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These Obama/Trump voters are just Trump voters now

Alexi McCammond:

“…Why it matters: The two-plus hour conversation revealed major warning signs for the Democratic Party in a crucial swing county that will be a pivotal area to win in 2020.

    • This was the biggest takeaway from our Engagious/FPG focus group last week, which included 10 voters who flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.
    • While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, these responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about the 2020 election in crucial counties.

Why Saginaw matters: Trump won Saginaw County by just over 1% in 2016, and Obama won by nearly 12% in 2012.

The big picture:

    • These voters hate the fact that House Democrats are moving toward impeaching the president. They call it a distraction from the issues that would actually improve their lives, like preserving Social Security, cracking down on illegal immigration, and keeping jobs in the U.S.
    • “I think she’s wasting a lot of [taxpayer] money on a ghost chase,” said Chad Y., a 43-year-old Obama/Trump voter, of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “The money she’s spending on that could go to help the homeless or go towards health care.”
    • Another participant, 73-year-0ld Michael G., said Democrats’ focus is in the wrong direction. “Instead of working on policies and things that will help the people, they are just working to basically preserve their own position … [T]hey don’t really care about you and [me], I don’t think.”

Between the lines: These voters aren’t sick of Trump’s antics like other swing voters we’ve talked with, and they don’t feel a sense that things need to get back to “normal” — because Trump is their new normal.

That’s reinforced by the fact that:

    • They have virtually zero trust in the media’s coverage of him.
    • Their support for Trump will grow, they said, even if the country enters a recession or a full-blown trade war with China.
    • And they credit Trump with making health care more affordable, thanks to — they said — his GOP tax law, which some said has saved them more in taxes so they can now reallocate that money to pay for prescription drugs.

Their responses were strikingly at odds with several other groups of Obama/Trump voters we’ve spoken with this year.

    • In past focus groups this year around the upper Midwest, we’ve heard voters say they wish Michelle Obama would run for president; they’ve soured on Trump’s personality; and several of them have indicated they would vote for Obama over Trump in 2020 if he were allowed to run for a third term.
    • But swing voters in our focus groups from Ohio, Iowa and now Michigan have revealed a common disdain for impeachment.

What they’re saying: “He’s proven what he’s promised over and over to us,” said 38-year-old Mary D.

    • “Let him finish out the last four years. Why not? He’s done good this far,” said 55-year-old Karen M.
    • Others in group said they like Trump’s “I-don’t-give-a-s— attitude,” as one man put it.
    • Heidi L., a 66-year-old Obama/Trump voter, said she likes that “nobody bought him his presidency. He did it all himself with his own money and nobody’s trying to buy him to do this or that.”

While only two participants said they are definitely voting to re-elect Trump next year, the entire group said they’re not excited by any of the 2020 Democrats, and no one signaled an interest in supporting a Democratic candidate.

The bottom line: The only way these folks are “swing” voters anymore is in their willingness to either sit out the next election or vote for a third-party candidate…”

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US trade representative Robert Lighthizer says phase-one trade deal is ‘totally done’ and will double exports to China in two years

Emma Newburger:

    • U.S. and Chinese officials announced on Friday that the U.S. and China had finally agreed to the phase one agreement after a contentious 18-month trade war.
    • China agreed to billions of dollars in agricultural purchases from the U.S., while President Donald Trump vowed not to pursue a new round of tariffs set for Sunday.
    • The world’s two largest economies plan to sign the partial accord in the first week of January.

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Diversity for thee…

Kay S. Hymowitz:

“…The top Democratic candidates will soon take the stage at the next debate, and oh boy, are party leaders squirming. Up until late last week, when Andrew Yang made the cutoff by a hair, all six of those making their pitch were white—#debatesowhite, as the hashtag called it. Worse yet, half of those Caucasians are old enough to be carrying Medicare cards. As Frank Bruni wrote in last week’s Sunday column, “for a party that celebrates diversity, pitches itself to underdogs and prides itself on being future-minded and youth-oriented, that’s a freaky, baffling turn of events.”…”

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Impeachment = Reelection

Frank Miele:

“…Though the people of the great state of California may be happy to see President Trump impeached for coloring outside the lines, the people of the Midwest, South and Mountain West who voted for him to be the Great Disruptor no doubt see things very differently. After watching Congress do nothing for two years except try to unseat the people’s president on a host of trumped-up charges, it is very likely that there will be hell to pay in 2020. That means not just a Trump victory, but also a larger Republican majority in the Senate and very likely a House of Representatives that will flip from the Democrats to the Republicans.

The Democrats, however, did not have to impeach President Trump to seal their doom, at least in presidential politics. The cake was already baked, and the icing on it is Trump’s just-won’t-quit economy. In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked Americans to vote based on whether they were better off than they were four years ago. For the vast majority of folks today, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Sure, lots of voters still don’t like Trump’s bluster and bravado, but God help the Democrat who comes between them and their 401(k).

Even if you take both the impeachment hoax and the economic renaissance off the table, Trump would still be the hands-down favorite for reelection. That’s because there has always been a clear path to victory for him in 2020, and it goes straight through the Supreme Court. There are several other issues that will boost Trump’s chances for reelection, but none quite as ripe as Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The octogenarian justice is locked in a life-or-death battle (literally) with President Trump to see who can outlast the other.

Trump’s ally, of course, is time. Ginsburg, 86, has beat the clock on numerous occasions, surviving multiple bouts with cancer and other ailments to which the flesh is heir, but actuarial statistics give voters a reasonable expectation that were Trump reelected, he would be appointing a successor to Ginsburg at some point. This also goes to a lesser extent for Stephen Breyer at age 81 and possibly Clarence Thomas at age 71 and Samuel Alito at 69.

Almost everyone agrees that Trump’s promise to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court energized his base in 2016 and helped to cement his victory. Although liberals will also use this issue to their advantage, it is a safe bet that taking the court back from activist liberal judges will play well for the president in the battleground states…”

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Trump will prevail over ‘scalp-hunting’ journalists

Michael Goodwin:

“…Donald Trump just spoiled the fantasy.

If, as expected, the Democrats’ impeachment dies a quick death in the Senate, it’s not just Speaker Nancy Pelosi who will have been thwarted. Presidential scalp-hunting by a biased media will be another Washington game disrupted by Trump.

Backed by a press corps eager to get Trump, Pelosi felt confident to authorize the flimsy effort to remove the president from office. She assumed media bullhorns would push the public into her camp and that would win her Republican votes for a bipartisan takedown.

She certainly got the media support, but the public and the GOP aren’t following. Indeed, the harder that Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler push and the louder the ­anti-Trump media scream, the more the public resists impeachment over the Ukraine piffle.

That was true even before last week’s sensational revelations that the FBI was both corrupt and incompetent in the Russia collusion probe. The report and testimony by Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department, further undermined impeachment by revealing the rampant misconduct in the earlier case…”

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On the latest liberal outrage

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Watch the MSM, deep state actors, and Democrats lie over and over again about the dossier

They lied over and over again and misrepresented information to the American people. The dossier was completely debunked by the Horowitz report.

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Alan Dershowitz: ‘Supreme Court Just Obliterated the Second House Impeachment Charge Against Trump…’

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New York Democrat Jeff Van Drew to Switch Parties and Become a Republican

“…Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a moderate Democrat who is strongly opposed to impeaching President Donald Trump, is expected to switch parties and become a Republican, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Van Drew is one of two Democrats who voted against opening the impeachment inquiry into Trump and has remained against the effort, even as the House prepares to vote to impeach the president next week.

Van Drew’s congressional and campaign staff were informed he was planning to switch parties on Saturday, according to Democratic sources. The question was now when, not if, Van Drew was joining the Republican Party, according to several Democrats with knowledge of the ongoing conversations.

As of Saturday afternoon, it was still unclear if Van Drew would make the announcement before the House votes on impeachment, which is expected Wednesday.

“It was supposed to be bipartisan, it was supposed to be incontrovertible. It was supposed to be something that was always on the rarest of circumstances,” Van Drew told reporters about impeachment earlier this week. “Well it’s not bipartisan.”…”

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Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson will vote against impeachment

Collin Peterson said he will vote against impeaching President Trump when the issue comes for a vote Wednesday. Peterson said he expects four or five other Democrats will do the same.

Peterson said Trump “has not committed a crime” and most people in the Seventh District don’t think the U.S. should provide foreign aid, so they are not troubled at all if Trump withheld funds to Ukraine. Peterson also said the case against Trump only includes “second-hand” information about Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine.

Peterson said the “biggest problem” he has with this impeachment process is that people decided in advance they were going to impeach Trump “and now they’ve spent a year trying to figure out how they can make a case for it. That’s backwards. I just don’t agree with this.”

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Doug Santo