Top Lines: 2020 Elections | Tariffs and Trade | US Economy | Immigration and the Border | Protecting US Elections | Patriotism & Optimism

Notes On 2020 – While the Democratic primary remains fluid, the main story continues to be Joe Biden’s resilience. Mayor Pete has surged impressively in IA and NH, but for all intents and purposes the big 4 Dems are all bunched up in both of those states and anything could happen. Meanwhile, Biden retains a formidable lead in NV and SC, and his broad, diverse base of support bodes well for his campaign once the voting leaves the early states. From a performance standpoint the Biden campaign just feels like it has found its footing, in part because the Vice President is finding ways to turn his years of experience on the global stage into a vital asset – something evident in this new video released last week.

Despite the Wizard of Oz-ish noise-making on the right, there just is no good polling news for Trump. His job approval remains worse than it was on election day 2018 when Rs lost by 8.6 points; Democrats have outperformed expectations when people have actually voted in 2018 and 2019; and when asking about whether Americans support the impeachment inquiry into the President, the spread is now 42/52 against the President – terrible numbers. There is no backlash, no big change in the polls, no meaningful positive movement for the President – nothing.

What should worry the White House most is what has happened over time in other consequential national debates. During Trump’s Presidency the numbers of people supporting things really important to him – the ACA, immigration, free trade – have all risen dramatically. In both the 2018 and 2019 elections, Republicans underperformed. On Impeachment, it is our belief that the President is in far more serious trouble than conventional wisdom holds right now. He is clearly guilty of having committed a series of felony-level crimes and has tried to illegally cover it up for months. Those are the facts. They are irrefutable. They are easy to understand. And we really only learned them in the last few weeks, clearly not enough time, particularly during the holiday season, for them to sink in. But like these other big issues where the debate has turned against the President over time, we think it will on removal – for he is a serial criminal, got caught, and leaving him in office is a danger to the country. There just isn’t another side to this story.

On Sunday Simon joined MSNBC’s Joy Reid to discuss his recent essay which argues that the House should break the Ukraine and Impeachment inquiry into 3 parts – the crimes, the co-conspirators, and a security review. In a new Medium piece out this morning, Russia’s Lavrov Comes For A Victory Lap, Simon makes a powerful case for the idea of a broad security review by detailing just how aggressively – and shockingly - the President has attempted to align the US with Russian geopolitical objectives in the past year.

Two Months After Announcing His "Phase One Trade Deal", Trump Has Still Made No Progress With China - On October 11th, Trump announced that the US and China had reached a "substantial phase one deal" that would defuse trade tensions, increase US exports, and address some intellectual property concerns. Very quickly, however, it became clear that no set of agreements actually existed between the Administration and China. First, the Chinese refused to set a target for the level of US agricultural exports to buy, and reduced their proposed purchases by 50% from the level that Trump announced. Second, they announced that even this meager concession would require the US to remove some of their existing import tariffs on China, which the Trump administration has in turn refused to do. Finally, just last week the Administration confirmed that the next tranche of tariffs on China was still set to be imposed on December 15th, something that would represent a major escalation in the trade war and would result in 97% of all Chinese imports to the US being covered by tariffs.

What, then, has Trump's trade war with China actually accomplished since it began in March 2018? It has reduced US economic growth by 0.6%, cost over 300,000 American jobs, and reduced the disposable income of the average American household by over $1,000. And what has Trump gotten from China in return? Nothing. You can read more about NDN's analysis of the economic costs of Trump's trade war here, and find NDN's broader work on trade and economic policy under the Trump administration here.

Under 45 Voters Are Breaking Hard Towards The Democrats - Among the most significant political developments of the Trump era is the dramatic shift of under 45 year old voters towards the Democrats. From 2000 to 2016, Democrats won the under 45 vote by an average of 6 points. In the 2018 midterm elections, they won it by 25. NDN has written extensively on the magnitude of this shift and its profound effects on the future of American politics. You can find our most recent analysis of this shift here, and follow all of NDN's work on the 2020 elections here.

Coming To Terms With New Age Of “Moscow Rules” In US Politics - In a piece we published a few months ago, we decried the embrace by Trump and the GOP of what we call the “Moscow Rules” of politics – the bare knuckled use of all modern tactics such as fake identities, foreign collaboration, hacking, and classic disinformation in our domestic politics. Our fears were heightened when the FEC, the body in charge of policing our elections, was shut down by Trump and the Republicans in late August. And it is with that context that we consider Trump’s effort to invent a scandal against his leading opponent with the aid of a foreign nation – it is literally right out of Putin’s playbook.

Our own assessment of what we’ve seen so far is that our system isn’t really ready to handle this new era. The parties have not yet assumed the degree of responsibility that they will need to battle this new dystopian political world; even simple, easy bills to address these challenges have been blocked by Trump and McConnell; and the Biden campaign still remains remarkably flummoxed by an attack they had to know was coming. Trump’s dropping of $10m into bringing his imaginary scandal to television of course confirms the political nature of his pressure campaign on the Ukrainian President, providing further evidence that once again the President has broken US election laws; but bring it he has, and now all of us have to talk openly about what it is we are witnessing here, and what we can and should be doing about it. This isn’t politics as usual – it is Moscow Rules – and no one can or should be surprised at the ferocity in which it is being practiced by Trump and his party.

Of course, these tactics include the use of high-volume, often clearly fake accounts on Twitter. Our recent effort to build a database of the most influential of these accounts is now up to 416. Feel free to check it out here and review our broader set of recommendations about how to protect our democracy and discourse from foreign manipulation. As well, Simon weighs in on the struggle Democrats are having in responding to Trump’s attacks on Biden in this new Politico piece.

ICYMI – NDN has released proposals to protect our elections, reform US immigration laws, and counter Trump’s reckless protectionism. We’ve also proposed creating a new super department we call the Department of Jobs, Skills, and Economic Development to better target our efforts to ensure no one is left behind. We’ve marveled at the dramatic decline of the GOP’s prospects in the heavily Mexican-American part of the US, and just how much better Democrats have been in managing the US economy in a new age of globalization. We are advising Congress to go slow and be smart in how it reforms the Postal Service – reforms are needed but far more is going right than wrong these days.

We’ve also written a great deal about Trump and his contempt for democracy and the liberal order America has imagined and built. We’ve challenged the conventional wisdom to stop downplaying the enormity of the Russian attack on our system, recognize that Trump is more like Maduro than almost any politician in the West, understand the European elections as a direct repudiation of Trumpism/illiberalism, and acknowledge that America First has become an extraordinary governing and political failure. After repeated mass shootings and the rise of dangerous domestic terrorism, we think the Democrats should make this fall about keeping America and Americans safe.

Recent NDN Media Citations – You can find us in these recent stories: ABC/FiveThirtyEight, AP (here, here, here), Atlantic, CNN (article, TV), Financial Times, MSNBC, NBC News, New York Times, Politico, Real Clear Politics, San Antonio Express-News, Slate, Telemundo, Time Magazine, USA Today, Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Simon offers extensive remarks about the 2020 Democratic Primary in this recent Ron Brownstein Atlantic piece - we think it is well worth your time.

You can also catch Simon in extended interviews on politics and disinformation in this new Future State podcast hosted by Dick Clarke, on Democrats and immigration in this Slate podcast hosted by Univision’s Leon Krauze, and in Fernand Amandi’s new Strange Days podcast on why Democrats need to go big and make their indictment of Trump far more than about “obstruction.”

Support Our Far-Sighted Work Today – We know there are many calls on your giving, but please consider donating to NDN today. Whatever amount - $5, $25, $100 – it all helps us keep the ideas and insights coming.

Best,

Simon, Chris, and the rest of the NDN team



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