I think the "bad feeling" @michelleinbklyn and @chrislhayes are describing is common among highly engaged liberal-leaning news junkies but it doesn't seem the broader Dem base is intensely worried about a threat to democracy.
The Republican base is, though!
I suspecy this is basically it. Like the "is there a threat to democracy" question is now another version of the "how is the economy doing" question where we see huge partisan swings immediately depending on who the president is
I delved into the child care plan of the Build Back Better Act. It's one of the most ambitious parts of the bill, that could greatly help millions of families.
But its design could bring serious implementation challenges, both practical and political
The core of the plan is that the federal government would agree to pick up the bulk of childcare costs at licensed providers, offering generous subsidies to most families, who'd only have to pay a limited "copay"
But there's some fine print, including:
-Lots of discretion is left to state governments, including whether to participate at all.
-The full subsidies won't be available until 2025
-The whole plan expires after 2027
This piece is of course anecdotal but I continue to believe Biden's vaccine rules (covered as "mandates") are underdiscussed as a cause of his approval drop.
The Dem coalition is more pro-vaxx (higher social trust) than the GOP, but that doesn’t mean *everyone* in the D coalition is that way.
Vaccine rules / "mandates" are sufficiently personal and may read as threatening enough to the low trusters to turn them against Biden
Biden's approval drop accelerated with Afghanistan but continued when Afghanistan receded from the headlines in September. Vaccine rules announced 9/9.
Morning Consult looked at this with regards to Black voters specifically and found an approval drop
Governor approval ratings from Morning Consult. Some of the polling was done as far back as July (before Biden's approval really fell into the toilet).
Blue state moderate Rs — Phil Scott, Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Chris Sununu — most popular
9 of the top 10 most popular governors are Republicans, with the sole Democrat being Ned Lamont.
Swing state D governors in MI, PA, WI, NV not doing so hot. All of those seats are up in 2022
I was curious how the governor approval ratings compared to their party's presidential candidate's vote share.
The blue state moderate Rs overperform most, but the red state moderate Ds also overperform (though only enough to put them slightly above 50% approval)
I don't think a lack of clarity is the real hold-up. It's substance.
Manchin and Sinema have demanded various changes in the bill. Dems have offered some of what they want, but not all of it, in hopes they'll say it's good enough. They haven't yet.
Durham tries to get to the bottom of where the pee tape allegation came from. He seems to imply what he thinks is the answer without actually proving it.
This is a bit complicated so needs some decoding (cont'd)...
Much of the Steele dossier relied on information provided by Igor Danchenko, who is the subject of this indictment.
Per indictment, Danchenko was close to an unnamed Democratic PR Executive who worked in Russia and had associations with many key figures named in dossier
This Democratic PR Executive told Danchenko that he had inside information on the downfall of Paul Manafort, from "a GOP friend". Danchenko wrote up his info and put it into the dossier.
But the PR exec actually just made that up, had no "friend" who gave him inside info