‘Presidents of War’: Historian Michael Beschloss on leaders who’ve taken U.S. into battle
One of his first points yesterday was that every war president has become more religious after making the decision to shed blood.
Eric Black Ink
Trump’s approval rating: Gallup shows 38%; HuffPost average is 43.9%
Basically, throughout his presidency, Trump’s approval number has fluctuated between 35 and 45 percent and his disapproval number between 50 and 60.
What happens to a political centrist when there is no center?
I don’t know if there’s much of a “center” remaining in U.S. politics. But if there is, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine personifies it.
In Minnesota and nationally, election was all about Trump, U panel agrees
Where President Trump wasn’t political poison, he was political magic, panelists at the University of Minnesota noted.
Dems lost ground in Senate while actually winning most of the races
Democrats actually won a significant majority of the races for seats in both houses on Tuesday.
Reminder: Polls are only a snapshot of the moment
And by the time the latest poll numbers reach you, they are out of date.
In recent polls, Americans wish for a third major party
I believe we’re so used to this lesser-of-two-evils duopolism that we think it’s the only way to do democracy, which it isn’t.
Ex-GOP chair Michael Steele on the politics and power of Trump
Steele, who has little praise for the president, said in a Minneapolis speech, as a refrain with variations: “We are where we are because this is where we want to be.”
Why you should just ignore campaign ads
An example: Like almost all TV ads, this one isn’t rooted in facts and logic. It is eyewash, brainwash, mouthwash.
Former Clinton advisor Jake Sullivan on what Trump doesn’t understand about alliances
As Sullivan summarized Trump’s attitude: “What’s wrong with a dog-eat-dog world, if we’re the biggest dog?”
More on Trump’s relationship to facts and truth
This is just one puzzling aspect of life in the Age of Trump. But there is a point at which it is no longer reasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt.
On Trump, falsehoods, and the media’s approach to them
The old journalistic system is breaking down somewhat under the stress of so much mendacity by the actual president of the United States.
U.S.-Saudi bond has been awkward from the beginning; WaPo offers an update
In this morning’s Washington Post, my buddy Tom Hamburger gets first byline in a piece that updates the awkwardness of the moment (and really the awkwardness of the whole 73-year tale).
Another upgrade: Klobuchar seen as 6th most likely 2020 Dem nominee
CNN moved Minnesota’s senior senator from seventh most likely Democratic nominee for president in 2020, to sixth mostly likely.
Approval ratings for Trump rise to 44 percent
His current bad disapproval number, according to the average of many polls maintained and calculated by HuffPost, stands at an average of 51.2 percent.
Laugh or cry? The case of West Virginia’s high-stakes political battle
The basics: The West Virginia Legislature impeached the entire West Virginia Supreme Court for spending too much on redecorating their offices. But they haven’t yet been tried in the state Senate.
America the unusual: Where else have the major parties switched positions on the political spectrum?
While we have two major parties, operating under the same names since 1856, they have not only not stood for the same things over time, they have on several occasions traded positions on the big left-to-right ideological spectrum.
Amid major crisis between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, U.S. spokesman forced to admit we have no ambassador in either country
We have a pretty major crisis just now between two extremely important U.S. allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, over the apparent kidnapping and likely murder, by Saudi agents in Turkey, of a prominent Saudi journalist.
DFLers ‘up big’ in Minnesota, NBC/Marist poll finds
The poll has DFL gubernatorial nominee Tim Walz leading Republican Jeff Johnson by 55 percent to 38 percent among likely voters.
We suck at voting
Although a great many changes have made it easier to vote, our overall participation has not gone up. In fact, if anything, it’s drifted down a bit from the 1950s and ’60s.
