It’s a winner. Huge. You go boys and girls: Republicans leading the party’s effort to defend the House in this fall’s elections are pushing GOP colleagues to openly discuss their positions on abortion, rather than try to sidestep the issue like many did in the previous campaign, arguing that doing so will be critical to winning competitive races. A memo prepared by House Republicans’ campaign arm and viewed by The Wall Street Journal says Republicans have a “brand problem, not a policy problem,” as their reluctance to discuss the issue left it to Democrats to define where the GOP stood. Many voters view the party’s hopefuls as opposing abortion under any circumstances, when there are actually a variety of positions held by candidates, particularly in swing districts, the memo states. The guidance tells candidates that they must “confidently articulate” their stance and that “being unwilling to stake out a clear position with voters is the worst possible solution.” Abortion has weighed on the party’s success in recent years.
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Another time for choosing Indulge me. I still struggle to get campaigns here to rethink their strategy and to cast a wider net for “low-propensity” voters Democrats here cannot win statewide races without. Without getting into the weeds, a short thread by Anat Shenker-Osorio gets at what I was already recommending. It’s related to how Jay Rosen a full year ago recommended the press approach this election: Not the odds, but the stakes. For individual voters, the stakes are also high, but democracy may seem an abstraction. Shenker-Osorio’s observations are based on preliminary findings, but what seems to move voters is reframing how Democrats pitch their message: from vote for us to vote for you. “We must shift folks from seeing election as contest between 2 (or more) people to seeing it as fork in road between 2 different futures.” It is old hat to ask people if they are better off now than they were four years ago. But they might disagree that they are, no matter how much data you throw at them. It’s almost reflex on the left to try to browbeat people into submission with our supposed superior command of the facts.
Today, the United States House of Representatives voted to require the Chinese company Bytedance to sell its stake in the popular service Tiktok. If the company does not comply, the bill would ban the use of Tiktok in the US. The bill still needs to pass the Senate and get delivered to President Biden’s desk, … Continue reading Tiktok and the Fediverse
This is the person who runs 538 now: I always remember that time Michael Dukakis came out of his convention 18 points ahead and we all sat back on our laurels thinking that the election was over. Yeah, that didn’t work out.
I didn’t watch the whole thing but from the reports it appears that the Republicans held a hearing in which the Democrats showed a bunch of clips of Donald Trump sounding demented, illustrating that Donald Trump’s classified documents theft is a serious crime and getting the Special Prosecutor to admit that he said that Biden had a photographic memory but didn’t include that in his report. Other than that it went really well for the Republicans.
According to the Hur transcripts Biden had very detailed and distinct memories of the past including time he spent in Mongolia. George Conway recalled Trump’s embarrassing ignorance about world geography and linked to this article in the Independent about a list he made a few years ago: Mr Conway’s Twitter thread came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly berated an NPR reporter who was asking him about the president’s Ukraine scandal which sparked an impeachment inquiry in Congress. Mr Trump has been accused of withholding crucial military aid to Ukraine as it fought a war with Russia while demanding the country’s president announce political investigations into his own 2020 political rival, Joe Biden.
I don’t know if Biden will get credit for this but he should. It’s from the Hur transcripts: It’s important not to get too carried away here. Biden may not have owned stock but he wasn’t called the Senator from MBNA for nothing. Representing Delaware he took up for a lot of banks in his day, including shepherding through a punitive bankruptcy bill back in 2005 on their behalf. He played the game. But there is no evidence that he personally enriched himself while in office. He bought some real estate back in the 70s that ended up being worth quite a lot. And he sold books and gave speeches like they all do. But of all people accused of influence peddling he’s one of the least likely.
He really likes him I’ve always thought it didn’t make any sense that Donald Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his nightstand because he doesn’t read. (He later said it was a book of Hitler’s speeches given to him by a friend.) I do think someone has told him that Hitler built the Autobahn which is why he thinks he’s just great: Huffington Post: John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, discussed the former president’s apparent dictatorial aspirations for a new book by CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “My theory on why he likes the dictators so much is that’s who he is,” Kelly said, according to an article published Monday about the forthcoming book by the CNN anchor and chief national security analyst. Kelly told Sciutto, “Every incoming president is shocked that they actually have so little power without going to the Congress, which is a good thing. It’s Civics 101, separation of powers, three equal branches of government.” “But in his case, he was shocked that he didn’t have dictatorial-type powers to send U.S.
MAGA purges the RNC “The RNC is entering the 2024 election with a third of the Democratic National Committee’s reserves,” writes David Graham in The Atlantic. Graham noted last month that the Republican National Committee has ceased functioning as a political party. Today, it operates as another arm of the Trump Organization, now with loyalist Michael Whatley, immediate past chair of the North Carolina GOP installed as chair, and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that “with the political equivalent of shock and awe,” Team Trump has begun a purge of the RNC staff. “The senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, while dozens of lower-ranking officials including state directors were either fired or told to reapply for their jobs.” The RNC is now eating its own. Given the RNC’s years of electoral losses post-2016, clearing out the dead wood makes sense, Graham writes, and presidential nominees typically take control of the party.
Chris Hayes makes the case for Biden recovery “These are just the facts,” Chris Hayes argued Tuesday night. In the wake of the pandemic inflation spike, I’ve experimented with store brands. Some are better than others. But many are just as good as the higher-priced, better-shelf-placement, name brands. Gas has come down to about $3/gal. Eggs are no longer $5/dozen. But that breakfast cereal I used to buy at about $3.69 a box is now about $6.39 and not budging. So, nope. You can’t eat GDP charts or statistics. And those persistently higher food prices are in your face each week. That makes it a harder sell for President Joe Biden that the economy has recovered under his administration. Even if it has. And it has. Chris Hayes made a valiant stab at making that case on Tuesday evening with a series of massive charts. Behold. Wages are up, and disposable income. Even if it doesn’t feel like it at the grocery store. The consumer price index is better “than any of our peer countries,” Hayes points out. “They would all trade places to be us.” View the segment below.