In the remote case you’ve not been following the 2020 presidential race (I’m teasing you — who could manage to follow everything?), 538, bless its heart, is.
Here’s what they launched today.
There are some juicy bits, yes, but mostly it’ll remind us who is running and what some of their positions and policies are. I, for one, had forgotten about some of them and found myself saying, “Oh no, don’t run, please,” over a few.
Meanwhile, I spent all Wednesday watching the Michael Cohen hearing. A couple of impressions:
- The difference in capacity, intelligence, diversity and preparation between the Democratic and Republican members was striking, wasn’t it?
- Most of the Republicans spoke with southern accents.
- Of course I’ve been avidly reading the Times’s stories, editorials and the readers’ comments to both, from which I’ve gathered a couple of things. First, an unusually small number of Trump supporters wrote comments. Second, the tenor of the anti-Trump comments has shifted from outrage and despair to a clear reckoning that Trump is and has always been a crime boss both in his business and in the White House. Passionate readers seem to have opened their eyes and brains wide at the panorama of monstrosity to which we’re all witnesses. The condemnation of the collaborationist Republican Party was particularly remarkable.
- The few Trumpists who did post (very short) letters went back to their “no collusion, no collusion,” declaration. They were responding, I presume, to Cohen’s statement that he personally did not know of Russian collusion. They forgot several things: Cohen had no direct involvement with Russian dealings and, indeed, he and the committee had been limited in the areas of discussion by, I read, the Mueller investigation. But Cohen talked directly about overhearing the Roger Stone-Trump phone call on the Wikileaks email dump. Which is, of course, collusion — an offer of “damaging” info about a political opponent from an adversary nation, an offer which was not reported immediately or ever to the FBI.