“Former Florida candidate for governor Andrew Gillum (D) disclosed Sunday that he is entering a rehabilitation facility, saying he had fallen into a depression and alcohol abuse after losing his bid for the state’s highest post,” the AP reports.

“The Democrat’s statement came days after Gillum was named in a south Florida police report Friday that said he was ‘inebriated’ and initially unresponsive in a hotel room along with a male companion where authorities found baggies of suspected crystal methamphetamine.”

Former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D) was allegedly involved in an incident involving crystal meth at a Miami Beach hotel early this morning, according to an incident report obtained by the Miami New Times.

Gillum to the Washington Post: “While I had too much to drink, I want to be clear that I have never used methamphetamines.”

He says he was in Miami last night for a wedding celebration when EMTs were called to assist one of his friends.

The FBI arrested a man connected to former Rep. Katie Hill’s (D-CA) congressional campaign, BuzzFeed News reports.

“Hill, who flipped a Republican-held seat in California two years ago, resigned from Congress last year after nude photos of her were released without her consent. While she was a candidate in 2018, the website of one of her Democratic rivals — Bryan Caforio — was hacked.”

The Intercept: “During the campaign, the websites of Hill’s opponents, Democrats Jess Phoenix and Bryan Caforio, who was supported by Justice Democrats, were both attacked, though Hill’s never was, raising suspicions at the time that Hill’s campaign was behind them.”

“He got 44.8% in 2018. He suffered the worst electoral defeat in the House ever… but yet, the media is going, ‘Oh, he’s so strong, he’s so powerful, he’s so this.’ No he’s not!”

— James Carville, in an interview on MSNBC, on President Trump.

“The NRCC, with the blessing of House Republican leaders, has adopted a no-holds-barred strategy to win back the House majority next year, borrowing heavily from President Trump’s playbook in deploying such taunts and name-calling,” the New York Times reports.

“The offensive hinges largely on the relatively facile notion that by tagging all House Democrats as socialists, anti-Semites or far-left extremists, they will be able to alienate swing-state voters. On Tuesday night, after the House voted to condemn as racist President Trump’s attacks on four congresswoman, the campaign arm’s communications team deluged reporters’ inboxes with message after message calling vulnerable Democratic lawmakers ‘deranged.'”

“Their tactics have discomforted some Republicans and highlighted the struggle in the party over how much to lean into the tenor of politics forged by their leader.”

“A nine-page report titled Path to Power recommends changes to party communications, candidate recruitment, digital operations, and voter registration. The analysis, published online without fanfare, has been quietly circulated to grassroots and local leaders.”

“State Democrats are still smarting after a run of bad election cycles, including last year’s race for governor and the loss of a U.S. Senate seat. Party leaders praised the report, calling it a comprehensive look at changes needed to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020. But for some, the work fell short.”

The newly-updated FiveThirtyEight generic congressional ballot tracker shows Democrats leading Republicans, 45.9% to 40.1%.

Ron Brownstein: “Detailed new research by the Democratic voter-targeting firm Catalist found that the party’s big gains in the 2018 congressional election were fueled not only by unusually high turnout among voters sympathetic to the party, but also by larger-than-expected defections from the GOP among voters who had backed Trump two years earlier.”

“Those findings offer potentially critical evidence as Democrats are debating the best approach to beating Trump in 2020. On one side are progressive activists who say the party should prioritize mobilizing nonvoters, particularly young people and minorities, with an unabashedly liberal agenda. On the other are centrists who say Democrats can’t tilt so far left on issues such as single-payer health care and the Green New Deal that they alienate swing voters who backed Trump in 2016 but may be open to reconsidering now.”

“Rather than picking one path, the new Catalist data on 2018 signals that Democrats need to do some of both in 2020. But, on balance, its analysis found that a clear majority of Democrats’ gains from 2016 to 2018 came from voters switching their preference, rather than from changes in the electorate’s composition.”

“Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters,” according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

“The three younger generations – those ages 18 to 53 in 2018 – reported casting 62.2 million votes, compared with 60.1 million cast by Baby Boomers and older generations. It’s not the first time the younger generations outvoted their elders: The same pattern occurred in the 2016 presidential election.”

Ballotpedia: “On November 6, 2018, elections were held for 6,073 state legislative seats across 87 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers. Five hundred and eight elections (8.3%) resulted in control of a seat changing to a new party. Of the 508 flips, 391 (77.0%) were Republican seats that flipped to Democrats and 93 (18.2%) were Democratic seats that flipped to Republicans.”

First Read: “In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 75% of Republican registered voters say they have high interest in the 2020 presidential election – registering a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale – versus 73 percent of Democratic voters who say the same thing.”

“That’s quite a change from the 2018 cycle, when Democrats held a double-digit lead on this question until the last two months before the election, when the GOP closed the gap but still trailed the Dems in enthusiasm.”

“Overall enthusiasm for 2020 is sky-high, with 69% of all voters expressing a high level of interest in the upcoming election. That’s just 3 points shy of the 72 percent who said the same thing in October 2016. And we are still more than 500 days away from the 2020 general election. So, yeah, turnout in 2020 is going to be through the roof.”