Ron Brownstein/CNN:
Even as the White House this week firmly insists President Donald Trump is determined to seek a second term, a new analysis of polling data shows that he's caught in a three-way political squeeze in the states that tipped the 2016 presidential race, and will likely decide the 2020 contest...
But these poll results challenge the conclusion that Trump's political base has remained impregnable across the traditionally decisive swing states in presidential politics -- as well as several other states that each side hopes to put into play by 2020. "The implications going forward are fairly problematic," says long-time Republican pollster Glen Bolger. "He doesn't have a lot of room to drop, and yet he is."
It has been the case that the Trump base remains relatively solid, but major cracks there are showing, as his support erodes with everyone else. And it’s everyone else that matters most. Without the support of the enablers, Trump would never have been elected. His low poll standing is basically because he’s both incompetent and unpopular. If that remains so, it doesn’t matter what his base thinks.
A different poll, from Axios, same theme.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
In recent days, President Trump has escalated his assaults on the “Fake News” media and other institutions, in an increasingly frantic effort to carve out a kind of safe space that cannot be penetrated by accountability or factual reality. Inside this bubble, the truth is what Trump says it is, on Twitter and in his tirades before rally crowds, where Twitter replies (even by bots) and raucous cheers serve as confirmation of Trump’s versions of events in a kind of intensifying feedback loop.
But if the brutal new poll released Tuesday by CNN is any indication, that safe space seems perilously small.
We said it mattered that Trump was unqualified and too incompetent to be in the WH. And now, North Korea:
Austin Frakt/NY Times:
Paradoxically, even though Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers more than traditional Medicare, they spend less on care. In fact, one of the motivations of the program is to capture that lower spending as savings for taxpayers. It hasn’t worked out that way.
“Our study found that health care spending for enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans is 10 to 25 percent lower than for comparable enrollees in traditional Medicare,” said Amy Finkelstein, an M.I.T. economist and one of the study’s authors. “Yet government payments to plans is far above their lower health care costs.” The study was also conducted by four economists at Stanford: Vilsa Curto, Liran Einav, Jonathan Levin and Jay Bhattacharya.
Studying Medicare Advantage in addition to some of the different MediGap plans is important to understand the contours of single payer, Medicare for all, Medicaid for all, public option, and universal coverage ideas (each is different). We have a lot more work to do. The politics is moving faster than the policy.
Paul Krugman/NY Times:
Well, some progressives — by and large people who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries — are already trying to revive one of his signature proposals: expanding Medicare to cover everyone. Some even want to make support for single-payer a litmus test for Democratic candidates.
So it’s time for a little pushback….
A far more important consideration is minimizing disruption to the 156 million people who currently get insurance through their employers, and are largely satisfied with their coverage. Moving to single-payer would mean taking away this coverage and imposing new taxes; to make it fly politically you’d have to convince most of these people both that they would save more in premiums than they pay in additional taxes, and that their new coverage would be just as good as the old.
This might in fact be true, but it would be one heck of a hard sell. Is this really where progressives want to spend their political capital?
What would I do instead? I’d enhance the A.C.A., not replace it, although I would strongly support reintroducing some form of public option — a way for people to buy into public insurance — that could eventually lead to single-payer.
Meanwhile, progressives should move beyond health care and focus on other holes in the U.S. safety net.
Politico with a long, important read on trade, TPP, and the agricultural midwest:
The downward trend of commodity prices has been a lingering reality for the third-generation farmer who lives just outside Eagle Grove. The USDA’s annual farm income report forecasts that net farm income will drop this year by 8.7 percent, compared with 2016. Incomes have been decreasing steadily since 2013 when they hit an all-time high of more than $120 billion. The forecast for this year projects net incomes down to little more than $62.3 billion.
Dave Weigel/WaPo:
Democrats are moving left — and that won't necessarily hurt them in 2018
On Sunday, Democratic Socialists of America got a chance to break away from the Democratic Party. A resolution laid out all of the reasons, from the reported 57 percent of voters who want a third party, to the rapid success of the 2016 presidential bid by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), to the laughable unelectability of the Democrats.
“Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said the Democratic Party has become a toxic brand and a failed party,” the resolution read. “The D next to a socialist or progressive’s name places them at a major disadvantage on Election Day. Why tie our strategy to a sinking ship?”
The resolution failed — easily so. While the judgment of 697 delegates to a socialist convention might not seen like a major Democratic Party development, it was telling of something that frequently gets lost. Democrats, for whom self-flagellation starts at birth and continues after death, have been moving as steadily left as Republicans moved right in 2009, when they last lost power.
Amber Phillips/WaPo:
President Trump keeps calling the Russia investigation ‘fake news.’ But with each passing week, the independent investigation into Trump's campaign ties to Russia is getting more real, not less.
Here's how:
It's expanding, both in size and scope. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has built a team of lawyers who have expertise in cybercrime, white-collar crime, the mob, money laundering and Watergate. Together, his team has more than a century of legal experience.
The Justice Department's No. 2, Rod J. Rosenstein, originally appointed Mueller to investigate Trump campaign connections to Russia, but Mueller has wide latitude to look into whatever he wishes. So far, we know that's expanded to: Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, unspecified financial crimes and very specific accusations by the former FBI director that Trump himself tried to obstruct justice.
It's getting more in depth. As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, they've set up a grand jury, which can subpoena witnesses and documents and, if need be, indict people. The president's defenders, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), point out that grand juries are a normal process of any investigation.
It’s important for us not to lose track of how media is playing this, outside of how closely we follow it.
As Mueller closes in, Trump prepares his base for the worst
President Trump is again attacking the media this morning, and his broadsides carry a newly ominous edge: He is both faulting the media for allegedly downplaying the size and intensity of support from his base and accusing them of trying to deliberately weaken that support for him.
Christian Schneider/USA Today:
Donald Trump has a sickening fetish for cruelty
These are not the actions of a well-adjusted person. Trump clearly has a maudlin fetish for cruelty. Given his pattern of humiliating both friend and foe, the president's brain is occupied with little else than Electoral College results and revenge fantasies. Trump is basically a 71-year old kid cackling in delight as he melts ants under his magnifying glass. Only these ants are attorneys general, senators, FBI directors and governors.
Naturally, Trump's supporters think toying with people's dignity is a show of strength — but it is the exact opposite. He's a weak leader who wastes what little political capital he has settling personal scores. With apologies to Winston Churchill, Trump remains an immodest man with much to be modest about.
And it's just a matter of time before he's under Vladimir Putin's magnifying glass.