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Tag: us presidential elections

  • Exclusive: DOJ mulling potential special counsel if Trump runs in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: DOJ mulling potential special counsel if Trump runs in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As Donald Trump inches closer to launching another presidential run after the midterm election, Justice Department officials have discussed whether a Trump candidacy would create the need for a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations related to the former president, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

    The Justice Department is also staffing up its investigations with experienced prosecutors so it’s ready for any decisions after the midterms, including the potential unprecedented move of indicting a former president.

    In the weeks leading up to the election, the Justice Department has observed the traditional quiet period of not making any overt moves that may have political consequences. But behind the scenes, investigators have remained busy, using aggressive grand jury subpoenas and secret court battles to compel testimony from witnesses in both the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at his Palm Beach home.

    Now federal investigators are planning for a burst of post-election activity in Trump-related investigations. That includes the prospect of indictments of Trump’s associates – moves that could be made more complicated if Trump declares a run for the presidency.

    “They can crank up charges on almost anybody if they wanted to,” said one defense attorney working on January 6-related matters, who added defense lawyers have “have no idea” who ultimately will be charged.

    “This is the scary thing,” the attorney said.

    Trump and his associates also face legal exposure in Georgia, where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State and expects to wrap her probe by the end of the year.

    Indicting an active candidate for the White House would surely spark a political firestorm. And while no decision has been made about whether a special counsel might be needed in the future, DOJ officials have debated whether doing so could insulate the Justice Department from accusations that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting his chief political rival, people familiar with the matter tell CNN.

    Special counsels, of course, are hardly immune from political attacks. Both former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe came under withering criticism from their opponents.

    The Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

    The Justice Department has brought in a brain trust for high-level advice on the Trump investigations, according to people familiar with the moves.

    Top Justice officials have looked to an old guard of former Southern District of New York prosecutors, bringing into the investigations Kansas City-based federal prosecutor and national security expert David Raskin, as well as David Rody, a prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer who previously specialized in gang and conspiracy cases and has worked extensively with government cooperators.

    Rody, whose involvement has not been previously reported, left a lucrative partnership at the prestigious corporate defense firm Sidley Austin in recent weeks to become a senior counsel at DOJ in the criminal division in Washington, according to his LinkedIn profile and sources familiar with the move.

    The team at the DC US Attorney’s Office handling the day-to-day work of the January 6 investigations is also growing – even while the office’s sedition cases against right-wing extremists go to trial.

    A handful of other prosecutors have joined the January 6 investigations team, including a high-ranking fraud and public corruption prosecutor who has moved out of a supervisor position and onto the team, and a prosecutor with years of experience in criminal appellate work now involved in some of the grand jury activity.

    Taken together, the reorganization of prosecutors indicates a serious and snowballing investigation into Trump and his closest circles.

    The decision of whether to charge Trump or his associates will ultimately fall to Attorney General Merrick Garland, whom President Joe Biden picked for the job because his tenure as a judge provided some distance from partisan politics, after Senate Republicans blocked his Supreme Court nomination in 2016.

    Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Several former prosecutors believe the facts exist for a potentially chargeable case. But Garland will have to navigate the politically perilous and historic decision of how to approach the potential indictment of a former President.

    In March, Garland avoided answering a CNN question about the prospect of a special counsel for Trump-related investigations, but said that the Justice Department does “not shy away from cases that are controversial or sensitive or political.”

    “What we will avoid and what we must avoid is any partisan element of our decision making about cases,” Garland said. “That is what I’m intent on ensuring that the Department decisions are made on the merits, and that they’re made on the facts and the law, and they’re not based on any kind of partisan considerations.”

    Garland’s tough decisions go beyond Trump. The long-running investigation of Hunter Biden, son of the president, is nearing conclusion, people briefed on the matter say. Also waiting in the wings: a final decision on the investigation of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, after prosecutors recommended against charges.

    It likely won’t take long after the midterms for focus to shift to the 2024 presidential race. That could incentivize top DOJ officials to make crucial charging decisions as quickly as possible, including whether to bring charges against Trump himself or other top political activists, other sources familiar with the Justice Department’s inner workings say.

    “They’re not going to charge before they’re ready to charge,” one former Justice Department official with some insight into the thinking around the investigations said. “But there will be added pressure to get through the review” of cases earlier than the typical five-year window DOJ has to bring charges.

    Matters could also be complicated by the situation in Georgia, where Willis is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election there. Willis has said she’s aiming for a special grand jury to wrap up its investigative work by the end of the year.

    Willis has observed her own version of a quiet period around the midterm election and is seeking to bring witnesses before the grand jury in the coming weeks. Sources previously told CNN indictments could come as soon as December.

    Key Trump allies, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows are among witnesses that have tried to fight off subpoenas in the state probe into efforts to interfere with the Georgia 2020 election.

    How those disputes resolve in Georgia – including whether courts force testimony – could improve DOJ’s ability to gather information, just as the House Select Committee’s January 6 investigation added to DOJ’s investigative leads from inside the Trump White House.

    The months leading up to the election have provided little respite from the political and legal activity around the investigations. The DC US Attorney’s Office–which is still shouldering the bulk of the January 6 investigations–has dealt with burnout in its ranks, as prosecutors are taking to trial or securing guilty pleas from more than 800 rioters who were on the grounds of the Capitol and still look to charge hundreds more.

    Trump has also foiled the DOJ’s efforts to keep things quiet in the weeks leading up to the election, leading to a steady barrage of headlines related to the investigation.

    Trump’s legal team successfully put in place a complicated court-directed process for sorting through thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, to determine whether they’re privileged and off limits to investigators. But the Justice Department and intelligence community have had access for weeks to about 100 records marked as classified that Trump had kept in Florida.

    The outcome of the intelligence review of those documents may determine if criminal charges will be filed, according to one source familiar with the Justice Department’s approach.

    Yet in both investigations, under-seal court activity never subsided, with the Justice Department trying to force at least five witnesses around Trump to secretly provide more information in their grand jury investigations in Washington, DC, CNN has previously reported.

    On Tuesday a federal judge ordered Trump adviser Kash Patel to testify before a grand jury investigating the handling of federal records at Mar-a-Lago, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

    Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court granted Patel immunity from prosecution on any information he provides to the investigation— another significant step that moves the Justice Department closer to potentially charging the case.

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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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  • 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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  • GOP Gov. Chris Sununu on backing election denier: ‘I don’t think anybody should be a one-issue voter’ | CNN Politics

    GOP Gov. Chris Sununu on backing election denier: ‘I don’t think anybody should be a one-issue voter’ | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu believes that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election but is supporting Don Bolduc – a GOP Senate nominee who has consistently pushed election falsehoods – because he is considering a “variety of issues” in making his choice on Election Day.

    “It is not just a one-issue – you can’t say, ‘Well, based on that one issue, we vehemently disagree, so, therefore, we shouldn’t be casting our vote.’ I don’t think anybody should be a one-issue voter regardless of the issue,” Sununu told “CNN This Morning” hosts on Tuesday.

    Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general who is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, has shifted his answers related to false 2020 election claims, though he has still pushed some falsehoods after securing the Republican nomination to represent the Granite State in the US Senate.

    “We might disagree on what happened in 2020 or folks are focusing on the conspiracy theories around the 2020 election. At the end of the day, the vast majority of voters, especially those independent voters that still haven’t made up their mind, they’re voting on inflation, they’re voting on the cost of goods, they’re voting on not being able to make their mortgage or find housing,” said Sununu, who is seeking reelection.

    Recent CNN polls conducted by SSRS in battleground states have found that the economy is the foremost issue for voters this midterm season, well ahead of voting rights and election integrity.

    Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if he thinks congressional Republicans and Bolduc have a plan to combat the inflation that they have often cited on the campaign trail, Sununu said, “Well, one thing I’m really confident of is if you send the same people back to Washington, you ain’t going to get a different result. Not even close.”

    Sununu, who endorsed one of Bolduc’s opponents in the primary race, touted Bolduc as a war hero who has worked on mental health issues and said Bolduc wants “to mix things up.”

    “You can’t say that just by electing the same old Democrats you’re going to get a different result. We want different results across this country and the only way to do that is to bring a different system,” he said.

    Sununu also condemned a joke made on Monday by Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in regard to the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

    “There is just no place for it. This is serious,” he said before adding, “lines are moving on both sides. This isn’t just one party or the other.”

    Sununu then referred to the alleged plot to murder conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as well as the shootings of GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as evidence of escalating violence in American politics.

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  • Black men say they feel ignored by politicians. A historic Senate face-off between two Black men isn’t helping | CNN Politics

    Black men say they feel ignored by politicians. A historic Senate face-off between two Black men isn’t helping | CNN Politics

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    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Aaron Bethea says he has voted election after election for US presidents, governors and senators – and yet those lawmakers have done little to nothing to improve life for him, his family or his community.

    Bethea said he believes the issues he cares about, financial freedom and equal investment in predominately Black schools, have largely been ignored.

    “Where we are from, nobody really cares about what Black men think,” said Bethea, an Atlanta father of six who owns a wholesale company that sells televisions. “They don’t do anything for us.”

    Bethea, 40, said he still plans to vote Democratic in Georgia’s hotly contested gubernatorial and US senate races. But he’s not voting with enthusiasm. He said he is hoping that one day someone will prioritize the needs of Black men.

    Bethea is not alone. Political analysts, researchers and Black male leaders say politicians are failing to reach some Black men with messaging that resonates with them and visibility in their communities. Those shortcomings could particularly hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterms given Black men are the second most loyal voting bloc for the party next to Black women, experts say.

    And while Black men have increasingly supported Republicans in recent years, some say the GOP is still missing the mark. Many Black men say they are concerned that Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker does not represent them in a positive light given his many public gaffes, history of domestic violence and being an absentee father.

    Political analysts worry that the lack of effective messaging could result in Black men sitting home on Nov. 8 and Democrats like Stacey Abrams – who has made a late attempt to reach Black men with a series of events – losing their races.

    “If some of them feel unmotivated because they don’t feel spoken to then you’ve really got a problem,” said Jason Nichols, a professor of African American studies at the University of Maryland College Park. “A lot of these campaigns don’t hire Black male advisers. They don’t hire Black men to actually tell them how to reach Black men.”

    So far, 39% of Black voters have been men, and 61% have been women, according to Catalist, a company that provides data and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and gives insights into who is voting before November. Those breakdowns were the same at this point in the early voting period in 2020.

    Some polls have suggested that Black men were gradually leaving the Democratic party to vote for Republicans. In 2020, 12% of Black men voted for former President Donald Trump.

    Ted Johnson, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice, said some Black men find Republicans more attractive because they promote individualism and the idea that hard work, not government dependence, leads to financial success. In 2016, Johnson wrote in the Atlantic that a Black person who supported Trump was likely a “working-class or lower-middle-class Black man, over the age of 35, and interested in alternative approaches to addressing what ails Black America.”

    Still, Johnson said Black men are not naive and will vote against a Republican candidate who they feel is unfit. And for some Black men, that is the case with Walker who is running against incumbent US Sen. Raphael Warnock.

    The match-up between Walker and Warnock is one of the closest and most critical Senate races in the country, as Republicans seek to win back control of the body, which is currently split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote.

    Walker has been criticized by his opponents for being violent toward his ex-wife and the claim that he paid for the mother of one of his children to get an abortion. Walker told Axios last year that he was “accountable” for his past violent behavior, and that people shouldn’t be “ashamed” for confronting mental health issues.

    Walker speaks at a campaign event in Carrollton, Georgia, on October 11.

    In an interview with NBC News, Walker acknowledged that he sent a $700 check to a woman who alleges the money was provided to reimburse her for an abortion, but denied the check was for that purpose. Walker has been vocal about his anti-abortion views but has gone back and forth about whether he supports exceptions.

    Walker is currently polling at 11% with Black men compared to 74% for Warnock.

    “(Walker) is just not an attractive, viable candidate for most Black folks,” Johnson said. “I think there are Black men who won’t vote for Stacey Abrams but will vote for Raphael Warnock.”

    Recent polls show Republican Gov. Brian Kemp with support from 16% of Black men compared to 77% for Abrams. Johnson said he believes Kemp has more support from Black men because some men still refuse to vote a woman into office.

    “There is a strain of conservatism in Black men that comes with a strain of sexism,” Johnson said, noting that in 2016 some Black men sat home because they didn’t like Trump but also didn’t want to see Hillary Clinton as the first female president.

    In recent years, Republicans have faced criticism for being sexist, misogynistic and rejecting women’s rights.

    Walker’s candidacy was the topic of discussion for several Black men who gathered at Anytime Cutz barbershop in Atlanta on a recent Monday afternoon. The chat was part of a series hosted by the Urban League of Greater Atlanta’s Black Male Voter Project and Black Men Decide offering Black men a chance to discuss voting and the issues that matter to them.

    Some of the Black men present said they found it offensive that the GOP would pit Walker – a former NFL running back with no political experience and a troubled past – against Warnock, a beloved figure in Atlanta’s Black community who pastored the church once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

    Aaron Bethea, second from right, speaks during a discussion about voting with other Black men at Anytime Cutz barbershop.

    Barber Antwaun Hawkins poses for a portrait in his barber's office at Anytime Cutz.

    “The guy is looking like a fool,” said Antwaun Hawkins, a 46-year-old barber. “That’s who we want to put in place to speak for us? Because he’s a Black man? No. To me, he looks like an idiot.”

    Bethea said after the barbershop event that Walker’s candidacy feels like a “sick joke.”

    “I think he’s embarrassing himself,” Bethea said. “I don’t play the field in a position that I don’t know how to play. Someone talked him out of staying in his lane.”

    Bethea said he plans to vote for Warnock because he’s a more qualified candidate and pillar in the community.

    Moyo Akinade, a 29-year-old soccer coach from Atlanta, said he too will vote for Warnock because he’s a positive role model. Walker, meanwhile, perpetuates negative stereotypes about Black men, Akinade said.

    Those stereotypes are “that we are aggressive, we aren’t intelligent and we are abusive,” Akinade said. “It portrays Black men as being violent. And that’s still inaccurate.”

    But one barber said he doesn’t think voters should judge Walker by his past.

    “Everybody has a past, everybody has done something wrong, everybody has lied before, everybody has done something that they shouldn’t have done,” said Charles Scott who manages Anytime Cutz. “But at one point, people can change. Just like they are bashing Herschel Walker. How do you know he’s not a changed man?”

    Anytime Cutz manager and barber Charles Scott think that voters shouldn't judge Walker by his past.

    Black men interviewed by CNN said they look for more than just character and experience in politicians, but also the issues they address.

    A report released by the NAACP in September found that Black men believed racism/discrimination, inflation/cost of living and criminal justice reform/police brutality were the most important issues facing the Black community. The survey also concluded that 41% of Black men disapproved of the job President Joe Biden is doing to address the needs of the Black community.

    The group at Anytime Cutz named financial security, student loan forgiveness, police reform, healthcare reform and improving jail conditions as their top concerns.

    Most said they vote in elections but rarely see lawmakers making decisions that help them personally or their communities.

    “Do something about policing,” Hawkins said. “Do something for the people that can’t really help themselves. I don’t think people choose to be homeless and hungry.”

    Hawkins and Bethea said they have given up waiting for policies that will close the wealth gap and give Black Americans a fair shot at success. They are focused on providing for their families.

    “We can’t sit around and wait for legislation to change because the kids are at home hungry,” Hawkins said.

    Hawkins gestures while speaking about voting at Anytime Cutz.

    Some of those same sentiments are felt by Black men nearly 900 miles away in New York.

    Mysonne Linen, a popular activist and rapper from the Bronx, said he can’t remember the last time a political candidate spoke directly to Black men during their campaign and delivered on those promises after winning. Linen said Black men are tired of “pandering.” Linen wants politicians who genuinely care about Black men living in marginalized communities and will follow through on addressing police reform, livable wage jobs and investment in mental health resources.

    “They have to do a better job with having tangible results,” Linen said. “Tell us how you to plan to invest in the communities to change those realities. Get into office and actually fight to do those things.”

    In the last few months, Abrams has hosted a series of events that targeted Black men in Georgia and released a “Black Men’s Agenda” that details her plans to invest in Black-owned small businesses, expand Medicaid, increase funding to schools and opportunities for job training and hold police accountable.

    Stacey Abrams speaks during a campaign event and conversation with Charlamagne tha God, 21 Savage and Francys Johnson at The HBUC in Atlanta on September 9.

    But Linen and Nichols both agreed that Abrams’ efforts may have come too late. Nichols said he fears that some Black men are already planning to sit home on Election Day or vote for Kemp.

    “I think she didn’t necessarily get the right advice at the right time and now it feels like she’s pandering,” Nichols said. “I think she really is concerned but I think it comes across to some like ‘we’ve been ignored all this time.’”

    Nichols said he urges 2024 election candidates to do more outreach to Black men and Black families. The organization Black Men Vote has already launched a national campaign to register one million Black male voters by November 2024.

    NAACP President Derrick Johnson said those seeking public office must prioritize the needs of Black men if they want to win.

    “It is incumbent upon both political parties and all candidates to understand that the votes of African American men are not guaranteed,” Johnson said. “It’s an important voting bloc and candidates must speak to them so they can see how their vote really can support democracy and their quality of life.”

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  • Paul Pelosi attack unleashes partisan finger-pointing and sows fresh fears of political violence | CNN Politics

    Paul Pelosi attack unleashes partisan finger-pointing and sows fresh fears of political violence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    America’s toxic politics quickly turned the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband into the latest vicious partisan fight – even before the full facts are known.

    Police have yet to ascribe a motive to the attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, after a man broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco. They have said the alleged assailant was intentional about going to the house, and he shouted out, “Where is Nancy?” CNN has reported.

    Eight days before critical midterm elections, the intense political reaction had already outraced the investigation even before the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California on Monday filed charges of attempted kidnapping of a US official and assault against the suspect in the case, David DePape, 42.

    Republicans, while condemning the violence, are denying they have any culpability in fostering a poisoned political environment. Some even used it to pivot to new attempts to sow doubt on the integrity of US elections.

    In another sign of an ugly time, Pelosi’s misfortune is already the subject of outrageous conspiracies – amplified for a time by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, in a possible sign of how the social network could develop under his leadership. Ex-President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., also pushed false claims about the attack that were in deeply poor taste.

    Reports confirmed by CNN that the suspect posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid-19 vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection renewed the debate about how much responsibility political leaders have to temper inflammatory rhetoric in order to avoid triggering violence.

    The suspect in the case has not been arraigned, but Democrats, including President Joe Biden, are warning that the attack on the Pelosi is just the latest inevitable consequence of a GOP overtaken by its extreme fringe.

    “What makes us think that one party can talk about ‘stolen elections,’ ‘Covid being a hoax,’ ‘this is all a bunch of lies,’ and it not affect people who may not be so well balanced?” Biden said on Friday.

    “What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?”

    This was a question even before the Paul Pelosi attack given that many Republican candidates have tried to energize their base by putting Trump’s false claims about a stolen election in 2020 at the center of their midterm election campaigns.

    Trump, who’s still the de facto leader of the GOP, has yet to fully condemn the attack on Paul Pelosi. In an interview on Spanish-language Americano Media on Monday, the ex-President called the attack “a terrible thing” and then quickly connected it to Republican criticisms of rising crime in US cities.

    But dozens of Republicans – from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Vice President Mike Pence and GOP House conference chair Elise Stefanik – have offered stronger condemnations.

    At the same time, top Republicans on Sunday dodged on whether their side especially had fostered a dangerous political climate after embracing election falsehoods and blamed both sides equally for political turmoil.

    The gulf between the two parties in the aftermath of the attack underscored the nation’s internal political estrangement ahead of next week’s election. It suggested Republicans are unwilling to get crosswise with their voters by being more critical of the extremism pulsating through the GOP base. And political shock waves of the incident also showed how Democrats are keen to link rising threats against lawmakers and their families with Trump’s political movement as raging inflation threatens to deal them a heavy defeat at the ballot box.

    Yet the aftermath of the assault represents more than just another fault line between Republicans and Democrats and points to something more than rote arguments of equivalence between rival politicians.

    It took place in a time scarred by the January 6 insurrection, which established that in a festering political atmosphere cultivated and incited by Trump, individuals can be inspired to carry out acts of violence. The overwhelming majority of the ex-President’s supporters have not acted on his false claims of a stolen election. But while leading Republicans are right to argue the political attacks have targeted prominent figures on both sides, only one party features members who are excusing, downplaying, or denying the violence of January 6 and amplifying false claims of a stolen election that have been proven to incite violence.

    It was a sign of a worsening political environment that Musk gave credence to a fringe conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi attack. He tweeted and then deleted a link to an article on a website that purports to be a news outlet, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Donie O’Sullivan reported. The conspiracy theory was later amplified on Twitter by Trump Jr.

    And in another troubling development this weekend that wasn’t linked to the Pelosi case but underscored worrying extremism coming to the surface of American politics, a series of antisemitic messages appeared in public spaces – including a football stadium, a highway overpass and a downtown building in Jacksonville, Florida.

    Top Republicans on Sunday condemned the Pelosi attack as a despicable crime, but they tended to see it in isolation from current political tensions, even though the GOP has long demonized the speaker in hard-hitting ad campaigns. Instead, Republicans suggested it’s symptomatic of the rising violent crime they pin on Democrats.

    “It’s disgusting. This violence is horrible,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who runs the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that his heart went out to Paul Pelosi and wished him a full recovery. But Scott quickly pivoted to highlight a Republican canvasser whom his fellow Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has said was attacked in Miami for political reasons. (After the incident, Rubio accused the media of not caring about violence when it targets Republicans.)

    Scott also tried to move on in the interview to tacitly raise fresh suspicions about the US electoral system in coded language. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether Republicans should do more to condemn dangerous rhetoric and conspiracy theories, Scott replied: “We have to do everything we can to … make sure people feel comfortable about these elections. We have got to do everything we can to get people comfortable that this election in nine days is going to be free and fair, that people’s votes are all going to be counted fairly.”

    The reason why millions of Americans have lost confidence in elections – despite repeated court rulings rejecting Trump’s fraud claims and his own Justice Department’s statement that 2020 lacked major irregularities – is that the ex-President and many GOP allies are still falsely saying the election was stolen.

    Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, rejected the idea that the attack on Paul Pelosi was an inevitable consequence of rising Republican rhetorical attacks on Democratic politicians.

    “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    She also claimed that Biden had not condemned a suspect arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home who has been charged with attempting to murder the conservative Supreme Court justice. (After the arrest, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden believed any threats, violence or attempt to intimidate judges had no place in US society.)

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to deliver a full-throated public condemnation of the assault on Paul Pelosi on camera or on his official social media accounts or to release a detailed statement. The California Republican did tell Fox on Sunday he had texted with the speaker to express concern and his hopes for her husband’s full recovery.

    “Let me be perfectly clear, violence or threat of violence has no place in our society. What happened to Paul Pelosi is wrong,” he told Fox.

    The lack of a more public reaction by McCarthy is notable since he could be speaker himself, if Republicans win the House next week, and would have the responsibility of fulfilling the institutional duties of a role that is sometimes supposed to supersede partisan politics. This will lead to questions of whether he is catering to his fervently pro-Trump conference.

    His comments also appear less direct than Speaker Pelosi’s reaction to the shooting of GOP Whip Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball practice in 2017, which she described as a “despicable and cowardly attack” on Congress itself and said at such times there were “no Democrats or Republicans.” After Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was informed that the deceased suspect in the shooting volunteered on his Democratic presidential campaign, he took to the Senate floor to condemn political violence “in the strongest possible terms.”

    The Pelosi attack is also highlighting concerns about the general tone of some Republican advertising, which sometimes features candidates wielding guns.

    Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the GOP’s House campaign arm, denied there was anything tonally off about a video he tweeted last week that showed him firing a rifle with the hashtag #FirePelosi.

    Emmer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the tweet was about “Exercising our Second Amendment rights, having fun.”

    Another Republican who could have a big role in a future majority is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The pro-Trump Republican said such attacks “shouldn’t happen to Paul Pelosi. It shouldn’t happen to innocent Americans. It shouldn’t happen to me,” claiming she received death threats every day.

    In 2021, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments on Greene’s Facebook page showed she repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019, including Pelosi, before being elected to Congress.

    Leading Democrats were quick to make a link between such extremist rhetoric and the rise of violence and intimidation that has seen threats rise against political candidates and even some groups show up to monitor drop boxes in states like Arizona in moves Democrats have criticized as attempts at voter intimidation.

    Some of them reacted to reports that the alleged assailant in the Paul Pelosi incident had asked where his wife was, and immediately drew conclusions not yet supported by details released by police. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, for instance, tweeted that a “far right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House and almost killed her husband a year after violent insurrectionists tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol, and the Republican Party’s response is to either ignore it or belittle it.”

    Biden was more temperate but also made the link to far-right wing rhetoric at a fundraising event in Pennsylvania on Friday, referring to the alleged assailants’ demands of “where is Nancy?”

    “Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics regardless what your politics are,” Biden said.

    Former President Barack Obama made a wider argument about how the coarsening of political dialogue risked new eruptions of violence – and squarely put the blame on Republicans.

    “This habit of saying the worst about other people, demonizing people, that creates a dangerous climate,” the former President said at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Saturday.

    “If elected officials don’t do more explicitly to reject this kind of over-the-top crazy rhetoric, if they keep on ignoring it or tacitly supporting it or in some cases encouraging it, if they’re telling supporters, ‘you’ve got to stand outside polling places armed with guns and dressed in tactical gear,’ that’s the kind of thing that ends up getting people hurt.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • As Election Day approaches, Trump-DeSantis 2024 rivalry seeps into the public | CNN Politics

    As Election Day approaches, Trump-DeSantis 2024 rivalry seeps into the public | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When Election Day arrives in Florida, Donald Trump will vote for a Republican whose political demise he may soon find himself plotting.

    Months after Trump told The Wall Street Journal he would support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bid for reelection, the former President and his home-state governor appear increasingly likely to collide in a heated 2024 presidential primary. While neither has formally announced a presidential campaign, both have taken steps in the closing days of the 2022 cycle to cement themselves as team players and kingmakers – locking horns in those pursuits.

    “We have a rift with Trump. Big shocker,” said a source close to the DeSantis campaign, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s no secret that things are cool between [Trump and DeSantis] right now. They’re not punching each other, but we’re not helping them and they’re not helping us.”

    A rivalry that had mostly existed behind the scenes burst into public view this week after DeSantis recorded a robocall endorsing Republican businessman Joe O’Dea, an underdog in the Colorado Senate race who vowed earlier this month to “actively campaign” against Trump if he mounts a third presidential bid. While the Florida governor has supported other Republican midterm candidates, none of them have been as explicitly critical of Trump as O’Dea.

    The move did not go unnoticed by the former President, who has spent months griping to aides about DeSantis and amplifying claims that he would handily beat the governor in a Republican primary.

    “A BIG MISTAKE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform of DeSantis endorsing O’Dea. Three days later, Trump announced plans for a rally in South Florida with the state’s senior senator, Marco Rubio. DeSantis was not invited, a source told CNN.

    The first signs of a strain in Trump’s relationship with DeSantis began last fall amid the Florida Republican’s soaring popularity and thinly veiled criticism of Trump’s Covid-19 policies as president.

    Despite efforts by allies of both men to defuse tensions, their strained relationship has persisted for months and now appears at a crescendo as Trump readies a post-midterm 2024 campaign announcement and DeSantis barrels toward reelection with potentially historic support from Florida Hispanics.

    “Trump has to be concerned because DeSantis has built an unprecedented base in the Hispanic community,” said one Florida-based Republican consultant.

    DeSantis has also spent the past year making inroads with deep-pocketed Republican donors and laying the groundwork for a potential 2024 campaign launch next year, according to allies, some of whom said he doesn’t want to rush his potential entry into what is likely to be a crowded primary. It’s those overt steps toward a White House bid that have most irritated the former President.

    Days after Trump slammed the Florida governor for endorsing in the Colorado Senate contest, DeSantis committed another cardinal sin in the eyes of the former President when he once again refused to rule out a presidential run if Trump is a candidate. During a Monday debate against his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, DeSantis declined to commit to serving a four-year term if reelected, standing in silence as his opponent repeatedly raised the subject. Privately, Trump allies gloated over the debate, questioning DeSantis’ ability to endure a debate against Trump.

    “DeSantis did fine for a race he’s crushing,” said one Republican operative who has worked with both men. “It’s a whole different ballgame when he’s on a stage next to Donald Trump. Trump has a way of very effectively getting under people’s skin, especially on the debate stage.”

    Other Republicans dismissed such takeaways as premature – even unfair – given DeSantis’ clear edge in his reelection race and Trump’s inimitable debate style.

    “I don’t think that debate mattered at all,” said Brian Ballard, a Florida-based Republican consultant who maintains close ties to both Trump and DeSantis.

    “Donald Trump on the debate stage is the most unique political animal in 100 years. Everybody got decimated by him [in 2016],” Ballard added. “I believe Ron DeSantis can hold his own against anybody, but Donald Trump is his own character.”

    For months, Trump has worked to cast himself as the automatic front-runner in a contested 2024 primary while asking his own pollsters to identify whether DeSantis or others pose a serious threat.

    In perhaps his most direct jab at DeSantis yet, the former President reposted a video to his Truth Social site this week in which former Fox News host Megyn Kelly confidently predicted that Trump would emerge on top in a contest against DeSantis. Kelly repeatedly sparred with Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, both as a debate moderator and prime-time commentator, but in the video shared by Trump she suggested the former President’s base remains firmly behind him.

    “You really think the hardcore MAGA is going to abandon Trump for DeSantis? They’re not. They like DeSantis, but they don’t think it’s his turn,” Kelly says in the clip, adding that “the hardcore Trump faithful is unshakable [and] if forced to choose, they will choose Trump.”

    While some Republicans agree with Kelly, others are looking for new blood, exhausted by Trump’s unending legal battles and the media spectacle surrounding him.

    Those close to DeSantis say he is content, for now, to let his election performance do the talking for him. Through mid-October, two political committees behind his reelection effort had spent more than $80 million trying to engineer a lopsided victory that would further bolster his resume and deliver an overwhelming mandate for his agenda.

    But in conversations with donors, DeSantis allies say he is far less dismissive these days when questioned about a White House bid than he was six months ago – something Trump allies have brought to his attention, further irritating him.

    “People are always talking about, wondering about presidential elections in the future and all this stuff,” DeSantis said at a rally Wednesday. “People are concerned about who’s running the country next because no one knows who the hell is running the government now.”

    On the campaign trail, the Florida governor has been beta-testing messages that could set him apart in a presidential primary either with or without Trump as a competitor. He has touted his record on the economy, his management of the pandemic and his battles with businesses, Big Tech and school districts over “woke ideology.” Some say the more he can lean into his accomplishments as governor, the less likely he is to draw comparisons with Trump even as he mimics elements of the former President’s political style – from his hand gestures to his public war on the media.

    “If I were advising him, I would tell him to ignore that stuff. You’re Ron DeSantis 1.0, not anything 2.0,” said Adam Geller, a former Trump campaign pollster and Republican strategist.

    But Trump rallying voters in DeSantis’ state on November 6, two nights before the election, serves as a reminder of how easily he still commands GOP voters. Among Florida Republican operatives, the timing and location of Trump’s event has raised eyebrows. There are Senate battlegrounds considerably more competitive than Florida, where Rubio is favored to defeat Democratic Rep. Val Demings, and neither party has committed significant resources to the state in the closing weeks of the race.

    In announcing the visit, Trump once again claimed credit for DeSantis winning the governor’s mansion through “a historic red wave for Florida in the 2018 midterms” with the former President’s “slate of endorsed candidates up and down the ballot.” But Trump also preemptively took ownership of DeSantis’ reelection, saying he had “molded the Sunshine State into the MAGA stronghold it is today.”

    A person briefed on the matter said the prospect of a Florida rally was first raised during a phone call between Trump and Rubio following the Florida Senate debate earlier this month. Since the rally is being organized by Trump’s political operation, any effort to involve DeSantis would have likely come from the former President’s orbit. But that did not happen, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

    “The Senator and President Trump discussed holding a rally in Florida, like he’s doing for Senate races across the country,” said Elizabeth Gregory, a Rubio campaign spokesperson.

    Miami is also home to several vibrant Latino communities that shifted to the right under Trump and have continued to trend red in the two years since he left office. Trump will land in the city just before Republicans are poised to have their best electoral showing in Miami-Dade County since Jeb Bush won a second term in 2002.

    One Florida-based Republican consultant said he doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.

    “We’re potentially going to see Florida Republicans win Miami-Dade County, and it’s pretty clear Trump’s trying to get down there to take credit,” the consultant said.

    DeSantis’ campaign didn’t ask to join the program for the Trump rally once it was announced, a source told CNN.

    Like Trump, DeSantis has also tried to ascribe greater meaning to Florida’s transformational shift from a purple battleground into a reliably red state. On Wednesday, he told supporters that a big win on Election Day “will send a loud message, I think, across the country to governors in our own party” to follow his example in their states.

    But any tension over who deserves credit for engineering that success is unlikely to matter until after November 8, said Tim Williams, a former Florida GOP campaign strategist.

    “As far as the midterms go, that’s a train that’s approaching so quickly that this Trump-DeSantis feud isn’t going to get in the way of it,” Williams said.

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  • Obama endorses Karen Bass in Los Angeles mayoral race | CNN Politics

    Obama endorses Karen Bass in Los Angeles mayoral race | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former President Barack Obama on Saturday endorsed Karen Bass in her bid for mayor of Los Angeles on Saturday, saying that the Democratic congresswoman “has always been on the right side of the issues we care so deeply about.”

    “I am asking Los Angeles to vote for Karen Bass for mayor. I know Karen, she was with me in supporting my campaign from the beginning, and Karen Bass will deliver results,” Obama said in a statement. “Make no mistake, there is only one proven pro-choice Democrat in this race.”

    The endorsement was also depicted in a video Bass shared on Twitter account that captured her and the former President on a FaceTime call.

    “I’m confident you’re going to be an outstanding mayor of LA,” Obama told Bass, while also recalling her campaigning for him in 2007 when he was running for president.

    Obama’s endorsement comes just days ahead of the election in which Bass could make history as the first woman and the first Black woman to lead America’s second-largest city. She faces real estate developer Rick Caruso on November 8 after neither candidate took a majority of the vote in the June primary.

    Bass, who was on President Joe Biden’s short list for a running mate during the 2020 campaign, said she was “humbled and honored” to have Obama’s support.

    “It is impossible to overstate the impact of his work leading this country for eight scandal-free years advancing social and economic justice had on the nation and the world,” she said of the former President in a statement Saturday.

    “President Obama’s support underscores the contrast in this race and inspires our campaign as we share our plans to solve homelessness and make LA safer and more affordable for everyone during the home stretch,” she added.

    Obama has recently been wielding his political weight in an effort to help Democratic prospects across the nation.

    The former President hit the campaign trail in Georgia on Friday night to begin a five-state tour that includes visits Saturday to Michigan and Wisconsin. He has recorded nearly two dozen television commercials for Democrats and the party’s campaign committees, with new ads popping up nearly every day this week.

    Bass currently represents California’s 37th Congressional District. She previously served in the California State Assembly, where in 2008 she became the first Black woman to serve as speaker of a state legislature, according to her congressional biography.

    Bass has centered her campaign on tackling the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles and increasing public safety.

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  • Opinion: Democrats just can’t seal the deal with young Americans | CNN

    Opinion: Democrats just can’t seal the deal with young Americans | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Kristen Soltis Anderson, a CNN Political commentator, is a Republican strategist and pollster and author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (and How Republicans Can Keep Up.)” The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Democrats have sensed that younger voters might stay home in November and have turned to “Dark Brandon” for help in times of trouble.

    For those who do not know – and my own polling suggests that is most everyone reading this – “Dark Brandon” is a meme of President Joe Biden, rendered as an all-powerful hero (or villain, depending on your perspective). It started as a right-wing catchphrase before Democrats appropriated it to praise the President.

    The meme reached the height of its powers, whatever those may be, when the Democratic group Building Back Together released a hallucinogenic 30-second ad earlier this month featuring the meme of President Biden, lasers coming out of his eyes and all. The message? Biden is an exciting and successful hero on issues like student loan debt. Or rather, “if you’re unenthused about Biden and the Democratic Party, please don’t be.”

    I’ve sounded the alarm for years that Republicans are in trouble with younger voters and are in danger of losing them for good. This remains the case, as many polls show younger voters still have quite negative views of the GOP.

    But even though Millennials and Gen Z Americans tend to lean leftward on a host of economic and cultural issues such as LGBTQ rights and the size of government, it is clear that in this midterm election, Democrats have not energized the youth vote and may not be able to count on young people as a key part of their coalition.

    Voters under 30 are not exactly enamored with how things are going in America these days. Two-thirds of them say that the economy is bad, according to CBS News/YouGov polling. And accordingly, less than a quarter “strongly approve” of the job Biden is doing. Only 31% say they are “very enthusiastic” about voting in the midterms, compared to two-thirds of voters 65 and older. And only one in six say they are paying a “great deal” of attention to the midterms.

    This isn’t terribly unusual. Younger voters usually drop off in larger numbers than older voters when you go from a big presidential election to a lower-key midterm. According to CNN’s exit polls, voters under 30 only made up 13% of all voters in the 2018 midterms, compared to 17% in the 2020 general election.

    However, my own firm’s analysis suggests that voters under the age of 30 could fall to only 10% of the electorate in 2022 –a year where we expect overall turnout to be historic for a midterm at over 125 million votes.

    While young voters aren’t likely to turn out in huge numbers to power a “red wave,” it isn’t hard to imagine them costing Democrats their majorities by staying home.

    Democrats didn’t always need younger voters to win. In fact, younger voters were a relatively evenly split voter group for much of the 1990s and 2000s. But in the 2006 midterm, before then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) had even announced his bid for the presidency, young voters began bleeding away from the GOP in big numbers. Exit polls showed voters under the age of 30 breaking for Democrats by a 22-point margin in House races in that election, which swept Nancy Pelosi into the speakership for the first time.

    Young voters continued to oppose the GOP even in “red wave” years. The 2010 election, by all accounts a great year for Republicans, saw voters under age 30 still break for Democrats by a 16-point margin. By the time the “blue wave” of 2018 came along, we were seeing blockbuster turnout among young voters in elections that they previously sat out. Additionally, those voters broke for Democrats by an absolutely enormous 35-point margin.

    But then Donald Trump lost the presidency and Biden – not necessarily a favorite among younger voters – became the leader of the nation and the Democratic Party. Even before he was the Democratic presidential nominee, his polling among young voters always left something to be desired; only one third of voters under 30 held a favorable view of him before the 2020 election.

    Issues of importance to many young voters have taken a backseat and our political class continues to age. As a result, in the last few years, there has been a fascinating depolarization along generational lines. Previously, if I knew your age, I could somewhat easily make an educated guess about how you’d vote. That is less likely to be the case today, largely because young voters have become more disillusioned with Democrats.

    What is especially troublesome for Democrats is that this is all happening against a backdrop of young Americans being increasingly vocal about their politics. Companies are grappling with Gen Z and Millennial employees who seem keener than ever to work for employers that align with their political and cultural worldview. I regularly hear from business leaders who know that younger consumers are voting with their wallets and opting for products and services that match their values.

    If younger Americans are increasingly focused on issues and wanting change, but they aren’t turning out to vote in midterms, that represents a huge missed opportunity for those who want to see greater youth participation in politics. And in this election, it could cost Democrats their majorities.

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  • Time to treat North Korea’s nuclear program like Israel’s? | CNN

    Time to treat North Korea’s nuclear program like Israel’s? | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    As a statement of intent, it was about as blunt as they get.

    North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and will never give them up, its leader, Kim Jong Un, told the world last month.

    The move was “irreversible,” he said; the weapons represent the “dignity, body, and absolute power of the state” and Pyongyang will continue to develop them “as long as nuclear weapons exist on Earth.”

    Kim may be no stranger to colorful language, but it is worth taking his vow – which he signed into law – seriously. Bear in mind that this is a dictator who cannot be voted out of power and who generally does what he says he will do.

    Bear in mind too that North Korea has staged a record number of missile launches this year – more than 20; claims it is deploying tactical nuclear weapons to field units, something CNN cannot independently confirm; and is also believed to be ready for a seventh underground nuclear test.

    All this has prompted a growing number of experts to question whether now is the time to call a spade a spade and accept that North Korea is in fact a nuclear state. Doing so would entail giving up once and for all the optimistic – some might say delusional – hopes that Pyongyang’s program is somehow incomplete or that it might yet be persuaded to give it up voluntarily.

    As Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it: “We simply have to treat North Korea as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.”

    From a purely factual point of view, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and few who follow events there closely dispute that.

    A recent Nuclear Notebook column from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build between 45 and 55 nuclear weapons. What’s more, the recent missile tests suggest it has a number of methods of delivering those weapons.

    Publicly acknowledging this reality is, however, fraught with peril for countries such as the United States.

    One of the most compelling reasons for Washington not to do so is its fears of sparking a nuclear arms race in Asia.

    South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are just a few of the neighbors that would likely want to match Pyongyang’s status.

    But some experts say that refusing to acknowledge North Korea’s nuclear prowess – in the face of increasingly obvious evidence to the contrary – does little to reassure these countries. Rather, the impression that allies have their heads in the sand may make them more nervous.

    “Let’s accept (it), North Korea is a nuclear arms state, and North Korea has all necessary delivery systems including pretty efficient ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles),” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a preeminent academic authority on North Korea.

    A better approach, some suggest, might be to treat North Korea’s nuclear program in a similar way to Israel’s – with tacit acceptance.

    That’s the solution favored by Jeffrey Lewis, an adjunct professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.

    “I think that the crucial step that (US President Joe) Biden needs to take is to make clear both to himself and to the US government that we are not going to get North Korea to disarm and that is fundamentally accepting North Korea as a nuclear state. You don’t necessarily need to legally recognize it,” Lewis said.

    Both Israel and India offer examples of what the US could aspire to in dealing with North Korea, he added.

    North Korea held what it called

    Israel, widely believed to have started its nuclear program in the 1960s, has always claimed nuclear ambiguity while refusing to be a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while India embraced nuclear ambiguity for decades before abandoning that policy with its 1998 nuclear test.

    “In both of those cases, the US knew those countries had the bomb, but the deal was, if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t make an issue out of it, if you don’t cause political problems, then we’re not going to respond. I think that’s the same place we want to get to with North Korea,” Lewis said.

    At present though, Washington shows no signs of abandoning its approach of hoping to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nukes.

    Indeed, US Vice President Kamala Harris underlined it during a recent visit to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

    “Our shared goal – the United States and the Republic of Korea – is a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Harris said.

    That may be a worthy goal, but many experts see it as increasingly unrealistic.

    “Nobody disagrees that denuclearization would be a very desirable outcome on the Korean Peninsula, it’s simply not a tractable one,” Panda said.

    One problem standing in the way of denuclearization is that Kim’s likely biggest priority is ensuring the survival of his regime.

    And if he wasn’t paranoid enough already, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (in which a nuclear power has attacked a non-nuclear power) will have served as a timely reinforcement of his belief that “nuclear weapons are the only reliable guarantee of security,” said Lankov, from Kookmin University.

    A TV screen at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, shows an image of a North Korean missile launch on October 10, 2022.

    Trying to convince Kim otherwise seems a non-starter, as Pyongyang has made clear it will not even consider engaging with a US administration that wants to talk about denuclearization.

    “If America wants to talk about denuclearization, (North Korea is) not going to talk and if the Americans are not talking, (North Korea) will launch more and more missiles and better and better missiles,” Lankov said. “It’s a simple choice.”

    There is also the problem that if North Korea’s increasingly concerned neighbors conclude Washington’s approach is going nowhere, this might itself bring about the arms race the US is so keen to avoid.

    Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, a Korean think tank, is among the growing number of conservative voices calling for South Korea to build its own nuclear weapons program to counter Pyongyang’s.

    Efforts to prevent North Korea developing nuclear weapons have “ended in failure,” he said, “and even now, pursuing denuclearization is like chasing a miracle.”

    Still, however remote the denuclearization dream seems, there are those who say the alternative – of accepting North Korea’s nuclear status, however subtly – would be a mistake.

    “We (would be) basically (saying to) Kim Jong Un, after all of this tug of war and rustling, (that) you’re just going to get what you want. The bigger question (then) of course is: where does that leave the entire region?” said Soo Kim, a former CIA officer who is now a researcher at US think tank RAND Corporation.

    That leaves one other option open to the Biden administration and its allies, though it’s one that may seem unlikely in the current climate.

    They could pursue a deal in which Pyongyang offers to freeze its arms development in return for sanctions relief.

    In other words, not a million miles away from the deal Kim offered then US President Donald Trump at their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019.

    This option has its backers. “A freeze is a really solid way to start things out. It’s very hard to get rid of weapons that exist, but what is possible … is to prevent things from getting worse. It takes some of the pressure off and it opens up space for other kinds of negotiations,” said Lewis of the James Martin Center.

    However, the Trump-era overtones might make this a non-starter. Asked if he thought President Biden might consider this tactic, Lewis smiled and said, “I’m a professor, so I specialize in giving advice that no one is ever going to take.”

    But even if the Biden administration was so inclined, that ship may have sailed; the Kim of 2019 was far more willing to engage than the Kim of 2022.

    And that, perhaps, is the biggest problem at the heart of all the options on the table: they rely on some form of engagement with North Korea – something entirely lacking at present.

    Kim is now focused on his five-year plan for military modernization announced in January 2021 and no offers of talks from the Biden administration or others have yet turned his head in the slightest.

    As Panda acknowledged, “There’s a set of cooperative options which would require the North Koreans being willing to sit down at the table and talk about some of those things with us. I don’t think that we are even close to sitting down with the North Koreans.”

    And, in fairness to Kim, the reticence is not all down to Pyongyang.

    “Big policy shifts in the US would require the President’s backing, and I really see no evidence that Joe Biden really sees the North Korean issue as deserving of tremendous political capital,” Panda said.

    He added what many experts believe – and what even some US and South Korean lawmakers admit behind closed doors: “We will be living with a nuclear armed North Korea probably for a few decades to come at least.”

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  • Biden and Harris set to make rare joint campaign appearance for Pennsylvania Democrats | CNN Politics

    Biden and Harris set to make rare joint campaign appearance for Pennsylvania Democrats | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will make a rare joint appearance on the campaign trail in Philadelphia Friday evening as they seek to boost Pennsylvania Democrats in the closing stretch of the election.

    Their visit comes at crucial time, with less than two weeks until Election Day, as Democrats are fighting to hold onto their narrow majority in the 50-50 Senate. Pennsylvania represents the party’s best opportunity to pick up a Senate seat, with incumbent GOP Sen. Pat Toomey retiring.

    Biden and Harris’ appearance at the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s annual Independence Dinner, a major state party fundraising event, will mark the first time the President attends an event with Democratic Senate hopeful Lt. Gov. John Fetterman since his high-stakes debate performance against Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz earlier this week.

    Two other Democratic candidates will also be an attendance, per a Democratic official – Democratic gubernational candidate Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Rep. Matt Cartwright, who is facing a tough contest in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, which includes the President’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

    The President and vice president are set to deliver keynote remarks “about the critically-important choice before voters,” the Democratic official said, when they speak at the fundraising reception that is expected to raise $1 million.

    Biden will once again lean into his economic messaging that has peppered speeches in recent weeks as he tries to draw a contrast with “the Republicans’ mega MAGA trickle down plan,” the official said, including differences on prescription drug costs, Social Security, Medicare and tax plans.

    This will mark the President’s 19th visit to Pennsylvania since taking office, frequenting the commonwealth in a mix of official and political events in the run-up to the election, a contrast to his approach to the majority of competitive Senate races across the country.

    Biden is set to return to the Keystone state in the closing days of the campaign with expected appearances with his former boss, President Barack Obama, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Biden’s 2020 rival, former President Donald Trump, is expected to campaign in Pennsylvania next weekend as well.

    While the President has eschewed large campaign rallies this election cycle, he has been a frequent presence on the fundraising circuit, crisscrossing the country to raise money for Democrats, including at Friday night’s dinner. Other Democratic officials expected to be in attendance on Friday night include Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, US Sen. Bob Casey, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, and Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair and state Sen. Sharif Street.

    In the final week before the election, the President is set to campaign for Democrats in Florida, including Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist and Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Val Demings, as well as travel to New Mexico for events with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other local officials.

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  • 4 takeaways from the New York governor debate | CNN Politics

    4 takeaways from the New York governor debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul squared off with Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin on Tuesday in their first and only pre-election debate, offering a series of tense and testy exchanges over crime, abortion rights, the 2020 presidential election and campaign finance ethics.

    Their one-on-one came as recent polls show a tightening race, with the Democrat’s lead having dwindled to single digits in one survey. No Republican has won statewide office in New York since 2002.

    Zeldin, a conservative backed by former President Donald Trump, has campaigned furiously on his opposition to the state’s bail reform law and criticized Hochul’s handling of crime, which has ranked high up on the list of voters’ concerns in nearly every survey of the race.

    Both candidates sought to align themselves with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has pushed for new and substantial rollbacks to bail law, but they predictably diverged on Trump and his successor, President Joe Biden.

    Zeldin praised Trump’s policy agenda during the debate, but, in a nod to a state that voted overwhelmingly for his opponent, did not directly say whether the former President should run again in 2024.

    Hochul, breaking from some tepid statements from fellow Democrats, was clear and concise on Biden’s future. Asked if she thought he should run again, she said, “Yes, I do.”

    Here are the four big takeaways from Tuesday night’s debate.

    Crime has emerged as the central talking point of the election and that held for large portions of the debate on Tuesday, with Zeldin criticizing Hochul for not taking more aggressive steps to combat its rise and promising to fire a controversial Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan.

    Hochul responded by talking up various initiatives but also frequently tried to turn the tables on the Republican, pointing to his opposition to gun control measures, including a bipartisan deal recently passed in Congress.

    “I’m running to take back our streets,” Zeldin said in the first volley of the debate.

    Hochul dismissed her opponent’s attacks as vague and cynical.

    “You can work on keeping people scared or on keeping people safe,” she said, adding, “There is no crime fighting plan if it doesn’t include guns.”

    Zeldin sought to pivot off the gun argument by noting that firearms didn’t play a role in many recent hate crimes or when innocent bystanders have, in recent months, been pushed on to subway tracks.

    “They tell me these stories,” Zeldin said of voters he’s met, “about having to hug a pole or grab a guardrail because they’re afraid of being pushed in front of an oncoming subway car.”

    “All you have is rhetoric,” Hochul shot back. “I have a record of getting things done.”

    The state’s bail reform law, passed in 2019 but rolled back twice since, was also a flashpoint. Even after the moderators rolled out statistics showing it’s difficult to discern whether the law, which makes it more difficult to hold suspects in pre-trial detention, led to a rise in crime, both candidates – Zeldin to a much greater degree – spoke about their desire for further changes.

    Hochul has, before and during the campaign, sought new tweaks. Zeldin wants the legislation off the books entirely – a desire in step with even some liberal New Yorkers – calling it “the will of the people.”

    In a state Biden won by nearly 2 million votes, with more than 60% of ballots cast, Zeldin’s vote in Congress against certifying the election has become a reliable cudgel for Democrats.

    On Tuesday night, Hochul wielded it early and often.

    When Zeldin talked about trying to remove Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was elected to the job, Hochul connected it to the congressman’s actions after the 2020 presidential election.

    “In Lee Zeldin’s world,” she said, “you overturn elections you disagree with.”

    Zeldin said he had the “constitutional authority” and “constitutional duty” to try his best to unseat Bragg, who has been criticized for not more aggressively prosecuting low-level crime.

    Eventually, the moderators offered Zeldin an opportunity of sorts to disavow his past actions. Asked if he would, knowing what he does now, still vote against certifying the 2020 election, Zeldin demurred.

    “The issue still remains today,” the Republican said. “Election integrity should always matter.”

    Pressed then on whether he would accept defeat, should Hochul win in two weeks, Zeldin said he would – but his disdain for the question was obvious.

    “First off, losing is not an option,” Zeldin answered. “Secondly, playing along with your hypothetical question: Of course” he would accept the results, he said.

    The Republican also came under consistent attack over his anti-abortion policy views and celebration of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

    Zeldin has argued the issue is moot: New York state has passed strict abortion rights protections and, even if he wanted to, he could not change them.

    Still, he did not directly answer a question from the moderators asking whether he would sign off on new restrictions if Republicans took hold of the state legislature – something Zeldin insisted was immaterial because “it’s not happening.”

    Hochul returned to the issue frequently, touting the state law and promising to protect it from conservative politicians like Zeldin.

    “What we have in New York state is simply a codification of Roe v. Wade,” Hochul said, when asked if she would put any restrictions on abortion. She then added, “You know why nothing changed the day after the Dobbs decision? It’s because I’m the governor of New York and he’s not.”

    Zeldin also sought to fend off questions about a recent remark, which he has since walked back, stating he wanted to appoint an anti-abortion rights state health commissioner.

    “My litmus test,” he insisted, “is that (the health commissioner) is going to do an exceptional job.”

    Again though, on the issue of whether he would support funding for Planned Parenthood, Zeldin swerved and suggested it would be a bargaining chip with Democratic leaders in Albany.

    “I’ve heard from New Yorkers who say that they don’t want their tax dollars, for example, for people who live 1,500 miles away from here,” Zeldin said.

    The Bills have one of the best records in pro football this year, but Zeldin hopes they might be a losing issue for Hochul, at least outside Buffalo.

    The state this year approved $600 million in funds to build the team, which is owned by a billionaire, a new stadium in Buffalo. The county is also chipping in an estimated $250 million.

    Hochul defended what critics call a corporate handout as a job-creating maneuver – an argument belied by other cities’ past experiences doing the same – and claimed the Bills were “looking elsewhere,” or considering moving to another city, and said she’d heard from people that they’d been in contact with officials in other states.

    “You think about the identity of the community – like Broadway is to New York City, the Buffalo Bills are to Western New York,” said Hochul, a Buffalo native.

    Zeldin became exasperated at the suggestion the Bills were seriously considering leaving the city – “They’re not,” he snapped – and said the eleventh hour deal to secure the money was “irresponsible on process and substance.”

    Throughout the debate, Zeldin also criticized what he described as Hochul’s “pay to play” governorship, accusing her of trading state contract cash for campaign donations.

    Hochul rejected the charge, which has been reported on inconclusively by a number of local media outlets.

    “There has never been a quid pro quo, a policy change, because of a contribution,” the governor said, before pivoting to an attack on Zeldin’s outside support, specifically the more than $8 million invested in pro-Zeldin super PACs by Ronald Lauder, heir to the cosmetics giant Estée Lauder.

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  • Six takeaways from the Pennsylvania Senate debate between Fetterman and Oz | CNN Politics

    Six takeaways from the Pennsylvania Senate debate between Fetterman and Oz | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The first and only debate between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz quickly devolved into a series of personal and biting attacks in what has become the highest stakes Senate race in the country.

    Throughout the night, Fetterman’s delivery was at times halting and repetitive, with the Democrat – who suffered a stroke in May – dropping words during answers and occasionally losing his train of thought. Much of the attention heading into the debate was on Fetterman’s ongoing recovery and how his struggle with auditory processing and speech could impact a debate against someone who rose to national prominence hosting a syndicated television show.

    But the debate also emphasized the deep policy differences between the candidates, with the two candidates sparring over energy policy, abortion and the economy.

    Oz clearly entered the debate hoping to cast Fetterman as someone too extreme to represent Pennsylvania, using the term “extreme” countless times to describe several the Democrat’s positions. And Fetterman, in an effort to quickly negate many of criticisms, used the phrase the “Oz rule” to describe his opponent’s relationship with the truth.

    Here are six takeaways from Tuesday night’s debate:

    Fetterman struggled to detail his position on fracking, given he once said he never supported the industry and “never” will.

    Oz came prepared on the issue, hitting Fetterman when asked about it.

    “He supports Biden’s desire to ban fracking on public lands, which are our lands, all of our lands together,” Oz said. “This is an extreme position on energy. If we unleashed our energy here in Pennsylvania, it would help everybody.”

    When Oz raised Fetterman’s comments about fracking, Fetterman pushed back.

    “I absolutely support fracking,” Fetterman said. “I believe that we need independence with energy and I believe I have walked that line my entire career.”

    He added, “I have always supported fracking and I always believe independence with our energy is critical.”

    But that isn’t true – Fetterman has a long history of antipathy toward the practice of injecting water into shale formations to free up deposits of oil and natural gas that were not economically accessible before.

    “I don’t support fracking at all and I never have,” Fetterman told a left-wing YouTube channel in 2018 when running for lieutenant governor. “And I’ve, I’ve signed the no fossil fuels money pledge. I have never received a dime from any natural gas or oil company whatsoever.”

    When the moderators noted that position, Fetterman appeared at a loss for words.

    “I do support fracking and I don’t, I don’t, I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking,” Fetterman said.

    Oz has declined for weeks to give a firm answer about how he would vote on a bill proposed South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    And this debate was no different.

    “There should not be involvement from the federal government in how states decide their abortion decisions,” Oz said when asked about abortion, before turning the issue on Fetterman and calling him “radical” and “extreme.”

    But when directly asked how he would vote on the Graham bill, Oz declined to answer, claiming he was giving a bigger answer by saying he was “not going to support federal rules that block the ability of states to do what they wish to do.”

    The lack of an answer gave Fetterman an opening.

    “I want to look into the face of every woman in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said. “You know, if you believe that the choice of your reproductive freedom belongs with Dr. Oz then you have a choice. But if you believe that the choice for abortion belongs with you and your doctor, that’s what I fight for. Roe v Wade for me is, should be the law.”

    Fetterman, however, went beyond that position during the primary.

    When asked by CNN whether he supported “any restrictions on abortion,” Fetterman said he did not. He took a similar position during a primary debate.

    Oz used the moment, again, to call Fetterman out, saying it was “important” for Fetterman to “at least acknowledge” that he had taken another position on abortion.

    But it was an Oz comment that Democrats, including the Fetterman campaign, have seized on after the debate.

    Oz said he thought the debate about abortion should be left to “women, doctors, local political leaders,” a continuation of his argument that states, not the federal government should decide the issue.

    Top Democrats see the comment as an opening to link Oz with Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, a state senator who introduced a 2019 bill that would require physicians to determine if a fetal heartbeat is present prior to an abortion and prohibit the procedure if a heartbeat is detected.

    Their argument: Oz thinks politicians like Mastriano – either as state senator or possibly as governor – should decide the issue.

    The Fetterman campaign announced after the debate it would put money behind an ad highlighting the Oz comment.

    The Fetterman campaign went to great lengths to avoid debating – until the criticism from editorial boards, the Oz campaign and others became too untenable to keep resisting.

    After watching the debate in Harrisburg, even though Fetterman’s speech has shown signs of considerable improvement with every passing week since his May stroke, it’s an open question whether it was a wise decision to put him on the stage with Oz. It was, at many points, difficult to watch.

    Most, if not all, Democrats will almost certainly give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s an open question whether voters will.

    Fetterman struggled to prosecute a consistent case against Oz and to keep up with the speed of the hourlong debate. Oz, for his part, rarely talked about his rival’s recovery from a May stroke. Of course, he didn’t have to.

    If any Pennsylvania voters missed the debate, not to worry.

    There’s sure to be millions of dollars’ worth of new ads – replaying many of the uncomfortable moments – from the top Republican super PAC that doubled down on the race earlier Tuesday.

    Do debates matter? In less than two weeks, Pennsylvania voters will help answer that question. But this one will certainly reverberate for the rest of the campaign.

    In an age when politicians are being careful about how they embrace President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, that caution was not on display Tuesday night.

    When asked if he would back Trump in 2024, Oz – who received Trump’s endorsement during the contentious Republican primary in the commonwealth – said, “I will support whoever the Republican party puts up.”

    “I would support Donald Trump if he decided to run for president, but this is bigger than one candidate,” Oz said.

    And for his part, Fetterman did not run away from Biden, who has made Pennsylvania – which he flipped back to Democrats in 2020 – one of the few states he has repeatedly visited during the 2022 midterms.

    “If he does choose to run, I would absolutely support him, but ultimately, that’s ultimately only his choice,” Fetterman said. “At the end of the day, I believe Joe Biden is a good family man, and I believe he stands for the union way of life.”

    It was clear Oz was more comfortable than Fetterman on the debate stage – something Fetterman aides expected and attempted to highlight ahead of time with a pre-debate memo noting, “Dr. Oz has been a professional TV personality for the last two decades.”

    But the differences were apparent from the outset.

    Democratic Pennsylvania candidate Lt. Gov. John Fetterman participates in the Nexstar Pennsylvania Senate at WHTM abc27 in Harrisburg, Pa., on Tuesday, October 25, 2022.

    Fetterman appeared nervous on stage, drawing a sharp contrast with Oz, who was at ease, often smiling and seemingly comfortable.

    Fetterman attempted to hit back at Oz’s near constant barbs, at times interrupting while the candidate was answering – most noticeably during the closing arguments.

    “You want to cut Social Security,” Fetterman interjected as Oz was speaking about meeting seniors worried about their Social Security checks.

    Oz kept speaking, as moderator WPXI anchor Lisa Sylvester chimed in, “Mr. Fetterman, it’s his turn for his closing.”

    Oz avoided attacking Fetterman’s stroke recovery, a move that was out of step with his campaign, which at times used a mocking tone to attack the Democrat. But Oz did point out that his opponent only agreed to take the debate stage once.

    “This is the only debate I could get you to come to talk to me on, and I had to beg on my knees to get you to come in,” Oz said.

    Fetterman again declined to release more medical information beyond the two letters his primary doctors have put out. Most recently, Fetterman’s doctor wrote that the Democrat “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.”

    Fetterman said he deferred to his “real doctors” on whether to release more medical information, a subtle dig at Oz, and stressed his presence on the stage and activity on the campaign trail was proof enough that he was fit for the job.

    “Transparency is about showing up. I’m here today to have a debate. I have speeches in front of 3,000 people in Montgomery County, all across Pennsylvania, big, big crowds,” Fetterman said. “You know, I believe If my doctor believes that I’m fit to serve, and that’s what I believe is appropriate.”

    When pressed by moderator WHTM abc27 News anchor Dennis Owens, Fetterman replied, “My doctor believes I’m fit to be serving.”

    This story has been updated with more from the debate.

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  • How Ted Cruz explains his massive flip-flop on Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    How Ted Cruz explains his massive flip-flop on Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Ted Cruz’s relationship with Donald Trump, is, um, complicated.

    During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump suggested without evidence that Cruz’s father had something to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that Cruz’s wife, Heidi, was unattractive.

    The Texas senator, in turn, called Trump a “sniveling coward” and “utterly amoral,” and notably refused to endorse Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

    Then, suddenly, things changed. Cruz went from Trump’s most prominent Republican agitator to one of his staunchest defenders. Trump even asked Cruz to argue a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in several battleground states if it reached the Supreme Court.

    On Monday, Cruz explained what, uh, happened between then and now.

    During an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Ana Navarro brought up what Trump had said about Cruz’s father and wife, asking him bluntly of his past criticism of the former President: “Were you lying then or are you lying now?”

    Cruz laughed awkwardly before offering his answer.

    “In 2016, we had a primary where Donald Trump and I beat the living crap out of each other,” Cruz said, claiming that his wife laughed at Trump’s attacks. (So I guess that makes it OK?) “We went after each other, and at the end of the day, he won. And I had a decision to make. … I could have decided, my feelings are hurt, I’m going to take the ball and go home and not do my job.”

    Instead, Cruz argued that the only course of action available to him was to find a way to work with Trump – for the good of all of the people of Texas he represented. “I had a job to do and I had a responsibility,” he explained.

    That explanation leaves a lot to be desired – in a few places.

    1) Just because it’s your job, it doesn’t make it right.

    2) The idea that Cruz did all of this because he knew he had to put personal enmity aside so that he could represent his state best leaves out a massive calculation that drove all of this: Cruz wants to run for president again and knew he would have no chance if he was seen as a Trump antagonist.

    That’s not to say Cruz didn’t also believe that finding ways to work with Trump was a good thing for his constituents. He may well have. But, the driving force behind Cruz’s decision to scrape his way back into Trump’s good graces was his own political ambition.

    To his credit, Cruz has made no secret of his desire to run for president again – maybe as soon as 2024. And the hurdle that Trump’s potential candidacy would present. “I don’t know what Trump’s going to decide – nobody does,” Cruz said earlier this fall. “Anybody who tells you they do is making things up. The whole world will change depending on what Donald Trump decides. That’s true for every candidate. That’s true of every potential candidate.”

    That frankness stands in direct contrast to Cruz’s just-doing-my-job explanation of how he decided that he decided to make peace with Donald Trump.

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  • Michael Dukakis Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Michael Dukakis Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Michael Dukakis, three-term governor of Massachusetts.

    Birth date: November 3, 1933

    Birth place: Brookline, Massachusetts

    Birth name: Michael Stanley Dukakis

    Father: Panos Dukakis, an obstetrician

    Mother: Euterpe (Boukis) Dukakis, a teacher

    Marriage: Katharine “Kitty” (Dickson) Dukakis (June 20, 1963-present)

    Children: Kara,1968; Andrea, 1965; Adopted: John, 1958, Kitty’s son from her first marriage

    Education: Swarthmore College, Political Science, B.A., 1955; Harvard University, J.D., 1960

    Military service: US Army, 1955-1957, Specialist Third Class

    Religion: Greek Orthodox

    First Greek-American to run for president.

    His first cousin was Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis.

    As a high school senior, he ran the Boston Marathon.

    Michael and Kitty Dukakis’ first child, a daughter, was born anencephalic in 1964 and died shortly after birth.

    October 1960 – Joins the Boston law firm Hill & Barlow as an associate.

    November 6, 1962 – Dukakis is elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

    1966 – Unsuccessful bid for Massachusetts attorney general.

    1970 – Loses race for lieutenant governor.

    1970 – Becomes a partner of Hill & Barlow.

    October 1, 1973 – Announces candidacy for Massachusetts governor.

    November 5, 1974 – Defeats incumbent Francis Sargent in the gubernatorial election.

    January 2, 1975-January 4, 1979 – 65th Governor of Massachusetts.

    September 19, 1978 – Loses the Democratic gubernatorial primary to Edward King, who goes on to win the general election.

    1979-1982 – Dukakis teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

    January 1980 – His book,”State and Cities: The Massachusetts Experience,” is published.

    January 1982 – Announces his campaign to take back his job as the governor of Massachusetts.

    November 2, 1982 – Defeats John Sears in the gubernatorial election, with 60% of the vote.

    January 6, 1983-1991 – Governor of Massachusetts.

    June 1986 – His book, “Revenue Enforcement, Tax Amnesty and the Federal Deficit,” is published.

    November 4, 1986 – Wins a third term as governor, defeating George Kariotis 69% to 31%.

    April 29, 1987 – Formally declares his candidacy for president of the United States.

    February 1988 – His book, “Creating the Future: The Massachusetts Comeback and its Promise for America,” with Rosabeth Kanter is published.

    June 1988 – During the campaign, George H. W. Bush, the Republican nominee for president, paints Dukakis as soft on crime because of an incident involving Massachusetts’s weekend furlough program for prisoners. Inmate Willie Horton failed to return and later terrorized a Maryland couple before being captured.

    July 12, 1988 – Names Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) as his running mate.

    July 20, 1988 – Receives the nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

    October 13, 1988 – In the second presidential debate, moderator Bernard Shaw asks Dukakis if he would favor the death penalty if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered. Dukakis says no in an answer that many considered emotionless.

    November 8, 1988 – Loses the election to Bush by roughly seven million votes, earning 111 electoral votes in the Electoral College to Bush’s 426.

    1991-present – Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston.

    1991-2022 – Visiting professor at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA.

    2000 – His book, “How to Get Into Politics and Why: A Reader,” with Paul Simon is published.

    April 27, 2007 – Is awarded the city’s Medal of Honor in Athens, Greece.

    July 7, 2008 – Is quoted in the Boston Herald as saying that the country should get rid of the Electoral College and elect presidents through a popular vote.

    July 9, 2010 – “Leader-Managers in the Public Sector: Managing for Results,” with John H. Portz is published.

    October 16, 2014 – Testifies for the defense in the trial of Robel Phillipos, a friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Phillipos is charged with lying to the FBI during its investigation.

    November 13, 2016 – Dukakis again calls for an end to the Electoral College, Politico reports. Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the presidential election is because of “an anachronistic Electoral College system which should have been abolished 150 years ago.”

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  • Nearly six million ballots have been cast in pre-election voting | CNN Politics

    Nearly six million ballots have been cast in pre-election voting | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    More than 5.8 million ballots have been cast across 39 states in the 2022 midterm elections, according to data from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist.

    In the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania, Democrats are far outpacing Republicans in pre-election ballots cast, according to data from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving insights into who is voting before November.

    That’s not a surprise, and these data aren’t predictive of ultimate outcomes. In recent years Democrats have been more likely to vote before Election Day while Republicans have preferred to vote on Election Day.

    It’s too early to know how high voter turnout will be in this election cycle, but overall, early voting numbers remain on par with the 2018 elections, which had the highest midterm turnout in recent history.

    In Arizona, ballots cast by Democrats make up 44% of the pre-election ballots cast, while ballots cast by Republicans make up 33%. That’s similar to pre-election ballot returns at this point of the cycle in 2020, when Democrats made up 45% and Republicans made up 31%.

    However, this is a recent shift in Arizona. At this time before the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans had returned more ballots, with a 46% share to Democrats’ 34%.

    The 2020 election, between the Covid-19 pandemic and efforts from former President Donald Trump and his allies to question the integrity of mail-in ballots, could have shifted how people vote.

    Democrats’ comfort with pre-election voting compared to Republicans’ is on display in Pennsylvania – a state with one of the most competitive Senate elections this cycle.

    01 pre-election 2022 voting figures

    Of the more than 420,000 ballots cast in the Keystone State, 73% were cast by Democrats and 19% were cast by Republicans.

    That’s actually a slight improvement for Republicans compared to this point in 2020, when 75% of pre-election ballots cast were from Democrats and 17% were from Republicans.

    Early in-person voting has begun in most of the states with competitive Senate elections including Georgia, Ohio and North Carolina. Nevada’s early in-person voting begins on Saturday.

    North Carolina held its first day of early voting on Thursday, and more than 186,000 ballots have been cast in the state. The North Carolina State Board of Elections reported that’s an uptick from the number of early ballots cast through the first day of early voting in 2018, when just more than 155,000 ballots were cast.

    03 pre-election 2022 voting figures

    After the first day of early voting, ballots cast by Democrats made up 42% of the pre-election ballot share, and ballots cast by Republicans made up about 29%, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

    A large share of the pre-election ballots cast in the Tar Heel state have come from unaffiliated voters. As of Friday, unaffiliated voters cast more than 29% of the pre-election votes.

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  • January 6 committee announces it has sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee announces it has sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol announced on Friday that the panel has officially sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump as it paints him as the central figure in the multi-step plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

    The committee issued the subpoena to try to compel Trump to sit for a deposition under oath and to provide documents. The panel is ordering Trump turn over documents by November 4 and “one or more days of deposition testimony beginning on or about November 14.” Unlike with previous subpoena announcements, the committee released the entire subpoena it sent to Trump along with the documents it is requesting.

    While it is not clear if Trump will comply with the subpoena, the action serves as a way for the committee to set down a marker and make clear they want information directly from Trump as the panel investigates the attack.

    “As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multi-part effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” the committee wrote in its letter.

    The panel summarizes what it presented in its hearings to demonstrate why it believes Trump “personally orchestrated and oversaw” the plan.

    Trump and his legal team have been discussing how to respond to the subpoena, a source familiar with the situation told CNN, stressing that no firm decisions had been made. Trump has tapped lawyers Harmeet Dhillon and Jim Trusty to take the lead on responding to the subpoena.

    The former president posted a lengthy response criticizing the committee on Truth Social after members voted unanimously to subpoena him but did not say whether he would comply. Trump also recently shared a Fox story on Truth Social that claimed he “loves the idea of testifying.” But Trump could also fight the subpoena in court, and such a legal challenge would likely outlast the committee’s mandate.

    In its subpoena, the committee specifically demands Trump turn over any communications, sent or received during the period of November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021, with over a dozen of his close allies who have emerged as key players in the broader plan to overturn the 2020 election.

    The committee also notes that it wants Trump to testify about his interactions with several individuals, including people on the same list, who invoked their Fifth Amendment rights when questioned by the committee about their dealings with the former President.

    The House committee latest public hearing, where members voted to subpoena him, served as a closing argument to the American public ahead of the midterm election that Trump is at the center of the multifaceted plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

    “It is our obligation to seek Donald Trump’s testimony,” the panel’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said ahead of the subpoena vote during the hearing.

    Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice chairwoman of the committee, said during the hearing that seeking Trump’s testimony under oath remains “a key task” because several witnesses closest to the former President invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to their interactions with Trump.

    “We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion” Cheney said, referring to Trump.

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  • The trick Republicans are using to justify supporting election deniers | CNN Politics

    The trick Republicans are using to justify supporting election deniers | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New Hampshire GOP Gov. Chris Sununu sat for an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday night. The topic of election denialism – specifically related to New Hampshire Republican Senate nominee Don Bolduc – came up. Here’s the exchange:

    Tapper: Gov. Sununu, you’re a sane Republican at a time when a lot of people are looking for sane Republicans. Are you hurting the cause of sane Republicans when you embrace people like that?

    Sununu: No, look, this is about having folks in Washington, DC, that put New Hampshire first. Was the election stolen? Of course it wasn’t stolen. That’s nonsense, absolute nonsense, and it’s great to see him actually backtrack on that. But that isn’t the issue folks are going to vote on. Mar-a-Lago is not the issue folks are going to vote on. The people vote in their own self-interest, as they should, right? We should be a little bit selfish with our vote.

    What’s best for my family, what’s best for my business, my opportunities – that’s what a good vote is all about. And that’s why, again, Don Bolduc is going to win this race. You have to be present, you have to be in the state, you have to understand these issues and be willing to make tough decisions.”

    Before I go any further, I want to go backwards – to what Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general taking on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan this November, has said about the 2020 election.

    During a debate in August, Bolduc said this: “I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Donald Trump won the election and, damn it, I stand by [it].”

    Then, days after winning the Republican Senate primary in September, Bolduc changed his tune. “I’ve done a lot of research on this, and I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to Granite Staters all over the state from every party, and I have come to the conclusion – and I want to be definitive on this – the election was not stolen,” he said.

    But wait, there’s more! Earlier this month, asked by a voter about the 2020 election, Bolduc said: “I can’t say that it was stolen or not. I don’t have enough information.”

    Bolduc told CNN in an interview after the town hall that the election was “not stolen” but said that there were “irregularities and fraud.”

    It has been a journey! But where Bolduc appears to have landed is on the notion that it’s still possible the 2020 election was fraudulent, which it was not.

    Now back to Sununu. Although he and Bolduc have had their differences – Bolduc has called Sununu a “Chinese communist sympathizer” and a “globalist world-government guy,” while Sununu has called Bolduc a “conspiracy theory extremist” – Sununu is now supporting him out of a sense, it seems, of party loyalty. Yeah, they don’t see the world exactly the same way, but they’re both Republicans, so it just makes sense that Sununu would support Bolduc.

    But there’s an elision of logic inherent in that compromise that is dangerous.

    One of them believes – or is at least willing to keep open the option – that, contrary to all of the evidence, that there was fraud in the 2020 election. This isn’t a policy disagreement. This is about the very bones of our democracy, the notion that we hold free and fair elections – whether or not the candidate you supported winds up winning.

    Sununu isn’t the only Republican leader making this same sort of mistake.

    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday campaigned for Arizona gubernatorial nominee – and prominent election denier – Kari Lake. Of his decision, Youngkin said last month: “I am comfortable supporting Republican candidates, and we don’t agree on everything. I mean, I have said that I firmly believe that Joe Biden was elected president.”

    Again, this isn’t just a disagreement over some policy plank. The issue here is whether the 2020 election was free and fair. You can’t just yada-yada the notion that someone you are endorsing for high office actually believes that the last election was stolen!

    By casting election denialism as just another policy position, the likes of Youngkin and Sununu – both of whom have national ambitions of their own – are trying to put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. If you don’t believe in the fundamental tenets of democracy that have been followed since the founding of the country, all the other stuff doesn’t really matter.

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  • Biden’s quiet campaign season brings him back to familiar territory in Pennsylvania | CNN Politics

    Biden’s quiet campaign season brings him back to familiar territory in Pennsylvania | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden visited Pennsylvania on Thursday, he touted infrastructure investments that helped rebuild a collapsed bridge and raised campaign cash away from cameras with the state’s Democratic Senate candidate.

    Where he didn’t appear was a campaign rally stage.

    Three weeks before November’s elections, Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia neatly demonstrated a political strategy focused on promoting his agenda and talking with donors rather than headlining stump speeches alongside vulnerable Democrats.

    He has been a frequent visitor to Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman holds a narrow lead in his race against Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz in the US Senate race. Trading his trademark sweatshirt and basketball shorts for a dark suit and tie, Fetterman greeted Biden at the airport alongside his wife.

    “You’re gonna win!” Biden said as he shook the candidate’s hand.

    Biden has visited the commonwealth nine times this year, including Thursday’s visit, and 18 times since he became president.

    “I’m a proud Delawarean, but Pennsylvania’s my native state. It’s in my heart. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be part of rebuilding this beautiful state,” Biden said. “My Grandfather Finnegan from Scranton would really be proud of me now.”

    Still, despite the fondness, Biden’s visit was relatively low-key for a presidential stop weeks ahead of a critical midterm contest. He did not hold a rollicking campaign rally, opting for a smaller profile event with several dozen officials and workers from the bridge project.

    Biden’s approach borne out of political reality: While many of Biden’s accomplishments have been well-received by voters – and, in some cases, embraced by Republicans who voted against them – Biden himself remains unpopular and some Democrats continue to keep their distance as the midterm contests grow near.

    Departing the White House on Thursday, Biden bristled when asked why more Democrats weren’t joining him for political events.

    “That’s not true,” Biden said. “There have been 15. Count, kid, count.”

    Later, as he and Fetterman dropped by a Primanti Bros. sandwich shop near Pittsburgh, he told reporters he’d been requested to visit Nevada and Georgia, two states with tight Senate races.

    “We’re trying to work it out now,” he said. “I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve got about 16, 18 requests around the country.”

    Over the past weeks, Biden has worked to expand his list of achievements using executive power, including pardoning low-level marijuana offenders, canceling some student loan debt, reducing the cost of hearing aids and declaring a World War II training site a national monument.

    This week alone, he promised to sign a bill enshrining abortion rights into law if Democrats gain seats, outlined billions of dollars to invest in domestic battery manufacturing and released another 15 million barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic reserves as he works to bring down gas prices.

    Biden denied the oil announcement was politically motivated.

    “I’ve been doing this for how long now? It’s not politically motivated at all,” he said. “It’s motivated to make sure that I continue to push on what I’ve been pushing on.”

    Yet the timing of the release nonetheless came as Biden’s party looks with growing concern at the prospect of losing its congressional majorities next year, and the White House searches for steps to appeal to Americans.

    In Pittsburgh, the President spoke at the Fern Hollow Bridge, a four-lane steel span that collapsed into a snowy ravine in January. Biden happened to be visiting the city that day to speak about infrastructure, and the presidential motorcade made a detour to view the damage.

    “A complete catastrophe was avoided but it never should have come to this,” Biden said on Thursday. The President noted how quickly the bridge was bring rebuilt and said that while it wasn’t funded by his bipartisan infrastructure law, it was completely funded by the federal government.

    Biden said that “God willing” the bridge will be completely open in December, telling the audience: “I’m coming back to walk over this sucker.”

    Biden was joined by a slew of top Pennsylvania elected officials, most notably Fetterman, who is locked in one of the most closely watched midterm contests. Biden is also scheduled to join Fetterman later on Thursday for a fundraiser in Philadelphia.

    While the bridge’s reconstruction wasn’t directly funded by the bipartisan infrastructure law, a White House official said funding from the law allowed Pennsylvania’s Transportation Department “to move funds quickly to support this project, without having to slow down or interfere with other projects in the pipeline.”

    The rebuilding was funded through $25.3 million in federal funding appropriated to Pennsylvania in Fiscal Year 2021, the White House official said.

    The law allocated $40 billion toward bridge projects over five years. Since last October, repairs or replacements have begun on more than 2,400 bridges through funding from the infrastructure law, according to the White House.

    That measure has emerged as a central talking point for Biden during this year’s midterms. Candidates who might think twice about holding a political rally with Biden have seemed eager to appear alongside him at official events heralding improvements on rail lines, airport terminals or bridges. The President has hammered Republicans who voted against the bill but have nonetheless taken credit for projects made possible by the $1.2 trillion law.

    In planning Biden’s recent travel, including political events and official White House duties, his advisers have taken into account the sensitive political reality that some Democratic candidates in tough races would prefer he not visit their district or state in the final stretch to the midterms.

    But one Democratic official familiar with the White House’s thinking said an important overarching dynamic is that even the candidates who would rather not appear alongside Biden are still eager to run on his legislative accomplishments, describing it as a “halfsies” situation.

    “There are some campaigns that don’t want him to physically campaign in his state,” the official said. “But – people are running on his agenda.”

    Given the string of legislative victories that Biden’s party scored in the first half of the Biden administration – including the bipartisan infrastructure bill – even the events that are technically billed official White House business are effectively no different from political events these days, that official noted.

    “Every event is political now,” they said.

    Biden remains eager to visit key battlegrounds, according to his aides. Earlier this year, he voiced some frustration that more Democrats weren’t lining up to use him on the campaign trail.

    Now, Biden has settled into a midterm push that has him traveling mostly to states he won in 2020 while avoiding certain marquee races where his presence could be a drag on Democratic candidates.

    Other Democrats appear more welcome. Former President Barack Obama will hold campaign rallies for Democrats in Atlanta, Detroit and Milwaukee in the days before the elections. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont democratic socialist, will visit battleground states on a tour targeted to younger voters.

    The White House is working closely with the Senate and House campaign committees and will send the President where he could be helpful, aides said, and will avoid traveling to areas where nationalizing the race would be seen as a detriment to candidates.

    The logistics of presidential travel also complicate some travel, aides said, because campaigns must help foot the expensive costs of Air Force One.

    Still, at similar stages in their terms, Obama and former President Donald Trump were engaging in more traditional campaign-style events for candidates ahead of midterm elections, despite questions about dragging down candidates.

    Both saw their party lose unified control of Congress in their first midterm elections, a historical precedent Biden hopes to break – even as he avoids big political events.

    The White House has defended Biden’s travel plans, insisting he is traveling “nonstop” and intends to visit states “where he is needed” in the run-up to the vote.

    Still, in the weeks ahead of the midterms, Biden continues to spend most weekends at his homes in Delaware, including last weekend in Wilmington and this weekend in Rehoboth Beach.

    On Friday, he’ll stop at Delaware State University to tout his efforts at student debt forgiveness, before heading to his beach house. This week, the debt relief program Biden announced earlier this year went online, with millions applying to have some or all of their loans forgiven.

    In one of his previous trips to campaign in Pennsylvania, on Labor Day, Biden appeared before a small crowd with Fetterman at a union picnic in Pittsburgh. When the two men emerged from the union hall together, Fetterman raised his arms and pumped his fists.

    But when Fetterman spoke ahead of Biden, he used the opportunity to lambast his Republican opponent for owning multiple homes – without mentioning the President at all.

    During a 15-minute private meeting beforehand, Fetterman pushed Biden to begin the process of rescheduling marijuana, one of his top issues.

    A few weeks later, the White House said Biden would issue pardons for federal simple marijuana possession offenses and task members of his administration to “expeditiously” review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law, the first step toward potentially easing a federal classification that currently places marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD.

    Biden himself has only mentioned the decision in passing. But Fetterman hailed the move and was quick to cite his conversation with Biden after the White House made the announcement.

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  • ‘People are just hitting their heads against the wall’: Democrats fret another Johnson win | CNN Politics

    ‘People are just hitting their heads against the wall’: Democrats fret another Johnson win | CNN Politics

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    Rhinelander, Wisconsin
    CNN
     — 

    Tom Nelson can hardly believe it.

    In just a matter of two months, Democrats went from expecting to knock off the unpopular GOP incumbent, US Sen. Ron Johnson, to seeing their party’s nominee, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, scrambling to catch up.

    Already, the finger pointing has begun.

    “The national party did him a grave disservice by not closing the gap, by not being a stopgap measure in August and September to hit Johnson hard on good, effective negative ads, at the same time building up Mandela,” Nelson, a local county executive from central Wisconsin and former Senate Democratic candidate, told CNN. “The national party has totally failed us, and so it’s gonna come down to Wisconsin Democrats.”

    Of possibly seeing Johnson, 67, win a third Senate race, Nelson said, “People are just hitting their heads against the wall. How do we let this happen?”

    Over the summer, Barnes’ top Democratic opponents dropped out, clearing the way for him to win the primary and fully shift to attacking Johnson. Yet Barnes’ slim lead collapsed in September, when Republicans spent nearly $6 million more than Democrats on the air slamming Barnes primarily on crime. In August, a Marquette Law School poll of likely voters showed Barnes leading Johnson 52-45. By early October, those numbers reversed.

    What’s happening in Wisconsin resembles Democratic struggles across the country. They’ve seen their leads evaporate in key House and Senate races as outside money floods in to hammer Democrats over crime and inflation, while they’ve tried to rail against Republicans over their opposition to abortion rights. In several key battleground states – Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida – GOP candidates and groups spent roughly $25 million more than their Democratic counterparts on air in September alone, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks ad spending.

    In states like Wisconsin, the outside money has forced Barnes to go on defense, and air several ads accusing Johnson of lying in the attack ads.

    Many of his supporters believe that is not enough.

    “Oh, I’m terrified,” said Mary Hildebrand, a voter here in this small northern Wisconsin town. “His campaign seems to be faltering,” she said of Barnes.

    In an interview, Barnes dismissed the polls showing him down in the race. Democrats are heartened that the same Marquette pollster tested a larger universe of voters – registered voters – and found the race there essentially a dead heat.

    “Polls go up, polls go down,” Barnes, 35, told CNN. “The reality is we’re showing up, talking to everybody.”

    “All they can do is try to distort my record and try to make people live in fear,” he added, rejecting the notion that he was caught flat-footed. “But that’s not what this is about. It’s about making sure that people know better is possible.”

    Democrats have already reserved $2 million more in ads than Republicans in the final three weeks of the campaign, according to AdImpact. And officials with Democratic outside groups – namely the Senate Majority PAC and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – reject the criticism that their ad campaigns have been ineffective.

    “Wisconsin is one of the top Senate battlegrounds because voters in the state are tired of Ron Johnson looking out for himself at their expense,” said Amanda Sherman Baity, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has ramped up its spending since the August 9 primary and has spent over $4.8 million in the race so far, including a $1 million ad buy coordinated with the Barnes campaign.

    Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and its affiliated group have been on the air since May, having dropped $22 million in the state, with $6.2 million planned in the final three weeks.

    “We have just under three weeks left to defeat Johnson and defend our Democratic Senate majority—that’s what we’re focusing on, and we strongly encourage our fellow Democrats to do the same,” said Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Veronica Yoo.

    On the air, Republicans have had a near singular focus, hammering Barnes for violent crime and for previously advocating for shifting police funding to other social services in the community. Outside groups like Wisconsin Truth PAC and the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, have said he supports “defunding” the police, a slogan he rejects.

    Of the GOP attacks, Marilyn Norden, a voter in northern Wisconsin, said: “They seem to be working. Yes, I’m very concerned.”

    After a speech at a packed diner here in Oneida County, Barnes defended himself, telling reporters that the issue is personal for him since he’s lost friends to gun violence. He said he wants “fully funded” schools and “good-paying jobs,” and to prevent “dangerous weapons” from getting in the hands of criminals. He said that Johnson “is only playing politics with our safety.”

    “Nobody is asking about interviews from six years ago, people are asking why Ron Johnson continues to leave them behind,” he told CNN when asked about recent reports he spoke out against police brutality on RT, a Kremlin-backed network, in 2015 and 2016.

    Barnes is attempting to be the first Black person to become a US senator from Wisconsin, and his supporters see a racial component to the attacks.

    “These ads have gone from crime ads to just blatant racism,” Nelson said. “This is something that Wisconsin has never seen before.”

    Barnes’ attacks have mostly focused on the accusations that Johnson enriched himself while in office, an accusation the GOP senator rejects, and over his support for banning abortion.

    Sen. Ron Johnson greets people during a campaign stop at the Moose Lodge Octoberfest celebration earlier this month in Muskego, Wisconsin.

    Asked why he hasn’t focused on other issues during his paid media campaign – namely Johnson’s downplaying of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and sowing doubt over the Covid-19 vaccine – Barnes said there was plenty of controversy to choose from.

    “We actually have focused on January 6th to an extent, but the reality is there are many different fronts to address Ron Johnson’s failures,” Barnes told CNN. “And it’s important for us to highlight where Ron Johnson has failed people right at home and at the dinner table.”

    Johnson has remained behind closed doors this week. His campaign refused to disclose his campaign schedule this week or make him available for an interview. But he has appeared on Fox this week, including pleading for donations during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s show Tuesday night. The Barnes and Johnson campaigns have each spent over $23 million so far on the race, but the lieutenant governor outraised the senator last quarter, $19.5 million to $11.6 million.

    “I think so many people think this is won,” Johnson said to Hannity. “My fundraising is weaker. I rely on your audience.”

    There are signs that Democrats are broadening their attacks. The Senate Majority PAC and End Citizens United launched Wednesday a new ad featuring a retired Madison police officer calling out Johnson for describing the January 6 attack on the Capitol as largely a “peaceful protest.” On Tuesday, SMP aired another ad attacking Johnson on China, for working to sweeten a tax break for companies connected to his donors and himself, and for his anti-abortion rights position.

    At a speech here on Tuesday, Barnes attacked Johnson for not supporting federal legislation to codify same-sex marriage, for at one point facilitating an effort to contest the 2020 election and for later downplaying the January 6 riot.

    Johnson’s supporters in the ultimate swing state have twice sent him to the Senate, drawn to his brash attitude, businessman background and conservative values. The Wisconsin Republican has also benefited from running in election cycles when the political environment favored his party, first in the 2010 tea party wave, then in 2016 as Donald Trump stunned the world and narrowly took Wisconsin on his way to the White House, and now in 2022, when inflation and a deteriorating economy threatens Democrats’ control of Congress.

    Andy Loduha, Republican party chairman here in Oneida County, said Barnes doesn’t understand the economic issues that have come to the forefront of the race.

    “I think abortion is another example of how the Democrats don’t really have anything to run on,” said Loduha. “They’re running on emotional issues like abortion, but they don’t want to try to touch inflation, crime, drugs.”

    Wisconsin Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki is frustrated with the Democratic bedwetting, even though he said recognized the “tough national political environment.”

    “I just think there’s too many Democrats wringing their hands and thinking this thing is like gone or on its way to being gone,” Zepecki said. “Guys, run through the tape. You’re right there, despite the f***ing onslaught that Barnes had to weather … And he’s still right there.”

    Asked if she believed Barnes would win, Wisconsin Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, who ran against Barnes before dropping out, told CNN, “If there’s one thing we know about Wisconsin, it’s we live by close elections, and we never press our luck.”

    To get there, Barnes will be campaigning next week in Milwaukee with former President Barack Obama, in a bid to energize voters. But there are no plans yet to campaign with the current President, Joe Biden, whose unpopularity remains a liability here.

    Asked if Biden should run for reelection, Barnes told CNN: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. We still gotta get through November 8, 2022.”

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