The Congressional Budget Office has run the numbers on America’s fiscal outlook and it’s not pretty. Read more
American Deficits to Top Trillion Dollars for All of Next Decade
News
Johnson Warns Brexit Delay Will Benefit Labour
Boris Johnson has finally put his head above the parapet and launched his bid to become Britain’s next prime minister.
At a well-orchestrated event on Wednesday, which saw the former foreign secretary joined by a number of Conservative Party heavyweights, Johnson warned that his party faces an existential crisis if it fails to deliver Brexit.
“Delay means defeat, delay means Corbyn,” he warned.
Britain is due to leave the EU on October 31. Read more
Dutch Ruling Parties Negotiate Two Extra Senate Seats
The ruling parties in the Netherlands have managed to win an extra two seats in the Senate, giving them more room for negotiation with opposition parties.
The projection was that the four parties in Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s coalition win would thirty out of 75 seats in the upper chamber, which would have made them dependent on the Greens to pass legislation.
Now that they have 32, they can also do deals with the Labor Party, which has six. Read more
Dutch Voters Punish Euroskeptics, Give Labor Victory
Dutch voters punished Euroskeptic parties of the left and right on Thursday, according to unofficial election results and an exit poll.
The far-right Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, and the far-left Socialists would struggle to retain their seats in the European Parliament. The former currently has four, the latter two.
An exit poll conducted by Ipsos gives the two parties one seat each. But voting results from 732 of 9340 polling places suggest neither might qualify at all. The exit poll has a one-seat margin of error.
The official result is not announced until Sunday night, when all the EU’s 28 member states will have voted. But Dutch law requires individual polling places to read out their results on election night. Volunteers for the populist blog GeenStijl tallied the results, which were then analyzed by Ipsos’ competitor, Peil.nl. Read more
Brexit Delay Could Benefit Left in European Elections
The delay of Brexit could benefit the European left in elections in May.
A poll conducted by Hanbury Strategy for Open Europe found that the British Labour Party could win nearly 38 percent support and close to thirty seats in Strasbourg.
That would make theirs the largest delegation in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), surpassing the German Social Democrats, and close the gap with the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which stands to gain nothing from Brexit. Theresa May’s Conservatives group with the mildly Euroskeptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) instead.
Britain will need to hold European elections if it is still in the EU next month. Read more
Updates from the Democratic Primary
- Joe Biden — who still hasn’t officially declared his candidacy — is fending off accusations that he has been too affectionate toward women in the past.
- Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana is having a moment in the sun. He is a progressive who can appeal to the center, but the last time a mayor was nominated for the presidency by a major party was in 1812.
- Bernie Sanders is moving up in the polls (although, keep in mind, those are more about name recognition than support at this point) and raised the most money by far ($18 million) in the first three months of 2019. Read more
Updates from the Democratic Primary
- Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke is running for president.
- Ohio senator Sherrod Brown has decided against seeking the Democratic nomination.
- Former vice president Joe Biden — who still hasn’t declared yet — is ahead in the polls, but that is more about name recognition than anything else at this point. Only geeks like us are paying attention. Most voters don’t start to think about the election until a few months before the Iowa caucuses.
- Democrats have chosen Milwaukee, Wisconsin to host their 2020 convention. Read more