Glenn Kessler/waPo:
How Trump bobs and weaves to avoid the truth
The 26-minute interview that aired Oct. 14 was typical Trump — bobbing and weaving through a litany of false claims, misleading assertions and exaggerated facts. Trump again demonstrated what The Fact Checker has long documented: His rhetoric is fundamentally based on making statements that are not true, and he will be as deceptive as his audience will allow.
WaPo:
‘Blue wave’ or ‘left-wing mob’? Anti-Trump fervor fuels a new movement aimed squarely at winning elections.
President Trump’s political nightmare, a mother of two in a custom campaign polo, bounded down the driveway like a sweepstakes winner. She had just chatted up a shirtless Republican out to mow his lawn, and he liked what she said.
“He’s with me on the cost of health care and preexisting conditions,” Lorraine Wilburn, a first-time Democratic candidate for the Ohio statehouse, told her 11-year-old son, Finn. “He said he would take a look at me.”...
If the Nov. 6 midterm elections turn into what many Democrats hope will be a “blue wave,” swamping Republican majorities from Congress to state legislatures nationwide, it will have been powered in part by a new and sprawling network of activists on the left who, like Wilburn, have leaped into action over the past two years — energized by their deep desire to thwart the rise of Trump and his agenda.
WSJ:
Saudi operatives beat, drugged, killed and dismembered a dissident Saudi journalist in the presence of the kingdom’s top diplomat in Istanbul, Turkish officials said Tuesday, as Washington urged Riyadh to provide answers.
President Trump cautioned that Saudi Arabia should be considered innocent until proven guilty. His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on a visit to the kingdom, said Saudi leaders had “strongly denied” involvement and were conducting “a serious and credible investigation.”
And then Pompeo went to tell OJ he’s glad the real killers will someday be found.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
The pink resistance is growing
The irony is striking: At a time that President Trump and his most devoted fans — evangelicals — have abandoned any pretense that character and public morality matter, it is progressive women who have insisted that honesty, decency, respect and kindness count most of all.
This, above all.
Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:
Nate Silver will make one firm prediction about the midterms. Most journalists won’t want to hear it.
When Silver’s forecast had O’Rourke’s chances of upsetting Cruz at a 35 percent probability, the media chatter had it as almost a toss-up. Now that those chances have dropped to about 25 percent, the prevailing narrative has downgraded O’Rourke almost to dead-man-walking status.
“That’s not a night-and-day change, but that’s how it’s being talked about,” Silver said.
Which leads to his worry about coverage over the next few weeks, and particularly in the days leading up to Nov. 6.
“I get nervous about how people overstate things” he told me.
Pew research:
Little Partisan Agreement on the Pressing Problems Facing the U.S.
Wide gaps in how younger and older voters view the midterms
Majorities of registered voters who support Democratic candidates for Congress rate 13 of 18 issues as “very big” problems facing the country. Among voters who favor the Republican candidates in their districts, majorities rate only five issues as very big problems.
More striking, several of the issues that rank among the most serious problems among Democratic voters – including how minorities are treated by the criminal justice system, climate change, the rich-poor gap, gun violence and racism – are viewed as very big problems by fewer than a third of Republican voters.
For example, 71% of Democratic voters say the way racial and ethnic minorities are treated by the criminal justice system is a very big problem for the country, compared with just 10% of Republican voters. Other issues have a similarly large partisan gap: Democratic voters are 61 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say climate change is a very big problem and are 55 points more likely to say this about the gap between the rich and poor.
By contrast, illegal immigration is the highest-ranked national problem among GOP voters, but it ranks lowest among the 18 issues for Democratic voters (75% and 19%, respectively, say it is a very big problem).
Republicans: Kavanaugh
Democrats: health care
All you need to know to prove the point. And by the way, win or lose, fighting over Kavanaugh was the exact right fight to have.
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
Here's what should excite and depress Democrats so far in 2018
The biggest political questions facing Democrats, needless to say, all remain to be decided on election night. But that doesn't mean the tempestuous 2018 campaign season hasn't already sent important signals -- both encouraging and ominous -- about the Democrats' future against a Republican Party that Trump is reshaping in his image.
What follows is an attempt to identify some of the most important trends already evident on each side of that ledger for Democrats -- along with a few critical questions that remain very much to be decided.
The most encouraging trends for Democrats in 2018:
1. The white-collar suburban discontent with Trump is real and widespread.
What's discouraging for Democrats in 2018:
1. Trump 's provocations alone show few signs of improving the subpar turnout patterns among Latinos and millennials, two core Democratic constituencies.
Kevin McAlister/USA Today:
Trump Political Protection Plan: Replace Jeff Sessions with a Robert Mueller saboteur.
While we were all watching the Rosenstein crisis unfold, Trump was laying the groundwork for the biggest assault yet on the Mueller investigation: he aims to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with a little-known political ally — Sessions’ chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker. The Washington Post reported that Trump had talked to Whitaker himself about the job, and Trump did not deny it. "Well, I never talk about that, but I can tell you Matt Whitaker's a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker. But I never talk about conversations that I had," he said on Fox and Friends.
Then, Sunday night on CBS' 60 Minutes, he refused to pledge that he'd keep Sessions ("we'll see what happens" in the midterms) or that he wouldn't shut down the Mueller investigation. "I don't pledge anything," Trump said.