Ezra Klein/Vox:
The post-Christian culture wars
The Trump administration’s two most revealing speeches weren’t given by Trump.
Whatever Trump’s moral failings, he’s a street fighter suited for an era of political combat. Christian conservatives believe — rightly or wrongly — that they’ve been held back by their sense of righteousness, grace, and gentility, with disastrous results. Trump operates without restraint. He is the enemy they believe the secular deserve, and perhaps unfortunately, the champion they need. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to understanding the psychology that attracts establishment Republicans to Trump, and convinces them that his offense is their best defense.
If this sound exaggerated, consider two recent speeches given by Attorney General William Barr. Barr is a particularly important kind of figure in the Trump world. He previously served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush, and had settled into a comfortable twilight as a respected member of the Republican legal establishment. It’s the support of establishment Republicans like Barr that gives Trump his political power and protects him from impeachment. But why would someone like Barr spend the end of his career serving a man like Trump?
Speaking at Notre Dame in October, Barr offered his answer. He argued that the conflict of the 20th century pitted democracy against fascism and communism — a struggle democracy won, and handily. “But in the 21st century, we face an entirely different kind of challenge,” he warned. America was built atop the insight that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.
Aaron Blake/WaPo:
Trump’s big, ‘exonerating’ piece of Ukraine evidence takes a hit
Republicans have already stretched Sondland’s version of a Sept. 9 call, ignoring Trump’s motivation to deny a quid pro quo on it and the fact that, even on the same call, he made clear he wanted more than “nothing.” But the Morrison and Taylor recollections of the Sept. 7 call indicate Trump was demanding far more than just Zelensky doing “the right thing”; he was demanding Ukraine do his specific investigations.
And if that’s really the call Sondland remembered, it’s even less exonerating than Republicans have argued it was.
Christina Cauterucci/Slate:
Abortion Might Finally Be a Winning Issue for Democrats
As the Republicans’ long strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade edges closer to reality, voters are expressing their discontent.
NBC News has also been surveying Americans on their abortion views. In June, the network reported that support for legal abortion has risen among most demographics—women and men, Democrats and Republicans—since 2008, in a rare case of the country moving together on an issue. But the shift among Democrats has been the most dramatic. NBC found that the proportion of Democrats who say abortion “should always be legal” or “should be legal most of the time” has risen 13 percentage points since 2008, while the proportion of Republicans who say so has risen 4 points. The Pew Research Center found that Republican support for totally or mostly legal abortion stayed mostly steady between 2007 and 2019, with a net decline of 3 points. Over the same time period—from the year before Obama’s election to the start of the 2020 race—Democratic support has climbed 19 points.
Elaine Godfrey/The Atlantic:
The Democrats’ Next Goal for Impeachment
They have the facts. Now they have to figure out what to do with them.
This portion of the House’s impeachment inquiry is over, but the process is far from complete. Now that the facts have been laid out, Democrats are moving on to the decidedly less flashy but possibly even more crucial next step: deciding what to do with them. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jerry Nadler of New York, will pick up the impeachment baton, kick-starting this phase with a public hearing after Thanksgiving where it will discuss whether Trump’s alleged wrongdoing is impeachable.
Democrats have a lot riding on this: This next phase of the inquiry will offer them one last chance to sell Republicans in Congress, as well as a divided American public, on impeachment. The success of their efforts will hinge on whether they are able to effectively articulate the case—and on whether there’s anyone left to convince.
Axios:
Moderate muscle rises against Dems’ 2020 left
By the numbers: Medicare for All is a favorite among Democrats who are fed up with private insurance — but it's not a winner with swing voters.
- Per the Kaiser Family Foundation's Drew Altman, recent polling by Kaiser and the Cook Political Report found that 62% of Democrats in four battleground states — Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin — said a Medicare for All plan that eliminates private insurance is a good idea.
- But 62% of swing voters in those states said it’s a bad idea.
LA Times:
Trump has turned the suburbs into a GOP disaster zone. Does that doom his reelection?
“It’s amazing the change, in just the last few years,” said Q. Whitfield Ayres, a pollster who has spent decades strategizing for Republican campaigns and causes. “It’s not any one place. It’s everywhere.”
That includes Arizona, where in 2018 Kyrsten Sinema, a congresswoman from the Phoenix suburbs, became the first Democrat in 30 years to win a U.S. Senate seat. She ran as a centrist focused on bipartisan problem-solving, a direct appeal to pragmatic suburban voters, and her success is seen as a model for turning the state from red to blue in 2020 — or at least making Arizona competitive in a way it has not been in decades.
With 11 electoral votes, Arizona is a bigger prize than Wisconsin — a Midwestern battleground both parties view as a key to the election — and the Grand Canyon State is expected to draw lavish attention and a fortune’s worth of advertising over the next year. Visiting last month, Vice President Mike Pence said he and Trump “are going to be in and out of Arizona a lot.”
Mediaite:
Fmr GOP Congressman: No Question Republicans ‘Disgusted and Exhausted’ by Trump’s Behavior
[Charlie] Dent said, “Based on the facts as I understand them now, I do think this rises to the level of impeachment, I would probably support it.”
He did add that the Democrats shouldn’t be rushing on this and should wait until they hear from key witnesses like John Bolton.
As for his former Republican colleagues, Dent said, “There’s no question, having spoken to many of them privately, they’re absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the president’s behavior. They resent being put in this position all the time.”