"Trump sucks because of who he is" vs "Trump sucks because of what he does" was the D primary battle. In the general "what he does" is a winning D message. The 'who he is' is known and doesn't need elaboration.
As far as what he did:
Murray Waas/NYRB:
Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It
Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.
Must read, important story. Very detailed.
Michael Gerson/WaPo:
This will never be normal
One of the current complaints of the Trump right concerns the treatment given to Alex Jones by Facebook, which has temporarily banned the Internet radio host for videos that violated “community standards.” According to Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network, “freedom of speech [is] under attack.” Fox News television personality Tucker Carlson has also come to Jones’s defense, saying sarcastically, “I know we’re supposed to think Alex Jones is way more radical than, like, Bill Maher.”
Well, yes, that is precisely what we should think. At various points, Jones has promoted the belief that 9/11 was an “inside job,” that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria, that NASA had built a child slave colony on Mars in order to harvest blood and bone marrow, that the Oklahoma City bombing, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Sandy Hook school shooting were government “false flag” operations, that some shooting survivors were “crisis actors,” that “globalists” are intent on committing genocide and that Democrats are on the verge of launching a second civil war.
Free markets! Competition of ideas! Except for wingnut welfare, which must be protected at all costs.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
The wave that’s building for November may not be blue so much as pink
It was women who launched the first massive protest of the Trump era, marching the day after his inauguration in the millions to express opposition to his election. It was women who led the anti-Trump effort at the outset; it’s women who lead it still. Even the advent of the #MeToo movement has roots in opposition to Trump, both given the outstanding accusations against him and given the fuel that his triumph in 2016 added to the push to hold powerful men accountable.
Perhaps because this has been a constant undercurrent since early last year, it often goes unremarked upon. But it shouldn’t, particularly in the context of electoral politics. As the midterms near, there are signs that an energized base of women will play a significant — and probably defining — role in the outcome.
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
A winning theme for Democrats? Kids.
Democrats have been casting about for a winning theme this November. Here’s one suggestion: Kids.
After all, despite once declaring themselves the party of family values, Republican politicians have more recently ceded this territory. The GOP is now the party of state-sanctioned child abuse, of taking health care away from poor children, of leaving young immigrant “dreamers” in legal limbo.
It is GOP policy, and GOP policy alone, that has ripped thousands of immigrant children from their parents and locked them in cages, where they cannot be held or comforted when they cry.
It is these policies that have caused young children to not recognize their own parents when finally reunited through a federal court order. Or to enraging cases like one the Nation reported last week, about a 6-year-old girl who was separated from her mother and then sexually abused multiple times in an immigrant detention center. There, the child was asked to sign a form acknowledging it was her responsibility to stay away from her abuser.
On Trump, the Wall, and a government shutdown:
Drew Altman/Axios:
The health care surge: Why it's rising as a midterms issue
Between the lines: The importance of health care as a national priority is sometimes overstated — but our recent polling shows it really could be a decisive issue in the midterms. That's because it has been surging as an issue for Democrats, and in an election many see as a referendum on President Trump, it may now be as important a factor as Trump is.
By the numbers: The surprising number from our tracking polls: 33% of Democrats pick health care as the top factor in their vote in the upcoming elections, while 30% pick Trump. For the general public, 25% pick health care, about the same percentage as pick Trump (26%).
Latino Decisions:
Latino Voters Will Turn Anger into Action in the 2018 Congressional Midterm Elections
When looking at elections, pundits typically look to find which policy issues are driving voters to the polls and shaping their vote choice. Of course, issues matter, but so do feelings, according to recent studies by University of Michigan political psychologists. Research by Professor Nicholas Valentino and colleagues demonstrate the power of negative and positive emotions in driving turnout. Among the emotions analyzed, they find that anger is one of the most powerful feelings to spark turnout. Anger arises when a threat is identifiable and an individual feels a sense of control over the situation. This stands in contrast to another negative emotion, anxiety, which is triggered when an individual is less certain of the source of the threat, making him or her feels powerless to mitigate the danger.
The Latino Decisions poll included a battery of questions capturing a range of emotions evoked by Donald Trump’s presidency. Specifically, the survey asked, “Has Donald Trump, because of the kind of person he is or because of something he has done or said, ever made you feel [insert the emotion].” Figure 1 lists Latino reactions to seven emotional dispositions.
Robert Epstein/USA Today:
What's going on with Donald Trump? Psychologist explains the president’s lies, reversals
Trump's lies and reversals are not due to mental illness but because he reacts to people and situations in the moment, with no thought of future or past.
Trump is not mentally ill, and I doubt that he is even “living in his own reality,” as so many have claimed. He is simply fairly unique in a way that is hard for the public to understand. In a nutshell, Trump is highly vulnerable to what can reasonably be called “sympathetic audience control.”
If that sounds jargony, I apologize. It’s actually a pretty simple concept and, in Trump’s case, it explains a lot — maybe even 90 percent of the behavior that seems so baffling.
All normal people are subject to “audience control” to one degree or another. That means simply that they regulate what they say and do based on who’s around them. They are respectful sitting in a church pew, a bit more daring sitting in a classroom, and somewhat wild sitting in the bleachers. Near a police officer, most people are cautious and deferential; near a best friend, people feel comfortable and speak freely.
Sometimes audience control goes haywire. You might behave one way with your parents and a very different way with your new romantic partner. When you finally bring your new friend home to meet the ‘rents, you might feel awkward and barely know what to do or say.
Except for situations like that, audience control doesn’t usually cause problems, and it also usually doesn’t persist when the audience is gone. But for Trump, audience control works in a special way: