Seung Min Kim and Emily Swanson/The Associated Press:
Biden 2024 splits Dems but most would back him: AP-NORC poll
Despite the reluctance of many Democrats to see Biden run for another term, 78% of them say they approve of the job he’s doing as president. And a total of 81% of Democrats say they would at least probably support Biden in a general election if he is the nominee — 41% say they definitely would and 40% say they probably would.
This is why talking about so-called “tepid” support for Joe Biden is foolish. The election is a binary, not Biden vs the perfect candidate (which Donald Trump is decidedly not, and neither is the less likely Ron DeSantis).
From The Wall Street Journal poll:
Let that 54-15 number sink in and ask yourself how (barring a major recession) Trump grows his numbers (with more indictments likely).
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent/The Washington Post:
Enraged by GOP debt limit extortion? Blame MAGA’s moderate enablers.
When it comes to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s use of the debt limit as a weapon of extortion, the media relentlessly focuses on his dealings with extreme conservatives. They’re the ones, we’re told, who are pressuring the California Republican to refuse to raise the U.S. borrowing limit, threatening default and economic disaster, to squeeze Democrats for extreme spending cuts.
But this storyline lets another key GOP group off the hook: The supposedly reasonable Republicans — the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatists, whatever you call them — who could end this madness now if they chose but instead are enabling the crisis.
POLITICO Playbook:
How to lose friends and alienate people, by Ron DeSantis
“If you’re going to go into politics, kind of a fundamental skill that you should have is likability. I don’t think [he] has that,” [former Rep. Dave] Trott said. “He never developed any relationships with other members that I know of. You’d never see him talking on the floor with other people or palling around. He’s just a very arrogant guy, very focused on Ron DeSantis.”
Given that, Trott isn’t surprised that so many members of the Florida delegation are opting to endorse Trump over their own governor.
“He wasn’t really liked when he was in Congress. And now it’s coming home to, you know, prove out as some of the Florida delegation endorsed Trump and and some of the donors, you know, think he’s kind of awkward in terms of how he interacts with them,” Trott said. “If his pre-presidential campaign was playing out differently, then I’d say, ‘Well, maybe he just didn’t like me.’ But I think there’s something more at work here.”
In short, said Trott, “I think he’s an asshole. I don’t think he cares about people.”
Perhaps the smartest take on DeSantis I’ve seen comes from Helen Lewis’s ”The Bluestocking” on Substack:
Politics is, apart from anything else, a trade where people are intensely sensitive to status. My hunch is that DeSantis assumed that he was the big dog and everyone would be drawn to him, whereas he should have hosed down both donors and Republican colleagues with flattery (mixed with threats). The best politicians make everyone they speak to feel special.
CNN:
Text messages reveal Trump operatives considered using breached voting data to decertify Georgia’s Senate runoff in 2021
Willis’ office is weighing a potential racketeering case against multiple defendants and is actively deciding who to bring charges against, sources tell CNN. Willis has subpoenaed a number of individuals involved in the Coffee County breach, including the two men who carried it out who were in touch with Penrose and Logan.
Willis has also subpoenaed Giuliani and Powell as part of her probe. Giuliani has been told he’s a target in the Fulton County probe, CNN previously reported. The special grand jury convened for the case recommended issuing multiple indictments in its final report completed in February, according to the jury foreperson.
A source familiar with Willis’ investigation tells CNN that Willis and her team have in their possession evidence that Trump allies planned to use the breached voting data from Georgia to try to decertify the state’s senate runoff election. Emails obtained by CNN show Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County on January 7, 2021.
The Coffee County breach is also under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Burgess Everett/POLITICO:
Lost on abortion politics, Republicans struggle for a solution
Leading GOP lawmakers can’t even agree on the most basic question: whether the federal government should get involved in abortion at all.
The GOP is so divided over abortion politics that even top Mitch McConnell allies — who could succeed him as Senate leader — have opposing ideas on how to approach it.
Minority Whip John Thune sees a 15-week national abortion ban as something Republicans can defend amidst Democratic attacks. Another possible GOP leader, John Cornyn of Texas, doesn’t see a need for Congress to weigh in on abortion policy in a post-Roe world. And GOP No. 3 John Barrasso said simply that “states ought to make the decision.”
Republicans struggle for a solution because their position(s) are incredibly unpopular and lose elections.
Jill Filipovic/Substack:
Why are Conservatives Obsessed with Gender Identity?
It's because they want to impose their own gender ideology.
Conservatives who push and support these bills claim to be concerned about “gender ideology” perverting young minds — telling boys they can be girls and vice versa, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, giving children hormones and genital surgeries. This is all pretty dishonest. Members of the conservative movement aren’t concerned about women’s sports (otherwise they’d be funding them), children’s health (otherwise they’d be fighting the number-one killer of children), or women’s rights (otherwise they wouldn’t be virulent misogynists attacking women’s rights at every turn, banning abortion, and electing rapists to office). They care about liberal “gender ideology” for one reason: Because they want to impose and enforce their own right-wing gender ideology on the public.
Michael Hiltzik/The Los Angeles Times (via syndication partner Minneapolis Star-Tribune):
A stabbing in a liberal city, a rush to assumptions, then a revision
The Bob Lee killing in San Francisco shows how crime reporting gets almost everything wrong.
As it turned out, of course, Lee's stabbing death seems to have had nothing to do with street crime or prosecutorial laxity or coddled criminals or "repeat violent offenders." The April 13 arrest of a fellow tech worker in connection with the crime suggests that the assault was the outcome of a dispute between Lee (who had moved to Miami) and the alleged assailant (an Emeryville resident) over Lee's relationship with the latter's sister.
Superficially, then, the initial coverage of Lee's killing appears to be a case of what the great press critic A.J. Liebling once labeled "the futility of flapdoodle." It's what happens when uninformed or misinformed sources run wild, equipped with little but received wisdom.
That San Francisco was overrun by violent criminals was taken as gospel; a predawn killing in a deserted part of town was shoehorned into the prevailing narrative.
Never mind that the narrative itself is untrue. As my colleague Summer Lin reported, violent crime in San Francisco — homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — peaked in 2013, and by 2020, the last year for which statistics have been released, cases had fallen by about 32%.