Category Archives: Democrat

Doug Sosnik is the kind of political analyst who likes to figure out the results of the next election well in advance its just how hes wired.

But even Sosnik, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who now tries to forecast elections as a hobby, is stumped about the 2022 midterms.

I cant figure this one out, Sosnik said on Monday, a day after Democrats passed Build Back Better whoops, pardon me, the Inflation Reduction Act, a woolly mammoth-size package that aims to shrink both the deficit and the risk of catastrophic climate change.

The bills passage is one of a string of recent victories for beleaguered Democrats, who have spent the past 18 months squabbling among themselves and fretting about the coming elections. Gas prices are ticking down. Jobs are plentiful, with the unemployment rate at a 50-year low.

Congress also passed the bipartisan CHIPS Act, a bill that would provide $52 billion in subsidies and tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States and would add more than $200 billion for applied scientific research.

Even President Biden, whose age and concern about the virus forced him to spend much of the 2020 presidential election campaigning from his home in Wilmington, Del., managed to shrug off 18 days of coronavirus-induced quarantine.

As Ethel Merman might say, everything seems to be coming up roses for Joe and the gang in recent weeks, despite widespread predictions that Democrats are likely to lose the House and possibly the Senate.

According to the usual logic Sosnik uses to make predictions, Democrats should expect a blood bath in the fall. But hes not so sure anymore and is questioning everything he knows about the deeper patterns of U.S. elections.

He is puzzled by one thing in particular: Which past elections offer a guide to 2022?

The question doesnt have an easy answer, in part because times have changed there was no recent assault on the Capitol with the partial backing of one particular party in the 1982 midterms, for instance and in part because the nature of political partisanship has changed.

That latter point makes it really hard to compare todays approval ratings to the past; back in, say, the 1960s, voters were much more inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Today, far fewer partisans are willing to give the other side an ounce of credit or respect.

Midterms are completely different animals than presidential election cycles, too: Fewer voters turn out, and the electorate tends to be older and more Republican.

Historically, or at least since World War II, the party in power has lost seats in every midterm election but two: 1998 and 2002.

The first came as Clinton skillfully exploited the unpopularity of congressional Republicans, whose impeachment drive backfired. The second came after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when patriotic sentiments were still running high.

But these midterms are structurally different from many others. For one thing, many of the Democratic House members in battleground districts the Cindy Axnes and Elissa Slotkins of the world were elected in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. Those who held onto their seats in 2020, a good year for Republicans in Congress despite Trumps loss, may know a thing or two about staying in office.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.

So they werent elected on Bidens coattails, unlike many of the Democrats who took power after Barack Obamas commanding win in 2008 but who then lost in the 2010 midterms.

That said, most of the indicators warning of a shellacking for Democrats are blinking red:

Hence Sosniks confusion. What hes wrestling with is the seeming dissonance between the rotten mood of the country, and all the red blinkers, on the one hand, and the string of recent Democratic victories.

You can see some of this nuance reflected in the so-called generic ballot, an average of survey responses to the question of which party voters would like to see represent them in Congress. Right now, the generic ballot is basically tied.

One historical clue is the fate of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rammed his Great Society programs through Congress during his first few years in office, only to see voters punish Democrats at the polls in the 1966 midterms. Republicans picked up 47 seats that year.

Two years later, Johnson announced that he would not seek another term hobbled, unquestionably, by the war in Vietnam.

Johnsons average approval rating during his first term was 74.2 percent, according to Gallup. Thats a number Biden would love to have. And even his overall average approval rating, which dipped below 40 as the war dragged on, shrank only to 55.1 percent by the end of his presidency.

The point being: If even Johnson, the master of the Senate, couldnt profit from passing landmark legislation, how can anyone expect Biden to fare better?

Weve been engaged in a battle all along, said Representative David Price, a Democrat of North Carolina and a political scientist for many years at Duke University who wrote his dissertation about Johnsons Great Society. The counternarrative always was one of inflation and economic distress, and of course thats a real challenge.

But even Price, who said he thought many analysts were underrating Democrats chances of retaining the House, acknowledged the difficulty of the endeavor. I dont think I have a good answer, and I dont think anybody does as to how to break through, he said.

On the Senate side, the timing of the Inflation Reduction Act might be especially helpful for Democratic incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire. They are preparing to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars of television ad spending, playing up the prescription drug benefits in the new law along with what proponents say are other provisions intended to help Americans pay for household expenses.

Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, argues that Republicans still have plenty to work with.

The G.O.P. is skilled at exploiting the other partys major legislative deals for political gain. In addition to hitting Democrats on the overall price tag, the partys opposition researchers comb through the bill text and find provisions that can be weaponized into talking points and television ads.

In response to record inflation and two quarters in a row of negative economic growth, Democrats just passed a trillion dollars in new spending that even Bernie Sanders admits wont have any impact on inflation but will raise taxes on middle-class families and American manufacturers, Hartline said.

He also pointed to Democrats positions on crime and expanding domestic energy production, two issues Republicans have been hammering on amid an uptick in violent crime in cities across America and soaring gas prices.

Senate Republicans have decided that their platform is opposing lowering costs for Americans prescription drugs, countered David Bergstein, communications director for the Democrats own campaign arm. Thats a deeply unpopular position that will lead their campaigns to defeat.

Donald Trumps supporters in Wisconsin have turned the misguided belief that the results of the 2020 election can be nullified into central campaign issues in the states Republican primary for governor, Reid Epstein writes.

And in Wisconsins Senate race, Mandela Barnes, the states lieutenant governor, has consolidated Democrats in his bid to take on Ron Johnson, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the Senate. Jazmine Ulloa takes a look.

Blake

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Democrats and Republicans Struggle to Forecast 2022 Midterms - The New York Times

HOLLAND, MI Write-in candidate Joseph Alfonso, D-Holland, appears headed toward the November ballot as county canvassers continue to certify election results in the race for Michigans U.S. District 4.

Still, theres a ways to go and the 32-year-old former Marine says he is patiently respecting the process.

This process has been a waiting game, but Im just being patient, having faith in the system and not trying to further cause any doubts or other issues, Alfonso told MLive Tuesday, Aug. 9.

As of early afternoon, Tuesday, four of the six counties in the newly-drawn district were still yet to certify results from the Aug. 2 primary election, leaving Alfonsos campaign to continue to wait for the final word of whether he had enough certified write-in votes to land on the November ballot. That actual final word likely wont come until Aug. 22, which is the state deadline for certifying results.

If successful in making the Nov. 8 general election ballot, Alfonso will face off against U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland), as well as Kalamazoo Libertarian and former state Rep. Lorence Wenke, both of whom ran unopposed in their own primary races.

In order to be successful as a write-in candidate, a declared write-in candidate is required to not only win their own race, but receive at least 5% of the number of votes cast in the Democratic Party race that received the most votes throughout their respective district which across District 4 was the race for governor.

The new congressional district includes all of Allegan and Van Buren counties, and portions of Ottawa, Kalamazoo, Berrien and Calhoun counties, including the cities of Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Holland.

Of the two counties to have completed their canvass, Alfonso successfully garnered enough support through his write-in campaign to unofficially finish with 13.2% of the number of votes cast in the race for governor.

In Ottawa County, he received 2,093 write-in votes, according to the county cavass results report. In Van Buren County, he received 696 votes. There were 1,103 write-in votes in Ottawa County and 1,017 in Van Buren County that were thrown out, meaning only 56.8% of the write-in vote unofficially went to Alfonso.

The other four counties in the district were still yet to certify their results, but across Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Allegan and Berrien counties there were a total of 15,477 write-in votes cast in Alfonsos race with 51,363 votes cast in the Democratic race for governor.

Those four other counties will get done when they get done, Alfonso said. We are feeling pretty good, but we are going to wait for everyone else to do their jobs and respect their space.

While odds are seemingly in Alfonsos favor to get his name on the ballot, write-in votes can be thrown out for a number of reasons, Kalamazoo County Clerk Meredith Place said. Among those include votes for people who are not declared write-in candidates, as well as ballots for which the oval is properly filled in next to the write-in selection, but no name is actually written in, she said.

Oftentimes, a write-in candidates name can be misspelled too, she said, and it is up to each individual county board of canvassers to determine whats an acceptable name variation.

The language from the board of canvassers says its up to the county board of canvassers to discern the intent of the voter, Place said. Whats an approved variation in one county, may not be in another county.

Place said it then rests with the state board of canvassers to determine whether it will accept the accepted variations by each county. The counties have until Aug. 16 to certify their results and submit them to the State of Michigan. The State Board of Canvassers then must certify votes prior to Aug. 22.

Im in this race to win, Alfonso said. We are looking to give West Michigan a representative who is here to give the entire community a voice, not just a few.

The newly-drawn district had placed two Republican incumbents, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (St. Joseph) of the former sixth district and Huizenga, formerly of the second, into the same district. Upton announced his retirement in April and left Huizenga, who is running for his seventh term in U.S. Congress, unopposed in the Aug. 2 Republican primary.

Related: Upton retirement marks latest departure for anti-Trump Republicans, big blow for Michigan congressional delegation

It also presents an opportunity for Alfonso and the Democratic Party to, in essence, replace two Republican congressmen as the states number of congressional districts has decreased by one.

Theres no question its important to the national party, but my focus here is here, Alfonso said. Its representing the community. We are fighting tooth and nail and making sure this community has a choice, especially somebody whos willing to get up there and not be shy and not be afraid of the work.

Alfonso, who filed his candidacy last December, declared as a write-in candidate after being removed from the ballot in late May when the state board of canvassers ruled that he had fallen short of the necessary 1,000 signatures to petition onto the ballot.

According to a May report from the Michigan State Bureau of Elections, only 959 of the 1,027 signatures collected by the Democrat and his team were valid, leaving him short. Of the 68 signatures deemed invalid, the majority were due to date errors, such as lack of date written by the signer, no date of birth entered, or the date given by the signer being later than circulators date of signing.

Alfonso was one of 19 candidates removed from the ballot on May 26 along with three other other U.S. congressional candidates, five Republican gubernatorial candidates and 10 judicial candidates due to either petition errors or fraud. He declared his write-in candidacy the following day.

Related: Its their obligation: Michigan boots 19 candidates from Aug. 2 ballots over petition errors, fraud

While he does not have a background in politics, the veteran who was raised in New York City and moved to Michigan in 2015 said following the Jan. 6 insurrection he took some time prior to entering the race and asked himself if he was doing enough to protect his daughters rights and freedoms, as well as helping to protect his community from misinformation and disinformation.

We have people running for office who are doing well, or are at least doing their best to do well, he said, dismissing his lack of political experience. And we have so many career politicians going into this who are causing further and further divide at the leadership levels where they should be working together.

You go there to represent the community and work with other communities to see if you can get things done for the country, not go there and say hard lines in the sand. Theres certain things you hard line in the sand, but those are peoples freedoms, not necessarily taking peoples rights away. We need to restore faith in the system and move forward and stop this backsliding.

Issues at the top of Alfonsos agenda, he said, include protecting womens reproductive rights, putting an emphasis on veteran affairs and fighting on behalf of the local agricultural community. To read more about issues that matter to Alfonso, visit josephalfonsoforcongress.com/policy.

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Democrat Joseph Alfonso headed for primary win as write-in for U.S. House seat - MLive.com

In the initial round of balloting on Election Day 2020, then-Sen. David Perdue was the top vote-getter, but the Republican incumbent fell shy of the 50 threshold. In Georgia, that meant he was forced into a runoff election, which Purdue fully expected to win.

He didnt. Thanks in part to Donald Trump helping depress GOP turnout, Democrat Jon Ossoff eked out a narrow win in early January, despite finishing second in November.

If Perdue had performed just 0.3 percent better in the first round, he wouldve won re-election and left the Senate in Republican hands. That 0.3 percent shortfall meant Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed. It meant the American Rescue Plan passed. It meant the first new gun laws in a generation passed.

And it meant the Democrats ambitious Inflation Reduction Act was approved in dramatic fashion yesterday. NBC News reported:

Senate Democrats narrowly passed a sweeping climate and economic package on Sunday, putting President Joe Biden and his party on the cusp of a big legislative victory just three months before the crucial November midterm elections. After a marathon overnight Senate session, the 51-50 vote was strictly along party lines, with all Republicans voting no and all Democrats voting yes. After Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote, Democrats stood and applauded.

The package has been hailed as the biggest climate bill in American history, and the description is more than fair. At the heart of the reconciliation package is roughly $369 billion in investments in climate and energy programs. This includes everything from tax credits for electric vehicles to methane reductions, energy-efficient home improvements to the launch of a National Climate Bank.

Its also a health care bill, empowering Medicare for the first time to negotiate the cost of some prescription medications with the pharmaceutical industry. It doesnt apply to all medications, and the benefits wont begin right away, but nevertheless, Democrats have spent years trying to get a breakthrough victory on this issue, and yesterday, they succeeded.

Whats more, the bill includes a three-year extension on the Affordable Care Act subsidies that helped push the nations uninsured rate to an all-time low.

Taken together, this represents the biggest legislative accomplishment of either party since the Affordable Care Act passed more than a decade ago. It wasnt easy by some measures, this Sisyphean process began nearly a year and a half ago and the final product wasnt quite as transformative as the White House originally envisioned, but its still a genuinely impressive governing triumph.

Theres an old proverb about successes having many parents, and plenty will deserve to share the credit for this achievement, but lets make this plain: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made it happen.

For many years, one of the political worlds most overused jokes has been, The most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera. Its now time to retire the maxim: This guy has a legislative record with few modern rivals.

President Joe Biden will receive and deserve a lot of credit for the victories of his first two years in office, but in a 50-50 Senate, each of these wins has been hard fought, and its been Schumer whos taken the lead in delivering the successes on everything from Covid relief to veterans aid, infrastructure to U.S. competitiveness, climate to health care.

The New York Times noted today that the Democratic leader is not known as a master tactician or gifted legislator. Perhaps not. But Schumers patience and tenacity have resulted in an unusually impressive record despite a majority that barely exists in any meaningful way.

He did, however, get some Republican help. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threatened to derail a microchip bill that he supported, as part of a partisan hostage gambit, it had the effect of pushing West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin into Schumers arms, clearing the way for a breakthrough compromise.

Whats more, lets also not forget that when the bipartisan infrastructure package passed exactly one year ago this week Senate GOP leaders saw it as part of a strategy to derail a Democratic reconciliation package. Indeed, they admitted as much in public.

As we discussed at the time, the strategy from McConnell & Co. was relatively straightforward: Pass the modest, bipartisan infrastructure package, then sit back and wait for Democrats to tear each other apart over the reconciliation plan. With tiny Democratic majorities in both chambers, and effectively zero margin for error, Republicans gambled, assuming that the infrastructure bill would be the only one that could pass.

We now know they were wrong.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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What's in it for Climate? Democrats' big bill puts hundreds of billions toward crisis - MSNBC

Then, he did something really remarkable: He showed up again.

That candidate is John Fetterman, who secured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvanias May primary with a robust 59 percent of the vote and currently holds the lead in general election polling.

Fetterman lived up to his Every County, Every Vote slogan. On a single Saturday in early May, for example, he visited five counties in north-central Pennsylvania, part of the states rural T the vast area which form a big T on the map between the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas and north to the New York state line.

Ten days later, in spite of a stroke that hospitalized him just a few days before the primary, Fetterman carried all 67 counties in the Democratic primary. In doing so, Fetterman didnt just attend to the rural, he attended to what he often called the ruby red parts of the Keystone State. Trump carried all five of the counties Fetterman visited on that day in early May Clinton, Potter, Tioga, Bradford and Northumberland and he did so with at least 65 percent of the vote. In Potter County, four of five voters picked Trump. Many Democrats might see those counties as a waste of time, but in the primary, at least, showing up worked for Fetterman: He got 77 percent of the vote.

Fetterman is hardly the first Democratic candidate to make a show of an every-county tour. Indeed, it used to be the norm. When I was growing up in rural Arkansas in the 1970s and 80s, I recall Gov. Bill Clinton passing through my hometown each election cycle. (My family reminisced fondly for years about the day my sister, a teenaged waitress at Pearls Caf, served Clinton coffee and a slice of pie.) Clinton showed up even though my county was home to a measly 8,000 folks, of whom less than a few thousand voted. Its just how retail politics was done back in the day.

More recently, Beto ORourke conducted a 254-county campaign in 2018 when he ran against Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas. ORourke lost, but by just 3 percent, and he and his running mate for lieutenant governor are now going out of their way to show up in the Lone Star States rural reaches. Likewise Chris Jones, Democratic nominee for governor of Arkansas, is on a 75-county tour of the Natural State as he challenges the Republican heir apparent, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

But Fetterman may be the first candidate in recent memory to have visited each county in his state not once, but twice. When Fetterman became Pennsylvanias lieutenant governor in 2019, he undertook a 67-county listening tour about cannabis legalization. Columnist Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests this laid the groundwork for Fettermans widespread popularity, observing that when Fetterman returned to each county as a candidate for Senate, he was shrouded in the purple haze of a political rock star.

Fettermans primary strategy was, of course, the very antithesis of New York Sen. Chuck Schumers dismissal of a voting bloc Democrats used to rely on: For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, Schumer said, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. That was in the summer of 2016, and the senator was soon proved wrong. Pennsylvania was credited (or blamed, depending on your politics), along with Michigan and Wisconsin, with Hillary Clintons loss of the presidency. Trump beat her by about 44,000 votes in 2016 to win Pennsylvanias 20 Electoral College votes. (Biden, who often referenced his scrappy Scranton roots, recovered in 2020 with a slightly wider margin of victory, 81,000 votes.)

The attention a high-profile candidate like Fetterman has paid to rural areas of his state may begin to ease the rural inferiority complex thats been festering for decades, as rural economies have stagnated, small towns have lost population and country folks have become the butt of jokes. One 27-year-old woman in Westmoreland County, part of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area that struggles against the Pennsyltucky stereotype, praised Fetterman for showing up and speaking bluntly. Were not just silly hillbillies, she told a New York Times reporter.

Fetterman has serious street cred when he speaks about crummy job markets and regional inequalities that bog down many nonmetro communities. Before seeking statewide office, he served for 13 years as mayor of Braddock, a down-and-out city of 1,721 near Pittsburgh. Fetterman has continued to live in Braddock with his family, in a converted car dealership even after he was elected lieutenant governor in 2018.

Issues of place what rural sociologists call uneven development or spatial inequality have long been front and center for Fetterman, as in his 2018 response to the Ballotpedia survey, I am most passionate about policies that help our forgotten communities. Fettermans wife, Gisele, struck a similar chord on the night of his primary victory. This race were running, its a race for every small town, for every person who calls those small towns home and for every person whos considered leaving because they didnt see enough opportunities.

Many Pennsylvanians are presumably drawn to Fettermans everyman persona. He wears hoodies and gym shorts on the campaign trail, speaks Pennsylvania vernacular including yinz and youse, and Stillers and Birds. Even his long-time failure to look after his health the cause of his stroke is something many rural voters can relate to as rural hospitals close and health care gets harder to access. Thats on top of the rugged, self-sufficient mindset associated with rural culture that leads many especially men to forego medical care.

Fetterman doesnt try to sound like a Republican. His policy positions are left of centersometimes pretty far left of center on everything except fracking, which he supports. He favors criminal justice reform, raising the minimum wage, supporting the LGBTQ community, and legalizing dreamers. Hes even in favor of abolishing the filibuster if thats what it takes to advance a progressive agenda.

When it comes to abortion rights and unions, Fetterman has been known to use the word sacred, and he has been particularly vocal since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. When it comes to unions, even Fettermans dogs with their own Twitter account have gotten in on the action, expressing excitement about the unionization of Pittsburgh area Starbucks stores:

Given that some of these positions especially those on social and cultural issues surely rankle Pennsylvanias rural moderates, Fettermans popularity has probably risen not because of his stances, but rather in spite of them.

It may be that Fettermans personal appeal permits him to move the needle on voters political stances, pulling them along with his agenda. Fetterman may be to white working-class and rural voters in Pennsylvania what Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow is to suburban moms: the politician whose conviction, leadership and relatability brings others along on progressive positions, e.g., support for LGBTQ youth, that might otherwise give those voters pause, or cause them to balk outright. If John Fetterman believes it, they may reason, Ill give it some thought. Maybe hes got a point.

Whatever happens in the general election, Fettermans rural success in the primary raises the question: Why arent more Democratic candidates pursuing rural voters like Fetterman has?

Politicians and political consultants offer several excuses. Theres the discomfort candidates, as well as their staff, may feel when going into presumptively hostile territory. Some Democrats assume rural Americas a lost cause, not only because rural folks lean Republican, but also because of an assumption that they are yesterdays news, with little to contribute to the 21st century economy.

Plus, theres a widespread assumption that campaigns just dont get enough bang for their buck in rural places, where door knocking is inefficient because houses are scattered across the countryside rather than clustered along walkable streets. Its the same urban-centric thinking that keeps all sorts of institutions from investing in rural people and places: a belief you dont get a high enough return on investment where you cant achieve economies of scale.

If Fetterman had bought that line of thinking, none of the places he visited on Saturday, May 7 would have been deemed worth his time. None has more than 10,000 residents, and three have populations hovering around just 3,000. All are in nonmetro counties, defined as fewer than 100,000 residents. Wouldnt Fetterman have been wiser to spend that day in one of the states metropolitan areas, where critical masses of voters reside? After all, to make those five stops, Fetterman spent more than five hours driving 245 miles to get from one town to the next. And that doesnt count the three hours it took him to travel each way from his Braddock home to this part of north central Pennsylvania. How many voters did Fetterman reach on those nonmetro appearances, conventional political wisdom might ask? Did he convert any voters who werent already in his camp?

Fetterman apparently wasnt thinking about it that way. Hes running for state-wide office, which means that there are no gerrymandered districts to fall back on and a rural vote counts as much as an urban or suburban one. By visiting rural areas, the signal Fetterman sent to all rural Pennsylvanians all red Pennsylvanians is a powerful one. He saw them. He invested his time and energy in them, thus responding to a perennial rural complaint that politicians and mainstream society generally forgets or neglects them.

Its clear that this worked in the primary, and the question is whether that success will carry through to the general election. The truth is that in statewide races, rural voters can provide Democrats a margin of victory even if their town or county is ruby red. This was evident in Terry McAuliffes failed campaign for Virginia governor in 2021. McAuliffe didnt connect with rural voters, and he lost badly in nonmetro counties the areas referred to as ROVA, meaning the rest of Virginia. Both the term ROVA treating rural as remainder after that which really matters and McAuliffes neglect of rural voters suggests an urban dismissiveness of the rural. (He believed he had solidly blue NOVA, or Northern Virginia, stitched up.) Its an attitude that permitted Glenn Youngkin to gain the governors mansion; Youngkin outperformed Trumps 2020 numbers in rural places, giving him an edge McAuliffe could not overcome when he got less suburban support than hed anticipated.

Fetterman, similarly, will have to rack up huge margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh if he doesnt chip away at Republican dominance in the hinterlands. Its even possible that his strategy to cultivate support from across the state may be an added attraction to progressive metro voters; after all, the every-county approach has a unity vibe that may appeal to folks all along the rural-urban continuum.

Indeed, the election outcome could turn on mid-sized metropolitan counties like York (where Fetterman grew up) and Lancaster, where tens of thousands of votes are at stake. Those counties, considered part of the neglected T because theyre not Pittsburgh and Philly, were the last two places Fetterman visited before his stroke. More than 64,000 Democratic votes were cast in York and Lancaster counties combined in the primary. Thats more than the margin of Hillary Clintons 2016 Pennsylvania loss. Fetterman carried those counties with 80 percent and 76 percent, respectively, of the Democratic vote.

Fetterman still has his work cut out for him, of course. A national survey in February showed that two out of three rural voters view the Democratic Party unfavorably. Fettermans opponent, Republican nominee Mehmet Oz (televisions Dr. Oz), thus has some ready-made traction in the states rural reaches because of the R by his name on the ballot. Theres also the matter of Trumps endorsement of Oz, though Oz has recently been distancing himself from the former president.

With Fetterman still recovering from his stroke, hes unlikely to get back to each of Pennsylvanias counties before November. But it probably doesnt matter. Fetterman has already accumulated critical capital in the T, which may be enough to counter the toxic D by his name. And his unconventional rural strategy as much as his unconventional persona could help give him the W in a tight race, one with huge national implications for the balance of the Senate.

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Opinion | John Fetterman is Running a Test that Democrats Need to Watch - POLITICO

Things are looking up for the Donkey Party. But for how long? Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

How much difference a few weeks can make! Not that very long ago, Joe Bidens job-approval rating seemed chronically and endlessly depressed; the Democratic-controlled Congress couldnt get anything done; and all the indicators for the 2022 midterm elections looked terrible for the party, in part because its own voters were deeply disappointed with the lack of legislative productivity and a perceived absence of presidential leadership.

Now, in a series of legislative victories highlighted by the Schumer-Manchin budget-reconciliation agreement (now known as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA), Senate Democrats are suddenly walking tall, as Punchbowl News noted:

Senate Democrats have put together an impressive resume this summer, most especially during the last two months. The CHIPS Plus Act, PACT Act, Sweden and Finlands accession to NATO, gun control and reconciliation were all passed in this period, a number of them with big bipartisan majorities. All in a 50-50 Senate.

Assuming the House finishes action on the IRA later this week, its quite the late-innings home run, complete with a rebranded title that shows Democrats at least trying to address what has been the dominant issue of the midterms: inflation. Along with the Kansas abortion-rights referendum on August 2 that shows that Democrats may have an issue of competing significance to both swing and base voters, the landscape is most definitely getting brighter for Democrats. And though Biden and his party probably had little to do with it, they will get credit for falling gasoline prices if they continue to drop.

In an interview with Politico, Bidens pollster John Anzalone used a gambling analogy for the turnaround. We put our last silver dollar in our slot machine and came up big,he said. And they were sitting there with a stack of chips and are down to just one. The turnaround is unbelievable.

Spin aside, things are clearly looking better for Democrats, but the question (other than uncertainty over the future direction of crucial economic indicators) is whether midterm losses are already baked into the cake. After all, with the exception of George W. Bush in the immediate wake of 9/11, every president going back to the 1930s has lost ground in his first-term midterm election. Even very small House and Senate net losses would flip control to Republicans. And while a yearlong downward drift in Bidens job-approval rating has now been replaced with small gains, its still dreadful at the moment: 39.6 percent in the averages at both FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics. At this point in 2018, Donald Trumps RCP job-approval average was 43.4 percent, and his party was on the way to losing 41 House seats. Then, too, the direction of the country right-track, wrong-track ratio was 41-51. Now its 20-73.

Sure, Democratic base voters unhappy with earlier legislative misfires may now have a sunnier outlook on the partys congressional candidates. That, along with the growing anger at conservative Supreme Court justices and anti-abortion Republican state officials, could certainly improve Democratic turnout. But Republicans will likely retain an advantage of core swing-voter concerns that are unlikely to go away by November 8, as Senator Marco Rubio suggested in a taunting floor speech on the IRA over the weekend:

There isnt a single thing in this bill that helps working people lower the prices of groceries, or the price of gasoline, or the price of housing, or the price of clothing. There isnt a single thing in this bill thats gonna keep criminals in jail. There isnt a single thing in this bill thats going to secure our border. Those happen to be things that working people in this country care about.

That too is spin, of course, but the point is that GOP talking points really dont have to change in light of the IRAs passage.

The best empirical news for Democrats is the trajectory of the congressional generic ballot, the midterm indicator that has had the most predictive value in the past. As recently as June 13, Republicans had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP averages for this measurement of congressional voting preferences, with the expectation that the margin would widen as voting grew near. Now the generic ballot is basically tied (Republicans: 44.7 percent, Democrats: 44.6 percent). Historically, the party controlling the White House loses steam late in the midterm cycle, but at the moment, Bidens party does seem to have some momentum. And in the national contest where Democrats have most reason to be optimistic, the battle for control of the Senate, Republicans continue to suffer from candidate-quality problems that could lose them seats they probably should win in a midterm. John Fetterman keeps maintaining a solid lead over Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania; this race is for a seat currently held by the GOP. And in Georgia, Raphael Warnock continues to run comfortably ahead of Herschel Walker even before the frequently tongue-tied former football great reluctantly faces the highly eloquent incumbent Democrat in debates.

There is no way to know, much less factor in, late-breaking real-world developments that might affect the trajectory of these and other midterm contests, whether its unexpected economic news, a change of direction in the Russia-Ukraine war, or an official 2024 candidacy announcement by Trump that reminds Democrats that the wolf is still at the door. Typically, voting preferences form well before Election Day, and early voting will begin in September in some states. At present, FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans an 80 percent probability of controlling the House next year and Democrats a 59 percent chance of holding the Senate. These numbers are better for Democrats than those we saw in June and July. But dont get your hopes up or down just yet.

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Will Democrats' Legislative Success Matter in the Midterms? - New York Magazine

By Harm Venhuizen, Associated Press / Report for America

MILWAUKEE (AP) Facing critical races for governor and U.S. Senate, Democratic hopefuls in Wisconsin are hoping that their support for abortion rights in the face of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade can overcome the headwinds of a midterm election long expected to favor Republicans. But there's one key group their strategies might fail to mobilize: Black voters.

An issue with strong support from white Democrats is more complicated in the Black community, especially among churchgoers who hold more conservative views on abortion. The topic is so fraught that most community organizers avoid bringing it up.

"Among the Black Baptist church alone, that would split us in half," said David Liners, executive director of WISDOM, a faith-based organizing group with a statewide presence, when asked why his group isn't organizing around abortion. Karen Royster, spokeswoman for Milwaukee-based Souls to the Polls, called abortion "taboo" in church circles, making it difficult for faith leaders to do any sort of work around it.

Other groups, like Black Leaders Organizing Communities, "won't proactively bring up the issue" while doing voter outreach, but will discuss it if it comes up, said Angela Lang, BLOC's executive director.

It's an issue bound to get even more focus after a decisive statewide vote in heavily Republican Kansas on Aug. 2 in favor of protecting abortion access, buoying Democratic hopes the issue could galvanize voters elsewhere.

AP VoteCast shows that overall, Black voters in the 2020 presidential election were more likely than white or Hispanic voters to say abortion should usually be legal. But among those identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party, things looked different: White Democrats were more likely than either Black or Hispanic Democrats to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, 88% to 77% to 76%.

Valerie Langston, a 64-year-old Milwaukee woman who is Black, backs Democrats and supports abortion rights. She said she's afraid to bring up the issue with friends because she has occasionally been surprised to learn that some of them are anti-abortion.

"They're still going to vote Democrat even if they don't agree with abortion," she said.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who won election four years ago by just over 1 percentage point, said he isn't worried about voter enthusiasm. He has noted that he has vetoed nine bills from the Republican-controlled Legislature that would have restricted abortion access. At a news conference, he projected confidence that the issue will carry him to reelection.

"I don't think theres going to be any trouble," Evers said when asked if he thought voters with varied views on abortion might not be motivated to support him.

Doctors in Wisconsin have stopped providing abortions after the Supreme Court's ruling due to an 1849 ban that Republican lawmakers have said they want to update. Anti-abortion groups have said they'll work to clarify the law to defend against challenges.

State Sen. La Tonya Johnson, a Black Democrat who represents a majority-Black district in Milwaukee, noted many voters are focused on economic concerns. She said she hasn't seen groups going door-to-door to talk about abortion rights, even though Black women are more likely than any other group to obtain an abortion, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party's engagement teams that work directly with voters of color year-round prefer to take conversations where voters lead them, spokeswoman Iris Riis said. When it comes to abortion, "It's not the only thing we're talking to voters about, but we are talking about it," she said.

Shakya Cherry-Donaldson, executive director of 1000 Women Strong, a national political organizing group focused on issues that matter to Black women, favors a more direct approach. The key is to focus on the idea that "we have to have autonomy from the state," she said a message that resonates enough with a historically marginalized community to overcome personal and religious views on the morality of abortion.

"The framing of our messaging is that we cannot go back, only forward. Civil rights were won for all of us," Cherry-Donaldson said.

But her group is not in Wisconsin in 2022, focusing its efforts in seven other states where they were able to staff and fund their work.

Paru Shah, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee whose work focuses on race, ethnicity and politics, said Democrats would do well to make sure they are messaging on issues like crime and voting rights rather than focus on one particular issue like abortion.

"There isn't a lot of single-issue voting happening among Democrats in general, but especially among Black women who have kind of been the backbone of Democratic turnout for at least the last 10 years," said Shah.

The GOP's strategy and messaging to reach Black voters on abortion will be the same in the midterm as it's been for decades.

"What we will do is explain the inordinate I would say even lopsided access to abortion that's being pushed on African American women," said Gerard Randall, chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party's African American Council.

"They will hear certainly from the pulpits in many of their churches a similar message of restraint when it comes to accessing abortions," he said.

Still, Wisconsin Democrats see the issue as key to winning both the governor's race and the U.S. Senate race in the fall.

Polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found most people in the United States want Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide and that overwhelming majorities also think states should allow abortion in specific cases, including for a woman's health and for rape.

The Democratic front-runner in Wisconsin's Senate race, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is Black, emphasizes abortion access as a civil right. In his latest television ad, Barnes, who grew up in Milwaukee, and his mother talk about her decision to end a complicated pregnancy. LaJuan Barnes highlights that she was able to choose: "It was my decision, not some politicians'."

Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Venhuizen on Twitter.

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Democratic candidates rally around abortion are they reaching Black voters? - PBS Wisconsin

Republican primary voters upended their partys establishment in Wisconsin on Tuesday, choosing a Trump-backed candidate for governor who has entertained overturning the 2020 election results to take on Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, in one of the countrys most consequential November contests.

Tim Michels, a wealthy construction magnate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who had support from former Gov. Scott Walker, former Vice President Mike Pence and dozens of state legislators, as well as the states largest business organizations.

And Mr. Trumps followers gave a serious scare to the powerful Republican speaker of the State Assembly, Robin Vos. In recent weeks, Mr. Vos had become the former presidents chief antagonist among Wisconsin Republicans because he refused to indulge Mr. Trumps false claims that the 2020 results can still be decertified.

Mr. Vos inched past a far-right challenger and political neophyte who was desperately short on money but was buoyed by a Trump endorsement just a week before the primary.

Mr. Michels won by predicating his entire campaign on his support from Mr. Trump, highlighting that distinction in nearly all of his millions of dollars of self-funded television advertising and reminding voters about it during campaign stops and debates.

Id like to thank President Trump for his support, for his endorsement, Mr. Michels said in victory remarks at his campaign headquarters in Waukesha, Wis. It was a tremendous validation of our meteoric rise in this campaign. He knows that we need new leadership and he sees a lot of similarities.

During the primary, Mr. Michels, 60, subscribed to some of Mr. Trumps most outlandish conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He pledged to consider signing legislation that would overturn Mr. Trumps defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Wisconsin and withdraw the states 10 electoral votes a move that has no basis in state or federal law.

But on Tuesday night, Mr. Michels did not mention the 2020 election or the states voting laws an issue that just last week he said he was very, very fired up about.

Mr. Michels has projected a tough-on-crime stance, pledging to fire the Democratic district attorney in Milwaukee, hire more police officers and increase prison sentences for gun-related crimes. He also opposes abortion, which is now illegal in Wisconsin under an 1849 law and is likely to remain that way under the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Now Mr. Michels will take on Mr. Evers, who has cast himself as a defender of fair elections and has vetoed more than a dozen bills passed by Legislature that would have restricted voting.

Mr. Michels has proposed replacing the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission with a body made up of one member from each of the states gerrymandered congressional districts a way for Republicans to maintain control of the states election apparatus for at least the next decade.

Mr. Evers has shattered fund-raising records in Wisconsin, raising more than $10 million through July despite worries among Democrats that he does not generate enough excitement among the partys base. Mr. Michels has spent more than $8 million of his own money since joining the race in April, and he is likely to invest even more in the general election.

While Mr. Michels prevailed, Mr. Trump ultimately failed to displace Mr. Vos, who has been in the Legislature since 2005 and served as speaker since 2013, wielding more influence than any other Republican in the state in recent years.

After pressuring Mr. Vos over the 2020 election in public and private for months, last week Mr. Trump endorsed his long-shot challenger, Adam Steen. A small-time real estate investor, Mr. Steen had no paid staff and barely raised enough money to print and mail campaign literature.

The race was far closer than Wisconsin analysts had expected, with Mr. Steen appearing to come within several hundred votes of toppling Mr. Vos, a testament to the power of the Trump endorsement and the enduring false belief that the 2020 election can still be rolled back.

Over the last year, Mr. Vos tried entertaining Mr. Trumps wildest conspiracy theories about the 2020 election without completely giving in to the lies. When the former president demanded last summer that the state review its election results, Mr. Vos instead appointed a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman, to pursue a state-funded investigation of his own.

The Gableman investigation served as an albatross for Mr. Vos when Mr. Gableman, in March, falsely suggested that state legislators could decertify the 2020 election. Mr. Vos resisted the proposal, including in multiple conversations with the former president.

A week ago, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Steen, who by that point had raised less than $40,000, barely enough to print and mail campaign literature to his district in western Racine County. Last weekend, Mr. Gableman turned on his political patron and joined Mr. Trump in endorsing Mr. Steen.

Mr. Vos, at his victory party, called Mr. Gableman an embarrassment to the state and said he would review the status of the former justices ongoing investigation next week.

The primaries on Tuesday in Wisconsin and three other states Minnesota, Connecticut and Vermont came a day after the F.B.I. conducted a search of Mr. Trumps home in Florida, setting off fury from Republicans nationwide. Mr. Michels called the search a political witch hunt, while Ms. Kleefisch said it was shocking and unprecedented.

On the Democratic side in Wisconsin, the party settled its most consequential primary two weeks ago, when three leading candidates dropped out and endorsed Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in the contest to face Senator Ron Johnson, a two-term Republican.

The Barnes-Johnson matchup is expected to be one of the nations hardest-fought Senate races. Mr. Johnson, the only incumbent Republican senator running in a state Mr. Biden carried in 2020, is a top target of Democrats who point to his role as a leading amplifier of misinformation about the pandemic and American elections.

In Minnesotas race for governor, Republicans nominated Dr. Scott Jensen, a former state senator who rose to prominence by opposing pandemic mitigation efforts. His campaign may test the appetite for anti-abortion politics in Democratic states. His running mate, Matt Birk, a former professional football player, is one of Minnesotas most prominent proponents of restricting abortion rights.

Representative Ilhan Omar, one of the leading progressives in the House, narrowly survived a Democratic primary challenge to her Minneapolis seat from Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis City Council member backed by several local mayors who have been at odds with Ms. Omar since she was first elected in 2018.

In Vermont, Democrats chose Becca Balint, a state senator backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, to fill the states lone House seat. Ms. Balint defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, who was endorsed by Senator Patrick Leahy.

The House seat was open because of Mr. Leahys retirement after eight terms. Representative Peter Welch gave it up to replace the senator, and coasted to victory in the Senate primary.

Ms. Balint, the president of the Vermont Senate, has presented herself a progressive fighter in Mr. Sanderss image. Ms. Gray campaigned as a liberal conciliator, more willing to work among the moderate figures in her party.

And in Connecticuts Republican primary for Senate, voters chose Leora Levy, a Cuban-born Republican National Committee member who was endorsed by Mr. Trump. She defeated Themis Klarides, a former minority leader of the Connecticut House who was backed by party moderates.

But Ms. Levy is not expected to mount a competitive challenge to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat seeking his third term.

When Ms. Kleefisch announced her bid for governor of Wisconsin in September 2021, she promoted herself as the inheritor of the legacy of Mr. Walker with whom she served before Mr. Evers ousted them in 2018 and gathered endorsements from national Republicans like Mr. Pence and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

But she failed to consolidate support from Mr. Trumps most devoted supporters, who searched for an alternative candidate for months.

Then, in April, Mr. Michels entered the race. Soon after in a relationship brokered by Reince Priebus, Mr. Trumps Wisconsin-born former chief of staff the former president endorsed Mr. Michels, whose fortune stems from a construction company he and his brothers inherited from their father that had a contract to help construct the Keystone XL pipeline before it was canceled by Mr. Biden.

Mr. Michels, who was the 2004 Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, has spent much of the time since then living in New York and Connecticut, where he owns a $17 million estate and his children attended school. Mr. Michels continued to maintain a Wisconsin residence and has voted regularly in the state, though he skipped the 2016 presidential primary, when Mr. Trump was first on the ballot.

From the start, choosing Mr. Michels was rooted in Mr. Trumps grievance about his 2020 loss in Wisconsin.

When Mr. Michels met with Mr. Trump at his Florida estate, the former president discussed tweets of photos that showed Ms. Kleefischs then-16-year-old daughter going to a high school homecoming dance with the son of Brian Hagedorn, a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. Mr. Trump and his Wisconsin supporters hold a grudge against Justice Hagedorn because he cast the deciding vote in rejecting Mr. Trumps legal efforts to overturn the election results in December 2020.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on Mr. Trumps interest in the photos.

While Mr. Michels never fully endorsed Mr. Trumps futile obsession with decertifying the 2020 results, he toyed with the prospect enough to allow voters to believe that he would try. In the final week before Tuesdays primary, Mr. Michels said he would consider signing legislation to claw back Wisconsins 10 electoral votes something for which there is no legal mechanism.

Ms. Kleefisch has said repeatedly that it is impossible to undo the election.

Originally posted here:

Primary Elections: Live Race Calls and Updates - The New York Times

The Democratic Party establishment has not given up the fight to keep the Green Party off North Carolina's 2022 ballot. In an emergency motion filed today with the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the North Carolina Democratic Party and lawyers from the powerful, Washington-based Elias Law Group argued that a lower court ruling letting the Greens on the ballot would undermine the state's orderly political process.

The Green Party has been trying to gain access to this year's ballot through the petition process, which meant submitting at least 13,865 valid signatures, validated by elections officials at the county and state levels, from registered North Carolina voters. Initially, at a June 30 meeting, the Democratic majority on the bipartisan, five-member State Board of Elections, voted 3-2 to deny certification pending further investigation into allegations of fraud in the Green Party's petition campaign.

Then, at an Aug. 1 meeting, board staff presented preliminary findings of the investigation. The probe turned up several hundred fraudulent signatures, tied to outside contractors hired by the Green Party to collect signatures, and sworn affidavits from some voters who stated they had not actually signed the petitions and others who claimed they had been misled about what they were signing.

Still, at that same meeting, the state elections board's general counsel said that the Green Party had exceeded its target number of valid signatures by more than 1,600, and the board voted unanimously to certify the Green Party for this year.

Greens candidate calls party certification a 'win for democracy'

Certification meant that North Carolina voters wishing to affiliate with the Greens could begin doing so through the registration process, and it meant that N.C. Green Party candidate Matthew Hoh could get into the race to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr.

"This was a win for democracy and this was a win for North Carolina voters because now North Carolina voters can vote for someone who is in favor of universal health care, affordable housing, jobs, an end to the war on drugs, et cetera," Hoh declared Monday at a news conference in front of the Terry Sanford Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, in Raleigh.

Hoh and other Green Party officials and supporters turned out to hail U.S. District Court Judge James Dever III's order from last week instructing the state elections board to add Green Party candidates to the 2022 ballot even though the statutory July 1 deadline for doing so had passed.

Democrats had sought to block Green Party access to the ballot through a state court but Judge Dever's order from last Friday rendered that state case moot.

But Democrats argued in their 4th Circuit emergency motion that adding the Greens to the ballot at this late juncture would cause them irreparable harm "by forcing them to compete with a party that did not comply with the statutory deadline for naming candidates" requiring the Democratic Party to "expend party resources they would otherwise use for other purposes."

High stakes, slim margins in North Carolina's U.S. Senate race

North Carolina's U.S. Senate race promises to be an expensive, nationally-watched contest. The race's headline candidates are Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who could become North Carolina's first Black U.S. senator, and Republican Congressman Ted Budd, a hard-right gun shop owner and endorsee of Donald Trump. Libertarian Shannon Bray is also on the ballot.

The stakes in this race are high and the finish between Beasley and Budd promises to be tight, according to Prof. Chris Cooper, a political scientist and director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University. According to conventional wisdom, Cooper said, Green Party candidates tend to draw votes away from Democrats and that could make a difference come November.

"The polling has been pretty consistent here," Cooper said. "This is not a race that either candidate is going to run away with, this is a race that will be decided at the margins."

Indeed, Oliver Hall, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Competitive Democracy and counsel for the North Carolina Green Party, says the Democratic Party's efforts to block the Greens' ballot access are about hardball politics, not election integrity.

"The Democrats' last-ditch appeal has no basis in fact or law, which is why the State Board of Elections certified the Green Party for the ballot after conducting an exhaustive investigation, and why Judge Dever issued his soundly reasoned order," Hall said in an emailed response to WUNC.

"The Democrats have only one interest," Hall said, "to suppress voter choice by interfering with my clients' First Amendment rights and those of all North Carolina voters who want and deserve meaningful choices in competitive elections."

Unless the Fourth Circuit intervenes, the State Board of Elections will be adding the Greens to the 2022 ballot per Judge Dever's order.

See the article here:

NC Democrats are not done trying to keep the Green Party off the 2022 ballot - WFAE

Democratic Michigan congressional nominee Robert Lorinser claimed it could be proper and ethical for children suffering from a terminal illness to receive a medically assisted suicide, according to a Facebook post obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

[S]uch a difficult issue -DYING, Lorinser, who is running to unseat Republican Rep. Jack Bergman in November and is also a doctor, wrote on Facebook on Oct. 20, 2018. Children are harder than dying after a long life. Calling it medical assisting dying I like. When, who, howdevil is in the details.

Calling it suicide or killing is definitely negative and wrong. [sic] Calling it medical assisting dying may obscure the issue. A suffering child with a terminal illness say within weeks or months could it be proper and ethical. I think so, Lorinser wrote in the post, which has since been made private, thus shielded from public view.

Medically assisted suicide is the process by which a patient agrees a physician may end their life often by administering a lethal dose of drugs. (RELATED: Activist Doctors Fight To Legalize Assisted Suicide In Massachusetts)

Lorinser, who is the medical director for the Marquette County Health Department in Michigan, was responding to a 2018 article in the Daily Wire titled HORROR: Toronto Hospital Preps Assisted Suicide For Children, Might Not Inform Parents. The article is about doctors at a Canadian hospital who rolled out plans for allowing those under 18 years of age to receive medically assisted suicide in the near future.

Not in any case when the docs initiate this action without even contacting parents, a Facebook user, whose name the DCNF has redacted for their privacy, responded to Lorinser. Murder.

Diane Coleman, president and CEO of Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group that opposes legalization of assisted suicide, told the DCNF the practice is a form of discrimination.

Its discrimination because people with chronic health conditions and disabilities, whether or not theyre labeled terminal, are devalued in society, said Coleman.

Screenshot/Facebook/Bob Lorinser

Lorinser advanced unopposed in the Democratic primary on Aug. 2 for Michigans 1st Congressional District. The district is solid Republican, according to Politico, and a Democratic member has not been elected there since 2008.

Dr. Fauci wannabe Bob Lorinser sincerely thinks he is God, and this revelation further proves that point, a campaign spokesman for Bergman told the DCNF. Democrats in the First District continue putting up terribly radical and flawed candidates.

Last election cycle they put up a wife-beater, and now the same team puts up a doctor with viewpoints so radical they would make Dr. [Jack] Kevorkian blush, said the spokesman, alluding to Dana Ferguson, a Democrat who ran in 2020 against Bergman and was arrested for alleged domestic violence against his ex-wife. Bob Lorinser should withdraw from the race in disgrace.

Lorinsers campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Candidate Claimed Assisted Suicide Could Be 'Proper And Ethical' For Terminally Ill Children - Daily Caller

As Democrats celebrated a victory with the Senate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, some of Colorados highest-profile Republicans argued Tuesday that its a bad deal for Coloradans.

Republican candidates and party leaders gathered Tuesday to launch into the final three months of the midterm election season and took the chance to repudiate the Democrats federal legislation on health care, climate, and taxation.

It goes against everything that we believe in here in Colorado and trying to make it more affordable, Senate candidate Joe ODea said of the IRA. I don't know why they're calling it an Inflation Reduction Act Its a tax.

The imminent passage of the bill has given Democrats a feeling of momentum after months of rising concern over inflation and a failure to achieve many of President Joe Bidens priorities.

The bill would spend about $433 billion to address climate change and shift the country away from fossil fuels. It would be paid for with new taxes on corporations, but also by beefing up enforcement of the existing tax code.

The bill includes some $80 billion to boost the IRS, including by hiring more agents to audit people and corporations. Supporters of the bill say that new workforce will be aimed at ensuring wealthy people and businesses arent avoiding their tax obligations. But ODea and other Republicans argue it and other measures will amount to more tax enforcement against the middle class.

If they have to hire 87,000 IRS agents to collect that tax from working Americans, it's a tax, ODea said.

The claim of 87,000 new IRS agents has circulated widely among Republicans and some news publications, but administration officials have told reporters claim its not accurate.

The agency has outlined plans to hire more than 80,000 employees over a decade with new funding, but "the majority of those will be filling open vacancies, according to a Treasury Department spokesperson. Many of the employees will work in areas like customer service, not enforcement, the publication reported. But about $46 billion of the infusion will go toward tax enforcement, according to The Washington Post.

"The majority of new employees will replace the standard level of staff departures over the next few years. New staff will be hired to improve taxpayer services and (add) experienced auditors who can take on corporate and high-end tax evaders, without increasing audit rates relative to historical norms for people earning under $400,000 each year," read a statement from the Treasury Department to CPR News.

In a letter to the Senate, IRS commissioner Charles Rettig wrote that the new spending is absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.

New auditors will focus on (l)arge corporate and high-net-worth taxpayers (that) often engage teams of sophisticated representatives who pursue unsettled or sometimes questionable interpretations of tax law, the letter continued.

Staffing levels at the IRS are 17 percent lower today than in 2010, with an even sharper drop for enforcement employees, The Washington Post reported. A deputy Treasury Department Secretary told NPR that understaffing and old technology mean the agency is missing out on hundreds of billions in uncollected taxes this year.

ODeas spokesman, Kyle Kohli, said it was improbable that the agency could find that much new revenue without hitting the middle class.

GOP House candidates are also critical of the Democratic bill. Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, the candidate in CO-8, and Eric Aadland, whos running in CO-7, both said if elected theyd want to revisit the bill, including its provisions regarding prescription drug pricing.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare would use its market power to negotiate lower rates on some prescription drugs and would penalize companies that raise prices more than the rate of inflation. Kirkmeyer worries it will lead to reduced investment in new medicines. Basically, they're not going to make new drugs. They may not even produce certain drugs, she said.

Aadland added he does want transparency in drug pricing, but thinks the costs could be addressed by stopping onerous government regulation of companies.

As for the efforts to tackle climate change in the bill, Aadland argued it doesnt include the right kind of energy policy. He said the subsidies and tax incentives for people to transition to renewable energy, such as help buying electric vehicles and solar panels, would only really benefit the wealthy individuals.

The bill is projected to lower emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It would also fine companies for exceeding methane emissions from oil and gas drilling. But in a concession to oil and gas states, the bill would also require the administration to continue to hold new oil and gas leasing auctions.

Beyond their specific complaints, Republicans hammered the bill for not doing what the title says it would: reduce inflation. The Congressional Budget Offices analysis of the bill shows it would have little effect on inflation in the near term, but experts add if the bill can reduce health care costs, it could hold down inflation in the long term.

The GOP press conference went far beyond the new Democratic legislation. Also speaking were gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl; attorney general candidate John Kellner; secretary of state candidate Pam Anderson; education board candidate Dan Maloit; and treasurer candidate Lang Sias.

They generally sought to tie Colorado Democrats to Biden, who remains deeply unpopular. They blamed the party, which has held Colorado in Colorado for the past four years, for inflation, crime and the new fees that Democrats created to pay for priorities like transportation.

(Governor) Jared Polis has decided to fight for Joe Biden and the Democrat failed policies. He's fighting for his own political career, for his own American Dream to be president and destroy our country just like he's destroying Colorado, Ganahl said.

In a statement, Colorado Democratic Party Chair Morgan Carroll said her party has offered real solutions on the state and federal levels. Democrats have touted that they are saving people money through measures like paying out TABOR refunds several months early and temporarily delaying a new gas fee.

In her statement, Carroll said the GOP was pursuing a far-right agenda of taking away the freedom from women to make their own decisions, denying climate change, and growing tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and make things tougher for working families.

Election day is Nov. 8, but ballots will be mailed almost a month early.

CPRs Caitlyn Kim contributed to this reporting.

Editor's note: This article was update on Aug. 9 with comment from the Department of the Treasury.

Continued here:

Colorado Republicans enter the final stretch of 2022 by uniting against the Democrats' agenda - Colorado Public Radio