What we miss when we focus on Trump

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Former President Trump drives media attention, whether the story is about his first-quarter fundraising or the whereabouts of his wife, Melania. Broadcast-media ratings remained unusually high while he was in office and spiked again after his recent indictment. Financial Times columnist Edward Luce wrote that the media circus around Trump’s arraignment “was a cross between the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the OJ Simpson car chase.” …

In the same week as the arraignment, however, Wisconsin elected a liberal justice to the state Supreme Court, shifting its ideological balance in a state with crucial issues like abortion and gerrymandering on the line. Then, the Tennessee Legislature expelled two young Black legislators for disrupting floor business to protest gun violence in response to a recent school shooting in Nashville. …

Trump’s existence in politics has blurred lines between politics and entertainment, and that’s part of his appeal. He knows how to play an audience—and the media. The problem is that when Trump dominates the national discussion, it allows these other debates to happen under less sunlight than they deserve. CONTINUED

Natalie Jackson, National Journal

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Podcasts as a Source of News and Information

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Following a steady increase in podcast listening over the past decade, podcasts have become a big part of the normal routine – and news diet – of many Americans, especially younger adults. …

Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year, according to a new Pew Research Center survey, including one-in-five who report listening to podcasts at least a few times a week. Among adults under 30, about a third listen to podcasts with such frequency. …

There are broad similarities between the two major political parties in the United States in terms of the share who are listening to podcasts. But once there, Republicans and Democrats often have quite different experiences. CONTINUED

Pew Research Center

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The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why.

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Rarely have the tectonic plates of American politics collided as visibly and explosively as they did earlier this month in Tennessee.

The procession of predominantly middle-aged or older White Republicans who rose almost two weeks ago in the Tennessee House of Representatives to castigate, and then expel, two young Black Democrats crystallized the overlapping generational and racial confrontation that underpins the competition between the political parties.

The Republican vote to expel those Black Democratic representatives, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, encapsulated in a single moment the struggle for control over America’s direction between the nation’s increasingly diverse younger generations and its mostly White older cohorts. While kids of color now comprise just over half of all Americans younger than 18, Whites still constitute about three-fourths of the nation’s seniors, according to Census data analyzed by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Metro.

That stark division – what Frey terms “the cultural generation gap” and I’ve called the competition between “the brown and the gray” – has become a central fault line in the nation’s politics. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

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A boxing-style rematch has been a long time coming in presidential politics

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After a marquee boxing match, we’ve become conditioned to expect a rematch. But not so much in presidential contests. …

Not since Adlai Stevenson was nominated by the Democratic National Convention in 1956 for a second shot at Dwight Eisenhower has a party gone back to the loser of the previous election. But that is what former President Trump is asking Republicans to do, his eyes set on delivering “retribution” for his loss to President Biden in 2020. In neither case was the first election particularly close. Ike, with 55.1 percent, drubbed Stevenson by 10.7 points and 6.6 million votes. Biden, with 51.3 percent, beat Trump by 4.5 points and 7.1 million votes.

Polling leaves no doubt that the electorate doesn’t want a rematch. Most recently, the Washington Post-ABC News poll in February found that 62 percent of respondents would be “dissatisfied” or “angry” with a Biden win and 56 percent would be unhappy with a Trump win. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 58 percent said they prefer a nominee other than Biden, almost twice as much as the 31 percent who want Biden again. Almost 49 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want a nominee other than Trump, while 44 percent want the former president. CONTINUED

George E. Condon Jr., National Journal

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CBS News poll on debt ceiling shows large majority support raising limit to avoid default

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As Congress negotiates on federal spending with a possible debt limit crisis looming, 70% of Americans support raising the debt ceiling, if it means the U.S. would default without doing so. These figures are roughly the same as they were this past winter.

It comes as ratings of the national economy remain mired in the low 30s, as they have been for some time.

But that doesn’t mean people necessarily want the government to have more borrowing power — as much as they want to avoid default. Here’s how that works. CONTINUED

CBS News

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Most say congressional Republicans should let Trump investigations run their course

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Americans by and large don’t want Republicans in Congress interfering with law enforcement’s investigations into former President Donald Trump. But that’s different for a majority of rank-and-file Republicans, in particular MAGA Republicans, who do want their representatives to try to stop them.

And that comes as rank-and-file Republicans express more desire for party loyalty to Trump than they did earlier this year, back before he was indicted.

By two to one, Americans would prefer congressional Republicans to let the law enforcement investigations into Trump run their course, rather than try to stop them. CONTINUED

CBS News

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