Adam Serwer/Atlantic:
The Illiberal Right Throws a Tantrum
A faction of the religious right has concluded that if liberal democracy does not guarantee victory, then it must be abandoned.
Black Americans did not abandon liberal democracy because of slavery, Jim Crow, and the systematic destruction of whatever wealth they managed to accumulate; instead they took up arms in two world wars to defend it. Japanese Americans did not reject liberal democracy because of internment or the racist humiliation of Asian exclusion; they risked life and limb to preserve it. Latinos did not abandon liberal democracy because of “Operation Wetback,” or Proposition 187, or because of a man who won a presidential election on the strength of his hostility toward Latino immigrants. Gay, lesbian, and trans Americans did not abandon liberal democracy over decades of discrimination and abandonment in the face of an epidemic. This is, in part, because doing so would be tantamount to giving the state permission to destroy them, a thought so foreign to these defenders of the supposedly endangered religious right that the possibility has not even occurred to them. But it is also because of a peculiar irony of American history: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises, and no more fair-weather friends than those who have taken them for granted.
Kudos to BuzzFeed News:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders — the combative White House press secretary who unflappably defended President Donald Trump, followed his charge to discredit journalists who cover him, and admitted to lying to reporters — will leave the White House at the end of June.
The news was announced by the president via Twitter on Thursday.
David Lauter/LA Times:
Impeach Trump? Many California Democrats aren’t convinced
Among registered voters overall, 35% said Congress should start impeachment proceedings and 30% said Congress should continue investigating Trump, but not start the impeachment process — essentially the position taken by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. A third said Congress should drop the matter and move to other topics.
A narrow majority of Democrats, 53%, said Congress should start the impeachment process. But about 4 in 10 favored continued investigations. Only about 8% of Democrats said Congress should move on.
[Mimi Rocah link from tweet]
The Economist:
Donald Trump’s presidency has moved America left
The Right Nation was last this enthusiastic about left-wing policies in 1961
The American public’s preferences on policy have long shown an allergy to whatever the occupant of the White House is trying to do. In this respect public opinion is like a thermostat: when policy gets too hot, Americans turn the temperature down. When the government drifts too far right, Americans want to move back to the left, as happened in the 2018 mid-term elections.
Aaron Blake/WaPo:
Trump’s internal poll numbers are out. And both they and his team’s response paint a bleak picture.
I asked the Trump campaign to confirm or deny they are referring to informed ballots. It has declined to comment further.
Why does this matter? For one, I have long said that if you are talking about the informed ballot, you are losing. If the campaign needs to resort to these numbers, that says a lot.
And second, we do not know what kind of issue descriptions there are. Sometimes these informed ballots are done for legitimate reasons; sometimes they are hugely slanted statements, like the one above, intended to goose the polls and make them as rosy for the candidate as possible.
In either case, they quite simply cannot be relied upon. And the fact that the Trump team is apparently playing them up suggests the situation is as bad as the Times — and the public polling — suggested.
Max Boot/WaPo:
Trump sycophants jump to cover the president’s claim that he’ll break the law
A common trope among the Trumpkins was that criticism of their idol for making use of foreign election assistance was hypocritical because, as Sean Hannity argued: “Hillary Clinton literally empowered a foreign agent who produced a dossier for the Russian lies.” This whataboutism was echoed by the likes of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who should be smart enough to know better.
In reality (remember that quaint concept?), there is nothing illegal or unethical about the Clinton campaign paying a U.S. research firm, Fusion GPS, which employed a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who talked to actual Russians to probe Trump’s suspicious Russia links. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee admitted as much: This is standard opposition research. It is not remotely equivalent to the Russian government helping Trump win. It’s actually similar to the Trump campaign hiring Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm. Moreover, Steele did go to the FBI — something that Trump boasts about never having done.
Few Republicans were willing to defend Trump’s egregious comments outright. Instead, they deflected and minimized.
If you don’t look at Trump like a mob boss, you’re looking at him (and Republicans) the wrong way.
David A Graham/Atlantic:
Trump’s Electoral Shenanigans Are Getting Worse
Having exploited foreign assistance in 2016 and gotten away with it, the president is already trying it again in the 2020 race.
There are several plausible ways to interpret this. One, as my colleague David Frum shows, is as an astonishing confession. Another, laid out by my colleague Peter Nicholas, is that Trump has completely failed to learn the lessons of the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s declaration, though, is neither especially surprising nor especially irrational. While the president has paid hefty political penalties for his behavior during the 2016 election, and while his latest comments will only stoke the fervor for impeachment among Democrats, the fact remains that the Trump campaign profited from foreign interference in 2016. It did not rebuff explicit offers of assistance from Russia, and capitalized on the roundabout assistance Russia’s release of hacked material provided. Whatever collateral damage Trump has received since the election, Russia’s interference helped him pull off a shocking upset victory in November 2016, and he’s so far escaped serious personal consequences for exploiting that aid.
Read the above thread.
John Stohr:
Liberals Are Not Mad Enough
The president implied that treason is OK.
For many of today’s liberals, patriotism isn’t one of “the most ordinary emotions,” as George Orwell put it. They have been taught in good faith to take a critical (or even a suspicious) view of patriotism, because historically, patriotism has been as problematic as it has been ennobling. This was the case most recently when the George W. Bush administration equated any questioning of the “War on Terror” to treachery.
Such liberals have been taught to look beyond America’s borders toward creating a universal understanding of the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings, no matter where they are born. Citizenship in a nation-state is of secondary moral importance to membership in humanity. Perhaps above all, these liberals tend to believe that reason, evidence (data!), and logic are superior to passion. Passions trigger wars, liberals tend to believe. Aloofness is necessary to realizing world peace.
At the same time, many liberals tend to hold their country to ethical standards so high that when the United States inevitably disappoints them, they detach themselves emotionally even more than they are. The result can be, as philosopher Steven B. Smith once noted, “a morbidly self-hating form of disillusionment that can often lead to nihilistic fits of rage and contempt.” I’d add the following thesis: the dream of a classless politically neutral world society free of the conflict that comes with nationalist passions is itself helping drive a resurgence of nationalist passions.
How?
By meeting amorality with its own.
Rob Brownstein/Atlantic:
Brace for a Voter-Turnout Tsunami
Even with a surge in overall participation, white working-class voters could still remain decisive in the 2020 election.
Signs are growing that voter turnout in 2020 could reach the highest levels in decades—if not the highest in the past century—with a surge of new voters potentially producing the most diverse electorate in American history.
But paradoxically, that surge may not dislodge the central role of the predominantly white and heavily working-class voters who tipped the three Rust Belt states that decided 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Even amid a tide of new participation, those same voters could remain the tipping point of the 2020 election.
With Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency stirring such strong emotions among both supporters and opponents, strategists in both parties and academic experts are now bracing for what Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in voting behavior, recently called “a voter turnout storm of a century in 2020.”
In a recent paper, the Democratic voter-targeting firm Catalist projected that about 156 million people could vote in 2020, an enormous increase from the 139 million who cast ballots in 2016. Likewise, Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican polling firm, recently forecast that the 2020 contest could produce a massive turnout that is also unprecedentedly divers
That’s why you don’t give up on reluctant Trump voters, Never Trumpers, the Obama → Trump voters, etc. Forget the 35% Trump base, the evangelicals, the rally voters. That’s not enough to win with, and we are not talking about them.
This is a must read.
Susan J Demas/Michigan Advance:
The GOP finally has an infrastructure plan: Sell off Michigan for parts
In what was, perhaps, the most perfect Onion story ever written, the city of Detroit was sold at auction to “bulk scrap dealers and smelting foundries” back in 2006.
“Detroit Sold For Scrap” chronicles how the Renaissance Center netted $4,000 and the former Detroit Museum of African-American History fetched a whopping $135.
“This is what’s best for Detroit,” Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick said. “We must act now, while we can still get a little something for it.”
The article from the site that bills itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” was, of course, parody. But 13 years later, it seems as though it inspired Michigan Republicans’ infrastructure plan — and I use the term “plan” here extremely loosely.
Coming to a state near you.
For you polling skeptics:
When the propagandists are trying to convince you to ignore the polling numbers, pay extra attention to the polling numbers.
This is remarkable: