Tomorrow the open hearings begin. Shit will get real, I hope.

The headline of this post was triggered by a Byron York column headlined “ANALYSIS: Democrats have a Colonel Vindman problem” in the Washington Examiner. I’ll let you search for it if you really want to read it, but it’s full of York’s usual misdirections and dissembling. Just be assured that Lt. Col. Vindman is not a problem.

However, Trump is a problem, on several levels. The first and most obvious problem is that he’s a walking cesspool of ignorance and corruption, and by now anyone who still supports him is (a) being paid to do so; (b) dependant on the Republican party for current or future employment; (c) a hard-core partisan wingnut suffering massive cognitive dissonance; and/or (d) dumber than a bag of hammers. There are no other explanations. Byron York probably is several of the above.

But another problem is that Trump is both undisciplined and extremely stupid as well as corrupt. Those traits got him into the mess he’s in, and they are already undermining efforts to save him. Greg Sargent writes,

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Today’s news:

Pete King (R-Asshole) is retiring from Congress.

This is a hoot. Junior went to UCLA to promote his new book, Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us. I take it he hired Ann Coulter to write the title, if not the rest of it. Anyway, he was heckled and booed off the stage — by right wing hecklers. The young, right-wing audience that filled the venue grew angry when they were told Junior and his girlfriend (why was she on the stage?) were not taking questions.

At the Sunday event, Trump Jr. appeared to think the first shouts of dissent had come from left-leaning counterprotesters.

“Name a time when conservatives have disrupted even the furthest leftist on a college campus,” he said to the crowd. “It doesn’t happen that way. We’re willing to listen.”

A member of the audience interrupted with a shout: “Then open the Q&A!”

“See what I mean?” Trump Jr. answered. “And that is the problem. And the reason oftentimes it doesn’t make sense to do the Q&A is not because we’re not willing to talk about the questions, ’cause we do. No. It’s because people hijack it with nonsense looking to go for some sort of sound bite. You have people spreading nonsense, spreading hate, trying to take over the room.”

Over the weekend the New York Times published a long story about exactly what Biden was doing in Ukraine, and why. The short answer, “his job.”

Mr. Giuliani has claimed, without evidence, that Mr. Biden’s push to oust Mr. Shokin was an attempt to block scrutiny of his son’s actions. In fact, Mr. Biden was just one of many officials calling for Mr. Shokin to go. Good-government activists were protesting his actions in the streets, as were eurozone power players like Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, along with Ms. Nuland and Senate Republicans.

“The position regarding getting rid of Shokin was not Vice President Biden’s position; it was the position of the U.S. government, as well as the European Union and international financial institutions,” said Amos J. Hochstein, former coordinator for international energy affairs at the State Department and one of the few administration officials who directly confronted Mr. Biden at the time about his son.

Greg Sargent:

Biden was carrying out U.S. foreign policy by prodding Ukraine — awash in civil unrest and corruption, getting plundered by oligarchs and under Russian assault — to undertake reforms to bring it in line with Western democratic ideals, as a bulwark against Russia.

This is the important subplot lurking beneath the scandal headlines — that in leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russia in order to strong-arm Ukraine into carrying out his own self-interested corrupt designs, Trump retreated from the United States’ posture of siding with Ukraine in a broader battle between liberal democracy and illiberal authoritarian kleptocracy.

Monday will be the 101st anniversary of the Armistice and the 100th anniversary of the first November 11 parade in New York City, called either the Armistice Day Parade (correctly) or Veterans Day Parade (meh). Anyway, I am just now finding out that Trump has agreed to attend the parade and is expected to address the crowd at the beginning of it, which I find absolutely astonishing. If he didn’t like being booed at Nationals Park, what does he expect a crowd of New Yorkers to do?

The address is supposed to happen in or near the small Madison Square Park in the Flatiron district. I haven’t read any further explanations. I’m betting money that the area will be blocked off for considerable distance, and only pre-approved people, e.g. Trump supporters, will be allowed anywhere near the speaker’s podium. I hope the parade itself goes well.

In other news — the elites of American politics are all excited about Michael Bloomberg’s possible entry into the Democratic nomination contest. The rest of the country is looking on and thinking, WTF?  I agree with George Conway that if Bloomberg really wants to be useful, he should buy Fox News.

See also:

State Department Freed Ukraine Money Before Trump Says He Did

We read all 2,677 pages of impeachment inquiry testimony released to date. Here’s what’s clear.

The latest in the threat by Matt Bevin to steal the Kentucky election:

The Kentucky Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, declared Andy Beshear the winner of the election late Tuesday night, and when this was reported on CNN Matt Bevin blew a fuse. He accused Grimes of fraud and threw around accusations of voter fraud and “reports” — mysteriously, no one else heard them — of people being turned away from voting.

You might remember that Alison Lundergan Grimes is a Democrat who ran for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in 2014. If only. Anyway, one of her functions is to head the state board of elections. The board itself has eight members, four Republicans and four Democrats. As I understand it, once votes are certified by counties those results to go the state board, which then makes the results official. The counties were required to submit their certified forms by this Friday, so it probably is the case that the election hadn’t been officially certified when Grimes declared Beshear the winner.

Bevin requested a recanvass, which will take place November 14. According to CNN,

A recanvass is a reprint of the receipts from voting machines to check for reporting or clerical errors. After ballots are scanned, the machine tabulates those votes and prints out a receipt with the total.

During a recanvass, those receipts will be reprinted and checked again to make sure they were reported properly. It’s not uncommon for some clerical errors to occur during the initial vote tabulation.

All 120 counties would then fill out and submit the same certification forms again with the recanvass results.

My office has received concerns regarding a call being circulated. This call is not in conjunction with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office!

Please call @KySecofState ?? 502-564-3490 if you have received this call or have any questions! pic.twitter.com/DZrDA9UEY9

— Alison L. Grimes (@AlisonForKY) November 8, 2019

It also appears that Republicans in the legislature have had second thoughts about giving the governor’s seat back to Bevin.

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers believes Gov. Matt Bevin should concede his loss to Democrat Andy Beshear if next week’s recanvass doesn’t significantly change the vote totals.

“It’s time to call it quits and go home, say he had a good four years and congratulate Gov.-elect Beshear,” Stivers said in a brief Friday interview at the Capitol.

Voiding an election just because they can probably still looks bad even to Republicans. The process on the books for deciding a contested election hasn’t been used since 1899, and according to precedent involves armed militias and the assasination of one of the candidates. So there’s some understandble reluctance to go that route.

Also: My new book The Circle of the Way goes on sale November 12! That’s, like, Tuesday! You can pre-order from the publisher, from an independent bookseller, or from Amazon.

The Contested Election of 1899

So this just happened:

President Donald Trump has been ordered by a New York State judge to pay $2 million to a group of nonprofit organizations as part of a settlement in a civil lawsuit stemming from persistent violations of state charities laws.

The payment is the final resolution to a case brought by the New York attorney general’s office after the Trump Foundation held a fundraiser for military veterans during the 2016 campaign.

More details:

“Our petition detailed a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more,” then-Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleged in a statement late last year.

In her seven-page ruling, New York Supreme Court Justice Salliann Scarpulla wrote, “Mr. Trump’s fiduciary duty breaches included allowing his campaign to orchestrate the Fundraiser, allowing his campaign, instead of the Foundation, to direct distribution of the Funds, and using the Fundraiser and distribution of the Funds to further Mr. Trump’s political campaign.”

Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka were also named in the lawsuit.

Update: See also Talking Points Memo and Rolling Stone for more details.

Here’s a more recent Trump scam:

The pettiest grift of Trump’s presidency may be a scheme that was recently uncovered by Popular Information’s Judd Legum. As Legum notes, the Trump campaign has held at least 15 online contests in which the winner was promised a meal with Trump. Many of them also promised travel accommodations. All supporters had to do to enter the contests, which were promoted heavily on social media, was donate to the campaign. “I just saw the most recent list of Patriots who have contributed to win a trip to meet me in Chicago on October 28th, and I noticed you STILL haven’t entered,” read one email regarding a contest for a supporter and a guest to have lunch with Trump in Chicago.

This may sound great for Trump supporters, but there’s one problem: despite the untold sums of money raised off the contests, no one appears to have actually sat down for a meal with the president. …

… The campaign certainly hasn’t been able to provide any proof. After Legum’s original piece on the potential scam published, Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh tweeted that “[p]eople win the contests each time,” but offered no additional evidence. Nor have any of the “top supporters” and “patriots” who entered any of the 15 contests come forward with pictures or other proof that they sat down for a meal with Trump. It does appear some people have met the president before rallies as a result of winning contests, but the promise of grabbing breakfast, lunch, or dinner with him seems to be a sham.

I swear, he can’t help himself. Grifters gonna grift.

Well, well. Lots of headlines today about how Andy Beshear’s apparent win over incumbent Matt Bevin in Kentucky has unsettled Republicans a tad. Here are some numbers for you:

Trump’s Monday night rally for Bevin was held in Lexington. Beshear won Lexington/Fayette County easily, 65.5 to 33 percent. Note, though, that Lexington/Fayette was one of the two counties in Kentucky that went for Clinton in 2016, 51.2 to 41.7 percent. (The other Clinton county in 2016 was Louisville/Jefferson; the rest of the state was solid Trump.) Still, that shows an improvement for Democrats.

As of early afternoon Wednesday, Bevin is still refusing to concede and is asking for a re-canvass. With 100 percent of the precincts counted, Beshear is ahead by 5,300 votes. The Associated Press is saying the race is too close to call. Some shenanigans may still be pulled to deny Beshear the win. But let’s look at the results we do have.

A lot is being made of the suburban vote, which went for Beshear. But I notice several rural counties in eastern Kentucky went for Beshear also. Just to pick one at random — Magoffin County, population 13,333. 98.6 percent white. Median income $27,745 for men, $18,354 for women. 36.6 percent of residents are below the poverty line. Magoffin is very much in the old coal mining region of the state; whether there are any active mines remaining there I do not know.

Now, here’s the kicker — in 2016, Magoffin went for Trump by 74.7 percent. Yesterday Magoffin voted for Beshear over Bevin, 53.6 percent to 44.3 percent. This was after Bevin practically wrapped himself in Trump and made Trumpism and impeachment the primary focus of his campaign. Did I mention that last week Mike Pence and Matt Bevin did a big bus tour of eastern Kentucky to shore up support?

Republicans dominated down-ballot races in Kentucky, and today the GOP is pretending that this shows people are still with Donald Trump. But if there was ever a sign that Trump has no real coattails, even in places that look like his base, last night was it.

Democrats and Never Trumpers are already yakking that Andy Beshear’s victory shows us that “swing” voters will go for a “moderate” Democrat, wink nudge. But I’m not sure it’s that simple. I think voters, notably those eastern Kentucky rural voters, for once just voted for the guy who would help them rather than hurt them.

Back when the Affordable Care Act was put in place, the state governor was Andy Beshear’s father, Steve Beshear, also a Democrat. Beshear saw to it that Medicaid was expanded and put a state insurance exchange, called Kynect, into place that was one of the few that worked just fine out of the box. Kynect was very popular. Beshear was governor until his term limits were up in 2015.

Matt Bevin was elected to replace Steve Beshear. One of Bevin’s first acts as governor was to end Kynect to force residents deal with the clunky federal exchange. He attempted to reverse Medicaid expansion but was not entirely successful. His plan was to restrict Medicaid to people who could prove they were working, volunteering, or in school to receive Medicaid, but a judge blocked that plan. Bevin was openly in favor of completely ending Obamacare and replacing it with nothing. See How one U.S. state is leading the charge to dismantle Obamacare from May 2017. The “one state” is Kentucky.

One suspects a lot of those eastern Kentuckians who voted for Andy Beshear hoped he would be like his daddy and not take away their Medicaid. And, indeed, Beshear campaigned hard on protecting Medicaid and supporting access to health care in general.

Altough Bevin’s attempt to throw poor Kentuckians off of their health care plans was mostly unsuccessful, he did manage to ram through anti-union “right to work” laws, which probably didn’t help him in the coal region. He also pissed off the state’s public school teachers by cutting their pensions. I understand the teacher’s union worked hard for Beshear, as did the United Mine Workers and other unions.

Under Bevin, Kentucky adopted some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country. Bevin has personally signed ten anti-abortion bills. Beshear supports abortion rights. Bevin attacked Beshear hard on this issue, calling his opponent “abortion Andy.” This is from a couple of days ago:

Beshear was the first Kentucky gubernatorial candidate to earn an endorsement from the prominent abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is running digital ads against Bevin through Tuesday’s election. Of the Democratic candidates for governor in three Southern races this fall, which are all seen as competitive, Beshear is the only one supporting abortion rights.

Anti-abortion opponents are closely watching the Kentucky race for hints about 2020, particularly whether voters will care enough about restricting abortion to cancel out their reservations about an unpopular incumbent — be it Bevin or Trump.

The group is behind a $750,000 campaign in the state to attack Beshear and the Democratic candidate for attorney general. Bevin has released at least four ads since mid-September attacking Beshear on abortion and emphasizing his own anti-abortion credentials.

“Kentuckians overwhelmingly support pro-life protections, and Gov. Bevin has been proud to fight vigorously on behalf of the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable since day 1 of his Administration,” Bevin campaign manager Davis Paine said in a statement.

I liked this bit:

SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, appearing at a campaign event for Bevin last month, said the contrast between Bevin and Beshear on abortion is a “gift” that should seal the election for the Republican incumbent.

“The only way Andy Beshear can win is if people don’t know what his position is,” she said.

So much for abortion as a sure-fire wedge issue. A lot of poor Kentuckians think they have a right to their own life, thank you, and want to have access to medical care when they need it.

Another wedge issue: Gun control. Bevin is agin’ it, period. Beshear was mostly quiet on the issue except for coming out in support of “red flag” gun laws. But do see Beshear’s “issues” page from his campaign website; along with abortion rights he also favors marriage equality, medicinal marijuana, and pledges to support diversity in hiring and protection of voting rights. These are all issues that would have marked him as a flaming “leftie” once upon a time.

My larger point is that maybe we need to drop the labels. Maybe voters care less about whether some candidate calls himself a “centrist” or a “moderate” and more about whether she or he is actually going to do anything to make life more fair and livable.

More implications for 2020: It’s clear to me that if Trump can’t win in cities and suburbs he will lose the popular vote. Can he still win the Electoral College? The pundits are saying his only hope is to pick up every rural and small-town vote he can get in the “battleground” states. And my advice to Dems is to pay attention to what issues voters in those states care about and prepare to campaign hard on those issues. Don’t do what Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and run the same one-size-fits-all campaign in every state.

And see Greg Sargent, What GOP spin about last night’s losses says about Trump’s weakness. Trump and the GOP apparently believe that Trump’s base is a mighty and invincible thing that will deliver victories for them without their having to appeal to moderate voters. Yesterday’s election results, and not just in Kentucky, says they’re wrong.

Somebody decided he’s not willing to do time for Trump. This just happened:

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told House impeachment investigators this week that he now remembers telling a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Ukraine would not receive U.S. military assistance until it committed to investigating the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a person with knowledge of Sondland’s testimony.

Sondland’s latest testimony represents an update to depositions he gave in October to the three House committees leading the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The new testimony was in a three-page declaration to the committees.

According to that sworn declaration, Sondland told Congress this week that his memory has been refreshed after reviewing the opening statements from Bill Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a former adviser to Trump on Russian and European affairs.

Yeah, I bet his memory was refreshed. That must be it.

Greg Sargent has a roundup of The Scandal Thus Far, with the catchy headline The scope of Trump’s corruption is mind-boggling. New developments show how. “The broad contours of the Ukraine scandal are well understood,” he writes. But two aspects of the scandal require more scrutiny.

Do read the whole thing.  Then read Josh Marshall:

A few two-bit, maybe three-bit hustlers have managed to take control of the President of the United States and have him not simply making decisions at their direction but actually operating outside any clear coordination with his own State Department. We need to see this as a proof of concept through which we see current US relations with Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and many other countries. Think what more sophisticated operators are able to do with him.

This may sound like I’m trying to let Trump off too easily, portraying him as a soft touch or a patsy. Not really. I do get the sense here that Rudy’s telling him that Yovanovitch had to go was probably all he needed to hear. Hearing stories that she’d badmouthed him didn’t hurt either. I don’t get the sense that Trump knew or cared just why Parnas or Lutsenko wanted her out. Maybe he didn’t even know it was their ask. The point is it didn’t matter. Rudy was going to get Biden or spring Manafort or prove the Deep State was wrong about the Russians and that was all he needed to know.

There are more layers we haven’t uncovered yet, in particular why Trump is so obsequious to Russia. See also Michelle Goldberg, On Ukraine, Trump Is a Con Man, but He’s Also a Mark.

The heart of the Ukraine scandal, for which Trump will almost certainly be impeached, is simple. Trump used congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine, as well as the promise of a White House visit, to try to extort Ukraine’s president to announce investigations that would benefit Trump politically.

But there’s a broader story that’s still murky, because in this scandal Trump is both the perpetrator and the mark. Trump used the power of his office to try to force Ukraine to substantiate conspiracy theories. But the president was fed those conspiracy theories by people with their own agendas, who surely understood that he is insecure about Russia’s role in his election, and he will believe whatever serves his ego in the moment. The main reason Trump should be removed from office is that he has subverted American foreign policy for corrupt personal ends. But this scandal is the latest reminder of how easy sinister forces find it to pull his strings.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are reduced to complaining about the process or demanding that the original whistleblower be revealed. Because that’s all they’ve got.

ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION: Since the release of the first two transcripts from the impeachment inquiry Monday, have you seen a single stitch of information that helps President DONALD TRUMP? Have you found any information exculpatory for him? Can you name one single fact that’s changed the basic arc of this story?

IN FACT, as WaPo’s RACHAEL BADE and KAROUN DEMIRJIAN point out in today’s paper, “Republicans have used their time to complain that testimony has become public, going after their colleagues who were quoted in media reports commenting on witness appearances, and quizzing witnesses themselves on how their statements had been released.” WaPo story

See also Philip Bump, The desperate search for the Ukraine scandal’s Peter Strzok.

As unpopular as he is, if the 2020 election were being held today it’s highly likely Trump would lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College map again. Pollsters say that Trump is as popular as ever with less educated white voters, and that is keeping a number of “battleground” states in his column. Biden does slightly better in many of those states than do Warren or Sanders, but probably not better enough.

The Democratic nomination race is still very fluid. The national polls have Biden, Sanders, and Warren bunched together at the top, with everyone else in low single digits. However, Pete Buttigieg is moving into double digits in some early primary states.

Right now, most of the campaigning is going on in the early primary states, which means the polls there aren’t just reflecting name recognition any more. Especially in Iowa and New Hampshire, and increasingly in South Carolina and Nevada, voters are putting together names and campaigns and moving closer to making choices. So it’s interesting to me that in Iowa, Biden has faded to 4th place after Buttifieg. Warren is in first place, but it’s tight. Biden is in third place after Sanders and Warren, respectively, in New Hampshire. Biden maintains a substantial lead in Nevada and South Carolina, although he may have slipped a bit in South Carolina.

The point, though, is that while Biden has a huge advantage in name recognition and, well, comfort level among many Democratic voters, it appears that voters are willing to change their minds when they get a closer look at the other candidates. I think any of the top three has a shot at the nomination, and I’m making no predictions. I also think it’s way too early to make judgments about who is most “electable” in the general; if nothing else, the impeachment process could well change the landscape considerably.

However, there’s one significant dynamic among Democratic voters that bears watching: The generation gap. James Downie writes at WaPo:

For his consistent polling strength, Biden should thank older voters. Among adults under 49, just 17 percent back Biden, compared with 22 percent for Warren and 28 percent for Sanders. Conversely, 37 percent of those 50 and older back Biden, with 20 percent for Warren and 10 percent for Sanders. The difference between old and young Democrats is bigger than the differences between male and female Democrats, white and nonwhite, moderate and liberal, or any other demographic breakdown. …

… If the Democratic primary were a national contest, Biden’s lead is strong enough — nearly 9 percent in polling averages — that this age gap would be mostly a curiosity. But unfortunately for Biden, his standing is far shakier in Iowa and New Hampshire, and since 1992 no Democrat has won the nomination without winning at least one of those two states. Why is Biden struggling there? Because the age gap is even wider. In a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll of New Hampshire Democrats, Biden sits at 15 percent, trailing Sanders at 21 percent and Warren at 18 percent. The former vice president is supported by 22 percent of Democratic voters 50 and older, compared with just 8 percent of those under 50. And in the New York Times-Siena College Research Institute poll of Iowa, the explanation for Biden’s fourth-place showing at 17 percent starts and ends with the fact that, among likely caucus-goers under 45, he receives less than 3 percent support.

See also Vox, In Iowa, only 5 percent of Biden supporters are younger than 45.

Caucus states like Iowa aren’t necessarily a good barometer, because only the most committed — an activist — voters tend to participate. But as it says, Biden is polling at 8 percent among voters under 50 in New Hampshire. That says something.

But who else is supported by older voters? Donald Trump. Note that he’s got his own generation gap problem. As you can see in this interactive graphic at Politico, Trump does best with voters over age 65.  His support drops with each younger demographic. The 18-29 year olds would probably vote for a jar of mustard rather than Trump.

This suggests to me that the Democrats ought to be pulling out all the stops in a GOTV effort among the young folks. Would they turn out for Biden, however? Would enough of them turn out for anybody?

In the 2018 midterms, voter turnout among the 18 to 29 year olds went from 20 percent in 2015 to 36-38 percent (sources vary) in 2018. That’s nice, but of voters aged 65 and over, more than 65 percent of them voted. In 2016, 71 percent of the 65+ crowd voted, compared to 46 percent of 18 to 29 year olds. I have long thought that if the young folks thought the parties were listening to them they might be more responsive. The same old corporate dweebs in suits that Democrats like to nominate may not seem worth making the effort. But I’m 68 myself, so what do I know?

On the other hand, how much sense does it make for both Democrats and Republicans to chase the same demographic groups? One of the many factors impacting 2016 was that both Trump and Clinton found their strongest support among older voters. But the older voters overall preferred Trump. Younger voters more often voted for Clinton in the general, although they had preferred Sanders for the nomination. As usual, smaller percentages of them voted.

Republican columnist Jennifer Rubin, who is clearly hoping Democrats nominate somebody she can vote for, looks at poll numbers and calls Warren and Sanders too risky. Never Trump Republicans and right-leaning independents think Warren and Sanders are radical lefties, but those voters are comfortable with Biden. And why wouldn’t Democrats vote for Biden as easily as Warren? she asks.

Ask the young folks about that. I’m not sure they would.

One more item for consideration — This October 22 article at FiveThirtyEight asks early primary state Democratic voters who they don’t want to see nominated. In other words, which candidate would really make you squeamish as the Democratic standard bearer? Sanders won that contest, but Biden was a not-that-distant second. Warren seems poised to be a strong consensus candidate, but that could change. It could all change.

I still say it’s foolish to pick your primary candidate based on conventional wisdom about “electability,” but I do wish we could count on the younger people to vote.

It strikes me that Liz Warren is hitting more hurdles and tripwires than the other front runners, Biden and Sanders. It’s remarkable that she’s doing as well as she is.

For example, from the beginning of her campaign she made it clear she was committed to some kind of universal health care program. Although she signed on to Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan early on, for a while she tried to maintain a position of openness to other possible plans. And I think that would have been a good general election position, but the activist base wouldn’t let her do that. There was widespread grumbling that maybe she wasn’t really committed to universal healthcare.

And then when she did commit to a specific plan, she was put on the spot about raising taxes to pay for it. As David Atkins said, “how will you pay for it?” is the new “but her emails.” He writes,

…an enormous amount of the media debate in the 2020 election will focus on how the Democratic nominee intends to pay for priorities like healthcare and climate change mitigation. Even as the Republicans blow ever-bigger holes in the national budget without the slightest concern for how they will be paid for.

Bernie went ahead and bit the raising taxes bullet. From the most recent debate:

Matt Shuham at TPM:

The White House’s memorandum of the July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put words in the Ukrainian president’s mouth that he never said, a White House official testified this week.

The official was Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Vindman testified some of the conversation between the leaders had been ommitted in the memorandum of the call released by the White House.

But the Post’s report goes further: Not only did the record omit words of Zelensky’s regarding the natural gas company on whose board Joe Biden’s son sat, it also included a new phrase in its place that the Ukraininan President never said.

During the call, according to Vindman’s reported testimony, Zelensky referred to the natural gas company by its name, Burisma, and acknowledged that Trump wanted the Bidens to be investigated.

Instead, the White House memorandum reflects the leader saying to Trump, “the company that you mentioned in this issue.”

If they were going to fabricate a conversation, they might at least have left the Bidens out of it entirely. As Charles Pierce wrote at the time, “Jesus H. Christ on work-release, this is what they thought they could put out there?” Only Trump could be inept enough to fabricate evidence and still implicate himself.

I’m still suspicious of a lot of the words the memo of the July 25 attribute to Zelensky. I wrote when the memo was released that “It sounds too much like what Trump would have wanted Zelensky to say.” Passages like this …

I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to ·tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic·partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.

… that President Zelensky is said to have said just sounds like Trump to me, albeit with grammar and syntax corrected.

DALLAS, TX – SEPTEMBER 14: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the American Airlines Center on September 14, 2015 in Dallas, Texas. More than 20,000 tickets have been distributed for the event. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)