Happy Thanksgiving, Donald. No one’s buying your attack on Adm. McRaven or your defense of Crown Prince Mr. Bone Saw. Your daughter used personal emails for work business and your son-in-law just might be indicted soon. And you just lost a big election, and folks want Mueller to finish his work.
Oh, and there’s this bombshell about Trump and abuse of power:
NY Times:
Trump Wanted to Order Justice Dept. to Prosecute Comey and Clinton
The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.
Enjoy your holiday.
Harry Litman/LA Times:
Mueller might soon bring charges that even Trump die-hards can’t trivialize
Commentators predict the next chapter of the Department of Justice’s Russia investigation at their peril, but there is good reason to expect one or more blockbuster developments in the next few weeks.
There are concrete indications that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is now about the business of laying down the last big pieces of the puzzle of Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
Mueller already has done the difficult digging on the Russian side of the equation, bringing detailed indictments in February 2018 for a wide-ranging Russian trolling operation related to the campaign, as well as the July 2016 hacking of Democratic Party emails. Now he’s looking to tie those allegations to people close to the Trump campaign.
The upshot may be allegations of “collusion,” of the sort the president has long denied. The actual charges are likely to be one of three criminal conspiracies: violating federal election laws, violating computer laws, or soliciting or receiving something of value from a foreign government. Charges, in other words, that not even the most ardent Trump die-hard could trivialize. They bring with them the possibility that Mueller might opt to name President Trump himself as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Thing is, when the public isn’t buying the BS, you got a problem, Donald.
Tom Edsall/WaPo:
The corollary for Republicans is that the party, already behind in the popular vote, cannot afford to suffer continued losses among college-educated white voters, especially college-educated women. Pew found by 2017, a year into the Trump presidency:
Voters who have completed college make up a third of all registered voters. And a majority — 58 percent — of all voters with at least a four-year college degree now identifies as Democrats or leans Democratic, the highest share dating back to 1992. Just 36 percent affiliate with the Republican Party or lean toward the G.O.P.
This danger has become more acute, according to the Pew study:
The share of women identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic is up 4 percentage points since 2015 and is at one of its highest points since 1992.
At the same time, though, Trump appears to be strengthening Republican support among noncollege whites:
Voters with no college experience have been moving toward the GOP: 47 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 42 percent in 2014.
And how does that work out? Like this:
The election was a D blowout (7.8% margin and growing), with structural reasons for the Senate result that has little to do with the popular vote. Polling is only confirming how unpopular Trump’s policies and ideas are.
His base just lost an election, so no more ‘but his base’ excuses. His base is outnumbered and just got outvoted.
Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:
Trump’s Base Isn’t Enough
There shouldn’t be much question about whether 2018 was a wave election. Of course it was a wave….
This year’s results do serve as a warning to Trump in one important sense, however: His base alone will not be enough to win a second term. Throughout the stretch run of the 2018 midterm campaign, Trump and Republicans highlighted highly charged partisan issues, from the Central American migrant caravan to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. And Republican voters did indeed turn out in very high numbers: GOP candidates for the House received more than 50 million votes, more than the roughly 45 million they got in 2010.
But it wasn’t enough, or even close to enough. Problem No. 1 is that Republicans lost among swing voters: Independent voters went for Democrats by a 12-point margin, and voters who voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 went to Democrats by 13 points.
Trump and Republicans also have Problem No. 2, however: Their base is smaller than the Democratic one.
Matthew Yglesias/Vox:
Trump’s latest interview with Fox News should make us glad he’s mostly too lazy to govern
When he tries to do things, it only gets worse.
Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that Trump pretended to be busy when his public schedule for the day was empty. And thanks to his Twitter feed, we know perfectly well that he spent the day repeating weird misunderstandings of what a trade deficit is, flinging around absurd conspiracy theories about election fraud, feuding with the president of France, etc.
Yet the strangest thing about life in the United States in 2018 is that every time Trump sits down for an interview like this, he gives new evidence that we should almost certainly be glad he’s too lazy to actually bother doing his job most of the time. After all, he has no real understanding of any of the relevant issues.
Jane Coaston/Vox:
How California conservatives became the intellectual engine of Trumpism
The California GOP got wiped out in the midterms. But the heart of California-style conservatism is stronger than ever
In these conversations, one common theme emerged: Conservatives living and working in California view themselves as philosophically, culturally, and demographically under siege, and the political movement they are ideating, advocating, and building reflects that fully.
Always under siege, always victims.
CBS:
Seven in 10 Americans think President Trump should allow the Russia investigation to continue, and a slight majority think Congress should pass legislation to prevent Special Counsel Robert Mueller from being fired.
Perry Bacon, Jr/FiveThirtyEight:
Who Could Become Speaker Of The House If Pelosi Doesn’t?
Part of the complexity of the question of who might replace Pelosi also lies in the critique of her — House Democrats opposed to Pelosi have complained that she is old and unpopular and has been at the job for a long time. But party leaders are usually old, unpopular and fairly entrenched. (See McConnell, Mitch, who is 76.) Picking someone new and fresh for a job that is fairly complicated and requires a lot of prior knowledge is somewhat contradictory.
So I really don’t know who Democrats will pick for speaker, or who they should pick. (OK, I think they should probably choose Pelosi for now, with Bustos, Jeffries, Lujan or Schiff as the No. 2 and heir apparent. And this seems fairly obvious to me, but I’m just a journalist.) The House Democrats themselves seem just as confused. So we may have to wait until the vote in January before we really know who will be the next speaker of the House.