Aaron Blake/WaPo:
Michael Cohen’s three days of Capitol Hill testimony, explained
Why is this a big deal?
Cohen is the first member of Trump’s inner circle to provide eyewitness testimony about alleged misdeeds by the president. While other former aides have flipped and spoken to prosecutors, Cohen has spoken publicly and indicated that he thinks it’s his duty to atone for his own wrongdoing. And now that Democrats control the House, he has been given a platform.
Even before testifying, Cohen has spoken out repeatedly about Trump, has helped prosecutors implicate him in campaign finance violations and has reached a key plea deal with Mueller in which he admitted to lying about the Trump Tower Moscow effort.
WaPo:
Cohen plans scathing testimony about Trump, Russia and Stormy Daniels
According to a person familiar with his planned testimony, Cohen intends to paint Trump as a liar, a cheater and a racist during interviews with three congressional committees, two of which will take place behind closed doors. He is expected to share anecdotes about Trump’s behavior — Daniels alleged she had an affair with Trump years ago, a claim the president denies — as well as his financial dealings, the person said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe Cohen’s expected testimony.
Don’t telegraph it. just do it.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump’s propaganda machine is triumphally pre-spinning a grand exoneration out of the expectation that Mueller will not bring charges against Trump or his associates for conspiracy with Russian sabotage of our election. Savvy reporters are telling us that the Attorney General’s report to Congress on Mueller’s findings will disclose disappointingly little.
So let’s reconnect ourselves with two very fundamental realities that this whole affair has already brought to light:
- It has already been established that Trump himself committed very serious and extensive misconduct, and possibly crimes as well, and multiple of his top associates have already been confirmed to have committed extensive wrongdoing and numerous crimes. Trump repeatedly lied to the American people about this misconduct.
- It has already been established that a foreign power engaged in a wide ranging effort to corrupt our democracy for the purpose of electing Trump president, and that Trump and his associates eagerly benefited from and actively tried to participate in this scheme. Trump lied to the American people about this, too. And he engaged in extensive efforts to prevent a full accounting of all of it from taking place.
Some polling about of all things, the center.
Wason Center:
Independent Candidate May Have Significant Impact on Democratic Party’s Electoral Fortunes in 2020 Election
SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS
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Having an Independent candidate in the 2020 presidential race dramatically improves President Donald Trump’s chances of reelection.
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In a head-to-head match-up of the 2020 general election, Trump trails a generic Democratic Party nominee among likely voters by 11 points, 37% to 48%, with 9% of voters undecided.
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With an Independent in the race, the election becomes a statistical tie between Trump and his Democratic Party rival, 34% to 32%, with 16% going to the Independent and 16% undecided.
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An analysis of voters who selected the Independent option after initially selecting Trump or the generic Democrat reveals that for every voter Trump loses, the Democrat loses 5.
Jen Rubin/WaPo:
Democratic voters aren’t where a lot of Democratic candidates are
We’ve repeatedly pointed out that, contrary to the conventional wisdom and the rhetoric of many Democratic presidential contenders, the party itself favors moderation. We saw this vividly in 2018 when moderates won primaries and went on to knock out incumbent Republicans, while the forces of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) failed to flip a single House seat from red to blue. And yet the myth of a hyper-progressive party lives on, most likely because some of the more articulate media figures and candidates encourage the perception. And with the right-wing media machine delighted to focus on the most progressive Democrats so as to support the “Socialist!” scream, it is easy to come to the conclusion that moderates are in retreat. That doesn’t make it true.
The most recent piece of evidence for the primacy of moderates comes from the Pew Research Center:
Among Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, somewhat more say they want the Democratic Party to move in a more moderate (53%) than more liberal (40%) direction. These views are about the same as they were following the 2014 midterm elections. In November 2016, after Trump’s presidential election victory, a somewhat greater share of Democrats (49%) wanted the party to head in a more liberal direction.
Now, the definition of what makes a moderate — like the definition of what makes a conservative (anti-constitutional, pro-debt and Russia-friendly, these days) — may change over time. Moderates in today’s Democratic Party are defenders of Obamacare and incremental movement toward universal coverage, something that only a few years ago would have been seen as quite progressive.
If you want a party moving to the extremes, take a look at the Republicans. “Nearly six-in-ten Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters (58%) say they want the GOP to move in a more conservative direction, compared with 38% who want it to move in a more moderate direction,” Pew tells us.
The Big Tent Democrats have room for everyone, but want a place for moderates. Republicans are purists who want to kick moderates out. I’m fine with ex-Republicans going indy and voting D. I’m fine with indy progressives voting D. But we need to be open to anyone joining the party.
An opinion:
It’s getting nasty already. And on this, I’m a both sides-er. I (and most voters) do not want to relitigate 2016, either side. I am going with this (listen to the candidate, not the spox) with my naivety blinkers firmly on my nose:
Arguably, Bernie’s had the best roll out so far ($$$ and poll bump). Except that this happened:
Paul Waldman/WaPo with counterpoint to the centrist idea, including from the Republican side (doesn’t help them):
Do Democrats really have to worry about the left? Actually, not so much.
If you were a moderate Democrat elected to Congress in 2018, you might worry about how the sweeping proposals from your more liberal colleagues will reflect on you. Are the voters in my swing district going to think I’m some kind of far leftist, too? Should I make efforts to signal my centrism so they don’t turn against me? Will that work?
The answer, according to some fascinating new data, appears to be no. In fact, there is a strong case to be made that in congressional elections — especially for the House — the general election barely matters anymore. All the action is in the primary. Once that’s over, you can be a liberal Democrat or a moderate Democrat, and you’ll do just as well.
That goes against what political professionals have believed pretty much forever. Members of Congress spend a good deal of time worrying about how this or that vote will be received back in their districts, and about whether they’ve constructed an ideological profile that matches their constituents.
Of course, it’s all about the district.
Speaking of centrists, here’s an analysis of April Israeli elections (Monkey Cage/WaPo):
Two more findings stand out. First, our statistical analysis rules out other explanations. Centrist voters do not exhibit unique demographic, social or ideological traits compared with voters for rightist or leftist parties. Second, a distinctive centrist base has emerged since 2006. Even as the parties themselves come and go, the majority of centrist voters in one election had voted for another centrist party in the previous election.
Ambiguity helps in getting elected but not in being reelected.
These findings imply that Gantz is helped, not hurt, by the vagueness of his message. Yet our analysis also reveals the limits of this help. As previous one-hit-wonder parties have discovered, it is easier to appeal to dissonant voters than to deliver on an ambiguous platform once in office. A robust centrist solution, one that involves neither negotiations with the Palestinians nor continued occupation, is still missing, if it is even possible.
Too long, didn’t read? Centrists have an easier time getting elected than re-elected.
Good. These are implacable opponents who need to be defeated. Vaccine hesitant parents are trying to do the right thing with their kids, but these folks prey on them. While medical exemptions are legit and not on the table. personal exemptions put the entire community at risk.
Hey, some of them probably can’t read at all.
Well, since this may be an unpopular ideas day (which still need an airing), how about this one from David Byler/WaPo?
Beto for president is a bad idea. To help his party, he needs to run for Senate.
He should take the leap for Senate. If he wins in Texas, he can build a long, potentially very successful political career. If he fails, he’ll probably lose his golden-boy status but he’ll have helped his party build strength in a state where they want to be competitive. He could try to run for both at the same time, but I don’t know that Texas Democrats are going to want to share their Senate candidate with 49 other states. And he could run only for president and swear off all other offices. If he does that, he really could win the nomination and beat Trump.
But the more likely outcome is that he loses the primaries and, unless he gets picked as someone’s running mate, has nowhere to go from there. O’Rourke is far from the favorite in both the Senate and presidential races. But if he’s a team player, he’ll pick the Senate race — which would help his party more than a long-shot White House run.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
Trump’s ideology isn’t populism. It’s catastrophism.
A friend on a long car trip took the opportunity of listening to conservative talk radio along the way. He reported: “Right-wing talk radio is using language that can’t get much more apocalyptic. It’s all about coups, and Mueller as a Soviet-style prosecutor, and the left wanting to destroy America, and off-the-charts rage at the media.”
The ruling ideology of the Trump era, it seems, is not populism but catastrophism. Trump’s intellectual vanguard, though puny in number, makes up for it in hyperventilation.
When Michael Anton dubbed the 2016 presidential contest “the Flight 93 election,” in which conservatives had to “charge the cockpit” or die, Donald Trump’s supporters did not dismiss it as the poorly written, racially tinged, half-baked, over-caffeinated effusions of an adolescent intellect. Instead, they took it as reporting from the culture war’s front lines.