Jonathan Martin/NY Times:
The contrast between what Democrats in Washington are consumed by and what their candidates are running on illustrates an emerging challenge for the party as the president becomes ever more engulfed in controversy: For all the misfortunes facing their foe in the White House, Democrats have yet to devise a coherent message on the policies that President Trump used to draw working-class voters to his campaign.
And at least for now, the voters whom Democrats need to win back are more focused on their own troubles than those of the president.
After a campaign in which they learned the hard way that an anti-Trump message was insufficient, Democrats are again grappling with how to balance responding to Mr. Trump’s apparent transgressions and devising an affirmative policy agenda of their own.
Paul Kane/WaPo:
For Democrats, special elections may be preview of 2018 campaigns
Democrats are heading into the homestretch of three special elections over the next month amid a national frenzy over the investigation into the possible connections of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interference in the election.
Yet in all three races, Democrats have made a tactical decision not to turn the contests into a referendum on Trump’s alleged scandals and instead are focusing on policy decisions by the president and congressional Republicans.
Democratic strategists privately say that this might be the recurring theme through the November 2018 midterm elections. Democrats say that they have learned a lesson from the 2016 elections, in which House Democratic candidates relentlessly focused their campaigns on trying to tie Republican incumbents to the personal scandals of Trump or some of his more outlandish policy statements.
Dave Weigel/WaPo:
The Seth Rich conspiracy shows how fake news still works
On July 10, at 4:19 a.m., gunfire was detected in the District's Bloomingdale neighborhood. Not five minutes later, police found Seth Rich, a 27-year-old Democratic National Committee staffer, lying on the ground, dying from a bullet wound to his back. A conscious Rich was transported to the hospital; by daybreak, he was dead.
Nearly one year later, Rich's death remains one of America's thousands of unsolved murders — and the focus of endless conspiracy theories, spread this past week by Fox News, alt-right social media, a local D.C. news station and the Russian embassy in Britain. The reemergence of the conspiracy theory this week, which did not lack for real news, revealed plenty about the fake news ecosystem (or to use BuzzFeed's useful phrase, “the upside-down media”) in the Trump era. It also happened to cause untold pain for the Rich family, which has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the so-called private investigator who led this dive back into the fever swamp.
Neal Katyal/WaPo:
Trump or Congress can still block Robert Mueller. I know. I wrote the rules.
First, most simply, Trump could order Mueller fired. Our Constitution gives the president the full prosecution power in Article II; accordingly, any federal prosecutor works ultimately for the president. That constitutional reality is not something we could write around with a regulation. Instead, we opted to try to focus accountability for any such activity. The regulations provide that Mueller can “be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the Attorney General” (again, Rosenstein here, because Sessions is recused) and only for “good cause.” The president, therefore, would have to direct Rosenstein to fire Mueller — or, somewhat more extravagantly, Trump could order the special-counsel regulations repealed and then fire Mueller himself. Either of those actions was unthinkable to us back in 1999, for we understood that President Richard Nixon’s attempt in this regard ultimately led to his downfall. At the same time, after Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey this month, many things once thought beyond the realm of possibility look less so now.
Twitter is making fun of left leaning conspiracy theory (sealed indictments against Trump, in this case):
Michael Tomasky/NY Times:
The Spring of G.O.P. Discontent
First, most of what the Republicans are hoping to do simply isn’t popular. Big tax cuts for the rich and even for major corporations, which are more justified substantively, aren’t popular. Enormous budget cuts aren’t popular. Replacing Obamacare with something resembling the health care bill the House passed, recent polling shows, would be horrendously unpopular.
Second, Mr. Trump is unpopular. It’s still too early for post-Comey fallout polls, but right now his approval rating is at just under 40 percent. He got 46 percent of the popular vote last November. That means he’s lost 13 percent of his voters. If he gets down to the mid-30s, he will have lost around a quarter of his own voters — who were, remember, a minority to begin with.
Numbers like that make doing big things difficult. Ronald Reagan was above 60 percent when he signed that tax bill in October 1986 (his rating quickly plummeted the next month, when the Iran-contra affair broke). When you’re at 60 percent and you tell America that your tax bill is great and should pass, that’s one thing. When you’re at 40 percent and half the country thinks it’s scandalous that you’re even still the president, that’s another.
Third, pay attention to these two coming special elections to fill vacant House seats. The first happens soon, on Thursday. It’s in Montana. It’s a very Republican district — in fact it’s the whole state, Montana’s population entitling it to just a single at-large representative. The Cook Political Report rates it Republican +11 — basically a default Republican seat.
This piece is fascinating, a look at last week’s CA Dem convention from a party regular:
It’s not a rehash of the primaries, it’s what’s going on right now. So here’s the thing: if you want to be part of the party, you have to accept the party. That means persuading, not stonewalling or insisting that you’re right to the point of obstruction. That means fighting hard to win and accepting when you lose. It goes for everyone. It isn’t hard, but you can make it hard. Or controversial, when it’s really not. Right now, the focus is winning back the House, and that means working for unity, not division. And keeping our eye on this as well:
Washington Examiner:
GOP fears Trump will take the Republican Party down with him
Republicans in Congress fear President Trump could torpedo their majorities if he doesn't save his White House from constant crisis and pivot to the issues voters elected him to deal with.
Trump has been besieged by his handling of the firing of James Comey, reports he had previously pressured the FBI director to drop the investigation of national security adviser Mike Flynn, and the discovery that he shared classified information with Russian officialsin an Oval Office meeting.
Republicans have grown accustomed to Trump's tumult, tending to downplay it because the president has weathered past challenges that might have sunk conventional politicians. But this is different, lawmakers and GOP strategists conceded Tuesday, in interviews with the Washington Examiner.
Evan Siegfried is a Republican conservative; note the lack of enthusiasm for the safety net cuts.
WaPo:
Trump turmoil is spreading far beyond Washington to state and local races
While many Republicans are frustrated by what is going on in Washington, polls have shown that Trump remains popular with most members of the party and continues to be viewed positively by his base.
Trump also could try to energize his voters next year by blaming Washington’s problems on the hostile establishment he says he is fighting.
However, it remains an open question how many of the blue-collar and other nontraditional GOP voters who backed Trump will turn out for other Republicans when he is not on the ballot. At the same time, Democratic voters tend not to turn out as strongly in nonpresidential years.
MSN:
Public approval of President Donald Trump has dropped to its lowest level since his inauguration, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, after Trump was accused of mishandling classified information and meddling with an FBI investigation.
The May 14-18 opinion poll found that 38 percent of adults approved of Trump while 56 percent disapproved. The remaining 6 percent had "mixed feelings."
Americans appear to have soured on Trump after a tumultuous week in the White House during which the president fought back a steady drumbeat of critical news reports that ramped up concerns about his administration’s ties to Russia.