This is an amazing (and long) piece written over a year, coming back to Midwest Trump voters and watching them evolve. Democrats and Clinton voters will find it frustrating. But there's hope that there are more persuadable voters than appear right now (and PS shaming doesn't work). Follow them chronologically or just skip to now (i.e. end of piece).
Dan Balz/WaPo:
Loyalty, unease in Trump’s Midwest
Voters gave Trump a chance. Some remain all in. Others have grown weary of the chaos.
He talked about the president’s provocations of his adversaries and clashes with the media. “Of course, the real die-hard Donald Trump lovers eat this up and they eat these scandals up,” he said.
But Glazier made a distinction between the most staunch Trump supporters and other Republicans. “I think the real party faithful, the educated voters, might be beginning to distance themselves from him,” he said, “and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a Republican challenger or challengers against Trump.”
Was he disappointed by the president? “I wouldn’t call it a disappointment,” he said. “I would just say I’m a little saddened by some of the happenings. I don’t know, maybe his better days are yet to come. I don’t know. I would hope they would be, but no one can predict the future.”
He said many of the people he knows would vote again for Trump over Clinton, but he offered a telling caveat that will weigh heavily if Trump seeks reelection. “They wanted so much of a change,” he said of the supporters who put Trump in the White House. “But he has some changing to do himself before I would be supportive of him again. . . . A 71-year-old man like he is, I don’t foresee him changing a whole lot.”
Again and again we hear the idea that Democrats talk down to them. Remember, these are Trump voters, you’re getting a one sided view. But there’s no question he embarrasses them. And P.S. a careful read suggests, despite protestations, the Russia story is making inroads, if only because there’s no way to defend what we already know.
Jonathan Chait/New York:
Donald Trump ran for president as an economic populist. This fact has been largely forgotten, buried by the flurry of bizarre and outrageous actions, and activists on both sides have had little reason to bring it up. Conservatives have pushed the administration to forget its unorthodox gestures and follow Paul Ryan’s lead. Progressives have emphasized the racist and sexist nature of Trump’s appeal. But Trump’s ability to distance himself from his party’s economic brand formed a decisive element of his appeal. Voters actually saw Trump as more moderate than any Republican presidential candidate since 1972. And he has violated every one of his promises.
Charlie Sykes/Weekly Standard:
When Everything Is Possible and Nothing Is True
“Does it bother anyone that President Trump has been caught lying? Does it bother anyone that this is not new? Does it bother anyone that the president has been shown to be a liar?”
Stephen Hayes and I discussed the question on the Daily Standard podcast last week.
Of course, we pretty much know the answer. Many Americans, perhaps most, do indeed care. But in an age of tribal and transactional politics, a lot of folks frankly don’t, and are not afraid to say so:
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Sunday that he believes Americans are more concerned with the economy than falsehoods from President Trump.
Blunt’s comments echoed USA Today’s report from a focus group of Trump supporters: “Yes, they think President Trump's lying about Stormy Daniels. And no, they really do not care.”
This next one is notable because it was the reaction all day on cable:
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
What is wrong with these people?
The ensuing firestorm did force the Fox host interviewing McInerney to apologize and Fox to say it wouldn’t have McInerney back on. He might be excused for thinking his rhetoric, of a piece with so much of what airs on Fox, was entirely acceptable. Indeed, why invite on a birther if not to say outrageous things?
This is the political culture blessed and cheered on by evangelical leaders — for whom nothing Trump or his cronies do (be it paying hush money to a porn star or slandering a POW or endorsing an alleged child molester) is over the line. There is something dark and twisted at the core of the Trumpian political movement and philosophy (if you can call it that). You don’t get criticized, let alone fired, for perpetuating hurtful conspiracy theories (about Seth Rich’s death, President Obama’s birth certificate or McCain’s captivity) or for voicing hateful views.
In short, not all of Trump’s followers and enablers are bad people, but in the Trump universe, bad people sure do flourish.
Aaron Blake/WaPO:
The Trump White House crossed a new threshold for political debasement this week
The White House probably thinks it cannot punish Kelly Sadler for her awful comment about John McCain because President Trump has also said nasty things about McCain. It may worry that showing her the door would set a troubling precedent for a president who may one day cross a very similar line.
Welcome to the ongoing degradation of our political discourse. Destination: No end in sight.
Don’t make the mistake of considering it a distraction. You never know what the final straw is for some people. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Or wilt. Or whatever.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The bottom line is that Trump will not accept anything that protects the dreamers unless it also contains deep cuts to legal immigration. But nothing like that can pass Congress, because it faces bipartisan opposition.
Trump’s tirade at Nielsen is a reminder that he is the real obstacle to any deal protecting the dreamers. It reminds us of Trump’s bottomless irrationality on this issue: Border crossings have been at historic lows, but #Foxlandia keeps telling him the border is overrun by invading dark hordes, which makes it true. He is still demanding his wall, but even when that has been offered in exchange for protecting the dreamers, he has rejected it. Yet he raged at Nielsen over the lack of movement on the wall, showing himself unable to comprehend that his own deeply unreasonable demands — which many Republicans have rejected — are the real obstacle to getting it built as part of a dreamer deal.
Jason Sattler/USA Today:
The paperwork required by both [Jared] Kushner and [SNAP recipient Matthew] Cortland should have the same goal: protecting the U.S. taxpayers from our own generosity. But that generosity is generally unquestioned for the rich and ground into fumes for the poor.
Because he was born rich, Kushner’s only burden is more billable hours for his lawyers. Because they are poor, Americans with disabilities or single moms such as Stephanie Land must bear burdens that are, as she put it, “exhausting, labor intensive and often meant many hours on the phone, or at the department’s office, waiting for several hours in line — time that cost me jobs and money.”
The new farm bill being proposed by House Republicans and backed with the threat of a Trump veto will only make that worse.
Amy Walter/Cook Political Report:
How to Define 2018's Version of the Year of the Woman
Given how early in the cycle these three polls were taken, there are still lots of undecided voters. Even so, it wouldn't surprise me to see Democrats take more than 55 percent of the female vote. Nor would it surprise me to see Republicans take a double-digit share of the male vote.
Will this gap impact the actual results of the election? If women turn out a much higher percentage than men (women have traditionally made up 51-53 percent of the vote) and give a bigger percentage of their vote to Democrats than men give to Republicans, that can have a significant impact on election results. The important caveat, of course, is that each district and state is a unique situation and may look different from the national “generic” vote.
The most important takeaway, however, may be an election that divides the country along gender lines to a degree we’ve never before seen.
Michelle Goldberg/NY Times:
Countering right-wing movements that thrive on transgression is a challenge. One of the terrifying things about Trump’s victory is that it appeared to put the fundamental assumptions underlying pluralistic liberal democracy up for debate, opening an aperture for poisonous bigotry to seep into the mainstream. In California, a man named Patrick Little, who said he was inspired by Trump, is running for U.S. Senate on a platform of removing Jews from power; in one recent state poll 18 percent of respondents supported him. On Thursday, Mediaite reported that Juan Pablo Andrade, an adviser to the pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies, praised the Nazis at a Turning Point USA conference. (Owens, West’s new friend, is Turning Point’s communications director.)
It’s a natural response — and, in some cases, the right response — to try to hold the line against political reaction, to shame people who espouse shameful ideas. But shame is a politically volatile emotion, and easily turns into toxic resentment. It should not be overused. I don’t know exactly where to draw the line between ideas that deserve a serious response, and those that should be only mocked and scorned. I do know that people on the right benefit immensely when they can cultivate the mystique of the forbidden.
From the annoyingly brilliant Alice Dreger/Chronicle of Higher Education:
Why I Escaped the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’
Conventional wisdom says that if a staff writer for The New York Times wants to feature you in a story about brave intellectuals, you reply, "Yes, please!" This is especially true if the Times sends a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer to create a noble portrait of you for an accompanying visual pantheon.
But every time that Times writer, Bari Weiss, called to talk with me about the "Intellectual Dark Web" and my supposed membership in it, I just started laughing. In case you missed it — though, really, how could you, considering that it seems to be everywhere at the moment? — the Times recently published a piece about a bunch of renegade intellectuals who "dare venture into this ‘There Be Dragons’ territory on the intellectual map."
Why was I laughing? The idea that I was part of a cool group made me think there was at least some kind of major attribution error going on. The confused feeling was exacerbated by the dramatic photo setup: Damon Winter, the Pulitzer winner, had me standing in a marsh full of tall, dry reeds, waiting for a particular moment just past sunset. "Why am I in this scene?" I wondered as we waited, and not just because my favorite dress boots were getting muddy and I worried about ticks.
I also had no idea who half the people in this special network were. The few Intellectual Dark Web folks I had met I didn’t know very well. How could I be part of a powerful intellectual alliance when I didn’t even know these people?