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Participants will get my latest news updates and analysis -- and then I will answer questions galore.
Presented in conjunction with the Political Voices Network.
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TWO PERENNIAL INTERNATIONAL DANGERS LURKING DURING THE TRANSITION FROM ONE PRESIDENT TO ANOTHER
* David Ignatius on Trump and Iran.
* The Associated Press on the Hermit Kingdom:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered at least two people executed, banned fishing at sea and locked down the capital, Pyongyang, as part of frantic efforts to guard against the coronavirus and its economic damage, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Friday.
Kim’s government also ordered diplomats overseas to refrain from any acts that could provoke the United States because it is worried about President-elect Joe Biden’s expected new approach toward North Korea, lawmakers told reporters after attending a private briefing by the National Intelligence Service.
One of the lawmakers, Ha Tae-keung, quoted the NIS as saying Kim is displaying “excessive anger” and taking “irrational measures” over the pandemic and its economic impact.
HALPERIN SAYS: Donald Trump broke from the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama consensus on how to deal with these two remaining members of the Axis of Evil. For Trump, doing things differently did not produce a definitively different result. Biden wants to go back to the Obama-Biden days with regards to Iran, but we don’t really know what his NoKo plan is. Provocative action before New Year’s Day in either place (or both….) could produce the biggest headlines of the final days of 2020 — and remember that these two countries have a history of such December moves. And remember that Trump wants to leave a mark.
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TWO OTHER GLOBAL AREAS IN WHICH BIDEN HAS NOT YET SHOWN HIS HAND
* Josh Rogin’s essential read tries to decode Team Biden’s China posture.
* This Wall Street Journal essential read nicely lays out some of the inbox issues related to trade that said Team Biden hopes to defer and deflect as much as possible.
HALPERIN SAYS: Here, too, the central issue is Biden’s choice between (A) back-to-the-future of Trump’s four predecessors (with cosmetic tweaks, although they will claim the differences are more than that); (B) effective continuity with Trump (with cosmetic tweaks, although they will claim the differences are much more than that); and (C) or something new. On these issues and most others, I predict 65% (A), 25% (B), and 10% (C).
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AN OVERLOOKED VARIABLE FROM THE GEORGIA SENATE RUNOFFS
[Brian] Kemp, the governor, has also avoided making any runoff campaign appearances on behalf of his state’s two Republican senators. The governor has been walking a line between supporting the integrity of the election result — he signed the certification on Friday of the presidential votes — and agreeing that improvements can be made to signature verification and voter-identification rules. Kemp did not respond to a request for comment. (Washington Post)
HALPERIN SAYS: With strategists in both parties now suggesting the flood of TV ads are cancelling out on both sides and the president planning to go down to Georgia, Governor Kemp’s ultimate decision is a key part of the ground game end game that will likely decide the outcomes.
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TWIN NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNS THAT ARE ESSENTIAL READING
* David Brooks:
Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set. He and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime. The internet is an ideal medium for untested information to get around traditional gatekeepers, but it is an accelerant of the paranoia, not its source. Distrust and precarity, caused by economic, cultural and spiritual threat, are the source.
* Maureen Dowd’s brother’s annual guest column, with too much essential to quote from.
HALPERIN SAYS: Everybody should read both pieces, but if you reside in the Redlands, please especially consume Brooks to understand the Blues clues about your reality. And if you are a Blue Denizen, please check out Dowd for what is perhaps the best distillation of the pro-Trump/anti-Biden/anti-anti-Trump mindset I have seen in 2020. These are vitally important areas to develop more mutual understanding in before 1/20/21.
Neither side should want to be pro-ignorance or pro-hate, words I unfortunately know I have to type.
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THREE TRUMPY ELEMENTS FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO CAN’T QUIT HIM IN DECEMBER (OR EVER)
* Remarkable Associated Press couplet:
The 2020 presidential race is turning into the zombie election that Trump just won’t let die. Despite dozens of legal and procedural setbacks, his campaign keeps filing new challenges that have little hope of succeeding and making fresh, unfounded claims of fraud.
But that’s the point. Trump’s strategy, his allies concede in private, wasn’t to change the outcome, but to create a host of phantom claims about the 2020 presidential race that would infect the nation with doubt and keep his base loyal, even though the winner — Biden — was clear and there has been no evidence of mass voter fraud.
HALPERIN SAYS: Safest 2020 prediction – we will not see the likes of Donald Trump again, ever.