“Since taking office in 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become a progressive icon, due to his Liberal Party’s championing of climate change action and refugee rights, as well as Trudeau’s youthful looks and often charming demeanor,” NPR reports.
“Now Trudeau is embroiled in an escalating scandal that has triggered the resignations of his own principal secretary, a kind of senior political advisor, as well as two top cabinet members, the second one stepping down on Monday.”
Michael Gerson: “Trump’s CPAC speech was a bold assertion that he has learned nothing — absolutely nothing — during his first two years in office. Not manners. Not economics. Not geopolitics. Not simple decency.”
“Having gotten that out of my system, let me turn to what really bothered me. Our president lacks dignity.”
“The president has made the denial of dignity to certain people and groups a political rallying cry. This kind of cruelty and dehumanization is the defining commitment of his political life. He is not merely undignified as a leader; he is committed to stripping away the dignity possessed by others.”
“There is a tie between incivility and injustice. When a president uses his office to demean others, he is undermining an essential democratic premise — that those out of power are still protected from abuse by general respect for their inherent worth and dignity. They are still partners in a common enterprise. And they deserve better than cruelty and contempt.”
Jamelle Bouie: “A 2018 report on America’s future political demography found four realistic scenarios in which Democrats win the national popular vote but lose the Electoral College because of the geography of the electorate. The 2020 election could be the third time in six elections that the White House went to the loser of the popular vote.”
“That is why Electoral College reform deserves a prominent place in the national conversation, especially as the Democratic Party champions a host of pro-democracy reforms, such as public financing of elections and an end to gerrymandering.”
Test your own forecasts on our new interactive electoral vote map.
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
Twitter suspended a number of accounts supporting Howard Schultz for violating the social media giant’s fake accounts policies, NBC News reports.
Within days of Schultz’s announcement, Twitter “was home to fan accounts that seemed to span every demographic, praising the coffee executive’s possible campaign and vowing support. Along with general anonymous fan accounts, profiles claiming to represent moderates, Republicans, men, women and white and black voters all jumped on the billionaire’s bandwagon.”
“But, as many Twitter users suspected, some of Schultz’s fan accounts were not the grassroots supporters they claimed to be.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that she would defer the question of whether the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against President Trump to party leadership, The Hill reports.
Said Ocasio-Cortez: “I’ve always been very clear that I’m supportive and how I would vote in terms of impeachment. I understand that leadership may want to build a stronger case and subpoena more records or figure out what’s happening, perhaps in the Mueller investigation.”
“The House will vote this week on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism prompted by comments made last week by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN),” the Washington Post reports.
“Top Democrats are debating whether the resolution will specifically condemn Omar’s remarks, which include suggesting that supporters of Israel have an ‘allegiance to a foreign country,’ or condemn anti-Semitism generally. But House leaders are prepared to put the measure on the floor quickly once a decision is made.”
The chairmen of three House committees wrote letters to the White House and the State Department requesting documents on President Trump’s communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing “profound national security, counterintelligence, and foreign policy concerns,” the Washington Post reports.
David Axelrod interviewed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on CNN:
AXELROD: The question I’ve never understood is: Why? Why did you in 1986 fill out on your law license, or something, Native American? Why did you check those boxes? Because obviously that’s a very small part of your lineage, 1/32nd or something. So why did you do it?
WARREN: Based on what I learned growing up, and the fact that I love my family, decades ago I sometimes identified as Native American. Even so, I shouldn’t have done it. I’m not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe.
Matthew Yglesias: “A study by Emory University political scientist Gregory Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimates that watching Fox News translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates.”
“Specifically, by exploiting semi-random variation in Fox viewership driven by changes in the assignment of channel numbers, they find that if Fox News hadn’t existed, the Republican presidential candidate’s share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. Without Fox, in other words, the GOP’s only popular vote win since the 1980s would have been reversed and the 2008 election would have been an extinction-level landslide.”
“And Fox is not the only thing out there. The Sinclair Broadcast Group is not a television network in a traditional sense. Instead, it’s a company that owns a disparate bunch of local television stations affiliated with all four major networks. But Sinclair does exert centralized control over the ‘local’ television news broadcasts.”
“Matthew Whitaker, the former acting attorney general whose brief appointment generated intense controversy, resigned from the Justice Department over the weekend,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Justice Department officials said Whitaker’s last day at the agency was Saturday. He had spent recent weeks working as a senior counselor in the office of the associate attorney general. He has not settled on what to do next in his legal career.”
Washington Post: “The interaction between Sanders and Clinton — their first since they faced off in a sometimes-bitter 2016 Democratic primary — was frosty. While Clinton gave Cory Booker an effusive hug, the exchange with Sanders was brief; as he passed by quickly, she reached out and initiated a terse hello.”
“I cooperate all the time with everybody.”
— President Trump, quoted by The Hill, when asked if he would comply with the new House investigation, before adding that “it’s a political hoax.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) predicted that a resolution seeking to block President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border would pass in the Republican-led Senate but ultimately not survive a veto, the Washington Post reports.
Said McConnell: “I think what is clear in the Senate is that there will be enough votes to pass the resolution of disapproval, which will then be vetoed by the president and then, in all likelihood, the veto will be upheld in the House.”
McConnell told reporters that he had hoped Trump “wouldn’t take that particular path” of declaring a national emergency.
“The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee delivered a flurry of document demands to the executive branch and the broader Trump world on Monday that detailed the breadth of the Democrats’ investigation into possible obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power by President Trump and his administration,” the New York Times reports
“In the two months since they took control of the House, Democrats have begun probing members of the president’s cabinet, his businesses, his campaign, his inaugural committee and his ties to key foreign powers, including Russia and its attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. But Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the Judiciary Committee chairman, made clear on Monday that the new majority intends to train its attention on actions at the heart of Mr. Trump’s norm-bending presidency — actions that could conceivably form the basis of a future impeachment proceeding.”
Washington Post: “The farthest-reaching request since Democrats took control of the House underscored lawmakers’ determination to hold Trump and those around him accountable for an array of controversies that have dogged the president during his first two years in office — and perhaps lay the grounds for impeachment.”
Politico: “By initiating the wide-ranging demand for documents, the Judiciary Committee signaled it is creating its own insurance policy in the event that all of Mueller’s findings are not made public and it finds the kinds of evidence that would be grounds for trying to impeach Trump from office.”
New Yorker: “A pair of Fox insiders and a source close to Trump believe that Ailes informed the Trump campaign about Megyn Kelly’s question. Two of those sources say that they know of the tipoff from a purported eyewitness. In addition, a former Trump campaign aide says that a Fox contact gave him advance notice of a different debate question, which asked the candidates whether they would support the Republican nominee, regardless of who won. The former aide says that the heads-up was passed on to Trump, who was the only candidate who said that he wouldn’t automatically support the Party’s nominee — a position that burnished his image as an outsider.”
New York magazine: “Coolheaded Obaman technocracy is out; strident left-wing moral clarity is in. And while this atmospheric shift is felt most acutely among the left-literary crowd, it’s also bled into the general discourse, such that Teen Vogue is constantly flacking against capitalism and one of the most devastating insults in certain corners of the internet is to call someone a neoliberal.”
Steve Gardner argues that liberals should drop the term “Democratic socialism” and adopt “Progressive capitalism” instead.
New York Times: “Intelligence officers, steeped in how Mr. Trump views the world, now work to answer his repeated question: Who is winning? What the president wants to know, according to former officials, is what country is making more money or gaining a financial advantage.”
“While the professionals do not criticize Mr. Trump’s focus, they do question whether those interests are crowding out intelligence on threats like terrorism and the maneuvers of traditional adversaries, developments with foreign militaries or geopolitical events with international implications.”
“The president has also shown less interest in details about potential terrorist plots or cloak-and-dagger spy work — the kind of secret information that excites most officials… So in security briefings, Mr. Trump peppers officials with questions about economic competition with China, including Beijing’s efforts to gain technological superiority and to achieve trade advantages over the United States.”
CNBC: “Roger Stone on Sunday suggested he has been ‘framed’ by special counsel Robert Mueller in an Instagram post that appeared to run afoul of a judge’s barely week-old gag order… Stone deleted the only image in that multi-image post that included ‘Who framed Roger Stone’ language shortly after CNBC emailed his lawyer to ask about it.”
“Stone’s post was put online less than 48 hours after the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, ordered lawyers for the admitted Republican ‘dirty trickster‘ to explain why they did not tell her earlier about the planned publication of a book by Stone that could violate her gag order on him.”
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.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.