Mike Allen: “Advisers to former Vice President Biden say it will be apparent within days whether he has decided to activate a presidential campaign that would likely launch by early April.”
“If Biden decides to go for it, he’ll start pressing political allies and potential staff members for firm commitments to join him. That will be the true ‘tell,’ advisers say, and will quickly become widely known.”
Politico: “As de Blasio touted his liberal record in Iowa and South Carolina in recent weeks, nearly three dozen former and current aides, consultants and allies who spoke to Politico panned the idea or doubted that the mayor would end up going through with a run for the Democratic nomination. Aside from the few people working on the nascent effort, only two said de Blasio should run.”
“The idea of a de Blasio candidacy is ‘fucking insane,’ said one former aide, laughing out loud.”
“Another self-described friend of the mayor called the idea ‘idiotic.'”
“It’s a stark contrast to the typical dynamics of a presidential exploration, where aides and allies tend to egg on the potential candidate. Indeed, the strongest advocate for a de Blasio candidacy seems to be de Blasio himself.”
New York Times: “For now … the administration’s favors keep on coming: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just announced a stop in Israel on a Middle East swing beginning March 18. The political backup is almost certain to reach its peak a few days later, when Mr. Netanyahu is expected to get an Oval Office meeting, if not a formal White House dinner, during the yearly gathering of Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel lobby.”
“It’s gotten to the point that analysts tracking the American assistance to Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign have taken to guessing what Mr. Trump might toss his way next: merely more plaudits, or perhaps a meatier bone, like endorsing Republican-sponsored legislation to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”
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“Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), one of the most outspoken advocates of the #MeToo movement who has made fighting sexual misconduct a centerpiece of her presidential campaign, spent last summer pressing legislators to update Congress’ ‘broken’ system of handling sexual harassment,” Politico reports.
“At the same time, a mid-20s female aide to Gillibrand resigned in protest over the handling of her sexual harassment complaint by Gillibrand’s office, and criticized the senator for failing to abide by her own public standards. In July, the female staffer alleged one of Gillibrand’s closest aides — who was a decade her senior and married — repeatedly made unwelcome advances after the senator had told him he would be promoted to a supervisory role over her. She also said the male aide regularly made crude, misogynistic remarks in the office about his female colleagues and potential female hires.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sounded the alarms in a tweet about an electrical blackout in Venezuela, but the response from a journalist is priceless:
MARCO RUBIO: The worst electricity & telecommunications blackout in #Venezuela history’s going on 48 hours. A blackout caused by #MaduroRegime negligence… Today another transformer explosion at the German Dam in Bolivar State caused another massive blackout.
GERMAN DAM: Senator @marcorubio, an important transformer exploded in Bolívar and that, in part, again collapsed the Venezuelan Electric System; however it was not in a dam, much less german. My name is Germán Dam, I am one of the journalists who published the information.
“President Trump and his advisers are launching a behemoth 2020 campaign operation combining his raw populist message from 2016 with a massive data-gathering and get-out-the-vote push aimed at dwarfing any previous presidential reelection effort, according to campaign advisers, White House aides,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s advisers also believe the Democratic Party’s recent shift to the left on a host of issues, from the push for Medicare-for-all to a proposed Green New Deal, will help the president and other Republicans focus on a Trumpian message of strong economic growth, nationalist border restrictions and ‘America First’ trade policies.”
“The president’s strategy, however, relies on a risky and relatively narrow path for victory, hinged on demonizing Trump’s eventual opponent and juicing turnout among his most avid supporters in Florida, Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest — the same areas that won him the White House but where his popularity has waned since he was elected.”
Use my interactive Electoral Vote Map to test your own assumptions.
“The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger,” the New York Times reports.
“But there is a problem: The opposition itself, not Mr. Maduro’s men, appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.”
“Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times and previously released tapes — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident.”
“A prominent conservative group is thrusting itself into the Democratic primary with a TV ad assailing Beto O’Rourke — a move that comes as Republicans consider a broader campaign to meddle in the opposing party’s contest to take on President Trump,” Politico reports.
“The anti-tax Club for Growth is expected to begin airing a two-minute commercial in Iowa this week aimed at dampening liberal support for O’Rourke, who’s expected to enter the race any day. The spot paints the former Texas congressman as a politician dripping with ‘white male privilege’ who’s undeserving of the comparisons he’s drawing to Barack Obama.”
“Congress refused to fund his wall and he was forced to admit defeat and reopen the government. The same thing will repeat itself if he tries this again. We hope he learned his lesson.”
— Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-CA), in a statement, in response to reports President Trump is seeking $8.6 billion for a border wall in a new budget request.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that special counsel Robert Mueller was making a “mistake” by not demanding that President Trump testify as part of his investigation, the Washington Post reports.
Said Schiff: “I do think ultimately it’s a mistake because probably the best way to get the truth would be to put the president under oath. As he’s made plain in the past, he feels it’s perfectly fine to lie to the public. After all, he has said, ‘It’s not like I’m talking before a magistrate.’ Well, maybe he should talk before a magistrate.”
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro suggested that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) supports Sharia law in defiance of the U.S. Constitution because she wears a hijab, Politico reports.
Said Pirro: “She’s not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat Party. So if it’s not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from? Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59 tells women to cover so they won’t get molested.”
She added: “Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
Jonathan Swan: “Republican donors in attendance called it one of Trump’s weirdest lies ever. On Friday night, under a tent erected over the pool at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, President Trump claimed the media were spreading ‘fake news’ when they said he called the CEO of Apple ‘Tim Apple.'”
“Trump told the donors that he actually said ‘Tim Cook Apple’ really fast, and the ‘Cook’ part of the sentence was soft. But all you heard from the ‘fake news,’ he said, was ‘Tim Apple.'”
“Two donors who were there told me they couldn’t understand why the president would make such a claim given the whole thing is captured on video.”
Referring to the recent anti-semitism controversies with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Axios reports that President Trump told RNC donors over the weekend: “The Democrats hate Jewish people.”
“Trump said he didn’t understand how any Jew could vote for a Democrat these days. Trump talked about how much he’d done for Israel, noting his historic decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.”
“Trump said if he could run to be prime minister of Israel, he’d be at 98% in the polls.”
Jonathan Swan: “The plan — which acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and policy staff are developing, and which is in its early stages — would have Trump sign a series of executive orders on issues including education, drug pricing, the opioid epidemic and veterans affairs. Aides say the moves would appeal to Democrats and Republicans.”
“White House officials have already drafted some of these executive orders, and the White House Counsel’s office has started vetting them. Officials familiar with the planning say they think most Americans will back them, as was the case with criminal justice reform.”
“White House officials have been tight-lipped about the content of the orders, so it’s way too early to say if they will be substantive or just political theater.”
Politico: “With a thick crowd waiting in front of Austin’s Paramount Theatre, O’Rourke slipped into the premiere of his own documentary through an alley in the back. He waited for the lights to dim before joining the audience. And 10 days after declaring that he and his wife, Amy, had decided ‘how we can best serve our country,’ he once again refused to discuss his 2020 plans.”
Said O’Rourke: “I want to make sure I do it the right way and I tell everyone at the same time, so I’ll be doing that. I’ve got to be on the timeline that works for my family and for the country.”
“What is unusual is not that O’Rourke hasn’t said yet if he is running — Joe Biden hasn’t, either. It’s that O’Rourke, unlike any other potential presidential candidate, confirmed more than a week ago that he made his decision. He just won’t say what it is.”
“The federal budget deficit is ballooning on President Trump’s watch and few in Washington seem to care,” the AP reports.
“And even if they did, the political dynamics that enabled bipartisan deficit-cutting deals decades ago has disappeared, replaced by bitter partisanship and chronic dysfunction.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rejected Republican-fueled rumors that she’s a socialist, saying instead that she’s a capitalist who believes in markets that operate on “a level playing field,” the HuffPost reports.
Said Warren: “It is not capitalism to have one giant that comes in and dominates. What I have supported all the way through are the kinds of things that help level the playing field.”
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) told CNN that he’s been “disenchanted” enough to consider leaving the House Freedom Caucus over the conservative group’s unflinching support of President Trump.
Said Amash: “From the time the president was elected, I was urging them to remain independent and to be willing to push back against the President where they thought he was wrong. They’ve decided to stick with the president time and again, even where they disagree with him privately.”
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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