Subject: Stitch — 'The Aircraft Carrier' and 'The Pirate Ship,' plus Sidewire Chats today: Murphy & Axelrod; Clemons & McCain; and LaBolt, Lis Smith & Haberman
From: Jonathan Allen <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 12:32:03 +0000
List-Id: dff5dea186e38c29c57ca6f8fmc list <dff5dea186e38c29c57ca6f8f.326717.list-id.mcsv.net>

** WHAT'S THE STITCH
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Stitch is a morning news speed-read highlighting the work and insights of Newsmakers that is followed by a daily chat on hot political topics.

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TODAY'S SIDEWIRE CHATS
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* 10 a.m. ET, STEVE CLEMONS debuts his recurring chat — "The Convener" — with SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-Ariz.) as his first guest.
* 10:30 a.m. ET, Bloomberg's GREG GIROUX joins Stitch to preview the West Virginia and Nebraska primaries.
* 4:30 p.m. ET, LIS AND LaBOLT turn the tables on MAGGIE HABERMAN of the New York Times.
* 6:30 p.m. ET, MIKE MURPHY debuts his "4 x 2" chat format with guestDAVID AXELROD.

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CLINTON-TRUMP PARADIGM: 'THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER' AND 'THE PIRATE SHIP'
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The Washington Post's JOSE DELREAL writes that Donald Trump is running both to Clinton's right and her left, depending on the issue and the day.
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After jockeying to win over voters on the left, the Clinton campaign is now tasked with pinpointing the best way to attack Trump — an ideological moving target who sometimes switches positions within the space of a day — while also reaching out to moderates and disaffected conservatives.

—Jose DelReal / WaPo (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-is-running-to-the-left-of-hillary-clinton/2016/05/09/ebde82da-147c-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_trump-left-620pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory)

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal's RICHARD RUBIN, Trump continued to walk back his suggestion that the U.S. not honor its debts, said his plan to cut taxes is negotiable and offered an unusual plan for buying back existing U.S. debt by issuing new debt.

The upshot: Trump would like to avoid being tethered to either his printed or stated policies.

He frames that as a positive: As a deal-maker, he argues, you never know where the policy will end up, so no one should bother assessing his platform.
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"I always believe in flexibility and remaining flexible.”

—Donald Trump / WSJ (http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-reiterates-call-for-big-tax-cuts-1462826682)

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Clinton's team launched its first substantive assault on Trump's economic policy yesterday, choosing to focus on his written tax plan rather than anything he's said.
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"Trump will keep trying to bob and weave. But the problem for him is that his proposal is right there in black and white. It has four full pages of detail. In fact, it’s one of the only detailed policy proposals he’s put forward in this campaign.”

—Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan / Clinton campaign release

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Trump's plan (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/tax-reform)  would eliminate income taxes altogether for tens of millions of Americans, cut business income tax to a maximum of 15 percent and reduce the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, creating a windfall for the highest earners — though he has, at times, state a preference for making top earners pay more in taxes.

The Tax Policy Center has estimated (http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-donald-trumps-tax-plan)  it would lower revenue for the federal government by nearly $10 trillion over the next decade.

Clinton advisers seized on all of that to say Trump would tilt benefits to the rich.

One question this campaign may answer is the extent to which voters care whether candidates have specific and/or consistent policy plans.

In the last paragraph of Rubin's story, LANHEE CHEN, the former top policy adviser to Mitt Romney, put his finger on the challenge Trump presents to the Clinton team.
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"The guy can go from X to Y, from A to Z so quickly. ... They’re the aircraft carrier and he’s kind of the pirate ship.”

—Lanhee Chen / WSJ (http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-reiterates-call-for-big-tax-cuts-1462826682)

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TRIVIAL PURSUITS
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ABOUT TODAY
It's been 243 years since parliament passed the Tea Act.

ONE THING TO KNOW ABOUT SPORTS TODAY
The Washington Nationals and pitcher Stephen Strasburg have agreed to a seven-year, $175 million contract (http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15496192/stephen-strasburg-washington-nationals-agree-7-year-175m-extension)  extension. Strasburg, who was on the mound when the news of his deal broke Monday night, is 5-0 this year with a 2.76 ERA.

ONE THING TO KNOW ABOUT ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart called Donald Trump a "man-baby" in an interview with David Axelrod (http://www.ew.com/article/2016/05/09/donald-trump-jon-stewart-man-baby)  for the latter's podcast "The Axe Files."

YESTERDAY'S TRIVIA
Three former deputy national security advisers — Alexander Haig, Colin Powell and Bob Gates — have gone on to become secretary of State or secretary of Defense.

TODAY'S TRIVIA

Name the two West Virginia senators who were both first elected to the Senate in 1958.

Send answers to [email-masked]. The first person to respond correcly wins a rousing chorus of cheers and the right to pose tomorrow's trivia question.

Beginning today, we're keeping a tally of who wins, and we'll report the results at the end of the each month.

PLEASE SEND TIPS, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to [email-masked].

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TRUMP, RNC MELD
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JENNIFER JACOBS of Bloomberg Politics scoops some details (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-05-10/trump-aides-to-get-sneak-peek-at-cleveland-convention-plans) from Team Trump's meeting with the RNC yesterday. The highlights include an upcoming tour of convention facilities for Trump aides, a primer on field data, technology and this:
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"Research staff touted their treasure trove of opposition research on likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, which includes a searchable video database with exhaustive footage of her from over the years."

—Jennifer Jacobs / Bloomberg Politics (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-05-10/trump-aides-to-get-sneak-peek-at-cleveland-convention-plans)

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MAGGIE HABERMAN, ASHLEY PARKER & NICK CORASANITI of the New York Times bring news of the financial meld (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news) . Trump's going to need all of the RNC's infrastructure, including its help in raising money for a campaign that he can't fund on his own.
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"No one should underestimate how hard it would be for any nominee to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in a very short period of time."

—GOP strategist Mike DuHaime / NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news)

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** SEIB: THE ART OF CAPITALIZING ON NO DEALS
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Wall Street Journal D.C. Bureau Chief JERRY SEIB, who will interview Speaker Paul Ryan at 3 p.m. Eastern today, argues in a column today (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-political-dysfunction-fueled-the-rise-of-republican-presidential-candidate-donald-trump-1462807741)  that the groundwork for Trump's ascension was laid by Washington's inability to get things done.
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"The rise of Mr. Trump provides, finally, an answer to one of the more perplexing questions of the last decade or so in American politics, which is whether voters would ever mete out any punishment for the dysfunction in Washington. The much-maligned 'Republican establishment' now is receiving it."

—Jerry Seib / WSJ (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-political-dysfunction-fueled-the-rise-of-republican-presidential-candidate-donald-trump-1462807741)

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NATALIE ANDREWS of the Journal has all the details on how to submit questions ahead of time and watch live. Click here (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/05/09/what-questions-do-you-have-for-house-speaker-paul-ryan/)  for those details.

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TODAY'S PRIMARIES: WEST VIRGINIA (D & R) AND NEBRASKA (R)
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BERNIE SANDERS has led by single digits in both of the recent polls of West Virginia. Under Democratic rules, 20 delegates will be awarded based on each candidate's performance in the state's three congressional districts and another 9 are allocated based on the percentage of the statewide vote each candidate gets.
THERE'S ONLY ONE CANDIDATE ACTIVELY COMPETING for Republican votes today, Donald Trump.
* West Virginia has a complicated system for allocating its 34 delegates, but that shouldn't be much of a problem for Trump.
* Nebraska awards its 36 delegates based on the results of today's primary, but they are not selected until a state convention on Saturday.

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THE BIG QUESTION

Is it better to be agile on policy like Trump or fixed like Clinton and why?

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Have feedback for us? Email ** [email-masked] (mailto:[email-masked])
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