ELECTION/GOP/MICHAEL COHEN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A small group of Republican strategists opposed to President Trump, branding themselves Defending Democracy Together, quietly conducted polling and focus groups last fall to gauge whether the president was vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2020. Assembling a presentation for sympathetic political donors, they listed points of weakness for Mr. Trump such as ‘tweeting/temperament” and ‘criminality/corruption.’ The group concluded that Mr. Trump’s scandals were not yet badly damaging him with Republican-leaning voters: ‘Even relatively high information voters aren’t paying particularly close attention to day-to-day scandals,’ the presentation stated. But it added that there was ‘room to educate voters’ on the subject. Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, may have begun that education on Wednesday [2-26-19]. With Mr. Cohen’s appearance before a House committee, the public airing of ethical transgressions by Mr. Trump reached a new phase, one that may be harder to ignore for friends and foes alike.”
–Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, “Michael Cohen’s Testimony Opens New Phase of Political Turbulence for Trump,” The New York Times online, March 1, 2019