Fifty-nine percent of voters are extremely interested in the 2020 presidential election.  That's a number typically only seen right before an election.

It's 27 points higher than around this same time in the last presidential cycle -- and only one point off the record 60 percent extremely interested the week before Election Day in 2008.

In addition, more Democrats (65 percent) than Republicans (60 percent) are extremely interested in the election and more Democrats (69 percent) than Republicans (63 percent) are extremely motivated about voting in 2020.  That helps Democratic candidates top President Donald Trump in potential head-to-head matchups. [...]

In counties where the 2016 vote was close (Hillary Clinton and Trump within 10 points), Biden is ahead by 21 points.

Among the 6 in 10 voters who feel extremely motivated about voting in 2020, Biden is up over Trump by 16 points.

On the 20th of July 1787, Gouverneur Morris rose inside the stiflingly hot Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, to explain why he had changed his mind and now favored including a power of impeachment in the constitutional text.

Until that point, he and others had feared that an impeachment power would leave the president too dependent on Congress. He had thought that the prospect of reelection defeat would offer a sufficient control on presidential wrongdoing.

But the arguments of other delegates had convinced him--and particularly an example from then-recent British history. A century earlier, Great Britain had been ruled by a king named Charles II. King Charles was the son of Charles I, the king whose head was cut off during the English Civil War. Restored to the throne, Charles II learned to tiptoe carefully around his dangerous subjects. But there was a problem: Charles wanted more money than Parliament willingly offered him. His solution? He reached out to an old friend and patron: the king of France, Louis XIV.

Louis had sheltered Charles during exile. He knew that Charles had converted to Catholicism--a secret that could have cost Charles his throne and possibly his life if his own people had known it. Louis had no parliament of his own to worry about. He paid Charles an annual subsidy to cover Charles's fiscal shortfall. In return, he asked Charles to hand over a British base on French soil--and to stay neutral in the war Louis was about to launch against the Protestant Netherlands.

These treasons would emerge into daylight after the overthrow of Charles's brother and the Stuart dynasty in 1688. For the men of 1787, these events of the century before their own felt as vivid and central as the civil-rights era of the mid-20th century seems to us nearing the middle of the 21st.

So Gouverneur Morris said, according to notes taken by James Madison:

Foreign corruption inducing treason was the core impeachable offense in the eyes of the authors of the Constitution.

Which is why a whistle-blower report filed with the inspector general for the intelligence community, reportedly concerning an improper "promise" by President Donald Trump to a foreign leader, has jolted Congress.

That widening red-blue economic divide in turn drives the parties' starkly different policy agendas. It helps explain why Democrats lavish more attention on education, technology and protecting immigrants, for example, while President Donald Trump and other Republicans place mining, manufacturing and border control on center stage.

That coincides with a sharp increase in incomes and economic output for the constituencies Democrats represent in Congress. Today, the $61,000 median income of blue districts substantially exceeds the $53,000 median income of red ones, reversing the order from 2008.

The average gross domestic product for Democratic districts, near parity with Republican ones in 2008, has grown 50% higher. Output per worker has followed the same pattern.

Those shifts reflect trends within a globally-integrated economy that increasingly rewards better-educated workers and advanced technology. The share of professional and digital services jobs in Democratic districts more than doubles the share in Republican districts; a significantly higher proportion in blue areas now holds college degrees.

By contrast, Republican districts now boast the lion's share of work in basic manufacturing, agriculture and mining. They also have a slightly higher proportion of residents age 65 or older - 16.6%, compared to 14.7% in Democratic districts.

While red districts have remained demographically static, blue ones have grown more diverse. Roughly half of residents in Democratic districts are non-white, up by ten percentage points since 2008, compared to just over one-fourth in Republican areas.

Gregory A. Boyd's Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament's Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross is a massive, almost 1,500-page double volume that represents the author's attempt to resolve the tensions between a Jesus who is thought to reveal "an agape-centered, other-oriented, enemy-embracing God who opposes all violence" and the many Old Testament (OT) "portraits of Yahweh violently smiting his enemies" (xxviii-xxix). These tensions, which are very real and confront any serious reader of the OT, are magnified for pastor and theologian Boyd, who professes to stand within the Anabaptist tradition (15-17, 205, 260, and 544, n. 80) and who attempts their resolution with a pre-commitment to ideological pacifism (xxvii-xxxiv). This pre-commitment is stated from the outset and guides the entire project, governing the author's use of a "cruciform hermeneutic" and the author's treatment of all OT texts and narratives.

This task, of course, is complicated by numerous factors, not least of which is Jesus' and the New Testament (NT) writers' authoritative citing of OT figures, events, and categories. But it is further complicated (1) by the NT's unqualified recognition and acknowledgement of the OT scripture's inspiration and authority (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:1-12; 2 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 11:1-40; James 2:8-13; 2 Pet. 1:19-21); (2) by Jesus' acknowledgement of the continuity of moral law as revealed in the OT (Matt. 5:17-20), which Boyd misinterprets (75-78); and (3) by the NT writers' constant and authoritative use of the OT in myriads of ways, some of which are at times baffling to the modern reader. These realities create for Boyd a "conundrum" insofar as his own view, to be developed below, is lacking support from the historical Christian tradition (hereafter, HCT).

Boyd's project, then, requires a hermeneutic that begins with the presuppositions of ideological pacifism and works its way backward. It works its way backward (1) through the NT, in which John the Baptist, Jesus, the evangelists, and the apostles are made to espouse pacifism; (2) through church history and the early church in particular; and then finally (3) through the texts of the OT itself, whether found in the Pentateuch, the historical narratives, the Psalms, or the prophets. In light of the clear commands of God given to the leaders of Israel of old, this will not be an easy interpretive task. Along the way, Boyd finds one church father, the pacifist Origen, to assist him in reinterpreting the Old Testament and thereby helping to furnish a "new perspective" (xxxii-xxxiv) on a difficult question.

This "new perspective" wrestles with canonical material in the OT that seems "unworthy of God" (xxxii) and finds a "solution" (xl) to the theological tensions that emanate from OT "texts of terror." It does so in the following manner: "the Spirit," Boyd informs the reader, "will enable us to see beyond the surface appearance of things, where the conundrum resides, and find a resolution in a deeper, more profound, revelatory truth" (xxxiii). "Prayerfully contemplating Scripture's violent portraits of God," as Boyd retells it, he "suddenly began to catch glimpses of the crucified God in them" (ibid.). What he calls the "Magic Eye" approach to understanding the OT (xxxv-xxxvii) becomes for Boyd the key in interpreting those ethically knotty accounts in the OT of God supposedly destroying human beings. In a nutshell, what is this "Magic Eye" approach? "God, who is indiscriminate in his love and non-violent, had to accommodate his self-revelation to the spiritual state and cultural conditioning of his people in the ages leading up to Christ" (xxxv). This starting point for Boyd becomes the essence of his "crucicentric" reading of scripture. In the end, he realizes, "Origen's advice" (i.e., a mystical interpretation) "proved right" (xxxiii). With this inspiration in place, Boyd begins to apply his "cruciform hermeneutic."

Briefly summarized, Crucifixion of the Warrior God[i] (hereafter CWG) attempts to argue that the OT accounts of God's "violence"--i.e., "texts of terror" (279)--are not true portraits of the character of God. Rather, they are misconstrued and culturally conditioned--i.e., fallen--accounts that "mask" God's true character and self-revelation. These accounts, therefore, are to be understood as "literary artifices" (548) and not to be taken at face value. Let the reader beware: Boyd's argument consists of seven parts, 25 chapters, 10 appendices, one postscript, 100 pages of indices, and 40 pages of suggested reading, all of which consumes 1,445 pages of print. Wading through this project is not for the faint in heart.

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Lawfare's David Priess joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the anonymous whistleblower complaint, the departure of John Bolton, and new NSA Robert O'Brien and his resume.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that a phone call between President Trump and a foreign leader "included a 'promise' that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint," leading to a standoff between Congress and the acting director of national intelligence. Two of the three major cable news networks had some big questions on Wednesday night. On MSNBC, it was: Who is this leader?

"If you look through the White House records, Trump had interactions with about four or five foreign leaders in the weeks leading up to this complaint," Washington Post reporter Greg Miller told Brian Williams. "Perhaps the most relevant one is a late-July, end-of-July conversation with Vladimir Putin, in which the White House readout was very different from the Russian readout afterward." Former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul had a similar thought.

In an interview at the Harvard Kennedy School on Tuesday, the former top diplomat argued that Netanyahu -- whom he described as an "extraordinarily skilled" politician -- would share "misinformation" in meetings to get the Trump administration on board with his policy goals. "They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that 'We're the good guys, they're the bad guys,'" Tillerson charged.

Tillerson, who clashed with Trump on decisions including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and withdrawing from the Iran deal, explained that he "exposed" Netanyahu's tricks to the president "so he understood: 'You've been played.'" 

Arab Israelis defied expectations, withstood Likud's active and unabashed suppression campaign, and came to the polls demanding their due.

Indeed, the narrative now crystallizing in the Arab community contends that Likud's anti-Arab campaign caused the roughly 10-point spike in turnout (based on still-unofficial vote counts).

Hamad Khalailah, a 28-year-old lawyer in the large Galilee town of Sakhnin, told The Times of Israel on election day that he'd made the effort to go and vote -- for the Arab party the Joint List, to be sure -- in order to prove he could not be cowed by Likud's efforts, which included an attempt to install cameras in Arab polling stations (successful in April; banned on Tuesday) and campaign rhetoric focused on the "danger" of Arab citizens turning out to cast their ballots.

 

"I wasn't scared to come here," Khalailah said. "It is my right to vote and Netanyahu will not stop me from doing that."

As Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi put it on Wednesday, "Two weeks ago, our campaign was asleep, weak, limping. Then, a week ago, someone, a magician, set off alarm clocks at the entrances to all of our towns. That was Benjamin Netanyahu with his [polling-station] cameras bill. Then the Arabs rushed to the polls in droves."

Likud believed it had found a formula, immoral but effective, to maximize its advantage on election day. It worked, too -- until it didn't. As some Likud lawmakers have admitted, the anti-Arab campaign appears to have helped galvanize the very voters it was trying to dissuade.

But Likud's mistake could turn out to be costlier than the results of Tuesday's race, as the history of Israeli ethnic politics reveals.

The Labor party, once called Mapai, has long been dominated by Ashkenazi Jews. In the early years of Israel's existence, the party engaged in willful and systematic neglect and marginalization of newly arrived Mizrahi Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, largely excluding them from party membership and positions of influence in the young state.

The strategy worked -- until it didn't. A narrow Ashkenazi elite kept its hold on power for 29 long years. But once the spell broke, Labor and the broader Israeli left spent the next four decades (and counting) struggling to overcome the almost axiomatic Mizrahi identification with the right.

The marginalization of Mizrahim, like Likud's browbeating of the Arab community, was a deliberate effort, as the political debates of the state's early years reveal. One newspaper editor, Yehiel Halpern of Davar, Mapai's main outlet, warned his readers in a January 1951 op-ed that the deliberate marginalization of the Mizrahi newcomers could have disastrous consequences.

"They don't see the value to be gained from democratic rights and freedoms," he wrote of the Mizrahim, but blamed Mapai for that fact. By excluding them from membership and access to the ruling party's ranks, and thus to national leadership in those years, Mapai was denying the newcomers the experience of "real ownership" of their new country and "mastery over their own fate" that could transform those who had never experienced democracy into lifelong democrats.

By the 1970s, this marginalization had driven Mizrahim decisively into Likud's camp, paving the way for decades of mostly right-wing ascendance. Even in 2019, in the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi gap between Blue and White and Likud, the political reverberations of that old bigotry still echo.

Arabs make up roughly 21 percent of the Israeli population, but only 16% of the electorate. That large gap has two sources. About half the gap is due to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics classifying over 200,000 East Jerusalemites as part of the Arab Israeli population, though most are not Israeli citizens and are unable to vote in Knesset elections. The rest of the gap is due to the young age of the Arab population.

It seems safe to assume that both those demographic realities will eventually swell the Arab portion of the electorate. Since Israel is unlikely to surrender East Jerusalem anytime soon, it is likely to eventually see those residents ask for and receive voting rights to the Knesset. Similarly, barring drastic and sudden changes to human biology, those Arab children will soon grow up to be voting-age adults.

While tight monitoring of the Sept. 17 election results has delayed publication of the official numbers, as of the morning after, even partial results have made the situation abundantly clear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party's warnings that the country's Arab parties would steal the elections had a boomerang effect. The Joint List led by Knesset member Ayman Odeh will likely be the third-largest faction in the 22nd Knesset, with at least 13 of its 120 seats, after the Likud and Blue and White. According to counted ballots, turnout among Arab voters rose by 10% compared to the April elections (60%, far higher than the record-low 49% in April). The Joint List received about 430,000 votes compared to 337,000 in April in what was quite likely a response to Netanyahu's baseless accusations that fraud in Arab polling stations prevented him from forming a government after the April elections.

Knesset member Ahmad Tibi is chair of the Ta'al Party, one of the factions that form the Joint List. He summed up election day with, "The Arabs flocked to the polls," paraphrasing Netanyahu's infamous 2015 video warning of high Arab turnout and exhorting his followers to go out and vote.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologised following the publication of a photograph that showed him wearing brownface make-up at a party 18 years ago, as he scrambled to get on top of a fresh blow to a re-election campaign dogged by controversy.