Subject: Playbook PM: Pelosi bullish on leading Dems
From: "Anna Palmer Jake Sherman Daniel Lippman" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:52:07 -0600
List-Id: <1376319.xt.local>

Presented by Google: Playbook is POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the day in Washington                Oct 22, 2018 View in browser                   
 By Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, Daniel Lippman, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun 
             
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NEWS RELEASE FROM THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: "World Economic Forum Objects to Misuse of the 'Davos' Brand"

WHERE PELOSI'S AT -- "Nancy Pelosi says she is 'pretty comfortable' she will be speaker if Democrats win the House," by CNN's Dan Merica: "Pelosi declined to say whether she would only serve as speaker for a short term, something she suggested in an interview earlier this month.

"'I am not going to make myself a lame duck. I wouldn't advise that, my sisters,' she said, looking at women in the audience. She added: 'I think that I have a special understanding, institutional memory, knowledge of the substance, knowledge of the legislative process that holds me in good stead for now. We will see what happens in the Presidential coming up.'" CNN

MARY LEE: "Kushner: White House still in 'fact-finding phase' on Khashoggi's death": "When asked about the advice he gave the crown prince, Kusher emphasized transparency. 'The world is watching,' he said. 'This is a very, very serious accusation. A very serious situation. To be sure you're transparent and to take this very seriously.' When Van Jones followed up on the crown prince's response, Kushner replied with, 'We'll see.'" POLITICO ... More video from CNN

CLICKER -- "Where the money is going in the final push before Election Day," by WaPo's John Muyskens, Anu Narayanswamy, Shelly Tan and Monica Ulmanu: "Super PACs, party committees and other groups are spending hundreds of millions on behalf of House and Senate candidates in the final weeks before the midterm elections. We're tracking how much is being spent on each race." WaPo

Good Monday afternoon. WHAT'S ON THE PRESIDENT'S MIND -- @realDonaldTrump at 8:37 a.m.: "Sadly, it looks like Mexico's Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws!"

... at 8:49 a.m.: "Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws! Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally."

... at 8:57 a.m.: "Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them."

... at 8:58 a.m.: "Big Night In Texas!!!!"

ON THE BORDER -- "Growing caravan of migrants pushes deeper into Mexico," by AP's Mark Stevenson in Tapachula, Mexico: "The migrant caravan, which started out more than a week ago with less than 200 participants, has drawn additional people along the way and it swelled to an estimated 5,000 Sunday after many migrants found ways to cross from Guatemala into southern Mexico ... Later in the day, authorities in Guatemala said another group of about 1,000 migrants had entered that country from Honduras." AP

-- "Trump's Plans to Deter Migrants Could Mean New 'Voluntary' Family Separations," by NYT's Miriam Jordan, Caitlin Dickerson and Mike Shear: "Facing a surge in migrant families entering the United States and with the midterm elections two weeks away, the Trump administration is weighing an array of new policies that it hopes will deter Central Americans from journeying north.

"Each of the policies, which range from a new form of the widely criticized practice of family separation to stricter requirements on asylum, would face significant legal and logistical challenges. But the White House is applying strong pressure on federal immigration authorities to come up with a solution to secure the southwest border." NYT 
       
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2018 WATCH -- JAMES ARKIN in Las Vegas: "Heller proves resilient against 'blue wave' in Nevada": "Democrats and Republicans both consider the race a dead heat, and the success of their respective voter turnout operations will likely determine the winner. ... 

"Democrats have tried to make the race a referendum on Heller, on Trump, and on the relationship between the two Republicans. During the lone debate, Heller said his relationship with the president gave him a direct line of communication that could help him deliver on local issues important to Nevadans." POLITICO

-- POLITICO MAGAZINE'S MICHAEL GRUNWALD: "How to Win Florida": "If you add up the 50 million votes Floridians have cast in the past seven presidential elections, a mere 20,000 votes separate the two parties-about 0.04 percent. ... When the margins are this thin, everything matters-persuading the middle as well as firing up the base, white turnout as well as minority turnout, television ads as well as field operations, not to mention candidate positions on health care, oil drilling and dozens of other issues that can move swing voters. And the national climate also matters ... 

"There are multiple Floridas within that mosaic, and they all require different strategies." POLITICO Magazine 

-- WAPO'S JENNA JOHNSON in Richmond, Ky.: "Trump's comfort zone this year: Smaller venues and rapturous fans in places where he remains popular": "Of the 27 midterm rallies Trump has held this year, more than three-quarters were held in counties that he won in 2016 by an average of 59.5 percent. The few times that he has ventured to counties that Democrat Hillary Clinton won, those places are nearly always surrounded on all sides by counties that he won. And more than a third of the rallies were in or near the Appalachian Mountains, where his popularity remains high.

"Those areas, and the snug event spaces he finds there, have become Trump's comfort zone, and also a sign of how convinced he remains that his most loyal supporters can drive a victory in 2018 as they did in 2016." WaPo 

-- NOLAN MCCASKILL: "Running anti-Muslim campaigns 'a losing strategy,' report finds"

HEADS UP -- "These 8 Attorney-General Races Could Make A Big Difference To Trump's Agenda," by FiveThirtyEight's Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Nathaniel Rakich: "Democratic candidates are making the case to voters that their down-ballot campaigns could be the key to holding Trump accountable. ... [A] 'blue wave' of Democratic attorneys general is possible - and it could be one of the most important outcomes of the election." FiveThirtyEight 

NYT'S JEREMY PETERS in Omaha: "Far From Washington, Americans' Thoughts Are, Well, Far From Washington": "In interviews with two dozen people who live in a pair of Republican-held swing districts that stretch across 160 miles of the American heartland - through the urban sprawl of Omaha, past the wind farms and corn fields of western Iowa, and eastward into the Des Moines metropolis - the spasms of the national news cycle were often back-of-mind distractions, especially among the less partisan women who are crucial to Democrats' hopes ... The concerns they described were personal, everyday issues that had only a tenuous attachment to President Trump ... 

"What did come up in conversations: pre-existing conditions, prekindergarten, school safety, inequality, friends blocked on Facebook and the corrosive polarization of politics. What mostly did not: 'Horseface,' 'Pocahontas' or any other denigrating nicknames Mr. Trump has lobbed at women lately; Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh; impeachment; Russia; and a 'Blue Wave.'" NYT

AP'S CARLA K. JOHNSON and NICKY FORSTER -- "AP analysis: 'Obamacare' shapes opioid grant spending": "The AP analysis found states that expanded Medicaid under President Barack Obama's health overhaul reported spending their allocations more slowly than states that didn't expand the health insurance program to poor, childless adults. Why? In states that expanded Medicaid, the insurance program already covers addiction treatment for nearly everyone who is poor and needs it." AP 

THE LATEST ON KHASHOGGI -- "Germany halts arms deals with Saudi Arabia, encourages allies to do the same," by WaPo's Rick Noack: "'There is an urgent need to clarify what happened - we are far from this having been cleared up and those responsible held to account,' [Chancellor Angela Merkel] said at a news conference. 'I agree with all those who say that the, albeit already limited, arms exports can't take place in the current circumstances,' Merkel said. ...

"Germany is the first major U.S. ally to cast doubts over future arms sales after the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and the move is likely to put pressure on bigger exporters, including the United States, to do the same." WaPo 

-- AFP: "Saudi dissidents fear 'long arm' of state after Khashoggi murder": "Saudi exiles in three different countries have recounted what appeared to be official attempts to bait them into the kingdom's diplomatic missions, exposing them to potentially the same fate as Khashoggi." AFP

ON THE WORLD STAGE -- "In Win for Trump, Merkel Changes Course on U.S. Gas Imports," by WSJ's Bojan Pancevski in Berlin: "Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered government support to efforts to open up Germany to U.S. gas, a key concession to President Trump as he tries to loosen Russia's grip on Europe's largest energy market. ...

"Mr. Trump has intensively lobbied Europe to buy significant amounts of LNG as part of his campaign to rewrite the terms of trade relations. German and U.S. officials said Berlin hoped embracing U.S. gas might help solve a protracted trade dispute and possibly even defuse threats by Washington to sanction Nord Stream 2, an unbuilt German-Russian gas pipeline that would double Russia's existing gas export capacity to Germany." WSJ 

TRADE WARS -- WSJ'S INTI PACHECO and JOSH ZUMBRUN, "The Steel Industry Gets What It Wants on Tariffs": "Steel producers in September petitioned the U.S. Trade Representative for relief on 132 tariff lines. These were primarily for raw materials and chemicals used in the steelmaking process that members of the Steel Manufacturers Association import from China. They were able to get 66, or half, of them removed from the final list. ...

"Most other major industry groups had a much lower success rate in petitioning for exemptions on the grounds that tariffs would hurt members' ability to do business, according to a Wall Street Journal review of letters from more than a dozen groups that filed such requests to the USTR." WSJ 

AFTERNOON READ -- "Claire McCaskill's Toughest Fight," by The New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann: "The race, possibly the Senate's closest this year, is a test of whether a Democrat who doesn't openly break ranks with the national party-even an adept veteran like McCaskill-can survive in Trump country. ... McCaskill has run for political office twenty-three times, and lost only once, but the fear has never really gone away. A Democrat in a place that seems to become more Republican with each election cycle, she has had to hone her instinct for locating the ever-smaller zone where there is some remaining overlap between her party and her state. ... 

"In the final weeks of the campaign, McCaskill and Hawley are sticking to their scripts. ... She's convinced that her specific, practical ideas get closer to what voters are demanding than Josh Hawley's big, emotionally satisfying rhetoric. That's McCaskill's future, if she has a future." The New Yorker

WAR REPORT -- "The Army Ordered an Unvarnished History of the Iraq War-Then Let It Languish," by WSJ's Michael R. Gordon: "Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno issued the marching orders in the fall of 2013. Some of the Army's brightest officers would draft an unvarnished history of its performance in the Iraq War. ... 

"It would be unclassified, he said, to stimulate discussion about the intervention-one that deepened the U.S.'s Mideast role and cost more than 4,400 American lives. He arranged for 30,000 pages of documents to be declassified. For nearly three years, the team studied those papers and conducted more than 100 interviews. By June 2016, it had drafted a two-volume history of more than 1,300 pages. ... It has yet to be published." WSJ 

SPOTTED: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Richard Tucker Foundation Gala at Carnegie Hall in New York City last night. She got a standing ovation ... Marlee Matlin walking near 16th and K streets NW this morning. ... California Gov. Jerry Brown and wife Anne Gust on Sunday evening at Acqua al 2 on Capitol Hill with Bill and Carol Press, Diana Dooley, Rob Harmala and Christina Calce. Pic 

WEEKEND WEDDING -- Marilyn Rosenthal, national director for progressive engagement at AIPAC, married Mark Tavlarides, SVP at BGR Group, on Sunday night at the St. Regis Hotel. They met seven years ago on a blind date. Pic 

SPOTTED: Ann Lewis, Howard Kohr, Rob Bassin, Stephanie Cutter, Steve Rademaker and Dany Pletka, Daniella Landau, Karin Johanson, Jill Zuckman and Jim Mulhall, Kimberley Fritts and Marion Francis Turner, Ben and Ashley Chang, Walker and Leah Roberts and Susan Blumenthal.

BONUS BIRTHDAY: CNN's Tammy Kupperman Thorp.

                        
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