Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

The latest Qunnipiac poll has various Democrats beating Trump by significant margins in head-to-head matchups right now.

In a first look at head-to-head 2020 presidential matchups nationwide, several Democratic challengers lead President Donald Trump, with former Vice President Joseph Biden ahead 53 - 40 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today.

In other matchups, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University National Poll finds:

• Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over President Trump 51 - 42 percent;
• California Sen. Kamala Harris ahead of Trump 49 - 41 percent;
• Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tops Trump 49 - 42 percent;
• South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg edges Trump 47 - 42 percent;
• New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker by a nose over Trump 47 - 42 percent.

In the Trump-Biden matchup, women back Biden 60 - 34 percent, as men are divided with 47 percent for Biden and 46 percent for Trump. White voters are divided with 47 percent for Trump and 46 percent for Biden. The Democrat leads 85 - 12 percent among black voters and 58 - 33 percent among Hispanic voters.

Republicans go to Trump 91 - 6 percent. Biden leads 95 - 3 percent among Democrats and 58 - 28 percent among independent voters.

"The head-to-head matchups give this heads up to President Donald Trump's team: Former Vice President Joseph Biden and other Democratic contenders would beat the president if the election were held today. Leads range from Biden's 13 percentage points to thin five-point leads by Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Cory Booker," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"It's a long 17 months to Election Day, but Joe Biden is ahead by landslide proportions."

"That said, the Trump bump to 42 percent job approval is nothing to sniff at. It's one point shy of the best Quinnipiac University survey number ever for President Trump," Malloy added.

A total of 70 percent of American voters say the nation's economy is "excellent" or "good," but only 41 percent of voters say Trump deserves credit for an excellent or good economy. Another 27 percent say Trump does not deserve credit and 28 percent say the economy is "not so good" or "poor." 

In other words, the one thing keeping Trump in the race, he's no longer getting credit for.  That's far more important than any of the head-to-head matchups, which at this point are about as predictive as me guessing the outcome of the 2020 World Series in June 2019.

Buckle up regardless.  If Trump's losing steam on the economy then it's all bets are off time.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As Jon Chait notes, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee want to drop the Russia investigation and move forward to "protect the country from future attacks".  Except of course that Senate Majority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell won't allow a vote on any measures to do just that.

The New York Times reported a few days ago that McConnell is refusing to bring to a vote any bill to safeguard the elections from foreign attack. There’s a Democratic bill to provide election funding to state and local governments. There’s a bipartisan Senate bill to “codify cyberinformation-sharing initiatives between federal intelligence services and state election officials, speed up the granting of security clearances to state officials, and provide federal incentives for states to adopt paper ballots.” McConnell won’t allow any of them to come to a vote.
The threat from Russian election interference is actually quite severe. Russian intelligence breached at least one Florida county computer system and planted malware in a manufacturer of vote-tabulating machines, according to the Mueller report. While the probability that Russian hackers could actually change the outcome of the next election is low, the consequences would be extraordinarily high — especially if they do so by actual vote-rigging rather than mere information warfare.

Exactly why McConnell is so blasé about this threat is impossible to say, but the next time McConnell takes some action that sacrifices his partisan interests for the greater good will be the first.

Of course, Collins’s whole notion that guarding against the next Russian political operation requires halting all investigation of the last one is obviously disingenuous in the first place. The Mueller report shows in detail that Trump and almost everybody working for him welcomed Russian help, legal or otherwise. The reason the government isn’t doing more to protect our democracy from the next attack is that the people who cooperated with the last attack don’t want to.

We could ask why that is, but that's obvious by now.  Mitch McConnell wants the Russians to throw the elections for Republicans in 2020 and give the GOP total control of the government back.  There can be no other conclusion at this point.

Mitch McConnell is a traitor.

It's Above Your Pay Grade

Not even House Democrats are blockheaded enough to try to pass a congressional pay raise right now, which is I guess good news considering they actually did try it and the response was exactly what you would expect to an organization polling slightly below drug-resistant gonorrhea.

House Democratic leaders are postponing consideration of a bill that would include a pay raise for members of Congress, after facing a major backlash from the party's most vulnerable members.

Top Democrats agreed in a closed-door meeting Monday night to pull a key section of this week’s massive funding bill to avoid escalating a clash within their caucus over whether to hike salaries for lawmakers and staff for the first time in a decade, multiple lawmakers confirmed.
At least 15 Democrats — mostly freshmen in competitive districts — had pushed to freeze pay after some Democratic and Republican leaders quietly agreed to the slight pay increase earlier this month.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) confirmed to POLITICO after the meeting that he "thinks" they would pull the bill so that Democrats can resolve the issue of congressional pay raises.

The issue flared up in the Democratic leadership meeting on Monday, where there was an intense discussions of whether to force members to go on the record about a pay raise, which some battleground Democrats believed would create a target on their back in 2020.

"Nobody wants to vote to give themselves a raise. There's nothing good about that," said Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.), who attended Monday's meeting.

But Hill said she also believed the issue deserved more discussion to ensure that stagnant pay wasn't deterring average Americans from running for office — particularly if they already live in districts with high costs of living. 

The potential vote set off Democratic political consultants who warned that if members were on the record supporting a pay raise for themselves it could be seen as tone deaf. One strategist called it “political suicide” for freshman Democrats in swing districts if they were made to take the vote. 

Stagnant pay in the House isn't deterring average Americans from running for office, you dolt.  It's the millions of dollars necessary to run for office that's doing that, and thanks to Citizens United, that will be the case for the foreseeable future.  If you don't have the money to play, you get buried by the guy who does 99% of the time.

I really shouldn't have to explain this to House Democrats, but here we are.

StupidiNews!

• A helicopter crash in NYC killed the pilot as the vehicle landed badly on the rooftop of the 787 Seventh Ave. building's helipad and started a fire.
• The assassinated half-brother of North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un was reportedly a CIA informant, Kim Jong Nam was killed at a Malaysian airport in 2017 by two women with a nerve agent.
• The head of the UN's atomic watchdog agency says Iran has followed through on threats to enrich uranium, but still may be below the stockpile limits in Tehran's deal with the UN.
• Several GOP senators are siding with Senate Democrats to rebuke Donald Trump's planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but it's unclear what, if anything, the Senate can do at this point.
• The US Supreme Court will hear arguments later this year on a lawsuit by an African-American owned cable network against cable giant Comcast over discrimination in refusing to carry it.