August 12, 2020

Behind the scenes of the Biden-Harris event

https://twitter.com/douglasemhoff/status/1293649718912913414

August 11, 2020

Nice Lincoln Project ad. "Kamala. It's time. Let's go."

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1293288202502103041

August 11, 2020

I (still) believe the president, and in the president (satire) by George Conway

I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be “no religion, no anything,” and he would confiscate all guns, “immediately and without notice.” He would “abolish” “our great,” “beautiful suburbs,” not to mention “the American way of life.” There would be “no windows, no nothing” in buildings.


I believe it’s normal for the president to say “Yo Semites” and “Yo Seminites,” “Thigh Land,” “Minne-a-napolis,” “toe-tally-taria-tism,” “Thomas Jeffers” and “Ulyss-eus S. Grant.” I believe it’s Biden who’s cognitively impaired.

I believe Rep. John Lewis made a “big mistake” not attending the president’s inauguration. I believe the president has done more for Blacks than any other president — perhaps even Abraham Lincoln, who “did good” although the “end result” was “questionable,” and certainly more than Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which hasn’t “worked out” so well.

I believe absentee voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is good, and that mail-in voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is totally different, and bad — and will result in “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election” in history. Except in Florida, where absentee and mail-in voting are the same and both good, “because Florida has got a great Republican governor.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/10/i-still-believe-president-president/?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-f-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans



I could only post an excerpt but if you can , go read the whole thing.

August 10, 2020

Heavy winds in Iowa

https://twitter.com/WxKanost/status/1292875141777694722


https://twitter.com/WxKanost/status/1292884864874815488


https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1292898789649461248

August 10, 2020

Do we even need the Republican Party? - Jennifer Rubin

Opinion by
Jennifer Rubin
Columnist
August 10, 2020 at 12:56 p.m. EDT



In anticipation of President Trump’s loss in November, there is a cottage industry of speculation about the fate of the post-Trump Republican Party. The New York Times’s David Brooks pines for a Republican Party without racism, anti-government animus or unbridled faith in free markets. (The technical term for that might be “the Democratic Party.”) It would be refreshing to see the Republican Party cast off its obsession with old white men in favor of “a cross-racial alliance among working-class whites, working-class Hispanics and some working-class Blacks.” That, however, supposes Hispanic and Black voters have no memory of years of racism and xenophobia, and that the party’s heavily White support is based on something other than racial resentment. Both propositions are questionable.

A Republican Party that does not depend on White grievance and cultural resentment (leading to incessant whining that its members are victims of everything from Facebook to climate scientists to immigrants) and does not depend on what Brooks aptly describes as “an anti-government zombie Reaganism long after Reagan was dead and even though the nation’s problems were utterly different from what they were when he was alive” would frankly not have much to say. After you strip away those two failed themes, what’s left?

We need a two-party system, but we do not have a two-ideology political culture if the price of admission is a reality-based, decent, inclusive and constitutionally respectful ideology. If there is to be, as I hope, a grand coalition from center right to center left that generally defends constitutional government, curbs on the excesses of the free market, globalization with a safety net, responsible international leadership and a determination to root out systemic racism, I am not certain what that leaves to the opposition. On the left, it might be Sanders-style socialism. But on the right?

Trump cultists and the proponents of zombie-libertarianism continue to drive the party into the ground, relegating it to a regional party of dead-enders. Maybe the real question is not what the Republican Party will believe and who will support it, but whether we need it at all. Perhaps there is no morally, politically and intellectually decent party of the right to be had.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/10/do-we-even-need-republican-party/?hpid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-e-right%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans


The answer is no, of course but seeing as how about 30% of America is composed of horrible people, I don't think Trumpism/ the hard right is going away.

August 8, 2020

Pelosi and Schumer joint statement

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1292240175104434177

Hard to see the political upside of a payroll tax cut/suspension for Trump now. It’ll take months to show much if any impact; it lacks support from his own party; it hands Dems an easy weapon to say he’s imperiling Social Security while he’s already in the penalty box w/ seniors.

NEW: Pelosi and Schumer issue a joint statement dismissing Trump’s executive orders as “unworkable, weak and narrow policy announcements to slash the unemployment benefits that millions desperately need and endanger seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.”

August 7, 2020

New at Cook Political: 5 more House ratings change today

https://twitter.com/redistrict/status/1291718992378449925?s=21


New at @CookPolitical: five more House rating changes today, including four in Democrats' direction - and two veteran House Rs moving into our Toss Up column.


#AZ06 Rep. David Schweikert (R) and #MO02 Rep. Ann Wagner (R) represent near-100% suburban districts where President Trump's numbers have tanked since 2016.

That these districts would be Toss Ups in 2020 would have been semi-unthinkable at the beginning of the decade.

August 6, 2020

Joy Reid just said that Trump played "Live and Let Die"

before a campaign event in Ohio today. What a disgusting, sociopathic pos.

August 5, 2020

Trump's Postmaster General is trying to triple the postage rates on election ballots.

https://twitter.com/zachdcarter/status/1291085208733855745

Important piece from
@PatrickMRucker
. Trump's new Postmaster General is trying to nearly triple the postage rate on election ballots that states mail to voters. It's a naked attempt to restrict voting by mail.

https://library.thecapitolforum.com/docs/472hnf4jwkhq




Zach Carter
@zachdcarter
States pay 20 cents for every ballot they send to voters. Raising that price to 55 cents would dramatically increase costs at a time when state budgets are being hammered.


Zach Carter
zachdcarter.
@PatrickMRucker
's reporting makes it very clear that all of the self-imposed dysfunction Trump has been creating at the Post Office is about disrupting the election. The GOP has always used voter suppression tactics at the state level, but this is petty dictator stuff.



A poll tax.

August 5, 2020

Republicans Aid Kanye West's Bid to Get on the 2020 Ballot

At least four people involved in the effort to get Kanye West’s name before voters in several states have G.O.P. connections, renewing questions about the aim of his campaign.

By Danny Hakim and Maggie Haberman
At least four people who have been active in Republican politics are linked to Kanye West’s attempt to get on the presidential ballot this year. The connection raises questions about the aims of the entertainer’s effort and whether it is regarded within the G.O.P. as a spoiler campaign that could aid President Trump, even as those close to Mr. West have expressed concerns about his mental health as he enters the political arena.

One operative, Mark Jacoby, is an executive at a company called Let the Voters Decide, which has been collecting signatures for the West campaign in three states. Mr. Jacoby was arrested on voter fraud charges in 2008 while he was doing work for the California Republican Party, and he later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.


New York Magazine reported Monday evening on the campaign’s links to two other people with partisan ties. One is Gregg Keller, the former executive director of the American Conservative Union, who has been listed as a contact for the campaign in Arkansas. Mr. Keller, who did not respond to a message seeking comment, is a Missouri-based strategist. He was under consideration to be Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2015, a role that was ultimately filled by Corey Lewandowski, according to a former campaign official.

Another person linked to the West campaign is Chuck Wilton, who is listed as a convention delegate for Mr. Trump from Vermont and as an elector with the West operation who could potentially cast an Electoral College vote for Mr. West. Mr. Wilton could not be reached. He and his wife, Wendy, a Trump appointee at the United States Department of Agriculture, have been political supporters of the president. She hung up immediately when called at her office.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/us/politics/kanye-west-president-republicans.html

Kanye West has officially submitted signatures to appear on the ballot in Wisconsin, arguably the most important state on the presidential map — and those signatures were dropped off by an experienced GOP operative.

Lane Ruhland, who a local reporter recorded as she headed in to drop off the signatures that would qualify West for his presidential bid in Wisconsin on Tuesday, is one of a handful of GOP election lawyers in the state — and a former legal counsel for the state Republican Party.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akzy3b/a-well-connected-gop-strategist-is-helping-kanye-west-get-on-the-ballot-in-wisconsin