Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The Trump pivot: Make the plutocrats happy. Keep feeding his voters nativism.
Everyone in Washington is struggling to make sense of Donald Trump’s reversals on multiple issues. The Post reports that “establishment” Republicans are relieved to see him governing more as one of them, as evidenced by his new support for NATO and the Export-Import Bank. Meanwhile, the rising influence of Goldman Sachs banker Gary Cohn inside the administration has some discerning a more “moderate” and “centrist” Trump on various issues, such as our posture on trade with China, and others seeing the emergence of a “pragmatic” Trump.
But please — let’s not forget two really important storylines that continue to mark the Trump presidency, both of which are damaging the country. First, for all the talk about how Trump is backing off of Stephen K. Bannon’s “economic nationalism,” Trump remains fully committed to the policies that embody the nativist and xenophobic side of his nationalism. Second, for all the chatter about how Trump is suddenly getting more conventional, his serial shredding of our norms on ethics and transparency continues to run rampant.
Cleek’s Law (2010):
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
Jay Bookman/AJC:
Opinion: Our politics is no longer about policy, or even ideology
And on and on it goes. When you marvel at Republican inability to formulate coherent policy on health care, on Syria and the Middle East or any other issue, I again refer you to the charts above. For decades now, the centerpole of conservative thought has been to oppose liberal thought. As a result, when put in a position to enact policies of their own, they have none. It’s like a drunk who has spent all night leaning against a lamppost for support. Take away the lamppost, and he collapses.
And again, the true source of that resentment isn’t political in the first place, which also means it cannot be addressed through politics. Its inspirations are demographic, generational, economic, technological and religious. It is also a reaction against a media culture that conservatives find increasingly antagonistic and dismissive, and often, I’ll admit, for very good reason.
Yet for the most part, all of those things are and ought to be well outside the control of government. In fact, the irony is that a government that is powerful and intrusive enough to alter such trends would contradict everything that the “small-government” Republicans have claimed until now to support.
I’m hopeful that too won’t change, but on some days I do have my doubts.
CNN:
Jeff Sessions ushers in 'Trump era' at the Justice Department
In just over two months, Sessions has proved to be a central figure in effectuating Trump's vision for America in tangible ways on immigration, crime, police reform and civil rights.
He and Steve Bannon are what’s most wrong with the Trump WH. To celebrate what they do is to celebrate racism and anti-Semitism.
Josh Marshall on Trump and Russia:
But this assumption has tended to hide an extremely relevant story in plain site: namely, Donald Trump had and continues to have extensive and deep ties and business dependence on organized crime figures in the US, Russia, Ukraine and a host of other countries. If we'd never heard about Russian intelligence hacking of the 2016 election or Carter Page or Paul Manafort or Sergei Kislyak this would seem like an extraordinarily big deal. And indeed it is an extraordinarily big deal.
What that means is that we - as reporters and as a concerned public - should probe these relationships on their own terms just as much as the most logical place to hunt looking for the evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Bill Scher/Politico on The Meaning Of It All :
What Kansas Didn’t Do for Democrats
Still, it’s difficult to fully separate what’s happening in Washington from a congressional election, and what’s happening is a Republican meltdown. And that may be sapping enthusiasm among GOP voters nationwide.
Before last night, there was some evidence of depleted Republican energy in other special elections. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn reported last week, Republicans suffered a 5-point turnout drop in a Delaware state legislative race. And in the early vote for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, he wrote, “[Democratic] turnout is running about twice as high as it did at this point in 2014, while Republican turnout is about half what it was.” These are hopeful signs for Democrats, but they are only wisps of data.
Amy Walter/Cook Political Report:
Conclusion:
It’s easy to understand why the Bannon/Kushner narrative is so appealing. It is, after all, the story of the modern GOP in the age of Trump. Will this be a populist/nationalist administration, hell bent on breaking norms and shattering the status-quo (a.k.a. Bannon)? Or, will it settle down into the more traditional global/free market agenda of previous GOP presidents (a.k.a. Kushner)? This narrative, however, misses the bigger, more profound point. This is a fight that can’t be “won.” This tension between these two philosophies - not the outcome - is what will continue to define Trump for the foreseeable future. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. But, these two philosophies are going to be present throughout the Trump era.
However, the actually fighting (and leaking) between the two camps in the White House is taking a serious toll. Voters are more attached to accomplishment than they are to ideology. The more dysfunctional the White House, the harder it is to do—or show—any achievement.
Tom Edsall/NY Times:
For the moment, the Democratic Party is forced to stand by and watch the Trump spectacle, unable to enact policies to address the issues Spross, Brynjolfsson, and McAfee raise. Would better candidates help to enlarge the electorate to appeal to voters whose primary concerns are economic?
One place to look toward is the West, where such Democratic governors as Jay Inslee of Washington, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Steve Bullock of Montana preside.
All three have been elected and re-elected in competitive states where to survive politically they have had to balance urban and non-metro bread-and-butter interests.
Shifting the focus of attention onto politicians like these would be a modest first step, but for a party struggling to regain its foothold, a modest first step would be a major achievement. The question going forward is whether Democrats can compete more effectively and more efficiently for the votes of those who have been left behind. They should set themselves this challenge.
Sean McElwee/Demos:
What propelled Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 election? Though the foggy aftermath of the election left us with many competing theories, only now are the data to test them coming out. The recently released American National Election Studies (ANES) survey can give us some insights into the different racial attitudes of Clinton supporters, Trump supporters and Obama to Trump voters.
How Racism Benefited Trump
First, I examined feeling thermometer scores, which ask respondents to rate their feelings for different groups from 0 (coldest) to 100 (warmest). As the chart below shows, Trump voters have colder feelings towards African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Black Lives Matter and undocumented immigrants than Clinton voters. Obama to Trump voters have scores similar to Trump voters, and are colder on views about Black Lives Matter.
WSJ:
Congress Feels Squeeze From Sputtering Health Law Overhaul
Centrist Republicans in Democratic-leaning districts face particularly furious constituents
After nearly two hours of fielding mostly health-care questions from hundreds of rowdy constituents at a full auditorium here this week, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman threw up his arms in frustration.
“Those of you on the extreme left will never be satisfied,” he told the group of about 500 people assembled at a town hall here at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The crowd erupted in boos.
The congressman was right that many in the crowd were Democrats. But they aren’t Mr. Coffman’s only angry constituents.
Centrist Republicans like Mr. Coffman in districts won by Democrat Hillary Clinton are in a particularly precarious position on health care going into next year’s midterm elections.