The Political Page, T+140 -- June 9, 2017

Pollsters? The Trump-Hillary and the May-Corbyn elections raise questions about polls. Every poll in the UK showed that Theresa May would win by 1 to 8 points. Similarly, US polls across the board, with rare exceptions, showed that Hillary would win, including the now infamous ABC poll that showed Hillary would win by 15%.

Leaks: of many big stories not being discussed by mainstream media regarding the comedy hour was the fact that the nation's FBI director purposely leaked memos of a private conversation with the president simply to force the appointment of a special counsel. It spoke volumes that the four national intelligence leaders the previous day declined to follow suit even under increased pressure from the US Senate. Interestingly enough, CNBC journalist, Pete Williams, admits that he does not know the definition of a "leak" suggesting that he does not necessarily consider what Comey did was a "leak."

Comedy hour: many, many story lines from the session. But perhaps for another day.

Miss: analysts this morning are suggesting that Theresa May completely botched this whole thing, starting with calling for a "snap" election that was clearly not needed at the time. 

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That New York Times Op-Ed

Link here. 

Drop-off voters: lean Democratic but failed to vote in either 2014 or 2016.

• people of color (AA, Hispanic, or Asian): 41%
• young (under age 29): 22%
• female: 60%
• unmarried: 46%

Drop-off voters: distinctly lukewarm toward Hillary Clinton

Obama-to-Trump voters: estimates range from 6.7 to 9.2 million, far more than enough to provide Trump his Electoral College victory

And then this statement: as shocking as those statistics are/were, "to say that this constituency does not look favorably on the Democratic Party fails to capture the scope of their disenchantment.

A chart at the link illustrates this discontent, of Obama-to-Trump voters, a solid majority, 77% think:

• Trump's economic policies will favor "all groups equally": 44%
• Trump's economic policies will favor the middle class: 33%
• only 21% said Trump would favor the wealthy (one assumes that all things being equal, the vast majority of that 21% were composed of Bernie Sanders supporters

But note this, although it was essentially a wash, the percent of respondents who said:

• Congressional Democrats favor the wealthy: 42%
• Congressional Republicans favor the wealthy: 40%

Geoff Garin of Gari-Hart-Yang Research Group:

• biggest common denominator among Obama-Trump voters: a view that the political system is corrupt and doesn't work for people like them
• Obama-Trump voters were more likely to think more Democrats look out for the wealth than look out for poor people
• after "economics," the other main drivers for Trump were very specifically about immigration and race, and feelings about both things were powerful and raw

Then this, 'if the Priorities analysis is bleak, the 13 American Prospect essays are even more so.

Later: "Trump's brand of populism -- and more importantly, that of working-class whites -- differs in important ways from the populism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren."

And, of course, the usual meme concludes the op-ed:

For all the harm he has done, continues to do and proposed to do, Trump has successfully forced Democrats to begin to examine the party's neglected liabilities, the widespread resentment of its elites and the frail loyalty of its supporters.