Amy Walter/Cook Political Report with the best political summary you’ll read for a while
Look at the Forest, Not the Trees: What We Do and Don't Know About 2020
It’s hard to beat an incumbent president. .
BUT, BUT, BUT* President Trump's job approval ratings have consistently underperformed the last eight president’s seeking re-election. In the major — non-Rasmussen polls, Trump has never hit 50 percent job approval. The only president to win re-election with an approval rating under 50 percent was George W. Bush, who clocked in at 48 percent job approval in late October 2004.
It’s also hard to beat an incumbent when the economy is good — or at least not doing poorly.
BUT, BUT, BUT: Which is a better predictor of Trump’s re-election chances: his overall job approval rating (which is dangerously low), or his job approval rating on the economy (which is pretty good). According to CNN’s Harry Enten, "history suggests that overall approval ratings are far more telling of electoral success that economic approval ratings. Look at the seven elections in which the incumbent ran for re-election since 1976 (the first election for which we have economic approval ratings). The average difference between the net approval rating (approval-disapproval) rating of the president and the general election margin has been 7 points. When you examine the economic net approval ratings (in CBS News polls) compared to the general election margin, the difference has been a much higher 19 points." In other words, the president’s job approval rating was much closer to the ultimate vote the president got on election day was his economic job approval rating.
Harry Enten/CNN:
Here's why you can't discount Joe Biden's early polling lead
You can look nationally, too. Biden and Sanders have about the same name recognition. Since the beginning of the year, Biden has averaged about 30% in primary preference polls. Sanders has averaged about 20%, and that was with a post-announcement boost. The only other candidate with greater than 80% name recognition, Warren, has averaged in the mid-single digits.
Indeed, when
you line up the different candidates by their name recognition in Iowa, New Hampshire and nationally, you see that Biden is actually doing better than expected given his name recognition in all three contests. The only other candidate for whom that is true? South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
The fact that Biden is able to do this in spite of bad media is also probably a sign it's not just name recognition for him. He remains well liked by voters.
Des Moines Register:
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Thursday he doubts a Republican lawsuit will succeed in getting the Affordable Care Act overturned.
“I don’t believe the courts are going to strike it down,” the Iowa Republican said in a phone interview with the Des Moines Register.
Grassley regained one of the most powerful health care perches in Congress this year when he resumed his role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Like other Republicans, he has been critical of the Affordable Care Act. The wide-ranging law is also known as Obamacare, because then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, signed it in 2010.
Aaron Blake/WaPo:
The growing signs of a rift between Trump and the Senate GOP
The latest source of discord is over Trump’s apparent desire to clean house on top administration officials in charge of immigration-related issues. A surge of illegal border crossings and asylum seekers has already spelled the end for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) this week warned Trump against putting anybody else on the chopping block, especially Lee Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Politico:
When the GOP tried — and failed — to tag Democrats as socialists
A swing-state experiment in last year's midterms offer a cautionary tale for the GOP.
In Pennsylvania last year, Republicans tagged Democrats up and down the ticket as socialists or sympathetic to socialism: Gov. Tom Wolf, congressional candidates and state representative hopefuls all got the hammer-and-sickle treatment. The strategy was deliberate and coordinated, emanating from the state’s Republican Party chairman, Val DiGiorgio.
But come Election Day, Democrats flipped three House seats and 16 more in the state General Assembly. Wolf easily won reelection, as did Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.
“Their attacks backfired,” said Democratic state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, a first-time candidate who won a GOP-held seat in the Philadelphia suburbs. “They protested an event I was at and handed out fake $10,000 bills that said ‘In Socialism We Trust’ with my face on it. They went really low, and it didn’t work.”
Like, you mean, Comey? Color me shocked.
Brexit from ITV:
Why Labour looks set to become the referendum party
But I am told enough of the referendum doubters are close to folding, partly because the advantages of Labour rebranding as the people's vote vanguard in the forthcoming European parliamentary and council elections would be very significant.
Labour would pick up the votes of almost all of the 48% who voted to remain in 2016, while the Tories would face a humiliating wipe out, with so much of the leave vote likely to gravitate to Farage's new Brexit party and to a somewhat resurgent UKIP.
According to senior Labour figures, what might clinch the deal for McDonnell, Thornberry, Starmer and Abbott, the leading proponents of a referendum, would be a decision by the shadow Cabinet to follow the approach of Harold Wilson's Labour Party in the 1975 referendum: namely for Corbyn himself to largely stand back from the campaign, and to allow any Labour MP or shadow minister to campaign for remain or leave, according to conscience.
As incompetent as Labour is, it’s amazing to see the Tory party destroy itself without their help. With their help, would be even worse.
You know it would be fine if half of the GOP left to become the Trump- Buchanan party.
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
How the Media Can Get the Mueller Report Right
There are a lot of questions to consider, biases to set aside and reactions to ignore. Tread responsibly.
Don’t screw up again!
That’s what Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes are saying to the news media in a must-read item about how to read and discuss the Robert Mueller report, which we’re finally supposed to see in the next week or so.
They say the best way to avoid misleading the public is to focus on what Mueller’s team actually says. I’d put it slightly differently: The first priority is to focus on what we will now know about what actually happened — what Donald Trump did, what others around Trump did, what the Russians did.
Focusing on the conclusions is important, too, but as Jurecic and Wittes point out, that’s where it starts getting very murky very quickly. There are whole series of overlapping but hardly identical questions, even just sticking to Trump: Were actions he took illegal? Were they possible to prosecute — and would it have been wise to do so? Were any actions a violation of the president’s oath of office, and therefore legitimate grounds for impeachment? Do any such actions demand impeachment as the only reasonable remedy? Were any actions improper, and if so, how much?