A new Monmouth poll finds 69% of America is greatly divided when it comes to our most important values. Just 27% say Americans are united and in agreement on these values.
The sense that the country is divided is fairly similar among Democrats (74%), Republicans (68%), and independents (66%).
A new ALG Research (D) poll in Louisiana finds Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) leading challenger Eddie Rispone (R) in the November 16 gubernatorial runoff election, 52% to 36%.
Inside Elections: Key takeaways from the primary election.
A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that Ohio is set to return to its traditional status as a battleground state in 2020.
After winning the state by 8 points in 2016, President Trump now trails a generic Democratic 47% to 48% and holds an underwater 47% to 51% favorable rating. Given that state’s swing from 2012 to 2016, it is especially notable that Trump trails a generic Democrat 37% to 51% with independent voters.
Fiona Hill, the former Trump adviser testifying in the impeachment probe today was subpoenaed, CNN reports, because of “attempts by the White House and the Administration to direct witnesses not to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry and efforts by the White House to limit any testimony that does occur.”
Joe Biden told Radio Iowa that if he is elected president, he would not pardon President Trump from any possible charges he might face after leaving office.
Said Biden: “It wouldn’t unite the country. You’d say: ‘Wait a minute. I get a parking ticket and I’ve got to pay it. This happens to me and I’ve got to go to jail. This guy does all these things that put us jeopardy and he gets off?’ I think this is of a different nature.”
He added: “I think President Ford… had to do it over again he wouldn’t have done it… because he didn’t get reelected.”
In the week before Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) launched an impeachment probe, President Trump was tweeting an average of 18 times per day. But the start of the inquiry has led Trump to double that to an average of 36 tweets a day, the Washington Post reports.
Trump set his single-day tweeting record of his presidency just five days after the impeachment inquiry began with 48 tweets. He then set another record last Friday, “hitting 59 total tweets, including 33 in just 20 minutes.”
New Firehouse Strategies/Optimus polls finds Elizabeth Warren ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe Biden leading in South Carolina and Pete Buttigieg surging in Iowa:
A new Firehouse Strategies/Optimus poll found that a majority of Democratic primary voters in early voting states believe that President Trump should not only be impeached but also imprisoned.
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New York Times: “Ms. Warren is expected to reveal additional support from Democratic officials this week in conjunction with Tuesday’s CNN/New York Times debate and the release of her smashing third-quarter financial disclosure. Yet her growing crowd sizes, soaring fund-raising and surge to the top of a number of national and early-state polls only shine a brighter light on one of the most revealing elements of this primary: the widening gap between the preferences of many Democratic voters and the lawmakers who represent them.”
“Ms. Warren is now a clear front-runner in the race for her party’s nomination, yet just under four months before the leadoff Iowa caucuses she lacks the support of a single governor, big-city mayor or fellow senator outside Massachusetts.”
Walter Shapiro: “Awash in advice from constitutional scholars, House Democrats desperately need to hear from top theatrical directors. Because the only way that Trump’s impeachment will be more than a Democrats-only quest is if the dramatic arc becomes as compelling as Watergate. And that means that the target audience now should be wavering Republican voters appalled by Trump’s conduct and Republican legislators who are privately ashamed of their timidity.”
Olivia Nuzzi: “The truth is, Trump fatigue is a condition that knows no party, and many Republicans are as tired of this shit as anybody else. That’s not to say they’re outraged, or motivated to Make a Difference. They’re just tired. You can live inside the right-wing bubble in a state of depression, resigned to the fact that, yeah, every five minutes or so, the president is probably going to do something norm-shattering or potentially impeachable, and no, you probably won’t or can’t do anything to change that. Sad!”
“‘I’m totally bored by the story,’ one person who speaks regularly with the president told me. ‘There’s nothing to it. I already know all the details.’ This person is bored more generally, too — with the topic of Donald Trump. When we talk about what it would take for the president’s defenders to turn on him, this crucial piece is missing: You can’t feel outraged if you can no longer feel anything at all.”
As the impeachment probe intensifies and Syria devolves into chaos following the withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Trump is encouraging his supporters to vote to keep “good guy” former press secretary Sean Spicer on Dancing with the Stars.
As we noted last night, a video depicting mass murder by President Trump — in a church! — was shown at a conference of the president’s supporters at the Trump National Doral Miami resort.
Fiona Hill, President Trump’s former top Russia aide, arrived at the Capitol to testify in impeachment probe, Politico reports.
NPR: “Hill, who declined to elaborate on her planned testimony, is expected to discuss concerns she raised over the ouster of longtime diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, whose removal as the ambassador of Ukraine has become a key topic in the impeachment inquiry. She is also likely to speak about how, in her view, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, were operating a Ukraine policy outside of the National Security Council.”
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds 95% of Democrats and 61% of independents say they are not confident President Trump will follow through on his promises to propose a new health care plan. In fact, just 37% of those polled were even aware that Trump had promised to release a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.
However, 81% of Republicans are somewhat or very confident Trump will deliver on his health care promises.
“President Trump loomed large over Louisiana’s governor’s race a day after Gov. John Bel Edwards fell short of winning Saturday’s primary outright, forcing him to face businessman Eddie Rispone in next month’s runoff,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
“About 200,000 more people voted in the primary compared to the 2015 runoff election that Edwards won, an increase of about 17%. An analysis on Sunday by Jim Kitchens, who was the governor’s pollster four years ago and was an independent consultant for his campaign this year, indicated that most of the 200,000 were white rural voters who voted for Rispone or Abraham.”
“China wants further talks as soon as the end of October to hammer out the details of the ‘phase one’ trade deal touted by Donald Trump before Xi Jinping agrees to sign it,” Bloomberg reports.
“Beijing may send a delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He, China’s top negotiator, to finalize a written deal that could be signed by the presidents at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next month in Chile, one of the people said. Another person said China wants Trump to also scrap a planned tariff hike in December in addition to the hike scheduled for this week, something the administration hasn’t yet endorsed.”
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.