A Bonkers Speech

  In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Remarks in Great Falls, Montana, July 5:

So anytime I suggest anything -- so we've got $33 billion -- it's going to be a lot more money than that. But then they say, let's see, he's angry at NATO. I guess, yeah, he loves Russia. I love Russia. I will say this, I am meeting with President Putin next week and getting along -- let me tell you, getting along with Russia and getting along with China and getting along with other countries is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing.
...
"Will he be prepared? Will he be prepared?" And I might even end up having a good relationship, but they're going, "Will President Trump be prepared? You know, President Putin is KGB and this and that." You know what? Putin's fine. He's fine. We're all fine. We're people.

Will I be prepared? Totally prepared. I've been preparing for this stuff my whole life. They don't say that.
...
A vote for the Democrats in November is a vote to let MS-13 run wild in our communities.

To let drugs pour into our cities, and to take jobs and benefits away from our hardworking Americans, and we're not letting it happen.

Democrats want anarchy, they really do, and they don't know who they're playing with, folks.

I said it the other day, yes, she is a low IQ individual, Maxine Waters. I said it the other day. High -- I mean, honestly, she's somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe that.

Wacko Senate Candidate Has Wacko Husband

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott report at CNN:

Arizona US Senate candidate Kelli Ward's husband has a history of promoting fringe conspiracy theories on social media, a CNN KFile review has found.

Mark Ward, who like his wife is a doctor, is an Arizona political activist and heavily involved in his wife's campaign for the Republican nomination for US Senate in Arizona in the race to replace retiring Sen. Jeff Flake. He frequently appears at campaign events, knocks on doors to speak with voters and has even appeared at a local event on his wife's behalf.

On Twitter, Mark Ward retweeted users who suggested that a murdered staffer of the Democratic National Committee, Seth Rich, was involved in the hacking of the organization's emails and who implied a conspiracy theory to cover up his death.

...

In March 2017, Ward claimed on Twitter that McCain "supports, funds, equips and trains #ISIS"

Ward frequently mocked McCain for his age on Twitter. In July 2016, Ward said that McCain "is the weakness frail and scared guy that won't debate @kelliwardaz." Also in July 2016, Ward tweeted that McCain was "a senior citizen masquerading as a competent Senator."

In June 2016, Ward retweeted an image calling McCain a "senile old fart" who "loves illegal immigrants" and "thinks he can make it all okay by calling himself a 'war hero.'"

In August 2016, he tweeted that McCain was old, stale, and feckless. Also in August 2016, Ward tweeted that McCain was too "scared and frail" to debate his wife.

Senate Committee Reaffirms that Russia Helped Trump

  In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

From the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

Today, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released the Committee’s unclassified summary of its initial findings on the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian activities in the 2016 U.S. elections. The Committee finds that the overall judgments issued in the ICA were well-supported and the tradecraft was strong. The course of the Committee’s investigation has shown that the Russian cyber operations were more extensive than the hack of the Democratic National Committee and continued well through the 2016 election.

“The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” said Chairman Burr. “The Committee continues its investigation and I am hopeful that this installment of the Committee’s work will soon be followed by additional summaries providing the American people with clarity around Russia’s activities regarding U.S. elections.”

“Our investigation thoroughly reviewed all aspects of the January 2017 ICA, which assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to target our presidential election and to destabilize our democratic institutions,” said Vice Chairman Warner. “As numerous intelligence and national security officials in the Trump administration have since unanimously re-affirmed, the ICA findings were accurate and on point. The Russian effort was extensive and sophisticated, and its goals were to undermine public faith in the democratic process, to hurt Secretary Clinton and to help Donald Trump. While our investigation remains ongoing, we have to learn from 2016 and do more to protect ourselves from attacks in 2018 and beyond.”

The summary is the second unclassified installment in the Committee’s report on Russian election activities.

The Committee held a closed door hearing in May to review the ICA on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.” Members heard testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan and former Director of the National Security Agency Mike Rogers, which informed the Committee’s report.

You can read a copy of the unclassified summary here.

Most Republicans Want a "Strong Leader Willing to Break the Rules"

In Defying the Odds,  we discuss the Trump phenomenon and its impact on broader attitudes.

"Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? - America needs a strong leader willing to break the rules"

	Republican	Democrat	Independent
Strongly Agree	33%	10%	15%
Agree	26%	12%	19%
Neither	21%	21%	26%
Disagree	11%	24%	15%
Strongly Disagree	09%	33%	22%

These are findings from an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of the USA Today from June 26-27, 2018. For the survey, a sample of roughly 1,004 adults age 18+ from the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii were interviewed online in English. The sample includes 338 Democrats, 324 Republicans, and 213 Independents. 

At Ipsos, Clifford Young wrote earlier this year:

The logic of this system goes something like “the system is broken; it is broken because the system is rigged to favor the rich and powerful; we can no longer trust traditional parties and politicians to fix it; hence, we need a strong leader to take the country back, even if he or she needs to break the rules.”

 The latest flavor of anti-system populist actors, including Trump, has come from the Right—many with strong nativist, country-first messages. Such populist figures, however, are the offspring of low-trust environments. In this sense, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were in effect “two sides of the same coin”—each representing different flavors of America’s disenchantment with the system. Looking forward, given our low-trust environment, what precludes a “Trump of the left” arising in the next few electoral cycles as a reaction to Trump himself? In my opinion, not much.

Hard Left

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

Maxine Waters called for the harassment of Trump administration officials, and Trump is gleefully putting the spotlight on her.  A year ago, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng wrote at The Daily Beast:

Rep. Maxine Waters has been reborn at the age of 78, emerging as a folk hero to the anti-Trump resistance for her repeated torching of the president.

From the glowing coverage and partisan praise, you’d barely detect that just a few years ago the veteran California congresswoman was dubbed one of the nation’s “most corrupt” elected officials by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for her role in pushing a bailout for a bank tied to her family.

Waters was eventually cleared by investigators, though her grandson who served as her chief of staff was not. And now, Democrats seem to be embracing—and some liberal ethics advocates willfully ignoring—her sudden emergence as one of the nation’s leading critics of ethical lapses in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Asked by The Daily Beast whether the group felt that Waters would be an effective critic of Trump’s own ethics given that history, Jordan Libowitz, a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokesman, demurred.

“Going to have to pass on this one, I think that’s just a little too political of a question for us,” read an email from Libowitz, whose group is a key component of a well-funded network of political and policy outfits working to “kick Donald Trump’s ass,” in the words of Democratic operative David Brock, who formerly chaired CREW’s board and has remained active with the group this year.

Lloyd Green at The Hill:

Redistributive policies and identity politics loom as fast approaching storm clouds on a nearby horizon. Clintonian neoliberalism and triangulation just got belted with a left hook to the jaw, and the party’s poohbahs are looking dazed and confused.

Ocasio-Cortez calls for single-payer healthcare, abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and free college for all. Forget about the underlying arithmetic and how to pay for all of it, which either requires sky-high taxation or flat-out sorcery. Rather, this is a cultural manifesto, a cry for open borders, and a demand for one ginormous nausea-inducing free lunch. Against this backdrop, does anyone think Michael Bloomberg has a realistic shot at winning the Democratic nomination two years from now? There is nothing like an aging financialist to get people really excited and trudging out in the dead of winter to hang out for two hours at the Iowa caucuses.

...
Trump is working hard to trash the First Amendment, shred the rule of law, and gut reproductive freedoms. But when the smoke clears, Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, and Democratic “progressives” may well leave greater and more lasting cultural and economic resentments.

Democrats are taking a winning moral issue (not separating children from parents) and turning it into a losing political one (eliminating ICE/Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency). If they keep this up they may have a replay of 2016 on their hands.

— Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner) July 2, 2018

Crazy Maxine Waters, said by some to be one of the most corrupt people in politics, is rapidly becoming, together with Nancy Pelosi, the FACE of the Democrat Party. Her ranting and raving, even referring to herself as a wounded animal, will make people flee the Democrats!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2018

Senate Elections Align With Presidential Results

In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Drew DeSilver at Pew:

The vast majority of the regular and special Senate elections held since 2013 – 69 of 73 – have been won by candidates who belonged to the party that won that state’s most recent presidential race, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of election results going back to 1980. That represents a marked contrast with prior years: As recently as 2006, 12 of 33 Senate contests (36%) were won by candidates of different parties than their state’s 2004 presidential pick. (The election data we used came mostly from the Federal Election Commission, supplemented by information from the U.S. House Clerk’s office and media reports.)

Fearful Symmetry

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the Sanders candidacy and the leftward drift of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic left took heart when a socialist beat a standard liberal in a House primary in New York. Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

What worries some Democratic elders, though, is that activists will harbor unrealistic expectations of what sort of policies newly elected progressive lawmakers can push through in a still-divided capital.

“They say to new members, ‘You won because of us,’” said John A. Lawrence, former chief of staff to Ms. Pelosi and the author of a new book on the so-called Watergate Babies. “Actually no, typically you win because you were able to win moderate voters disgusted with incumbents.”

There is also a group of younger Democrats uneasy about the party drifting too far left.
Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana said he understood that Democratic voters were “furious and scared at the same time,” but he also said he wished his party had a moderating influence to counter Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who has been at the front end of the party’s turn left.

“Bernie is fighting for his principles on what direction the party should go,” he said, “but we don’t really have anybody doing it on behalf of moderates and other Democrats. It has become a one-sided conversation.”

There is no question that Democratic leaders have been tugged toward a brand of more unadulterated progressivism. But there are fewer levers of power at their disposal to impose discipline or tilt their proposals toward the political center. They lack legislative earmarks to hand out, or withhold, and their ability to raise large sums of money matters less in an era in which liberal fund-raising is moving online.

And with the decline of unions, one of the last pillars of top-down authority in their coalition is on the wane. The public-sector unions stung by last week’s court decision had been one the movement’s remaining power centers.