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Presented by PhRMA: POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. | | | | |  | | By Ryan Lizza, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross | | | We heard from several Democratic operatives after this morning’s dissection of the debate over the party’s 2022 strategy. One prominent liberal strategist who’s an advocate of making Trumpism central to 2022 took exception to the idea that Democrats were successful in 2018 by sticking to bread-and-butter issues — rather than benefiting from a ferocious backlash against DONALD TRUMP: “It’s a little like a kid who always gets bullied in school and then comes in one day with his much larger older brother and doesn’t get bullied and he thinks he did this, not his brother. 2018 Democrats didn’t win 20 million more votes than 2014 Democrats because they figured out a better way to talk about prescription drugs. “In October, if the conversation is about inflation or Afghanistan, we’ll see the expected midterm dynamics play out. But if the conversation is about MAGA, or Trump or something like that, the midterm pattern could break. We saw something similar happen in 2010, a horrible midterms for Democrats, but not horrible enough to elect SHARON ANGLE .” The key to this theory is a wager that the turnout of the last two Trump-centric elections can be recreated even without Trump in the White House: “Because of record shattering turnout in 2018 and 2020, Democrats have an opportunity unavailable to any other presidential party going into the midterms: the benefit of having won the previous midterm by nearly 10 million votes.” STAN GREENBERG offered this view on his party’s prospects: “I am not very optimistic on the House front, but do think that it is possible that some things come together late to change the dynamics of the race. JAMES [CARVILLE] and I created Democracy Corps in 1998 when we got donors to poll on whether Republican overreach on impeachment would potentially lead to a backlash. The power of the argument on overreach developed very late. “I can see the strength of the economy and worker leverage coming to matter late. Prices are supposed to edge down. Democrats will pass Build Back Better in some form and government funding that shows a lot of visible benefit for families — all opposed by the Republicans. The tax on corporations and Republicans fighting them is a huge potential motivator. “Then, the Jan. 6 findings get reported and the partisan polarization and cues kick in — producing surprising turnout from Democrats. In fact, we may be in a period of high turnout that up until now has only favored the Republicans. “It is interesting that the generic vote has been a lot better in polls than [JOE] BIDEN approval. Maybe, that reflects the underlying partisan polarization peaking through.” We’ll be delving into the GOP strategic debate next. Please drop us a line with your thoughts.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: Washington is talking about price setting of medicines, but it won’t stop insurers from shifting costs to you. And it will risk access to medicines and future cures. Instead, let’s cap your out-of-pocket costs, stop middlemen from pocketing your discounts and make insurance work for you. Let’s protect patients. It’s the right choice. Learn more. | | | AMERICANS ON RUSSIA/UKRAINE — Our new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll dives into American voters’ views of the Russia/Ukraine tensions — and generally finds support for the West standing firm against Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. Toplines … Crosstabs — Forty-nine percent of voters say NATO shouldn’t bow to Russia’s demand to prevent Ukraine from joining the alliance, compared to 17% who think NATO should accede to it. (A third don’t know/have no opinion.) — Americans also back new congressional sanctions on Russia, 63% to 16%, and support Biden’s move to deploy 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe by a somewhat narrower margin, 48% to 33%. — Biden’s marks on Russia/Ukraine are mixed: He’s got a 39% approval/40% disapproval rating on the conflict. Putin, meanwhile, is at 10% approval/64% disapproval. — Just 3% of voters see Russia as an ally of the U.S., with another 10% calling it friendly. Seventy-three percent say it’s an enemy or unfriendly. Twenty percent, on the other hand, call Ukraine an ally, and another 36% say it’s friendly. Side note: This caught our eye. Among the other countries that didn’t get a majority of Americans calling them allies: Israel (48%), Germany (45%), Japan (41%), Mexico (31%), Iraq (3%) and Pakistan (3%). Good Monday afternoon. CONGRESS TEACH THEM HOW TO SAY GOODBYE — Senate Appropriations Chair PATRICK LEAHY (D-Vt.) and ranking member RICHARD SHELBY (R-Ala.) are hustling to see if they can cut a huge government spending deal before they retire, Burgess Everett and Jennifer Scholtes report. The longtime colleagues are hoping to land a bipartisan accord, averting the year’s cycles of stopgaps and brinkmanship. But with just a few weeks left, it’s a tall order: “Some Republicans would be happy to kick the can until they retake the majority, while Democrats want to put their stamp on full government control and rid the spending bills of longtime GOP spending riders.” THE WHITE HOUSE STICK A FORK IN IT — First lady JILL BIDEN said this morning that free community college won’t make it into any slimmed-down Build Back Better package Democrats might be able to pass, NYT’s Katie Rogers reports . It was the “starkest acknowledgment yet that a measure she had championed is dead.” Just as stark were the community college professor’s comments about the stakes of losing the proposal: “I was disappointed. Because, like you, these aren’t just bills or budgets to me, to you, right? We know what they mean for real people, for our students. … It was a real lesson in human nature that some people just don’t get that.” POLITICS ROUNDUP THE NEW GOP — Leadership changes at the Heritage Foundation are seeking to reorient the longstanding conservative think tank toward the Trumpified Republican Party, focusing more on hot-button culture wars and less on fiscal or foreign policy, report WaPo’s Jeff Stein and Yeganeh Torbati. New director KEVIN ROBERTS is focusing especially on schools, a break from his predecessor KAY COLES JAMES, under whose leadership coronavirus restrictions became a divisive topic within Heritage. (Roberts told WaPo economic policy remains a big focus for the think tank.) LOOK WHO’S BACK — Former New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO gave an interview to Bloomberg’s Laura Nahmias in which he says he shouldn’t have resigned and won’t rule out another run for public office. But his more immediate task is aiming to clear his name, as he’s still furious over state A.G. TISH JAMES’ probe into his behavior: “This is his full-time work these days, and he seems willing to risk what little political capital he has left to achieve that goal.” “You know, I’ve had the time and the space to get a little philosophical about this,” Cuomo tells her. “Too many people do run for office because it’s about them. It’s about their ego, their need.” Nahmias adds this nugget: “Cuomo wouldn’t disclose his exact location during the interview, but while he spoke, he was audibly rolling pool balls across a pool table, which clinked and clacked while he talked.”
| | | | HAPPENING THURSDAY – A LONG GAME CONVERSATION ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS : Join POLITICO for back-to-back conversations on climate and sustainability action, starting with a panel led by Global Insider author Ryan Heath focused on insights gleaned from our POLITICO/Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll of citizens from 13 countries on five continents about how their governments should respond to climate change. Following the panel, join a discussion with POLITICO White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López and Gina McCarthy, White House national climate advisor, about the Biden administration’s climate and sustainability agenda. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | TRUMP CARDS DOCUMENT DUMP — The National Archives and Records Administration had to retrieve multiple boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago last month that Trump improperly took with him from the White House, WaPo’s Jackie Alemany, Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger and Ashley Parker report. Among the contents were Trump’s famous “love letters” with KIM JONG UN and the note BARACK OBAMA left him. “Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence.” JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH FIRST DAUGHTER FILES — The Jan. 6 committee is hopeful that IVANKA TRUMP will meet with them soon, as congressional investigators are eager to learn what she knows about her father’s actions the day of the insurrection, reports AP’s Farnoush Amiri . It’s possible that “her proximity to him on Jan. 6 could provide the committee with direct access to what Trump was doing during those crucial three hours when his supporters violently stormed [the] Capitol.” — The article also has this revelation: On Jan. 6, right after Donald Trump unsuccessfully told VP MIKE PENCE not to certify the election, Ivanka Trump said to retired Lt. Gen. KEITH KELLOGG, “Mike Pence is a good man.” AMERICA AND THE WORLD PRE-BILAT READING — When Biden meets with new German Chancellor OLAF SCHOLZ this afternoon, Russia will be the big topic of the day. As Germany has seemed one of the softer members of the NATO alliance on Russia, one of the outstanding questions is whether they’ll join the U.S. in pledging to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine, per ABC’s Sarah Kolinovsky and Molly Nagle. PAGING ANTONY BLINKEN — As white supremacist groups increasingly forge bonds across international lines, some experts say the State Department should consider taking a step it never has: designating them as foreign terrorist organizations. In POLITICO Magazine, Suzanne Smalley reports that doing so could give law enforcement better tools to crack down on domestic extremists that the country’s lack of domestic terrorism statute has thus far hampered. But there’s “a hesitance among U.S. officials, and fears that they don’t yet fit the model of global terrorist networks established by Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups.” TRADE WARS — U.S. officials tell Reuters’ Andrea Shalal and David Lawder that they’re “losing patience with Beijing” over China’s failure to live up to its purchase commitments for U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021. Full data is expected Tuesday, and U.S. officials said they’d push China to take “concrete actions” to make up the shortfall for the agreement signed in the Trump administration. THE WAR ON DRUGS — A big report landing Tuesday on synthetic opioid fentanyl causing massive numbers of U.S. overdoses will put a spotlight on tensions with China over its origination of the drugs, Phelim Kine reports . “China’s reluctance to tighten controls on chemical production and exports,” which typically arrive in the U.S. via Mexican cartels, “has spurred a clash with U.S. legislators” and increasingly becoming a political and diplomatic football, he writes. Chinese President XI JINPING successfully moved in 2019 to block lots of fentanyl exports — but since then, traffickers have gotten craftier by focusing on “unregulated chemicals that can be processed into synthetic opioids.”
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | BEYOND THE BELTWAY POLITICAL VIOLENCE WATCH — A second man accused of planning to kidnap and harm Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER will plead guilty and testify for the government, per a new court filing. 27-year-old KALEB FRANKS will admit to a kidnapping conspiracy charge. More from the Detroit News POLICY CORNER ANNALS OF INFLUENCE — It’s a tale as old as time: stronger regulations from a Democratic administration, stronger resistance from business lobbyists. WSJ’s Brody Mullins and Ryan Tracy reports that an oncoming wave of regulations as the administration hits year two is meeting has “alarmed businesses and prompted them to launch lobbying efforts to enlist allies in Congress.” The SEC is moving particularly aggressively, but the article catalogs a range of actions from the CFPB to USDA and beyond. PLAYBOOKERS IN MEMORIAM — “John Vinocur, Foreign Correspondent and Editor, Dies at 81,” by NYT’s Sam Roberts: “After decades as a reporter for The A.P. and The Times, he became executive editor of The International Herald Tribune and a columnist on world affairs.” MEDIA MOVES — CNN announced a slate of new contributors: former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms , Fox News defector Jonah Goldberg and Kristen Soltis Anderson are joining as political commentators, Loni Coombs as a legal analyst, Beth Sanner as a national security analyst and David Zurawik as a media analyst. TRANSITIONS — Kenneth Weinstein is now a senior adviser at Brunswick Group. He previously was president and CEO of Hudson Institute and U.S. Ambassador-designate to Japan from 2020-2021. … Rebecca Coccaro is joining Paul, Weiss as a partner. She previously was a partner at Akin Gump. … Peter Winsor will be the next executive director of Alaska Wilderness League. He previously was at the World Wildlife Fund, where he was director of its Global Arctic Programme and its official representative to the Arctic Council. … … Mary Wentworth is now a legislative assistant for Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.). She previously was a legislative aide for Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). … Dylan Jones is now comms director for Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.). He previously was comms director for College to Congress. … James Lai is joining Vogel Group as a director. He most recently was director of government affairs for Lot Sixteen’s trade and energy practice and is a Senate Energy Committee and Maria Cantwell alum.
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