What Went Down During Marie Yovanovitch’s Testimony

It’s very hard to deny that the president has a tendency to make different kinds of attacks toward men and women. Relatedly, suburban white women turning away from the GOP was an important story of the 2018 elections. There are a lot of debates about the extent to which women should be considered any kind of cohesive group in the electorate. But there has been a persistent gender gap since the 1970s, with Republicans at a disadvantage with women. And groups have abandoned parties — African-Americans turned away from the GOP beginning in the 1920s — because of perceptions of hostility or indifference from those parties.

Schiff talking about Trump’s tweet as “witness intimidation.” Flashback to the Mueller investigation, when Trump’s tweets attacking figures like Michael Cohen were also seen by legal experts as episodes of potential witness tampering.

As compelling as Yovanovitch has been, the narrative so far has been pretty far removed from the heart of the case that Democrats have been trying to distill and re-brand for simple consumption by everyday Americans: a crime of “bribery.” I wonder if average Americans will see a clear connection with her story, or if it’s disturbing/convincing enough its own right: Trump threatened and smeared her to purse a personal agenda.