“Roughly half the nation’s business economists say they think the U.S. economy will slip into recession by the end of next year,” CBS News reports.
“The finding comes from the latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics of its member economists. Just 10 percent of them say they foresee a recession beginning this year. At the other extreme, only 11 percent expect the economy to avoid a recession through 2021.”
Former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) told CNN that he now wishes for George W. Bush again “every day.”
Said Reid: “He and I had our differences, but no one ever questioned his patriotism. Our battles were strictly political battles.”
He added: “There’s no question in my mind that George Bush would be Babe Ruth in this league that he’s in with Donald Trump in the league. Donald Trump wouldn’t make the team.”
Warren Buffett told CNBC that he would support fellow billionaire and former three-term New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg for president.
Said Buffett: “If Mike Bloomberg announced tomorrow that he was a candidate, I would say I’m for him. I think he would be a very good president.”
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President Trump started his Monday by blasting director Spike Lee as “racist” against him in an early morning tweet following Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts,etc.) than almost any other Pres!”
“Even by the combustible standards of Donald Trump, the spectacle set to unfold around his presidency in time zones 12 hours apart in the next few days could defy description,” CNN reports.
“On one side of the planet, Michael Cohen, the President’s former personal lawyer, is expected to dish dirt in a congressional hearing on Trump’s turbulent personal and business affairs that are becoming an increasing legal and political threat.”
“On the other side in Vietnam, Trump will be pursuing a Nobel Peace Prize, convening a second summit and media extravaganza with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un that will take place despite a lack of genuine progress since their first encounter.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “campaign says she is forgoing traditional private fundraising dinners and receptions during her 2020 presidential primary bid, instead offering ‘equal access’ to anyone who backs her,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
CNN: “Warren’s bid for the White House has been defined since its start by themes of fighting corruption and money in politics. The Massachusetts Democrat took that to the next level on Monday, blasting out an email to supporters vowing to forgo any ‘fancy receptions or big money fundraisers only with people who can write big checks,’ as well as phone calls to wealthy donors.”
New York Times: “With polls indicating that electoral viability is as important to voters as any policy issue, a handful of the party’s prospects are already holding up their Midwestern credentials to make the case that they are the ones who can turn Big 10 country — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin — blue again.”
“Yet far away from the mounting snowdrifts that line every curb here, there is a growing school of thought that Democrats should not spend so much time, money and psychic energy tailoring their message to a heavily white, rural and blue-collar part of the country when their coalition is increasingly made up of racial minorities and suburbanites. The party should still pursue voters who have drifted toward Republicans, this thinking goes, but should also place a high priority on mobilizing communities more amenable to progressive politics.”
“The numerical swap between the three Rust Belt states that handed Mr. Trump the White House and the most alluring trio of Sun Belt targets is nearly even: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have a combined 46 electoral votes, while North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona offer 42.”
Electoral Vote Map: Identifying the 2020 battleground states.
Politico: “With special counsel Robert Mueller expected to wind up his work soon, Democrats are launching an investigation to discover why Deutsche Bank was willing to lend the Trump Organization money when other banks wouldn’t and whether Russia was involved.”
“The German bank, which has been under scrutiny for its role in Russian money laundering, lent Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for his property development ventures.”
“Late last month, more than 100 major Republican donors gathered at the Trump International Hotel for a presentation from the president’s campaign manager Brad Parscale and other top political hands on their plans to keep the White House in 2020 after a brutal midterm election,” Politico reports.
“But several of the GOP contributors left the two-day retreat in Washington dissatisfied, dogged by essentially the same concern: The president doesn’t really have a strategy to win reelection.”
“They are chiefly worried about how he intends to prevail again in the Rust Belt states that voted for Trump in 2016, but where Democrats performed strongly in last year’s midterms. But there are also concerns about whether the president’s fundraising apparatus is up to the task, and whether Trump will trample on any strategy or message the campaign does develop, as he frequently does.”
Twenty three former Republicans members of Congress have penned a letter, urging legislators to “pass a joint resolution terminating the emergency declared by the President.”
“In his campaign launch video last week, Bernie Sanders singled out the fossil fuel industry for criticism, listing it among the special interests he planned to take on. But in the final months of the 2016 campaign, Sanders repeatedly requested and received the use of a carbon-spewing private jet for himself and his traveling staff when he served as a surrogate campaigner for Hillary Clinton,” Politico reports.
“In 2016, after Sanders endorsed Clinton and agreed to campaign on her behalf, the Sanders campaign’s preferred mode of travel quickly emerged as a point of tension, according to six former Clinton campaign staffers and another source familiar with the travel. … The senator ended up flying private on three separate multi-day trips in the last two months of the campaign. Sanders’ flights — usually on a Gulfstream plane — cost the Clinton-Kaine campaign at least $100,000 in total, according to three people familiar with the cost of the air travel.”
“With North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on an armored train barreling through China toward Vietnam’s capital, and U.S. President Donald Trump about to board a jet for Hanoi, Vietnamese officials scrambled Monday to finish preparations for a rushed summit that will capture global attention,” the AP reports.
“Officials in Hanoi said they had about 10 days to prepare for the summit — much less than the nearly two months they said Singapore was given for the first Trump-Kim meeting last year— but still vowed to provide airtight security for the two leaders. … Nguyen Manh Hung, the leader of the information ministry, said the 3,000 journalists from 40 countries expected in Hanoi could rely on his agency as ‘you’d count on a family member.’”
Yahoo News: “A weekend swing through the Des Moines area — in preparation for next year’s Iowa caucuses, now a mere 11 months away — highlighted Harris’s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate.”
“Comfortable in crowds, she is capable of soaring rhetoric, even if that rhetoric is perhaps not quite of the same caliber as that which Obama displayed in 2008. But in more intimate settings, she sometimes avoided specifics, leaving some Iowans unsatisfied.”
“Questioned in court last week about his recent Instagram post featuring a photo of the judge presiding over his case with what resembled a crosshairs symbol, Roger Stone said under oath that a ‘volunteer’ found the image. He insisted he couldn’t recall who exactly, though, and struggled to identify the five or six people he said were serving as his volunteers at the time,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“The names he offered after being pressed by the prosecutor underscored Stone’s ties to the Proud Boys, a far-right, men-only extremist group that describes its members as ‘Western chauvinist.’ The four men identified by Stone are all active on social media, and several continued to post about Stone’s case after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed a strict gag order Thursday — an order that limits not only what Stone can say in public and online, but what his surrogates and volunteers can say on his behalf.”
“A bipartisan group of 58 former senior national security officials will issue a statement Monday saying that ‘there is no factual basis’ for President Trump’s proclamation of a national emergency to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border,” the Washington Post reports.
“The joint statement, whose signatories include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former defense secretary Chuck Hagel, will come a day before the House is expected to vote on a resolution to block Trump’s Feb. 15 declaration.”
Jonathan Swan: “Political commentators often paint Mike Pence as an impotent toady. But those caricatures miss an important reality: The vice president has much more power than many people realize.”
“Most people know Pence has been a driving force behind perhaps the most socially conservative presidency in modern history — especially on abortion rights. But that’s just the start. For the past two years, the vice president has done more than arguably any other senior administration official to propel President Trump’s most hawkish foreign policy positions. He’s done so consistently in private and, increasingly, in public.”
New York City Mayor de Blasio “tried to display some presidential fortitude by traveling through near-blizzard conditions in Iowa — and wound up sleeping in a roadside motel after chowing down on a gas-station burrito for dinner,” the New York Post reports.
“Reporters from New York City wisely decided to wait out a snowstorm in Sioux City… But the mayor ignored the dangerous weather and insisted on heading south to Des Moines with his security detail.”
“Hizzoner made it less than halfway before calling it quits in Onawa, Iowa — estimated population 2,849 — to bed down in a Super 8 Motel… And instead of enjoying some of the Hawkeye State’s award-winning barbecue or succulent steaks, he had to make do with a microwaved burrito.”
President Trump announced that he would delay a scheduled tariff hike on $200 billion of Chinese goods in a series of tweets, citing “substantial progress” in an ongoing round of U.S.-China trade talks, Axios reports.
He also hinted at an upcoming Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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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