We all share the news; we just don’t all feel the same way about it.
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Item:
Reds Say: How out of touch can these people be!?
Blues Say: He’s just telling the truth.
Purples Say: He probably shouldn’t have said it quite like that.
Halperin Says: Ron Klain sometimes seems to think that only people in Chevy Chase follow him on Twitter.
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Items:
Want proof that the Biden administration is really the second incarnation of the Carter administration? We have runaway inflation, Americans trapped overseas, a member of the first family who tried to do business with Libya and a president begging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies (OPEC Plus) to increase oil production. It’s like the 1970s all over again.
Reds Say: Trump was too much in some ways, but at least his policies were good.
Blues Say: Frank Bruni, speaking for the Blues:
Just how competent, really, is Biden? Just how knowledgeably and confidently in charge? I don’t mean neurologically, which I hasten to clarify, lest right-wingers suffering from Biden Derangement Syndrome disingenuously repurpose my comments. I mean administratively, legislatively, politically. And voters’ misgivings about that could be disastrous for him and for America — which cannot afford another go-round with Donald Trump or any of his coddlers — because they concern and corrode the very case that Biden made for his presidency.
Purples Say: To paraphrase Michael Dukakis, it is about both competence and ideology.
Halperin Says: If it is the ‘70s, where is my pet rock?
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Item:
Here is Kim Strassel:
“We’re committed to birddogging” Ms. Sinema, vowed Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese to Politico this week. “We’re going to make her life unpleasant or uncomfortable” until she follows orders. The group—which spun out of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign—gathered shock troops this week outside Ms. Sinema’s Phoenix and Tucson offices to make a start on that threat. Only the left gets away with warnings like this. Suburban parents who grump at school boards are labeled (by the same progressives) “domestic terrorists….”
It’s also no surprise given the cover Democrats and the media gave to appalling behavior over the past 18 months. What’s to stop bullying or harassment (much less looting, rioting and arson) when the media and Washington elite will consistently and helpfully write it off as just a bit of “peaceful protest”?
Reds Say: You go, gal!
Blues Say: Why not just become a Republican?!
Purples Say: Unlike Mr. Grant, we like spunk!
Halperin Says: You are going to want to read this Reuters story:
U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a key moderate, told fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives this week that she will not vote for a multitrillion-dollar package that is a top priority for President Joe Biden before Congress approves a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, according to a source briefed on the meeting.
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Item:
Via McClatchy:
[V]accinated Republican voters have expressed rising levels of anger about unvaccinated Americans, faulting them in part for the country’s then-rising number of infections and deaths from COVID-19.
That has led Democrats to examine whether they have a chance to make inroads with voters frustrated with continued vaccine skepticism — particularly the affluent, suburban voters already drifting away from the GOP — as Republicans largely view the vaccine as a matter of personal freedom.
Reds Say: DeSantis ’24!
Blues Say: This would be justice.
Purples Say: Get the damn vaccine.
Halperin Says: There are only people who can tell you now how the pandemic will play as a political issue in the midterms — and unfortunately they disagree.
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Item:
Nearly 40% of U.S. households said they faced serious financial difficulties in recent months of the Covid-19 pandemic, citing problems such as paying utility bills or credit card debt, according to a recent poll. About one-fifth have depleted all of their savings.
U.S. households are struggling in many ways over a year into the coronavirus pandemic, according to the poll conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and National Public Radio.
Nearly 60% of households earning less than $50,000 a year reported facing serious financial challenges in recent months. Of those, 30% lost all of their savings, according to the poll.
Reds Say: It’s Biden’s fault.
Blues Say: It’s Trump’s fault.
Purples Say: America is better than this.
Halperin Says: What about those stories that said the pandemic assistance actually cut the poverty rate?
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Item:
Reds Say: Look at Hillary! What were they doing in California??!
Blues Say: [TOO COMPLICATED FOR ONE NEWSLETTER]
Purples Say: The New York Times confirms the diagnosis.
Halperin Says: Get well soon, Mr. President.
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Item:
Via the Washington Post:
The Biden administration is prepared to reimplement the Trump-era border policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols in mid-November if the Mexican government agrees to accept the return of asylum-seekers to its territory, administration officials said Thursday.
Reds Say: Too little, too late.
Blues Say: Too much, too late.
Purples Say: Not enough, too late.
Halperin Says: “If the Mexican government agrees….”??
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Item:
Via the Wall Street Journal’s “the sky is falling” ed board:
Mr. Trump’s escalation is that he is now explicitly tying Republican acceptance of his election fantasy to a threat of electing Democrats as retribution. The message to Republicans is that if they don’t loudly pretend that he won the last election, Mr. Trump will make sure the GOP loses the next one, too….
With the Biden Administration’s polarizing overreach, the 2022 elections are an opportunity for the GOP to retake Congress and check the divisive progressive assault on the U.S. economy and law. But that was also true of the 2021 Georgia races. Mr. Trump may not be finished making his supporters pay for his narcissism.
Reds Say: Trump ’24!
Blues Say: Biden and our team will be saved (again) by Trump!
Purples Say: We need a unifying, competent president.
Halperin Says: Run (do not walk) to inhale this essential reading Washington Post story on Donald Trump’s recent speech to the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee meeting. You will not believe some of the stuff he said. Except: you will.
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Item:
Via the New York Post editorial board:
Reds Say: Put this one in the time capsule.
Blues Say: Put this one in the time capsule.
Purples Say: Put this one in the time capsule.
Halperin Says: Put this one in the time capsule.
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