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Tag: Democracy

  • Wisconsin’s Evers, in 2nd term bid, says democracy at stake

    Wisconsin’s Evers, in 2nd term bid, says democracy at stake

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    MADISON, Wis. — Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers staked his bid Tuesday for a second term on his support for abortion rights and his status as the only check on the GOP in a state certain to be pivotal in the 2024 presidential race.

    Evers faced Tim Michels, a Donald Trump-backed Republican who promised to deliver “massive” tax cuts and largely financed his campaign from his fortune as owner of the state’s largest construction firm.

    Roughly half of Wisconsin voters say the nation’s economy is the most pressing issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in the state.

    Nearly all the state’s voters say inflation was a factor in how they cast their ballots, with roughly half naming it as the single most important factor. Among those who named inflation as a factor in how they voted, nearly half say the rising costs of groceries and food were most important.

    Evers frequently touted the more than 120 vetoes he issued to block Republican legislation in his first term, including bills that would have broadened gun rights, made it harder to get an abortion and tougher to cast absentee ballots. Future elections loomed large in the race, with Evers arguing that democracy was on the ballot.

    “I am the last line of defense for voting rights in Wisconsin,” Evers tweeted in the final weeks of the race. “If Republicans win, they’ll undoubtedly make it harder to vote and undermine our electoral system.”

    Michels, who won a tough primary after getting Trump’s endorsement, initially refused to commit to accepting the results of the election before saying in late October he would “certainly” accept the outcome. Michels also has said “maybe” the 2020 election lost by Trump was stolen, even though President Joe Biden’s win has survived numerous lawsuits, reviews and recounts.

    Michels also supports Republican proposals to disband the state’s bipartisan elections commission and to make it harder to vote.

    He tried to make the race largely about the economy, education, crime and public safety, arguing that Evers allowed too many prison inmates to be paroled and failed to act decisively to quell violent protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha in 2020.

    Michels also faulted Evers’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that schools and businesses were shuttered too long and that Evers has failed to improve educational results. Michels supports making everyone eligible to attend private schools using taxpayer-funded vouchers, a program that Evers, the former state schools chief, opposes. Michels also wants to cut income taxes to a nearly flat rate of around 5%.

    Michels, in their lone debate, said all Evers “wants to do is blame others and talk about more resources, more money.” He added: “I’m a leader that will take responsibility. I’m a man of integrity.”

    After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Evers tried to make the race a referendum on abortion. Michels supported the state’s 1849 abortion ban in the Republican primary, but after his win he changed positions and said he would sign a bill creating exceptions for rape and incest. Evers said he would not sign such a bill if it left the underlying ban in place.

    Al Drifka, 65, a retired manufacturing executive voting in the northern Milwaukee suburb of Cedarburg, split his ticket in the state’s top two races — voting for GOP Sen. Ron Johnson in that race but going for Evers as governor.

    “I think the state of Wisconsin is in a good position right now,” Drifka said. “And I didn’t hear a lot of substance from Michels on what he was actually going to do.”

    Vasyl Ovod, 41, a construction worker who described himself as conservative, voted for Michels at the same polling place. Ovod said he emigrated from Ukraine 17 years ago and things have gotten harder.

    “When we came, it was much different,” he said. “I could even make more money. Gas was low. Now I feel like everything is going wrong. You feel this, you know?”

    Though Republicans were keen to knock off Evers, they were also vying Tuesday to win supermajorities in the Legislature — a threshold that would allow them to override vetoes and shape state policy almost entirely to their liking.

    Evers won in 2018 by a little more than a percentage point, and history was not on his side for a second term. He was trying to become the first Wisconsin governor in 32 years who was the same party as the sitting president to win reelection in a midterm.

    Trump’s endorsement of Michels in the primary propelled him to victory over the presumptive favorite up to that point, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. But Michels downplayed that backing in the general election and never mentioned it in his one debate with Evers.

    Michels, 59, co-owns Michels Corporation with his brothers and claimed that he is “not a politician.” He previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, losing to then-Sen. Russ Feingold.

    ———

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

    And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • Media preps for 2022 election with focus on democracy issues

    Media preps for 2022 election with focus on democracy issues

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Time was, a television reporter assigned to “democracy issues” would have a quiet time on election night sets, occasionally popping up to talk about broken voting machines at a polling place or two.

    That’s not the case in 2022.

    Between election deniers and threats to voting rights, news organizations have emphasized the beat. That will continue next Tuesday, with coverage plans for the midterms rounding into shape.

    CBS News will have its first-ever “Democracy Desk” to look at those issues and how law enforcement is dealing with threats. NBC News’ “Vote Watch Unit” is looking at election security and disinformation. ABC News has assigned the team of Dan Abrams, Pierre Thomas, Terry Moran and Kate Shaw to the topic.

    News teams, mindful of public suspicion about journalists, also promise transparency in their own operations.

    “Because there is an adamant disinformation campaign, there are efforts to sow chaos, one of the most important things we can do is stick to the facts,” said CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell.

    Following a precedent set in the 2018 midterms, the broadcast networks will set aside their entire prime-time schedules to follow the action. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC will have wall-to-wall coverage. There will be a wealth of online options for those whom one screen won’t do.

    Expect surprises. Close pre-election polls, with control of the House and Senate up for grabs, combined with the lingering question of whether any politician will take Donald Trump’s example from 2020 and not accept the results, make the night potentially combustible.

    “The stakes are high,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “The results of this will alter the course of Biden’s presidency.”

    ABC News is preparing for the possibility that answers to which party controls the House and Senate won’t be known when the network’s planned cut-off point of 2 a.m. Eastern is reached — and to extend that if necessary, said Marc Burstein, who’s in charge of the coverage.

    “There’s just a lot of tight races,” said Martha MacCallum, who will co-anchor Fox News’ coverage with Bret Baier. “As a reporter and anchor that makes it a lot more fun to cover. It’s going to be a really exciting night in a lot of ways in terms of the drama that has already been built into this.”

    Fox became a major part of the election night stories in 2018, when it declared long before its rivals that Democrats would control the House, and in 2020, when its first call of Arizona for Joe Biden infuriated Trump and his supporters.

    After the fallout, one of Fox’s decision desk executives retired and another was reassigned, soon to leave the network — even though Fox got it right.

    As a result, Fox viewers will probably see a lot of Arnon Mishkin, who returns to lead the network’s decision desk. Fox wants to bring viewers into the process as much as possible this year, so they can see the communication between the anchors, decision desk and producers, MacCallum said.

    “We want people to understand how the calls are made,” she said. “We’re definitely making an effort to open up that process so viewers can see for themselves.”

    Networks won’t say they’ll be more cautious than usual in calling races, not wanting the implication they weren’t careful enough in the past. Executives noted that news organizations didn’t declare Biden the winner in 2020 until the Saturday after the election.

    But transparency — showing with perhaps mind-numbing detail how voting is going in close races — was a byword.

    “We care about being right,” said Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of “Meet the Press” and executive in charge of NBC News’ election coverage, “not necessarily being first.”

    Burstein preached patience with so many local races. “We’re not going to jump to any conclusions that it’s a red wave or a blue wave,” he said.

    The Associated Press, which has counted the nation’s votes for more than a century, does not declare a winner in an individual race until it has determined that there is no scenario under which trailing candidates can close the gap — even if a candidate has declared victory or others have conceded.

    One of Tuesday’s biggest mysteries is whether any 2020 election deniers become 2022 election deniers.

    “I can’t control what a politician comes out and says about the election results,” Chalian said. “What is in our control is our ability to present the factual results to the viewer.”

    CNN will have more reporters out in the states than it ever has for a midterm election, he said. Other networks echo him; CBS News is preparing to tap into the expertise and staffing of its local stations across the country. NBC News has assigned six reporters each to Georgia and Pennsylvania alone.

    “Through it all, they are going to have to be nimble and cover whatever story that emerges,” Budoff Brown said.

    NBC News’ coverage will be led by the team of Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell. David Muir anchors ABC’s coverage. CNN says its hosts include Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Dana Bash and Don Lemon.

    With the exit of news anchor Brian Williams, MSNBC’s coverage will be led by three anchors who host opinion shows: Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace.

    ___

    David Bauder is the media writer for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder

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  • Democrats confront their nightmare scenario on election eve as economic concerns overshadow abortion and democracy worries | CNN Politics

    Democrats confront their nightmare scenario on election eve as economic concerns overshadow abortion and democracy worries | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Democrats close their midterm election campaign Monday facing the nightmare scenario they always feared – with Republicans staging a gleeful referendum on Joe Biden’s struggling presidency and failure to tame inflation.

    Hopes that Democrats could use the Supreme Court’s overturning of the right to an abortion and a flurry of legislative wins to stave off the classic midterm election rout of a party in power are now a memory. Biden faces a dark political environment because of the 40-year-high in the cost of living – and his hopes of a swift rebound next year are clouded by growing fears of a recession.

    On the eve of the election, Democrats risk losing control of the House of Representatives and Republicans are increasingly hopeful of a Senate majority that would leave Biden under siege as he begins his reelection bid and with ex-President Donald Trump apparently set to announce his own campaign for a White House return within days.

    It’s too early for postmortems. Forty million Americans have already voted. And the uncertainty baked into modern polling means no one can be sure a red wave is coming. Democrats could still cling onto the Senate even if the House falls.

    But the way each side is talking on election eve, and the swathe of blue territory – from New York to Washington state – that Democrats are defending offer a clear picture of GOP momentum.

    A nation split down the middle politically, which is united only by a sense of dissatisfaction with its trajectory, is getting into a habit of repeatedly using elections to punish the party with the most power.

    That means Democrats are most exposed this time.

    If the president’s party takes a drubbing, there will be much Democratic finger-pointing over Biden’s messaging strategy on inflation – a pernicious force that has punched holes in millions of family budgets.

    Just as in last year’s losing off-year gubernatorial race in Virginia, which the president won by 10 points in 2020, Democrats are closing the campaign warning about democracy and Trump’s influence while Republicans believe they are addressing the issue voters care about most.

    “Here’s where the Democrats are: they’re inflation deniers, they are crime deniers, they’re education deniers,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

    Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic consultant, said on the same show that her party had misjudged the mood of the electorate.

    “I’m a loyal Democrat, but I am not happy. I just think that we are – we did not listen to voters in this election. And I think we’re going to have a bad night,” Rosen told CNN’s Dana Bash.

    “And this conversation is not going to have much impact on Tuesday, but I hope it has an impact going forward, because when voters tell you over and over and over again that they care mostly about the economy, listen to them. Stop talking about democracy being at stake.”

    Rosen is not the only key figure on the left uneasy with the midterm strategy. Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, urged the White House to do more to stress economic concerns in recent weeks even while acknowledging the crisis of democracy and the importance of abortion rights. In retrospect, it appears Democrats were slow to recognize that a favorable period over the summer, spurred by falling gasoline prices and a hot streak for the president in passing legislation, wouldn’t last long enough to compensate for a ruinous political environment caused by the economy.

    In effect, Biden’s stress on the threat to US political institutions posed by Trump essentially asks voters to prioritize the historic foundation of America’s political system over their own more immediate economic fears.

    It’s a message that resonates strongly in Washington, DC, where the scars of the US Capitol insurrection are keenly felt. And it is undeniably important because the survival of the world’s most important democracy is at stake. After all, Trump incited an insurrection that tried to thwart the unbroken tradition of peaceful transfers of power between presidents.

    But outside the Beltway bubble of politicians and journalists, democracy feels like a far more distant, esoteric concept than the daily struggle to feed a family and to be able to afford to commute to work. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, the return to normality after the Covid-19 nightmare that Biden promised remains elusive to many as the economic after effects of the once-in-a century health emergency linger.

    The impossibility of the political environment for Democrats was laid bare in a CNN/SSRS poll released last week. Some 51% of likely voters said the economy was the key issue in determining their vote. Only 15% named abortion – a finding that explains how the election battleground has tilted toward the GOP. Among voters for whom the economy is their top concern, 71% plan to vote Republican in their House district. And 75% of voters think the economy is already in a recession, meaning that Biden’s efforts to stress undeniably strong economic areas – including the strikingly low unemployment rate – are likely to fall on deaf ears.

    It’s too simple to say that Biden has ignored the impact of inflation, or doesn’t understand the pain it’s bringing to the country.

    The premise of his domestic presidency and his entire political career has been based on restoring the balance of the economy and restoring a measure of security to working and middle class Americans. His legislative successes could bring down the cost of health care for seniors and create a diversified green economy that shields Americans from future high energy prices amid global turmoil. But the benefits from such measures will take years to arrive. And millions of voters are hurting now and haven’t heard a viable plan from the president to quickly ease prices in the short-term.

    There is no guarantee that plans by Republicans to extend Trump-era tax cuts and mandate new energy drilling would have much impact on the inflation crisis either. And divided government would likely mean a stalemate between two dueling economic visions. But the election has turned into a vehicle for voters to stress their frustration, with no imminent hope that things will get better soon.

    Biden has resorted to highlighting bright spots of the economy – claiming to have reignited manufacturing, high job creation and a robust effort to compete with China. He’s now warning that Republicans would gut Social Security and Medicare on which many Americans rely in retirement.

    And in practice, there is not much a president can do to quickly lower inflation on their own. The Federal Reserve is in the lead and the central bank’s strategy of rising interest rates could trigger a recession that could further haunt Biden’s presidency.

    Inflation and high gas prices are also a global issue and have been worsened by factors beyond Biden’s control, including the war in Ukraine and supply chain issues brought on by the pandemic. At the same time, however, economists are debating the wisdom of Biden’s high-spending bills that sent billions of dollars into an overheating economy. And the White House’s repeated downplaying of the soaring cost of living as “transitory” badly misjudged the situation and was another thing that battered Biden’s credibility – on top of the confidence some voters lost in him during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.

    The Republican Party also got exactly what it wanted as Trump has delayed his expected campaign announcement until after the midterms, depriving Biden of the opportunity to shape this election as a direct clash with an insurrectionist predecessor whom he beat in 2020 and who remains broadly unpopular. Such a confrontation might have enabled the president to dampen the impact of his own low approval ratings and win over voters who still disdain the twice-impeached former president.

    Ironically, Biden’s struggles in framing a believable economic message could bring about the very crisis of democracy that he is warning about.

    Any incoming GOP majority would be dominated by pro-Trump radicals. Prospective committee chairs have already signaled they will do their best to deflect from Trump’s culpability on the January 6, 2021, insurrection and go after the Justice Department as it presses on with several criminal investigations into the ex-President’s conduct. And Tuesday’s election could usher in scores of election deniers in state offices who could end up controlling the 2024 presidential election in some key battlegrounds. GOP dominance of state legislatures could further curtail voting rights.

    High inflation has also always been a toxic force that brews political extremism and tempts some voters to be drawn to demagogues and radicals whose political creed is based on stoking resentment and stigmatizing outsiders.

    If Democrats do lose big on Tuesday night, Trump will be a beneficiary.

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  • Polling shows that most voters say economic concerns are top of mind | CNN Politics

    Polling shows that most voters say economic concerns are top of mind | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Economic issues remain a top concern for most voters ahead of the 2022 election, a review of recent polling finds, with many also worried about America’s democratic process itself. But voters’ highest priorities are divided along partisan lines, with abortion rights continuing to resonate strongly for Democrats, while Republicans remain sharply focused on inflation. Concerns about other issues, from gun policy to immigration, are often similarly polarized. And some topics that drew attention in previous elections – like the coronavirus pandemic – are relatively muted this year.

    Recent polling provides a good general sense of which issues have become the focal points of this year’s elections, and for whom. But what voters truly consider important, and how those concerns influence their decisions, is too complicated to be fully captured in a single poll question.

    As we’ve noted previously, voters tend to say they care about a lot of different issues. That, however, doesn’t necessarily mean any of those issues will be decisive in a specific race, either by motivating people to vote when they wouldn’t have otherwise, or by convincing them to vote for a different candidate than they would have otherwise.

    In practice, few campaigns revolve around a single issue, with voters left to weigh the merits of entire platforms. In a recent NBC News poll, for instance, voters were close to evenly split on whether they placed more importance on “a candidate’s position on crime, the situation at the border, and addressing the cost of living by cutting government spending,” or on “a candidate’s position on abortion, threats to democracy and voting, and addressing the cost of living by raising taxes on corporations.”

    And in some cases, voters’ primary focus may not be on the issues at all. In CNN’s recent polls of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a majority of likely voters in both states said that candidates’ character or party control of the Senate played more of a role in their decision-making than did issue positions.

    Here’s a recap of what the polls are showing now.

    CNN’s most recent polls have examined voters’ priorities from two different angles. A survey conducted in September and early October asked voters to rate a series of different issues on a scale from “extremely important” to “not that important,” while a second survey conducted in late October asked them to select a single top priority. On both measures, the economy emerged as a top concern.

    In the first poll, nine in 10 registered voters said they considered the economy at least very important to their vote for Congress, with 59% calling it extremely important. And in the second poll, 51% of likely voters said the economy and inflation would be most important to them in their congressional vote, far outpacing any other issue.

    While economic concerns rank highly among both parties, the CNN surveys found a pronounced partisan divide. Among registered voters in the first poll, 75% of Republicans called the economy extremely important to their vote, compared with about half of independents (51%) and Democrats (50%). And in the second, 71% of Republican likely voters called the economy and inflation their top issue, while 53% of independents and 27% of Democrats said the same.

    The Republican Party also holds an advantage on economic issues. In a Fox News poll, voters said by a 13-point margin that the GOP would do a better job than the Democratic Party of handling inflation and higher prices. And in a mid-October CBS News/YouGov poll, voters were nine points likelier to say that GOP control of Congress would help the economy than to say it would hurt. Voters also said, by a 19-point margin, that Democratic economic policies during the last two years in Congress have hurt, rather than helped.

    At the same time, voters express concerns beyond pocketbook issues. In that CBS News/YouGov survey, 85% of likely voters said that their “personal rights and freedoms” will be very important in their 2022 vote, while a smaller 68% said the same of their “own household’s finances.”

    Following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, abortion has taken far higher precedence in this midterm than in recent past elections, particularly among Democrats.

    In CNN’s September/October poll, nearly three-quarters (72%) of registered voters called abortion at least very important to their vote, with 52% calling it extremely important. The share of voters calling abortion extremely important to their vote varied along both partisan and gender lines: 72% of Democratic women, 54% of independent women and 53% of Republican women rated it that highly, compared with fewer than half of men of any partisan affiliation.

    And in CNN’s latest poll, 15% of likely voters called abortion their top issue, placing it second – by some distance – to economic concerns. Democratic voters were about split between the two issues, with 27% prioritizing the economy and inflation, and 29% placing more importance on abortion.

    Abortion policy does stand out in some surveys as particularly likely to serve as a litmus test. In the Fox News poll, 21% of voters named abortion or women’s rights as an issue “so important to them that they must agree with a candidate on it, or they will NOT vote for them,” outpacing issues including the economy and immigration, and far greater than the 7% who named abortion when asked the same question in a 2019 survey.

    To the extent that abortion serves as a voting issue, it’s more of a factor for abortion rights supporters – something that was not necessarily the case in the past. In the mid-October CBS News/YouGov poll, just 17% of likely voters say they view their congressional vote this year as a vote to oppose abortion rights, while 45% say it’s in support of abortion rights, with the rest saying abortion is not a factor. In a recent AP-NORC survey, the Democrats hold a 23-point lead over Republicans on trust to handle abortion policy, their best showing across a range of issues; in a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, the Democrats lead by 12 points.

    Immigration’s role as an electoral issue has grown increasingly polarized. In CNN’s September/October poll, 44% of registered voters called immigration extremely important, on par with concerns ahead of the 2018 midterms. But Republican voters were 35 percentage points likelier than Democratic voters to call immigration extremely important, up from a 17-point gap four years ago.

    That partisan dynamic also plays out in which party is more trusted to handle immigration-related topics: In the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, voters say by a 14-point margin that the GOP would do a better job than the Democratic Party on dealing with immigration. In the Fox poll, voters say by a 21-point margin that they trust the GOP over the Democrats to handle border security, making it by far the Republicans’ strongest issue by that metric.

    But with Republicans overwhelmingly focused on the economy, immigration isn’t at the forefront of many voters’ minds this year. In the latest CNN poll, just 9% of Republican voters and 4% of Democratic voters called it their top issue.

    This year also finds voters concerned about the electoral process. An 85% majority of registered voters in CNN’s September/October poll called “voting rights and election integrity” at least very important to their vote, with 61% calling those topics extremely important. Both 70% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans said the issue was extremely important, in comparison with a smaller 47% of independents. Seven in 10 registered voters in a Pew Research survey out in October said that “the future of democracy in the country” will be very important to their vote this year, with 58% saying the same about “policies about how elections and voting work in the country” – in each case, that included a majority of both voters supporting Democratic candidates and those supporting Republicans.

    But levels of concern can vary depending on how the issue is framed. In the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 28% of registered voters, including 42% of Democrats, picked “preserving democracy” as the issue that’s top of mind for them in this election. In CNN’s latest poll, just 9% of likely voters, including 15% of Democrats, called “voting rights and election integrity” their top issue.

    The driving factors behind voters’ worries also vary significantly. In the Fox News poll, 37% of voters said they were extremely concerned about candidates and their supporters not accepting election results, while 32% were extremely concerned about voter fraud. In an October New York Times/Siena poll, about three-quarters (74%) of likely voters said they believed American democracy was currently under threat, but in a follow-up questioning asking them to summarize the threat they were envisioning, they diverged. Some cited specific politicians, most notably former President Donald Trump (10%) or President Joe Biden (6%), while others offered broad concerns about corruption or the government as a whole (13%).

    In CNN’s September/October poll, 43% of registered voters said that the phrase “working to protect democracy” better described the Democratic congressional candidates in their area, while 36% thought it better fit their local Republican candidates. In the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, voters said, 44% to 37%, that the Democratic Party would do a better job than the Republican Party of “dealing with preserving democracy.”

    Most voters in this year’s elections express concerns about guns and violent crime, but relatively few voters call either their top issue. There’s also a notable partisan divide depending on the framing, with Republicans more concerned about crime, and Democrats more attentive to gun policy.

    In a late October CBS News/YouGov poll, 65% of likely voters said crime would be very important to their vote, and 62% said gun policy would be very important. An 85% majority of Republican likely voters, compared with 47% of Democratic likely voters, called crime very important. By contrast, while 74% of Democratic likely voters called gun policy very important, a smaller 53% of Republican likely voters said the same.

    According to Gallup, voters’ prioritization of gun policy spiked this summer following a wave of high-profile mass shootings, before fading as a concern in the fall; the Pew Research Center polling found less significant changes in voters’ priorities over that time.

    Neither issue is currently widespread as a top concern. In the latest CNN poll, 7% of likely voters called gun policy their top issue, and just 3% said the same of crime.

    In an October Wall Street Journal poll, 43% of registered voters said they trusted Republicans in Congress more to handle reducing crime, compared with the 29% who said they trust Democrats in Congress. Voters who were instead asked about reducing “gun violence” gave Democrats a 7-point edge.

    The polling also reveals a few issues that aren’t receiving similarly widespread public attention this year. Among them is coronavirus, which just 27% of likely voters in the latest CBS News/YouGov poll called very important to their vote, rising to 44% among Democrats. Despite this year’s major climate change legislation, that issue ranked last among the seven issues CNN asked about in the September/October poll, with only 38% of registered voters calling it extremely important to their vote – although the issue had far more resonance among Democrats (60% of whom called it extremely important) and voters younger than age 35 (46% of whom did). And relatively few in the electorate are substantially focused on the war in Ukraine: in Fox’s polling, just 34% of registered voters said they were extremely concerned about Russia’s invasion of the country.

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  • Biden’s plea for democracy is a strong election-closing argument for a different election | CNN Politics

    Biden’s plea for democracy is a strong election-closing argument for a different election | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Joe Biden’s eloquent defense of democracy was a message Americans needed to hear. But it was not the one voters most want now from their president – that relief is at hand from the soaring cost of living.

    Biden’s speech Wednesday, delivered blocks from the US Capitol that was ransacked by ex-President Donald Trump’s mob on January 6, 2021, was a strong election-closing argument. But for an election other than the one taking place next week.

    That’s not to say that the warning was misplaced. The fact that Biden felt the need to say, “We can’t take democracy for granted any longer,” underscores the grave threat posed to America’s core values by political violence and election denialism. If a president does not safeguard this historic legacy, who will? The chaos and violence Trump incited after the 2020 election show what unfolds when a president chooses to try to destroy democracy for personal gain.

    Biden’s speech was deeply personal, reflecting his own view of the mission handed him by history. It was also highly political given that the midterm elections, which feature scores of pro-Trump candidates spouting his stolen election nonsense, are only five days away. And it came days after the latest shocking example of political violence – the attack on the 82-year-old husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And since Biden launched his 2020 campaign as a quest to save America’s soul from what he sees as the aspiring autocracy of Trump, it was a statement of a mission unaccomplished – as well as a potential opening volley of a possible 2024 showdown for the White House between the 45th and 46th presidents.

    “You have the power, it’s your choice, it’s your decision, the fate of the nation, the fate of the soul of America lies, as it always does, with the people,” Biden told voters.

    Elections should be about more than one thing. Voters can walk and chew gum at the same time. But the harsh truth is this: In Washington, where just a glimpse of the towering Capitol dome reminds politicians and their media chroniclers of the January 6 horror, the threat to democracy feels visceral.

    But in the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona and cities everywhere, the gut check issue is less the somewhat abstract and age-old concept of self-government. It’s the more basic one of feeding a family. This is an election more about the cost of a cart full of groceries or the price of a gallon of gasoline than America’s founding truths.

    As Scottsdale, Arizona, retiree Patricia Strong told CNN’s Tami Luhby: “The price of everything was better during Trump,” adding, “We were looking forward to retirement because everything was good.”

    Declining stock markets have hurt retirement accounts and Americans with credit card debt took another blow Wednesday when the Federal Reserve raised its short-term borrowing rate by another 0.75%. There are fears the Fed’s strategy could pitch the economy into recession and ruin one of the best aspects of the Biden economy – the low unemployment rate.

    Biden’s argument is implicitly that while inflation will fall, and economic damage can be repaired, the current election – and its legions of anti-democratic Republican candidates – could cause political wreckage that is beyond mending.

    But it’s a tough case to make in such a doom-laden political environment for Democrats. The millions of Republicans who believe Trump’s falsehoods about the last election don’t listen to Biden and his call for national unity anyway. His low approval ratings don’t help. And in a new CNN/SSRS survey published on Wednesday, for instance, 51% of Americans said inflation and the economy was most driving their vote in the midterms. Abortion – the issue Democrats hoped would save them next Tuesday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer – was the only other concern in double figures, polling at 15% of likely voters. And voting rights and election integrity – the focus of the president’s speech on Wednesday night – polled at only 9%.

    But Biden effectively asked voters to make a concern well down the list of their priorities the decisive factor when they cast their ballots.

    “This year, I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote, and how you vote,” he said. “Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?” he added, at the end of a campaign in which several GOP nominees have not guaranteed they would accept voters’ will.

    In places where Biden is unpopular, Democrats in tight races have made an explicit point about distancing themselves from the national party.

    “You know, the national Democratic Party has never been really good at strategic political decisions. So you know, it is not a surprise here, and thank God that I have enough experience that I’ve built this campaign not needing them and we really don’t want them at this point. We’re gonna do this thing with all the grassroots people we have here,” Rep. Tim Ryan, who is in a tight race for US Senate in Ohio against J.D. Vance, told “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.

    It’s not that Biden hasn’t been also talking about high prices. His pitch is that the billions of dollars of spending in his domestic agenda will lower the cost of health care, lift up working families and create millions of jobs. That may be the case, but things that could happen in the future can’t ease the pain being felt now.

    While Biden may be talking at cross purposes with the electorate on these issues, they are linked, in a fateful way, that he did not mention in his speech at Union Station on Wednesday evening. The president’s failure – whether it is all his fault or not – to quell inflation and the worries of a nation already demoralized by a once-in-a-century pandemic created the electoral conditions that look likely to restore Trumpism to power, in the form of a volatile, extreme GOP majority in the House of Representatives at least, with the Senate still on a knife’s edge.

    Throughout history, inflation has often been a pernicious political force that breeds desperation in an electorate and seeds extremism as a potential response. That’s why politicians fear it so acutely and why it is so curious that the Biden White House initially didn’t take the surge of prices that seriously, repeatedly insisting that this was a “transitory” problem caused by Covid-19.

    The president also renewed his call for national unity that he delivered in his inaugural address in front of a still violence-scarred Capitol in 2021. He explained that American democracy was primarily under attack because “the defeated former president of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election.”

    “He has abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. And he’s made the Big Lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party – a minority of that party,” Biden said, being careful not to insult every GOP voter as he did when referring to “semi-fascism” earlier this year.

    The president also argued that Trump’s threat was far broader now than it was in the 2020 election. “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America: for governor, Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state who won’t commit – who will not commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re running in,” the president warned.

    Biden also hinted at a lack of understanding of Trump’s MAGA supporters, who have embraced his anti-democratic, populist, nationalist appeal to mainly White voters, which grew out of a backlash to the first Black presidency of Barack Obama. The 44th president has been making his own searing defenses of democracy and repudiation of Trump on the midterm election campaign trail in recent days.

    “You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said. The president is right – the essence of democracy depends on the loser in an election accepting the verdict of the people. This is why Trump’s behavior was so noxious in 2020 since his refusal to admit defeat did not just ruin one election. It tore at the fundamental principle of the political system that made America great two-and-a-half centuries before Trump’s political career and caused damage that will long outlast the shockwaves of one administration.

    But the essence of the Trump message exists in direct contradiction to Biden’s logic. Such voters can only love their country when their party wins because they see the Democrats that they lose to as the antipathy of their vision of America itself. These dueling understandings of what America actually means are at the core of the current, great political struggle that will not just play out next Tuesday, but in the 2024 election and beyond.

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  • How Should We Fix America’s Broken Electoral System?

    How Should We Fix America’s Broken Electoral System?

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    A majority of Americans believe that U.S. democracy is in crisis, and many point to issues with the nation’s electoral system, from dark money donations to voter suppression. The Onion polled all 330 million Americans for their solution to fix America’s broken electoral system.

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  • Warnings about a fragile democracy hit home for some Arizona voters as election deniers compete for key offices | CNN Politics

    Warnings about a fragile democracy hit home for some Arizona voters as election deniers compete for key offices | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The voters who poured into a Phoenix high school to hear from former President Barack Obama were looking to send a message of defiance Wednesday night.

    They said they are determined to defeat former President Donald Trump’s hand-picked slate of election deniers – including gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, Senate nominee Blake Masters and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem – and will not allow their state’s voters to be intimidated by activists who turned up to monitor ballot drop boxes late last month – some of them armed, masked and wearing camouflage.

    As President Joe Biden warned Americans from Washington, DC, on Wednesday night that democracy is at stake, it’s here in Arizona that democratic institutions look most fragile ahead of next week’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election, in which Arizona is likely to be a pivotal battleground.

    Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who successfully defeated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, now finds herself locked in a tight race against Lake, who has said she will accept the results of a “fair, honest and transparent election,” after previously refusing in an interview with CNN to commit to accepting the results if she lost. And Finchem, who could become the state’s chief elections administrator, is still trying to overturn the results of the last election.

    “If you do need one more reason to vote, consider the fact that our democracy is on the ballot. And nowhere is that clearer than here in Arizona,” Obama told the crowd Wednesday, later adding that “democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona” if election deniers fill all the top state offices.

    Maricopa County was the site of repeated “audits” after the 2020 election – including the sham partisan review conducted by the now-defunct firm known as Cyber Ninjas. Both political parties are now girding for another potential battle over the election results in a state Biden won by less than 10,500 votes. And the GOP candidates at the top of the ticket are setting that tone.

    Joann Rodriguez, a registered Democrat from Maricopa County, said it was scary that “radical Republicans” in her state were able to elevate candidates like Lake and Masters, who won their primaries in part by echoing Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election.

    “What are they running on, aside from Trump’s talking points that the election was stolen?” Rodriguez said. She noted that “a lot of Trumpers” are still driving their trucks with Trump flags around her Glendale, Arizona, neighborhood. “And they’re walking around with guns on their hips, showing up at the ballot boxes or showing up at the election sites – for what reason? I mean, do they think that their intimidation tactics are going to work?”

    Hobbs touted her record as secretary of state Wednesday night. “I stood for democracy when I refused to give into the insurrectionists who surrounded my home after I certified the 2020 election and I’m still doing it today in this race for governor,” she said.

    A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week showed her in a dead heat race with Lake. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race a Toss-up.

    The state was on edge as Obama arrived in Arizona less than a week before the midterm election to campaign for fellow Democrats, including Sen. Mark Kelly, who is in a close race with Masters. The fact that those top statewide contests may be decided on a razor’s edge is what brought Obama to the Grand Canyon State as he seeks to fire up the Democratic base and make sure that young voters and Latino voters – who will be critical to victory in Arizona – turn out in a midterm election year.

    Both Biden and Obama have been arguing that the fate of democracy is at stake, but Biden, who has not been invited to campaign in top swing states, had to make his argument from the opposite side of the country.

    The political climate and concerns about the sanctity of the election results are what brought Keith Greenberg, a registered Republican from Maricopa County, to Obama’s rally. He said in an interview that he wasn’t voting for Democrats in this election, he is voting against the Trump ticket.

    “The Republican Party today is not the Republican Party I’m a part of,” said Greenberg, who described the 2020 election as fair and honest. “That’s more like the American Nazi Party and I can’t put up with that – the lie.”

    If the Trump ticket wins, Greenberg said, “It means that the state of Arizona has lost its mind. And this is no longer a safe place to live. If Mark Finchem wins and says, ‘Well, I don’t care what the people voted. I’m going to do this’ – then what’s the point? We’ve lost our democracy.”

    Arizona’s status as a tinderbox of election controversies is underscored by the fact that two lawsuits have already been filed in federal court on behalf of voters who felt intimidated by the aggressive patrols at ballot drop boxes late last month.

    Voters filed complaints to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office after some activists were taking pictures of voters and their license plates – apparently inspired by debunked conspiracy theories about so-called “mules” who stuffed ballot boxes in 2020. A federal judge issued a ruling in one of the cases on Tuesday barring members of a group known as Clean Elections USA – whose leader has falsely asserted the 2020 election was rigged – from openly carrying guns or wearing body armor within 250 feet of drop boxes.

    Because of the ruling, the group’s members are also now barred from speaking to or yelling at voters who drop off their ballots, and they may not photograph or film voters at the drop boxes. The Justice Department had weighed in on the case that was brought by the League of Women Voters. The DOJ did not formally take sides, but in a legal brief, federal prosecutors said the right-wing group’s “vigilante ballot security efforts” were likely illegal and “raise serious concerns of voter intimidation.”

    The depth of the belief among Republicans about Trump’s election lies was underscored by a CNN poll conducted by SSRS that was released on Wednesday: 66% of Republicans said they don’t believe Biden legitimately won the election.

    That dynamic is even more pronounced in a state like Arizona where Trump acolytes control the Republican Party and have censured figures like outgoing Republican Gov. Doug Ducey and former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for what they said was insufficient loyalty to the former president.

    Michelle Gonzales, a registered Democrat from Maricopa County, said she believes that people came to see Obama Wednesday night “so they could feel hopeful” about the democratic process amid all the noise.

    “With everything, all the rhetoric going on, I think it’s important to really hear from someone – that we trust and we believe in – that we can be hopeful about this election,” she said. “You can see all these people out here. Thousands of people waiting. I just want to believe that people want to believe in something better – that they have morals and values that we all should have as human beings and not elect these liars and con people.”

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  • CBS Evening News, November 2, 2022

    CBS Evening News, November 2, 2022

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    CBS Evening News, November 2, 2022 – CBS News


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    Biden addresses threats to democracy in speech; Former foster kid fosters his Florida community

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  • Democrats cautiously campaign on Jan. 6, democracy threats

    Democrats cautiously campaign on Jan. 6, democracy threats

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaking last year on the House floor, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan angrily bemoaned the lack of bipartisanship after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and said Republican opposition to an investigative commission was a “slap in the face” to the law enforcement officers assaulted by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters that day.

    Ryan has trodden more carefully this year as he runs for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, a onetime battleground state that has trended rightward in the Trump era. At a recent debate, his Republican opponent, JD Vance, charged that Ryan has an “obsession” with the insurrection and called the Jan. 6 House committee’s investigation a “political hit job” on Trump.

    “I don’t want to talk about this any more than anybody else,” Ryan shot back. “I want to talk about jobs. I want to talk about wages. I want to talk about pensions … but, my God, you’ve got to look into it.”

    Ryan’s cautiousness is a reflection of the political divide that remains nearly two years after the violent Capitol insurrection spurred by Trump’s lies of a stolen 2020 presidential election. Many Republicans still falsely believe the vote count was rigged against Trump, and GOP lawmakers have repeatedly downplayed the violent attack, which left at least five people dead, injured more than 100 police officers and sent lawmakers running for their lives.

    But some Democrats’ reluctance to talk about Jan. 6 on the campaign trail is an acknowledgement that voters are primarily focused on pocketbook issues, like gas prices and rising inflation, in a midterm year that is typically a referendum on the president in power. That dynamic has created a delicate balance for Democrats, especially those like Ryan who are running in more Republican-leaning areas or swing states.

    “The public sees this as something in the past, whereas they are dealing with inflation right now,” says GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who has conducted focus groups on the Jan. 6 attack. If you can’t afford to feed your family or fill your tank with gas, Luntz says, “arguing something that happened two years ago isn’t prone to be high on your list.”

    Still, some candidates are betting that voters will care.

    Independent Evan McMullin, a former Republican running against Utah Sen. Mike Lee, has made the issue a central part of his campaign. In a debate this month, McMullin said Lee had committed a “betrayal of the American republic” after it was revealed that the GOP senator had texted with White House aides ahead of the insurrection about finding ways for Trump to overturn his defeat. Lee demanded an apology, which McMullin did not offer, and noted that he had voted with most senators to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

    McMullin also appeared with Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel, at an event in Salt Lake City. Speaking to an audience that included supporters carrying signs that read “Country First,” the two men framed the midterms as a fight for democracy.

    “If you’re Mike Lee, it’s still acceptable to say that Donald Trump is the future of the party and the leader of the party,” Kinzinger said.

    In a debate earlier this month, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., defended her work as a member of the House Jan. 6 panel by saying it is “the most important thing that I have done or ever will do” professionally, beyond her military service. Her campaign later ran an ad showing footage of her opponent, Republican Jen Kiggans, refusing to say whether Biden was fairly elected.

    “I’m not your candidate if you stand with insurrectionists,” Luria said at the debate. “I’m not your candidate if you’d rather have Donald J. Trump as president again.”

    In Wisconsin, Democrat Brad Pfaff is struggling against his opponent, Republican Derrick Van Orden, but is betting that more people will vote against Van Orden if they find out that he was among the Trump supporters outside the Capitol on Jan. 6. One Pfaff ad shows images of the violence and a veteran criticizing Van Orden.

    Another ad in Wisconsin targets Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who is running for reelection and has repeatedly downplayed the violence of the attack. “Ron Johnson is making excuses for rioters who tried to overthrow our government,” a police officer says in the ad, paid for by Senate Majority PAC, which is associated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

    Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says that the democracy issue has proven salient among Democratic voters, particularly among older and suburban women who have less favorable views of Trump. “They are talking about it as a get-out-the-vote issue,” Lake said.

    John Zogby, also a Democratic pollster, agrees that the threat to democracy is a top-tier issue for many Democrats. But he has seen less interest among the independent voters who could decide the most competitive elections.

    “I don’t know that it gains any new voters for Democrats,” Zogby says.

    Like Ryan, the chair of the House spending subcommittee that oversees the Capitol Police, some Democrats who have been outspoken about the insurrection while in Washington have been talking about it less on the campaign trail.

    New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster and Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee have spoken about their post-traumatic stress from being trapped in the House gallery as rioters tried to beat down the doors on Jan. 6. Now in competitive reelection races, neither has focused much on the attack or threats to democracy — though both have occasionally mentioned it.

    Kildee noted that police protected him that day in a debate against his opponent, Republican Paul Junge, as he spoke about his opposition to efforts to defund law enforcement. “People wearing uniforms saved my life on Jan. 6,” Kildee said. “I know what the police can do.”

    Answering a question on support for Ukraine, Kuster said that she thinks the United States also needs to fight for democracy at home and that she is a “survivor, witness, victim of the insurrection on Jan. 6 in our Capitol.”

    Vermont Rep. Peter Welch, who was trapped alongside Kuster and Kildee and others that day, has chosen a different strategy as he runs for Senate in his liberal-leaning state. He talks about his experience often.

    Asked about the committee’s work in a recent debate, Welch told the audience that “I was there” and that it was a violent assault on the peaceful transfer of power.

    “A big issue in this election is the American people coming together and fighting to preserve that democracy that has served us so well,” Welch said.

    His opponent, Republican Gerald Malloy, responded that criminals should be held to account but that Americans have a right to peacefully assemble.

    “I am not calling this an insurrection,” Malloy said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis.; Kathy McCormick in Concord, N.H.; and Will Weissert and Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterm.

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  • Obama, campaigning in Georgia, warns of threats to democracy

    Obama, campaigning in Georgia, warns of threats to democracy

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    COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) — Former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail Friday in Georgia, using his first stop on a multi-state tour to frame the 2022 midterm elections as a referendum on democracy and to urge voters not to see Republicans as an answer to their economic woes.

    It was a delicate balance, as the former president acknowledged the pain of inflation and tried to explain why President Joe Biden and Democrats shouldn’t take all the blame as they face the prospects of losing narrow majorities in the House and Senate when votes are tallied Nov. 8. But Obama argued that Republicans who are intent on making it harder for people to vote and — like former President Donald Trump — are willing to ignore the results, can’t be trusted to care about Americans’ wallets either.

    “That basic foundation of our democracy is being called into question right now,” Obama told more than 5,000 voters gathered outside Atlanta. “Democrats aren’t perfect. I’m the first one to admit it. … But right now, with a few notable exceptions, most of the GOP and a whole bunch of these candidates are not even pretending that the rules apply to them.”

    With Biden’s approval ratings in the low 40s, Democrats hope Obama’s emergence in the closing weeks of the campaign boosts the party’s slate in a tough national environment. He shared the stage Friday with Sen. Raphael Warnock, who faces a tough reelection fight from Republican Herschel Walker, and Stacey Abrams, who is trying to unseat Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who defeated her narrowly four years ago.

    Obama will travel Saturday to Michigan and Wisconsin, followed by stops next week in Nevada and Pennsylvania.

    For Obama personally, the campaign blitz is an opportunity to do something he was unable to do in two midterms during his presidency: help Democrats succeed in national midterms when they already hold the White House. For his party, it’s an opportunity to leverage Obama’s rebound in popularity since his last midterm defeats in 2014. Their hope is that the former president can sell arguments that Biden, his former vice president, has struggled to land.

    Biden was in Pennsylvania on Friday with Vice President Kamala Harris and plans to be in Georgia next week, potentially in a joint rally with Obama and statewide Democratic candidates. But he has not been welcomed as a surrogate for many Democratic candidates across the country, including Warnock.

    “Obama occupies a rare place in our politics today,” said David Axelrod, who helped shape Obama’s campaigns from his days in the Illinois state Senate through two presidential elections. “He obviously has great appeal to Democrats. But he’s also well-liked by independent voters.”

    Obama tried to show off that reach Friday. The first Black president drew a hero’s welcome from a majority Black audience, and he offered plenty of applause lines for Democrats. But he saved plenty of his argument, especially on the economy, for moderates, independents and casual voters, including a defense of Biden, who Obama said is “fighting for you every day.”

    He called inflation “a legacy of the pandemic,” the resulting supply chain disruption and the Ukraine war’s effects on global oil markets — a sweeping retort to Republican attempts to cast sole blame on Democrats’ spending bills.

    “What is their answer? … They want to give the rich tax cuts,” Obama said of the GOP. “That’s their answer to everything. When inflation is low, let’s cut taxes. When unemployment is high, let’s cut taxes. If there was an asteroid heading toward Earth, they would all get in a room and say, you know what we need? We need tax cuts for the wealthy. How’s that going to help you?”

    Biden has sought to make similar arguments, and was buoyed this week with news of 2.6% economic growth in the third quarter after two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

    Yet Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, said Obama is better positioned to convince voters who haven’t decided whom to vote for or whether to vote at all.

    “If it’s just a straight-up referendum on Democrats and the economy, then we’re screwed,” Smith said. “But you have to make the election a choice between the two parties, crystallize the differences.”

    Obama, she said, did that in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections “by winning over a lot of working-class white voters and others we don’t always think about as part of the ‘Obama coalition.’”

    Obama left office in January 2017 with a 59% approval rating, and Gallup measured his post-presidential approval at 63% the following year, the last time the organization surveyed former presidents. That’s considerably higher than his ratings in 2010, when Democrats lost control of the House in a midterm election that Obama called a “shellacking.” In his second midterm election four years later, the GOP regained control of the Senate.

    Still, Bakari Sellers, a prominent Democratic commentator, said Obama’s broader popularity shouldn’t obscure how much his “special connection” with Black voters and other non-white voters can help Democrats.

    The Atlanta rally brought Obama together with Warnock, the first Black U.S. senator in Georgia history, and Abrams, who’s vying to become the first Black female governor in American history.

    In Michigan, Obama will campaign in Detroit with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is being challenged by Republican Tudor Dixon, and in Wisconsin he’ll be in Milwaukee with Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, who is trying to oust Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. Each city is where the state’s Black population is most concentrated. Obama’s Pennsylvania swing will include Philadelphia, another city where Democrats must get a strong turnout from Black voters to win competitive races for Senate and governor.

    With the Senate now split 50-50 between the two major parties and Vice President Kamala Harris giving Democrats the deciding vote, any Senate contest could end up deciding which party controls the chamber for the next two years. Among the tightest Senate battlegrounds, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are three where Black turnout could be most critical to Democratic fortunes.

    Axelrod said Obama’s turnabout from his own midterm floggings to being Democrats’ leading surrogate is, in part, a rite of passage for any former president. “Most of them — maybe not President Trump, but most of them — are viewed more favorably after they leave office,” Axelrod said.

    Notably, during Obama’s presidency, former President Bill Clinton was the in-demand heavyweight surrogate, especially for moderates trying to survive Republican surges in 2010 and 2014.

    Axelrod said Obama and Clinton have a similar approach.

    “What Clinton and Obama share is a kind of unique ability to colloquialize complicated political arguments of the time, just talk in common-sense terms,” Axelrod said. “They’re storytellers.”

    ___

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to show Abrams, not Kemp, is trying to unseat the governor.

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  • Rare John Steinbeck column probes strength of US democracy

    Rare John Steinbeck column probes strength of US democracy

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    NEW YORK — Decades ago, as communists and suspected communists were being blacklisted and debates spread over the future of American democracy, John Steinbeck — a resident of Paris at the time — often found himself asked about the headlines from his native country.

    The question he kept hearing: “What about McCarthyism?”

    The future Nobel Laureate wrote that the practice embodied by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was “simply a new name for something that has existed from the moment when popular government emerged.”

    “It is the attempt to substitute government by men for government by law,” Steinbeck continued in a 1954 column for Le Figaro that had rarely been seen until it was reprinted this week in the literary quarterly The Strand Magazine. “We have always had this latent thing. All democracies have it. It cannot be wiped out because, by destroying it, democracy would destroy itself.”

    Steinbeck was closely associated with his native California, the setting for all or most of “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Of Mice and Men” and other fiction. But he lived briefly in Paris in the mid-1950s and wrote a series of short pieces for Le Figaro that were translated into French.

    Most of his observations were humorous reflections on his adopted city, but at times he couldn’t help commenting on larger matters.

    “Anyone even remotely familiar with Steinbeck’s works knows that he never shied away from taking on controversial topics,” Andrew F. Gulli, managing editor of The Strand, writes in a brief introduction. The Strand has unearthed obscure works by Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others. Gulli calls Steinbeck’s column in the French publication a timely work for current concerns about democracy.

    “The Grapes of Wrath” was a defining work of the Great Depression. Steinbeck held to an idealistic liberalism that was formed in part in the 1930s by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, deepened by the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and eventually tested by the Vietnam War. He despised both McCarthyism and communism, opposing what he called “any interference with the creative mind” — whether censorship in the U.S. or the persecution of writers in the Soviet Union.

    “He stated in the 1960s that the role of an artist was to critique his country,” says Susan Shillinglaw, who directs the Center for Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University.

    Steinbeck believed that the United States was a force for good and fortunate in its ability to correct itself. He advocated a version of tough love hard to defend now, likening democracy to a child who “must be hurt constantly” to endure and regarding McCarthyism as a passing threat that would strengthen the country in the long run.

    “In resisting, we keep our democracy hard and tough and alive, its machinery intact. An organism untested soon goes flabby and weak,” he wrote.

    McCarthyism was peaking around the time of Steinbeck’s column and McCarthy himself would be censured by his Senate peers within months and dead by 1957. Political historian Julian Zelizer says that Steinbeck was not alone in recognizing the dangers of anti-communist hysteria, while maintaining an “unyielding optimism” that “the constitutional separation of powers and pluralism would keep these forces on the margins.”

    Lucan Way, whose books include “Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics,” tells The Associated Press that “in principle the clear and unambiguous defeat of anti-democratic actors” such as McCarthy might have a positive effect.

    But he does not think Steinbeck’s column can be applied to contemporary politics.

    “What is going on now is not an example of this phenomenon (the fall of McCarthyism),” Way says. “Trumpism has not been clearly defeated but has instead helped to normalize anti-democratic behavior that was previously considered out of bounds.”

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  • Britain wants an election. It’s not getting one

    Britain wants an election. It’s not getting one

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    LONDON — Now on their third prime minister since the last general election, the despairing British public want a vote on who runs the country. They appear to be out of luck.

    New U.K. premier Rishi Sunak did not secure the 2019 election win for the Tories. Neither did his predecessor Liz Truss, who instead for a chaotic 44 days tried to rip up many of the economic and policy promises in Conservative manifesto.

    It was, of course, Boris Johnson who secured the Tories’ 80-seat majority almost three years ago — before being kicked out of Downing Street in the summer by his own MPs following a string of humiliating scandals. His replacement Truss, elected by just 81,00 Conservative members, lasted less than two months before her colleagues wielded the knife again.

    This carousel of leaders has left some observers pondering how Britain, can repeatedly change its figurehead — not to mention, in Truss’ case, its entire economic direction — without once consulting the public.

    Unsurprisingly, it’s a question opposition leader, Labour’s Keir Starmer, hopes to capitalize on.

    Asking questions to the new PM in the House of Commons Wednesday, Starmer noted that the last time Sunak took part in a vote — his head-to-head contest with Truss — “he got trounced by the former prime minister … who herself got beaten by a lettuce.”

    “Let working people have their say,” Starmer told the PM, “and call a general election.”

    A defiant Sunak replied that his mandate “is based on a manifesto that we were elected on — an election that we won, and they lost.”

    Public panic

    Constitutionally, Sunak is correct.

    The U.K. government retains total control over whether a snap election should be called ahead of the January 2025 deadline for the next vote — unless dozens of Tory MPs suddenly go rogue and decide to bring down their own regime via a no-confidence vote in the Commons.

    And the Tories’ rock-bottom poll ratings mean any kind of electoral gamble is off the table for the foreseeable future. Conservative support among the public — already dire at the tail-end of the Johnson tenure — plunged to record lows under Truss.

    “The short answer to anyone at home or abroad asking why the Conservatives don’t have an election, is because they don’t have to have an election,” said Joe Twyman, director at U.K. polling firm Deltapoll. “Given the situation the polls are in, they would be assured of a loss.”

    Under the British political system, the public votes for a governing party rather than a specific prime minister — and it’s for each party to pick its leader as and when it sees fit. The set-up differs markedly from presidential systems in places like France and the U.S., which are led by directly-elected heads of state.

    “It’s a fundamental rule of a parliamentary democracy that it isn’t the prime minister who wins a mandate at a general election, it’s the parliamentary party,” said Catherine Haddon, a constitutional expert at the Institute for Government think tank. 

    “Once you start going down the route of arguing every prime minister needs to win a general election to be able to hold the job, you are fundamentally changing the system.”

    Furthermore, the U.K.’s “first-past-the-post” voting system tends to deliver single-party rule, meaning coalition governments — which might collapse in times of turbulence, so triggering an election — are historically rare.

    So Sunak retains a healthy parliamentary majority, inherited from Johnson’s 2019 victory.

    Left wanting

    But the one thing counting against the Conservatives is public opinion.

    A YouGov poll this week found 59 percent of the British public think Sunak should call an election — including 38 percent of all Conservative voters — compared with just 29 percent who thought he shouldn’t. That’s far higher than normal, and way above even the peak figure of 41 percent who wanted an election at the height of the Partygate scandal. 

    “Turmoil in the government, with the Conservatives now two leaders removed from the one who took them to election victory in 2019, has clearly convinced many Britons that the time is right for a new vote,” said YouGov’s head of data journalism, Matthew Smith.

    An internal poll for the opposition Labour Party this week found similar results, with support for an election strongest among swing voters, according to a Labour official. Even a third of those 2019 Conservative voters who are still planning to vote the same way next time round want a snap election, the official said. Those leaning toward Labour are even more enthusiastic about a fresh campaign.

    Other research confirms the public is getting restless. A focus group this week for the non-partisan “More in Common” campaign found seven out of eight participants wanted an election once the current economic crisis has died down — a significant increase on previous exercises.

    Luke Tryl, the U.K. director of More in Common, said most people want “a choice over who is in charge” — although he noted that the same people also often feel conflicted, being “exhausted with the constant politics of the past few years.”

    Consultants at the agency Public First have found similar results in their own focus groups. The firm’s founding partner James Frayne said demands for a general election had “surged in recent weeks, and won’t be going anywhere.” He added: “As far as most voters are concerned, one unelected PM screwed up the economy so badly that another unelected PM must impose brutal austerity in response.”

    Internal dissent

    Indeed, even some Conservatives — chiefly those supportive of Boris Johnson — have suggested an election is necessary following his departure from No. 10 Downing Street.

    Former Cabinet Minister Nadine Dorries said publicly that an election would be “impossible to avoid” after her fellow MPs rejected Johnson’s recent comeback bid. Backbencher Christopher Chope and Tory peer Zac Goldsmith both made similar claims.

    “Imposing a new prime minister no-one voted for goes against the grain of what is democratic,” said one Johnson-supporting Conservative MP. “Colleagues who removed Boris can’t have their cake and eat it. We’ve had a sh*t show since, and appointing Rishi without a single vote is precarious. But colleagues insist they don’t want a general election.”

    For the vast majority of Conservative MPs, who want to avoid a vote at all costs, Sunak appears their best hope of calming the waters and so holding off the clamor for an election.

    “It is legitimate to feel there should be an election,” said a former Johnson adviser. “But in a world where there’s no general election, the best thing for everyone is to have Rishi — because however well he ends up doing, I think he will be quite calm, professional, and not trying to do crazy things that f*ck up all our mortgages.”

    Twyman, from Deltapoll, suggested that ultimately, being accused of dodging democracy is probably the “lesser of two evils” for the Tories.

    “It doesn’t look good for the Conservatives,” he said. “But a Labour majority of 300 doesn’t look good for the Conservatives either.”

    Annabelle Dickson contributed reporting.

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    Emilio Casalicchio

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  • Thousands march in Khartoum on 1st anniversary of Sudan coup

    Thousands march in Khartoum on 1st anniversary of Sudan coup

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    CAIRO — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Sudan’s capital of Khartoum on Tuesday, marking the first anniversary of a military coup that upended the nation’s short-lived transition to democracy.

    Videos published on social media showed marchers with flags and drums, most of them bound for the Presidential Palace. Other footage showed protesters standing in front of convoys of security forces.

    Netblocks, an online network tracker, announced early Tuesday that internet services across the country were blocked. Various Sudanese pro-democracy activists and local journalists reported security forces fired tear gas at protesters and earlier closed off bridges leading into Khartoum. The Associated Press has been unable to verify these claims.

    Since its takeover, the military has cracked down and suppressed near-weekly pro-democracy marches, with as many as 118 protesters killed, according to statistics published by the Sudan Doctors Committee.

    Sudan’s top general, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and paramilitary deputy Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo were meant to oversee a democratic transition after Sudan’s autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir was toppled in a popular uprising in 2019.

    But last year, Burhan dissolved the ruling Sovereign Council, arrested the transitional prime minister and unseated the civilian faction of a power-sharing government that had been in place. He later said he acted to stop a civil war.

    Rights groups say hundreds have been detained since the military takeover, many without charge.

    In recent weeks, internationally backed talks between Sudan’s pro-democracy movement and the ruling military have made some progress.

    According to The Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change — an alliance of political parties and protest groups — the military has agreed on a draft constitutional document written by the country’s Bar Association. This would allow the appointment of a civilian prime minister who would lead the country through elections by 2024.

    But Sudan’s more ardent pro-democracy groups, including the grassroots Resistance Committees who spearhead anti-coup street protests, reject any settlement with the military. Along with the Communist Party, they have demanded that those responsible for the year’s deadly crackdown on demonstrations be tried in court.

    ‘‘I have no trust in the army’s intentions, the new negotiation is just a new division of wealth and power” said Ammar Yahya, the spokesperson for a Khartoum branch of the Resistance Committees.

    The coup has plunged Sudan’s already inflation-riddled economy into deeper peril. International aid has dried up while bread and fuel shortages, caused in part by the war in Ukraine, have become increasingly routine.

    In a statement also marking the coup’s anniversary, the head of The U.S. Agency for International Development condemned the takeover but said she was ‘encouraged’ by the recent agreement over the Bar Association’s constitutional document.

    ‘‘I reiterate the call for the military to cede power back to civilian authorities,’’ Samantha Powell added.

    The year has also seen a resurgence of deadly tribal clashes in the country’s neglected peripheries. Fierce clashes between the Hausa and Berta people last week killed at least 230 people in southern Blue Nile province.

    Many analysts consider the rising violence in the south a product of the power vacuum caused by the military takeover, with the ruling generals’ clampdown focused on the center of power, Khartoum and the country’s heartland, while the peripheries descend into chaos.

    Burhan and Dagalo have separately promised to step back from politics following the reinstatement of a civilian government. But amid the chaos, both have also sought to further their political influence.

    Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, implicated in the killing of more than 100 sit-in protesters in June 2019 in Khartoum, have continued to expand across the country. Meanwhile, Burhan has overseen the reinstatement of dozens of civil servants sacked by the previous government for their association with al-Bashir’s circle.

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  • Taiwan’s Tsai says no backing down to Chinese aggression

    Taiwan’s Tsai says no backing down to Chinese aggression

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    TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan won’t back down in the face of “aggressive threats” from China, the president of the self-governing island democracy Tsai Ing-wen said Tuesday, comparing growing pressure from Beijing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Tsai’s comments follow the conclusion of the twice-a-decade congress of China’s Communist Party at which it upped its long-standing threat to annex the island it considers its own territory by force if necessary.

    The party added a line into its constitution on “resolutely opposing and deterring” Taiwan’s independence “resolutely implementing the policy of ‘one country, two systems,'” the formula by which it plans to govern the island in future.

    The blueprint has already been put in place in the former British colony of Hong Kong, which has seen its democratic system, civil liberties and judicial independence decimated.

    Speaking to an international gathering of pro-democracy activists in Taipei, Tsai said democracies and liberal societies were facing the greatest host of challenges since the Cold War.

    “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is a prime example. It shows an authoritarian regime will do whatever it takes to achieve expansionism,” Tsai said.

    “The people of Taiwan are all too familiar with such aggression. In recent years, Taiwan has been confronted by increasingly aggressive threats from China,” she said, listing military intimidation, cyber attacks and economic coercion among them.

    The rising Chinese threat has spurred calls on Taiwan for additional defense investments and a lengthening of the term of national service required of all Taiwanese men.

    “However, even under constant threats, the people of Taiwan have never shied away from the challenges” and have fought to work against authoritarian forces looking to undermine their democratic way of life, Tsai said.

    Tsai was speaking at the opening ceremony of the World Movement for Democracy’s Steering Committee, which is chaired by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa.

    Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949 and Taipei enjoys strong U.S. military and political support, despite the lack of formal military ties.

    Despite having just 14 official diplomatic allies, Taiwan has drawn increasing backing from major nations, including Japan, Australia, the U.S., Canada and across Europe.

    A recent visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi enraged Beijing, which responded with military exercises seen as a rehearsal of a blockade of the island.

    On Monday, Tsai met with a German parliamentary delegation focusing on human rights, who expressed concern about how Taiwan would handle threats from China.

    “Taiwan is really facing military threats,” delegation head Peter Heidt said. “From Germany’s point of view, changes to the cross-strait status quo, if any, must be based on peaceful means. Also, these changes must be made after both sides have reached a consensus.”

    Also on Tuesday, Taiwanese Premier You Si-kun was meeting with Ukrainian lawmaker Kira Rudik and Lithuanian politician Zygimantas Pavilionis. Taiwan has strongly condemned the Russian invasion and at least one Taiwanese citizen is reportedly fighting with Ukrainian forces.

    The Ukrainian conflict has focused new attention on if and when China might launch military action against Taiwan, given that a solid majority of Taiwanese reject Beijing’s calls for “peaceful reunification.”

    A full-scale invasion across the 160-kilometer (100-mile) -wide Taiwan Strait remains a daunting prospect for China despite its recent massive military expansion, especially in its naval and missile forces.

    However, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s securing of another five-year term in office has some observers speculating he may be looking to move up the schedule for bringing Taiwan under China’s control.

    Among personnel changes at China’s congress that concluded Saturday, Gen. He Weidong was elevated to second vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. He was formerly head of the Eastern Theater Command, which would be primarily responsible for operations against Taiwan should hostilities break out.

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the Asia-Pacific region at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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  • ‘Beaten by a lettuce’: 44 glorious days of Liz Truss

    ‘Beaten by a lettuce’: 44 glorious days of Liz Truss

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    LONDON — Westminster is in turmoil, the U.K. economy is floundering, and Tory MPs are about to pick their fifth prime minister in just over six years.

    But in a sign of total normality in this fully-functioning Western democracy, Brits have instead spent much of the past week fixated on a livestream of a head of iceberg lettuce, wearing a wig.

    Set up by tabloid the Daily Star, the paper’s newshounds bet big that a 60p supermarket lettuce would outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss, after her fledgling regime was gripped by unprecedented chaos in its first few weeks.

    And they were right. Truss finally resigned Thursday, just 44 days into the job, making her the U.K.’s shortest-serving prime minister. The Daily Star broke out the Champagne, declaring: “The Lettuce Outlasted Liz Truss.”

    So how did Truss put her salad days behind her, and why did she wilt under the public gaze?

    Let POLITICO take you on a whirlwind tour of Truss’ 44-day premiership — but be warned, there are more than a few icebergs ahead.

    Smashing the orthodoxy

    September 6: It all started so well. After seeing off suave-but-dull rival Rishi Sunak in a rancorous Conservative leadership contest, Truss looked triumphant as she took the reins at No. 10 Downing Street and vowed to “transform Britain into an aspiration nation.” She had good reason to be cheerful, too, vacuuming up support from thousands of grassroots Tory members, getting the key Conservative-backing newspapers on side, and confidently brushing off the fact that the majority of her own Tory MPs had doubts about her competence. What did they know, after all? They’d only worked with Truss in Westminster for the past decade.

    September 8: Upon taking office, Truss picked her close friend and neighbor Kwasi Kwarteng as her top finance minister, and immediately tasked him with taking on the stale “orthodoxy” at the Treasury. In a savvy first move, Kwarteng immediately sacked the most senior civil servant in the ministry — a man so clever his name is literally Tom Scholar — and so ensured that outmoded, orthodox qualities like “experience,” “credibility” and “economic literacy” were expunged at just the right time … amid a global economic crisis.

    Also September 8: A busy day this one, what with Britain’s longest-reigning monarch dying that same afternoon. As the country mourned Queen Elizabeth II, Truss faced her first big communications test on the job: How to capture the nation’s deep sense of grief? She duly rose to the occasion, ripping up lines painstakingly prepared by career officials to deliver a heartfelt tribute with all the enthusiasm of a Q4 sales report. The country wept, for at least one Liz.

    September 23: The queen’s death put normal politics on ice for a couple of weeks. But the pause allowed Team Truss to put the finishing touches on their very own Mona Lisa: the mini-budget. A sleeker, more aerodynamic budget than the normal kind, this mini version did away with tired conventions like “independent fiscal scrutiny by the government’s own watchdog,” and “making the sums add up.” Instead, Truss and Kwarteng pressed ahead with debt-funded tax cuts and a multi-billion pound plan to subsidize energy bills. Kwarteng also showed he retained a populist touch with crowd-pleasing measures such as cutting taxes for the U.K.’s super-rich and removing a cap on bankers’ bonuses, all in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis — before heading off to a Champagne reception with hedge fund bosses to party the night away. Cheers!

    Woke markets cancel Truss

    September 26: Eek. Then came the backlash. Financial markets — famously stuffed with tofu-munching lefties who hate conservatism and everything it stands for — failed to understand the mini-budget’s genius, while the unruly pound, which probably voted to Remain in the EU, crashed to its lowest-ever level against the U.S. dollar. Kwarteng, sounding a little shaken, promised he would publish all his fully-worked-out sums in, oooh, November? That sound OK?

    September 28: The pound’s reign of terror continued, and, as U.K. borrowing costs soared and British pension funds teetered on the brink of collapse, those radical communists at the Bank of England were forced to step in with an unprecedented emergency bond-buying program “to restore market functioning.” Their hippie best mates at the International Monetary Fund also got in on the act, saying Kwarteng’s plans would “likely increase inequality” and urging the government to “re-evaluate” its tax measures. Chill out, guys!

    Prime Minister Liz Truss is seen returning to Downing Street | Rob Pinney/Getty Images

    October 3: Phew — she made it through to the Tory party conference. Political party conferences, after all, are normally a glorious victory lap for newly-crowned leaders, but Truss again decided to smash the status quo by turning hers into a deeply embarrassing few days of U-turns, backpedaling and noisy Tory infighting. Less than 24 hours after insisting she was sticking by her economic plan, Truss suddenly junked her centerpiece proposal to cut taxes for the rich. Kwarteng admitted the idea had “become a distraction” from the government’s “overriding mission.”

    October 4: Indeed, the U-turn allowed the real “overriding mission” of the government — to needlessly piss off its own MPs — to shine through. No sooner had the tax cut been ditched than Truss’ ever-loyal Cabinet ministers were onto their next target, publicly pressuring the PM not to impose a real-terms cut to social security payments. One minister even capped off the day by telling a room full of drunk communications professionals that the government’s own comms strategy was “shit.” And who could argue?

    October 10-11: A week after ditching their flagship policy, Truss’ government had another go at calming the still-spooked markets. Kwarteng’s new idea? Bringing forward the publication of his next fiscal plan to a date in no way guaranteed to be, erm, spooky: October 31. The Bank of England loved the cut of his jib, again stepping in with a major market intervention to prevent what it called a “fire sale” of U.K. government bonds. Which sounded worrying.

    Actually, we really love the orthodoxy, please come back

    October 14: After weeks of economic turmoil, Kwarteng was dragged home from a trip to Washington D.C. so that he could be sacked on the spot while still jet-lagged — a bad day at the office by anyone’s standards. Finally free of a chancellor who had repeatedly defied her by *checks notes* implementing her exact policy wishes to the letter, the PM then ripped up her long-standing pledge to ease taxes on big business, admitting in an epic eight-minute-long press conference that she’d gone “further and faster than markets were expecting.” We’ve all been there. Reaching out to the center of the Tory party, Truss appointed former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt as her new chancellor, shoring up her faltering premiership for a full 36 hours.

    October 16: Team Truss’ strenuous efforts to build bridges with her now-mutinous party ramped up another notch over the weekend, as a No. 10 insider branded her former leadership rival and ex-Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid — who had reportedly just been sounded out by Truss’ team itself about the chancellor job — “shit.” It didn’t go down too well with him, or his mates.

    October 17: A biggie, as Hunt put a bullet in the entire Truss agenda, live on TV. In an astonishing move, the new finance minister issued a televised statement in which — by his own admission — he ripped up “almost all” the mini-budget pledges the Truss government had announced just a few weeks earlier. Even the energy support plan, clung to by Truss supporters as one of the few remaining positives of her premiership, was to be significantly pared back — although hard-pressed voters should be able to warm themselves this winter by standing near the giant “dumpster fire” that’s been Westminster the past six years. Truss capped another glorious day by avoiding an urgent question in the House of Commons and sending a junior Cabinet minister to reassure angry MPs that the British prime minister was not, in fact, “hiding under a desk.”

    October 19: Very much the End Times. A rollercoaster of a day — if rollercoasters only went downhill — as an under-pressure Truss first offered up yet another U-turn, this time on pension payments; then a senior Truss aide was suspended as that clever “shit” quote to the Sunday newspapers got investigated by No. 10; then her home secretary was sacked and posted what was essentially an extended anti-Truss sub-tweet as a resignation letter; and then the government somehow turned a really boring House of Commons vote into a bitter row about “manhandling” its own MPs, as one of them literally cried on live TV. For those watching from abroad — this is why people in the U.K. drink a lot.

    October 20: With the game finally up and her authority shot to pieces, Truss bowed to the inevitable and resigned Thursday, reeling off all her achievements in an 89-second statement on the Downing Street steps. Yet all is not lost. Tucked away in a newsroom in London, there’s one little lettuce who never lost hope. And in its still-crisp and delicious center lies the promise of national renewal. We can but dream.

    This article was updated to correct a date.

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    Matt Honeycombe-Foster

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  • Liz Truss quits as UK prime minister

    Liz Truss quits as UK prime minister

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    LONDON — Liz Truss has resigned as U.K. prime minister after a chaotic six weeks in office, saying she “cannot deliver the mandate” on which she was elected.

    In a short but dramatic televised statement outside No. 10 Downing Street Thursday, Truss admitted she could no longer command the support of her party and that a rapid-fire Conservative leadership election will take place over the next week to choose her successor.

    Truss’ resignation after just 44 days makes her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history — an extraordinary and unwanted tag she could scarcely have imagined when she was selected as leader by Tory members on September 6.

    But in less than two months in office she triggered a meltdown in financial markets, sacked two of her most senior ministers, was forced into multiple policy U-turns and ultimately lost the backing of her own MPs.

    Her successor will have to resolve significant tensions within the ruling Conservative party over the U.K.’s economic approach, while facing a yawning budget deficit which must be filled with tax rises or deep spending cuts. They will also face pressure for a general election, although — given their disastrous poll ratings — the Tories are likely to resist calling one until legally required to do so in 2024 or January 2025.

    “I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party,” Truss said in her statement Thursday. “I have therefore spoken to his majesty the king to notify him that I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party.”

    Turmoil

    Truss had faced a disastrous start to her premiership after unveiling a radical economic plan of unfunded tax cuts on September 23 which spooked financial markets, sent U.K. borrowing costs soaring and collapsed her party’s poll ratings to a record low.

    She attempted to steady her faltering administration last week by sacking her friend and chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, and replacing him with a center-ground choice, her former leadership rival Jeremy Hunt. He immediately junked her entire economic program in an effort to calm the markets and bring down Britain’s borrowing costs.

    But Truss’ premiership disintegrated Wednesday night amid chaotic scenes in the House of Commons, where party enforcers struggled to marshal mutinous Tory MPs in a crucial vote. Earlier in the day Truss had been forced to suspend one of her closest aides and sacked her home secretary, Suella Braverman, enraging her right-wing supporters.

    The turmoil prompted more Conservative MPs to go public with their demands for Truss to leave office, with dozens more calling for her to go behind the scenes.

    Truss then held crisis talks Thursday morning with Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee, which sets leadership contest rules; Deputy PM Thérèse Coffey; and Conservative Party Chairman Jake Berry. Together they concluded she could no longer command the support of her own MPs.

    Speaking to reporters in Westminster Thursday afternoon, Brady said the plan as agreed with Berry was to conclude the leadership election by October 28, meaning a new prime minister will be in place before Hunt’s next big fiscal statement on October 31.

    Nominations will close Monday at 2 p.m., and in a move that is expected to substantially narrow the field compared to the past summer’s 11-strong contest, candidates will need the backing of at least 100 fellow Tory MPs to progress. If only one candidate reaches that threshold Monday, they will be crowned leader that same day.

    If there are three candidates who manage to garner that number of backers, Tory MPs will vote again to whittle them down to a final two before the contest is opened up to the party’s approximately 180,000 grassroots members. The contest will be wrapped up by next Friday at the latest.

    The favorites to succeed Truss as PM include Rishi Sunak, the former U.K. chancellor who won more backing from Tory MPs than any other candidate last time round, but who she defeated in a head-to-head ballot of Tory members over the summer.

    Also in the running are Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt and — incredibly — former PM Boris Johnson, who remains wildly popular among Tory Party members. Johnson, who left office only last month, is currently on holiday in the Caribbean with his wife Carrie. Hunt has already ruled himself out of the running.

    Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, called for an immediate general election so that the British people could choose their next leader.

    He told broadcasters on Thursday that “we can’t have a revolving door of chaos, we can’t have another experiment at the top of the Tory Party. There is an alternative, and that is a stable Labour government. The country should be entitled to have their say.”

    This developing story is being updated.

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    Matt Honeycombe-Foster

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  • Planning for the chaotic post-Putin world

    Planning for the chaotic post-Putin world

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    Vladimir Putin in power has brutalized millions as he careens into tyranny. 

    Yet Vladimir Putin out of power will bring its own brand of chaos: a Shakespearean knife-fight for power; unleashed regional leaders; a nuclear arsenal up for grabs.

    For now, few want to publicly talk about that post-Putin world, wary of the perception of meddling in domestic politics. But privately, western countries and analysts are plotting the scenarios that could unfold when Putin inevitably departs — and how Ukraine’s allies should react.

    “I will be careful speculating too much about the domestic political situation in Russia,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week when asked how the alliance was preparing for the possibility of the Russian leader leaving office. 

    “Regardless of what different analyses may indicate, I think what we need to do at NATO is to be prepared for all eventualities and when it comes to Ukraine, be prepared to continue to support them,” he said. 

    One consensus: It won’t be a clean transition, posing myriad dilemmas that could strain Western allies. How much can — and should — they influence the succession process? What should they do if a Russian republic breaks away? What relationship should they pursue with Putin’s successor?

    “We should put aside any illusions that what happens next immediately is democracy,” said Laurie Bristow, a former British ambassador to Russia. 

    “What I think happens next,” he added, “is probably a time of troubles.” 

    An explosive succession fight 

    For now, Putin is in a safe position. He still controls the state apparatus, and the military is executing his murderous orders in Ukraine. 

    But the Russian leader’s flailing invasion of Ukraine has diminished his position at home and deepened uncertainties over who would take over, and how. 

    “To manage a stable succession when the time comes — which will in Putin’s mind be a time of his choosing — then you need a high degree of elite consensus,” said Bristow, who served as the United Kingdom’s envoy in Moscow from 2016 until 2020. 

    “What they’ve done now is break that consensus,” he said, noting there is now more vying for power within the Kremlin. 

    That fighting could turn bloody once the Kremlin’s top job finally opens up. 

    “This could get very Shakespearean, think King Lear, or [the] Roman Empire, like I, Claudius, or Games of Thrones, very quickly,” said William Alberque, a former director of NATO’s arms control center. 

    Alexander Vershbow, a former senior U.S. and NATO official, said the most likely scenario was still a “smooth transition” within Putin’s current inner circle — but he conceded that toppling tyrants can beget turmoil. “There could be internal instability,” he said, “and things become very unpredictable in authoritarian systems, in personalistic dictatorships.”

    Bristow, the former British ambassador, warned Western powers to stay out of such succession fights: “I think we have to recognize the limits of our ability to influence these outcomes.”

    Although, the ex-envoy conceded, “we certainly have an interest in the outcome.”

    Nukes = power

    Russia is sitting on the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, featuring thousands of warheads that can each inflict massive destruction, death and trauma on a population.

    The arsenal has long been a source of Russian strength on the world stage and a dominant part of its global image — for years, the possibility of a Kremlin nuclear strike dominated the public imagination in the U.S. and elsewhere. 

    In a period of leadership uncertainty, that arsenal could become a coveted symbol of power. That would put focus on the Russian military’s nuclear protector, the 12th Main Directorate, or GUMO. 

    “There’s a real possibility,” said Alberque, “that there would be deadly competition — competition to include people trying to rally different parts of the military — particularly the 12th GUMO that controls Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”

    Rogue regions

    Put simply, Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching across 11 time zones and climbing from the Caucasus to the Arctic. 

    While Putin may seem to hold a despotic grip on that entire expanse, there are a number of Russian republics with more tenuous connections to Moscow — and some with ambitious political figures. A power vacuum in a faraway capital could present an opening for local leaders to seize more control.

    While most analysts believe the Russian Federation would largely hold together through a battle for Kremlin control, they acknowledge the Russian government has long feared fragmentation. 

    In the event of such factional fighting, all eyes will be on Ramzan Kadyrov, the brutal head of the Chechen Republic. 

    “Does he throw his weight behind a competing faction? Or does he say, ‘I’m good with a decade of massive Russian subsidies — now let’s break off, and I can probably rule Chechnya and Dagestan; I can have my own empire here’?” said Alberque, now a director at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine could also come back to haunt the Kremlin.

    Vershbow, a former American ambassador to Russia, said there is a “low probability” of disintegration but noted that “ironically” Putin’s annexation of areas in eastern Ukraine “could be cited as a precedent by separatist leaders inside the Russian Federation, to say ‘borders are now up for grabs’.”

    A return of the reset debate

    Once a new leadership team is in place, that’s when the most bedeviling policy debates will begin for Western governments.  

    With Putin off the political stage, some officials — in particular in western Europe — may argue there is an opportunity to forge a fresh relationship with Moscow. 

    The U.S. infamously offered Russia a symbolic “reset” button at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency, only to see relations deteriorate further. And Germany for years preached the gospel of economic engagement with Russia, only to declare a historic “Zeitenwende,” or turning point, after Moscow’s invasion.

    With new leadership in the Kremlin, Germany may say “oh, Zeitenwende, never mind. Let’s push the U.S. to do another reset with the new Russian leader,” Alberque said. 

    Inevitably, NATO’s eastern wing would deplore such overtures. They’d argue “Russia never changes,” Alberque said, and lean on allies to not recede from the more assertive NATO stance adopted since the war began.

    Polish Minister for National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak made exactly that point to POLITICO.

    “Russia in a version with Tsar as a leader was the same like Russia in a version with a secretary-general of Communist party as a leader, and now it’s the same as Vladimir Putin as a leader,” he said. 

    “What is important from our perspective,” he added, “is to isolate Russia.”

    For now, there is no expected Putin successor. But officials say they are expecting a regime with a similar ideology — or one even more extreme. 

    Jānis Garisons, a Latvian state secretary, pointed out that Putin has already jailed critics — and possible future leaders — like Alexei Navalny, and only more hardliners on the outside are ready to step in. 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence | Pool photo by Vladimir Smirnov/AFP via Getty Images

    “The only people who criticize him” and not in prison “are from the right wing,” Garisons said. 

    “We should not fall victim to a junta or some group of people coming forward saying that they want a reset,” said Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, “if it’s still the same.” 

    One major difference this time around is that Europe is now less economically dependent on Moscow, reducing a key incentive to re-engage.

    “We have gone a long way to stop buying from Russia,” said a senior EU diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That would leave only the issues of nukes — but that will largely be with the Americans.” 

    Another signal Western leaders can look for is whether a Putin successor cooperates with international organizations seeking to prosecute Russian war crimes in Ukraine — a possibility, of course, that seems remote.

    “Only a Russia determined to cooperate, would not represent a threat to Europe,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský.

    Yet for all the assumptions that a cooperative Russia is far off, several current and former officials cautioned that western governments must combine deterrence with a longer-term effort to engage Russian civil society. 

    The Western alliance, said Bristow, must consider “how we reach out to Russian society beyond the Kremlin, to the next generation of Russian politicians, thinkers, intellectuals, teachers, businesspeople, to kind of spell out an alternative vision to the one they’ve got.” 

    “My sense,” he added, “is that quite a lot of people in Russia would like to do that.” 

    Paul McLeary contributed reporting 

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    Lili Bayer

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  • UK names the date for coronation of King Charles III

    UK names the date for coronation of King Charles III

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    LONDON — Get ready for plenty more pomp and ceremony in the United Kingdom. The coronation of King Charles III will take place on Saturday, May 6, 2023, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday.

    Charles ascended to the throne last month following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, but a formal coronation date had not yet been set.

    In a statement Tuesday night, Buckingham Palace finally named the date, and confirmed the coronation ceremony will take place at Westminster Abbey, the site of the queen’s own coronation and state funeral. It will be conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England.

    “The Ceremony will see His Majesty King Charles III crowned alongside The Queen Consort,” the statement said, referring to Charles’ wife, Camilla Parker Bowles. “The Coronation will reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future, while being rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry,” it added.

    Buckingham Palace is promising further details “in due course.”

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    Matt Honeycombe-Foster

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  • Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

    Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Islamic regime in Iran has ruled for decades with fear and intimidation.

    Outrage at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old who died after being detained by Iran’s morality policy, allegedly for improperly wearing her hijab, ignited nationwide protests across the country that have gone on for weeks.

    That Iranians are risking their lives and freedom to stand up to their government has sparked hope among many that change is coming. Read CNN’s latest report.

    I talked on the phone to Masih Alinejad, an Iranian in exile in the US who works as a journalist and activist.

    Key points:

    • She uses social media – 8 million followers on Instagram alone – to amplify and aid the protests inside Iran.
    • US authorities charged four Iranian nationals with trying to kidnap her last year.
    • To Alinejad, that women in Iran are removing their headscarves as an act of protest is equal to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    • She sees solidarity with dissidents from other oil-rich autocracies like Russia and Venezuela, and has a stern message for feminists in the West.

    Our conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below. I’ve also added some context and links in parentheses where appropriate.

    WHAT MATTERS: This newsletter is not usually focused on Iran. Can you first just explain what’s happening?

    ALINEJAD: Mahsa Amini was only 22 years old. … She came from Saqqez to Tehran for a vacation. Then she got arrested by the so-called morality police – because I call them the hijab police.

    And for your audience, if they don’t know what morality police means, they’re a bunch of police walking in the streets, telling people whether their way of wearing hijab is proper or not.

    Mahsa was arrested for wearing inappropriate hijab. So she was not unveiled.

    (Here is a CNN report in which the Iranian police deny the allegation she was beaten.)

    ALINEJAD: That created huge anger among Iranians. And that is why women across Iran first started to cut their hair. Then they took to the street and they started to burn their headscarves. And now, with men, shoulder to shoulder, across Iran they’re not only saying no to compulsory hijab, they are actually chanting against the dictator and they are saying we want an end to the Islamic Republic.

    This is a revolution.

    To me, this is a women’s revolution against a gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: The Iranian government has tried to crack down on this. We see video that gets out of Iran of these protests. How have things changed in the weeks since Mahsa’s death?

    ALINEJAD: From the beginning, the level of crackdown was so brutal. They opened fire, they really opened fire on teenagers, school leaders, university students, they opened fire on unarmed people.

    Now some reports say more than 130 people have been killed. But it’s strongly believed the number is much more than this. Only in Zahedan on only one day, they opened fire on those who were praying. Who were praying. They killed more than 80 people in Zahedan.

    (CNN has not verified all of these claims. Related CNN report: Iranian security forces beat, shot and detained students of elite Tehran university, witnesses say.

    Amnesty International has reported on the killing of 66 in Zahedan along with other deaths recorded in other places.

    Regarding death tolls: CNN cannot independently verify the death toll –  a precise figure is impossible for anyone outside the Iranian government to confirm – and different estimates have been given by opposition groups, international rights organizations and local journalists.)

    ALINEJAD: The Iranian regime cut off the internet in some cities to prevent the rest of the world from getting to know about the crackdown, to get to learn about the number of people killed.

    But again. That didn’t stop people. Actually, it changed the tone of the protesters. They became more angry. They were holding the names and photos of those who got killed and the major slogan was this: ‘We are ready to die, but we won’t live under humiliation.’

    One of the young women whose name was Hadis Najafi, she was only 20 years old. She made a video of herself walking in the street and saying I’m joining the protests. In the future, if I see that Iran has changed, that change came, then I was proudly part of this demonstration. She got killed. There are many of them.

    (CNN has reported that Najafi’s family said she was shot six times and never made it home from a protest. She was 23. There are reports of multiple young women killed. Here’s a CNN video report on Nika Shahkarami, whose family found her body at a morgue after not being able to find her for 10 days following an Instagram story of her burning her headscarf.)

    Students filmed themselves burning their headscarves, but they got killed. But murdering and killing didn’t stop the protests. Instead they became more angry. Now schoolgirls came out, university professors came out, teachers came out and ask for a strike.

    (Here’s a CNN report that explains the special significance of strikes in Iran.)

    WHAT MATTERS: The flashpoint is one woman’s death that set off all of these protests. But it’s a movement that’s been building for months –

    ALINEJAD: Don’t say for months. I don’t accept that. It has been building for years. Years of women pushing back the boundaries the anti-woman laws, especially compulsory hijab laws.

    For years and years, these women that you see in the streets, they have been fighting back compulsory hijabs alone. Like lonely soldiers. I myself have published videos of women being beaten by morality police under the hashtag #mycameraismyweapon. I really want you to go and check this hashtag. Brave women filming themselves while being harassed by morality police and looking to the morality police and saying that you cannot tell me what to wear.

    Slavery used to be legal. I’m not going to respect bad law in Iran.

    This is being built up by women within the society practicing their civil disobedience in bravely saying no to forced hijab and the gender apartheid regime for years and years. That’s my opinion. Mahsa’s name became a symbol of resistance for women to take to the streets in large numbers. That’s the new thing.

    WHAT MATTERS: How will this be transformed into permanent change? How will it evolve from here?

    ALINEJAD: Look, this is not going to happen overnight. This is the beginning of an end. It takes time. It reminds me of the revolution 40 years ago. People were taking to the streets for like one month and were going back home and then coming back again. The national strike helped a lot. For me and millions of people, this is just the beginning to an end.

    The compulsory hijab is not just a small piece of cloth for Iranians. It’s like the Berlin Wall. I keep saying that. If women can successfully tear this wall down, the Islamic Republic won’t exist.

    Maybe in the West, people ignore me and they never take this seriously. But the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, he knows what I’m talking about. That’s why, just two days ago, he referred to my statement comparing the hijab to the Berlin Wall, saying that ‘she is an American agent and we have taken action against her.’

    (Alinejad shared this video of Khamenei on Twitter, in which he refers to US political elements making the comparison to the Berlin Wall.)

    ALINEJAD: But it’s not me. It’s millions of people who believe that compulsory hijab is like the main pillar of the religious dictatorship. It’s like the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.

    That’s why I believe that now people are being fearless and clear that we want to break this weakest pillar of the Islamic Republic… I strongly believe that the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic are the women who are leading the revolution, who are facing guns and bullets and saying that we want an end for this gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: In Iran, and we’ve seen this in Russia as well, social media is helping spread the word and is essential to organizing protests. Here in the US, it is often viewed as a threat to our democracy because that’s where misinformation is spread. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that dichotomy.

    ALINEJAD: Let me be very clear with you. Right now, the tech companies are actually helping the Islamic Republic. First of all, Iranians are banned from using social media – Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are filtered. The leaders like Khamenei and other officials who ban 80 million people from using social media, they all have verified accounts. They have multiple accounts on social media. Basically, the Iranian regime cut off the Internet for its own people, but they’re being more than welcomed on social media to spread fake information, misinformation, disinformation.

    (Accounts that appear to be associated with Khamenei are on Twitter and Instagram and have large followings. They are not verified by Instagram or Twitter. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Meta said this in an email: “Iranians use apps like Instagram to stay close to their loved ones, find information and shed light on important events – and we hope the Iranian authorities restore their access soon. In the meantime, our teams are following the situation closely, and are focused on only removing content that breaks our rules, while addressing any enforcement mistakes as quickly as possible.”)

    WHAT MATTERS: The US government has tried to increase Iranian’s access to the internet. Is that working?

    ALINEJAD: Oh, of course, this is phenomenal. But we need more. We need more.

    The thing is, at the same time, the US government, we’re pleased that they’re providing internet access for Iranians. This is good. We appreciate that.

    But at the same time, the US government is focused on getting a deal from this regime, the same regime.

    They condemn the brutality, they condemn the Iranian government for killings, but at the same time, they try to give money, billions of dollars, to the same murderers. And I don’t understand this contradiction.

    (The US government could give Iran’s government ​access to billions of dollars of frozen Iranian funds if it re-joins an agreement whereby Iran can sell oil in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons capability. Recent talks, however, have not gone well. Read more.)

    ALINEJAD: Many people in the streets are now risking their lives and want an end for the same regime. They aren’t asking for US government to go there and save them at all. They’re brave enough to do it themselves. But they’re really clearly asking the US government not to save the Iranian regime. …

    People believe that the money goes to the benefit of the people. It doesn’t go to the people. The money goes to Syria, Lebanon, to Hamas, Hezbollah, to terrorist organizations.

    For millions of Iranians now, this is the moment they want the US government to ask its allies, the European countries, to recall their ambassadors and to cut their ties with the murders until the day that they are sure that the Iranian regime is stopped killing its own people.

    (CNN isn’t able to confirm that all the money goes to terrorist organizations or that none of it goes to Iranian people. Iran does fund terror groups outside its borders, according to the US government, and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard is a terror group, according to the US government.)

    WHAT MATTERS: I want to talk about another dichotomy you’ve pointed out. You wrote in The Washington Post that feminists all over the world need to pay attention and take to the streets.

    ALINEJAD: You cannot call yourself a feminist in the West, in America, and not take action on one of the most important feminist revolutions, in Iran.

    By saying that, I don’t mean that I want the feminists to just appear on TV and cut their hair to show their solidarity.

    I want, especially the female politicians, to cut their ties … and instead take to the streets to show their solidarity with the women of Iran. When the Women’s March happened here in America, like every single feminist around the world showed solidarity. I was part of the Women’s March in New York. The main slogan was ‘my body my choice.’

    But at the same time I’m witnessing that when it comes to Iran and Afghanistan, it seems that my body my choice is not as important as it is in the West.

    (Here Alinejad said women representing Western governments who meet with Iranian and Afghan officials should refrain from wearing headscarves.)

    WHAT MATTERS: You took part this week in an Oslo Freedom Forum event in New York with other dissidents from Russia and Venezuela. Those are two places that are repressive, and they’re also funded largely by oil. The US wants more oil on the market. I just wondered if you had any larger comments to make on this question?

    ALINEJAD: This is what’s missing here. The dictators are more united than our freedom fighters.

    Let me give you an example. Just two months ago, (Vladimir) Putin went to Iran. (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela went to Iran … from China to Russia to Venezuela to Nicaragua, everywhere. The leaders from autocracies and dictatorships are united. They’re helping each other. They’re supporting each other to oppress protests taking place in each country. But we the freedom fighters, we the opposition to these dictators must be united as well, because when we fight against autocracy or dictatorship on our own, we’re not going to be successful.

    (Alinejad said she has talked to dissidents from Russia and Venezuela about calling a World Liberty Congress for opposition and activist leaders.)

    ALINEJAD: If we don’t get united to end dictatorship, then the dictators will get united to end democracy. We’re not fighting just for ourselves. I’m not fighting just for Iran. Garry Kasparov is not fighting for just Russia. Leopoldo Lopez is not fighting just for Venezuela. We are fighting for democracy. We’re trying to protect the rest of the world from these dictators.

    (Our conversation continued from here and Alinejad argued the “United Nations is useless.” It’s true the United Nations prioritizes inclusion of most countries over action. And it is awkward at best that Iran sits on the UN’s Commission on Women’s Rights and Russia sits on the Security Council.)

    ALINEJAD: We need to have our own alternative United Nations, where all the good people get united, not the bad guys. Now the bad guys are winning because they’re helping each other. So this is the time that all the good people who care for freedom and democracy get united and have their own society.

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  • Brazil Vote Begins As Far-Right Bolsonaro Faces Potential For Resounding Defeat

    Brazil Vote Begins As Far-Right Bolsonaro Faces Potential For Resounding Defeat

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    SAO PAULO — Standing on the back of a small flatbed truck, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva danced and waved and sang his way through a massive crowd of supporters that had gathered for a parade through the center of Brazil’s largest city on the day before the country’s presidential election.

    Brazilians head to the polls Sunday in the first round of voting in a contest that has been marred by outbreaks of political violence and fears that far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has spent two years trying to undermine the election, will contest the results and refuse to leave power.

    But da Silva, a leftist who served as president from 2003 to 2010 and holds substantial leads over Bolsonaro in pre-election polls, finished this stage of the campaign in a jubilant mood seemingly meant to persuade his supporters, his country and the world that the planet’s fourth-largest democracy would survive whatever final threat Bolsonaro may pose to it.

    “I have no fear,” da Silva, 76, told reporters during a Saturday afternoon news conference. “If the people elect me, there will be an inauguration and everything else I’ve promised.”

    Da Silva, a former trade unionist who became an icon of the Brazilian and global left during his presidency, has led Bolsonaro in nearly every poll conducted over the past year. His optimism received another boost on Saturday, when final pre-election surveys from Brazil’s two largest pollsters showed him leading Bolsonaro 51% to 37% and 50% to 36%, with other candidates lagging far behind.

    That put da Silva in range of a resounding victory in Sunday’s first round: If he garners an outright majority of votes, he would end the election without the need for a runoff election against Bolsonaro on Oct. 23.

    It would mark a triumphant return for Brazil’s first working-class president, who during his tenure oversaw an economic boom that lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and positioned Brazil as an emerging global superpower. He left office with approval ratings above 80%, and the title of “the most popular politician in the world” bestowed on him by U.S. President Barack Obama.

    His legacy seemed forever tarnished by a corruption conviction that sent him to prison in 2017. Brazil’s economy, meanwhile, collapsed under da Silva’s chosen successor, President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached in 2016.

    But da Silva’s conviction was annulled in 2019, after The Intercept Brazil exposed judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance that bolstered da Silva’s argument that the investigation had been a politically motivated witch hunt against him and the leftist Workers’ Party all along.

    That paved the way for a confrontation with Bolsonaro, a right-wing authoritarian who’d made vanquishing da Silva’s Workers’ Party and many of its favored policies, especially those that benefited poor and marginalized populations, his chief political aim.

    For the last two years, Bolsonaro has sought to cast doubt on the election, seemingly convinced that his only path to victory over da Silva was to undermine faith in the contest and the election itself. He has spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud, waged an all-out battle with Brazil’s electoral institutions, and promised to “go to war” if he loses. He has said he will only accept the results if he believes the election is “clean and transparent.”

    The threats from a former army captain with close links to the Brazilian military have generated widespread concern of a potential coup attempt, although most experts regard that as unlikely. Others have expressed fears of a Brazilian version of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an event Bolsonaro — a close ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump — and his allies have studied closely.

    The combination of Bolsonaro’s conspiracies and his painting of the race as a battle of “good vs. evil” has contributed to a violent electoral atmosphere, during which multiple da Silva supporters have been attacked and killed by Bolsonaro backers. Da Silva has canceled events amid security concerns and ramped up his own protections. Polls, meanwhile, have shown that as many as a third of Brazilians are fearful of discussing their vote, a number that rises among supporters of da Silva’s Workers’ Party.

    Voting is mandatory in Brazil, but there are concerns among some on da Silva’s side that fears of violence or political turbulence could keep some of his supporters away from the polls on Sunday. In recent weeks, da Silva has also sought to ensure turnout among Brazil’s poorest residents and to flip the votes of the roughly 15% of voters whom polls show still favor other candidates in the race.

    His public parade Saturday, during which there was little visible security presence around him, seemed aimed at countering worries about violence and convincing his supporters to put an end to Bolsonaro’s presidency at the first available opportunity.

    A first-round victory, many experts believe, could blunt any attempt from Bolsonaro to contest the results. Da Silva, meanwhile, argued that a definitive defeat of another far-right leader who has put democracy in his crosshairs would send a message to a global community that has largely rejected and isolated Bolsonaro thanks to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and democratic erosion that has occurred on his watch.

    “Brazil will enter into a moment of great peace, Brazil will return to a moment of great democracy, Brazil will return to a moment of extremely active and proud international relations,” da Silva said. “The message I can tell the world is that Brazil will wake up … with a more beautiful face. … Brazil has its heart and arms open to welcome the world again.”

    Da Silva cast his ballot shortly before 9 a.m. in São Paulo, less than an hour after polls opened. Bolsonaro voted in his home state of Rio de Janeiro and will spend the day in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.

    Polls will close at 4 p.m. Eastern time, with results expected within hours thanks to an all-electronic voting system that is widely considered one of the world’s most efficient and secure.

    Top officials from the U.S. and European Union have expressed confidence in the Brazilian election system amid Bolsonaro’s threats, in an effort to help prevent a dispute. The U.S. Senate this week approved a resolution that called on the Biden administration to “review and reconsider its relationship with any government that comes to power in Brazil through undemocratic means.” EU lawmakers threatened trade sanctions against Brazil if Bolsonaro attempts to remain in power despite losing the election.

    Despite da Silva’s optimism, Bolsonaro appears unlikely to simply accept defeat, whether it comes Sunday or in a runoff round three weeks from now. He and his supporters have questioned the legitimacy of the polls, and argued this weekend that Bolsonaro, not da Silva, is on the cusp of a first-round victory.

    As many as a quarter of Bolsonaro’s voters do not want him to accept defeat, polls show, and many Brazilian observers consider it unlikely that he would do so after a campaign spent challenging the integrity of Brazil’s electronic voting system.

    If the race does advance to a second round, it would “give Bolsonaro an extra month to cause as much turmoil as he can,” said Guilherme Casarões, a Brazilian political expert at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo.

    Da Silva, however, pledged to celebrate the results of Sunday’s election even if he falls short of a first-round victory, especially as polls show that his lead over Bolsonaro would only expand in a head-to-head matchup.

    “We’re going to party, because we deserve it,” he said Saturday. “To be reborn from the ashes is a reason to celebrate.”

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