"Democrats probably need four seats to win the Senate. Can they do it?" by Victoria McGrane Globe Staff, October 28, 2020
Back in January, Jessica Taylor, a political analyst with the respected Cook Political Report, chatted up sources, studied the polls, and figured that Republicans had a slight edge in the battle over which party would emerge from the 2020 elections with control of the Senate.
That was before the pandemic struck. Before the economy shattered. Before George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer. Before the protests. Before Democrats’ rage-fueled small-dollar donations poured into races around the country at roughly the rate of water surging over Niagara Falls.
Those dynamics have helped Democrats dramatically expand the number of states in which their candidate is competitive, increasing the routes by which the party may wrest back control of the Senate and forcing Republicans to spend time and money in states they had thought would be easy wins.
Now, Republicans look vulnerable in up to a dozen races. The polling is such that analysts, including Taylor, are starting to believe this could be a wave election that carries Democrats to big gains in the Senate, beyond the handful of seats they need to regain control.
That means Trump must be reelected as a final check against their madness.
Besides, what will the media write about if Trump is no longer around?
Why the dramatic turnaround? “It’s President Trump, and that these Republican incumbents are inextricably linked to him,” said Taylor. “We’ve seen a hesitancy up until very, very recently to even slightly criticize him or distance themselves from him.”
Republican operatives agree that the president has made the job of keeping the Senate in GOP hands harder. Trump’s antics also enflame Democrats, sending them online to give again and again to candidates around the country, money that those candidates “then turn around and use to bludgeon Republicans on the airwaves,"one GOP official said.
Former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign seems to be doing its part, too. The Democratic standard-bearer and his running mate are spending time in key Senate battleground states in the final stretch, including Georgia, Texas, and Iowa — states they don’t necessarily need to win the White House.
Of course, if 2016 taught anyone anything, it is that American politics is incredibly unpredictable. This election is unfolding in the middle of a devastating pandemic, while also sparking what could be historic turnout, all of which injects uncertainty, and there are still a few days until Election Day, plenty of time for unexpected twists. (Indeed, at this time in 2016, the Globe wrote a story about how Democrats looked poised to win control of the Senate, which did not happen. Oops.)
Yeah, OOPS!
The sheepish admission is either a sign of a complete steal by Democrats or the pre$$ is doing it again!
The only problem is this "oops" is likely to result in their complete self-immolation, although I have noticed odd hedges in their coverage lately that may provide them an out.
Republican anxieties about Trump’s drag on down-ballot races was salved somewhat, for instance, by the president’s more restrained debate performance last week, and while Republican Senate candidates have been almost universally outraised by their Democratic counterparts, outside GOP groups, especially the Senate Leadership Fund — a super PAC affiliated with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell — have been pouring millions into key races to defend embattled incumbents.
All of which is to say, even with an expanded map, winning enough seats to take the Senate is no slam dunk. Big gains, even less so.
She just covered her own butt.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate. Democrats are almost certain to lose the seat held by Alabama’s Doug Jones, who won an improbable victory in the deep-red state in a 2017 special election, after news reports that his GOP opponent, Roy Moore, made sexual advances on young women decades earlier.
That means Democrats need to keep all the other seats they hold, plus win four more to reach a 50-50 split with Republicans. If Biden wins the White House, that would give Democrats control because Kamala Harris, as vice president, would cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate.
So how do Democrats get there?
Analysts say the party is on pace to win Colorado and Arizona, adding two of the four seats.
In Colorado, part of the challenge for GOP incumbent Cory Gardner is the shifting demographics of the state, which leaves a minority of voters inclined to support Republicans and young voters energized to vote by the killing of Floyd and by climate change, said David Flaherty, a pollster in Colorado for the Republican-leaning Magellan Strategies.
“Can Cory Gardner pull an upset? . . . What we’ve seen right now, we think that’s unlikely," he said.
In Arizona, former astronaut Mark Kelly, who is married to former representative Gabby Giffords, who resigned after being shot at a constituent event in 2011, has outpaced Republican Martha McSally. She was appointed after the death of Senator John McCain.
The next most likely Democratic pickup, analysts say, is in Maine, where GOP Senator Susan Collins is waging the fight of her political life. Her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, the speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives, has raised tens of millions more campaign cash than the four-term incumbent, and has narrowly led Collins in polls for months.
Plus, analysts say Gideon is likely to benefit from Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, in which voters can rank all the candidates for a seat in order of preference.
After Collins voted against Barrett she headed home to save her job, but we will get up to Maine down below.
Either North Carolina or Iowa could be the next best chance for Democrats to flip a seat, and either one could be the tipping point that provides Democrats the 50th seat.
Democrat Cal Cunningham in North Carolina looked like a strong contender to oust Republican Senator Thom Tillis until news broke that Cunningham had engaged in an extramarital affair during the campaign.
Tillis and outside Republican groups have used the revelations to attack Cunningham as untrustworthy. Polls have narrowed, and Republicans say they feel good about the race, especially as they believe more revelations about Cunningham’s sex life could drop before Election Day. Still, some analysts still believe Cunningham has a slight edge because polling hasn’t shifted dramatically since the scandal broke and because of the national anti-Trump mood.
More on North Carolina below; however, what I will say here is as crappy as Tillis is, if voters in North Carolina send a sexual scum to the Senate they should be ashamed of themselves.
Iowa has emerged as something of a surprise opportunity for a Democratic pickup. The race between incumbent Senator Joni Ernst and her Democratic challenger, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, appears to be a dead heat, according to polls.
Beyond those five races, Democrats face much longer odds despite having waged competitive races in up to seven states that analysts didn’t expect them to have any shot at winning earlier in the cycle.
Those include the astoundingly tight race in deep-red South Carolina, where Democrat Jamie Harrison appears to be within striking distance of ousting Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham, who has resorted to asking for campaign donations in TV interviews, so robust has his challenger’s fund-raising been. Harrison pulled in $57 million in the third quarter of this year, setting a new record for a Senate candidate in one three-month period.
Other stretch races for Democrats include Montana, Kansas, Texas, Alaska, and Georgia — where there are not one but two Senate races underway, both tight, all while polling suggests the presidential race in the once-reliably Republican state is deadlocked.
Amid all these tough races for Republicans, Democrats have found themselves playing defense on one blue seat, held by incumbent Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Republicans have directed resources to the race, seeing it as their best pickup opportunity, aside from Alabama, powered by a strong candidate, 39-year-old John James, who is a Black Iraq War veteran with punchy TV ads, but even some Republican operatives acknowledge that Trump most likely needs to improve his own poll numbers in Michigan for James to win, even though James has outperformed the president in polls.
Trump likely carries Michigan over reaction to the tyrant Whitmer.
Handicapping analysts still rate the seat as leaning toward Democrats, but the tight polling has forced Democrats to spend more time and money defending the seat than they’d like.
Then there is the cryptic comment by McConnell that implies loss of control.
Just how many seats Democrats win, if they do manage to claw their way to a Senate majority, could ultimately rest with how well Biden performs.
“If this really is looking like the type of wave election that some national pollsters are forecasting, if Biden ends up winning the popular vote by 10 points, I could see [some] of the states we have as leans Republican — an Alaska, a Kansas, races like that — end up flipping,” said J. Miles Coleman, an elections analyst with the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
What if it goes the other way?
That's what one of the foremost experts in election modeling is forecasting.
Historically, races that the Cook Political Report has rated as “toss up" overwhelmingly break together for one party, typically reflecting the broader political mood in the country, said Taylor. In 2014, when Republicans won back the Senate, the GOP also won eight of the nine races in the “toss up” category.
Likewise, in 2008, Democrats won eight of the 10 tossup Senate races that year.
The only problem with history now it's the entire world is upside down with COVID. What was no longer holds. The world is completely upside down.
I have done a lot of analysis, a lot of analysis, of presidential elections here at this blog regarding my Peace and Prosperity pillars. I'm not making them into anything other than what they are, nor is it an endorsement of either candidate. It is more a perspective on the pulse of America because I am part of that pulse. I have a sense for how they truly feel out there across the land, and my analysis nothing more than an exercise in something akin to an intra-mural basketball game.
That said, past history would seem to indicate a Trump loss given his loss of the Prosperity pillar due to COVID, even as he holds the Peace pillar for not starting any new aggressions and because coverage of foreign wars has nearly vanished in the wake of COVID despite the Arab normalizations with Israel.
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The article contains a color-coded map showing 6 Republican seats too close to call with Arizona and Colorado flipping to Democrat being offset by a likely Republican win in Alabama.
I flipped below the fold and found this:
"As North Carolina emerges as a key election battleground, Democrats feel the pressure to deliver" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, October 27, 2020
Thirteen Democratic signs fill the yard of Gina McGourty’s one-story white house, an unmistakable display of her support for Joe Biden. In Gaston County, N.C., a deep red area west of Charlotte, that makes her an anomaly.
Her mailbox is across the street, in the yard of her Trump-supporting neighbor, so these days she waits until he leaves before collecting her mail.
McGourty, 33, is no stranger to conversations with those who see things differently — she is a volunteer for the local Democratic party — but for her and many other liberals in this deeply conservative area, the way that bitter politics has seeped into daily tasks as mundane as checking the mail has become exhausting. She installed a security camera recently after repeated yard sign thievery.
Try reading a Bo$ton Globe every morning.
Tension is high in North Carolina, a critical state in both the presidential race and the battle for control of the US Senate. Except for 2008, the Republican presidential nominee has won the state in every election dating back to 1980, but this year, President Trump has found himself in a dead heat with Biden.
The Senate contest was thrown into turmoil this month when Republican incumbent Thom Tillis contracted COVID-19 after attending the now-notorious Rose Garden gathering honoring Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and Democrat Cal Cunningham — who had been comfortably ahead in the polls — became embroiled in a sexting scandal with a woman who alleges the two had an extramarital affair. Amid such high stakes and last-minute twists, the contest was recently dubbed the most expensive Senate race in American history, fueled largely by an influx of millions of dollars from outside the state.
Out$ide dollars mean deep $tate billionaire $tring-pullers as the pre$$ once again minimizes Democratic transgressions while flogging the Garden party as the source of COVID after it was likely the debate -- if you believe in a fairy tale viru$, that is.
“North Carolina is vital," said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. While it is one of several key states for Biden, flipping the Senate seat is even more crucial for Democrats’ quest to regain the Senate, he said. Democrats need a net gain of at least three seats to take the Senate majority if Biden is elected and Tillis is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents.
Not so much now one would think.
Early voting has smashed all expectations. So far, 3.2 million people have cast ballots, or 43 percent of registered voters, according to state data. By comparison, just 1.7 million people had voted at this point in 2016. Despite record turnout, however, there are still concerns about lack of access to the ballot box, especially for people of color.
Early voters so far have been overwhelmingly white and majority women. About 40 percent of early ballots have been cast by Democrats, 30 percent by Republicans, and 29 percent by unaffiliated voters, according to state data.
As Election Day inches closer, Democrats in North Carolina feel the pressure to try to deliver a knockout blow to Trump and the Senate Republican majority.
Their candidate just got hit below the belt, right?
Like many Democrats in this state, Trump’s performance as president spurred McGourty to do more than simply vote. Two years ago, fed up with his leadership and inspired by the number of seats that Democrats flipped nationwide to win the majority in the House of Representatives, she looked up her local county Democratic organization and got involved. Gaston County is growing, as people like her move out of the city, and she sees an opportunity in that growth.
“We can definitely get new voters. We may not turn this county blue, but maybe into a purple area,” she said.
When the pandemic hit, McGourty lost her job as a waitress and bartender, so she threw herself into full-time volunteering.She recruits new volunteers by text message, serves as a poll greeter, and writes postcards to encourage people to vote.
Her job was taken from her.
The political tension is on full display when McGourty texts voters to try to recruit new volunteers. Most people are polite, but some Trump supporters reply with messages that range from false (“Biden is a socialist”) to angry ("Hell NO!!!!!) to words unprintable by this newspaper, including one that accused her of supporting third-trimester abortions.
“I’m not really sure why they think Democrats are evil, but it is pretty intense,” she said.
It's the throwing in with the Great Re$et crowd as well as the deplorable behavior by Democrats these last four years, as they project their actions on others. They just don't get it.
The intensity has been heightened as both presidential candidates and their allies have repeatedly visited the state, recognizing that it is crucial to a White House win. Their campaigns and outside groups also are bombarding voters with flyers, text messages, and commercials.
Biden held a drive-in rally in Durham this month, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, swung through Charlotte and Asheville last week. Ivanka Trump visited the state recently and the president held a rally just 10 miles south of McGourty’s house last week at the municipal airport, a gathering that drew a tightly packed crowd of more than 20,000 people, only some of whom wore masks.
That type of disregard for the pandemic frustrates people like Paige Garner, 52, a health care worker who lives in the county north of McGourty and cares for the elderly. Garner has witnessed the virus wreak havoc on her patients, forcing families to visit through windows and other patients to die alone. She also lost four friends to COVID-19, and yet many of her neighbors, acquaintances, and even relatives still don’t take it seriously.
The virus didn't do that, criminal human beings did. Criminal human beings that continue to push and support the lie.
“I’m just disgusted with the playing down of COVID, the deaths,” she said. “I’m angry that people don’t take it more seriously in our state.”
Garner grew up in the area, then lived in more liberal parts of the state before returning home to care for her mother. She owns a gun and considers herself a Christian. Her son voted for Trump last time. It is difficult, she said, to live among people she has known for decades, yet have come to such opposite conclusions about what the country needs.
“It has torn a lot of our state apart. Friends, families, but that’s where we are right now,” she said.
Garner, who in the past has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, pulled a straight Democratic ticket this year for the first time ever. That included a vote for Cunningham, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel whose large favorable polling margin all but evaporated after it was revealed that he sent sexual text messages to a woman who is not his wife. The Associated Press reported the woman said the two had at least one intimate encounter in July. Cunningham has apologized for causing “hurt” in his personal life but has not confirmed the affair.
She should be ashamed of herself, and the Globe will drop the issue as usual.
Garner and many other Democrats said they still feel compelled to support Cunningham because they are determined to win back the Senate.
At what cost, your very soul?
“I think that people will look at the balance of the Senate more so than at his judgment when it comes to his marriage,” said Billy Richardson, a state representative from Fayetteville who endorsed Biden after his breakthrough primary win in South Carolina in February. “He seems to have resonated with what I’d call undecided middle class voters,” Richardson said about the former vice president’s appeal in North Carolina.
Still, many voters believe their best bet is with Trump.
Brian Greene, 48, a concrete truck driver who lives 20 minutes from where Trump held his rally last week, said he believes the pandemic has been overblown by the media. He lost two relatives to COVID-19, but believes that was because they had severe underlying health conditions. Greene supports Trump because he believes that his tax cuts have benefited him and the construction industry.
“We all know wealthy people are going to stay wealthy regardless. The middle class people never catch a break,” he said. The majority of his friends and all his family also support the president, Greene said.
Can you say landslide?
With early voting underway since Oct. 15, the race now will largely depend on turnout. That is complicated this year because of the pandemic, along with longstanding concerns in the state about voter suppression.
Don't forget the mail-in fraud:
"President Trump has frequently made baseless claims that the elections are riddled with fraud and urged his fans to help protect the integrity of the vote. Poll-watching is a staple of American politics, but experts and state elections officials warn that Trump’s rhetoric may lead to Election Day confusion and consternation: There are strict, state-specific rules governing election observers, and, they emphasize, it is illegal to harass and intimidate people casting their ballots. "What the president has done is potentially dangerous because [Trump] has not explained . . . what the process is,'' said Todd Belt, a politics professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management....."
Of course, it's okay if the NBA and NFL are making arenas and stadiums available for voting sites with some teams even paying workers to staff early-voting locations, and a newly formed group called Power the Polls -- whose backers include Microsoft, Patagonia and MTV -- is recruiting a new generation of poll workers: younger, less vulnerable to Covid-19 and more technically adept than those who have long operated democracy's basic machinery. Employees, customers, students, off-duty National Guard members and even entire professions are being corralled to staff polling places and keep them from closing. Nationally, LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, last week launched a multimillion-dollar outreach effort to recruit poll workers. Power the Polls started in June and has a $2 million social-media budget. It's been pitched by Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show” as well as online, at rallies, on campuses and by volunteer organizations. It's backed by a long list of businesses that are both funding the outreach and leveraging their own employees as poll workers. The list includes ViacomCBS Inc., Patagonia Inc., Starbucks Corp., Lyft Inc., Uber, Warby Parker Retail Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Microsoft Corp., Zillow Group Inc. and Old Navy Inc. Some are giving employees paid time off to work the polls on Nov. 3, in addition to whatever local election agencies pay.
A recent court ruling in North Carolina made it easier for voters to correct mistakes on their mail-in ballots and was largely seen as a positive development by voting access advocates, but many still worry about how people will overcome all the other challenges that come with voting this year.
Rev. Anthony Spearman, president of the NAACP of North Carolina, said his organization has received reports of voter intimidation and inappropriate behavior by partisan poll observers, including one person who worried poll workers by standing behind them without a mask. “That was very, very frightful,” he said.
At the same time, he and others are encouraged by the enormous turnout.
“What is going to prevail in this election are the numbers,” he said. “The numbers are far above anything that we could have imagined.”
That way, the chosen puppet can advance the vaccine and elite agenda claiming massive support.
With the election now just a week away, volunteers like McGourty are in hyperdrive, but it is “nerve-racking,” she said, because she still has no idea which way North Carolina will go. Last Friday evening, she and her fiancé joined a group of volunteers on a highway overpass, waving Biden signs and American flags as drivers whizzed underneath. Even there, the deep division was on display.
“We’re getting a lot of honks, but we’re getting a lot of people flicking us off,” she said.
That is where the print copy ended, and I think the Globe and her ilk are in for a rude awakening again all across the board.
To increase voting access, the local nonpartisan group Democracy North Carolina operates a hotline that voters can call to ask questions about how to fill out an absentee ballot, register to vote, or to report voting problems. Calls have peaked since early voting began, the group said.
Other advocates try to help voters feel welcome at the polls.
Only certain voters, of course.
Kristie Puckett-Williams, who works for the ACLU of North Carolina, sits every day from 8 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. under a red tent in the parking lot of Garinger High School on the diverse east side of Charlotte, with a sign that says “Black Voters Matter.”
She and others greet people, direct them where to go, and pass out hand sanitizer and masks. She informed one 90-year-old woman that she could stay in her car for drive-up voting. People are wary because of COVID-19, but also worried about white supremacists, she said.
“They feel safe seeing people who look like them sitting waiting for them,” she said.....
Why have you or your organization not filed lawsuits against tyrannical states and their leaders for this unconstitutional shutdown and lockdown measures like masking and distance?
I$ it the funding?
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Related:
Biden vows to unify and save country
(Blog author chuckles at the audacity)
That was yesterday's National lead along with this co-lead:
It's a Washington Compost piece regarding journalist E. Jean Carroll surfacing at just the right time, right?
The New York Times claims Trump has no vision:
"Trump’s second-term agenda? Slogans over details" by Lisa Lerer and Annie Karni New York Times, October 27, 2020
DELAWARE, Ohio — Donald Trump entered the political arena five years ago with a ride down his golden escalator and a clear if concise platform for his presidential campaign.
This time around, Trump has struggled to make the election about anything other than himself.
For months, his advisers have pushed him to lay out a vision for a second term, putting out news releases for him that promise a mission to Mars, a “manned presence on the moon,” and the “world’s greatest infrastructure system.” Those proposals, though lacking in detail, have been driven in part by the campaign’s internal polling, which shows that voters want to hear his plans, but “the vision thing,” as George H.W. Bush once called it, takes up little time at the president’s rallies.
Instead, Trump has promised more of the same and warned that the alternative could be scarier. The problem of running with little new to say has been most pronounced in the campaign’s throwback of a slogan: “Make America Great Again, Again.”
For a presidency defined by breaches of political and presidential tradition, Trump’s inability to detail how he would use four more years remains a notable break with every other general election candidate in recent American history.
Four years ago, Trump centered his campaign on a series of broad pledges — cracking down on China, restricting immigration, and “draining the swamp” of Washington — though the specificity of his promises did not match those provided in a 288-page book released by Hillary Clinton’s campaign detailing her plans.
Now, much of his agenda seems rooted in reprising past battles and on simply returning to the precoronavirus economic gains he claims credit for. The bulk of his message is focused on attacking Joe Biden and playing down the continuing threat of the virus, with little attention paid to how he would pull the country out of the pandemic. He has ruled out future shutdowns, which he has little control over as president, and has falsely argued that the virus is receding even as cases surge.
I suppose the New York Times would know given that the majority of Covid misinformation is conveyed by the media without question or correction. That's why we are all sick of you.
“We’ve never seen this before,” said Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian. “In traditional American presidential election theater, you’re forced to lay out your plan for tomorrow.”
He added, “Trump doesn’t play by that rule.”
While the echoes of 2016 are clear, their resonance is not. A sitting president is not a political outsider coming to shake up Washington, and voters want to know why he should keep his job, said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist working on congressional races in battleground states.
“My experience is that the voters generally hire you to do the next job — not the last job,” he said.
Instead, Trump has largely framed his candidacy around what he is not: “the radical left” Democrats.
Trump may not be articulating it as a second-term agenda, but over the past few weeks he has indicated some policy priorities through the actions of his administration. Earlier this month, he signed an executive action removing job protections for many federal workers, potentially laying the ground work for him to weed out what he sees as a “deep state” bureaucracy, and federal agencies have been enacting a series of last-minute regulations that affect millions of Americans, the apparent end game of a four-year deregulatory push. Those initiatives, however, do not come up at his campaign rallies and are not part of his closing argument to voters.
Why was he not doing this all along?
He didn't drain the swamp, and that is why he is in the position he is in.
Of course, he is still part of the club which exposes the show for what it is as does the amount of ink given the subject.
Recent polling shows that Trump trails on all of the pressing issues of the election. Voters are now evenly split on whom they trust to manage the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted this month by The New York Times and Siena College.
Some supporters say that they just want more of what the president has already delivered.
The one cited is a racist janitor from Ohio.
Democratic voters have filled Trump’s policy blanks with their own theories about his plans. “His agenda, in my mind, can be based on what will be his own financial best interests, whether that’s doing the bidding of Putin or somebody else,” said John Tanoury, 69, a lawyer from Upper Arlington, Ohio, who is backing Biden.
Most likely Netanyahu and Adelson while Joe is apparently in bed with the globalists and the Chinese.
Incumbent presidents typically update their messages for their reelection races. Former President Bill Clinton promised to build a “bridge to the 21st century,” rolling out economic policies aimed at middle-class families. George W. Bush offered “A Safer World and a More Hopeful America,” with a slate of conservative economic and national security policies, and Barack Obama ran with a one-word theme — “Forward!”— centering his campaign on a promise to continue the recovery from the Great Recession.
In an interview with The New York Times in August, Trump offered perhaps the most honest response to the job candidate questionnaire. Pressed on how he would behave if voters reelected him, he said, “I think I’d be similar.” A second term, he added, would mean more of the same.....
That is all we ever seem to get no matter who is "elected."
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One thing that can be said for him is he does oppose portions of the Great Re$et, and he's not the guy he replaced:
"Obama’s new gig: gleefully needling Trump" by Glenn Thrush New York Times, October 27, 2020
He should be in a jail cell for the spying scandal and using the IRS against political opponents, and yet there he is gleefully running around. He knows he will never be held accountable or prosecuted.
Former president Obama bounded off the stage in Philadelphia last week after his debut as Joe Biden’s 2020 battering ram and pronounced himself pumped — and even a bit delighted at the chance to troll his troll, President Trump.
“Oh man, that felt good,” Obama told a friend in a phone call — and he let Biden’s staff know that the ungainly format of the event, a “drive-in rally” where he addressed hundreds of supporters in cars in a stadium’s parking lot, had worked surprisingly well, according to several people close to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
In 2016, Obama took his whacks at Trump on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Then he stepped up his criticism of his successor during the 2018 midterm elections. This summer, during the virtual Democratic convention, he offered a damning jeremiad against the president, warning that Trump’s reelection would “tear our democracy down,” but nothing Obama has said during the Trump era compares with his gleeful slag-heaping of scorn upon Trump in the closing days of the 2020 campaign, part of a two-week burst of activity that will culminate in a joint rally with Biden being planned for this coming weekend, according to Democratic officials.
You have to love the New York Times and their revisionist history!
If I remember correctly, and I do, Obama was criticized for not helping her enough in 2016 even though he held back because he realized he was hurting her after eight years of misrule. The guy was barely visible in 2018, and is on record as saying Biden shouldn't run in 2020. Now he crawls out of the woodwork in the last week of the campaign and the NYT makes it seem like he has been out in front the whole time.
You can't take anything they write or print these days as anything but lies, folks. Total distortions are lies.
“What’s his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID?” Obama said Tuesday at an Orlando rally intended to energize voters in Florida, a perennial neck-and-neck battleground and Trump’s adopted home state. “He said this at one of his rallies. ‘COVID, COVID, COVID,’ he’s complained. He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage.”
That reminds me of the $wine flu $candal at the beginning of his presidency, where the WHO overinflated a non-pandemic (just like now) and more people died from the vaccine than the alleged disease.
Trump was apparently watching, and he complained about how much media coverage Obama was getting.
He was watching Fox, of course.
Obama’s return to the trail is driven by a desire to help Biden in any way he can, according to friends and Democratic aides. He has already lent his name to about 50 fund-raising e-mails on behalf of Biden and other Democrats, in addition to cutting get-out-the-vote ads appearing in 15 swing states and raising millions of dollars through online fund-raisers.
Above all, he has been eager to reverse roles with his loyal helpmate, these allies and associates say, and willing to throw punches that would undermine the former vice president’s image as a national healer if Biden took the swing himself.
OMG!
They can't really believe that.
It has also allowed Obama to have fun at a time when many Biden supporters have been anxiously following state polling averages in fear of a second Trump surprise. Obama is clearly relishing the chance to strike back at Trump, who has not only baited him for years but has also tried to eradicate his legacy, policy by policy.
“He’s plainly having a good time out there — like a guy with a lot of material to work with who’s been waiting a long time to share it,” said David Axelrod, a longtime campaign and White House adviser to the former president.
Obama kicked off the Philadelphia rally by giddily referring to a recent New York Times report that detailed previously unknown financial holdings of the president’s in China and other foreign countries.
“Can you imagine if I had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection?” Obama asked after ridiculing lower-than-expected recent TV ratings for the president and mocking him for contracting the coronavirus after flouting safety measures. “They would’ve called me Beijing Barry.”
OMFG!
This guy is audacious to the point of nauseousness!
Like I said, Democrats project the very behavior of which they are guilty while the pre$$ hides their misdeeds!
At his second rally, on Saturday in a Miami parking lot, Obama went after Trump with an ear-to-ear smile that at times gave way to raw-nerve rage.
He needs to see a doctor about that anger issue and split personality.
Popping up in Florida just as Trump arrived in West Palm Beach to cast his vote, the former president slammed his successor for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic, “fumbling” the economy, asking aides about selling Puerto Rico, musing about killing the virus by injecting disinfectant, and once reportedly floating the idea of blasting hurricanes with nuclear weapons.
Obama concluded by comparing Trump, unfavorably, to the state’s signature meme, a feckless and addled Everyman known for bizarre and idiotic behavior.
Oh, he knows Scott from Tampa?
Trump took instant notice. “Nobody is showing up for Obama’s hate laced speeches,” the president wrote on Twitter moments after Obama had finished. “47 people! No energy, but still better than Joe!”
There were, in fact, dozens of cars at the event, and the Biden campaign said hundreds of potential attendees had been turned away to comply with social-distancing requirements.
Obama’s manicured vitriol falls considerably short of anything Trump might say in the course of a typical rally, and so far the post-speech fact-checks have been a comparatively light lift. An Obama staff member said that all of his preplanned zingers had been fact-checked.
Michelle Obama, who has recorded videos for the Biden campaign, has no plans to appear at events in person this campaign, Democratic aides with knowledge of her plans said. Her husband, for his part, is intent on expending his political capital now, even if it involves abandoning his characteristic reluctance to sling insults at Trump, a man he has privately described as beneath contempt.....
It's Michael Obama based on some of the photographs out there, but I don't want to get into a whole thing right now. It explains why Malia was coking with Hunter, and how many black men were shot dead and then back-paged under Obama?
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Also see:
Biden Endorsed by Reagan FBI Director, Former U.S. Attorneys
They accuse Trump of doing what Obama actually did, do the Deep $tate $wamp creatures!
Not only that, Trump in fact called out the criminal doctors who started squawking as the state once again released a batch of numbers with no context, leading me to believe they are either reading a simulated script, making them up, or misreporting the data just as Trump says since they are NO LONGER COUNTING FLU CASES as they mandate a shot!
Meanwhile, the WaCompo is worried about mail-in ballots arriving late and the Globe is of the opinion that if Joe Biden wins, history’s light will shine brightest on Kamala Harris because Black women are the builders of real democracy and their participation in elections is a proud tradition.
That's one of the things to remember in the closing days of the election in these tumultuous, truth-tossed times when the future of higher education will be determined on Election Day.
(Note to Globe, it already has been because “Covid has turned the dial up to 11, and higher education’s business model is not sustainable in the long term.”)
Of course, a fight over the Supreme Court would devour political bandwidth, endangering more important Democratic priorities.
Meanwhile, up in Maine:
"In small-town Maine, Trump’s popularity proves durable" by Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff, October 27, 2020
CHARLESTON, Maine — Maine’s vast Second Congressional District is the largest east of the Mississippi River, the second-most rural in the country, and the only slice of New England where President Donald Trump won an electoral vote in 2016.
A bevy of lawn signs from the Great North Woods to Down East fishing villages show Trump remains popular in this sprawling district, and few places show as much raw enthusiasm for him as tiny Charleston, whose 1,049 residents live among hills, farms, and forest 30 miles northwest of Bangor.
Four years ago, Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in Charleston by nearly four to one, a stark contrast with her narrow victory statewide, and despite near-daily turbulence from the White House, Trump’s impeachment, and a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans, the president’s message continues to resonate here — even if polls indicate his support is ebbing elsewhere in the district.
"It might be five to one this time,” said Rusty Weymouth, 65, a Charleston trucker and former fire chief who called Democratic candidate Joe Biden “the most crooked politician I’ve ever seen.”
“I love him,” Weymouth said of Trump. “I don’t know if I like his personality, but you have to look at what he’s done. He’s cut taxes; he’s brought jobs back; he’s going to get peace in the Middle East before he’s done.”
Weymouth, a burly man wearing a baseball cap and suspenders, laughed as he talked about the eight Trump lawn signs that his 18-year-old grandson had placed near the street.
It’s a family thing, this support of the president, he said. Elsewhere in town, which is 97 percent white, it’s a reflection of what many see as Trump’s support for hard work, self-sufficiency, and an aversion to government welfare.
“I’ve been part of this town and everything about it for all of my life," Weymouth said, ducking under a roof during a light rain. “He can be a bit crude and have a big mouth, but that’s confidence. My blood pressure is a hell of a lot better now with Trump in there than it was with Obama.”
Trump outpolled Clinton, 75.9 percent to 20 percent, in Charleston four years ago. That margin far surpassed his performance in the rest of Penobscot County, which Trump carried 51.9 to 40.9 percent, and in the Second District overall, which he took by a similar margin of 51 to 41 percent.
Clinton narrowly won the statewide race, gaining 47.9 percent of the vote to Trump’s 45.2 percent. The state apportions a single electoral vote to the winner in each of its congressional districts. The remaining two electoral votes are awarded to the overall victor.
Every electoral vote is important in presidential races, which explains why even a district blanketed with large swaths of wilderness can draw close attention.
On Sunday, Trump paid a surprise campaign visit to an apple orchard near Bangor. On Oct. 19, Vice President Mike Pence spoke in nearby Hermon, and in June, the president visited tiny Guilford. In late September, a Colby College poll of the district showed a close race, with Biden receiving 46 percent support to Trump’s 43.
The district is represented by Jared Golden, a Democrat who polls show has a comfortable lead over Republican Dale Crafts. Statewide, Biden also appears to have a comfortable edge, and plenty of campaign signs in Portland and Maine’s more affluent southern communities, but on the few roads in Charleston, marquee billing goes to the top of the ticket — and Trump. Biden signs are rarities.
Even the heated US Senate race between four-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House, seems almost an afterthought, even though that contest could help flip control of the chamber to Democrats.
The big issue is health care, and they have repeatedly clashed over it in their debates as Collins gains momentum.
“I truly believe in my heart that there is a swamp in Washington that doesn’t care about the interests of the country," said Barry Higgins, 71, who manages Maple Lane Farms, a bustling five-generation business that sells beef, pork, and hay.
“I’m afraid if he doesn’t get in that the scales will tip toward socialism,” Higgins said. "It’s a scary time in the history of our country.”
It is, and the politics really have nothing to do with it. They are simply servants of the Great Re$et cla$$.
As Higgins sat in his office, a beehive of activity that runs the 1,800-acre farm, he ticked off what he has liked about the past four years: fewer regulations, progress on trade, support for law and order, and Trump’s oversight of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think he’s done a good job with it," Higgins said of the virus, although critics sharply disagree. "It’s like writing a book that’s never been written before.”
Farmers are the upshot for Trump.
Like much of up-country Maine, Penobscot County has been spared the worst of the pain caused by the pandemic. As of Thursday, the county had recorded 284 cases and six deaths, according to state data.
Masks aren’t required among the 30 employees at Maple Lane Farms, and Higgins wasn’t wearing one during a recent visit. Social distancing is encouraged, but Higgins acknowledged that often isn’t possible because much of the staff works “shoulder to shoulder.”
“I’m not against masks," Higgins said. "Politically, [Trump] probably should have emphasized masks and social distancing more. I think it’s hurt him.”
Still, Higgins said he often can tell a liberal by whether he or she is wearing a mask. If another clue is needed, he said, “there’s just an air about them."
And vice-versa, right?
Much of what Trump represents for Higgins and Kevin Strout, the owner of a welding and fabrication business, is a bulwark against their creeping fears of socialism.
That is his best argument, and somewhat true within the narrow context in which we are dealing.
“We don’t have time to protest. We’ve got work to do," Strout said. "The economy has been very strong, everybody’s got money, and they want to spend it.”
In 2017, the town’s median household income was $52,962, slightly below the state median of $56,277.
Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, said much of Trump’s stance is a good fit for the district.
“He says he is supportive of working-class, blue-collar Americans who have been taken advantage of. That has a big appeal up here,” Brewer said. “Trump also says he is a strong advocate for the Second Amendment, and guns are a big issue in the Second Congressional District.”
As they should be in rural areas.
Another trait that appeals to Higgins and Strout is Trump’s unvarnished bluntness. “If he thinks you’re a son of a bitch, he’ll tell it to your face,” the farm manager said, “and that’s the way we are!” Strout added with a big smile.
Randa Higgins, Barry’s daughter-in-law, doesn’t care for some of Trump’s behavior, but she plans to vote for him anyway.
“He’s not the best politician, but he’s also not a politician," said Higgins, a 48-year-old with four children and a hair salon that is closed because of COVID concerns. “I don’t think there’s any one candidate who’s going to fit the bill for everyone, obviously.”
She also doesn’t care for the country’s political polarization, a trend that critics say Trump has deepened and exploited.
"I’m not blaming that on him. I’m just blaming it on people,” Higgins said. “Social media has made it too damn easy to run your mouth.”
What counts in the end, she said, is respect for the process and for people whose politics are different.
“I tell my kids, you are going to vote," she said. “I don’t care who you vote for, but you are going to vote.”
With all due respect, the tolerance comes from right.
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Also see:
"The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-1 on Friday to uphold a judge’s rejection of a lawsuit that sought to allow absentee ballots that were postmarked by the Nov. 3 general election to be counted. The lawsuit cited concerns about the large volume of absentee ballots and Postal Service delays. Maine law requires absentee ballots to be in clerks’ hands by the time polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day. The court’s majority declined to declare the voting deadline unconstitutional, finding that the processes put in place by election officials during the pandemic provide adequate opportunities for Mainers to cast their ballots for the election without an undue burden on voters. The lawsuit brought by the Alliance for Retired Americans, Vote.org, and two Maine residents had sought to extend the cutoff by 10 days (AP)."
This next item was found buried in the bottom left corner of page C11 and was not carried in the web version:
"Less than a week before Election Day, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google are set to be grilled by Republican senators making unfounded allegations that the tech giants show anti-conservative bias. Democrats want to expand the discussion to include issues such as the companies' impact on local news. The Senate Commerce Committee has summoned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to testify for a hearing Wednesday. The executives have agreed to appear remotely after being threatened with subpoenas. With the election looming, Republicans led by President Donald Trump have thrown a barrage of grievances at Big Tech’s social media platforms, which they accuse without evidence of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views. The chorus of protest rose this month after Facebook and Twitter acted to limit dissemination of an unverified political story from the conservative-leaning New York Post about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, an unprecedented action against a major media outlet. The story, which was not confirmed by other publications, cited unverified emails from Biden’s son Hunter that were reportedly disclosed by Trump allies. Trump, asked by reporters about the companies Tuesday as he left Washington for the campaign trail, said they are trying to suppress revelations of Joe Biden's “corruption." “They don't want to show corruption, like you have with Biden. That's totally corruption, and everybody knows it," Trump said. “It’s very unfair. Nobody has ever seen anything like this. It’s not freedom of the press, it's the opposite.”
I view the show hearing as something of a joke as they allegedly threaten their tech overlords who have all the surveillance and billions to blackmail with, and as far as the unconfirmed and unverified criminal corruption of the Bidens, you can't do that if you don't look for it.
Related:
Facebook, Twitter take unusual steps to limit spread of New York Post story on Hunter Biden
The Washington Compost says the social media giants took that action before verifying the contents of the article, in which President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his former top adviser Stephen Bannon claimed to have obtained and leaked a trove of private materials from Hunter Biden.
The Washington Compost says US intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that "the New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said. Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility....."
Trump records shed new light on Chinese business pursuits
He is also being helped by Russia, of course.
Also see:
"Social media giants are also under heavy scrutiny for their efforts to police misinformation about the election. Twitter and Facebook have slapped a misinformation label on content from the president, who has around 80 million followers. Trump has raised the baseless prospect of mass fraud in the vote-by-mail process. Starting Tuesday, Facebook is not accepting any new political advertising. Previously booked political ads will be able to run until the polls close next Tuesday, when all political advertising will temporarily be banned. Google, which owns YouTube, also is halting political ads after the polls close. Twitter banned all political ads last year. Beyond questioning the CEOs, senators will examine proposals to revise long-held legal protections for online speech, an immunity that critics in both parties say enables the companies to abdicate their responsibility to impartially moderate content. The tech platforms are gateways to news online. Critics say their dominant position in the advertising market has crushed the struggling U.S. news industry, especially local news publishers. A report issued Tuesday by the committee’s Democratic staff cited the additional devastating impact of the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. About 7,000 newspaper employees are expected to be laid off this year, and newspaper revenues will be down 70% from two decades ago, according to the report. “Local news is an incredible engine for the creation of accurate information. We don’t want to lose that infrastructure,” Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the panel’s top Democrat, said in an interview....."
Are the agenda-pushing liars of the mass media expecting sympathy?
I don't mean to taunt them after they broke their oath to serve the public; however, there is only so much whining one can take after they did a full hatchet job on Trump.
They either need to switch sides or be out of print!
Maybe they should be after the Google ad services contracted by the Globe offer the Karen Kane new arrivals (maybe you get zolucky)?
That article was located in the bottom right-hand corner of page C9, so nothing to really $ee there if you mi$$ed it, right?
"Social media CEOs get an earful on bias, a warning about new limits" by Marcy Gordon Associated Press, October 28, 2020
WASHINGTON — With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Google received a hectoring from Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for the allegedly anti-conservative bias in the companies' social media platforms — and they were warned restrictions are coming from Congress.
They will be voted out next week if what the Globe reports is accurate, so why did they wait so long?
Doing something as you go out the door is like doing nothing at all.
Lawmakers of both parties, citing the companies' tremendous power to disseminate speech and ideas, are looking to challenge their long-enjoyed bedrock legal protections for online speech.
With worries over election security growing, senators on the Commerce Committee extracted promises from Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Google’s Sundar Pichai that their companies will take needed measures.
Those measures could include stopping meddling by foreign actors or blocking the incitement of violence to overturn the election results.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube have scrambled to stem a tide of material that incites violence and spreads lies and baseless conspiracy theories.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asked the CEOs if they have a plan "if the president uses your platforms to say, on the day of the election, that there is rigging or fraud, without any basis in evidence, or attempts to say the election is over.''
What a laugh Danang Dick has become.
President Trump has refused to publicly commit to accepting the results if he loses the presidential contest. He also has raised the baseless prospect of mass fraud in the vote-by-mail process.
These are the same people who are hollering Russia, Russia, Russia.
Testifying via video, the executives said their companies are taking a number of steps, including forming partnerships with news organizations to get out accurate information. Dorsey said Twitter was working closely with state election officials. "We want to give people using the service as much information as possible,'' he said.
As they censor and shut down sites!
Republicans, led by Trump, have accused the social media platforms, without evidence, of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious, and anti-abortion views.
Remember, everything they say about him is true of themselves!
During the hearing, GOP senators raised with the executives an array of allegations of bias on the platforms regarding Iran, China, Holocaust denial, and other issues.
It's all about the $$$.
Democrats focused their criticism mainly on hate speech, misinformation, and other content that can incite violence or keep people from voting. They criticized the CEOs for failing to police content, blaming the platforms for playing a role in hate crimes and the rise of white nationalism in the United States.
Antifa and related groups are their side of the aisle, not ours.
The Trump administration, seizing on unfounded accusations of bias against conservative views, has asked Congress to strip some of the protections that have generally shielded the tech companies from legal responsibility for what people post on their platforms.
That I am against as it rings of further restrictions against free speech.
“The time has come for that free pass to end,” Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee, said at the start of the hearing. He said the laws governing online speech must be updated because “the openness and freedom of the internet are under attack.”
Wicker cited the moves this month by Facebook and Twitter to limit the dissemination of an unverified political story from the conservative-leaning New York Post about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The story, which was not confirmed by other publications, cited unverified e-mails from Biden’s son Hunter that were reportedly disclosed by Trump allies.
It's the e-mails again, and this time the pre$$ is completely ignoring them under the cover of unconfirmed and unverified, even though they have been confirmed and verified.
The proposals would make changes to a provision of a 1996 law that has served as the foundation for unfettered speech on the Internet. Critics in both parties say that immunity under Section 230 enables the social media companies to abdicate their responsibility to impartially moderate content.
Trump chimed in Wednesday with a tweet, exhorting "Repeal Section 230!''
"It’s amazing. Twitter refuses to allow any mention of the Biden corruption story,'' he tweeted. "It’s the biggest story and Big Tech, together with the Lamestream Media, isn’t allowing a word to be said about it.''
Well, I don't know about it being the biggest story, but the willful blindness by the ma$$ media means something.
Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, said, "It’s clear that the directive to hold this hearing comes straight from the White House.''
Zuckerberg acknowledged that Congress “should update the law to make sure it’s working as intended.” Dorsey and Pichai urged caution in making any changes.
The executives rejected accusations of bias. "We approach our work without political bias, full stop,'' Pichai said. "To do otherwise would be contrary to both our business interests and our mission.''
The companies have wrestled with how strongly they should intervene with speech. They have often gone out of their way not to appear biased against conservative views — a posture that some say effectively tilts them toward those viewpoints. The effort has been especially strained for Facebook, which was caught off guard in 2016, when it was used as a conduit by Russian agents to spread misinformation benefiting Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump earlier this year signed an executive order challenging the protections from lawsuits under the 1996 telecommunications law.
Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency, recently announced plans to reexamine the legal protections — an about-face from the agency’s previous position.....
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