In Case You Missed it (v7)

It was a short week for the blog, as life happily interrupted things a couple of times. That said, there was still plenty going on. Here's a recap.

Sunday School  brought us a couple of 2020 presidential candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. Here's part of Mayor Pete's conversation with Jake Tapper (CNN's State of the Union) on impeachment.

It's about making sure that a future president, 10 years or 100 years from now looks back at this moment and draws the lesson that nobody is above the law. And in a moment like that, public opinion is just going to have to follow the lead of the Constitution, instead of the other way around.

Sanders talked with Jonathan Karl (ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos) on his and the president's dislike for endless wars, although Sanders said he and Trump are not completely on the same page.

Yes...But the difference between Trump and me is he lies. And, again, you don't turn your back on an ally that lost 11,000 troops fighting against terrorism through a tweet and a discussion with Erdogan.

Monday brought us another installment of Poll Watch, this time focusing primarily on impeachment. We know that a number of polls have shown that Americans are in favor of the impeachment inquiry, and we know, from the polls included in the post, that many are in favor of seeing the president not just impeached, but removed from office.

We also learned that the Dems and how they're handling the whole thing that is the impeachment inquiry are perceived more favorably than the Republicans and their shenanigans.

Looking at Congress,

• 49% approve of how the Democrats are handling it, while 44% disapprove.

• 56% disapprove of how the Republicans are handling it, while only 33% approve. 

Wednesday's Wondering was all about the winners and losers from Tuesday's debate. Experts picked their winners and losers, and so did I. We disagreed on some of winners, but were pretty much in sync on the losers, and those who didn't do enough to make a difference.

Kamala Harris did not have a good night (again), nor did Julian Castro (again) or Beto O'Rourke (again), and Cory Booker was middle-of-the-pack safe (again). I don't see a future for the latter three, and I'm wondering how much longer Harris will - or should - stick around, too.

I did another report from the Update Desk on my social experiment involving the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, and again wondered how much longer I'm going to keep all of them in the mix. I expect there'll be some herd-culling after next week's report, but we'll see.

Here's how a few of them talked about the president.

Biden continued to focus on Trump, including a demand that the president produce his income taxes "or shut up" - a more strident approach then any of the others took. O'Rourke planned a protest rally during Trump's Texas visit, and also pointed out that Trump is a symptom, not the problem; Mayor Pete focused on his 'day after the Trump presidency' messaging, and Klobuchar said Trump could come to Minnesota as often as he wanted, but he wasn't going to win.

And yesterday brought our regular weekly feature, TGIF. Trying to keep track of all the folks having bad weeks, and finding any who had good weeks, is getting harder and harder these days. On the bad week side of the ledger, one current and one former presidential candidate were spotlighted.

Joe Biden had another bad week, I think we'd all agree, and in my eyes so did the winner of the popular vote in 2016.

And finally, I've said this before and I'll keep saying it as many times as I have to. Hillary Clinton, sit down. And please, stay out of the fray. We don't need you interjecting yourself into the 2020 campaign. Go sell books or something.

There you have it -- this week, in review. Check ou these posts, and be sure to come back next week to see what's going on.