Politico: “There’s every reason to believe this is the beginning of the end for Scott Walker. His presidential bid crashed and burned. He’s running for a third term as governor in what figures to be a hostile midterm for the Republican Party. Polling shows that the independent voters who were so critical to Walker’s wins in the 2012 recall and 2014 reelection are breaking away from him.”
“After years of futility, Democrats here are convinced they finally have him cornered.”
Rick Tyler, who served as Sen. Ted Cruz’s communications director during his 2016 presidential race, told MSNBC that Cruz could lose his re-election race.
Said Tyler: “It’s possible — people say no, it’s not possible because again you look at Texas and say ‘it’s a red state and it’s never going to happen’ but Beto O’Rourke has consistently out-fundraised him two-to-one, and he doesn’t take PAC money.”
He added: “It should be a 10 to 15 point race, it’s not, it’s a zero to four point race.”
New York Magazine: “Republican pros have, in recent weeks, quietly settled on new conventional wisdom: If Donald Trump is not impeached first, he is likely to face a primary challenge — of some sort — in 2020. The matter was regarded as an open question for most of 2018, but a new emergent consensus among the party’s consultants and strategists has taken root after Paul Manafort’s conviction and Michael Cohen’s implication of the president in federal court.”
“And New Hampshire — fertile ground historically for political insurgencies — is likely to be the place were we see the first clues about who the candidate will be, and what form exactly the challenge will take.”
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Bob Woodward spoke to CBS News about his new book, Fear, and offered an anecdote about when economic Adviser Gary Cohn was upset over President Trump’s reluctance to condemn white supremacists for the violence in Charlottesville and went into the Oval Office to resign.
According to Woodward, “Trump said, ‘You can’t resign. I need you to do tax reform. If you leave, this is treason.’ And Trump talked him out of resigning.”
Afterwards, Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been in the room, pulled Cohn aside: “Cohn wrote this down, quote from General Kelly: ‘If that was me I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times.'”
Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News that it was “un-American” for an anonymous author to write a New York Times op-ed last week critical of President Trump and vowed that he would take a lie-detector test to prove he did not write it.
Said Pence: “I would agree to take it in a heartbeat and would submit to any review the administration wanted to do.”
“President Trump is expected to declassify, as early as this week, documents covering the U.S. government’s surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the investigative activities of senior Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr,” Axios reports.
“Republicans on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees believe the declassification will permanently taint the Trump-Russia investigation by showing the investigation was illegitimate to begin with. Trump has been hammering the same theme for months.”
Jonathan Swan: “My colleague Mike Allen, who’s covered a few midterm elections in his time, says it’s rare to see so much evidence of a trend accumulate so many months out, only for all the signals to be proven wrong… The signals look every bit as bad for Republicans as they did for House Democrats when they got wiped out in the 2010 Tea Party wave.”
Said one GOP operative: “Every metric leads you to one conclusion: The likelihood of significant Republican losses in the House and state/local level is increasing by the week.”
“The depth of losses could be much greater than anticipated and the Senate majority might be in greater peril than anticipated.”
Jonathan Swan: “Bob Woodward’s book hits the stands on Tuesday. Trump’s advisers have spent the past few days reading a PDF of the book, and the president now knows that some of his previously trusted White House aides play starring roles in Woodward’s narrative. Trump is privately furious at Gary Cohn and Rob Porter, and sources with direct knowledge of Trump’s thinking tell me it’s possible he publicly attacks Porter and Cohn this week.”
Jonathan Swan: “President Trump was bluffing when he tweeted that he knows the successor to White House counsel Don McGahn, and instead he is vacillating about new legal leaders as he girds for open warfare with Democrats and Robert Mueller. The newest name on the president’s mind: Fannie Mae general counsel Brian Brooks, two sources with direct knowledge tell me. ”
“This is, by far, Trump’s most important current staffing decision. The climax of Mueller’s probe lies ahead. And the White House faces the possibility of impeachment proceedings — and certainty of endless subpoenas and investigations — if Democrats win the House in November.”
“Trump wants somebody who’ll be unquestioningly loyal — who’ll be ‘his guy’ and defend him on TV, said a source familiar with his thinking. (McGahn fulfills neither criteria: He’s independent-minded, TV-shy and makes no effort to disguise his contempt for Jared and Ivanka.)”
“We are seeing tens of millions of dollars flooding into the state of Texas from liberals all over the country who desperately want to turn the state of Texas blue. They want us to be just like California, right down to tofu and silicon and dyed hair.”
— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), quoted by CNN.
“With a string of polls showing GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s lead slipping, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick showed up in Washington on July 25 to deliver an urgent plea to White House officials: Send President Trump,” Politico reports.
“Patrick, who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state, made the case that a Trump visit was needed to boost turnout for Cruz and the rest of the Texas Republican ticket.”
“The previously unreported meeting comes as senior Republicans grow increasingly concerned about the senator’s prospects in the reliably red state, with some expressing fear that an underperformance could threaten GOP candidates running further down the ballot.”
Political strategist turned venture capitalist Bradley Tusk did not rule out the possibility that his former boss, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, might run for president in 2020. But Tusk, who managed Bloomberg’s third mayoral campaign, told Axios that the path for independents will be much more difficult in 2020 than it was in 2016.
Said Tusk: “We’re in a moment right now where people are really partisan… I just think people are so polarized right now that an independent in 2020 would be very tough.”
Playbook: “If you listen to President Trump, Republicans are poised to win big in the midterms, keep control in Washington and win in a landslide in 2020. Nothing to worry about, folks.”
“But that’s a stark contrast to the vast majority of Republican operatives who are increasingly raising the alarm bells that Republicans could lose control not only of the House but, potentially, the Senate.”
“There is a growing fear among GOP political operatives that Trump could depress turnout in the midterms by constantly telling his supporters that Republicans are going to do well in November and not ringing the alarm bells that they need to stave off a blue wave.”
“According to multiple sources, Cory Booker has placed four staffers on the ground in Iowa, helping Democratic candidates, as he moves to position himself for a potential presidential bid,” the Guardian reports.
“Placing staffers on campaigns is a time-tested way for potential presidential candidates to test the waters in early-voting states while building necessary political infrastructure.”
George Papadopoulos told ABC News that he floated the idea of a summit between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin at a campaign security team meeting on March 31, 2016. Jeff Sessions, now the Attorney General, later told Congress he shut down the idea of a summit at that meeting.
“Papadopoulos said there were mixed reactions to the summit idea among Trump’s advisers, but that many in the campaign supported his efforts, including Corey Lewandowski, the then-campaign manager, Sam Clovis, a senior aide, and Trump himself. He recalled Trump nodding his head when Papadopoulos proposed the meeting, but then appeared to defer to Sessions.”
Said Papadopoulos: “He was open to this idea. And he deferred, of course, to then senior Senator Jeff Sessions, who I remember being quite enthusiastic.”
Pointing to an anonymous column in the New York Times detailing resistance within the Trump administration, Steve Bannon said that President Trump is facing a “coup”, Reuters reports.
Said Bannon: “What you saw the other day was as serious as it can get. This is a direct attack on the institutions. This is a coup, okay.”
“The White House and top congressional Republicans want to push for a House vote on a second round of tax cuts ahead of the midterms in hopes of bolstering their economic pitch to voters – but they’re running into opposition within their own party,” Politico reports.
“GOP leaders conceived of the second tax bill as a messaging win that would put Democrats on their heels ahead of the midterms, forcing them to vote against tax relief for the middle class. But the concerns over the bill are largely flowing from the Republican side, mainly from members fighting to keep hold of seats in suburban districts where President Trump is most unpopular – and that are key to the GOP’s hopes of keeping their majority.”
Washington Post: “Midterm campaign cycles traditionally have centered on the party in power. Opposition to former president George W. Bush’s Iraq War powered the 2006 Democratic wave, while a backlash to Obama’s health-care law fueled the 2010 Republican takeover.”
“But this year is shaping up differently. The Nov. 6 election that will determine control of Congress is likely to hinge on the president — the man and his rash actions, more so than his policies — to a remarkable degree.”
“The spike in Democratic enthusiasm that has Republicans fearful of losing their House majority is driven largely by opposition to Trump personally — his attacks on civic institutions, his impetuousness and the chaos that tornadoes around him — strategists on both sides say.”
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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