Links for 04/19/17

by Michael Sean Winters

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At RNS, Mark Silk looks at Trump's approval ratings through the prism of religious identification, and compares his numbers to Obama's.  In a nutshell: Trump is not holding his own with his own, white mainline Protestants.

With Trump in the White House, Democrats have a lot of energy in their base. But is it enough to start winning elections? Politico looks for an answer. One thing is certain. If Joe Ossoff had managed to dodge a runoff last  night in Georgia, partisans on both sides of the aisle would be over-interpreting the result. Republican voters usually vote Republican and Democratic voters usually vote Democratic.

In this morning's Washington Post, David Ignatius compares Donald Trump to Harry Truman, arguing that Trump would benefit if he acquired some of Truman's "manly virtues." I think Ignatius doesn't focus on the main difference. Truman may have lacked high level executive experience, and he was never brought into the inner counsels of his predecessor, but he was deeply read in history and brought the knowledge he thus acquired to the decisions he had to make. That background is one reason the only president in the 20th century to have never gotten a college degree was capable of some of the most far reaching decisions of any president.

 

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