A new poll finds that more voters favor an optional government-run health insurance plan, as former Vice President Joe Biden advocates, than full-scale "Medicare for All" that eliminates private health insurance, as advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The poll could give credence to Biden's argument against his main two rivals in the Democratic White House race, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), that an optional plan is more popular in a general election than the full-scale Medicare for All that Sanders and Warren advocate.

The USC/Los Angeles Times poll finds that 48 percent of eligible voters surveyed support giving everyone the option of a government-run health insurance plan, compared to just 14 percent who oppose it. Thirty-eight percent had not heard enough to have an opinion.

The full-scale Medicare for All, which eliminates private health insurance, polls somewhat worse. That proposal gets 39 percent support to 34 percent opposition.

After essentially flipping off the court, Republican legislators got to work drawing the new districts. They quickly settled on a plan to get around the ban on partisan gerrymandering. Lawmakers announced that they would work off maps created by Jowei Chen, a political scientist who served as an expert for the plaintiffs in this case.
Their stated plan is to identify which if Chen’s maps best comports to the court’s guidelines and adopt them with minimal alterations.

There are many problems with this plan. First, and most obviously, Chen did not draw the maps in public hearings, as the court demanded. The court even clarified that “any relevant computer screen” must be “visible to legislators and public observers” to prevent subtle chicanery.

Second, Chen’s maps were never intended to serve as a model for redistricting. Instead, they were created as evidence to gauge the severity of the existing gerrymander. Chen ran 1,000 simulations for both the house and senate maps using non-partisan districting criteria but allowing for incumbency protection. Every single map produced more seats for Republicans; not a single one exhibited “the same extreme level of Republican bias.” The court relied upon these maps to illustrate just how extensively the GOP gerrymander diluted Democratic votes. Legislators claimed that Chen’s maps can serve as a baseline for redistricting because they have already been “accepted” by the court. That is simply false. The court never said “accepted” these plans as remedial maps, but as evidence of the current map’s infirmity.

Third, working off Chen’s maps will allow Republicans to smuggle partisan bias into the new plan. These maps, after all, were drawn using a simulation designed to protect incumbents. And most incumbents at that time were Republicans because of the partisan gerrymander. As Chen explained, the maps therefore “distort[ed] the partisan distribution of voters across districts” to favor Republicans. In other words, they have a built-in partisan bias. Moreover, Republican legislators, who are very familiar with the partisan distribution of voters at this point, can easily assess which simulated maps have the most bias toward the GOP. They will then rank their favorite plans and use a lottery machine to select which ones they will use. This performance is a bit mystifying since the finalists will all be extremely similar—and, most likely, extremely favorable to Republicans.

A new Emerson poll in New Hampshire finds Joe Biden leading the Democratic presidential race with 24%, followed by Elizabeth Warren at 21%, Bernie Sanders at 13%, Pete Buttigieg at 11%, Kamala Harris at 8%, Tulsi Gabbard at 6%, Cory Booker at 4%, Andrew Yang at 3% and John Delaney at 3%.

In February, Sanders led the race with 27%.

“Many Democrats see Joe Biden as a voice of ideological restraint in a party rapidly moving to the left,” McClatchy reports.

“But the 2020 Democratic frontrunner’s emerging policy agenda is anything but moderate — at least compared to the party’s last presidential nominee.”

“From health care to climate change to criminal justice, Biden has proposed ideas more ambitious and liberal than policies supported by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, a McClatchy review of the candidates’ platforms found.”

He shows up at a general election debate, and suddenly his audience/cult-followers hear all sorts of things. Trump might find it hard to answer for his big and little lies and might get tripped up when asked about things he knows nothing about (FARC?).

And, if by the debates, the economy has slowed to a crawl or fallen into a recession, one can imagine the glee with which the Democratic nominee will repeat Trump’s boast that he brought the greatest economy ever and that trade wars are quick and easily won.

The obvious escape hatch for Trump would to be demand Sean Hannity moderate the debates and, when that’s rejected, refuse to show up. He’ll huff and puff about not wanting to share his audience with the Democratic nominee. He’ll claim the fake news media’s moderator has it in for him. Whatever discomfort that causes will nevertheless pale in comparison to the nightmare of having to answer for his actions.....

Trump cannot admit error, cannot accept blame and cannot stand to be shown up. He has refused to even admit that he used a doctored map to defend his misstatement about the hurricane hitting Alabama and, worse, dragooned a rear admiral serving as a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to throw away his reputation by attesting that he briefed Trump on the “possibility of tropical storm force winds in southeastern Alabama.”