Billionaire presidential prospect Michael Bloomberg is heading to Iowa, the AP reports.
“The former New York City mayor, who formally registered as a Democrat last month, is scheduled to appear in Iowa’s capital city at a Dec. 4 screening of a film on climate change, according to senior adviser Howard Wolfson.”
TJ Cox (D) slipped past incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) to take the lead in the country’s sole remaining undecided congressional race, positioning Democrats to pick up their seventh House seat in California and 40th nationwide, the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Prosecutors with special counsel Robert Mueller said Monday that Paul Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying repeatedly as they questioned him in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” the Washington Post reports.
“Manafort denies doing so, and both sides agree that sentencing should be set immediately.”
“The apparent collapse of Manafort’s cooperation agreement is the latest stunning turnaround in his case, exposing the longtime Republican consultant to more than a decade behind bars after pleading guilty in September on charges of cheating the Internal Revenue Service, violating foreign lobbying laws and attempting to obstruct justice.”
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Rep.-elect Gil Cisneros (D-CA) said that he “had joined the letter circulated last week by Democratic rebels declaring they would not support Nancy Pelosi in this week’s caucus nominating election or in a planned January 3 floor vote,” the Washington Post reports.
“Cisneros’s signature gives a jolt of energy to the anti-Pelosi dissidents, who had seen the House minority leader’s relentless lobbying machine pluck off several of the rebels.”
President Trump told the Wall Street Journal he threatened GM president Mary Barra after the company announced it was shuttering several auto plants.
Said Trump: “They better damn well open a new plant there very quickly. I love Ohio. I told them, ‘You’re playing around with the wrong person.’”
He added: “I said, ‘I heard you’re closing your plant. It’s not going to be closed for long, I hope, Mary, because if it is you have a problem.'”
Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), “who built a national following and a deep fundraising base during his unsuccessful bid for the Senate, would not rule out a run for the presidency, telling constituents at an El Paso town hall that he and his wife were considering next steps,” the Washington Post reports.
Said O’Rourke: “Amy and I made a decision not to rule anything out.”
“O’Rourke, 46, a three-term congressman from Texas, would enter the race with less elected experience than many of his rivals but a proven ability to excite Democratic voters in a political era dominated by President Trump. In a crowded field that could number more than 20 candidates, charisma is likely to be key to attracting attention of early voters and the small-dollar fundraising that most candidates will need to survive the early stages of the primaries.”
President Trump suggested the United States should create a “worldwide network” to combat the “unfair” way the country is treated by the media, saying CNN doesn’t have enough competition overseas, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way. Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”
A new Gallup poll finds that President Trump’s approval rate suddenly plunged last week to 38% to 60%.
President Trump told reporters that he has seen the latest climate report released on Black Friday by his administration, Axios reports, but said, “I don’t believe it.”
“Democratic strategists are absorbing a big lesson from their electoral success this month — stay focused on economic issues and refuse to play on President Trump’s turf,” Bloomberg reports.
“Democrats largely ignored Trump’s provocations about the caravan of refugees in Mexico and a call to end birthright citizenship, and didn’t engage with most of his inflammatory talk delivered through a string of campaign rallies. Instead they focused on health care and economics.”
Dan Pfeiffer: “Democrats have fallen behind Republicans on the campaign-innovation curve—it’s a key reason we lost in 2016. But a Beto O’Rourke presidential campaign has the potential to change this. Like Obama’s 2008 campaign, Beto’s Senate campaign felt different because it was different. He didn’t hire a pollster. He spoke like an actual human instead of an AI-generated amalgamation of focus grouped talking points and consultant approved buzzwords like ‘fight’ and ‘everyday Americans.’ He spent his money on digital advertising rather than dump it into the black hole of TV ads that fatten consultant pockets more than they inform voters; and he communicated with voters in innovative ways.”
“By live-streaming so much content, Beto was able to tell his own story directly to the voters without filtering it through the funhouse mirrors of the legacy media. Tens of millions of people watched Beto’s impassioned defense of NFL players exercising their right to protest, taking his message directly to the people, instead of relying on the mainstream media or political Twitter to do the job for him. If Democrats run the same old campaign, using the same tired and outdated tactics, we will certainly lose to Trump.”
Related for members: ‘The Arena Test’ and 2020 Democrats
“Republicans, privately and publicly, are beginning to argue that Democrats are bound to overreach, so there’s little incentive for the White House to turn over information to their foes looking for fresh ammunition. So, in the words of one senior Republican, the White House should ‘delay, delay and delay’ by not turning over documents immediately,” CNN reports.
“And if the House seeks to hold them in contempt, some Republican sources privately say, let them do so since there are no real consequences and punishing Trump officials may only serve to rally the GOP base.”
“I said, those jobs have left Ohio. They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. Don’t move, don’t sell your house. We’re going to fill up those factories or rip them down and build new ones.”
— President Trump, quoted by the Columbus Dispatch in July 2017.
Two nooses were found hanging at the Mississippi State Capitol Monday morning around 7:15 a.m., WLBT reports.
NBC News: “Hate signs also were found, although it unclear what they said or if the signs referenced the racially charged runoff Senate election taking place Tuesday between Democrat Mike Espy, who is black, and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.”
Vanity Fair: “These moves underscore a highly relevant fact about Bloomberg: he is the anti-Donald Trump. He is philanthropic, where Trump is not. He is actually very, very rich—with a net worth of more than $50 billion and counting—whereas Trump mostly pretends to be. He has meaningful and relevant experience as the chief executive of a global company and an international city, while Trump was woefully unprepared to be president and seems always to be learning on the job, and poorly at that. Unlike Trump, who at 72, claims to be the healthiest person who has ever served as president, Bloomberg, four years older than Trump, may actually be among the healthiest. In any event, he has some serious longevity genes: his mother lived to be 102 years old.”
“Being the anti-Trump in nearly every way, shape and form could prove extremely useful politically for Bloomberg should he decide to run in 2020. And there is little doubt that whoever the Democrats nominate to face Trump, the plan will be to draw as sharp a contrast with him as possible, hoping that by then a vast majority of Americans, as well as the Electoral College map, will have had quite enough of Trump and his presidency.”
“The inside word on Wall Street is that Bloomberg will announce his candidacy in February.”
Jonathan Chait: “President Trump has been demanding that his aides draft a plan to reduce the swelling budget deficit while simultaneously ruling out virtually all categories of possible deficit reduction and demanding new deficit-increasing measures of his own. The Washington Post has plenty of hilarious details from the administration’s internal fiscal deliberations, such as they are. Trump comes across as possessing every bit as much fiscal acumen as you would expect from a man who managed to bankrupt a casino, required hundreds of millions of dollars in secret cash infusions from his father to stay afloat, and can barely absorb written material of even the shortest length.”
“The Post’s account draws heavily from the perspective of Trump’s current and former advisers, who treat his buffoonery as the central cause of the administration’s fiscal straits. But the reality is that Trump is simply expressing a more ignorant version of standard-issue Republican budgeting.”
Stan Collender: “It also demonstrates a complete failure by Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and the rest of the Trump administration’s economic team. How is it possible that they have had so little influence with and impact on the president that, almost two years after he took the oath of office, he is so clueless?”
Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) said that President Trump’s mocking of her election loss was “hurtful,” adding that he has “no real relationships, just transactions,” CNN reports.
Said Love: “The President’s behavior towards me made me wonder: What did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican. It was not really about asking him to do more, was it? Or was it something else? Well Mr. President, we’ll have to chat about that.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) signaled that he is seeking to hold negotiations with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “about changes to her leadership team, a development that makes her ascendancy to the speakership likelier as her opponents continue to struggle to recruit a challenger,” the Washington Post reports.
“Pelosi, however, has given no indication that she is open to talks with Moulton about a deal for the support of moderate critics, or that she would ever waver in her support for her longtime deputies, Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and James Clyburn (D-SC), who are in line to hold the No. 2 and No. 3 posts in the House next year.”
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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