grew by only 10 points. The question for Trump is whether he
expects his border moves to attract new voters or merely solidify the ones he has. A question for Democrats is whether they will find the
message to counter any appeal from his renewed pitch and limit Trump's reach. "Looking
at the situation right now, in 2018, it
doesn't seem like an issue that can save them," Teixeira said of the impact of immigration on
Republicans, who are widely expected to lose congressional seats in November. On the other hand, he added,
"For the Democrats, they really need to stop the bleeding among white non-college voters."
Thumpers
 2AC – Black Swans
A host of “known unknowns” thump the link
Wilson 6/19
Reid, The Hill, “20 weeks out from midterms, Dems and GOP brace for surprises” June 19, 2018,
http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/392872-20-weeks-out-from-midterms-dems-and-gop-brace-
for-surprises
Twenty weeks before November’s midterm elections, Democrats and Republicans are cautiously eyeing
a fluid political landscape, one that is likely to be dramatically altered by outside forces in the weeks and
months ahead. In interviews with about two dozen Democratic and Republican strategists, pollsters and political scientists, most agree on
a few things: House Democrats are almost certain to pick up seats, and Senate Republicans are likely to add to their slim majority. But a host
of what Donald Rumsfeld might call "known unknowns" looms large over the midterm elections. Special counsel
Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Trump shows no indication of nearing an end. The booming economy may
be blunting Democrats’ advantage right now, but a burgeoning trade war with allies and competitors alike could
dampen growth. And Trump’s high-stakes diplomacy with North Korea, Iran and others creates further
uncertainty in an already dangerous world. “We all think we have a handle on trends, but those are three really big
possibilities out there that could alter a lot,” said Bruce Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist who closely tracks election data.2
 1AR – Black Swans
Unpredictable black swans could shape the midterm
Scott 18 (Dylan, Vox. “How everything could still go horribly wrong for Democrats in the 2018
midterms.” 4/12, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/12/17216136/2018-midterm-
elections-predictions-house-control)
Fear 3: some act of God introduces an unknown variable to the campaign This is the most uncomfortable
electoral variable to discuss and the one you can plan for the least. You can try to craft a political message that keeps
voters dissatisfied with Trump. You can do your best to vet your candidates and prepare them for the grind of a campaign. But there are
some things you simply cannot anticipate: a terrorist attack, an international crisis, a natural disaster, or
a war. It’s difficult to begin to quantify what the electoral repercussions would be in such big and
unpredictable events. Some of the operatives just shrugged their shoulders when this point came up. What can you do? Black swan
events are always a risk — and rarely an actual factor — in politics. But a few were willing to at least talk through the electoral
implications. Take a military intervention: Some Democrats argued that there is actually reason to think that
could hurt Republicans as much as help. Trump’s brinksmanship with North Korea has been polarizing.
The same would likely prove true for any military adventures the president decided to undertake in the next few
months. “Trump is so polarizing that unless America were attacked, it would be polarizing,” one strategist said. “Trump doesn’t get the benefit
of the doubt. You’d have as many opponents as supporters.” But conversely, there
is the truism that Trump has yet to face an
unmanufactured crisis during his presidency (well, excepting a couple of hurricanes and the widely criticized response to the
crisis in Puerto Rico). While it could certainly turn out that he would bungle it and thus reinforce the perceptions that have made him so
unpopular to begin with, there is also at least the possibility that he would handle it well and give Americans
new confidence in his leadership. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop wrote during the 2016 campaign, there is some scholarly evidence that
the more hawkish party gets an electoral advantage when the unthinkable happens: Experimental and real-
world studies have tended to show that in the US and abroad, the major party with a more hawkish reputation usually
benefits when international terror becomes a major concern. For instance, [Michael] Koch, Laron Williams, and Jason
Smith studied how quickly various parliamentary governments lost their majority coalitions after transnational terrorist attacks in a 2012 paper.
What they found was that right-leaning governments had an easier time holding on to power than left-leaning governments did. It seems the
left gets more blame for terrorist attacks that occur under its watch. “Trump
hasn’t dealt with an actual crisis yet. If a legit
crisis happens between now and November, how Trump handles it could shape how people view him
and his presidency,” said yet another Democratic operative. “If he does well, that’s the kind of thing that could
make people normalize his presidency.”

Trump polling error, economy and investigations could all swamp the midterm
Hanson 18 (NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the
author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, released in
October from Basic Books. “Trump’s Midterm Known Unknowns.” 1/23,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455680/trump-midterm-predictions-exercise-caution-recall-
november-2016)
Certainly, presidents with an approval rating below 50 percent usually lose more than 30 seats in the House. That crash would be more than
enough to produce a Democratic majority and thus would ensure an impeachment proceeding designed to paralyze the remainder of Trump’s
first term. In the Senate, the Democrats have three times as many seats to defend (and lots of them in Trump-won states). Yet recently they
are gaining confidence that they can flip enough races to deadlock or even win the Senate. The now-orthodox narrative about the midterm
elections is increasingly hyped by the media as a “blowout” or “tsunami.” Yet the dilemma is not just that we are ten months out from the
election and relative party popularity is already gyrating, but that there
are lots of landmark developments in play that we
usually do not experience in any midterm election. The first, of course, is Trump and the polls. No one knows
whether the “Trump phenomenon” of 3–5 percent underreporting in the polls is still valid. The Rasmussen
poll has Trump at 45 percent, about 5 percent higher than the gold-standard RealClearPolitics average of 40 percent — analogous to the
Election Day outlier and often-scoffed-at polls by USC/Los Angeles Times and Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP. Anecdotally, most can attest that
colleagues and friends still usually look both ways before whispering, “Wow, Trump is doing great.” It
may be a mass phenomenon
that, for some, expressing
hesitation about Trump or even virtue-signaling about his excesses serves as psychological
penance for voting for him. Conventional wisdom trusts the 40 percent average; by 2016 unorthodox thinking, however, one might
argue for the 45 percent outlier. But remember again, we are in surreal, even revolutionary, times when what is certain is now suspect, and
what is absolutely impossible is feasible. No
one ever imagined that the take-the-knee NFL protests would have
tanked viewership and attendance by over 10 percent and shaken the very foundations of a multibillion-dollar industry.
No one ever dreamed that many in the illustrious liberal aparat would be attrited in just days by long-
known but suddenly disclosed creepy behavior — John Conyers, Al Franken, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Ryan Lizza, Charlie
Rose, Jann Wenner, and Leon Wieseltier. We had never seen late-night television turn into nonstop political ranting.
We have no idea whether comedians’ spiked ratings represent the new normal or have earned a quiet but simmering backlash. In short, we
have no idea whether the unprecedented hatred for a president, evident in mainstreamed assassination chic and 90 percent negative press
coverage, will reach a saturation point and turn off voters. Or will it create a pet-rocket/hula-hoop fad effect, where not voting for Trump
becomes the correct, career-advancing, and socially acceptable act? Nor
does anyone fathom the effect of the booming
economy on the midterm election, especially an economy whose potential for rapid growth has not been seen in a generation.
Conventional wisdom wars with itself. On the one hand, unpopular presidents usually lose the midterm elections. On the other, “It’s the
economy, stupid” logic of 3 percent GDP growth undergirds a lot of political arithmetic. We
have never seen a stock market
boom like the present one. Nor has the U.S. experienced all at once record gas and oil production, peacetime unemployment sinking
to 4 percent or lower, and near-record small-business and consumer confidence. Is it more likely that current economic trends
will peak and lead to stagnation or even a bust by November — or continue with even more robust
growth? Was the U.S. economy under Obama sorely underperforming and psychosocially repressed? And if so, do we really have any idea
what the “animal spirits” of American entrepreneurialism are capable of when they are let loose — and are unabashedly praised rather than
deprecated? The new tax code in the ensuing months might ensure more take-home pay for the middle class and fatten further its 401K
accounts. If GDP growth increases and illegal immigration keeps falling, job growth among minorities may continue at near-record levels. An
unprecedented economic boom might make anti-Trump voters simply stay home, to square the circle of publicly
not liking Trump the messenger while privately very much liking Trump’s message. Or it could be that a 3 percent growth in
annualized GDP won’t be enough for the controversial Trump; he might require 4 percent or even above for voters to
value the economy over all other considerations. Trump’s recent bump in the polls occurred at a time of both strong economic news and an
anti-Trump news blitz. There are other known unknowns. First, no one can foresee the ultimate results of the warring
investigations by Robert Mueller’s team and by the House Intelligence Committee. Will Mueller
synchronize more indictments with the November elections and try to indict a Trump family member on
some sort of financial impropriety or obstruction allegation? Would it even matter if the charge had little to do
with Trump or Mueller’s original directive? Or instead, will we finally learn the full story of the Fusion GPS–Steele
dossier and discover that the FBI and Justice Department, the outgoing Obama administration, a toadying media, and the Clinton campaign
not only colluded in trafficking with Russian-supplied fibs and fantasies designed to cause chaos in the Trump campaign and transition, but also
in many cases violated federal laws by using fraudulent materials to obtain FISA orders so they could improperly surveil U.S. citizens and then
unmask and leak the names of those citizens (also illegally), and then use transcripts of such improper intercepts to cook up perjury charges
against Trump associates? Could we go from a non-scandal to one of the greatest political scandals of the post-war era? Trump was once widely
demonized for supposedly sloppily tweeting that Obama had “wire tapped” him. (“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’
in Trump Tower just before the victory.”) But in political terms, what
would happen over the next few months if it turned
out that Trump was not only prescient but that he also understated the extent of the prior
administration’s violations of civil liberties? Like the economy, the political ramifications of the pseudo-collusion charges and
the Steele dossier remain great unknowns. But in terms of momentum, the disclosures among Mueller investigators of improper workplace
behavior, political biases, five months of “lost” text messages on FBI cellphones (coincidentally, texts that congressional overseers were
seeking), and the failure to find clear evidence of collusion suggest that the team will become ever more eager to find something — anything —
before the election, even as repulsion with the dossier scandal and its purveyors only grows. Second, we
cannot yet calibrate either
the political fallout from the recent government shutdown (and perhaps others to come in 2018) or the
consequences of the Democratic gambit of basing an electoral campaign on the demonization of Trump,
the supposed ogre. Will Trump be able to reframe the recent shutdown as amnesties for illegal aliens trumping pay of U.S. soldiers? Or will
progressives win the aftermath with charges of Trump nihilism? We won’t know the full answer for weeks, if not months.
 2AC – Healthcare Thumper
Healthcare is the most salient issue for the midterm – nothing else comes close
Walter 18 (Amy Walter is the National Editor of The Cook Political Report where she provides analysis
of the issues, trends and events that shape the political environment. Her weekly column appears at
cookpolitical.com. “Deja Vu All Over Again. Health Care Takes Center Stage in 2018 Campaigns.” 3/22,
https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/deja-vu-all-over-again-health-care-
takes-center-stage-2018)
There’s always something of a disconnect between what Washington, DC is obsessed about and what the rest of the country is worried about.
In DC, of course, the story is Robert Mueller, Russia and White House chaos. Out in congressional races, however,
Democratic candidates aren’t talking about any of those things. Instead, their primary focus is health
care; specifically, their criticism of GOP attempts to repeal Obamacare. Ironically, while the passage of Obamacare
cost Democrats their House majority in 2010, GOP attempts to repeal Obamacare may help Democrats flip House
control in 2018. While Republicans argue that Americans are going to vote with their pocketbooks this
fall (thanks to a growing economy boosted by tax cuts and deregulation), Democrats seem to be betting that health care —
costs and access — will be the more salient issue in 2018. In fact, as we saw in the special election in PA-18, Democrat
Conor Lamb made the case that many of his constituents are going to have to use their tax cut refund to
pay for escalating health care costs. It’s also true that Americans are more emotionally attached to health
care than they are to almost any other issue. They may not love the health care system they have today, but they also dislike
the idea of government messing with it. In 2010, of course, voters punished Democrats for messing with the system. But, eight years later,
Obamacare is more popular than ever. A February Kaiser Foundation poll found the long-maligned health care law
garnering 54 percent approval, including 55 percent among independents. Republicans remain sour on the law, with
78 percent disapproving. In fact, since last summer, Obamacare has enjoyed support from a narrow majority of Americans (50-54 percent).
Back in 2016, approval of Obamacare averaged in the low to mid-40 percent range. It’s not clear if this new level of support is due to increased
happiness with the law, or if it’s become more popular as GOP attempts to dismantle have intensified. Moreover, with Democrats
no longer in charge in Washington, the issue of health care is now the responsibility of the GOP. Trump
has repeatedly pledged to "let Obamacare fail.” Almost every House Republican voted for a bill that
would repeal Obamacare. And, Congress won’t help shore up insurers in the exchanges — referred to in DC as
Obamacare stabilization — which could lead to insurers jacking up rates. As such, note POLITICO’s Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer: “We’ll see
how people feel if [health care] premiums spike.” Plenty
of Republicans are worried about the prospect of rate hikes
this fall as voters are headed to the voting booth." A Pew poll out this week, found that "health care costs is a top
household financial pressure across all income levels. About half (53%) of households earning $100,000 or more a year say
it affects their financial situations a lot; about as many (52%) of those earning $30,000 a year or less say the same." It’s clear that
Democrats see the issue as much more politically potent this year as well. Scroll through the ads Democrats have
run in the primaries, or watch their campaign videos, and you’ll find almost all mentioning the “Trump” or “GOP plan” to take away, or raise the
cost of health insurance. In her announcement video , Democrat Angie Craig, running against GOP Rep. Jason Lewis in suburban Minneapolis,
highlights her family’s challenges in paying the health care bills of her younger sister, and chides Lewis for “his votes to dramatically increase
the cost of insurance, and kick millions off health care.” In Illinois, almost every
Democratic candidate running in a
competitive House district made health care a part or centerpiece of their campaign message. The top two
vote-getters in the crowded Democratic primary in suburban Chicago’s 6th district (held by Republican Pete Roskam) both attacked Trump’s
position on health care. Kelly Mazeski, a breast cancer survivor, pledged to “stop Trump’s dangerous plan to hurt millions of people with pre-
existing conditions and forces us to pay more for less care.” Sean Casten, an environmental engineer and winner of the primary, attacked
Trump for “gutting health care.” A nurse and former HHS official under President Obama, Lauren Underwood won the primary for the exurban
Chicago-based 14th district currently held by GOP Rep. Randy Hultgren. Her ads featured her in scrubs, where she boasted of her work in
“expanding access to care” while "our congressman has not looked out for the folks in the 14th district.” Betsy Dirksen Londrigan, who won the
Democratic primary to face Rep. Rodney Davis in the Springfield-based 13th district, talked of her son’s rare and almost fatal infection, arguing
that “Trump’s health care plan would have bankrupted us.” Last week, I
met half a dozen Democratic candidates running
for GOP-held seats. Every one of them mentioned health care as one of the main reasons for their
candidacy. Most mentioned the vote the GOP incumbent had taken last year to repeal Obamacare,
framing it as a Republican attempt to “take away health care” from district constituents that will raise
the cost of insurance. Notably, none of the candidates in GOP-leaning districts mentioned the term
Obamacare in their ads. The results of the Kaiser Poll gives us a pretty good illustration of why they didn’t. When Kaiser looked at
voters who lived in battleground states or districts, 48 percent had a favorable view of Obamacare, and 48 percent had an unfavorable opinion,
with slightly more holding a very unfavorable view (33 percent) than a very favorable opinion (29 percent). In other words, while the health
care law may garner majority support nationally, it only breaks even in the states and districts that will determine the House/Senate majorities.
This is why we should expect to see Democrats run against Trump/GOP actions on health care, rather than
promoting or defending the current law.
 1AR – Healthcare Thumper
Healthcare will be the deciding issue in November
Scott 18 (Dylan Scott, Policy Reporter for Vox. “Health care is Democrats’ secret weapon in the 2018
midterm elections.” 3/22, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/22/17143298/2018-
midterm-elections-health-care-obamacare-repeal)
In a remarkable twist of karma, health care could defeat Republicans at the polls this November. Opposition to the
Affordable Care Act helped sweep the GOP into power eight years ago. But after they spent the last year failing to repeal it
while the Trump administration waged a quiet administrative war against the law, Republicans in
Congress are facing the very real possibility that health care could animate the backlash that could
force them out of power next year. That is the subtext of this week’s fight in Congress over whether to include stabilizing the
health care law in the government spending bill. Republicans who support stabilization cite reducing premiums as their top priority: Outside
experts have projected a 40 percent drop in premiums for ACA plans if stabilization measures were put in place, though estimates from the
Congressional Budget Office are not quite as rosy. Those lawmakers haven’t fallen in love with Obamacare or anything, but they see the
political utility of lowering premiums. Democrats, meanwhile, know they have a winning issue on their hands. Progressive
operatives note that 2019 premiums are supposed to be announced in October — just a few weeks before the
election. Given that last year’s premium increases were rightly attributed to Trump’s sabotage — and
that voters tend to blame the party in power anyway for what is right or wrong with their health care —
that could provide more ammunition for the Democrats in their final attacks right before voters head to
the polls. From special elections over the past year, we know health care has been a powerful
motivator for Democratic voters. In his razor-thin win in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, Democrat Conor Lamb
decisively won the health care vote. Polling uniformly shows Americans trust the minority party in
Congress over the majority on health care. Republicans can’t undo all of the damage of the past year.
They have already voted for various unpopular repeal bills that would have left 20 million fewer Americans with health
insurance and that would have unwound protections for people with preexisting conditions. Those attacks are baked in. The
GOP’s only remaining hope is to try to mitigate premium increases for next year — and then hope health
care isn’t enough to carry a blue wave. Obamacare stabilization is really about the midterms If you read between the lines, the
impetus for Republicans who have spent eight years demonizing Obamacare deciding now to help it is pretty clear: Premiums are going up,
they will keep going up without new federal funding, and Americans will blame the people in power if they do. “ Rates will
go up. The
individual market will probably collapse,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who has led the stabilization talks over the last year, said
on the Senate floor last week, describing what would happen without a stabilization plan. “There will be 11 million people who are
between jobs, who are self-employed, who are working, who literally cannot afford insurance, and they’re not going to be very
happy. And they’re going to blame every one of us, and they should.” The polling bears this out — specifically that
Republicans will take the blame for the state of Obamacare, even if they hate the law. The Kaiser Family Foundation
recently found that 60 percent of Americans believe Republicans are responsible for the ACA going forward.
And nothing matters more to voters on health care than its cost. Republicans already have a mess on
their hands of their own making. The Trump administration’s multifaceted crusade against the health
care law — slashing outreach budgets and pulling the law’s cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers — were already to blame
for a 20 percent premium hike this year. Then Congress repealed the individual mandate in their tax bill, a huge political victory
given the GOP’s vehement opposition to the mandate but one that insurers have said would drive up premiums even more next year. The
Republican solution to these problems that they have created is $30 billion in reinsurance funding, proposed by Alexander, Sen. Susan Collins
(R-ME) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Greg Walden (R-OR). They want to pass the funding as part of the government
spending bill that must be approved by Friday to avoid a shutdown. Alexander has clung to evidence that the plan would drive down premiums:
40 percent, according to the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, or a more modest 10 to 20 percent drop, according to the Congressional Budget
Office. In either case, the stabilization bill would help avert a round of damning October headlines about skyrocketing insurance costs on the
GOP’s watch. (The CBO also projects a slight rise in the uninsured rate because the proposal would end up making insurance more expensive
for some people who receive ACA subsidies. But that would not happen immediately.) If they can get it passed, that is. House conservatives
have always been dubious about stabilizing Obamacare, and now Democrats don’t sound enthused either. They might not want to
give Republicans a win because of the politics — like I said, Democratic operatives are keenly aware of when premiums are
announced — but the Trump White House made it easier for them by demanding anti-abortion riders be
attached to the plan and by trying to codify an administration proposal that would unwind the ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions.
That has allowed Democrats to oppose the stabilization bill on solid policy ground while at the same
time denying Republicans a win that would soften the electoral environment for the GOP. What we’ve learned
from the special elections From the Republican perspective, shoring up the insurance markets would at best stop the
bleeding. Because the early returns in the midterm elections, and in the public debate over health care,
have been brutal for the majority party. At the macro level, Americans clearly trust Democrats more than
Republicans on the issue. A Politico/Morning Consult poll from November found that 44 percent of voters trusted Democrats more,
compared to 34 percent who trusted Republicans more. (USA Today and Suffolk found a similar breakdown: 43 percent trusted Democrats the
most, 15 percent said they trusted Trump, and 10 percent trust Republicans in Congress — harsh numbers for the GOP any way you cut them.)
On top of that, theACA — the Republican policy boogeyman for the past decade — has never been more popular than it is
today, after withstanding a year of GOP attacks. So it should come as no surprise that Democrats are already landing
substantial wins on health care in this cycle’s special elections thus far. It started last summer, with Jon Ossoff’s
unexpectedly strong showing to replace Georgia Rep. Tom Price. As Jeff Stein documented at the time for Vox, voters in that red
district were overwhelming motivated by the health care debate raging on Capitol Hill over a GOP plan projected to increase
the ranks of the insured by 20 million or so people. “It’s the No. 1 issue,” Ossoff supporter Gopi Nath, 48, told Stein. Three-quarters of voters,
even in that red-tinted district, opposed the Republican repeal bill. A few months later, in Alabama, Doug Jones surged to his
shocking upset in another deep-red state by dismissing the GOP’s “repeal and replace” promises as a political slogan
and by fiercely advocating for a funding extension for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The most decisive win
for Democrats — and for health care — was in the Pennsylvania 18th, where Trump won by 20 points just a year ago,
a district Republicans had held for 15 years. The Democratic candidate, Lamb, won by less than 1,000 votes, and health care could
make a compelling case it put him over the top. From a Public Policy Polling exit poll, taken the day after Pennsylvania’s
special election: Health care was a top issue for 52 percent of voters: 15 percent said it was the most important issue for
them, and another 37 percent said that it was very important.
 2AC – Mueller Thumper
Trump will fire Mueller – decimates the GOP in the midterm
Budowsky 18 (Brent Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep.
Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the U.S. House of Representatives. He
holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics. “A Saturday Night
Massacre would bring a midterm mauling to GOP.” 4/10, http://thehill.com/opinion/white-
house/382436-a-saturday-night-massacre-would-bring-a-midterm-mauling-to-gop)
Washington, D.C. is now on red alert for the potentially imminent firing by President Trump of special counsel Robert
Mueller and other Republicans holding high positions in the Department of Justice. Monday’s raid targeting
one of Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, may well drive Trump to extreme actions that would be a hostile attack
against the administration of justice and bring a death knell for Republicans in the midterm elections.
Following the breaking news of the Cohen raid, Trump made hostile attacks against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and special counsel Robert Mueller — all of whom are Republicans. He demonstrated an
anger and rage that could soon lead to a Nixon-like "Saturday Night Massacre" that many Republicans as well as
Democrats have long feared. Trump’s anger following the Cohen raid also includes the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New
York Geoffrey Berman, who spearheaded the raid and who is also a Republican. Trump appointed Berman to the position after he fired Preet
Bharara. Trump’s anger is also targeted against the FBI, whose director is Christopher Wray, also a Republican and Trump
appointee after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey. Last week, I wrote that Mueller
will drop a series of bombshells
that will plague Republicans in the midterm elections unless they stand tall to uphold the administration of justice, and I've
been warning about the dangers of the Russian scandal in recent months. The bombshell of the Cohen raid was not dropped
by Mueller, who merely referred the matter to the U.S. attorney in New York, who spearheaded the raid, which was approved in a warrant
granted by a federal judge who concluded there is probable cause that a crime was committed and the only sure way to obtain the evidence
was through the raid. Republicans in Congress, who are already in grave jeopardy, facing potentially huge losses in the midterm elections, are
well aware that the long list of targets of Trump’s anger and rage are all Republicans! A failure of Republicans in Congress to stand up for the
administration of justice and a failure to oppose firings of Republican officials would create a death knell for GOP chances in November. The
controversy and chaos surrounding the investigations of the Russian attack against America coincide with other developments of paramount
importance as the midterms approach. The most
politically powerful development is the endless series of scandals,
mini-scandals and ethical failures that have surrounded the Trump presidency from its beginning. Trump
promised to drain the swamp, but the swamp is worse than ever under Trump. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has
become, outside of anti-environment circles, the poster boy for the swamp at its dirtiest. The
list of cabinet members and other
administration officials who have committed ethically dubious actions appears destined to grow even
beyond its currently unacceptable levels. The Trump presidency is engulfed in chaos. Shortly after Trump
announced he wanted to get out of Syria, the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, almost certainly with support from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin,
who Trump has until recently often praised, launched a brutal and sickening chemical weapons attack. Hopefully Trump will abandon his plan to
get out of Syria soon and will seek and obtain bipartisan support for a strong American and Western response to the Syrian mass murder. The
chaos continues with endless leaks and background comments from administration officials seeking to humiliate retired Marine Corps General
and White House chief of staff John Kelly (as Trump and his inner circle humiliated former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former National
Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster) by suggesting he is now powerless to do his job. As the midterm elections near, the American people
are exhausted and appalled by the scandals and chaos that surround the Trump presidency. There is a Trump fatigue that
overwhelms the politics of the nation. There is now a clear and present danger of Trump seeking to
execute a Saturday Night Massacre after the Cohen raid, while the Mueller investigation deepens and
spreads. The Mueller investigation and the Cohen raid all involve a Republican attorney general, a Republican deputy attorney general, a
Republican U.S. district attorney, a Republican FBI director and a Republican special counsel.
 1AR – Mueller Thumper
Mueller will block out every other issue
Glueck and Roarty 18 (KATIE GLUECK AND ALEX ROARTY, McClatchy DC. “2018 campaigns are not
ready for Robert Mueller.” 4/8, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-
world/national/article208301959.html)
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation could upend the 2018 midterm elections — whether it reveals
wrongdoing at the highest levels or exonerates the president. And yet campaign officials and party insiders
on both sides are unprepared for it. Interviews with two dozen political strategists reveal that there is very little
planning underway for the possibility that Mueller will make significant news this year, potentially in the
middle of a campaign cycle that history suggests will already be difficult for the president's party. "It's something on everybody's
minds," said one Republican strategist working on races in Tennessee, who like many sources interviewed for this story requested anonymity to
discuss internal campaign strategy. "There's an unknown there. That's certainly a fear." Many Republicans said it’s nearly impossible to prepare
for the myriad Mueller scenarios, and they argue their time is better-spent dealing with current realities of the race. Those Republicans who
have given the issue thought have wildly divergent views about how they would advise candidates to proceed if there is a Mueller verdict, from
dismissing negative results as “fake news” to pushing for a pivot to local issues. Democrats, meanwhile, are in their own messaging quandary,
caught between a desire to seize on a potential one-of-a-kind scandal or stick with pocketbook issues such as health care. Some party
operatives even think Democrats would be better off in November if Mueller’s investigation never existed in the first place. “It’s not as if Trump
wasn’t already the driving narrative of midterm campaigns,” Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist advising a handful of House and
gubernatorial candidates. “But this would block out the sun to a large degree.”

It'll be a political disaster

Bloomberg 18 (Bloomberg News. “How Trump may imperil his presidency by firing Mueller ahead of
mid-terms.” 4/12, http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/how-trump-may-imperil-
his-presidency-by-firing-mueller-ahead-of-mid-terms-118041201210_1.html)
President Donald Trump risks plunging his administration into political calamity ahead of a crucial midterm
election and deepening his legal jeopardy if he takes the drastic step of firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A
decision to remove the man investigating his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia could paralyse his administration,
alienate some of his supporters and force even Republican allies in Congress to either tie themselves to
the president or abandon him. In that instance, Democrats almost surely would amplify the drumbeat toward
impeaching Trump -- so far mostly the province of the party’s liberal flank -- and if Trump persisted in precipitating a
constitutional crisis, even some Republicans might join the call to remove him. Trump denied in a Thursday
morning Twitter post that he’d wanted to fire Mueller late last year. "If I wanted to fire Robert Mueller in December, as reported by the Failing
New York Times, I would have fired him. Just more Fake News from a biased newspaper!" Yet Trump appears closer than ever to
such a move. He made personal attacks on Mueller this week -- calling him “the most conflicted of all” -- after an FBI raid on
the president’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, triggered a new round of broadsides on the investigations that have plagued the
administration. Trump also focused his ire on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein,
who oversees the special counsel’s office. Trump discussed firing Rosenstein with White House aides on Wednesday, a
person familiar with the matter said, as a chorus of Trump’s allies and advisers urged him to thwart the special
counsel’s investigation. The question is whether Trump’s venting will turn to action -- and fundamentally alter
the course of his presidency. Firing Mueller or other top officials would almost certainly damage his already
lagging approval ratings, which in spite of a recent rebound still remain at historically low levels for a modern president this early in his
first term. Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said he warned Trump directly against firing Mueller. ‘Faith in Mueller’ “I have a lot of
faith in Mueller and I’ve shared with the president it would be a tremendous mistake on his part to fire him," Corker said. "I think it would end
his presidency as he knows it. I don’t think he understands how vehemently people would respond to that, because we have faith in Mueller.
We do not believe he is corrupt." Polls
show overwhelming bipartisan opposition to firing Mueller. Doing so
would put the GOP at war with itself and unify Democrats as the nation heads toward the November
midterm elections. The closest historical analogue would be Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre of 1973,
when he forced the resignations of his attorney general and deputy attorney general after they refused to fire Watergate special prosecutor
Archibald Cox. Nixon’s approval rating fell to 22 percent the following week, according to a NBC News poll. After Nixon’s resignation the
following year, Democrats, who already controlled both sides of the Capitol, gained 49 seats in the House and four in the Senate. Republicans
wouldn’t win the speaker’s gavel for another two decades. If Trump acts, it could strengthen a case that he has sought
to obstruct justice. Mueller’s team has already interviewed Justice Department officials, including former acting attorney general Dana
Boente, as part of a possible obstruction case, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. "It would simply frame him again as a problematic,
potentially corrupt president," Princeton political historian Julian Zelizer said in a phone interview. "It could have real consequences on public
sentiment, even if feelings about the president are pretty baked in." The
political crisis that would follow an effort to
disband the investigation would necessitate a response from lawmakers. Republican leaders have thus far refused to
discuss what they’d do, but have warned the impact would be dire. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa said it would be
"suicide" for the Trump presidency; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who helped lead the impeachment of President Bill
Clinton, said it would be the beginning of the end. ‘Catastrophic’ consequences Still, a quick move to impeachment proceedings over
obstruction of justice seems unlikely without more facts about what Mueller has found in his investigation. The House Judiciary Committee
under Chairman Robert Goodlatte so far has all but ignored oversight of Trump, and Republicans have been raising money off the threat of
impeachment if Democrats win control the chamber. "There’s an assumption it’s a red line, but it’s worth looking at how the Republican
Congress has handled the investigation so far -- which is they’ve been perfectly happy not to act," Zelizer said. Yet the
clamor for
Congress to investigate -- or ensure a new special counsel is named -- could be overwhelming. Graham and
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina have cobbled together legislation with two Democratic senators to protect Mueller’s job. But Republicans
have pointed out that it would take 67 senators and two-thirds of the House to override a likely Trump veto. Susan Collins of Maine doesn’t
think Trump would sign such a bill and isn’t sure it’s constitutional. "The consequences if he were to fire Rosenstein in order to find someone
who would fire Robert Mueller would be catastrophic," she said. But like most Republicans, she wouldn’t elaborate. Such a dismissal could also
shake a depleted White House staff that has hemorrhaged employees over the past year amid a constant drumbeat of chaos and controversy. It
would again force a wary group of aides to evaluate whether they want to continue serving a president who allowed personal frustration to
create enormous political risk. "There could be officials who just don’t want to be around to see what happens next," Zelizer said. Mass protests
Such a move is also likely to be opposed by the president’s legal team, which already has seen its own share of departures, including lead
attorney John Dowd less than a month ago. That wouldn’t necessarily matter if Trump were able to end the special prosecutor’s investigation.
But there’s an open question over whether lawyers on the special counsel’s team could continue their work. Senators also warn that Trump’s
legislative agenda would effectively be consumed by the backlash. That’s especially true in the Senate, where Republicans are clinging to a
fractious, 51-49 majority. Even nominations, which Republicans have managed to muscle through with simple majorities, could face a blockade
as it would only take a single Republican senator to join with Democrats and insist on a new special counsel -- or even the rehiring of Mueller --
before any other nominees move. Democrats
and some anti-Trump Republicans are already organizing for mass
protests in the streets should Trump move to quash Mueller’s investigation. Beyond that, though, senior Democrats
have also been loathe to discuss specific consequences they’d pursue. And then there’s the potential impact on the midterm elections. Senator
Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who runs the Senate Democratic campaign committee, thinks Republicans would pay a major price. "I think
there’s going to be a political earthquake if Trump gets rid of Mueller," he said. "All Americans, irrespective of party,
agree the president’s not a king, the president’s not above the law. And we’re a country of laws. That’s the kind of thing that will
not only bring out Democrats in huge numbers but independents and even many Republicans."
AT: Impeachment Impact
 2AC – No Removal
No chance Trump gets removed from office
Lowry 17 (Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. “The Impeachment War.” June 13, 2017.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448565/donald-trump-impeachment-democrats-getting-ahead-
themselves)
Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, once frequently mentioned as a potential Democratic Supreme Court pick, wrote a piece a
couple of weeks ago titled “Trump Must Be Impeached.” Must doesn’t allow for wiggle room. Tribe
maintains that “impeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency.” Left-wing New York Times
columnist Charles Blow writes about “the critical and increasingly urgent question for many: Will Trump be impeached — or indicted — and
when? The anticipation has produced a throbbing anxiety. There
is so much emotional investment in Trump’s removal
that I fear that it blinds people to the fact that it is a long shot and, in any case, a long way off.” Yes,
impeachment might have to wait till early 2019. Who has the patience? It may be that Democrats don’t
take the House, or even if they do, they pull up short on impeachment. A House impeachment vote
would almost certainly only be a symbolic gesture. The chances of getting the two-thirds of the Senate
necessary to remove Trump from office are close to nil, unless there’s an offense that collapses his
support among Republican senators.
Can’t impeach without the senate – won’t happen
Cesca 17. (Bob Cesca, established contributor to Salon. Forget impeachment: Donald Trump can be
driven from office, but probably not that way. January 31, 2017. www.salon.com/2017/01/31/forget-
impeachment-donald-trump-can-be-driven-from-office-but-probably-not-that-way/)
The upshot is this: The Democrats need a majority in the House to impeach someone. They also need votes
of 67 senators to convict a person. (For that matter, they also need provable high crimes or misdemeanors before anything else
happens.) Without a multitude of Republican votes, the entire scenario is a nonstarter — even after a
possible Democratic sweep of the House in 2018.
 2AC – No Resignation
Trump won’t resign – he’ll just declare victory
Litman 17 (Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general,
teaches at UCLA Law School and practices law at Constantine Cannon. “Trump will fire Robert Mueller
eventually. What will happen next?” LA Times. 9/21, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-
litman-mueller-firing-20170921-story.html)
The odds also seem great that the erratic, power-consumed and thin-skinned Trump, who every week
launches a new Twitter attack on a real or imagined enemy, will be unable to stay his hand month after
month as the Mueller investigation unfolds. Like the fabled scorpion who stings the frog even though it dooms him, Trump,
being Trump, won’t be able to endure domination by Mueller over the long term. Of course, Trump likely fails to
appreciate that it is not Mueller personally, but the law, that is asserting its dominance. Let’s say Trump snaps. To fire Mueller, Trump
would need to order Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to remove him. But Rosenstein, a career prosecutor with a strong dedication to the
values of the Department of Justice, would likely resign his office rather than comply with the order, as would the department’s third-ranking
official, Rachel Brand. Eventually Trump, moving down the hierarchy, would find someone willing to fire Mueller (as Nixon found Robert Bork,
the then-solicitor general, to fire Archibald Cox). From there, Mueller could launch a legal challenge to the ouster (potentially with the support
of the Department of Justice). It’s by no means clear that Mueller, an ex-Marine of legendary rectitude, would choose to sue. Assuming he did,
though, he would need to overcome a series of constitutional arguments by the president’s lawyers that any restrictions on the president’s
ability to terminate him would impinge on presidential power under Article II. In any event, any pushback from the courts would likely be
procedural and incremental. Only Congress is positioned to pass broad judgment on Trump. But a congressional response — for example, a
statute to create an independent counsel — would be tempered by political compromise, and would have to withstand a presidential veto. In
particular, it’s hard to envision a scenario in which Congress successfully forced Trump to reinstate Mueller. As
for a more definitive
rebuke such as impeachment, for now it is a barely conceivable fantasy. Even if Democrats were to gain
control of the House in the 2018 elections, chances are remote that Democrats in the Senate would be
able to muster the 67 votes needed to convict and remove. The trial would be a sort of opéra bouffe
with Trump at the center at his most melodramatic. And when Trump is acquitted, he will find a cheap
salesman’s way to declare victory, to the exasperation of his critics. Impeachment without removal, then,
looks to be the worst-case scenario for Trump. He’ll still get away with firing Mueller, but expect him not
to run for a second term. Expect him also to be a fixture on, and probably atop, lists of the nation’s worst presidents.
 2AC – Dems Won’t Do It
Dems won’t pursue impeachment – fear of future backlash
Debendetti 17 (Gabriel Debendetti, political reporter for POLITICO, graduated from Princeton
University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Princetonian “Democrats seek to quell Trump
impeachment talk”, http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-impeachment-democrats-235184)
Just a month into Donald Trump’s presidency, Democratic Party leaders are trying to rein in the talk of
impeachment that’s animating the grass roots, the product of a restive base demanding deeper and more aggressive
investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia.¶ Democratic officials in Republican-dominated Washington view the
entire subject as a trap, a premature discussion that could backfire in spectacular fashion by making the party
appear too overzealous in its opposition to Trump. Worse, they fear, it could harden Republican support
for the president by handing his party significant fundraising and political ammunition when the chances of
success for an early impeachment push are remote, at best.¶ “We need to assemble all of the facts, and right now there are a lot of questions
about the president’s personal, financial and political ties with the Russian government before the election, but also whether there were any
assurances made,” said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “Before you can use
the ‘I’ word, you really need to collect all the facts."¶ “The ‘I’ word we should be focused on,” added Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, “is
'investigations.'"¶ The problem for party lawmakers is that the hard-to-placate Democratic base has assumed a stop-Trump-at-all-costs posture.
At a recent town hall in Albany, Oregon, Sen. Ron Wyden faced three questions about the issue. Rep. Jim McGovern, who was also confronted
with the impeachment question at an event in Northampton, Mass., told his constituents it's not the right strategy for the moment, according
to local reports. In California, a real estate broker has launched a challenge to Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher using a new “Impeach Trump
Leadership PAC.”¶ But it’s not just furious rank-and-file Democrats who are raising the idea. A handful of Democratic House progressives —
among them California Rep. Maxine Waters, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro — have already publicly raised the
specter of impeachment.¶ Waters has said she thinks Trump is marching himself down the path to impeachment, while Raskin — whose office
was presented last week with a petition carrying more than 850,000 signatures calling for impeachment — has repeatedly brought up the
prospect of voting for impeachment "at some point" in rallies and interviews. Castro has said Trump should be impeached if the president
repeatedly instructs Customs and Border Protection officials to ignore federal judges' orders.¶ Some have read New York Rep. Jerry Nadler’s
“resolution of inquiry” that could force the Department of Justice to share information about Trump’s Russian ties and conflicts of interest as a
way to further lay the groundwork for impeachment.¶ “You see immense energy from people who want to resist the president. And that’s
affecting the Congress,” said California Rep. Ted Lieu, who has said that a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives would impeach
Trump. "A recent poll came out saying that 46 percent of Americans want the president impeached, and certainly members of Congress take
notice."¶ Still, most congressional
Democrats insist on drawing a line that stops far short of using the loaded
term. Responding to Waters' impeachment chatter this month, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said,
"When and if he breaks the law, that is when something like that would come up. But that's not the
subject of today."¶ They believe that even if they did have enough evidence to start impeachment
proceedings — which they don’t, since a number of investigations are still in their early stages, and
Democrats can’t just impeach a president because they don’t like him — they wouldn’t have anywhere
near enough votes as long as Trump-sympathetic Republicans control the majority.¶ Neither party leadership nor
the campaign committees have circulated talking points or suggested ways to respond to impeachment questions that are starting to appear.
But they are already aware of the potential electoral blowback to the party.¶ The
mere mention of impeachment on the left
has already kicked off a fundraising frenzy on the Republican side, with both the GOP House and Senate
campaign wings raising cash off it — much like Democrats did under President Barack Obama when Republicans speculated about
the prospect.¶ “No president has EVER endured the level of disrespect shown to President Trump. (It’s sickening) Unprecedented obstruction
from the left on his cabinet nominees. Mockery and scorn from the liberal media. And now the liberal elite are calling for his impeachment … IN
HIS FIRST MONTH,” reads a National Republican Senatorial Committee email from last week.¶ Since 12 House Democrats sit in seats won by
Trump while 23 House Republicans serve districts won by Hillary Clinton, party operatives eyeing gains in the chamber fear that crossover
voters could turn against Democrats if their party is perceived as reckless in its pursuit of Trump.¶ Nonetheless, the pressure to stand in
Trump’s way has amped up on the ground in the days since the resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, say party officials, and
Democratic voters appear poised to pounce on any further revelations.¶ “The energy right now is really on Congress and trying to get some
Republicans to find some backbone. As we see the Flynn stuff and the question of who asked him to make the call, that could change as it
develops,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, who’s been touring his state in a series of town hall meetings. “But for the
moment people are focused on the most productive avenues for their frustrations, like ‘Call Pat Tiberi’ or 'Tell Rob Portman to vote against
Scott Pruitt.’"¶ Rather
than pursuing impeachment, most Hill Democrats are focusing their energies on
persuading colleagues across the aisle to publicly support or join their investigations, viewing that as
the most productive path forward. The brewing voter anger can only help them reach that goal, they believe.
 2AC – Doesn’t Solve
The GOP, not Trump, is the problem – impeachment just makes them seem more
reasonable
Heer 2017-senior editor at the New Republic
Jeet, "The Democrats' Dangerous Obsession With Impeachment," Dec 5,
https://newrepublic.com/article/146098/democrats-dangerous-obsession-impeachment
Impeachment fetishists seem to think that the overriding problem of American politics is that Trump is
president. By this analysis, the president is a dangerous outlier whose removal would restore America to normality. But the problem isn’t
just Trump; it’s also the Republican Party. Trump is only dangerous because he’s the standard-bearer of a party that has unified
control of the government and is willing to stand by Trump no matter what. A Democratic agenda of reining in presidential
power will give more lasting victories than mere impeachment, which is unlikely to succeed and would
only address a symptom, not the cause, of the cancer that’s ravaging American politics.
AT: Populism Impact
 2AC – EU Alt Cause
EU populism makes it inevitable
Maher 17 (Richard Maher, Research Fellow, Global Governance Programme, Robert Schuman Centre
for Advanced Studies, European University Institute. “Why populism is still a threat in Europe.” World
Economic Forum. 12 Jun 2017 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/populism-is-still-a-threat-in-
europe-heres-why)
Has the populist tide sweeping Europe crested? Six months ago, many European leaders worried that the wave of popular
discontent that led to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and propelled Donald Trump into the White House could empower nationalist,
anti-immigrant and anti-EU parties across Europe, shaking the very foundations of the bloc. Since then, however, populist movements have
been turned back in Austria, the Netherlands and France. German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks likely to win her fourth term as chancellor in
national elections this September. And with a young, energetic, pro-EU French president now in the Élysée Palace, some are predicting that the
bloc is actually poised for a comeback. But itwould be a mistake to think that populism no longer represents a
serious threat to Europe and the EU. Populist authoritarians are in power in Hungary and Poland. Marine
Le Pen of the far-right National Front captured a third of the vote in the run-off of France’s election last month, and
Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam Freedom Party is the second most powerful seat-holder in Holland’s
parliament. Even in Germany, long thought to be resistant to right-wing populist currents, the anti-immigrant party Alternative for
Germany (AfD) seems poised to gain parliamentary representation for the first time following national elections this
year. And with early parliamentary elections scheduled for October 15 in Austria, it appears likely that the far-right
Freedom Party, which was formed in the 1950s by former Nazis, will enter into a government coalition with the
centre-right Austrian People’s Party. A rise in populism since the 1960s Post-war Europe has seen populist movements of both the
left and the right, but they have mainly operated on the margins of national politics. While no populist party or politician has been able to
actually win a national election in Western Europe over the past seven decades, research shows that populism
has been advancing
slowly yet steadily in Europe since the 1960s. Today, virtually every European country has a populist party
represented in national or regional parliaments. Most are right-wing, like Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the National Front in France,
Golden Dawn in Greece, Lega Nord in Italy, the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democrats and the Swiss People’s Party. These
parties’ aims and agendas are driven by different national histories, traditions and circumstances, but all
are anti-immigrant and
anti-EU. Populism’s appeal remains too small to actually win elections in most of Europe, but it is
shaping national and European politics in various ways, reframing debates on immigration, the Eurozone and national
security, among other examples. Political views once considered extreme or taboo are now firmly present in
mainstream political discourse. In response, some mainstream politicians have co-opted parts of the
populists’ message or have felt pressure to move to the right on some issues to blunt the populist
advance. To counter Wilders’s anti-immigrant message, for example, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte took a more hardline
stance on immigration and refugees in the weeks leading up to parliamentary elections in March. Even Angela Merkel has
placed limits on Germany’s absorption of new refugees in light of criticism from both the AfD and the Christian Social
Union, the Bavarian sister party of her Christian Democratic Union. The period from the second world war to the present has been a remarkably
stable one for Western Europe. Governments have largely alternated between the centre-right and the centre-left. With the rise of populist
movements and candidates, we are, in a way, restoring the historical norm: for much of Europe’s modern history, liberals and social democrats
have competed with populists of various stripes in national elections. What’s the plan? To effectively contain populism, Europe must accurately
diagnose how and why it emerged in the first place. This means they cannot just ignore populists and their supporters, or ascribe their
grievances as the product of envy, resentment or blind rage. Those in power must acknowledge constituents’ genuine worries and anxieties
about immigration, national identity and terrorism, for example. Globalisation has produced rapid economic and social disruptions. It has
contributed to economic displacement, rising income and wealth inequality, and what seems to some people to be the homogenisation of
national cultures. Many people today face a level of economic insecurity that their parents or grandparents did not experience. And with large-
scale immigration, they have legitimate concerns about the cultural and demographic future of their countries. The
sources for such
concerns are not likely to disappear, so populism is more of a long-term challenge than a temporary
crisis. As Harvard’s Yascha Mounk has said, “the past two decades have represented not a populist moment but
rather a populist turn — one that will exert significant influence on policy and public opinion for decades
to come.”
 1AR – EU Alt Cause
Populism is growing across Europe despite high-profile losses for Le Pen and Wilders
O’Brien 17 (Zoie, Daily Express. “End of the EU? Wave of populism takes over bloc as Austria and Italy
prepare for elections.” Jul 30, 2017, http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/834629/End-EU-Emmanuel-
Macron-France-Merkel-Germany-populism-brussels-bloc-latest-news)
Angela Merkel revealed just last month she was rocked by Brexit, and feared for the future of the EU, but the
result of the French presidential election gave her new hope. However, that hope may be dashed after
the findings of Epicenter (the European Policy Information Centre). Populism is being described as the ‘third force’
in Europe - with right-wing parties gaining renewed support across the bloc. The Epicenter report revealed the
total number of European voters who bucked the Brussels rhetoric and chose an anti-system force at
the last political elections was 21.4 percent. This means 55.8 million people preferred an alternative to traditional political
forces - or those preferred by the EU. Speaking two months ahead of the federal elections in Germany, where she will fight for a fourth term,
Mrs Merkel said: “For many people, including myself, something changed when we saw the Britons want to leave, when we were worried
about the outcome of the elections in France and the Netherlands." Yet the Epicenter
report has revealed the threat to the
Brussels bureaucrats is as big as ever. Despite the victory of Emmanuel Macron in Paris and Mark Rutte in
Amsterdam, the vote for populist parties increased in both countries. There was a rise of 6.4 per cent in
France, from 21.7 percent in 2016 to 28.1 perc ent in 2017. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands there was a +6.8 percent jump
from 10.1 percent to 16.9 percent. Epicenter said in its report: “It is interesting to note that in the 1980s, authoritarian parties were rarely part
of governments and from 1985 to 1988 they were never in power. “This picture has now changed dramatically. In fact, anti-establishment
parties are today holding power in a quarter of EU Member States (7 out of 28). “The
number of left- and right-wing parties in
government is also likely to increase in the near future, as countries such as Austria and Italy will soon head to the polls.”
In nine European countries, including seven EU Member States, the "populist-authoritarian" parties have come to
play a role within the government. In the Italian elections of 2013, over 11.4 million voters (33.7 per cent) chose an 'anti' force.
Hungary, Poland, and Greece were the leading nations where support for anti-system parties is high.
Christian-conservative parties and the Social-Democratic forces are ahead according to Epicentre based on the analysis of election data from
1980 to the summer of 2017.

Populism is rising despite the failure of Trump

Robinson 17 (Belinda, Daily Express. “Deutsche Bank warning: There will be MORE Trumps and Le
Pens – Europe must prepare.” 9/19, http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/856074/populism-Marine-
Le-pen-Donald-Trump-Geert-Wilders-will-rise-says-Deutsche-bank)
Anti-establishment politicians like Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump will continue to be popular as they
electrify the electorate, a report by the German bank has found. The march of populist parties led by charismatic
leaders in Europe and abroad and movements like Brexit’s “vote Leave” will continue to pose a threat to
the establishment, according to Deutsche Bank. It will mean established parties are set to face a tougher
time getting people’s votes, as more people favour leaders who buck the trend. But Deutsche Bank warned
support of fringe politicians could eventually have a destabilising impact on financial markets. In a report on potential concerns for the global
economy, Deutsche Bank said: “While the consequence of the recent rise in populism hasn't yet destabilised financial markets, the level of
uncertainty will surely remain high while such parties remain realistic power brokers in major national elections." The global investment bank
carried out the analysis while looking for international events that could impact the stock market. The election of US President Mr Trump over
Hillary Clinton stunned the establishment, pollsters, and the electorate in America as he was not expected to win. But by using a populist
narrative of “America First” and taking a tough stance on immigration by promising to build a border wall to block out Mexican immigrants,
voters propelled Mr Trump to the White House. Similarly, throughout
Europe, a battle ensued after politicians like
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right Front National became a candidate in the French election race.
Emmanuel Macron, 39, an independent centrist eventually beat her to get the keys to the Elysee Palace but it marked a moment in which
Europe clearly began to stray away from established political parties. Mr Macron did not represent the mainstream parties, having created his
own ‘En Marche!” [on the move] movement last year in 2016. He won with 66.1 per cent of the vote compared to Ms Le Pen’s 33.9 per cent. At
his victory speech, Mr Macron reached across the aisle to Ms Le Pen’s supporters and told them he heard the "anger, anxiety and doubts" you
have. Meanwhile, Ms Le
Pen’s populism was repeated in the Netherlands, with Geert Wilders. The anti-islamic and
anti EU politician saw success with voters but stumbled during the election - coming in with just 20 seats in the house. In
Britain, the
electorate’s vote to leave the European Union last year June, stunned our European neighbours and
signalled a change in the county’s direction. But, all pointed to the rise in populism, According to a seperate 2016
YouGov poll, voters are increasingly turning against the pampered liberal elite in favour of strong politicians
who they believe will better serve their interests. Of 12 EU countries ranked by the level of support for populist politicians,
who are predominantly eurosceptic, authoritarian leaders scored more than 40 per cent of the vote in all but four. The pollsters concluded:
“The results may well be cause for concern for politicians in mainstream established parties across the continent. The implications for electoral
success are potentially enormous. “Should a politician or party be able to find a way to unite significant numbers
of AP voters under their banner, they will be able to issue a serious challenge to the established political
order. “France in particular has a high proportion of voters with AP sentiment. If a candidate there can unite this group behind them it could
have serious implications for not just France but Europe as a whole.”
 2AC – Trump Not Key
Trump isn’t key to the global populist tide
Haski 17 (Pierre Haski is a former correspondent for French media in Johannesburg, Jerusalem and
Beijing. He is the cofounder of the French news website Rue89, and a columnist for L'Obs, a leading
French magazine. “Has Trump’s Incompetence Killed Europe’s Populism?” The Daily Beast. 03.14.17.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/has-trumps-incompetence-killed-europes-populism)
PARIS — Have we already passed “peak populism”? The question is posed quite seriously by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, a US think tank borrowing the expression from “peak oil,” the point in time when extraction reaches its maximum level and
starts to decline. This
theory assumes that Donald J. Trump’s election on Nov. 8, 2016, could be the highest point of the
populist wave, as he turns out to be a pitiful president, a kind of anti-model. It points to the number of
controversies marking the beginning of his mandate, his political U-turns, and the fact that his speech to Congress was applauded because it
meant the beginning of a return to “realism.” “In the battle between reality and populism, reality is now winning,” wrote Peter Kellner, the
author of the Carnegie paper. His analysis also points to the fact that the expected populist victory in the presidential election in Austria in
December 2016 didn’t occur; that the British populist party UKIP didn’t manage to turn its Brexit referendum victory into success during a
significant by-election last month; and, finally, that populist forces don’t have such an easy path to victory in the forthcoming Dutch, French and
German general elections. Thistheory is tempting, but probably premature. First, mainly American-based
commentators imagined a domino-like victory parade for European populists thanks to the success of
the American “big brother.” Even if it is true that Donald Trump’s election made a similar triumph by France’s Marine Le Pen and her
European counterparts more credible than ever before, there is a lack of nuance and of local political logic in this
analysis. Its other weakness is the idea that President Trump’s bad image and difficulties would make the
populist pitch less attractive and credible in Europe. Marine Le Pen continues to praise Donald Trump at
her election rallies, and gets her followers to applaud decisions like the infamous “Muslim Ban,” the
anti-immigration presidential order targeting predominantly-Muslim countries, or his “economic
patriotism” forcing U.S. corporations to produce in the United States. Populist leaders in Europe have no
difficulty convincing their supporters that the “system” is responsible for all the pains and difficulties of
the Trump administration, and they are on familiar ground when he clashes with justice and the media.
Marine Le Pen even promised a purge among defiant civil servants, in a speech on Feb. 26, presaging the decision by President Trump to fire 46
Obama-era federal prosecutors. For hard-core populist voters, Donald Trump remains, at this stage, the best living proof not only that victory is
possible, but that their nationalist program can be implemented. They don’t pay attention to “details” and remain focused
on the symbolic dimension of his actions and permanent defiance, most often expressed through
tweets. To assess if “peak populism” really has come and gone, we’ll have to see the results of the Dutch vote on Wednesday this week,
followed by France’s presidential election on April 23 and May 7. These involved two of the most emblematic figures of what is called the
“populist wave”: Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen. More tests will be coming with German general elections in September, involving the far-
right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) led by Frauke Petry, as well as possible early Italian elections with the rise of
the 5 Star Movement (M5S) of humorist Beppe Grillo. In the Netherlands and France, the early tests, it
is likely that the populists
will reach very high scores without necessarily gaining power. In France, despite strong showings, no opinion poll has yet
proclaimed a likely Marine Le Pen victory in the second round of the two-round election. But polls misread the rise of Trump as well, and Le Pen
will gain the support of traditional right-wing voters in the second round if their candidate is eliminated in the first round, as seems to be the
case according to current polls. This will the most significant development of the vote: in 2002, the one and only time a far-right candidate
made it to the second round—Marine’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen—his final score was almost the same as in the first round: less than a 1
percent gain. This time, polls predict that Marine Le Pen could increase her score by 10 to 15 percent between the two rounds, depending on
her adversary. A
mental dam has been broken. These factors don’t point to an automatic “populist wave,” as
was predicted after Donald Trump’s victory, but
neither do they allow us to claim that “peak populism” is already
passed. There are very strong national differences, but we are nonetheless living an era in which
historical government parties are seriously weakened. Germany remains an exception where the election fight still pits
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party against her Social Democratic challenger, Martin Schultz, who revived the old and tired
SPD; and not against the marginal AfD nationalist party. But in
the Netherlands, voters have the choice between a dozen
parties, an unprecedented fragmentation; while in France, according to the polls, may see a second round in which
neither of the two parties that have dominated political life for the past 60 years make an appearance.
For now, it looks like the final fight will be between Marine Le Pen’s National Front and the centrist Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche!
Movement, which was launched only last year. More
than the rise of populist ideas, Europe shows the exhaustion of
old traditional political parties and their inability, with “software” stuck in the old industrial world, to
reinvent themselves. Their failure to deal with inequalities produced by globalization has pushed voters, particularly from the poorer
sections of the population, into the arms of those who, rather than offer real alternatives, best express their anger. Populism feeds on the
failure of others. “Peak
populism” will be reached when convincing new political offerings are made—when
citizens feel they are voting “for” and not only “against.”
AT: FoPo Impact
 2AC – No Lashout
No trump wars---past year proves rhetoric doesn’t translate to action---administration
is following conventional foreign policy
Carafano 18 --- Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute (James Carafano, 1-3-2018,
"The Media Is Vexing Over Trump’s "Nuclear Button" Wars. Why We Should Ignore Them.," Heritage
Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/missile-defense/commentary/the-media-vexing-over-trumps-
nuclear-button-wars-why-we-should-ignore, accessed 1-17-2018)
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump both claim to have big red nuclear buttons. Who
cares? We shouldn’t. In his New Year’s address, Rocket Man reportedly announced he had a “red button” on his
desk and he was ready to use it. Trump tweeted back, saying that his button is much bigger. The tweets
themselves are actually not worthy of all the histrionic reporting and punditry that followed. First, Trump
doesn’t have a nuclear release button on his desk. In all likelihood, Kim doesn’t either. In both cases, the release
and employment of nuclear weapons is not nearly as cavalier as the tweeting or the hysterical pundits
suggest. We are coming up on the anniversary of the premier of Dr. Strangelove. Maybe they have all seen the
movie one too many times. Second, we already know Kim has a nuclear capability. We also know his nuclear
arsenal at present is not capable of doing what he claimed in the speech. Kim lies a lot. No news there.
Third, Kim’s threat was actually defensive in nature. He said he would use his nuclear arms—if attacked.
That is not a new policy. Further, the likelihood of U.S. preventative military action is near zero. Fourth, the U.S. has
a much, much, much bigger and more capable arsenal than North Korea. That’s not news. The administration has frequently stated a retaliatory policy that if North
Korea fired a nuclear weapon at us or our allies, we would fire a bunch back. That’s not news. So
other than the colorful metaphors,
what’s new here? Nothing. Critics fret that the taunting rhetoric could lead to miscalculation and war.
Their evidence for that is less than zero. North Korea has engaged in fiery rhetoric for decades. There is
virtually little correlation between what they scream and what they actually do. Sometimes they line up. Often they don’t.
Likewise, Trump has given to Kim as good as he gets on social media. There is no evidence the rhetoric
per se has heightened tensions. Indeed, there is scant likelihood that we are inevitably marching toward
war. South Korea in fact just announced that North Korea has reopened the border hotline. What has heightened
tensions is North Korea’s increasing demonstration of an expanding nuclear capability. The U.S. needs a strong and consistent strategy for that, working in concert
with Japan and South Korea. That’s
all that matters. The rhetorical war does not. The Chicken Littles are starting
2018 just like they ended 2017: by obsessively focusing on the rhetorical war of words without context, and
without considering the actual interests and polices of the actors involved. That’s why the track record of
journalists and analysts who focused almost exclusively on the president’s tweets, off-hand comments,
campaign speeches, and statements (some of which were reported anonymously and are therefore less reliable) was pretty dismal.
The U.S. did not abandon NATO. Trump did not hand Europe over to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He did not
abandon Taiwan. And he did not do any of the things that some said he would do—basing their
assessments on presidential rhetoric and little more. Sure, words matter. But in matters of statecraft,
rhetoric matters in the context of action. It might be understandable that some obsessed about the
tweets a year ago, when the administration had little policy and not much of a track record. But now it’s a
year later. The administration has lots of policy on the books, including a new National Security Strategy.
The administration has also had a year of practicing foreign policy, which so far looks more
conventional overall than either of the last two presidents. What’s the excuse now for going nuclear
over every tweet? While pundits and journalists choose to be distracted by every tweet, that doesn’t
mean we have to. Let’s make a resolution in 2018 to be reasonable. Maybe you hate the president. Maybe you hate the
tweeting. But if you want to analyze what actual U.S. policies are, try being reasonable.
 1AR – No Lashout
No impact: lashout’s short-term and doesn’t escalate
Mark Fritz 17, Benzinga Staff Writer, 4-18-2017, "Is Trump's Foreign Policy Belligerence A Diversion
From A Stalled Agenda?," Benzinga, https://www.benzinga.com/markets/emerging-
markets/17/04/9305488/is-trumps-foreign-policy-belligerence-a-diversion-from-a-stal
It’s called “saber rattling,” a term used when a leader has problems at home and picks a fight abroad.
Historians have examined the idea exhaustively, but there’s nothing like seeing it in real time. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim
Il Jung, both of whom have an apparent case of missile envy, are rattling their sabers. Trump’s bombardment of Syria
and Afghanistan — and his threats against an uncowed North Korea — came after his youngish administration had a bad
start on immigration and healthcare reform, conflicts of business interests, ousted underlings with ties
to Russia and policy drift in general. During the weekend, Kim’s display of anti-ballistic missiles — some of which had performance
issues — was another example of leaders hoping to show strength by fanning the patriotic threat of war with big sticks. Does It Work? “A core
finding of my book was that it does not work, often causing those threatened to react in a contrarian way,” B. Dan Wood, author of
“Presidential Saber Rattling: Causes and Consequences” (Cambridge University Press), told Benzinga. Both Trump and Kim are engaging in
textbook examples of pumping up the local populace by antagonizing an enemy, a tactic that also has an economic imperative, Wood said.
Wood’s book analyzed 4,000 instances of drum-beating from 1945 to 2009, which covers the Cold War and the chaos that ensued when the
Soviet Union collapsed and left a massive power vacuum still being chaotically filled today. Wood’s research found that isolating
and
attacking an enemy correlate to domestic problems and can boost a leader’s appeal, albeit only
temporarily. Similar studies have come to the same conclusions about what might seem to most people as simply common sense. “It is
conventional wisdom that the public rallies 'round the president when military force is used abroad,” according to “Presidents, the Use of
Military Force, and Public Opinion,” a study published by the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1993. “Indeed, this belief has encouraged the
view that presidents are apt to rattle the saber to divert attention from domestic problems." The Psychology Of Diversionary War U.S.
presidents who are generally distrustful and tend to see the world in simplistic terms are most likely to engage in what historians call
diversionary warfare, said Dennis M. Foster, a professor of international studies and political science at the Virginia Military Institute. “I think
there are some reasons to believe that the recent behavior is at least in part diversionary; and if it is, it is a historically unique brand of
diversion,” he said. Some reasons: Trump’s domestic agenda is stalled “and things don’t look like they are going to get moving anytime soon.”
His behavior is in stark contrast to the “quasi-isolationist” foreign policy vision he’d outlined in the past. Trump seems much less sensitive to the
consequences of his actions than previous presidents of the post-Cold War period. “Finally, there
is no clearly apparent
international strategy, either within or across crises, other than the show of American strength in the face
of behavior we don't like.” Trump Actions ‘High-Risk’ And ‘Unsettling’ If Trump is in fact creating a diversion, it’s high-risk
and doesn’t appear to advance any concrete international strategy, said Foster, who wrote a piece for the
Washington Post back in December that pondered whether Trump would go to war to distract from a stalled agenda. “It would thus be, in two
fundamental and unsettling ways, very different than any other action I've seen described as diversionary conflict,” he said. In contrast, former
President Bill Clinton’s cruise missile strikes on al-Qaeda targets in Sudan and Afghanistan — retaliation for the August 1998 U.S. Embassy
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania — came at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and were relatively low-risk, he said. Likewise, former
President Richard Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia during the height of street protests against the Vietnam War may have been diversionary, but
they clearly advanced a foreign policy agenda. Saber Rattling Impact Usually Short-Lived The
whole Machiavellian idea of using
war as a diversion from domestic stress is as old as, well, war. And the bully pulpit that is the presidency makes it awfully
tempting to shore up support by rallying the people to an exaggerated enemy. Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who wrote the definitive
study of the United States in “Democracy in America,” ruminated that the American president has, when it comes to foreign relations, “almost
royal prerogatives.” But, as Brown says, good luck with that. “Generally,
the political science literature suggests that any
change in approval from presidential saber rattling … is small and short-lived.”

Constraints solve Trump

Goldsmith 17 (Jack, Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution, and co-founder of Lawfare. He teaches and writes about national security law, presidential power,
cyber security, international law, internet law, foreign relations law, and conflict of laws. He served as Assistant
Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel from 2003-2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of
Defense from 2002-2003. “Checks on Presidential Power Are Stronger Than You Think” 1-20-17
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/north-america/checks-presidential-power-are-stronger-you-think-1091)
TCB: Which are the most resilient currently existing checks
on his power, and which need to be bolstered? JG: There are many, both
inside and outside the Executive branch. On the inside, a bevy of lawyers, ethics monitors, inspectors
general, and bureaucrats in the intelligence and defense communities have expertise, interests and
values, and infighting skills that enable them to check and narrow the options for even the most aggressive
presidents. On the outside, the press, which did such an extraordinary job of holding Bush, and to a lesser
extent Obama, to account, is more motivated than ever to hold Trump accountable. The same goes for civil
society groups like the ACLU, which have used lawsuits, reports, and Freedom of Information Act requests to
expose government operations and misdeeds since 9/11, and whose coffers have ballooned since Trump’s
election. Spurred on by the press and civil society, the judiciary, which often stood up to Bush, will stand up even more to Trump if he engages
in excessive behavior. Finally, Congress
has been more consequential in constraining the national security
president since 9/11 than people realize. And as we have already seen in some pushback from Senators John McCain (R-AZ),
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Rand Paul (R-KY), it will stand up to Trump on many issues, even though his party nominally controls Congress.
None of these institutions are perfect. They are especially ill-suited to prevent the President from using military force as he sees fit, which is
institutions do a much better job in other
why the Obama Administration’s precedents in this context are so troubling. But the
national security contexts than they have been given credit for, and they will be watching president Trump
with a very skeptical eye and an array of powers to push back.
AT: Entitlements Impact
 2AC – No Entitlement Cuts
GOP doesn’t have the political will to cut entitlements
Weekly Standard 6/7 (“Editorial: Who Cares about Entitlements?”
https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-editors/medicare-will-be-bankrupt-in-8-years-why-dont-
republicans-care)
The bigger question is whether Republicans any longer have the will to make entitlement programs
sustainable. The reform ideas are well known on Capitol Hill: raising the eligibility age for Medicare recipients, reducing Medicare subsidies
for beneficiaries with higher incomes, altering the formula for Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustments. George W. Bush bravely tried to allow
Americans to privatize part of their Social Security savings. (He failed at that effort, but succeeded, alas, at adding a prescription drug benefit to
Medicare.) Paul Ryan proposed an ambitious plan that would have replaced Medicare’s absurdly inefficient direct-payment system
with one that supports insurance premiums of plans chosen by beneficiaries. But Ryan is retiring, and Capitol Hill lawmakers
no longer seems interested, if indeed they ever were. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed
fierce opposition to anything resembling “cuts” to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. It’s a hopeful sign,
perhaps, that Howard Schultz, retiring CEO of Starbucks and likely Democratic presidential candidate, called the debt the most pressing
domestic policy challenge facing the country. But candidates have often shown interest in such reforms—then lost it
as officeholders.
AT: ACA Repeal Impact
 2AC – No Disease Impact
Absolutely no chance of extinction from disease
Adalja 16 [Amesh Adalja, infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh] “Why Hasn't
Disease Wiped out the Human Race?” June 17, 2016
(http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/infectious-diseases-extinction/487514/) - MZhu
But when people ask me if I’m worried about infectious diseases, they’re often not asking about the threat to human lives; they’re asking about
With each outbreak of a headline-grabbing emerging infectious disease comes a fear
the threat to human life.
of extinction itself. The fear envisions a large proportion of humans succumbing to infection, leaving no survivors or so few that the
species can’t be sustained.
I’m not afraid of this apocalyptic scenario, but I do understand the impulse. Worry about the end is a quintessentially human
trait. Thankfully, so is our resilience.
For most of mankind’s history, infectious diseases were the existential threat to humanity—and for good
reason. They were quite successful at killing people: The 6th century’s Plague of Justinian knocked out an estimated 17
percent of the world’s population; the 14th century Black Death decimated a third of Europe; the 1918 influenza pandemic killed 5 percent of
the world; malaria is estimated to have killed half of all humans who have ever lived.
Any yet, of course, humanity continued to flourish. Our species’ recent explosion in lifespan is almost
exclusively the result of the control of infectious diseases through sanitation, vaccination, and
antimicrobial therapies. Only in the modern era, in which many infectious diseases have been tamed in the industrial world, do people
have the luxury of death from cancer, heart disease, or stroke in the 8th decade of life. Childhoods are free from watching siblings and friends
die from outbreaks of typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox, measles, and the like.
So what would it take for a disease to wipe out humanity now?
In Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, the canonical book in the disease-outbreak genre, an alien microbe threatens the human race
with extinction, and humanity’s best minds are marshaled to combat the enemy organism. Fortunately, outside of fiction, there’s no reason to
expect alien pathogens to wage war on the human race any time soon, and my analysis suggests that any real-life domestic
microbe reaching an extinction level of threat probably is just as unlikely.
Any apocalyptic pathogen would need to possess a very special combination of two attributes. First, it
would have to be so unfamiliar that no existing therapy or vaccine could be applied to it. Second, it
would need to have a high and surreptitious transmissibility before symptoms occur. The first is
essential because any microbe from a known class of pathogens would, by definition, have family members
that could serve as models for containment and countermeasures. The second would allow the
hypothetical disease to spread without being detected by even the most astute clinicians.
The three infectious diseases most likely to be considered extinction-level threats in the world today—
influenza, HIV, and Ebola—don’t meet these two requirements. Influenza, for instance, despite its well-established
ability to kill on a large scale, its contagiousness, and its unrivaled ability to shift and drift away from our vaccines, is still what I would
call a “known unknown.” While there are many mysteries about how new flu strains emerge, from at least the time of Hippocrates,
humans have been attuned to its risk. And in the modern era, a full-fledged industry of influenza
preparedness exists, with effective vaccine strategies and antiviral therapies.
HIV, which has killed 39 million people over several decades, is similarly limited due to several factors. Most importantly, HIV’s
dependency on blood and body fluid for transmission (similar to Ebola) requires intimate human-to-
human contact, which limits contagion. Highly potent antiviral therapy allows most people to live
normally with the disease, and a substantial group of the population has genetic mutations that render
them impervious to infection in the first place. Lastly, simple prevention strategies such as needle
exchange for injection drug users and barrier contraceptives—when available—can curtail transmission
risk.
Ebola, for many of the same reasons as HIV as well as several others, also falls short of the mark. This is especially
due to the fact that it spreads almost exclusively through people with easily recognizable symptoms, plus the
taming of its once unfathomable 90 percent mortality rate by simple supportive care.
Beyond those three, every other known disease falls short of what seems required to wipe out humans—which is, of
course, why we’re still here. And it’s not that diseases are ineffective. On the contrary, diseases’ failure to knock us out is a testament to just
how resilient humans are. Part of our evolutionary heritage is our immune system, one of the most complex on
the planet, even without the benefit of vaccines or the helping hand of antimicrobial drugs. This system, when viewed at a
species level, can adapt to almost any enemy imaginable. Coupled to genetic variations amongst humans—
which open up the possibility for a range of advantages, from imperviousness to infection to a tendency for mild
symptoms—this adaptability ensures that almost any infectious disease onslaught will leave a large
proportion of the population alive to rebuild, in contrast to the fictional Hollywood versions.
While the immune system’s role can never be understated, an even more powerful protector is the faculty of
consciousness. Humans are not the most prolific, quickly evolving, or strongest organisms on the planet, but as Aristotle identified,
humans are the rational animals—and it is this fundamental distinguishing characteristic that allows humans to form abstractions,
think in principles, and plan long-range. These capacities, in turn, allow humans to modify, alter, and improve
themselves and their environments. Consciousness equips us, at an individual and a species level, to make nature
safe for the species through such technological marvels as antibiotics, antivirals, vaccines, and sanitation. When humans began to focus their
minds on the problems posed by infectious disease, human life ceased being nasty, brutish, and short. In many ways, human consciousness
became infectious diseases’ worthiest adversary.
 1AR – No Disease Impact
pandemics won’t cause human extinction---global diseases are an alt cause
Sebastian Farquhar 1/23/17, director at Oxford's Global Priorities Project, Owen Cotton-Barratt, a
Lecturer in Mathematics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, John Halstead, Stefan Schubert, Haydn Belfield,
Andrew Snyder-Beattie, "Existential Risk Diplomacy and Governance", GLOBAL PRIORITIES PROJECT
2017, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf
1.1.3 Engineered pandemics For most of human history, natural pandemics have posed the greatest risk of mass global fatalities.37 However,
there are some reasons to believe that natural pandemics are very unlikely to cause human extinction. Analysis of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list database has shown that of the 833 recorded plant and animal species
extinctions known to have occurred since 1500, less than 4% (31 species) were ascribed to infectious disease.38
None of the mammals and amphibians on this list were globally dispersed, and other factors aside from
infectious disease also contributed to their extinction. It therefore seems that our own species, which is
very numerous, globally dispersed, and capable of a rational response to problems, is very unlikely to
be killed off by a natural pandemic. One underlying explanation for this is that highly lethal pathogens can kill their
hosts before they have a chance to spread, so there is a selective pressure for pathogens not to be
highly lethal. Therefore, pathogens are likely to co-evolve with their hosts rather than kill all possible
hosts.39

Containing the outbreaks solves despite trends

Julia Belluz, 16 – senior health correspondent for Vox News (Vox, “4 reasons disease outbreaks are
erupting around the world”, 5/31/16, http://www.vox.com/2016/5/31/11638796/why-there-are-more-
infectious-disease-outbreaks)
Here are four key reasons we're seeing an uptick in infectious diseases around the world: 1) More travel, trade, and

connectivity For most of history, humans lived in small, disparate bands that were relatively isolated from each other. "Only comparatively recently has there
been extensive contact between peoples, flora and fauna from both old and new worlds," write researchers in a paper on global transport and
infectious disease spread. The rise of sailing in the 1300s helped spread deadly plague around the world through rat populations carried on boats. And then the slave trade of the 16th and
17th centuries introduced Aedes aegypti — the mosquito type that today spreads viruses like Zika, yellow fever, and dengue — to the Americas from West Africa. These pathogens spread at a
relatively slow pace. It took more than 10 years for plague to spread across Europe, for example. Air travel changed all that. "The jet plane took off in the '70s and accelerated during the '80s
and '90s," said Duane Gubler, an infectious diseases specialist and former director of the division of vector-borne disease at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So now we have
this modern transportation or globalization that is moving animals, humans, commodities, and pathogens around the world." The movement of people and goods is happening at a faster rate
You can now travel pretty much anywhere in the world in a day. And unlike the plague lurching
and greater volume than at any other time.

a traveler can now bring a deadly strain of bird flu from China to Europe within 24 hours.
across Europe in the 1300s,

When a pathogen is introduced to a new place, people are biologically more susceptible to the disease,
since their immune systems have probably never been exposed and have no experience fending it off.
Doctors and health systems can also be caught off guard. This is one of the factors that helped the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa spiral out of control: the three most affected countries
had never experienced an outbreak of the virus before. "Clinicians had never managed cases," the World Health Organization reported. "No laboratory had ever diagnosed a patient specimen.
No government had ever witnessed the social and economic upheaval that can accompany an outbreak of this disease. Populations could not understand what hit them or why." Contrast that
with East Africa, which has had plenty of experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks over several decades. In Uganda, for example, as soon as an Ebola case is identified, public health officials
overwhelm all streams of media with messages about how to stay safe. People won't leave their houses out of fear of infection, and they immediately report suspected cases to surveillance
officials. It's one of the reasons Uganda has successfully stamped out about half a dozen Ebola outbreaks. This new context helped spread an old virus around quickly, leading to more than
15,000 cases and 11,000 deaths. 2) Urbanization an emerging humanitarian disaster"
—" Not only are people and goods traveling farther and at a
greater volume and speed than any other time in history, but people are also more likely to live in densely populated urban environments. More than half of the world's population now lives
in cities, and just about every country on the planet is becoming more urbanized. Global health researchers have called the trend "an emerging humanitarian disaster." That's because most
people don't live in relatively clean cities like Washington, DC, or Munich. "Most cities are unplanned, and many people — tens of millions — now live in crowded, unhygienic conditions," said
Gubler. Cities can be perfect breeding grounds for disease to spread. Consider the ongoing Zika outbreak in Brazil. Not only was this an old virus in a new country that caught health officials off
guard but Brazil's many cities also happened to be extremely hospitable to the virus. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries Zika, thrives alongside people. As Gubler wrote in this 2011
paper, "[It's] a highly domesticated urban mosquito that prefers to live with humans in their homes, feed on humans and lay eggs in artificial containers made by humans." (Think tires or
plastic cups.) Across Latin America, 113 million people (nearly one in five) live in slums. Many of these slums lack a clean and steady water supply, so people keep buckets filled with water
around their homes — ideal mosquito breeding grounds. Not to mention the fact that air conditioning isn't common, leaving bodies and homes warm and making them even more hospitable
to the disease-carrying bugs. Globally, unprecedented population growth following World War II has meant that not only are more people living in cities than ever before but populations are
also exploding into areas that were once inhabited only by other animals. Anytime humans interact with animals, there's a chance that a pathogen could make the leap across species and
sicken them. Today about three-quarters of new emerging infectious diseases are spread to humans by animals — a health threat that came with the rise of ajgriculture. As the historian Yuval
Harari writes in his sweeping history of humankind, Sapiens: "Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as small pox, measles, and
tuberculosis) originated in domesticated animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution." Today, this is still the case, whether it's chicken sellers sitting on the
streets of China risking exposure to bird flu or hunters in Guinea eating bushmeat that could be infected with the Ebola virus. "That’s why many of these infections come out of Africa or Asia,
where there's a strong link between humans, animals, and the environment," said Ali Khan, author of The Next Pandemic and the former director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness
and Response at the CDC. 3) Pervasive poverty means outbreaks will be worse When new viruses strike impoverished or weakened health systems,
they have a much greater chance of thriving and killing people. The 2014-'15 Ebola epidemic offers another illustrative example here. Every American infected with Ebola during that period
survived. The same wasn't true for the affected West Africans, 11,000 of whom died. The stark difference in outcomes had to do with money and access to health care: Patients with Ebola can
be kept alive through tried-and-true health measures — kidney dialysis, IV rehydration, antibiotics — and 24-hour hospital care. While that's possible at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland, it wasn't in many of the places where Ebola struck, like Gueckedou, Guinea. We're seeing a similar story play out right now with an outbreak of yellow fever in Angola.
More than 2,500 people have been infected with the virus, and 300 have died, in an ongoing outbreak. This outbreak could have been prevented. While there's no cure for yellow fever, a
vaccine was developed in 1936, and it's highly effective. Within three or four weeks after receiving the shot, nearly all people are protected from the virus. But in order for the vaccine to really
prevent outbreaks, many people need to be immunized. That's not happening in many parts of Africa, including Angola, where the virus is endemic. Starting in 2006, the World Health
Organization, with support from Gavi (an international organization focused on improving vaccine access), ramped up efforts to make sure at-risk communities got vaccinated. But many
countries on the continent still have vaccine coverage rates that are much too low to make the vaccine effective. So because of poverty and weak health systems, even when we have the
Politics and social factors play a determining role in whether or not you
technology to stop disease spread, we don't get to use it. "

have one or two cases — and whether or not you have an outbreak or pandemic," said Khan. "We probably
can't prevent the one to two cases. But we sure as heck can prevent the pandemic." 4) A warming
climate is helping fuel more disease outbreaks When we think about health, experts say, we need to start thinking about how environmental factors like
climate change can matter as much as — or sometimes even more than — our personal behaviors. In a report released in June 2015, The Lancet brought together the world’s leading experts
on environmental health. They argue that "[t]he implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development
and global health," including the spread of disease vectors. For example, Zika, dengue, and chikungunya are all spread by the Aedes mosquito. And one of the reasons researchers think Aedes
may be reaching new places —and more people — lately is climate change. (Mosquitoes thrive in warm and moist environments.) Bird flu, cholera, Lyme disease — researchers believe all are
being made worse by climate change. In his decades as a disease detective for the CDC, Khan has witnessed the expansion of vector-borne diseases in the US. "It’s already happening now," he

said. "And it's only going to continue to accelerate as our climate continues to get warmer, as we continue to have these extremes in rain fall, and weather events." Despite all
this, we're getting better at stopping outbreaks The researchers who published on the rise
of infectious disease outbreaks in The Royal Society also found that while the number of outbreaks was
increasing globally, the number of outbreak cases per capita was actually declining over time: "Our data suggest
that, despite an increase in overall outbreaks, global improvements in prevention, early detection, control and treatment are

becoming more effective at reducing the number of people infected." The researchers I spoke to also mentioned that we've
generally gotten better at detecting outbreaks and advancing medical technologies — vaccines,
medicines, diagnostics — needed to control spread. Where we fail, they all said, was in strengthening public health systems globally to reduce the
risk of a couple of cases turning into something much bigger and deadlier. For example, the vector control programs that started after the WWII, Gubler pointed out, have been victims of their
own success. "Health authorities couldn't see any sense in continuing to spend a lot of money to control diseases that weren't occurring, so the programs were disbanded," he explained. "At
the same time, many countries disbanded their public health infrastructure to deal with vector-borne diseases." This is another reason mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, dengue, and
Zika are on the rise. The money spent on public health has been in a steady free fall in the US in recent years. When health emergencies like Zika or Ebola hit, there's no emergency funding
what
mechanism to quickly get a response in place. And at the global level, the budget of the World Health Organization has been at a standstill and not adjusted for inflation for years. Yet

stopped the SARS and Ebola outbreaks from truly going global were simple, old-fashioned public health
measures like contact tracing and quarantines.