• Enumerati

  51% to 37%

  A new CNN poll finds Democrats holding a sizable lead in the generic congressional ballot, 51% to 37%, driven by a unified base of Democrats. Key finding: 98% of self-identified Democrats say they prefer the Democratic candidate in their congressional district, compared to 88% of Republicans who prefer the GOP candidate in their district. Meanwhile, President Trump’s approval rate remains underwater at 37% to 57%.

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• Enumerati

  39%

  “A CBS News Tracker survey published Sunday showed that majorities want more cooperation between Congress and Trump, especially the president’s strongest backers and most Republicans. The most fascinating nugget from the poll: 39% of Republicans feel that their party’s congressional representatives ‘don’t like’ the president and are actively trying to undermine him, while another 37% think congressional Republicans don’t like Trump ‘but pretend to’ in order to try passing their own agenda.”

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• Enumerati

  62%

  A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds that 62% of Americans think that people in Puerto Rico are not yet getting the help they need in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. In terms of the federal government’s response, 52% feel the federal government is not doing enough to restore electricity and access to food and water and 52% think the response has been too slow.

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• Enumerati

  60%

  A new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters support stricter gun laws by 60% to 36%, the highest level of support ever. American voters support by 94% to 5% requiring background checks for all gun purchases. Voters in gun households support universal background checks 93% to 6%.

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• Enumerati

  55% to 43%

  A new Quinnipiac poll finds President Trump with a 38% to 56% approval rate. By a 55% to 43% margin, voter say Trump is not fit to serve as president.

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Poetic Justice

Never Too Soon

Buck Banks | Oct. 17, 2017

Just when we thought racial tensions couldn’t get tenser,
Any meet-up of white nationalists brings an element of danger.
Expecting things to get hot,
Our intrepid Gov. Rick Scott
Already declared a state of emergency for a Thursday speech by Richard Spencer.

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• Verbatim

  “Across an array of domestic and foreign challenges, Trump’s go-to move has become to create what amounts to a political hostage situation. He’s either terminating, or threatening to terminate, a series of domestic and international policies adopted by earlier administrations — and insisting that others grant him concessions to change his mind.”

  — Ron Brownstein

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• Verbatim

  “To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

  — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), in a speech at the 2017 Liberty Medal ceremony.

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• Verbatim

  “It is a tactic borne of frustration and dissatisfaction. Its impact has been to overload the circuits of government — from Capitol Hill to the White House to the Pentagon to the State Department and beyond. In the face of his own unhappiness, the president is trying to raise the pain level wherever he can.”

  — Dan Balz

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• Verbatim

  “At first it’s cool, and then you realize, I’m filling some drugs that are for some pretty serious health problems as well. And these are the people that are running the country,” Kim said, listing treatments for conditions like diabetes and Alzheimer’s. “It makes you kind of sit back and say, ‘Wow, they’re making the highest laws of the land and they might not even remember what happened yesterday.’”

  — Mike Kim, who runs the pharmacy that most members of Congress use, told Stat that he knows the most sensitive details about some of the most powerful people in Washington.

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• Verbatim

  “Trump loves watching the press and its allies scramble their jets in defense of the First Amendment when he makes threats because that puts his name in lights. As long as we continue to over-react to his tweets, as long as we keep reading too much into them, he’ll keep doing it. So am I advocating that we ignore Trump’s tweets? Never. Instead, I suggest that we discount their value in the political marketplace down to the junk level, perhaps placing them in the bundle that includes campaign speeches, advertisements and slogans. … Watch more of what Trump does and a little less of what he tweets. And go ahead and sleep in.”

  — Jack Shafer

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