2020 Presidential Election 2: The Primaries are upon us

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Impeachment will define the 2020 election"

Spoiler

For the fourth time in American history, the House has embarked on the road to impeachment. Not in more than 150 years have the proceedings unfolded in the middle of a presidential election.

No one knows how this will play out, or what its collateral effects will be. Recent precedent offers no guide. Impeachment inquiries were launched against Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton during their second terms, when both were all-but-lame ducks. In 2020, we will see our democratic processes and traditions stretched close to the breaking point.

Maybe all of this was preordained anyway, given the recklessness of the current occupant of the White House. As Joe Lockhart, who was Clinton’s White House press secretary, said to me: “If Donald Trump is president, impeach him or not, he’s going to be the news every day. He has blotted out the sun.”

It is easy to forget that Democrats won back the majority in the House last year by pressing their case on issues that shape the everyday lives of families. With impeachment proceedings underway, there will be little oxygen left for any discussion of health care or infrastructure or college costs or anything beyond the question of Trump’s fitness for office. And if the investigation turns up anything short of a slam-dunk case to remove him, swing voters might punish a party they see as determined to overturn the result of the last presidential election.

All of this helps explain why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was so reluctant to set the formal process into motion, and why she would like to see it come to a conclusion as expeditiously as possible. Senior Democratic lawmakers and top leadership aides have told The Post that a House vote on articles charging President Trump with “high crimes and misdemeanors” could happen within weeks.

But that seems unrealistic. Rushing the process would only give credence to Trump’s near-hourly declarations that all of this is a “witch hunt.” And his White House is certain to resist congressional demands for documents and witnesses upon which the House could build its case, which means battles in the courts that could take months.

Meanwhile, Trump will galvanize his ever-loyal base, and his fundraising will skyrocket. The near-certainty that he would be acquitted by the Republican-held Senate will be spun as an exoneration.

An impeachment investigation will also shape the Democrats’ choice of a nominee, potentially foreshortening the race and freezing the current standings in place. Those who are struggling to break from the rear of a 19-person field will find it even harder — and maybe impossible — to make their voices heard in the din. “Candidates who have advantages now may see those advantages multiplied,” says David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama’s chief strategist.

One of the biggest unknowns is how all of this will affect the prospects of poll-leading Joe Biden. Trump’s brazen and improper play to enlist a foreign government to scuff up Biden assures that baseless allegations about him will be in the water. But even if Trump’s pressure on Ukraine failed, he continues to insist that Biden should be investigated and to spread evidence-free allegations about him. How Biden deals with it will likely be his greatest test as a candidate.

Trump has also created a paradox for himself. As longtime Democratic operative Joe Trippi notes of the president: “The question may not be whether Biden can take him down. It may be his fear of Biden that takes him down.”

The possible effects on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are also double-edged. Her campaign, after a rocky start, has been executed more skillfully than any other to date, and she is the only one who has shown consistently upward momentum.

It may or may not help her to have Biden at center stage now. She was the first 2020 candidate to call for Trump’s impeachment, and the relentless focus on that this fall and beyond could dampen scrutiny surrounding the details and cost of some of her more far-reaching policy proposals.

But the most consequential unanswerables are the ones that transcend how the impeachment inquiry will affect the outcome of a single presidential election.

When the country comes out on the other side of whatever terrifying, uncharted territory we are about to cross, what kind of nation will we be? One that is even more deeply and irreconcilably divided than we are now? Or maybe — just maybe — one that is finally ready to demand something better than the ghastliness that has gotten us to this.

 

[fraurosena]

Oh dear. This is such bad news for Bernie. 

I hope he returns to health soon.

[milkteeth]

Getting a stent is pretty common, and recovery time is usually like a week to ten days. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had stents put in when they were in their 60s. Thankfully this was caught early and hopefully Bernie is feeling better soon! 

[fraurosena]

Well, at least he's admitting it this time.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yes!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope more media outlets do the same: "CNN won’t run two Trump campaign ads, citing ‘demonstrably false’ claims"

Spoiler

CNN said Thursday that it will not run two Trump campaign ads because they disparage the network’s journalists and make “demonstrably false” claims while discussing impeachment and pushing unsubstantiated allegations of corruption against former vice president Joe Biden.

The network’s decisions come as the Trump administration escalates its attacks on congressional Democrats’ impeachment efforts and continues to lash out at media organizations it tries to discredit as “fake news.” CNN’s move brought renewed ire from Trump’s reelection campaign, as Communications Director Tim Murtaugh called the news network a “Democrat public relations firm” that “spends all day protecting Joe Biden.”

The first rejected ad, posted last week to YouTube, suggests the president is being unfairly scrutinized for pressing Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter. The ad accuses Trump’s potential 2020 opponent of corruption, continuing a favorite talking point of the president and his supporters amid an impeachment inquiry and concerns Trump used his office to create trouble for a political rival.

The 30-second commercial claims Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion to fire a prosecutor looking into “his son’s company.” Hunter Biden sat on the board of energy firm Burisma but does not own it, and while Biden was key in the Obama administration’s efforts to remove Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin by using U.S. aid as leverage, no evidence indicates Biden sought to help his son. Widely criticized for his handling of corruption cases, Shokin was eventually voted out of office.

The ad goes on to criticize another common Trump target by accusing “media lap dogs” of aiding Democrats’ impeachment efforts. It depicts prominent journalists bashed by Trump: CNN hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

CNN said in a statement that “in addition to disparaging CNN and its journalists, the ad makes assertions that have been proven demonstrably false by various news outlets, including CNN.”

Murtaugh maintained the Biden ad is accurate and was “reviewed by counsel.”

Another 30-second video titled “Coup” and released Wednesday has been rejected as well, CNN said Thursday.

That ad decries Democrats’ impeachment efforts as an attempt to “undo the election regardless of facts” and attack Trump “by any means necessary.” It also accuses Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, of fabricating evidence during a discussion of a whistleblower complaint against Trump, a claim also broadcast from the president’s Twitter account. (Schiff has said his paraphrase of Trump’s controversial call with Ukraine’s president “was meant to be at least part in parody.”)

The impeachment push is “nothing short of a coup and it must be stopped,” the Trump ad declares.

CNN cited similar concerns about false statements in declining the newer commercial, saying the spot makes claims about the whistleblower complaint against the president that the intelligence community inspector general has debunked.

“In addition, it is inaccurate to use the word ‘coup’ to describe a constitutionally prescribed legal process,” the company stated, echoing critics who slammed Trump’s comparison of impeachment to an opposition group’s violent, illegal overthrow of a government.

Trump’s reelection campaign did not immediately provide comment on CNN’s decision about the second ad.

Another commercial submitted by the Trump campaign called “Changing Things” has been accepted, CNN said.

Networks have rejected presidential campaign commercials before. Last year, channels including Fox News — the president’s favored news network — nixed an ad that CNN and others called racist for its depiction of immigrants as “dangerous illegal criminals.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Of course FB has no such scruples:

Just one of the many reasons I refuse to have a FB account.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Just one of the many reasons I refuse to have a FB account.

Yeah, I ditched mine too. I don't want to contribute to FB's unscrupulous profit scheme.

[GreyhoundFan]

Jacob Wohl just can't stop trying to make his idiotic trolling stick:

Spoiler

 

Edited October 4, 2019 by GreyhoundFan

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Jacob Wohl just can't stop trying to make his idiotic trolling stick:

I don't know why this guy is still around.  I do like how Elizabeth Warren turned his insinuation around.  Go, Cougars! 

[GreyhoundFan]

Whenever I see anything about Wohl, I can't help but think about Regina and Gretchen:

[AmazonGrace]

I don't even know why Wohl thought that insinuating younger men want Warren would be bad for her

[front hugs > duggs]

This was hysterical:

https://www.thewrap.com/snl-kate-mckinnons-elizabeth-warren-mocks-that-fake-sex-scandal-as-her-vibe-for-sure-video/

I was cracking up at everything "Warren" was saying in response ☺️

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Smash!]

I don't get part of Beto's response. I know a few people who immigrated to the US based on a fiancé (K1) or a spouse visa (CR1). Even if you're from central Europe it's a hassle. USCIS is understaffed and has a huge backlog. There are forms to no end, it takes long and after that, your greencard is only valid for two years. You then have to file the removal of conditions to prove that your marriage is real. Only after this is approved you get your 10 year greencard. And all this is only for the fiancé/spouse visa which should be the easier ones if you compare it to the work visa.

Considering this hassle when you want to legally enter and stay the US, yes I get what the woman is saying. I don't know if illigal immigrants are a treat to low income workers tough?

However, Beto is right in that it's a shame to the country to separate the kids from their families and put them into a cage.

Unfortunately immigration is a complex topic and I believe it's important to consider all the grey tones between the stances of the GOP and the Democrats.

 

[front hugs > duggs]

15 hours ago, Smash! said:

I know a few people who immigrated to the US based on a fiancé (K1) or a spouse visa (CR1). Even if you're from central Europe it's a hassle. USCIS is understaffed and has a huge backlog. There are forms to no end, it takes long and after that, your greencard is only valid for two years. You then have to file the removal of conditions to prove that your marriage is real. Only after this is approved you get your 10 year greencard. And all this is only for the fiancé/spouse visa which should be the easier ones if you compare it to the work visa.

This is me and my husband, who is from England. He got his initial green card within a few months. In December, the two year expired and we had to pay the $850 (which the government happily cashed before the shutdown). Then the government shut down and he didn't have any documentation to renew his driver's license, which expired the same date as his green card. My husband couldn't drive for a few months until the government reopened, they had to track down his case (didn't have the best experience in dealing with USCIS employees, who didn't seem trained for their jobs), send him formal documentation so he could renew his driver's license. We are still waiting for the new green card. He's had his biometrics, and we do not think that we'll need another interview, but it's possible. 

My dad used to "joke" about my husband flying to Mexico and coming through that way as a means of staying here when legal immigration was being a hindrance for us.

I'm not saying this from the perspective, by the way, of thinking my husband is better than in any way. Our entire immigration system is largely flawed. I'm disgusted at the situation at the border and at the conditions that men, women, and especially children are in.

[smittykins]

John Oliver has a great bit on how hard it is to immigrate legally to this country.

https://youtu.be/tXqnRMU1fTs

[Smash!]

This is me and my husband, who is from England. He got his initial green card within a few months. In December, the two year expired and we had to pay the $850 (which the government happily cashed before the shutdown). Then the government shut down and he didn't have any documentation to renew his driver's license, which expired the same date as his green card. My husband couldn't drive for a few months until the government reopened, they had to track down his case (didn't have the best experience in dealing with USCIS employees, who didn't seem trained for their jobs), send him formal documentation so he could renew his driver's license. We are still waiting for the new green card. He's had his biometrics, and we do not think that we'll need another interview, but it's possible. 

 

My dad used to "joke" about my husband flying to Mexico and coming through that way as a means of staying here when legal immigration was being a hindrance for us.

I'm not saying this from the perspective, by the way, of thinking my husband is better than in any way. Our entire immigration system is largely flawed. I'm disgusted at the situation at the border and at the conditions that men, women, and especially children are in.

 

 

Exactly this. A good friend of mine filed the K1 6 or 7 years ago. She waited 9 (!) months alone to get the NOA2. Once in the US, her AOS took forever and her temporary work permit expired so she had to go to he local USCIS office and renew it if I remember correctly

I hope your removal of conditions gets approved soon without an interview!

 

I just watched John Oliver in legal immigration. Loved it!

[BernRul]

On 10/7/2019 at 6:49 PM, Smash! said:

I don't get part of Beto's response. I know a few people who immigrated to the US based on a fiancé (K1) or a spouse visa (CR1). Even if you're from central Europe it's a hassle. USCIS is understaffed and has a huge backlog. There are forms to no end, it takes long and after that, your greencard is only valid for two years. You then have to file the removal of conditions to prove that your marriage is real. Only after this is approved you get your 10 year greencard. And all this is only for the fiancé/spouse visa which should be the easier ones if you compare it to the work visa.

Considering this hassle when you want to legally enter and stay the US, yes I get what the woman is saying. I don't know if illigal immigrants are a treat to low income workers tough?

However, Beto is right in that it's a shame to the country to separate the kids from their families and put them into a cage.

Unfortunately immigration is a complex topic and I believe it's important to consider all the grey tones between the stances of the GOP and the Democrats.

 

Most "illegal" immigrants come through legal channels, and then get nudged out by the system. So it's not so simple to talk as if the undocumented are cheating, when they are being screwed over by the system.

Source: am a former immigration activist and my mother in law is one of those illegal immigrants.

On another note, I think I'm throwing in my hat for Warren. I never really thought about her before, but her policiy, ability to campaign and build support, and her appeal to liberals and now some moderate dems makes me think she's the one. 

I don't just like her now, I'm downright enthusastic. 

Warren 2020 baby. 

Warren has policies that will actually fix the immigration system, like expanding the definition of "extreme hardship" for marriage adjustments and getting rid of the 3 to 10 year ban. Mark my words, that ban is the reason we have 12 million undocumented immigrants right now.

Her other policies also seem thorough and practical. 

Edited October 9, 2019 by BernRul

[formergothardite]

9 hours ago, BernRul said:

I never really thought about her before, but her policiy, ability to campaign and build support, and her appeal to liberals and now some moderate dems makes me think she's the one. 

I'm feeling this way too. She has a lot of really good ideas on how to fix our broken system. With the right vice president I think she could pull off beating Trump. 

[GreyhoundFan]

It would be nice if cities and facilities learned that having one of the mango manboy's klan rallies means they will be footing the bill: "Minneapolis arena backs off on rally security costs after Trump campaign cries extortion, threatens to sue"

Spoiler

After the Trump campaign threatened to sue a Minneapolis arena for passing along a half-million-dollar security bill from the city to cover costs of the president’s political rally there later this week, the venue withdrew the request, according to Trump’s campaign manager.

Minneapolis officials told the Target Center, where Trump is slated to appear Thursday night, that it would be responsible for the $530,000 the city says it will need to beef up security for President Trump’s visit. The Target Center planned to pass that bill along to the Trump campaign and said the campaign would have to pay or it could not use the arena.

But after a day of angry tweets from the president, mostly directly at the Democratic Minneapolis mayor, the Trump campaign announced Tuesday evening that the arena will not be canceling the contract and the campaign will not be paying any additional fees.

“The arena in Minneapolis has been fully approved,” campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote in an email to supporters. “The Target Center has backed off cancelling the contract, which means President Trump’s Keep America Great rally will go on as scheduled. Consistent with our original agreement with the venue, the Trump campaign has not agreed to pay any additional funds.”

It was not immediately clear whether the Target Center or the city will absorb the costs.

The battle over the security fees infuriated the Trump team, which accused Mayor Jacob Frey (D) of trying to block Trump’s visit.

Trump slammed Frey in a series of tweets throughout the day Tuesday, calling him a “lightweight.” Parscale accused Frey of “abusing his power.”

Frey, reached by phone Tuesday night, said that his effort to recoup public safety costs is not political and that his position remains the same — that he wants the city reimbursed.

“What I’m doing is watching out for our taxpayers, something our president should be doing, too,” Frey said. “It’s not extortion to ask someone to pay their bills, even when that person really hates paying their bills.”

The Trump campaign’s legal team sent the Target Center’s parent company, AEG Management, a letter Monday declaring that refusing to allow Trump to hold his event there would be a breach of contract. The letter said the Trump campaign “will aggressively pursue all remedies available to it in law or equity.”

In a statement accompanying the public release of the letter, Parscale accused Frey of extortion by “conjuring a phony and outlandish bill for security in an effort to block a scheduled Keep America Great rally.”

“The radical Mayor of Minneapolis, @Jacob_Frey, is abusing his power in an attempt to block the President’s supporters from seeing him speak on Thursday,” Parscale tweeted Tuesday morning with a map of Minnesota showing the counties Trump won in 2016. “We refuse to be bullied by a left-winger resister & won’t let him stifle the speech of @realDonaldTrump or his supporters!”

Trump retweeted his campaign manager and wrote: “The lightweight mayor is hurting the great police and other wonderful supporters. 72,000 ticket requests already. Dump Frey and Omar! Make America Great Again!” Trump’s rally is to be held in the congressional district of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Frey, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, responded to the president’s tweet shortly thereafter.

“Yawn . . . Welcome to Minneapolis where we pay our bills, we govern with integrity, and we love all of our neighbors,” Frey tweeted.

After Trump announced his intent to visit the city, Frey said in a statement that while there was “no legal mechanism to prevent the president from visiting, his message of hatred will never be welcome in Minneapolis.”

A spokesman for the city, Casper Hill, said in an email that the public safety cost of Trump’s visit is estimated to be around $400,000 and that another $130,000 will probably be needed for lane closures, traffic control and other such disruptions.

“For context, the City’s public safety and other essential services costs during the Super Bowl in 2018 was roughly $6 million and $1.5 million for the Final Four earlier this year,” Hill said. “The City has used the same methodology to determine public safety, traffic control and other costs for the political rally at Target Center.”

Trump’s campaign committee has not paid at least 10 cities for the public safety costs of hosting the president, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Nearly three hours after Trump first tweeted on the subject, he went after the Minneapolis mayor again. He typed out another tweet attacking the mayor several hours after that.

The president is also irked by a rule change ahead of his visit banning law enforcement officers from wearing their uniforms to political events. Instead, Trump-supporting police officers are planning to wear bright red shirts that say: “Cops for Trump.”

“Someone please tell the Radical Left Mayor of Minneapolis that he can’t price out Free Speech. Probably illegal!” Trump tweeted. “I stand strongly & proudly with the great Police Officers and Law Enforcement of Minneapolis and the Great State of Minnesota! See you Thursday Night!”

“It’s certainly an interesting way to wake up in the morning,” Frey said, of being on the receiving end of Trump’s tweets. “It’s just surprising that the president of the United States takes so much time to spout that kind of garbage online. It’s not what I spend my time doing.”

 

[formergothardite]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It would be nice if cities and facilities learned that having one of the mango manboy's klan rallies means they will be footing the bill:

The problem is that way too many people are afraid of his angry tweets. Let him tweet like a maniac but he needs rallies to get his attention highs. Take those away from him and he will truly suffer. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The famously secluded Amish are the target of a Republican campaign to drum up Pennsylvania votes for Trump"

Spoiler

MANHEIM, Pa. — In 2016, when more than 6 million Pennsylvanians voted in the presidential election, the state’s 20 pivotal electoral votes were decided by a margin of less than 45,000 voters.

Pennsylvania is home to more than 75,000 Amish people, and most who are eligible don’t vote.

For two Republican operatives, those two numbers together add up to one major opportunity — to convince the traditionally reluctant Amish to come out to the polls, where their votes might be tremendously influential. Their project, which started in 2016 with billboards and newspaper ads urging Amish people to vote for Donald Trump, goes by the name Amish PAC.

Amish PAC aims to win more votes for Trump in 2020 in a state both the president and the Democrats are desperate to win. Amish people tend to align strongly on policy with Republicans, who share their opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. But making voters out of the Amish, who forgo technology like television and the Internet and who believe fiercely in the separation of their religious community from government intrusion, may be a steep goal.

On a farm where eight Amish children in their traditional clothing were playing baseball, a young woman said sternly of those who would ask the Amish to vote: “We don’t really appreciate that.”

While she skillfully snapped lima bean pods off the bushes at her farm, another woman said about voting: “My husband never did; I never did.”

The same answer at market stall after market stall, where Amish farmers sell their wares: Never voted. Never wanted to vote.

But Ben Walters, who co-founded Amish PAC, says the tide is turning. He heard from more Amish people willing to vote in 2018 than in 2016; in 2020, he thinks, the numbers will be still higher. “Their votes would be so important, and there’s a lot of them,” he said. “Since 2016, every single year, it gets a little bit easier. We’re seeing more and more signs of progress. I think behaviors are finally changing.”

Walters lives in the Washington area and is not Amish, though he was familiar with the sect — a Christian community that settled in Pennsylvania in the 18th century and has protected its farming-based, technology-minimizing way of life ever since. His grandparents had Amish friends in Indiana, he says, who used to invite him for meals.

That was enough to spark his curiosity about the sect’s voting behavior. After working on a PAC supporting Ben Carson’s 2016 run for president, Walters teamed up with barn-building company owner Ben King — who grew up Amish and left the faith — to make the Amish and their local religious cousins, the conservative Mennonite denominations, their new political project.

At Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Kyle Kopko and Steven Nolt — two of the foremost experts on the Amish — are studying the results of the PAC’s efforts. Nolt said he is skeptical the PAC can make much of a dent. “For a group like the Amish PAC, the key is — to what extent could a group like Amish PAC take that civic identity that’s here, and leverage that into registering to vote and actually voting?” he said. “There’s not a prohibition, [but] there would be a fairly strong, strong religious and cultural bias against [voting.]”

Focusing on Lancaster County, where more than 10 percent of America’s 300,000-plus Amish live, the two researchers found that 1,019 Amish people cast votes in the county in 2016, out of 15,055 eligible voters. That is not a lot, although in the late 1990s, fewer than 450 of the Amish were even registered to vote.

The Amish have been in the United States for hundreds of years but speak a German dialect to this day, and refer to outsiders as “English.” They still dress much as they did when they arrived in this country. They avoid government intrusion in many forms — by withdrawing their children from school and putting them to work in family businesses after eighth grade; by seeking waivers, unusual among almost any other American group, to exempt themselves from participation in Social Security.

Voting makes many apprehensive, just as it does in some traditional Mennonite communities in the region.

“Well, we don’t. It’s just something we don’t do. It’s just something that isn’t practiced among our people — they feel like we as Christians are looking forward to going to heaven someday, and we don’t vote,” Janice Lehman said as she worked at a produce stall in a Lancaster County farm market.

Lehman is a member of one of Lancaster County’s many Mennonite sects, a Christian tradition that shares roots with the Amish but varies more widely in level of integration with the outside world. Mennonites are much more likely to get news about politics from TV, radio and the Internet, all technologies that the Amish don’t use. Some Mennonites are very politically involved (one pastor’s wife even ran for Congress last year, as a Democrat). Others, like Lehman, belong to more traditional orders that emphasize communal values, old-fashioned dress and disengagement from the earthly realm.

Amish PAC hopes to reach those conservative Mennonite voters as well.

Yvonne Beiler, a Mennonite farm owner, said she had heard about the voter-registration push and she wasn’t interested. “We don’t vote, and we just try to pray for our leaders,” she said as her cows mooed loudly and one of her six children called out to her as he tinkered with a wrench. (Young enough to still have training wheels on his bike, the boy is already able to adjust the wheels himself.)

“I guess we just feel like it’s not for us to vote. That would be our belief, I guess,” Beiler said. “I’m not exactly sure. We just don’t do that.”

But George W. Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, changed that perception for some in Lancaster County.

Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, were the only two sitting presidents who came to speak to Amish people, Nolt says. The younger Bush already had goodwill built up by his father in the community, and he campaigned hard in Pennsylvania. His frequent talk of Christian values, his identification with rural America and his opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage all appealed to the Amish.

In 2004, 1,342 Amish people in Lancaster County alone came out to vote for him.

Trump is nowhere near as popular among the Amish. So the fact that Amish voting even approached that peak in 2016 indicates Amish PAC’s efforts might be working, Kopko and Nolt said.

The PAC, which spent nearly $140,000 in 2016 and has raised $32,000 so far for 2020, according to campaign finance records, mostly focuses on advertising in heavily Amish areas of Pennsylvania and Ohio. In 2016, their “VOTE TRUMP” billboards showed a picture of an Amish buggy with the words, “Hard Working, Pro-Life, Family Dedicated . . . Just Like YOU.”

The group is already paying for newspaper advertisements to encourage prospective 2020 voters to register now, and will put the billboards back up in 2020.

As a rule, Amish church members don’t have driver’s licenses. But in addition to getting around by the trademark gray buggies that Lancaster’s roads are famous for, and by the two-wheeled, no-pedal, bicycle-like scooter that the Amish prefer, many are willing to ride in cars, just not drive them.

So on Election Day in 2016, Amish PAC mobilized voters to knock on the door of every Amish family they knew of in Lancaster County, offering rides to the polls. Walters says more than 200 non-Amish Republican volunteers helped out.

They hit their jackpot at an Amish wedding — all Amish weddings take place on weekdays in late fall, when the harvest schedule allows enough time for it — where they drove numerous wedding guests to go vote.

Walters says he is confident that if the Amish do vote, they will vote for Trump. “They can relate to a businessman who runs a family business with his kids. I think they appreciate the fact that he abstains from alcohol and drugs,” he said.

His fundraising messages, which drum up donations from Republicans across the country willing to invest in the Amish vote, mock Democrats and use favorite Fox News catchphrases. When he talks to Amish would-be voters, he takes a different tone. “The Amish care about religious liberty, business regulation, abortion and judges. Those are four things that the Amish overwhelmingly support President Trump over whoever the Democratic candidate is. We talk a lot more about issues than we do about candidates,” he said.

Kopko and Nolt found that 90 percent of Amish who do register do so as Republicans. Less than 1 percent register as Democrats.

At Root’s Country Market, a jumble of rural Pennsylvania cultures collide every Tuesday. It’s the sort of place where a traditionally dressed Amish woman selling dairy products sets up shop right next to a secular stand that makes lewd, winking references on hats and T-shirts to town names in the area: “Intercourse, Pa. Between Blue Ball and Paradise.”

In the market’s sprawling buildings and rows of outdoor stands, auctioneers will sell anything, even a few boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, to the highest bidder. Merchants who may be Amish, Mennonite or “English” peddle jambalaya, wine, hemp oil, five different editions of “Anne of Green Gables,” reams of VHS and cassette tapes and paperback romance novels and a reduced-price TV set up to play old episodes of “Bewitched.”

Others sell Trump hats, Trump flags and Trump bobbleheads, and Confederate flag belt buckles, wallets and bandannas.

One religious woman selling flavored pretzels and pies piled high with strawberries at a market stall didn’t want to discuss politics, but said when she votes, she votes “to stay conservative.”

But Trump doesn’t appear to have gained a lot of traction in the community. Omar Stolzfus, running a pit beef stand at the bustling market, said he skipped the polls in 2016 because he was dissatisfied with both candidates. He last voted in 2004. George W. Bush was the last candidate who had “Christian values that I shared,” he said.

Men like Stolzfus, who own businesses that bring them in contact with non-Amish neighbors often, are more likely to have political opinions than farmers who interact almost entirely with fellow Amish people. And men are much more likely to vote than Amish women: 77 percent of Amish who registered in 2016 were male, Kopko and Nolt found.

Priscilla Stolzfus, who worked at the couple’s dairy stall inside the market while her husband manned their beef shack outside, said she never thought of voting even when her spouse did. “Maybe I feel like it’s something that the husband as a leader would do, instead of myself,” she said.

That’s how Elizabeth Lapp, who owns a stand-alone farm stand with her husband in Lancaster, thinks about it too. She describes herself as “a country wife” who doesn’t pay much attention to politics.

“I think Trump — who’s Trump? He’s the president, right? — he’s doing pretty good. Just from what I hear people say, he’s trying to improve things,” she said.

Ike Lapp, on the other hand, is the rare Amish man with plenty of political opinions. His neighbor Bob, who is not Amish, frequently drives him from place to place. And Bob watches Fox News, and fills Lapp in on what is happening.

Lapp says of Trump: “I think he does more of what he says than a lot of the presidents ever did. If he says it, he means it. . . .He’s pretty rash, but I think that’s what we need as a leader.”

Lapp is against impeachment. (“I just think it’s another way for the people that don’t like him to get something against him.”) Though he only gets the local Lancaster newspaper and never watches TV or hears the radio, he’s concerned about fake news. (“Sad to say, the media just wants you to hear the bad side of everybody. There has to be a good side.”)

He’s thinking of registering to vote for the first time. In 2020, he might cast the first ballot of his life, for Trump.

 

[fraurosena]

She’s good.