The Midterm Elections

[AmazonGrace]

Despite his nice McCain eulogy GWB still wants Trump enablers  to win big 

 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Despite his nice McCain eulogy GWB still wants Trump enablers  to win big 

 

Just because he gave Michelle Obama a cough drop doesn't mean he's a nice person. He is the president responsible for the war in Afganistan, and the ill-advised invasion of Irak (against the UN's wishes) and he signed the Patriot Act into law. And don't forget his woefully inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. He is a horrible person, and one worthy of the GOP.

Especially now Obama has entered the midterm fray, it doesn't surprise me one bit that he's back in action too. 

[AmazonGrace]

This ghoul: 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The cyclist who flipped off Trump’s motorcade is running for public office"

Spoiler

Juli Briskman, the cyclist who flashed her middle finger at President Trump’s motorcade — and lost her job at a government contracting firm as a result — is parlaying an act of resistance into a run for local office in Northern Virginia.

The 51-year-old marketing executive said this week she will file the paperwork to challenge Suzanne M. Volpe, a Republican who represents the Algonkian District on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2019.

The county reliably votes for Democrats at the state and federal level, but Republicans maintain control of the board, 6 to 3, and Republicans have represented the county in Congress for nearly 40 years.

Democrats hope voter hostility toward Trump, combined with a recent population boom and demographic changes, will help them oust Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) in November and turn the Board of Supervisors blue in 2019 county elections.

Briskman said she didn’t consider seeking public office until last October, when she was forced out of her government contracting job for, as she sees it, exercising her First Amendment rights.

“We have a right to peacefully protest and criticize and express dissent toward our government,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“I’ve gotten some feedback that folks say you should respect the president. Even if you don’t like what they’re doing, you shouldn’t show this sort of disdain. And I simply disagree, and I think the Constitution grants me that privilege.”

Would she do it again? “Probably,” she said.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Loudoun County with 55 percent of the vote in 2016, and the following year Ralph Northam (D) expanded her margin, winning 59 percent of the vote in Loudoun on his way to becoming governor.

But it remains to be seen if and how national politics will influence local elections in 2019.

Volpe, who has been on the board since 2012, said that although she supports the president, she hopes the campaign will focus on local issues.

“Right now, I’m focused on doing the job that my constituents elected me to do: improving our transportation, making our community safer, creating jobs, being fiscally responsible,” she said. “Needless to say, I’ll focus on the race at the appropriate time.”

Briskman said she would run on funding the county’s growing schools adequately, curtailing unchecked development and increased transparency in local government.

She declined to name specific items she would work to change, but said she opposed Volpe’s successful call to cut taxes last year because the move cost the district about $14 million.

Volpe defended the tax cut.

“I felt it was important because not only do we have working families who are struggling,” she said, “but we also have a senior population living on a fixed income and it’s important to try to find that balance.”

Briskman, a divorced mom of two teenagers, has lived in Loudoun County for nearly 20 years and has been active in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and co-founded a local running club.

She has a journalism degree from Ohio State University, an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and a social media certificate from Georgetown University.

Early in her career, Briskman was a reporter for the Winchester Star, and she went on to work in communications and public relations, including stints at embassies in Kazakhstan and Latvia.

Briskman was asked to leave her government contracting job or face termination after an Agence France-Presse photo of her raising her middle finger at Trump’s motorcade went viral.

She sued and won her severance claim, but her wrongful-termination lawsuit was dismissed. Rather than appeal, she decided to seek public office.

Trump often returns to Briskman’s section of Loudoun to visit Trump National Golf Club. Each time, she and a band of Democrats stage impromptu protests outside the resort with signs and baby Trump balloons. Middle fingers stay down.

“If he’s coming to my neighborhood,” she said, “I think he should see some resistance.”

 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

Audio Reveals Potentially Illegal Coordination Between NRA and Montana Senate Hopeful Matt Rosendale

Quote

Before the National Rifle Association dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to flip a competitive, Democratic-held Senate seat, the gun-rights group’s chief lobbyist apparently gave the race’s Republican challenger a heads-up.

Chris Cox, the top political strategist for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), assured Montana Republican Matt Rosendale that the group would spend heavily to support his bid to unseat Sen. Jon Tester, Rosendale told attendees at a July event in Washington.

PAY DIRT exclusively obtained audio of Rosendale’s remarks, which good-government groups say raise serious questions of potentially illicit coordination between Rosendale and an independent political group supporting his campaign.

“I fully expect the NRA is going to come in… in August sometime,” Rosendale said in response to a question about independent political spenders in the race. “The Supreme Court confirmations are big. That’s what sent the NRA over the line. Because in ’12, with [Republican Senate nominee Denny Rehberg] they stayed out, they stayed out of Montana. But Chris Cox told me, he’s like, ‘We’re going to be in this race.’”

[audio]

Rosendale was slightly off in terms of timing, but the NRA did come through as Cox apparently promised. Early this month, the group spent more than $400,000on ads hitting Tester over the precise issue that Rosendale mentioned—the senator’s votes on Supreme Court nominations.

Rosendale’s remarks are potentially problematic, as the NRA-ILA, a 501(c)(4) “dark-money” group, is legally barred from coordinating its ad buys with a federal campaign. As explained by nonprofit tax law attorney Holly Schadler, illegal coordination may occur “if the organization has substantial discussions with the campaign about an expenditure, or if the organization informs the campaign about a planned communication related to the campaign and the campaign signals its agreement with the suggestion to make that communication.”

Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and Federal Election Commission reform programs for the Campaign Legal Center, said Rosendale’s remarks, together with the eventual ad campaign he alluded to, might satisfy the “three-pronged” legal test for impermissible coordination. The three prongs are payment, content, and conduct.

“The payment prong is satisfied because the ads were paid for by somebody other than Rosendale; the content prong is satisfied because the ads expressly advocate against the election of Rosendale’s opponent; and the conduct prong can be satisfied by Rosendale assenting to the request or suggestion of the entity paying for the ad: the NRA,” Fischer said.

An investigation into potential wrongdoing would likely hinge on the question of whether Rosendale encouraged or otherwise signed off on Cox’s pledge to get involved in the race. Rosendale did not recount his reply to Cox in response to the questioner, meaning he could claim that no such assent was offered.

Neither the Rosendale campaign nor the NRA-ILA responded to requests for comment.

Fischer’s group has also filed an FEC complaint alleging the NRA is illegally coordinating with a number of federal campaigns through the use of a common vendor. NRA-ILA’s independent expenditures have been routed through a company called Starboard Strategic. That company appears to be a clone of another vendor, OnMessage, which works with the same campaigns that the NRA is—ostensibly, independently—supporting with huge ad buys. The Trace first reported on the vendor overlap that led to CLC's complaint.

The complaint alleged that OnMessage, which shares staff and office space with Starboard Strategic, was using insight gleaned from media-buying work for the candidates’ campaigns to inform the NRA’s separate advertising strategies in each race.

Like other senators in competitive races this year, Rosendale’s campaign has paid OnMessage for media services, with payments totaling about $445,000. The NRA’s expenditures for its anti-Tester ads, notably, were paid to Starboard Strategic.

 

[formergothardite]

Samantha Bee explains the reasons why I am not exactly sure there is going to be a blue wave come November. And why the republicans don't need a lot of voters to stay in power. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Daily 202: Preexisting conditions take center stage in Democratic attack ads"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: Democrats are pummeling Republican candidates for governor and Senate over a pending lawsuit by 20 GOP-led states that could allow insurance companies to stop covering people with preexisting medical conditions. Underscoring how the politics of Obamacare have changed — even in red states — this issue is being highlighted more than any other right now in Democratic television commercials. Public and private polling validates that it’s an effective line of attack.

A new ad going up today in Michigan from a group funded by the Democratic Governors Association features a diverse mix of Michiganders — young and old, white and black — talking about their preexisting conditions — like lymphoma, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis. Then they warn that GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette might take away their protections. “Schuette would let insurance companies deny people coverage when they need it most,” a female narrator says in the spot, shared first with us.

Similar commercials have popped up across the map. In Ohio, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray launched an attack Wednesday against Mike DeWine. It features cancer patient Bob Jacobsen, a small-business owner from Columbus, saying he could die if he needs to pay $8,000 a month out of pocket for his own medications. He says he was “furious” when he found out DeWine, the state’s attorney general, challenged the constitutionality of the 2010 health law in court. “Mike DeWine is with the insurance companies,” Jacobsen says to the camera.

Neither Schuette nor DeWine are plaintiffs in the pending lawsuit led by Texas, where a federal judge heard oral arguments last week. Both say residents in their states should not be denied care because of preexisting conditions, but as attorney general each also previously fought in court to kill the Affordable Care Act, which would have gotten rid of such protections, and supported congressional efforts last year to repeal the law. Their challengers have also attacked them for not joining an effort by Democratic attorneys general to defend the law in the face of the latest legal challenge.

Stronger Wisconsin, another DGA-backed group, launched an ad against Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Wednesday for signing off on Attorney General Brad Schimel’s decision to join the 20-state lawsuit. A woman with breast cancer, identified as Mary from Madison, says she wants to see what her young daughter will do with her life. “If Scott Walker takes away the protections for preexisting conditions, I won’t be able to afford the treatments that are saving my life,” she says. “It’s a matter of life and death for me. Scott Walker just doesn’t seem to care about families like mine.” 

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s challenger, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, is one of the plaintiffs in the Texas suit. In 2010, Manchin ran a commercial that featured him shooting a copy of the cap-and-trade bill. Last week, he released a similar ad that depicted him shooting a copy of Morrisey’s lawsuit instead. Manchin says he hasn’t changed, but the threat to the state has. “Now the threat is Patrick Morrisey’s lawsuit to take away health care from people with preexisting conditions,” Manchin says, holding his rifle. “He’s just dead wrong.” Indeed, the Mountain State is one of the poorest and sickest states in the country with the highest percentage of people who have preexisting conditions.

The Democratic senators up for reelection in North Dakota and Indiana are also running ads on this topic. In fact, more than half of all Democratic commercials last month for federal races mentioned health care, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

... < chart >

-- This is not some hypothetical. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor made no immediate ruling on the lawsuit following a four-hour hearing in a Fort Worth courtroom last Wednesday. The 20 GOP attorneys general argue that the entire ACA is unconstitutional and should be struck down because Congress repealed the individual mandate in last December’s tax bill. The requirement that people buy insurance or pay a tax penalty was the mechanism that Chief Justice John Roberts used to uphold the entire law in 2012. So now its legal foundation is gone.

The Trump administration supports this lawsuit, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions took the highly unusual step in June of ordering Justice Department lawyers not to defend an existing federal statute in court. The president’s spokespeople insist that he only wants to get rid of the mandates to buy coverage, not the protections for consumers. Interestingly, DOJ lawyers asked O’Connor not to issue an immediate injunction to suspend enforcement of the health law. They argued that this would cause chaos. Perhaps not coincidentally, this means chaos would be sowed only after the midterms.

An Urban Institute report recently estimated that around 17 million Americans could lose health coverage if the lawsuit succeeded. Federal data has also shown that almost half of all non-elderly Americans have a preexisting condition.

This case, Texas v. United States, may land before the Supreme Court. On the same day as the Texas hearing last week, Brett Kavanaugh pointedly declined to answer during his Senate confirmation hearing whether he’d uphold the requirement that insurance companies cover people with preexisting conditions. “I can't give assurances on a specific hypothetical,” said Kavanaugh, who dissented in 2011 when the D.C. Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the law.

-- Polling shows why Democrats are embracing this issue with such gusto. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which does gold-standard survey research on health care, found widespread public concern about the lawsuit in a national poll conducted at the end of August. A 75 percent majority of Americans say it is “very important” to guarantee coverage for people with preexisting conditions; 52 percent of the public are “very worried” that they or someone in their family will have to pay more for health insurance because of the lawsuit; and 41 percent are “very worried” they will lose their coverage if the Supreme Court overturns these protections.

Check out these five interesting slides from Kaiser’s PowerPoint deck on their results:

... < several slides >

-- Democrats said during the past four election cycles that Obamacare would be a real winning issue for their candidates. This time, they might finally be right. The Fix’s Philip Bump pointed Wednesday to these two proof-points:

The ACA has become more popular since Republicans tried to repeal the law last year, especially among independents.

... < graphs >

-- The Michigan governor’s race captures the shifting political tide in miniature. In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Schuette announced that he would not undo Michigan’s expansion of Medicaid if he gets elected. This is remarkable because he vigorously opposed expansion and ran attack ads before the GOP primary attacking Lt. Gov. Brian Calley for supporting it.

Schuette said he accepts that Healthy Michigan, as the program is known locally, is now the law of the land and that he wants to “reform” and “make it better,” rather than get rid of it. “It’s not going anywhere,” he said.

The attorney general reiterated his view that the ACA has been a “failure,” and he said he still wants to replace it — but he would make sure there are protections for people with preexisting conditions. He said any suggestion otherwise is “a scare tactic.”

Democratic nominee Gretchen Whitmer, a former party leader in the state Senate, has made Medicaid expansion a centerpiece of her campaign. Schuette’s new tack on the issue came just one day after the Detroit News and WDIV-TV released a poll showing him down 14 points, 50 percent to 36 percent.

-- Republican gubernatorial candidates really have struggled to thread the needle on Medicaid expansion all year. Exactly two months to the day before Scheutte shifted his tone, DeWine did so in Ohio. After spending more than $1 million attacking his opponent in the GOP primary for supporting expansion under John Kasich, DeWine said he wouldn’t move to take it back after all and, like Schuette, called for adding work requirements.

This sort of muddled messaging on Medicaid has contributed to tension between the outgoing GOP governors and their party’s nominees to replace them in Michigan and Ohio, as well as Nevada and New Mexico.

Recognizing the perilous politics at the national level, 10 Republican senators also co-sponsored a bill last month to prohibit insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions. Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), the most vulnerable GOP incumbent up for reelection, is one of the co-sponsors.

... < graph >

TWO OTHER BIG HEALTH-CARE STORIES DROPPED YESTERDAY:

1. “For the first time since 2010, America’s progress on health insurance stalls,” by Jeff Stein: “America's uninsured rate held essentially steady from 2016 to 2017, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures published on Wednesday, the first year this decade that the nation did not make progress in reducing the ranks of those without health insurance. In 2016, 8.8 percent of the American population — or 28.1 million people — did not have health insurance. In 2017, the number of those without health care rose by about 400,000 people to 28.5 million while the rate of the uninsured did not change … From 2010 to 2016, the uninsured rate fell dramatically — nearly in half — as tens of millions of more people were signed up for health insurance under the [ACA].”

“Fourteen states saw increases in their uninsured populations in 2017, compared to just three states — New York, California, and Louisiana, which recently expanded Medicaid — that saw the number of uninsured fall. … ‘It may be statistically insignificant, but the uptick [in uninsured Americans] represents hundreds of thousands of real people,’ said Sara Rosenbaum, a health expert at George Washington University.

“The data do not reflect the Trump administration’s most significant changes to the American health care system, which primarily came into effect in 2018. The Trump administration has given states permission to impose new work requirements on their Medicaid enrollees, but none were implemented in 2017. [The individual mandate repeal also did not go into effect until this year.] Some health care experts blamed the Trump administration for eliminating the Affordable Care Act’s outreach budget.” (Colby Itkowitz goes deeper on the numbers in today’s Health 202.)

2. Speaking of work requirements: “Several thousand poor residents of Arkansas have been dropped from Medicaid because they failed to meet new requirements, the first Americans to lose the safety-net health insurance under rules compelling recipients to work or prepare for a job to keep their coverage,” Amy Goldstein reports. “Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) announced Wednesday that 4,353 people have become ineligible for Medicaid, out of an initial group of nearly 26,000 who became subject to the requirements this spring. ‘I don’t like that number,’ Hutchinson said of the residents who were removed. But, noting that 1,000 people in the overall program have found employment, he called the requirement ‘a proper balance of those values that we hold important,’ including work and personal responsibility.

“Under Arkansas Works, the state’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, able-bodied adults must go online every month and report their hours of work or other community engagement. They lose insurance if they fail to comply for three months in a row. The requirements began in June for the initial group, who are ages 30 to 49. August was their third month, so the number announced Wednesday represents the first beneficiaries to be dropped. They cannot reapply until next year.

“The concrete reality of more than 4,300 individuals losing insurance — diminishing their access to care — is alarming leaders at medical and mental health clinics and hospitals, as well as legal advocates for the poor. They say logistics of the work rules are ill-suited to the lives of many poor Arkansans, who may not have computer access to report their hours online or may not have even received — or understood — letters the state sent telling them how to stay on Medicaid. … Statewide, nearly a fourth of the population lives in areas in which Internet service is not available, according to figures from the Federal Communications Commission. Even when they have cellphones, many low-income people have plans in which they pay by the minute … In Lee County in the Mississippi Delta, where poverty is rampant, nearly three-quarters of the people lack online access.

“Federal health-care officials have approved work requirements in three more states and have received proposals from 11 others. Arkansas is the only place with rules in effect.”

...

 

[AmazonGrace]

It looks like the group of NY Dems who are basically just Republicans in disguise are getting crushed in the primary. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Republicans are tripping on Trump’s coattails — bigly"

Spoiler

President Trump is getting his wish: It’s all about him.

The election, that is.

New evidence indicates that the midterm elections in seven weeks will be the clearest referendum on a president in at least 80 years.

But while it may delight the narcissistic president that the 2018 midterms are entirely about him, this is precisely what his fellow Republicans were hoping to avoid. With Trump’s support at historic lows — 60 percent overall disapprove of his performance, including 59 percent of independents — Republicans scrambling to hold the House and Senate have been struggling in vain to make the election about other issues: tax cuts, Democrats’ personal foibles — anything to avoid the election being about Trump.

This has failed, bigly.

Midterm elections have generally come to be seen as the electorate’s reaction to a presidency. But this one is on a whole different level. “In no previous election,” Gary Jacobson, a University of California political scientist who crunched the numbers, tells me, “has the linkage between opinions of the president and how people are likely to vote been as strong as this time.” Jacobson’s research goes back to the 1930s, before which there was no polling and therefore no ability to compare.

Jacobson, who presented his findings to the American Political Science Association recently and provided me with updated data, found in 93.1 percent of cases this year, voters’ approval or disapproval of the president is correlated with their planned votes for or against the president’s party in House races. That’s an all-time high. It averaged 86 percent in recent elections, 74 percent in the 1980s and 1990s.

And it isn’t just correlation — it’s causation. Using regression analysis, Jacobson determined that for every percentage point movement in Trump’s job approval rating, support for Republican House candidates in the midterm elections move by 0.75 percentage points — the highest effect ever seen. For Barack Obama, it was 0.50 percentage points. For George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, closer to 0.25 percentage points. There isn’t as much data about Senate voting, but the relationship has been virtually identical.

This has been caused by a combination of historical trends and Trump’s uniquely polarizing status.

Jacobson, working with data from Gallup, the American National Election Studies and others, writes that as recently as 1990, there was only a 31-point difference between how Republicans and Democrats rated the president’s performance in midterm election years. That jumped to a roughly 70-point gap during the midterms of 2006, 2010 and 2014. This year? Seventy-eight percent.

At the same time, party loyalty — the tendency of Democrats and Republicans to vote for their own party’s congressional candidate — has grown from the mid-70s in the 1980s to 90 percent in the past decade. This year? Ninety-six percent.

This does not necessarily mean a Democratic wave, or even a victory. Democrats now lead by about 9 points in the generic House ballot — which asks respondents which party they would vote for in a congressional election. But because of gerrymandering and the distorting effects of urban districts with Democratic supermajorities, Democrats would need to win between 53 percent and 55 percent of the popular vote, Jacobson calculates, to pick up the necessary two dozen House seats. And this year’s Senate map is even more daunting.

But Trump’s unpopularity seems to offset the benefit Republicans should get from the strong economy. Using results from previous midterms and factoring in the president’s approval and the growth in real disposable income, Jacobson reports that in conditions close to the current situation — 2 percent income growth and Trump’s approval at 40 percent — Republicans would, by historic models, lose 33 House seats.

Republicans in competitive races are in a bind. Among independent voters they need to win, Trump is a pariah. But among the Republican voters they need to turn out in high numbers, Trump has 78 percent approval.

Their dilemma was evident on Thursday when Trump made the outrageous and false claim that the official death toll of 2,975 from last year’s storms in Puerto Rico was inflated by Democrats “to make me look as bad as possible.” (Even storm deaths are all about him.) Delicately, Republican candidates in Florida, who had been trying to win over Puerto Rican voters, tried to step away from Trump. Gov. Rick Scott, running for Senate, tweeted: “I disagree.” Rep. Ron DeSantis, running for governor, issued a similar statement.

Good luck with that. Trump, later in the day, repeated his insulting and bogus claims.

As Trump continues to repel, opinions of him drop and support for a Democratic Congress rises. It has the makings of a wave, but one that could recede before the election. We are destined for one of two outcomes: a massive repudiation of Trump or an unthinkable affirmation of him.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 this doesn't seem fair or democratic

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

this doesn't seem fair or democratic

In the past two years of following American politics, I've come to the realization that the US electoral system is utterly undemocratic and only has a thin veneer of democracy. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, the electoral college... none of this is democratic in any sense of the word. It's time Americans realize this themselves and change the system to reflect the will of all of the people, not just the rich of privileged as it is now.

Shining light upon the hill? Yeah, of how not to do things if you want to be a democracy.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 This comment was in response to a ridiculous RW pundit who complained that she wore expensive clothes for a photoshoot

[AmazonGrace]

Oh well 

If you're unable to find out, perhaps you're not an informed voter anyway 

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

Awww, poor Nunes is seeing the Resistance everywhere! 

Better get used to it, Nunes, because this is what you get for being Russia's bitch.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hunter's opponent is using Faux News' words against Hunter:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

He denies the charges and calls her a liar but is dropping out anyway. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Kevin Cramer thinks rape attempts are fine If you're drunk 

 

[AmazonGrace]

So you think you can vote