A new Quinnipiac poll finds President Trump’s approval rate plunged from 44% last month to 33% today.
The poll also finds that 74% of voters say democracy in the United States is under threat, while just 21% of voters say that democracy in the United States is alive and well.
Said pollster Tim Malloy: “When it comes to whether American democracy is under threat, both Republicans and Democrats see a raging five-alarm fire, but clearly disagree on who started it.”
A majority of voters, 56%, say they hold President Trump responsible for the storming of the U.S. Capitol, while 42% say they do not hold him responsible. A slight majority, 52% to 45%, say President Trump should be removed from office.
Washington Post: “The central question now hovering over America’s political landscape is whether one of its two major parties will allow itself to function as an extension of QAnon and other online conspiracy movements that have taken hold with a vocal segment of the GOP, or if it can emerge from the Trump era as a potential governing coalition built around ideas and some shared agreement on facts.”
“The tensions carry echoes of the tea party uprising that powered the Republican takeover of Congress a decade ago when grass roots activists clashed with establishment leadership and pushed the party to the right.”
“But the movement exposed by the Capitol riot and its aftermath has taken a far darker and anti-democratic turn.”
Orange County Register: “Voter registration data in Orange County, the one Southern California county that tracks registration numbers daily, shows the Republican party lost eight times more voters than it gained after the violence in D.C., with 600 GOP voters lost from Wednesday to Friday. That followed a month in which the party had been gaining ground among O.C. voters.”
PENNSYLVANIA SENATOR / GOVERNOR–Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman reiterated Friday that he was taking “a serious look” at running for the Senate and had also ruled out a bid for governor.
In response to Fetterman’s new comments, former Republican Rep. Ryan Costello engaged in some Twitter trash-talk, declaring, “If I ran I would smoke Fetterman in the suburbs.” Not likely, since Costello was last seen in 2018, when he huffily abandoned his bid for re-election after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court undid the GOP’s gerrymander and made his 6th Congressional District bluer.
At the time, Costello loudly whined at the time that the new maps were “1,000 percent partisan,” a Democratic gerrymander in “disguise,” and even “racist.” LOL. He not only demanded that the justices be impeached (they weren’t), he quit his campaign after the filing deadline, leaving his fellow Republicans just with a random weirdo on the ballot (he lost).
MARYLAND 1 CD–Former Democratic Del. Heather Mizeur threatened to challenge Republican Rep. Andy Harris next year after he almost incited a fist-fight on the floor of Congress during Wednesday night’s certification of the Electoral College vote, which he twice voted against. Mizeur’s warning came after Maryland Democrats demanded that Harris resign over his role in egging on the terrorist mob that ransacked the Capitol earlier that same day, saying that he and his fellow Republican instigators “have blood on their hands.”
Mizeur was last seen on the electoral scene in 2014, when she ran a creditable race for the Democratic nomination for governor, casting herself as the most vocally progressive option and narrowly finishing third behind two much better-known and better-funded rivals. However, Harris, the lone Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, would be almost impossible to defeat under the state’s current map, since his 1st District, based on the Eastern Shore, is dark red.
But Maryland, which sends seven Democrats to the House, is one of the few states where Democrats will have unfettered control over redistricting, and HuffPost’s Kevin Robillard reported that one party operative sent him a text following Wednesday’s tragic events that included a tweet about Harris’ near-brawl and read simply “8-0.” Indeed, as map-making aficionados well know, Democrats could easily draw new lines that would create eight solidly blue districts, with boundaries that look much neater than the hideous mess they crafted a decade ago. The only obstacle to maximizing their advantage is the parochial self-interest of current Democratic incumbents.
MARYLAND 6 CD–Former Del. Aruna Miller has filed FEC paperwork for a bid in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, but she’s not planning to challenge Rep. David Trone, a fellow Democrat. Rather, she explains, she’s preparing for the possibility that Trone might run for governor, something he’s reportedly considering, which would once again create an open seat. Miller ran here the last time this seat was open in 2018 and finished second in the primary, losing 40-31 to the self-funding Trone.
NEW MEXICO 1ST CD–Victor Reyes, who serves as legislative director for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, announced Friday that he’d seek the Democratic nomination if Rep. Deb Haaland is confirmed as Joe Biden’s secretary of the interior. Reyes would be the state’s first LGBTQ member of Congress.
Andrew Yang, who is running for New York City mayor, acknowledged to the New York Times that he has not lived in the city for most of the year.
Said Yang: “We’ve spent more time upstate than in the city over the last number of months, but I also spent time in Georgia, as you know, I spent time in Pennsylvania campaigning for Joe and Kamala.”
He added: “We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told Fox News that Democratic “overreach” in the coming years will help propel the GOP back into the Senate majority in 2022.
Said Scott: “Over the next two years, the Democrats are going to try to do a whole bunch of things that the public doesn’t want.”
“As expected, the Supreme Court refused Monday to fast-track a batch of challenges to the presidential election filed by President Trump and his allies,” the Washington Post reports.
“The rejections came without comment or noted dissent, and were formal notifications of what already had become clear. Some of the petitions asking for the court to move quickly were filed in early December, and the court had not even called for responses from officials in the states where the results were challenged.”
Jack Shafer: “It makes sense that Trump would want to build his own impregnable forum where nobody can police his speech. He maintains his base by communicating with it at all hours of the day and night. He desperately wants to maintain that continuity to preserve the momentum he has achieved over the past four years. He rightly worries that his pack will ditch him for someone more compelling or entertaining, ergo, he needs to lay plans now or face oblivion.”
“But then as now, the business challenges to launching a TV channel or other high-profile media property seem beyond the talents, resources and patience of Trump and his crew. This isn’t to predict that Trump won’t enter the media business, only to record that if he does, he won’t get very far.”
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