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The Rubicon Is Crossed

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A must-read from Charles Krauthammer: “Across 25 years and five administrations, we have kicked the North Korean can down the road. We are now out of road.”

War is almost unthinkable, given the proximity of the Demilitarized Zone to the 10 million people of Seoul. A mere conventional war would be devastating. And could rapidly go nuclear.

Acquiescence is not unthinkable. After all, we did it when China went nuclear under Mao Zedong, whose regime promptly went insane under the Cultural Revolution.

The hope for a third alternative, getting China to do the dirty work, is mostly wishful thinking. There’s talk of imposing sanctions on other Chinese banks. Will that really change China’s strategic thinking? Bourgeois democracies believe that economics supersedes geostrategy. Maybe for us. But for dictatorships? Rarely.

Trump Is Playing Into Putin’s Hands

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NBC News: “For President Trump, meeting President Putin may be a way to thumb his nose at critics — to show he’s NOT scared of the multiple investigations into his inner circle’s ties to the Kremlin. But for Russians who’ve tried to stand up to Putin, Trump is being played — has been from the start.”

Said Putin critic Garry Kasparov: “He’s definitely playing into Putin’s hands. Putin’s a dictator, and dictators by definition don’t play chess, so that’s why I believe I have to defend the integrity of my game… I would rather say he’s playing a poker game… He’s a, he’s a poker player, he’s a card player, he’s a gambler.”


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Every Early Sign Points to a Wave

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David Wasserman: “This is a tricky point in the election cycle to begin making predictions. On one hand, the danger signs are everywhere for the GOP: President Trump’s approval is mired in the high 30s, and support for the AHCA’s legislation is stuck in the high teens, and Democrats have been significantly over-performing—despite falling short—in a broad array of special elections. They also lead most national generic ballot tests by high single digits.”

“Race by race, the data isn’t much better for Republicans. Multiple public and private polls now show House Republican incumbents who won by wide margins last fall tied with or trailing real and hypothetical opponents… Taken as a whole, the evidence would seem to point to a wave election that would justify moving a slew of races into the Toss Up column and threaten GOP control of the House.”

“Except, the election isn’t this November; it’s still 16 months away. The fact these warning lights are flashing now means Republicans won’t be caught off guard like many incumbents were in 2006 and 2010—they will have time to raise millions, conduct opposition research and define their opponents early.”

For members: Model Shows Democrats on Track to Win Back House

The Most Unpopular Bill In Three Decades

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David Nather: “This is why Senate Republicans are having so much trouble with the health care bill. The Republican health care effort is the most unpopular legislation in three decades — less popular than the Affordable Care Act when it was passed, the widely hated Troubled Asset Relief Program bank bailout bill in 2008, and even President Bill Clinton’s failed health reform effort in the 1990s. That’s the verdict from MIT’s Chris Warshaw, who compiled polling data from the Roper Center on major legislation Congress has passed since 1990.”

“It’s rare for Congress to move ahead with legislation when the signs are this clear that the public doesn’t want it. Clinton’s health care plan never got a floor vote in the House or Senate, and neither did President George W. Bush’s plan to partially privatize Social Security.”

Cuomo Will First Have to Win Over the Left

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Politico: “Cuomo looks very much like someone doing the spadework to run for president. His speeches are increasingly laced with the kind of Big Themes that become the rhetorical cornerstones of presidential campaigns. He rails against Washington, contrasting the gridlock of Congress against his own relatively smooth management of the previously dysfunctional statehouse, the misplaced priorities of national Republicans against the steady progress he has made in Albany. Over the past several months, Cuomo has hired Chris Christie’s former chief of staff, a move widely seen as further burnishing his own bipartisan credentials; his aides have reached out to out-of-state donors about a possible fundraising swing later this year.”

Kamala Harris Rises to Prominence

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New York Times: “California’s very junior senator has emerged as the latest iteration of a bipartisan archetype: the Great Freshman Hope, a telegenic object of daydreaming projection — justified or not — for a party adrift and removed from executive power… Like the Senate newcomers Barack Obama or Marco Rubio before her, Ms. Harris — a 52-year-old former prosecutor with a profane streak, a lawyerly aversion to ‘false choices’ and an affection for the rapper Too Short — has insisted that national aspirations are far from her mind. Like those men, she has not exactly ruled out the possibility, either.”

“Unlike those men, she is not a man, a fact that has figured prominently in her introduction to mass audiences in a recurring (and highly rated) television series: Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing Into Possible Trump Ties to Russia. Twice recently, Ms. Harris’s pointed questions and interjections during long-winded witness testimony have prompted uncommon interruptions from Republican colleagues, John McCain of Arizona and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee chairman, urging her to let the officials answer. In the outsize fallout, her supporters have questioned whether a white male senator would have been confronted the same way.”

Lynch Denies Offering Assurances to Clinton Campaign

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Politico: “Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch pledged to cooperate with a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into whether she assured the Hillary Clinton campaign last year that the FBI probe into Clinton’s emails wouldn’t go too far.”

“In a statement from her lawyer, Lynch also denied ever making such an assurance to a former Clinton campaign aide, Amanda Renteria — an allegation fueled by a Russian intelligence memo that’s credibility has been called into question.”

Leaks Crackdown Concerns National Security World

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Politico: “National security officials across the federal government say they are seeing new restrictions on who can access sensitive information, fueling fears in the intelligence and security community that the Trump administration has stepped up a stealthy operation to smoke out leakers. Officials at various national security agencies also say they are becoming more concerned that the administration is carefully tracking what they’re doing and who they’re talking to — then plotting to use them as a scapegoat or accuse them of leaks.”

“One U.S. official voiced concern over even talking to their superiors about a benign call from a reporter. The agency this official works for had started limiting staff’s access to information, they said, and it would make it far easier to figure out who was talking to people in the media. There was suspicion, the official said, that the agency was even tracking what they printed, to keep tabs on what information they were accessing.”

Cruz Backs ‘Clean Repeal’ of Obamacare

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said “that he agrees with President Trump: If Republican senators are unable to pass a bill to repeal and replace key parts of the Affordable Care Act, the Senate should vote on a narrower bill to simply repeal the law and work on a replacement later,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Cruz: “If we cannot bring the conference together and agree on repeal legislation, then I think President Trump’s absolutely right that we should pass a clean repeal.”

Cruz said such a repeal should be delayed “either a year or two years” to give lawmakers time to work on a replacement.

Russia Steps Up Spying Efforts

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“Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts in the US, according to current and former US intelligence officials who say they have noticed an increase since the election,” CNN reports.

“The officials say they believe one of the biggest US adversaries feels emboldened by the lack of a significant retaliatory response from both the Trump and Obama administrations.”

It Just Got Harder for GOP to Pass a Health Care Bill

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Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) “won’t vote for the Senate GOP health care bill without the addition of a controversial amendment he’s championing with Sen. Ted Cruz — a position he has made clear to the White House and Senate Republican leaders,” according to Caitlin Owens.

Said Lee: “The entire bill is unacceptable without the Consumer Freedom Option.”

Jonathan Chait: “Lee’s position makes it almost impossible for McConnell to find his 50 votes. Blue-state senators Susan Collins and Dean Heller already appear irretrievably opposed to anything resembling McConnell’s plan. If Lee demands that the bill let insurers charge higher prices for coverage of treatments needed by sicker people, then he drives away at least one more vote on the party’s opposite wing: Lisa Murkowski or Shelley Moore Capito, among others, have expressed reservations about yanking coverage away from people who have obtained it through Obamacare.”

McConnell Says Limited Bill Needed If Repeal Effort Fails

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Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that a bill “focused on buttressing the nation’s insurance marketplaces will be needed if the full-fledged Republican effort to repeal much of President Barack Obama’s health care law fails,” the AP reports.

“It was one of his most explicit acknowledgments that his party’s top-priority drive to erase much of Obama’s landmark 2010 statutes might fall short.”

Said McConnell: “No action is not an alternative. We’ve got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state.”

Inside the Trump-Putin Meeting

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Jonathan Swan: “There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany…. it will be Trump, Putin, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and translators.”

The meeting is scheduled to last only half an hour.

LePage Says He Feeds False Stories to the Media

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Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) suggested he makes up stories to mislead reporters, the AP reports.

Said LePage: “I just love to sit in my office and make up ways so they’ll write these stupid stories because they are just so stupid, it’s awful.”

He also characterized the Maine media as “vile,” “inaccurate” and “useless” and said “the sooner the print press goes away, the better society will be.”

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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