Olga Khazan/Atlantic:
People Voted for Trump Because They Were Anxious, Not Poor
A new study finds that Trump voters weren’t losing income or jobs. Instead, they were concerned about their place in the world.
“For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country,” Mutz notes, “white Americans are being told that they will soon be a minority race.” When members of a historically dominant group feel threatened, she explains, they go through some interesting psychological twists and turns to make themselves feel okay again. First, they get nostalgic and try to protect the status quo however they can. They defend their own group (“all lives matter”), they start behaving in more traditional ways, and they start to feel more negatively toward other groups
One of several studies to come to that conclusion.
Nancy LeTourneau/Washington Monthly:
The Status Anxiety of White Evangelicals
The question becomes: how much of this is about Christianity and how much is about whiteness?
It is important to note that not all white evangelicals are reacting to change this way. A group that John Fea calls “non-court evangelicals” met last week in Illinois to discuss the future of evangelicalism. One of the speakers was Dr. Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary (disclosure: where I earned my master’s degree). His speech resonated with a theology that takes an entirely different view than the one we hear so often from the likes of Robert Jeffress, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Jerry Falwell, Jr. He acknowledged that evangelicals are at a moment of crisis, but it is historical, not recent.
Having white supremacists in the WH does make you ask questions. For example check this thread out:
And this one:
Way too much of this happening to be coincidence. There’s a hateful permission structure about Trump’s win and his WH that represents the worst of America.
NY Times magazine:
How Devin Nunes Turned the House Intelligence Committee Inside Out
In inquiries on Benghazi and Russia and beyond, the California congressman has displayed a deep mistrust of the expert consensus on reality — a disposition that has helped him make friends in the current White House.
For House Democrats, Nunes’s “midnight run,” as they now call it, represented a fundamental break. “Devin and I had a very good relationship until March 21,” Schiff told me. “From that point on, I think that he considered it his primary mission to protect the White House no matter the cost.” In the process, Nunes has all but destroyed what was once the House Intelligence Committee’s greatest asset. When the committee was being created in 1977, to exercise legislative oversight of American intelligence agencies, Speaker Tip O’Neill pledged, “This is a nonpartisan committee; there will be nothing partisan about its deliberations.” Although that goal was occasionally tested, the spirit of nonpartisanship generally prevailed and at times even flourished, as it had under Nunes’s predecessor, Mike Rogers, and his Democratic counterpart, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland. “It’s not like Dutch and Mike weren’t stalwarts of their own parties, but they knew they had a national security mission,” says Jamil Jaffer, a Republican lawyer who was a senior counsel on the committee. “They got together and said, ‘Look, this stuff is too important to screw up.’ ”
But since Nunes’s midnight run, the committee has been crippled by partisan fighting.
This level of partisanship (above piece) is really pretty bad.
Trump doesn’t deserve any benefit of the doubt. His cabinet members are crooks like Pruitt, shysters like DeVos and incompetents like Carson. Ronny jackson probably won’t get far enough to screw up the VA, but who knows?
But the idea that 'the president deserves to have his nominee' is ridiculous. It's an outdated concept based on a competent president. It's ok to oppose his choices. It’s yet another way DC has not come to grips with Trump.
Paul Brandus /USA Today has an interesting take on how to run against Trump, aimed at trump voters:
Democrats should hit Trump policies, not Trump, to win Arizona special and the House
Indeed, if the idea is to energize Democrats and get them to the polls, they'll be in for a good night. But if they're trying to peel away Trump supporters, that approach will be less successful.
That is, you don’t have to run against Trump because antiTrump sentiment for indies and Ds are already there. For any persuadable Trump voter, talk policy. It’s the only way in. For the hard core base, just outvote them.
Max Boot/WaPo:
It’s a disgrace more Republicans aren’t willing to choose country over partisanship
For me, supporting Clinton wasn’t a close call: She was qualified and centrist, and her ethical issues, while real, faded into insignificance compared to Trump’s own. For those reasons, I had expected that many high-profile Republicans would campaign for Clinton. But it didn’t happen. Why?
Part of it undoubtedly was Clinton aversion and fatigue. But a lot had to do with the demonization of the Democrats and the tribal loyalty that have long been central to Republican identity — just as demonization of Republicans and a mirror-image tribal loyalty have been the case for Democrats. American politics has become so polarized, it is harder than ever for partisans to cross the aisle — even when the arguments for doing so are overwhelming.
Click the tweet to read the notes. Worth your time.
Brian Beutler/Crooked:
CONSERVATIVES: TRUMP CRIMES ARE NONE OF OUR BUSINESS
Is it tenable for the president of the United States to have owned and operated—and to continue to own and operate—a clearly corrupt and likely criminal organization, underwritten by foreign actors? Even if those actors didn’t meddle in the American electoral process?
These are profound questions. They’re also questions that Trump’s lackeys in the conservative movement have no answer for. Their response isn’t to show that Simpson has his facts wrong or to explain why the public shouldn’t be alarmed by Trump’s financial entanglements. It is to ring fence Trump from exposure to any criminal or political jeopardy that doesn’t stem entirely from the question of “collusion.” Conservatives are preparing to argue that any crimes Trump committed that weren’t essentially motivated by a desire to cheat during the election, are no business of ours, and can’t be investigated legitimately. Their fealty to Trump now runs so deep that they’d prefer the country remain vulnerable to a potentially enormous and ongoing national security breach than do anything to determine how serious the breach is and whether anything should be done about it.
Catherine Rampall/WaPo:
Tax cuts were supposed to save the GOP from Trump. Oops.
Voters were supposed to be so very grateful to have a little extra pocket money that they would be willing to overlook all that nonsense and eagerly cast their ballots for the GOP come November.
Unfortunately for Republicans, this deus tax machina never arrived.
Just 27 percent of Americans believe the GOP tax overhaul was a good idea, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Even among Republican voters, the tax cuts are not exactly thunderously popular: A little more than half (56 percent) say they were a good idea.
John Harwood/CNBC:
Not just Congress: Emily's List is pushing Democratic women to flip statehouses, too
Harwood: When you think about your allocation decisions — limited amounts of money, staff time — how do you calibrate now versus the future? That is to say, people running for federal office versus people running for city council, state legislature, all the lower-level things that become the feeder jobs for Congress.
Schriock: We have had to make a big expansion here at Emily's List in our state and local work this year. Not just for the future, but because those that are serving in the legislature today are absolutely rolling back policies. They're devastating women and families in their legislatures.
Harwood: We've got state chapters here today.
Schriock: That's exactly right. We've got our state organizations here. This is a very serious moment in these legislatures, and we more than tripled the size of our staff that recruits for legislative seats alone across this country.
Harwood: Encouraged by Virginia?
Schriock: We were engaged in 16 of those House of Delegate races. Thirteen of those women won; 11 of the 15 pickups were Emily's List candidates. We know that we've got the formula here to get those women up and running and to ensure they've got good staff around them. We're now working with 1,200 women in legislatures. This on top of our wanting to take back the House. That's on top of the Senate work. That's on top of the 10 women we've endorsed for governor.
Jonathan Blitzer/New Yorker:
In Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trump’s Immigration Agenda
After Trump took office, ICE announced that it planned to quadruple the number of workplace inspections it conducts. In January, the agency launched stings at ninety-eight 7-Eleven franchises in seventeen states. Smith hadn’t noticed those. But when the arrests happened closer to home, he was immediately struck by the fact that many of the people who’d been picked up had lived in the area for more than a decade. He knew people like them, he told me—“they work hard and they do the jobs that no one else wants to do.” He also felt strong sympathy for their kids. Smith said, “I felt I understood the legal side of it. But this is the first time I really started looking at the human side. Families are being divided.”