The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.
We all know what was coming. Even Susan Collins knew. Well, maybe she knew. I mean, she can’t be that dumb, right? so she must have been lying.
In any case, she owns this.
Frederick E Hoxie/USA today:
Trump impeachment acquittal is bad news for democracy, but history shows us how to cope
We have been here before. Our predecessors dug in and took it one topic, one government failure and one election at a time. We should, too.
Changes came but not quickly
The pictures were gripping, but politicians in 1890 were more concerned with the operation of their political machines and winning partisan battles over tariffs and the gold standard. Sweatshops continued to proliferate, while children, sharecroppers and industrial workers labored on in obscurity. The rich enjoyed their privileged lives, protected by the absence of wage and labor laws, public health standards, environmental controls and a federal income tax.
Joe Walsh/WaPo:
Challenging Trump for the GOP nomination taught me my party is a cult
Real conservatives think for themselves. Trump Republicans have been brainwashed.
My chances are slim — don’t worry, I know.
It’s been made even tougher by the party canceling primaries to shield the president from being challenged. And by Fox News, and the rest of Trump’s lapdog conservative media, denying me airtime. But I’ve been on TV, I’ve served in Congress and I hosted my own talk-radio show. I don’t need the airtime. More than anything else, what’s made this challenge nearly impossible — to a degree that I didn’t fully realize when I first hit the trail — is how brainwashed so many of my fellow Republicans seem to have become. I hate to say it, but the GOP now resembles a cult.
I was already sensing this, but I was slapped hard in the face this past week at the Iowa caucuses: Last Thursday, the president came to Des Moines for one of his narcissistic rallies. I was in Des Moines, too, so I tried to talk to some folks outside the event before they went in — makes sense, right? Here’s a captive audience of Republican voters. But it turned out to be one of the most frustrating (and frankly, sad) experiences I can recall. I asked dozens of people a very simple, straightforward question: “Has President Trump ever told a lie to the American people?” And every single person said, “No.” Never mind that thousands of his misstatements have been meticulously documented. No, they said, he’s never lied.
Steve Koczela/WBUR:
The Outcomes, Not The Vote Count Meltdown, Show Why Iowa Can’t Go First Anymore
The outcomes are more than just who got how many votes (however that’s counted) or who ends up with more state delegate equivalents (whatever those are). They also include perceived momentum and viability, positive media coverage, fundraising, and the benefits that come with each. On that score, this primary cycle offers a very clear illustration that it’s the candidates who appeal to white voters who benefit at the expense of everyone else.
Joe Biden has led in most national polls for months, and his support among black voters has far outpaced his rivals. A Pew survey in the lead up to Iowa found Biden with 36% of the black vote nationally, over 20 points more than any other candidate, echoing many other surveys. Of course there is no national primary, but these figures provide a pretty good indication of how different the process — and resulting media narrative — would be if white voters didn’t get a head start.
Dallas was a Pete win.
LA Times:
How Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders split Iowa voters
A closer look at the results shows that different areas and demographic groups pushed the two candidates ahead of the pack. Here's how it played out.
Sanders in the cities, Buttigieg in the burbs
Buttigieg did well across the state, winning the Des Moines suburbs, a crucial battleground, and many smaller towns. Sanders’ victories were concentrated in more densely populated cities, like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
FiveThirtyEight:
Election Update: Buttigieg Is Rising In New Hampshire
Today’s piece of good news for the Buttigieg campaign was an NBC News/Marist poll of New Hampshire, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, that showed Sanders at 25 percent and Buttigieg at 21 percent. (They were followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 14 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 13 percent and Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 8 percent. However, New Hampshire is probably just a two-person race — our model thinks there is only a 7 percent chance that someone other than Sanders or Buttigieg wins.) In Marist’s last New Hampshire poll, conducted Jan. 20-23, Sanders had 22 percent and Buttigieg had 17 percent, so they both did a bit better in the latest poll — although the differences were within the margin of error. Still, no other candidate experienced a boost of more than 1 percentage point.
And given the evidence from other polls, it seems safe to say that Buttigieg, at least, is on the upswing in New Hampshire. Both Suffolk University/Boston Globe/WBZ-TV and 7 News/Emerson College have been conducting tracking polls of the Granite State, and the latest installment of each was released late last night. And the trend is clear:
Bernie is flat, and Pete is rising. But NH voters make up their mind late and we had a debate last night so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Click the link for the updated coronavirus dashboard from Johns Hopkins.
Key words are potential and serious.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
The media stumbles in covering Trump
President Trump engaged in a post-impeachment trial event — a rant really — at the White House. He appeared unhinged, angry and resentful in what was billed as a speech but amounted to a disjointed stream of consciousness. The diatribe lasted more than an hour in the East Room of the White House, not normally the setting for a political harangue. To the consternation, I am sure, of Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who expressed the belief that Trump had learned his lesson (she later said it was “aspirational”), he was not contrite. More important, he was not composed nor in control of himself.
He struck out at Democrats as “evil,” “vicious” and “corrupt” people; expressed anger that “nothing happens” to Hillary Clinton (the Justice Department found no grounds for anything); called the FBI “scum" and “dirty cops”; weirdly recounted in gruesome terms the shooting of Republican House whip Steve Scalise (R-La.); and took a veiled swipe at Hunter Biden. (With not a shred of self-awareness, he declared, “They think that’s okay, because if it is — is Ivanka in the audience? Is Ivanka here? — boy, my kids could make a fortune. They could make a fortune. It’s corrupt.” They have, and it is.)
Danielle Carr/The Nation:
Why Doctors Are Fighting Their Professional Organization Over Medicare for All
Calls for single-payer are coming from outside the American Medical Association—and show that doctors are not a single class of workers with a unified political view.
Even in the AMA, change is in the air. In June 2019, the medical students’ chapter introduced a proposal to strike down the AMA’s unconditional opposition to single-payer. The students were narrowly defeated, 53 to 47 percent, in the organization’s policy-setting House of Delegates. Pressure from within has forced the AMA to withdraw from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, an industry coalition of insurance and hospital lobbies opposed to single-payer. As public support for Medicare for All continues to enjoy widespread support, the AMA’s inflexibility increasingly looks as if it could disqualify the group from a seat at the policy-making table in the future.
Here are two separate but related concepts from outside our bubble: Trump re-election and M4A not happening. I think the first is 50-50 and not a lock. Wall Street political forecasts aren’t any better than anyone else’s — see 2008 — and they like to gamble, but the second… may be close to correct.
NY Times on an ongoing farm and corruption issue we’re following that highlights ways to talk to those non college areas:
Farm Bailout Paid to Brazilian Meat Processor Angers Lawmakers
Lawmakers want to know why a Brazilian-owned company got payments from a program aimed to help American farmers weather President Trump’s trade war.
About $67 million in bailout funds have gone to JBS USA, the subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s biggest meat-processing firm.
Lawmakers have argued that a company with foreign-held ownership should be getting more scrutiny, particularly one that encountered legal troubles three years ago. In 2017, two of JBS S.A.’s former top executives, brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista, pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Brazil.
The Batista family, through a holding company, remains the largest shareholder of JBS S.A.