Just wanted to be sure everyone saw the part of President Trump’s impromptu press conference where he said openly what his administration (both generally and specifically to the Supreme Court) has denied for months: that they want a citizenship question on the census to help with redistricting.
Trump on why he wants a citizenship question: "You need it for congress for districting, you need it for appropriations." Key point: The Solicitor General specifically this was not why they wanted a citizenship question. This is the real reason that they've been hiding. pic.twitter.com/K0FT5yYVAh
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 5, 2019
When we think about politics all of us are prone to meld together things we support with things that are viable, possible, popular. With this in mind I want to flag to your attention one part of the WaPo/ABC news poll that came out over the weekend. One headline out of this poll is that Trump’s approval rating is the highest ever recorded for this particular poll. We shouldn’t draw too much from that data point since it’s only slightly higher than the average for this poll and to date other polls show no significant strengthening.
But I want to draw your attention to this finding.
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I got a flood of responses to yesterday’s post on Joe Biden’s poll numbers. As always, I learn from all of them. I should say that I know these posts provoke people. But it’s not mischievous provocation. It’s with a purpose. To that end, most of the replies were some form of making two points. First, we’re 18 months from the election. Polls can and do change and they don’t mean that much now. (TPM Reader AG sent me the link and text to this CNN write-up of an April 2004 Gallup poll showing John Kerry beating George W. Bush.) Second, Joe Biden sucks! By which they mean, as they explain, Biden has any number of already apparent weaknesses and liabilities – he’s old; he’s got a history running failed presidential campaigns; he’s on the line for various policies of the past which Democrats now repudiate; he’s old school and establishment; he’s out of touch with the aspirations and beliefs of younger and more diverse Democrats, etc etc. The point being that both within the Democratic primaries and in a hypothetical general election these liabilities will inevitably weigh him down and sink him regardless of what polls today may say.
I actually agree with a lot of these criticisms and said as much a few months ago. More than that, I worry they will weigh him down over time.
In comments a earlier this hour, President Trump shifted his stance on Jeffrey Epstein, now claiming he “was not a fan” and “had a falling out with him” many years ago. Video after the jump.
It seems like General Flynn may have gotten tired of cooperating with the Feds, for some reason.
Here’s an issue you likely know intuitively but is worth knowing and considering in more depth. Partisan gerrymandering is a scourge on our democracy and Republicans played it to maximum advantage in 2010. But it’s only part of the reason that Democrats play at a deep structural disadvantage in the House of Representatives. An equally big culprit is Democrats’ concentration in major urban enclaves. Indeed, the two are deeply intertwined. What we think of as partisan gerrymandering in its recent Republican guise is largely a matter of taking the existing concentration of Democrats in urban areas and playing it to maximum advantage. Put another way, if Democrats controlled states and tried to partisan gerrymander to their maximum advantage rather than produce ‘fair’ districts through commissions it simply wouldn’t be possible to do it as successfully as Republicans did in 2010-12.
The key to a successful partisan gerrymander is creating a large number of districts where your party has a strong but not overwhelming advantage and creating a small number of safe seats for your opponents where they have an overwhelming advantage and thus ‘waste’ lots of votes. Geography and demography simply make that much more possible for Republicans than Democrats.
We know the outlines of charges that Jeffrey Epstein for years had procurers recruiting underaged girls for sex. We know the suspicions that various wealthy and powerful men in his vast social circle may have been part of this organized system of statutory rape. But there’s another part of this emerging story I want to focus your attention on – one which is distinct but may not at all be separate.
No one seems to have a clear idea of where Jeffrey Epstein’s money comes from.
In my earlier post I mentioned the reporting of Vicky Ward who did a lengthy piece on Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003 and is now revisiting the story in The Daily Beast. (Ward had a detailed version of the underaged girls part of the story but Vanity Fair cut that from the 2003 story.) I wanted to flag your attention to a passage in her latest piece at The Daily Beast which reports that Acosta told Trump transition officials that he’d been told to back off the Epstein case at the time and that that was why he gave Epstein such a generous deal.
Here’s the passage …
Here’s Alex Acosta’s answer on that Daily Beast claim that he told Trump transition officials that he was told to lay off Epstein and that he was some sort of intelligence asset. That struck me as a pretty wild claim. But bizarrely Acosta non-denial denialed it with a claim about departmental policies which I don’t think adds up.
This was a pretty weird answer: "I can't address it directly because of our guidelines." pic.twitter.com/9SVi8HNKo2
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 10, 2019