President Trump tweeted that campaigning for the popular vote is “much easier” than campaigning for electoral votes.
Said Trump: “Campaigning for the Popular Vote is much easier & different than campaigning for the Electoral College. It’s like training for the 100 yard dash vs. a marathon.”
He added that “Cities would end up running the Country” without the Electoral College and that the current system “is far better for the U.S.A.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden reached out to at least a half-dozen supporters Tuesday to tell them he intends to run for president and to ask for their help in lining up contributions from major donors so he can quickly raise several million dollars,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Biden has expressed concern to these people that he wouldn’t be able to raise millions of dollars in online donations immediately the way some other Democratic candidates have.”
“I’m going to be there til he tweets me out of office.”
— Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, quoted by CNN, when asked how long he plans on staying in the role.
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“While Democrats’ campaign launches have sucked up national attention, President Trump’s re-election campaign has quietly spent nearly twice as much as the entire Democratic field combined on Facebook and Google ads,” Axios reports.
“Political advertising strategists say that this level of ad spend on digital platforms this early in the campaign season is unprecedented. The data (captured between December 2018 and now) provides a window into the Trump campaign’s 2020 strategy, which until now has been virtually invisible aside from a few rallies.”
Raleigh News and Observer: “One of 17 candidates vying for the Republican nomination in North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District special election will begin airing television ads in the Greenville market Tuesday.”
“In the ad, Eric Rouse (R) is seen skeet shooting — hitting clays with Democratic priorities like the Green New Deal written on them in the 30-second ad. It closes with Rouse cocking a gun and vowing to have President Trump’s back if elected.”
Washington Post: “Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the president’s agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.”
“In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance, including providing legitimate explanations for shifts in policy, supported by facts and, where required, public input.”
“A three-judge U.S. appeals court panel signaled sympathy toward President Donald Trump on Tuesday in his appeal in a Democratic-backed lawsuit that accuses him of violating anti-corruption provisions of the U.S. Constitution with his Washington hotel,” Reuters reports.
“The judges on the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals indicated they may dismiss the lawsuit filed against the Republican president in June 2017 by the Democratic attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.”
“Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte last year allowed the lawsuit to proceed, a ruling that Trump appealed to the 4th Circuit. All three of the judges who heard the appeal were appointed by Republican presidents.”
Shortly before launching his presidential campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders emailed his supporters, urging them to “do our very best to engage respectfully with our Democratic opponents—talking about the issues we are fighting for, not about personalities or past grievances. I want to be clear that I condemn bullying and harassment of any kind and in any space,” The Atlantic reports.
“What he didn’t include was that one of the people already advising him and helping him write those launch speeches is one of his most famously aggressive supporters online.”
“Since December, David Sirota has, on Twitter, on his own website, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing most of Sanders’s Democratic opponents—all without disclosing his work with Sanders—and has been pushing back on critics by saying that he was criticizing the other Democrats as a journalist.”
“Google provided The Washington Post with U.S. search data since Jan. 1. It pools similar searches — Bernie, Bernie Sanders, Sanders, etc. — into buckets, which it then tracks. Search totals are relative to one another, with 100 being the peak interest in any of the candidates. That peak came with Harris’s initial announcement.”
“She also got another spike a few days later, corresponding with her kickoff event in Oakland. That secondary event itself generated more search interest than any other candidate except Sanders or O’Rourke.”
During a hearing last week over whether incarcerated citizens should be guaranteed access to basic menstrual hygiene products, Maine state Rep. Richard Pickett (R) cautioned that such a rule might make the prison system seem too much like a “country club,” the Maine Beacon reports.
“I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Daily Beast, explaining a series of tweets critical of the late war hero and senator.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has reached an agreement with Attorney General William Barr to stay on at the Justice Department “a little while longer,” according to Fox News.
Rosenstein would like to stay in his post until the Mueller investigation concludes, and sources confirmed that he’s still the primary liaison between department headquarters and Mueller’s office.
A new CNN poll finds Joe Biden leads the Democratic Presidential Race with 28%, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 20%, Sen. Kamala Harris At 12%, Beto O’Rourke at 11% and Sen. Elizabeth Warren At 6%.
“The poll also finds enthusiasm about voting next year already outpaces the level seen for any presidential contest since the turn of this century. Four in 10 say they are ‘extremely enthusiastic’ about voting for president, far outpacing early reads in other recent presidential contests.”
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) told CNN the Electoral College was “conceived in sin” and originally designed to effectively perpetuate slavery.
Said Cohen: “The slave states wanted equal representation in the Senate because they wanted to keep slavery. The slave states wanted to have an Electoral College to where the members that they had in Congress counted towards the vote of president, where the slaves counted as two-thirds and in the popular vote they would count as zero. So the slaves states didn’t want a popular election because their slaves wouldn’t count towards voting and the slaves states would have less votes.”
Philip Bump: Democrats calling to abolish the electoral college should not be surprising.
Rep. Mark Green (R-.TN) announced he will introduce a constitutional amendment this week to limit the number of Supreme Court justices to nine after several Democratic presidential candidates have floated the idea of expanding the High Court’s bench, The Hill reports.
Said Green: “This Thursday, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment that would limit the number of Supreme Court justices to 9 — the number of seats since 1869. The Supreme Court must remain a fair and impartial branch of government not beholden to party.”
George Conway told the Washington Post that he has had a number of notable interactions with Donald Trump over the past decade, including legal representation and sensitive legal matters since Trump became president.
He described the president as “mendacious” and “incompetent” and predicted he would not win reelection.
Conway also suggested his own tweets questioning the president’s mental health were aimed in part at avoiding conflicts with his wife: “It’s so maddening to watch. The mendacity, the incompetence, it’s just maddening to watch. The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That’s basically it. Frankly, it’s so I don’t end up screaming at her about it.”
Fox News announced Tuesday it will host a town hall with former Starbucks CEO and potential 2020 presidential candidate Howard Schultz, The Hill reports.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) defended her call for former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) to resign from the Senate in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations, saying that she “stood up for women who came forward,” The Hill reports.
Said Gillibrand: “If there are a few Democratic powerful donors who are angry because I stood up for women who came forward with allegations of sexual harassment, that’s on them.”
She added: “I had a choice to make whether to stay silent or not, whether to say ‘it’s not OK with me,’ and I decided to say that.”
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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