Eugene Robinson/WaPo:
We can’t pretend this is a normal election
But Trump is no sensible person, and he obviously does not represent our best. He is a demagogue with one highly effective political move: driving wedges. He is now trying to open a chasm between white and nonwhite Americans, and he wants to force his potential supporters to choose a side.
I hope and expect that Trump’s race-baiting will fail — but hope and expectations are not enough. His shamefully divisive tactic must be called out, labeled with its proper name and fought without quarter. Based on Trump’s public comments and his Twitter feed, it seems obvious that race is what he wants the nation to be talking about right now, as opposed to his administration’s incompetence and corruption. But to ignore his white-power tactic would be a much bigger mistake than facing it head-on. Trump may believe his political opponents lack the stomach to confront him. He must be proved wrong.
I don’t want to hear a word about ‘if my candidate doesn’t win...’. Not one word. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, they must have full-throated support. Biden, Harris, Warren, Sanders, whoever it is. In the meantime, vote like it matters.
Housekeeping note: I will be away [and probably off grid] for the next two weeks, after I put up Saturday’s post. Some, but not all, slots will be filled in. I’ll see you when I get back.
Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:
The media is getting a second chance to cover Robert Mueller’s findings — and this time get it right
Many news organizations, including some of the most prominent, took what Barr said at face value or mischaracterized the report’s findings.
They essentially transmitted to the public — especially in all-important headlines and cable-news bulletins — what President Trump desperately wanted as the takeaway: No collusion; no obstruction.
Not only that, much of the media treatment failed to emphasize sufficiently that this was Barr’s rendering of Mueller’s conclusions.
And many early headlines and tweets went so far as to state that Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy, although that’s not the whole story.
(While the report did not find sufficient evidence to bring charges of criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, it stated that Trump could not be exonerated of trying to obstruct the investigation itself. And it said that Mueller’s conclusions were informed by his reasoning that Trump couldn’t be indicted, at least partly because of a Justice Department opinion against prosecuting a current president.)
Russell Berman/Atlantic:
Washington Can’t Wait for Mueller. Voters Have Moved On.
Rather than expecting fireworks from the former special counsel’s appearance before Congress, many seem wary of getting their hopes up.
Don’t get your hopes up.
That’s the message voters in the nation’s first primary state have for Democrats looking to Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress this week as a game-changing moment in the drive to impeach President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think it’s going to make a difference. I wish it would,” said Lin Van Allen, 66, a retired nurse who saw Elizabeth Warren speak in her hometown of Peterborough earlier this month. “I keep thinking something will happen to change things, and it never does.”
Josh Cook/Iowa Starting Line blog (my bold):
I WATCHED 8 HOURS OF 2020 AARP FORUMS. HERE’S WHAT I LEARNED.
Here’s some of the biggest issues highlighted during the forums that the candidates seemed to agree on, and some of the more creative solutions put forth. …
Vice President Joe Biden, just a day or so before his forum on Monday, released a plan to create a ‘public option’ in the Medicare program, which would allow people to opt-in on a government health care plan. For some reason, every candidate was asked about their stance on a public option in regard to Biden’s newly released plan, which was understandably upsetting to some, like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who have been working on creating a public option for some time.
Many of the candidates seem to now be in agreement that Medicare for All should not be the party’s stance for the general election, with most saying, instead, a public option should be created to test the waters on government-run care. This would allow officials to work out the bugs in the program, grow enrollment numbers slowly, and be certain it is a viable path before discussing any type of single-payer system.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, however, pushed back on that, which comes as no surprise.
I have bad news for M4A supporters… M4A support appears to be softening with those running, in favor of a public option. That’s partly because of concerns about ‘moving too far left’ (and offering care to undocumenteds, which is good policy but bad politics) and partly because polls clearly show the public wants cheaper prices, but also wants options, and does not want private insurance eliminated, or taxes to go up.
Watch the candidates position themselves for maximum flexibility.
Oh, and by the way, no more stupid ‘raise your hand’ moments on complicated issues. Just say ‘this is too important for a raise your hand’. And which plan do I support? The one that winds up being the candidate position. They are all better than status quo.
Click here, then on the pic, for bigger print. Medicare for all who want it (70%) > Medicare that replaces private insurance (41%). Hey, M4A supporters, don’t argue with me, argue with the public and with the candidates.
Grist:
Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed
The numbers look something like this: 63 percent of national adults think the climate proposal is a good idea, while 60 percent of registered voters (the folks who are capable of actually putting politicians in office who will make the green dream a reality) support it. A whopping 86 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Independents are in favor of the plan. No surprise here, but only 26 percent of Republicans are enthusiastic about the Green New Deal at the moment.
So how does the Green New Deal compare to other climate-themed issues?
The deal has a higher approval rating than implementing a carbon tax and re-entering the Paris climate agreement: Only 50 percent of national adults think a carbon tax is a good idea, and 53 percent think we should re-enter Paris. The plan is just as popular among Republicans as a carbon tax, even though a number of conservatives have recently tried to repackage carbon pricing as a bipartisan climate solution.
Here’s another fascinating tidbit: the percentage of adults who weren’t sure whether re-entering the Paris agreement was a good or bad idea was quite high: 17 percent. But when it came to the Green New Deal, only 6 percent of adults said they were unsure. That means the folks pushing the proposal (and the people opposing it — cough, cough — Fox News) are doing a great job of raising awareness.
Jill Lawrence/USA Today:
What if Robert Mueller decided to tell Congress what he really thinks?
I did not anticipate William Barr's perfidious misrepresentations, maddening Democratic caution or scandalous Republican indifference. Let's clear things up.
Think of me as a hostage, tied to this chair, my wrists in handcuffs, a gag stuffed in my mouth.
I can’t help you. Do you understand? You will have to help yourselves.
If I could stand up to raise my right hand, I’d swear to tell the truth. And it would be this: Of course I would have indicted Donald Trump if I could have. What don’t you get about “if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that"? Or 10 textbook cases of obstruction of justice? Or the difference between “no collusion” and insufficient evidence to nail down a criminal conspiracy with the Russians?
Nancy Gibbs/WaPo:
The best candidate against Trump will harness hope — and fear
But Democrats don’t have to promise a moonshot. At the moment, ambitions too grand can themselves feel like a threat. Optimistic candidates can celebrate American ingenuity in solving problems without upending capitalism; promote both compassion and compliance in immigration law; restore institutions poisoned by partisanship, invoking deep shared values that underlie surface conflicts. That, too, was part of the moonshot: not just what government is capable of but what individuals are, too.
Trump’s presidency has taught many of us things about our country that we’d rather not know. That knowledge itself is frightening. Hope sometimes needs fear as its fuel. Perhaps the candidate who can best harness both is the one we need to lead us out of here.
How story choices influence the news:
Gideon Rachman/Financial Times:
Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and lessons from the 1930s
When is it right to sound the alarm about political turmoil?
Then, as now, political moderates were constantly having to ask the question, how serious is this? Is it just distasteful or is it truly dangerous? And is the right response to plunge into politics or to retreat into private life?
In today’s Britain, the Conservative party has swung towards the nationalist right, and the Labour party has been taken over by the radical left. That leaves many centrists politically homeless. Haffner captures that feeling, when he writes of, “We — that indefinite we, with no name, no party, no argument and no power.”
The complaints by today’s populists that a “deep state” in the US and Britain is thwarting the will of the people is reminiscent of Haffner’s description of the far-right in Germany in the 1920s: “With deep hatred they coined the word ‘system’ for the impalpable force that held them within bounds . . . For the moment, at least, they were held within bounds.”
A well-read young lawyer, Haffner nurtured a deep intellectual contempt for the Nazis and “their revolting jargon, every syllable of which implied a violent stupidity”. But this contempt turned out to be a political trap because, “I was inclined not to take them very seriously — a common attitude among their inexperienced opponents, which helped them a lot.”
At every turn, he wrestled with the question of how bad things would get. Shortly after the Nazis took power he “felt distinctly that what had happened so far was merely disgusting and no more. But what was in the offing had something more apocalyptic about it.”
Encouraging data, long term: