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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/weekly-read-february-11-2020/"></div>One frame for the Democratic presidential nomination race over the last year is to track the collapse of candidates — Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker — who positioned themselves to carry the center-left banner following an inevitable Biden implosion that never came, as the similarly positioned candidacies of Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet continued on, and Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick entered the fray.
Following a disappointing-bordering-on-disastrous performance in the botched Iowa caucuses last week, and a New Hampshire primary he’s already conceded he won’t win — and may finish fourth or fifth in — Biden’s campaign may now finally be looking into the abyss.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/05/politics/iowa-caucuses-candidates-voters-support-divided/index.html">CNN</a> “The failure of any candidate to score a more decisive victory [in Iowa] points toward a potentially long and grinding struggle for the party&#8217;s nomination,” writes Ron Brownstein. “Unless one of the top finishers can broaden his or her appeal in the coming weeks, Democrats may be headed for a springtime of uncertainty and discontent as all of the candidates struggle to span the party&#8217;s differences.”
Brownstein is one of the best pundits working, and I cite him regularly. So I was surprised to read on and find this: “The candidates&#8217; convergence captures the reality of a Democratic Party balkanized by race, education, age and ideology — and made clear that the leading candidates have not yet built coalitions big enough to transcend those divides or to pull away from their rivals” [emphasis added].
Surprised because it’s not exactly a secret that Iowa, like New Hampshire, is one of the least representative states in the country: more rural, and significantly whiter — demographics that leave both of little value as a test of a candidate’s ability to build coalitions big and diverse enough to transcend the party’s divides and pull away from the pack.
And as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/30/why-iowa-caucuses-are-even-whiter-than-you-think/">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> reported last week, representation of diverse voters in Iowa’s already-user-unfriendly caucuses is even worse than the stark demographic numbers suggest. The state imposes a lifetime ban on voting for anyone with a felony conviction. And while only 4% of Iowans are black, 26% of its prison population is. Making matters worse, it was reported last year that the states database of felons barred from voting had systemic inaccuracies officials knew about for years but left unaddressed.
So where do things stand as the race for the Democratic nomination heads to New Hampshire before moving on to Nevada, South Carolina, and Super Tuesday states that look more like America?
As of Monday morning, it’s still a Bernie-Biden race. But that could change quickly as underlying problems with both candidacies become more apparent.
The problem with Biden’s candidacy is that his support is soft beyond his African-American base — and there are now signs of cracks in his black firewall.
The problem with Bernie’s candidacy is that he’s yet to show he can broaden his appeal beyond his base.
First, Biden. A new national poll out Monday from <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3655">QUINNIPIAC</a> shows Sanders on top with 25%, with Bloomberg rocketing up to third at 15%, just two points behind second-place Biden at 17%.
More ominous for Biden is that Bloomberg shot up to second place among black voters. Biden still leads with 27% support, followed by Bloomberg at 22%, Bernie 19% , Warren 8%, Buttigieg 4%, and Klobuchar not registering any support.
It may come as a surprise, even a shock, that Bloomberg would do so well so quickly among black voters given his record as New York’s mayor. Especially his stop-and-frisk policy.
That’s because “[t]he American left and the mainstream press do not realize just how serious black America, especially older black Americans, are about getting rid of Trump,” writes Jason Johnson in <a href="https://www.theroot.com/bloomberg-is-an-oligarch-biden-may-have-jumped-the-sha-1841514806">THE ROOT</a>. “[B]lack folks will jump to Bloomberg if Biden falters because they think he might be the only one to beat Trump.”
While Biden and other Democrats compete for endorsements from black members of Congress, Bloomberg has won endorsements from black mayors across the country like San Francisco’s London Breed, rising star Michael Tubbs of Stockton, Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC, and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.
And he’s flooding screens with ads touting his close working relationship with Barack Obama when he was president.
While Biden’s biggest problem may be Bloomberg, not Bernie, Bernie’s biggest problem is his failure to provide proof of concept for the premise of his campaign: that he can expand the electorate, grow his base, and win over Independents.
And if he doesn’t show he can ignite the promised combination of young and non-traditional voters in primaries and caucuses, there’s no reason to believe it will suddenly catch fire after Labor Day if he’s the Democratic nominee.
<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/what-stands-out-after-iowa-bernie-sanders-limited-crossover-appeal-n1132336">NBC NEWS</a> What stands out after Iowa is Bernie Sanders&#8217; limited crossover appeal. Mark Murray writes: “When you dig deep into the Iowa entrance poll, what stands out is Sanders’ limited crossover appeal — outside of his very young and very liberal base. He might have met expectations, but he certainly didn’t exceed them.”
Sanders got just 8% support from Iowa caucus-goers 45 and older, and just 4% among seniors. And seniors vote way more and more regularly than young voters.
While it may not necessarily be bad news for Democrats that turnout was down in Iowa — there were many reports that “Blue No Matter Who” Iowans didn’t think it necessary to endure the time-consuming and confusing caucus process — it is devastating to Bernie’s argument for why he should be the party’s nominee in the fall.
Underperforming in Iowa and scratching out a win in New Hampshire isn’t enough — especially since those are two states that play to his strengths. If Bernie’s going to be a legitimate frontrunner to win the nomination he needs to win decisively in New Hampshire before the campaign moves on to states that pose bigger challenges for him.
To do that he needs to expand his base of support.
<a href="http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/take-two-can-sanders-broaden-his-base/">SABATO’S CRYSTAL BALL</a> Can Sanders Broaden His Base?  Maybe you knew better than me, but I didn’t really understand what Sanders’ base was until I read this article: “[T]he heart of Sanders’ coalition in 2016 was academic centers and a significant swath of rural America,” Rhodes Cook writes. “The latter was an unlikely source of votes for a self-described ‘democratic socialist.’ Antipathy to Clinton was no doubt a major reason for his strong rural vote. So were his full-voiced attacks on what he saw as an insensitive political and economic elite.”
For instance, Bernie won the Michigan primary in 2016 by carrying 73 of its 83 counties. But Hillary Clinton dominated the Detroit metropolitan region, and won its two major suburban counties, Oakland and Macomb (ground zero for the legendary blue-collar “Reagan Democrats”). She also won hard-scrabble Flint, hometown of prominent Sanders supporter Michael Moore.
In Michigan, and nationally, Sanders’ lack of support among black voters over 30 contributed to his relatively poor showing against Clinton in major urban centers and their surrounding suburbs.
Meanwhile, he won nearly everywhere else, including Washtenaw County, home to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
So as you watch or read about election returns tomorrow and going forward in the campaign, especially as the field narrows, keep an eye on whether Sanders is expanding his base beyond college towns and rural and exurban communities by improving his margins in big cities, suburbs, and blue-collar Rust Belt areas, and doing better among older black voters.
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/">THE ATLANTIC</a> The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President. How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election. A must-read. Democrats need to know what they’re up against this year. Trump and his allies are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in US history this year — and they’re not ready.
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1225474576945176576?s=20">KATIE PORTER</a> Check out this video of the great Katie Porter holding up Maine’s welfare eligibility form and asking the right-winger who ran the state&#8217;s welfare program to answer the same questions and disclose the same intrusive information required of applicants.
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<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/68154/lessons-for-life-the-obituaries-of-republicans-who-opposed-nixons-impeachment/">JUST SECURITY</a> Lessons for Life: The Obituaries of Republicans Who Opposed Nixon’s Impeachment. What will the future think of President Donald Trump and two historic votes Republican senators (Mitt Romney excepted) took on his impeachment? The obituaries of the Republicans who voted for and against articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon offer clues. Their 1974 votes figured prominently in all of their obituaries.
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<a href="https://twitter.com/MillenPolitics/status/1226227969888313346?s=20">AMERICAN BRIDGE</a> Susan Collins is Disappointed. But you’ll be entertained by this compilation of her many furrowed-browed expressions of concern at Trump and the GOP’s daily degradations of democracy and the rule of law.
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<a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/angels-in-east-texas/">TEXAS MONTHLY</a> When “Angels in America” Came to East Texas. Twenty years ago my hometown made national headlines when the local college staged an internationally acclaimed play about gay men and the AIDS crisis. The people I grew up with are still feeling the aftershocks. Texas Monthly is one of the best magazines in the country. This article is a great example why.
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<a href="https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/02/keith-richards-quits-smoking/">CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND</a> Keith Richards quits smoking. The Rolling Stones guitarist admitted that kicking heroin was easier than stopping smoking. First Willie Nelson stops smoking weed. Now this. “Quitting heroin is like hell, but it’s a short hell. Cigarettes are just always there, and you’ve always done it. I just pick ’em up and light ’em up without thinking about it,” Richards explained. Now, he says his vices are limited to “a little wine with meals, and a Guinness or a beer or two.”
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TWEET OF THE WEEK:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13558" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-1.jpg" alt="" width="1074" height="842" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-1.jpg 1074w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-1-300x235.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-1-768x602.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-1-1024x803.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1074px) 100vw, 1074px" />
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You can follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: February 11, 2020

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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/weekly-read-february-5-2020/"></div>The 100 men and women who serve in what was once known as the “world’s greatest deliberative body” basically spent the past two weeks deciding whether or not to hold a trial to remove Donald Trump from office.
Nobody won.
Two-thirds of the Senate was never going to vote to remove Trump from office. But when 51 Republican senators (or 53, depending on the resolution) voted last week against even hearing from witnesses or reviewing documents, they effectively cancelled the trial before it started.
And when they vote later this week to keep Trump in office despite his obvious abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, it will be the culmination of a months-long process that saw them follow the usual script for when his latest misdeed surfaces: “He didn’t do it, how dare you suggest he did, but it would be totally cool if he had, which of course he did so get over it, everybody does it, and we’re going to prosecute Joe Biden for doing it!” 
Democrats rightly pursued impeachment to defend the Constitution and rule of law. But they also did it to force Republicans to reveal themselves as complicit in Trump’s corruption and criminality.
Nancy Pelosi maneuvered the GOP and vulnerable senators up for re-election into casting unpopular votes that will come back to haunt them as more evidence of Trump’s manifest unfitness comes to light.
Votes that also delegitimized and discredited the preordained outcome, depriving Trump of the acquittal he craves. An acquittal he will still claim, but since Pelosi and Adam Schiff won the framing war decisive majorities of Americans will give no credence to.
Polls show 70-80% of voters, including a majority of Republicans, wanted Senators to conduct a real trial with actual evidence.
52% believe Trump abused the power of his office by extorting Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Only 41% disagree.
On obstruction of Congress the numbers are even worse: 53% of Americans say he did, versus only 37% who say he didn’t.
And roughly half of the country thinks he should be removed from office — something that’s never happened in the nearly a quarter of a millennium since the Constitution was ratified.
Given that the Republicans were never going to vote to remove Trump, it’s the best possible outcome for Democrats that they went all-in on a cover-up.
The breathtaking scope and depravity of Trump’s corruption and lawlessness, which they have now signed off on, will come out. Bolton will talk and his book will be published. Lev Parnas is a wild-card with iCloud accounts full of incriminating information. Trump’s taxes and financial records will be released. His former White House Counsel Don McGahn will testify under oath as the House continues to investigate the president. And in a story that’s been flying under the radar, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/31/irs-whistleblower-trump-pence-audit/">Senate investigators</a> are interviewing an IRS whistleblower alleging improper political interference in the audit of Trump’s or Pence’s taxes.
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POLLS POLLS POLLS Tonight — finally, and hopefully for the last time — Democrats will kick-off voting season in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. A party that champions expanding voters’ access to the ballot box and fights GOP voter suppression should finally eliminate confusing, time-consuming, and unrepresentative caucuses from its presidential selection process.
Iowa is an especially unrepresentative state. It’s more rural and a lot whiter than the national averages. Its racial disparity is made even worse, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/30/why-iowa-caucuses-are-even-whiter-than-you-think/">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> reports, because it has a lifetime voting ban on anyone ever convicted of a felony.
While Iowa is only 4% black, 26% of its prison population is. Making matters worse, caucuses are limited to registered voters, and last year, the Des Moines Register reported the state’s database of more than 69,000 felons barred from voting contained systemic inaccuracies officials have ignored for years.
I have no idea who’s going to win on the February 3 caucus. The outcome is especially uncertain this year because the impeachment trial sucked up so much oxygen and kept three of the top five candidates off the campaign trail. And because the most widely-watched poll in the state was withdrawn after the Buttigieg campaign complained his name had been left off at least one survey.
<a href="https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1224413107092688897?s=20">Nate Silver</a> tweeted Monday that “Sanders has emerged with a slightly clearer lead over Biden… Still think people are underestimating the uncertainty a bit and neither a Buttigieg or Warren win would be at all shocking.” Here are his final <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/iowa/">Iowa polling averages</a>:
<blockquote>Sanders: 22.2%
Biden: 20.7%
Buttigieg: 15.7%
Warren: 14.5%
Klobuchar: 10.1%</blockquote>
Iowa&#8217;s caucuses have a complicated voting system. Candidates who don’t get the support of 15% of voters in the first round of caucusing are eliminated. Their supporters can then realign with other candidates, or go home. Silver expects the result on the first ballot will be close to the polling averages.
But in the second round he expects Biden to do a little better and Bernie a little worse. Either way, he expects the spread between them to be less than three points, which would basically be a tie since it would result in them both getting about the same number of convention delegates.
Ron Brownstein reports in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/democrats-iowa-caucus-cautious/605974/">THE ATLANTIC</a> that Biden’s camp is pulling for a Bernie win if the former VP doesn’t come out on top himself. Senior Biden advisers “believe Sanders has a ceiling on his support that will impede his ability to clinch the nomination. They believe that a victory for Warren, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar would pose a greater threat — a win for the latter two would also represent a meteor strike on the moderate voters Biden is relying upon.”
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<a href="https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/01/30/who-will-be-donald-trumps-most-forceful-foe">THE ECONOMIST</a> Who will be Donald Trump’s most forceful foe? Data suggest that one Democratic candidate would do better than others against the president in November. G. Elliott Morris did a deep dive into the political science literature and polling data and found that a moderate Democrat with strength among working-class whites has the best chance to beat Trump. As he summarized his conclusions in a tweet: “[I]f Democrats want to win in 2020, Biden will boost their chances. But he&#8217;s an imperfect candidate who leaves *A LOT* to be desired.”
Nominating moderates improves both parties’ chances of doing better, both down-ballot and in presidential races. Why?
First, moderates have advantages in both persuasion and mobilization. This goes against the conventional wisdom that ideological nominees &#8220;fire up&#8221; the base. That&#8217;s true, Morris writes. But they fire up the other side’s even more. Since Trump will fire up Democrats, it’s not clear how much more a more ideological nominee can energize the party.
Second, candidates who appeal both to “racially resentful” and anti-immigrant whites and to non-white voters will have an advantage this year. Biden’s support among black Democrats, at least those over the age of 30, is overwhelming. And he does nearly 30 points better among “racially resentful” whites than the other candidates. (That phrase &#8220;racially resentful&#8221; is quite a euphemism, but apparently it&#8217;s the term used in the literature.)
Third, Trump got a lot of support in 2016, especially in close states, from low-income and non-college white voters who liked how he campaigned against elites. Sanders would do better among these voters than Biden, Morris writes. But his more ideological orientation would cost him more overall.
Fourth, polling shows Biden doing better than Sanders nationally and in swing states.
And finally, polling reveals — shockingly — that American voters see all of the major Democratic candidates except for Biden as more ideologically extreme than Donald Trump. You read that right.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13509" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_1-1024x692.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="433" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_1-1024x692.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_1-300x203.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_1-768x519.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_1.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
And believe it or not, voters in 2016 saw Hillary as more ideologically extreme than Trump. It’s a little less shocking when you consider Hillary&#8217;s decades of demonization by the right. And when you recall that Trump ran in 2016 on preserving and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, and promising to come up with a “beautiful” and superior replacement for Obamacare. But still.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13510" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-842x1024.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="778" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-842x1024.jpg 842w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-247x300.jpg 247w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2-768x934.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/wr_2.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
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Dueling essays appeared this week on Brexit from two brilliant thriller writers I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/01/john-le-carre-breaking-heart-brexit?fbclid=IwAR1K2AW8-vIeJe8H90by_Vu6bNuNnyz_So46_tnTgErTnam9nJ5DtvOrsVk">THE GUARDIAN</a> John le Carré on Brexit: “It’s breaking my heart.” This is the transcript of a valedictory speech the great novelist delivered last week in Sweden accepting a prestigious lifetime achievement prize. He laments the lack of leadership that led his country to “sleepwalk” into Brexit, which he calls “this wanton act of political and economic self-harm.” He ends by quoting May Sarton: “One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.” Read this if you love le Carré. Or if you just love great writing by a master.
Frederick Forsyth, author of classics like The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, isn’t a literary master of le Carré’s caliber. But he wrote a punchy op-ed in <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/1235877/brexit-news-eu-elites-david-cameron-eu-referendum-latest-news?fbclid=IwAR1K2AW8-vIeJe8H90by_Vu6bNuNnyz_So46_tnTgErTnam9nJ5DtvOrsVk">THE DAILY EXPRESS</a> titled “Elites got it so wrong on Brexit — we just wanted our country back.” It’s a good read, especially if you haven’t read many, or any, smart defenses of Brexit. Forsyth may lack le Carré’s eloquence, but he shares his contempt for decades of British post-war leadership.
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<a href="https://theathletic.com/1563483/2020/01/27/hes-going-to-be-missed-on-the-legacy-of-john-altobelli/?source=shared-article">THE ATHLETIC</a> “It’s a loss that you can’t replace”: On the legacy of John Altobelli Powerful profile of the Orange County baseball coach who died along with his wife Keri and daughter Alyssa in the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna. “Altobelli’s tenure at OCC included more than 700 victories and four state titles,” writes Fabian Ardaya. “His impact was felt far beyond. He was an icon for a junior college community, one whose presence extended far beyond that.”
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TWEETS OF THE WEEK: This was a dark week, so I’m posting a few extra tweets that made me laugh. The last two should be read as a pair.
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The Weekly Read: February 5, 2020

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/weekly-read-january-27-2020/"></div><h4>&#8220;Right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.&#8221;</h4>
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All seven of the House managers prosecuting the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress charges against Donald Trump in the Senate last week rose to the occasion.
But Adam Schiff ascended to another level of mastery. Hour after hour, day after day, he told a complex story with clarity, precision, passion, and eloquence.
He called on Republican senators to find the moral courage to defend the founding ideals of a nation created in revolt from a would-be tyrant, and later bound together by a Constitution that’s about nothing if not about checking abuses of power by a president aspiring to be a king.
But all 53 GOP senators in the chamber seemed to have heard by week’s end was a line Schiff quoted from a news report that Trump was threatening revenge on Republicans who crossed him: &#8220;CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, &#8216;Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’”
Republican senators reacted immediately with feigned outrage, denying anything like it happened. Sen. Susan Collins repeatedly said “Not true!” while shaking her head, prompting Schiff to say he hoped it wasn’t.
“He was doing fine with moral courage until he got to the head on the pike,&#8221; said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowksi. &#8220;That&#8217;s where he lost me.&#8221; Her comments were echoed by GOP colleagues who claimed to be insulted at what they called Schiff’s unflattering suggestion they might vote to acquit Trump based on anything but the noblest of motives.
Later, Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma told reporters he reacted with “visible outrage” to Schiff’s language, an odd thing for a human to say, and a likely tell of the performative nature of his outward-facing fury.
Of course, “your head will be on a pike” — language that wasn’t refuted when first broadcast, and CBS stood by — is just a colorful way to communicate to Republican senators they’ll suffer Trump’s wrath if they don’t back him. Just like other GOP apostates and semi-apostates such as ex-Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. And soon-to-be ex-Rep. Justin Amash, who was exiled from the party after voting to impeach Trump and is likely to lose re-election in the fall.
This is a familiar tactic Republicans use to get off the hook for votes they can’t otherwise justify. They head straight for what Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse called “the outrage offramp.”
It’s rich to hear the “fuck-your-feelings” party basically say, “We were prepared to stand up for the Constitution and rule of law until Adam Schiff hurt our fee fees,” even as they continue to play their usual hardball to jam through Trump’s acquittal.
Republicans told Robert Mueller that Presidents can&#8217;t be indicted and can only be held accountable for abuses of power by Congress through the impeachment process.
Now they’re telling Congress Presidents can’t be impeached for abuses of power.
Trump blocked officials with first-hand knowledge of his crimes from testifying before Congress, and refused to let his subordinates hand over incriminating documents.
Now, he and the GOP argue (falsely) there’s no first-hand evidence of wrongdoing.
Republicans also argue that Democrats can’t at the same time say they’ve proven their case and need to call more witnesses.
Not true. The House managers presented an overwhelming case proving Trump is guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
They also know — if only because Trump said so in public this week! — that his ongoing obstruction is keeping a warehouse of smoking guns from Congress and the public.
In any court of law, the defendant would already be guilty enough and it would be done with.
But in any court of law, the judges deciding what evidence the jury can see wouldn’t also be the jury, and the judge-jury wouldn’t be coordinating with the defendant to keep out evidence even bad-faith actors like GOP senators couldn’t dismiss or ignore.
The good news is that Republican lying and spin simply isn’t working beyond Trump’s base, which surely adds to their frustration.
A <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-record-economy-ratings-as-half-say-senate-should-remove-trump">FOX NEWS</a> poll out today reports that 50% of Americans support Trump&#8217;s removal from office, versus 44% who oppose it. Ominously for Republicans, Independents support Trump’s removal by a 19-point margin, 53% to 34%.
These numbers are virtually identical to the results of polls from CNN and Pew Research. Pew also reported that 53% of college educated whites support removing Trump from office. This is a scary number for the GOP. College-educated whites traditionally have voted Republican. But they’ve fled the GOP in increasing numbers in 2016, 2018, and 2019. That number looks likely to increase in 2020.
And shocking and hard to process as it may be, the Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff, are also playing hardball. They’ve never been under any illusion this Senate would acquit Trump. They know, as Upton Sinclair once wrote, “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.&#8221;
But the Democrats have gamed this out to make the Republicans pay in the fall.
Late on the trial’s first day, Republicans sighed and groaned at yet another proposed Democratic resolution to get evidence admitted into the trial.
Schiff took the floor and said: &#8220;Yeah, we&#8217;re making it hard for you… We&#8217;re making it hard for you to say, &#8216;I don&#8217;t want to hear from these people, I don&#8217;t want to see these documents.&#8217; We&#8217;re making it hard. It&#8217;s not our job to make it easier for you. It&#8217;s our job to make it hard to deprive the American people of a fair trial.&#8221;
The Republicans are frustrated Democrats are denying them plausible deniability of Trump’s corruption and criminality.
But they’re furious Democrats are denying them plausible deniability of their own cowardice and complicity. Their votes to acquit and cover-up for Trump will be hung on their necks in the summer and fall as more and more evidence inevitably surfaces.
But thanks to the Democrats’ tenacity and brilliance, the salaries of Republican senators up for re-election in swing states in the fall are at even-graver risk. Those men and women won’t be able to say they didn’t know what happened. And what’s still happening.
As Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York told them last week, quoting Notorious B.I.G., “If you didn’t know now you know.”
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POLLS POLLS POLLS With just over a week to go until the Iowa caucuses, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are pulling away from the rest of the Democratic field. But fresh polling in Iowa paints an unclear picture of which septuagenarian leads there. A new <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2020-iowa-poll-sanders-biden-and-wild-finish-ahead-cbs-news-battleground-tracker/">CBS NEWS</a> poll puts them neck and neck, with Buttigieg close behind and Elizabeth Warren trailing at 15%.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13429" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-3.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="349" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-3.jpg 620w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-3-300x169.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" />
Warren’s number is important because candidates who don’t reach 15% support in the first round of caucusing are eliminated, and their supporters are released to support other candidates in the next round. But she won the coveted endorsement of the Des Moines Register this weekend. And if history is any guide that should boost her comfortably past the 15% threshold, if not to victory.
A <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/01/26/iowa-poll-biden-leads-sanders-and-warren-one-week-before-caucuses/4582032002/">USA TODAY</a> poll out today gives Biden a more comfortable lead with support of 25% of likely Democratic caucus-goers, followed by Sanders at 19%, Buttigieg at 18%, and Warren at 13%. But another 13% said they were undecided, and 45% of those who expressed support for a candidate said they could still change their minds. Biden maintains his lead in this poll because he leads on the number one issue of Iowa caucus-goers: defeating Trump. Interestingly, 57%-31% of those surveyed said that &#8220;in their gut&#8221; they thought Trump would lose.
Meanwhile, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/us/politics/democratic-iowa-poll-sanders.html?campaign_id=60&amp;instance_id=0&amp;segment_id=20653&amp;user_id=7b849ea5cb1ae8d7fc6b44d23add2590&amp;regi_id=11195982">NEW YORK TIMES </a>poll out this weekend shows stronger support for Bernie in Iowa. He’s up six points there since the last big Times poll in late October, largely at the expense of Warren. She’s dropped seven points while Biden has held steady.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13430" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-3-1024x594.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="371" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-3-1024x594.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-3-300x174.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-3-768x445.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-3.jpg 1128w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
<a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/iowa/">Nate Silver</a>’s Iowa polling averages have Biden and Sanders in a virtual tie at 22.7% and 22.0%, respectively, Buttigieg at 18.5% and Warren at 14.8%
In New Hampshire, two new polls out Sunday put Sanders up by 5 points and 9 points among likely voters. <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-d/new-hampshire/">Silver</a> has Sanders at 21.7%, Biden at 16.7%, Buttigieg 14.5% and Warren at 13.1% in his polling averages. Those aren’t great numbers for Bernie and are horrible numbers for Warren. Both represent bordering states. And Bernie needs bigger margins in Iowa and New Hampshire to show he can make up for his big deficits on Super Tuesday in the south, and among Black voters nationwide.
A new <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-holds-steady-warren-slips-national-poll-iowa/story?id=68518223">ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST</a> national poll has Biden leading by 4 points overall, 9 points among registered voters, and 12 points among likely voters.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13431" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-3.jpg" alt="" width="608" height="304" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-3.jpg 608w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-3-300x150.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 608px) 100vw, 608px" />
It’s no surprise at this point that Biden leads when Democrats are asked which candidate is most likely to beat Trump in November. But it is likely surprising to many that he also leads comfortably when voters are asked which candidate would best motivate the Democratic base.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13432" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_4-2.jpg" alt="" width="659" height="387" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_4-2.jpg 659w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_4-2-300x176.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 659px) 100vw, 659px" />
It’s also no surprise that Biden continues to lead by a wide margin among Black Democrats, who accounted for 25% of the Democratic primary voters in 2016. But it’s likely surprising that he also leads among non-college voters.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13433" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_5-2.jpg" alt="" width="608" height="494" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_5-2.jpg 608w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_5-2-300x244.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 608px) 100vw, 608px" />
Overall, the story of the race so far is that Biden is beating Bernie among white moderate and non-college voters while continuing to match Hillary’s margins among people of color.
And, finally, a reminder:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13434" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_6-1-1024x610.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="381" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_6-1-1024x610.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_6-1-300x179.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_6-1-768x457.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_6-1.jpg 1078w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1221079753760833536?s=20">TWITTER</a> Trump yet again referred to Chuck Schumer as “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” in one of his many tweet-rants this week. Trump refers to Trump with this particular epithet because Schumer once <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/01/29/chuck-schumer-emotional-trump-travel-ban-new.wcbs">teared up</a> in public while denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban and recalling that his daughter’s middle name is Emma in honor of Emma Lazarus.
Schumer’s great-grandmother and seven of her nine children were killed in the Holocaust.
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<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/annabella-sciorra-testimony-harvey-weinstein-trial.html">VULTURE</a> Annabella Sciorra Testifies That Harvey Weinstein Raped Her: “I Couldn’t Fight Anymore.” A painful, must-read story that may have gotten lost in the torrent of news this week. Another infuriating must-read is this account in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/harvey-weinsteins-defense-strategy-is-wretched/2020/01/24/ab8fd64e-3e20-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_first_reads&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_rainbow&amp;wpmm=1">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> of Weinstein’s defense strategy, and the “monstrous” cross-examination by his attorney Donna Rotunn: “It was monstrous in the insidious way reserved only for cross-examinations of rape victims and no other crime victims—a perversion of justice in which the question isn’t, ‘Did it happen?’ but rather, ‘If it happened, why did you let it?’”
¤
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/01/23/34-best-political-movies-ever-made/?arc404=true">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> The 34 best political movies ever made. A fun list, with “the usual collection of thrillers, biopics, satires and straight-ahead dramas and a few unexpected entries.”
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<a href="https://twitter.com/SECNetwork/status/1219286735491825667?s=20">PAUL FINEBAUM </a>Finebaum is a legendary Southern tv and radio sports personality. Click through to the linked video to hear a caller to his show tell one of the most unlikely stories you’ve ever heard. I promise you don’t know where it’s going.
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TWEET OF THE WEEK: This tweet explaining why maybe Bernie didn’t win The New York Times endorsement last weekend made me genuinely lol.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13435" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_7-1-1024x660.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="413" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_7-1-1024x660.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_7-1-300x193.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_7-1-768x495.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_7-1.jpg 1080w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
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You can follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: January 27, 2020

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The Weekly Read: January 20, 2020

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-january-13-2020/"></div>Would Mike Bloomberg mind being president? Of course not. Does he believe he could do at least as good a job as the other Democrats in the race — let alone the incumbent? Goes without saying. Does he think there’s a snowball’s chance in a hot yoga class he’ll win the Democratic nomination and go on to become the 46th President of the United States?
Mike Bloomberg may be vain, but he isn’t stupid. He didn’t become the 9th richest person in the US and the 14th richest person in the world by throwing away money on quixotic quests or vanity projects. At least not the kind of money — a few hundred million — he’s already spent running for president since he formally entered the race in late November.
Or the billion, give or take, he’s pledged to spend through next November to defeat Donald Trump regardless of who the Democrats nominate. Even if, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-spending.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> reported, it’s Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. (“I really don’t agree with them,” he said of Sanders and Warren, “but I’d still support them, yes, because compared to Donald Trump that’s easy.”)
Is he in it to win it? Or is he up to something else?
Bloomberg, the grandson of immigrants and son of an accountant, accumulated his $56 billion fortune by knowing how to stretch a dollar. And it turns out that if you believe Donald Trump is an existential threat to the country you love and the global issues you most care about — climate change, gun safety, women’s rights, including the right to choose — you can stretch hundreds of millions of them a lot further by running for president instead of just starting a super PAC.
The other Democratic candidates are focusing all their time on the first four states voting to choose the Democratic nominee — Iowa, and to a lesser extent New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — none of which are really in contention next in November. (The Democrats could win Iowa, but it&#8217;s far down the list of tipping point states likely to alter the outcome of a close election.)
Meanwhile, Trump has been running a general election campaign and spending an historic amount of money unopposed in the states where the White House will be won or lost:  Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina.
Bloomberg made an unprecedented decision not to compete and spend money in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina. Instead he’s spending a fortune on TV ads in those swing states the other Democrats are unfortunately, if understandably, ignoring.
That decision makes it very unlikely Bloomberg will be the nominee — but increases the odds the eventual nominee will beat Trump.
If there’s a vain billionaire running a quixotic campaign in this race, it’s Tom Steyer, who’s pouring millions of dollars into Iowa and the other early states to get on the leader board, but far from the top tier of candidates.
Bloomberg’s swing state TV ads are solely focused on the general election and purely about Trump. They don’t even mention Bloomberg by name.
And it turns out that as a presidential candidate Bloomberg can buy those local TV ads at significantly discounted rates compared to what he’d have to pay for them through a super PAC. Local TV stations are also required to sell ad time to presidential campaigns, and run their ads as-is. They’re not required to sell ads to super PACs, and if they do, they can force them to make editorial changes to those ads.
Take Sinclair Broadcasting, a rabidly pro-Trump company that owns nearly 200 local stations reaching about 40% of US homes. It’s required to sell ads to candidate Bloomberg and broadcast them as-is. It could refuse to sell ads to a Bloomberg super PAC, or demand changes to them that would make airing them pointless.
And take Facebook. As a candidate, Bloomberg can place digital ads that aren’t subject to Facebook’s fact-checking process. Fact-checking is usually a good thing. But not so much when Facebook counts, for instance, Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller as a trusted fact-checking news source on par with The New York Times.
Big picture, Bloomberg is using his presidential campaign as a vehicle to create what the Times calls “a shadow campaign operation for the general election, complete with hundreds of organizers in key battleground states and a robust digital operation, ready to be inherited by the party nominee.”
He’s hired 500 staffers in 30 states, including battleground states like Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. And in Texas, where he plans to open 17 offices and keep the major ones operational through the general election.
In addition to his presidential campaign spending, Bloomberg has also pledged <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/474034-bloomberg-to-donate-10-million-to-house-democrats">$10 million</a> to back vulnerable House Democrats running for reelection, and up to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/471343-bloomberg-to-spend-millions-on-voter-registration-campaign-targeting">$20 million</a> on voter-registration drives and voter protection efforts in battleground states, including $5 million to Stacey Abram’s <a href="https://fairfight.com/">Fair Fight</a>.
The Bloomberg-funded registration drive will target 500,000 voters from traditionally underrepresented groups that typically lean Democratic, including African Americans, Latinos, Asians, young voters, and residents of rural communities.
All these organizing efforts will help the eventual Democratic nominee and also have major down-ballot effects in state and local races.
Is it a good thing a mega-billionaire can spend unlimited amounts of money running for president? No way. But for now, it’s the world we live in. And if you have unlimited resources and are determined to defeat Donald Trump, Bloomberg’s approach is the way to do it. Far from an out-of-touch billionaire embarked on a doomed self-serving vanity project, Mike Bloomberg is an American hero.
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-holds-wide-lead-among-black-voters-in-democratic-presidential-race-post-ipsos-poll-finds/2020/01/11/76ecff08-3325-11ea-a053-dc6d944ba776_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_main&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> Biden holds wide lead among black voters in Democratic presidential race, Post-Ipsos poll finds. The poll finds the former vice president is far and away the favored Democratic candidate for black Americans, boosted by his personal popularity, his service in the Obama administration, and perceptions he is best equipped to defeat Trump. Six in 10 black Democratic voters identify as moderate or conservative, and Biden gets 58% support among this group, compared with 14% for Sanders and 8% for Warren. Biden is favored by 53% of black Democratic voters in the South. A majority of blacks who lean Democratic (58%) say the most important they want in a nominee is a likelihood of beating Trump.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13322" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-1-902x1024.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="727" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-1-902x1024.jpg 902w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-1-264x300.jpg 264w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-1-768x872.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_1-1.jpg 1484w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Biden, Sanders and Warren supporters also chose Biden, Sanders or Warren as their second choice for the nomination. So, as Jonathan Capehart noted in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/11/biden-leads-among-black-voters-reason/#click=https://t.co/dDwWJsP3Oa">THE WASHINGTON POST</a>, “for African Americans in this survey, a white Democratic nominee is fine by them.”
The poll throws cold water on the conventional wisdom (shared by me, frankly) that if the Democratic nominee is white, the vice president will likely be a person of color. Say, Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams. But 72% of those polled said it was not important to them personally that a white nominee choose a black running mate, including 38% who said it’s “not at all important.” That’s compared to the 27% who said it was “fairly” important.
There’s also a notable generation gap among black Democrats. Among those 65 and older, Biden leads by 60 points. Sanders leads by 12 points among those under 35. That could matter in the fall if it leads to lower turnout among younger African Americans.
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<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13321" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-1-1024x1007.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="629" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-1-1024x1007.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-1-300x295.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-1-768x755.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_2-1.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Capehart writes that the poll tells him his Aunt Gloria was right when he spoke to her at a family barbecue: “I asked her why she thought Biden was the person to take on Trump. Her answer left me slack-jawed and remains the best explanation for Biden’s continued strength. ‘The way the system is set up now, there is so much racism that it’s going to have to be an old white person to go after an old white person,’ Aunt Gloria said. ‘Old-school against old-school.’”
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<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/8/21051739/abortion-june-medical-gee-third-party-standing-supreme-court-roe-wade">VOX</a> The Trump administration’s subtle, devious plan to dismantle abortion rights. Roe v. Wade doesn’t mean much if no one can sue to enforce it. Ian Millhiser writes that in March, the Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases — June Medical Services v. Gee and Gee v. June Medical Services — that together “present the greatest threat to the right to an abortion in decades.” The Trump Administration will try to convince the Court to adopt an argument about who can sue to challenge laws restricting abortions that “could make it nearly impossible for anyone to obtain an abortion in states that bar the procedure.&#8221; This has been a goal of the GOP for more than a generation, and the installation of Brett Kavanaugh on the Court has put it finally within reach.
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/nyregion/trump-e-jean-carroll-defamation.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> Trump Fails to Quash E. Jean Carroll’s Defamation Suit. Meanwhile, a judge this week denied Trump’s request to dismiss Carroll&#8217;s defamation lawsuit against him. Last June, Carroll went public with a compelling case that Trump raped her 20 years ago and lied about it. The judge also denied Trump’s request to delay the exchange of evidence between the parties. Keep an eye on this space.
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/nyregion/faith-hope-consolo.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> She Was a Star of New York Real Estate, but Her Life Story Was a Lie. Faith Hope Consolo had the entire press fooled, including us. Then a message came in. “Wrapped in furs, dripping with diamonds and with her blond hair perfectly coifed, Faith Hope Consolo cut a glamorous figure in the flashy, late 20th-century world of New York City real estate. In late 2018, Ms. Consolo died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 73. As someone who had covered her for years, I wrote her obituary confirming her place in this rarefied world. But those details, I soon discovered, were lies.” Read the whole thing.
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TWEET OF THE WEEK:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13320" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-1-1024x867.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="542" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-1-1024x867.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-1-300x254.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-1-768x650.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/wr_3-1.jpg 1070w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
You can follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: January 13, 2020

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-january-7-2020/"></div> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdLHWasBS9U&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;utm_campaign=wp_opinions&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> Trump ordered the fatal strike on Soleimani. Now what? &#8220;When I came here,” Donald Trump bragged in June with respect to Iran, “they were all over the place causing terror, causing problems. They’re not doing that right now.&#8221; But as Post columnist (and author of excellent spy thrillers) David Ignatius points out, the Iranians hadn’t been nearly as passive as Trump boasted. It was Trump who’d shown restraint over the past year in response to Iranian provocations like shooting down an American drone, disabling the oil facilities of Jared’s friends in Saudi Arabia, and attacking the US consulate in the Iraqi city of Basra.
It’s a mistake to read any strategic thinking into Trump’s actions. It’s a stretch to say he even thinks tactically beyond id-driven wants and impulsive moves to preserve his fragile ego.
For instance, he didn’t tear up Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran pursuant to any plan, or because he wants a hot war with Iran. He did it because a) it was Obama’s deal, and b) he took for granted that he — The Artist of the Deal — could negotiate a better one. Q.E.D.
But, as Ignatius observes, Trump’s “policy”, such as it is, failed even to get Teheran back to the negotiating table, let alone getting them to yes on a perfect, beautiful new deal.
Which certainly isn’t going to happen now. So why did he authorize a dramatic escalation in the face-off with Iran that inaugurates a new era in which countries will feel authorized to use armed drones to kill top officials of other countries?
The New York Times reported this weekend that Trump was presented with a menu of retaliatory options following the killing of an American contractor by Iran-backed militia in Iraq on December 27, 2019. The targeted killing of Soleimani was the “far-out” option meant to make supposedly more moderate choices more palatable.
Trump initially chose one of the moderate options. It was only after protestors started gathering and chanting outside the US embassy in Baghdad that Trump authorized the assassination of Soleimani.
This tidbit was no doubt leaked by top military brass to let themselves off the hook. But it’s really self-indicting they’d do such a thing three years into Trump’s impulsive, blustery, seat-of-the-pants presidency.
If The Times reporting is correct, Trump was likely terrified of appearing weak — and worse, feeling weak — by a situation he saw inviting comparisons with the dreaded Carter (Iranian hostages) and Obama (Benghazi).
Trump’s decision was more likely impelled by this ego-shattering fear than it was a considered strategic gambit to distract from impeachment.
Either way, as Ignatius puts it, we’ve now entered a world of geo-strategic consequences we can’t begin to predict.
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Meanwhile, with less than 30 days left until Democrats formally begin selecting a nominee at the February 3 Iowa caucuses, new post-holiday/pre-Iran strike polling shows the race narrowing to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
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These are very good numbers for Biden. It wasn’t long ago he was fourth among the four Democrats clustered at the top of the polls. And Nate Silver’s latest polling averages, which include the above numbers, are even better news for him:
<blockquote>IOWA
Biden 22.0
Sanders 20.6
Buttigieg 19.4
Warren 13.3
Klobuchar 7.0</blockquote>
<blockquote>NEW HAMPSHIRE
Sanders 21.3
Biden 21.1
Warren 14.4
Buttigieg 13.7
Klobuchar 4.9</blockquote>
Biden is the only candidate who doesn’t need to win Iowa or New Hampshire. Strong Biden finishes there, followed by victories in the larger, more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina, will set him up to clinch the nomination on Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020).
But narrow Sanders victories in Iowa and New Hampshire — states that are 91% and 93% white, respectively — will not propel him to the nomination.
If Biden wins either Iowa or New Hampshire outright, it’s over.
Bernie polls well among Latino voters in Nevada, California, and the Southwest. But his relative strength among Latino voters isn’t enough to make up for Biden’s dominance among African-Americans.
If Biden is the nominee it will be because he will have proved to be the only candidate able to put together a multi-racial coalition of Democratic primary voters. A year ago many — myself included — thought Kamala Harris would also be such a candidate. But it didn’t turn out that way.
Ironically, while many complain about a broken system which enables two 90%+ white states to winnow the Democratic field to two white men closer in age to 80 than 75, it’s Biden’s overwhelming support in the states that look more like the overall Democratic electorate that as of today make him the likely Democratic nominee.
And this is all before the events of the past few days, which should take foreign policy — a Biden strength — off the back-burner in the final weeks leading up to the start of voting.
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Looking ahead to the fall, Trump is a uniquely weak and vulnerable incumbent. But it will take a massive mobilization of voters to defeat him in November. (Whether he’ll leave the White House voluntarily on January 20, 2021 is a question for another day.)
Money helps, too. And <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/02/democrats-2020-huge-donor-windfall-093034">POLITICO</a> reports that Democrats enter 2020 “riding a massive surge of presidential campaign cash, boosting the party’s hopes of taking back the White House.” Party pros expect the eventual nominee will have the cash to compete with the Trump campaign. The current contenders and the DNC combined raised over $480 million in the last year — more than Trump’s campaign machine brought in during that time. The money is pouring in from the progressive and moderate wings of the party, and from big and small donors alike.
On other fronts, Democrats continue to pummel the GOP in voter registration in states like Nevada, where they now have a 5% edge statewide. And for the first time in history the GOP is poised to fall behind Independents/third parties in Clark County (Las Vegas).
Demographic trends driving the purpling of American also continue to work in the Democrats’ favor, especially in Texas and Arizona. Here’s a list of the counties that added the most population between 2010 and 2018:
<blockquote>Harris TX (Houston) +590k
Maricopa AZ (Phoenix) +585k
King WA (Seattle) +294k
Los Angeles CA +283k
Clark NV (Vegas) +279k
Tarrant TX (Ft Worth) +267k
Dallas TX +265k
Bexar TX (San Antonio) +263k
Miami-Dade FL +254k</blockquote>
And here are the counties that lost the most population between 2010 and 2018:
<blockquote>Wayne MI (Detroit) -61k
Cuyahoga OH (Cleveland) -34k
Cook IL (Chicago) -18k
Baltimore MD -18k
Genesee MI (Flint) -18k
St. Louis MO -16k
Westmoreland (Pittsburgh area) -14k
Suffolk NY (Long Island) -13k
Caddo Parish LA (Shreveport) -13k</blockquote>
Recent polling data also shows that voters who lean Republican are much more open to defecting than voters who lean Democratic.
But it will take a massive mobilization of voters to make it so. The Democrats flipped the House and won down-ballot races across the country in 2018 because of presidential-year-level effort by volunteers who canvassed, phone-banked, and registered voters. Winning in 2020 requires an even more intense level of commitment.
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/why-you-never-have-time/603937/">THE ATLANTIC</a> Three Theories for Why You Have No Time. Better technology means higher expectations, and higher expectations create more work. In 1900, the average home had no modern tech. By 1960, it had electricity, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, refrigerator, freezers… all of which saved the typical housewife approximately 0 hours. Derek Thompson explores why more and more tech doesn’t necessarily lead to more leisure time at the home, office or factory, and sometimes creates more work. Short answer? 1.) Better tech often leads to higher expectations, which leads in turn to more work. 2.) The extraordinary rise in childcare time, especially among college-educated parents anxious about getting their kids into college. 3.) Tech only frees people from home, office, and factory work if the boss allows it. 4. Time-saving isn’t equally distributed across the sexual division of labor.
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/12/30/i-ignored-friends-familys-warnings-not-marry-my-husband-was-i-making-big-mistake/">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> I ignored warnings from friends and family not to marry my husband. Was I making a big mistake? Read this all the way to the end. You don’t know where it’s going, I promise.
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/23/upshot/recognizability-quiz.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> Quiz: Can You Identify These Politicians, Athletes and Celebrities? Most Americans Can’t. And enjoy this fun quiz.
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A RANDOM THING I LEARNED OVER THE BREAK: Phil Hartman was a graphic designer before he became a famous comic actor, and created the album art for Steely Dan’s “Aja”:
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TWEET OF THE WEEK:
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You can follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: January 7, 2020

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<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-december-3-2019/"></div>The story of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination continues to be Joe Biden’s resiliency and strength nationally and in the larger, more diverse states that choose convention delegates after Iowa and New Hampshire. Your reaction to the photo above is likely a pretty good test of whether this cheers, reassures, frustrates, or infuriates you.
Biden’s rivals, along with many pundits and Dem operatives, activists, and big donors, have been waiting for his supposedly inevitable implosion since before he even formally announced he was running.
But as the final countdown to 2020 begins, it’s looking more and more like Biden isn’t a paper tiger in the mold of Jeb “Please Clap” Bush in 2016 — an early front-runner based on near-universal name recognition — but an energizer bunny à la Mitt Romney in 2012 — favored by at least a plurality of primary voters as acceptable and electable.
Or using another dated reference Biden would appreciate, he&#8217;s like a Timex watch: he takes a licking, but keeps on ticking.
In what&#8217;s often cited as Peak Clueless Coastal Liberal Insularity, the great film critic Pauline Kael is frequently misquoted as having said after the 1972 election, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
But like pretty much everything Kael ever said or wrote, her coastal liberal insularity was nothing if not knowing. Here’s what she actually said: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
Hopefully no one who reads this will be blindsided if Biden goes on to win the nomination.
Which if he does will be in no small part because of his appeal to Democrats across the country who find something both calming and reassuring in the goofy mid-century, middle-American sensibility of a candidate who’d go on a “No Malarkey!” bus tour.
(And for what it&#8217;s worth, it&#8217;s a callback to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfcQWrfkmRI">this moment</a> when Biden filleted Paul Ryan in the 2012 vice presidential debate.)
Looking at the latest numbers, here are Nate Silver’s averages nationally and in the early states and key Super Tuesday contests:
<blockquote>NATIONAL: Biden 26, Warren 19.7, Sanders 16.7, Buttigieg 7.5
IOWA: Buttigieg 21.6, Sanders 18.4, Biden 17.5, Warren 15.9
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Biden 20.0, Warren 18.0, Sanders 17.0, Buttigieg 15.0
NEVADA: Biden 27.6, Sanders 19.3, Warren 18.6, Buttigieg 7.3
SOUTH CAROLINA: Biden 37.6, Sanders 12.8, Warren 11.9, Buttigieg 5.5
CALIFORNIA: Biden 23.0, Warren 20.6, Sanders 19.2, Buttigieg 7.6
TEXAS: Biden 25.3, Warren 15.3, Sanders 14.1, Buttigieg 6.1
NORTH CAROLINA: Biden 33.8, Warren 15.1, Sanders 14.6, Buttigieg 6.0
VIRGINIA: Biden 30.9, Warren 15.0, Sanders 14.5, Buttigieg 8.3</blockquote>
Elizabeth Warren may well have survived her initial embrace of Bernie Sanders’ and AOC&#8217;s maximalist version of Medicare-for-All, and it’s call for the abolition of private health insurance. But she may have dealt her candidacy a self-inflicted fatal blow when — trapped by her persona as “the plans” candidate? — she offered a detailed road map to her goal of &#8220;robust&#8221; Medicare-for-All.
Her plan has led to problems among Democratic moderates and union-members (because it calls for the abolition of private insurance) and on the left (because she says she won&#8217;t try to pass full-on M4A until her administration’s third year — by which time it would likely be out of reach if, as is typical, Dems suffer big midterm losses in Congress).
Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg’s rise in Iowa, and to a lesser extent in New Hampshire, has been fueled by highly-educated white Democrats. That&#8217;s Warren&#8217;s base, not Biden&#8217;s, and Buttigieg&#8217;s growing support appears to have come at Warren’s expense despite their ideological differences. Still, there’s no sign of either breaking though among the more diverse electorates of South Carolina, Nevada, and the Super Tuesday states.
And the general election? <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/upshot/democratic-trump-voters-2020.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> had a big story this week with an ominous headline for Democrats: &#8220;They Voted Democratic. Now They Support Trump. Two-thirds of battleground state voters who chose Trump in 2016 but selected Democrats in the midterms say they will return to the president next year.&#8221;
These voters represent 2% of registered voters in these states, and are overwhelmingly white, male, and without college degrees. It&#8217;s Trump who should be alarmed if he’s shed one-third of this slice of the electorate. They represent more than his narrow margins of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Moving on to impeachment, Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee will approve this week a report to send to the House Judiciary Committee, which will then consider and vote on articles of impeachment for the full House to vote on.
A <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/26/politics/cnn-poll-impeachment-views/index.html">CNN poll</a> last week got a lot of attention for showing support for Trump’s impeachment and removal from office was unchanged from October despite two weeks of objectively devastating public hearings. This followed a few polls that seemed to show support for impeachment and removal dipping.
But as this graph of polling averages shows, overall support for impeachment is ticking up again after briefly dipping before the hearings. The hearings didn’t change minds, but did solidify support at October levels, after most people paying attention had absorbed the basics of the Ukraine story.
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The evidence of Trump impeachable offenses is overwhelming. Yet the media continues to act as if the strength of the case against him should be measured by whether it changes the minds of congressional Republicans or the GOP base — as if either are considering the evidence in good faith.
As Greg Sargent writes in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/22/trumps-gop-defenders-cannot-be-shamed-its-time-democrats-try-this-instead/">THE WASHINGTON POST</a>, “If there is one widely shared conclusion about the impeachment hearings that have just concluded, it’s that President Trump’s GOP defenders were never ‘gettable’… Some defenders have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/21/republicans-repeatedly-counter-inquiry-witnesses-by-misrepresenting-past-testimony/?tid=lk_inline_manual_4">flatly inverted</a> what was actually testified to into its diametrical opposite. Others have reflexively <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/21/fiona-hill-will-tell-devin-nunes-his-face-that-his-ukraine-conspiracy-theory-is-harmful/?tid=lk_inline_manual_4">reverted to conspiracy theories</a> creating a universe as divorced from the actual corrupt conduct now being examined as one former half of a divided cell is from the other.”
Since we should only expect the same from Senate Republicans, Sargent writes, we should begin to “treat Trump’s defenders as his criminal accomplices. Not just as &#8216;enablers&#8217; of [his] corruption but as active participants in it. Once this is accepted, it becomes obvious why they can’t be &#8216;won over,&#8217; because they are actively engaged in keeping the corruption in question from getting fully uncovered, in the belief that they, too, benefit from it, and that they, too, lose out if it’s exposed.”
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For an excellent narrative of what we now know about Trump’s single-minded efforts to extort Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on Joe Biden and exonerating Russia for it’s sabotage of the 2016 election, check out this recap in <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/we-wrote-starr-report-account-record-laffaire-ukrainienne">LAWFARE</a>.
And if you have any lingering doubts about Russia’s complicity, check out this <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-hackers-2016-election-democratic-congressional-campaign-committee-60-minutes-2019-11-24/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7d&amp;linkId=77636488">60 MINUTES</a> segment from last week detailing exactly how Russian military intelligence officers broke into the Democratic Party&#8217;s computers, stole compromising information, and selectively released it to undermine candidates up and down the ballot.
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<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/joe-biden-stutter-profile/602401/">THE ATLANTIC</a> &#8220;What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say. His verbal stumbles have voters worried about his mental fitness. Maybe they’d be more understanding if they knew he’s still fighting a stutter.&#8221; Whatever your views on Biden, this is a beautiful article about Biden&#8217;s and author John Hendrickson’s lifelong struggles with stuttering.
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> &#8220;Jeffrey Epstein, Blackmail and a Lucrative ‘Hot List’. A shadowy hacker claimed to have the financier’s sex tapes. Two top lawyers wondered: What would the men in those videos pay to keep them secret?&#8221; This must-read article reads like a pulpy thriller, and offers a fascinating look at the lengths top lawyers and journalists will — and won’t — go to get a story.
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<a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/">PEW RESEARCH CENTER </a>&#8220;In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace. An update on America&#8217;s changing religious landscape.&#8221;The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. Pew found that 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the share of the population who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13080" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr3-494x1024.jpg" alt="" width="494" height="1024" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr3-494x1024.jpg 494w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr3-145x300.jpg 145w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr3.jpg 624w" sizes="(max-width: 494px) 100vw, 494px" />
Rates of religious attendance are also declining. The share of Americans who say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month dropped by 7 percentage points over the past decade. Those who say they attend religious services less often (if at all) has risen by the same amount. The data shows a wide gap between Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation on the one hand, and Millennials on the other:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13081" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr4-1024x818.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="511" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr4-1024x818.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr4-300x240.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr4-768x613.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/wr4.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3w8I8boc_I">DATA IS BEAUTIFUL</a> Click-through to see this fascinating dynamic timeline of the most popular music artists between 1969 and 2019 based on yearly certified record sales. And be prepared for more Neil Diamond that you might expect.
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<a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/ta-nehisi-coates-on-obama-reparations-kaepernick.html">NEW YORK MAGAZINE</a> &#8220;In the 2010s, White America Was Finally Shown Itself. Ta-Nehisi Coates on &#8216;Obama’s decade,&#8217; reparations, and Kaepernick.&#8221; Coates has been busy writing Black Panther graphic novels and old-fashioned word novels for awhile now, and hasn’t been commenting on current events. He does here, and is always worth reading.
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/review/by-the-book-interview-phoebe-waller-bridge.html">NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW</a> &#8220;Phoebe Waller-Bridge Loves Antiheroines. Of Course.&#8221;An expectedly delightful interview with the creator of Fleabag about her favorite books, ideal reading experience (wine, armchair, raining), and the most interesting thing she learned from a book recently (since this is a family email newsletter, you’ll have to click through to find out).
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CORRECTION OF THE WEEK:
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TWEET OF THE WEEK: 
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&nbsp;
Follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: December 3, 2019

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-november-19-2019/"></div>Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff seem to have made a strategic decision to focus the House impeachment inquiry on Trump’s efforts to bribe the new Ukrainian President Zelensky into manufacturing dirt on Joe Biden and his family, resisting calls to expand the investigation to include Trump’s collusion with Russia in 2016 and his obstruction of justice before, during, and after the Mueller investigation.
Their focus for now on Trump and Rudy&#8217;s Ukraine shenanigans, though, is more tactical than strategic. The focus of the House investigation — and resulting articles of impeachment — may quickly widen.
For now, though, the Ukraine story is simpler and easier to tell. It involves Trump’s actions not as a candidate but as POTUS, presenting a narrative of a president abusing the power of his office for personal gain at the expense of America’s national security and in defiance of the express bipartisan will of Congress.
But Pelosi and Schiff are well aware that Ukraine 2019 and Russia 2016 are really one and the same story. Trump, Giuliani, and their coterie of mooks, goons, flunkies, and clowns weren’t only trying to get Ukraine to gin up a bullshit investigation of a potential, even likely, 2020 opponent. They were also extorting Ukraine to help Attorney General William Barr’s sham investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.
Barr’s real purpose is to validate the far-right conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked into DNC email servers in 2016 and colluded with the Obama Administration and Clinton campaign to frame Russia — contrary to the unanimous consensus of the US intelligence community and the microscopic level of detail of Russia’s guilt contained in the Mueller report.
Trump, Giuliani, et al., also wanted Ukraine to come up with a pretext that would allow Trump to pardon Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager now serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison for various crimes related to his work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
Ukraine and Russia are also one story in a deeper way. Putin’s endgame in helping install Trump in the White House has always been removal of the crippling US-led international sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea in 2014.
For an excellent “tick-tock” of the impeachment saga beginning with the whistleblower’s decision to come forward, check out —
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/how-a-cia-analyst-alarmed-by-trumps-shadow-foreign-policy-triggered-an-impeachment-inquiry/2019/11/15/042684a8-03c3-11ea-8292-c46ee8cb3dce_story.html">THE WASHINGTON POST</a> “How a CIA analyst, alarmed by Trump’s shadow foreign policy, triggered an impeachment inquiry.” By the Post’s star national security reporter Greg Miller, and the best summary of what we know so far.
¤
Nancy Pelosi said on Face the Nation Sunday that she has “no idea” when the House impeachment investigation will end, leaving open the possibility that it can widen in scope and extend well into the new year. But whether it wraps up by Christmas or Easter, what’s the endgame of an impeachment that’s a virtual lock not to lead to Trump’s removal from office?
<a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-do-the-democrats-have-to-prove">TALKING POINTS MEMO</a> “What Do The Democrats Have To Prove?” Josh Marshall tackles the dilemma posed by a GOP Senate unlikely to remove Trump from office amid the reality that “35% to 40% of the population wants to maintain a lawless President in office no matter what.” It’s not the Democrats’ job, he writes, to persuade the unpersuadable. And it’s not Adam Schiff and the Democrats who are on trial. Trump, whose guilt is obvious, isn&#8217;t really on trial either.
So who is? It’s worth quoting Marshall at length here:
<blockquote>Who and what is on trial here is the Republican party, which has made it pretty clear that they are willing to countenance any level of law breaking and abuses of power so long as it is done by a Republican or at least as long as it is Donald Trump.
The Democrats’ job is to lay out the evidence in a public setting and get elected Republicans to sign on the dotted line that this is presidential behavior they accept and applaud. That won’t be difficult. They have one last chance to change their answer. Democrats’ real job is to clarify and publicize that that is their answer.
It is simply recognizing the nature of the crisis in which the country finds itself and avoiding nonsensical, bad-faith exercises that can only end in frustration. The aim for Democrats is to set forth, calmly and clearly, what the Republican Party accepts and what it is and to consolidate the non-Republican, non-authoritarian nationalist vote which supports the rule of law and the constitution.
Since the GOP is self-indicting, President Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office and these questions, properly set forth, will go before the people in one year.</blockquote>
¤
The Blue Wave continued to wash over suburbs deeper in red America Saturday with the reelection of Louisiana’s Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. Edwards carried suburbs outside New Orleans where Obama got a mere 26% of the vote in 2008. And Louisiana Republicans were denied expected super-majorities in the state legislature that would have allowed them to continue imposing gerrymandered districts after the 2020 census.
While it&#8217;s true that rural northern whites increasingly vote like rural Southern whites, Southern suburbanites are voting more and more like their Northern and Coastal counterparts. That’s a trade Democrats will happily make: the GOP increasing margins among shrinking demographics, the Democrats increasing margins among ones that are growing.
This year’s elections also show that GOP efforts to use impeachment to nationalize and polarize the public isn’t working either. Kentucky and Louisiana are two of the most conservative states in the US. If the GOP can’t make it work there, it can’t make it work anywhere.
¤
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/16/politics/iowa-poll-cnn-pete-buttigieg/index.html">CNN</a> Pete Buttigieg surges to first place in Iowa. Two new high-quality polls of Iowa place Buttigieg as the clear front-runner. His moderate pivot (attacking Elizabeth Warren in general, Medicare-for-All in particular) is working. In June his strongest support came from those who say they&#8217;re very liberal. His weakest group was self-described moderates and conservatives. That’s now flipped.
Warren’s embrace of Bernie Sanders’ version of Medicare-for-All, in which private health insurance would be abolished, has hurt her. Just as it did Kamala Harris earlier. Thirty-eight percent of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers in the CNN poll I linked to above now think Warren is too liberal, up from 23% in the spring.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-12982" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr1-1024x272.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="170" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr1-1024x272.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr1-300x80.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr1-768x204.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr1.jpg 1198w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
But the real leader in Iowa is still “uncommitted.” Biden and Sanders have far higher percentages of supporters whose minds are made up. This explains why their numbers have been more consistent than Warren’s and Buttigieg’s. Nate Silver’s back-of-the-envelope estimate is that in the end 10% of the Democratic electorate will only vote for Bernie and another 10-15% will only vote for Biden. The other 75-80%, he thinks, is relatively fluid.<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12981" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr2.jpg" alt="" width="867" height="488" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr2.jpg 867w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr2-768x432.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 867px) 100vw, 867px" />
All of which explains why —
<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/15/20966674/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all-plan-public-option">VOX</a> “Warren Proposes Two-Step Plan to Implement Medicare for All.” Elizabeth Warren’s new Medicare-for-all plan starts out with a public option. This is a good primer if you want to dive into the details of Warren’s latest plan.
¤
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/world/berlin-wall-photos-30-year-anniversary.html">THE NEW YORK TIMES</a> “The Fall of the Berlin Wall in Photos: An Accident of History That Changed The World.” The Communist regime was prepared for everything “except candles and prayers.” East Germany’s peaceful 1989 revolution showed that societies that don’t reform, die.” It was clear who lost the Cold War as the wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. I can’t say I expected that 30 years later it wouldn’t be clear who won.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-12980" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr3-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="426" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr3-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr3-300x200.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr3-768x511.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr3.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
¤
<a href="https://www.fieldteam6.org/">FIELD TEAM 6</a> Jason Berlin’s Field Team 6 has a simple motto: “Register Democrats. Save the world.” Jason and Field Team 6 revolutionized voter registration drives in Los Angeles and Orange Counties in the run-up to the 2018 midterms. They registered thousands of voters and helped turn all of the House seats in Southern California swing districts blue.
Their secret? Being openly partisan. Seeking out and engaging voters where they are. And using humor to connect with them.
Now they’re going national. Field Team 6 has opened 18 chapters in seven battleground states, including Arizona, Maine, Pennsylvania and Colorado, with plans to start chapters in four more battleground states soon.
You can donate to Field Team 6 <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ft6-phase2">here</a> and contact Jason <a href="mailto:ason@fieldteam6.org%20%20">here</a>. They&#8217;re also holding a <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ft6sllf">fundraiser</a> on December 11 at the Satellite in Silver Lake with Dana Gould, Puddles Pity Party, Natasha Leggero, and much more.
¤
TWEET OF THE WEEK: This one you have to <a href="https://twitter.com/adamhess1/status/1196033662644568064?s=20">click through</a> and listen to appreciate.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12978" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr4.jpg" alt="" width="962" height="988" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr4.jpg 962w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr4-292x300.jpg 292w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/wr4-768x789.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 962px) 100vw, 962px" />
&nbsp;
Follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
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The Weekly Read: November 19, 2019

wrcover

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-july-9-2019/"></div>POLLS POLLS POLLS A new flurry of polling following the first Democratic presidential primary debates paint a consistent picture. Kamala Harris has significantly risen in the polls, in some cases leapfrogging over Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders into second place behind Joe Biden, who has shed if not quite hemorrhaged support among Democrats. Meanwhile, a big poll out from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/aided-by-a-strong-economy-trump-approval-rises-but-a-majority-also-see-him-as-unpresidential/2019/07/04/c9c42c54-9d9f-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html?utm_term=.26b2ec966c6a.">THE WASHINGTON POST/ABC NEWS</a> shows Biden still faring significantly better against Trump than his chief rivals in head-to-head contests among all potential voters and among registered voters. (It&#8217;s too early for pollsters to screen for &#8220;likely voters&#8221; in their surveys.)
All of the current top-tier Dems are ahead of Trump among voting-age Americans:
<blockquote>Biden 55-41
Harris 51-43
Warren 51-44
Sanders 51-45
Buttigieg 48-44</blockquote>
But it&#8217;s much closer among registered voters, with only Biden holding a decisive lead over Trump outside the poll&#8217;s margin of error:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11935" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr1-820x1024.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="799" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr1-820x1024.jpg 820w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr1-240x300.jpg 240w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr1-768x959.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr1.jpg 1484w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
And now the really bad news: thanks to gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Founding Fathers, if the Dem nominee only beats Trump by one or two percentage points in the national popular vote it&#8217;s likely Trump will be re-elected, Mitch McConnell will expand his Senate majority, and the House will flip back into Republican control.
Biden&#8217;s performance at the debate and on the campaign trail are cause for concern, if not alarm, about his weaknesses as a candidate. But there continues to be no support in the polls for the idea that he would be a disastrous nominee against Trump in the fall. In fact, all polls I&#8217;m aware of continue to show him doing much better against Trump than any other Dem. Of course, it&#8217;s still early, things change, and we should never underestimate Biden&#8217;s ability to step on a rake.
Meanwhile, aided by a strong economy for many Americans, Trump&#8217;s approval rating has risen to 44%, up from 39% in April:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11936" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr2-767x1024.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="854" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr2-767x1024.jpg 767w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr2-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr2-768x1026.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr2.jpg 1484w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Trump&#8217;s approval numbers may also be buoyed by House Dems&#8217; failure so far to impeach him, hear from Robert Mueller, or hold other meaningful public oversight into his incompetence and corruption. (FWIW, I was intrigued by an aside in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/opinion/sunday/nancy-pelosi-pride-parade.html">Maureen Dowd column</a> that Nancy Pelosi spent the long holiday weekend re-reading The Mueller Report&#8230; )
While it may be stunning that 44% of Americans approve of Trump&#8217;s performance as president, we shouldn&#8217;t lose sight of the fact that he is deeply, widely, and intensely unpopular. He&#8217;s the only president in the modern era whose approvals have never gone above 50%, or whose disapprovals have never gone below 50%.
And the intensity of his approval/disapproval numbers are disastrous. Among the 53% of Americans who disapprove of his performance, 45% strongly disapprove — more than his 44% total approval rating. Only 32% of Americans strongly approve of his performance. And a whopping 65% of Americans believe he has not acted in a way that&#8217;s presidential since taking office, compared to only 28% who believe he has acted presidentially.
But about one-fifth of Americans who say Trump hasn&#8217;t been presidential approve of the job he&#8217;s doing. Go figure.
Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/02/nearly-half-democrats-say-theyre-extremely-enthusiastic-about-election/?utm_term=.bf7fa7fcba25">a CNN poll </a>showed unprecedented enthusiasm among Democrats to vote in 2020 — even higher than it was in June 2007, when George W. Bush&#8217;s approval ratings were in the low 30s thanks to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Katrina. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats are very or somewhat enthusiastic to vote, which is also significantly higher than it was at this point in the 2016 election cycle.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11937" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr3-1024x426.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="266" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr3-1024x426.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr3-300x125.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr3-768x319.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr3.jpg 1484w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
And enthusiasm isn’t equivalent between the two parties. Almost half of registered Democrats say they&#8217;re extremely enthusiastic about voting next year, compared to 40% of Republicans. The Dem number is higher than any measurement at the same point from either party since 2007:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11938" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr4-1024x842.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="526" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr4-1024x842.jpg 1024w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr4-300x247.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr4-768x631.jpg 768w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr4.jpg 1484w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
It&#8217;s true that the percentage of Republicans who say they&#8217;re extremely enthusiastic to vote next year is larger than in any previous polling at this point in an election cycle. But that was also true before the 2018 midterms — which turned out pretty well for the Dems. Extreme partisan polarization is a heckuva thing.
That said, both parties aren&#8217;t equally to blame for today&#8217;s polarization. THE NEW YORK TIMES asked an important and provocative question recently: If we could put every political party in the world on the same continuum from left to right, where would the American parties fall?
According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html">an analysis of political platforms and manifestoes from around the world</a>, our very own GOP leans much farther right than traditional mainstream conservative parties in Western Europe and Canada such as Britain’s Conservative Party, Germany&#8217;s Christian Democratic Union, and Canada&#8217;s Conservative Party.
The GOP is more extreme than far-right populist parties like Britain&#8217;s Independence Party and France&#8217;s National Rally (formerly the National Front) and closer to far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, whose platform contains explicitly xenophobic and anti-Muslim statements.
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11939" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr5.jpg" alt="" width="849" height="235" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr5.jpg 849w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr5-300x83.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr5-768x213.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 849px) 100vw, 849px" />
The GOP platform doesn&#8217;t include the same explicitly bigoted policies. But it shares a nativist, working-class populism with the European far right, and an emphasis on &#8220;traditional morality&#8221; and a “national way of life. The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are typically an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, is positioned closer to mainstream liberal parties around the world. Overall, the US&#8217;s political center of gravity is to the right of other countries’, in part because of the absence of a serious left-wing party.
If it feels like the political center of gravity in this country has shifted dramatically in the last decade, and over the last few decades, that&#8217;s because it has. And, as Lincoln, TR, and Eisenhower weep, that&#8217;s on the GOP. And ultimately on the Dems if they (we) can&#8217;t exploit the extremism of the GOP to their (our) electoral advantage.
¤
THE ATLANTIC  <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/2020-democrats-divide-over-single-payer-health-care/593341/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=share">Ron Brownstein writes</a> that &#8220;the battle over health care is emerging as the most consequential policy choice facing Democrats in the 2020 presidential contest — and it’s one that could play out over time to Joe Biden’s advantage.&#8221; In the first Democratic debates a fault line emerged between candidates who want Medicare-for-All to wholly replace the current system of private health insurance in the US. And those who want to achieve universal coverage by offering Medicare as a &#8220;public option&#8221; while maintaining the current system of employer-sponsored health insurance for the 181 million Americans covered through their jobs and who generally like their plans and want to keep them.
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SLATE The Supreme Court’s Partisan Gerrymandering Ruling Is a Body Blow to Our Democracy, <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/john-roberts-supreme-courts-partisan-gerrymandering-rucho-common-cause.html">Dahlia Lithwick writes</a>: &#8220;In an effort to appear as though it hovers permanently above the partisan fray, the Supreme Court [in late June] delivered perhaps the most staggering win to the Republican Party since Bush v. Gore. In a pair of cases out of North Carolina and Maryland raising the question of whether extreme partisan political gerrymanders can ever violate the Constitution, the five-justice conservative majority finally answered a decades-old question: The federal courts will have no role to play in overseeing whether political lines were drawn for the gain of the majority in violation of the Constitution.&#8221;
With voting rights under attack via voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and made-up claims of voter fraud, and with Republicans having won a majority of the popular vote for president only once in the last 30 years while winning three presidential elections, this latest decision, Lithwick concludes, is &#8220;a gut punch to voter confidence that their votes really matter and that voting isn’t a cynical rigged game in which all spoils go to just one side.&#8221;
Meanwhile, in MOTHER JONES, <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/the-courts-wont-end-gerrymandering-eric-holder-has-a-plan-to-fix-it-without-them/">Ari Berman writes</a> that as the Supreme Court recuses itself from the fight against extreme gerrymandering, former Attorney General Eric Holder has a plan to fix it without them: he&#8217;s trying to &#8220;make redistricting sexy.&#8221; While most Democrats are focused on defeating Trump in 2020, he&#8217;s focused on 2021 and electing down-ballot candidates who can deliver fairer maps and voting laws.
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TWEET OF THE WEEK:
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11940" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr6.jpg" alt="" width="802" height="326" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr6.jpg 802w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr6-300x122.jpg 300w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/wr6-768x312.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 802px) 100vw, 802px" />
&nbsp;
 Follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/stevel3000">@stevel3000</a>.
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The Weekly Read: July 9, 2019

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/current-events/weekly-read-june-24-2019/"></div>VOX A <a href="https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2019/6/21/18679314/trump-support-is-not-normal-partisanship">new study</a> finds evidence that Trump&#8217;s appeal is different than the appeal of both the Republican and Democratic parties: &#8220;Support for Trump is characterized more by out-group hatred than by in-group affection&#8230; Trump approval is best explained by a disdain for the Democratic groups he so often attacks.&#8221; Approval of the Republican and Democratic parties, on the other hand, is based on affection towards those who vote Republican and Democratic, respectively. In other words, the special sauce of Trump&#8217;s appeal to members of his base is that he hates the same people they do.
The study also finds that &#8220;partisan identities are now matched up with ideological, religious, racial, and other cultural and geographical identities. This increasing alignment between our partisan and other identities pushes us toward intolerance of out-groups. This is particularly true among the Republican Party, which is made up mostly of voters with fewer, and better-aligned religious and racial identities.&#8221;
This is a vicious cycle: &#8220;As voters’ racial and religious identities align with their party, their partisan identity strengthens. For Republicans, this means that the closer they feel to fellow whites and Christians, the closer they feel toward the Republican Party: an ideal recipe for intolerance of &#8216;the other.'&#8221;
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KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION A <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-june-2019/">new report</a> shows that healthcare leads the list of topics Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want to hear 2020 Democratic presidential candidates talk about during this week’s debates. Nearly nine in ten (87%) say it’s very important for candidates to talk about healthcare. Eight in ten say it is very important for candidates to discuss issues affecting women.
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Most voters are unaware, however, of how much change the Medicare-for-All bills introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal would bring. Majorities say people would continue to pay deductibles and co-pays (69%) and continue to pay premiums (54%) under a Medicare-for-All plan. Majorities also say those with employer-sponsored or self-purchased insurance would be able to keep their plans (55% each) under a Medicare-for-All plan. None of these beliefs are correct.
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DEMOCRACY FUND A <a href="https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/on-the-money">large-scale voter survey</a> shows progressive policies are widely popular. For instance, 60% support raising the minimum wage, and only 24% oppose it. But while Democratic voters are relatively unified in support of progressive economic policies and in their explanations of inequality, Republicans are divided. Lower-income Republicans are substantially more economically progressive than higher-income Republicans. About one in five Republicans hold economic views more in line with the Democratic Party than their own party. But that doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;ll vote Democratic. See above on the source of Trump&#8217;s popularity with many of these voters: he hates what they hate, and they vote their hatred, not their policy preferences or economic self-interest.
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Speaking of the minimum wage&#8230;
THE WASHINGTON POST America has never gone this long without hiking <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/18/america-has-never-gone-this-long-without-hiking-federal-minimum-wage/?utm_term=.d90e1fac4007">the federal minimum wage</a>. In July 2009, almost 10 years ago, the federal minimum wage rose from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour. Congress has not approved any hikes since then, with Republicans blocking Democratic efforts to raise it. Twenty-nine states have passed state minimum wages higher than the federal baseline. In the other 21 the federal minimum is the last word. Republican-controlled states are less likely to have passed minimum wage hikes, although voters in conservative-led states such as Arkansas have approved higher minimum wages through ballot initiatives.
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NEW STATESMAN Why political journalism keeps getting it wrong. <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/06/why-political-journalism-keeps-getting-it-wrong">This excellent piece</a> from across the pond focuses mostly on the United Kingdom but is just as applicable to the US political journalists, who, the author writes, &#8220;are prone to panic about not representing &#8216;real people’. But who gets depicted as the authentic voice of unheard Britain is governed by implicit assumptions that are grim when exposed to the light. Why are the views of a retired steelworker in Grimsby about ‘where the country has gone wrong’ more important than those of a second-generation Nigerian-British nurse in Plaistow? Citizenship is supposed to transcend personal identity, and yet we still indulge an idea of the ‘volk.&#8217; This tendency applies equally in America, where retired steelworkers in Pennsylvania were held up as the Great Unheard, but the same epithet was not bestowed on black voters in Detroit.&#8221;
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THE WASHINGTON POST We need to prepare for a complete reversal of the role the Supreme Court plays in our lives, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-need-to-prepare-for-a-complete-reversal-of-the-role-the-supreme-court-plays-in-our-lives/2019/06/11/b492d894-8c5b-11e9-adf3-f70f78c156e8_story.html?utm_term=.c627200123fc">writes Ron Klain</a>: &#8220;All but the oldest Americans have lived their entire adult lives under a Supreme Court associated with progressive social change&#8230; We need to prepare for a complete reversal of the role the court plays in our public life. That change could be dramatic, its impact sweeping and — perhaps most surprisingly for those who believe change at the Supreme Court is always slow — it could come head-spinningly fast.”
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HUFFPOST Democrats in Maine have found a formidable candidate to take on Sen. Susan Collins in her re-election bid next year: <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/susan-collins-democratic-challenger-sara-gideon_n_5d029422e4b0304a120bf5de">Susan Sara Gideon</a>, Maine’s Democratic House Speaker. Collins faces intense backlash from state Democrats and abortion rights activists over her vote for Brett Kavanaugh and her alleged belief that he is not a threat to Roe v. Wade.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES Teenage dramas have typically presented a soapy view of high school, write <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/upshot/euphoria-hbo-teens-sex-drugs.html?campaign_id=61&amp;instance_id=0&amp;segment_id=14580&amp;user_id=7b849ea5cb1ae8d7fc6b44d23add2590&amp;regi_id=11195982ries">Margot Sanger-Katz and Aaron E. Carroll</a>, with more sex, drugs, and wild behavior than in real life. But HBO’s new series “Euphoria” suggests that “our modern society, with its smartphone dating apps, internet pornography and designer drugs, has made teenage life more extreme and dangerous than ever before. Actually, nearly the opposite is true.”
Today’s teenagers drink less, smoke less, and use fewer hard drugs than their parents did. They get in fewer car accidents and physical fights. They commit fewer crimes, and are less likely to drop out of high school, have sex, and to become pregnant.
Teenagers today do face some increased risks. Teenage suicide is rising, as are certain mental health diagnoses. Vaping has exploded so fast public health officials are alarmed. And though fewer kids use drugs, overdose deaths are rising as certain drugs become more dangerous. But over all, the authors conclude, “adolescence is safer than it’s ever been.”
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TWEET OF THE WEEK:
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Follow Steve Lichtman during the week on Twitter @stevel3000.
Cover photo credit: Gage Skidmore, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>
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The Weekly Read: June 24, 2019

Steve Lichtman is a writer, producer, and lawyer in Los Angeles. He has written for TV shows such as The Good Wife, Medium, and Eli Stone, and sold one-hour pilots to CBS and ABC. He has also written for Slate and The New Republic.