NY Times:
White House Budget Official Said 2 Aides Resigned Amid Ukraine Aid Freeze
Mark Sandy, an official at the Office of Management and Budget, testified that two of his colleagues quit after expressing concerns about President Trump’s decision to withhold military assistance.
Mr. Trump has insisted he never pressured Ukraine for the investigations or made the aid contingent upon them, and was instead withholding the money out of concern for corruption in Ukraine and a desire to have other countries pay their fair share. And his Republican allies have argued that the funding’s eventual release proves that Mr. Trump did nothing wrong.
But the money was delivered only after a bipartisan outcry by lawmakers and after the White House became aware of a whistle-blower complaint that alleged Mr. Trump was using the funding as leverage. Two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had been briefed on that complaint when he unfroze military aid for the country in September.
Quinnipiac:
Voter opinion on impeachment will be difficult to move as 86 percent say their mind is made up, while only 13 percent say they might change their mind. Among those who think the president should be impeached and removed from office, 8 percent say they might change their mind, while among those who think the president should not be impeached and removed from office, 17 percent say they might change their mind.
While 50 percent think that the impeachment inquiry is a legitimate investigation, 43 percent think it is a political witch hunt. Nonetheless, 76 percent of American voters think that the Trump administration should fully cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, while 18 percent don't think so.
American voters are paying attention to the news about impeachment as 59 percent say they are paying a lot of attention and 27 percent say they are paying some attention, while only 14 percent say they are paying little or no attention.
Nearly half of American voters, 49 percent, believe that President Trump held up military aid to Ukraine because he wanted the Ukrainian president to announce investigations that would benefit Trump politically, while 40 percent don't believe that.
As Trump continues to stonewall, I expect some of that “might change their mind” to actually do so.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Pompeo just flirted with Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy theory. This isn’t normal, folks.
Pompeo added that when “we have information that so much as suggests that there might have been interference, or an effort to interfere in our elections, we have an obligation” to combat “these malevolent actors trying to undermine our Western democratic values.”
“America should leave no stone unturned,” Pompeo also said. Here’s the video:
That’s weaselly language, and it stops just short of endorsing the idea that Ukraine hacked our elections. But it absolutely does endorse the idea that this question continues to be worthy of investigation.
Todd Purdham/Atlantic:
The Return of Jerry Nadler
The Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, is fractious and unruly. And it’s about to take over impeachment.
Given the gravity of impeachment, the expectation on Capitol Hill is that Pelosi, who’s kept a tight rein on the process with her usual iron hand, and her leadership staff will be intimately involved in determining just what the House’s final bill of particulars against Trump should be, and just how the actual articles of impeachment should read. She has so far declined to detail her thinking in public and her office did not respond to a request for comment.
The precise ground rules for how the Judiciary Committee will operate have yet to be fully spelled out, but Nadler will face challenges that Schiff did not have to manage. The resolution authorizing the impeachment inquiry specifies that the Judiciary Committee will make “such provisions as to allow for the participation of the President and his counsel,” which was not a consideration in the Intelligence Committee’s fact-finding hearings. The Judiciary Committee, with 41 members, is much larger than the Intelligence Committee, at 23, and because it deals with contentious issues such as crime and civil liberties, it has long been a coveted stepping-stone for some of the most voluble members of Congress from both parties. Some of the most outspoken Republicans on the Intelligence Committee—including Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and John Ratcliffe of Texas—also sit on Judiciary and can be expected to offer fierce defenses of Trump, as they did during the past two weeks of public hearings.
Bill Lueders/The Progressive:
Comment: Join Together to Dump Trump
What a delightful irony it would be if, in the end, this most determinedly divisive of Presidents ended up bringing the people of this country together
George Will, the conservative pundit, laments in a recent column that “aside from some rhetorical bleats, Republicans are acquiescing” as Trump makes public display of his “gross and comprehensive incompetence.” He argues that if Trump continues to get away with insisting that “the Constitution’s impeachment provisions are unconstitutional,” the instrument of impeachment will be rendered useless as a check on all future Presidents.
There may also be a political price to pay, as Will notes in issuing a warning that to Democrats surely sounds like a dream: “If Congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe—losing the House, the Senate, and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and even Texas—that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.”
That conservatives like Will are at the forefront of opposition to Trump creates opportunities for alliances that were once unthinkable. MSNBC commentator Charlie Sykes, a conservative from Wisconsin, says in an interview for this editorial that Trump’s unfitness has the potential to unite the citizenry.
Philip Rotner/Bulwark:
Impeachment Should Focus on Actions, Not Motives
So forget about Trump’s initial state of mind. It doesn’t matter. Focus on the key facts:
(1) Trump withheld crucial military aid from Ukraine;
(2) Ukraine knew it;
(3) While the aid was being withheld, Trump asked Ukraine for a “favor”—investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens;
(4) The request for investigations morphed into a demand for a public statement;
(5) Ukraine agreed to make the public announcement, was working with U.S. government officials on a script for the announcement, and was scheduled to deliver it in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria;
(6) Ukraine canceled the CNN interview only when Trump released the aid after the scheme was exposed by the whistleblower report.
Case closed.
There’s no need to get drawn into an irrelevant debate about why Trump froze the aid in the first place.
A reminder that winning won’t be easy, at least to an extent that this small group represents Trump voters.:
OTOH losing a third of the Trump → Democratic voters won’t help him in tight races, even if 2/3 return to vote for him. And again, it’s a small group. NY Times:
They Voted Democratic. Now They Support Trump.
Two-thirds of battleground state voters who chose Trump in 2016 but selected Democrats in the midterms say they will return to the president next year.
This group is only a sliver of the electorate — 2 percent of registered voters — and is not representative of all voters. They are overwhelmingly white, 60 percent are male, and two-thirds have no college degree. But the president’s strength among them helps explain why he is highly competitive in states that Democrats carried just one year ago….
Of course, a smaller but significant share of those who recently switched from Mr. Trump to a Democrat said they intended to vote for one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates next year. And these voters could be a key to victory.
But a broader look at past midterm results suggests they offer no predictive power — and can even be false signals — for the presidential races that follow.
It’s a also a reminder that persuasion and candidates still matter:
And speaking of candidates, Democrats have not settled on theirs.:
Warren is fading and Biden (and Bernie) are not. Harris had her moment but is campaigning hard and joyfully. The others haven’t broken out but Mayor Pete is having a moment now (and with that, comes vetting).
The voters will decide, though I’d be fine if Yang, Gabbard, Bloomberg and Steyer go away, and we start to get serious about this. And Castro, Amy K and Booker deserve better. That’s my view.
Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, all!