The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

That ABC poll can be found here. With the new NPR/PBS Marist poll, Mike Bloomberg makes the debate and gets a chance to see how he takes a punch. That should help Bernie and hurt Bloomberg, but nobody knows nothing™ this primary season, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Also, VA polling from Monmouth (March 3, Super Tuesday in two weeks) shows Bernie and Bloomberg as the frontrunners tied at 22%, and gives you an idea of what Super Tuesday is starting to feel like.

Pro tip: California is voting already, 600K ballots already cast. That’s more than IA and NH combined.

This is one of the most brilliant analogies for the 2020 DEM Primary I've seen. Yeah, a raft COULD offer more than survival, but let's argue about it AFTER we avoid drowning. ANY BLUE RAFT WILL DO. pic.twitter.com/7rJ53xvoiu

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) February 18, 2020

Poynter:

How Bloomberg the candidate impacts Bloomberg the publication

Farther down the page — MUCH farther down the page — there was a story about Mike Bloomberg. He’s running for president, too. He also happens to own Bloomberg News. The headline: “Bloomberg Faces Attacks from Democrats as He Rises in the Polls.”

This remains a sticky situation. How do you cover someone running for president when that someone is your boss? And how do you cover him if he doesn’t want you to?

Since Bloomberg entered the race in November, there has been controversy over how his media outlet will cover him. Specifically, Bloomberg News announced that it would not do any investigative pieces on Bloomberg. And, out of fairness, that courtesy would be extended to the other Democratic presidential hopefuls. However, President Donald Trump remains fair game for Bloomberg News.

This edict put Bloomberg reporters in a tough spot. How can you be considered a reputable news outlet if there are certain stories you aren’t allowed to pursue?

Not that the big boss has any sympathy. Back when he announced his candidacy, Bloomberg told “CBS This Morning”’s Gayle King that “you just have to learn to live with some things. They get a paycheck. But with your paycheck comes some restrictions and responsibilities.”

The whole thing simmered down, mostly because we didn’t know just how seriously to take Bloomberg as a candidate.

That was two months ago.

Media coverage this week:

MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up https://t.co/L0BfYBuCek pic.twitter.com/LXSZvMiNdV

— The Onion (@TheOnion) February 18, 2020

And more media coverage:

New: I talked to the pollster behind the poll that left Elizabeth Warren out of a key question, angering her supporters. He said they were only able to poll 5 candidates, and the fifth spot went to Klobuchar.https://t.co/Elue4tFR0k

— Molly Hensley-Clancy (@mollyhc) February 19, 2020

Bernie is doing very well in the new NBC/WSJ poll as well, with a double digit lead. 

Hypothetical matchups for just the states of AZ, CO, FL, ME, MI, MN, NV, NH, NC, PA, WI (combined): Biden 52%, Trump 44% Sanders 49%, Trump 48% Bloomberg 48%, Trump 46% Klob 48%, Trump 47% Buttigieg 47%, Trump, 47%

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) February 18, 2020

Biden’s general election numbers hold up. Doesn’t mean Biden can get there.

You can count me as firmly in the camp that thinks all this talk about Trump's approval rating hitting record highs and his chance of re-election soaring recently is pretty much just BS pic.twitter.com/5BXvP3gUCg

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) February 18, 2020

There are differences between panel polls (no change) and telephone polls (small trump rise); the panel polls were very accurate so sar in primary season. Seems like it depends how you recruit the panels, though. 

What Pew also shows is that environmental issues will play a big part in this election:

As Economic Concerns Recede, Environmental Protection Rises on the Public’s Policy Agenda

Partisan gap on dealing with climate change gets even wider

And finally, socialism has a big ballot problem this fall. NPR:

Sanders Rises, But Socialism Isn't Popular With Most Americans

If socialism is so unpopular with Americans, how can Sanders be on the rise in the Democratic primary? Because Democrats and, more specifically, progressives view socialism favorably. Half of Democrats said so, while more than two-thirds of progressives did.

Just 23% of independents, though, and 7% of Republicans viewed socialism favorably….

Views of socialism grow more unfavorably the older the generation, but even 50% of Gen Z and Millennials had an unfavorable view of it, as opposed to just 38%, who had a favorable one.

Suburban voters, who have been trending with Democrats since Trump's election, are overwhelmingly against it by a 27%-to-61% margin.

Capitalism, on the other hand, was viewed overwhelmingly favorably by a 57%-to-29% margin. But a majority of progressives (52%) had an unfavorable view of capitalism, as did a 45%-to-37% plurality of African Americans...

The views of capitalism versus socialism is one reason why Republicans prefer to face Sanders in the general election. They and veteran Democrats point out that Sanders hasn't yet faced the likely barrage of attacks around his economic belief system — Democratic socialism.

But Sanders, in this poll and others, does beat President Trump in a head-to-head match up, 48% to 45%. That's something his campaign and surrogates are eager to point out

We are the majority in this country when it comes to Trump and the environment. Socialism? No. Progressivism? No, alas.

We can win in November, but our job just got harder.

Vox:

Mike Bloomberg and his billions are what Democrats need to beat Trump

The fifth in a Vox series making the best case for each of the top Democratic contenders.

The case for Bloomberg goes beyond his mayoral record. He has poured millions of dollars into fighting climate change and illegal guns, and has injected funds into federal and state elections that have made a difference — in 2018, 21 of the 24 Democratic congressional candidates Bloomberg gave money to won. That’s quite a winning streak and shows he knows how to put money in the right places. A similar strategy and spending push could be critically important in 2020 when Democrats try to hold the House and take back the Senate. In December, Bloomberg gave $10 million to House Democrats being attacked by Republicans over impeachment and $5 million to Stacey Abrams’s Fair Fight effort to protect voting rights, demonstrating his commitment to boosting the party.

Bloomberg is worth more than $50 billion, and he’s not interested in anyone else’s money, committing to self-funding his campaign. Bloomberg has all the resources he needs to combat the Trump machine, and he doesn’t have to spend time and energy courting donors and then returning favors to them if and when he’s in the White House.

[NB This article is the fifth in the series. Our case for Bernie Sanders is here; our case for Elizabeth Warren is here; our case for Joe Biden is here; our case for Pete Buttigieg is here. Vox does not endorse individual candidates.]

Posting the above  and the below as a reminder that what we find distasteful about Bloomberg (and Trump) is not necessarily shared by the voting public writ large.

Among gun rights folks, Bloomberg generates a level of vitriol usually only reserved for George Soros among conservatives. https://t.co/MG8CT2Wgob

— Anthony Zurcher (@awzurcher) February 18, 2020

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

The Trumpian Liberalism of Michael Bloomberg

He may be running as the anti-Trump, but when it comes to the politics of racial control, there is a resemblance.

Donald Trump is who he is as a politician because of his unapologetically racial vision of the American nation. Trump’s America is white, and he sees his job as protecting that whiteness from black and brown people who might come to the country or claim greater status within it. That’s what it meant to “make America great again.” And he’s delivered, using the power of the office and the force of the state to attack and stigmatize black and brown people, from outspoken celebrities to ordinary immigrants.

If that’s our lens for understanding Trump — if the heart of his movement and ideology is racial control — then it appears we finally have a Democratic equivalent, a figure who works on the same signal albeit at a different frequency. It’s Michael Bloomberg, the other New York billionaire in American politics, who is currently campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

There are clear objections to thinking of Bloomberg this way. He may have been a Republican, but he’s also a liberal. He has given hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal causes and Democratic politicians. He spent more than $100 million helping Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in 2018. He’s also given tens of millions of dollars to environmental groups and spent millions more lobbying for new gun control laws. He’s given to Democratic super PACs and voting rights groups, individual politicians and the Democratic National Committee itself. And while he is an imperious personality with a disdain for limits — he got the rules changed so he could serve a third term as mayor of New York — he also doesn’t share the president’s criminality, corruption and complete contempt for constitutional government.

But he does share one important quality.

Although he never articulated it in these terms, Bloomberg’s actions as mayor reveal that he was someone who also saw black and brown people as threats to the security and prosperity of his territory, New York. And under his administration, the city became a quasi-authoritarian state for many of its black, brown and Muslim residents.

I understand frustrations of those who prefer candidates with little chance of winning (I do too) I also understand & share the annoyance at IA & NH roles But historically, it is not early but very late in the process. Few (or maybe only 1) have a precedented path to a majority pic.twitter.com/QmfUAkwTLi

— Matt Grossmann (@MattGrossmann) February 18, 2020

Jason Sattler/USA Today:

Stop Bloomberg. He's showing billionaires how to buy the presidency and it's dangerous.

While Trump used his star power and shamelessness to execute a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, Bloomberg is purchasing Democrats' affection.

Forbes now estimates that Bloomberg is worth $64 billion, which means his wealth is likely growing faster than he can spend it. And his campaign is spending it at a record pace, with $1 million a day going to Facebook ads alone, campaign rallies catered with food and wine, and generous salaries flooding out to staffers all over the country.

And it’s working.

He’s rising in the polls and leading in the latest poll in Florida, the state with the fourth most delegates to hand out for the Democratic convention. He will even be onstage for the Democratic debate Wednesday in Las Vegas, thanks to rule changes that seemed designed to allow him to qualify.

The popular consensus is that you could not possibly be competitive for the nomination if you skipped the first four primary contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — that are meant to cull the pack of candidates. That consensus is being crushed under the weight of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Why are "billionaires" the right direction? https://t.co/urv1KV18io

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) February 18, 2020

Congrats to the Iowa Dems for goofing up the night of the caucuses, releasing misleading preliminary data 24 hours later, only slowly updating those numbers for a more accurate picture, publishing obviously wrong final numbers and two weeks later publishing real, different ones.

— Philip Bump (@pbump) February 19, 2020

In non-primary news:

Axios:

Economists warn coronavirus risk far worse than realized

What's happening: The number of confirmed cases has already far outpaced expectations and even those reports are being viewed through a lens of suspicion that the Chinese government is underreporting the figures.

Yet, U.S. stock indexes have continued to hit all-time highs, bond spreads remain compressed, and even some Asian bourses have recouped losses that followed the initial coronavirus headlines.

Driving the news: Of the 364 companies that have held Q4 earnings calls, 138 cited the term “coronavirus” during the call, and about 25% of those included some impact from the coronavirus or modified guidance due to the virus, according to FactSet.

You can count me as firmly in the camp that thinks all this talk about Trump's approval rating hitting record highs and his chance of re-election soaring recently is pretty much just BS pic.twitter.com/5BXvP3gUCg

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) February 18, 2020

Bloomberg Businessweek:

The Lasting Toll of a Deadly Virus

Hyundai, Levi Strauss, and Apple are already feeling the impact of the coronavirus.

There are a lot of ways things could sour. The virus might spread more than expected, flaring up in countries that are less capable or less willing than China to impose a stringent cordon sanitaire. Businesses built to survive brief disruptions will go bankrupt if the epidemic drags on. And in the long run, even after this epidemic ends, it could leave scars, particularly in China itself. Corporate executives will be less keen to do business with the world’s workshop if it’s also perceived as the world’s incubator of deadly viruses.

Right now no one can be sure which way the story will go, as forecasters are the first to admit. “Rapid containment and escalating contagion are both possibilities, and would result in widely different growth forecasts,” the Bloomberg Economics forecasters, Chang Shu, Jamie Rush, and Tom Orlik, wrote in their Jan. 31 report.

What’s clear is that the viral epidemic is already hurting business. 

Sara Gideon 43% Susan Collins 42% https://t.co/FGeTgn1I5Y

— Bill Scher (@billscher) February 18, 2020

Rebecca Traister/New York:

The Immoderate Susan Collins

After a long career voting across the aisle, why did the Maine senator gamble her legacy on Trump?

In short, Collins has gone from pleasing an unusually high number of people, at least some of the time, to pleasing vanishingly few people almost never…

Despite all this, Collins might well win in 2020. Sure, the money is pouring in for Gideon, and at least in southern Maine, home to liberal and left voters, bumpers are affixed with BYE-BYE, SUSAN stickers. Every time she makes a statement, the internet is awash with people posting donations to Gideon (or one of her Democratic rivals). Google analytics show that impeachment season had a huge spike in searches for “Collins’s opponent.” Control of the Senate rests on a couple of seats viewed as potentially flippable; it is possible that she will be running in the wake of a Supreme Court decision in June Medical Services v. Gee that will result in the closing of vast numbers of abortion clinics, with all eyes on the senators who installed Kavanaugh.

But it’s hard to beat incumbents. “Pundits always want to predict that Maine is much more competitive than it is,” said Gilman.

Toby McGrath said, “This is probably the most difficult race that she’s ever had. But one of the difficulties for Democrats is that there’s going to be the highest turnout we’ve ever had in Maine. With the presidential election, I think we could be at 75 or 80 percent, with a lot of low-information voters showing up to the polls. They’ve known Susan Collins’s name for five elections.”…

Choosing between a party that now demands total fealty and a constituency she’s promised independence, Collins — a woman who has built her image around being a careful, thoughtful decision-maker — appears to have made no decision at all about the best way to keep her power. Instead, she is hoping that she can pretend to do both without anyone noticing.

It might work. But if I were her, I’d be deeply concerned.

This will be today:

Group of federal judges calls emergency meeting over concerns about DOJ's intervention in politically sensitive cases - CNNPolitics https://t.co/qDBnNLSBJw

— gdthomas (@gdthomas) February 18, 2020

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

With New Hampshire and Iowa in the rear view mirror, next up is Nevada, Feb 22 and South Carolina, February 29. 

Watch for the “national polls mean nothing” folks to suddenly discover national polls 🤔. But perhaps more interesting in the new Morning Consult poll — all interviews post-NH — is support by race. Bernie is doing great there, 30 (Black) and 48 (Hispanic), but the numbers that also jump out are Pete’s 4 and 8 and Amy’s 1 and 3. They aren’t encouraging if you want to be the nominee of the Democratic party. Mike Bloomberg, by way of contrast, is 19/17, Biden 34/13.

Why all of a sudden the chatter about Bloomberg? My guess is there are lots of folks unsettled and downright unhappy about the remaining choices (including Bloomberg). I think it’s going to be one of those elections, with tough choices to make. Buckle up, we have work to do.

Follow us below the fold for more.

We are just two election nights into this whole Dem nomination, but the once crazy idea of a Bernie vs. Bloomberg matchup looking more real by the day. https://t.co/ncuBD2hUMM

— amy walter (@amyewalter) February 14, 2020

Why have I been throwing Bloomberg’s name around? This is why:

When they (whomever they may be) finally engage with him in the run up to Super Tuesday, it'll be too late for things to really sink in; 2/3 of the delegates are going to be awarded in March.

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) February 14, 2020

Is it working? Well… look.

New national poll of the Democratic primary from @MorningConsult, fielded entirely after New Hampshire. Support + change vs pre-NH Sanders: 29% (+4) Biden: 19 (-3) Bloomberg: 18 (+1) Buttigieg: 11 Warren: 10 (-1) Klobuchar: 5 (+2)https://t.co/00YEl7Zd2g

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) February 13, 2020

Sanders' numbers call to mind the "rainbow coalition" Jesse Jackson tried to assemble in the '80s, built around leftist/working class politics. But while he got ~95% of the black vote, Jackson's ceiling with whites was around 10% with many more refusing to even consider him.

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) February 13, 2020

Norm Ornstein/Daily News:

Learn to get comfortable, voters: Weaning ourselves off instant gratification on election night

The New Hampshire primary played out the way journalists and pundits love: as a close contest with excitement, and a declared winner before the night was out. Contrast that with Iowa. The night of the Iowa Caucuses saw television anchors, reporters and analysts openly angry in a way we rarely see them. The anger was in part at the Iowa Democratic Party’s comedy of errors, a Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight creating havoc and uncertainty that still reverberates. But a good share of that anger was from the frustration that their coverage had no conclusion, no opportunity to declare winners that night and then do their panel evaluations of what it all means. They wanted results and wanted them now.

I will give no aid and comfort to Iowa’s Democratic Party. But the fact is that with a complicated process, including the party’s commitment to report every column of results in the caucus version of rank-choice voting, where initial supporters of one candidate would move to their second choices if their first did not cross a threshold of 15% support, it could well have taken a day or more to sort out winners and losers, even without an app disaster and backup-phone-line gridlock

In the “most important news” category, unhappiness with Bill Barr at DOJ bubbled over and forced a farce:

"The most important role of the attorney general is to protect Department of Justice from improper political influence, including from the president... https://t.co/6RJzMEIrP7

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 13, 2020

And here is an instructive tweet with a lot of truth:

I am one of those people who: -thinks the health care debate is the most instructive difference between Dem presidential candidates -doesn�t think there�d be much governing difference between them on health care because Congress Embrace the paradox.https://t.co/ZY29Tc8s5X

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) February 13, 2020

On coronavirus:

LA Times:

How deadly is the new coronavirus? Scientists race to find the answer

Of all the questions scientists hope to answer about the new coronavirus sweeping across the globe, the most pressing is this: How deadly is it?

The only way to know is to figure out how many people have been infected — and that’s the real challenge.

More than 60,000 infections have been confirmed, but experts are certain there are at least tens of thousands more. Some cases haven’t been counted because patients didn’t have biological samples sent to a lab. Some never saw a doctor, and others had such mild symptoms that they didn’t even know they were sick.

Without a true picture of the total number of cases, it’s impossible to calculate a fatality rate. That’s why scores of epidemiologists and mathematicians are working to solve one of the most complex modeling problems of their time.

About six weeks ago, China was reporting on the first 41 cases of confirmed #coronavirus in that country. Singapore and Hong Kong have now each hit 50 cases. Modeling suggests that the time from first introduction to epidemic spread is about 10 weeks. https://t.co/YvYRjjFFeS

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) February 12, 2020

Nate Cohn/NY Times:

The Math That Could Add Up to a Sanders Nomination

Why 15 percent is so important to him, and how Bloomberg could scramble those calculations.

It had been thought that Mr. Biden could perform well in more diverse states like Nevada and South Carolina to consolidate the moderate wing heading into Super Tuesday. But it is not at all clear whether he is strong enough to take advantage of more friendly terrain, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. His standing in post-Iowa national polls has taken a far greater hit than Mrs. Clinton’s four years ago, and his standing could drop further after New Hampshire.

His collapse in New Hampshire and Iowa certainly offers additional reason to think he could fade down the stretch, whether it’s because he has been outspent on advertising, because some of his rivals have gained as they have become better known, or because his performances on the debate stage and stump have raised doubts among his supporters.

Even if one of the three moderate candidates emerges as plainly the strongest of the bunch, it remains unclear whether any has the resources or broad appeal necessary to reunite the disparate elements of the typical establishment-friendly coalition.

Striking chart in this @foxjust Bloomberg piece on Trump's steel tariffs. There are less people employed in the steel/primary metals industry than there were before the tariffs were announced in March 2018... https://t.co/U5QX75h5Sk pic.twitter.com/l23vLkITl7

— Shawn Donnan (@sdonnan) February 13, 2020

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

Time for Democrats to get much tougher with William Barr

This leaves Democrats no choice but to escalate their oversight of Barr in any way they can. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who has been prodding them on this, suggested to me that a handful of leading Democrats should devote themselves to going on the airwaves and “hounding Barr from office.”

This is so utterly weak. You don�t get to work closely with Trump in implementing some of his most indefendible policies, stay silent for a year after leaving, wait until AFTER the president has been acquitted, and then expect applause when you speak up https://t.co/97rsCCxCTM

— Quinta "Pro Quo" Jurecic (@qjurecic) February 13, 2020

There is this odd phenomena among those who work for Trump and later try to spin what they did. It�s as if they think integrity and decency are items that can be sold to a pawn shop and reclaimed at a later date unharmed and no one will notice.

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) February 13, 2020

WaPo Editorial:

The degradation of William Barr’s Justice Department is nearly complete

The most important role of the attorney general is to protect the department from improper political influence, including from the president. Mr. Barr should have ensured that Mr. Stone’s case was handled with strict professionalism, as the career prosecutors sought to do, and shielded them from White House pressure, direct or indirect. To all appearances, he did the opposite. Mr. Trump evidently thinks so: “Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought,” he tweeted.

White House officials say since President Trump's acquittal on impeachment charges, he is determined to assert an iron grip on government, pushing his Justice Department to ease up on friends while exacting payback on real and perceived foes. https://t.co/6XwztcOeTq

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) February 13, 2020

Nieman Lab:

McClatchy files for bankruptcy, likely ending 163 years of family control and setting up more consolidation in local news

The hedge fund that will likely soon control America’s second-largest newspaper chain, Chatham Asset Management, is also majority owner of the National Enquirer and Canada’s largest newspaper chain. It is advancing its “fundamental thesis on late-stage media consolidation in North America.”

And McClatchy’s own Sacramento Bee, the newspaper that started the chain in 1857:

The Chapter 11 filing will allow McClatchy to restructure its debts and, it hopes, shed much of its pension obligations. Under a plan outlined in its filing to a federal bankruptcy court, about 60 percent of its debt would be eliminated as the news organization tries to reposition for a digital future.

The likely new owners, if the court accepts the plan, would be led by hedge fund Chatham Asset Management LLC. They would operate McClatchy as a privately held company. More than 7 million shares of both publicly available and protected family-owned stock would be canceled.

“While this is obviously a sad milestone after 163 years of family control, McClatchy remains a strong operating company and committed to essential local news and information,” said Kevin McClatchy, chairman of the company that has carried his family name since the days of the California Gold Rush. “While we tried hard to avoid this step, there’s no question that the scale of our 75-year-old pension plan — with 10 pensioners for every single active employee — is a reflection of another economic era.”

(It’s oddly comforting that the McClatchy story is by far the best and most detailed of the bunch.)

Jim Jordan's name comes up during Statehouse testimony on an OSU abuse victims bill. "Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling� begging me to go against my brother�That's the kind of cover-up that�s going on there." https://t.co/KJ3ofDhsQW

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 13, 2020

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

More on New Hampshire in subsequent days (it all happened last night!) Story of the night: Bernie won but didn’t run away with it. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are non Bernie placeholders and fought it out for second (and a late surge for Amy may have prevented a Pete win and vice versa). All three have a claim on winning something, and/but they still has to prove they can win elsewhere. Everyone else just flat out lost (Andrew Yang suspended his campaign last night). Now on to more diverse Nevada, Feb 22 and South Carolina, February 29. And Mike Bloomberg is circling out there.

 Meanwhile, the DOJ political intervention in the Roger Stone case is also an important evolving story. So big, in fact, that it cut into NH coverage on cable last night and shared the top story slot.

Not just me looking at NH this way:

Because he won with over 60% in a landslide in 2016. And he had over 150k votes. It�s a win, but also means he nearly lost half his voters or more to other candidates- notably two left-center candidates, Buttigieg and Klobuchar. https://t.co/FdFrknKIO2

— Joel Benenson (@benensonj) February 12, 2020

My take has been that if Sanders changes the electorate, he�ll be a force moderates can�t stop. Based on IA and NH he is not changing the electorate. But we�ve got 48 states left. https://t.co/n4psxS9XwG

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 12, 2020

But big picture:

The part of the electorate that has expanded isn�t the young Bernie coalition, but the educated suburbs. Question is if anyone can consolidate it.

— Conor Sen (@conorsen) February 12, 2020

NH Primary: Democrats hope this is the start of a political exorcism of President Trump, as their frustration has been very evident. "Job one is defeating Donald Trump," a man told Joe Biden in Hudson on Sunday. "I hate the man. I hate him." https://t.co/ZzAkOc5fpA

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) February 11, 2020

44% of folks who took part in the Dem primary said they were registered undeclared/Independent voters. Among them: Sanders: 25% Klobuchar: 24% Buttigieg: 21% Biden: 8% Warren: 7%https://t.co/iSHZFnoBOm

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) February 12, 2020

Keep in mind Bernie and Pete are more organized than Amy and have more staff. And while I love Elizabeth Warren, it was a very bad night for her (and bad for Joe Biden, who has no money and organization).

This is everything:

More than 8 in 10 NH Dem primary voters say they will support the nominee no matter who it is. pic.twitter.com/FhwDJQSAsR

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) February 12, 2020

So, Bernie has to grow and the non Bernie vote being carved up helps him.  And Mike Bloomberg remains the wild card.

Meanwhile, the other story:

BREAKING: Now, all four federal prosecutors on the Stone case have asked the judge to withdraw from the case. Michael Marando joins the rest of his team including Aaron Zelinsky, Jonathan Kravis, and Adam Jed.

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) February 11, 2020

Asked about Roger Stone, Trump says he has an �absolute right� to tell the Justice Department what to do pic.twitter.com/AZRv9Aff7P

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2020

This will be known in the history books as the "OMFG It's Only Tuesday Afternoon Massacre" https://t.co/XSQ8M9MsAZ

— Michael Roston (@michaelroston) February 11, 2020

What if this one time, instead of "raising questions," it's providing answers? https://t.co/3pyuNAL9Fc

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 11, 2020

In other news...

Ron Brownstein/CNN:

Today may mark the end of the Iowa-New Hampshire monopoly

In this year's presidential campaign, the distorting effects of providing such power to two virtually all-white states in an increasingly diversifying party have grown impossible to ignore. The vote-counting meltdown in Iowa's antiquated and haphazard caucus system -- a process used partly to circumvent New Hampshire's law requiring it to hold the nation's first primary -- has further underlined the flaws in the existing order.

Just so you know, if Biden implodes as now looks very possible, it will take about 12 seconds for the Senate and Trump admin investigations of Hunter Biden to be dropped so they can focus their strong commitment to fighting corruption on Jane Sanders.

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) February 10, 2020

Doesn’t matter that it’s bogus. Just understand what’s coming. Trump is already starting on Bloomberg.

Bloomberg's favorable rating among black voters in NYS (where they know him best): 61%. That's actually better than his favorable rating among all Dems in NYS. https://t.co/tVwXAKUye9

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) February 11, 2020

Nathan Gonzales/Roll Call:

RIP, election night

Vote-by-mail and close races could delay when the real story of 2020 is known

It’s time to retire the term “election night.”

The semiannual national tradition of staying up a few hours past bedtime to know who will control our government is over. From close races to “vote by mail” to human error, it’s becoming clear that counting votes no longer fits neatly into prime-time television windows. Reporters and politicos should prepare to practice patience when handling and digesting the results.

The recent chaos surrounding the Iowa caucuses was just a taste of what’s to come. Due to the lack of results, there was no clear winner, which created confusion rather than clarity in the search for a narrative on election night. But while the Iowa crisis might have been avoided with a working app, the 2020 elections won’t be as easy to uncomplicate.

Looking beyond the 2000 presidential election (which wasn’t decided until more than a month after Election Day), the 2018 midterm elections were a prime example of how the narrative of a cycle can evolve beyond election night.

Quinnipiac - 2020 head to head matchups vs Trump: Bloomberg 51-42 Sanders 51-43 Biden 50-43 Klobuchar 49-43 Warren 48-44 Buttigieg 47-43 If these are Trump's numbers after his "best week ever," he's going to have a really bad time in November. Absolutely brutal poll for Trump.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) February 10, 2020

Gabriel Leung/NY Times with an excellent piece:

The Urgent Questions Scientists Are Asking About Coronavirus

Let’s start with what we don’t know.

What do we most need to know next? For epidemiologists who track infectious diseases, the most pressing concerns are how to estimate the lethality of the disease and who is susceptible; getting detailed information on how it spreads; and evaluating the success of control measures so far.

No. 1 is the “clinical iceberg” question: How much of it is hidden below the surface? Because the outbreak is still evolving, we can’t yet see the totality of those infected. Out of view is some proportion of mildly infected people, with minor symptoms or no symptoms, who no one knows are infected.

A fleet of invisible carriers sounds ominous; but in fact, an enormous hidden figure would mean many fewer of the infected are dying. Usually, simple math would determine this “case fatality” ratio: divide the total number of deaths by the total number of people infected. In an emerging epidemic, however, both numbers keep changing, and sometimes at different speeds. This makes simple division impossible; you will invariably get it wrong.

The State Department triggers authorized departure for non-emergency U.S. personnel in Hong Kong pic.twitter.com/aVqcfFPw0I

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) February 11, 2020

Another excellent piece from NY Times:

Inundated With Flu Patients, U.S. Hospitals Brace for Coronavirus

Resources are already stretched during flu season. With so much medical equipment and drugs made in China, public health experts are anxiously watching the global supply chain.

The mask shortage highlights just how dependent the United States health care system is on goods from China. Premier was told last week that a Taiwanese factory it had a contract with was halting shipments to the United States. In addition, Chaun Powell, the group vice president of strategic supplier engagement for Premier, said masks that are made in China are being diverted for use there. As a result, “there’s not as much supply to ship,” he said.

However you assess Trump�s re-election odds, the overall political dynamics of his presidency have been extremely stable. I think it�s still hard for people to process the idea that big events don�t necessarily change presidential politics very much these days. https://t.co/MYIcDufkQx

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) February 10, 2020

Policy Tensor:

THE EVIDENCE FROM IOWA (SO FAR)

So, who should we bet on to oust Trump? If the pattern evident in Iowa holds, Biden and Sanders may both be viable against Trump. Biden is viable because he is working class and working class folk can tell that he is one of their own just by the way he talks — recall that class is passed on at your parents dinner table. As I suspected, the Biden tendency is the shadow of the class war on the Democratic primary. Sanders is viable because he does well in communities that are struggling. If you think that Trump is in the White House because large parts of the country are in trouble, and he has done little to help them, Sanders is your man. If you think that only a man who can out-blue collar Trump can oust Trump, Biden’s your guy. If progressives want Sanders instead of Biden because the former can be expected to demolish the neoliberal political economy, they must begin by losing the Boasian scold.

Ultimately, the governing question is whether culture or economics is more important to the meaning-making of the working class. For at issue in what Lind calls the New Class War, is not just the vertical and spatial polarization of value-added, income and wealth, but the concentration of symbolic production and the cultural desertification of vast swaths of America. Intellectuals have for too long paid attention to the former at the cost of the latter. It is time to pay attention to the historical sociology of the white working class — the dominant strata of American society. And to bring geography back to the center of political analysis, where it belongs.

Next time someone says �I don�t think Trump is racist� - show them ��. You can�t pick your family but you can pick who you hire. Show me the people you hire and you are showing me you.https://t.co/A4VJdXiG9E

— Jeff Kemp (@jkempcpa) February 11, 2020

Dana Milbank/WaPo:

Trump’s budget reveals a tremendous fraud

Trump promised to balance the budget, retire the debt, protect and enhance entitlements, and grow the economy at a rate far beyond anything we’ve seen. But he did none of that, and now he asks: “Who the hell cares about the budget?”

The fraud is in the open.

How to win elections https://t.co/Tph0AmO2J2

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 11, 2020

The Senate impeachment trial was conducted *unfairly,* voters say by a 24-point margin. (59% to 35%) New Quinnipiac Poll:https://t.co/9AdFdHpNu5 https://t.co/vj89EzKS6N

� Heidi Przybyla (@HeidiNBC) February 10, 2020

And more on our corruption story (not the DOJ):

NEW: Trump's AG secretary has quietly confirmed he won�t order an internal investigation into why a corruption-riddled Brazilian meatpacker got millions in farm bailouts. His reason: The company is already under several other investigations so why bother. https://t.co/AEwouxXL50

— Chris Sommerfeldt (@C_Sommerfeldt) February 12, 2020

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

We all know what was coming. Even Susan Collins knew. Well, maybe she knew. I mean, she can’t be that dumb, right? so she must have been lying.

Yovanovitch forced into retirement. Taylor forced back into retirement. Vindman expelled from the NSC. Sondland fired. Sounds like a purge to me.

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) February 7, 2020

In any case, she owns this.

We�ve reached the nadir where even Gordon Sondland is more of a patriot than @SenatorCollins

— Frank Rich (@frankrichny) February 8, 2020

Frederick E Hoxie/USA today:

Trump impeachment acquittal is bad news for democracy, but history shows us how to cope

We have been here before. Our predecessors dug in and took it one topic, one government failure and one election at a time. We should, too.

Changes came but not quickly  

The pictures were gripping, but politicians in 1890 were more concerned with the operation of their political machines and winning partisan battles over tariffs and the gold standard. Sweatshops continued to proliferate, while children, sharecroppers and industrial workers labored on in obscurity. The rich enjoyed their privileged lives, protected by the absence of wage and labor laws, public health standards, environmental controls and a federal income tax.

Words that @SenatorCollins will eat from now to election day: �I believe the president has learned from this case...The president has been impeached, that�s a pretty big lesson,� �...I believe he will be much more cautious in the future."

— Jackie Calmes (@jackiekcalmes) February 8, 2020

Joe Walsh/WaPo:

Challenging Trump for the GOP nomination taught me my party is a cult

Real conservatives think for themselves. Trump Republicans have been brainwashed.

My chances are slim — don’t worry, I know.

It’s been made even tougher by the party canceling primaries to shield the president from being challenged. And by Fox News, and the rest of Trump’s lapdog conservative media, denying me airtime. But I’ve been on TV, I’ve served in Congress and I hosted my own talk-radio show. I don’t need the airtime. More than anything else, what’s made this challenge nearly impossible — to a degree that I didn’t fully realize when I first hit the trail — is how brainwashed so many of my fellow Republicans seem to have become. I hate to say it, but the GOP now resembles a cult.

I was already sensing this, but I was slapped hard in the face this past week at the Iowa caucuses: Last Thursday, the president came to Des Moines for one of his narcissistic rallies. I was in Des Moines, too, so I tried to talk to some folks outside the event before they went in — makes sense, right? Here’s a captive audience of Republican voters. But it turned out to be one of the most frustrating (and frankly, sad) experiences I can recall. I asked dozens of people a very simple, straightforward question: “Has President Trump ever told a lie to the American people?” And every single person said, “No.” Never mind that thousands of his misstatements have been meticulously documented. No, they said, he’s never lied.

Doubly a good idea. https://t.co/cTlpzM6Jcr

— Robert Schlesinger (@rschles) February 7, 2020

Steve Koczela/WBUR:

The Outcomes, Not The Vote Count Meltdown, Show Why Iowa Can’t Go First Anymore

The outcomes are more than just who got how many votes (however that’s counted) or who ends up with more state delegate equivalents (whatever those are). They also include perceived momentum and viability, positive media coverage, fundraising, and the benefits that come with each. On that score, this primary cycle offers a very clear illustration that it’s the candidates who appeal to white voters who benefit at the expense of everyone else.

Joe Biden has led in most national polls for months, and his support among black voters has far outpaced his rivals. A Pew survey in the lead up to Iowa found Biden with 36% of the black vote nationally, over 20 points more than any other candidate, echoing many other surveys. Of course there is no national primary, but these figures provide a pretty good indication of how different the process — and resulting media narrative — would be if white voters didn’t get a head start.

2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus attendance vs. 2016... Five most college-educated counties: Dallas (Des Moines burbs): +38% Johnson (Iowa City): +9% Polk (Des Moines): +7% Story (Ames): +1% Linn (Cedar Rapids): +1% Everywhere else: -6%

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 7, 2020

Dallas was a Pete win.

LA Times:

How Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders split Iowa voters

A closer look at the results shows that different areas and demographic groups pushed the two candidates ahead of the pack. Here's how it played out.

Sanders in the cities, Buttigieg in the burbs

Buttigieg did well across the state, winning the Des Moines suburbs, a crucial battleground, and many smaller towns. Sanders’ victories were concentrated in more densely populated cities, like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

FiveThirtyEight:

Election Update: Buttigieg Is Rising In New Hampshire

Today’s piece of good news for the Buttigieg campaign was an NBC News/Marist poll of New Hampshire, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, that showed Sanders at 25 percent and Buttigieg at 21 percent. (They were followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 14 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 13 percent and Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 8 percent. However, New Hampshire is probably just a two-person race — our model thinks there is only a 7 percent chance that someone other than Sanders or Buttigieg wins.) In Marist’s last New Hampshire poll, conducted Jan. 20-23, Sanders had 22 percent and Buttigieg had 17 percent, so they both did a bit better in the latest poll — although the differences were within the margin of error. Still, no other candidate experienced a boost of more than 1 percentage point.

And given the evidence from other polls, it seems safe to say that Buttigieg, at least, is on the upswing in New Hampshire. Both Suffolk University/Boston Globe/WBZ-TV and 7 News/Emerson College have been conducting tracking polls of the Granite State, and the latest installment of each was released late last night. And the trend is clear:

Bernie is flat, and Pete is rising. But NH voters make up their mind late and we had a debate last night so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The media continues to treat climate change like it�s a third tier, minor issue � at best. But on the ground in New Hampshire, I�m finding voters take it very seriously. https://t.co/T1FFsiutIy

— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) February 8, 2020

Click the link for the updated coronavirus dashboard from Johns Hopkins.

It�s likely that as more data accrues, the percent of mild and moderate disease will increase as proportion of total burden. But even if this data from WHO is still underestimating mild cases because we�re not diagnosing them, we�re confronting a very serious potential threat.

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) February 7, 2020

Key words are potential and serious.

Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:

The media stumbles in covering Trump

President Trump engaged in a post-impeachment trial event — a rant really — at the White House. He appeared unhinged, angry and resentful in what was billed as a speech but amounted to a disjointed stream of consciousness. The diatribe lasted more than an hour in the East Room of the White House, not normally the setting for a political harangue. To the consternation, I am sure, of Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who expressed the belief that Trump had learned his lesson (she later said it was “aspirational”), he was not contrite. More important, he was not composed nor in control of himself.

He struck out at Democrats as “evil,” “vicious” and “corrupt” people; expressed anger that “nothing happens” to Hillary Clinton (the Justice Department found no grounds for anything); called the FBI “scum" and “dirty cops”; weirdly recounted in gruesome terms the shooting of Republican House whip Steve Scalise (R-La.); and took a veiled swipe at Hunter Biden. (With not a shred of self-awareness, he declared, “They think that’s okay, because if it is — is Ivanka in the audience? Is Ivanka here? — boy, my kids could make a fortune. They could make a fortune. It’s corrupt.” They have, and it is.)

This might be the worst physician advocacy position I have ever seen. Because health care is now "more affordable," people are "disincentivized" from being healthy. By her (absent) logic, if we made health care cost $1 zillion dollars, everyone would be much healthier. https://t.co/vyAfmdVeeu

— Tyler Black, MD (@tylerblack32) February 8, 2020

Danielle Carr/The Nation:

Why Doctors Are Fighting Their Professional Organization Over Medicare for All

Calls for single-payer are coming from outside the American Medical Association—and show that doctors are not a single class of workers with a unified political view.

Even in the AMA, change is in the air. In June 2019, the medical students’ chapter introduced a proposal to strike down the AMA’s unconditional opposition to single-payer. The students were narrowly defeated, 53 to 47 percent, in the organization’s policy-​setting House of Delegates. Pressure from within has forced the AMA to withdraw from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, an industry coalition of insurance and hospital lobbies opposed to single-payer. As public support for Medicare for All continues to enjoy widespread support, the AMA’s inflexibility increasingly looks as if it could disqualify the group from a seat at the policy-making table in the future.

this is a good argument with trump it doesn't even trickle down https://t.co/XbdGORdL4L

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 7, 2020

Here are two separate but related concepts from outside our bubble: Trump re-election and M4A not happening.  I think the first is 50-50 and not a lock. Wall Street political forecasts aren’t any better than anyone else’s — see 2008 —  and they like to gamble, but the second… may be close to correct.

Hard to overstate how overwhelming the feeling is on Wall Streer that Trump is a near lock for re-election. https://t.co/SiVkkGbOCX

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) February 7, 2020

NY Times on an ongoing farm and corruption issue we’re following that highlights ways to talk to those non college areas:

Farm Bailout Paid to Brazilian Meat Processor Angers Lawmakers

Lawmakers want to know why a Brazilian-owned company got payments from a program aimed to help American farmers weather President Trump’s trade war.

About $67 million in bailout funds have gone to JBS USA, the subsidiary of JBS S.A., a Brazilian company that is the world’s biggest meat-processing firm.

Lawmakers have argued that a company with foreign-held ownership should be getting more scrutiny, particularly one that encountered legal troubles three years ago. In 2017, two of JBS S.A.’s former top executives, brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista, pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Brazil.

The Batista family, through a holding company, remains the largest shareholder of JBS S.A.

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

So yesterday we got to hear Donald Trump whine, gloat and introduce some of his sycophants to the general public (Mike Braun, Josh Hawley, among others). He would have had it a day sooner, but Mitt Romney’s vote against him would not permit the equilibrium to do so. 

"had I not fired James Comey, it's possible I wouldn't even be standing here right now" �� Trump, admitting his crimes

— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) February 6, 2020

Still, like OJ, the public knows he’s guilty and nothing he says will change that. So what else are the pundits saying?

This Trump speech would make sense if he was delivering it to his therapist, and the transitions were just the therapist prompting, "and how does that make you feel?"

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) February 6, 2020

In Iowa (remember Iowa?), Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttegieg are virtually tied (at least within the Margin of Incompetence), and now it’s on to New Hampshire. But get rid of these caucuses. The people whom participated are wonderful. The systems issues, however, do not do them justice.

This system dates to the 19th century. It wasn't designed for this level of turnout or scrutiny. We're trying to make it like a primary, while preserving the caucus form, just so Iowa can vote before New Hampshire, which insists on holding the first primary. Time for a rethink. https://t.co/yrHv4XDFVg

— David Karol (@DKarol) February 6, 2020

I have an unpopular idea about the 2020 primary, moving forward. Why don’t we just let the voters choose, instead of telling us what we should do or what will happen?

Exclusive: In leaked documents, Fox News� in-house research team warns colleagues of �disinformation� from several Fox News regulars like Giuliani and John Solomon. https://t.co/fKilxL8yss

— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) February 6, 2020

Nate Cohn/NY Times:

Iowa Caucus Results Riddled With Errors and Inconsistencies

The mistakes do not appear intentional, but they raise questions about whether there will ever be a completely precise accounting.

Some of these inconsistencies may prove to be innocuous, and they do not indicate an intentional effort to compromise or rig the result. There is no apparent bias in favor of the leaders Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, meaning the overall effect on the winner’s margin may be small.

But not all of the errors are minor, and they raise questions about whether the public will ever get a completely precise account of the Iowa results. With Mr. Sanders closing to within 0.1 percentage points with 97 percent of 1,765 precincts reporting, the race could easily grow close enough for even the most minor errors to delay a final projection or raise doubts about a declared winner.

WASHINGTON (AP) � The Associated Press is unable to declare a winner in Iowa�s 2020 Democratic caucuses.

— Julie Pace (@jpaceDC) February 6, 2020

New Morning Consult polling on who people think won the Iowa caucus, unsurprisingly, finds we're mostly all confused: https://t.co/IW2N39X0W8 Don't know/no opinion: 57% Buttigieg: 17% Sanders: 14% Biden: 4% Warren: 2% Bloomberg: 2% Klobuchar: 1%

— Brandon (@Brand_Allen) February 6, 2020

And because I can't let this go, reupping these numbers in a different way: The eventual WINNER of the Iowa caucuses will get about 11 national delegates or 0.3% of all pledged DNC delegates. ZERO POINT THREE PERCENT! So forgive me for not caring that AP cannot call a "winner".

— Patrick Murray (@PollsterPatrick) February 6, 2020

Onion:

DNC Offers Startup $500 Million To Develop Pencil That Can Accurately Record Election Results

Hoping the yellow, graphite-based writing instrument would allay voter doubts following the chaos of the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic National Committee reportedly offered a technology startup $500 million Tuesday to develop a pencil that can accurately record election results. “As of this morning, we have commissioned the design and manufacture of a cutting-edge tabulation device that will be able to legibly report vote totals on a sheet of paper 99% of the time,” said DNC chair Tom Perez, holding up a rough prototype of the 7.5-inch hexagonal marking implement, which will be built and rigorously stress-tested by a new Silicon Valley business venture known as Sharpen. “It may not be easy to encase a cylinder of graphite with wood or put a slick coat of glossy paint on its outside. But with this new partnership, we believe we will soon have at our disposal a pencil that is both reliable and totally resistant to any attack by foreign powers. Also, because it can be sharpened, this new delegate-reporting tool can be used repeatedly, lasting us through New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and perhaps even Super Tuesday.” At press time, sources confirmed plans for the pencil had been scrapped after election security experts warned the rubber eraser on its tip would quickly erode public trust in the product.

Great job, Iowa.

NEW @MonmouthPoll New Hampshire poll: - Sanders 24% - Buttigieg 20% - Biden 17% - Warren 13% - Klobuchar 9% - Gabbard 4% - Yang 4% - Steyer 3% BUT only 49% are firmly set. pic.twitter.com/mqEwMKPcHP

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 6, 2020

Stuart Rothenberg/Roll Call:

After Iowa, a boost for Buttigieg and concerns for Biden and Warren

Partial results put the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor in enviable position

Veteran pollster Gary Langer described Buttigieg’s performance in the Iowa caucuses entrance poll as showing a “broad-based appeal,” while candidates like Sanders and Biden demonstrated much more narrow appeal.

Sanders did extremely well among young voters, but poorly among seniors.

Biden was strong with seniors but weak among younger voters.

Sanders did well among the most liberal voters, while Biden was strong among so-called moderates.

Iowa was not kind to Biden. His fourth-place showing was unimpressive, and while it is fair to note that the state is not necessarily ideal for him, his weak showing doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence in his ability to win the nomination.

Both of these columns from local and national press make the same argument against @SenatorCollins reasoning for her vote on impeachment. How will it play out in the election? #mepolitics From @BillNemitz https://t.co/6YqR53Cf2z From @RuthMarcus https://t.co/eUlVx79lvm

— Larry Gilbert Jr (@LarryGilbertSJ) February 5, 2020

The nominee will have to battle the Republicans. And to be clear, Republicans are using more than pencils:

McKay Coppins/Atlantic:

The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President

How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election

The story that unfurled in my [test] Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video—served up by the Trump campaign—that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?

As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: “That’s right, the whistleblower’s own lawyer said, ‘The coup has started …’ ” Swipe. “Democrats are doing Putin’s bidding …” Swipe. “The only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing …” Swipe. “Only one man can stop this chaos …” Swipe, swipe, swipe.

I was surprised by the effect it had on me. I’d assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself—about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else—felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach.

What I was seeing was a strategy that has been deployed by illiberal political leaders around the world. Rather than shutting down dissenting voices, these leaders have learned to harness the democratizing power of social media for their own purposes—jamming the signals, sowing confusion. They no longer need to silence the dissident shouting in the streets; they can use a megaphone to drown him out. Scholars have a name for this: censorship through noise.

At the end of the day, the U.S. Senate didn't need to censure President Trump over the Ukraine scandal -- because Mitt Romney did it for the chamber on Wednesday https://t.co/mWjKNN8qAl pic.twitter.com/tcChIdv0KC

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) February 6, 2020

Politico:

An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter

Rachel Bitecofer’s radical new theory predicted the midterms spot-on. So who’s going to win 2020?

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

The model, of course, assumes no cheating.

Pelosi: "I tore up a manifesto of mistruths � It was necessary to get the attention of the American people, to say this is not true and this is how it affects you. And I don't need any lessons from anybody, especially the president of the United States, about dignity."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 6, 2020

Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:

What’s next after a sham impeachment trial?

The first step toward national sanity and constitutional recovery after impeachment, therefore, is to acknowledge what happened: Senate Republicans cowardly submitted to their gang leader and concocted retroactive excuses for their lack of principle.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) acknowledges as much in a bracing op-ed in the New York Times. “So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold: They claim that calling witnesses would have meant a never-ending trial. They tell us they’ve made up their minds, so why would we need new evidence? They say to convict this president now would lead to the impeachment of every future president — as if every president will try to sell our national security to the highest bidder,” he writes. He says this crowd "cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election.” In short, Republicans are putting themselves above country because they are afraid Trump will chase them out of office otherwise.

That leads to the second step: To smash that defend-your-seat-at-all-costs mentality, the senators who capitulated to Trump must be voted out. The lesson learned must be that, if you want a career in politics, you need to do the right thing, especially when the stakes are so high.

The emergence of three distinct anti-left candidates -- each with one unique strength that will make it hard for the other two to knock them out -- suggests that someone up there likes Bernie Sanders. https://t.co/TrBuxBWJN3 pic.twitter.com/UvdTXFeDgs

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) February 6, 2020

And just so you know:

It�s highly likely that #2019nCov will be a #pandemic, spreading beyond #China. We don�t know yet whether the pandemic will be mild, moderate or severe. Key is to find and implement the best ways to protect people. pic.twitter.com/ZJjJuXylv6

— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) February 6, 2020

Pandemic designation refers to geographic spread of a new disease, not severity. No reason to panic (and news coverage isn’t panic in any case.) But follow the news.

The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a daily feature at Daily Kos.

This is really a bad sitch. Bernie probably won the most votes. Pete probably did very well in the delegate count, but can’t prove it yet. Elizabeth probably did ok, but that’s not clear. Joe did badly, and/but we don’t know how badly. So, on balance, this hurts all of us. No conspiracy about that.

You know who got hurt the most? The people working their butts off for a year in a state where retail politics matters. Their moment got stepped on. Oh, also the Iowa caucuses, which really suck and should be done away with.  In any case, I expect there will be a lot of unhappy activists. But by Friday (my next APR day), we should know who won, whatever that means by then! (I hope.) 

A lot happened, so come with us after the fold. 

As of 6 pm, Tuesday, and I am leaving it here so folks can see how this rolled out (the latest update as of now is up to 71% and positions remain Bernie with the voters and Pete with the delegate equivalents):

Sanders leads by 1,190 votes in the first alignment vote

— David Beard ðÂ�Â�³ï¸Â�âÂ�Â�ðÂ�Â�Â� (@dwbeard) February 4, 2020

SDEs are state delegate equivalents, the official winning number. They translate to actual delegates — 41 total delegates for the state. 1% of the convention total.

And @MSNBC finally fixed its data error about how many precincts actually reported so far. Still too early to call. 62% of precincts reported. #IowaCaucuses pic.twitter.com/QhT1gYJNcI

— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) February 4, 2020

And the rest of the state? What if it’s different?

These tweets are so futile lmao

— Addisu Demissie (@ASDem) February 4, 2020

With this releasing of partial information, the Iowa Democratic Party is making yet another strong argument against ever having the Iowa caucus go first again. This is an incredibly irresponsible thing that the party's about to do.

— David Darmofal (@david_darmofal) February 4, 2020

Philip Bump/WaPo:

Iowa Democrats are poised to do the one thing that could make the caucus debacle worse

Releasing partial results tanks one of the few positive aspects from Monday’s contest

“The IDP does not declare a winner,” the state party’s “Press 101″ Web page reads, “the party’s role is to present results.” Fair enough.

Then, in the face of withering criticism, the party announced that it would do the one thing that could possibly make the fallout of the caucuses worse: It would release partial results. …

Jeremy Bird, who ran Barack Obama’s field program, criticized the Iowa party for its deployment of a tool intended to make counting the results of the caucuses easier. But he did offer one compliment to how the party was managing the disaster.

The Iowa Democratic Party “smartly did not release inaccurate or partial data,” he wrote on Twitter. “We are going to get accurate results. Patience is a virtue we can cultivate here.”

So much for that.

Another thing – watch how they handle the uncertainty. Bernie Sanders and (even more so) Elizabeth Warren were “wait and see”:

How has Joe Biden's campaign reacted to the Iowa caucuses results released so far? @edokeefe: "We have not heard much from them tonight so far... which is a sign that they know that this data is quite troubling for them." https://t.co/SWxepABjrR pic.twitter.com/J8sBTPEuDm

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 5, 2020

The more aggressive moves: Joe questioning the process is an awful look. And Pete declaring victory before the count was/is in is either smart campaigning or opportunism depending on where you sit. But so far, looks like the count/narrative winners/losers were Pete and Bernie (losers because the hard fought win got smushed by the chaos). Arguably, worse sitch for Pete, because he has the current delegate lead (which is what matters) and could have used the positive buzz while Bernie has what should be a strong NH coming up to take the sting off how IA wound up (including a disappointing turnout overall compared to expectations).

As it is, things didn’t go as well as expected for Bernie:

New: Bernie Sanders� camp envisioned him potentially giving a primetime victory speech in Iowa, raising millions from small-dollar donors, and savoring proving so many elites wrong. Instead, they reassured demoralized aides and volunteers Tuesday. https://t.co/2S0Jh8vCou

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) February 5, 2020

But the mood was tense and anticlimactic. What could have been an historic night for Sanders and his movement was not � at least, not in the way they had hoped. His campaign manager later told aides in a call to appreciate what had happened. Despite bad press, Sanders was ahead.

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) February 5, 2020

NH is next, Bernie has a solid lead, and we could all use a break from SOTU and impeachment votes…. and it’s not a caucus!

Still, biggest loser of all has to be Biden, whose campaign might be over and done if NH is another weak showing (traditionally there are “only 3 tickets out of IA”). As it is, Joe is out of excuses and money.

And biggest winner of all could be Mike Bloomberg, who is playing a different game altogether. 

What happens next? Do both Biden and Warren fade in NH after disappointing IA showings, making it Bernie vs Pete? Or is one of them the comeback kid? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alexandra Petri/WaPo:

So I was at a caucus where they had some problems

I went to the Iowa caucuses because I love democracy — well, I’m a fan of its earlier work — and I was excited to see it in action. What I saw instead was people fighting a valiant fight against voter preference cards, and the clock, and losing.

There is no more powerful force than someone with a bright idea for a new way things should go who does not have to live with the consequences. Someone in an office somewhere devises a form or an app, and then on the ground people struggle and strain over a confusingly worded directive, and it makes the difference between receiving a benefit or not, or having your voice heard or not, or being the room where the future of America gets decided.

“There’s certainly room for debate as to whether this is the best way to go forward,” Michael admitted to Ames Precinct 3-1/11. And then he sent the votes off.

By the way, check out this thread for how it worked, from a twitter friend:

So... I was at the call center for Warren, which means we received the called-in results from precincts as they rolled in. I�m not going to go into any specifics, as it is not my place, but a few clarifying observations. #IACaucus

� Esther Choo (@choo_ek) February 4, 2020

We are applying our 21st c expectations to a very 20th c - in some cases 18th c - processes. I mean, at the time that I left for the night, sites were still doing coin tosses or drawing names out of a hat or debating other tie breaking issues and rounding rules.

� Esther Choo (@choo_ek) February 4, 2020

We are an impatient lot, but we weren’t the ones that promised results in an hour. Or the ones, like CNN, that hyped the CNN/DMR/Selzer poll that got pulled (we covered that Monday).

Coin tosses? Yep. A few of them.

Dylan Scott/Vox:

Why some of the Iowa caucuses are being decided by coin toss

Some Iowa delegates were decided by coin toss. That means it’s close.

It came down to a coin toss at the precinct at Hills Elementary in rural Johnson County. With only one delegate they needed 50% to win. Warren carried the day. #IACaucus pic.twitter.com/Cgv5kA391C

� Charity Nebbe (@CharityNebbe) February 4, 2020

A few times on Monday night, at some of the Iowa caucuses, candidates ended up with the same number of votes. There was a tie when it came time to hand out delegates.

So the Iowa voters resolved it with a time-honored election tradition: the coin toss.

FYI 3 way tie at the end btwn Biden, Bernie and Warren. Picked a name out of a hat. Biden won.

� Mark Salter (@MarkSalter55) February 4, 2020

Coin tosses and problematic apps. What a country.

The spiked Ann Selzer poll: Sanders 22% Warren 18% Buttigieg 16% Biden 13% Actual first alignment results (62% reporting): Sanders 24% Buttigieg 21% Warren 19% Biden 15% A little low on Buttigieg but for a caucus poll, that's *really* good.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 4, 2020

What Iowans are saying:

Sorry I was right. RIP caucuses. And after the GOP fiasco of 2012, Iowa probably shouldn�t even try. #iacaucus https://t.co/0mE6uIVWIT

— David Yepsen (@DavidYepsen) February 4, 2020

�This fiasco means the end of the caucuses as a significant American political event. The rest of the country was already losing patience with Iowa anyway and this cooks Iowa's goose. Frankly, it should,� Iowa journalism legend David Yepsen tells Politico https://t.co/0fk2oROXPg

— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) February 4, 2020

The first question at the Iowa Democratic Party press conference moments ago: �How can anyone trust you now?�

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 4, 2020

Making the news cycle about the latest dangerous, irresponsible statement Trump makes was very 2016. It�s time for political media to show it learned something and wrangle back control of the news cycle. This isn�t a great start.

— Jeremy Littau (@JeremyLittau) February 4, 2020

Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:

Iowa Might Have Botched One Caucus Too Many

The state’s first-in-the-nation primary status has been under fire for years. It’s very possible that this will be the end of it.  

Well, that was ugly. As I write, there are basically no results from the Iowa Democratic caucuses, hours after everyone went home. Some campaigns are beginning to release their internal numbers, but it would be wise to wait for the official results. The results are intact, according to officials, but the app that was supposed to deliver them from the precincts to the state party didn’t work.

Ugly.

Caucuses are run by the political parties, not the government. State and local officials are in charge, with volunteers mostly handling work at the precinct level. There are paid staff at the state level, but they aren’t necessarily experts in elections technology. This isn’t exactly a huge surprise.

I get plenty of stuff wrong. But I don’t know that I’ve ever been as correct as this one, from four years ago:

A lot of people are calling for Iowa to switch to a primary after the slow reporting of Democratic results this year and the botched counting of the Republican votes in 2012. Better idea: Keep the caucuses, but have the state, rather than the parties, run them with properly trained poll workers. Surely officials can pay for this by diverting a small percentage of revenue they raise in sales taxes from the business generated by campaigns and the visiting press corps. Yes, the delays and glitches are an annoyance mostly for the press and impatient campaigns, not voters. And the contests where these problems occurred were in races where there were virtual ties, so delays can be explained. Still: Get it right, Iowa.

congratulations, Iowa. You played yourself. https://t.co/mvbyXZgzD2

— Lyz Lenz (@lyzl) February 4, 2020

Dave A. Hopkins/Honest Graft:

It's Time to De-Hype the Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa Democratic Party certainly deserves plenty of blame for the disastrous problems with the delayed tabulation of the results from Monday night's caucus. The all-too-predictable failure of a new, untested reporting app was compounded by the state party's idiosyncratic devotion to a uniquely complex two-stage public preference declaration process that required the chairs of 1,700 precincts statewide to all simultaneously report three sets of distinct but necessarily compatible numbers to state party headquarters. This new mandate for numerical transparency came at the behest of the Democratic National Committee, which responded to widespread suspicions that Bernie Sanders actually received more popular support than Hillary Clinton in the 2016 caucus by requiring Iowa to release raw vote totals for the first time as well as the traditional delegate counts.

Still, there was something a bit unseemly about major media figures taking to cable news and social media to blast the state party for failing to satisfy their curiosity about the outcome on a more personally convenient schedule. For it was the media that turned the Iowa caucuses into a decisive event in presidential politics beginning in 1972, when journalists interpreted George McGovern's third-place finish in a sparsely-attended vote (behind Ed Muskie and "uncommitted") as a game-changing moral victory, and it's heavy media coverage every four years that gives what might otherwise be an obscure and unimportant event its outsized influence on the behavior of voters in subsequent contests, setting some candidates on a path to the White House and driving others out of the race entirely with 99 percent of the national delegates still unselected.

Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight:

Iowa Might Have Screwed Up The Whole Nomination Process

Despite its demographic non-representativeness, and the quirks of the caucuses process, the amount of media coverage the state gets makes it far more valuable a prize than you’d assume from the fact that it only accounts for 41 of the Democrats’ 3,979 pledged delegates.

More specifically, we estimate — based on testing how much the results in various states have historically changed the candidates’ position in national polls — that Iowa was the second most-important date on the calendar this year, trailing only Super Tuesday. It was worth the equivalent of almost 800 delegates, about 20 times its actual number.

Well, it screwed up his model, anyway.

Jeff Greenfield/Politico:

Blame Iowa? Nope, the Democrats Did This to Themselves

The signals were there. The party had a chance to avoid this mess 12 years ago. Here’s why they failed.

As much as this was Iowa’s local failure, it also marked a massive failure of courage on the part of the Democratic Party. Twelve years ago, when Florida began demanding a bigger role for states that better represented the American electorate, the national party pushed back hard, and the candidates—fearful of alienating voters in Iowa and New Hampshire come the fall election—agreed to boycott that state’s primary. (Footnote: had Florida not tried to “jump the line” that year by moving its primary up, Hillary Clinton would have won a landslide victory in the campaign and might well have emerged as the 2008 nominee.) The party did move the dates of Nevada and South Carolina to put more diverse states in play earlier in the calendar, but the fundamental flaw—the enormous attention paid to a state that employs an anti-democratic, unwieldy, poorly attended process—has remained.

As the co-founder 30 years ago (with Joe Klein) of the Committee to Start the Process in Hawaii—a movement intended to blend civic good with personal comfort—I confess to a heart overflowing with schadenfreude at what happened Monday night. Longtime critics of Iowa now feel like Jor-el, Superman’s father, whose warnings to the elders of Krypton about the planet’s instability went ignored.

But there’s a broader issue here. Democrats have, since January 20, 2017, argued that preventing a second term for Donald Trump was a matter of protecting the American system from the most unfit occupier of the Oval Office ever. While it may not prove to be decisive, the party’s refusal to end a deeply flawed process to begin the selection for Trump’s opponent has made it harder for them to achieve that goal.

Or, as Buddha might have put it: Karma is a bitch.

SOTU:

And then there is Pelosi�s response when asked why she tore up Trump�s speech �it was a courteous thing to do considering the alternative.� #ouch

— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) February 5, 2020

Oh, yeah, and impeachment.

If he learned any lesson it was the opposite of this. https://t.co/u0NdPQ1ch8

— Seth Masket (@smotus) February 4, 2020

Jill D Lawrence/USA Today:

I used to cover Republicans who are cowering to Trump. I don't recognize them now.

Until Trump, I found something to like or respect about most politicians I encountered, even those I strongly disagreed with. That's no longer true.

For the 40 years I have written about politics, there has been something to like or respect about nearly every politician I've encountered. Even when I passionately disagreed with someone on tax or gun or war policy, there was always at least one thing: They welcomed immigrants, wanted to save the planet or were willing to defy elements of their own party to seek a "grand bargain" on taxes and spending. Maybe they were dishonest and had to resign in disgrace, but not before creating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Lately, the Founders have also been top of mind. Many of the most prominent owned slaves, and it's hard to get past that, even considering their times. But they also laid what they hoped was a permanent foundation for an aspirational nation striving toward its ideals. They clearly anticipated and feared someone like Trump, and tried to give us the remedies and protections we'd need.

Those safeguards have failed. Let's hope the union the framers envisioned doesn't fail, as well.

Thank you, Susan Collins. You�ve done more to show Maine voters what you really are than I ever could.

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) February 4, 2020

Tom Krattenmaker/USA Today:

Democrats shouldn't be chumps. That's why this liberal is giving up on compromise for now.

The time for give and take has passed

Those days are gone. Our current political impasse runs so deep, and one would-be compromise partner is so recalcitrant, that I've given up hope for the near term that the Democrats and Republicans can work together on the country’s urgent challenges. With the fate of our democracy and planet at stake — sorry, that's not hyperbole — would-be conciliators can't afford to continue extending olive branches only to have them shoved back in our faces.

#2019nCoV: Latest numbers out from China. Total cases 24, 324, up nearly 3900 from yesterday. Deaths now 490, up another 65. Globally there are another ... 150? 200? cases in about 2 dozen countries. 2 deaths outside of mainland China. pic.twitter.com/BzH3x3R2vz

— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 5, 2020

I mean, really. No one knows nothing about what will happen tonight. It’s kinda… cool. Though I do feel bad for the pollster.

What happened:

Politico:

The most consequential poll in politics is about to be released

But pollsters are trying to downplay expectations for the final pre-caucus Iowa survey from the Des Moines Register.

And then moments before going live on CNN, with a hoopla hour-long “get to the point, already” presentation:

Ariel Edwards-Levy/HuffPost:

Highly Anticipated Iowa Caucuses Poll Shelved Over Possible Errors

At least one Iowan interviewed reportedly wasn’t read the full list of candidates. “One operator had apparently enlarged the font size on their computer screen, perhaps cutting off Mr. Buttigieg’s name from the list of options,” the Times reported, noting that because the list of candidates is randomized between interviews, Buttigieg may not have been the sole candidate affected. The pollsters weren’t immediately able to determine the extent of the problem before the poll’s planned ― and much hyped ― release on Saturday night.

Big oops. 

My prediction? Elation, tears and some big time pundit embarrassment. But I’m more interested in how they won, not “how they could win, if they only listened to me.” And for that, wait until tonight.

The politics of sports:

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President Trump congratulated the 'Great State of Kansas' after the Chiefs' Super Bowl win. They play in Kansas City, Missouri https://t.co/5b55PPBTr4

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 3, 2020

CBS:

CBS News Battleground Tracker: What could happen in Iowa on Monday?

Our final CBS News Iowa Battleground Tracker offers a statistical simulation of the caucuses and some scenarios that might unfold on Monday. It looks like a close contest heading in, and the top candidates are all poised to win national delegates.

To show what could happen — and more importantly, why — we continued interviewing likely caucus-goers this week for their first- and second-choice preferences in our polling, then combined it with data on Iowa voters generally, and how the caucus system works across the state's counties and districts.

That was an… interesting poll but not necessarily good for the leaders. Why? Iowa is an expectations game. What you have to do is do better than folks thought you would. And/but then there’s SOTU Tuesday and impeachment verdict Wednesday and New Hampshire in a week (February 11), so make the most of your week and try for a back-to-back.

The politics of politics:

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He deleted it. But it was beautiful while  it lasted. pic.twitter.com/DNR1nDMTwQ

— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) February 2, 2020

A reminder: Democrats are winning the argument. People don’t remember or even know details and don’t vote on policy. But remember who’s a crook:

x

.@chucktodd for weeks tried to tell us Article 2 was the weaker charge. But it’s easier for the public to understand... and they evidently do https://t.co/kY0Cfy5HxD

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 2, 2020

Great story about how Rs always think Ds are them but mirror image (and it turns out not so): “So you want Confederate statues removed? Remove the Harry Byrd statue!!!”

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1/2 What I truly love about this is the extent to which Delegate Walker tells on himself by just assuming that most Democrats would privilege party over ideology. And then ... https://t.co/LNE4gGhCD6

— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) February 2, 2020

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3/2 AND—god I love legislative procedure—the House of Delegates Rules Committee has refused to allow him to withdraw the bill. 👨‍🍳 😘

— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) February 2, 2020

An intriguing newsletter from data journalist G Elliot Morris:

American democracy is screwed

Our best hope is a (very unlikely) mass mobilization of voters that favor multiparty democracy

American democracy is on thin ice. A survey of experts in October of 2019 found that they rated American democracy at about a 70 out of 100, showing broad discomfort with a number of factors they define as essential to modern democracy. Only 41% of them believed that all adult citizens have equal opportunity to vote, for example, and only 26% thought that the government today was effectively limiting the president’s power to its proper Constitutional bounds.

Point is, in a polarized environment, what can we do about it? That’s why state houses and the courts all matter (I love you, VA). Don’t just concentrate on the WH.

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October. https://t.co/TgiwExPBLH

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) February 1, 2020

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Republican senators lament “flawed process” and partisanship of Trump impeachmentBut this moment isn’t about process or Democrats or facts about Trump’s conduct. now, at the end, they admit the House proved the caseit’s about what the GOP has becomehttps://t.co/GY3i0yE6ZS

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 1, 2020

Sahil Kapur/NBC:

Party of FDR or Obama: How the 2020 primary will define Democrats

As Iowa kicks off the presidential voting season, Democratic voters will take on the existential question of whether they're a party of center-left pragmatism or bold populism. On one side is an older and moderate cohort drawn to pitches by Biden — and to an extent, Pete Buttigieg — of finding common ground and unifying the country. Challenging them is a younger and re-energized left that wants a more aggressive nominee like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren who will seek to bust corporate power, expand the safety net and finish the project FDR began.

“Senator Sanders is the fulfillment of the FDR legacy,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., one of his prominent endorsers. “I believe we are at a moment in history where, post-Trump, we could see the dawn of a new progressive era. If you believe that moment hasn’t come and we just need to defeat Trump and return to normalcy, then Vice President Biden is offering that choice.”

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Sign of the House GOP fundraising woes.Elissa Slotkin, Trump-district Democrat, one of leading advocates for impeachment. #MI08Her two leading GOP challengers raise a combined $150K against her (anchor Paul Junge -- $148K, Nikki Snyder -- $2K).That's chump change.

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 1, 2020

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Another stunning sign of House GOP $$ woes.Liberal fave Katie Porter raises over $1M in 4thQ in longtime conservative Orange County district.None of her GOP rivals able to raise more than $100K in the same time period.#CA45

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 1, 2020

TIME:

Americans Trapped in Wuhan Aren’t Angry at the Chinese Government. They’re Angry at Their Own

Still, priority on Wednesday’s flight was given to staff at the local U.S. consulate and their families. The few remaining seats were available at inflated costs of $1,000, say Americans living in Wuhan, prompting anger among those who felt abandoned by their government.

“For the average person, that plane ticket really wasn’t available,” says George Goodwin, a biology teacher from Reno, Nev., who worked for the U.S. Center for Disease Control before moving to China. “Many people were very frustrated as the announcement [of the flight] made it seem this is going to be the savior of all Americans in Wuhan. Except it really isn’t because most of us can’t go.”

For Steece, the situation is complicated by the fact that his wife is a Chinese national and son, Colm, is less than one month old, and so still hasn’t been registered as a U.S. citizen. Chinese spouses and other family members of Americans were not eligible for Wednesday’s flight.

“I’ve actually been a little bit annoyed at the p–s-poor treatment,” says Steece, who before moving to China served five years with the U.S. National Guard. “Why is it that American citizens have to pay $1,000 and not have our families come with us? It’s bulls–t.”

A reminder that Wuhan (11 million people) is bigger than NYC.

Hoping we don’t see a lot of this:

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The international panic over the Wuhan coronavirus has taken another, more familiar form -- the re-emergence of old racist tropes that portray Asians, their food, and their customs as unsafe and unwelcome. https://t.co/4R0ICiqPsb

— CNN International (@cnni) February 1, 2020

Here’s a paywalled piece from AJPH that deals with it, the concern is real and shared by public health folks:

“Spanish Flu”: When Infectious Disease Names Blur Origins and Stigmatize Those Infected

CONCLUSIONS

Xenophobic reactions to disease are not limited to outbreaks specifically named after a foreign country or stigmatized group.

The history of infectious disease control is rife with examples of heavy-handed responses to epidemics that are assigned perfectly neutral names but that nonetheless inspired intrusive measures against foreigners. For example, authorities quarantined San Francisco’s Chinatown while explicitly exempting non-Asian businesses during a plague outbreak in 1900; in the wake of cholera and typhus outbreaks in 1892, New York City officials selectively quarantined Jewish immigrants, whereas Italians arriving on the same boat were detained for only a brief time

Although stigmatizing names can exacerbate public anxiety, they are but one example of the deeply entrenched xenophobia in public health history.

Great dataviz graphic:

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WEALTH INEQUALITY: The richest 1% controls more wealth now than at any time in more than 50 years. But what does wealth inequality really look like?@TonyDokoupil turned America’s economic pie into a real one and asked people a simple question: Who gets what? pic.twitter.com/scGPKcHbie

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 31, 2020

And another story via BuzzFeed:

“HELP!!!” Internal #SharpieGate Emails Show Government Officials Freaked Out Over Trump’s “Doctored” Hurricane Map

President Trump’s fake hurricane map triggered panic, outrage, and an internal revolt among top officials at the National Weather Service and NOAA. That’s according to a trove of more than 1,000 emails released Friday night to BuzzFeed News and other publications in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Trump (falsely) tweeted on September 1 that several southern states, including Alabama, were “most likely to be hit” by the hurricane after its deadly pass through the Bahamas. Three days later, Trump shared a fake map in which a storm track, seemingly drawn with a black Sharpie, showed Dorian moving toward Alabama. When a National Weather Service forecaster tried to set the record straight, its parent agency, NOAA, released an unsigned statement disavowing the correction — seemingly to appease the White House.

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After falling into the deep hole of the NOAA data dump buzzfeed got through FOIA -and going through 1049 pages on document cloud - I have a new Admin crush: Craig McLean. 😍😍THE ONLY PERSON THERE WHO SPEAKS A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN CYA-ESE, AND ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT THE FORCASTERS pic.twitter.com/21injbvfh7

— Ondine, MD☕️ (@Ondine_MD) February 2, 2020

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Biggest takeaway from today’s #qanda ‘It’s good to have an open mind but not so much that your brain falls out’ @MichaelEMann on #climatedenial best.words.spoken.

— Swati Pandey (@Swatisays) February 3, 2020

Maybe it’s me, but I think John Bolton’s revelation about Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel, being involved in the scheme, and presenting himself as an honest advocate, is a big deal. Everyone is in the loop. So the impetus for the cover-up is strong. And the blow-back will follow.

Jonathan Chait/New York Magazine:

The Republican Cover-up Will Backfire. The House Can Keep Investigating Trump.

From the very beginning, Democrats have followed an informal norm that impeachment should not impinge on the presidential campaign. That self-declared constraint forced the House to work quickly, and is now being used in the Senate as a weapon against more evidence. One revealing moment in the dynamic came last night, when a pair of Republican senators teed up a softball question for the Trump lawyers, asking them to estimate how long the trial would take if all the Democratic requests for evidence were granted. “It would take a long time,” warned Jay Sekulow, “months … This would be the first of many weeks.”

This threat underscored the method Trump has used all along to ward off accountability. He threatens to exhaust every avenue to withhold evidence, running out the clock, and then uses the fear of a lengthy process as a shield. Trump will drag it out, and then Democrats will be blamed for running the process into the election season.

But what if you assume, instead, that the cover-up affixes the blame onto Republicans? That the sheer nakedness of their methods liberates Democrats from the self-imposed constraint of respecting the election-year norm? They can keep digging into Trump from next week through fall, keeping public attention not only on his corruption and abuse of power but also on the Republican conviction that abuse of power is permissible. If impeachment is about exacting a price for Trump’s misconduct, perhaps the highest price will come by letting his enablers reveal exactly how far they are willing to go.

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Unless you think having witnesses in the Senate trial could actually lead to a removal, there’s a decent case to be made that the Dems are politically better off having them blocked. Especially as more info leaks out. The ammunition of an “unfair trial” seems quite valuable.

— Matt Glassman (@MattGlassman312) January 31, 2020

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Our new Washpost editorial says Senate Republicans, out of fear of Trump, betrayed voters who wanted witnesses. We hope voters pay them back. https://t.co/otOTkilH5F

— Jackson Diehl (@JacksonDiehl) January 31, 2020

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As angry as I am, just wanted to put out there how much we as Americans should appreciate @RepAdamSchiff for his defense of the Constitution. #ThankYou #TheFightGoesOn

— John Weaver (@jwgop) January 31, 2020

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“Trump’s cheating in the next election, and his use of his office in an attempt to involve a foreign govt in that cheating to help himself, are together an abuse of power and high crime. I recommend the Senate find Trump guilty of abuse of power and remove him from office”

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 31, 2020

Anna North/Vox:

How abortion in Virginia went from a Trump talking point to a winning issue for Democrats

Democrats in the state won by campaigning on abortion — not running from it.

This time last year, Virginia was at the center of a nationwide firestorm.

The state legislature was considering a bill that would remove some restrictions on third-trimester abortions, and in an interview about the bill, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam made confusing comments that some took as an endorsement of infanticide.

The moment went viral, with Fox News commentators and Republican politicians lambasting the governor and the bill. In his State of the Union address in February, President Trump mentioned “the case of the governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth.” The bill never got a vote.

But now, both houses of Virginia’s state legislature have passed another bill to remove restrictions on abortion. The bill would eliminate a required ultrasound and 24-hour waiting period before the procedure can be performed, as well as requirements for clinics that, advocates say, are simply aimed at shutting down the facilities.

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Continuing with the deluge... https://t.co/zIbwf8YeoH

— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) January 31, 2020

Politico:

Bloomberg and Biden barrel toward Super Tuesday collision

Bloomberg's bid was based on the assumption Biden would collapse. But it hasn't happened, and a moment of reckoning is approaching.

Despite Bloomberg's protestations that he's only here to help, party moderates worry about failure to unite as Bernie Sanders rises. And the calculation for Bloomberg about whether to stay put or step back for Biden won't necessarily be straightforward: He could confront a scenario where Biden is competitive, but not a juggernaut. Indeed, there are myriad ways for how this might play out.

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"constitutional conservative" always meant "liquidate our enemies." https://t.co/0AzduVjlJF

— Jonathan Bernstein (@jbview) January 31, 2020

Susan B. Glasser/New Yorker:

THE SENATE CAN STOP PRETENDING NOW

Lamar Alexander and the end of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

All fifteen previous impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate, including the two previous Presidential-impeachment trials, had witnesses. But Lamar Alexander has spoken. Donald Trump’s stonewalling will succeed where Nixon’s failed. Perhaps Alexander has done us all a favor: the trial that wasn’t really a trial will be over, and we will no longer have to listen to it. The Senate can stop pretending.

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this graph, from my new article in POQ with @Anthony_Rentsch and @justinhgross, is one of my favorites...a lot of interesting lessons in there pic.twitter.com/sXNfC9QZTC

— Brian Schaffner (@b_schaffner) January 31, 2020

Point is, youngs have to get in the habit of voting.

Kate Brannen/USA Today:

Trump's bogus case against impeachment witnesses: No national security secrets are at risk

Potential witnesses might have to spill the secret of what they really think of Trump. But shouldn't voters find out about that before November?

Setting aside the legal and historical precedents and arguments, it is also important to acknowledge this: There are no national security secrets at risk here. The building blocks of the Ukraine story — and the impeachment articles — are already known. The most important piece of evidence was made public by the White House in November: the record of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president.

It is right there for all to see that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, and thereby invited a foreign country to interfere in the upcoming election. Trump’s request set off so many alarm bells that National Security Council staffers sought the advice of White House lawyers about what to do. It also prompted an intelligence official to share his or her concerns with a colleague, who passed them on to CIA General Counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood.

Elwood found these concerns reasonable and serious enough to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. That same intelligence official eventually filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general, who tried to pass it on to Congress, as required by law, before being stopped by the Justice Department in consultation with the White House.

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One action: sign up here https://t.co/oI7DKm3Uwt

— Megan Ranney MD MPH (@meganranney) January 31, 2020

Pew Research Center:

Political values and Democratic candidate support

Large shares of Democratic voters prefer an active role for government and believe in the importance of its regulatory role. About eight-in-ten Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters say the government should do more to solve problems, while just 20% say it’s doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals. Similarly, 78% say the government regulation is necessary to protect the public interest, compared with far fewer (20%) who say it usually does more harm than good.

Interesting data collection from Pew, highlighting where Sanders and Warren are mainstream, and where they are not.

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This action is a precautionary and preventive step to maximize the containment of the virus in the interest of the health of the American public. The current epidemic in Mainland China has demonstrated the #2019nCoV’s capacity to spread globally. https://t.co/ueWP8UYkLW

— CDC (@CDCgov) January 31, 2020

Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:

Four Big Things About the Democratic Race

Voters finally get their say starting Monday in Iowa. The results will be subject to lots of interpretation, so let’s begin.

Several things to keep in mind:

Iowa really is a toss-up. The FiveThirtyEight average has Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden tied for first (Sanders has a 0.1% advantage). But the most important point made by the FiveThirtyEight analysts is over at their projection page: “Joe Biden is forecasted to win an average of 28% of the vote in Iowa. In 80% of simulations, he wins between 11% and 44% of the vote.” Plug in Sanders, and the same results come back. Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have similar, although slightly lower, ranges. In other words, it’s plausible that those four candidates could finish in any order at all. It also wouldn’t be surprising if one or two of them finish below Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, although she could also finish below several of the others if she winds up at the bottom of her likely range.

The FiveThirtyEight model is telling us something important. When there are lots of candidates, and lots of voters who like most or all of them, the history is clear: Large swings from the polls to the final results are possible in Iowa, even in the final week.

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Republican Senators know— he did it— it’s impeachable— they’d have impeached Obama for it— Trump will do it again— the republic is threatenedAnd don’t care.

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) January 31, 2020

Monkey Cage Blog:

How are Iowa voters picking candidates?

You’ve probably never considered this quality

In considering whom to nominate to run against President Trump, Democrats in Iowa appear to be employing criteria they might use to choose a car to drive or music to listen to: whether they want to fit in with the crowd or stand out.

Former vice president Joe Biden — establishment candidate and front-runner — is losing potential supporters for a reason that has nothing to do with political views. Many Democratic voters have a strong “desire to be different” in their regular lives. That disposes them toward candidates with more niche views and backgrounds.

Like driving a Saab rather than a Honda or arguing that punk rock pioneers Iggy and the Stooges were superior to mainstream favorite Led Zeppelin, picking candidates who challenge the establishment allows people to advertise their distinctiveness and authenticity.

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NOTE: most diagnosed outside of China have had mild illness. This suggests there may be many mild and unrecognized infections in China. We understand more each hour and need to keep learning so we can best protect people.

— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) January 31, 2020

Peter Hamby/Vanity Fair:

GET A GRIP, BERNIE BED-WETTERS: HIS MESSAGE AND MEDIA MACHINE COULD BE POTENT AGAINST TRUMP

Socialist Schmocialist. Sanders has a set of political assets—celebrity, fundraising power, committed foot soldiers, media sophistication, relentless consistency—possessed by no one else in the race.

Everything about Sanders—his ideas, his stubborn dogma, his sometimes-kooky supporters, his contempt for greenroom culture and the party circuit—is completely foreign to the intellectual and cultural fabric of Washington. In that universe, the claim that Sanders is unelectable is more or less gospel. The same Democrats who were assured of Hillary Clinton’s victory are now starting to worry about a Goldwater or McGovern-style Electoral College wipeout with Sanders atop the ticket. If they were so inclined, the bed-wetters could easily Google a year of polls showing Sanders beating Trump in hypothetical head-to-head matchups. A Texas Lyceum poll just this week showed Sanders performing better against Trump in Texas than any Democrat, losing by just three points. That’s on top of a raft of polls showing Sanders beating Trump back those precious Upper Midwest states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. These polls aren’t totally hypothetical, either: Sanders boasts near universal Name ID. Most voters know who Sanders is and what he stands for—and they’re still choosing him, whether they actually like him or just because his name isn’t Donald Trump. The president and his advisers are starting to notice, according to recent stories in the New York Times and Daily Beast. Both outlets reported in recent weeks that some Trump advisers are worried about Sanders’s strengths—his populist appeal, perceived authenticity, and his durable popularity with the same white non-college voters who voted for Trump. “I think he’s tough in places where people are making $12 an hour,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale recently told CBS News, who said the media is underestimating his appeal. Trump himself has started asking his team about Sanders’s polling performance in key battleground states, specifically Pennsylvania, the Daily Beast reported.

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America is changing. The GOP's desperation and willingness to use any tactics at all to survive are based on their recognition that demography and an urbanizing, better educated America absolutely dooms them as a party. It may take a while. But there is some comfort in that.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 31, 2020

NY Times:

To Senate Republicans, a Vote for Witnesses Is a Vote for Trouble

Lawmakers fear allowing new testimony would tie up the Senate indefinitely and open the door to a cascade of new accusations.

“We don’t need Mr. Bolton to come in and to extend this show longer, along with any other witnesses people might want, and occupy all of our time here in the Senate for the next few weeks, maybe even months,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said Tuesday evening on Fox.

Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff and a top outside adviser to Mr. McConnell, made it clear that Republicans viewed the idea of calling witnesses as a disaster in the making.

“More witnesses = Hindenburg,” Mr. Holmes wrote Wednesday on Twitter, showing a picture of the flaming airship. “None of it changes ultimate acquittal.”

They are afraid of the facts. Now, Republicans will be patting themselves on the back today about how clever they are but meanwhile …

Yoni Appelbaum/Atlantic:

Trump has led his party to this dead end, and it may well cost him his chance for reelection, presuming he is not removed through impeachment. But the president’s defeat would likely only deepen the despair that fueled his rise, confirming his supporters’ fear that the demographic tide has turned against them. That fear is the single greatest threat facing American democracy, the force that is already battering down precedents, leveling norms, and demolishing guardrails. When a group that has traditionally exercised power comes to believe that its eclipse is inevitable, and that the destruction of all it holds dear will follow, it will fight to preserve what it has—whatever the cost.

Tim Alberta had a very pointed thread on Lamar Alexander (who said the House managers proved their case, so he’s a ‘no’ on witnesses for that reason, and a ‘no’ on impeachment because what Trump did is bad but not impeachable bad):

I’ve spent a LOT of time with retired (and retiring) congressional Rs since 2016. Most feel zero sense of liberation to bash Trump on the way out. If anything, they’re even more cowed & cautious, fearing that being out of favor w: POTUS (and his party) limits their earning power.  And it’s not just about money. I’ve had numerous retiring Rs talk warily — sometimes fearfully — about the “cult” of Trump supporters back home. They worry about harassment of their families, loss of standing in local communities, estranged relationships, etc.  If you think this is a bunch of weak-ass excuse making from people who ought to rise above it and do what they think is right..... well, no argument here. I’m just explaining the reality for these Rs. They feel trapped, most of them—and retirement isn’t the escape we might think. 

But Lamar was right about one thing. The House managers proved their case:

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There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a “mountain of overwhelming evidence.” 3/15

— Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) January 31, 2020

Lamar’s epitaph:

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Coward senator caves to Trump, earns infamous place in history https://t.co/6XzgTppMyP

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 31, 2020

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I am going to reserve comment on this moment of disgrace until I have properly composed my thoughts on it.

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) January 31, 2020

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By refusing to have witnesses the GOP (1) assured that Trump’s acquittal is not an exoneration, (2) defies overwhelming public support for hearing witnesses (3) puts senate majority at risk by forcing vulnerables to cast toxic vote for coverup.....

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) January 31, 2020

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Burn it down. The fix was always in. America knows there is no acquittal in a sham trial. Burn it down.

— John Weaver (@jwgop) January 31, 2020

That message was aimed at ex-Republicans.

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I realize all of you are feelings the SADs right now. Even though an outcome is expected, small hope is always there. And when that hope gets crushed, people get pissed. Which is why I've argued the acquittal, although expected, is still going to PISS people off & add to D adv.

— Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭 (@RachelBitecofer) January 30, 2020

That’s our message: make them pay in November and yes, we are pissed.

Tom Nichols/USA today:

Trump is being impeached over an extortion scheme, not a 'policy dispute'

Trump was shaking down Zelensky while trying to keep the rest of the government in the dark. That’s not a 'policy,' that’s a conspiracy.

This scheme (it is too misleading even to call it a “policy”) was a rogue operation against Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, conducted by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a squad of shady characters, none of whom were answerable to anyone but Trump himself. (One wonders how Sen. Lee’s constitutionalism squares with foreign operations being conducted by the likes of Giuliani and Lev Parnas, out of sight of pesky members of Congress and their annoying questions.)

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Bolton played a clever game trying to ramp up the value of his book, but he didn’t factor in that Bill Barr is coming to destroy him at the behest of an exonerated Donald Trump with newly unlimited executive powers.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 31, 2020

Quin Hillyer/Washington Examiner:

The longer GOP blocks Bolton, the more he will hurt them

Senate Republicans covering for Trump are letting all their chips ride on the intensity of the voters from Trump's base to carry them through to reelection, but that’s a risky bet. Especially with highly controversial candidates, those supporters can suddenly reach a breaking point where enough is enough. I’ve seen numerous elections where support for high-risk candidates suddenly evaporated, resulting in massive, sudden swings in the polls — one from a dead heat to a 25-point loss in just three weeks.

Republicans who don’t hedge their bets by at least allowing witnesses will have no chance to survive if Trump takes a dive. The remaining Republicans would face increasing odds of finding themselves a powerless minority against an enraged and emboldened Democratic majority absolutely out for blood.

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From me: YouGov’s polling reveals that voters perceive all the major Democratic contenders other than Joe Biden as MORE ideologically extreme than Donald Trump. https://t.co/B0IUkef1OK

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) January 30, 2020

G Elliott Morris on what the data for electability (fwiw) says, from the Economist ($$):

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

Here, Mr Biden looks strong. YouGov’s polling reveals that Americans view him as the most moderate Democrat, on average. They perceive all the other major Democratic contenders as more extreme than Mr Trump (see chart).

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We think that (B) is especially important, so let me just reiterate here. The typical argument for ideologues is that the "fire up" the base. That's true! But they fire up the other side even more. This will be esp. important in 2020 with turnout expected to exceed 60%.

— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) January 30, 2020

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While 71% of Americans in our new @USATODAY @Ipsos poll say they would be comfortable with a woman president, just 33% say their neighbors would be--perhaps a more candid measure. https://t.co/sUSlPtwSgW

— Susan Page (@SusanPage) January 31, 2020

A majority, but a shaky one. Then again, everything about America is shaky these days.

Dennis Aftergut/USA Today:

Dear Mr. Dershowitz, 'mixed motives' is no impeachment defense when there's corrupt intent

Taken together, Donald Trump's actions — at least seven of them — contradict the defense claim that he had any legitimate national interest in mind.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, opened the question-and-answer portion of the Senate impeachment trial by asking whether President Donald Trump was guilty if he had "mixed motives." In other words, what if he was protecting both American interests by seeking an investigation of alleged foreign corruption and protecting his own interests because the investigation — and its announcement — would smear rival Joe Biden?

The president's lawyers responded that the Senate cannot properly convict a president for a "mixed motive" quid pro quo. After all, professor Alan Dershowitz argued, all elected officials take action to help their electoral prospects, and all believe that the nation is best served by their reelection. Presidents may not be removed from office for self-serving actions that also advance the public interest.

This absurdist argument is raised as a smokescreen to avoid what makes a trial a trial: hearing testimony from firsthand witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton, who says the president told him he would only allow military aid if Ukraine investigated former Vice President Biden and his son Hunter.

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GOP argument:* We've already heard enough witnesses, so we don't need to hear from the one with the most direct knowledge of Trump's central act* We'll acquit, b/c Ds failed to produce testimony from anyone with direct knowledge of Trump's central acthttps://t.co/SU4LaLouUD pic.twitter.com/dk4xthZcgy

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 30, 2020

WaPo:

World Health Organization declares coronavirus outbreak a ‘public health emergency’

The World Health Organization announced Thursday that it was declaring the coronavirus outbreak a “public health emergency,” setting in motion a plan for global coordination to stem the spread of the virus, which originated last month in Wuhan, China.

Chinese officials announced more than 1,900 new cases of the coronavirus on the same day, as the total number of people infected in mainland China reached over 8,000 and surpassed those infected with SARS during the 2002-2003 epidemic.

The United States confirmed a sixth U.S. case of the Wuhan coronavirus on Thursday, marking the first time the virus has spread from person to person in the United States.

With experts saying a vaccine is still a long way off, more international cases of the illness have appeared. Australia, Vietnam and South Korea all announced new coronavirus infections, while India and the Philippines had their first ones. Here’s what we know so far:

One thing we know is it’s an evolving situation so what I write today might not be true in a month, but at the moment, flu seems worse, at least in the US. In China, well, that is another story. 

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I'm watching this slowly tick up from my office in Hong Kong. Wherever you're reading this, you're not as far away as you likely think. National borders mean very little to pathogens.#CoronaOutbreak pic.twitter.com/vuk91KXrwE

— Bryan Druzin (@BryanDruzin) January 31, 2020

One thing of concern is that personal protective supplies are running short there, and eventually here (that’s where some of it is made).

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Russia has now shut its entire land border with China - one of the longest borders in the world - in an effort to prevent the spread of the #coronavirusMaybe they need some sort of great wall on that border. pic.twitter.com/Emt8igZGsH

— Bryan Druzin (@BryanDruzin) January 31, 2020

With airline cancellations and border closures, look for economic effects soon. And don’t assume it’s over.

In the meantime, follow CDC, trusted medical sources, and be wary of internet memes and self-styled  ‘experts’. And get your flu shot and wash your hands.

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This paper just published in the New England Journal of Medicine will be of interest for anyone concerned about the potential spread of the Wuhan virus.#coronavirus https://t.co/eaxGWnjX9b

— Bryan Druzin (@BryanDruzin) January 31, 2020

NEJM is making all coronavirus articles free, no paywall. Not a new policy, they do that with big public health issues.The Lancet has, as well. 

Back to politics:

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stop it with the logic https://t.co/iaUKRv22dv

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) January 30, 2020

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Can we all just be honest?The GOP no longer believes in fair elections because fair elections gave us a black president.It’s really NOT more complicated than that. That’s the heart of Dersh’s argument that 45 can cheat if he thinks it’s in the national interest.

— Pam Keith (@PamKeithFL) January 29, 2020

We know Mitch McConnell doesn’t want witnesses. We know he controls everything about this trial. But what the voters want is something else. So, see you in November, Mr Current Majority Leader.

Perhaps the main thing to come out of impeachment is that whereas before we strongly suspected the Congressional GOP were lying knaves in it for power, we now know for certain Congressional GOP are lying knaves in it for power.

David Rothkopf/USA Today:

Even if the Senate does not remove Donald Trump, this impeachment is far from a mistake

The judgment of the court of public opinion will matter more to history and the 2020 elections than the verdict in the Senate impeachment trial.

I would most emphatically suggest that undertaking the impeachment investigation was far from a mistake. Even with the deck stacked against a just outcome by a GOP leadership that has lost sight of the most basic ideals associated with public service, much good has come out of this process and might come out of it even in the event of an acquittal.

First, the mere pursuit of the facts by the House has both underscored the importance of accountability, and it has, in a very systematic and public way, revealed the facts of this case. Trump, McConnell and the army of parrots spouting White House talking points may repeatedly say otherwise, but the president’s wrongdoing has been made crystal clear, and many of those detailing or corroborating it have been witnesses who are above reproach, objective and distinguished. Many of them are Trump appointees or apolitical career public servants. Today, poll after poll reveals that a substantial majority of Americans believe that the president is guilty of wrongdoing, and about half believe he should be removed from office.

When facts are bad:

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Senate Majority Whip John Thune told us the Senate shouldn’t hear from Bolton, arguing it could create an “endless cycle” when “facts are all out there.”“I don’t think that anything that he’s going to say changes the fact..I think people kind of know what the fact pattern is.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 28, 2020

So, will we have witnesses?

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basically no one knows anything

— Alana Abramson (@aabramson) January 28, 2020

And that about sums it up. So keep calling your Senators.

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4/ Hunter on the stand is also a great opportunity for the house managers to start talking about Jared, Nepotism Barbie, Don Junior, and Eric the Slow. unintended consequences. How do they work?

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 29, 2020

Herald-Tribune:

Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly tells Sarasota crowd ‘I believe John Bolton’

President Donald Trump is denying that he told former National Security Advisor John Bolton he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until the country launched investigations into Joe Biden and his son, allegations that Bolton levies in his new book, according to news reports.

But one of Trump’s former top aides told a Sarasota audience Monday evening that if the reporting on what Bolton wrote is accurate, he believes Bolton.

“If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” said retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months.

Maybe that will get McMaster and Mattis off the fence.

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Woke up a bit ago to some angry texts from Rudy Giuliani. He's pissed Dems aren't considering calling him as a witness and says "they are afraid of my physical presence." "Why do they want Bolton if not me," he says. "Again I really should stop wasting my time." #impeachment

— Chris Sommerfeldt (@C_Sommerfeldt) January 28, 2020

Barbara McQuade/WaPo:

Trump waived executive privilege when he called Bolton a liar

If the Senate decides to summon the former national security adviser, the president won’t have much recourse left.

President Trump refers to himself as a counterpuncher. This time, he might have punched too hard.

In a series of tweets just after midnight Monday, Trump responded to weekend reporting about a forthcoming book by his former national security adviser John Bolton. The book reportedly reveals that Trump tied military aid for Ukraine to his demands for investigations into his political rivals. Trump’s tweets directly dispute the truth of these claims. He may have been hoping to push wavering Senate Republicans away from agreeing to call Bolton to testify in the impeachment trial. But in the process, Trump probably waived any executive privilege that he could have claimed to keep Bolton quiet if that gambit fails.

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It's stunning that some folks are treating the idea that Senate Republicans were "blindsided" by the Bolton bombshell as a real argument. It's self-incriminating. What really "blindsided" them is that their cover-up for Trump has been upended. New piece: https://t.co/PzWeTgIYQS

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 28, 2020

Nancy LeTourneau/Washington Monthly:

Republicans Are Trying to Interfere in the 2020 Democratic Primary

Here’s the quote:

Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters. Those Democratic caucus goers — will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not as certain about that.

In other words, the smear campaign against Joe Biden is an attempt by Republicans to interfere in the Democratic primary to knock him out of contention.

Democratic voters are free to make of this what they will. But the one thing they can’t do is to allow this kind of disinformation campaign based on conspiracy theories to be effective. Lying about opponents is now the modus operandi of Republicans because they are steeped in having to defend the most corrupt president in this country’s history. Disinformation is all they’ve got and they will use it mercilessly—especially against an opponent they fear.

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"Pretty subtle, huh?" Biden says after reading Ernst's comments. "You Iowa caucus-goers have a chance for a two-fer. You can ruin Donald Trump's night by caucusing for me. And you can ruin Joni Ernst's night."

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) January 28, 2020

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens/NY Times:

Always Look on the Bright Side of Impeachment

Not to mention the Democratic presidential race. It can be done, if you put your mind to it.

Gail: I have to admit the Bolton revelation — which, as you point out, is a big moment but not exactly a big surprise — perked me up. But one of the many downsides of the Senate trial is the amount of time people are having to spend contemplating the heart and mind of Susan Collins.

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good piece on what R0 (R naught) means from @edyong209 https://t.co/ZgohStzks3

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) January 29, 2020

Helen Branswell/STAT vis Scientific American:

The Coronavirus Questions that Scientists are Racing to Answer

Although scientists have learned a lot so far, there is still much they do not know about the novel virus spreading in China and other countries

HOW DANGEROUS IS THIS INFECTION?

The reports emerging suggest a pretty significant portion of cases are seriously ill. For instance, in a report China’s national health authorities posted Monday, about 17% of total cases were severely ill. And about 3% of confirmed cases had died.

Those are frightening numbers. But if the confirmed cases represent only a fraction of the total cases — and they likely do — that could really change the math. Until we have a better handle on the total number of cases it’s premature to draw conclusions.

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75% of voters say allow witnesses in Senate impeachment trial, Poll finds; 53% say #PresidentTrump is not telling truth about Ukraine https://t.co/yDzEUncVAT #Impeachment

— Quinnipiac University Poll (@QuinnipiacPoll) January 28, 2020

Elanah Uretsky/WaPo:

Is China ready for this major global health challenge?

Beijing invested heavily in public health around the world — but left troubling gaps at home

Is China protecting its global image — or its citizens?

Chinese officials have been working hard since SARS to build up the country’s reputation as a global health leader. Indeed, China’s investments in global health help make up for funding shortfalls, including recent reductions in global health commitment from countries such as the United States.

But the stigma of the SARS coverups at home in 2003 may overpower the impact of these global assistance efforts. China is receiving big hits to its domestic and international reputation because of its lack of preparedness to fight yet another outbreak of a strange pneumonia-like virus within its borders.

This kind of pressure speaks to Chinese leaders, who don’t want to be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame,” as one Communist Party statement explained last week. Ultimately, it is this type of pressure that might help China figure out how to balance its commitment to global health with that of domestic preparedness.

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"Electability" has become a watchword of this year's Democratic primary, but the polling on what that actually means to voters is really complicated. I tried to break it down a bit: https://t.co/Jz8KWPWfgq

— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) January 28, 2020

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Lordy, this ad is BRUTAL. 😳cc: @SenMcSallyAZ pic.twitter.com/XIDCvmARef

— Matt Rogers 🎙 (@Politidope) January 28, 2020