President Trump calls a dozen Democratic Senators and tells them he'll "get killed" financially if his tax "reform" effort passes. Because, after all, if you can't trust Donald Trump, who can you trust? He also told them that they've got to pass an Estate tax repeal because they had to "give the rich something," but what can you give people who already have everything? (Oh, and a Trump spokeshack again spreads the lie that Democrats are holding up his nominees when they're not even able to filibuster Presidential nominees anymore.)
Politico reporter revisits Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and finds that although they generally said they'd abandon him if he didn't deliver, now they're saying they won't abandon him even though he hasn't delivered. You'll encounter all the naked self-contradiction of their analyses and you'll say well, what the hell else are they going to do? Most of us have a very hard time admitting we're wrong, and it's not like Democrats offer very much in opposition. (By "offer very much," I mean offer very much economic populism, not whatever else it is Democrats think people want.)
Maine voters overwhelmingly approved a Medicaid expansion at the polls earlier this week, but didn't actually provide a funding mechanism in their ballot resolution, so Gov. Paul LePage may yet get to stop it, by declaring a lack of funds (Maine's share of the expansion would be around $54 million) and sending the resolution back to the legislature. Of course Mr. LePage -- who was very poor and very abused by an alcoholic father as a child and I got past it, so suck it, poor people! -- has already vetoed five-count-'em-five Medicaid expansions as Governor, and the current state Senate Majority leader would like to succeed him, so it doesn't look as good as it did on Election Day, which is a shame. (The good news: Utah might succeed in 2018 where Maine has thus far failed.)
Surprise, surprise, hedge fund manager/Trump campaign financier Robert Mercer appears to have used money sheltered from U.S. taxes in Bermuda to finance some anti-Clinton efforts. So quite a few Democrats will now be able to attack quite a few Republican opponents by referring to all the tax shelter money being spent on that Republican's behalf -- but nah, they won't do that, not when they can coast on this week's results in Virginia.
Finally, in a story that may be breaking a few weeks early, a woman has come forward to accuse Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of molesting her when she was 14 and he was 32. Mr. Moore has denied the allegations, but the bulk of the Post's report describes a man who seemed to spend an awful lot of time with girls when he was spending time with anyone, and that's not a good sign. Also, he tried to date at least three other teenage girls in his early 30s, though none of those attempts resulted in any sexual relations (and in one of them he actually seems kinda human). I bet he still wins the race anyway, because rage.
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