Good morning! Here is your news briefing for monday November 4, 2019.
THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON
| ‘Grassroots’ Justice Dems Fueled by Out-of-District Money By Yuichiro Kakutani Report: Castro Staffers Looking for Other Jobs as Campaign Struggles By Graham Piro N.Y. Justice Dem: White Male Terrorism Is ‘Biggest Issue’ in US By Collin Anderson Visit the All-New Free Beacon Online Store Warren Claims Non-Billionaires Won’t Pay Higher Taxes Under Health Care Plan By Graham Piro Continetti: Beto Got Nowhere Campaigning on Cultural Issues By Washington Free Beacon Staff Nancy Pelosi Isn’t a ‘Fan’ of Medicare for All By Elizabeth Matamoros Biden: Warren’s A Liar By Cameron Cawthorne Buttigieg Hits Warren Over Health Care Plan, But Continues to Face Polling Issues By Washington Free Beacon Staff SIGN UP FOR THE BEACON EXTRA HERE You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website. Copyright © 2019 Free Beacon, LLC, All rights reserved. To reject freedom, click here. Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. |
THE DAILY SIGNAL
| Nov 04, 2019 |
| Good morning from Washington, where President Trump continues to discard government regulations that conservatives see as going too far. White House correspondent Fred Lucas reports on two new cases: stringent rules for disposing of coal ash and a ban on federal grants to faith-based adoption agencies. Plus: sexually explicit books for schoolchildren as young as 5, what’s on the Supreme Court docket this month, the enormous tax weight of “Medicare for All,” and two women who challenge the idea that blacks vote liberal. Forty years ago today, Iranian students loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages. |
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Commentary ‘I’m Black, I’m Supposed to Be a Democrat’: 2 Women Explain Why They Veered Right By Bill Walton “Many black people … really are Republicans because we are the most conservative, really, group. It’s just a matter of me getting in there … and saying, ‘Let us be who we want to be. … Just let us be free,’” says Winsome Earle Sears, a former Virginia lawmaker. More Commentary Sexually Explicit Books Were Put in These Virginia Classrooms. Parents Want Answers. By Anna Anderson Parents discovered an alarming number of the books focused on “sexual diversity” contained sexually explicit language, including “frequent descriptions of underage drinking, fondling, masturbation, orgasms, oral sex, sexual intercourse, sexual abuse, statutory rape, incest, and rape.” More Commentary ‘Medicare for All’ Proposes Economy-Crushing Taxes on Middle Class By Adam Michel No country in the world has been able to provide government-managed health care without soaking middle-class and lower-income taxpayers with high income and payroll taxes. Here’s a look at the impact of Sen. Warren’s new plan. More News Trump’s EPA Rolling Back Obama-Era Anti-Coal Regulation By Fred Lucas The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing easing rules on disposal of coal ash, the residue from burning coal, to make it less likely the federal government would shutter a coal-fired utility plant. More Commentary Justices Set to Weigh Fourth Amendment Traffic Stop Case, Trump’s DACA Stop Sign By Elizabeth Slattery In November, the court will hear arguments in important cases dealing with traffic stops and the Fourth Amendment and with the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program. More News HHS to Lift Obama-Era Restrictions on Grants for Faith-Based Adoption Services By Fred Lucas Under a new proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government will no longer withhold federal grant money from faith-based adoption providers that won’t compromise their views on same-sex marriage. More Analysis Why These Women Walked Away From the LGBT Lifestyle By Virginia Allen “We know that perpetuating the lifestyle, at least for women, places this bondage essentially on a person, never opening the door for them to understand … repressed needs, repressed traumas,” says Elizabeth Woning, who once lived as a lesbian. More | ||
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THE EPOCH TIMES
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“The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.” CONFUCIUS McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook Fired After Engaging in Relationship With Employee: Company Consumers Continue to Fuel US Economy Despite Headwinds Celebrity Astrologer Walter Mercado Dies at 87: Reports House GOP Leader Says Trump’s Removal Would ‘Undo’ 2016 Election Locals in Hong Kong called for simultaneous protests in seven districts on Nov. 3 to condemn the police department’s use of force against protesters. Meanwhile, police made arrests and cleared away crowds before some events could begin in earnest. Read more A national security review of Chinese-owned TikTok’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly has been opened by the U.S. government, three unidentified sources told Reuters. Concerns include the company censoring politically sensitive content, and how it stores users’ personal data. Read more Senate investigators in late October intensified their scrutiny of the acquisition of a U.S. maker of anti-vibration technologies with military applications by a Chinese firm tied to Hunter Biden. Read more To settle a civil rights lawsuit that was backed by the Trump administration, the University of Michigan has agreed to change politically correct policies that were alleged to have chilled students’ free speech on campus. Read more China has high ambitions for its state-controlled digital currency. I wrote two months ago that its central bank digital currency could be imminent. And since foreign adoption of the yuan has been tepid so far, the technology also represents a massive bid to accelerate the internationalization of the yuan. Read more A state lawmaker in Georgia wants to make it a felony for medical doctors to perform sex-reassignment surgery on minor children, including vasectomy, castration, mastectomy, and other varieties of genital mutilation, and forbid the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormone therapy in such cases. Read more See More Top Stories Attention: If you Currently Own or are Considering Buying Physical Precious Metals for your portfolio, please read carefully. On Sept. 26th, 2016, under the Obama Administration, the American Bankers Association and the Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures [CUSIP] announced it started tracking a list of Fungible Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium bars and coins. Simply put: when the failing banking system NEEDS to calculate YOUR ASSETS outside of their financial system, THEY CAN EASILY DO SO! Contact GSI Exchange to acquire the secret documented list of fungible precious metals that are now being tracked by the big banks. Call 833-474-4653 now to speak with a GSI Exchange representative about this new tracking trend. Click here to claim your complimentary copy of our exclusive Bank Failure Survival Guide while supplies last Impeachment Inquiry Rules Skewed Heavily Against the President By Rob Natelson Under pressure from the public and the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives has voted to formally authorize its continuing impeachment inquiry. The House resolution also opens the previously secret hearings of the House Intelligence Committee. But the resolution prescribes procedures heavily and deliberately skewed against the president. Read more Durham Was More Than Ready for This Job By Brian Cates On May 13, it was announced that Attorney General William Barr had assigned U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Durham was the guy very publicly tapped to conduct the probe into how the Trump–Russia collusion hoax began not just because of his qualifications, but also because he already had been read into the “Spygate” plot. Read more See More Opinions It’s Official: China Fakes Economic Numbers By Valentin Schmid (December 14, 2015) Everybody knew it but it took a while to become official. In the case of overstated Chinese GDP figures, we now have confirmation from the Chinese state mouthpiece Xinhua that they have been made up for a long period of time, at least on the regional level. This is just short of the National Audit Office admitting GDP numbers are basically made up. Read more Four recent, blockbuster developments in “Russiagate” could spell big trouble, including, in my opinion, forthcoming criminal indictments for upper-echelon Obama-era officials. Spygate Scandal: Will We See Indictments of Obama-era officials? Advertisement: Copyright © 2019 The Epoch Times, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can unsubscribe from this list or remove my account. |
POLITICO PLAYBOOK
POLITICO Playbook: Did Trump just threaten a shutdown over impeachment?
By JAKE SHERMAN and ANNA PALMER
DRIVING THE DAY
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP just made this month much more … interesting. Speaking on the South Lawn on Sunday, the president left the door open to a government shutdown in 17 days. First, he said “no, no, no” when asked if he would shut down the government because he is being impeached. Then he said, “It depends on — it depends on what the negotiation — I wouldn’t commit to anything. It depends on what the negotiation is.”
REMEMBER: The government shutdown date is Nov. 21 — Congress’ last day in session before the Thanksgiving break. Congress will revolt at the idea of a shutdown, and Democrats are never going to relent on impeachment because of a funding crisis. Some in the Capitol believe they can override the president’s veto of a spending bill. Needless to say, if the president is toying with a shutdown in his mind, this month might not be on autopilot as some may think.
IMPEACHMENT TODAY: The House is out, but four witnesses are scheduled for depositions today. All of them — OMB’s Robert Blair and Brian McCormack, and the NSC’s John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis — are expected to skip their meetings with the impeachment investigators. (hat tip: Andrew Desiderio)
THIS WEEK: Democrats are signaling that they’ll release the transcripts of the depositions conducted so far. On Sunday night, Trump alleged that Democrats might manipulate these records for political purposes. As Kyle Cheney explained, this is implausible: Not only were Republicans in the room for these encounters, but witnesses are also able to return to verify and sign off on the records.
THE FIREFIGHTER IN CHIEF … L.A. TIMES: “As wildfires burn across California, President Trump lashes out at the state on Twitter,” by James Rainey: “Autumn in California now comes not only with fierce, wind-driven wildfires but with routine claims from President Trump that the state’s leaders are to blame for the disasters, followed by assurances from experts that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“The cycle renewed again Sunday, when Trump tweeted that Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) had failed to properly manage the state’s forests, causing a string of recent blazes.
“Newsom ‘has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers,’ Trump said in an early-morning missive on Twitter.
“A few hours later he concluded a slam on Democrats for their impeachment inquiry against him, concluding, ‘Corrupt Adam should clean up & manage the California forests which are always burning!’” LAT
WHAT TRUMP IS FIXATED ON — “Trump inches closer to outing purported whistleblower,” by Rishika Dugyala and Sarah Ferris: “President Donald Trump on Sunday reiterated his calls to reveal the name of the whistleblower behind the complaint that led to the House’s formal impeachment inquiry, mentioning unconfirmed reports about the person’s identity and possible ties to the previous administration.
“Trump sought to discredit the whistleblower, linking the individual to his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama, as well as former CIA director John Brennan and former national security adviser Susan Rice — two of Obama’s top aides.
“‘There have have been stories written about a certain individual, a male, and they say he’s the whistleblower,’ Trump told reporters outside the White House. ‘If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he’s a Brennan guy, he’s a Susan Rice guy, he’s an Obama guy. And he hates Trump.’ ‘Now, maybe it’s not him. But if it’s him, you guys ought to release the information,’ the president added.” POLITICO
— “Trump’s impeachment inbox,” by Daniel Lippman: “President Trump doesn’t think House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry should get any media coverage.
“Meanwhile, he’s ravenously consuming news about the subject — primarily through a friendly lens. From the Oval Office to the White House residence to Air Force One, he’s closely tracking how Republican members of Congress are digesting the latest revelations on his handling of Ukraine, and monitoring their statements for any sign of hesitation or perceived disloyalty.” POLITICO
CLIP AND SAVE — “Your guide to a year of Trump legal landmines,” by Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Gerstein
Good Monday morning.
NEW … WSJ’S MIKE BENDER is writing a book. “Selling Trump: The Inside Story of the 2020 Re-Election Campaign” will give “an unprecedented look at the business of presidential campaigns and the marketing of Donald Trump’s political brand, going behind the scenes on key decisions for the Trump team during the 2016 and 2020 elections.” Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin represented Bender. Sean Desmond will edit the book for Twelve Books.
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THE NEXT FRONTIER OF THE CULTURE WARS? — NYT’S JEREMY PETERS in Arlington, Va.: “A Conservative Push to Make Trans Kids and School Sports the Next Battleground in the Culture War”: “From the 12th floor of a glass office tower in the Washington suburbs, a campaign to sway the governor’s race in Kentucky on Tuesday is being waged with an alarmist claim that has little to do with the race itself: If Democrats have their way, soon boys will be able to compete against girls in school sports.
“This scenario, presented in a pair of ads that are appearing on computer screens and smartphones across Kentucky, is the work of a little-known group funded by anonymous donors called the American Principles Project, which in recent years has focused on fighting more familiar clashes in the culture wars over same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
“The group is limiting its work to Kentucky for now, but strategists say it has bigger ambitions. It is effectively running a pilot program for the 2020 election that will help it determine how it could use the debate over transgender rights to rally conservative voters in support of President Trump.
“The results could inform what type of campaigns social conservatives run in the future — and answer whether the delicate and deeply personal questions around gender identity are the next major wedge issue in American politics or, as recent experience suggests, something that most voters and politicians would rather not see politicized.” NYT
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2020 WATCH … TEXAS TRIBUNE: “Democrats don’t have a candidate who would beat Trump in Texas today, poll finds,” by Ross Ramsey: “None of the top Democrats seeking the presidential nomination would beat President Donald Trump in Texas in an election held today — and neither would either of the Texas candidates in that race, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
“Joe Biden of Delaware, the former vice president, is running 7 percentage points behind Trump in Texas, as is U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont falls 5 percentage points short in a head-to-head with the president among Texas voters. And the two Texas candidates also lag behind Trump: former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of El Paso (who dropped out of the race Friday, after the poll was completed) by 6 percentage points, and former U.S. Housing Secretary and San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro by 13 percentage points.” Texas Tribune
— NYT’S KATE KELLY and LISA LERER: “As Warren Gains in Race, Wall Street Sounds the Alarm”: “[F]rom corporate boardrooms to breakfast meetings, investor conferences to charity galas, Ms. Warren’s rise in the Democratic primary polls is rattling bankers, investors and their affluent clients, who see in the Massachusetts senator a formidable opponent who could damage not only their industry but their way of life. …
“Interviews with more than two dozen hedge-fund managers, private-equity and bank officials, analysts and lobbyists made clear that Ms. Warren has stirred more alarm than any other Democratic candidate. (Senator Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a socialist, is also feared, but is considered less likely to capture the nomination.) …
“‘Everyone is nervous,’ said Steven Rattner, a prominent Democratic donor who manages the wealth of Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor. ‘What scares the hell out of me is the way she would fundamentally change our free-enterprise system.’” NYT
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WAPO: “Sanders, Warren seek to clarify their differences as the fight for Democratic left intensifies,” by Chelsea Janes, Sean Sullivan and Isaac Stanley-Becker
TRUMP’S MONDAY — The president will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at 11:45 a.m. in the Oval Office. He will host the 2019 World Series Champions, the Washington Nationals, at 1:30 p.m. on the South Lawn. Trump will leave the White House at 4:10 p.m. en route to Lexington, Ky., where he will speak at a campaign rally at Rupp Arena at 7 p.m. Afterward, the president will return to Washington.
PLAYBOOK READS
BOSTON GLOBE: “‘I’m going to have to end up leaving my own country’: How Trump’s travel ban affects one family,” by Zoe Greenberg in Montreal
BACKSTORY — “Inside Ukraine’s Push to Cultivate Trump From the Start,” by NYT’s Mark Mazzetti, Eric Lipton and Andrew Kramer: “Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president until May, waged an elaborate campaign to win over Mr. Trump at a time when advisers had convinced Mr. Trump that Ukraine was a nest of Hillary Clinton supporters.
“Mr. Poroshenko’s campaign included trade deals that were politically expedient for Mr. Trump, meetings with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the freezing of potentially damaging criminal cases and attempts to use the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort as a back channel.
“From the start, Mr. Poroshenko’s aides also scrambled to find ways to flatter the new American president — advising their boss to gush during his first telephone call with Mr. Trump about Tom Brady, the star New England Patriots quarterback whom Mr. Trump has long admired.” NYT
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS … AP’S SETH BORENSTEIN : “For more than two years President Donald Trump has talked about pulling the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement. Starting Monday he finally can do something about it.
“Even then, though, the withdrawal process takes a year and wouldn’t become official until at least the day after the 2020 presidential election.” AP
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WHAT THE LEFT IS ARGUING ABOUT — “Can Warren Actually Avoid Taxing the Middle Class?” by The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein: “The biggest question surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s new Medicare for All plan isn’t whether she has produced a plausible pathway to raising $20.5 trillion over the next decade to fund it.
“Rather, the biggest question is whether $20.5 trillion is actually a plausible estimate of how much her plan would cost.
“Warren’s estimate is considerably lower than most projections for a single-payer system, as her team acknowledged in its own analysis of the plan. Even at a flat $20 trillion, such a plan would cost more than the federal government now spends on Social Security alone or on Medicare and Medicaid combined. Estimates from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation, the conservative-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and the center-left Urban Institute have each placed the 10-year cost of a single-payer plan at $31 trillion to $34 trillion.” Atlantic
FOR YOUR RADAR — “Protesters Attack Iranian Consulate in Iraqi City,” by WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen in Erbil, Iraq, and Ghassan Adnan in Baghdad: “Iraqi protesters attacked the Iranian consulate in the city of Karbala, in the latest sign of mounting anger against Tehran’s involvement in the country’s affairs.
“Protesters scaled the consulate’s walls late Sunday while hauling an Iraqi flag. Security forces fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters who were throwing Molotov cocktails over the wall, video footage witnesses provided to The Wall Street Journal showed.” WSJ
— IRONY: This is happening as Iran commemorates the 40th anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, per AP.
MEDIAWATCH — FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Michelle Kosinski has left CNN, where she was senior diplomatic correspondent. She was a foreign correspondent at NBC before CNN. A CNN source said that her contract is up, and she decided to leave to do other things. When asked why she left, she told Playbook: “I’ve been at CNN for six years. It’s time.” She was recently spotted at ABC in New York. ABC didn’t respond to a request for comment. (h/t Daniel Lippman)
PLAYBOOKERS
Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.
SPOTTED: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) at Cielo Rojo in Takoma Park, Md., for breakfast Sunday morning.
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Ben Smith, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief. What he’s been reading recently: “I just finished ‘Advise and Consent,’ which was on the bestseller list for 95 weeks starting in 1959 and is now mostly forgotten (h/t Jamie Kirchick). It’s a pure Washington novel that centers on a high-stakes confirmation hearing, and feels both totally relevant today and unimaginable in the extent to which establishmentarian D.C. traditions have been swept aside, for good and ill.” Playbook Q&A
BIRTHDAYS: Laura Bush is 73 … Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is 72 … Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) is 69 (h/t Michael Chirico) … Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) is 48 … Avi Berkowitz … Jeremy Bernard … Kit Seelye … Blair Latoff Holmes … Craig Stevens … Ashley Estes Kavanaugh … Rima Sirota of the Georgetown University Law Center (h/t Jon Haber) … Michael Fontneau is 35 … Alice Tong … POLITICO’s Gabby Orr, Amanda Eisenberg and Liz Davidson … WaPo’s Mike DeBonis … Eric Wagner of Bloomberg Government … AP’s Alex Sanz … WTOP’s Hillary Howard … Will Shaw … Michael Clauser … Emma Kenyon … Laylee Ghiasi … Jessica Reis, senior director at Bully Pulpit Interactive, is 36 (h/t Anthony DeAngelo) …
… Ken Weinstein, president and CEO of the Hudson Institute, is 58 … Max Gleischman, SVP at Breakwater Strategy (h/t wife Rachel Racusen) … Rick Ungar is 69 … Casey Martel of Global Automakers (h/t Benjamin Decatur) … Darla Bunting … Amanda Thayer … Julie Siegel, senior counsel for economic policy for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) … Jean Roseme … Katie Hughes … Tim Saler … Ezra Mechaber … Florencia Iriondo … Lucy Tutwiler Hodas … Kevin McVicker … Trish Turner … Michael Hough is 4-0 … Aaron White … WSJ’s Elena Chiriboga … Morgan Mohr … Kari Kant … Jeremy Chwat is 45 … Jared Kleinstein … Edward Luttwak … Massachusetts state Rep. Ken Gordon … Hal Malchow … Julie Tippens … Casey Sinnwell (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) … Lynde Uihlein … Susan Knapp … Jacques Haeringer
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THE FLIP SIDE
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Monday, November 4, 2019 Warren Releases Healthcare Plan “Elizabeth Warren on Friday proposed $20 trillion in federal spending over the next decade to provide health care to every American without raising taxes on the middle class.” AP News Read Warren’s plan here. Medium From the Left The left applauds Warren’s detailed projections despite noting that some of the estimates may be unrealistic. “The administrative costs [and profits] of private insurers are more than 25% of what they pay out in benefits each year. By contrast, the administrative costs of Medicare are less than 3% of what is paid in benefits. The potential savings from getting administrative costs for the whole system down to that of Medicare is close to $3 trillion over the next decade… Warren also proposes large reductions in payments to health care providers. Patients in the US pay drug companies, medical equipment manufacturers, doctors and other providers on average roughly twice as much as in other wealthy countries… “There are a lot of moving parts here, each of which involves practical as well as political problems… [For example] There are issues with the planned funding mechanisms. It makes more sense just to charge employers a set percentage of wages rather than base payments on historic insurance premiums. In addition, a wealth tax may prove problematic for a variety of reasons. However, we should realize this is an opening gambit, not a finished product. The final version of the Affordable Care Act was 2,300 pages when it went to a vote. It is unlikely that a Medicare for All bill will be any shorter. Warren’s proposal is not the final word. But it is an excellent first draft that provides a basis for future debate.” Dean Baker, CNN “Don’t get me wrong: The funding is important. But the most important overarching question is what kind of health-care system we want. Once we’ve decided that, we can figure out the best way to pay for it… What we have right now is really the worst of all possible worlds: A system with horrific problems, costing more than any system in the world, and paid for in ways that are inequitable and unsustainable. Would [Warren’s] plan be better?… Whatever plan you find most compelling, we should never forget that what we have now is a practical, financial and moral catastrophe. If we decide to change it, we can.” Paul Waldman, Washington Post Critics note that “in avoiding some of the problems associated with a switch to single payer, [Warren’s] proposal would keep some of the downsides associated with our existing system of employer-provided insurance. A talking point you often hear in favor of Medicare for All is it would relieve employers of the burden of paying for health insurance; this, obviously, leaves that burden in place. The large, lump-sum, per-employee health-care charge would remain a barrier to new hiring.” Josh Barro, New York Magazine But “the biggest question is whether $20.5 trillion is actually a plausible estimate of how much her plan would cost… Estimates from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation, the conservative-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and the center-left Urban Institute have each placed the 10-year cost of a single-payer plan at $31 trillion to $34 trillion… Reimbursement-rate cuts as big as Warren is envisioning would be extremely politically difficult to pass through Congress—and could lead to hospital closures or service cutbacks if they do… “The reality remains that most countries around the world have established and maintained quality universal-health-care systems that cost less than even Warren’s proposal… The problem, of course, is that Warren and other single-payer advocates are not writing on a clean page, but rather seeking to reconfigure an enormously complex structure that consumes one-sixth of the national economy and employs hundreds of thousands of people.” Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic Others note that “[Warren] has provided more detail on Medicare financing than Sanders has. She has also provided more overall policy detail, including on the taxes she would raise, than Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg. And her Medicare plan comes much, much closer to paying for itself than various Republican tax cuts. I wish the conservatives complaining about her plan applied the same rigor to their own ideas… “The biggest weakness of Warren’s approach is that it tries to bulldoze through the sizable public anxiety about radical changes to the health care system. Warren would not let people opt into Medicare, a wildly popular idea. She would force them to join… she needs to come up with a reassuring transition plan soon.” David Leonhardt, New York Times “Warren’s cost estimate is probably transparent and realistic enough to deflect unpleasant questions from debate moderators and journalists, which, ultimately, is the main point of this exercise. Warren’s floating a low number for how much her plan will cost, but it’s not the lowest one out there. And the substantive reasons to doubt it might not play well on a debate stage. I mean, what’s Pete Buttigieg going to say? Elizabeth Warren wants to cut America’s insane prescription drug prices too deeply? That Democrats shouldn’t trust numbers produced by the guy who ran Medicare for Obama?… The question now is whether voters will think Warren’s pitch is just too good to be true.” Jordan Weissmann, Slate Warren “deserves credit for reminding us of two things that often get overlooked in political debates. First, if you take the view, which is supported by history, that imposing higher taxes on corporations and the very wealthy wouldn’t have a deleterious effect on economic growth, there is a great deal of potential revenue that is currently going untapped. Second, if you want to create a universal health-care system at a reasonable cost, you have to put the squeeze on health-care providers—not just insurance companies but also doctors, hospitals, and drug companies… On health care, as in other areas, Warren has shown a willingness to consider remedies that go beyond the Washington consensus and get to the heart of the matter.” John Cassidy, The New Yorker From the Right The right is critical of Warren’s plan, arguing that it makes unrealistic assumptions about both costs and revenue from additional taxes. “The Warren plan would throw more than 100 million people off their current employer-sponsored health insurance plan, and put the federal government in charge of just about everything that occurs in the health care system through a variety of new regulations and price controls… The current health care system is unquestionably flawed and in need of major reforms, but significantly cutting health care services and providers and putting the federal government – which can’t even run existing agencies properly – in charge of all health care will only make things much worse… “Putting less money in the hands of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers means they’ll have less to spend on expanding services, rebuilding old facilities, buying new medical equipment like MRI machines, and on investing in innovative new technologies. This also means there will be fewer providers to treat patients, forcing people to wait weeks and in some cases months longer than they do now to see specialists. This problem would be made even worse by the fact [that] Warren’s proposal would do nothing to substantially increase the number of health care providers available – while expanding access to services for tens of millions of people.” Justin Haskins, Fox News Warren’s plan “basically relies on everyone involved in health care and medicine agreeing to do the same or more work for a lot less money than they do now… She wants to get the same medicine that we do now, paying only 30 percent that we do now. When you assume you can do that, sure, making the numbers add up gets a heck of a lot easier! Imagine working out your household budget by assuming you could keep your home for only 30 percent of your current rent or mortgage payments. You’re lucky if you can find a ‘70 percent off’ deal in stores that are going out of business; Warren’s convinced she can get it for every [brand] name medication required for every American in the country.” Jim Geraghty, National Review Warren “concedes that her plan will cost only ‘slightly’ less than the $52 trillion that the U.S. is expected to spend on health care in the next 10 years. She deducts from that what the feds now spend on Medicare and Medicaid, plus $6 trillion that the states contribute to Medicaid, the state-federal children’s health program and government worker benefits. That leaves $30 trillion to finance, but Senator Warren waves her wand and says the bill will really be $20.5 trillion. She makes the rest vanish by positing magical savings from things like ‘comprehensive payment reform’… Ms. Warren is trying to sell an illusion and make it sound like political courage. Donald Trump’s boast that Mexico would pay for the wall was more believable.” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal “Warren proposes a blizzard of tax hikes — on payrolls, financial transactions, corporations, and the wealthy — and promises to save money by combating tax fraud, [implementing] immigration reform, and cutting military spending. These add up to $20.5 trillion. So even if they raise all of the money she claims (doubtful), she would still be left with a huge gap relative to the $34 trillion cost of a program as generous as what she’s proposing, according to an estimate from the liberal Urban Institute… “The largest single tax increase she proposes is an $8.8 trillion tax on payrolls, which inevitably will fall on the middle class. Her defense of this is that both the middle class and businesses would be better off on net because they’d be saving money on premiums and administrative costs. Yet even if this were true, this would still count as a tax increase… people may believe that paying property taxes and sending their kids to public school is a good deal on net. But they still think of property taxes as taxes and increases in property taxes as tax increases.” Philip Klein, Washington Examiner “We already have a ton of debt and frightening obligations to provide old-age entitlements to hordes of retiring Baby Boomers, and yet this plan would eat up trillions in new revenue sticking the rich with the health-care bills of middle-class Americans who say they like their current insurance. And as if all this weren’t politically infeasible enough, Warren also thinks she can chop defense spending. Oh, and pass comprehensive immigration reform so the government can collect $400 billion more from immigrants… “The easy solution is just to go back to the old argument, where taxes do go up but they’re more progressive than premiums and lower on average. But maybe middle-class Americans won’t want to give up their health insurance unless you bribe them with buckets of rich-people money.” Robert Verbruggen, National Review “Single-payer health care is, in certain ways, the liberal-activist equivalent of the conservative dream of a flat tax. It’s an idea of some merit if you’re designing a system from scratch and it polls O.K. if you don’t tell people about the trade-offs. But it tends to run into trouble quickly on the state level — with Vermont’s stillborn single-payer experience mirroring the flat-tax experiments of states like Kansas. And it has enough political vulnerabilities, in terms of costs and disruption both, that no sane Democrat should want it as the centerpiece of their national campaign… “If Warren wins the nomination she’s going to drag a multi-trillion dollar renovation of the American health care system into the fall campaign — even though everyone understands that the renovation won’t happen, even though Warren herself would rather talk about other policies that poll better. An ideological party is a harsh mistress.” Ross Douthat, New York Times A libertarian’s take “After adding in the ultra-millionaire’s tax and factoring in the other capital taxes Warren wants to levy — on financial transactions, on unrealized capital gains, on corporations — we’d be asking every billionaire to hand over more than two-thirds of their total wealth over a 10-year period. If the government actually managed to collect it, their fortunes would rapidly erode — and so would tax collections. The plan might be a good way to smash wealth, but it’s a terrible way to fund the nation’s health-care system… “If Warren makes it to the White House, and tries to pass a plan, the Congressional Budget Office will eventually attach more reasonable numbers, with more defensible assumptions, sparking an even more spectacular political blowback than the one that greeted Friday’s announcement. Outside of the progressive Twitterati, there isn’t necessarily an enormous constituency for spending $20.5 trillion to herd every American into a national health insurance program; there would be even less support for spending what Warren’s plan would actually cost.” Megan McArdle, Washington Post On the bright side… Domino’s has put bubble tea bubbles on a pizza and people don’t hate it. CNN Our volunteer team spends hours each night scanning the news, fact-checking, and debating one another, so your 5 minutes each morning can be well spent. If you’ve found value in our work, we welcome you to help sustain our efforts and expand our reach. Any support you can provide is greatly appreciated! Share Tweet Forward Sign Up Here Copyright © 2019 The Flip Side, All rights reserved. You can unsubscribe from this list here. |
THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING HEADLINES
| Sign up for this newsletter Read online The morning’s most important stories, curated by Post editors. (Jabin Botsford/The Post) Mulvaney allies try to stonewall impeachment probe Russell T. Vought, who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, is preparing to deliver what President Trump wants but has failed to achieve so far in the impeachment investigation: unquestioning loyalty from staffers. IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY ● By Rachael Bade, Josh Dawsey and Erica Werner ● Read more » Three governor’s races will test whether every election is about Trump In Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana, Democrats are sticking to local issues while the president tries to weaponize opposition to him and to the impeachment inquiry. By Tim Craig and Seung Min Kim ● Read more » McDonald’s pushes out CEO over consensual relationship with employee Directors voted to oust Steve Easterbrook after concluding that he violated the company’s policy against romantic relationships with direct or indirect reports. By Hannah Knowles ● Read more » From fawning praise to scorched-earth attacks, White House press secretary turns up the rhetoric for Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham may have out-Sarah Sanders-ed Sarah Sanders. By Paul Farhi ● Read more » What kids are eating — and where, when and why — in eight schools across the U.S. The Post found some mouthwatering menu options and a complex juggling act with federal regulations, budget realities, crunched lunch schedules, aging kitchens and cultural sensitivities, to say nothing of picky eaters. By Susan Levine and Jenny Rogers ● Read more » ADVERTISEMENT Opinions Satellite images show the horrifying extent of China’s cultural genocide of Uighurs By Fred Hiatt ● Read more » All politics used to be local. Then along came Trump. By E.J. Dionne ● Read more » Now the real battle for the Democratic nomination begins By Karen Tumulty ● Read more » Why another round of tax cuts is a monstrously bad idea By Robert Samuelson ● Read more » ADVERTISEMENT Trump made an empty promise on guns — again By Editorial Board ● Read more » How the media could tip Trump’s impeachment one way or the other By Hugh Hewitt ● Read more » More News West Virginia town gripped by addiction works to unravel an HIV cluster Huntington, W.Va., has diagnosed 80 cases since early 2018 that have been tied exclusively to intravenous drug use as the cause, a development officials fear is the next step in the fallout from the opioid epidemic. By Kyle Swenson ● Read more » ‘Hit them in their heart’: These parents lost kids to hazing. They want to make sure no one else does. The demand for their message reflects a new urgency to confront what has been an intractable problem. It also reflects the benefits of an unexpected alliance with national Greek organizations. By Susan Svrluga ● Read more » Six deaths in one family over 14 years. Police say they have found their killer: The daughter-in-law. Shocked neighbors described the suspect as “pious,” and her sister-in-law called her “smart and jovial.” But in the press, Jolly Joseph has come to be known as the “cyanide killer.” By Niha Masih ● Read more » López Obrador and Mexico’s military in rare public spat after ‘El Chapo’s’ son is freed A retired Mexican general has openly criticized the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after the botched attempt to arrest the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — a rare challenge that’s raising concerns about growing discontent in the military. By Mary Beth Sheridan ● Read more » What Democrats are telling Iowans After a four-hour party dinner, three more cattle calls Saturday and events across the state, here’s how things look. Campaign 2020 | Analysis ● By David Weigel ● Read more » Lamar Jackson and the Ravens hand the Patriots their first loss New England didn’t have enough answers for Baltimore’s quarterback and lost to the Ravens, 37-20. NFL Week 9 ● By Mark Maske ● Read more » We think you’ll like this newsletter Check out By The Way for tips and guides that will help you travel better and make you feel like a local wherever you go. Delivered every Thursday. Sign up » |
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AXIOS
By Mike Allen
😎 Good Monday morning! Frank Bruni has a memorable column that ends with the magic of asking someone how they are — and being ready to really listen:
- “I asked her, tentatively, about her health. And for more than 10 minutes, she opened up about her frequent physical ordeals, her surgeries and how she’d learned to cope by focusing on the good days and remembering that the bad ones were never permanent. I felt a connection to her. I was inspired.”
- Hope you have a meaningful conversation today.
1 big thing … Inside Warren’s plan: What it would really do
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare for All takes on every major health care industry — insurers, doctors, hospitals, drug companies — in her quest to expand coverage and lower costs for the middle class, Caitlin Owens writes.
- Why it matters: We’ve never tried any cost containment measures that are remotely close to being as aggressive as Warren’s.
Experts say you can only wring so much money out of the system before it starts to impact care — and Warren is wringing out a lot.
- Private insurance would be eliminated.
- Americans would no longer have to worry about reaching their deductibles or whether their doctors are in their insurance network.
- They’d pay no premiums and have “virtually no” out-of-pocket costs, according to Warren. They’d have expansive health benefits, including long-term care, audio, visual and dental.
To pay for all of this, providers would see drastic payment reductions.
- Drug prices would plummet.
The bottom line: The days of American health care as big business would likely be over. Patients may win financially, but there’s no way of knowing at what cost to the quality of their care.
- Go deeper: Read more details; share this story.
2. Trump’s government by vacancy
A quarter of the leadership positions on the Department of Homeland Security’s website are “acting” or vacant, Stef Kight reports.
- Why it matters: President Trump said Friday that senior DHS official Chad Wolf will be named acting secretary, to replace acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan. Wolf will be the fifth person in the job for this administration.
- Throughout the agency, there are hiring difficulties, vacant positions and temporary officials.
- And this has been true across Trump’s government, with record turnover in top positions and many months of acting secretaries. Mick Mulvaney has been acting White House chief of staff for 10 months.
The biggest reasons: Politicization makes it harder for nominees to be confirmed by the Senate. And the difficulties dealing with the border crisis, along with the White House’s singular focus on immigration, makes the job look toxic.
- “[T]he WH’s constant mismanagement of the interagency policy making process is also a factor,” a former administration official said. “Agency leaders never feel like they have command.”
Trump has said he prefers acting secretaries, who don’t have to go through Senate scrutiny, because it gives him “more flexibility.”
3. 🎬 Josh Harris, fallen evangelical mega-pastor: “I excommunicated myself”
Josh Harris, once one of America’s most famous evangelical pastors, admitted in his first interview since renouncing Christianity that he ruined lives and marriages, so he excommunicated himself from the faith that made him famous.
- “If you’re not living according to the teaching of the Bible, and you’re living in unrepentant sin, then you have to be put out of the church,” Harris told me for “Axios on HBO,” near his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Harris, author of the million-selling “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” stunned his tight-knit world by going on Instagram in July and announcing that he was leaving his marriage and — nine days later — that he was no longer a Christian.
- Many of his former followers “are angry — understandably,” he told me.
- “Someone said, ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.’ I can relate to that.”
Video: See an excerpt of our conversation.
- Go deeper … Josh Harris: Evangelical support for Trump is “incredibly damaging to the Gospel.”
4. 🇮🇷 Pic du jour
Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP
This photo, of Iranian demonstrators chanting slogans as they set fire to an American flag, is from today — not 40 years ago.
- Thousands of Iranians chanted “death to America” as Iran marked the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover and ensuing hostage crisis, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declaring the two countries “implacable foes,” Reuters reports.
- Go deeper.
5. Tim Cook to Axios: Apple will spend $2.5 billion to help neighbors
Tim Cook attends the global premiere of the Apple TV series “The Morning Show” in New York last week. Photo: Roy Rochlin/WireImage
Apple CEO Tim Cook, unveiling a $2.5 billion plan to help alleviate California’s housing availability and affordability crisis, told me in an interview that Apple feels “a profound responsibility” to the region where it was born and thrived.
- “It’s just unsustainable,” Cook said. “This problem is so big that the public sector cannot do it alone.”
Why it matters: Many teachers and emergency workers can’t afford to live in the Bay Area communities they serve. “Super-commutes” of 90 minutes or more, often from distant counties, have become a grim regional phenomenon.
- The big picture: The tech giants are trying to be better neighbors. Facebook announced last month that it would invest $1 billion to help alleviate California’s housing crisis. Google announced a $1 billion plan in June.
Cook told me Apple is making this move now in part because Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is the right partner.
6. McDonald’s CEO booted after relationship
Steve Easterbrook demonstrates a touchscreen kiosk. Photo: Richard Drew/AP
McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was pushed out after violating company policy by engaging in a consensual relationship with an employee, per AP.
- “Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on,” Easterbrook said in an email to employees.
7. Climate-change confessions of an energy reporter
“I cover energy and climate change, and yet even I do little to reduce my own environmental footprint,” Amy Harder writes in her “Harder Line” column.
- Readers ask me what I do to lower my own carbon footprint, suggesting that because I cover this topic I should stake out a higher moral ground.
- Spoiler alert: I don’t! Like most people, I’m driven mostly by economic incentives.
Eating: I eat beef, at most, a couple times a week, usually when I’m at restaurants.
- I often opt for vegetarian or other meat (chicken, primarily) because cheaper and healthier.
- However, when I’m home on my family’s cattle ranch in Washington State, I eat beef almost daily. Burgers. Steak. Prime rib. Pot roast. Hot dogs. Meatloaf. Cube steak. You get the point.
Electricity: I really try to conserve — but to save money, not the planet.
Mobility: I don’t own a car, and I’m among the 18% of Americans who use public transport.
8. Republican Jewish Coalition fires first shot
Screenshot: RJC
The Republican Jewish Coalition today will launch its first attack ad of the 2020 campaign — an inflammatory spot titled “Shanda” (Yiddish for “shame”), Jonathan Swan scoops.
- The ad accuses leading 2020 Democrats of being anti-Israel, citing their threats to withhold aid to Israel unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government changes its behavior.
Why it matters: The RJC, which is backed by billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, has spent millions over the past two presidential elections, leading the Republican Party’s outreach to Jewish voters. In April, the RJC board authorized its largest ever campaign budget: $10 million.
- “This isn’t our parents’ Democratic Party anymore,” RJC executive director Matt Brooks said. “What’s happening to the Democratic Party is a disgrace, a shanda, and a potential disaster for our community.”
The RJC’s 2020 goal is to identify every Jewish voter in the battleground states, contact them and then turn out as many as possible to vote for President Trump and Republicans.
See the RJC’s first ad of the 2020 campaign.
9. First look … Nikki Haley: “Trump and I understood each other”
Cover: St. Martin’s Press
Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, will be out Nov. 12 with “With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace” (represented by Robert Barnett):
When I had an idea about a direction for U.S. foreign policy — with regard to Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, or elsewhere — I could pick up the phone and call the president. Our communication was nearly constant, and it was straightforward. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes I called to privately express my disagreement with a policy. But he always took the call and he always listened. …
The result was that I had unusual latitude to operate as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. … President Trump and I understood each other.
10. 🗞️ 1 fun thing: What we really read
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Last week started with the Baghdadi raid and ended with the first formal vote on impeachment, with Lt. Col. Vindman’s testimony in between.
But the week’s most read N.Y. Times article was restaurant critic Pete Wells’ entertaining pan of the legendary Brooklyn steakhouse, “Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters”:
What gnaws at me every time I eat a Luger porterhouse is the realization that it’s just another steak, and far from the best New York has to offer. …
Luger is not the city’s oldest, but it’s the one in which age, tradition, superb beef, blistering heat, an instinctive avoidance of anything fancy and an immensely attractive self-assurance came together to produce something that felt less like a restaurant than an affirmation of life, or at least life as it is lived in New York City. This sounds ridiculously grand. Years ago I thought it was true, though, and so did other people.
Go deeper … “How a Food Critic Plots His Pans,” by Pete Wells: “I try to avoid negative reviews — unless I think readers are at risk of wasting their money.”
📬 Thanks for reading! Please tell a friend about AM/PM.
THE RESURGENT
|
The Resurgent’s Morning Briefing for November 4,2019
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Good morning, Here is all the news conservatives need to know to start their day. At 4pm ET, you can catch me on radio to bring you up to speed on developments throughout the day. You can listen live here. Obama Condemns What He Helped Create It’s kind of like Al Gore condemning climate hysteria, or like Beyoncé denouncing the over-sexualization of modern music. That’s how I felt watching former President Obama’s recent condemnation of so-called “cancel culture.” Keep in mind, it’s not that I would be bothered by Gore’s renunciation of the climate cult or Beyoncé’s censuring promiscuous lyrics, it’s […] The post Obama Condemns What He Helped Create appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » “The Angry Majority” The angry majority is exactly the wrong thing to Make America Great Again. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t vote for Trump. Voting is a political act, not an act of fealty. It does mean, however, that you should not count on President Trump to usher in, in any way, a Christian ethic. His reliance on an “angry majority” is proof of this. The post “The Angry Majority” appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Damned Christianity The multiply divorced President has placed a multiply divorced heretic in charge of faith based outreach. The heretic, who practices the prosperity gospel heresy that God will reward us financially if we prop up earthy goldleaf gaudiness in the form of various heretics’ mansions, planes, and megachurches, has also once affirmed Jesus is not the […] The post Damned Christianity appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » BREAKING: Beto Is Dropping Out Of The Presidential Race Beto O’Rourke has dropped out of the race for President. The gun confiscation ploy seems to have fallen short. The post BREAKING: Beto Is Dropping Out Of The Presidential Race appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » A Pennsylvania State Legislator Just Said The Unthinkable About Life The post A Pennsylvania State Legislator Just Said The Unthinkable About Life appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Austin Approves LGBT Indoctrination Campaign Under Guise of Sex Education After midnight Monday night and early into Tuesday morning, a long line of over 100 Austin parents and citizens testified before the Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees on a radical, hypersexualized sex education curriculum. Despite the fact that public opposition to the curriculum at the meeting more than doubled the amount of support, […] The post Austin Approves LGBT Indoctrination Campaign Under Guise of Sex Education appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Facebook Defends Free Speech While Twitter Limits It. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg steers a different course than Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on political ads and free speech. There haven’t been many times in the last several years that conservative members of Congress have found common cause with social media tech giants. Every time a senior member of a social media group was in […] The post Facebook Defends Free Speech While Twitter Limits It. appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » WATCHING COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Week 10 2019 Table scraps. The post WATCHING COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Week 10 2019 appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Elizabeth Warren Agrees Her Health Plan Could Kill 2 Million Jobs Job creation under Trump has averaged about 2 million jobs per year. The post Elizabeth Warren Agrees Her Health Plan Could Kill 2 Million Jobs appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » LIVE: The Erick Erickson Show – Impeachment, Paula White, And The Decline of Christianity The Erick Erickson Show is live! Here’s the plan for today. Hour 1 Impeachment Bipartisan opposition Media treats it as formal impeachment It isn’t; just rules President ready to fight back Tim Morrison undercut Democrats Dem leaks President wants fireside chat The Democrats and Impeachment Six senators won’t be able to campaign Cuts into President’s […] The post LIVE: The Erick Erickson Show – Impeachment, Paula White, And The Decline of Christianity appeared first on The Resurgent. Read in browser » Recent Items: Remember, you can listen to the Erick Erickson Show anytime and anywhere via WSB Radio, iTunes, Stitcher, and Soundcloud. As always, you can find pretty much anything and everything I’m writing about throughout the day via The Resurgent. Thanks for reading and tuning in. Erick Erickson THE RESURGENT Facebook Twitter Instagram Copyright © 2019 The Resurgent Media Group, LLC, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences |
THE HILL
| © Getty Images Welcome to The Hill’s Morning Report. Happy Monday! Our newsletter gets you up to speed on the most important developments in politics and policy, plus trends to watch. Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver are the up-early co-creators. Find us @asimendinger and @alweaver22 on Twitter and CLICK HERE to subscribe! |
| This week, three House impeachment committees begin a new chapter in what has become a starkly divisive political pursuit. Democratic lawmakers expect to release transcripts unveiling some of what 13 witnesses told Congress, an exercise that will ignite ferocious spinning by both parties as Democrats talk about evidence and Republicans focus on the process. Conservatives will continue to complain that Democrats are poised to hold televised hearings without providing “due process.” They argue President Trump and his allies are unable to mount an adequate defense against allegations of abuse of power, obstruction of justice and, as House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) added on Sunday, potential evidence of bribery. The timetable remains murky for public hearings to be convened by the House managers of the impeachment probe. The word “soon” was echoed by Democrats on Sunday. Trump spent part of the weekend urging anew that the anonymous whistleblower – whose concerns went up the chain at the CIA, on to the intelligence community’s inspector general and then to the House Intelligence panel – must be unmasked. The president and his allies, who appear to know the whistleblower’s identity, have for weeks been eager to publicly discount the official as partisan, akin to an enemy who because of bias accused Trump of pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival in exchange for the U.S. release of military aid. “The whistleblower should be revealed because the whistleblower gave false information,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding that he’s a “radical.” The president’s handling of the complaint filed under the Whistleblower Protection Act, including his repeated attacks on the official’s information, motives and background is considered highly unusual and has been criticized by some House and Senate Republicans. The whistleblower offered to communicate directly with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, the official’s lawyers said on Sunday (Reuters). Republicans have “sought to expose our client’s identity which could jeopardize their safety, as well as that of their family,” attorney Mark Zaid wrote on Twitter. Trump’s congressional allies are mounting a whisper campaign about the suspected identity of the whistleblower. In closed-door depositions, in private hallway conversations, during public hearings and on Twitter, the president’s allies tease the rumored identity of the federal official, even as they acknowledge they have not independently verified it (The Hill). The loop of rumors and suggestions sluiced through Trump’s Twitter feed over the weekend, creating the social media version of a distracting whodunit: “The Fake News Media is working hard so that information about the Whistleblower’s identity, which may be very bad.” Trump has sidestepped or dismissed as inaccurate testimony from multiple witnesses inside the White House and the State Department who have corroborated elements of the whistleblower’s complaint. The Hill: Trump is unlikely to cooperate with the impeachment proceedings. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said the president will not create a White House war room, as suggested by numerous Republicans, to respond to the impeachment inquiry. “He is the war room,” she told Fox News on Friday. The Washington Post: An Office of Management and Budget official, Russell Vought, a protege of acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, intends to defy House Democratic subpoenas seeking information about the delayed release of military aid appropriated for Ukraine. Two of his OMB subordinates are expected to follow suit. Senators are increasingly persuaded that the House will adopt one or more articles of impeachment, which would then be sent their way as indictments. In the Senate Intelligence Committee, divisions are emerging over whether to hear from the whistleblower, and when. Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told The Hill he wants to speak with the whistleblower as part of his committee’s inquiry. In an exercise of wishful thinking they’ve shared multiple times with Trump, Republican senators tell Alexander Bolton they want the president to focus less on impeachment and instead sell voters on the GOP’s policy agenda headed into the election year. The Hill: On Sunday, Trump allies assailed the impeachment process while House Democrats promised public hearings “soon.” The Hill: Next impeachment phase dominates in Washington (highlights from the Sunday shows). The Associated Press: The week ahead in the impeachment probe: Democrats prepare for public hearings and seek testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton. |
| © Getty Images |
| LEADING THE DAY |
| POLITICS: The U.S. political universe is focused on the big election a year from now, but plenty of eyes are trained on critical contests around the country tomorrow. Democrats and Republicans will be poring over those voter choices in search of clues about the future. As Reid Wilson reports, Mississippi and Kentucky have important gubernatorial contests. And Virginia, a state in which Democrats have gained traction in the last few cycles, could be a bellwether: The last time Democrats won control of the state Senate in Virginia was in 2007, a year before then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois won the presidency. And elsewhere there are some intriguing initiatives, propositions and local elections to consider, Wilson writes. More than anywhere else, Virginia’s state legislative elections tomorrow will test the magnitude of the Republican Party’s suburban slide. Democratic victories this week could reshape the national political landscape in 2020, and politics for decades across the South (The Associated Press). The New York Times: Trump remains highly competitive in the battleground states likeliest to decide his reelection, according to a set of new surveys from The New York Times Upshot and Siena College. As voters head to the polls, election officials and election experts say they’re confident about the headway being made with improvements adopted around the country to prevent hacking and disinformation attacks like those experienced in 2016 and 2018. That optimism is a backdrop for lawmakers in Congress, who split along party lines about how to legislatively tackle election security (The Hill). The 2020 Democratic presidential contest is a three-way race, according to voters participating in a new survey, even as lower-tier candidates with anemic standings in poll after poll attempt to hang on for the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) are less well known than former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), all of whom enjoy high name recognition and generally favorable assessments among Democrats, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (The Associated Press). But a quarter of respondents say they don’t know enough about Harris and 40 percent say the same about the South Bend mayor. Over the weekend, Harris, who is managing her cash-on-hand and fundraising to focus on Iowa, said she’s “all in” for the Hawkeye State caucus, the first-in-the-nation primary. Niall Stanage explores the “restructuring” that the senator’s campaign envisions amid her sagging polls and tepid fundraising and asks the key question, especially after former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) decided there was no path for him to the White House, is there a plausible way back for Harris? CBS News: Reporter Ed O’Keefe interviewed Harris in Des Moines on Saturday about her strategy in Iowa. “We’re going to do well in Iowa, and I’m sure of that,” she said. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro made nice on Sunday. Recall that his breakout moment during the first Democratic debate came when he attacked O’Rourke over immigration policy. With his fellow Texan out of the race, Castro says the disagreement is behind them. Castro told The Hill on Sunday in Indianola, Iowa, that he had called O’Rourke to offer him good wishes. They didn’t connect, but Castro said he left a message — and predicted that O’Rourke still has a future in politics. The New York Times: The end of Betomania. Meanwhile, Warren has all the name recognition, campaign cash, and Iowa staffing and infrastructure an emerging front-runner could hope for. She’s also dogged, mocked and skewered over her $20.5 trillion invoice to cover the costs of public health care for every American through higher taxes on the wealthy and on businesses, but without “a penny” in higher taxes for the middle class, she says. Analysts maintain Warren’s big challenge with her “Medicare for All” plan is political, not mathematical (Reuters). John F. Harris, Politico: There are at least seven big bets that will decide who wins the White House in 2020. One wager, made by Warren, who is “the greatest disrupter of Democratic politics this year” is that it’s “time for progressives to play a much more aggressive and undiluted brand of offense.” |
| © Getty Images And speaking of progressive policies and 2020, the Democratic presidential contenders are zeroing in on “environmental justice,” which pleases green activists. Candidates have ambitious plans to tackle decades of pollution and harmful practices that are concentrated in poor neighborhoods and communities of color (The Hill). |
| IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES |
|
WHITE HOUSE & ADMINISTRATION: Immigration:
Over the weekend, the administration’s requirement that prospective
immigrants must prove in advance they’d have health coverage within 30
days of their arrival in the United States hit a hurdle when a federal
judge in Oregon issued a 28-day restraining order. The policy was to
take effect on Sunday. Numerous legal challenges to Trump’s immigration
and refugee policies are in the courts. The White House issued a
statement on Sunday saying the administration will continue to argue
that Trump may “impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” (Reuters).
> Paper chase: Departments and agencies
that implement Trump’s science and environmental policies have refused
to respond to more than 50 separate Democratic requests for documents
and information, underscoring the administration’s reluctance to provide
information to Congress and to the public. The agencies behind the
blockade include the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments
of Interior, Commerce and Agriculture. Administration officials say the
Democratic complaints are unfounded and that information relevant to
some requests has been shared with lawmakers (The Hill). > Adieu, Paris: Beginning today, Trump has the rules-based opening to act on his pledge to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement signed by close to 200 nations in 2015, and binding with pledges to cut carbon pollution for the past three years. Withdrawal would begin with a letter from the administration to the United Nations, but the separation would not become official for a year, which in Trump’s case could occur soon after the 2020 election. If the president loses his bid for reelection, the 46th U.S. president could return to the Paris accord with 30 days’ notice (The Associated Press). Personnel announcements: Trump last week said he will nominate Texas cancer researcher Stephen Hahn to lead the Food and Drug Administration (The New York Times). …Trump on Friday sparked confusion when he announced that Chad Wolf is the acting secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), although the department said acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan is still on the job into next week. McAleenan resigned in October pending the appointment of a successor. Complications: Wolf must be confirmed for his current job as undersecretary for policy before he can take the acting job atop DHS (Politico). Wolf is on record advocating for the separation of immigrant families, a controversial Trump policy the administration was forced by courts to reverse. His Senate confirmation hearings will be rough. |
| OPINION |
| The government protects our food and cars. Why not our data? Natasha Singer, technology reporter, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/36qyOSp In California in 1994, Prop. 187, which denied certain benefits to illegal aliens, roused a generation, by Gustave Arellano, The Los Angeles Times. https://bit.ly/2JJb3vm |
| WHERE AND WHEN |
| Hill.TV’s “Rising” program features Guy Snodgrass, the former communications director for former Defense Secretary James Mattis, discussing his new book, “Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon.” Also on the program: Kyle Kulinski, host of The Kyle Kulinski Show. Watch at 9 a.m. ET at http://thehill.com/hilltv or on YouTube at 10 a.m. at Rising on YouTube. The House will meet at 1 p.m. for a pro forma session and lawmakers return to work on Nov. 12. The Senate convenes at 1 p.m. for a pro forma session. The president this morning will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump welcomes the World Series champion Washington Nationals to the South Lawn at 1:30 p.m. He will depart this afternoon to hold a reelection rally at 7 p.m. at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., to campaign for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) before returning to Washington (USA Today). The president wielded his Twitter account to stump for Bevin before the flight (The Hill). Vice President Pence flies to Gulfport, Miss., to speak to Republicans at a rally hosted by Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) in Biloxi at noon. Pence will return to Washington this evening. Pompeo will meet with the president in the morning at the White House and in the afternoon sit down with Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Moreno at the State Department. The secretary at 3 p.m. will headline an event marking the 40th anniversary of Iran’s taking of U.S. hostages in the embassy in Tehran (The Associated Press). Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is in Doha, Qatar, for a second day, holding bilateral meetings with his counterparts. He returns to Washington tomorrow. White House Fellows: The application process is open through Jan. 8 for the 2020-2021 White House Fellows program, founded in 1964. Selected individuals spend a year in Washington, D.C., working as full-time, paid government employees aiding Cabinet secretaries, senior White House staff and other top-ranking government officials. Application info: https://fellows.whitehouse.gov/. Program info: https://www.whitehouse.gov/get-involved/fellows/. Contact for questions: whitehousefellows@who.eop.gov. |
| ELSEWHERE |
| ➔ Airbnb: The shooting deaths on Halloween of five people at a large party at an Airbnb property in Northern California resulted in the company’s decision to ban “party houses” nationwide that are booked through the short-term rental platform. “We are redoubling our efforts to combat unauthorized parties and get rid of abusive host and guest conduct, including conduct that leads to the terrible events we saw in Orinda,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky announced on Saturday. He said an Airbnb executive will oversee a new rapid response team and initiate a “10 day sprint” to implement new safety initiatives adopted by the company (USA Today). Airbnb is attracting negative publicity in major cities that are destinations for large numbers of tourists and visitors, including Miami Beach. ➔ Law enforcement: Breathalyzer tests, a bedrock of the criminal justice system, are often unreliable, a New York Times investigation found. Judges in Massachusetts and New Jersey have thrown out more than 30,000 breath tests in the past 12 months alone, largely because of human errors and lax governmental oversight. Across the country, thousands of other tests also have been invalidated in recent years. ➔ Economy: A resilient job market and steady consumer spending have helped push the U.S. economy through a mix of global threats. Without a significant downturn in hiring or consumer spending, the economy may hold up favorably into the 2020 election season, potentially insulating Trump from political blowback (The Hill). ➔ Baked goods in space: It’s one giant leap for chocolate chip cookies! If you remember the Easy Bake Oven method of cooking something the size of a hockey puck with a lightbulb, you’ll want to read this: A Zero G Oven was packed among supplies sent into space over the weekend to astronauts on the International Space Station. If all goes according to plan, in a few weeks, the warm, sweet aroma of a single cookie baked at a time using electric heating elements will waft through the space station’s lab (The Associated Press). |
| THE CLOSER |
| And finally … This is the kind of smile we all like to see on Monday morning! The New York City Marathon included a dazzling debut finish on Sunday by first-time-marathoner Joyciline Jepkosgei of Kenya, 25, who ran 26.2 miles like a veteran when she won among female racers in 2:22:38, just seven seconds off the course record. In the 23rd mile, Jepkosgei broke away from four-time race winner Mary Keitany, also of Kenya, who came in second in 2:23:32. Desiree Linden, who set a fast early pace, was the top American, crossing the finish line in sixth place in 2:26:46. It was the fourth-fastest time ever run by an American woman on the course (Runners World). Among the men, Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya won the marathon in 2:08:13, followed by Albert Korir of Kenya and Girma Bekele Gebre of Ethiopia. Gebre, who speaks no English and has no agent or shoe contract, slashed an astonishing five minutes from his personal record with his 2:08:38 third-place achievement on Sunday (Runners World). |
| © Getty Images The Morning Report is created by journalists Alexis Simendinger and Al Weaver. We want to hear from you! Email: asimendinger@thehill.com and aweaver@thehill.com. We invite you to share The Hill’s reporting and newsletters, and encourage others to SUBSCRIBE! To view past editions of The Hill’s Morning Report CLICK HERE To receive The Hill’s Morning Report in your inbox SIGN UP HERE Morning Report Sign Up FORWARD Morning Report Privacy Policy | Manage Subscriptions | Unsubscribe Email to a friend | Sign Up for Other Newsletters The Hill 1625 K Street, NW 9th Floor, Washington DC 20006 ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc. |
THE DISPATCH
The Morning Dispatch: Make-Believe Medicare Math
Plus: The state of the Democratic race and the impeachment week ahead.
| Nov 4 | Public post |
Happy Monday morning! We hope you’re reading this newsletter while basking in all that extra morning sunlight we traded for this weekend, because for the next three months you’ll need a flashlight to eat dinner.
Quick Hits: What You Need to Know
- The economy added 128,000 jobs in October, driving the S&P 500 to all-time highs. Manufacturing activity, however, contracted for the third straight month.
- Beto O’Rourke dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential race, telling supporters his “campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully.”
- The California wildfires that have raged for days and forced mass evacuations are largely under control, per the Ventura County Fire Department.
Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-All Rube Goldberg Machine
The first time Elizabeth Warren refused to answer a debate question about whether she would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for her Medicare-for-All plan, it seemed like a momentary oddity. As she kept dodging the question in debate after debate, it became a real difficulty for her campaign.
Warren finally rolled out her detailed Medicare-for-All policy proposal on Friday. You can’t fault her for inconsistency. The apparent organizing question of Warren’s Medicare-for-All plan is not “What is the most just and equitable way to lay out our national health care system?” Rather, it seems to be: “What will allow Elizabeth Warren to keep claiming that the middle class won’t pay more in taxes under Medicare-for-All?”
The result is a policy Rube Goldberg machine, in which the Warren brain trust pilfers from every conceivable pot of cash just to make the numbers seem halfway plausible: New corporate taxes, wealth taxes, investment taxes, cuts to military spending, and a barrel of cheerful promises about eliminating IRS loopholes to cut down on tax avoidance.
Warren’s proposal makes the math work by making fantastical assumptions about how much new revenue the government is likely to bring in and by dramatically underestimating how much implementing Medicare-for-All will cost. Her campaign puts the 10-year price tag at $20.5 trillion; a whole slew of independent projections, meanwhile, estimate a 10-year cost of no less than $31 trillion.
Oh, and it also tosses in comprehensive immigration reform as another revenue-generating measure. Sure, why not?
Pie in the Sky
The traditional Democratic argument for single-payer health insurance has been straightforward: The insurance industry’s primary interest is not the welfare of its customers, but the financial interest of its shareholders. If the government were to get rid of the profiteering leeches, it would create a much leaner, more efficient system all while providing universal health care. Since people would be paying the government rather than private companies, taxes would of course go up. But the costs would be shouldered much more heavily by those better able to afford them, and Americans would be getting far more bang for their buck.
There are plenty of problems with this argument, but set those aside for now. Even by single-payer standards, Warren’s proposal is absurd. With a straight face, Warren insists that private health care costs for the entire middle class (and for the poor, for that matter) will simply vanish—and that they won’t be asked to pay a cent in new taxes to make up the difference. “It doesn’t raise taxes on anybody but billionaires,” Warren said in Iowa this weekend. “And you know what? The billionaires can afford it.”
Warren and her fellow true-blue progressives are proposing the most dramatic overhaul of the U.S. economy in our nation’s history. This means that the onus is on them to sell Medicare-for-All to the people. At a minimum, Warren has a responsibility to the voters to show her work—to explain exactly how everyone will be better off, to show how the math makes sense and how the plan anticipates and navigates drawbacks of the change.
Instead, Warren has consistently shown us that she believes the opposite to be true. It isn’t her job to sell Medicare-for-All to the people—it’s the people’s job to wise up and get on board because Elizabeth Warren says they should. At the Democratic debates, Warren has repeatedly scoffed off the idea that any reasonable person could object to her plan. She has dismissed serious questions about how her plan will be paid for as “Republican talking points.” And this weekend, she had no good answers about the futures of the millions of Americans currently employed by the health insurance industry, suggesting casually that they could “work in other parts of insurance—in life insurance, in auto insurance, in car insurance.” Other parts of insurance? Sounds like someone who doesn’t have a plan.
Elizabeth Warren wants to convince Americans that they should trust her to dramatically reshape the U.S. economy. It’s hard to see how policy fantasies like this help her make that sell.
The Democratic Horserace
The first several months of the Democratic 2020 campaign have been remarkably cordial by political standards—save Kamala Harris’ body blow on Joe Biden and Tulsi Gabbard’s body blow on Kamala Harris. We are just 91 days from the first votes being cast in Iowa, and congeniality is beginning to wear thin. In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen:
- Elizabeth Warren tell Joe Biden he’s “running in the wrong presidential primary” and “repeating Republican talking points”
- Joe Biden’s team remind everyone Elizabeth Warren was a Republican until age 47
- Pete Buttigieg declare the race is down to just him and Elizabeth Warren (he later walked these comments back, but we at The Dispatch will not stand for this Wayne Messam erasure!
- Kamala Harris call Pete Buttigieg “naive”
- Amy Klobuchar refer to Elizabeth Warren’s health care plan as a “pipe dream” and
- Andrew Yang tweet that he likes to ride his bicycle.
So what’s driving all these spats between the candidates? Let’s break down some of the key matchups that’ll be worth keeping an eye on over the next eight Scaramuccis (is that still funny?).
Joe Biden vs. the clock: For all the doom and gloom you may be reading about the Biden campaign—his age is beginning to show, he’s going to lose Iowa, his rivals are crushing his fundraising numbers—the former vice president remains a frontrunner in public polling. His campaign has had him running from ahead since the outset, like a football team nursing a 10-point lead midway through the fourth quarter. By limiting his exposure and shying away from excessive confrontation with other candidates, his team had hoped to minimize risk and simply run out the clock. But recent surges from rivals—and a certain Ukraine saga, you might have heard of it—have forced Biden to deviate from the plan, going back on offense to put a few more points on the board.
In recent weeks, he’s appeared on 60 Minutes and MSNBC, he’s repeatedly attacked Elizabeth Warren’s credibility, and he’s begun accepting help from an outside super PAC. The primary map looks tricky: Biden is closer to fourth than first in Iowa, and he’s losing ground to Warren and Sanders in New Hampshire. The campaign is treating South Carolina—which votes fourth and where Biden currently holds nearly a 20-point lead—as its firewall. But can a former vice president and longtime frontrunner, with massive name-ID, really afford to lose Iowa and New Hampshire?
Relative to his opponents, the former vice president is lacking in both money and progressive bona fides. But as New York Times political reporter Astead Wesley noted over the weekend, the more moderate Biden remains the only candidate who has demonstrated enough support in black communities to win. As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ 2016 battle proved, you can’t win the nomination with hyper-liberal white voters alone. Don’t count out ole’ Joe just yet.
Elizabeth Warren vs. Pete Buttigieg/Bernie Sanders: If you’ve been following the 2020 campaign exclusively through cable news, you’d be excused for thinking Elizabeth Warren had this thing in the bag. As some would tell it, she has a plan for everything, a clapback for everyone, and is surging past her rivals, unlikely to look back. She even seemed to secure the highly coveted and influential Saturday Night Live endorsement this past weekend (here’s hoping sarcasm can be transmitted via newsletter). The result of all that attention is that she’s getting her first real taste of frontrunner status, and as a result, has had to fend off increasing attacks from her Democratic rivals.
On her right, Mayor Pete seems to finally be having His Moment™ after tacking slightly to the center in the most recent debate and placing himself in sharper contrast with the junior senator from Massachusetts. Despite tweeting in favor of Medicare-for-All in February 2018 (the term’s actual meaning was much hazier back then), Buttigieg has been hammering Warren’s plan as expensive and implausible, after initially branding her evasive for not releasing the plan’s details at all. And it seems to be working: Mayor Pete is now nipping at Warren’s heels in Iowa, and just delivered by all accounts a riveting Liberty and Justice Gala speech that has drawn comparisons to another “young man with a funny name” back in 2007. If Warren is tied up in Washington for a lengthy impeachment trial, Buttigieg could very well pull within striking distance.
On her left, Warren must contend with a re-energized and reinvigorated Bernie Sanders who, while not running nearly as combative a campaign as Buttigieg, is starting to create some distance between himself and his closest ideological ally in the race. Late in the summer, Sanders’ campaign showed signs of stagnating, unable to expand beyond an insufficient base of supporters. But an early October heart attack, followed by a strong debate performance and high-profile endorsements from progressive superstars Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar have breathed new life into Bernie’s campaign.
The combination presents a difficult one-two punch for Warren. Move too far to the left—as it appears she might have done with the Medicare-for-All rollout—and she leaves her right flank open to attacks from Buttigieg and Biden. If she so much as hints at a relatively centrist proposal, she risks driving progressive voters back into Bernie’s outstretched arms.
Kamala Harris vs. relevance: For someone who declared herself “obviously a top-tier candidate” just a few months ago, Harris sure is doing a lot of cellar-dwelling. After delivering the “that little girl was me” line on busing that temporarily blindsided Vice President Biden, the freshman California senator and former prosecutor rapidly gained traction. But the boost was short lived, and Harris is now laying off staff and shuttering offices in New Hampshire to “go all-in on Iowa,” a state where she’s currently polling sixth. She’s in low single-digits in several recent national polls.
To be fair, Harris is far from the only candidate languishing. We haven’t even mentioned John Delaney, Julián Castro, Marianne Williamson, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock, or Joe Sestak in this segment, and very likely The Dispatch’s entire existence. But relative to expectations, perhaps only Beto, peace be upon him, has fallen flatter.
The Week Ahead: Impeachment
Congress may be on recess this week, but House Democrats—who, you’ll recall from Friday’s Morning Dispatch, are in a bit of a time crunch—are trying to press forward with impeachment proceedings nonetheless. This week, however, is looking like a stalemate: The White House has instructed four current officials who were slated to appear Monday and Tuesday—including National Security Council lawyers and an aide to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney—not to testify and unlike some of their predecessors, they appear likely to comply with those orders.
One big remaining question mark: whether we’ll hear this week from former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Bolton told the relevant committees last week that he was unwilling to testify voluntarily, and his lawyer effectively asked them to subpoena him instead. But whether that means Bolton is privately eager to dish is far from clear.
Outside the SCIF, the defenses of the president are becoming more confused. Not surprisingly, after the sixth witness to confirm the existence of a quid pro quo, many of Trump’s defenders on Capitol Hill are moving from “no quid pro quo” to “yes, there was a quid pro quo, and it was a good thing.” But Trump isn’t happy with what he sees as strategic retreat: Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrumpFalse stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!November 4th 201916,121 Retweets65,805 Likes
Worth Your Time
- A moral grandstander is “a person who frequently uses public discussion of morality and politics to impress others with their moral qualities.” Sound like anyone you know? A new study published in PLOS One finds such people are more prone to political and moral conflict in their daily lives. Read a synopsis here.
- The New York Times conducted an interactive analysis of Donald Trump’s tweets since taking office in January 2017, and found, among other things, that he has routinely engaged with conspiracy theorists on the platform and praised himself more than 2,000 times. “President Trump is tweeting more than ever. The second week of October was his busiest, with 271 tweets.”
- On a recent trip to Chicago, Allie Conti was deprived of the room she paid for, and she stumbled into an Airbnb scam that has afflicted hundreds of travelers nationwide. She wrote about it for Vice here, and now the FBI is on the case.
Presented Without Comment
Toeing the Company Line
- The Morning Dispatch/G-File closed circuit is nearly complete, with Jonah taking Friday’s reporting on House GOP retirements and running with it in his most recent “news”letter. The G-File also touches on impeachment, show trials (or the lack thereof), the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” speech, and, of course, Conan the hero dog. Give it a read here.
- We did not know Steve Bannon was a Morning Dispatch reader, but we’re glad he’s enjoying our work!
Let Us Know
Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar, Florida, is somehow still running for president despite raising all of $5 for his campaign in the third quarter of this year. Who gave him that $5?
- An FEC official who felt bad seeing a zero on the reporting form
- His three children pooled it together
- Pete Buttigieg, mayor of a city smaller than Miramar, Florida
- Nobody, was a rounding error
Reporting by Declan Garvey and Andrew Egger.
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DESERET NEWS
BRIGHT
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Monday, November 4, 2019 |
Circle the Quid Pro Quo President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway had the line of the day on a Sunday morning show and she brought receipts. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Conway talked about the ongoing Ukraine drama and brought a transcript of the infamous call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. From Townhall: “Let’s just start with the basics. The President of the United States asked a foreign power to investigate a top political rival. We read it in the summary of the July 25th call. We also him do it in public. Was that appropriate?” [CNN host Dana] Bash asked right off the bat. “Well, I have the transcript of the call right here and I’d like you to show me where that is,” Conway replied. “And you can circle where there’s a quid pro quo –” “No, I’m not asking about –” Bash interjected. “– where the president mentions holding up aid. The Ukrainian president has said he didn’t realize any aid was being held up but he felt no pressure,” Conway explained. “This phone call is about two presidents of respected countries talking about how they got elected. The president of the Ukraine said ‘I followed after you in draining the swamp.” On Sunday, the attorney for the man accusing Trump of impropriety and quid pro quo said via Twitter on Sunday that his client is willing to answer Republicans’ questions in writing but not testify in person. CBS News quickly claimed, “BREAKING: Whistleblower is willing to answer Republicans’ questions in impeachment probe, lawyer says.” The Federalist’s Sean Davis put this claim in perspective and responded, “This is a complete lie. The anti-Trump leaker, whom @RCInvestigates has identified as Eric Ciaramella, refuses to testify to Congress or be questioned in person by any Republican. Recall that he coordinated with House Democrats before attacking Trump.” CNN: ‘The US Added 128,000 Jobs in October, Topping Dour Forecasts’ That must have been a hard headline for CNN to write. ‘Tis true, the October 2019 jobs report was better than expected. Economists predicted about 89,000 jobs would be added in October. The other good news is that the 36,000 manufacturing jobs that dropped are largely due to the short-term GM strike, which has now ended. More from CNN: “Average hourly earnings increased 0.2% in October, a slightly slower pace than expected, but overall, they were still up 3% from a year earlier. Another bright spot came from strong revisions to prior data, which showed an extra 95,000 jobs were added in August and September combined. “The current economic expansion, already the longest in US history, looks set to continue at least through the first part of next year despite the trade war drag,” Faucher said. Consumer spending is the backbone of the US economy. The retail sector added more jobs in October, and the September number was revised up, “indicating that strength in the consumer sector is sufficient to support positive retail hiring,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a note. The unemployment rate, at 3.6%, remains near a 50-year low. In October, the labor market participation rate climbed to 63.3%, its highest level since August 2013.” A Race to Watch in Pennsylvania The Examiner’s Salena Zito wrote about the 2020 race for the 17th congressional district in Pennsylvania. BRIGHT may recognize the new candidate, author, former combat veteran, and Purple Heart recipient Sean Parnell. He sat down with BRIGHT in September to discuss being a single dad, writing, and other topics. Zito writes: “Army combat veteran Sean Parnell kicked off his race as a Republican running for the U.S. House here at Pamela’s Diner. It’s within a stone’s throw of the district office of Rep. Conor Lamb, the Democrat he is challenging for the 17th Congressional District seat in 2020. “My plan for today is just to tell the voters who I am, give them a sense of what I stand for, and just listen to them and figure out what they feel is important,” said Parnell before he headed off to two other diners in the district in Beaver and Butler counties in the western and northern suburbs of Pittsburgh. The district is made up of neatly trimmed Allegheny County upper-middle-class, left-leaning suburbs such as Mt. Lebanon, working-class communities in Beaver County packed with labor families, and fiscal conservatives and enough rural and exurban Butler County voters to make the whole district a smidge Republican leaning. Parnell spent his time talking mostly with customers but took a beeline to the kitchen before he left to talk to the cooks and servers. “I worked at Smartie Arties as a bus boy, then as a cook from the time I was 15 until I was 21. I know how hard that job is and I just want to thank them,” he said.” What I’m Reading This Week This week I’m starting Good Luck with That by Kristan Higgins. From the description: “Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it’s coming to terms with the survivor’s guilt she’s carried around since her twin sister’s death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it’s about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother’s and brother’s ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson’s dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves.” Also, this week is the second anniversary of when my first novel, I Wish I Might, came out! As a book lover who stayed up way past my bedtime to read every Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High book from the library to now when I have multiple books and audiobooks in my queue every week, it has always been my dream to write a novel. A Case of the Mondays Hero dog leads NJ police to accident victim’s home (PIX11) When your landlord says no dogs are allowed (Facebook) Hero dog is coming to the White House (The Daily Wire) |
Last week the First Lady visited troops and children at Fort Charleston in South Carolina.
I’ll cut to the chase — the fabulous Coach trench coat she wore is on sale for $347! It’s a bargain by First Lady standards.
There are only a few sizes left, so you may also want to check out this classic trench coat from London Fog at Macy’s for under $100.
More from John Binder’s Fashion Notes:
“Melania Trump landed in South Carolina in a 1970s-inspired army
green trench coat by Coach, which features the brand’s iconic brown
leather and traditional military-style details. The coat retails for about $350.
With the coat, Mrs. Trump chose one of her favorite pairs of Manolo
Blahnik suede-leather stilettos, which she has now worn on four
occasions. The heels feature a leather-tipped point at the toe and loyal
Fashion Notes readers will recall that Mrs. Trump wore the heels most recently in July for a Western-inspired denim ensemble.”
Watch the video the First Lady posted after the trip.
Mondays with Melania is a weekly feature that highlights what the First Lady is doing and wearing. |
BRIGHT is brought to you by The Federalist. |
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IJR
NBC
From NBC’s Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann
FIRST READ: Trump might end up surviving impeachment. But can he survive the 2020 election?
Our latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll contains two big findings.
The first: Despite nearly half of the country – 49 percent – supporting President Trump’s impeachment and removal from office, his GOP base remains loyal to him, with 90 percent of Republicans opposing his removal.
REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
That party support is crucial factor given that an impeachment conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote – so support from at least 14 GOP senators.
The second finding in the NBC/WSJ poll: One year before the Nov. 3, 2020 general election, Trump is the underdog, even with a growing economy and an unemployment rate at 3.6 percent.
He trails Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren in hypothetical general-election matchups by nearly 10 points among registered voters. It’s Biden 50 percent, Trump 41 percent; and Warren 50 percent, Trump 42 percent.
(A Fox News poll released yesterday showed similar results – Biden up by 12 points, Bernie Sanders up by 8 points and Warren ahead by 5 points.)
Perhaps more importantly, 46 percent of registered voters say they are certain to vote AGAINST Trump in 2020, versus 34 percent who are certain to vote FOR him. Seventeen percent – made up disproportionately of independents, soft Republicans and younger voters – say they might vote either way depending on the nominee.
In the Dec. 2011 NBC/WSJ poll, by comparison, 34 percent said they were certain to vote FOR Barack Obama, 37 percent said they were certain to vote AGAINST him and 27 percent said they might vote either way.
In the end, Obama won 51 percent of the popular vote – so he won over more than half of that up-for-grabs vote.
By contrast, Trump will need to win ALMOST ALL of that 17 percent up-for-grabs vote to reach 51 percent.
Doable for Trump to win (especially with third-party help and an Electoral College map that benefits him)? Absolutely – see the next section below.
But extremely difficult for him one year out? You betcha.
Remember, the national polls don’t necessarily reflect the situation in the battlegrounds
But if you want to see how the Democrats’ NATIONAL polling lead over Trump evaporates in the key battlegrounds, check out the New York Times/Siena poll of six states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.
Biden leads Trump by a combined average of 2 points among registered voters in these states; Sanders is even with Trump; and Warren trails by 2 points.
Trump won these states by a combined 2 points in 2016, 48 percent to 46 percent.
It’s a reminder: The national polls don’t reflect the situation in Wisconsin. Or Florida. Or Pennsylvania.
Tomorrow is Election Day 2019
Here’s another reminder: Tomorrow brings us gubernatorial elections in Kentucky and Mississippi, as well as state legislative contests in Virginia.
And Louisiana holds its gubernatorial runoff on Saturday, Nov. 16.
Tonight at 7:00 pm ET, President Trump holds a rally for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in Lexington, Ky.; Bevin is facing off against Democrat Andy Beshear.
And at 1:00 pm ET, in Biloxi. Miss., Vice President Pence rallies with GOP gubernatorial nominee Tate Reeves, who’s taking on Democrat Jim Hood.
2020 VISION: Breaking down Friday’s big dinner in Iowa
The dispatch from NBC’s Maura Barrett and Priscilla Thompson on Friday’s Liberty and Justice dinner in Iowa (formerly known as the Jefferson-Jackson dinner):
“Pete Buttigieg, who had the largest crowd filling 12 sections in the arena, pitched himself as the one to usher in a new generation of leadership. ‘I did not just come here to end the era of Donald Trump,’ the South Bend, Indiana, mayor said. ‘I am here to launch the era that must come next.’”
“Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren once again hammered home her message of ‘big structural change.’ ‘Anyone who comes on this stage and tells you they can make change without a fight is not going to win that fight,’ she said.”
“Beyond a box dedicated to ‘Firefighters for Biden,’ the crowds for former Vice President Joe Biden were significantly smaller than those for Warren and Buttigieg. Nonetheless, Biden brought renewed energy to the stage, as he bounded down the runway and ditched his scripted address to speak candidly with potential caucus-goers.”
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
On the campaign trail today: Elizabeth Warren holds a town hall in Grinnell, Iowa… Pete Buttigieg also is in the Hawkeye State… John Delaney and Marianne Williamson file for the New Hampshire primary… Tulsi Gabbard also is in the Granite State… Bernie Sanders campaigns in Northern Virginia… So is Andrew Yang… And Amy Klobuchar is in Philly.
Dispatches from NBC’s embeds: Julian Castro questioned Pete Buttigieg’s ability to break through with minority voters, and Buttigieg responded while in Iowa yesterday, per NBC’s Priscilla Thompson. “Our city has had a lot of challenges, but the black voters who know me best returned me to office and supported me more the second time around than the first,” Buttigieg said. “And I would be happy to walk him around South Bend and introduce him to folks if he wants to learn more about how we can tackle these really tough issues. We’ve got major challenges as diverse communities do around policing, around economic inequality, but they’re not going to be made better by being used as a political football.”
Elizabeth Warren, also in Iowa yesterday, suggested public education should start before the age of 5, the average age of a student entering kindergarten. NBC’s Benjamin Pu has her remarks: “Well-to-do parents know that. They put their children in enrichment programs. Right, they got their kids out there, and all those special music things and all those special, you know, get the kids together and let them socialize and learn their colors and little songs or whatever it is. Because they know that gives their kids a better start in life. When I talk about universal childcare, what I’m really talking about is universal early education for every one of our kids.”I’m a new Text block ready for your content.
Talking policy with Benjy
Elizabeth Warren’s big Medicare for All plan is out and the campaign mostly got the big headline it wanted, which is that it does not directly raise taxes on the middle class. So where does the policy debate go now?
NBC’s Benjy Sarlin breaks it down:
On the center and right, Warren’s opponents say the plan actually does raise taxes on the middle class. Warren raises $8.8 trillion through a tax on employers, which Joe Biden’s campaign argues is really a big fat tax on workers, because businesses will take it out of their wages. Warren argues it’s just a redirection of the $9 trillion businesses are already expected to spend on health care, rather than a tax increase.
The pro-single payer left is taking aim at the same employer tax, but from a different angle. Bernie Sanders argued on Sunday that Warren, by straining to technically avoid new middle class taxes, produced a worse alternative.
“I think that that would probably have a very negative impact on creating those jobs, or providing wages, increased wages and benefits for those workers,” Sanders told ABC News on Sunday. “So, I think we have a better way, which is a 7.5 percent payroll tax, which is far more I think progressive, because it’ll not impact employers of low wage workers but hit significantly employers of upper income people.”
TWEET OF THE DAY: Poll numbers galore!
DATA DOWNLOAD: And the number of the day is… 85 percent.
85 percent.
That’s the share of Democratic primary voters who say they’re either very satisfied (31 percent) or fairly satisfied (54 percent) with their choices for Democratic nominee, according to the newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Just four percent say they are “not at all satisfied” with the field.
THE LID: All politics ain’t local
Don’t miss the pod from Friday, when we looked at how nationalized our politics has become – even in gubernatorial and state legislative races.
ICYMI: News clips you shouldn’t miss
The impeachment drama hasn’t kept pro-Trump allies in Ukraine from keeping up the search for dirt on the Bidens and the 2016 election.
2020 candidates have to compete with one big story every day — whatever’s happening in the impeachment probe.
Kellyanne Conway said she doesn’t know whether Ukraine aid was in fact held up over requests for an investigation into the Bidens.
White nationalists tried to record a video in front of the Emmett Till memorial.
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NOQ REPORT
| NOQ Report Daily |
- Taking Monday off (and a request for assistance)
- Is Durham ready for the job?
- Reminder: This is 100% quid pro quo
- Why won’t Fox News poll an accurate allotment of Independent voters?
- Milo Yiannopoulos releases alleged recording of Richard Spencer spewing racist hatred (warning: explicit)
- Jenna Jameson has a holiday message for the world
- 5 questions the GOP should ask alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella
- President Trump rightly counters emerging GOP narrative
- Intersectionality clash: Rep. Clyburn admits Pete Buttigieg’s struggles in SC are due to homosexuality turning off old black voters
- California governor threatens to take over PG&E
| Taking Monday off (and a request for assistance) Posted: 04 Nov 2019 03:02 AM PST Family is so important. Over the past year, I have been acting as sole editor for this news outlet. It hasn’t been easy as I also write quite a bit, but we’ve still been able to increase our traffic by a factor of ten over that time while breaking some important stories along the way. […] The post Taking Monday off (and a request for assistance) appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Is Durham ready for the job? Posted: 04 Nov 2019 02:34 AM PST The short answer is, “Yes.” U.S. Attorney John Durham has always been the right guy for the job of investigating and exposing the whole Spygate mess that prompted the Mueller investigation because he has experience with uncovering corruption in federal law enforcement. His most famous case was that of the FBI’s involvement with James “Whitey” […] The post Is Durham ready for the job? appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Reminder: This is 100% quid pro quo Posted: 04 Nov 2019 01:07 AM PST It takes a lot of logical gymnastics to come to the conclusion President Trump engaged in quid pro quo with the Ukrainians regarding an investigation into Burisma, the company that employed Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. First, you have to dismiss the transcript of the call between President Trump and President Zelensky. Then, you have to […] The post Reminder: This is 100% quid pro quo appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Why won’t Fox News poll an accurate allotment of Independent voters? Posted: 04 Nov 2019 12:46 AM PST When conservative media jumped all over Fox News last month for posting a poll unfavorable to President Trump that did not depict an accurate representation of voters, we didn’t cover it. I personally assumed they had already gotten the message and would correct the issue with the next poll. I was wrong. The news outlet […] The post Why won’t Fox News poll an accurate allotment of Independent voters? appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Milo Yiannopoulos releases alleged recording of Richard Spencer spewing racist hatred (warning: explicit) Posted: 03 Nov 2019 10:25 PM PST There was a time when both Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard B. Spencer represented the rising “alt-right” movement in America. Both were controversial figures with their own brands as provocateurs. Yiannopoulos was “deplatformed” and made essentially invisible on the internet other than his popular YouTube channel while Spencer became anathema to many conservatives, even on the “alt-right,” […] The post Milo Yiannopoulos releases alleged recording of Richard Spencer spewing racist hatred (warning: explicit) appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Jenna Jameson has a holiday message for the world Posted: 03 Nov 2019 09:07 PM PST There’s a certain suspense when one gets the warning message on Twitter that says, “The following media includes potentially sensitive content.” Fine, call me a prude, but I’ve seen too many things I’d rather not have seen on Twitter, so I keep my settings on safe-mode. If you don’t, you should try it. The suspense […] The post Jenna Jameson has a holiday message for the world appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| 5 questions the GOP should ask alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella Posted: 03 Nov 2019 06:37 PM PST Eric Ciaramella may or may not be the whistleblower. We have to say that to avoid a lawsuit from his lawyers even if we’re 99% certain he is. Nevertheless, the chances of him every coming out or taking direct questions from Republican lawmakers are essentially zilch, so today’s report that he’s willing to accept written […] The post 5 questions the GOP should ask alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| President Trump rightly counters emerging GOP narrative Posted: 03 Nov 2019 05:19 PM PST Allegedly, some Republicans in the Senate are changing their tune about quid pro quo, which is the basis for the impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. I say “allegedly” because there have been no attributable quotes thus far, only speculation and anonymous sources. But the President isn’t waiting around for the alleged narrative to take tangible […] The post President Trump rightly counters emerging GOP narrative appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| Intersectionality clash: Rep. Clyburn admits Pete Buttigieg’s struggles in SC are due to homosexuality turning off old black voters Posted: 03 Nov 2019 04:48 PM PST For a Democratic candidate to win in South Carolina, he or she must carry the black vote. More than a quarter of the population in the state is African-American and the vast majority of them vote Democrat. Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) knows this well and acknowledged today on CNN that South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg […] The post Intersectionality clash: Rep. Clyburn admits Pete Buttigieg’s struggles in SC are due to homosexuality turning off old black voters appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
| California governor threatens to take over PG&E Posted: 03 Nov 2019 03:33 PM PST According to President Ronald Reagan, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Californians find themselves between a rock and a stupid place as Governor Gavin Newsom has threatened to have Sacramento take over PG&E as they struggle to handle their finances in bankruptcy court, […] The post California governor threatens to take over PG&E appeared first on Conservative Christian News. |
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REALCLEARPOLITICS
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11/04/2019 Share: Carl Cannon’s Morning Note Presented by Fisher Investments: No Shame; Biden’s Lead; UNIVAC Good morning, it’s Monday, Nov. 4, 2019. Sixty-seven years ago today, a popular U.S. Army general was elected to the first of his two terms as president. Dwight David Eisenhower had risen to prominence as commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II. His fiery inner drive was masked by a demeanor so affable that everyone from fellow generals to infantry soldiers in the field referred to him as “Ike,” his boyhood nickname. Although there has always been politics among the ranks, Eisenhower wasn’t known as a partisan person in the Army. Because he rose to prominence while Franklin Roosevelt was president, millions of Americans (Harry Truman included) assumed that Eisenhower was a Democrat. As it turned out, Ike considered many of the policies of the New Deal misguided, and when he entered elective politics, he did so as a Republican. Although President Truman felt betrayed by Eisenhower, the 1952 campaign wasn’t an acrimonious affair. Running against Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower’s team embraced and popularize a slogan — “I like Ike” — that pretty accurately captured the electorate’s attitude. The contrast to today’s politics is so obvious that I won’t even go there. Instead, let’s look at something else notable about election night in 1952: This was when Americans first realized that they also liked computers. I’ll explain in a moment. First, I’d point you to RealClearPolitics’ front page, which presents our poll averages, videos, breaking news stories, and aggregated opinion columns spanning the political spectrum. We also offer original material from our own reporters and contributors, including the following: * * * Lessons for Our Youth from Donald Trump & Katie Hill. A.B. Stoddard laments the lack of good judgment — and shame — being paraded by our nation’s leaders. Poll: Biden’s Lead Over Dem Field Is Up in NV, Down in MI. Phil Wegmann has the numbers from Emerson College’s latest survey, which also polled voters in Arizona. Wealth Taxes Are the New Sin Taxes. Scott A. Hodge lays out the comparison, prompted by proposals from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Trump’s True Crime: He Made People Laugh at Congress. Frank Miele cites the articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson to show that getting opposition lawmakers’ goat may be the greatest misdeed of all. Trump’s Week vs. Washington’s Week: It’s No Contest. Steve Cortes draws a Dickensian comparison in achievements notched last week by the president and those seeking to bring him down. Singer’s AT&T Bid Is Not About Trump or Reforming CNN. Bay Buchanan warns that the motivations of the “vulture investor” are not what President Trump thinks they are. Electricity Market Integrity Is Key to Grid Reliability. In RealClearEnergy, Rich Nolan bemoans out-of-market subsidies and years of the government picking winners and losers. Remembering Donald Smith, Champion of Free Markets. RealClearMarkets editor John Tamny pays tribute to the late Cato Institute board member. New Postmaster General Must Meet New Challenges. In RealClearPolicy, Steve Pociask describes the daunting task ahead for whoever succeeds Megan Brennan. * * * Most political professionals believed that the 1952 presidential race between Eisenhower and Stevenson was going to be close. Ike led all summer, usually by wide margins, but polls showed the race tightening in October. The last survey showed it at 51%-49%, which proved to be an outlier and is why — even all these years later — averaging of polls, something pioneered by RealClearPolitics — is the best method for gauging public opinion. After the votes were counted in 1952, the Eisenhower-Richard Nixon ticket won in a landslide, carrying 39 states while winning the popular vote 55% to 44%. But 1952 also showed the world that the future was digital — that computers could tally votes, and project results, faster than humans. On the night of Nov. 4, CBS news unveiled a new election tool. It was UNIVAC, one of the earliest commercial computers. “This is the face of a UNIVAC,” reporter Charles Collingwood told the network’s audience. “A UNIVAC is a fabulous electronic machine, which we have borrowed to help us predict this election from the basis of early returns as they come in.” Collingwood was actually pointing to a mock-up of the UNIVAC console, with an accompanying typewriter attached to it. The real machine was sitting in Philadelphia. That device would be unrecognizable to a modern user of technology, as it couldn’t fit in the hand of even a giant. It took up a large room and required several programmers to run it. Nonetheless, on this night in history, it did its job. Audiences didn’t realize that at first. Neither did Collingwood. When he asked the computer for its prediction, nothing happened. “There was no response,” NPR reporter Steve Henn noted in a 2012 retrospective on the event. “The typewriter didn’t move and to the audience at home the UNIVAC must have looked like a big, dumb box.” “You’re a very impolite machine, I must say,” Collingwood quipped. It’s a sentiment many 21st century computer users have addressed to Siri and Alexa and any number of computer-assisted voices coming from cyberspace, usually in saltier language. In 1952, however, Collingwood didn’t want to impeach his own witness, so to speak, so he quickly added, “But he’s an awfully rapid calculator.” This second comment was more on the mark than the first. UNIVAC was hardly impolite. The machine had given a prediction: a huge Eisenhower win in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. It was so out there that the neither the programmers nor the newsies trusted it. They should have. The machine projected the Republican ticket getting 438 electoral votes to only 93 for the Democrats. The actual results were 442 to 89. In other words, Ike wasn’t in Kansas anymore, and neither were we. Carl M. Cannon Washington Bureau chief, RealClearPolitics @CarlCannon (Twitter) ccannon@realclearpolitics.com For years, many pundits and politicians have claimed Internet behemoths are too powerful and monopolistic. Then, in June, the House announced they would launch a probe into several tech giants. Despite many possible outcomes, we don’t view these possibilities as a reason to avoid Tech now. Click here to read more of this message, brought to you by Fisher Investments. |
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