Top Lines: 2020 Elections | Tariffs and Trade | US Economy | Immigration and the Border | Protecting US Elections | Patriotism & Optimism

Notes On 2020 – The basic contours of the race haven’t changed much since last week – Biden and Buttigieg have the most plausible Dem paths now, Warren has faded, and we are still waiting and seeing if Bloomberg and Patrick can deal themselves into the game. Trump’s numbers remain in an uncomfortably low place on all measures including re-election, removal, and job approval. In a new piece, Chris finds that at this point in their first term all Presidents since 1953 other than Trump have been at -10 net job approval for a total of 245 days; for Trump it has been 900.

You can find NDN’s political insights covering a wide range of 2020 matters in recent stories in the LA Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, NBC News, New York Times (here and here), Politico, Washington Examiner and the Washington Post (here and here).

On Impeachment, Simon in a new Medium op-ed suggests splitting off a review of the damage done by Trump’s foreign dealings/policy from the current process which is rightfully looking at the crimes the President and his co-conspirators have committed. He argues that in the long run this strategic review may be among the most important work done by Congress next year as America comes to terms with the grave and long term damage that Trumpism has done to our standing in the world and overall security.

With the President taking very destructive trade related actions in the coming days – steel tariffs against Brazil and Argentina and the killing off of the WTO dispute resolution process – Congress must somehow tie the successful adoption of the USMCA with the President abandoning his unilateral and serial attacks on the global trade system itself. For those of us who have worked so hard to build the rules based international system in the years after Communism, it is just too much to be lectured about the urgent need for the USMCA from a party who walked away from a completed TPP deal in 2016, and who are standing by and letting the President do lasting damage to the global system the US has built and led. Congress can and must do more than one thing at a time – it can pass the USMCA while also far more aggressively challenging the President’s sinister attacks on the American-led global order.

Trump's Trade "Deal" With China Falls Apart As The Economic Outlook Withers – Since last month, optimism about the President's trade war with China and the economic outlook as a whole has surged. On October 11th, Trump announced that the US and China had reached a "substantial phase one deal" that would defuse trade tensions, while the third interest rate cut by the Fed alongside a reversion of the yield curve - meaning a much reduced chance of recession - boosted hopes that growth would soon strengthen. Recent events over the past two weeks have shown that confidence to be misplaced, however. First, it has become clear that no "phase one deal" actually exists, and that there remain key stumbling blocks on even the most cosmetic issues that the deal was supposed to address. China has both refused to set a target for the level of US agricultural exports to buy and has demanded that the US remove existing tariffs before agreeing to any deal, which the Trump administration has in turn refused to do. CNBC has even reported that China is pessimistic about a possible deal and is choosing to first wait and see how Trump's electoral prospects unfold.

Second, the economic outlook for the remainder of the year has worsened considerably over the past two weeks. Consumer spending, the key contributor to growth given that business investment is in recession, continues to gradually weaken while industrial production in October saw its largest monthly decline since May 2018. On a year-over-year basis, consumer spending in October hit its lowest level since May 2019 while industrial production was at its lowest level since October 2016. Unsurprisingly, this weak data has caused a collapse in growth expectations for the fourth quarter, with the Atlanta Fed and New York Fed projections falling to just 1.3% and 0.8%, which would be the weakest quarterly growth since 2015.

Finally, while NDN is pleased to hear that the House and the Administration may be close to a deal on the USMCA, leaders of the House must be careful in the coming days to not allow their support of this particular deal to in any way be an endorsement of the President’s broader – and deeply reckless – global trade policy. You can read more about NDN's work on trade and economic policy under the Trump administration here.

Under 45 Voters Are Breaking Hard Towards The Democrats - Among the most significant political developments of the Trump era is the dramatic shift of under 45 year old voters towards the Democrats. From 2000 to 2016, Democrats won the under 45 vote by an average of 6 points. In the 2018 midterm elections, they won it by 25. NDN has written extensively on the magnitude of this shift and its profound effects on the future of American politics. You can find our most recent analysis of this shift here, and follow all of NDN's work on the 2020 elections here.

Coming To Terms With New Age Of “Moscow Rules” In US Politics - In a piece we published a few months ago, we decried the embrace by Trump and the GOP of what we call the “Moscow Rules” of politics – the bare knuckled use of all modern tactics such as fake identities, foreign collaboration, hacking, and classic disinformation in our domestic politics. Our fears were heightened when the FEC, the body in charge of policing our elections, was shut down by Trump and the Republicans in late August. And it is with that context that we consider Trump’s effort to invent a scandal against his leading opponent with the aid of a foreign nation – it is literally right out of Putin’s playbook.

Our own assessment of what we’ve seen so far is that our system isn’t really ready to handle this new era. The parties have not yet assumed the degree of responsibility that they will need to battle this new dystopian political world; even simple, easy bills to address these challenges have been blocked by Trump and McConnell; and the Biden campaign still remains remarkably flummoxed by an attack they had to know was coming. Trump’s dropping of $10m into bringing his imaginary scandal to television of course confirms the political nature of his pressure campaign on the Ukrainian President, providing further evidence that once again the President has broken US election laws; but bring it he has, and now all of us have to talk openly about what it is we are witnessing here, and what we can and should be doing about it. This isn’t politics as usual – it is Moscow Rules – and no one can or should be surprised at the ferocity in which it is being practiced by Trump and his party.

Of course, these tactics include the use of high-volume, often clearly fake accounts on Twitter. Our recent effort to build a database of the most influential of these accounts is now up to 400. Feel free to check it out here and review our broader set of recommendations about how to protect our democracy and discourse from foreign manipulation. As well, Simon weighs in on the struggle Democrats are having in responding to Trump’s attacks on Biden in this new Politico piece.

ICYMI – NDN has released proposals to protect our elections, reform US immigration laws, and counter Trump’s reckless protectionism. We’ve also proposed creating a new super department we call the Department of Jobs, Skills, and Economic Development to better target our efforts to ensure no one is left behind. We’ve marveled at the dramatic decline of the GOP’s prospects in the heavily Mexican-American part of the US, and just how much better Democrats have been in managing the US economy in a new age of globalization. We are advising Congress to go slow and be smart in how it reforms the Postal Service – reforms are needed but far more is going right than wrong these days.

We’ve also written a great deal about Trump and his contempt for democracy and the liberal order America has imagined and built. We’ve challenged the conventional wisdom to stop downplaying the enormity of the Russian attack on our system, recognize that Trump is more like Maduro than almost any politician in the West, understand the European elections as a direct repudiation of Trumpism/illiberalism, and acknowledge that America First has become an extraordinary governing and political failure. After repeated mass shootings and the rise of dangerous domestic terrorism, we think the Democrats should make this fall about keeping America and Americans safe.

Recent NDN Media Citations – You can find us in these recent stories: ABC/FiveThirtyEight, AP (here, here, here), Atlantic, CNN (article, TV), Financial Times, MSNBC, NBC News, New York Times, Politico, Real Clear Politics, San Antonio Express-News, Slate, Telemundo, Time Magazine, USA Today, Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Simon offers extensive remarks about the 2020 Democratic Primary in this recent Ron Brownstein Atlantic piece - we think it is well worth your time.

You can also catch Simon in extended interviews on politics and disinformation in this new Future State podcast hosted by Dick Clarke, on Democrats and immigration in this Slate podcast hosted by Univision’s Leon Krauze, and in Fernand Amandi’s new Strange Days podcast on why Democrats need to go big and make their indictment of Trump far more than about “obstruction.”

Support Our Far-Sighted Work Today – We know there are many calls on your giving, but please consider donating to NDN today. Whatever amount - $5, $25, $100 – it all helps us keep the ideas and insights coming.

Best,

Simon, Chris, and the rest of the NDN team



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