State Senate Republicans are leaving in droves. What it means for NY and their constituents

ALBANY – For years, Republicans maintained their grip on the New York Senate, hanging on to their last bastion of power in a blue state that kept getting bluer.

They ceded control to Democrats at the start of this year. Then came the exodus.

As of Wednesday, eight of the 23 current Senate Republicans have declined to run for re-election or are seeking another office in 2020, the next year their seats are on the ballot.

The rash of Republican retirements has made the already difficult task of regaining the Senate majority seem gargantuan, especially since six of the eight soon-to-be-open districts have a Democratic enrollment edge.

And to make things even more difficult, Senate Republicans have struggled to raise money since losing the majority, reporting about $300,000 in their main fundraising account earlier this month, far less than the $1.8 million reported by their Democratic counterparts in July.

The election battle will have significant implications on any number of policy issues in New York.


When Democrats took control of the Senate this year, they successfully passed many bills that had been blocked by Republicans for years, including major reforms to the election and cash-bail systems and a measure allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for driver's licenses.

"It's a struggle," Senate Minority Leader John Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, said last week of the coming election cycle. "It's a battle.



https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2019/12/19/senate-gopers-leaving-droves-what-means-ny-and-voters/2668262001/

Sanders calls for vaping industry shutdown, then walks it back

GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa — For a moment — before his campaign almost immediately walked it back — Bernie Sanders appeared to call Saturday for the vaping industry to be “shut down.”

Responding to a question about the youth vaping epidemic at a town hall meeting here, the Vermont senator said, “The answer is, I think we shut down the industry if they’re causing addiction and if the evidence is that people are getting sick as a result or inhaling a lot of bad stuff.”

Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ longtime political adviser, told POLITICO following the town hall that Sanders was “certainly not talking about shutting down the industry tomorrow.” He said Sanders wants more study and regulation of the industry to ensure that it is safe and that “the federal government needs to act strongly in those areas.”

Still, Sanders’ strident rhetoric was sure to both please many public health advocates and further infuriate corporate America.



https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/01/04/bernie-sanders-vaping-shutdown-093780

The generals were never in positions to keep Trump "in check".

They would have faced court-martial. That bullshit was simply the excuse of the Republican establishment and Stein voters.

Officials 'Stunned' Trump Took Most Extreme Option

Comments

“In the chaotic days leading to the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander, top American military officials put the option of killing him — which they viewed as the most extreme response to recent Iranian-led violence in Iraq — on the menu they presented to President Trump,” the New York Times reports.

“They didn’t think he would take it. In the wars waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable.”

“After initially rejecting the Suleimani option on Dec. 28 and authorizing airstrikes on an Iranian-backed Shia militia group instead, a few days later Mr. Trump watched, fuming, as television reports showed Iranian-backed attacks on the American Embassy in Baghdad… By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned.”




https://politicalwire.com/2020/01/04/officials-stunned-trump-took-most-extreme-option/

Democratic Party Activists May Be Cooling On Warren And Warming To Biden

In my last round of interviews with Democratic activists in early-primary states, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, at long last, seemed to be getting traction. Forty-eight percent (14 of 29 activists I interviewed) said they were either supporting her or considering supporting her. However, the most recent results suggest that has changed. Activists still haven’t coalesced around any one candidate, but former Vice President Joe Biden has made gains in this survey.

This is now the seventh installment of my series about the preferences of Democratic activists in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and Washington, DC.1 I’ve been interviewing early-state activists on who they are committed to — or considering supporting — in 2020 as part of my upcoming book, which will look at how the Democratic Party has changed since 2016. In addition to finding out about their candidate preferences, I’ve been asking these activists who they thought other Democrats in their community might be leaning toward and who they don’t want to see as the nominee.

Thirty-one activists responded to my latest survey, and 18 of them have declared their support for a candidate, up from 15 of 29 activists in October. Only one activist I interviewed switched their allegiance from one active candidate to another since the last round.2 However, one of the newly committed activists was actually recommitting to a candidate she had backed in a previous round: former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro. (She withdrew her support in October when she felt his campaign was going nowhere, but she’s now backing him again, as she feels he has a strong platform and is impressed that he is “unapologetically progressive.”)

Meanwhile, Sen. Amy Klobuchar has picked up her first two committed supporters in this round. One of them was previously undecided, and the other had previously been backing former Rep. Beto O’Rourke. One of Klobuchar’s new supporters cited her Midwestern connections and her “moderate, pragmatic” style as a reason for supporting her, adding that Klobuchar was also appealing because she was “plain-spoken and direct [and a] good communicator.”



https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democratic-party-activists-may-be-cooling-on-warren-and-warming-to-biden/

TX-28: Democratic Congressman Cuellar endorses Trump's drone strike

LAREDO, TX (KGNS) - Congressman Henry Cuellar has spoken out about the death of the Iranian leader.

In a statement sent to KGNS, it reads in part:

"There is no doubt the record of Major General Gassim Suleimani proves he was an egregious and dangerous military leader.

Suleimani is responsible for the death of thousands of innocent civilians and threatened our national security."

Cuellar goes on to say, "the death of Suleimani could diffuse the power of the Quds Force and is a necessary step in combating the threat of Iran.

The administration should work with congress to ensure we continue to protect our national security and international interests."



https://www.kgns.tv/content/news/Congressman-Cuellar-speaks-on-death-of-Iranian-leader-566709281.html

Bonus Tweet of the Day

Nine States Face Economic Contraction, Most Since 2009 Crisis

Nine U.S. states’ economies are expected to slide into contraction within six months -- the most since the financial crisis ended more than a decade ago, according to the latest projections from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

West Virginia’s economy is forecast to shrink the most, while a decline in neighboring Pennsylvania is anticipated to be the most severe since May 2009 during the tail-end of the Great Recession, figures released this week show. A faltering economic outlook in coming months would likely cast a shadow over President Donald Trump’s re-election bid.

Delaware, Montana and Oklahoma are still expected to face shrinking economies in the next six months, as predicted in the analysis for the prior month. But the list of states was expanded to include contractions on the horizon for Vermont, New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut. The bank no longer expects Alaska to post negative growth.

The forecast puts the number of states at risk of slipping into contraction at the highest since July 2009, the data show.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-02/nine-states-face-economic-contraction-most-since-2009-crisis?fbclid=IwAR07A5HNL6sH5tXs9Il7bzP-nU_2_UBqf2gMSFgwpyrXoz9saNPp-mk-FOU

Selective Service website crashed by people worrying about being drafted to fight in Iran war

President Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani has young men in America worried about being drafted for a new war in the Middle East, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Federal law requires all men aged 18 to 25 to register with the Selective Service System, but there has not been a draft since 1973.

“Historically, only men have been eligible for the draft. But the question of whether to register women has gained traction in recent years, as women have taken on broader roles within the military,” The Times noted. “In 2015, the Pentagon opened up all combat jobs to women. Last year, a federal judge in Houston ruled that excluding women from the draft was unconstitutional.”

The newspaper said fears of a new war are “spiking anxiety among many Americans.”


https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/selective-service-website-crashed-by-people-worrying-about-being-drafted-to-fight-in-iran-war/

Two endorsements highlight the quandary for Democrats as they look for a nominee

INDEPENDENCE, Iowa — Endorsements in presidential campaigns often have little impact, but sometimes they do help to clarify priorities and choices as voters decide whom to support. That's the case of the endorsement former vice president Joe Biden got last week from a first-term House member from Iowa.

Biden has bigger names on his roster of supporters than Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D-Iowa). He has the backing of the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential nominee, former secretary of state John F. Kerry. In Iowa, he has support from former governor (and former Obama administration agriculture secretary) Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie. But Finkenauer’s endorsement is important for reasons beyond her own personal political standing or national recognition.

Her support for Biden, paired with the earlier endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), crystallizes a strategic dilemma many Democratic voters are wrestling with a month ahead of the Iowa caucuses as they search for a candidate they believe can defeat President Trump in November: the choice between mobilization and persuasion.

The question still unresolved is if there is a candidate among the many running who can energize the party’s liberal grass-roots base to assure maximum turnout from key Democratic constituencies, while also being able to reach more-moderate swing voters to win back areas that Trump converted from blue to red in 2016. And if there is no candidate who can do both, which is the better path to victory?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/two-endorsements-highlight-the-quandary-for-democrats-as-they-look-for-a-nominee/2020/01/04/ff493d84-2f11-11ea-9b60-817cc18cf173_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter