He attended church in Las Vegas on Sunday. This is the bizarre scene, with congregants seemingly worshipping him.
And him looking very much like Lucifer himself.
"what digby sez..."
Month: October 2020
I don’t have a crystal ball so I don’t know if this is right. But I suspect Trump will start campaigning for 2024 the minute he loses and will set himself up as the rightful president in exile:
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon predicted that if President Trump loses re-election in 2020, he’ll run again in 2024. “I’ll make this prediction right now: If for any reason the election is stolen from, or in some sort of way Joe Biden is declared the winner, Trump will announce he’s going to run for re-election in 2024,” Bannon told The Australian. “You’re not going to see the end of Donald Trump.”
Trump, notably, will be 78 in 2024.
On the other hand:
Bannon, who also served as Trump’s 2016 campaign CEO, previously envisioned Trump’s re-election while speaking at an Oct. 10 forum with the Young Republican Federation of Virginia, Salon notes. “At 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock … on Nov. 3, Donald J. Trump is going to walk into the Oval Office, and he may hit a tweet before he goes in there … and he’s going to sit there, having won Ohio, and being up in Pennsylvania and Florida, and he’s going to say, ‘Hey, game’s over,'” Bannon said. He explained, “the elites are traumatized. They do not want to go stand in line and vote. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a game-changer.”
Biden remains ahead in the polls, but his own aides have cautioned their team not to get too cocky. “The very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, wrote in a memo to supporters.
On Friday night, Trump joked that if he loses the election, “I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”
Whatever happens in terms of 2024, he will let his cult believe he’s coming back and he will spend the next three years milking them for every penny. And who knows how many foreign interests will help him keep the illusion going? After all, this ignoramus knows all of America’s secrets and he’s not afraid to blab them.
He’s not going away folks. The good news is that if you don’t watch Fox or read Breitbart, you can probably avoid him most of the time. It will be like a calm, warm breeze on a summer night.
After Richard Nixon resigned from office in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Congress set out to create numerous reforms designed to rein in future presidents. After all, Nixon had set forth a view of the presidency that was downright un-American: “If the president does it it’s not illegal,” essentially saying that no law can apply to the executive branch.
The legal system had worked, up to a point. Twenty-two members of the Nixon administration were convicted of crimes pertaining to Watergate. Most of them did time in prison, including the White House chief of staff and the attorney general. Nixon himself was guilty of numerous crimes but was never tried for any of them because he was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. But much of what Nixon did wasn’t illegal. It was unethical, immoral and totally disrespectful of any and all norms of decent leadership. It turns out that those kinds of transgressions are even harder to check than rank criminality.
There were committee investigations, such as the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House which delved deeply into the intelligence community’s abuses, resulting in the permanent select committees on intelligence in each chamber. Later reforms required the president to inform congressional leaders of both parties prior to major covert actions, and for leaders of the CIA to regularly brief the committees.
Unfortunately, those reforms were of limited utility. The Iran-Contra scandal and the pardons that followed mocked the idea of intelligence oversight. The CIA black sites and torture program program during the George W. Bush administration pretty much destroyed the illusion that Congress had any control over the intelligence services. Throughout this period, the War Powers Act, which was enacted over Nixon’s veto in the first place, has been a joke. As for campaign finance and ethics reforms, well, those were nice ideas. The Supreme Court took care of the first with the Citizens United ruling, and the second turns out to be almost entirely dependent on a sense of shame — a thing that turns out to be easily discarded.
And yet, for all of that, no one has come close to abusing the power of the presidency as Donald Trump has done. He didn’t do it on his own. Yes, his personal inclination has been to treat the government as his private fiefdom, demanding loyalty oaths, conducting purges and using the office for his personal profit. But people such as Attorney General Bill Barr and others in right-wing legal circles who were politically baptized by Nixon’s downfall have used Trump’s authoritarian instincts to institute the “imperial presidency” that Nixon once espoused.
When Trump says “I have an Article II that says I can do anything I want,” he didn’t get that idea from reading the Constitution. He has obviously never done that, and wouldn’t understand it anyway. He has been told this by people who believe very strongly in unaccountable presidential power: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Barr’s covering for Trump’s obstruction of justice in the Mueller probe, the White House refusal to cooperate with Congress, the assertion of novel rationales that render oversight null and void and the Department of Justice claiming that personal cases against Trump come under the rubric of presidential immunity, among many other instances are not just exercises in Trumpian corruption. They are assertions of executive power way beyond anything that Nixon, Reagan or Bush ever thought of.
That’s not Trump. It’s a Republican power grab, and it’s just one of many we’ve seen coming from the right in recent years. This authoritarian strain of thought has been with us at least since the Nixon era and it’s metastasizing.
I wrote the other day that should the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate they must take the necessary step of expanding the Supreme Court. There has also been considerable discussion about getting rid of the Senate filibuster and granting statehood to Washington, D.C. These ideas and others are starting to make people nervous.
The Washington Post published an essay by Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore this past weekend in which she argues against one of the ideas percolating on the left: that a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is needed to examine what happened during the Trump administration. This idea stems from the suspicion that the law will not adequately deal with a corrupt former president and his accomplices. I suspect that many people believe that our system is so damaged at this point that Congress will be unable to properly handle the task of unraveling this disaster and putting it right. So something like a truth and reconciliation commission comes into play since that would make it possible for the truth to come out, even if no legal penalties for the abuses that took place are likely or possible. At least we would know.
Lepore doesn’t think the situation is grave enough for that. Trump can be dealt with by journalists and historians; Congress will carry on with passing legislation. But as you can see, we’ve been dealing with this for more than 40 years and it’s just getting worse and worse.
Donald Trump has turned 40% of the country into his private cult. The Republican Party has become radical, corrupt and power-mad and America is now seen as a rogue superpower around the world, unpredictable and dangerous. We’re being tested by foreign adversaries and we don’t seem to be able to respond. The nation’s economic situation is dire and nearly a quarter of a million people have died in the last eight months because our system is so broken. The racial injustice at the heart of our society has become too much to bear.
Journalism and history, in Lepore’s view, are going to keep us tethered to the truth? There is an entire right-wing information ecosystem based on lies and fantasy. We live in an age where tens of millions of people live in an alternate reality, believing that the Democratic Party is run by a Satanic pedophile cult and that John F. Kennedy Jr. is coming back from the dead to help Donald Trump save the children.
We are in very big trouble.
Our immediate survival depends upon electing new leadership — that much is true. Our democracy is under stress but it may not yet be so damaged that we can’t make that happen. But whether it’s a truth and reconciliation commission or a “presidential crimes commission” made up of independent prosecutors, as Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., has suggested, or some other mechanism by which we document what has happened and attempt to hold people accountable, we need something. Otherwise I’m afraid we’ll just let it all slide out into the ether as if nothing happened at all. Until it happens again.
For more than 40 years the U.S. has been heading down this path, sometimes pushed back by various institutions that were designed in the wake of Watergate to keep it from going too far. But those institutions have been failing for a while and I don’t think we can survive another onslaught, especially if someone smarter than Donald Trump comes along and picks up the the tools that Bill Barr and others have provided them. The Democrats must do their duty and deal with this now.
The following is from Howie Klein for Blue America:
Millions of Americans have already voted. By Saturday evening 3,881,004 Texans had voted, 2,423,676 Floridians, 3,037,970 Californians, 1,397,929 Michiganders, 1,293,128 New Jerseyites, 1,438,284 Georgians, 1,433,778 North Carolinians, 1,355,646 Virginians, 911,385 Minnesotans… In the states that report early voting with party registrations, 55.0% of the early votes were from registered Democrats and 24.2 were from registered Republicans. But it would be a tragic error to think that this election is in the bag. This is going down to the wire, if not so much in the presidential races, then certainly in the down-ballot congressional races where progressives are working to flip “safe” red districts that aren’t quite so safe any longer.
It would be logical for a contributor to ask what campaigns can do, at this late moment, with a more campaign money. So we asked some of the candidates endorsed by Blue America what exactly they plan to do with last minute ActBlue contributions. Their statements are below. And to make it more interesting, the Blue America PAC has $3,500 to give to two candidates our members direct us too give it to– $2,000 for one and $1,500 for another. How to decide?
“Vote” by contributing to your favorite candidate by clicking here.
It opens a page and on that page– on the right– it says “customize amounts,” which will allow you to pick the candidate you want us to send the $2,000 check. The candidate who gets the most contributions gets the $2,000 check and the candidate who gets the second most gets the $1,500 check. This is number of contributions, not amount. So if you give $10 and someone else gives $100, each counts as one vote.
Mike Siegel, one of the two Texas progressives we’re trying to help flip a seat was the first one to respond to our question about how his campaign will use the late contributions. This is what he said:
“We are on the cusp of defeating one of the wealthiest, most powerful members of Congress, and he knows it. I’m running on a platform for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, and supported by a powerful coalition of unions, Sunrise kids, local activists and national progressive leaders. We made over 500,000 voter contacts in September and are statistically tied as of the last poll. In response, McCaul is spending his family fortune, not only buying up TV ads from Houston to Austin, but advertising on every medium. Just this morning my kids were watching YouTube cartoons and told me they saw a ‘Mike Siegel ad’ that was really an attack piece. With additional support we will unleash our own wave of digital ads to make sure every voter knows what I’m fighting for, and what my corrupt opponent represents.”
Julie Oliver is the other Texas progressive Blue America is backing and her district borders on Mike and her opponent is another multimillionaire Trump enabler. “We’re running against one of the most corrupt members of Congress,” she said, “in a gerrymandered district that the establishment didn’t think was winnable. Nevertheless, we’ve pushed this district to a statistical tie, and without a single dime from any PAC we’ve been able to go toe-to-toe with an entrenched GOP incumbent, calling him out on his corruption, running a huge digital, TV, mail media plan as well as one of the most aggressive grassroots field programs in the entire country. If we can continue to get our message out there, we will win.”
Liam O’Mara is running for a red-leaning Riverside County seat held by Corrupt Ken Calvert. “Why donate this late?,” asked O’Mara. “Frankly, it’s more important than ever. Our incumbent is running radio, television, mail, and Internet ads that mention me by name, lie about my ideals, and literally call me a terrorist! He’s more nervous than he has been in decades, and we are hammering the phones to get those ballots turned in. We have our own advertising blitz under way, more signs than any Democrat has ever posted, and phonebanks running every day to keep people fired up and mailing in their votes. We also have radio ads ready to go, in both Spanish and English, and need only your contribution to get us onto enough stereos and put us over the top. Crooked Ken Calvert is already scared– let’s show him he had reason to be, and help him retire with all the indignity he deserves.”
State Rep. Jon Hoadley is running in a swing district in southwest Michigan that looks like it it finally ready to end the congressional career of Trump puppet Fred Upton. “Our race in MI-06 has been on the receiving end of the most homophobic attacks in the country. We can’t let that be the only message they hear. We know our message around healthcare and taking on the insurance companies is moving voters in a massive way. The problem in my race is the incumbent has more name recognition. However, after 34 years, everyone knows him and only 46% of voters want to re-elect him. Contributions to my campaign in this semi-rural district keep our healthcare and accountability messages in front of voters, especially voters who we haven’t been able to reach on the phone or at their doors but who don’t know me as well yet. With a cheap media market, your contributions go a long way towards helping us win.”
Washington state legislator Beth Doglio is in one of those are D vs D congressional general election battles. She represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party and her opponent, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, represents the Republican wing. Beth’s statement:
Thank you all for standing up for progressive values and candidates that will bring a strong, strategic, tenacious voice to Congress calling for transformational change. In the final days of the campaign, your donations make a huge difference. It can make a difference in how many voters we can reach with mail, television ads and digital communications. The very first Congressional race I ever worked on was won by four votes. Four– count them 1, 2, 3, 4! And this, after three recounts. The dollars that come in in the final days of a campaign can make that four vote difference. And, the people we elect will make the difference on how quickly we move to a fossil free future, universal healthcare, compassionate immigration reform, criminal justice reform and so much more. Make the most of the next few weeks– sign up to call voters (you can pick any campaign in the country we’re all doing virtual phone banks) and donate away…
Kathy Ellis’ race in southeast Missouri is the toughest one Blue America has gotten behind in this cycle– a rural and small town R+24 district virtually abandoned to Trumpism by the Democratic Party. Ellis is undaunted: “From day one, I’ve said I’m in this race for the working people of Missouri’s 8th district and to help rebuild progressive infrastructure in a district that has long been ignored. That remains true, all the way through the finish line. We have two major funding priorities right now, and at this point in the game, 100% of contributions go to these areas. The first priority is field and organizing, and specifically hiring organizing in the region. In just the past two weeks, we’ve hired three field organizers who are dedicating their time to calling voters and reminding them to vote. We’d like to hire two more individuals to work with us in our final get out the vote stage. Our second priority is expanding our advertising. In a 30-county district like MO-08, getting our message out can be difficult, and tv/digital ads are some of the best ways to do it. We recently produced an amazing ad focused on Smith’s record, and it’s producing strong results in digital ads. We need to raise $15k to get that on the airwaves across the district. For years, Smith has relied on his corporate donors to help him blanket the airwaves and dominate the conversation. We’ve been challenging that from day one and are ready to take it to the next level.”
Last week, Audrey Denney told us that she needs to raise $458K more to win and told us what she’s talking about with people she calls on the phone asking for contributions to show them that even in this red district, it is a winnable race. In polling last June:
• Audrey trails Rep. LaMalfa -5% on initial ballot.(41-46)
• Audrey is even 47-47 after introducing positive ballot statements on Audrey and Rep. LaMalfa.
• Audrey leads +8% (50-42) after full messaging.
In polling last week:
• LaMalfa’s lead has shrunk to 4-points (49% to 45% for Denney) in a district that has a double-digit Republican advantage in partisanship.
• Tracking poll represents a small percentage of our messaging plan having reached voters. At the time of the poll voters had only been exposed to 20% of our paid communications plan.
• Audrey is winning No Party Preference voters 60-29. There is a chunk of NPP voters (10%) who have a negative view of Trump, but have not yet heard of Audrey.
“Our June poll,” she told us, “showed that our messaging is beating Rep. LaMalfa’s and we are moving voters. We are on track to finish this race with strength.” She raised $671k in Q3 from 16,000 individual contributions and she is working hard to fully fund her $2.6 million dollar budget. “We are going to take this seat nobody is paying attention to. It is also our assessment that an additional $500k in investment in television in the Sacramento media market would finish off Rep. LaMalfa.”
The West Virginia seat Cathy Kunkel is contesting is no walk in the park for a Democrat either, but Cathy is no ordinary Democrat. She’s a populist and a progressive with ideas that make sense to the people in central West Virginia. “Our campaign,” she said, “aims to raise $65,000 in the next two-and-a-half weeks. That money will go towards keeping our ads on the air across our congressional district, footing the bill for the 100,000 phone calls and texts that we’ll be making to voters by election day (we’re 35% of the way there) and paying the staff who are running one of the largest field operations of any West Virginia congressional campaign in recent history, despite the pandemic.
Mondaire Jones is in a pretty blue district and he’s polling well but when I asked him if he needs contributions this late in the game his response was clear: “We do!!!” One of his third-party opponents– a Republican now running as an independent, is self-funding his congressional campaign with at least $500,000 and running misleading and vicious TV ads against Mondaire. “This week, I learned that one of my opponents decided to drop six figures in negative ads against me on television. The Willie Horton-style ad calls me an ‘extremist’ who wants to ‘free criminals’ and also flashes images of AOC, Rashida, Ilhan, and Ayanna across the screen, saying ‘we don’t need any more radicals in Congress.’ It uses racist tropes to criticize my support of New York State’s common sense criminal legal reforms, which passed with overwhelming majorities last year. We are genuinely concerned about the impact it will have across our district, especially because I look very different from the representation this majority white, suburban district is used to. We’ll be ramping up our expenditures in this final stretch to ensure people have accurate information about me, and we need all the support we can get to fight back.”
Omaha progressive Kara Eastman told us she “locked in a tight race with Trump Republican Don Bacon. I lost to him in 2018 by just under 2 points, and I lead in the latest poll by the same margin. But what we are seeing is phenomenal: Republican-aligned dark money Super-PACs have ALREADY spent over $6 million in this race, attacking me with the most extreme langage. I have only been able to fight back due to the support of my massive grassroots army of donors. Every day we see that more and more money is being spent by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson under the direction of Kevin McCarthy against me, so we need more and more grassroots support.”
Trump literally let a convicted felon out of prison to run for the Atlanta district that was represented by John Lewis. With Lewis’ passing state Sen. Nikema Williams, a tough progressive leader, became the Democratic nominee. She told me that “Every contribution made to our campaign right now goes towards direct voter contact, making sure we fight against the hate and vitriol of my opponent to protect the legacy of Congressman John Lewis. My opponent is a Donald Trump apologist who is not fit for public service. I have a proven record of working to uplift the voices of those too often left unheard and unseen. I’m fighting out loud on purpose for the promise of America, for all of us. This election is the most consequential of our lifetime. Voting rights, access to abortion, access to health care and child care– SO much is at stake.”
J.D. Scholten has helped run neo-fascist Steve King out of politics and how he’s taking on King-lite in the only Republican-held district left in Iowa. “We’re focusing these last few weeks,” he told me, “on connecting with Independents, Republican women, and non-voters who are fed up with career politicians maintaining the status quo that props up corporations and the 1% while leaving the working class behind. Any extra dollars will go to our voter contact program and pay for our tele-town halls, where we will dial out to folks across the district who can tune into J.D.’s live parking lot rallies. For those at our parking lot rallies, folks stay in their cars and listen to J.D. via a local radio frequency or can watch live on our Facebook page, and now we’re adding the feature of dialing out to folks at home. Throughout this pandemic, our campaign has worked hard to follow health and safety guidelines while finding creative ways to reach out to voters and get folks involved in our democracy.”
Adam Christensen turned 27 on Saturday, the youngest congressional candidate Blue America is supporting this cycle and if he wins, he’ll be the youngest member of Congress. His election will prove that progressive Democrats can compete and win in rural areas. “Our campaign,” he told me, “is going to win by turning out young voters, progressive voters, and irregular rural Democratic voters. All three of these voting blocs are traditionally ignored but they are key to winning in Florida’s 3rd, and will be instrumental in also delivering Florida for Joe Biden. Contributions to our campaign will fuel our first television ad (which is airing in rural parts of the district even before the Democratic stronghold). We are able to place cable television ads to irregular and rural Democratic voters at under $20 each. $2,000 will keep our ad up for nearly a week in the final stretch in the most rural parts of the district. We know these voters decide the latest of all, so late money is critically important to reaching these hard to contact voters. This race is the best bang for your buck in the country.
Nate McMurray is amazing. Electing this guy to Congress would be as disruptive to the status quo as anything American voters can do this cycle. Please read his statement and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Nate:
A win for my campaign in NY-27 will signal to the world that Trumpism is dead! Especially in NY-27, where Trumpism got it’s foothold. Trump’s first big endorsement in 2015 came from convicted ex-Rep. Chris Collins. NY-27 is home to disgraced GOP operative Michael Caputo and failed big-mouthed Trump supporter Carl Paladino. Trump won the district in 2016 by 25 percentage points and felt such strong ties here that in 2018 he campaigned in person against me for Collins. But I defied the odds and came within 1 percent of winning in 2018. My opponent now hugs tight to Trump but is losing support every day. A win for us in NY-27 will be an actual expansion of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, giving progressives like me and the donors of Blue America not just the best chance in decades to implement a progressive agenda, but one that can get results even faster with a supermajority in the House that stops Trumpism in its tracks.
My progressive campaign right now is at a crucial junction, at the culmination of three years of overwhelming support from grass-roots, small donors and union members running against one of the most far right members of Congress today. Eighty-five percent of my donors are small dollar Western New Yorkers, most of whom continue to give through the end stages of the campaign. It is these everyday Americans– in need of affordable quality healthcare, good paying jobs, economic assistance for struggling businesses, improved infrastructure, and a cleaner community around them– who are most directly hurt by the hate-filled and hurtful actions of Donald Trump and his GOP enablers.
Late-stage donor dollars will figure heavily for me these last weeks, because me and my team have more time than ever before to affect and protect the vote and we need all the resources we can muster to do it. My team and I will put funds to use getting out the late vote, getting media up, but most critically we will need it to send my team out in the field to oversee and protect the voting process at the polls in all 8 counties that make up NY-27 during voting and after the polls close. Absentee ballots are cast and received from Sept. 18-Nov. 10, in-person early voting occurs at select sites Oct. 24-Nov. 1, then widespread in-person voting on Nov. 3. On Nov. 5, two days after Election Day, New York starts a week of counting absentee ballots. My die-hard NY-27 grassroots donors and volunteers in NY-27 will have all their donations and hard work validated and supported by late-stage big donors like Blue America. And then a bigger fight comes after Election Day when New York State starts the absentee ballot count. I’m going to rely heavily on late-stage donations like Blue America’s to protect votes cast at the polling booth and in the absentee ballot count. My team will be dispatched across NY-27 to oversee the vote count and combining our forces with fellow Democrats for days– maybe weeks– thereafter to fight what we predict will be intense efforts in NY-27 by the GOP to suppress the vote count in all 8 counties. I’m going to need resources to keep my people engaged and ensure that every last vote cast for me is counted and we bring in a massive win!”
Let’s help them get over the finish line!
For those not exposed to the South Carolina media market, one ad Jaime Harrison runs against Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham never fails to grab my attention. He runs clips of Graham from before and after the 2016 election, first saying Trump is “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” then later denying he thinks that. Harrison responds in a dismissive, “Oh, come on” tone you just have to love, “We can beat this guy. But I need your help.”
Eric Boehlert’s tweet minutes ago suggests the same about the acting president:
But even with poll numbers like these, Democrats are not expecting the race to be over on election night whatever the margin:
The Biden campaign and congressional Democrats are strategizing together to wage a post-election response to Trump on two fronts — anticipating both a legal challenge and a messaging war — as Trump’s attacks on the election have only intensified while he’s lagging in the polls two weeks ahead of Election Day, with voting already underway. Outside groups are also mobilizing to try to blunt any efforts to dispute the vote count after November 3.
People are worried about civil unrest if Trump loses. Hell, poll greeters at early voting sites here even in upscale neighborhoods are asking what to do if men with guns arrive. Team Biden is preparing for Trump’s attempts to delegitimize the results.
Democratic sources say that they are taking the President at his word. The Biden campaign is preparing for any number of legal contingencies that could arise if the vote is close, while lawmakers are preparing for plausible — and also quite implausible — scenarios that could arise if the presidential election were kicked to Congress to decide a winner. Democrats are also readying a response to Trump’s claims of fraud — which could cause his voters to doubt the legitimacy of the result, even if it’s a Biden landslide — with plans underway for nationwide protests should Trump try to dispute the result. They’re also working with social media companies to try to discourage a premature declaration of victory on election night.
The problem is, Trump has a more compliant media megaphone at his disposal.
Trump’s rhetoric about the election being stolen or rigged has mobilized both liberal activists and Washington veterans keen on ensuring the results of the election are trusted. They’re looking to provide air support should Trump launch a Twitter-driven protest of the results after Election Day.
Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC backing Biden, is beginning to plan for the possibility that Trump will attempt to frame election results that favor Biden as illegitimate.”
We have begun making internal plans,” said Guy Cecil, who chairs the group. “We’re working with allied organizations to sort through our role both in terms of potential litigation and also what our role is in responding to the President.”
Two progressive advocacy groups, Stand up America and Indivisible, formed a bipartisan coalition of 100 advocacy groups called Protect the Results that’s organizing protests across the country should Trump try to challenge the results.
Eric Trump told supporters in Nevada last month that his father would concede if “he got blown out of the water.” Clearly, this guy and his brother do not speak for Donald, but blowing him out of the water is more desirable than fighting a defensive media battle against a torrent of MAGA bullshit.
We can beat this guy. Go. Blow him out of the water.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
A story from the Guardian speaks to a task on my plate this morning:
Black voters in North Carolina are disproportionately having their mail-in ballots flagged for potential rejection in the battleground state, setting off alarms about disenfranchisement.
North Carolina requires mail-in voters to get a witness for their ballots and at least 7,000 mail-in ballots have been flagged across the state because of a deficiency, according to data collected by Michael Bitzer, a professor at Catawba College who closely tracks voting data in the state. As of Wednesday, 40% of rejected ballots – 2,871 – were from Black voters, even though they comprised only 16% of the overall ballots returned. (A spokesman for the state board of elections cautioned some of the data may be outdated because local election offices have not been entering rejection data into the statewide system while legal challenges are pending.)
That 40% number corresponds to what I’m seeing locally. The overall rejection rate seems (don’t quote me) about 2.3% so far, but significantly higher for Black voters. What adds to the confusion is the litigation surrounding absentee ballots that keeps modifying the rules even during the ballot review process. North Carolina has set up a ballot “cure” process but modified it since mailing out ballots. But this makes it difficult for reporting to keep up.
The New York Times has an interactive explainer for the different ways your ballot might be challenged or rejected. It’s informative, but out of date in spots where it comes to North Carolina’s rules. Double-check what you read in the news. The rules are a moving target this cycle.
NPR ran a story last week on groups attempting to help voters fix defects in their ballots. My assignment each morning now is to pull the county list of mailed ballots flagged for defects. Local activists are taking the list and working Black neighborhoods to contact voters whose ballots are in limbo. Fortunately, North Carolina allows a registrants to vote early (that started last Thursday). Finding these voters and taking them to the polls to vote in person means their flagged absentee ballots will be voided and their in-person ballots will count.
So it goes.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
One piece of Rudy Giuliani’s most recent grotesque smear job is the role of the NY Post and its willingness to pass on what may very well be foreign propaganda in order to help that dying whale known as Donald Trump. The NY Times takes a look:
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, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
Coming late in a heated presidential campaign, the article suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used his position to enrich his son Hunter when he was vice president. The Post based the story on photos and documents the paper said it had taken from the hard drive of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.
The article named two sources: Stephen K. Bannon, the former adviser to President Trump now facing federal fraud charges, who was said to have made the paper aware of the hard drive last month; and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who was said to have given the paper “a copy” of the hard drive on Oct. 11.
Mr. Giuliani said he chose The Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”
Seriously. He said that. Good lord…
Top editors met on Oct. 11 to discuss how to use the material provided by Mr. Giuliani. The group included the tabloid veteran Colin Allan, known as Col; Stephen Lynch, The Post’s editor in chief; and Michelle Gotthelf, the digital editor in chief, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. Mr. Allan, who was The Post’s editor in chief from 2001 to 2016 and returned last year as an adviser, urged his colleagues to move quickly, the person said.
As deadline approached, editors pressed staff members to add their bylines to the story — and at least one aside from Mr. Golding refused, two Post journalists said. A Post spokeswoman had no comment on how the article was written or edited.
Headlined “BIDEN SECRET E-MAILS,” the article appeared Wednesday with two bylines: Emma-Jo Morris, a deputy politics editor who joined the paper after four years at the Murdoch-owned Fox News, and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a Post reporter since 2014.
Ms. Morris did not have a bylined article in The Post before Wednesday, a search of its website showed. She arrived at the tabloid in April after working as an associate producer on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her Instagram account, which was set to private on Wednesday, included photos of her posing with the former Trump administration members Mr. Bannon and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as well as Roger J. Stone Jr., a friend and former campaign adviser to Mr. Trump. (In July, the president commuted the sentence of Mr. Stone on seven felonies.)
Ms. Fonrouge had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article, said three people with knowledge of how it was prepared. She learned that her byline was on the story only after it was published, the people said.
The article goes on to outline the “charges” in the Post which amounts to showing some emails that purport to prove Hunter Biden introduced someone to his father, which Joe Biden’s calendar disputes and means nothing anyway, but mostly seems like an attempt to show Hunter Biden is a man with a serious drug problem, which we already knew, and Biden as a loving father who expressed love and support for his troubled son. That’s it.
It’s gross, public humiliation but it’s very much on brand for Trump, Bannon and Giuliani. These are the lowest of low lives. And, as the Times throws away in the last paragraph, “last month, two Republican-led Senate committees investigating the matter said they had found no evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president” so it’s just a smear for smear’s sake. And the trio of Murdoch, Bannon and Giuliani were happy to get it out there.
Meanwhile, in case you haven’t heard, the US Intelligence services warned Trump last winter that Giuliani was almost certainly a Russian useful idiot, if not worse, and he should stay away from him. This happened during the Ukraine shenanigans last December. You’ll recall that Trump was being impeached at the time — for attempting to extort Ukraine to collude with him to smear Joe Biden.
They are still doing it. You cannot make this stuff up. It is insane.
I don’t think we know the half of Trump’s rampant personal corruption while in office. The National Memo has the story:
Donald Trump makes a big show of giving away his annual paycheck to some agency each year. He can afford to, since the Secret Service has rewarded him with two years’ worth of pay just in the money it has spent on golf carts. Really. And then there’s the money that the Air Force has dropped at Trump’s Scottish golf resort. And how Trump has doubled the dues at several of his clubs so that people wanting insider access have to pony up at least $200,000 to bend his elbow in the buffet line (for the buffets that they are still having despite COVID-19).
Assembling the full list of all the ways Trump has tapped his position to line his pockets over the past four years, is a project that will probably still be occupying scholars in the year 3020. However, there is at least one government department that seems to have taken a shot at assembling a compendium. The State Department has put together a 450-page tome showing all the ways it slipped dollars to the boss.
That report is ready to go … they’re hiding it until after the election.
As The Washington Post reports (and by Washington Post, I mean David Farenthold), the documents were assembled in response to a public-records lawsuit which the Post won earlier this year. In response, the State Department had promised to release 300 pages on Thursday. Instead, they sent the Post two (2) pages. On those two pages: “the receipts of a single hotel bill from Trump’s Irish golf course, involving security for Trump’s daughter-in-law and campaign adviser Lara Trump.”
That single bill is a slap in the face to both the public and the whole idea of transparency. It’s also a reminder of just how wide a selection of documents the State Department has when it comes to Trump. It’s not just Donald Trump and his massive entourage that racks up six-figure bills every single day they’re parked at one of his properties. The entire extended first family is also traveling on the taxpayer dime, with those dimes often being channeled right back home by making sure they—and their advisors, assistants, and security personnel—stay at Trump properties.
The State Department also often picks up the tab for foreign dignitaries when they are in the United States, and they also of course pay the bill when Mike Pompeo or any of the department’s 13,000 employees are on the road. How much of that money goes back to Trump? We simply do not know.
We do know that Trump never misses an opportunity to pad his own accounts. The man who went out of his way to cash a $0.13 check raised room prices during the Republican Convention by 60% … and that was just a virtual convention. The prices anyone walking into a Trump hotel might face seem astoundingly fluid, with prices in December of 2019 shooting up to 13 times the normal rate, as Trump funneled money from a campaign event to his personal accounts. A hotel room that normally went for $500, was jacked up to $6,719 that night so that Trump could maximize his take.
How much has Trump been playing this game with government visitors, charging them beyond top dollar to maximize profit from his position? It’s unclear, but based on the contracts between the Trump Organization and the Secret Service, it is clear he’s not giving anyone a discount.
The Post had previously identified $1.2 million in government dollars that were mostly brought into Trump hotels by the travels of Ivanka, Don Jr, and Eric. That includes $245,000 from the Secret Service alone. But for an accurate look at just how much Trump is benefiting from the ability to tell everyone in the government when to travel, where to stay, and how much to pay, it will require more transparency. Which is not forthcoming.
The State Department was supposed to hand over the documents in two batches, one on Thursday, with the second batch on Nov. 16 … two weeks after the election.
Apparently the single receipt handed over now counts as the first “batch.” And if you’re waiting to see what’s in the remainder, don’t count on it arriving in November. Or on any other date.
Any thought that this stuff should be left to posterity is just wrong. This corruption is flagrant and unprecedented. The next congress has an obligation to audit everything.
Lindsey Graham said the other day that he was coming around to campaign finance reform whining that he’d “like to know where some of this money is coming from.” They aren’t used to being outraised and it makes them unhappy. Of course, the Democratic money is coming from average citizens pouring money into ACT Blue (people have donated almost a billion just since RBG died…)
Anyway, it’s a lot of money and it isn’t coming from Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer:
The most shocking pre-election result neither side can dispute is in: Democrats are destroying Republicans in truly historic ways in fundraising.
Why it matters: Money can’t buy elections, but it sure helps. And Joe Biden and a half dozen Senate Democratic candidates are bathing in cash, often with 2x or 3x advantages over their opponents.
A top Republican insider told me: “Fundraising is a barometer of voter support and intensity. Pretty clear from these numbers who has more support and enthusiasm.”
Let’s go to the tape: On the air, President Trump is being “vastly outspent” by Biden, who has maintained a nearly 2-to-1 advantage for months, the N.Y. Times reports on today’s front page.
Joe Biden and the DNC raised $383 million in September, compared to $248 million for Trump and the RNC. Biden’s campaign had $432 million in cash on hand, to $251 million for Trump’s campaign and joint committees.
In the top 14 Senate races, Democrats more than doubled Republicans’ fundraising haul, according to a Politico tally — $363 million to $143 million, for the quarter ending Sept. 30.
Democratic challengers are raking in so much money that seven of the 10 most expensive Senate races ever are happening now, CNN reported from Advertising Analytics data.
Some marquee destinations for Senate cash:
In South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison, challenging Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, shattered Senate fundraising records with a $57 million haul for Q3. Graham raised half that — $28 million, which itself was a record for Senate Republicans.
Also doubling up his opponent is Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), who’s challenging Sen. Steve Daines. Bullock set a record for the most ever raised in a quarter for a Montana U.S. Senate race ($27 million to Daines’ $12 million) — beating his own record for the previous quarter, Lee Newspapers reported.
In Iowa, Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield raised more money in Q3 than any previous Iowa Senate candidate in an entire election cycle, according to Iowa Starting Line. She out-raised Sen. Joni Ernst 4-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics ($29 million to $7 million).
Democratic challengers also raised eye-popping amounts for long-shot Senate races in Kentucky, Texas and Mississippi.
Money is also trickling down to once-unthinkable Senate races — including Kansas and Alaska — forcing Republican outside groups to spend money playing defense, AP reports from Kantar/CMAG data.
“I don’t know why he would have ….”
I’m sure you remember that that’s the line Trump used when defending Vladimir Putin against charges of helping him get elected in 2016. Here’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump:
Why would the president knowingly test positive and go to a debate? Well, duh.
But the answer is less complicated. He didn’t bother to get tested at all. He doesn’t like testing, he didn’t want to know anyway and he figured that all of his minions were being regularly tested so he was safe. He didn’t do it. And he had the virus and exposed Joe Biden to it.
But perhaps I’m being naive again. Let’s just say that it would not surprise me to learn that he knew he had it, figured he was asymptomatic because he felt fine and didn’t give a damn about who he might spread it to, particularly Joe Biden. That is sort of how he’s dealt with the pandemic write large.
I feel very confident that he did not follow the rules one way or the other. And if we didn’t know it before, that proves that he is more than a narcissistic ignoramus. He is a sociopath.