DownWithTyranny!

Last time they debated Ossoff called him a "crook" to his face-- and accurate assessment-- and he was unable to defend himself. After that he cancelled a debate he had already scheduled. Ossoff has told crowds that debating is the "the bare minimum" voters should expect from candidates.

Perdue and Loeffler are feuding with Georgia's Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, so they could stick with Trump's bullshit about election fraud. That makes it hard for them to bang too hard on the top talking point-- that President Biden must be denied a Senate majority. Earlier today Perdue was on Fox Business News insisting that "What's at stake is this is that Schumer will change the rules in the Senate so they can do anything they want with 50 votes plus the vice president's vote as a tiebreaker."

Today, Trump and Georgia's Trumpist governor, Brian Kemp, caused Georgians to suffer 2,084 more COVID cases, bringing the state total to 424,989-- 40,028 cases per million Georgians. You can contribute to Warnock and or Ossoff by clicking on the Blue America Senate thermometer on the right.

Labels: Georgia, Loeffler, Ossoff, Perdue, Senate 2020, Warnock

Some major donors have financial stakes in current and future legislation.

For instance: SMP received a $1 million donation from billionaire Jonathan Gray, an executive at Blackstone, which owns the hospital staffing chain, TeamHealth. SMP also received $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association.

In late 2019, Schumer helped stall Senate legislation that would have kept patients from receiving “surprise medical bills,” the hefty charges that occur when they visit hospitals that are in their insurance network but are unknowingly treated by providers who are considered out-of-network.

SMP is affiliated with Majority Forward, a dark money group focused on attacking Republican Senate candidates. Majority Forward received $450,000 in 2018 from pharmacy giant CVS Health-- which also owns health insurer Aetna. The group also received $300,000 from the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a trade association that represents the nursing home industry.

The Democratic primary candidates backed by the DSCC have expressed reservations about Medicare for All, arguing they believe people should be allowed to keep their private health insurance if they want it. Many of the DSCC’s favored candidates do support creating a public health insurance option.

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for real estate investors, donated $50,000 to Majority Forward. Schumer and Senate Democrats recently helped Republicans unanimously pass pandemic relief legislation that included a special, little-noticed provision that amounted to $170 billion worth of new tax breaks for wealthy real estate investors.

In addition to the Colorado race, SMP has waded into at least three other Senate primaries this year.

In North Carolina, SMP funded Carolina Blue, a super PAC that spent $4.5 million to help veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham win the primary in March. Cunningham handily defeated his chief opponent, state senator Erica Smith, who was running to his left...

In Iowa, SMP spent nearly $7 million to promote real estate developer Theresa Greenfield. She easily bested her two primary opponents, including progressive Kimberly Graham, who campaigned in support of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

SMP has already spent more than $2 million in Maine, including nearly $500,000 to promote House Speaker Sara Gideon in the Democratic primary. Some of the group’s advertising against Republican Senator Susan Collins was also designed to boost Gideon.

In North Carolina, Cunningham raised $46,795,495 to Tillis' $21,474,728. The DSCC spent $24,542,003 and Schumer's PAC spent $35,838,924.

In Maine, Gideon raised $68,577,474 to Collins' $26,511,555. The DSCC spent $4,667,250 and Schumer's PAC spent $27,909,459.

In Iowa, Greenfield raised $47,004,937 to Ernst's $23,536,707. The DSCC spent $27,899,050 and Schumer's PAC spent $41,225,046.

[W]hat I would have liked to have tested is if we had an entire progressive ticket. You know, it could be that the most consequential decisions about my campaign were made March 3, Super Tuesday, when we decided that Bernie Sanders wasn’t gonna be the presidential nominee and, in Texas, we decided that Christina Tzintzún Ramirez wasn’t going to be our Senate nominee.

So with my analysis that I’m doing now with our team and many others in Texas is what would it take to really get out more poor voters? I mean, I’m talking about poor people. Like, when you canvass in rural Texas, in a town like Eagle Lake, or Brenham, in the summer, you meet people who are in these rundown, double-wide kind of houses, basically falling apart at the seams-- people who have to survive three months of 100-degree weather with no air conditioning at all, people who have very marginal employment. What’s it going to take to get those folks to care about an election? You know, whether you’re talking about black folks and Latinx voters in a city, or poor rural voters-- black, Latino, and white-- what’s it gonna take for them to really care about an election?

And to me, Bernie Sanders would have helped us make that populous case. You know, Texas has this tradition of populism; it goes back 100 years or more. But like, if we were really talking about farm policy, if we were really talking about water policy, if we were talking about rural jobs programs, things that really affect their lives. I mean, as a congressional candidate, I was talking about these things, but it’s hard to really break through.

Same thing with Christina. You know, statewide in Texas, we’re not going to flip Texas if we don’t win the RGV, the Rio Grande Valley. And, you know, if you haven’t been to Texas, you might not realize there are communities along the border called colonias, where they don’t even have running water and municipal sewage in some of these developments. I mean, these are like, you know, sometimes undocumented residents, sometimes U.S. citizens who are living in abject poverty. What’s it gonna take to get those folks to care? And it’s not some slick TV ads, it’s not a poll-tested message. Even for me, I got some DCCC support, and some of my messaging was about prescription drug prices and protecting pre-existing conditions. But I feel like that’s too nuanced for these folks. I mean, it has to be more direct.

You know, this, this might be a little off-topic, but one of the things I’m thinking about is, think about the movements in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez or Bolivia under Evo Morales. Evo Morales is supported by the poorest indigenous farmers from the high plains of Bolivia. Those people are engaged in the electoral process. In this country, poor people are not engaged in the electoral process.

And so, for me, on a gerrymandered map, I don’t know if I could have gotten more than 210,000 votes, like McCaul got, unless we were really doing organizing with poor people. And I think that’s a longer-term investment. That’s where it’s this question, these people who gave me $2800, when I called them and spoke to them for a minute, would they give me $1,000 if I was gonna say: We’re going to invest in a five-year project to do deep organizing these communities? Is the donor class willing to invest in changing the fundamental conditions in areas like mine that would really enable progressive change in the long term?

...[O]ne of the things I’ve been preaching on the campaign trail, you know, and I got to do some events with Bernie and he absolutely loved it-- you know, this is our New Deal moment, American history: crumbling U.S. infrastructure, massive wealth inequality, unemployment-- major crises we need to confront. In the 30s it was fascism rising in Western Europe; now, it’s climate change.

And how did we enact a New Deal in this country? You know, a 15-year program, the Works Progress Administration, massively investing in infrastructure, putting people to work in all sorts of jobs. It was FDR, when he ran for president the first time, talking about the New Deal every chance he gets: We’re gonna give you a New Deal. Whatever the question was-- economic policy, jobs, health care, you name it, we’re gonna give you a New Deal.

Imagine we had a candidate for president who for 10-12 months is talking nonstop about fundamental economic change. That’s what it takes. And that’s where the Democratic establishment, which to some extent supported me, although not as strongly as they could have, they’re not talking about that, because we’re too invested in conservative donors who don’t want us to say that.

And so we’re caught in between. You know, half the Democratic Party is still taking the corporate PAC money, moderating the message, saying: OK, we’re only going to talk about this extremely narrow issue, you know, protecting pre-existing conditions or negotiating prescription drug prices downwards, whereas like people don’t have AC and it’s 100 degrees every day, they don’t have gas in the car, they’re making $10 an hour and getting 20 hours a week. I mean, they are struggling to survive. They’re completely cynical about democracy as something that’s even real in the world. And we’re not speaking clearly to them about why it matters to vote.

Situated in and near Miami, these districts make up some of the most volatile and interesting political territory in the United States. FL-27 had voted heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the House seat had been held by a socially liberal Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for 30 years. Ros-Lehtinen was retiring, and on paper the district seemed a natural Dem pick-up. The districts also overlapped with Miami-Dade, the most populous county in Florida, whose turnout would be critical in deciding a narrow gubernatorial race.

Instead of requesting interviews, I decided to see the candidates like an undecided voter would, joining the audience for stump speeches and campaign events. This seemed standard, almost old-fashioned reporting. It never occurred to me that it would be hard, let alone so hard that I’d need to extend my stay in Miami. By leaving time, I felt not like an undecided voter, but like a private detective. Finding a schedule of Republican campaign events took 15 minutes. With Democrats, this process took five days.

...Perhaps this information was at one of the other offices. Volunteers tried to be helpful. One suggested a website might have the information, and when pressed, offered unsarcastically that I “try Google.” Another showed me an event dated two weeks prior. Finally, with fanfare, someone produced a number for another campaign office. They could put me in touch with the right person. I stepped outside and dialed. I had called the switchboard for the City of Miami Gardens, Florida.

Irritation was turning into intrigue, and while the next few days were mileage and frustration-heavy, they were in some ways a reporter’s dream. The factional fighting between Miami-Dade Democrats, Florida Democrats, Senate campaign offices and the national party was flagrant. One of the few times I saw the operation energized was when I mentioned the Miami-Dade Democrats to a staffer for and she rolled her eyes. I heard more than one volunteer try to remember the names on the ballot and fail. I was left unsupervised in campaign offices, in prime eavesdropping real estate, though this was just a bonus: campaigners were ready to vent their frustrations, and I opened my confessional.

By comparison, the Republicans I encountered were courteous, organized, and dedicated. I heard a speech by the GOP challenger for FL-27, Maria Salazar, and afterwards her apparatchiks handed me business cards. At voting locations drowned in GOP paraphernalia, campaign staff showed me detailed spreadsheets, tallying how early turn-out numbers tracked with their booth-by-booth strategy. They asked if I needed anything. The competition dynamic was starting to remind me of 1980s comedy movie: a ruthless, well-heeled team up against a band of plucky misfits.

My grail quest became no easier. At one field location, I arrived just before the advertised opening time and waited by myself for hours before leaving empty-handed. Finding the number for one press secretary took phone calls to 22 different people, most of whom didn’t know who he was. Several times I was told that a particular volunteer was important and “knew everything.” Tracked down at a polling booth, he turned out to be a young backpacker, freshly arrived from Spain, who knew as little as anyone else. Later, I realized the source of this special status: he was one of the few people on the ground who could speak Spanish. Donna Shalala herself (i.e. the candidate) could not.

Following a hot tip about a possible press contact, I turned up at another campaign office with a different strategy: I would refuse to leave. After the traditional greeting-- bewilderment, being offered a chair within earshot of indiscrete conversations-- there was a short conclave. I could speak with Ben. Ben and I sat facing each other, in the middle of an open-plan office. By this time I had become a kind of connoisseur of incompetence, and I sensed that Ben was good at something, but he had not dealt with a reporter before. “Can I ask what your role with the campaign is?” Ben was a policy adviser. He had no idea if his candidate had any events that day, and no idea why he was speaking with me.

When the comms person did come in (this was treated as a special occasion), our conversation had an informality that was almost charming. I explained my difficulty with the Democratic campaigns, and the contrast with Republicans. “They’re a lot more organized than us!” she said, and I had to laugh. They sure were! Here at last was some kind of schedule, but as we stepped through it, something was missing. Through exhaustive internet searches, I had found a digital ticketing website offering a Q&A event featuring Donna Shalala. Why wasn’t it on the schedule? “Ohhh, that’s cancelled.” Perhaps, she said, they could line up an interview instead? I explained that I had been trying to see the election from the perspective of a voter, not a reporter, and how information was freely available from Republicans and almost non-existent from Democrats. Catching my drift, she started to flush.

The call came through later, when I was in a Haitian-owned coin laundry. A DNC flack in Washington, D.C. had heard I was making trouble, planning some kind of “Dems in disarray” story, and as I scribbled notes on top of an industrial dryer, I picked up the story that had been relayed to him, as much from his tone as his words. A foreign correspondent had arrived in Miami expecting VIP treatment, then got miffed when the red carpet wasn’t rolled out. Smearing the ground game would be revenge for a bruised ego. “Money at a national level has gone into these seats,” he assured me.

Walking him through what I’d seen-- and hadn’t seen-- only made him angry. “We’re going to win both of those seats,” he said, berating my ignorance. It was a strange reaction. By then I probably had as clear a snapshot of the election in Miami as anyone. Wasn’t that information useful? Potentially important, even? Instead, someone hundreds of miles away was blithely junking this eye-witness evidence in favor of obnoxious confidence. “You’ll see,” he insisted, “when we win FL-26 and FL-27 on election night, I’ll message you.” And they did, and he did.

In my reply, I pointed out that Andrew Gillum, the Democratic favorite to become Florida’s governor, had lost by a narrow margin, and that poor turnout in Miami-Dade was the culprit. And perhaps you can imagine my lack of surprise two years later, when FL-26 and FL-27 both fell to GOP challengers, one of them Maria Salazar. On the presidential ballot, Clinton’s 30-point lead in Miami-Dade shrunk to a 7-point margin for Biden.

In a piece titled What the Hell Happened to Democrats in Miami-Dade?, Rolling Stone observed ruefully that “Miami-Dade is considered safe—until election night, when suddenly it’s not,” and quoted Maria Elena Lopez, first vice-chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats.

Lopez lamented how the Democratic National Convention did not talk to, fund, or advise the local parties. “We don’t get any feedback from the DNC,” she said. “They don’t come to us and say, ‘Hey, what is the messaging that would work in your community? Where are we weak?’ [The party] doesn’t do that, at all. We are on our own.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that we’ve seen this,” she said. It was not the first time I had seen it either.

Labels: 2020 congressional elections, Blue Dogs, Brindisi, DCCC, Donna Shalala, DSCC, FL-26, FL-27, Florida, Mike Siegel, Mucarsel-Powell, progressives vs Democrats, Schumer, Senate 2020, Texas

Crooked senator with crooked husband

If virtuous leaders seem few and far between, there may be a good reason for it. Research has shown that virtuous people who have a strong sense of responsibility are less likely to actively pursue leadership roles. However, when they do assume positions of power, they end up making excellent leaders who are admired by others. Research also suggests that leaders who demonstrate greater integrity may be rewarded with more loyal and harder working employees.

Given this, we may do well to encourage the more virtuous among us to step up as leaders. The next time you have an opportunity to help select someone to lead, it may be worth the effort to actively encourage someone you see as virtuous. It just might make your organization more effective, as well as a more pleasant place to be.

• Courageousness
• Empathy
• Sincerity (Honesty)
• Transparency
• Efficiency and Practicality
• Vision

Anyone looking for an endorsement and financial assistance from Blue America can easily say they support an unlikely-to-be-voted-on Medicare for All or something as amorphous as the Green New Deal. It's harder to feign the virtuous traits above. Sometimes candidates have clear records that show exactly where they stand in terms of virtue vs vice. Two such candidates are competing in the January 5 Georgia runoff-- Reverend Raphael Warnock and multimillionaire Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to the Senate by America's most crooked governor, Brian Kemp (who, as Secretary of State, blatantly stole his own election to the governor's mansion.

Loeffler and her husband have contributed over $3 million to conservative politicians-- including a million bribe to Trump this past May, 2 months after she was caught profiting from insider information about COVID-19, selling almost $19 million in stocks that would soon lose much of their value and buying other stocks that would go up in value in a pandemic.

As Roger Sollenberger reported for Salon this morning, Loeffler has been hopping between campaign stops in a multimillion-dollar private jet that she and her husband bought after Kemp appointed her to the Senate last December. He wrote that "Despite her campaign's claims that she uses the plane to 'save taxpayer money,' Loeffler, a former asset management executive, may well now have joined the 'frenzy' of Wall Street money managers who leapt at a loophole in President Trump's 2017 tax bill that turns private jets into flying tax shelters. Embedded in that bill is a provision that permits a company to write off the full price of a new or used airplane against the company's earnings. It is not clear how much Loeffler paid for the jet, a 2010 Bombardier Challenger 300 that she has used for campaign travel, but an online listing asks $9.7 million for the same model and year. Loeffler's federal financial disclosures put the value in the range of $5 million to $25 million, and indicate that the plane is jointly owned by Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, chair of the New York Stock Exchange."

She told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she paid for the jet out of her own pocket-- an apparent lie, since individuals can't write off jets the way she has-- only companies. She has attempted to cover her tracks with a curtain of opaqueness and manipulation. When he was running against her in the primary, Trumpist Congressman Doug Collins, frequently invoked the plane to paint Loeffler, the wealthiest member of Congress, as out of touch with Georgia voters. Collins: "Who buys a $30 million jet in secret then posts a picture with their new KIA on Facebook around the same time? That's all you need to know about Kelly Loeffler."

I never thought I'd write this words but Doug Collins is right about this-- and that's why I've embedded the Blue America Senate thermometer on the right. Please consider doing what you can to elect Rev. Warnock to replace Kelly Loeffler.

Labels: Georgia, Loeffler, Senate 2020, virtue, Warnock

YR FIRED by Nancy Ohanian

“To be honest with you, I haven’t been sleeping so well lately. I was very worried about four more years of Trump. It appears that that is not going to be the case, so I feel exhilarated. I feel relieved.”

Trump himself was at one of his personal golf properties grifting off the taxpayers as usual when the race was called. The Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was quarantined with COVID after having spent the week in the White House wantonly spreading his precious bodily aerosols all over the staff. His devoted henchman Rudy Giuliani was holding a press conference next door to a sex shop called Fantasy Island.

What a long, strange trip it's been. And it's not over yet, unfortunately.

The normal people immediately started celebrating, as one might expect. Cheers went up simultaneously all over the world. The 70 million Trumpers seemed to be momentarily stunned, as one might expect since they have been brainwashed by right wing media into believing it wasn't even possible. But there are a lot of them and I expect they will find their voices soon enough. And the silence of GOP officials in the wake of the results being announced says that Trump may have lost the election but he hasn't lost his hold on the GOP.

So far, Mitch "grim reaper" McConnell is keeping his powder dry. As of now he holds the Senate but the massive Georgia turnout (thanks Stacey Abrams!) has given Democrats one last chance to take his majority away from him.

Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will have another chance to remove the corrupt Trump bootlickers David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler from the US Senate in January. Neither one of those odious reprobates were able to get above 50% so there will be a runoff. And we all know the stakes could not be higher.

These will be the most consequential Senate races in history. It is the difference between Democrats having control of the Senate agenda and Mitch McConnell successfully furthering the destruction of America, which seems to be his only goal in life. Any hope of passing the progressive legislation we desperately need to deal with the carnage left in Trump's wake will be thwarted by this misanthropic monster, if he is allowed to remain the Majority Leader.

So our work is not done. Blue America has set up an ActBlue donation page for the two challengers for one last campaign in this cycle-- if you would like to help secure a senate majority and a progressive agenda for the next two years. Having Biden and Harris in the White House will stop the bleeding but this country needs major surgery and we can't do it with the Grim Reaper standing in the way.

If you have any more to spare, we would encourage you to help Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win their runoffs in January. Just tap the thermometer on the right and give what you are able.

And take a moment to let relief and joy wash over you: our long national nightmare is over. Donald Trump has been defeated!

Thank you all so much for your generosity,

Digby, for the entire Blue America team

Ralph Warnock's presence would make the U.S. Senate a much better place

Labels: Georgia, Raphael Warnock, Senate 2020

David Perdue is stuck in a neck and neck race with a decidedly mediocre Democratic challenger who doesn't stand for much of anything. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Perdue losing to Jon Ossoff 47.0% to 46.0% and the most recent poll-- last week by Emerson-- shows Trump leading Biden by 1 point (49-48%) and Ossoff leading Perdue by one point (47-46%).

Yesterday, Perdue, Trump loyalist to the end, tweeted on the fake glories of the Trump economy, seeming to forget that Obama saved the economy from the shambles the Bush Regime left it in and Trump inherited the result, which and his GOP allies immediately started to undercut with tax breaks for the multimillionaires and billionaires and a deficit that was wasted on unproductive bullshit and that won't be repaid for generations.

It had been assumed that Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, would end up in a runoff with one of two prominent Republicans who are running in the crowded special election contest (and thus splitting the Republican vote): appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins. But polls now show Warnock running almost as well as Ossoff. A just-released Public Policy Polling survey has the pastor of the church that was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s spiritual home at 46 percent, 19 points ahead of Loeffler. But recent polls have also have shown Lieberman, the son of former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, continuing to pull as much as 4 percent of the vote while another Democrat, former federal prosecutor Ed Tarver, has been attracting 1 percent or perhaps a bit more.

There are fears that because of Lieberman’s name recognition, he could pull enough votes to prevent Warnock from winning outright on November 3, thus forcing him into a runoff with Loeffler or Collins.

Labels: Georgia, John Nichols, Senate 2020, Trump's economy

“Well, the president’s losing Arizona. And, you know, we think that he and Martha are very intrinsically tied together,” Kevin McLaughlin, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, explained during a 90-minute presentation on the state of the races Thursday. Trump won Arizona by 3.5 percentage points in 2016 and is now trailing Democrat Joe Biden, according to both public and private polling, which Republicans feel is why Sen. Martha McSally (R) is also trailing in her key race.

At one point, NRSC strategists believed Biden hit 50 percent in Georgia-- a figure they found “terrifying” as they try to defend two seats in the state, which Trump won by five percentage points in 2016.

Trump won Kansas by more than 20 percentage points in 2016, but now his lead is in the low single digits, according to Republicans, after bleeding support in the Kansas City suburbs. A state that has voted Democratic just once since 1940 could now be considered a relatively competitive fight between Trump and Biden.

Even in Alaska, which has only voted once, in 1964, for a Democratic president in its history, forcing the Republicans’ official campaign arm to spend cash to shore up Sen. Dan Sullivan (R).

“You should’ve seen those [polls] three weeks ago when we had the president down,” McLaughlin said, explaining Trump was actually losing in Alaska this month and how the Senate incumbent’s race sunk with the president. “I mean, it’s not because of Dan Sullivan. I’m just telling you.”





Democrats do not dispute that the environment has opened the door for them to seize the majority, but they contend that this group of GOP senators did little to prepare themselves for such competitive races.

They have known since 2014, when these Republicans won in part by campaigning against the Affordable Care Act, that they should put together their plan to replace it, something that never happened. Trump’s decision to join the legal challenge at the Supreme Court to scrap the entire law in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic made the situation even worse.

“These candidates exacerbated their own unique liabilities. They built their campaigns on a very weak foundation,” said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Beneath the surface is another crack in the GOP foundation, as House Republican candidates are floundering in key states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas, according to consultants in both parties. In districts that Trump narrowly won or narrowly lost four years ago, Biden is now solidly ahead along with the Democratic candidate, while in some districts Trump won by significant margins, the president is now narrowly trailing.

That dynamic has left some Republicans privately bracing for a potential across-the-board collapse, but so far that has not happened in the Senate battlegrounds.

That’s in large part because of a massive rescue effort led by the NRSC and its super PAC cousin, the Senate Leadership Fund.

“We’re in, we are in it. And we have a very distinct path, and it’s a good path. I mean, it’s a violent path; it’ll take a toll on all of us,” McLaughlin said.

The NRSC raised and spent $275 million in this election cycle, dwarfing the $151 million raised for the 2018 campaign, and the GOP super PAC stunned Democrats by raising almost $150 million over a six-week period this fall, flooding the airwaves and leveling a playing field that had tilted toward Democrats who smashed records through online fundraising among liberal activists.

For the first time, McLaughlin’s committee has run an aggressive field program trying to drag voters to the polls. That program will be particularly important in states where the presidential contest was not expected to be close like Alaska, Kansas and Montana, because neither Trump’s campaign nor the Republican National Committee is engaged in those states.

Strategists in both parties concede that they will trade Colorado and Alabama as easy victories for the respective challenger, leaving Republicans with 53 seats.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can then only afford to lose two of 12 remaining GOP-held seats Democrats have targeted to hold the majority, if Biden defeats Trump. McConnell can afford three losses if Trump pulls off another upset as Vice President Pence would be the tie-breaking vote in a 50-50 Senate.

Despite Trump’s sagging popularity, Republicans have not broken ranks with him and instead have tried to rally his most loyal supporters, who remain suspicious of these more traditional, establishment-friendly senators.

McSally joined Trump at an Arizona rally Wednesday, even after the president rushed her onstage and limited her speaking time. “You got one minute! One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha. Come on. Let’s go. Quick, quick, quick, quick.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) crossed into Nebraska on Tuesday to get a brief shout-out from Trump at a rally in Omaha, whose media market crosses into western Iowa.

And Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), whose campaign has caused dramatic late concern among GOP strategists, canceled his final debate Sunday, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, so he can instead attend a rally in northwest Georgia with Trump.

Both sides view Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and gun-control activist, as the favorite over McSally and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) remains in a precarious position.

His opponent, Cal Cunningham, admitted to an extramarital transgression a month ago, but pollsters in both parties say Tillis remains more unpopular than the challenger.

That could leave the majority hinging on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a 24-year veteran who has built her own political brand that has kept her afloat even as Trump heads toward a significant defeat in Maine. In a recent debate, Collins declined to say whether Trump deserves to be reelected.





Democrats are frustrated that they still consider the race essentially tied after tens of millions of dollars in negative ads that began two years ago when Collins supported Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation and almost never let up.

Maine’s unique system of “ranked-choice voting” could delay the final outcome for at least a week after Tuesday’s election. Voters there will rank their preferences among Collins, Democrat Sara Gideon and two unaligned candidates, and if no candidate gets more than 50 percent on the initial vote, all ballots are sent to the state capital, where election officials will physically review them to count the second and third choices in a complicated formula until one candidate has cleared majority support.

The strongest unaffiliated candidate is running as a staunch liberal encouraging her supporters to choose Gideon second. Most strategists believe Collins will need a lead of several percentage points, near 50 percent, on the initial vote or else Gideon will overtake Collins when the ranked votes are counted.

Georgia state law says that if no one clears 50 percent in Perdue’s race and a special election, the top two advance to a runoff election Jan. 5. Republicans concede they expect both races to end up in runoffs and possibly leave the entire Senate majority hanging in the balance until early next year.

Senate GOP officials remain furious that Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-GA) entered the special election against the appointed senator, Kelly Loeffler (R), in the special election. Almost two dozen candidates appear on the ballot together, and the top two head to the runoff. Loeffler has raced to the right to fend off Collins in a way that could leave the middle open in the runoff for the leading Democrat, Raphael Warnock.

GOP officials believe that had Collins not run, a combination of Loeffler’s wealth and Perdue’s relative strength in the Georgia suburbs compared to Trump could’ve aided the president in the state.

Ernst’s race against Theresa Greenfield might be the closest in the nation. Republicans believe Trump is in better shape in Iowa, which he won by nine percentage points four years ago but where he has struggled throughout the summer and early fall.

“We needed the president to, kind of, right the ship here, and we feel like he has,” McLaughlin said.

Given Trump’s standing there in 2016, Democrats view Iowa as a linchpin-- if Greenfield wins, their candidates will probably sweep four other states where Trump performed worse in his first race.





Republicans do not understand why Democrats remain so financially invested in Montana, where they believe Sen. Steve Daines (R) has a stable lead over Gov. Steve Bullock (D). Just as Democrats do not understand why GOP super PACs continue to spend heavily this weekend in Michigan, where they believe Sen. Gary Peters (D) has a steady lead over John James (R).

If either side pulls off the upset against those incumbents, it is probably going to be a very good night for that party’s chances at securing the Senate majority.

Finally, Democrats have used their online financial engine to boost candidates in four states the president won four years ago by nine percentage points to 21-- Alaska, Kansas, South Carolina and Texas.

In each state, Trump still leads, according to NRSC polling, but by a fraction of his margin from four years ago.

With such undefined GOP incumbents, Democrats believe they have a chance to score a major upset among those conservative states, all of which gives them more chances to reach the majority.

“We go into Election Day with a lot of different paths to the majority,” Passalacqua said, “and we have to see how it shakes out.”

Labels: Senate 2020

COVID-Kim

“Our older Iowans-- many have not been able to leave their homes because they do not feel safe,” said Representative Cindy Axne, a first-term Democrat who represents Des Moines and southwest Iowa. “If you go into a grocery store, the large majority of people are not wearing masks.”

Ms. Axne added that disappointment with the governor’s handling of the virus was lifting Democrats like her who are on the ballot this year. “Voters know we’re standing up to keep their families safe,” she said.

...Reynolds has called mask mandates “feel-good” actions and refused to issue a statewide directive, unlike Republican governors in such states as Texas and Ohio. At the same time, she has blocked municipalities from enforcing their own mask edicts. Iowa was one of only a few states that never imposed a full stay-at-home order, and it let restaurants, bars and hair salons reopen earlier than most places. Still, the hospitality and retail sectors are struggling because consumers have not fully returned.

Pressed in September if she would consider a mask mandate as cases began to rise again, Ms. Reynolds said, “Nope, not going to happen.” She said she trusted Iowans, armed with data about the virus, to make their own decisions.

...A survey by the Des Moines Register and Mediacom in September showed a plurality of Iowans, 47 percent, disapproved of Ms. Reynolds’s handling of the pandemic, 15 percentage points worse than the number who disapproved in June. For the first time since Ms. Reynolds, 61, became governor in 2017, more Iowans said the state was on the wrong track than headed in the right direction, according to the poll.

Labels: 2020 elections, Daniel Deitrich, Iowa, Kim Reynolds, Senate 2020

Kelly Loeffler-- the first U.S. Senator to publicly embrace QAnon

She's cut an ad saying she's "more conservative than Attila the Hun." She's lashed out at the WNBA for its ties to Black Lives Matter. And she frequently promotes herself as having a "100 percent Trump voting record."

And this week, Sen. Kelly Loeffler took her move to the right to a new level: Touting the endorsement of a controversial House candidate from Georgia who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy and had been denounced by other Republicans before winning the GOP nomination in her race for making bigoted and racist comments.

"No one in Georgia cares about the QAnon business," Loeffler told reporters defiantly, after pulling up to the event in a Humvee and sporting a baseball cap, with congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene by her side. "This is something the fake news is gonna continue to bring up-- and ignore Antifa."

Loeffler, an appointed senator and one of the richest in Congress, has been in a race to the right with GOP Rep. Doug Collins, an intraparty battle that has prompted deep Republican concerns that it could splinter the vote and help Democrats sweep Georgia and take the Senate majority.

But Collins, who lobbied for the Senate appointment that Gov. Brian Kemp gave to Loeffler, entered the race earlier this year over the furious opposition of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. As Trump has remained silent about his preference in the race, the two candidates have sought to one-up the other and showcase their loyalty to the President, moving further and further to the right in a state where Atlanta's more moderate suburban voters will be the linchpin.

...What's also concerning Republicans: The other Georgia Senate seat, currently occupied by GOP Sen. David Perdue, who is now in a deadheat against Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who announced he'd raised $21.3 million in the past quarter, the largest quarterly haul for any Senate candidate in the state's history.

Republicans privately fret that the bitter Collins-Loeffler fight is dividing the party during the campaign's most critical juncture and now threatening both Senate seats, a scenario some senior Republicans warned could happen months ago when Collins entered the race. Warnock's standing has improved in recent weeks. In late September, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Warnock with 31%, Loeffler at 23%, and Collins at 22% among likely voters. In October, another Quinnipiac poll showed Warnock at 41%, Collins at 22% and Loeffler at 20%.

All of which has some top Republicans frustrated with Collins and accusing him of putting his own personal ambitions ahead of the goal of preserving the Senate majority.

"In a difficult election cycle like this one, you really need candidates to avoid making selfish decisions that further complicate your party's ability to win," said Josh Holmes, a former McConnell chief of staff who still advises the GOP leader. "Clearly that didn't happen in Georgia."

Georgia has not elected a Democratic senator in 20 years. But Democrats are optimistic that they will compete in the state, spurred by the Republicans' race to the right, the growth of the Atlanta suburbs and the voter expansion efforts led by former state House Democratic leader Stacey Abrams.

Late last year, Kemp appointed Loeffler to serve the rest of Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson's term following his resignation. Part of the draw of Loeffler, who is married to New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, was that she could appeal to the rapidly diversifying suburbs-- especially suburban women-- and could self-fundraise. (The couple has spent at least $25 million of their own money in the race so far.)

But not long after Loeffler's appointment, Republican state legislators attempted to pass a bill creating a primary, so that Loeffler would have to face Collins and the winner of the primary would go head-to-head against the Democratic nominee in a general election.

The governor threatened to veto the bill, and it went nowhere.

But now, the Republican candidates are spending the last days of the Senate race as if they were running in a primary, trying to appeal to the hardcore members of their party-- like Greene.

At the Thursday event, a reporter asked Loeffler if she accepted the endorsement of someone who had spread "the baseless QAnon theories" and "made incendiary, xenophobic, controversial remarks" before asking whether she was worried that Greene is damaging the party's brand in the state.

"Look, I don't know anything about QAnon," responded Loeffler. "I know how the media twists people's words, they do it over and over, they even make up things."

A Georgia Republican strategist, who is not affiliated with either campaign, said that Loeffler's endorsement event with Greene was "nothing short of a Hail Mary."

"I think it's devastating to her in a runoff," said the GOP strategist, who asked for anonymity to assess the race candidly. "The day after Election Day on our side, if Kelly Loeffler were to somehow pull this out, there'll be an ad within five minutes tying her to QAnon. And it's not going to be good."

When asked if he was concerned that Loeffler's pitch to conservative voters would turn off independents, and potentially hurt the senator in a runoff race, Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson told CNN that the GOP senator would be able to paint Warnock as outside of the mainstream.

"Raphael Warnock is the most radically liberal and extreme candidate running for Senate anywhere in the country--so we're extremely excited about the opportunity to face him in the January runoff," Lawson said.

On Capitol Hill, Loeffler has maintained a low profile and rarely speaks to reporters, flanked by an aide and often walking by in silence when asked a question. And in the extremely rare event that she does answer a reporter's query, she speaks Trump's language.

"Fake news," she said to CNN when asked last month about Trump's recorded comments to journalist Bob Woodward that he intentionally played down the coronavirus.

In Georgia, though, her moves have made waves.

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Loeffler, the co-owner of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream, was engaged this summer in a fight with the league and her own players, writing in July to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert that she "adamantly" opposed the Black Lives Matter political movement, which she called "totally misaligned with the values and goals of the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream, where we support tolerance and inclusion."

The players responded in-kind, wearing black shirts that said: "Vote Warnock."

...[Meanwhile] Collins announced on Thursday a "Trump Defender Statewide Tour," with some of the President's staunchest allies, including Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona and former Trump advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who were players in former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Collins campaign spokesman Dan McLagan said Collins would drive his "family suburban, trailed by volunteers in a 15-passenger van that runs on liberal tears."

McLagan said that Greene was "a nice endorsement for Kelly," but said the senator "looked about as comfortable at that press conference as a deer at a hunters convention."

"Georgians know that Doug is the real conservative and Kelly is a phony," he said.

The courtship of the right has Democrats optimistic about the race.

Warnock, the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, who raised nearly $13 million in the last quarter, has already attacked the senator over accepting Greene's endorsement.

"Instead of trafficking in division and proudly standing alongside those that spout dangerous rhetoric like Marjorie Taylor Greene, we're focused on being a voice for all Georgians," Warnock said.

While Warnock is the heavy favorite to make it to a runoff, some Democrats fear that Matt Lieberman, a Democratic candidate and son of former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has polled in the single digits, will siphon away enough support to prevent Warnock from winning in November outright.

Labels: Doug Collins, Georgia, Kelly Loeffler, Republican wing of the Democratic Party, Senate 2020, Vernon Jones

AOC & Pramila-- Starting To Lose My Temper by Nancy Ohanian

On Friday, we noted that spineless Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has shown over and over again that he knows just how dangerous Trump is for America. On a taped conference call, Sasse said that Trump had mishandled the coronavirus response, "kisses dictators' butts," "sells out our allies," spends "like a drunken sailor," mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs. Trump, he went on "flirted with white supremacists," and his family "treated the presidency like a business opportunity." In response to this accurate indictment, Sasse, obviously without a patriotic bone in his body, helped block removing Trump after he was impeached.

Trump reacted on Twitter in exactly the way you would expect, giving Sasse a nickname and sending a nasty signal to his Nebraska followers to not vote for him. (Luckily for Sasse, Schumer and the DSCC decided to give him a free-pass to reelection.)

NY Times reporter Catie Edmondson noted the exchange and interpreted it as Republican senators distancing themselves from Trump in fear that he's threatening their own political survival. A little too late for that. They're all on the record of enabling him and voting against convicting and removing him. "For nearly four years," wrote Edmondson, "congressional Republicans have ducked and dodged an unending cascade of offensive statements and norm-shattering behavior from President Trump, ignoring his caustic and scattershot Twitter feed and penchant for flouting party orthodoxy, and standing quietly by as he abandoned military allies, attacked American institutions and stirred up racist and nativist fears. But now, facing grim polling numbers and a flood of Democratic money and enthusiasm that has imperiled their majority in the Senate, Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to publicly distance themselves from the president. The shift, less than three weeks before the election, indicates that many Republicans have concluded that Mr. Trump is heading for a loss in November. And they are grasping to save themselves and rushing to re-establish their reputations for a coming struggle for their party’s identity."

She also noted that Sasse said Trump is "alienating voters so broadly that he might cause a 'Republican blood bath' in the Senate. [Note to Ben Sasse: in the House too.] Edmondson noted that Sasse "was echoing a phrase from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who warned of a 'Republican blood bath of Watergate proportions.' Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the president’s most vocal allies, predicted the president could very well lose the White House.

Even the normally taciturn Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has been more outspoken than usual in recent days about his differences with the president, rejecting his calls to “go big” on a stimulus bill. That was a reflection of the fact that Senate Republicans-- who have rarely broken with the president on any major legislative initiative in four years-- are unwilling to vote for the kind of multitrillion-dollar federal aid plan that Mr. Trump has suddenly decided would be in his interest to embrace.

“Voters are set to drive the ultimate wedge between Senate Republicans and Trump,” said Alex Conant, a former aide to Senator Marco Rubio and a former White House spokesman. “It’s a lot easier to get along when you’re winning elections and gaining power. But when you’re on the precipice of what could be a historic loss, there is less eagerness to just get along.”

...[T]heir recent behavior has offered an answer to the long-pondered question of if there would ever be a point when Republicans might repudiate a president who so frequently said and did things that undermined their principles and message. The answer appears to be the moment they feared he would threaten their political survival.

If some Senate Republicans have written off Mr. Trump’s chances of victory, the feeling may be mutual. On Friday, the president issued his latest Twitter attack on Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the most endangered Republican incumbents, apparently unconcerned that he might be further imperiling her chances, along with the party’s hopes of holding on to the Senate.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Romney assailed the president for being unwilling to condemn QAnon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy movement that the F.B.I. has labeled a domestic terrorism threat, saying the president was “eagerly trading” principles “for the hope of electoral victories.” It was his second scathing statement this week criticizing Mr. Trump, although Mr. Romney coupled both screeds with critiques of Democrats, saying the two parties shared blame.

Yet Mr. Romney and other Republicans who have spoken up to offer dire predictions or expressions of concern about Mr. Trump are all sticking with the president on what is likely his final major act before the election: the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of conservatives, to the Supreme Court.

The dichotomy reflects the tacit deal congressional Republicans have accepted over the course of Mr. Trump’s presidency, in which they have tolerated his incendiary behavior and statements knowing that he would further many of their priorities, including installing a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.

Still, the grim political environment has set off a scramble, especially among Republicans with political aspirations stretching beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency, to be on the front lines of any party reset.

“As it becomes evident that he is a mere political mortal like everyone else, you’re really starting to see the jockeying taking place for what the future of the Republican Party is,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who did not support Mr. Trump in 2016. “What we heard from Senator Sasse yesterday was the beginning of that process.”

In an interview, Mr. Curbelo said that his former colleagues have known for months that Mr. Trump would one day become “subject to the laws of political gravity”-- and that the party would face the consequences.

“Most congressional Republicans have known that this is unsustainable long term, and they’ve just been-- some people may call it pragmatic, some may call it opportunistic-- keeping their heads down and doing what they have to do while they waited for this time to come,” he said.

It is unclear whether Republicans will seek to redefine their party should the president lose, given that Mr. Trump’s tenure has shown the appeal of his inflammatory brand of politics to the crucial conservative base.

“He still has enormous, enormous influence-- and will for a very long time-- over primary voters, and that is what members care about,” said Brendan Buck, a former counselor to the last two Republican House speakers.

What Mr. Sasse and Mr. Cruz may be aiming for, he added, is a last-ditch bid to preserve Republican control of the Senate.

“If you’re able to say it out loud, there is an effective message that a Republican Senate can be a check on a Democratic-run Washington,” Mr. Buck said. “It’s just hard to say that out loud because you have to concede the president is done.”

On the campaign trail, Republicans are privately livid with the president for dragging down their Senate candidates, sending his struggles rippling across states that are traditional Republican strongholds.

“His weakness in dealing with coronavirus has put a lot more seats in play than we ever could have imagined a year ago,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and consultant. “We always knew that there were going to be a number of close Senate races, and we were probably swimming against the tide in places like Arizona, Colorado and Maine. But when you see states that are effectively tied, like Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina, that tells you something has happened in the broader environment.”

In 2016, when Mr. Trump, then a candidate, looked increasingly likely to capture the party’s nomination, Mr. McConnell assured his members that if he threatened to harm them in the general election, they would “drop him like a hot rock.”

That did not happen then and it is unlikely to now, with Republicans up for re-election readily aware that Democratic voters are unlikely to reward such a rebuke, especially so close to Election Day. But there have been other, more subtle moves.

Despite repeated public entreaties from Mr. Trump for Republicans to embrace a larger pandemic stimulus package, Mr. McConnell has all but refused, saying senators in his party would never support a package of that magnitude. Senate Republicans revolted last weekend on a conference call with Mark Meadows, the president’s chief of staff, warning that a big-spending deal would amount to a “betrayal” of the party’s base and tarnish their credentials as fiscal hawks.

A more personal rebuke came from Mr. McConnell last week when the Kentuckian, who is up for re-election, told reporters that he had avoided visiting the White House since late summer because of its handling of the coronavirus.

They must be wiped out, not just on the level of the White House and Senate, but also in the House, in state legislatures and in local offices up and down the ballot. They have all been enablers and they should all be held accountable. Listen to Ben Sasse's own voice and remember that he has backed Trump on everything.

Labels: 2020 elections, Ben Sasse, Senate 2020, toxicity of Donald Trump