Perry Bacon, Jr/Five Thirty Eight:
Some Of The GOP’s Institutions Have More Reason To Be Loyal To Trump Than Others
So, after speaking with some political scientists and Republican operatives, examining the groups that spent the most money electing Trump and Republicans in Congress and looking at the president’s moves in his first few months in office, I came up with an informal list of six blocs that are significant parts of the Republican Party’s organizational wing. (Along with listing and describing each bloc, I included a current Republican politician whose ideology resembles that bloc, just to help clarify the distinctions.
Arrogant, unprepared 30 something gets into trouble. I’m shocked.
Conor Friedersdorf/Atlantic:
How Conservatives Awoke to the Dangers of Sean Hannity
The Fox News host is under attack as never before because many Americans are now forced to take what he says seriously for the first time.
Others on the right just started taking aim at right-wing misinformation as never before, perhaps having seen that it can have consequences, like a man with a gun demanding to search the non-existent basement of a much harassed Washington, D.C. pizzeria that was falsely accused of running a pedophilia ring for Democratic Party bigwigs out of its basement; or the elevation of a corrupt, serial liar to the presidency of the United States.
There are fabulous pieces in the Atlantic.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
It’s the Trump presidency, not its communications staff, that’s failing
Trump’s apologists cry, “But his base is with him!” or “In the Rust Belt, they don’t care!” That’s a comment on blind partisanship and the impact of Fox News-type propaganda and should not provide solace to Trump for several reasons. First, his core groups (e.g. older voters) are starting to drift away. Second, his core base of support is a minority of a minority of the 2016 electorate, which is insufficient to reelect him in 2020. Third, congressional Republicans scattered across the country, now at risk of losing the House, are not impressed with his continued support in deep-red quadrants; Republicans in mildly competitive seats better scramble to save their own political hides.
Seth Masket/Vox:
Poli-sci blogging has come far, and has far to go
A look back on changes in political science blogging since the founding of Mischiefs of Faction.
We have all benefited.
Emile Simpson/Foreign Policy:
Jared Kushner’s Growing Stench of Treason
Nobody knows yet whether the president's son-in-law broke any laws. But "traitor" is more than just a legal term.
But it’s the very legitimacy of wanting better relations with Russia, given Trump’s democratic mandate to pursue such a course, that makes Kushner’s desire to hide the Trump transition team’s connections with the Kremlin from U.S. intelligence so dubious, especially if he did intend for the backchannel to continue, or to start, after the inauguration. That is the kernel of the illegitimacy here: not the effort to improve relations through a backchannel, but the extraordinary measures to keep it secret from one’s own side.
Elizabeth Rosenthal/NY Times:
We All Have Pre-existing Conditions
But the Republican proposal also raises a more basic issue: Who will decide what constitutes a pre-existing condition?
Before the Affordable Care Act, profit-taking insurers had lowered the bar for what was considered a pre-existing condition to include nearly every malady, making it difficult for many healthy patients to get affordable insurance.
Molly Ball/Atlantic:
How Trump Is Torturing Capitol Hill
As Republicans in Congress try to fend off the flurry of scandals, they are haunted by a question: Is this as good as it’s going to get?
Meanwhile Democrats sit back and watch it burn, with no small amount of schadenfreude, and the Republicans who never liked Trump see their worst predictions fulfilled. “You bought this bad pony. You ride it,” the anti-Trump consultant Rick Wilson tweeted recently. A staffer to a Senate Republican who did not vote for Trump told me, “We didn’t have high expectations, so we’re not disappointed. We tried to warn you.”
CNN:
Sources: Russians discussed potentially 'derogatory' information about Trump and associates during campaign
The details of the communication shed new light on information US intelligence received about Russian claims of influence. The contents of the conversations made clear to US officials that Russia was considering ways to influence the election -- even if their claims turned out to be false.
None of the sources would say which specific Trump aides were discussed. One of the officials said the intelligence report masked the American names but it was clear the conversations revolved around the Trump campaign team. Another source would not give more specifics, citing the classified nature of the information.
"The Russians could be overstating their belief to influence," said one of the sources.
Remember, you don’t need a sense of shame or patriotism to be affected by derogatory information. You just have to be worried about your finances.
Patrick Ruffini (conservative)/Five Thirty Eight:
Black Voters Aren’t Turning Out For The Post-Obama Democratic Party
But the Georgia 6 April primary was a continuation of some 2016 turnout trends too — trends that should worry Democrats. In 2016, turnout among whites was up across the country, and in highly educated areas like the 6th District in the suburbs of Atlanta. This redounded to Democrats’ advantage. At the same time, black turnout was down precipitously, from 66 percent in 2012 to 59 percent in 2016. This black-white turnout gap continued in the first round of Georgia’s special election, where the Democrats got impressive turnout levels from all races and ethnicities — except African-Americans.
Lower black turnout in 2016 might be explained as a reversion to the mean after that group’s historic turnout for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. It’s possible that Clinton could never inspire black turnout the way the first African-American president could. But even if this shift is more of a return to the old status quo, Democrats will still have to grapple with these turnout levels going forward, and there are powerful lessons we can learn from the party’s failure to raise or maintain previous black turnout levels in 2016. Painting Trump as a bigot did not motivate more African-Americans to vote, in 2016 or in the Georgia 6th. Hope and shared identity seem to be much more effective turnout motivators than fear.