Ok, it’s on, I suppose …

It seems that years of Fox News false binaries have created a kind of a universal false binary narrative that everyone, even us vaunted liberals, seem to be unable to avoid using. TPM reader AX is just an example. She tells us that she deeply dislikes his abortion position, but because he’s the only former Vice President in the race, we have to sublimate those concerns (and others) because ‘experience’ and particularly ‘foreign policy’.

This is, frankly, insane.

“I am not a ‘safe, legal, and rare’ person. I am an ‘on demand and without apology’ person. I am a ‘holy s*** I am so pissed off right now I’m gonna rip out my IUD, get pregnant, and have an abortion, over and over as many times as I can while I still can, as an fu to those people’ person. But I am also pragmatic. Why can’t Democrats be the same?”

TPM Reader AX has some thoughts about the Hyde amendment ….

(Remember, publishing a reader email does not signal agreement or disagreement. As they say on Twitter, don’t @ me.)

Fascinating, an on-going public opinion analysis project that goes back more than half a century says the public mood currently is the most liberal ever recorded.

I was on vacation last week when I got the news that the TPM Union had ratified the contract we’d agreed upon. Without a doubt, the union makes TPM a better company. Now that I’m back in the office, I wanted to talk a bit about why.

Some of TPM’s longtime readers may know me but most of you will not so let me introduce myself. I’m Joe Ragazzo, executive publisher at TPM. In my previous life I was a journalist but moved over to the “business” side because it upset me how the news industry was dying and I hoped in some small way I could help improve it.

We have three simple goals at TPM. We want to do great journalism. We want to be the best media company at which to work. We want to make enough money to do the first two things.

Another reader pipes up:

I just read Crazy Over This Impeachment Thing and there is something very disturbing to me about that reader’s outlook.

Oh my. Michael Flynn has fired his lawyer and retained new counsel ahead of sentencing. Story coming shortly.

In recent days we’ve been talking about the pace and strategy of Democratic investigations of President Trump. Impeach or not to impeach has taken up a lot of the discussion. We’ve also discussed the need to dramatically up the pace and the aggressiveness of the push, quite apart from whether or not it’s labeled an impeachment inquiry. As I’ve been at pains to explain, when you have a recalcitrant, indeed a law-defying President, most of this quickly ends up in the courts. There the logic of legal strategy usually fits at best uneasily with the logic of politics. No one’s going to be satisfied with the pace. Keeping the substance and the optics and the strategy in alignment is a complicated task.

As a general matter I’ve assumed, I think accurately, that people’s aims are on the up and up whatever disagreements there may be about strategy. But just in the last few days I’ve started to wonder about Rep. Richard Neal (D), dean of the Massachusetts delegation and Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That’s the tax writing committee which is normally of most concern to policy wonks and corporate lobbyists. But in our Trump corruption moment it’s a position with unique hold over the question of getting the President’s tax returns.

TPM Reader BT:

Love you sir, but you’re absolutely crazy over this impeachment thing.

Happy Thursday, June 6. While President Donald Trump and his retinue are still bouncing around Europe, both the Democrats and Republicans are trying to put out fires at home. Here are the stories we’re watching today.

There’s a new poll out of Michigan yesterday and it shows President Trump getting crushed by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.