The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
@kerryeleveld
RFK Jr.

Abortion Doubts May Drive Wavering Democrats Away From RFK Jr.

The extended family of third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an explicit effort Thursday to blunt his appeal among Democratic voters by endorsing President Joe Biden en masse.

Robert's sister Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and niece of former President John F. Kennedy, called Biden “my hero” at an endorsement event in Philadelphia featuring at least 15 members of the Kennedy clan.

“We want to make crystal clear our feelings that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” she said, a clear sign of the threat third-party candidates pose to Biden's 2024 reelection bid.

Almost simultaneously, news broke that RFK Jr. and his tech entrepreneur running mate Nicole Shanahan qualified for the ballot in the swing state of Michigan after being nominated by the Natural Law Party.

The ultimate effect of third-party candidates this cycle and exactly where they will make the ballot remains unclear. But we do know that Donald Trump, who has never won more than 47 percent of the vote, will need a spoiler or two siphoning away votes from Biden in order to prevail in November.

The supposed bipartisan group No Labels recently complicated Trump's calculus by ending its bid to find a candidate to run. That leaves anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr., Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Harvard professor Cornel West as potential spoilers to Biden's reelection, either individually or as a group. Kennedy, who polls highest and has the resources to potentially get on the ballot in all 50 states, poses the biggest threat.

It remains to be seen whether Kennedy's candidacy—which draws interest from conspiracy theorists and Kennedy-nostalgic Democrats alike—will hurt Biden or Trump more in November. But some polling suggests that Kennedy is currently skimming more voters away from Biden.

What is clear is that Trump benefits disproportionately from every third-party candidate in the race since he fell several points shy of reaching 50% in both 2016 and 2020. By contrast, Biden won in 2020 with 51% of vote—just barely enough to tilt the Electoral College in his favor. It’s telling that Kennedy's presidential bid has been bankrolled by one of Trump's biggest donors, Mellon banking heir Timothy Mellon, and championed by one of Trump's biggest allies, Steve Bannon. Not so coincidentally, a key Kennedy campaign official, Rita Palma, also said her No. 1 goal was blocking Biden's reelection bid. Palma has since been axed by the Kennedy campaign.

All that said, it is incumbent upon the Biden campaign to blunt Kennedy's allure among Democrats to make him a bigger drag on Trump in November.

“If Kennedy makes it on the ballot in these states—and that’s a big if—we’re going to make sure voters know how extreme his policies are and that MAGA megadonors are bankrolling his spoiler campaign to be a stalking horse for Donald Trump,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, who is advising the Democratic National Committee on the matter.

The Kennedy family itself, with its enduring star power among Democrats, has been searching for ways to kneecap RFK Jr., who's leveraging the family name while damaging the Kennedy legacy with his antithetical stances.

But at some point soon, the Biden campaign will have to deploy a strategy to neutralize Kennedy's Democratic appeal, and a recent Engagious focus group in Pennsylvania of 11 Trump-to-Biden swing voters may offer a window into one potential avenue.

According to Axios, roughly half of the swing voters who participated in the focus group said the candidates' stances on abortion would play a role in how they voted in the fall.

Six of those swing voters also said they would vote for Kennedy over Biden and Trump, but questions about Kennedy's abortion stance became an immediate hang-up for them.

"If he doesn't agree with what I agree with abortion, then I'm going to switch," said participant Michael W.

Rich Thau, the focus group moderator and president of Engagious, said that pro-choice swing voters who expressed support for Kennedy "seemed to second-guess their support when confronted with the argument that a vote for Kennedy is effectively a vote for Trump and his abortion policies."

After some initial jostling last year, Kennedy told NBC News’ Ali Vitali that he supported abortion during the first three months of pregnancy but would sign a federal abortion ban if elected.

“I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life," Kennedy said. "Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child." The exchange between Kennedy and Vitali was captured on video, making it fodder for attack ads.

Kennedy’s campaign has since backtracked on those remarks, issuing a statement saying he does not support a federal ban on abortion.

“Mr. Kennedy supports a woman's right to choose,” says the statement, adding that it’s “not up to the government to intervene in these difficult medical and moral choices.”

A national abortion ban is a nonstarter with Democratic voters, and perhaps most importantly, many Democrats who aren't thrilled about voting for Biden but would never consider voting for Trump.

In a follow-up exchange with Daily Kos, Thau said, "For pro-choice Trump and Biden voters, the risk posed by voting for RFK Jr. could be too much if abortion is a top-tier concern."

He added that he hasn't yet come across another issue that "would have the same effect on RFK-curious swing voters as abortion does. It’s not to say there aren’t such issues … but I haven’t pushed or probed on those yet."

Whatever the range of issues that could dissuade Democrats from voting for Kennedy, abortion appears to offer the Biden campaign a starting point.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Joe Biden

New Poll Shows Republicans (And Trump) Losing Badly On Abortion

A new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos shows why the issue of abortion is so perilous for the Republican Party, with voters viewing themselves as significantly more aligned with Democrats on the matter.

By 15 points, registered voters say their opinion on abortion is closer to that of Democrats in their states than Republicans, at 48% to 33%, according to the poll released Wednesday.

President Joe Biden also fares eight points better than Donald Trump on the question of how voters think the candidates' abortion views track with their own, with 44 percent choosing Biden compared to 36 percent picking Trump.

Democratic lawmakers likely performed slightly better than Biden on the abortion measure partly because voters generally view Trump as more socially liberal on abortion than most Republican lawmakers overall.

For instance, a December 2023 Data for Progress poll found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed congressional Republicans would take action to pass a national abortion ban if they took control of Congress in 2024, ranking only second to the belief that they would build a wall at the southern border. Meanwhile, only 48 percent of voters said Trump would pass a national abortion ban as president, putting the issue seventh on his likely to-do list.

The disparity between how voters view Republicans lawmakers versus Trump on abortion is exactly why the Biden campaign hammered Trump’s pretzel twisting on abortion last week after Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered the enforcement of a draconian Civil War-era abortion ban.

The Biden campaign’s rapid response team also made an explicit effort to link Trump to anti-abortion zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson, deploying roughly 18 tweets in a 24-hour period featuring the two men together.

Notably, the Civiqs poll also found that independents view Democrats as more closely aligned with their abortion views than Republicans by 12 points, at 41 percent to 29 percent. Biden and Trump run about even among independents, with 35 percent saying their views track more closely with Biden's, and 36 percent choosing Trump.

The bottom line: Any time candidates of either party talk about abortion or the topic dominates the headlines—as happened last week—it’s a win for Democrats and Biden.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe-Biden-South-Carolina-primary

'New York Times' Poll Reverses Itself On Trump Gaining Minority Support

A newly released New York Times/Siena poll shows a wholesale reversal from its previous February poll that suggested President Joe Biden was bleeding support among Latino voters.

The Times/Siena poll released Saturday showed Biden gaining significant ground with minority voters, including opening up a 9-point lead over Trump with Latinos, 50 percent - 41 percent. That's a 15-point turnaround since February, when theTimes/Siena survey gave Trump a six-point advantage among Latino voters, winning 46 percent of the group to Biden's 40 percent.

Biden's growth among nonwhite voters—including a net 10-point gain with Black voters—has effectively erased Trump's lead among registered voters overall in the latest Times/Siena survey, with Biden at 45 percent to Trump's 46 percent. The Times' February poll gave Trump a five-point advantage overall, at 43 percent Biden -- 48 percent Trump.

Taking the poll at face value, Trump's Latino support is still historically high at 41 percent, while Biden's is historically low at 50 percent. The high-water mark for any Republican presidential candidate is President George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004.

In 2020, Biden won Latino voters 59 percent -- 38 percent, so the incumbent still has considerable room to grow support among the group while Trump may already be close to hitting his ceiling.

Last week, we covered polling from the Pew Research Center that draws into question whether Trump—as many outlets including the Times have reported—has really made significant inroads with Latino voters and, if so, whether those gains would be enough to swing an election given Biden's relative strength thus far with white voters.

Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican...The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).

But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats.

Biden now appears to be doing exactly that: consolidating support among Latino and Black voters as he gains ground on Trump.

And as we noted in Friday's piece, the same Pew Research Center polling suggests Democrats haven't suffered a significant falloff in support among Black and Latino voters during the Trump era. In fact, Pew's data called into question the entire premise that some sort of racial realignment has taken place among voters over the past several years.

The Times/Siena poll isn't the only survey showing Biden cutting into Trump's lead since the State of the Union address in early March. In The Tilt newsletter Saturday, the Times' Nate Cohn found Biden gaining an average of +1.4 points on Trump in 16 polls taken before and after the fiery speech.

While none of these revelations feel like tectonic shifts in the presidential contest, they do appear to reflect the Biden campaign's increasing advantages over Trump when it comes to electoral fundamentals such as fundraising, time spent campaigning, and investments in advertising and organizing.

An old adage comes to mind: The only nonrenewable resource in a campaign is time. And while Biden continues to campaign across the country, Trump will be spending the lion's share of his time in a courtroom over the next half-dozen weeks.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Black And Hispanic Voters

Pew Data Disproves Reported Trump Advance Among Minority Voters

The Pew Research Center released polling this week that casts serious doubt on recent surveys showing Donald Trump making significant gains among Black and Latino voters.

The Pew survey suggested majorities of Latino, Black, and Asian voters continue to largely favor the Democratic Party. The results show very little change among Black and Latino Americans since the early 1990s, while white voters remain almost exactly as aligned with the Republican Party as they were in the early ‘90s.

"Not much 'racial realignment' in these Pew numbers," Vanderbilt political science professor John Sides tweeted, attaching a series of Pew graphs tracking party alignment over three decades.

On Latinos specifically, Pew’s 2023 data showing Democrats with a 61 percent to 35 percent edge seemed to counter recentNew York Times/Siena polling showing Trump with a 46 percent to 40 percent edge over Biden—6 points above George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004, the high-water mark for Republicans.

Pew puts considerable effort into surveying the U.S. Latino population, and some political analysts consider it the gold standard on Latino polling. The differences in outcomes between the Pew and Times polls are due to a number of variables, including the fact that Pew asked about party affiliation while the Times polled Trump-Biden support.

But another factor—and a potential cautionary tale about polling Latinos—might be differences in the way the polls were conducted. In the fine print of its graph, Pew explains why its data for Latino voters only dates back to the mid-aughts while information for its other three demographic graphs date back to the 1990s.

"Data for Hispanic voters shown only for years with interviews in English and Spanish," the text reads. In other words, the polling organization didn't view polling of Latinos conducted in English as sufficiently representative, even if the sample sizes were technically large enough.

The Times poll conducted just three percent of its interviews of self-identified Latino voters in Spanish—a fact that UCLA political science professor, Democratic pollster, and Biden campaign adviser Matt Barreto currently highlights in his pinned tweet.

"Let's look at their brilliant Latino methodology: 97 percent English," Barreto tweeted incredulously last month, when the poll was released. Barreto added emphatically that Trump's 6-point advantage in the Times survey "does not match ANY actual bilingual large-n polling of Latinos. ZERO CHANCE. Are people frustrated? Yes. Is Trump +6. ZERO CHANCE."

Even the Times piece detailing the poll's findings among Latino voters warned, "For a subgroup that size, the margin of error is 10 percentage points."

But if Barreto's tweet sounds urgent, it's because Biden's share of Latino voters matters. Latinos, who now account for roughly 15 percent of eligible voters, can be difference-makers in 2024. That is particularly true in a swing state like Arizona, where Latinos are expected to account for around one-quarter of voters this year.

There's good reason to question polling suggesting such a dramatic shift among a group of voters who present unique challenges to pollsters.

As Republican political consultant and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid tweeted, Pew's "numbers are much more in line with where Hispanics will likely end up. Lower for GOP than most current polls but high historically."

Trump's big purge of old-school and more moderate Republicans, such as supporters of his primary rival Nikki Haley, has also put more pressure on him to overperform among groups that typically haven't favored Republicans—including Latinos.

The smartest reporting out there on the topic of Trump's potential gains with minority voters this cycle comes from CNN analyst and The Atlantic senior editor Ronald Brownstein, who has been at the forefront of tracking demographic trends since coining the term "the blue wall" in 2009.

As Brownstein points out, one underreported trend in this cycle's polling is Biden's relative strength among white voters. In most state and national polls, Biden is "matching or even exceeding" his winning 2020 share of the white vote.

So with Biden and Trump running roughly even in national polling now, Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican.

As Brownstein tweeted, "Trump's gains w/Black & Hispanic voters have drawn justified attn. But w/little notice, Biden is matching or beating his 2020 # w/Whites in most ntl & state polls. That means to win,Trump may need to hold more minority votes than any GOP nominee in 60+ yrs."

That's going to be a tall order, particularly among Latinos, given the full-court press the Biden campaign rolled out last week with its new targeted outreach strategy, "Latinos con Biden-Harris."

The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).

But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats, as the Pew polling suggested.

As Democratic strategist Joe Trippi recently explained on his podcast, “That Trippi Show,” "We don't have to gain back 20 points with Blacks, we don't have to gain back 20 points with Latinos, or with young people. If we're in a dead heat when we've lost 20 points with all those folks across the board, you get 2 points, 3 points, 4 points of them back, and Trump is dead."

It's another case of: We'd much rather be us than them.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

Biden Pulls Even With Trump In Latest National Polls

In the four weeks since his fiery State of the Union address, President Joe Biden's campaign has kicked into high gear—barnstorming eight battleground states, opening up more than 100 field offices, making a $30 million ad buy, and launching a Latino outreach strategy targeting the Southwestern swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Some polls have begun to see movement in Biden's direction, including a recent Bloomberg battleground poll, the Marquette University polling released Thursday, and the NPR/PBS/Marist poll (compared to its January/February survey).

Since last fall, the standard line in national political reporting has been that Trump leads Biden in the polling. That construct doesn't hold true any longer. Eyeballing the last two weeks of polls released by nonpartisan outfits (excluding Trafalgar Group) on 538's aggregate, Biden won six of them, Trump won five, and one found them even.

Data analysts far smarter than me also see positive movement for Biden.

The 538 generic ballot continues to be better for Democrats relative to results earlier this year. At 44.6% to 44.4%, Democrats are now up by a whisper over Republicans, who consistently led in the generic this year until roughly a month ago when Democrats pulled even.

It's impossible to intuit exactly what goes into subtle shifts among the electorate, but Trump hasn't exactly been killing it on the campaign trail. His campaigning over the past month has mainly consisted of making courtroom appearances, golfing, some fundraising, and 'Truthing' his endless grievances.

The presumptive GOP candidate did manage to cause a stir this week in the battleground state of Michigan, where he lied about speaking with Ruby Garcia’s family. The Michigan woman was murdered by a man who was in the country illegally. Trump never spoke to her loved ones.

“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” Mavi Garcia, who has acted as a spokeswoman for her family, said in an interview with WOOD-TV8, the NBC affiliate for West Michigan.

Other local media outlets carried similar stories refuting Trump's false claim.

From a campaign standpoint, it wasn't exactly a home run, even though the virulently anti-immigrant aspect of the stop surely thrilled his MAGA faithful.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

In Late March, Both Fundraising And Polling Are Improving For Biden

Last week,The Economist's presidential polling average set in motion a reevaluation of the general election when President Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump for the first time since September 2023.

To be clear, Biden isn't suddenly the odds-on favorite to win in November, but the fundamentals of the Biden-Trump contest do appear to be shifting in a slightly more favorable direction for Biden.

In the 18 Biden-Trump head-to-head matchups conducted by reputable pollsters (1.8 stars or higher-plus in 538’s pollster ratings) since the March 7 State of the Union address, Trump led in nine surveys, Biden led in seven, and they were even in two. This is a modest improvement from the 18 comparable surveys leading up to Biden's speech. In those surveys, Trump led in 10, Biden in six, and two found the candidates evenly matched.

Better yet, the average of these polls shows Biden improving overall, from 1.1 percentage points underwater before the State of the Union, to 0.8 points underwater afterward—which may seem like a negligible shift but is meaningful where averages are concerned. (Note: None of the polls used here account for how third-party candidates affect the outcome.)

Included in the post-SOTU polling was this month’s Daily Kos/Civiqs survey, which found Biden leading Trump by a single percentage point, 45 percent to 44 percent—a slight uptick from January, when the two were even.

But truth be told, the horse-race polling is among the least of Biden's gains in the contest. The Biden campaign's fundraising in February combined with that of the Democratic National Committee eclipsed the totals of Trump and the RNC.

Filings posted last week showed that the Biden campaign raised $21.3 million in February, while the DNC raised another $16.6 million; the Trump campaign reported raising $10.9 million, while the Republican National Committee raised a similar $10.7 million.

But the more pronounced disparity came in cash reserves available to Biden and the Democrats. Biden and the DNC closed out February with a combined $97.6 million cash on hand—more than doubling the $44.9 million banked by Trump and the RNC.

Democrats’ associated committees boast a cash advantage over Republicans as well:

  • Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has $14 million more money banked than the National Republican Campaign Committee ($59.2 million to $45.2 million).
  • Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a $7 million cash-on-hand advantage over the National Republican Senatorial Committee ($31.9 million to $24.8 million).

Other underlying fundamentals are also moving in a positive direction for Biden and Democrats. While Republicans led Democrats in 538's generic congressional ballot aggregate throughout most of January, February, and much of March, Democrats have now pulled even with Republicans, at roughly 44.5 percent each.

In Civiqs’ tracking polls, the public opinion of Biden's efforts to create jobs are better than they have ever been, with 42 percent agreeing that he’s doing enough and 48 percent disagreeing.

And while voters' views on the condition of the economy remain well underwater, they are trending in the right direction since falling in the first half of 2022, during the throes of inflation. At net -24 points “good,” the numbers now are on par with how voters viewed the economy in late September 2021.

And voters' estimation of their family finances are the best they've been in roughly two years, since early March 2022.

Current public opinion about the economy and personal finances are double-digits better than they were during the final month of the 2022 midterms, when Democrats turned back the vaunted red wave that historical norms foretold. In fact, voters’ view of the economy is 22 points better now than it was on Election Day 2022.

The data points aren't unrelated. Now that voters are getting more clarity on the choices this cycle, Democratic donors are demonstrating greater enthusiasm for their ticket than are Republican donors. And that cash advantage is giving Democrats more room to advertise and assemble a ground game.

While voters will be settling into their choices later this year, partisans on both sides are already starting to “come home” to their party—which is particularly important to see on the Democratic side since the media had fixated on soft support for Biden as an early narrative.

Civiqs polling from January and March is a perfect example, with Biden bumping his support among Democratic voters by a couple points, from 88 percent to 90 percent. Trump likewise boosted his GOP support from 90 percent to 92 percent.

But what is most fascinating is the shift among independents, who favored Trump by 11 points in January. But this month, Biden cut Trump's lead among independent voters to just a handful of points, 37percent to 42 percent.

Biden's State of the Union remains a rallying point, giving Democratic voters something to cheer and offering a point of reassurance for some disaffected Republicans voters who defected from Trump to Biden in 2020. This week's Focus Group podcast, hosted by Sarah Longwell, featured the reactions of several Trump-to-Biden voters following the State of the Union.

I thought he was energized, chuckling, and that’s one of my biggest complaints about him. You know, not the age so much. It’s just, you know, he’s not, like, an enthusiastic, energized guy. ... You know, he made a couple of jabs at, like, Lindsey Graham, which comes off good in this, like, day and age. ... Sometimes you could tell he was going off script, which is good. He was, you know, flowing improv, which is good. He’s showing he’s competent.

It was the most that I’ve seen him be able to go off script that I can remember—but this, to me, felt like he was going off script. He was showing that he can do it, and he can do it well, which was a pretty good thing. And, I mean, to me, that answers some of the questions that people were having, or have made about him in the last couple of months.

He suffers from having a stutter. So a lot of times he stumbles over words, and it can be a little uncomfortable to listen to him. But I thought he sounded really sharp. He was very strong. He did go off script, but he was handling the hecklers really well.

If there's a takeaway here, it's that letting Joe be Joe—even amid some stumbles—is a better strategy than shielding him from the press and voters. Biden did himself and Democrats a world of good with his feisty State of the Union speech. And the Biden campaign appears to have switched into high gear in the weeks since, visiting every 2024 swing state in less than three weeks and putting the president on full display in a multitude of settings.

The other takeaway is that Republicans are continuing to disintegrate, with Trump's money woes eating away at their ability to compete by the day.

November is still many months away, but Democrats have reason to like the way things are trending as they work to build momentum heading into the August convention.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Liz Cheney Trump GOP

Cheney: Donors Beware! Trump's Legal Woes Are Draining GOP Finances

Donald Trump is in a bit of a financial bind: He can't post the $464 million bond necessary to buy him time while he appeals the ruling in the New York civil fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump has reportedly floated the enticing idea of underwriting his nearly half-billion obligation to some 30 different organizations and, shockingly, found no takers.

Trump absorbed the news with his usual grace, complaining bitterly about it Tuesday morning in at least seven posts on his social media platform Truth Social (which was down at the time of this writing).

“I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense?” Trump fumed in one post.

Trump's excessively public self-victimization for being found guilty of breaking the law is a clarion call for cash—from his MAGA cultists and whoever else might find it useful to potentially have a grateful asset in the White House.

As The New Republic's Timothy Noah told Greg Sargent on his new "Daily Blast" podcast, "Trump is broke, on the verge of bankruptcy, and he's running for president. It's a situation just ripe for corruption."

The presidency, should Trump win it, is effectively up for sale to the highest bidder.

But Trump's personal financial issues are just the tip of the iceberg for the man who just last week secured enough delegates to be the 2024 Republican nominee for president.

As his legal troubles continue to mount, the small-dollar donors who have funded much of Trump's legal bills are starting to turn off the spigot. CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports that in 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5 percent less money from small-dollar donors than in 2019, the year preceding the last presidential election. When the dust settled in 2020, Trump had raised nearly half of his total cash haul—$378 million—from small-dollar donations.

But the Trump campaign's looming cash crunch doesn't end there: the Republican Party's traditional well-heeled donor class is also missing in action. Many of those donors kept Nikki Haley’s rival bid for the GOP nomination afloat. Now they’re directing more of their funds to congressional races and, in particular, the Republican effort to win back the Senate.

Trump hasn't done himself any favors by promising to "permanently" bar Haley donors from his MAGA movement. In fact, the Biden campaign clearly sees an opening there and is making a play for Haley donors.

Biden made his own fundraising pitch when Haley ended her campaign, tweeting, "You don’t have to agree with me on everything to know MAGA extremism is a threat to this country. We need everyone on board—join our campaign." The tweet included a link to the Biden-Harris campaign fundraising page.

To review, Trump may have topped out in terms of what he can raise from his MAGA loyalists, while the bougie donors who fueled Haley's campaign are still MIA on Trump's presidential bid.

Since securing the required delegates, Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee with high hopes of a cash infusion he can use to pay his legal bills. Except the RNC is broke—entering the year with just $8 million cash on hand and nearly $2 million in debt. Those are some downright dismal numbers. And despite Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump promising to pay her father-in-law's legal bills, the RNC faces the same uphill fundraising battle that Trump does.

Trump’s archenemy, former Rep. Liz Cheney, took the opportunity to send out a buyer beware missive on Monday.

"Is it just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?" Cheney tweeted. "Donors better beware."

While this month's Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 63 percent of Republican voters are fine with the RNC paying Trump's bills, it appears many of those voters aren't personally coughing up the cash they used to.

That's a serious problem for the RNC and, perhaps, all of its associated committees, though it's possible GOP donors will shore up Senate Republicans’ finances even as they take a pass on Trump. As for House Republicans, it remains to be seen whether House Speaker Mike Johnson can keep pace with his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, who was actually a fundraising stud.

And amid these harrowing cash-strapped times for Trump, the Republican Party is convulsing its way through a nasty divorce that will require a lot of time, effort, and money to clean up before November.

That's a big messaging problem that is going to translate into a massive money problem. Even if Sephora sold enough lipstick to put on that pig, Trump wouldn’t have the cash on hand to buy it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

George Conway

Conway: When Trump Threatens America With A Bloodbath, It's No 'Hoax'

Donald Trump and his allies devoted the bulk of their energy Monday to cleaning up his promise during a weekend rally that if he doesn't win the presidency in November, "it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country."

Trump made the remark—which has attracted a gusher of scrutiny—while stumping for Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno on Saturday in Dayton, Ohio. Trump had been discussing the auto industry, but when he got to the gory “bloodbath” line, he hammered it repeatedly as the notion that the auto industry would flounder if he lost in November receded into the background.

“Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's going to be the least of it—it's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it," Trump said, adding, "But they're not going to sell those cars."

In other words, it was a classic Trump conflation of themes, obscuring his true intent.

The media, which usually misses the big picture on all things Trump, took his comments both literally and seriously.

One New York Times headline said Trump "Predicts a 'Blood Bath' if He Loses."

Trump allies, no doubt realizing the damage done by the viral comments, began referring to mainstream coverage as the "bloodbath hoax." Trump also took to Truth Social, his social media platform, with a series of posts and reposts claiming he was merely talking about cars and that the "Fake News Media" was taking him out of context.

But the most pertinent context came via George Conway, a noted anti-Trumper and soon-to-be ex-husband of Trump ally Kellyanne Conway. He tweeted out a thread that included this observation: "I’m willing to assume for the sake of argument that he was referring to cars. And it makes no difference to his malicious intent or to the danger he and his rhetoric poses.

"What matters," Conway continued, "is that he consistently uses apocalyptic and violent language in an indiscriminate fashion as a result of his psychopathy and correlative authoritarian tendencies, and because he’s just plain evil."

Trump famously kicked off his presidency in 2017 with an inaugural address decrying "American carnage." And during his 2024 bid, he has already leaned heavily into envisioning the catastrophic aftermath for the country if he loses, promising an economic crash "like you wouldn't believe" and bedlam in the country if his criminal indictments kneecap his electoral chances.

Trump is willing chaos and violence into existence if he loses precisely because he needs that apocalyptic threat to assert that he alone can fix it.

Indeed, later in Trump's weekend rally, he forewarned, “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.”

When Trump says “bloodbath,” it's because he's out for blood, plain and simple. The apocalyptic promise of violence and carnage is essential to his pitch, a self-fulfilling prophecy spoken into action.

As MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said Monday, "We are not stupid. Americans aren't stupid. [Trump] was talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a bloodbath. And when he finishes by saying, 'That's just going to be the least of it.' Seriously … we're not stupid."

The Biden campaign got the contextualization right, dropping a new ad Monday afternoon reprising Trump's entire body of work.

The spot opened on Trump's weekend remarks, then took viewers through a tour of Trump's greatest end-of-times hits, including his 2017 reference to the Charlottesville neo-Nazi marchers as "very fine people," his 2020 order to the white nationalist Proud Boys to "stand by," and his unabashed glorification of the Jan. 6 rioters.

That's the context, folks. When Trump promises a bloodbath for the country, he means it.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Joe Biden

State Of The Union Boosted Public View Of Biden

President Joe Biden's very good State of the Union showing wasn't just a hit among Democrats. Despite criticism that Biden's address was specifically aimed at rallying Democratic voters, the speech not only tested well with viewers beyond the base, it also significantly improved Biden's standing among those viewers.

As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner pointed out, a CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of respondents viewed the speech positively, with 62 percent saying his policies would move the country in the right direction—a 17-percentage-point bump from before the speech.

Navigator Research posted similar findings from its live-reaction dial group of 33 Phoenix-area soft partisans and independents: 76% had positive reactions, with 64 percent saying Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction.

Biden's favorability rating among the dial group jumped 37 points from before and after the speech, ending at 58 percent favorable to 42 percent unfavorable.

The change in Biden's job approval rating—a tougher sell—was far smaller but still improved six points, to 33 percent approve versus 67 percent disapprove. There's still plenty of work to do in that arena.

According Navigator testing among the 33 speech-watchers, Biden's biggest improvements from pre- to post-speech came in these five areas:

1. Stands up to corporations: net change of +83 points

2. Is a strong leader: net change of +63 points

3. Is up for the job of president: net change of +60 points

4. Represents the U.S. well abroad: net change of +46 points

5. Brings people together: net change of +40 points

Early numbers from Nielsen suggested Biden's State of the Union address attracted nearly 28 million viewers—a slight uptick from last year, despite appearing on fewer networks then. But the final Nielsen numbers were even better: 32.3 million viewers tuned in, a significant 18 percent increase over 2023.

Among those viewers, Biden did himself a world of good not just from a policy standpoint but also from the perspective of: Is this guy up for the job, and are his priorities in the right place?

The Biden campaign has a lot more work to do, but the overwhelmingly positive responses to the president's speech suggest his message is also one that he and his team can sell on the campaign trail.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Nikki Haley

Poll Shows GOP Is Running On Nothing But Immigration Fears

Immigration shot to the top of Gallup's February polling on what Americans say are the country's most vexing problems, finishing at 28 percent, an eight-percentage-point uptick in a single month.

Here were February's top five issues, compared with January's:

1. Immigration: 28 percent (+8 points from January)

2. Government: 20 percent (-1 point)

3. Economy in general: 12 percent (unchanged)

4. Inflation: 11percent (-2 points)

5. Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness: 6 percent (+1 point)

The main driver of immigration’s rise to the top of voter concerns was Republicans, 57 percent of whom name immigration as the country’s top problem—a 20-point surge since January.

Gallup notes that survey, taken from February 1 to February 20, encompassed a timeframe when the bipartisan border deal was announced but ultimately failed to pass the Senate after Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to kill it.

But Republicans have also recently been hammering the issue with hard ad dollars, according to Zachary Mueller, senior research director at the immigration advocacy group America's Voice. Mueller told Daily Kos that in just the first two months of 2024, Republican-aligned campaigns have already run 445 unique immigration ads totaling $62.6 million, according to AdImpact data.

"What those Gallup numbers tell me is that there is a core of the GOP base that has bought into the bigoted fiction that immigration is an existential threat to the nation," Mueller said, calling the Republican advertising a "xenophobic feedback loop."

Gallup's list of 15 items national priorities was notable for several other reasons, including the fact that concerns about inflation (No. 4) and the economy (No. 3) continue to recede in relation to other issues. In October 2022, just before midterm Election Day, 46 oercent of Americans mentioned various economic issues as the nation's most important problems. In February 2024, just 30 percent of respondents cited economic issues as their chief concern, so voters’ urgency around economic issues have receded considerably over the last year and a half.

In addition, the latest Gallup survey shows that just three percent of respondents named the federal budget deficit as a problem—so that GOP talking point is effectively dead, even among Republican voters.

At this point in the cycle, immigration is effectively all Republicans have left to run on. And due to their heavy spending, the issue of immigration and the influx of migrants crossing the border is now tops among Americans for the first time since July 2019, when it hit 27 percent

That's exactly why both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump went to Texas on Thursday to stage dueling press conferences.

During the visit, Biden sought to play offense on the issue, saying congressional Republicans had tanked the border deal for "rank partisan politics" and challenging them to "show a little spine."

While it's true that voters typically trust Republicans more on the issue of immigration, being a solutions-oriented pragmatist on the matter recently helped secure New York Democrat Tom Suozzi an 8-point win over his Republican rival in the special election for New York’s Third Congressional District. Suozzi called for a border shutdown while also emphasizing providing law-abiding immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.

And if Biden hopes to broaden his coalition by appealing to Nikki Haley supporters on the matter, South Carolina exit polls showed her winning 70 percent of Republican primary voters who say most undocumented immigrants should be given the opportunity to apply for legal status.

The split-screen Biden-Trump events at the border were just the opening salvo on an issue that Republicans will surely drive home through November. In 2022, Mueller said Republican-aligned campaigns ran 733 unique immigration ads totaling $233.4 million, according to AdImpact.

This year, Mueller expects Republicans to make another "massive investment" in stoking the issue.

"Despite nativist attacks failing to deliver at the ballot box in cycle after cycle, Republicans, with Trump still leading their party, are not going to switch tactics," he said.

And even if Republicans wanted to switch tactics, what would they switch to?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

After Crushing Defeat In Her Home State, What's Next For Nikki Haley?

After Crushing Defeat In Her Home State, What's Next For Nikki Haley?

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley got clobbered by Donald Trump Saturday in her home state of South Carolina, just as everyone predicted.

Haley's candidacy has already lasted longer than most election analysts predicted and certainly longer than Trump would like. Here's a look at what comes next.

1. Does Haley have a path to winning the nomination?

No. There's no world in which Haley manages to match, much less surpass, Trump's delegate count given the makeup of today's Republican Party.

Even in the event of Trump choking on the proverbial cheeseburger, Haley would face incredibly steep odds in brokering a convention deal among a bunch of delegates whose worship of Trump is complete and total. Such a convention showdown would be an awesome spectacle, but those delegates would almost surely vote for someone in Trump's mold, or maybe even anointed by him. That person will not be Haley.

2. Why is Haley still running?

It seems increasingly clear, based on the sharpness of her attacks on Trump, that Haley is trying to build a brand for the future, perhaps including a 2028 presidential bid. If Trump loses, Haley can say, “I told you so.” And at a spry 52 years of age, she can start laying the groundwork for her next political act, whether it's as part of the Republican Party or some other party that arises out of the GOP's wreckage.

3. Does Haley have a better shot on Super Tuesday than she did in South Carolina?

Yes. In spite of Haley's experience serving as governor of South Carolina, it remains a deeply conservative state with a relatively low level of college-educated voters. Haley's advisers have noted that 11 of the 16 contests taking place on Super Tuesday will be open or semi-open primaries that will inevitably include more voters receptive to Haley's insurgent pitch. The electorate in several of those states also boasts a greater concentration of the college-educated voters who have fueled Haley's campaign thus far. States that include some type of open primary coupled with a highly educated electorate, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, will be Haley’s sweet spot. She may not win them, but she will likely fare better there than in the Palmetto State.

4. Any chance Haley will be Trump's running mate?

Highly doubtful. Trump wants a running mate who will lie like a rug for him and trample the Constitution if that's what it takes to keep him in power. He doesn't want another Mike Pence fiasco. Plenty of malleable candidates have already stepped forward to demonstrate their bootlicking cred, including House Republicans' number three, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, and former 2024 hopeful-turned-Trump backer Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

5. Will Haley eventually fall in line on Trump?

Perhaps. But with each passing day, Haley's attacks on Trump get more pointed and trenchant, making it harder for her to walk that plank when she calls it quits.

During this week’s press conference on the state of the race, Haley said of Trump, "I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him."

If Haley is really building a brand for the future, she might think twice before endorsing a man she has repeatedly called "unstable and unhinged." In fact, Haley has finally hit her messaging stride because she sounds authentic, as if she is being true to herself and her own beliefs rather than hedging her bets in a party where she no longer belongs.

So it's just possible, if not exactly probable, that Haley declines to endorse Trump when she inevitably ends her bid.

If Trump wins the general election, however, Haley could very likely come crawling back in search of an administration position. There's nothing Trump relishes more than a contrite convert.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Donald Trump

Trump Contradictions Exposed In IVF Debate As Biden Trolls Republicans

Republicans are scrambling for a response to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling upending access to in vitro fertilization treatments in the state, and one very important person has gone silent: Donald Trump.

On Thursday, NBC News' Jonathan Allen reported that a Trump campaign spokesperson failed to reply to an inquiry about when Trump might weigh in. It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that Trump finally addressed the matter, saying that he would “strongly support the availability of IVF.” But by then, the Biden campaign and Democrats had pounced.

The right-wing ruling in a red state has put Republicans in a bind, forcing them to choose between their evangelical voters and the well-heeled donors who are increasingly turned off by the Republican Party's extremism. In Pew Research Center polling from last year, nearly 6 in 10 upper-income Americans said they or someone they know have used fertility treatments, such as IVF.

Even Trump's campaign surrogates dodged when asked whether embryos are children. “Well, I haven’t studied the issue,” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said after casting his vote in the state's Republican primary.

In Trump's absence, however, the Biden campaign stepped in to fill the void. "Make no mistake: this is because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade," President Biden tweeted Thursday, over a graphic of an Associated Press headline about an Alabama hospital pausing IVF treatments. The graphic included a picture of Trump alongside a quote of him taking credit for destroying the country's abortion rights: "I'm the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade."

But that wasn't Biden's only tweet about IVF on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Biden also connected the end of Roe to the IVF ruling, writing, "The Vice President and I won’t stop until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state."

The Biden-Harris campaign's rapid-response account tweeted out several damning tweets related to Trump's attack on reproductive freedom—including on IVF treatments—while he was president. One tweet included Trump's tortured 2019 announcement of nominating anti-IVF, anti-surrogacy judge Sarah Pitlyk to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

"She was confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench and Trump even considered her for the Supreme Court," stated the Biden-Harris HQ account.

Another Trump appointee, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, refused to rule out criminalizing IVF treatments. During her 2020 confirmation, she said this:

In case there was any confusion about Trump's role in inserting the federal government into America's bedrooms, the Biden campaign wants to clear it up.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

How A Dank Meme Turned Into 'Dark Brandon' (And Muted MAGA)

How A Dank Meme Turned Into 'Dark Brandon' (And Muted MAGA)

When MAGA Republicans first stumbled into the meme "Let's Go Brandon!"—a euphemism for "Fuck Joe Biden!"—it was electric.

The meme’s origin stems from a misunderstanding. During an October 2021 NASCAR race, an on-air NBC News reporter suggested the crowd was chanting "Let's go, Brandon" for Brandon Brown, who had just won the day’s race. It quickly became clear that was not the case.

Suddenly, the MAGA movement had a G-rated code for relaying how they really felt. “Let's Go Brandon” showed up on bumper stickers, at campaign rallies, even in chants at some events featuring President Biden. Republican Rep. Bill Posey of Florida used it to punctuate a speech he delivered on the House floor—an easy way to score political points.

MAGA’s demented delight in the phrase might have peaked on Christmas Eve 2021, when Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, were fielding caller questions on NORAD's Santa tracker hotline. After a perfectly pleasant interaction with the president and the first lady, one caller, a 35-year-old father, ended the conversation with "Merry Christmas and Let's Go Brandon."

Jill Biden gave an uncomfortable chuckle as President Biden sought to further engage the caller, who either hung up or had been disconnected.

But Let's Go Brandon has ultimately suffered an unusual fate. By the second half of 2022, the meme had been largely co-opted by the left, becoming a new meme known as “Dark Brandon,” which centers on a grinning, laser-eyed portrayal of the president. As Don Caldwell, general manager of the meme-tracking site Know Your Meme, explained to The Daily Beast in an August 2022 article, the “Dark Brandon” meme suggests that Biden only seems like a hapless elderly man.

“It’s revealed that he’s pulling the strings behind the scenes and that everything’s going to plan,” Caldwell said.

In many ways, it's a new take on a Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1980s in which comedian Phil Hartman portrayed then-President Ronald Reagan as a doddering old man in public who shifted into a ball-busting mastermind behind closed doors. Only today, the president is on the joke.

And as “Dark Brandon” has risen, Republicans' own “Brandon” chants have practically gone mute. In other words, Democrats stole Republicans' thunder—and they did it with a gamely assist from the White House.

According to The Daily Beast's reporting:

The Biden press shop had noticed the rise in Dark Brandon content online and decided to lean into the meme as the president capped off a successful stretch, a White House official told The Daily Beast. Dealing with Trump and Republicans during and after the 2020 campaign convinced the Biden team that mockingly embracing the other side’s online attacks could have a strategic advantage.

But the more fun the Democrats have had with Dark Brandon, the more the meme has evolved and the richer it has become.

After Senate Democrats finally passed Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7, 2022, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted out, "Dark Brandon is crushing it."

Fun, yes, but nothing compared to the Dark Brandon troll to end all trolls following the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl win this past Sunday. In the lead-up to the game, some right-wing fever dream had birthed the idea that President Biden was conspiring with Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, the Chiefs' star tight end Travis Kelce, to rig the Super Bowl and eventually leverage a Swift endorsement of Biden to win reelection.

After the Chiefs' come-from-behind victory over the San Francisco 49ers, President Biden tweeted out a picture of old laser-eyes himself accompanied by the message, "Just like we drew it up."

Who’s laughing now?

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

James Comer

Trump Allies Mock (And Bully) Comer Over His Impeachment Flop

As he closes in on the Republican nomination, Donald Trump needs House Republicans to deliver an equalizer for him in the general election: an impeachment of President Joe Biden.

But after a yearlong investigation led by the House oversight committee chair, Rep. James Comer, Republicans seem no closer to digging up any actionable dirt on Biden. That leads to two conclusions:

  1. If the pro-Trump House GOP conference hasn't found anything on Biden, it's unlikely anything legally actionable exists.
  2. It becomes even more imperative for House Republicans to scrape together something Trump can work with.

After all, when pundits call him the twice-impeached, four-time indictee, Trump has to be able to point at Biden and say he's the one who's really corrupt. Just look at what Congress found on him. It's very reminiscent of Trump attempting to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into opening a bogus investigation into Biden. Only now, Trump has so many legal liabilities, he needs more than just the specter of wrongdoing—he needs the goods. And according to some fascinating reporting from The Messenger's Stephen Neukam, Trump has taken note of the fact that he's currently got nothing on which to spin a corruption narrative.

“Comer has cast a wide net and caught very little fish. That is a big problem for him,” one ally of Trump told The Messenger.

The reporting is informed by more than a dozen anonymous interviews, including a House Republican colleague who calls Comer's inquiry a "parade of embarrassments."

“One would be hard pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee,” the GOP lawmaker said.

But in many ways, the leaks seem specifically designed to put Comer on notice that he not only needs to produce, but he'll be singularly on the hook if he doesn't.

“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over," said a source identified as "close" to House GOP leadership, who appeared to be playing CYA for the leadership team. The source's big fear was that Comer would ultimately fail to provide the foundation necessary (i.e. evidence) to follow through with impeaching Biden.

“I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on [Comer's] clueless investigation and lack of leadership,” said the source.

The quotes had the feel of a failed campaign staff pointing fingers at each other as the ship goes down, only the campaign in this case is the Republican effort to impeach Biden.

Publicly, of course, House leaders are expressing full confidence in Comer.

"I am grateful for the superb efforts of Chairman Comer," Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement, while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Comer had "worked tirelessly" on the investigation.

But Comer's misfires have become legendary: providing nothing substantive, just a series of accusations and innuendo that don't amount to a hill of beans. In fact, Comer's investigation has become a punch line in the media. As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner wrote in November, Comer had uncovered another "smoking water pistol."

In fact, just last month, CNN's Jake Tapper mocked Comer during a live interview.

And when the oversight committee met earlier this month to debate holding Hunter Biden in contempt for refusing to give closed-door testimony, the younger Biden made a laughingstock of House Republicans by staging a surprise press conference in which he volunteered to provide public testimony.

“It seems like they got played by Hunter Biden,” a senior House GOP aide told The Messenger. “It was a disaster. They looked like buffoons.”

To sum up, the boss needs production, Comer has become a national joke, and the House leadership is happily hanging him out to dry.

In response, Comer issued a statement through a spokesperson saying that House Oversight, along with the Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, are coordinating to "determine whether President Biden's conduct warrants articles of impeachment."

Yeah, that's not gonna cut it.

"You have to start producing," one Trump ally said. "The base is starting to get more and more frustrated with him because they see all this smoke but they don’t see the movement.”

If that sounds like a mob-boss threat, that’s because it is.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Wins New Hampshire Primary, But It's Not The Victory He Thinks

Trump Wins New Hampshire Primary, But It's Not The Victory He Thinks

Congratulations, Republicans, you got your guy. Donald Trump has won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. And his victory there is in large part due to the 70 percent of likely GOP primary voters who believe that Trump will “definitely” beat incumbent President Joe Biden, according to a CBS/YouGov poll from early this month.

Such certainty is the product of the right-wing echo chamber. Around this time last year, non-MAGA Republicans were expressing skepticism about Trump's chances of being reelected, along with a heavy dose of Trump fatigue. In fact, Republican voters at the time favored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a head-to-head matchup against Trump. Mostly, Republican voters wanted to field a candidate who could win the general election and, as much as they still liked Trump, they thought he had too much baggage.

But that was before DeSantis announced his candidacy and voters actually got a good look at him. Despite his enormous war chest, DeSantis was nothing short of a tragic campaigner.

In the meantime, right-wing media painted a caricature of President Biden that suggested even the hapless Charlie Brown could clean his clock. And if that were true, why go for an exceedingly whiny Trump-lite candidate when you can have the real thing? Now, one year later, Republican voters, donning the blinders provided to them by the right-wing disinformation machine, believe Trump's a shoo-in against Biden in the general election.

Looking at high-quality national head-to-head polls conducted in January, we see that Trump holds a consistent lead over Biden. However, on closer inspection, Trump's lead is very narrow. While he may lead most polls, he leads by little more than 1 or 2 percentage points in many cases. And at this point, such polls represent little more than a partisan ink-blot test since many Americans are only now waking up to the fact that this year’s election will surely be a Biden-Trump rematch.

In truth, Trump has likely benefited from not being a part of many people’s daily lives. Outside of the white noise of Trump’s legal battles, voters have largely not tuned in enough yet to be privy his rally rants, his increasing cognitive challenges, and his social media meltdowns.

But that grace period is now ending. Team Biden is already feasting on Trump's barrage of embarrassing—not to mention deeply worrisome—statements. On Tuesday, Biden's rapid-response team circulated a nonsensical Trump quote in which he told rally attendees Monday, “We are an institute in a powerful death penalty.”

Subtweeting the quote, Team Biden quipped, "Yeah, we don't know what he's saying either."

On Monday, the account circulated video of Trump in 2020 promising a "stock market collapse" if Biden became president, splicing the footage together with Fox News’ coverage of the stock market's record-high close earlier this week.

While none of this will pierce the MAGA bubble, it does stand a chance of reaching both reality-based Republicans (who have typically supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the primaries) and independents who will be forced to cast a ballot for what they consider to be the lesser of two evils.

The November election will not be a popularity contest; rather, it will be a race defined by which candidate a majority of voters most fear being in charge of the country. And reality-based Americans will now be force-fed a daily diet of utterances from a man who is arguably the most dangerous presidential candidate the country has seen since the country's founding.

Democrats would much rather not roll the dice on democracy once again, but here we are. Republican voters have landed us here, largely because they are delusional enough to believe Trump’s a slam dunk in the general election.

They got their guy. Now they’re stuck with him as the Biden campaign gets to work.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Joe Biden

Surprise! Americans Are Feeling 'Good Vibes' About Their Finances

If we've learned anything from Trump-era post-fact politics, it's that old polling metrics don't exactly translate at the ballot box the way they used to.

A major part of the 2022 “red wave” narrative was informed by the fact that President Joe Biden's approval rating was hovering around a dismal 40 percent and the right track/wrong track numbers were abysmal—net -40s for the final few months of the midterm campaign. In days of old, Democrats, who controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, would have been toast. Instead, they barely lost the House and miraculously managed to pick up one Senate seat.

The point isn't that old metrics aren't meaningful: It's that we have to view them through a new-era lens. At the same time, pollsters need to find new ways to measure the views of the electorate—particularly ones in which responses aren't as driven by partisan bias.

The Axios Vibes surveys seem to be an attempt at that. Yes, the name and concept seem almost laughable—except that, well, maybe they're onto something here.

One of their latest Vibes surveys conducted by Harris Polls finds that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are feeling pretty bullish about their personal finances. Indeed, 63 percent rated their current financial outlook as good, with 19 percent calling it "very good."

Additionally, they feel optimistic about their future finances, with 66 percent saying 2024 will be better than 2023 and 85 percent betting they can improve their personal financial situation this year.

These results may seem impossibly rosy to anyone who has been following voters' views of the economy over the past couple of years. But for one thing, consumer sentiment is actually a lagging indicator as an economy starts to hum again.

As veteran Democratic campaign strategist Joe Trippi tweeted out regarding the poll, "The Lag means this will start to show up in polling long before November….Americans are actually pretty happy with their finances."

That would be most welcome from a Democratic perspective.

Axios also notes that "political affiliation influences the responses that Republicans, in particular, give when they're asked about the economy." So asking instead about personal finances can elicit different and, in this case, more positive responses.

Views on the economy more broadly have been improving, but they're not exactly the stuff of legend.

In Civiqs tracking on the "current condition" of the economy, for example, voters currently say the economy is 29 points underwater, with 34 percent calling it good and 62 percent calling it bad.

But for perspective, the economy's current condition hasn't been in positive territory since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in the spring of 2020. And net -29 on the question is voters' best measure of the economy since October 2021. So overall sentiment is not great, but also consistently moving in a positive direction.

Consumer views about the economy will be taking shape over the next handful of months and helping to inform the overall mood of voters as they begin to size up a likely Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump rematch.

And while those views may not be quite as predictive about 2024 outcomes as they have proven to be in the past, it's possible that consumer sentiment will start to undercut the economic doomsday message that Republicans will be trying to sell the American people on.

That's exactly why Trump is predicting an economic "crash" is on the horizon while rooting for it to happen sooner rather than later.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Blasting Trump And GOP Rivals As 'Unfit,' Bitter Christie Quits Race

Blasting Trump And GOP Rivals As 'Unfit,' Bitter Christie Quits Race

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced during a Wednesday town hall that he is ending his presidential bid.

"It's clear to me tonight that there isn't a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I'm suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States," Christie told the town hall, saying it was "the right thing" to do.

Christie’s exit chiefly stands to benefit former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has steadily gained ground in New Hampshire polls over the last several months while Donald Trump has slipped. Haley has taken second in the three most recent independent polls cited on 538, all taken since Dec. 15.

The latest, a CNN/University of New Hampshire survey of likely Republican primary voters, found the following:

  • Trump: 39%
  • Haley: 32%
  • Christie: 12%
  • Vivek Ramaswamy: 8%
  • Ron DeSantis: 5%

Christie, who has run as the field’s most vocal Trump critic, has concentrated his entire race in the Granite State, amassing what is a presumably solid block of anti-Trump GOP voters. Based on his campaign, his supporters are most likely to accrue to Haley rather than DeSantis, who has chiefly run as a Trump mini-me. Some quick back of the napkin math suggests such a boost from Christie voters looking for a new home could make Haley competitive with Trump.

Ahead of Christie’s town hall event, the candidate was caught in a hot-mic moment lamenting that voters didn’t seem open to his message.

“People don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear it. We know we’re right. But they don’t want to hear it,” Christie said. “We couldn’t have been any clearer. We couldn’t have been any more direct or worked any harder. So. You know.”

Later, before the mic was cut, Christie also suggested Haley didn’t have a chance of winning.

”She’s gonna get smoked. And you and I both know it. She’s not up to this,” he said.

It’s unclear from the recording exactly who Christie was speaking with, but the Biden campaign was happy to help disseminate Christie’s sentiments.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.