| | | | Why Joe Biden's 2020 message is so radical |  | | Speaking to a group of donors and lobbyists in Washington on Monday night, Joe Biden said this of the Republican Party post-Donald Trump:
"With Trump gone you're going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing."
That is, without any exaggeration, a radical view from the man who polling suggests is the front-runner to be the party's nominee against Trump in November 2020.
Why? Because the commonly held view among liberals, who compose the base of the Democratic Party, is that Trump is not an anomaly or a virus within the broader Republican Party, he is the Republican Party. That attempts, like Biden's, to say Trump is "other" than the GOP lessens the party's culpability on its capitulation to the darker forces at work in the President's message and the party he represents.
It's not the first time Biden has voiced this Trump-is-terrible-but-Republicans-are-OK sentiment.
In March in Omaha, Nebraska, Biden was talking about the icy reception Vice President Mike Pence had received at a security conference in Germany in February. "The fact of the matter is it was followed on by a guy who's a decent guy, our vice president, who stood before this group of allies and leaders and said, 'I'm here on behalf of President Trump,' and there was dead silence," Biden said. "Dead silence."
The implication was clear. Pence is a fine guy but has been tainted -- on the world stage -- by his association with Trump. Liberals were very unhappy with Biden's characterization of Pence as a "decent guy," considering his views on LGBT rights. (The former vice president sought to clarify that he was talking only about Pence's foreign policy record.)
That tone and approach from Biden may be what distinguishes him most clearly from the other top-tier candidates running against him for the Democratic nomination. From Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth Warren to Kamala Harris, each of them sees Trump less as something that has infected the GOP than as the symptom of a party that has been sick for a long time.
"[Mitch McConnell] doesn't want us to consider the mountain of evidence against the President," Warren said from the floor of the Senate last month. "That is wrong. He and his colleagues have moved to protect the President instead of defending the Constitution."
The Point: Biden is marching to the message of a very different drummer here. His pitch is that with Trump gone, things -- and Republicans -- will return to "normal." Will that sell in today's mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore Democratic Party?
-- Chris | | "My stock goes up every time he attacks me. What can I say?"
-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responding to President Trump after he lashed out on Fox News and called her "a nasty, vindictive, horrible person." | | |
RED DISTRICT DEMS BALK ON IMPEACHMENT | | A key caucus of House Democrats -- a group that was vital in 2018 in taking back the House -- could ultimately decide the fate of President Trump.
Of the 43 Democratic challengers who flipped seats from red to blue in 2018, only two -- Reps. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania -- have publicly said they support opening an impeachment inquiry.
While Democratic voters increasingly support impeaching Trump and removing him from office, the majority of Americans remain opposed -- a tension that leaves middle-of-the-road House Democrats walking on eggshells with their constituents.
Of the 41 remaining freshmen Democrats who flipped Republican seats last year, 10 offices told CNN that they did not support an inquiry at this time, and by CNN's count, 11 were undecided. See a breakdown of the responses here. | | Pelosi left Mark Zuckerberg on read
Back in 1972, the kids couldn't get enough of Joe Biden
Tulsi Gabbard had a very, uh, interesting childhood
A history of Donald Trump and the "Central Park Five"
Robin Givhan on the "irresistible authenticity" of Gayle King
This story about the 2008 fire at Universal Studios is NUTS
All of the effects -- big and small -- of Kevin Durant tearing his Achilles | | | Though it was never intended for public consumption, Radiohead is releasing hours of unheard material from the mid-1990s in response to ransom demands from unnamed hackers. | | THE LATEST TRUMP CRITIC ... KEN BURNS? | | The infamous case of the Central Park Five has come back into national consciousness following the growing popularity of the Netflix series "When They See Us."
The Central Park Five story -- in which five black and Hispanic teens were wrongfully convicted in the horrific beating and rape of a white female jogger in New York's Central Park in 1989 -- features another important character: real estate developer Donald Trump.
Trump took out ads in all the New York daily newspapers during the time of the case, calling for the return of New York's death penalty, saying "muggers and murderers should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes."
In one clip from the series, Trump says of the wrongfully accused teens, "Of course I hate these people. And let's all hate these people. Because maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done."
Historian and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who created a documentary on the Central Park Five in 2012, slammed Trump's response in a fiery interview with NowThis News this week.
"It was horrific then and it's horrific to hear it now," Burns said. "We should be talking about it." | | | "On the stump"/ "Stump speech" An extremely common (and overused) phrase to describe candidates on the road, campaigning.
Merriam-Webster officially defines it as an idiom for "traveling around and giving speeches during a campaign for election to a political office."
The term comes from the days when speakers and orators would actually stand on a literal stump to be heard better -- you know, before microphones and loudspeakers were a part of campaign logistics.
That speech, which is often repeated basically verbatim (or tweaked depending on the location/audience) is known as a "stump speech."
Use it in a sentence: Beto O'Rourke took this literally when he *literally* stood on a stump while on the stump in Iowa. | |  | | From Brenna: "If the week's got you down already, might I suggest taking some deep breaths and -- like HUD Secretary Ben Carson -- going with the flow? Share The Point with someone who needs to do some 4-7-8 breathing." | | | | | | |
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