NY Times:
Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.
The law amounts to the most far-reaching states’ rights endeavor in the country, the far edge of a growing movement known as “nullification” in which a state defies federal power.
Guns? Marijuana? You can always find some righteous reason for nullification. But even Jefferson Davis had trouble with nullification (
he preferred secession and states' rights.) Let's remember where that led to the last time around.
Charles M. Blow:
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” so disturbed the American power structure that the F.B.I. started spying on him in what The Washington Post called “one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.” The speech even moved the head of the agency’s domestic intelligence division to label King “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of Communism, the Negro and national security.
Quinnipiac:
With 13 days until the primary election, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio surges ahead of the Democratic pack for New York City mayor with 36 percent of likely voters, close to the 40 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is at 21 percent, with 20 percent for former City Comptroller William Thompson, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner has 8 percent of likely Democratic primary voters, with 6 percent for City Comptroller John Liu, 1 percent for former Council member Sal Albanese and 8 percent undecided.
This compares to the results of an August 13 Quinnipiac University poll which showed de Blasio at 30 percent, with 24 percent for Quinn and 22 percent for Thompson.
In possible Democratic primary runoff matchups:
De Blasio tops Quinn 59 - 30 percent;
De Blasio leads Thompson 52 - 36 percent;
Thompson bests Quinn 57 - 33 percent.
Bill De Blasio. Get used to the name.
More politics and policy below the fold.
The Fix:
Two things are true about Obamacare. First, the law has been broadly unpopular for the last several years. Second, the idea of defunding it — as some conservative Republicans are pushing — is even less popular.
People are afraid of change. The law's unpopularity, given the popularity of actual features of the law, and those who want to see the law go further, is greatly exaggerated.
Greg Sargent:
Trying to sort all of that out isn’t easy. We know, from other Kaiser polls, that people like the individual portions of ACA far more than they report liking the law. We know that some of those who disapprove of it do so because they want more, not less, reform. We know that “fixing” the law is a lot more popular than getting rid of it. As I said, hard to sort out.
But clearly the idea that most voters, or most swing voters, have the kind of deep hatred for health reform that Tea Party activists and other core Republicans share just isn’t the case. And those Republicans who want to keep “repeal” and “defunding” at the center of Congressional debate and then yet another electoral cycle? They’re going to find, as they did in 2012, that Obamacare as a political weapon used against the Democrats is in most contexts one big dud.
.@ThePlumLineGS polls can be tricky to interpret (see privacy and NSA, look up "nuance") but here's a case for them.
http://t.co/...
— @DemFromCT
:
Democrats may dream of sixteen years of dominance, but on Nov. 8, 2016 it is entirely possible that Americans will elect a Republican president. It is even possible, although less likely, that Republicans will be in full control of the federal government: the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court.
A dominant theme in contemporary political commentary on the left, the right and the center is that the Republican Party faces a grave crisis of both demographics and ideology. But despite the cacophony of fault-finding, caution is in order before we declare the Republican Party down for the count.
Of course, this scenario depends on Hillary not running, Jeb winning the nomination and Obamacare imploding. Put differently, a lot of hot air in service to making a point.
McKay Coppins:
The rapidly approaching conflict in Syria has begun to draw a deep rift between two sides of a Republican party that have long been drifting apart over foreign policy, pitting the hawkish holdovers of Bush-era neoconservatism against an ascendant libertarian wing that opposes humanitarian intervention.
As the Obama administration beats the war drum — calling the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens a “moral obscenity,” and insisting intervention is the only acceptable response — Republicans are scattered all over the philosophical spectrum, without a clear set of talking points, let alone a unified worldview.
Reality check on where the Republicans really are... and it's not rallying around Jeb Bush.
NY Times has a reality check for the White House:
With botched intelligence about Iraq casting a long shadow, the Obama administration is preparing to release information it says will show proof of a large-scale chemical attack by the Syrian military.
