Political scribe: Why Are 2020 Dems All So Weird?
John Hickenlooper told a CNN town hall how he took his mother to see the porn film “Deep Throat.” Andrew Yang came out strongly against circumcision. Kamala Harris told a “painfully obvious lie” about listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac in college while smoking weed. Elizabeth Warren released a DNA test to support her claims of Native American heritage. Beto O’Rourke served his wife green feces, pretending it was avocado. Why, asks The Week’s Matthew Walther, “are Democrats so weird?” Maybe they think that “by embracing their inner weirdness, they can channel some of Donald Trump’s electoral magic,” given that he “once bragged about the size of his genitalia” during a debate. Still, laments Walther, “I can’t be the only person” who thinks “there’s something to be said for, you know, normal people in politics.”
Foreign desk: Golan Switch Was No Impulse Tweet
As The Atlantic’s Kathy Gilsinan notes, President Trump “once again overturned decades of US policy via Twitter” when he said Washington should recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967. Like the earlier move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, it appeared to offer “a major gift” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just ahead of Israeli elections “without any obvious concession in return.” But the push to make such a move “has been going on for more than a year, due to parallel efforts by Israeli officials and members of Congress,” and was “being discussed at the highest levels of the State Department and the National Security Council.” For its backers, declaring Israeli sovereignty is, like the embassy move, “a recognition of reality.”
Historian: Is This What Could Doom Elizabeth Warren?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is languishing in both the polls and the money race for president, and “there’s no single answer for her slow start,” observes Jeff Greenfield at Politico. Some of it may be her DNA test, or the fact that she’s a woman, or that she “feels too much like yesterday’s news.” But there might be a “more difficult hurdle” — the fact that she’s a senator. Fact is, only three sitting senators (Warren Harding, JFK and Barack Obama) have ever been elected president. And “with distrust of government at record levels,” the optimism of Warren and the five other Democratic senators now running “seems unwarranted.” Then again, since Harry Truman in 1944, every Democratic vice presidential nominee (save Geraldine Ferraro) has been a sitting senator.
From the left: McCain Insults Finally Stir Republicans
The first thing to remember about President Trump’s continuing Twitter insults of the late Sen. John McCain, says Bloomberg’s Timothy O’Brien, is that he’s “spent decades aiming his slingshot at everyone around him.” Leona Helmsley, Jerry Nadler, Olympic skater Katarina Witt, the Pritzker family — all have been on the receiving end of Trump’s bile over the years. All that’s changed is that he’s “become the most powerful man in the world” and “social media has given him a platform to spout nasty 24/7 in front of a live audience.” But his fuming about McCain drew pointed criticism from several Republicans, notably Sen. Johnny Isakson. True, some “still hesitate to respond forcefully to Trump even when he attacks old friends and colleagues.” But those who came to John McCain’s defense “are on the right side of history.”
Liberal take: Socialists Set To Transform Chicago Politics
Two members of the Democratic Socialists of America have already won seats this year on Chicago’s 50-member City Council, and four more are vying in the April 2 runoff elections, reports The Guardian’s Eric Lutz. Those candidates confidently predict their election will “transform” the way Chicago operates. Part of this is a reaction to people — particularly minorities and the poor — feeling “victimized” by the city’s Democratic political machine. But Chicago “also has a history of radical politics,” and these candidates see their momentum as “the start of a culture shift.” Still, the term “socialist” continues “to carry baggage, even among some progressives” and self-styled populists.
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann