Links: Midterm ad spending; student loan forgiveness; Newt Gingrich's culpability

At Politico, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's super PAC is canceling $8 million of ads it had planned to run in Arizona, where Trump-endorsed GOP candidate Blake Masters is losing in every public poll to incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Cook Political Report still rates the contest as a toss-up, as does Politico itself. The McConnell PAC is also canceling ads in Alaska, where Sen. Lisa Murkowski appears headed for an easy reelection.

On ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders rightly tackles Republican criticisms of President Biden's decision to forgive some student loans, pointing out that they do not worry about the inflationary effect of tax breaks for the uber-rich. He is shakier in defending the proposal from the criticism that it is unfair to expect working-class people who did not go to college and who are also struggling financially.

In a guest essay at The New York Times, former prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann explains the many ways the redacted affidavit explaining the reasons for granting a warrant to search the property at Mar-a-Lago is deeply damning. At best, former President Donald Trump was far more reckless about top secret documents than former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was. Should we "lock him up!"? The best line in Weissmann's essay however was this: "There is nothing that prevented [Trump] for over a year from publicly answering those questions; he surely has not remained silent because the answers are exculpatory." Bingo.

At The Hill, Catholic University's Matthew Green and American University's Jeffrey Crouch answer the question: Is Newt Gingrich responsible for the rottenness of our political system? It is a fair question and he bears as much blame as anyone, but they rightly point out that many forces have brought our country to this moment when democracy is in such peril, not just Gingrich's fire-breathing style of political warfare. The essay is a preview of their new book, Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur.

In The Washington Post, columnist Jennifer Rubin thinks Joe Biden has found his inner-Harry Truman. I am not sure I completely agree with her argument, but she gets high points for recalling one of my favorite episodes in Truman's 1948 campaign:

Biden seemed to channel Harry S. Truman, who, to a voter shouting "Give 'em hell, Harry!" declared, "I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it's hell."

I like the fact that Biden placed defending democracy alongside other more traditional Democratic Party concerns like protecting Social Security. And, with Rubin, I agree that feisty Biden is better than rambling Biden.