| | | | Our incredibly angry American political moment |  | | There were two big moments in politics on Thursday.
1) Speaker Nancy Pelosi brusquely shut down a conservative reporter's question as to whether she hated President Donald Trump.
2) Former Vice President Joe Biden got into a heated back-and-forth with an Iowa voter at a town hall in which the man said Biden was too old to be president and Biden challenged the man to a pushup contest or an IQ test.
Both moments had something in common: vitriol -- and ill intent. Which perfectly typifies our current moment in American politics.
While there's a tendency to focus on the reactions from Biden and Pelosi, I think there's actually more value in looking at the other two participants. In Pelosi's case, that's a reporter from Sinclair Broadcasting, a conservative TV conglomerate, who asked a purposely provocative question designed to elicit a response from the normally disciplined Pelosi as she was leaving her weekly news conference. In Biden's situation, the questioner falsely accused Biden of sending his son, Hunter, to Ukraine and told the former vice president he was too old to run for president -- both of which were clearly provocative attacks.
In both cases the politicians responded with emotion. And anger. Or at the very least, deep annoyance. Which a) is their right and b) was the clear goal of both of the questioners.
That we live in a moment in which this sort of purposely provocative questioning is not only tolerated but also lionized among fellow believers is a testament to how far our civil discourse has eroded. If the goal of asking politicians questions is simply to make them angry and then make fun of them for being angry, we are in rough shape.
It also speaks to the anger coursing through the public that both Pelosi and Biden chose to react, and react the way they did. Anger, of course, and the weaponizing of it for political gain also sit at the heart of Trump's political magic, as it were. Trump was elected in 2016 in large part because of his ability to channel the rage coursing through the electorate. And he has governed, amazingly enough given that he is the President, as an aggrieved victim of a system hopelessly biased against him.
The simple truth is that politicians aren't so different from the people they represent. The levels of frustration, distrust and disgust they feel are high -- so high that they are less able to keep it under wraps even when they know that allowing their actual emotions to show will make an encounter into a major moment.
We're all on a razor's edge. And unfortunately, there's more political gain in reinforcing our divisions than in reminding us of our common humanity.
The Point: This feels like a moment of real crisis in American politics, when the anger and disillusion we've been holding in can't help but burst out. And the 2020 election is still almost a year away.
-- Chris | | "This is the day Alexander Hamilton feared."
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Yang and Gabbard each need just one poll to qualify, according to CNN polling pro Grace Sparks. They've both already met the fundraising requirement, and need just one more national poll showing them at or above 4%.
The only other candidate with any chance of making the stage is Cory Booker -- he met the fundraising threshold BUT has no qualifying polls. It'll be difficult for him to clear the four-poll hurdle ahead of the debate's December 12 deadline.
So far, six candidates will debate in Los Angeles on December 19: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren, per the Democratic National Committee's standards. Kamala Harris had qualified before she dropped out earlier this week. | |
LAUREN'S CAMPAIGN TRAIL LATEST | | Joe Biden: Snagged the endorsement of former Secretary of State (and former Massachusetts Sen.) John Kerry. The two will campaign in Iowa on Friday. Biden also called an Iowa voter a "damn liar" in a heated exchange on the trail today.
Pete Buttigieg: Has been endorsed by some key former Obama officials, including the former president's personal aide Reggie Love.
Cory Booker: Criticized the current Democratic field's diversity (or lack of it) in a speech from Iowa: "It is a problem that we have an overall campaign for the 2020 presidency that has more billionaires in it than black people." | | | 77
The number of votes cast by apparent noncitizens in Ohio's 2018 election, according to Ohio's Republican secretary of state. Of the 4,496,834 ballots cast in the state on November 6, 2018, just 0.002% of them were illegal. | | | | | | |
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