“I would’ve said experience but he doesn’t really have experience because I don’t think he remembers what he did yesterday, so how is that experience?”
— President Trump, in an interview with Sheryl Attkisson, when asked about Joe Biden’s best attribute.
Politico: ““The party is placing a surprisingly large bet on the real estate executive to take on first-term GOP Sen. Joni Ernst in a bid to expand their path back to the Senate majority. If Greenfield wins the June 2 primary, she’ll face Ernst in a state that’s turned against Democrats since 2012, when Barack Obama carried it for the second time.”
“The closing weeks before the primary have brought a flurry of activity: Democrats’ leading super PAC has already spent $6 million on television ads to boost the previously unknown Greenfield’s positive image, and another super PAC is spending $1 million attacking one of her opponents. The intervention has rankled the other Democratic candidates, who say the Washington establishment is trying to smother their chances.”
Out next month: Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference by David Shimer.
“Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations — by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia — to shape electoral outcomes.”
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CNN: “Joe Biden is thinking big.”
“Confronted with the prospect of taking office next year in the depths of a historic economic and health crisis, Biden is now talking about a bolder presidency, with ambitions stretching beyond the restoration of pre-Donald Trump normalcy.”
“And there is a growing sense in Democratic circles, particularly among the progressive wing of the party, that there is one sure way to show he means it: Make Elizabeth Warren his running mate.”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the first prime minister in Israel’s history to go on trial while in office at the Jerusalem district court, where he is facing charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust,” the Jerusalem Post reports,
“Netanyahu tried to avoid having to attend the first day of the trial but the prime minister was compelled to attend by the court.”
New York Times: “In October, President Trump declares a state of emergency in major cities in battleground states, like Milwaukee and Detroit, banning polling places from opening.”
“A week before the election, Attorney General William P. Barr announces a criminal investigation into the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.”
“After Mr. Biden wins a narrow Electoral College victory, Mr. Trump refuses to accept the results, won’t leave the White House and declines to allow the Biden transition team customary access to agencies before the Jan. 20 inauguration.”
“Far-fetched conspiracy theories? Not to a group of worst-case scenario planners — mostly Democrats, but some anti-Trump Republicans as well — who have been gaming out various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election. Outraged by Mr. Trump and fearful that he might try to disrupt the campaign before, during and after Election Day, they are engaged in a process that began in the realm of science fiction but has nudged closer to reality as Mr. Trump and his administration abandon longstanding political norms.”
“Pennsylvania could determine the presidency. But it might not be clear for days who won the state on Nov. 3,” Politico reports.
“Election officials throughout the critical battleground, which is implementing no-excuse mail-in voting for the first time ever amid a pandemic, say they are unlikely to finish counting those ballots the night of the general election.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose full-throated opposition to high-dollar fund-raising events was a central tenet of her presidential campaign, has agreed to host such a gathering of donors for Joe Biden, who is considering her to be his running mate, the New York Times reports.
Joe Biden released an attack ad against President Trump, slamming his decision to play golf on Memorial Day Weekend amid the rising coronavirus death toll in the United States.
From the ad: “The death toll is still rising. The president is playing golf.’
Washington Post: “Trump’s moves in recent days make clear that the president has decided to revive the disruptive themes of his 2016 bid, aimed at branding his opponent as a corrupt member of the Washington establishment and himself as an insurgent problem-solver. It’s a message that often has seemed incongruent with the present reality as Trump leads the federal government’s response to the worst crisis in a generation.”
“In recent days, as the coronavirus death toll has approached 100,000, Trump has pushed conspiracy theories alleging criminality by his predecessor, made baseless charges of voter fraud, accused dozens of people of felonies, used taxpayer-funded events to advance his political message and fanned coronavirus culture wars over issues such as face masks and church closings.”
The New York Times took the extraordinary step of devoting the entire front page of the Sunday paper to the names of those who have died in the coronavirus pandemic.
“The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly transforming this year’s elections, changing the way tens of millions of people cast ballots and putting thousands of election officials at the center of a pitched political fight as they rush to adapt with limited time and funding,” the Washington Post reports.
“In a watershed moment for American voting, nearly 30 states have changed rules or practices for this year’s primaries or the general election in response to the public health threat posed by covid-19… The new policies affect roughly 86.6 million registered voters — including more than 40 million people who now have the temporary right to cast an absentee ballot because of the virus.”
Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has a new book out, Above the Law: The Inside Story of How the Justice Department Tried to Subvert President Trump, which the HuffPost says is “light on new revelations.”
“In fact, it’s light on new material altogether. A digital copy of Whitaker’s book, published by the conservative Regnery Publishing, clocks in at 266 pages. Whitaker’s actual new material book is about 130 pages; maybe a couple more if you count the acknowledgments. The rest is padding: DOJ documents, copies of Whitaker’s speeches, and even a copy of the U.S. Constitution ‘for reader reference.’ He even toys with the classic margins trick, indenting his text when he republishes (in full!) an August 2017 anti-Mueller op-ed he wrote for CNN two months before he joined the Justice Department.”
“President Trump kicked off his Memorial Day weekend by visiting his club in Virginia, marking the president’s first time back at one of his private golf courses in 75 days, the longest stretch of his administration without spending time at one,” NBC News reports.
New York Times: “The G.O.P. has tightened its ranks; its reliable voters, hovering at around 40 percent of the electorate, tend to approve of almost anything President Trump does. Yet throughout his term, from the 2017 battles over health care and tax cuts to his impeachment and subsequent acquittal early this year, very few people from outside the party have been coming aboard.”
“Mr. Trump has led the charge, but his effects are being felt far down the ballot. Two years after Democrats swept the midterm House elections by a historically wide margin and with historically high turnout, polling suggests they have a shot at a similar showing this year.”
“And in the high-stakes Senate, G.O.P. incumbents in swing states have struggled to disentangle their numbers from Mr. Trump’s stubbornly minoritarian status. That is putting Democrats in a strong position as they look to take back the Senate in the midst of a pandemic.”
President Trump’s advisers are increasingly concerned about Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s (R-GA) campaign in Georgia, a newly competitive state where the president’s own poll numbers have tightened against Joe Biden, the New York Times reports.
“Because the field is so crowded, Georgia officials expect no candidate to get a majority, forcing a runoff. And the president’s team is planning to stay out of the race until the runoff approaches, which wouldn’t be until January 2021.”
Coming soon: Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest by Lawrence Roberts.
“They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in the spring of 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end America’s war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nation’s capital. And the White House, headed by an increasingly paranoid Richard Nixon, was determined to stop it.”
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.