A new Winthrop poll in South Carolina finds Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) stature has “steadily risen” among state Republicans since becoming a close and vocal ally of President Trump.
Graham’s 74% approval rating among Republicans is up 23 points from April 2018 and is now even with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
A new Quinnipiac poll in New York finds Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who is running for president, with a lowly 29% approval rating in her home state.
The Federal Reserve signaled that it will not raise interest rates again in 2019, a dramatic about-face that indicates the central bank’s worries about the economy are intensifying, the Washington Post reports.
Said Fed chairman Jerome Powell: “Growth is slowing somewhat more than expected.”
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Former President Jimmy Carter became America’s longest-living president ever on Thursday, surpassing former President George H.W. Bush, The Hill reports.
As of March 21, Carter is 94 years and 172 days old, a day older than Bush was when he died last November.
Katie Couric told BuzzFeed News that says her 2008 interview with then-Gov. Sarah Palin during the presidential campaign would likely have been treated much differently if it happened today.
Palin was asked which newspapers and magazines reads and enthusiastically responded: “All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.” Her response led to widespread mocking by late night comedians.
Said Couric: “I think there’s such a reverse snobbery about intellectuals that I think it would almost be seen as a badge of honor. I think that’s really concerning.”
Time: “The woman everyone calls AOC is as much a villain to the right as she is a hero to the left… Many House Democrats resent her celebrity and worry it overshadows efforts to reach the moderate voters who propelled the party to the majority. Privately, some admit they’re also a little afraid of her.”
“That’s because Ocasio-Cortez threatens the status quo, bringing a youthful impatience to a set of policies popularized by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, like Medicare for All and tuition-free public college…. She’s not thinking about how to keep the Democratic majority for another two years; she’s thinking about how to define the agenda for the next two decades.”
“But this is the paradox facing the Democrats: Ocasio-Cortez represents a merging of movement and electoral politics that hasn’t permeated the rest of the Party, let alone the rest of the country. The ideas generating the most enthusiasm among the party’s very loud, very online left flank don’t necessarily win elections…. So evaluating Ocasio-Cortez’s success depends on the time frame in which she is judged. Will she help deliver Medicare for All and a Green New Deal in the next two years? No. But having the debate is already making a difference in how D.C. does business.”
“Even if you were invited to my dad’s funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for the credit and not for any condolences. Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows.”
— Meghan McCain, quoted by The Guardian, responding to President Trump complaining that he was never thanked for the late Sen. John. McCain’s funeral.
Tyson Brody, who was Hillary Clinton’s deputy research director during the last election cycle and dug deeply into Sen. Bernie Sanders, is going to work for Sanders, according to New York magazine.
“Brody, who worked on Clinton’s self-research as well as the Sanders oppo files last cycle, is the first Democrat to go from Clinton’s camp to Sanders’s 2020 campaign after their bitter primary fight.”
President Trump still wants Robert Kraft to visit the White House with the New England Patriots for a Super Bowl celebration party, Politico reports.
White House aides said they think this is a bad idea, given the soliciting of prostitution charges against Kraft, but they believe Trump will invite Kraft regardless of their advice.
A lawyer for former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates said he has been advised by prosecutors not to cooperate with the congressional investigation, Politico reports.
“The decision to delay immediate cooperation with the Democrat-led investigation comes days after Mueller signaled that Gates is still cooperating in multiple investigations. Gates was a key witness in the Virginia trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort last summer.”
Jonathan Chait argues why an “unconventional Biden–Abrams ticket makes tons of sense for both figures.”
“Joining the race early makes Abrams a much more attractive vice-presidential selection than she would be in June of next year. Like O’Rourke, her talents offset a résumé that’s well short of the traditional qualifications for president (Abrams’s highest elected office is state assembly). That’s a weakness that might prevent Abrams or O’Rourke from being nominated as a vice-president next summer — they would face questions about their qualifications and preparedness for office. Paradoxically, for a candidate with a borderline résumé, vice-president is more of a reach than president.”
“But it’s also a liability that can be addressed on the campaign trail, by demonstrating a command of policy to the media. Abrams, with her advanced degrees in both public policy and law, can answer any doubts.”
James Hohmann: “We’ve grown collectively numb to so much of this drama. But try to imagine George W. Bush ripping into the husband of Karen Hughes, who played a role similar to Kellyanne in his White House. Or Barack Obama mocking George McGovern after he died in 2012. It’s inconceivable.”
“This week’s beefing speaks volumes about not just Trump but the coarser and crueler era he’s ushered in. If denizens of official Washington thought being here would change Donald Trump, Trump has changed Washington. It’s also inconceivable, for example, to imagine Hughes’s husband Jerry publicly attacking Bush while she worked in the White House, as George Conway continues to slam Trump on Twitter, or McGovern putting out a posthumous statement attacking Obama like the one McCain’s family released last summer.”
“Trump has supercharged the celebrification of American politics, as a cast of characters you couldn’t dream up cycle through this tragicomedy. TMZ videographers are now a fixture of DCA, staking out the departures level of the airport with cameras as they wait for people who have become famous in the Trump era.”
George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, lashed out at President Trump in a new series of tweets, saying that he is a liar and “the worst kind of dumb,” The Hill reports.
Said Conway: “To understand Trump ‘you have to look at everything through the prism of his narcissism.’ Once you do that, pretty much everything makes sense.”
He added: “He lies even when it makes no sense to lie. As one of his lawyers once told me, Trump couldn’t be allowed to talk to Mueller because ‘he’d lie his ass off.'”
First Read notes that if the Mueller report is coming out soon, here are the 10 questions we hope the special counsel will answer:
“Why don’t you ask the women if they’d put a man on the ticket?”
— John Hickenlooper, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, after saying he would pick a woman as his vice presidential candidate.
CBS News: “A former congressional candidate in Virginia says she running for Congress again even though she’ll be in federal prison. Shaun Brown revealed her plans to reporters Wednesday before turning herself into authorities outside a federal courthouse in Norfolk.”
Bloomberg: “Several top Democratic presidential candidates have lined up behind jettisoning the Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court, killing the Senate filibuster and granting statehood to Washington D.C. — all of which would likely smooth the way for the policy proposals at the heart of their agendas.”
“Those ideas are likely to resonate with the core of Democratic voters still bubbling with anger over the election of President Donald Trump despite his loss in the national vote count, the ease with which he’s transformed the Supreme Court and federal judiciary, and the power held in the Senate by a cluster of sparsely populated GOP-dominated states.”
Mike Allen: “Close advisers to former Vice President Joe Biden are debating the idea of packaging his presidential campaign announcement with a pledge to choose Stacey Abrams as his vice president.”
“The popular Georgia Democrat, who at age 45 is 31 years younger than Biden, would bring diversity and excitement to the ticket — showing voters, in the words of a close source, that Biden ‘isn’t just another old white guy.'”
“But the decision poses considerable risk, and some advisers are flatly opposed. Some have pointed out that in a Democratic debate, he could be asked why no one on the stage would be a worthy running mate.”
“Advisers also know that the move would be perceived as a gimmick.”
New York Times: “Also under discussion is a possible pledge to serve only one term and framing Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign as a one-time rescue mission for a beleaguered country.”
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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