<em>The Atlantic</em> Politics Daily: Democrats Want to Show They Can Do More Than Impeachment  

2. What if Democrats don’t need to be worrying at all? My colleague David Graham writes that one facet of impeachment is conspicuously unnoticed: It’s incredibly popular.

“Roughly half the country not only disapproves of Trump’s job as president,” he writes, “but believes he ought to be removed from office, a sanction that has never been applied before.”

3. Democrats want to show they can do more than impeachment. House lawmakers are working across the aisle, for instance, to pass USMCA, the Trump-backed successor to NAFTA (and the biggest trade deal in a generation). Passing these other bills could ultimately be more consequential for Democrats than how they voted on impeachment, Ron Brownstein argues—accomplishments vulnerable Democrats who represent more skeptical constituents can lean on.

—Saahil Desai

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« SNAPSHOT »

(Tom Brenner / Reuters)

The president stands among U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia this weekend.

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« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »

(Erin Schaff / The New York Times)

1. “There is also nothing impartial about declaring oneself to be, well, not impartial.”

Senators Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham have already declared allegiance to the White House when it comes to how they’ll run a potential Senate trial (Graham, just this past weekend: “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here”).

This kind of open coordination flies in the face of their constitutional duties, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes argue. But:

It is actually not obvious what the optimal amount of senatorial comment on the merits of the matter looks like. Senators have different obligations, after all. …

What they probably should do, however, is avoid prejudging the evidence or how they are going to vote. Senator Mitt Romney’s comments on the impeachment trial are a decent model of what such restraint looks like.

Read the rest.

2. “[T]here’s an opportunity for serious reflection and reform—if Congress and the executive branch can seize it.”

Multiple inspector-general investigations have now confirmed deep procedural problems within the FBI. These flaws exist and should be considered separate from this era of intense politicization, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write.

They recommend focusing on three major areas for reform:

First is the serious problem of inadequate guidance to the FBI for opening and conducting investigations against politicians or campaigns, especially during election season.

Read on for their meticulously argued slate of recommendations.

3. “Perhaps judging a politician in relation to Jeremy Corbyn isn’t the most stringent moral test one could apply, but it’s worth a moment’s gratitude that [Bernie] Sanders passes.”

After the British left’s devastating losses in last week’s general election, should American Democrats draw any conclusions about Bernie Sanders as the Jeremy Corbyn of the U.S.? Simply put: No, Franklin Foer writes. The evidence is mostly to the contrary.

But the point is that the rise of the left could have gone much worse for the Democrats. It could have taken the form of an apologist for dictators and a fomenter of anti-Semitism. Attacks on globalization could have veered into coded smears of globalists. The rightful flaying Wall Street deserves could have been expressed in nasty tropes.

Read the rest.