A new Monmouth poll finds 29% of Americans see inflation and everyday bills as the biggest concern facing their family right now.
This far outpaces Covid — which was named by 18% or respondents — or any other single issue as the top kitchen table worry in the country.
A new Quinnipiac poll in Texas finds Gov. Greg Abbott (R) leading Beto O’Rourke (D) in the race for governor, 52% to 37%.
Key finding: A majority of voters, 54%, say O’Rourke is too liberal, 3% say he is too conservative, and 35% say he is about right.
Former U.S. Ambassador Lynda Blanchard (R) announced that she’s no longer running for U.S. Senate but instead plans to challenge Gov. Kay Ivey (R) in the Republican gubernatorial primary, AL.com reports.
A new Insider Advantage/Fox 5 poll in Georgia finds Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and David Perdue (R) deadlocked in the Republican guberantorial primary, 34% to 34%, and trailed by Vernon Jones (R) at 10% and Kandiss Taylor (R) at 4%.
Before respondents were told Donald Trump had already endorsed Perdue, Kemp actually led the survey, 41% to 22%.
Said pollster Matt Towery: “This shows the amazing impact that a Trump endorsement can have on a Republican primary and certainly in Georgia. In my many years of polling I have never seen any other individual endorsement move as many points in a single survey.”
“An effort to recall Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant led in Tuesday night’s vote count with about 53% supporting her removal from office, as voters in her district took part in a historic election to decide whether the outspoken socialist politician should be ousted or retained,” the Seattle Times reports.
“Additional votes will be counted in the coming days.”
A new Wall Street Journal poll of Hispanic voters find 44% would back President Biden in the next presidential election while 43% would support Donald Trump.
Asked which party they would back if the election were today, 37% of Hispanic voters said they would support the Republican congressional candidate and 37% said they would favor the Democrat, with 22% undecided.
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has informed former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows it has “no choice” but to advance criminal contempt proceedings against him given Meadows has decided to no longer cooperate with the committee, CNN reports.
Axios: “Meadows is the third person to face contempt proceedings from the committee, after former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been indicted, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.”
Olympic gold medalist and former congressional candidate Marty Nothstein (R) was charged with stalking a female acquaintance and her boyfriend, the Allentown Morning Call reports.
The U.S. surgeon general warned on Tuesday young people face “unprecedented” mental health challenges — and the pandemic has only made matters worse, Axios reports.
New York Times: “The companies said that tests of blood from individuals who received only two doses found more than a 25-fold reduction in antibody levels against the Omicron variant compared to an earlier version of the virus. That finding indicates that two doses alone ‘may not be sufficient to protect against infection’ by the new variant.”
“But the blood samples obtained from people one month after they had received a booster shot showed neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant comparable to the levels of antibodies against a previous version of the virus after two doses.”
Forbes: “A 10-month-long review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election conducted by a conservative group in the state found no signs of widespread or significant election fraud, according to a new report of its findings, further disproving continued baseless allegations of election fraud as the battleground state undergoes a contentious partisan election audit.”
“We are going to take power after this next election. When we do, it’s not going to be the days of Paul Ryan, and Trey Gowdy, and no real oversight, and no real subpoenas. It’s going to be the days of Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Dr. Gosar, and myself.”
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), quoted by The Hill.
A new Bendixen & Amandi poll of Hispanic voters finds just 2% of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68% call themselves “Hispanic” and 21% favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background.”
David Brooks: “What passes for ‘conservatism’ now, however, is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered then. Today, what passes for the worldview of ‘the right’ is a set of resentful animosities, a partisan attachment to Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson, a sort of mental brutalism. The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me then has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression.”
“I recently went back and reread the yellowing conservatism books that I have lugged around with me over the decades. I wondered whether I’d be embarrassed or ashamed of them, knowing what conservatism has devolved into. I have to tell you that I wasn’t embarrassed; I was enthralled all over again, and I came away thinking that conservatism is truer and more profound than ever—and that to be a conservative today, you have to oppose much of what the Republican Party has come to stand for.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “The good news is that Congress has come up with a solution both parties can live with to raise the limit, and lawmakers cut the deal well before the latest deadline. So the markets won’t be roiled by the possibility of a debt-limit breach, let alone an actual economy-destroying default. Hurrah.”
“The bad news? The debt limit, the stupidest law in the nation, survives, and Congress will need to deal with it again, probably in 2023. It’s a bomb left unexploded, and it certainly could go off one of these days.”
“Donald Trump’s wait-and-see approach to the 2024 election has frozen the next Republican presidential primary before it’s even begun,” CNN reports.
“As each rumored 2024 candidate navigates the uncertainty of another Trump bid — deciding if they should publicly acknowledge their presidential ambitions or keep their head down until he makes a decision — their potential opponents are paying close attention to the degree of loyalty they show the former President.”
New York Times: “Legislatures from Nevada to Georgia are drafting new House district lines under the required reapportionment that occurs every 10 years. Most of them are seeking to protect incumbency and maintain a partisan edge by eliminating competitive seats, a process that Republicans in particular have exploited to gain a heavy early advantage in their push to wrest control of the House next year.”
“But in California, the map will stand in stark contrast to most of the country, scrambling the fortunes of lawmakers in both parties and creating the broadest — perhaps the only — true battlefield for 2022. Lawmakers should see the full plan by Friday, and the commission will send it to the secretary of state by Dec. 27.”
Bloomberg: “The new lineage has about half the gene variations of the original and can’t be detected with typical screening… It was found in a traveler who had arrived from South Africa and tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday.”
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.