Daily Archives
28 posts · Tuesday
A new CBS News poll finds President Trump’s approval rating is a dismal 36% to 57%.
Key finding: “The drop in the President’s approval rating is partially due to ebbing support among Republicans. Seventy-two percent approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing, a decline of eleven points since April.”
For members: Trump Is Finally Starting to Lose His Base
David Leonhardt: “If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, Hillary Clinton would be president. Even with Donald Trump’s working-class appeal, Clinton could have swept Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”
“If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, Democrats would control the Senate. Clinton or Barack Obama could then have filled the recent Supreme Court vacancy, and that justice would hold the tiebreaking vote on campaign finance, labor unions and other issues.”
“If liberals voted at the same rate as conservatives, the country would be doing more to address the two defining issues of our time — climate change and stagnant middle-class living standards. Instead, Trump is making both worse.”
Randy Bryce (D), a Democratic veteran and iron worker, announced he will challenge Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district in 2018, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“President Trump’s pick to be the next FBI director, Christopher Wray, billed New Jersey taxpayers more than $2.1 million in legal charges and expenses while representing Gov. Chris Christie as his personal attorney before during and after the Bridgegate trial,” WNYC reports.
“It is unclear what Wray and an extensive team from his firm, King & Spalding LLP, was doing for Christie — the bills provided to WNYC from the state Attorney General’s Office are heavily redacted, and Wray has never spoken publicly about his role.”
“The public did not even know that Wray was working for the governor until nearly two years into his work, when Christie’s spokesman said a cell phone that the governor used during Bridgegate was in Wray’s possession. Two former Christie aides who were indicted and ultimately convicted had unsuccessfully sought to subpoena the phone to use as part of their defense.”
David Brooks: “In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.”
“There may be a giant revelation still to come. But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred — that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything seems to be leaking out of this administration, but so far the leaks about actual collusion are meager.”
Also important: “The politics of scandal drives a wedge through society. Political elites get swept up in the scandals. Most voters don’t really care.”
Rick Klein: “The insane money and outsized attention are just two factors that make the race for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District a less-than-ideal test case; this game won’t be played 50 or 60 times next November. And Democrat Jon Ossoff has resisted resistance-themed messaging, though he has benefited greatly from anti-Trump sentiments that have been channeled into Georgia. But rather than prescriptions for 2018, which are dubious in any special election, this race matters for 2017.”
“President Trump’s beleaguered agenda needs to show it can win on the ballot. Democrats needs to demonstrate that they can convince chunks of Trump voters that they offer a better path, and that energy can equal votes. Interestingly, both sides embraced the national implications of Ossoff-Handel in the closing days of the race. That will change Wednesday. (Cue stories about bad campaigning and inexplicable messaging despite pleas of national operatives.) But the message will have been delivered.”
“It’s Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it. The whole reason this race is competitive today is because of Donald Trump.”
— GOP operative Chip Lake, quoted by the Daily Beast, on the special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district.
David Nather: “If Democratic contender Jon Ossoff manages to squeeze out a victory tonight in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, it’ll be hard to deny some thematic similarities to Scott Brown’s upset election in 2010. The two aren’t identical, of course: Brown denied Democrats a 60th vote in the Senate; Republicans can easily afford to lose one House seat and still pass a bill.”
“But as canaries in coal mines go, the similarities could be telling. Brown’s victory was all about the ACA, and Ossoff has made health care an integral part of his closing argument in the race for HHS secretary Tom Price’s former seat.”
A new AP-NORC poll finds that less than a third of Americans support President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, with just 18% of respondents agreeing with his claim that pulling out of the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions will help the U.S. economy.
Nate Silver: “Everything we know about the Georgia 6 special election, from the polls, to the first-round results, to the results of special elections in other districts, to the shifting politics of Georgia 6, suggests that the race ought to be close. So if the race ends in a photo finish, with either Jon Ossoff or Karen Handel edging out the win by a couple of percentage points, it won’t necessarily be the ‘game-changer’ that it’s billed to be in terms of helping us to figure out what will happen in 2018. A blowout win by either candidate would be a bigger deal.”
“However, Republicans have a lot of decisions to make in terms of how to proceed with their unpopular health care bill and an unpopular President Trump. A loss in Georgia 6 wouldn’t necessarily be catastrophic unto itself, but it would be a warning sign that they’d have a lot of trouble ignoring, and it might lead to members in competitive districts starting to think about how to save their own jobs. So whatever the outcome, I’ll be watching how Republicans react as much as the results themselves.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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