Republicans are content to allow Trump to try and take away health care for 20 million people, and they are content to allow Trump to build his wall. Get the message? It's not Trump that allows all of this. It's Republicans. Their enabling of what he does is what you’re voting on in 2020.
First Read:
Trump turns 2020 election into a referendum on health care
But in the long term, at least through the 2020 election, Trump’s tweets allow every Democratic campaign to say, “The president wants the presidential election to be a referendum on health care!”
And we saw how that played out in 2018 …
Mind you, we won 2018 on bread and butter issues, and we will win 2020 for the same reason. But that does not change the fact that Trump is a white supremacist who employs Stephen Miller, another white supremacist, to come up with policies designed to hurt Americans.
Meanwhile:
More after the fold.
First Read:
How this weekend exposed Biden's generational challenges
Biden’s greatest strength is the fact that he’s been in the political mainstream of the Democratic Party for the last 40 years, as one of us said on “Meet the Press” yesterday.
And that fact is also his greatest weakness.
So a death by a thousand cuts is one (likely) scenario for Biden, if he runs.
But there’s another scenario, too: His past becomes THE story for the 2020 campaign, making it difficult for other candidates to break through, a la Trump in ’16.
Of course, there’s a big difference between Biden and Trump: One can be shamed; the other one can’t.
I won’t be shocked if Biden doesn’t run. At the same time, on paper he remains the most popular Democrat. And if there are generational issues at play, it’s not so obvious (in this IOP youth poll, Bernie leads with 31, Biden with 20 and then there’s everyone else). Fact is, Democrats of every age are pragmatic and want the person who can win. But who that is best set up to be remains TBD.
Ariel Edwards-Levy/Huffpost:
Most Americans Agree On One Thing About The Mueller Report
A slew of new polls show little consensus on the report’s findings, but a lot of support for its full release.
Mueller announced last Friday that he’d completed his report on the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia. Mueller’s full conclusions have not been made available to the public or even to Congress. In a four-page summary of the report, Attorney General William Barr wrote that the report did not determine that Trump criminally conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election’s outcome, but that it did not exonerate the president on committing obstruction of justice.
Here’s a quick recap of what the polls have found so far:
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
Trump Got No Bump From Mueller. He Should Worry.
Good news on the president’s biggest scandal hasn’t improved his ratings.
Here’s why that’s bad news for Trump. His approval rating is the second-worst of any president on record after 801 days in office, which is where Trump was on Sunday. Only Ronald Reagan, at 41.1 percent, was worse. Trump is dead last in disapproval rating. No other president was over 50 percent. He’s also last in net approval (that is, approval minus disapproval) at -10.7.
Good news is a relative thing. And by the way look at his disapproval, it’s a better reality marker.
NPR:
Wason Poll: “Enemy of the People Attacks” Like “Kerosene” for GOP
A Christopher Newport University Wason poll released this morning says “Enemy of the People” attacks on the press are working and a hyper-polarized electorate sees the other party as a “threat to the U.S.”
The survey’s director, Rachel Bitecofer says the results are shocking. “Eighty-six percent of Republicans: that means almost nine out of ten of our Republican voters in this survey agree that our nation’s major news outlets are publishing fake news for political purposes."
Thirty-one percent of Democrats agreed. Bitecofer says it was there before, but Trump's constant attacks have maed it worse.
"Those are numbers that should be troubling because we are talking about one of our major democratic, small 'd,' democratic institutions,” says Bitecofer.
corrected graphic:
Richard North Patterson/Bulwark:
The Republican political and donor classes, personified by Mitch McConnell, have proven themselves among the most cynical, adaptable, and self-serving people in politics. Once Trump co-opted the base voters already inflamed by the GOP’s anti-government rhetoric, the party elite resolved to use his presidency for their own ends.
For these Vichy Republicans, principles are pretense. As the last two years have shown, beneath their obligatory lip service they don’t give much of a damn about anything but power. Not deficits, or fiscal prudence. Not NATO, or the liberal global order. Nor, despite their plaints, will they seriously impede whatever Trump does about Syria or Afghanistan or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia’s Mad Prince.
Most elected Republicans don’t care—at least in public—about Trump’s constant lies, or attacks on the rule of law. They don’t care if Russia owns him, or that he conflates governance with his private business interests. They don’t much care that he’s a race-baiter and a demagogue who coarsens the national discourse and divides Americans from each other. Except for their own political discomfiture, they don’t care that he shut down our government and falsified reality to fund his mythological wall. While they certainly fear the Republican base, most party insiders don’t care how badly Trump deludes them.
The Hill:
Voters overwhelmingly want GOP to move on from border wall fight
A large majority of voters would prefer that congressional Republicans focus on issues other than President Trump's border wall, according to a new poll conducted amid Trump's threats to close the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a Hill-HarrisX survey conducted over the weekend, 69 percent of registered voters said they want Republicans on Capitol Hill to move on from the wall fight, while 31 percent said the GOP should keep pushing for more funding.
But let’s just pretend Trump is popular.