"Live from his basement, Joe Biden tries to win over donors in the middle of a pandemic" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, April 26, 2020
WASHINGTON – A politician known for backslapping and handshaking retail politics has been learning to connect with voters — and just as importantly raise money — in virtual spaces at a time when businesses are shuttering, the ranks of the unemployed are surging, and families are bracing for an uncertain future.
With each passing day we live more and more in a Matrix, and the loot is ju$t as important as voters (ha!).
“Fortunes are being lost by the minute. How do you call someone up that just laid off all their staff or stopped construction mid-project and ask for money?” said Florida plaintiff attorney and top Biden fund-raiser John Morgan. “It’s like going to a funeral and asking, ‘Would you like to dance?’”
That's a good question. It is untoward at bottom and it doesn't even matter anymore.
So far, campaign aides assure, the money is still coming in as Biden tries to close a major gap with President Trump by holding virtual events like Thursday night’s “A Fabulous Evening with Vice President Joe Biden.” The Zoom fund-raiser, which included actor Kristin Chenoweth, singer Melissa Etheridge and tennis legend Billie Jean King, drew 670 people and brought in more than $1.1 million dollars, according to one of the hosts.
NICE!
I'm so happy that pontificating ¢elebrities helped rai$e so much campaign loot for Joe when Americans are out of work and businesses are going under.
Didn't the Democrats learn from the last time?
March marked Biden’s best fund-raising month, as he pulled in $46.7 million, more than Trump’s $13.6 million. Biden has seen two recent major bumps, according to his campaign. One came as Democrats coalesced around him after his South Carolina victory and he racked up a slew of victories on Super Tuesday; another when Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders conceded the primary and endorsed him, with former president Obama and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren following after.
“The pandemic is front and center, and there are people who are suffering from this, psychologically, physically,” said Sarah Morgenthau, a Biden fund-raiser and member of his national finance committee, “but at the same time, because people are spending more time at home and seeing how things are playing out, there is a lot of interest and a lot of excitement on the financial side.”
OMFG!
This is sickening, sickening stuff.
The American people are on bended knee, wounded to their hear and souls, and the ruling cla$$ crowd of flunkies is happy about the bailout loot(?) in the form of campaign contributions!
Still, Trump had much more cash on hand at the end of March: $98.5 million compared with Biden’s $26.4 million. The gap widens when you add in the money of their respective national parties. Trump and the Republican National Committee ended the first three months of the year with a total of more than $175 million cash on hand, accounting for debts owed, compared to the estimated net of $57 million combined for Biden and the Democratic National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.
As you can see, MONEY is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than those VOTERS who were tossed a bone at the beginning of this piece of $citte article.
The coronavirus outbreak presents major challenges for Biden. He raised most of his March funds during the primaries in the first two weeks, with donations dropping off as he went virtual.
Typically in the crucial spring months ahead of a presidential election, Steve Shurtleff, speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and a Biden surrogate, would be making phone calls to voters, raising money, and recruiting House candidates. Instead, this spring he’s spent most of his time working with the governor and state agencies to help implement stay-at-home orders and deploy the National Guard.
Some state and congressional candidates have fired off e-mails to update supporters about what they are doing to help with the crisis and what people should be doing, he said, such as staying home and drinking plenty of fluids, “but no one is straight up asking for money,” Shurtleff said. Because of that, he added, “Fund-raising is going to be a big issue for both Democrats and Republicans all the way down the ballot.”
Money isn’t everything in a political campaign.
Then what they hell was they point of the first half of this pos article?
Trump spent far less than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, and Biden clinched the Democratic nomination after he started the year with less cash on hand than most Democratic rivals and was sorely outspent throughout the primary.
Ah, the Biden theft and its narrative.
Republicans could use their money advantage to ramp up their attacks on Biden over the Ukraine and China business dealings of his son, Hunter, and a new allegation by a former staffer, Tara Reade, who said Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. Biden denies the allegation, but Trump is facing extensive criticism as well over his own business dealings and those of his children during his time in office, as well as accusations of sexual assault and misconduct by more than a dozen women, and political strategists said there is only so much that advertising can do to change voters’ perceptions about two candidates who have spent so much of their lives in the public eye.
That paragraph is an incredible piece of work. The stellar Globe reporter quickly skips over the Tara Reade allegations (it was rape), just like the Globe did earlier. Apparently, they don't believe the women in his case and are willing to completely overlook his perversions and dementia.
As for the President of the United States, the paragraph quickly pivoted from the Biden allegations to lay into Trump in one of the worst well-worn tactics of diversion I have ever seen.
“This election will be a relatively strange one,” said Republican strategist Dennis Darnoi of Michigan. “It really is going to be a referendum on Donald Trump, and there aren’t that many people who are neutral on Donald Trump.”
If there is an election, he is done. Dead candidate walking. Either by voter's will (sad that so many Americans would disregard qualifications and vote for doddering Old Joe) or by massive vote fraud (more likely with the mailed-in ballot).
Where money will matter is in efforts to reach absentee voters and increase turnout in key battleground states, particularly as the pandemic could make many people afraid to go to the polls, Darnoi said.
We aren't going to the polls, and I won't be in any case.
In Michigan, where Trump has little room for error after winning the state with fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016, Republicans have a huge financial advantage, but Biden will be helped by outside groups and donors, such as the Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed by disaffected Republicans, and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who said he would transfer $18 million in funds from his failed 2020 presidential bid to the Democratic National Committee.
“That will help mitigate the deficiencies, but [Biden] will definitely be at a disadvantage and the pandemic doesn’t help,” Darnoi said.
Biden’s campaign is betting his message will matter over money. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the new technology of his era — radio — to produce weekly “fireside chats” to inspire and rally Americans during the Great Depression and World War II. Biden has attempted to leverage the Internet to conduct his own fireside chats, fund-raisers, and speeches, although the earliest ones were plagued by grainy video and technical glitches.
Are you sure Joe wasn't glitching?
You know, just when you think you have seen the Globe staff sink as low as they can go, they outdo themselves.
Comparing Joe Biden's basement bloopers to FDR's fireside chats is a LAUGHER!
On the other hand, Trump's fireside chats are now a liability (or so I am told).
This isn't objective reporting, this is pure propaganda.
In front of pearl white bookcases, family photographs, and the folded American flag that flew over the Capitol in honor of his late son Beau, Biden has sought to break through one interview at a time, making appeals for empathy and unity in a time of crisis and critiquing Trump’s response to the outbreak.
“Your strength is in traveling around the country and connecting with people ... looking them in the eye, a hug, a handshake, especially in this crucial months before the election and you can’t do any of that,” CNN’s Brooke Baldwin asked him in March. “Right now, Mr. Vice President, does that worry you?” “No, it doesn’t worry me, the thing that worries me is whether we get this under control,” Biden said of the pandemic.
Biden’s personality helps make even digital events feel intimate, said Malcolm Kenyatta, a state representative in Pennsylvania who organized a virtual happy hour to help target young voters. The two talked climate change and student debt, as Kenyatta sipped on whiskey and Biden on Gatorade.
“I am getting texts from people, calls,” he said. "They say, 'It is such a relief, finally someone is speaking facts, not sugarcoating things, showing empathy.’”
Another Biden fund-raiser this month with California Senator Kamala Harris brought in $150,000 and drew 52 people, including TV writer and producer Norman Lear and Dee Dee Myers, who was White House press secretary during the Clinton administration.
Related:
"Wynn Resorts Ltd., the casino operator coping with a sexual-harassment scandal tied to its former chief executive officer, named three new board members — all of them women. Dee Dee Myers, president Bill Clinton’s former spokeswoman; Betsy Atkins, a corporate-governance advocate; and Wendy Webb, former investor-relations chief at Walt Disney Co., were appointed to the Wynn Resorts board, according to a company filing Tuesday....."
That's what the Clinton $kank Dee Dee Myers is up to now.
"Now, it’s a different way of campaigning” Biden said during the event when pressed on the new reality. “It’s going to be this way for a little while.”
Until Bill Gates has his microchipped vaccine ready, right?
--more--"
Related:
"Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden renewed his party unification efforts Monday with bookend endorsements from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the leader of the House progressive caucus that sometimes battles the speaker. The twin announcements from Pelosi and Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington highlight Biden’s effort to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election, when tensions between establishment Democrats and the party’s progressive flank hobbled Hillary Clinton. Pelosi is a face of the Democratic establishment and boasts perhaps the widest network across the party’s wealthiest donors. Jayapal is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members want sweeping expansion of the federal government’s role in the economy, notably through a single-payer “Medicare for All” insurance plan that Biden and Pelosi do not favor. The two women reflected those varied approaches Monday as they explained their common conclusion that a Biden administration is the best chance for Democrats to advance a liberal agenda."
BREAKING: Hillary Clinton becomes latest Democrat to endorse Joe Biden
Evil witch!
"Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is advising Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on economic policy, including its plans to revive the US economy after the coronavirus pandemic, according to five people familiar with his involvement. The Obama and Clinton administration veteran’s role will likely roil progressives who view his past work on the 2009 recovery as too favorable to big banks. That’s awkward for the Biden campaign at a time when it is trying to win the trust of former supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Summers’ involvement in Biden’s campaign, however, would likely reassure Wall Street that Biden is not moving too far to the left from the centrist positions that earned him his establishment support."
That is the $ame Larry Summers who is of the opinion that electronic signatures are needed to protect our democracy, and who is also one of the architects of all the economic destruction with a hand in it all through the years as he has worked his way through the revolving door before he became a tax reformer and health and labor nut.
That's what progre$$ives stand for these days.
Also see:
"State and local governments across the United States have obtained about 30 million doses of a malaria drug touted by President Trump to treat patients with the coronavirus, despite warnings from doctors that more research is needed. At least 22 states and Washington, D.C., secured shipments of the drug, hydroxychloroquine, according to information compiled from state and federal officials by the Associated Press. Sixteen of those states were won by Trump in 2016, although five of them, including North Carolina and Louisiana, are now led by Democratic governors. Supporters say having a supply on hand makes sense in case the drug is shown to be effective against the pandemic and to ensure a steady supply for people who need it for other conditions like lupus, but health specialists worry that having the drug easily available at a time of heightened public fear could make it easier to misuse it. The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned doctors against prescribing the drug, hydroxychloroquine, for treating the coronavirus outside of hospitals or research settings because of reports of serious side effects, including dangerous irregular heart rhythms and death among patients. It’s the latest admonition against the drug that Trump mentioned 17 times in various appearances, touting its potential despite his own health advisors telling him it is unproven. Oklahoma spent $2 million to buy the drugs, and Utah and Ohio have spent hundreds of thousands on purchases. The rest of the cities and states received free shipments from drug companies or the US government over the last month. Ohio received a large donation from a local company. Several states including New York, Connecticut, Oregon, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas received donations of the medication from a private company based in New Jersey called Amneal Pharmaceutical. Florida was given 1 million doses from Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical."
Related: Trump Poisons COVID-19 Cure
The Globe is of the opinion, as repre$ented by Mark Lampert, founder and CEO of BVF Partners; Jeremy Levin, chairman of BIO and chairman and CEO of Ovid Therapeutic; Michel Vounatsos, CEO of Biogen; and John Maraganore, CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, that the biopharmaceutical industry is working on a counterattack against the COVID-19 pandemic and is cautiously optimistic about discovering drugs to treat the coronavirus.
The problems, according to Dr. Michael Rosenblatt, the chief medical officer of Flagship Pioneering who previously served as chief medical officer of Merck and as dean of Tufts University School of Medicine, are that the restrictions on coronavirus patents would restrict research.
"Reports that Trump may fire Health and Human Services leader are ‘fake news,’ president says" by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Josh Dawsey Washington Post, April 26, 2020
WASHINGTON — President Trump pushed back Sunday evening on reports the White House is considering whether to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar as ‘‘Fake News.’’
The Washington Post, along with other news outlets, reported early Sunday that White House officials are discussing possible replacements for Azar as frustrations have grown over his handling of the coronavirus crisis earlier this year, and the uproar that followed his removal of a top vaccine official in his agency last week.
WaCompo trying to get him removed?
Five aides familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation told The Post that the president had not yet weighed in. Trump did that publicly Sunday evening.
‘‘Reports that H.H.S. Secretary @AlexAzar is going to be ‘‘fired’’ by me are Fake News,’’ he tweeted at 5:53 p.m. ‘‘The Lamestream Media knows this, but they are desperate to create the perception of chaos & havoc in the minds of the public.’’
Mika Brzezinski said it is their job.
During the past several weeks, Azar has rarely appeared at the daily White House coronavirus news briefings and has been largely sidelined from the response. He oversaw that effort until Feb. 26, when he was replaced by Vice President Mike Pence amid anger over the continued lack of coronavirus testing and conflicting messages from health officials about the threat of the virus, which has claimed more than 54,000 Americans’ lives.
His agency remains responsible for crucial aspects of the pandemic response, such as leading the search for treatments and vaccines and distributing $100 billion worth of relief to hospitals that was allocated by Congress.
One senior administration official with knowledge of the discussions said Trump has no deep affection for Azar but is unlikely to change secretaries as the coronavirus continues to rage. There is also concern about having a nomination fight in an election year on an issue — health care — that many Trump advisers see as a political weakness.
The Wall Street Journal and Politico first reported discussions about Azar’s possible removal Saturday.
Politico is a WaCompo appendage, and it also serves as a conduit for the New York Times.
They are about as trustworthy as the American Free Press.
Azar has long had a tenuous relationship with many White House officials, including battles over the administration’s efforts to curb drug prices and his aggressive proposals to address the vaping crisis, which spurred backlash from the president’s base. Azar’s conflict with his Medicare chief, Seema Verma, grew so acrimonious late last year that Trump and Pence intervened, but presidential and White House frustrations with Azar has been exacerbated by the pandemic and turmoil at the health agency.
Trump and White House aides were frustrated at recent reports that Azar’s efforts to warn the president about the coronavirus in January went unheeded.....
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Maybe they could impeach him again:
"Remote vote? In Trump shadow, stay-home Congress eyes change" by Lisa Mascaro Associated Press, April 26, 2020
WASHINGTON — Congress wants its voice back.
With no real plan to reopen Capitol Hill any time soon, the coronavirus shutdown poses an existential crisis that’s pushing Congress ever so reluctantly toward the 21st century option of remote legislating from home.
“It’s the ability to be an equal branch of government,” said Representative Katie Porter, a freshman Democrat from California.
Divisions are fierce, but so too is the sense of what is being lost. Every day lawmakers shelter at home, their public role is being visibly diminished. While they are approving record sums of virus aid, they are ceding authority to oversee the effort and tackle next steps.
It’s an imbalance of power for all to see: President Trump’s daily public briefings without a robust response from Capitol Hill, though the White House is also discussing changing its format to curtail his role.
“This is a time where oversight is really important,” said Representative Derek Kilmer, a Washington Democrat.
The pandemic “begs for Congress’s engagement, virtual or otherwise,” he said.
Changing the rules to allow lawmakers to cast votes or hold hearings from home would be unprecedented in House and Senate history. The Constitution requires lawmakers be “present” for most action.
Some lawmakers want to stick with tradition; others are ready for change. A vocal band of conservatives insists Congress must reopen now, despite public health warnings, echoing Trump’s push to end the shutdown. Others have no interest in returning to the crowded Capitol complex until it’s safe.
They should be scorned!
How dare they stand for the Constitution and against fiat fa$ci$m by leader$hip?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said Sunday on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union’’ that she’s ‘‘all for doing the remote voting by proxy.” She shelved a proposal this past week after Republicans objected. Once resistant to what she called “Congress by Zoom” meeting, she tapped a bipartisan task force to present fresh ideas.
Was that the program where she scolded Jake Tapper (who took it) like the $kank, ice-cream insulting eliti$t that she is?
In the Senate, majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, rejected a GOP remote vote proposal. He expects Congress to return May 4, as planned, but House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that he would like to “have committees working.’’
The reluctance to change is leaving the legislative branch behind after even the tradition-bound Supreme Court announced it would hear oral arguments by teleconference as stay-home rules reorder civic life.
“It’s a huge can of worms,” said Sarah Binder, a professor at George Washington University. She said the pandemic provokes a question far beyond the logistics of working remotely. Among them: Is it safe to return to Capitol Hill? Can you be “present” if you appear on a computer screen? But she said, “They need a solution if they’re not going to be able to come back.”
You mean they are never coming back?
Time to DI$$OLVE CONGRE$$ and DRAIN the $WAMP for GOOD!!
No more Wa$hington D.C.!
Lawmakers say they can only do so much on conference calls and virtual town hall meetings as they assess $3 trillion in coronavirus aid and consider annual spending, defense, and other bills.
While the 100 senators can usually command attention on their own, the 435 rank-and-file House members have a harder time being heard.
Awww, it's about getting in the pre$$ and on camera for reelection purposes!
One prime opportunity is time allotted to lawmakers at committee hearings.
It may be just five minutes on C-SPAN, but for members of Congress, the committee means everything. It’s their chance to make a difference.
PFFFFFFFFT!
Porter knows firsthand what’s being lost with Congress away.
As the pandemic emerged, she wrote a letter asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide free virus testing as the country scrambled to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“They blew us off,” she said, but when CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield appeared before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Porter had her moment.
In a video that went viral, she grilled Redfield on whether he would commit to invoking authority under federal law to declare pandemic testing free.
The term "viral" in reference to a video is now INSENSITIVE and INSULTINGLY OFFENSIVE!
He said yes.
“It wasn’t until we got Dr. Redfield in front on me, and I had my five minutes with the cameras on him, in front of the American people, that I was able to get an answer,” she said, but under House rules, committees usually need members to be physically present to meet. While several committees have been conducting briefing calls with key administration officials, it’s mostly out of public view.
So we can't see them breaking social distancing rules, huh?
Related: Redfield Warns of Relapse
Better get him back up in front of the committee!
The House Small Business Committee confirmed a private call this past week with the head of the Small Business Administration running the coronavirus paycheck program. The Appropriations Committee held one with Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has had calls with other committees.
Did they ask him why it was giving all the small business loot to big bu$ine$$es and richer concerns?
The House Oversight and Reform Committee was set for a briefing with the Census Bureau’s director about curtailing the 2020 population count during the pandemic. Billions of federal dollars are at stake, but the public could not watch.
Yeah, it's our money but we can't know which Congre$$crooks stole it!
Still, some say the only way for Congress to work is for lawmakers to return to Washington during the pandemic. Conservative House Freedom Caucus members rallied this past week to reopen the Capitol. Key GOP senators agree. “If COVID-19 requires Congress to act, then it requires Congress to convene,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who self-quarantined last month after sitting near another GOP senator who tested positive for the virus.
As the House considers options, one advocate for remote legislating is majority leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, who enjoys FaceTime with his grandkids and suggests Congress could do the same. Hoyer acknowledged it is difficult for Congress to change. During the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, the House convened to vote, but this is an “extraordinary circumstance,’’ he said. He expects an update this coming week.
It's no different at all, a$$hole, and I'm so glad he gets to spend FaceTime with his family while living off the taxpayer dole.
We are all out of work because of the likes of him, but oh well!
A$$hole!
Porter warns that without changes the 535-member legislative branch is being distilled to its most visible leaders — ‘‘a four-person Congress,” she said. “Technology is not disruptive to the Founders’ idea,” she said. “It’s limiting the technology that is consolidating power in a small number of people,’’ she said, ‘‘which is what they were worried about when they created the House of Representatives.”
--more--"
Ready for November?
"Support rising for mail voting amid pandemic, poll says" by Nicholas Riccardi and Hannah Fingerhut Associated Press, April 27, 2020
I suppose there is no agenda they won't lie about if it needs pushing.
WASHINGTON — Americans’ support for mail-in voting has jumped amid concerns about the safety of polling places during the coronavirus pandemic, but a wide partisan divide suggests President Trump’s public campaign against voting by mail may be resonating with his Republican backers.
A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to support their state conducting elections exclusively by mail, 47% to 29%.
Related: Americans Bulli$h on Economy
It's a bull$hit poll!
In 2018, about half as many Democrats were in favor, and there was little difference in the views of Democrats and Republicans on the question. The survey also found a partisan divide on support for no-excuse absentee voting, the system in place in most states, including almost all the top presidential battlegrounds, even as a majority of Americans say they favor that practice.
The increased partisanship in the debate over how America votes comes just as that question has been thrust into the forefront of American politics. As health officials warn about the risk of spreading the coronavirus at polling places, some in the Republican Party have tried to limit the expansion of mail voting, with Trump and others openly fretting that it may enable too many people to cast their ballots for the GOP to win in November.
They are worried about DEMOCRATIC FRAUD, and rightly so.
All states conduct elections differently, and only five states automatically mail ballots to every voter, but in response to the virus, some states — including Ohio on Tuesday — have shifted their primaries to virtually all-mail elections. On Monday, New York Democrats canceled their presidential primary, which had already been delayed until June 23.
What was that last one?
New York cancelled their primary?
WTF?
The Republican National Committee has been fighting some of those moves. Republicans successfully petitioned a New Mexico court to block the state from holding its June primary exclusively by mail, forcing the state to open some polling places and only send applications for absentee ballots to voters. The attorney general in Texas, a Republican, argued unsuccessfully in a legal case that the coronavirus should not be an automatically accepted excuse for people seeking absentee ballots in that state.
Most prominently, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature rebuffed a last-minute request to hold that state’s April 7 primary and state court election by mail. Democrats won a contested Supreme Court race, but not before shuttered polling locations left voters in long lines at polling places in Green Bay and Milwaukee, where only five of 183 stations were open, but the debates over the primaries may only be a preview of the partisan battles ahead if the virus is still forcing stay-at-home orders and social distancing in November.
That shit will still be with us, and they are sticking to the script.
The poll finds that 39% of Americans favor conducting all-mail elections, up from 19% in 2018. Another 40% are opposed, but even more, 48%, favor a move to voting only by mail if the coronavirus outbreak is ongoing in November.
The poll also shows 60% of Americans support allowing people to vote via absentee ballot without requiring them to give a reason if the outbreak is still happening. That includes 73% percent of Democrats and 46% of Republicans. Some 40% of Republicans are opposed.
The partisan differences could have a strong impact across the presidential battleground states. Five of the top seven swing states — Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — have divided government, and skirmishes over voting have already broken out in several. In some, there are signs that Democratic areas are moving faster than GOP ones to embrace mail voting.
In Wisconsin, Democrats have already started to bolster their mail voting operations for November. Reliably Democratic Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, will send every one of its 300,000 voters a request for an absentee ballot. Republicans, who have resisted a similar step statewide, acknowledge that Milwaukee’s move would put them at a disadvantage. “It makes winning Wisconsin harder,” said Andrew Hitt, chair of the state Republican Party, calling for intervention to “level the playing field.”
That is where the print ended, and it looks like he has lost Wisconsin then.
In Pennsylvania, Democratically led areas are eager to expand absentee voting, but Republicans seem less so. The second-most populous county in the state, the Democratic bastion of Allegheny, which includes Pittsburgh, is sending absentee ballot requests to all its voters in its June primary. The poll found roughly two-thirds of Republicans worried that voter fraud would be a major problem with all-mail voting. Two months ago, about as many described voter fraud as a major problem in US elections in general. Widespread voter fraud in mail-in voting is uncommon.
What evidence does the AP have for that last statement, or did it just come out of their a$$?
Brynn Alexander, 36, who just moved with her husband to military housing in Alabama, is one of those who worries about security. “How do you even identify that the mail got to the right person?” Alexander asked. She added that she favored exceptions for some, like her 70-year-old mother, but preferred votes at the polls. “It’s going to be better to make everybody feel confident with the results,” she said of in-person voting in the presidential election. “You don’t want one party or the other saying the other side cheated.”
The machines are far from great, but it's better than mail in. When you vote at the polls, we get exit polls and can check if the results match up with the official tally. That's gone with the mail-in ballot.
Meanwhile, only 29% of Democrats were worried about fraud being a major problem in an all-mail election, though another 41% described it as a minor problem. Rick Reinesch, a 59-year-old IT technician in Austin, Texas, said Republicans needlessly pump up worries about voter fraud. “It’s trying to kill a gnat with a sledgehammer,” he said.
Democrats feel that way because they will benefit from the massive electoral fraud.
Paul Miller, 81, of Carlisle, Pa, is wary of voting by mail. He is accustomed to going to the polls on Election Day. “I’m just not sold on mail-in voting,” said the Republican and retired factory worker, but Miller may bow to the reality that he shouldn’t be face-to-face with poll workers anytime soon and cast his vote by absentee. “I’m not dead set against mail,” Miller said. “I could be persuaded.”
I'll bet he votes Biden this time!
--more--"
It could all come down to, as it usually does, Florida:
"A high-stakes federal trial opened Monday that could allow hundreds of thousands of felons to regain the right to vote in Florida, a state expected to hold considerable sway in the November elections....."
Don’t look to the Supreme Court to protect the election; however, they will protect in$urance companies:
"The Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. Insurers are entitled to the money under a provision of the “Obamacare” health law that promised the companies a financial cushion for losses they might incur by selling coverage to people in the marketplaces created by the health care law, the justices said by an 8-1 vote. The program only lasted three years, but Congress inserted a provision in the Health and Human Services Department’s spending bills from 2015 to 2017 to limit payments under the “risk corridors” program. Both the Obama and Trump administrations had argued that the provision means the government has no obligation to pay, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the court that the congressional action was not sufficient to repeal the government’s commitment to pay."
Everybody is getting millions and billions except the out-of-work American people.
Maybe the election should just be CANCELLED like in New York:
"New York Board of Elections cancels Democratic presidential primary" by Stephanie Saul and Nick Corasaniti New York Times, April 27, 2020
New York officials canceled the state’s Democratic presidential primary Monday, calling the vote a beauty contest that the state can ill afford in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
How f**king fa$ci$t of them, and what a terrible precedent!
I hope they don't complain when Trump cancels the November elections due to the second, more ferocious, wave of COVID-19.
The move by Democrats on the New York State Board of Elections followed the decision by Senator Bernie Sanders to concede the Democratic presidential nomination to former vice president Joe Biden.
Officials had struggled with the decision, which was certain to anger some supporters of Sanders, but they ultimately concluded that the risk of spreading coronavirus was too great to justify holding an election with no real meaning.
PERFECT!
Yeah, YOUR VOTE MEANS NOTHING in an election that is a BEAUTY PAGENT!
That's the $tate of AmeriKan politics today!
Biden HASN'T EVEN CLINCHED the NOMINATION YET!
Just going to anoint the demented pervert, huh?
“Suppressing the Sanders vote in New York will again lead to attacks on the party across the nation and harm the volunteer effort that our group and others are building for Joe Biden,” said the group’s chairman, Larry Cohen, suggesting he will challenge the New York delegation.
A Bernie bro?
I've given up on Bernie. If he isn't willing to fight for his own candidacy, why should I give a f**k about him and his program?
It's the death knell for Progre$$ivi$m in this country, but we are going to get Soviet-style Communism complete with $ocietal de$truction.
With the decision, made during a telephone meeting by the two Democrats on the election board, New York became the first state to cancel its primary, only the latest major development in the shifting national electoral landscape. Officials said they had weighed the concerns of Sanders’s supporters but ultimately decided that canceling the election was necessary.
Despite arrangements to encourage absentee voting, polling places are expected to remain open in New York for the election.
Why would they remain open for an election that isn't going to happen?
WTF?!!
Douglas A. Kellner, a chairman of the elections board and a New York City lawyer who voted in favor of scrapping the primary, said, “Obviously the intent of the Legislature was not to have a primary election where there is no real contest.”
He just gave the Sanders voters the finger!
Sanders had said he was suspending his campaign April 8, and he subsequently endorsed Biden. In doing so, however, he expressed a desire to remain on ballots and collect delegates in an effort to leverage his influence to push the party platform to better reflect his progressive positions.
So much for that!
The Republican presidential primary in New York had already been called off in February when no other candidates other than President Trump qualified for the ballot.
Officials in Connecticut had also pushed for calling off that state’s primary, which has been rescheduled to Aug. 11.....
Let's just cancel the general election, too!
To be safe.
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They are going to regret having done that.
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NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and a political veteran who knows firsthand what it is like to compete against President Trump, threw her support behind Joe Biden on Tuesday, the latest party leader to make the case for returning the White House to Democratic hands in November. “I’ve been not only a colleague of Joe Biden’s, I’ve been a friend, and I can tell you I wish he were president right now but I can’t wait until he is — if all of us do our part to support the kind of person that we want back in the White House,” Clinton said on Tuesday afternoon during a virtual town hall-style event with Biden about the effect of the coronavirus on women. Accepting her support, Biden said: “I really appreciate your friendship. What a wonderful personal endorsement.” The Biden campaign had advertised that the event would feature a “special guest,” and on her Twitter account Tuesday, Clinton all but confirmed the endorsement as she disclosed that she would appear with Biden. As the woman who got closest to the White House, Clinton remains a singular figure in Democratic presidential politics, and a complicated one. Both beloved and blamed for her narrow loss to Trump in 2016, she retains a loyal and powerful constituency of supporters, many of whom have argued that Russian interference cost her the election. Her endorsement follows similar ones from Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, former president Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former vice president Al Gore, and Governor Jay Inslee of Washington. The fast and carefully orchestrated rollout of endorsements for Biden is a sign of the value that his campaign is putting on Democratic unity against Trump. Her reemergence in presidential politics also serves as an implicit reminder to the Democratic left about the dangers of a divided party. While a wide array of factors contributed to Clinton’s loss, one element was the refusal of some on the left to coalesce behind her candidacy against Trump."
(Blog editor's response to all that hogwash here)
Same to this guy:
"Former top advisers to Senator Bernie Sanders are teaming up on a surprising new venture to try to rally progressive support for former vice president Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign: a super PAC. Jeff Weaver, who served as Sanders’s campaign manager in 2016 and as a top adviser in 2020, is leading the effort, which will focus on mobilizing the base of Sanders supporters — young people, liberals Latinos, and “blue-collar progressives” — for Biden. Other top Sanders officials from the 2020 race who will be involved include: Chuck Rocha, a senior adviser who focused on Latino outreach; Tim Tagaris, who oversaw digital strategy and fund-raising; and Shelli Jackson, a California strategist for the campaign. Mark Longabaugh, who worked for Sanders in 2016 but left the 2020 campaign early on, is also part of the new group. Sanders has railed for years against super PACs, which can accept unlimited donations, emphasizing his reliance on millions of small contributions from supporters online to fuel his two presidential bids. “The senator is not supportive of super PACs. He is not supportive of this super PAC,” Weaver said in an interview Tuesday. “He certainly would prefer we had not done it through a super PAC. Each of us has to make our own decision about how to move forward.”
Now you know who were they DNC moles sabotaging his lame, lackluster effort.
"Weaver said that, given the short time frame until the general election, this was the most efficient way for the Sanders movement to “lock in some of the gains progressives have made” by electing Biden and ousting President Trump. Sanders, through a spokesman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new group. The group, whose paperwork was filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, will be called Future To Believe In PAC, a play on Sanders’s 2016 slogan. Weaver can be a polarizing figure in the Sanders orbit and the reaction from some former Sanders aides and supporters was negative. “Don’t give them a dime. Pass it on,” wrote the popular @PeopleforBernie Twitter account run by Sanders supporters. The new effort will not have access to Sanders’s vaunted e-mail list, Weaver said. Longabaugh was a top architect of the 2016 Sanders campaign but parted ways one week into the 2020 effort, issuing a public statement with two fellow consultants, Tad Devine and Julian Mulvey, that they were leaving “because we believe that Senator Sanders deserves to have media consultants who share his creative vision for the campaign.” The media firm eventually worked for Andrew Yang’s campaign. This is not the first time that an independent entity sprung out after Sanders ended a presidential campaign. In 2016, veterans of Sanders’s campaign formed a different outside group, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit called Our Revolution. Weaver was initially installed as president, a posting that caused an exodus of other alumni who had clashed with Weaver during that race. Weaver left the group in 2017, at which point Nina Turner, another top Sanders adviser and surrogate, took over. Our Revolution continued to support Sanders through 2020. With the new group, both halves of the title of Sanders’s post-campaign book in 2016, “Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In,” are now the names of entities that sprung out of his movement. The new effort is actually the second super PAC formed by a former top adviser to the Sanders campaign. Rocha recently also created Nuestro PAC, a super PAC dedicated to turning out Latino voters in the fall, using the same model and methods that the Sanders campaign used to win over such voters in the primaries."
How did you do in New York, Bern-man?
Related:
"Ohio held primaries Tuesday, contests that were postponed last month and changed to an almost entirely vote-by-mail process amid the coronavirus pandemic....."
Separated by a makeshift window, James Lewison of Columbus asked a question to Khadijah Ashe, a clerk for the Franklin County Board of Elections. (Joshua A. Bickel/The Columbus Dispatch via Associated Press) Joshua A. Bickel/The Columbus Dispatch via AP
I've seen enough and won't be showing up to the polls like in 2016, and I won't be mailing it in, either.
Also see:
Amy Klobuchar is Joe Biden’s best VP pick
The Globe argues that the Minnesota senator would boost Biden both ideologically and geographically.
"House drops plans to return to D.C.; Senate will vote Monday" by Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim Washington Post, April 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — House majority leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that the House was abandoning plans to meet next week, less than 24 hours after members were told to prepare to return May 4, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, said the change was made in light of advice from Congress’s attending physician and the continued spread of the virus in Washington and its suburbs.
‘‘The numbers in the District of Columbia are going up, not down,’’ he said.
As of Monday, city officials reported 3,994 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and 190 deaths of D.C. residents. Both figures have steadily increased in recent weeks. Maryland has reported more than 19,500 cases; Virginia, more than 13,500.
The decision to stay home stands in stark contrast to the plan from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who said the Senate will reconvene on Monday to confirm President Trump’s judicial nominees and to start work on a new coronavirus relief bill.
David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell, said his decision to return the Senate to Washington would stand. He declined to answer whether McConnell consulted with health officials.
‘‘We will modify routines in ways that are smart and safe, but we will honor our constitutional duty to the American people and conduct critical business in person,’’ McConnell said in a statement Monday. He noted that he considers senators to be as essential as health care providers, first responders, truck drivers, and other workers who have continued doing their jobs during the crisis.
As repugnant as I find him sometimes, that is at least setting a good example and at least an attempt to adhere to Constitutional strictures.
Hoyer said he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, reached the opposite conclusion after consulting the attending physician, Brian Monahan. Public health officials across the country have continued to recommend that all workers who have the option of working remotely do so. Lawmakers have adapted many of their informal duties to the realities of social distancing, but both House and Senate rules make official business all but impossible unless it’s conducted in the Capitol.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer spoke with reporters at the Capitol last week. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
El Bandito!
Monahan’s view, Hoyer told reporters, ‘‘was that there was a risk to members that was one that he would not recommend taking’’ and that he was ‘‘forceful’’ in warning of the nature of the pandemic in metro Washington. Hoyer said that he expected committees to continue working remotely in the interim on the next coronavirus response and that lawmakers would be summoned to Washington to vote on the next round of relief legislation.
Be sure to bring your rubber $tamp, and it will be a new chance for House Democrats to force McGahn’s testimony (#Trump4Life).
Hoyer said he subsequently discussed the matter with Pelosi. ‘‘We both concluded that . . . we ought to listen to the medical authorities, because we’ve urged that to be the case for everybody, and so that’s what we’re doing,’’ he said. He acknowledged some House members had expressed qualms about returning to Washington without firm plans for the next bill. ‘‘We will come back very soon,’’ he said.
They haven't been practicing scale distancing based on the photos over the last 6 weeks!
While House committees can meet informally and conduct member briefings via conference calls or videoconferences, they are not allowed to officially meet to process legislation or conduct hearings unless members are physically present in Washington. The Senate operates under similar rules.
IMPEACH, IMPEACH!
House Democratic leaders proposed moving forward last week with a proxy voting arrangement that would allow a member to authorize a colleague to cast votes in Washington on his or her behalf, as well as rules changes to allow for remote committee work, but Pelosi withdrew the plan after Republican leaders objected, and the parties are discussing a potential compromise.
Hoyer said negotiations will continue this week and expressed hope a bipartisan agreement to allow remote committee work could can pass the House on a voice vote or by unanimous consent, allowing lawmakers to remain at home.....
So they are never in town when the guy who they impeached and claimed was the greatest threat ever to our national security is left to run the government on his own.
All these traitorous bastards are doing is further insulating themselves from public wrath as they willingly help destroy the American way of life.
What EVIL CREATURES!
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Thief!
