The Morning Dispatch: Donald Trump Is Having a Pretty Good Week

Plus, we need to talk about Iowa.

By
22

Happy Wednesday! If our predictions are correct (and we’d love it if they weren’t), you’ll be hearing a lot from cable news today about two moments from the State of the Union address last night: President Trump’s snubbing of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s handshake, and Pelosi’s ripping up of Trump’s speech. Both happened. Both were childish. This is us acknowledging that they happened.

Now let’s move on to things that actually matter.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Iowa Democratic Party chairman Troy Price apologized for the delay in reporting the results of Monday’s caucuses, blaming an app “coding error” for the chaos.

  • With 71 percent of precincts reporting late Tuesday night, Pete Buttigieg is holding onto a 1.6 point lead over Bernie Sanders in terms of state-delegate equivalents, 26.8 to 25.2 percent. Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar are at 18.4, 15.4, and 12.6 percent, respectively.

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
22
By
Comments (22)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    JohnF

    It's four days now after the Iowa Caucuses and reports now have Mayor Pete narrowly edging out Bernie Sanders. Each will have roughly a quarter of the votes (+-1%) which will translate to about the same percentage of Iowa's 41 delegates. Ultimately, there will be 4,750 delegates at the Democratic Convention. If Bernie wins 11 in Iowa and Mayor Pete wins 12, or even if it goes the other way, why should I care?

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    NotOpie

    As someone who would call themselves a "conservatarian", my political leanings stray toward the libertarian end of the conservative political philosophy....perhaps more toward classic liberalism as best described in Jonah's writings. What I find disturbing is the near total abandonment of conservative principles by the Republican party brain trust. Embracing yet another "big government" leader in Donald Trump feels more like a sell out for questionable political gain than a realignment of political philosophy. To me that is unforgivable. Therefore I end up stewing in the vat of political homelessness. Abandoning of core free market tenets to engage in childish, but incredibly damaging trade wars, abdicating our role on the world stage and diminishing our beacon of liberty and freedom, and generally increasing the reach and power of the federal government is anathema to my shrinking political minority. But where do we go....I could never vote for Trump even if he gives me the judges and some deregulation that aligns with my philosophies. The left, which moves even farther toward their extremities, provides almost nothing new in their governing thought. So the "red meat" state of the union fell mostly on my personally deaf ears. It does feel as if the time might be right for the development of a viable 3rd party, one which harkens back to true limited government ideas, one which feels that that more limited approach would make government programs more effective. Ah....I guess one can dream.

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Butch Earl

    On the Democrats immediate future:

    "With 71 percent of precincts reporting late Tuesday night, Pete Buttigieg is holding onto a 1.6 point lead over Bernie Sanders"
    Some form of the following message could be a winning one for Pete Buttigieg, "If we are to beat Donald Trump in November, we must not let the party of Obama become the party of Methuselah." After the performances of the Clintons in 2016; Biden, Sanders, and Warren on the debate stages; and the asinine antics of Nancy Pelosi at the State of the Union Speech (how often does Donald Trump come off looking likes the adult in the room), it is time to take the torch John Kennedy passed to the new generation away from the baby boomers before they burn the house down.

    On the future of the American left:

    It's unusual I find anything thought provoking on Fox News anymore but, yesterday several commentators made the point that one of the most under-reported stories is the fractured nature of the American left. Quite rightly so, there's been a lot of discussion of the future of classical liberalism, big government conservatism, limited government conservatism (I believe there are about 7 of us left), and libertarianism in the age of Trump. It is striking to me that Joe Manchin and AOC are both in the same political party. If the Democrats cannot find common ground to defeat Donald Trump now, what can they possibly offer the politically homeless Trump skeptics like me after he's gone?

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      Like you said, there are about 7 of us left.

      Conservatives should have *never* attempted to make their party the majority. Doing so forced them to trade away their actual identity. The GOP is like a recent amputee that still thinks the limb is still there, but it's not. The new brand will slowly take effect over the next couple of years.

      The terrible thing that has happened here is that there is *no longer a Conservative party in the USA*. That is a much, much worse state than having one as a minority party.

      Collapse
  4. Avatar photo
    Elizabeth Vander Galien

    It needs to be pointed out that neither did Trump shake Mike Pence's hand though Pence began to outstretch it and immediately pulled back when he realized Trump's intention was to drop the copies and nothing more. Nancy should have realized this herself when she saw the absence of a Pence handshake. Nancy wanted to make a scene from the get go.

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Kevin Durant?

    “But he did tout plans that would add to them: an infrastructure package, a promise to “protect” existing entitlements, expeditions to the moon and to Mars. From Republican-turned-independent and noted Trump critic Rep. Justin Amash:”
    ——————————————
    The extent to which Justin Amash is absolutely correct on the merits cannot be overstated

    The extent to which Justin Amash’s position makes absolutely zero sense based on the current alternative to Trump ALSO cannot be overstated

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Steve Hayes

      Fair. Though I'd argue it almost always makes sense to advocate for limited government. And it's important to do so w/trillion dollar annual deficits and nearly $23T in debt. Disappointing that so many elected officials and commentators who once claimed to care deeply about these matters apparently don't care at all anymore.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Kevin Durant?

        As a one-issue deficit voter who is now a zero-issue nihilist, I agree. All of this is deeply distressing. I suppose maybe I agree with Rumsfeld too much about army you have vs army you want (I wanted Cruz 😢)

        I guess my view is that Trump is serving Kool Aid with vodka in it and Democrats are serving Kool Aid with cyanide in it

        Should we warn the kids about the vodka? Yes. It’s important to be consistent on the vodka. Kids shouldn’t drink vodka.....but really really focus on the cyanide. Strong strong messaging against the cyanide is critical, even if we have to postpone some very well crafted anti-vodka PSAs

        Our only hope at this point, in my view, is to get everyone really drunk on the vodka and when everybody is passed out, destroy all of the cyanide 😃😃

        (the concern of course is that Trump might be leaning over to see what this really cool cyanide recipe is all about 😬)

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Pat Riot

          So you don't think Trump has caused any adverse long-term effects?

          Collapse
          1. Avatar photo
            Kevin Durant?

            Long term adverse effects of Trump? So like the Iraq War and the Great Society? No not yet. That is the upside of him not having any actual plans.

            I’m sure there are concerns about ‘the discourse’ which is the perfect sort of claim because it is vague and unmeasurable. As a conservative I was already being accused of being pro-slavery and torturing grandma so I find the state of the discourse to be identical.

            Collapse
      2. Ann G

        Do they not care, or is their personal need so great they need a hand, or see the value in having that option available? The crash ten years ago and the way costs have risen since have put a lot of people in a bind.

        Collapse
        1. Ann G

          And I mean regular folk who seemed to have changed their minds, not necessarily politicians and pundits.

          Collapse
  6. Avatar photo
    Kevin Johnson

    Love The Dispatch, am an early subscriber, and oted against Trump. Calling him out is a vital part of your mission. But I constructively observe that you will lose “gettable” people who dislike much about potus and are ready to criticize him if you slide into easy, gratuitous sniping at him which seems unfair. One example is saying “always the tv producer...” before saying he did just what a former actor, former CIA director, former (and current?) enthusiastic heterosexual (thanks KWilliamson), and community organizer also did. The symbolic guest is standard at so tu. When trump does something standard for a potus, many will ask why you twist it for a small laugh; or they won’t ask why, they will conclude it is the equivalent of this calling him a Nazi, etc., rather than just “ bad.” Exaggeration is not the friend of those of us standing against real misdeeds and errors. Now, if he did something different and significant plausibly due to his tv stripes, I missed it in your copy. Thanks.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Steve Hayes

      Kevin -- Thanks for your note. We're open to criticism, including along these lines, and we're eager for this kind of constructive feedback. One of the things we want to do with these threads -- and eventually with the broader community space we're building -- is offer some transparency for our reporting and writing, answering questions exactly like this one and letting people know why we're writing/saying the things we are. In this case, I think we were closer to the mark than your comments suggest, but there are ways that we could have done it even better. I don't think there's any question that what we saw from the president last night had far more elements of television/reality-show production than what we've seen at previous SOTUs. The president's strongest supporters are touting the speech for exactly those reasons, among others. And there's also no doubt that Trump thinks like a TV producer. He reveals this in his public comments, in his obsession with ratings, etc. So I think we were on very solid ground with our "always the TV producer" aside and I don't think it falls into the category of gratuitous sniping at all. All of that said, where we could have improved the item would have been giving readers examples of exactly *how* what Trump did last night wasn't standard for a potus and went beyond what we've seen from his predecessors, including the enthusiastic heterosexual. For folks who saw the speech, I suspect it might have been obvious that there was more of a producer's touch in evidence; for those who didn't, merely asserting that this was the case wasn't enough. That didn't occur to me as we were writing/editing it, but I can see why that phrase might have felt like sniping. Anyway, hope that helps understand where we were coming from on it and I'm eager to hear who wins your ote in November. Thanks again for the feedback.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Kevin Johnson

        Thanks much, Steve. This does help me understand. Have also seen other outlets lay out how much more grand the tv production elements were than previous. Y’all have to deal with space limitations, so I get why you didn’t explain more given how you say it all looked to those watching. Not enough to make me watch such things, since I am with KW about eliminating SOTU, but enough to show me I missed something you didn’t. Thanks for keeping an eye out for my general point, as well. We don’t want to further the, sometimes legitimate, narrative that establishment finds many, many things fine when done by “not Trump,”. I know that isn’t what The Dispatch is about!

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Kevin Johnson

          Probably no one running deserves more than an “ote”, perhaps only a “te” but will advise.

          Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      Kevin Johnson

      Actually went so far as to “vote” against him, not merely “ote”...

      Collapse
    3. Avatar photo
      Elizabeth Vander Galien

      Well said. Agree completely. Such a joyless bunch and it's tiresome.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Steve Hayes

        Who, us? We've got boundless joy! One of the things we're determined to do in these often discouraging times is find the joy in the day-to-day. It's harder to find some days than others, but it's there and we're seeking it out and trying to create more of it.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Elizabeth Vander Galien

          I guess I don't find the times to be nearly as discouraging as you all do. I can find very little to be discouraged about, actually, considering the alternatives.

          Collapse