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Burn It All Down? - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/burn-it-all-down GOP 2020 trump reform strategy
shared by Javier E on 28 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • Trump himself is a horror show, but the most horrific story of the last four years has been the complete surrender of the GOP to Trumpism, not just on policy but on everything. The party that once imagined itself to be about ideas became a cult of personality for one of the most deplorable personalities in political history.
  • This suggests that the dysfunction in the GOP was a pre-existing condition; and that bringing the party back to sanity won’t be easy.
  • The transactional nature of the Senate GOP’s groveling surrender to Trump is straightforward: Simply ignore his awfulness and you will get things you want. That bargain required ignoring an ever-growing pile of awfulness. At some point the ignorance morphed into rationalization and ultimately active collaboration.
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  • Earlier this year, Senate Republicans decided to tie their fates inextricably to Trump, including “an apparent end to public disagreements for the next six months until the party is past the election.”
  • Lewis evidently thinks so because the alternative would be so much worse. He cites the Lincoln Project’s broadside against Trump’s Senate enablers, noting that it is “a compelling ad.” But, he asks, “is this a smart strategy for conservatives who want to restore the Party of Ronald Reagan and not empower the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”
  • “Just because you think Trump is horrible doesn’t mean you should cheer a 180-degree backlash,” he writes. “Losing the Senate would leave Republicans with little power to block a progressive, pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice nominee. . . . And when President Biden is trying to raise the top marginal tax rate north of 50 percent, I want enough Republicans in the Senate to be there to stop it.”
  • All of this has elements of truth, but isn’t it also the sort of transactional argument that gave us Trumpism in the first place? It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . but for marginal tax rates?
  • saving the party means voting for Lindsey Graham, Kelly Loeffler, John Cornyn, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, Cory Gardner, and Joni Ernst. What kind of salvation is that?
  • The story of Marsha Blackburn is merely one small chapter in the long book cataloguing the many ways that Trumpism corrupts everything.
  • On issue after issue—the deficit, impeachment, racial justice, corruption, the assault on the rule of law, and basic oversight—Senate Republicans have distinguished themselves by failing to uphold their most basic constitutional responsibilities. Some have simply fallen silent, while others have turned themselves into low-rent internet trolls.
  • Worse: they have squandered their credibility
  • Of course, we need to be realistic: If Senate Republicans are defeated en masse, they will not necessarily be replaced by angels or statesmen, and the policy implications will not be pleasant for conservatives. There are, however, no permanent victories or defeats. Parties can renew themselves in the wilderness.
  • But if the GOP does not somehow renew itself—by purging the foul air of its current corruption—it will find itself in the wilderness for the next 40 years as it tries to explain its history of Vichy Trumpism.
  • Where does that leave us? I have nothing but respect for Mitt Romney, and if I lived in Nebraska, I would probably come around to voting for Ben Sasse this year. And throughout the nation, there are smart, principled, competent Republican governors like Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, and Phil Scott. As for the rest of them: Burn it all down.
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Trump to accept Republican presidential nomination outside of North Carolina - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...f-north-carolina-idUSKBN23A36L
shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump will accept the Republican presidential nomination outside North Carolina, the party said on Wednesday, following the Democratic governor’s decision not to lift social-distancing restrictions for the planned Aug. 24-27 convention.
  • On Tuesday, Governor Roy Cooper rejected Republican demands to guarantee that attendance at the convention in Charlotte would not be restricted by social-distancing measures aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
  • “We are working to schedule visits to these cities by Republican National Committee officials in the coming days,” the official said.
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  • In response, Trump said on Twitter that the party would relocate the event.
  • Earlier, the official said the states being considered were Florida, Georgia, Tennessee or Arizona.
  • ooper, referring to the Republicans, said on Twitter on Tuesday night: “It’s unfortunate they never agreed to scale down and make changes to keep people safe.”
  • Democrats have delayed their convention in Milwaukee, which was set for Aug. 17 to 20, and left the door open to a revised format. Former Vice President Joe Biden is the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
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Biden sharpens contrast with Trump: 'I won't traffic in fear and division' - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by katherineharron on 02 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • In a speech in Philadelphia, the presumptive Democratic 2020 presidential nominee addressed systemic racism and empathized with those who are protesting across the nation in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in ways Trump has not.
  • I won't traffic in fear and division. I won't fan the flames of hate. I'll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gain. I'll do my job and I'll take responsibility -- I won't blame others,"
  • Building on his campaign's core theme that the "soul of the nation" is at stake, Biden made explicit his differences in approach from Trump, who on Monday urged governors to "dominate" protesters, and bragged on Twitter Tuesday morning that "overwhelming force" and "domination" had been on display in the nation's capital.
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  • "Is this what we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren -- fear, anger, finger-pointing, rather than the pursuit of happiness? Incompetence and anxiety, self-absorption, selfishness? Or do we want to be the America we know we can be, the America we know in our hearts we could be and should be?"
  • "The president held up the Bible at St. John's Church yesterday. I just wish he opened it every once in a while instead of just brandishing it," Biden said. "If he opened it, he could have learned something."
  • "It's time to pass legislation that will give true meaning to our constitutional promise of legal protection under the law," Biden said.
  • On Monday, as Trump urged governors in a phone call to "dominate" protesters, Biden held a discussion with African American community leaders in Wilmington and a virtual roundtable with the mayors of cities that have seen protests and violence: Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minnesota.
  • "They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk. They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to a virus and 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment -- with a disproportionate number of these deaths and job losses concentrated in the black and minority communities," Biden said. "And they speak to a nation where every day millions of people -- not at the moment of losing their life -- but in the course of living their life -- are saying to themselves, 'I can't breathe.'"
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Trump vs. Biden in the Polls: The Myth of 'But 2016' - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-vs-biden-polls.html polls myth election 2020 2016 campaign
shared by Javier E on 16 May 20 - No Cached
  • What Mr. Trump’s stunning win and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s extraordinary comeback in the 2020 primaries both demonstrate, they say, is the crucial importance of momentum-changing events, the mood of the electorate and the ingrained perceptions of the candidates. Tactics like well-produced campaign ads, high-profile endorsements and clever one-liners at debates often matter far less, as Mrs. Clinton found.
  • To call Mr. Trump’s political organization four years ago bare-bones would be an insult to other bare-bones campaigns. Mr. Trump cycled through campaign managers, ran his campaign from a spare floor in Trump Tower and approached social media like a guy watching TV at the end of a bar. But it all proved less important than the structural factors that shaped the 2016 election and ultimately favored him.
  • First, Mr. Trump ran in a crowded and fragmented Republican field and found a strong plurality of voters for his racial grievances and attacks on the political establishment.
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  • Then he competed against a deeply unpopular Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, whose gains in the polls often depended on Mr. Trump’s doing or saying something that got him in trouble.
  • Just over two months ago, Mr. Biden’s candidacy was in dire shape. Yet in short order, he revived his campaign and all but ensured he would be the Democratic nominee by winning in a series of Super Tuesday states where he had never visited, had not advertised and had only a skeletal staff on the ground.
  • He was broadly popular among black and moderate white Democrats and was widely perceived to be the safe selection in a primary that revolved around finding a candidate who could defeat Mr. Trump.
  • “You can meet the moment, but you can’t really change the moment,” said Mr. Demissie, who was quick to credit Mr. Biden’s aides for positioning him as the safe choice. “It’s very difficult to change the mood of the electorate via campaign strategy and tactics.”
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GOP undeterred by criticism over Biden probes and plans aggressive election-year push -... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html biden
shared by katherineharron on 22 May 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump's loyalists in the administration and on Capitol Hill have opened up an all-out assault against the Obama administration and former Vice President Joe Biden, using committee investigations and declassified documents to try to paint the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in an unflattering light.
  • The Republicans leading the investigations say they're about accountability and oversight, not politics. But the investigations are being openly cheered on by Trump, who told Republicans they need to get "tough" on issues like "unmasking," one of the areas where Grenell has provided newly declassified documents. The probes have also been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, as he fights to keep the Senate majority in GOP hands in the 2020 election where the fate of Senate Republicans will be closely tied to Trump's.
  • So far, there's little dissent within the Senate GOP Conference about the pursuit of investigations against Trump's opponent -- even as many Republicans denounced House Democrats for mounting what they said were overtly political investigations and impeachment proceedings aimed at hurting the President's reelection chances.
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  • "It's not to say I agree with every investigation, but I think we can certainly do both," said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican up for reelection this fall, referring to acting on a pandemic response as well.
  • And Johnson, Graham and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa have all requested Grenell and Attorney General William Barr declassify documents from the Obama administration related to the FBI's Russia probe and its prosecution of Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. On Thursday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, didn't rule out getting involved in looking into the matters either "to the extent they involve oversight over intelligence activities."
  • "I do think that there should be repercussions: What exactly they are depends on where the facts are," Paul said. "I do think it's wrong for people to abuse their office to get business for their kids. ... It doesn't look good."
  • Asked if he would object if the committee began to target Hunter Biden more directly, Romney said Thursday: "That will be determined in the light of the particular circumstances that will be presented."
  • The chairmen leading the investigations say they are conducting legitimate oversight. They argue their probes aren't about trying to damage Biden but rather about holding accountable the officials who went after Trump and his associates.
  • Asked about the appearance that the probe is political, the Oklahoma Republican said: "Everything in this place is political. There are a series of questions there aren't answers to at this point."
  • The senators' probes have been fueled by disclosures from the Trump administration after Barr directed a review of the Flynn case, which prompted the Justice Department to move to drop the charges that Flynn previously pleaded guilty to. The administration has declassified numerous documents relating to the Flynn case in recent weeks, including a list from Grenell of more than three-dozen Obama administration officials who made "unmasking" requests during the Trump transition and could have been provided foreign intelligence reports that identified Flynn.
  • Trump and his campaign have used Biden's presence on the list of officials to attack the former vice president on the issue. "Americans have a right to know the depth of Biden's involvement in the setup of Gen. Flynn to further the Russia collusion hoax," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement shortly after the unmasking documents were made public.
  • "It's clearly designed to find out what happened to 'Crossfire Hurricane,'" Graham said, referring to the name of the FBI probe, pushing back against the accusations of launching a political investigation.
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GOP operatives worry Trump will lose both the presidency and Senate majority - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html
shared by katherineharron on 29 May 20 - No Cached
  • A little more than three months ago, as Democrats cast their ballots in the Nevada caucuses, Republicans felt confident about their chances in 2020. The coronavirus seemed a distant, far-off threat. Democrats appeared poised to nominate a self-described socialist for president. The stock market was near a record high. The economy was roaring. President Donald Trump looked well-positioned to win a second term, and perhaps pull enough incumbent Republicans along with him to hold the party's majority in the Senate.
  • Seven GOP operatives not directly associated with the President's reelection campaign told CNN that Trump's response to the pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout have significantly damaged his bid for a second term
  • Several say that public polls showing Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden mirror what they are finding in their own private polls, and that the trend is bleeding into key Senate races. The GOP already had a difficult task of defending 23 Senate seats in 2020.
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  • All of this demonstrates how difficult it is to run as a Republican incumbent almost anywhere in 2020. Strategists who spoke to CNN worry that Trump has become a liability for Republicans needing to expand their coalition beyond the President's core base of supporters.
  • "Republican candidates need something more like Romney in '12 and less like McCain in '08," said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist in Washington.
  • That one-two punch could knock the GOP out of power in Washington-- and it's what has strategists hoping the President's reelection team can successfully transform the race to a choice between Trump and an unpalatable Biden.
  • "This is the one thing he (Trump) cannot change the subject on," said a Republican strategist. "This is not a political opponent, this is not going way and he has never had to deal with something like this."
  • Trump overall has a 45% approval rating. While only 42% approve of how he's handled the pandemic, 50% still said they approve of Trump's handling of the economy.
  • "The economic message resonates strongly, particularly in a time like this," said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "President Trump is clearly the one to restore us to that position. He did it once, he will do it again."
  • "Absent some sort of V-shaped recovery many people think he is dead in the water," said the Republican strategist.
  • Trump has solidified his position within the party. That has made it harder for Republicans in Congress to distance themselves from him without antagonizing his base. That, say Republican operatives, risks keeping away voters who may consider the GOP but don't like the President.
  • "It's a very, very tough environment. If you have a college degree and you live in suburbia, you don't want to vote for us,
  • The task requires Senate candidates to make appeals to suburban voters who flipped to Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections as a reaction against Trump.
  • Scott Reed, the political director at the US Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of Republican campaigns, said that a presidential reelection campaign is "always" a referendum on the incumbent and his party.
  • Congress, he noted is, having a relative boom in popularity -- 31% support in the latest Gallup poll, the highest in over a decade -- thanks in part to the passage of economic relief.
  • The line aims to combat the most consistent line of criticism from Democrats -- that Collins has voted in line with the Trump administration on everything from judicial appointments to health care to the President's acquittal on impeachment -- without having to disavow Trump himself.
  • "The truth is despite being massively outspent by liberal dark money groups, Republicans are still well-positioned to hold the Senate majority in the fall," said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
  • "When he does it right three days in a row, it really bumps his numbers," said Reed. "We need command performance on message discipline."
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George Floyd: protests and unrest coast to coast as US cities impose curfews | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-saturday-curfews-minneapolis US crisis culture
shared by brookegoodman on 31 May 20 - No Cached
  • Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black men spread across the US on Saturday night as mayors around the country imposed curfews and several governors called in the national guard amid scenes of violence, injuries and unrest.
  • Governors of six states, including Minnesota, where Floyd died on Monday, called out national guard troops. Many cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Louisville, Columbia, Denver, Portland, Milwaukee and Columbus, imposed curfews in anticipation of a restless night ahead.
  • Saturday’s demonstrations had started early but as the night drew on sporadic violence broke out again, seeing businesses torched, police cars set on fire and protesters injured and arrested.
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  • Near Union Square, in the heart of Manhattan, a police vehicle was on fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. In Brooklyn, protesters and police clashed for hours in Flatbush. In Los Angeles, a police post was burned in a shopping mall while nearby shops were looted. In Nashville, Tennessee, a historic courthouse was set on fire and in Salt Lake City, Utah, vehicles were burned and a man with a bow and arrow was arrested after he aimed it at protesters.
  • Social media posts showed flames and thick black smoke billowing from a fire in downtown Philadelphia, where an earlier peaceful protest ended with cars being set ablaze, and law enforcement vehicles came under attack in and Chicago.
  • The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, struck a different tone, calling protests against police brutality “right and necessary” but urging an end to violence. “The act of protesting should never be allowed to overshadow the reason we protest,” he said in a statement.
  • “We will not tolerate actions like these against New York City police officers,” the city’s police department said in a tweet announcing the arrest of “multiple people” for throwing molotov cocktails at police vehicles. The US attorney’s office subsequently announced that it had filed federal charges against three people over the incidents.
  • Numerous media outlets, including CNN, Reuters and MSNBC, reported that their staff covering protests in the city had been hit by rubber bullets fired at them. Media outlets and journalists in numerous cities reported being targeted by police with chemical agents or less-lethal rounds, and several reporters were arrested.
  • “The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists,” Trump said, speaking at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center after watching the launch of the historic SpaceX mission.
  • George Floyd’s brother, Philonise, said on Saturday he had briefly spoken to Trump about the death of his brother. “It was so fast. He didn’t give me the opportunity to even speak. It was hard. I was trying to talk to him but he just kept like pushing me off like, ‘I don’t want to hear what you’re talking about,’” Philonise told MSNBC.
  • In Atlanta, people set a police car ablaze and broke windows at CNN’s headquarters. In Oakland, San Jose and Los Angeles, protesters blocked highways and police fired teargas. In Louisville, Kentucky, police fired projectiles at a reporter and her cameraman during a live shot. Protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd ignited once again on Friday, as Minneapolis faced another night of chaos and demonstrators clashed with police in cities across the US.
  • You’ve read more than 70 articles in the last six months. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and analysis. We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers across America in all 50 states.
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Joe Biden's basement campaign echoes Warren Harding's front porch presidential run - Th... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...harding-porch-biden-basement history US trump politics
shared by anonymous on 22 May 20 - No Cached
  • n 1920, Harding ran the last “front porch” campaign by a U.S. presidential candidate from his home at 380 Mount Vernon Ave. in Marion, just north of Columbus.
  • A century later, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is challenging President Trump from the basement of his Delaware home, where he has been sheltering in place during the coronavirus pandemic
  • Both men are itching to get out on the campaign trail with rallies and speeches. Harding’s goal was exactly the opposite: “to restore the dignity of the office” of president by avoiding the “barnstorming, water tank speech and [railroad-car] tail end platform business.”
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  • Presidential candidates not only sat home but didn’t even campaign before 1840, when Ohio’s William Henry “Old Tippecanoe” Harrison became the first to give speeches with a campaign of carnival-like rallies. In 1880, Republican James Garfield campaigned from his farm in Mentor, Ohio. In 1888, Republican Benjamin Harrison, William Henry’s grandson, ran from his house in Indianapolis.
  • Harding’s campaign theme was “a return to normalcy” after the turmoil of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic.Instead of going to the people, he had the people come to the large, curving front porch of his wood-frame house in Marion, a town of about 30,000 residents.
  • Meantime, Harding’s Democratic rival, Ohio Gov. James Cox, was campaigning by train in 36 of the 48 states.
  • Cox said he was “carrying his front porch” to the country, while his opponent continued “his self-isolation in a small Ohio community,”
  • By October, Harding was far in the lead. His front-porch campaign had drawn more than 600,000 people.
  • Harding didn’t make it to the end of his first term. In the summer of 1923, after a bout of flu, the president took a cross-country train trip. On Aug. 2 in San Francisco, he died after a heart attack.
  • Harding’s legacy was tarnished by scandal following his death. In 1927, it was ruled that his interior secretary secretly sold drilling rights to federal oil wells in Teapot Dome, Wyo., to private oil interests.
  • In 1927, young Nan Britton published a book claiming she was Harding’s mistress and gave birth to his daughter. Decades later, love letters were uncovered showing, in a Stormy Daniels-like moment, the Republican Party in 1920 had paid another Harding high-society mistress to take a long voyage until the election was over.
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Trump's GOP is Increasingly Racist and Authoritarian-and Here to Stay - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/authoritarian-and-here-to-stay trump gop analysis 2020 election trumpism
shared by Javier E on 29 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • he inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive, and disloyal.
  • Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America’s president and his party’s base.
  • Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic—by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future.
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  • He rose from a political party bent on thwarting demographic change by subverting the democratic process; a party whose base was addicted to white identity politics, steeped in religious fundamentalism, and suffused with authoritarian cravings—a party which, infected by Trumpism, now spreads the multiple malignancies metastasized by Trump’s personal and political pathologies.
  • Since the civil rights revolution triggered an influx of resentful Southern whites, the GOP has catered to white grievance and anxiety.
  • Trump’s transformative contribution has been to make racial antagonism overt—a badge of pride that bonds him to his followers in opposition to a pluralist democracy that threatens their imperiled social and political hegemony.
  • Take the poll released last week by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) measuring the attitudes of “Fox News Republicans”—the 40 percent of party adherents who trust Fox as their primary source of TV news. The survey found that 91 percent oppose the Black Lives Matter movement; 90 percent believe that police killings of blacks are “isolated incidents”; and 58 think that whites are victimized by racial discrimination, compared to 36 percent who think blacks are.
  • He comprehends his audience all too well
  • Their animus toward immigration is equally strong. Substantial majorities believe that immigrants consume a disproportionate amount of governmental services, increase crime in local communities, and threaten our cultural and ethnic character.
  • In 2016, Vox reports, Trump carried whites by 54 to 39 percent; in 2020, by 57 to 42 percent (per the raw exit polls)
  • Another key subgroup of the GOP base, white evangelicals, harbors similar attitudes. The poll found that the majority adamantly disbelieve that the legacy of racial discrimination makes it difficult for African Americans to succeed
  • The head of the PRRI, Robert P. Jones, concludes that Trump arouses white Christians “not despite, but through appeals to white supremacy” based on evoking “powerful fears about the loss of White Christian dominance.”
  • That sense of racial and cultural besiegement pervades the 73 percent of Fox News Republicans who, the survey found, believe that white Christians suffer from “a lot” of societal discrimination—more than double the number who say that blacks do
  • Tucker Carlson serves as a cautionary tale. When Carlson dismissed, as gently as possible, the crackpot allegations of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell about a sweeping conspiracy using rogue voting machines, he was savaged across the right-wing echo chamber as a spineless quisling. Lesson learned.
  • fear of displacement helps explain the profound emotional connection between Trump and Republican voters. Their loyalty is not to the political philosophy traditionally embraced by the GOP, but a visceral sense of racial, religious, and cultural identity—and the need to preserve it—which is instinctively authoritarian and anti-democratic.
  • Bartels surveyed respondents regarding four statements which, taken together, read like a blueprint for Trump: The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it. A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands. Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done. It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.
  • Support for Trump’s wall is nearly unanimous (96 percent); two-thirds (66 percent) favor barring refugees from entering the United States; and a majority (53 percent) support separating children from their parents when a family enters the country without permission.
  • This lies at the heart of Trump’s appeal: his shared sense of victimization by an insidious elite; his unvarnished denunciation of white America’s supposed enemies; and his promise to keep them at bay—if necessary, by force. For many in the Republican base, he fulfills a psychic longing for an American strongman.
  • In the New York Times, Katherine Stewart describes the growth of “a radical political ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world.”
  • “Christian nationalism is a creation of a uniquely isolated messaging sphere. Many members of the rank and file get their main political information not just from messaging platforms that keep their audiences in a world that is divorced from reality, but also from dedicated religious networks and reactionary faith leaders.”
  • As Republican strategists well appreciate, a party whose appeal is confined to conservative whites is, over the demographic long term, doomed to defeat. The GOP’s design is to postpone as long as possible their electoral day of reckoning.
  • In launching his naked attempt to disenfranchise the majority of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin through assertions of fraud unprecedented in their speciousness and scope, Trump took the GOP’s distaste for free and fair elections to its logical conclusion: the abrogation of American democracy at the highest level.
  • Trump justified his anti-democratic sociopathy by proliferating a plethora of groundless and preposterous falsehoods calculated to delegitimize our electoral processes. He claimed that millions of phony mail-in ballots had been cast for Biden; that voting machines had been re-engineered to exclude millions more cast for him; and that Republican election observers had been excluded from many polling places by a host of local officials bent on serving a labyrinthine conspiracy to purloin the White House.
  • Never once did he or his lawyers cite a shred of evidence supporting any material impropriety. Rather his purpose was to convince the Republican base that they were being cheated of their leader by the insidious “other.” Numerous polls confirm that it’s working; typical is a Politico/Morning Consult survey showing that 70 percent of Republicans don’t believe the election was fairly conducted.
  • As Trevor Potter, a Republican who formerly headed the Federal Election Commission, told the New York Times, Trump “is creating a road map to destabilization and chaos in future years. . . . What he’s saying, explicitly, is if a party doesn’t like the election result they have the right to change it by gaming the system.”
  • Reports Bump: “Most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agreed with the first statement. . . . Nearly three-quarters agreed that election results should be treated with skepticism.” Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were also “significantly more likely to say they agreed with the other two statements than that they disagreed.”
  • Ultimately, this otherworldly obduracy stems from Trump’s manifest psychological illness: his imperishable narcissism; his ineradicable drive to be noticed; his relentless need to dominate; his comprehensive carelessness of all considerations save what pleases him in the moment. Television turned this moral pygmy into a mythic figure—and he cannot let go.
  • Republican elites want very much to turn the page on Donald Trump following his loss. But . . . they do not have any say in the matter, because their party now belongs to him. And the party belongs to Donald Trump because he has delivered to Republican voters exactly what they want.
  • a notable phenomenon of Trump’s presidency is the degree to which financially embattled working-class whites imagined, contrary to observable reality, that their economic situation had improved—or soon would. There are few better examples of how politics mirrors psychology more than lived experience.
  • This fidelity is why some Republican gurus remain committed to Trump’s strategy of maximizing support among middle-class and blue-collar whites. After all, they argue, despite Trump’s defeat the GOP did better than expected in senatorial and congressional races. Why risk tinkering with his formula?
  • Finally, economic populism is antithetical to the donor classes who, in truth, did better under Trump than did anyone else. They got their tax cuts and their judges—the GOP’s pipeline for judicial nominees, the Federalist Society, is dedicated to advancing pro-corporate jurisprudence. This is not the prescription for worker-friendly policies.
  • For the foreseeable future, Trumpism will define the GOP. The path to regeneration runs not through reform but, one fears, must proceed from self-destruction. The wait time will be painful for the party, and fateful for the country.
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Biden's popular vote margin over Trump tops 7 million - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html trump
shared by katherineharron on 04 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • President-elect Joe Biden's margin over President Donald Trump in the nationwide popular vote is now more than 7 million votes and may continue to grow as several states continue counting votes.
  • Biden's lead over Trump is the second largest since 2000
  • Biden had won about 81.2 million votes, the most votes a candidate has won in US history, and Trump had won about 74.2 million.
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  • Trump's vote count makes him the second-highest vote earner in American history.
  • the President has refused to concede the race and continues to make baseless claims about widespread voter fraud.
  • Biden won 306 electoral votes, while Trump has 232. Two hundred and seventy electoral votes are needed to become president.
  • A number of states have certified their election results, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan.
  • The campaign has mounted legal challenges that have failed to gain any traction, with many of the cases being dismissed by judges for lack of evidence.
  • Despite Trump's refusal to concede, Biden has continued to build out his administration and has named several key nominees and appointees to top roles in his administration.
  • On Tuesday, Biden introduced a diverse economic team, including Janet Yellen, who would be the first woman as Treasury secretary if confirmed by the Senate.
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Biden Picks Xavier Becerra to Lead Health and Human Services - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...erra-hhs-health-secretary.html
shared by mattrenz16 on 07 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has selected Xavier Becerra, the Democratic attorney general of California, as his nominee for secretary of health and human services, tapping a former congressman who would be the first Latino to run the department as it battles the surging coronavirus pandemic.
  • But as attorney general in California, he has been at the forefront of legal efforts on health care, leading 20 states and the District of Columbia in a campaign to protect the Affordable Care Act from being dismantled by his Republican counterparts. He has also been vocal in the Democratic Party about fighting for women’s health.
  • Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, will be selected to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a person familiar with Mr. Biden’s deliberations. Dr. Walensky, whose selection was reported earlier by Politico, will replace Dr. Robert R. Redfield as the leader of the scientific agency at the forefront of the nation’s pandemic response.
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  • Dr. Vivek Murthy, who served as surgeon general under President Barack Obama, will reprise that role for Mr. Biden. A telegenic confidant of the president-elect, Mr. Murthy will become one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers on medical issues and will lead much of the public outreach on the pandemic.
  • Jeffrey D. Zients, an entrepreneur and management consultant who served as the head of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council and fixed the bungled rollout of the health law’s online insurance marketplace, will become a coronavirus czar in the White House, leading efforts to coordinate the fight against the coronavirus pandemic among the government’s sprawling agencies.
  • An outspoken advocate of improved health care access, Mr. Becerra said in 2017 that he would “absolutely” support Medicare for all, a proposal for government-run health care that Mr. Biden has explicitly rejected. A source familiar with the selection said Mr. Becerra would support the president-elect’s call for strengthening and preserving the A.C.A. and would not be pushing Medicare for all while in office.
  • As California’s top law enforcement official, Mr. Becerra helped lead legal fights across the nation for access to health care, focusing in particular on dismantling barriers for women struggling to get medical services.
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Debate Showed Trump Hasn't Settled on Main Message Against Biden - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...sage-against-biden-11601550000 debate biden politics culture trump
shared by leilamulveny on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Trump’s debate performance on Tuesday against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, GOP campaign strategists said, encapsulated his struggle to frame the race in the same consistent and persuasive way he did in 2016, as he spent the night ticking through multiple attacks he and his campaign have rotated through for most of the past year.
  • Mr. Biden has maintained a consistent lead in public surveys
  • Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden’s time in government and called him an avatar for much of the liberal wing of the party. He questioned the former vice president’s health, attacked his son and tried to paint Mr. Biden as ill-equipped to stem the violence that has erupted at times alongside civil rights protests during Mr. Trump’s fourth year in office.
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  • Mr. Trump sent mixed messages in his own day-after analysis. During the debate, Mr. Trump said Mr. Biden was beholden to the most liberal members of his party, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and a group of four female House members, known as The Squad, which includes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D., N.Y.). But Wednesday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Mr. Biden was in fact not listening to the Left, and that he had spent the debate “throwing Bernie, AOC PLUS 3, and the rest, to the wolves!”
  • But Mr. Trump’s inability to convey a central argument for his candidacy also contrasts with the past two successful presidential campaigns.
  • But Mr. Trump sometimes overlooked his own record.
  • During the portion of the evening focused on the economy, Mr. Biden promised to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. Mr. Trump interjected, “Why didn’t you do it before, when you were vice president with Obama?” “Because you, in fact, passed that,” Mr. Biden responded, referring to the 2017 tax law cutting the rate to 21%. “That was your tax proposal.”
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A Full Guide to the Kamala Harris vs Mike Pence Debate - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-harris-mike-pence-debate.html trump politics us
shared by kaylynfreeman on 07 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • The debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris will begin at 9 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday and run for 90 minutes without commercial interruptions. This will be their only debate.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 07 Oct 20
       
      Hopefully, they are more civilized than the first presidential debate.
  • Mr. Pence is also likely to be pressed to defend Mr. Trump’s actions since his illness was diagnosed — leaving the hospital against the counsel of many medical professionals, minimizing the threat of the virus and dramatically removing his mask when he returned to the White House. The president has offered himself as evidence that Covid-19 can be beaten; does Mr. Pence agree with that?
  • But that basic rule of thumb got a little more tricky for Ms. Harris. With Mr. Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis and him just being back at the White House after three nights in a hospital, harsh attacks against an ailing president might be politically unwise. The Biden campaign pulled down its negative advertising attacking Mr. Trump as soon as he disclosed his diagnosis. Joseph R. Biden Jr. has stepped carefully in talking about the president.
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  • Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has established her credentials as a tough interrogator with her questioning of officials like William P. Barr, the attorney general. She knows how to make a case. But can she attack Mr. Trump’s handling of the virus — which has come to define his presidency — without veering toward an overly personal attack on a president battling a potentially lethal disease?
  • Mrs. Clinton, the only woman to serve as a major-party presidential nominee, warned Ms. Harris, in so many words, about the corrosive role that sexism will play onstage.
  • “You should also be prepared for the slights, the efforts to diminish you, you personally, you as a woman, who is about to be our next vice president,” Mrs. Clinton said on her podcast. “So I do think there will be a lot of maneuvering on the other side to try to put you in a box.”
  • Ms. Harris is not just a woman but also the first woman of color on a major-party ticket.
  • Don’t look too angry’ line,” Ms. Lawless said. “These are cliché. But they’re cliché because they’re true.”
  • “She symbolizes everything that ‘Make America Great Again’ wants to push back on by virtue of being a Black woman,” Ms. Lawless said.
  • (Step 1); moved quickly to talk about the aspirations of a Trump presidency (Step 2); and swung into an attack on the Democrats (Step 3).
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 07 Oct 20
       
      This was clearly effective
  • because so many vice presidents, and vice-presidential candidates, eventually run for president.
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Biden Scores 14-Point Lead Over Trump in Poll After Debate - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-poll-after-debate-11601816400 trump biden debate poll wsj politics
shared by leilamulveny on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, leads the president, 53% to 39%, among registered voters in the new poll, which was conducted in the two days following the debate but before news emerged that Mr. Trump had tested positive for Covid-19. Mr. Biden’s 14-point lead compares with an 8-point advantage last month and 11 points in July, which was his largest of the campaign at that time.
  • evidence that an individual news event—the debate—is having a material effect on Mr. Trump’s political standing, at least for now
  • His support has never before fallen below 40% on the ballot against Mr. Biden.
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  • support for Mr. Trump has softened among some of his most loyal groups, such as white, working-class men.
  • About three-quarters of voters said the event made no difference to their vote. But among the other 25%, a bigger share said the debate made them more likely to support Mr. Biden than Mr. Trump.
  • While 84% of Democrats said Mr. Biden did a better job in the debate, 54% of Republicans said so of the president. Overall, half of voters said Mr. Biden performed better, with a quarter saying Mr. Trump did. Some 17% said neither candidate did well.
  • voters by a two-to-one margin said Mr. Biden was better at displaying “the right temperament to be president,” 58% to 26%.
  • Mr. Biden leads two-to-one on which candidate can best handle race relations, and he holds single-digit leads on handling crime and making Supreme Court nominations, the poll found.
  • Mr. Trump’s bout with the virus will likely keep the public focused on the pandemic, an issue that voters believe Mr. Biden would be better at handling, 52% to 35%.
  • The survey of 800 registered voters was conducted on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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Election 2020: Fueled by Democrats, early voting is way up - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...3623292001 election democrats voting republican absentee politics Trump Biden
shared by hannahcarter11 on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • More than 4.2 million people have already voted early in the presidential election, vastly exceeding the pace of 2016 as Democrats amass a commanding lead in returned mail ballots
  • Several states have changed laws since four years ago to either offer early voting or expand early voting periods. In addition, as expected for months, more people are taking advantage of early voting, particularly voting by mail, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • The strong early voting turnout comes as Democratic nominee Joe Biden maintains a strong national polling lead over President Donald Trump
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  • Some voters could be voting earlier because they're wary about the performance of the U.S. Postal Service and want to get their ballots in the mail as soon as possible.
  • It might not be good news, however, for Trump and Republicans, who are lagging considerably behind Democrats in the number of mail ballots submitted.
  • The advantage for Democrats comes after they requested nearly twice as many mail ballots nationwide than Republicans, likely the result of Trump's months-long assault on the legitimacy of mail ballots
  • The more their votes get cast early, he said, the less time Republican candidates have to reverse things "before all we're producing is regrets from people who already cast their ballots
  • not only did Democrats request more mail ballots than Republicans, they are also returning them at higher rates.
  • It's a concern if the pandemic continues to rage and if seniors who had voted for Republican candidates in the past get scared to go to the polls at a time when it's too late to vote for mail.
  • It's a concern for Democrats because mail ballots are far more likely to be disqualified for various reasons than are in-person ballots
  • Polling has shown that Trump voters are nearly twice as likely to vote on Election Day than Democrats
  • The other scenario is that Democrats are just more enthused to vote than Republicans and it's showing up in these numbers
  • McDonald is among election experts who predicted a historically high turnout presidential race even before votes were cast. He estimated last year 150 million people would vote in the 2020 election, 12 million more than the 138 million in 2016
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An Early Virus Stock Sell-Off - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ocks-trump-administration.html politics pandemic economics
shared by anonymous on 15 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • President Trump was fully aware of how severe the coronavirus was back in February, even as he was publicly downplaying it.
  • Short everything.
  • declining to answer a question from Senator Cory Booker — and others from various Democrats — on whether it was “wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants from coming to the United States.”
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  • avoided answering a question from Senator Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, on whether she believed the scientific consensus on man-made climate change. Barrett called that question “a very contentious matter of public debate,”
  • uestioning her, Graham invited the judge to give a preview of how she might rule to save — not overturn — the Affordable Care Act.
  • Her willingness to answer in the affirmative, and to get into theoretical details around a possible ruling, stood in stark contrast to her tight-lipped responses to questions from many Democrats, including Booker.
  • Biden’s campaign has flatly rejected the report, which Facebook and Twitter viewed as so dubious that they limited access to the article.
  • NBC will host a town hall event with Trump at 8 p.m.
  • The two candidates had been scheduled to face off in a debate tonight until Trump withdrew last week,
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'Fatigue is a factor': Political exhaustion weighs on voters in rural Wisconsin - CNNPo... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html trump
shared by katherineharron on 15 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • In an electorate that agrees on little, there is one thing that nearly every voter here in Southwest Wisconsin feels: Exhaustion.
  • That fatigue with politics, aimed primarily at President Donald Trump but also Democrats in Washington and the overall tone of discourse in America, is coursing through the minds of many voters in one of the most politically volatile parts of this swing state, where counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 swung substantially to Trump in 2016 before swinging back to Democrats and Gov. Tony Evers in 2018.
  • Wisconsin played a central role in Trump's victory in 2016, with rural and working class voters leading the rejection of Democrats throughout the Upper Midwest.
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  • But exhaustion is one of the few things that crosses those hardened party lines. Even people who voted for Trump four years ago and top Republican operatives in the area told CNN that the chaos surrounding the President has left voters beleaguered weeks out from the 2020 election.
  • The first presidential debate, which was dominated by Trump angrily yelling and interrupting and Democratic nominee Joe Biden firing back by calling Trump a "clown," did nothing but cement those feelings.
  • Lawler and the county party paid to have a large billboard put up between the towns of Viroqua and Westby that simply reads "Had Enough" in block letters before directing people to "Vote Blue" in November.
  • "It just makes you tired," Seeley said of Trump the day after the first debate. "He's like a kid in a candy store. If he can't have a piece, he breaks everything in the store."
  • "Richland Center is the dipstick of the country," Daniel Miller, the owner of Ocooch Books & Libations, said about the seat of Richland County. "Anything that is going on anywhere else is going on here in some ratio that is matching the country."
  • The area has long, according to local candidates, been home to high concentrations of ticket splitters, people who may vote for Democrats atop the ticket, but back Republicans in local races.
  • "Most people don't want the ugliness of the political world to be front and center in their news every day and in their conversations and in their drive to work," he said. "A lot of people are just fed up with the constant barrage of whatever the scandal of the day is."
  • "The key for Republicans is keeping the focus a lot more on kitchen table issues, focused on taxes and health care and education and what we think we can do differently," said Andrew Hitt, the chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party, who grew up in Richland Center.
  • "If Southwest Wisconsin looks more like an Obama map, it's going to be hard for the President to win," said Hitt. "If it looks like a Trump 2016 map and everything else kind of stays about where it is, then that that means the President is probably going to win (the state) again."
  • "It is exhausting to put up with all the complete bickering that is going on for four years," said Biefer. "This constant getting nothing done. I don't think it is helping any party."
  • "It makes you feel like doomsday is coming," Murphy-Lopez said of the tenor Trump has struck in recent weeks. "And the top thing I hear from independents or people who are on the fence is they want politicians who are going to work for the people, not the party. They are tired of elected officials going after each other, they are tired of people making each other look bad."
  • "If we walked up and down this main street right now, there are multiple vacancies," he said, pointing down Wisconsin Avenue from the back porch of Timber Lane Coffee in Boscobel. "You go to some of the smaller villages and they're almost dead. Their business districts are gone."
  • "I really don't like the two of them," Adams said of Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. But Trump, Adams said, "is a liar. He has no care outside of his own image. He doesn't care about any of the people. His rhetoric is reprehensible. He is an embarrassment."
  • "There is a logjam in Washington, there is a logjam in Wisconsin and people feel quite hopeless," said the Democrat running to represent parts of Richland and Sauk counties in the state assembly. "And you layer that on top of the hopelessness that people have about the farm economy and the hollowness that people feel about small towns, that is a lot of exhaustion."
  • "I am tired of it and I am not going to sit back and let it happen anymore," Volenec said of the downturn in rural America and the farming that is shifting to larger and larger corporate farms. "A lot of these things, were set into motion prior to Trump, but he has had a steroid effect on things."
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Democrats' Arguments Against Amy Coney Barrett : Live: Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Cour... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...t-they-call-dangerous-regressi democrats supreme court barrett politics
shared by martinelligi on 16 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • "You are moving ahead with this nomination because you can. But might does not make right," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Thursday. "In your hearts, you know that's what's happening here is not right ... history will haunt this raw exercise of power." In 2016, Republicans used their majority in the upper chamber to deny then-President Barack Obama a Supreme Court nominee, waiting until after Donald Trump had been elected and he could submit a name of his own. And although senators including the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had suggested they wouldn't do that again, they are.
  • In Democrats' telling, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., need Barrett confirmed as soon as possible so she will be in position to hear arguments in a case in November that could affect the Affordable Care Act.
  • She, Coons, Blumenthal and the other Judiciary Committee members warn that the Barrett-era Supreme Court could be consequential across a number of other issues, too, and they cited Barrett's unwillingness to give substantive answers about climate change, voting practices and even Trump's claim about his power to pardon himself.
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  • There has been little tension about Barrett's nomination since a sufficient number of members of the Senate majority suggested they would go along generally and support her specifically, and she appears on track to be confirmed.
  • These
  • "These are lifetime appointments. They last for decades. What is done here will affect policies long after our lifetimes end," she said. "There's never been a situation quite like this."
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Who Is Miles Taylor? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...anonymous-miles-taylor.html trump homeland security
shared by hannahcarter11 on 29 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Miles Taylor, who revealed on Wednesday that he was the anonymous author of a New York Times Op-Ed article in 2018 that was critical of President Trump, is a lifelong Republican whose service as a senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration led him to endorse former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, for president this year.
  • Mr. Taylor anonymously described what he called Mr. Trump’s “amorality,” writing that he witnessed the president’s dysfunctional behavior as part of a “quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first.”
  • Mr. Taylor was frequently in meetings with top White House officials and sometimes with the president.
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  • Taylor served as a national security adviser on the committee and was a leading contributor to the task force report on combating terrorist and foreign fighter travel, which the committee released in 2015.
  • He faced criticism from some of the company’s employees because of his role in the administration when Ms. Nielsen helped enable the separation of migrant children from their families at the border.
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Amy Coney Barret - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...election-us-2020-54303848 Politics Trump Senate
shared by dytonka on 29 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump - who as sitting president gets to select nominees - reportedly once said he was "saving her" for this moment: when elderly Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and a vacancy on the nine-member court arose.
  • Mr Trump has succeeded in tipping the court make-up even further to the right, just ahead of the presidential election, when he could lose power.
  • However, her links to a particularly conservative Christian faith group, People of Praise, have been much discussed in the US press. LGBT groups have flagged the group's network of schools, which have guidelines stating a belief that sexual relations should only happen between heterosexual married couples.
  • dytonka on 29 Oct 20
     
    Trump's supreme court pick
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