Stuff You Should Consume - 9/11/22

Welcome to this week’s edition of Stuff You Should Consume - a weekly email for Message Box subscribers with important and interesting political content.

“Republican Vulnerabilities: A Guide for Advocates” by Navigator Research

“The Electoral Count Act must be fixed. A new proposal doesn’t go far enough” by Laurence H. Tribe, Erwin Chemerinsky, and Dennis Aftergut

The proposal before the Senate represents an excellent beginning. It must be strengthened to protect democracy in the final stages of selecting a president. But it’s equally vital to remember that not even a perfect way of counting the electoral votes at the tail end of the process can overcome unfair and undemocratic obstacles to casting ballots at the front end.

Our democracy will not be secure until we enact broader protection for voting rights. For now, however, improving the Electoral Count Reform Act would be a victory to celebrate.

“Republican Strategist Reacts to Dr. Oz and MAGA Republican Ads” Crooked Media

“Trumpier than Trump” by Jonathan Swan and Josh Kraushaar, Axios

Some GOP candidates are softening their rhetoric and scrubbing their campaign websites of hardline positions as the midterms get closer. But Doug Mastriano is running a much different playbook in the Pennsylvania governor's race, one of the most important contests in the nation.

Driving the news: He has doubled down on false claims about the 2020 election. He's ghosting the mainstream media and spending nothing on TV advertising, relying instead on Facebook livestreams and far-right media.

• He has a small staff largely unknown to Pennsylvania politicos. And he may tap a woman who has described QAnon as "a very valuable resource" to be the state's top election official.

“Most Americans see Trump's MAGA as threat to democracy” by Jason Lange, Reuters

Fifty-eight percent of respondents in the two-day poll - including one in four Republicans - said Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement is threatening America's democratic foundations … The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 60% of Republicans don't think Trump's MAGA movement represents the majority of the party.