Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) “hasn’t made a public appearance since the weekend, and Montana Democrats are reviewing the steps they would need to take to replace him with another candidate if he decides to withdraw from the Senate race,” the Montana Standard reports.
“Walsh has until Aug. 11 to drop out of the race against Republican Rep. Steve Daines, and the state’s Democratic Party has until Aug. 20 to submit the name of a replacement candidate to the Montana Secretary of State.”
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that “a commanding majority of people, cutting across party lines, lacks confidence that the world will be a better place for their children.”
“That economic anxiety also cuts across all income groups, regions of the country, and levels of education. And at a time when there are big differences of opinion between men and women on a range of issues, the polled showed, this is one thing they largely agreed on: The kids are not all right.”
Politico: “House Democrats have their email fundraising down to a science: Cast Speaker John Boehner as the leading villain, use President Barack Obama’s signature (but sparingly) and don’t hesitate to go ALL CAPS with a subject line like this: BREAKING: IMPEACHMENT.”
“Over the top? Undoubtedly. But the fact is it’s working — better than anything Republicans have tried so far. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $4.8 million, thanks to a series of ‘red alert’ emails feeding off talk of impeachment and Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama over executive actions. It was the committee’s best week for online fundraising.”
The Fix has a “visual scorecard” of who wants to impeach President Obama.
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“I think we all agree that Obama’s out of control.”
— Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller (R), quoted by the Anchorage Daily News, calling for President Obama’s impeachment because he is “acting almost like a dictator.”
President Obama and his top aides “believe they are putting in place a new global security structure that will frame international relations for decades. Every day, however, brings a split-screen contrast between the White House’s confidence in its long-term strategy and the daily chaos playing out from Ukraine to the Middle East,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The disconnect is reflected in the president’s declining poll ratings. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week shows Americans’ approval of his foreign-policy record at a new low of 36%.”
Nate Silver notes that “while Republican incumbent senators have gotten some credit lately for their clutch performances in Kansas, Mississippi and other states, where they’ve fended off challenges from more conservative opponents, the GOP still has plenty to worry about. There have been far more close calls to its incumbents than usual.”
“Between 2004 and 2008, just four of 39 Republican senators running for renomination, or 10 percent of them, got less than 65 percent of the primary vote. This year, five of 10 have fallen below that threshold: not only Roberts, Cochran and McConnell, but also Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who both benefited from running against divided fields.”
A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that nearly 9 in 10 Americans say they disapprove of how Congress is handling its job, and 6 in 10 disapprove of President Obama. More than half of Americans, 54 percent, disapprove of both.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted permission to stay in Russia for three more years, the AP reports.
Mary Burke (D) put out a devastatingly effective ad against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) that should make Republicans at least a little more worried.
Chris Cillizza: “I’ve become convinced that the best (read: most effective) negative ads in the modern political world are those that feature a politician’s own words. The video of Walker promising that he would create 250,000 jobs is political gold — and something the Burke campaign can just keep running on TV in lots of different iterations between now and November.”
Jeff Shesol: “Whatever else you might say about Richard Nixon–and you might say a lot–the man knew how to write a memo. He wrote an untold number in the twenty years between his resignation from the Presidency, forty years ago this week, and his death, on April 22, 1994, at the age of eighty-one. He wrote memos to his successors, to their White House aides, and to his designated political heirs–memos on foreign policy and press strategy, memos of political pre- and post-game analysis. He wrote serious-minded memos, ingratiating memos, and incendiary memos…. He wrote secret memos–as well as nominally secret memos he intended to be leaked, so that he could be caught, time and again, in the act of offering wise counsel to Presidents and all the Presidents’ men.”
“This, of course, was the point: not merely to influence events but to be seen as influencing them. The flurry of memoranda was part of Nixon’s rolling campaign for redemption and, not least, relevance. The former will always elude Nixon, but he needn’t have worried so much about the latter. ”
Democrats were thrilled to see that Republicans “are going to spend early and big on the Georgia U.S. Senate race,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“The news that the National Republican Senatorial Committee will spend $2.5 million on Atlanta TV on a five-week span starting Tuesday — a huge sum at this stage of the race — was immediately picked up by Democrats as evidence that Georgia is not as safe as the GOP would like to claim.”
“There’s no doubt that he has done plenty of things worthy of impeachment.”
— Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Steve Deace, accusing President Obama of “acting like God.”
Reid Cherlin: “Beltway wags have long wondered how it is that Obama, such a gifted communicator, can’t manage to tell the story of his own accomplishments. As an insider, that criticism always annoyed me, because it conveniently ignores the realities of how things have changed. As an outsider now, I see the point. If someone this talented and this appealing can’t succeed in forging consensus – or even settle on a consistent narrative about what he’s done – then what hope is there for the next president? We suddenly find ourselves living in a post-narrative world, and our politics, somehow, are going to have to adapt.”
Herman Cain insists the Tea Party is still strong despite relatively weak showings in GOP primaries this year, Politico reports.
Said Cain: “The tea party movement, in terms of its impact, is still very strong. The key thing is it’s called many of the incumbents to move more towards the right relative to what the tea party message is.”
“Republicans are launching a fundraising effort that will let donors cut six-figure checks to support GOP Senate candidates this fall — a move that capitalizes on the Supreme Court’s landmark McCutcheon v. FEC decision,” Politico reports.
“Senate Republicans have filed paperwork to form the Targeted State Victory Committee, a joint fundraising effort between the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Republican state parties in 13 Senate battleground states.”
Since stepping down as British prime minister in 2007, Tony Blair “has tried to fashion a second act as a globe-trotting do-gooder… But at home, enthusiasm for such endeavors has been tempered by
criticism of his equally ambitious business enterprises, through a
private consultancy called Tony Blair Associates, whose clients have
included controversial monarchs and autocrats,” the New York Times reports.
“In many ways, Mr. Blair faces a perception problem. Years into his postpolitical makeover, confusion lingers about what particular hat he wears at any given time… His various roles often intersect with polarizing figures, which has only given the press more fodder.”
A new Vox Populi (R) poll in Montana finds Steve Daines (R) way ahead of Sen. John Walsh (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 47% to 34%.
A man who claimed Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) campaign asked him to pay people to vote for Cochran now says he was actually paid $2,000 by a member of Chris McDaniel’s (R) campaign to make the accusation, the Jackson Clarion Ledger reports.
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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