Despite trailing in the polls and with little enthusiasm among the base, Republicans continue to complacently sleepwalk into the midterm elections. In contrast, there is real energy and enthusiasm on the Left. 

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Congress’ only self-identified democratic socialist, campaigned Friday with the movement’s newest star, New York City congressional candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old former bartender who defeated one of the most powerful House Democrats last month.

Her victory fed a flame that was already beginning to burn brighter. The [Democratic Socialists of America] DSA’s paid membership has hovered around 6,000 in the years before Trump’s election, said Allie Cohn, a member of the group’s national political team.

Last week, its paid membership hit 45,000 nationwide.

[Democratic socialism rising in the age of Trump, by Steve Peoples, AP, July 21, 2018]

Even in deep-red areas, Americans are tired of low wages and paying too much for health care. So what is the solution of the Koch Brothers, the Republican superdonors? Import more Third Worlders who will vote for socialism and reduce wages. 

As the son of Mexican migrant workers and a veteran of the George W. Bush Administration, Daniel Garza has been frustrated by President Donald Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration.

To push back on it, he’s revving up a grassroots effort to lobby Congress, backed by the billion brothers Charles and David Koch.

As head of the conservative mega-donors’ LIBRE Initiative aimed at Hispanics, Garza will be organizing five public rallies in the next week aimed at shaking loose a congressional stalemate on immigration, highlighting yet another looming deadline for courts to decide how to handle children who came to the country illegally...

LIBRE and other parts of the Koch machine — including the powerful grassroots-focused Americans for Prosperity — have made clear they want a path for immigrants in the country illegally to earn citizenship, for children brought to the country illegally to be protected, for families who are stopped at the border to stay together.

[Koch Brothers mount grassroots effort to support immigration, by Philip Elliott, Time, July 20, 2018]

Leftists, no matter how extreme, always enjoy wealthy backers making sure they can organize and build real institutions. In contrast, rightists have to work hard to overcome the donors that are ostensibly "on their side." The sociopathic short-sightedness of the Koch Brothers risks destroying the entire country, as well as the Republican Party, as it is precisely by serving the interests of people like them that the GOP is turning capitalism itself into a dirty word. Yet rather than recoginizing the threat, the Koch Brothers want the GOP to double down on governing as a party of the donor class. This strategy can't win, but if they can force the GOP to follow, the Koch Brothers will ensure the Republicans (and President Trump) will lose.

There is one consolation if the Koch Brothers get their way. The Third Worlders they love so much will still consider them just more white racists and confiscate their wealth.