2020 USA presidential election

'Trump Talks Tough on Venezuela But Admires Thugs and Dictators like Nicolas Maduro'

https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1275048252073578501

"  Biden and his ventriloquists keep out-hawking Trump. This tactic of attacking Donald Trump for being insufficiently war-like is nothing new for Biden Inc., nor is it limited to Venezuela."

A New Voting Crisis: Kentucky Closes 95% of Polling Places, Leaving Louisville with Just One

As primary voters head to the polls in New York, Kentucky and Virginia, they face long lines, even as President Trump continues to attack mail-in voting, falsely claiming it leads to fraud. Kentucky has reduced the number of polling places from 3,700 to just 170 — a 95% reduction. “There’s the potential for record turnout,” notes Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, despite such suppression tactics.

quote:

The most closely watched race is the Democratic primary to pick a candidate to challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. Progressive candidate, Kentucky state Representative Charles Booker has seen a major boost in polling and received high-profile endorsements from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, as well as Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who’s running, herself, in New York. Booker hopes to beat out former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who has outspent Booker on ads, $14 million to $1 million. She spent the $14 million. This comes as Trump again attacked mail-in voting yesterday, falsely claiming it leads to fraud. He tweeted, “Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history.”

quote:

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: Yes, unfortunately, it is possible, and it’s happening right now. And, you know, that’s not an equal decline that we’ve seen. You know, what we know is that in Jefferson County, the largest county and the county that has half of the state’s Black population, that the number of polling locations was actually brought down to one — one polling place serving the entire county, estimated 600,000 — over 600,000 registered voters.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the projected vote totals, from previous elections to now, are people expecting a significant drop in the total votes as a result of reduction in polling places? Because many people will not end up doing mail-in ballots.

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: Exactly. And that’s part of the problem. So, the first part of your question, in terms of the expected drop, actually, there’s the potential — there’s potential for record turnout. What they’re saying is that there’s over 200,000 ballots that were sent out to folks that requested the mail-in ballot. That, combined with the number of folks that have actually already early voted, puts them at a number that basically could exceed even 2008, which is what we saw happen in Georgia, right? In spite of all of the mess that took place and the voter suppression that took place, that you still saw a record turnout in Georgia. And so, there’s really potential to have something similar take place in Louisville, in particular, but throughout the state of Kentucky.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mention Georgia. Clearly, if you could talk a little bit about the meltdown that occurred there, and also the fact a lot of people don’t understand that, yes, many states have gone to mail-in voting, essentially mail-in voting, but the mail-in voting process is a lot more complicated than it is going to the polling place and just choosing your candidates or sticking your ballot through a machine, isn’t it?

CLIFF ALBRIGHT: Exactly. You know, we’ve been big supporters of mail-in voting. We know that it’s the safest way for our communities to be able to go vote — again, communities that are being disproportionately hit by the coronavirus. But it’s not a panacea. It’s not something that solves all the problems. It’s not something that’s exempt from voter suppression.

You can have a state that says, “OK, we’ll do vote by mail,” but there are many ways, there are many pitfalls in how it gets done, that can still create voter suppression, in fact, even larger-scale voter suppression than in a normal election. There are still issues over who gets sent the ballots, over what excuse even qualifies for you to use a mail-in ballot, or you still have states that are fighting against — like states like Tennessee, where I’m at right now, with states that are fighting against coronavirus even being an allowable excuse to do vote by mail. You’ve still got issues in terms of when does the ballot have to receive: Is it a received-by date, or is it a postage date? You’ve got questions over signatures, right? In fact, one of the problems we’re hearing in Kentucky right now is that there are some voters who didn’t know that you have to sign in two places, and because of that, those ballots aren’t getting counted. And then you’ve got the signature match issues, which they also have in Kentucky, which says that your signature is going to be — your signature on the mail-in ballot is going to be compared with the signature that they have on file, which could be 10 years old or 20 years old, right? So, you’ve got all these different areas where voter suppression can creep into the vote-by-mail system. So, when done properly, it can be a great alternative to keep our communities safe, but it is not exempt from voter suppression.

That’s what we saw happen in Georgia, where the reality is, much of the lines that we saw in Georgia, it was a combination of many issues, but one of those issues is that you had many people that wanted to vote by mail but were not able to, either because of a postage issue — the state didn’t provide postage — or some other aspects. The state had incorrect directions in the mail envelope with the vote-by-mail ballot. And so, some of those lines — and again, we’re talking about four-hour, five-hour, six-hour lines. Some of that was caused by the fact that some people wanted to vote by mail, and simply weren’t able to.....

Progressive candidates also did well in down ballot races in yesterday's primaries across the country, including in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Iowa and Washington DC. While these lower profile races do not receive the attention of the races mentioned in the previous post they auger well for the future as financial social and racial conditions worsen for many Americans. The successful lower profile candidates often deal with local and state issues that are missed by the national media but often affect people's lives the most. They also build the experience level and profile of these progressive candidates, enabling them to run for higher office. 

FROM NEW MEXICO to Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., progressive challengers to Democratic incumbents scored a series of victories on Tuesday night, continuing to grind out an insurgency that in just a few years has dramatically reshaped the politics of the Democratic Party. 

In the wake of Bernie Sanders’s surge and then rapid collapse in the Democratic presidential primary, speculation about the demise of the progressive wing of the party, and a dismissal of the entire idea of organizing as a means toward power has been rampant, but leftist candidates at the local level continue to notch the kind of victories that force incumbents to pay attention. ...

In Pennsylvania, a progressive force has been coalescing since the election of President Donald Trump in November 2016, with radical activists allying with what’s become known as “the resistance” in a way that has gone smoother than elsewhere in the country. That alliance has meant that many of the same forces have organized both victories at the ballot box and street demonstrations, in both major cities and small towns. 

Organizers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, launched Lancaster Stands Up in the days after Trump’s victory and have gone on to block the privatization of local prison services, elect allies to council and school board seats, win a Democratic congressional nomination and, in recent days, put together the largest street protests in the city’s modern memory. The model has gone statewide, with an umbrella organization, Pennsylvania Stand Up, of nine chapters, including Eerie Stands Up, Lehigh Valley Stands Up, and others. Another of its chapters, Reclaim Philadelphia, is an effort by local activists, with help from the Working Families Party, to take back control of the city from establishment Democrats with ties to real estate developers and major corporate players. 

That effort got a major boost Tuesday night, when insurgent Nikil Saval, a co-founder of Reclaim Philadelphia, knocked off longtime incumbent state Sen. Larry Farnese, who had held the seat since 2008. For the previous 30 years, it had been held by a legendary South Philly politician, Vincent Fumo, who took over the seat when the incumbent went to prison for corruption. Fumo, likewise, left the seat for prison. For the left to claim Fumo’s seat is a major symbolic victory in a closely watched contest. 

Rick Krajewski, another Reclaim organizer running in a competitive West/Southwest Philly House district against a more moderate opponent, has a solid chance of winning. (WFP did not endorse either Krajewski or Saval.) Krajewski won a late endorsement from Sanders, and he told The Intercept on Wednesday he had expected to be trailing slightly among in-person votes, and to make it up with mail-in ballots, as his was the only campaign to organize a robust mail operation. But instead, with 5,500 ballots counted, Krajewski is leading by 4 percentage points among in-person votes, with roughly 7,000 mail-in ballots still to be counted. 

Progressives also rallied around Nydea Graves, who ran for a Coatesville City Council seat and ousted an incumbent in a special election. Coatesville, in Chester County, is roughly the midpoint between Lancaster City and Philadelphia, and Graves is a leader of the local Chester County Stands Up chapter. 

The left is also threatening to expand on gains it made in hotly contested city council races last year. Councilwoman Kendra Brooks won in 2019 with the backing of Reclaim Philadelphia and the Working Families Party, making inroads into the type of working-class, predominantly black neighborhoods where the left has struggled to gain traction in the past — a failure that is used to undercut the left’s claim to legitimately represent a broad, multicultural working-class movement. Brooks’s ally, Pastor Nicolas O’Rourke, lost a city council race the same year but went on to become Pennsylvania organizing director for the WFP. Brooks and O’Rourke teamed up to help 25-year-old Bernard Williams win the nomination for the area’s state House seat. A win would give the insurgent left deeper inroads in the area, solidifying Brooks’s victory; as of Wednesday afternoon, Williams trailed by a single percentage point among in-person votes, but mail-in ballots could push him to the top. ...

The left also appears to have taken out one-time progressive champion state Sen. Daylin Leach, the subject of a slew of sexual misconduct and harassment allegations. As of Wednesday afternoon, WFP-backed Amanda Cappelletti had a comfortable lead. 

Progressive Jessica Benham is also leading in a state House race against Ed Moeller, a conservative, anti-choice member of the Democratic establishment who had the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police in this Pittsburgh-area contest. 

And Emily Kinkead is leading incumbent state Rep. Adam Ravenstahl, brother of the former mayor of Pittsburgh. Kinkead is allied with democratic socialist state Reps. Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato, who were first elected in 2018, and will grow their power once she arrives in Harrisburg. Innamorato was unopposed in her primary this cycle, while the party establishment came hard for Lee in her race, but she crushed her opponent, leading by more than 50 percentage points, with votes still to be counted. 

Voters in Washington, D.C., also pushed the city council to the left, with an insurgent victory in Ward 4 by former D.C. assistant attorney general Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist, against incumbent Brandon Todd. Ward 4 covers some gentrifying neighborhoods as well as historically middle-class black neighborhoods; George performed best in the gentrifying areas, as many left insurgents do, but she also won convincingly across the ward, which has for years been represented by business-friendly candidates. That includes Adrian Fenty, who went on to become mayor and left a handpicked successor, Muriel Bowser, in his place. When Bowser ascended to mayor, she tapped Todd for the seat. George was helped by a large coalition — stretching from WFP to Democratic Socialists of America — that included an independent progressive city councilwoman, Elissa Silverman, who was first elected at-large in 2014 and fended off a well-financed challenge from the city’s developers in 2018 to hold her seat. The developers’ failure to take out Silverman, followed by their defeat at the hands of her ally, George, signals a shift in the city’s local politics. 

In Iowa, leftist candidate J.D. Scholten is once again the Democratic nominee in the 4th Congressional District, following an uncontested primary in the race to replace Rep. Steve King. The incumbent Republican and white supremacist lost his seat by more than 9 percentage points during yesterday’s Republican primary. King, who has a long history of saying and doing racist things, narrowly defeated Scholten in 2018 with a margin of 3 percentage points. ....

IN NEW MEXICO, an all-women slate of progressives challenged five recalcitrant incumbents under the banner of a coalition dubbed “No Corporate Democrats.” Four of the five women ousted long-serving members of the state Senate who had stood in the way of the progressive agenda for years in this deep blue state. Another allied progressive, who wasn’t officially part of the coalition, unseated an anti-choice Democrat. The defeated incumbents include state Senate leadership figures. 

Eric Griego, New Mexico state director for the Working Families Party, which had backed the progressives, said their victories are the “last gasp” of the moderate, corporate wing of the party on a state and local level. He noted that these victories build on the gains progressives made in the 2018 wave elections, when one of the longest-serving members of the state House of Representatives, conservative Democrat Debbie Rodella, was defeated by Susan Herrera.   

“With them gone, we think this is going to open up a lot of really, really monumental legislation that the state has needed for generations,” Griego said. The progressives’ priorities include fully funding early childhood programs, releasing the state’s dependence on oil and gas, and repealing an arcane law that criminalizes abortion, he added. “The other really big one is potentially expanding the social safety net whether it’s healthcare or childhood education.”  ...

An unprecedented number of absentee ballots has led to delays, so the votes are still being counted, but the Working Families Party declared victory in all five races Wednesday afternoon.

Siah Correa Hemphill, an educator and school psychologist, won overwhelmingly in District 28, unseating state Sen. Gabe Ramos. In District 38, Carrie Hamblen, a pioneer in New Mexico’s fight for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, is locked in a tight race against Senate President Pro Tempore Mary Kay Papen. ...

In District 35, Neomi Martinez-Parra has a nearly 10 percentage point lead over state Sen. John Arthur Smith, who has been in office since 1989 and serves as the head of the Senate Finance Committee. Pam Cordova, a retired educator, also appears to be on track to victory, leading state Sen. Clemente Sanchez by over 1,000 votes, as of Wednesday morning. Cordova was backed by local labor groups and unions, EMILY’s List, and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich. 

Noreen Kelly, a Navajo elder and environmental activist who ran with No Corporate Democrats, is the only candidate on the slate who lost. She jumped in late in the race, formally launching in March, and struggled to get her campaign off the ground. 

Leo Jaramillo, chair of the Rio Arriba County Commission, wasn’t officially on the No Corporate Democrat slate, but his victory is being celebrated by the Working Families Party and other allied progressive groups. Jaramillo defeated five-term incumbent state Sen. Richard Martinez, an anti-choice lawmaker who was also one of four Democrats to vote against New Mexico’s “red-flag” gun law, in District 5. ...

Oil and gas companies, which wield enormous influence over the state’s budget and politicians, pumped at least $1 million into New Mexico’s state Senate races, including Chevron Oil spending $700,000 in support of the incumbents. But some of the challengers, like Jaramillo and Correa Hemphill, had garnered broader coalitions of support across the progressive wing of the party and with top Democrats like Lujan Grisham and Heinrich. To help boost the candidates, the WFP joined other groups in making tens of thousands of calls, sending out mail, and investing in radio and texting. 

The No Corporate Democrats coalition was modeled after New York’s No IDC coalition, which in 2018 unseated conservative Democrats who were allied with Republicans, known as the Independent Democratic Conference. Progressives in New Mexico were tasked with the challenge of branding incumbents that work with Republicans, Griego said. Despite pushing candidates in a few risky, tough races, the coalition, which included reproductive rights groups, environmental groups, and the nonprofit organization OLÉ, pulled it off.

Georgia Bill Would Bar Election Officials from Mailing Absentee Ballot Applications

In Georgia, a Republican-controlled committee of state lawmakers has advanced a bill that would bar election officials from mailing absentee ballot applications to millions of active registered voters ahead of November’s election. Under Senate Bill 463, voters who want to cast ballots by mail would have to initiate the process themselves.

Freedom Rider: Democrats Move Right and Towards Defeat

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-democrats-move-right-and...

"Besides not being Trump, the Democrats offer nothing, but think they can win with a candidate who has no constituency, charisma or any platform positions that would attract more voters. This presidential election season bears a striking resemblance to that of 2016..."

Biden Criticizes Trump Over Intelligence on Russian Bounties on US Troops

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1277318851160

"Donald Trump's entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It's a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harms way."

And yet the Canadian liberal left can't cheer loud enough for the crooked, crazy warmonger or his dangerous drivel.

'Trump & Biden are Imbeciles. Threat of Nuclear War is Real' - Roger Waters

https://youtu.be/iHppg3wlhxc

A Cash Cliff Spells Trouble For US Unemployed and Everyone Else

https://twitter.com/Mont_Jiang/status/1277668796669612038

"American Democracy is a system where political parties will each calculate how best to take advantage of a looming humanitarian crisis to secure power temporarily. Great system where politicians compete to trick the people into blaming their opponents."

The devil is in the duopoly.

Lakotas To Donald Trump: 'You Are Not Welcome Here!'

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/lakotas-to-donald-trump-you-are-not-...

"Maya Eagle has a message for President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their supporters. You are not welcome here!"

Scuffles Break Out as National Guard Moves in to Disperse Protesters Blocking Entrance to Trump's Mt Rushmore Event (and vid)

https://on.rt.com/al04

LIVE FEED:

https://www.facebook.com/rightsidebroadcasting/videos/193824332072401

The Lincoln Project are a bunch of right wing assholes, but they sure do know how to make an attack ad.

Choices:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/07/choices.html

The Data is Clear: Progressives Should Boycott Biden

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/the-data-is-clear-progressives-s...

"Once again, the Democratic Party is asking progressives to vote for a presidential nominee who says he disagrees with them about every major issue. This is presented as an offer they can't refuse...History is clear. When progressive voters compromised their values by supporting corporatist candidates, they were ignored after the election. Only when they boycotted a general election did the DNC start to take them seriously..."

The American political duopoly is a truly debauched and toxic propaganda death-machine. Absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with democracy anymore. No more 'lesser evil' choices.  All it does now is attack, destroy and deceive in the interest of the same ruling class, war-mongering monsters. No wonder it enjoys Canadian 'progressive' support.

'The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Has Reported HR 6395 NDAA For Fiscal Year 2021 by a vote of 56-0'

https://twitter.com/stephensemier/status/1280233030670483456

"Here's how much each HASC Democrat took from the defense industry before voting to authorize a $740.5 billion military budget. (Figures in red refer to donations received so far in the 2020 election cycle.)

Presidential candidate Joe Biden has put forward a economic and environmental plan that many will question because of his past history in this regard. While the plan was built with the help of the Sanders team, I am very skeptical that it will be implemented. It does not include Medicare for All or a federal jobs guarantee that was part of Ocasio Cortez's plan. 

However, it still beat's Trudeau's ongoing $60 billion a year subsidies to the fossil fuel industry according to the International Monetary Fund (https://thenarwhal.ca/canadas-fossil-fuel-subsidies-amount-to-1650-per-c...), his pursuit of more pipeline construction, his failure to hit emission targets according to the Auditor General in 2018 ((http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)) and Environmental Commissioner in 2019 (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...) as well as in the latest report this May (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/05/29/opinion/canadas-emissions-ri...). The Trudeau government has simply redefined the way emissions are reported in order to make the emissions look smaller (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/06/05/opinion/canadas-managed-fore...).

If not a Green New Deal then at least a Green Society. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

No Democratic presidential nominee has ever assembled a more progressive campaign website than Joe Biden. Blue America’s presumptive standard-bearer has endorsed an expansion of collective-bargaining rightsthat drastically increases labor’s leverage over capital. He’s called for waging war on exclusionary zoning, and making Section 8 housing assistance an entitlement program that would be available to all Americans whose material circumstances qualify them for aid — policies that meaningfully reduce housing segregation and slash child poverty by more than a third. Biden has proposed making public college free for most Americans, tripling federal funding for low-income school districts, raising the federal minimum wage, and making Washington, D.C., a state.

But a campaign website promise is worth about as much as a verbal IOU from a miserly amnesiac. America’s veto-point laden legislative system, polarized politics, and right-leaning Senate map all make passing laws exceptionally difficult. ...

Expressing support for a policy means little, absent a commitment to prioritize its passage once in office. For this reason, the most encouraging aspect of Biden’s new climate plan is that it is also his plan for economic recovery.

During the 2020 primary, Biden called for spending $1.7 trillion on renewables, energy-efficient infrastructure, and research and development on a wide range of “moon shot” green technologies, among other projects. His plan also aimed to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 through the establishment of an “enforcement mechanism” (ostensibly, some kind of carbon tax) that would ratchet up until CO2 emissions fell to a level consistent with that goal. This was an order of magnitude more ambitious than any policy Democrats had entertained four years earlier, but still exponentially less ambitious than a rational and humane response to the climate crisis would require.

But that was the primary. Now that Biden’s secured the nomination, he’s walking back that proposal — and pivoting to the left.

On Tuesday, the presumptive Democratic nominee unveiled a new climate policy, informed by the work of the Biden-Sanders unity task force. Now, instead of investing $1.7 trillion over ten years, Biden calls for getting $2 trillion out the door in just four. As for zero-emissions targets, 2050 is soJanuary 2020; today, Biden wants America to run run on 100 percent clean electricity by 2035.

The new policy would spread $2 trillion across a wide range of initiatives, including revamping the nation’s infrastructure, upgrading and weatherizing millions of buildings, providing every major U.S. city with “high-quality, zero-emissions” public transit, constructing 1.5 million ecofriendly affordable-housing units, subsidizing the growth of America’s electric-car industry, and creating a climate conservation corps to clean up abandoned gas wells and other ecological blights. This is not the Green New Deal (GND) as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez conceived it; her version included Medicare for All and a federal jobs guarantee. But it is remarkably close to the narrower version of the GND outlined by the progressive think tank Data for Progress in September 2018. ...

All this would mean little in the absence of indications that Biden views his climate policy as a governing priority, rather than a mere campaign ploy. But there are two reasons to believe that he sees it as the former. First, there is the policy’s timing. We aren’t in the heat of a primary in which Biden is jockeying for the support of progressive interest groups. We’re in the general election. And, as recent polling from the New York Timesdemonstrates, from a purely political perspective, Biden has no real need to shore up his left flank. Former supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are nearly unanimous in their backing of the Democratic nominee over Trump. ...

Secondly, and more important, Biden’s vow to spend $2 trillion in four years doesn’t just represent a more substantively ambitious response to the climate crisis — it also establishes massive green investment as the cornerstone of his vision for economic recovery. The aim of rapidly dispensing these funds is as much Kenyesian as ecological: The point is to replace depressed private-sector demand for capital and labor with public investment in a sustainable future. ...

To be sure, the obstacles to enacting a plan as ambitious as Biden’s present one remain myriad. Even with Biden’s lead over Trump near all-time highs, Senate control remains a toss-up. If Chuck Schumer secures a tiny majority, centrist Democrats from states dominated by fossil-fuel interests will have significant leverage over all legislation. And although Biden is signaling comfort with abolishing the filibuster if Republicans obstruct his agenda, not every Senate Democrat is onboard.

Nevertheless, the odds that the Democratic Party will secure the power to govern in 2021 — and will use that power to substantially mitigate our ever-deepening ecological catastrophe — are higher now than they’ve ever been.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/biden-new-climate-change-plan-co...

'How Trump Stole 2020' : An Interview with Greg Palast

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/20/how-trump-stole-2020%e2%80%b3-an...

"...It's pretty hard for one thief to call out another thief. While it's true that the Republicans stole the White House, the Democrats stole their own party from their own voters."