Category Archives: Democrat

It's the latest indication that Democrats' hopes to win a Senate seat in Kansas for the first time since 1932 rest largely on Kobach winning the primary, hoping he would amount to the weakest candidate in a difficult general election against their candidate, state Sen. Barbara Bollier. And if Democrats take the Kansas seat, they will be in a strong position to win back the Senate majority, which currently stands at a 53-47 GOP advantage.

The new group, called the Sunflower State PAC, has quietly reserved $850,000 for ads just this week alone, according to data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The ad, reviewed by CNN, bashes Republican US Rep. Roger Marshall as a "phony" and "soft on Trump" and notes that Kobach is called "too conservative" who "won't compromise on building a wall" or "getting tough on China."

Sunflower State formed just this week, filing a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission on July 13. By forming shortly after the end of the second quarter, on June 30, the group could avoid disclosing any information about its donors until the end of the third quarter, all the way in September, even if it spends millions between now and then. Even if the group chooses to file more regular monthly reports with the FEC, it won't have to disclose donors until late August, weeks after the Kansas primary on August 4.

And the group quickly hit the airwaves after forming. One day after it filed initial paperwork with the FEC, the group placed the $850,000 TV ad reservation set to run this week on broadcast and cable in Kansas.

The group placed its reservations through Old Town Media LLC, a media firm that has also placed nearly $4 million of ad reservations for Unite The Country, the super PAC supporting former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

On its FEC forms, the group lists Amalgamated Bank as its financial institution, a company that supports progressive causes and lists as its clients, the Democratic National Committee, environmental groups, labor unions, Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Biden Foundation.

An individual listed as the treasurer for Sunflower State, Jim Jesse, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment. Asked about its ties to Democrats, the group responded via email to CNN simply saying: "Sunflower State is focused on educating voters about the US Senate race in Kansas and is operating in accordance with all federal election laws."

It's unclear if the group has ties to other major Democratic players, including the main Senate Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, which is aligned with Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC did not respond to inquiries seeking comment about the new Kansas outfit.

Eric Pahls, campaign manager for Marshall, argued the reason why the group is attacking the candidate is because Democrats are "terrified of him."

"This is not a new phenomenon," Pahls said in a statement, arguing the strategy at hallmarks of a past Senate race that led to the reelection of then-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri. "In 2012, national Democrats poured money into the Missouri Senate Race to nominate flawed candidate Todd Akin, who was handily defeated by Claire McCaskill. Their ad from 2012 closely mirrors this message, and they view Kobach as even more easily beatable."

A spokesperson for Kobach didn't respond to a request for comment.

It is not the only outside group with Kobach on its mind -- nor is it the only time that an outside group has gotten involved in the opposing party's primary.

A Republican-aligned group, Plains PAC, formed last week and announced a $3 million ad campaign against Kobach in an effort to derail his candidacy. And earlier this year in North Carolina, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to prop up a Democratic candidate that the party believed would be weaker in the general election, though that candidate ultimately lost in the Democratic primary.

In Kansas, Kobach is facing 10 Republican candidates including his top rival, Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist who represents the same solidly Republican, farm-focused district from which former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, Sen. Jerry Moran and the retiring Sen. Pat Roberts built the base of their power.

Other GOP candidates include Bob Hamilton, who owns a plumbing company, and Dave Lindstrom, a former Kansas City Chiefs player and businessman.

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Democratic-allied group gives a boost to conservative Kobach in Kansas Senate primary - CNN

But theres a problem with this narrative: Watson would later go on to help refound the Ku Klux Klan, though you wont learn about that here. Frank mentions the South Carolina demagogue Ben Tillman without noting that only a few years earlier, Pitchfork Ben had stood high in the populist pantheon. He writes glowingly of William Jennings Bryan, the Democrat whom the Populist Party endorsed for president in 1896, but does not remind the reader that Bryan ended his career ranting about the evils of modern science in the Scopes monkey trial. Demagogy may not have been the populists true nature; their heroism, and tragedy, were real. But how, given this history, can one wholly dismiss the kinship between the populists and the followers of Orban and Trump? Is it really a sign of elitism and hostility to democracy to regard invocations of the people, whether by right-wing nationalists or left-wing activists, as dangerous invitations to exclude the not-people?

Franks purpose here is explicitly polemical: He wants to realign history in order to force us to reimagine the present. The great cleavage of the past century, he insists, is not between progress and reaction, or liberal and conservative, but between ordinary people and the elite of both parties. Thus Franklin Roosevelt was a populist while progressive Teddy Roosevelt was an agent of reaction even though Franklin traced his own ideological descent to Teddy as well as to Jefferson.

In Franks view, Bernies with the people, and the Democratic establishment the Biden faction is in the pocket of the fat cats. The bottom line is class. But this poses another problem for Frank, because even before our Black Lives Matter moment much of the activist left cared less about class than about issues of identity. Frank treats identity politics as yet another species of elitism. Who, then, are the people? Are they the older working-class African-Americans who put Biden over the top in the Democratic primaries? Apparently not. But it was the white working class that provided Donald Trump with his margin of victory in 2016. How could that be? These Trump voters were, Frank explains as he did in his earlier book on Kansas beguiled by the phony populism of the right. By bad populism, not good populism.

Yet many of the Democratic leaders and policy experts whom Frank accuses of antipopulism now agree that liberal centrism has reached a dead end. The combination of the calls for racial justice that have filled our streets and the need for enormous government intervention in the face of the coronavirus pandemic will only hasten that leftward movement. Exhibit A would be Gene Sperling, a former senior economic official in the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In Economic Dignity, this consummate insider lays out an agenda closer to Sanders than to Biden. Sperling writes of forces of domination and humiliation that define the lives of many low-wage earners. Unorganized workers, he argues, need labor rights and the full panoply of social protections; unionized workers need a voice in corporate affairs, as they enjoy in places like Sweden. Though Sperling prefers direct payments to people suffering dislocation to a wholly universal basic income, in most respects he has gone full Nordic.

Sperling does not thoroughly explain, or even acknowledge, his own conversion; he appears to be one of the many centrists who were shaken out of their neoliberal faith in the marketplace by the 2016 election. In seeking some orienting principle beyond economic growth and incremental redistribution, Sperling has landed on the idea, unavoidably amorphous, of dignity. Liberals tend to look on talk of values as a cynical distraction from matters of economic justice; that is, in fact, the central theme of Whats the Matter With Kansas? Yet Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in peoples deepest aspirations in their sense of purpose and self-worth.

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The Fight Over the Future of the Democratic Party - The New York Times

As a Navy combat pilot, Mark Kelly landed fighter jets on aircraft carriers hundreds of times. He flew twenty-two million miles in space as a NASA astronaut, orbiting Earth eight hundred and fifty-four times. His toughest trip may have been his last. In May of 2011, he rocketed to the International Space Station, a few months after his wife, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, was gravely wounded by a would-be assassins bullet while she was meeting with constituents in Tucson. During that mission, which delivered a fifteen-thousand-pound cosmic-particle detector designed to study the formation of the universe, Kelly greeted Giffords by spelling out Its a Beautiful Day in letters that drifted through the zero-gravity air.

Kelly left NASA after that flight, to devote himself to Giffordss recovery and, soon after, to building a nonprofit advocacy organization for gun safety, now called Giffords. He emerged in countless interviews, often with his wife by his side, as a genial and respectful partner in a cause that mattered to both of them, partly because they themselves own guns. In the 2018 election cycle, Giffords and other national gun-safety groups outspent the National Rifle Association, and more than eighty per cent of the candidates whom Giffords endorsed went on to victory. As Arizona sputtered through fractious policy debates and coped with the death of one Republican senator (John McCain) and the departure of another (Jeff Flake), Democrats often asked Kelly to run for office. Kelly demurred. He said he felt good about his career and his choices, although he once told an interviewer, I wish I couldve gone to Mars.

This campaign cycle, with control of the U.S. Senate at stake, he changed his mind and now finds himself well ahead of the Republican incumbent, Martha McSally, herself a former fighter pilot, who has aligned herself closely with the increasingly unpopular President Trump. Polls show Joe Biden ahead of Trump in a state that has been carried by only one Democratic Presidential candidateBill Clinton, in 1996in the past seventy-two years. As Flake put it to me, Arizona is as much the state to watch as Wisconsin. Suburban women, minorities, millennialssome of whom, particularly in the millennial camp, have been walking away from the Party for a whileare now in a dead sprint.

Among many factors is the halting response to the COVID-19 crisis by Trump and Arizonas Republican governor, Doug Ducey. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released last week found that sixty-seven per cent of Americans disapprove of Trumps handling of the pandemic. In a separate survey, an academic consortium reported that Ducey has a thirty-two-per-cent approval rate for his handling of COVID-19, the lowest of any governor in the country. Ducey took the pandemic threat lightly and raced to reopen the state, only to see confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb. On July 1st, he asked the Trump Administration to send hundreds of reinforcements for the states health workers. Aides have warned Trump that he is in trouble in Arizona, which he won by less than four points in 2016, just four years after Mitt Romney won by nine. But when I asked the Trump campaign to discuss its Arizona efforts, the spokesperson Samantha Zager sounded unconcerned. She replied, by e-mail, that Republicans have held over two thousand events during the 2020 election cycle and are seeing remarkable enthusiasm from Arizona voters, while Joe Bidens campaign seems to have just located Arizona on a map.

Much can happen in four months, but to look at this moment in freeze-frame is to see Trump, McSally, and any number of Republicans across the country struggling to find a message. Amid a pandemic that has killed more than a hundred and thirty thousand people in the United States and pushed more than forty million workers to file for unemployment, Trump seems to have abandoned his original 2020 slogan, Keep America Great, while offering neither explanation nor apology for his handling of the coronavirus and the economic fallout. His principal answer to the Black Lives Matter protests that have spread from cities into the largely white towns that helped produce his Electoral College majority has been to tweet, in all caps, LAW & ORDER! Flake, for one, does not think that Trumps tough talk, including his vilification of undocumented immigrants and his trade wars, will work. Anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy, Flake said. You can, in an election here or there, drill down on the base and pull out a win. But it runs its course, and you end up in a demographic cul de sac.

If Republicans are headed toward a reckoning in November, Arizona offers warning signals for a beleaguered party that is defending seats up and down the ballot for the second election cycle in a row. Energized Democrats have spent years building a grassroots operation, especially in the big cities that often determine statewide success. Its one of those states thats moving our direction little by little, Josh Schwerin, the communications director of Priorities USA, a pro-Biden super-PAC that is running an ad accusing Trump of failing America, said. Schwerin reported that the organization plans to spend eleven million dollars on advertising in Arizona before Election Day. The Lincoln Project, an increasingly high-profile effort led by Republicans who aim to defeat Trump and many of his supporters in the Senate, is running withering ads in Arizona, targeting Trump and McSally.

One sign of change is visible in voter registration, which has grown by twenty-five per cent since 2012. During that time, Democrats have cut the Republican registration lead in half, with about one-third of Arizonans registering as independents. Significantly, Latino voter registration and turnout have increased, favoring Democrats. An Arizona State University poll, conducted in March, before Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee, showed a wide preference among Latino voters for Kelly and any Democrat running against Trump. An intensification of old-fashioned canvassing helped. We know that we can improve voter turnout and that, over time, once you get people voting, theyll continue to vote, Eric Meyer, the former Democratic leader in the state House, told me.

On a Sunday afternoon in June, two Democratic candidates for state representative on Meyers old legislative turf, District 28, held a Zoom call to mobilize volunteers. For more than ninety minutes, forty people discussed issues ranging from health care to the challenge of attracting fence-sitting Republicans. One of the candidates was Kelli Butler, who won office on November 8, 2016, the night that Trump stunned Hillary Clinton. I thought it was going to be this wonderful election party, and I felt like Id boarded the Titanic, Butler told me. Yet Trumps election had a silver lining for Democrats in her district, which includes the prosperous Paradise Valley and parts of North Central Phoenix: it inspired anti-Republican activism. Just a huge jump of people, she said. Christine Marsh, a high-school English teacher who was once Arizonas teacher of the year, was the other candidate on the Zoom call. She is in a rematch of the 2018 state-senate race, when she came within two hundred and sixty-seven votes of defeating the incumbent, a moderate Republican named Kate Brophy McGee. To win this time, Marsh said, her team has helped register four thousand more Democrats and is making about two thousand phone calls a week.

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Democrats Are Optimistic in Arizona - The New Yorker

Illustration by Steve Brodner.

Its looking pretty good for Joe Biden. Polls have been putting the presumptive Democratic nominee well ahead of President Trump in the 2020 campaign, and a New York Times survey in late June saw Biden opening up a comfortable lead in each of the half-dozen battleground states that will decide things in November. But before Democrats start making too many plans for undoing the damage done by four years of Donald Trump, let alone for the big structural change that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and other progressives propose, they need to consider an unfortunate truth.1Ad Policy

If Biden is elected but Republicans maintain control of the Senate, he will enter office as a lame-duck president. After the inaugural celebrations are done, Biden will settle into a dysfunctional relationship in which Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will determine precisely how ambitious his agenda can be. If we remove Trump but we dont remove McConnell, people need to understand how frustrating that will be, says People for the American Way president Ben Jealous. What good will a new president be if we cant get new laws passed?2

This prospect is so depressing that Democrats do not rush to discuss it. They focus on the feel-good politics of a presidential race that seems to be going well rather than the stark reality that ending mass unemployment, expanding health care, addressing the climate crisis, and implementing genuine criminal justice reform will be all but impossible with a Republican-led Senate.3

Democrats need to confront this reality. In a moment of tremendous instability and potential for progress, old expectations about what is possible have to be discarded in favor of a sense of mission that seeks to mobilize new voters and increase turnout everywhere. A winning strategy for November has to be grounded in a deep recognition of the fact that the combination of a Democratic president and a Republican Senate is fraught with peril. A capable Senate minority leader who is opposed to the president can cause a lot of problems for that president, says Rebecca Katz, who served as a top aide to former Senate majority leader Harry Reid. A capable Senate majority leader can stop almost anything.4 MORE FROM John Nichols

Like it or not, McConnell is capable. The most honest political history of the 2010s would be a biography of the Kentucky Republican, whose mastery of the Senates rules and politics has enabled him to disempower an honorable Democratic president and to empower a dishonorable Republican one. McConnell is the reason Judge Merrick Garland is not on the Supreme Court, while Brett Kavanaugh is busy tipping the balance to the right on 5-4 decisions. And the high court is just the tip of the iceberg. When McConnell appeared on Sean Hannitys Fox News show last year, the two men talked about the federal courts. I was shocked that former President Obama left so many vacancies and didnt try to fill those positions, Hannity said. McConnell chortled in response. Ill tell you why, he said. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. The Senate majority leader maintained his grip on power after Trumps inauguration, steering the new presidents rogues gallery of judicial picks through the confirmation process and then ensuring that Trump had nothing to fear even after Democrats took control of the House and made a credible case for impeachment. Lets be very clear, says Robert Reich, a labor secretary under Bill Clinton, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are sacrificing the worlds greatest deliberative body to serve their Dear Leader.5

If Trump is defeated while McConnell retains his seat and remains majority leader, the Kentuckian will no longer have to provide cover for an erratic president, but that doesnt mean proper orderas least as it is understood in civics bookswill be restored. Even before Trump began remaking the Republican Party in his image, McConnell had remade the Senate GOP as a fully owned subsidiary of the corporate interests and billionaire donors that fund campaigns. Thats not going to change if Biden is elected, despite the dim-witted fantasy the former vice president entertains about sitting down with a former Senate colleague to work things out.6Current Issue

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McConnell and the Senate Republicans will put the brakes on every meaningful policy initiative that Biden advances. Hundreds of measures that have been approved by the House since the Democrats took over in January 2019including the Heroes Act package of Covid-19 relief measures that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues passed in Mayhave been laid to rest in what Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer describes as Leader McConnells legislative graveyard. The Republican lawmaker and his cadre of obedient partisans have made it perfectly clear time and again that they will not be moved by the fact that a legislative initiative is essential.7

The challenges that a President Biden will face on Day Onepandemic surges, mass unemployment, a climate crisis, and demands for racial justiceare daunting enough. The prospect of seeking to address them in a process defined by McConnell ought to send chills down the spines of Democrats. As the majority leader has proved beyond a reasonable doubt, his caucus will do whatever it takes to maintain conservative control of the Supreme Courtwhich is no small matter, since Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will turn 88 in the early months of the next presidential term and Justice Stephen Breyer will turn 83 that summer. To fill those positions with jurists who respect civil rights and civil liberties, Jealous says, requires not just the election of a president who will make sound appointments but also the firing of Mitch McConnell.8

To disempower McConnell, Democrats need a clear-eyed political calculus that recognizes that the fight for control of the Senate matters just as much as the battle between Biden and Trumpperhaps more. They must fully embrace an understanding expressed by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a leading Democratic contender in the special election for one of two Georgia Senate seats up this year. In order to restore moral leadership to our government, says the pastor, it is necessary to flip the Senate. Democratic candidates, strategists, donors, volunteers, and voters all talk about the need to fundamentally alter the direction of our governance and our country. If fundamental change is the point, winning the Senate has to be understood as the defining struggle of a definitional election year. To that end, even as he mounts his own reelection bid this year, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is fundraising and campaigning for Democratic challengers nationwide with a message that pulls all the pieces together: Dump Trump. Ditch Mitch. Save America.9

Impeachment vote: The majority of the Senate voted to acquit President Trump on February 5, 2020, after the countrys third impeachment trial. (Rod Lamkey Jr. / SIPA USA via AP Images)

Thats my six-word mantra. It ends with Save America for a reason, says Merkley. I am absolutely trying to send the message that all the things were campaigning on wont happen if we dont win the Senate. To do that, the chambers Democratic caucus must grow.10

It currently has 47 members (45 Democrats plus two independents, Sanders and Angus King of Maine). If Biden wins, the party will need at least three more seats to take charge of the chamber in a 50-50 scenario, with a Democratic vice president casting the deciding vote. Ideally, the party would gain a clear majority. But even a 51-49 split would remain problematic, as it could hand outsize influence over the partys agenda to more socially or economically conservative Democrats, such as West Virginias Joe Manchin and Virginias Mark Warner. So what progressives are looking for is a substantial shift of five or more seats. Thats a tall order in any election cycle, and on paper at least, its even more challenging this year.11

Thirty-five Senate seats are up for grabs in 2020. Twenty-three of them are held by Republicans, while just 12 are held by Democrats. That sounds good because, in a moment of tremendous turbulence, when unemployment numbers could rival those of the Great Depression, the Republicans have to defend a lot more seats than the Democrats. The trouble is that most of the Republican seats are in deep-red states where Trump won in 2016, where be will probably win again in 2020, and where incumbents like Arkansas Senator Tom Cottonwhose Democratic challenger quit the race, leaving the partys ballot line emptywont be defeated. At the same time, there is at least one Democratic seat, Alabama Senator Doug Joness, that could well fall to the Republicans. Another Democrat, Michigans Gary Peters, was once considered vulnerable, but a late June New York Times poll had him up by 10 percentage points.12

Inauguration Day: The Capitol is prepared for the swearing-in of Donald Trump in2017. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

So where will the Democrats find the seats they need? And whats the best strategy for winning them?13

In what are frequently identified as red states. Unless Biden scores a victory along the lines of Lyndon Johnsons thumping of Barry Goldwater in 1964 or at least Barack Obamas defeat of John McCain in 2008, some of the Democratic victories needed to flip the Senate are going to have to come in states where Trump prevailed in 2016 and might do so again this year.14Mitch McConnell

Of the five Republican-held seats that The Cook Political Report labels as toss-ups in 2020, two are in states that Biden is likely to win: Colorado and Maine. Two more are in battleground states where he also could prevail: Arizona and North Carolina. The last is in Montana, a state that went for Trump by 20 points in 2016 and where the presidents ahead this time. But theres a twist: Montana voters have shown a penchant for supporting Democratic candidateslike three-term Senator Jon Tester and this years Senate nominee, popular incumbent Governor Steve Bullockeven when they back Republicans for president.15

The Democrats need to win the toss-up seats before they can entertain the prospect of governing in a meaningful way. Right now, theres a chance: Polls have Democratic contenders like former astronaut Mark Kelly in Arizona and state House Speaker Sara Gideon in Maine ahead, respectively, of Republicans Martha McSally and Susan Collins. The two incumbents have long been seen as vulnerable, as has another senator who joined Collins in the ill-fated 2018 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, Colorados Cory Gardner, who trails Democrat John Hickenlooper. Whats notable is that, as of now, Democrats can point to polling advantages in all five toss-up states. In Montana, for instance, Bullock, who made his name as an attorney general who took on corporate interests and crusaded for campaign finance and ethics reforms, leads Republican incumbent Steve Daines by seven percentage points in the latest Montana State University survey. With the presidents personal approval rating tanking amid widespread frustration with his dangerous response to the coronavirus pandemic and the protests over police violence, CNN reported in late May that Republican strategists are increasingly worried that Trump is headed for defeat in November and that he may drag other Republicans down with him.16

Even if things are going very well for Biden, its unlikely Trump will lose a state like Montana, which last backed a Democrat for president in 1992. But if Biden can gain more than 40 percent of the states vote, as Obama did in 2008 and 2012, then it is realistic to suggest that Bullock can take things the rest of the way. However, if Biden gets stuck in the mid-30s, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, the climb gets steeper. To get a Democratic-controlled Senate, Biden has to do what Clinton did not in 2016: run an aggressively progressive national campaign that expands its focus beyond a small group of traditional battleground states. By mobilizing voters and expanding Democratic turnout in red states and red regions of swing states, Biden can increase his national popular votewhich is important for claiming a mandateand grab back battlegrounds such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania for the Electoral College win. But the benefit of a 50-state strategy, of the sort thenDemocratic National Committee chair Howard Dean implemented when the party was at the top of its game during the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, is that the Democrats can still win Senate seats even in toss-up states where they fall short in the presidential race.17

The same goes for states that The Cook Political Report labels as leaning Republican or in some cases likely Republicansuch as Georgia (with its two 2020 contests), Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, and Kentucky (where former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath won a close primary with progressive legislator Charles Booker and will now take on McConnell). All of these states went for Trump in 2016. If the current polling numbers hold, theyll be more competitive in 2020, and states such as Iowa and Georgia could back Biden. Even more important, all of them could back Democrats for the Senate, thus empowering a Biden presidency.18

Blocked: Senator Harry Reid calls on his GOP colleagues to act on Merrick Garlands Supreme Court nomination in 2016. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)

Lets start with South Carolina, where no Democrat has won a presidential race since Jimmy Carter in 1976 or a Senate race since Fritz Hollings in 1998. Trump won there by 15 points in 2016, but he was up by only 10 points in a May Civiqs poll. The big news from that survey had to do with the states Senate race. Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, was tied 42-42 with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Yes, tied.19

Harrison is one of a number of Black candidates who are out to change assumptions about what is possible in Southern states. Others include former secretary of agriculture Mike Espy in Mississippi and Georgias Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, who is challenging the appointed and scandal-plagued Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.20Montana Senate Race

Jealous, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, argues that Democratic strategists and commentators need to recognize the potential of these African American candidates to expand turnout and forge new coalitions. Pundits who dismiss the ability of Black candidates to win US Senate seats south of the Mason-Dixon Line should consider whether the bigger issue is not the bias they see in voters but the bias in their own hearts, he says.21

In South Carolina, Harrison has benefited from a turn against Graham, who once dismissed Trump as a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot but now serves as the presidents most ardent defender in the Senate. Harrison isnt making the mistake of trying to run to the right of Graham. Rather, he is running against Grahams blatant hypocrisy and hoping to attract at least some swing voters. But the key to states like South Carolina, Kentucky, and Georgia is not so much swing voters as new ones. Harrisons campaign knows where it has to boost turnout across the board, citing 400,000 unregistered people of color in South Carolina who need to get on the books to vote for Harrison along with white, college-educated voters who are starting to shift to the left politically and constitute the fastest-growing demographic in the state, reads a recent analysis of the race by The State, South Carolinas second-largest newspaper.22

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Boosting turnout is part of the strategy for a number of candidates who are challenging suddenly vulnerable Republican senators. In 2018, Democratic congressional candidates made some of their most important gains in states where Trump won in 2016 but where a surge in participation by women, people of color, and young voters tipped the balance. Thats something Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Theresa Greenfield is talking about in her bid to unseat Republican Senator Joni Ernst. Noting that Democratic voter registration numbers are now higher than those for Republicansand that Democratic turnout in the states June primary significantly exceeded that of RepublicansGreenfield says, Theres a lot of momentum here. She argues voters understand the need for a politics that recognizes health care is a right, not a privilege and that is resolute in taking on corporate special interests. A June Des Moines Register poll put Greenfield ahead of Ernst, drawing attention to a race that remained off the radar until recently. Greenfield is stressing her family farm roots and making a big deal about the need to defend the United States Postal Service, declaring, Continued attacks on USPS are an attack on the people who depend on its services, especially those living in rural areas where other delivery services dont reach.23

Ditch Mitch: Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is running against Democratic candidate Amy McGrath in November. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

An emphasis on issues that are important to the states where the candidates are running is vital, says Katz, the former Reid aide, who argues that voters in these states dont want a cookie-cutter approach. Instead of sending talking points from D.C., party leaders must recognize that you need candidates who are grounded in the experience of their states, who actually understand what is happening on the ground and are ready to talk about it.24

Merkley gets it. Twelve years ago, he was a state legislator bidding to dislodge Republican Senator Gordon Smith from a seat no Democrat had held since 1967. Merkley trailed Smith until the fall race heated up and thenwith a progressive campaign that challenged the incumbents stances on the Iraq War, tax policy, and climate changebegan to close the gap. In November, with a boost from Obamas landslide win in Oregon, Merkley narrowly upset Smith.25

This year, Merkley looks to candidates like Warnock, Greenfield, and Kansass Barbara Bollier to be among the winners who build a meaningful Democratic majority. Of course, says Merkley, those are tough races. But in years that go well for the top of the Democratic ticket, prospects for Senate wins open up in unlikely places. The key is to provide the resources and the support necessary for those candidates to seize those openingsas he did in the 2008 elections, which saw eight Senate seats flip from Republicans to Democrats. Everything I care about depends on winning the Senate. Unless we win it in November and then reform it so the minority cannot block action on the issues that matter, the Senate will continue to be rigged for the powerful, says Merkley. Weve seen that movie way too many times before. Weve got to change the script.26

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Democrats Will Be Lost Without the Senate - The Nation

Two Ohio House Democrats, Reps. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington, and Jeffrey Crossman, of Parma, want to let the General Assemblys staff bargain collectively.

In 1983, the General Assembly, along party lines all Democrats for, all Republicans against passed Ohios landmark collective bargaining law for public employees. That law excludes roughly 20 categories of public employees from collective bargaining. Some are supervisors. Others include the governors staff; court employees; and General Assembly employees. People in those jobs are employed at-will. They can be hired or fired pretty much whenever a boss wants.

Democrats ran Ohios House for 14 of the 37 years after they passed the 1983 law; Democrats ran the Ohio Senate for two years. Democrats and unions are allies. And unions protect their members. But if memory is any guide, Statehouse Democrats never lifted a finger to let the legislatures staff unionize when Democrats ran the joint.

Now, Republicans are the ringmasters of the Statehouse circus. And House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry Countys Glenford, has ticked off Democrats. Householder doesnt make many mistakes. But he made a big one in refusing to keep the House consistently locked down until the coronavirus attacks fewer Ohioans.

That decision was political, not medical. Some Republicans, ranging from grandstanders in Householders Republican caucus to giant, economy-size grandstanders in Washington, decided that lockdowns, isolation and face masks comfort President Donald Trumps political enemies. In Columbus even worse such anti-coronavirus moves could imply that the Houses GOP menfolk (staff included) are wussies. That fecklessness gave Democrats a justified opening to assail what they say (and events suggest) is House Republicans indifference to the health of House members and staff.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jessica Miranda, a suburban Cincinnati Democrat, has complained to Householder that mixed-up House Republican supervisors mistakenly believed a Miranda aide had had contact with a Republican employee whod tested positive for the coronavirus. The supervisors sent Mirandas aide home without her knowledge, adding to what she termed a picture of [House] chaos. (In 2018, by just 56 votes, Miranda captured what had been a Republican-held Ohio House seat in that years closest Ohio House race. Winning back Mirandas seat is likely a GOP priority this November.)

Still, its good to keep context in mind when House Democrats gripe about Householder. He won the speakership last year with the votes of 26 House Republicans and of 26 House Democrats, including the votes of Crossman and House Democratic Leader Emilia Sykes, of Akron. (Miranda and Russo were among the Ohio House Democrats who voted for 2018s speaker, Republican Ryan Smith, of Gallia Countys Bidwell.) As an American founder, John Adams, once said, Facts are stubborn things.

Lockdown Library: If youre locked down at home, and have the time, here are some new books worth a look-see:

* Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Eric Eyre, on the horrific opioid plague that has destroyed communities in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia, including swathes of Ohio.

Federal data pried loose by a lawsuit newspapers filed revealed drug companies saturated the [United States] with 76 billion not a typo oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012, The Washington Post reported.

* The Room Where It Happened, by former White House national security adviser John Bolton. If you fear for our country, you may weep for it after reading this. In 2005, the late George Voinovich, then a GOP senator, fought Boltons appointment by President George W. Bush as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying, The United States can do better than John Bolton. The book suggests that Bolton thinks the United States can do better than President Trump.

* Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, by Larry Tye. McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, made his name a synonym for guilt by association in the 1950s. Looming large in McCarthys anti-communist crusade, hence in Tyes book, is the completely unscrupulous Roy M. Cohn (1927-1986), a lawyer who became a close friend of someone originally best-known as a New York real estate developer someone named Donald Trump.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-408-9474

Have something to say about this topic?

* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.

* Email comments or corrections on this opinion column to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.

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Democratic push to let Ohio Statehouse staff unionize is both more and less than it seems - cleveland.com

Even before a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, leading to a renewed national conversation about racial inequality, white Democrats were already pretty woke on some issues. An overwhelming majority of white Democrats said that racial discrimination was a major barrier to Black people getting ahead in America, that the police and the broader criminal justice system in America treated Black people unfairly and that the legacy of slavery still affected Black Americans today. And on issues of criminal justice and policing in particular, white and Black Democrats held fairly similar views. Surveys since Floyds death have shown even greater wokeness among white Democrats (and Americans more broadly). White Democrats now view the police even less favorably and the Black Lives Matter movement more favorably, and they are also more likely to agree that Black people face a great deal or a lot of discrimination in America today.

What we dont know yet is whether white Democrats have moved significantly on racial issues beyond policing and discrimination in general issues that deal with more material concerns, such as school integration and wealth redistribution. Most polling since Floyds death has focused on policing, Confederate monuments and other topics that have been in the news.

[Related: Theres A Huge Gap In How Republicans And Democrats See Discrimination]

But heres what we do know right now. In polling both before and even since Floyds death, white Democrats have been fairly opposed to giving reparations to the descendants of enslaved people, an idea supported by a clear majority of Black Democrats. And on a wide range of other policy ideas intended to address racial inequality, white Democrats are fairly tentative. (Republicans are much more opposed to all these policies across the board, which is why were focusing on white Democrats here.)

To look at these differences more closely, we focused on areas of American life where there is documented racial inequality. We then searched for polling on those issues. Our aim was to find the most recent polling available, in part to see whether views on major issues had changed in the wake of Floyds death, but for many issues, we had to rely on older polling, conducted before Floyd was killed. We found results in four major areas: income inequality, education, housing and the workplace.

The wage gap between Black and white Americans has been rising for decades, and this gap persists, even accounting for educational levels, with white college graduates earning much more than Black college graduates. Moreover, wealth in the United States is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of white Americans. Experts argue that mere changes in individual behavior is not enough to reduce these gaps, and that the government must have a specific agenda to address racial income and wealth disparities.

White Democrats support increasing taxes on the incomes of very high-earning Americans as well as taxing the wealth of people with a high net worth, according to polls. Recent surveys suggest that white Democrats may be even more supportive of these ideas than Black Democrats.

That said, white Democrats are much less supportive than Black Democrats of providing reparations to Black Americans as restitution for slavery or to make up for past and current discrimination that African Americans have faced. That divide, which is consistent across a number of surveys, is telling, because reparations are clearly intended to benefit Black people specifically and in a way that, for example, expanding health care through a wealth tax is not.

Percentage of respondents who support each policy or issue

Each poll used slightly different question wording; respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea, or if they said the policy should be enacted. The Nationscape question on taxing the wealthy specified raising taxes on households making more than $600,000 a year.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Floyds death and the heightened discussion around racism that followed have not led to substantial support for reparations among white Democrats. In late April and early May this year, a quarter of white Democrats supported reparations, according to polling from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape. In more recent polls, that support has grown to 33 percent of white Democrats. Thats a substantial increase but still nowhere near the support this policy has among Black Democrats. About two-thirds of Black Americans supported reparations both before and after Floyds death.

Education experts generally favor greater school integration and argue that it is an important tool in ensuring black Americans get a high-quality education.

White Democrats are fairly supportive of ideas like creating magnet schools that may draw in kids from across a community and redrawing school district lines to increase racial diversity. In fact, theyre about as supportive of these policies as Black Democrats are. White Democrats are also mostly in favor of having the federal government take actions to increase school integration, a step that was strongly opposed by many white Americans in the era after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. (There are reasons to be skeptical of this polling and think that some white Democrats may be lying about their true preferences, but well come back to that later.)

There is division about more aggressive ideas, however. White Democrats are much less supportive than Black Democrats of forcing students to attend a school farther away from their home or in a school district outside their neighborhood to ensure schools are integrated. Those policies have some echoes of the controversial busing policies implemented after Brown v. Board and subsequent rulings that resulted in greater racial integration of schools but that also angered many white Americans.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy

Respondents were counted in favor if they said the policy should be enacted, they favored the proposal, or race and ethnicity should be a major or minor factor in college admissions.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Notably, both Black and white Democrats are wary of race and ethnicity being factors in college admissions decisions, at least according to a 2019 Pew survey. Schools normally take this step, in part, to increase the number of Black students attending, so its somewhat surprising that this policy is not more popular among Black Democrats.

In all, though, we see the same trend in education as in income: Support among white Democrats dips for more aggressive policies, particularly ones with explicit trade-offs or downsides for white people. On these education questions, the only polling we have available was conducted before Floyds death, so its possible that opinions have shifted. But if views on wealth and income policies are any guide, we might still see gaps between white and Black Democrats regardless.

Many U.S. cities have distinct areas with predominantly Black populations, often because of policies created in the past to keep Black people in certain neighborhoods and out of others. Many heavily Black areas have high numbers of people living in poverty and relatively few amenities like supermarkets. Some of these communities face an intense and at times unwelcome police presence. Therefore, racial inequality experts generally want to increase housing integration.

According to polls, white Democrats say they support efforts to build more housing in their neighborhoods, even low-income housing in suburban and upper-income areas. (Again, we will come back to why you should be somewhat skeptical of these responses.) But white Democrats dont really prioritize residential integration, according to a 2019 Pew poll. Only about one-third of white Democrats said they wished their community were more racially mixed, with the vast majority (60 percent) saying they were fine with the current racial mix of their community.

Black Democrats answered fairly similarly to white Democrats on these questions favoring more housing in their neighborhoods and low-income housing in the suburbs, but most (62 percent) said they were happy with the current racial composition of their community. But, unlike with measures aimed at reducing racial inequalities in income and education, where Black and white Democrats disagreed, white Democrats, like their Black counterparts, support aggressive interventions to reduce racial inequality in housing.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or hold each view

Cato respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly favored the policy. Pew Research respondents were asked whether they wished their community were more racially mixed, less racially mixed or about as racially mixed as it is.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The finding that Black Democrats are happy with the current racial composition of their communities is not surprising. Black Democrats living in heavily Black areas may want some of the positive attributes of heavily white neighborhoods (like grocery stores and other amenities) but may not necessarily want to move to whiter neighborhoods themselves or have more white people move to their neighborhoods and change the character of the area. Again, this data was collected before Floyds death, so well need new polling to see whether views among white or Black Democrats have changed.

According to polls, both white and Black Democrats overwhelmingly want racially diverse workplaces and, when generally defined, support affirmative action. Though a minority of white men believe that affirmative action has made it harder for them to find work, the vast majority of white and Black Democrats agree that Black people are treated less fairly than white people in employment situations.

But while both white and Black Democrats value workplace diversity and recognize unfairness in employment situations, neither group thinks race and ethnicity should be taken into account when making decisions about promotions or hiring, even though the objective is to increase workplace diversity. That view in some ways contradicts Black and white Democrats support of affirmative action and a racially diverse workplace, but nevertheless, Black Democrats share white Democrats reluctance to embrace a more aggressive position that might increase racial equality in the workplace.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said the policy was very important or somewhat important to enact, they generally favored the idea, or the policy should be enacted.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

Whats going on here? Considering the long history of racial discrimination in employment, its likely that Black Democrats are worried that factoring race into the job application or promotion process would hurt them, even if that racial factor is supposed to benefit them. Alternatively, Black Democrats and their white counterparts might be hoping that diversity can be achieved without the direct consideration of race at the individual level, therefore explaining their wariness about considering race in hiring and promotions, as well as in college admissions.

That may or may not change in the wake of Floyds death and the national conversation about systemic racism; again, well need new polls to know.

The broader finding here is clear: White Democrats definitely before Floyd was killed but most likely afterward too are more circumspect about ideas promoting racial equality that might be disruptive to the status quo for white people. But its worth considering two other readings of these numbers.

Its possible that this data is overstating the support of white Democrats, even for more mild policy proposals to reduce racial inequality. Indeed, before the protests precipitated by Floyds death, the Democratic Party was increasingly connected with racial justice movements. So, if you identify as a Democrat or liberal, there may be pressure to say in a survey that you support ideas to address racial inequality whether you really do or not. Experts refer to this as social desirability bias and say it plagues polling around racial issues, in particular.

[Related: When Proof Is Not Enough]

[F]or scholars studying White liberals in this period, you must take into account [the] possibility that White liberals are responding expressively. That is, they are aware of the right answer, understand the answer that bad White people give, and dont wanna be bad White ppl, Stanford University political science professor Hakeem Jefferson wrote in a Twitter thread last year, raising doubts about polling results that show white liberals expressing as high or higher concerns about racial inequality than some Black Americans.

Im not saying we ought not believe White liberals when they tell us on surveys they are racially progressive. I am, however, suggesting that we treat these data with more skepticism than we have to date, he added.

I stand by these points and have made them again recently the key point is that we need to think about tradeoffs and consider what happens when white folks are forced to give up their privilege, Jefferson told us recently.

[Related: How Biden Is Winning An Identity Politics Election So Far]

Another reason to be skeptical of white Democrats commitment to addressing racial inequality is to look at their actions. In cities such as New York and San Francisco, where white voters tend to be Democratic-leaning, schools and neighborhoods are very segregated. And its not clear that a lot of elected officials in these cities are trying that hard to change those dynamics, which suggests that voters may have elected people they knew would maintain the racial status quo.

Finally, a sizable gap remains between Black Democrats and white Democrats even on issues that would seem less fraught than, say, reparations or school integration. White Democrats, for example, are significantly less likely than Black Democrats to support taking down Confederate monuments, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos survey.

Indeed, on a range of policies and views that dont fall neatly into one of the buckets we covered above, there is still a significant gap between white and Black Democrats.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said they somewhat or strongly supported the idea.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

But its also worth considering whether this data is understating the potential support of white Democrats for fairly drastic proposals to address racial inequality. After all, we have seen huge increases in the past decade in the share of white Democrats who say America must take additional steps to ensure equal rights for Black people and who say they support reparations, even though its still less than half. These recent shifts are likely due in part to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in addition, views on race and identity are now one of the major dividing lines between the two parties, and party rhetoric on these issues is crystallizing. (Increasingly, when people who identify as Democrats see their party leaders suggest that the police are treating Black people unfairly, theyll adopt that stance as well, new research indicates.)

And Black and white Democrats agree on many, more general, policies and views.

Percentage of respondents who favor each policy or agree with each view

Respondents were counted in favor if they said they agreed with the statement a great deal or fair amount, they somewhat or strongly supported the idea, they said the policy should be enacted or they said spending on policing in their area should be decreased a lot or a little.Numbers may not add up due to rounding.

The recent protests against systemic racism and police brutality against Black people could cause a racial awakening a second one just in this decade for white Democrats. People who are trying to learn more about systemic racism and what they can do to reverse it (books about racial equality are in high demand, for example) may end up shifting their views in ways that may not be apparent in polls right now or even three months from now. The general public may also be influenced by signaling from elites for instance, the push by leaders of the University of California system to allow race to once again be considered in the admissions process and a New York Times Magazine cover story calling for reparations.

Also, we may be entering a period of peak white collective guilt, which scholars define as remorse that a white person experiences due to her groups actions toward black people, not necessarily due to her individual actions. White Democrats are more likely than white Republicans to feel white collective guilt, and these feelings predict support for affirmative action and general aid for Black Americans.

[Related: Is Police Reform A Fundamentally Flawed Idea?]

It is one thing to say one believes in the existence of systemic racism and another to do something about it, said Robert Griffin, a polling and public opinion expert who is the research director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. However, these somewhat superficial changes are still important. For the public, they create opportunities to recognize the gap between stated belief and lived action. Such recognition can result in people feeling pressured to bring the two into closer alignment.

Finally, many of these polls are asking fairly imprecise questions about racial policy ideas that arent totally fleshed out. Specific plans for reparations, particularly proposals that would be funded largely by new taxes on the very wealthy or some other mechanism that does not target the incomes of most white Americans, might be fairly popular with white Democrats, or at least less unpopular than reparations defined generically and without details.

To conclude, you should be skeptical of stories that suggest white Democrats are very woke on policy matters of substance, or even more concerned about racial inequality than Black Americans are. That doesnt seem true at least not yet, whether you are reading polls or visiting a public school and notice that, though its in a liberal-leaning area of the country, its still not very racially mixed. That said, however, it seems that white Democrats have dramatically shifted their views on racial issues over the past 10 years, and are recognizing racial inequalities that they hadnt picked up on (or had even ignored) before. And so their views and priorities may keep shifting which could translate to more substantive actions, like looking for integrated schools for their children or even supporting some kind of modest approach to reparations.

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White Democrats Are Wary Of Big Ideas To Address Racial Inequality - FiveThirtyEight

Flipping Wisconsin back into the blue column in the Electoral College is goal No. 1 for state Democrats in 2020. Wisconsin has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in spending and sits atop Trump and Joe Bidens target lists, with the campaigns and outside groups combining to spend or reserve over $35 million on TV and radio ads there from March through the general election, according to Advertising Analytics.

But state Democrats are also focused on building enough state legislative power to affect redistricting in 2021, with Republicans just three seats away from veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

Recent public polling in the state from both the Marquette Law School and Siena College/The New York Times showed Biden with a 9- to 11-point lead over Trump.

I think we have an outstanding chance and Im convinced that Joe Biden will win. But we just cannot let down our guard, Evers said. We have good momentum in the state, he said, citing his own election in 2018 and Democrats blowout win in a 2020 state Supreme Court election.

Party officials said that Wisconsin Democrats have about $12 million in cash on hand between their state and federal accounts.

Wisconsin Republicans control both the state Senate and state Assembly, and Democrats are campaigning in the 2020 state elections to Save the Veto for Evers after repeated and bitter clashes over the last few years. The Democratic governor and the Republican statehouse have butted heads on everything from holding the states scandal-plagued primary in the midst of a pandemic to the legislatures ability to dismiss Evers cabinet members without his blessing.

The battle for the statehouse is also important for both parties, with the next legislature in charge of drawing the states congressional and legislative lines for the next ten years.

If we lose that three-person margin, theyll draw their maps, likely draw them even worse than they are now, Evers said. One of the first bills I get in the next session will be those new maps, and Ill veto them, and theyll override that veto.

Evers recently rolled out applications for a commission to draw the states maps. Evers is promoting the commissions mandate as being public and nonpartisan, but the legislature is under no obligation to consider the maps that the commission ultimately draws.

Wisconsin is a top target for both parties in the redistricting battle, and Wisconsinites are well represented among national Republicans redistricting-focused efforts this cycle. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan is advising the Republican State Leadership Committee, and former Republican National Committee chair and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is on its board of directors. Former Gov. Scott Walker is helping to lead the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

Democrats have also launched an aggressive campaign focused on the map lines, spearheaded nationally by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group helmed by former Attorney General Eric Holder, and the Democratic Legislative Committee.

Democrats got crushed by Republicans during the post-2010 map-drawing cycle, both in Wisconsin and across the country, after Republicans outmaneuvered and outstrategized Democrats with its REDMAP program, which focused on key state legislative races.

Im a former educator, right? Evers said. You learn from your mistakes, and that was a huge one. We learned from that experience, [and] we also learned how important it is for a party itself to focus its efforts.

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Wisconsin Democratic Party raises $10M as battle for the state heats up - POLITICO

Senate Democrats, in a letter, urged the US Postal Service to explain how it plans to handle the influx of ballots its expected to field as millions of people vote by mail this fall.

The letter, which was exclusively provided to Vox, calls on USPS to brief Congress on its plans for processing a staggering number of ballots and preventing voter disenfranchisement.

While problems with vote-by-mail can result from a variety of factors, staffing shortages and delays at Postal Service processing facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to delays that harm the use of election mail, writes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, alongside several other Democrats. If mail ballots arrive late and are uncounted, some voters may be disenfranchised.

This letter follows a report from the Washington Post, which uncovered an internal USPS memo mulling plans that could slow delivery services as a way to address higher costs. If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day, one line in the memo reads.

Such delays could have a significant impact on the election both when it comes to making sure mail-in ballot forms reach voters in time, and ensuring that those same ballots reach election authorities ahead of specific deadlines so theyre counted. In the Florida primary, for example, more than 18,000 ballots were not counted because they arrived after the states deadline, an issue that many voters may encounter in November if the postal system gets overwhelmed. A study by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also found that hundreds of absentee ballots never made it to voters during Wisconsins primary, partly due to mail delivery problems.

This specific issue takes on new urgency this year as a historic number of voters are expected to use mail-in ballots to participate in the electoral process given the public health risks posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the Pennsylvania primary, for example, 1.5 million voters used mail-in ballots, compared to 80,000 who did in 2018, Democrats note. And if numbers for the general election hold or surpass that of 2016, at least 130 million people are estimated to vote overall, guaranteeing a huge wave of mail-in voting as health concerns about physical polling places persist.

Among the key questions Democrats have for USPS: Theyd like more information on the number of staff USPS is putting in place to coordinate mail-in ballot logistics, and theyre interested in how USPS would be able to keep up the pace of processing ballots if one of its locations suffers a coronavirus outbreak.

One of the unknowns concerning mail-in ballots is how long it will take states to receive and tally up the votes, a delay that could mean the final outcome wont be clear for a week or even longer. Ensuring that ballots are delivered expediently is a central purview of the USPS, particularly because there are strict deadlines for when mail-in votes can be received in order to be counted.

Voting rights experts, including at the Brennan Center, have argued that some of these deadlines should be relaxed in November to enable as many people to participate in the process as possible and to make up for possible USPS snafus. Mail-in ballot receipt deadlines should be extended to account for delays in U.S. Mail, ballot drop box retrieval, or other administrative processing delays caused by Covid-19, the Brennan Centers Wendy Weiser and Max Feldman write.

As this weeks letter indicates, lawmakers still have questions about whether USPS is equipped to take on the central role it will play this fall.

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Exclusive: Senate Democrats want the USPS to explain how its going to handle vote-by-mail in November - Vox.com

The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed.

New research by Princetons Andy Guess finds that Democrats and Republicans read a lot of the same news sources; most American news consumers arent isolated in echo chambers, and most dont read that much about politics anyway. The outliers with the most polarized political media diets, however, are more likely to vote in primary and general elections and the fact that people are reading a lot of the same news doesnt mean theyre not processing it (or sharing it) very differently.

Guess started out with 2015 and 2016 data from YouGov Pulse, which tracks users web browsing activity (its anonymized) in addition to surveying them. He found that most rely on centrist media, including mainstream portals like MSN.com or AOL.com, which have a moderating effect on media diets.

There are extremes at either end, though, especially on the right, and those groups may get more attention. Guess writes:

Even many people who identify in the data as very conservative have relatively moderate media preferences. But those who do not are driving a disproportionate amount of traffic to conservative sites, producing at the macro level an illusion of polarized media consumption. This evidence, then, is consistent with a view that among the fraction of respondents who visit news and politics websites the preponderance of the content encountered is ideologically moderate. There is also suggestive evidence of an intense subgroup of Republicans who, possibly in addition to mainstream sources, consume large quantities of conservative, but not liberal, news and information about politics. Similar bumps on the left correspond to the popular viral site BuzzFeed and other left-leaning mainstream sources, in addition to partisan destinations such as Daily Kos. Arguably, then, most people are not habitual partisan news consumers approximately 18% of respondents in 2015 and 33% in 2016 have at least 10% of their visits to political news content originating from sites with absolute slant greater than 0.75. But it might seem so from the point of view of news publishers, which may lack the ability to see the individuals lurking behind inbound traffic leading to the possibility of feedback loops via engagement metrics and optimization.

The New York Times Max Fisher warns that Guesss findings shouldnt be interpreted to mean that polarization isnt a major problem. Sure, people may be reading a lot of the same news, but how are they getting to it and what are they sharing on social media? I think this severely misunderstands how people read and share news today, he writes.

Guesss paper is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science; read the preprint here.

The New York Times Veronica Penney notes that Facebook lets climate change misinformation flow free by classifying it as opinion content.

The policy means that peer-reviewed science can be lumped into the same category as industry statements and even blatant disinformation. In September, for example, the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit group that says increased carbon emissions are good for the planet, successfully overturned a fact-check when Facebook quietly labeled its post as opinion.

The CO2 Coalition story was originally reported by Scott Waldman of E&E News. In June, he investigated what happened:

The CO2 Coalition is increasingly focused on using Facebook to reach more people with its message that climate change fears are overblown and that burning more fossil fuels would help humanity, executive director Caleb Rossiter told E&E News this week. He sees the battle over its climate-related posts as part of a larger proxy war over how to reach an audience outside of conservative media.

Its a huge reach. You can reach so many people both with your posts and your advertisements, Rossiter said. Were kind of like Donald Trump. Were not happy with the treatment were getting from the mainstream media, we resort to social media. Thats where our action is in larger part.

Rossiter said the coalition was also temporarily blocked from running ads after the fact-check. After the false label was removed from its climate models piece, the coalition is now again allowed to buy ads. It has run a number of ads with messages that distort climate change and make inflammatory statements such as we are saving the people of the planet from the people who claim they are saving the planet. Those ads have received more than 50,000 impressions, Facebook data shows.

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Republicans and Democrats read a lot of the same news. What they do with it is a different question. - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

Not at all. We laid the groundwork in 2018 and he wouldnt have had a competitive primary if not for what we were able to do. I think what America needs is for people like Steve King to have their voices quieted, and I think this is a huge step forward for America. What were trying to do here in the Fourth District is the same thing we did last time. Its not talking about who were against or what were against, but what were for.

But doesnt this mean you have a tougher campaign ahead?

The people who are saying this race is an uphill battle as of now are the same people who told me that last time. Were going to work our tails off, get out there with our campaign R.V., which we named Sioux City Sue. Were going to go out and earn your vote. I spent more nights in Walmart parking lots the last few months of the campaign last cycle than I did in my own bed.

Were the second biggest agriculture-producing district in America. Were 39 counties, very rural, and in order to compete and connect with folks where theyre at, youve got to get out there. This past fall we went to 38 of 39 counties and towns of under 1,000 people and we called it the Dont Forget About Us tour. Some of these communities are fighting to keep their grocery stores. Some have to drive 30 minutes to buy fresh produce. When farmers arent making a dime, something isnt adding up.

How do you change your strategy?

It literally doesnt change. We go out there and campaign everywhere and, like I said, it doesnt matter who you are, were going to invite you to the table. If you came on the road with us last time, we barely mentioned Steve King.

Theres not enough people fighting for something who are running for office. The people of the Fourth District are sick of divisive politics. Its not enough just not being Steve King. We need to have something for this district and the ability to bring people together. And thats what we plan to do.

Do you intend to make it a campaign issue that Mr. Feenstra did not attack Mr. Kings racism?

He talks about how much of a man he is of faith. And theres a Proverbs message that really is near and dear to my heart. Its Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves, ensure justice for those being crushed. To me, the absence of all five of the Republicans even addressing the George Floyd death or any of these protests or anything like that, I feel thats a huge issue. I think thats the type of people we dont need to go to Congress.

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With Steve King Gone, Does the Democrat Have a Shot in His Iowa District? - The New York Times