Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
The Post summarizes the ratings put out by Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and FiveThirtyEight: “More than 300 of the 435 seats are seen as safe by all three rating systems. . . . Another 83 seats are seen as in play to some extent by all three, though the degree to which they’re at risk — that is, whether they’re toss-ups or leaning or likely — may differ. Another 48 seats are seen as in play by at least one system but not both of the others.”
One is struck by the breadth of the potential losses. Democrats, if they do take the House, are likely to win “across all regions of the country,” Nate Silver predicts for FiveThirtyEight. There really is no safe region for Republicans, not even in the Deep South. (“In the South, they face pressure because of demographic change in states such as Georgia and Virginia — and increasingly in Texas.”) Vulnerable Republicans come from rural, urban and suburban districts. A geographically dispersed coalition, heavily but not exclusively female, college-educated, nonwhite and young could send a thunderous message to the GOP. You say nothing matters? No, it really matters — all of it.
Let’s hope. The thing is, nothing changes until it does, and those who cite ‘nothing changes, see the recent past’ always miss it when it does.
Sabrina Siddiqui/Guardian:
'Era of Trump': how Republicans are banking on the president to drive midterm gains
Tim Pawlenty’s defeat in Minnesota has party operatives hoping base turnout can be enough to beat back the Democrats
“I think that most of the distractions are specific to only one figure – to President Trump himself,” [Michael] Steel [R strategist] said. “I don’t think anyone blames Republican candidates up and down the ticket for things the president may or may not have done.”
A rejection of Trump has, however, emerged as one of the central motivations of the so-called resistance. Democrats have seen a surge in turnout in primaries this year. Republican turnout has stayed relatively flat.
“The bigger risk,” Conant said, “is that Republicans who have mixed feelings about Trump but voted for him because they couldn’t stand the thought of Clinton being president may stay home this fall.
“Midterms are a turnout contest. The party that does a better job turning out its base is going to win.”
Virginia Heffernan/LA Times:
How Donald Trump made me love privileged men
But white men of both privilege and legitimate accomplishment — like Mueller and James Clapper and John Brennan and James B. Comey — have a sanguine and vigorous relationship with institutions.
They’re at ease in the halls (and hockey rinks) of power. Right now, American institutions are occupied by pretenders who may yet devastate them. We need white men like Mueller who speak without irony of justice and honor and the Marine Corps.
It’s simple: whatever political flag they fly, everyone in the U.S. who has a regular job, pays ordinary bills and taxes, has served time in the military or on a serious sports team, or has a traditional college education has a quality — discipline— that the unmoored, unfocused Trumpites lack.
The complaints about Trump from white veterans in the heartland and black lawyers in Boston are similar: Where is his discipline?
Marcy Wheeler:
WHY WOULD DON MCGAHN (AND HIS LAWYER) COOPERATE IN A PIECE CLAIMING HE COOPERATED WITH MUELLER (ON OBSTRUCTION)?
There may well be an aspect of that, though I wouldn’t want to be (and hope I’m not) in a position where my legal jeopardy relied on how successfully I could spin Maggie and Mike, even if I were as expert at doing so as Don McGahn is.
A better answer may lie in this observation from my last post:
By far the most telling passage in this 2,225+ word story laying out Don McGahn’s “cooperation” with the Mueller inquiry is this passage:
Though he was a senior campaign aide, it is not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned Mr. McGahn about whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia’s effort to influence the election.
Over two thousand words and over a dozen sources, and Maggie and Mike never get around to explaining whether Don McGahn has any exposure in or provided testimony for the investigation in chief, the conspiracy with Russia to win the election.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells/New Yorker:
For a while, McCain and Salter planned to call their final book “It’s Always Darkest Before It’s Completely Black.” But McCain pulled back—it was too much. “McCain never abandons all hope,” Salter said. “It’s not the country. It’s just this jackass.” I asked what, for McCain, had been the worst moment of Trump’s ascendance. “The Khans,” Salter said. In the summer of 2016, when Trump began attacking Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son was killed while serving in Iraq, Salter was driving from New Hampshire, where he had been consulting on Ken Burns’s Vietnam War documentary, to Maine. McCain called. “He was distraught,” Salter said. “He said, ‘Did you see that asshole?’ ” Salter went on, “I knew then that he would never go the distance. That he would formally say, ‘I can’t vote for him.’ ”
Liz Szabo/NY Times:
Vitamin D, the Sunshine Supplement, Has Shadowy Money Behind It
The doctor most responsible for creating a billion-dollar juggernaut has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the vitamin D industry.
The recommendations were a financial windfall for the vitamin D industry. By advocating such widespread testing, the Endocrine Society directed more business to Quest and other commercial labs. Vitamin D tests are now the fifth-most-common lab test covered by Medicare.
The guidelines benefited the vitamin D industry in another important way. Unlike the National Academy, which concluded that patients have sufficient vitamin D when their blood levels are at or above 20 nanograms per milliliter, the Endocrine Society said vitamin D levels need to be much higher — at least 30 nanograms per milliliter. Many commercial labs, including Quest and LabCorp, adopted the higher standard.
Yet there’s no evidence that people with the higher level are any healthier than those with the lower level, said Dr. Clifford Rosen, a senior scientist at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute and co-author of the National Academy report
Under 20 is low. 20-30 is probably normal, says this piece, which is excellent.
Comey and the Russian interference (it was far more than ‘meddling’) decided the election. An inconvenient truth that was assisted by the media.
Charles Blow/NY Times:
Nixon, Clinton and Trump
The more Trump is cornered, the more he mirrors Richard Nixon.
But a full reading of Nixon’s statements sound mild compared to the viciousness with which Trump is attacking the investigation looking into illegality, the press reporting on it and those providing information for it.
Even in Nixon’s false statement, one reads at least a rhetorical respect for American institutions and history, even if that respect did not exist in fact or in full.
Trump has none of that.
I believe he has absolutely no plans to personally cooperate with the investigation by sitting for an interview. He may have once believed that he could bluff his way through such an experience, but now his hostility and fear about the inquiry’s conclusion has clipped his courage.
And, I don’t believe Trump is going to confess as Clinton did, or resign as Nixon did, regardless of what Mueller finds, whom he prosecutes or what he says in a report.
We have our own folks who mistrust polls but:
There’s a lot to unpack here, but please stop with the idea that reporting good data for Democrats somehow makes us overconfident. There is no basis for this. The other side, otoh, does not see what’s happening.