Merry Christmas, everyone!!! It’s snowing!! What movie and which Chinese restaurant are you going to today?
WaPo:
Departing GOP lawmakers warn that their party could lose majorities in 2018
“When you look at some of the audiences cheering for Republicans sometimes, you look out there and you say, ‘Those are the spasms of a dying party,’ ” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said on ABC’s “This Week.” “By and large, we’re appealing to older white men, and there are just a limited number of them.”
“Clearly the Republican Party, my party, is going to experience losses. It remains to be seen whether we’ll lose the majority,” Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.) said, appearing on the same program. “I tell my colleagues, look, we’re going to be running into a head wind, you’ve got to be prepared for the worst. . . . It’s going to be a very tough year.”…
“Before Donald Trump became president, the litmus test, it was really about the ideological purity and conformity” with Republican ideas, Dent said. “Now the litmus test has changed: It’s loyalty to the man.”
“If I set myself on fire for them, they would complain that the temperature of the flame isn’t hot enough,” the GOP lawmaker said, explaining how Trump was “a factor” in his decision to retire after his term ends next year. “It’s not about ideology anymore, it’s about loyalty to the president.”
NY Times:
Black Turnout in Alabama Complicates Debate on Voting Laws
Even before a defiant Roy S. Moore stood at a lectern this month and refused to concede the Alabama Senate race, one political reality was clear: An extraordinary turnout among black voters had helped push Doug Jones to a rare Democratic victory in this state.
That turnout, in which registered black voters appeared to cast ballots at a higher rate than white ones, has become the most recent reference point in the complicated picture about race and elections laws.
At issue, at a time when minorities are becoming an increasingly powerful slice of the electorate, is how much rules like Alabama’s voter ID law serve as a brake on that happening. The turnout by black voters in Alabama raises a question: Did it come about because voting restrictions were not as powerful as critics claim or because voters showed up in spite of them?
Read these weets together:
Yoni Applebaum/Atlantic:
A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll recently found that 24 percent of respondents strongly approved of Trump’s performance in office, and another 17 percent somewhat approved; 56 percent strongly or somewhat disapproved. (Those numbers are roughly in line with the average of other recent polls.) Ratings that tilt so far negative usually presage electoral setbacks for the president’s party—and indeed, the past year has seen Republican candidates underperform at the polls, on average, by wide margins.
But the more worrisome finding in that same poll may be the question that Trump himself most cares about: Would respondents vote for Trump if he runs for reelection? Fifty-two percent indicated they’d support a generic Democrat; just 36 percent backed Trump, and only 18 percent said they’d definitely vote for him.
Those findings, taken together, suggest that at least a quarter of those who tell pollsters they strongly approve of his performance aren’t certain they’ll vote for him next time around; at least one in eight of those with positive views aren’t even willing to affirm that they will probably vote for him.
Ruth Marcus/WaPo:
I’ve never loved my country more
Moral Americans — and the Alabama Senate results suggest there remains, pardon the phrase, a moral majority — recoil at the president’s support for a candidate credibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old, at his incessant lies, at his (and his family’s) unabashed willingness to use government service as just another pocket-lining opportunity. This litany is made all the more disgusting by the complicity of so many members of his party.
And yet, I am thankful for Trump in this sense: He has unleashed my inner patriot. I love my country, for all its flaws and for all its flawed leader.
Margaret Renkl/NY Times:
The day of the election, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, identified the biggest loser in Alabama: Christian faith itself. From now on, Mr. Galli wrote, “When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation.”
Christianity presents a conundrum for evangelicals considering a monstrous political candidate who is also a Christian. The very foundation of our faith lies in the infinite mercy of a loving God, and it’s hard for an ordinary sinner to cast the first stone. Last year I asked an evangelical friend how she could bring herself to support a presidential candidate like Donald Trump, whose behavior is so at odds with her own. “He says he’s changed,” she said, “and I believe in God’s redemption. If I didn’t, how could I get out of bed in the morning?”
I believe in redemption myself, though if I were in charge I think I’d be looking for evidence of repentance, too. And I’d be asking why people so deeply invested in redemption also tend to be so deeply invested in sending their fellow human beings to death row. But I’m trying to understand the country I’ve found myself in since last year’s election, and these days I look hard for common ground.
Robert Schlesinger/US News:
So Long 2017, You Won't Be Missed
Little went well in 2017 but maybe 2018 will be better
That the other party is manifest incompetence at fully implementing its agenda is cold comfort in the face of the Democrats' generalized powerlessness. And that fact of being shut out of control of all three branches of government (made all the more galling by the fact that Clinton got 3 million more votes last year than Trump) may spur Democrats to start adopting destructive Republican tactics. So Democrats have at least toyed with the idea of shutting the government down in order to maximize their leverage on things like immigration policy.
This is not to say that 2017 has been without good moments or glimmers of hope for the future. Moore lost and the Obamacare-repeal movement proved itself politically poisonous. And the #MeToo moment is spurring a much-needed and long overdo round of discussion and national self-reflection about how men abuse their power in relation to the women with whom they work. (Brace yourself for the backlash, though, which you could see when Trump basically accused New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of being a prostitute.)
And 2018 could further temper shambling Trumpism: The Republican margin in the Senate will be down to 51 seats; and the 2018 midterm elections hold out the possibility of giving Democrats the power to put a real check on Trump's depredations. But November is an awfully long way away.
Nevertheless the new year impends and brings with it fresh potential for positive change. Welcome 2018, you can't get here fast enough.
Annie Lowrey/Atlantic:
The Trickle-Down Mythmaking Begins
Several companies gave out raises after tax cuts passed Congress. But that was probably already going to happen anyway.
Contrary to companies’ stated reasoning, many of those wage increases and bonuses would have happened anyway, it seems, given how low the unemployment rate is right now. Though wage growth has been in a long-term slump, paychecks are finally rising as the jobless rate has fallen below 5 percent and stayed there, with earnings growing the fastest for the lowest-wage workers. Plus, 18 states are raising their minimum wages in 2018, requiring businesses to pay out an estimated $5 billion more to 4.5 million workers.
Given those dynamics, businesses are likely using the tax cuts in part as a way to advertise pay increases that were already planned and to curry favor with the Trump administration and Republicans on the Hill. To wit: Wells Fargo waffled onwhether its pay increases had anything to do with tax reform, first saying they did not and then correcting the record and saying they did. “Minimum pay is a topic that we continue to review as part of our efforts to attract and retain talent, and we have been on a path to increasing the minimum hourly rate,” a spokesman told The Los Angeles Times.