Jeremy Barr/WaPo:
‘Is there a purge?’: John Harwood’s CNN exit viewed as strategy shift
The veteran White House correspondent’s parting words were a defense of an outspoken kind of journalism that CNN insiders think has fallen out of favor under a new boss.
Several current and former CNN employees who spoke with The Washington Post — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly — are interpreting the sudden exodus as evidence that Licht, who joined the network as chairman and CEO in May, is starting his tenure by casting out voices that had often been critical of former president Donald Trump and his allies, in an effort to present a new, more ideologically neutral CNN. That aligns with a vision repeatedly expressed by David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Old people watch cable. Old people watch Fox. Ergo…
We’ll see if Brownstein lasts at CNN (he also writes for the Atlantic). But he’s correct about fascist-adjacent pundits.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
MAGA Republicans are seething with rage because Biden hit his target
So here’s a question for those Republicans: What exactly in Biden’s speech was wrong?
In coming days, these Republicans will retreat into right-wing media safe spaces to fulminate without facing cross-examination. But when they venture into mainstream forums, they should be pressed on specifics.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
That sounds like exit surveys elsewhere (from FairVote):
Voter support and understanding
Voter understanding of and support for RCV is strong. For democracy — and RCV — to flourish, voters must understand their electoral system and how to interact with a ranked ballot, and they must be able to cast a meaningful vote for a candidate of their choice. This section examines how well voters understand RCV and their level of satisfaction with it.
Voter support
- In 2021, 77% of voters surveyed by Rank the Vote NYC in the New York City primaries supported using RCV for future local elections.
- In 2018, 61% of voters in Maine’s general election expressed support for keeping or expanding RCV after using it for the first time.
- In 2018, 94% of Santa Fe voters reported feeling “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their first use of RCV.
ABC News:
Abortion, unemployment, police shootings on Ohio young voters' minds for midterms
A fight for the Senate seat is on in this swing state.
ABC News hit the campaign trail, asking young voters in Columbus and at Ohio State University, about the issues that matter most to them in the midterm elections.
This year's midterms are slated to be the most consequential yet as the fate of abortion laws are now in the hands of the states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
"A lot of women don't even know they're pregnant until after six weeks. I think that is odd, cruel and it's clearly laws made by people that have never had babies," said Ashley McCoy of Columbus, referring to the state's six-week abortion ban, which makes the procedure illegal after fetal cardiac activity is detected, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
WaPo:
Living in a city with no water: ‘This is unbearable’
What stood out this week was the calm. The streets were quiet, and residents queued expectantly for resources.
The entire city of more than 150,000 was without safe drinking water, with no end in sight. Many residents here say they adapted long ago to catastrophic government failure.
“Jackson’s water’s been messed up; I don’t even feel like they should be issuing people bills,” said Roshonda Snell, 32, who works at a local hotel. “It’s infected, and you can’t even do nothing with it.”
Snell is a beneficiary of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and says she has been using most of the money she receives from it to buy water for her family for a while. “I spend about $200 on bottled water every month. That’s mainly what I use that money for, to buy five big cases of water for the month,” said Snell, a Jackson native. “I really want to leave Jackson so bad.”
This is fake/not fake:
Annie Lowry/Atlantic:
The Economist Who Knows the Miracle Is Over
An era of remarkable prosperity has ended.
In time, [Brad DeLong] decided that the era that had begun in 1870 ended in 2010, shortly after productivity growth and GDP growth had collapsed, as inequality was strangling economic vibrancy around the world and revanchist political populism was on the rise. With a bit more writing, he finished Slouching Towards Utopia, one of this year’s most anticipated economics books, to be published on Tuesday. His long-gestating examination of what he calls the “long 20th century” is sweeping and detailed, learned and accessible, familiar and strange—a definitive look at how we arrived at such material splendor and how it failed to deliver all that it seemed to promise. His decision to end the story in 2010, and thus to finish his book, holds a message for all of us: Despite its problems and iniquities, the economic era Americans just lived through was miraculous. And now it is over.
WSJ:
Support for Legalized Abortion Grows Since Dobbs Ruling, WSJ Poll Shows
More than half of voters said the issue made them more likely to cast ballots in the midterm elections; majorities oppose 6-week and 15-week abortion bans
According to the survey, 60% of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 55% in March. Another 29% said it should be illegal, except in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is endangered, compared with 30% in March. And 6% said it should be illegal in all cases, down from 11% in March.
...
“Abortion is not an issue that most people, prior to Dobbs, spent a lot of time thinking about,” said Democratic pollster Molly Murphy, whose firm conducted the poll with Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. “What Dobbs has done is one, we’ve had a national conversation about it. Two, it has gone from hypothetical to real.”
More than half of voters said the ruling made them more motivated to vote in the midterm elections.
Asked broadly about their top issue for the midterms, voters cited the economy and inflation first, followed by abortion. But when offered a choice of five issues and asked which made them most likely to vote, they put the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade ahead of inflation.
Among those who named the court ruling as the most important issue tested against others, 77% were Democrats, 8% were Republicans and 9% were independents.
“I was already going to vote anyway in the midterms. What this made me do is really take a harder look at local elections,” said Jacob Kendrick, 22, a Democrat and recent college graduate from Detroit. Referring to the Republican candidate for governor in the state, he said: “Now, I’m like, let me make sure they’re not a Tudor Dixon candidate who is extreme on abortion.”
'I'm paying attention to local races now' is a BFD.