Democrats

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr’s name will remain on ballot in swing state Wisconsin, judge rules

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr’s name will remain on the ballot in the swing state of Wisconsin, a judge ruled on Monday.Dane county circuit judge Stephen Ehlke ruled that Wisconsin law clearly states presidential candidates who have submitted nomination papers can’t be removed from the ballot unless they die. Kennedy’s campaign submitted nomination papers before the state’s 6 August deadline.“The statute is plain on its face,” Ehlke said, adding later: “Mr Kennedy has no one to blame but himself if he didn’t want to be on the ballot.”Time is running out for Kennedy to get his name off the Wisconsin ballot. County clerks face a Wednesday deadline to print ballots and distribute them to more than 1,800 local officials in cities, towns and villages who run elections.Kennedy asked a state appellate court to consider the case last week, days before Ehlke issued his ruling. The second district court of appeals has been waiting for Ehlke’s decision before deciding whether to take the case.The Wisconsin elections commission voted 5-1 earlier this month to approve Kennedy’s name for the ballot after an attempt by Republican commissioners to remove him failed. The commission noted the statute that prevents candidates from removing themselves from the ballot short of death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe presence of independent and third-party candidates on the ballot could be a key factor in Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by between 5,700 votes and about 23,000 votes.In 2016, Green party nominee Jill Stein got just over 31,000 votes in Wisconsin – more than Trump’s winning margin of just under 23,000 votes. Some Democrats have blamed her for helping Trump win the state and the presidency that year.Kennedy suspended his campaign in August and endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump. Kennedy said he would try to get his name removed from ballots in battleground states while telling his supporters that they could continue to back him in the majority of states where they are unlikely to sway the outcome.Kennedy won a court order in North Carolina earlier this month to remove his name from ballots there. Kennedy filed a lawsuit on 3 September an attempt to get off the Wisconsin ballot, arguing that third-party candidates are discriminated against because state law treats Republicans and Democrats running for president differently.Republicans and Democrats have until 5pm on the first Tuesday in September before an election to certify their presidential nominee. Independent candidates such as Kennedy can only withdraw before the 6 August deadline for submitting nomination papers. More

    • 175 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Should we take Elon Musk’s and Taylor Swift’s political endorsements seriously? | Siva Vaidhyanathan

      by

      What should we make of the fact that the richest person in the world has joined forces with Donald Trump and promises now to serve the United States as some sort of czar of government “efficiency”? And what should we make of the world’s biggest pop star endorsing Kamala Harris for president?Why should it matter that these mega-celebrities tell us what they want from politics and government?The morning after Taylor Swift endorsed Harris for president, Elon Musk defended his new buddy, Trump, in the most disturbing and bizarre fashion, referring to the Republican obsession with women who have chosen not to have children and have cats. “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk, who has impregnated at least one of his employees and has reportedly propositioned others, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Swift, in contrast, has declared over the past four years that she cares deeply about women’s issues and has motivated her followers around the world to register to vote and get active in politics. Her engagement has been serious and sincere. Swift, more than any other celebrity, has the opportunity to assume the role of the champion of democracy in America. She writes and sings about the personal yet connects the personal to the political through the descriptions of power and mistreatment in relationships. To many, the connections between power imbalances and mistreatment in personal relationships and those in society at large are strong yet implicit. Swift has moved in recent years to make them explicit.So Swift’s endorsement is not so much about swaying undecided voters through her charisma. That’s a myth. Rather her endorsement is about harnessing all the activist energy she has been building over the years and focusing it on getting young people registered to vote and willing to volunteer for a cause. She is expanding the electorate and infusing it with optimism and purpose. That’s a blessing to anyone who cares about the fate of democracy in the United States.In stark contrast, the other billionaire in this spat has done everything he can to undermine belief in government by the people and for the people. His long hostility to safety and securities regulation makes sense, given his role as a corporate leader. His deep-seated racism and sexism have become even more vocal since he found common cause with Trump and other Republicans. Musk wants a smaller set of political actors in the world. They should be his buddies, all men, and all who assume they know what’s best for the world. It does not help that he is neither smart nor serious about policy nor politics.Yet the nominee of one of the two major American political parties has declared he wants Musk to assume a powerful role in the next government. We could approach this question by examining Musk’s record as a corporate leader, which is spotty at best. We could address Musk’s habits of exaggeration and prevarication, which are significant. We could wonder how a person who is supposed to be running five companies already might have the time to also head up a major government initiative.Or we could just conclude that neither Musk nor Trump are serious people with any idea how to execute policy, let alone devote time, energy and thought to the process. That’s not a reason to suspend concern about this partnership. Musk’s threats to the United States go far beyond any potential office he might hold in the future.Policy is not for amateurs. We learned this the hard way during the first Trump administration, when the few veteran policymakers who were willing to keep the government operating were one by one pushed out of power by Trump or his cronies.To change the way any federal government office operates, one must generate a feasible proposal and seek affirmation and criticism from stakeholders. Those stakeholders might include corporations and their lobbyists, unions and their lobbyists, and public interest groups that range from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club. They also include elements of the executive branch who might have to implement that policy. And, of course, plenty of lawyers and economists must weigh in. Often, if generated by an office of the executive branch, the public must be invited to submit comments on a draft of a policy statement.And, once all of that happens, policy changes are subject to court scrutiny if an interested party decides to sue over it. In other words, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to change even small things that the government does. It takes skill, knowledge, diligence and a whole lot of patience to enact policy.It’s not work appropriate for the flippant, unserious or easily distracted.Now, that’s how it’s done in normal times. We can assume that normal times would come to a permanent end in the United States if 78-year-old Donald Trump takes the oath of office again on 20 January 2025. He has promised radical change in the basic workings of government, down to promising to ignore or “terminate” the constitution if he does not get his way.How he would do this is unclear. We can assume that he would have some elements willing to use force to wrest control of the government away from processes and the limits of law. And we know that Trump has managed to turn the federal courts into instruments of his own interests. All of that would take work, of course. The only thing that saved the government from complete breakdown during Trump’s term in office was his inability to focus and follow through on his indignation and ambition. The friction of bureaucracy turned out to be one of the last bastions holding up the fragile republic.The best Trump can hope to accomplish is chaos and breakdown along with massive corruption that would flow as the failsafes of oversight and accountability collapse.That’s what makes the whole Musk partnership so absurd. Assume for a moment that Musk were a serious, committed, competent leader and manager. Under the Trump style of administration, what possibility would there be for him to discipline a sprawling federal agency such as the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Defense?It would not matter. Again, it’s folly to take this effort seriously as an effort to do what Trump or Musk say it would do. Musk, like Trump, is only interested in how any effort could smooth the way for his own benefit. Over the past decade or more, Musk has found his various companies, especially Tesla, entangled with regulators over issues ranging from safety to securities violations.His leadership of SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink, which provides satellite internet access to many millions of people around the world including essential elements of the military and government of Ukraine, has come under scrutiny as Musk has grown closer to the Russian view of the invasion of Ukraine. SpaceX is a major defense contractor. The United States government already depends on SpaceX way too much, and SpaceX depends on the United States government for much of its revenue.Having Musk involved at the highest levels of a government that is supposed to be curbing his excesses and protecting the public interest from the worst externalities of his companies is beyond a conflict of interest. It’s naked corruption. And that is the point. It’s positively Putinesque.Musk is, of course, unlikely to even assume such an office or hold a meeting if he did. He does not have the ability to focus these days. His incessant tweeting at all hours is increasingly unhinged from reality. His drug use, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, has reached a concerning level at which investors in Tesla are worried about his ability to protect their interests. He seems not to be putting in the time to do his current jobs well, even the one at Tesla that supplies him with most of his wealth.Musk’s closeness to Trump is itself a cause for concern. Even without Musk in office, Trump would probably order his cronies to suspend regulatory scrutiny of SpaceX and Tesla. Musk depends on the goodwill of the Xi regime in China to keep parts flowing for Tesla and to keep China open as a market for the cars. Musk needs the new extremely rightwing government of Argentina to remain friendly to the United States to maintain access to new lithium mines for Tesla batteries. And Musk infamously owes the Saudi royal family for funding his disastrous purchase of Twitter.This level of entanglement with troublesome and oppressive foreign governments makes Musk a security risk to the United States whether inside or outside government, whether Trump or Harris runs the government.The choice for America’s future could not be starker, especially when we contrast the roles, goals and personalities of the two highest-profile celebrities active this fall. Swift offers a serious and sincere opportunity for engagement. Musk offers snark and selfishness. Yet for some reason, too many people consider Musk, with his wealth, worthy of pontification on matters of public policy. Maybe it’s time we took Swift and her followers more seriously. The future is theirs.

      Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president

      by

      More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.In a letter obtained by CBS News, former Reagan aides and appointees – including Ken Adelman, a US ambassador to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, as well as a deputy press secretary, B Jay Cooper – said they believed that, if alive today, Reagan would have supported Harris.“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket,” the group wrote.“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the group added. “Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy.”The letter comes as more than 230 former Republican administration officials have also backed Harris. Karl Rove, George W Bush campaign strategist and senior adviser, wrote “there’s no putting lipstick on this pig” after Donald Trump’s debate performance. Bush has said he has no plans to endorse any 2024 candidate.While there are more Republican-for-Harris defectors than vice-versa – Trump has gained the support of the Democrat outcasts Robert F Kennedy Jr. and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – natural alignment resets are increasing.The conservative columnist George Will floated in the Washington Post last week that “a Harris presidency, tempered by a Republican-led Senate, might finally revive a more normal politics.”Will wrote that the outcome required the removal of Donald Trump – “that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast” – from public life and the rekindling of genuine liberal-conservative debate.The Reagan staffers said they were looking to convince former colleagues to back their stand for Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as “the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come”.Other Republicans backing Harris include former vice-president Dick Cheney and daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman, Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. The latter three accepted speaking slots at the Democrats’ convention in August.But few Republicans endorsing Harris over Trump are in the political game.Trump’s nomination rival Nikki Haley has not backed Harris and said she agrees with Trump’s policies. But challenged last week to go further, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, failed to say she thought Trump was a good candidate.“I think he is the Republican nominee,” Haley replied. “Do I agree with his style, do I agree with his approach, do I agree with his communications? No.”Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, said before the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia last week that “many people who have worked for Donald Trump have said that they do not support Donald Trump coming back to the presidency. And I think that speaks volumes, because we know him.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It’s such a dramatic contrast’: Harris turns North Carolina into a toss-up

      by

      Landon Simonini found himself standing in the middle of a Charlotte highway lane at 2.30 in the afternoon, stuck in an artificial traffic jam while drivers waited for Kamala Harris’s plane to land and the motorcade to clear for the rally later that day.He was out of his car, because why not? He wasn’t going anywhere soon. His red Make America great again cap stood out among others cursing the traffic gods.Simonini, born and bred in Charlotte, builds houses. His livelihood depends to some degree on Charlotte’s tremendous growth. But not all growth is great, he said.“This is a traditionally southern state,” Simonini said. “Over 100 people move to Charlotte a day. That is changing the election map. I am born and raised in Charlotte, for 33 years. I have lived here my entire life. I went to school at UNC Charlotte. This is my city. It is a conservative city and I want to keep it that way.”But in America’s nail-biting 2024 presidential election, North Carolina is now in play. It rejoins a select list of crucial swing states whose voters will decide if Harris becomes America’s first woman of color to win the White House or if Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office from which he wreaked political chaos for four years.Up until about two months ago, the odds didn’t look like this.Though the margins in North Carolina have been close for decades in presidential races, Obama in 2008 was the last Democrat since 1976 to win the state, eking out a win by three-tenths of a percentage point. Biden’s weakness earlier this year threatened to turn North Carolina into an also-ran contest. Every poll through June had Trump beating the president by at least two points, with an average around six.Party affiliation can only tell so much in a state with a storied history of split-ticket voting. Almost four in 10 of North Carolina’s 7.6 million registered voters choose not to affiliate with a political party. But between August 2020 and August 2024, Republicans added about 161,000 new registered voters in North Carolina while Democrats lost about 135,000 registered voters.Trump won the state by about 75,000 votes in 2020, a margin of about 1.3 percentage points, his closest winning state, before losing the election. Biden won the four states with closer margins – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent scrambled the math. North Carolina’s secretary of state, Elaine Marshall, described the reaction as euphoric.“It’s such a dramatic contrast from that venom, that poison, that hatred that’s coming from Republican events,” she said. “That contrasts so strongly with the hope and the expectations of the future from Democratic party events.”The Trump campaign reportedly abandoned its efforts to mount a serious contest in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia recently. That leaves seven states in the political battleground – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and now North Carolina.Counting electors aside from the remaining non-battleground states, Harris starts with 226 and Trump with 219. North Carolina can deliver 16 electoral votes to the victor. A candidate must have 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Only Pennsylvania has more electors among the remaining battleground states.A re-energized Democratic electorate has been visible in polling data, which now shows the state as tied. Part of that is the roughly 20% of North Carolinians who are Black; increased African American voter turnout helped Obama win the state in 2008.But the enthusiasm is far more widespread, and was visible this week, when Harris drew 25,000 people to two rallies this week, one in Charlotte and another a few hours later in Greensboro. It was the vice-president’s 17th trip to North Carolina and her ninth just this year.If Harris wins North Carolina and holds in Michigan and Wisconsin, she need only win one of the four other swing states to clinch the presidency. But if Trump wins North Carolina, he can win the presidency with Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin even while losing elector-rich Pennsylvania and Michigan.Melissa Benton waited on one foot for traffic to clear on Tuesday night outside the Greensboro coliseum. Her right knee rested on a scooter, keeping her broken ankle off the ground. She came up from Charlotte for the event, she said.Benton is an Atlanta-area transplant. She left Georgia out of frustration with how her community had changed with growth. The irony is not lost on her.Locals complain about the rising cost of living, and soaring housing costs are first on the list. Even people who have weathered the slow-motion collapse of the furniture industry over the last 30 years are being saddled with property tax increases as their homes rise in value.“Every time I meet a native Charlottean, I’m always like, ‘Listen, I’ve been where you are right now,” Benton said. “I swear I’ll be a great citizen, because I understand what it’s like for new people to come in.” She has a keen eye on municipal problems, services and infrastructure. “But it’s also keeping Charlotte Charlotte, and we’ve lost sight of that in some big cities.”Affordable housing is a crisis in Charlotte, much like it is in Atlanta and Greensboro and most large cities in the US. But in North Carolina, it’s not just an urban problem. Lenoir – pronounced “len-OR” – up at the edge of the Brushy mountain range of the Appalachians, is in one of 73 rural counties in the state, and it has a problem with market rate housing too. About a third of North Carolina’s voters live in rural counties.The Democratic party has a field office in Lenoir. The lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, held a campaign event there on Wednesday for his gubernatorial run. Marshall, the secretary of state, held a discussion there last week. No part of the state can escape battleground politics today.View image in fullscreenDemocrats have long expected a brutal fight in North Carolina, and have been investing time, money and personnel into the state for the last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democratic party is certainly trying to reach young people,” Marshall said. It’s also trying hard to connect with young women who may have abortion politics on their mind. “They’ve got Sunday school, and they’ve got work, getting the kids fed and kind of stuff. So suburban mom, working professional women, you know.”Harris’s visit to North Carolina for her first rallies since the debate is no accident. North Carolina is that important. Trump has planned a rally in Wilmington on North Carolina’s coast next week. JD Vance, his running mate, will be in Raleigh next week as well. The Republican campaign has been sending surrogates to local events regularly. Two weeks from now, the former housing secretary Ben Carson will speak at the Salt and Light conference of the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition.The Democratic party has 26 field offices in North Carolina with 240 paid staff, according to the campaign. The choices of placement for some of the offices, such as rural Wilson county in the state’s “Black belt” and Lenoir in western mountain country, speak to movement away from a focus on high-density urban territory that’s friendly to Democrats.Democrats are also using their significant financial advantages in fundraising to swaddle broadcast and social media in a blanket of Harris advertising. Organizers say they have been on the air with ads for a year. The ad tracking firm AdImpact notes that Democrats have reserved about $50m in ad buys through the end of the cycle, with particular attention paid to Black and Spanish-language media outlets. Trump only began advertising in earnest in August.But Republican campaign leaders view much of that effort as artificial.“We feel like, from our standpoint, that the race is a toss-up, but we feel like we still have an advantage,” said Matt Mercer, director of communications for the North Carolina GOP. “One of the big reasons is our leadership. You know, we didn’t abandon a ground game at any level in 2020. What you’re seeing from Democrats is an effort to catch up.”The Republican campaign is decentralized, Mercer said, accommodating far-flung efforts in a state that’s 560 miles wide from Manteo in the east to Murphy in the west. “You win statewide by going across the entire state, and that means going west of I-77 and east of I-95.”“For every person that’s moving to Charlotte or Raleigh, you’ve also got retired couples moving to the coast, or you’ve got military deciding to stay in the state,” Mercer said. “You know, I think Democrats kind of fall into this trap where they think growth is all going to benefit them, and they’re just missing it.”The GOP dominates North Carolina’s legislative branch, which has enough Republicans to override a gubernatorial veto. But North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat and the state has elected a Democratic governor for most of the last 30 years, even as it has delivered wins to Republican presidents.Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the Democratic nominee to succeed Cooper, has maintained a consistent lead over Robinson throughout the year. Robinson is an unusually controversial candidate even by standards set in the Trump era, with a litany of offensive and antisemitic attacks made on social media or in public statements.View image in fullscreenRobinson has tried to keep a low profile over the last few months, even as Stein has used his financial edge to batter Robinson with ads drawing primarily on the lieutenant governor’s own words. In recent weeks, Robinson has taken to the campaign trail, meeting with small groups in small towns far away from urban centers, haranguing the media and calling Stein’s ads deceptive. “Josh Stein is a liar,” he said, demanding that a news reporter convey that message to his opponent, along with a demand for a debate.Stein has, so far, declined.James Adamakis watched a Robinson speech, from a seat at Countryside BBQ in the small town of Marion, North Carolina, on Tuesday. It’s a popular stop for politicians in North Carolina’s rural mountains. A picture of Barack Obama’s visit in 2011 hangs proudly on the wall next to the cash register.Adamakis works in juvenile justice. The military veteran supports Republicans because they’re tougher on crime he said. But he acknowledges that even people who share his political values may vote in peculiar ways in North Carolina.He described the conversion of one of his friends into a Republican. “It was the economics, where he just kept seeing the inflation and buying groceries and everything,” Adamakis said. “He was like, why is the media and Biden saying that it’s good when it’s not? I think that the economy cuts across lines.“Everybody you meet in western North Carolina still may vote Democrat, but they still don’t like that.”But political diversity is about more than race in North Carolina. The economy of a place like Research Triangle Park near Durham is fundamentally different from the banking sector in Charlotte, or the tourism of the southern coast, or mountain towns struggling to reinvent themselves.“It might be easier in my job if there were just one [swing voter], but there’s not,” Mercer said. “And I think that dynamism is what makes the state so interesting and so hard to win, and why you truly need to understand the entire state.” More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump ‘likelier winner’ unless Harris tackles two failings, says ex-ambassador

      by

      Donald Trump will remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on 5 November unless the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, addresses key failings in her campaign, a former British ambassador to Washington says on Sunday.Kim Darroch says that despite clearly getting the better of Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two crucial mistakes in the final weeks of campaigning, which mean the former Republican president is still the favourite.View image in fullscreenWith a Trump return to the White House on the cards, Lord Darroch says it is important that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met US president Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, should also now be seeking a meeting with Trump and his team before polling day, so he has built links with both sides.“It is important that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” Darroch says in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”Darroch was UK ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in a row over leaked confidential emails in which he criticised Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept”. Darroch’s position became untenable after Boris Johnson, then involved in the Tory leadership contest to succeed Theresa May, failed to give the ambassador his unequivocal backing.Darroch, who remains a respected figure in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, says Trump is now “a less formidable campaigner” than in 2016, “down on energy, more liable to become confused, with a mind cluttered with grievances. And he remains a policy-free zone.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But,” he adds, “he is still capable of connecting with the ‘left behind’ to a level few others can match, a talent which ensures a devoted and enduring support base in a country where one in three workers say they live paycheck to paycheck.”Darroch argues that the Democratic campaign is at risk of making two hugely important errors. Urging Harris to be “laser-focused” on voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin won by Biden in 2020, Darroch warns that they may drift back to Trump unless Harris is able to offer “some crisply worded, specific, targeted policies to bring jobs and hope back to these blighted neighbourhoods”.The second error is that Harris appears to be hiding from the media, repeating a mistake made by Hillary Clinton. “Back in 2016, Trump was ever-present. He would accept any and every invitation. He would even, unbidden, phone the morning news shows to offer his views on the day’s issues. By contrast, Hillary Clinton locked the media out – and lost.”Harris, he claims “seems to have adopted the Clinton playbook”.View image in fullscreenDarroch says the UK embassy in Washington will no doubt be advising Starmer to try to meet Trump, perhaps taking time out from a meeting of the UN general assembly this week to do so.“There is a lot to discuss with him, starting with his views on Ukraine. And however badly Trump performed in the debate, however visible his personal decline, he remains for many of us the likelier winner.” Last week, Starmer’s former pollster Deborah Mattinson met Harris’s campaign team in Washington to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”, further strengthening contacts with the Democratic side. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      What debate? Harris and Trump back to brutal grind of swing state campaigns

      by

      Even as gleeful Democrats spent days circulating video clips and memes of Kamala Harris ridiculing and riling Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate, the candidates themselves got back to the brutal grind of winning over the tiny proportion of voters who will decide November’s election in a clutch of swing states.Harris is on a “New Way Forward” tour of pivotal areas this weekend to exploit the momentum from her humiliation of Trump. On Friday, she was in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial of crunch states, to push the themes she hit hard in the debate in painting the former president as a threat to democracy, women’s rights and the US’s international standing.Trump is in Arizona on Saturday and then headed to Michigan, both states he narrowly won in 2016 and then lost four years later, as he attempts to recover from what was widely recognised to be a damaging performance.The contest for the White House remains on a knife edge.Before the debate, Harris’s narrow lead in the polls was being chipped away by a Trump campaign trying to claw its way back from the shock of Joe Biden exiting the contest. After Trump’s poor debate showing, Harris appears to be edging up again. But neither campaign is taking anything for granted and both are returning to the daily fight.A CNN poll showed that 63% of debate watchers thought Harris won as Trump made outlandish claims about immigrants eating family pets and Democrats wanting to kill newborn babies. A focus group of undecided swing state voters put together by the Washington Post overwhelmingly said Harris came out on top.Even Fox News conceded the defeat. Its political analyst, Brit Hume, said Trump spent too much time airing old grievances that do nothing to win votes.“Let’s make no mistake, Trump had a bad night,” he said.Still, more cautious Democrats recognised that one bad night for the former president is far from a knockout blow and that their candidate remains particularly vulnerable on the economy, the top issue for large numbers of voters hit by surging inflation.The CNN poll showed that confidence in Harris to handle the economy fell by two points to 35% because of the debate after she failed to address inflation, or even acknowledge the hardship it has caused, while trust in Trump on the issue rose by two points to 55%.And while the latest YouGov poll gives Harris a nine-point advantage over Trump in favourability ratings, the presidential race is still neck-and-neck with each candidate claiming the support of 45% of the electorate.Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette Law School polling of voters in the swing state Wisconsin, where only about 20,000 votes separated Trump and his opponent in the last two presidential elections, said that while it was clear Harris won the debate, he doubted the outcome would shift the dial very much in those states where the election will be decided.“The question is, how much does it move the electorate in Wisconsin? Our electorate is pretty highly polarised even by national standards and so moving it much seems a little far-fetched,” he said.“The trouble is that voters always go to debates looking at it through their partisan glasses. If their candidate is clearly doing poorly, they come up with reasons why that is that still doesn’t lead them to reconsider their support for that candidate.”Swathes of Trump supporters lamented his performance but then shifted the blame to the debate moderators by accusing them of picking on the former president while giving Harris an easy ride.Polling says that about one in 20 voters in swing states have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for. But political analysts are sceptical that so many people are really undecided when Trump is such a known and divisive candidate.Nicholas Valentino, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, said that even though Harris’s positions are not particularly well-known, few people can be in doubt about the differences between the contenders on key issues from abortion to immigration and healthcare.“There are very few undecided voters left in the electorate at this point in the campaign. When those undecided voters say we need more substance from either of the candidates, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t know the differences or that they’re really waiting for some key piece of information that will tip the scales. That’s ambivalence. It’s not ignorance about where the candidates stand,” he said.Franklin said his polling showed that when uncommitted voters in Wisconsin are pressed about the reasons for their indecision, it often has less to do with policies or individual candidates than how they feel about politics in general.“The fact that they are negative towards politics, though, also sounds like many of Trump’s supporters, and that is one argument to think that Trump might have an advantage winning over those folks who are undecided but very negative about politics,” he said.Nonetheless, the YouGov poll shows Harris has the opportunity to make headway with voters who say they favour a candidate but are open to changing their minds. Four per cent of Trump supporters would consider voting for Harris while just 1% of Democrats are prepared to contemplate switching. But many of those Trump supporters see the economy as the most important issue. A majority of voters continue to view the former president’s tenure in the White House as a time of greater prosperity and have much more confidence in him to improve their finances.For all that, Harris’s combative approach to the debate was informed by the recognition in both campaigns that the key to victory almost certainly lies in turnout and generating enthusiasm among ambivalent supporters.In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes out of nearly 6m cast. Four years later, Trump increased his vote in the state by more than 400,000 ballots. But he still lost Pennsylvania in 2020 because Biden was able to boost the Democratic turnout by 530,000 votes.That was a pattern repeated across swing states that delivered a Biden victory and that Harris must now almost certainly win. Probably no state is more pivotal than Pennsylvania.“It’s mostly now about the turnout game,” said Valentino. “It’s very likely that this election in Pennsylvania will be decided by fewer than 100,000 votes, just like it has been in the last two elections. There are many, many voters in Pennsylvania – white, less-than-college-educated men, women in the suburbs around the big cities – that each respective camp is going to be trying to turn out.”Polling shows that enthusiasm for the election among Democrats shot up after Biden dropped out of the race in July. Franklin saw it in Wisconsin.“Democrats are now running about nine points ahead of Republicans in enthusiasm, which certainly seems to point to another very high-turnout election,” he said.The YouGov poll shows that, nationally, 72% of Harris supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. Only 67% of Trump supporters say the same. But enthusiasm is significantly lower among younger people, whom the Democrats need. Only 78% of under-30s say they are likely to vote, compared with 95% of over-45s, who lean toward Trump.Harris continues to alienate some Democrats who outright refused to vote for Biden, calling him “Genocide Joe” over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. Harris sought to defuse the issue during the debate by saying that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”, but that prompted critics to ask: how many innocent deaths is too many?The Democrats were particularly worried about the impact of Gaza policy on the significant Arab American vote in swing state Michigan, but Valentino thinks it has lost some of its sting, particularly among younger voters now focused on concerns about Trump returning to power.After the debate, Harris faced criticism for spending her time taunting Trump instead of detailing economic policy and a political vision. But Democratic strategists are only too aware that the surge in turnout for Biden in 2020 was less about support for the candidate than to get Trump out of the White House.Valentino said Harris’s approach may have served her well in that regard.“Her campaign strategy in this debate was clearly to allow Trump to display this kind of intense anger and goad him into making highly questionable arguments that they would cause moderates, and maybe even some moderate Republicans, to either become disillusioned with Trump and stay home from voting,” he said.“The other reason she was doing this is to mobilise her own base. Young people are worried about the future of democracy. I have data that shows the issue of protecting electoral institutions and elections is a very mobilising issue for Democrats, especially young Democrats. They know that they’re going to have to live and vote in this country for a lot longer than older folks and they are really worried about democratic institutions. That’s an issue that’s very potent for the Democratic party and for Harris, and she’s trying to make the most of it.” More

    • 288 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump repeats false claims about Ohio cities after Biden says ‘no place in America’ for attacks on Haitian immigrants – as it happened

      by

      Donald Trump went on to threaten “large deportations” in Springfield, Ohio, which is home to a large Haitian community that he and his allies have vilified in recent days.“I can say this: we will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We’re going to get these people out,” Trump said.Haitians are currently shielded from deportation under the homeland security department’s Temporary Protected Status through 3 February 2026, due to their home country’s troubles.

      Joe Biden said the hostile attacks on Haitian immigrants in the US “[have] to stop” after Donald Trump repeated a false and derogatory claim about a Haitian community in Ohio.

      Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, on Friday, doubling down on anti-immigrant rhetoric as residents in the town have faced bomb threats and have detailed their fears amid harassment.

      Some schools in Springfield were reportedly closed by administrators for a second day in a row as Trump and his allies spread unproven stories of pet-eating by Haitian migrants.

      Haitians have reportedly been intimidated and had their cars vandalized in Springfield since the campaign against them began. People chanted “we’re not eating cats” at a rally held by Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, in Michigan yesterday.

      Trump also defended his association with Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist whose penchant for public displays of racism has unnerved even some of his most extreme allies.

      Kamala Harris is participating in a taped interview with a local station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to air later on Friday. Harris will also host a virtual livestream rally together with Oprah Winfrey next week.

      Pope Francis criticized Donald Trump over his plan to deport millions of immigrants and Kamala Harris over her stance supporting abortion rights.

      Kamala Harris’s campaign stepped up its mockery of “chicken” Donald Trump for ducking out of another presidential debate, with the Democratic nominee telling her Republican rival he owes it to voters to face her again.

      Joe Biden and Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, are meeting at the White House where they are expected to discuss a loosening of restrictions on Ukraine to launch long-range strikes into Russia.

      Joe Biden is planning a trip to Angola in the coming weeks. This would make Biden the first US head of state to visit sub-Saharan Africa since then president Barack Obama in 2015, according to Reuters.
      Joe Biden is meeting with the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, at the White House.The pair are expected to discuss – though not necessarily announce – a loosening of restrictions on Ukraine to launch long-range strikes into Russia.Biden and Starmer took photos inside the Oval Office before sitting down for talks in the Blue Room alongside UK and US officials, per pool report.Before talks began, Biden said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will not prevail in the war with Ukraine. He said he and Starmer would talk about Ukraine, the Middle East and the need for a hostage and ceasefire deal, as well as the Indo-Pacific region.The White House’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said political leaders should not be “attacking vulnerable communities” as she criticized Donald Trump for spreading false and racist theories targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.The Washington Post reported Jean-Pierre, whose parents immigrated from Haiti to New York, telling reporters today:
      Political leaders should not be attacking vulnerable communities. That’s not who we should be. And if they’re going to fall for conspiracy theories online, maybe they shouldn’t be our leaders.
      Pope Francis has criticized both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for their policies on abortion and immigration, claiming both candidates are “against life”.The pope was speaking to journalists on Friday when he was asked about the US presidential election. He replied:
      Both are against life, be it the one who kicks out migrants, or be it the one who kills babies.
      He went on to say that not welcoming migrants is a “grave” sin and compared undergoing an abortion to an assassination, Reuters reported.Catholics would have to “choose the lesser evil” when they vote in November, he said, without elaborating.
      Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this.
      “Not voting is ugly,” he added. “It is not good. You must vote.”Kamala Harris is participating in a taped interview with Brian Taff for Action News 6 ABC, a local station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The interview will air on the station’s 6pm broadcast.Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris will host a virtual livestream rally together next week.The event, titled Unite for America, will take place on Thursday 19 September, at 8pm ET.This comes as Winfrey, who said she was a registered independent, made a surprise appearance at the Democratic national convention last month and endorsed Harris for president.President Joe Biden is planning a trip to Angola in the coming weeks, Reuters is reporting, citing several sources familiar with the plans.The trip, Reuters reports, is likely to occur after the UN general assembly meeting in September and before the presidential election in November, according to a source.This would make Biden the first US head of state to visit sub-Saharan Africa since then president Barack Obama in 2015, according to Reuters.Biden had previously said he would visit Africa during his presidency.MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group, is partnering with ice-cream company Ben & Jerry’s to create a special limited edition Kamala Harris-inspired ice-cream flavor, titled Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee, as part of a get-out-the-vote initiative.MoveOn announced on Friday that it will also be traveling to battleground states with an ice-cream truck, where it will hand out free ice-cream, and raffle off free, limited-edition, autographed pints of Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee – which is described as a coconut ice-cream with a caramel ripple and confetti stars.The Scoop the Vote tour begins on 16 September in Philadelphia with the founders of Ben & Jerry’s, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the organization said.In addition to free ice-cream and other goodies, the tour will feature elected officials, activists and other special guests, MoveOn said.And on top of the coconut ice-cream, MoveOn will also serve a variety of electorally themed ice-cream flavors, they said, that include: Unburdened by What Has Vanilla Bean, Inauguration Celebration Birthday Cake, Fight for Our Rights Sorbet and MoveOn Mobilizer Milk Chocolate.Despite the efforts of local leaders, Donald Trump has continued to demonize the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, vowing at a press conference to carry out “large deportations” in the town if returned to the White House. He also defended his association with Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist whose penchant for public displays of racism has unnerved even some of his most extreme allies. At a White House event celebrating Black excellence, Joe Biden said the attacks on Haitians have “no place in America”, and Kamala Harris was on her way to Pennsylvania for more campaign events this evening.Here’s what else has happened so far today:

      Some schools in Springfield were reportedly closed by administrators for a second day in a row as Trump and his allies spread unproven stories of pet-eating by Haitian migrants.

      People chanted “we’re not eating cats” at a rally held by Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, in Michigan yesterday.

      Haitians have reportedly been intimidated and had their cars vandalized in Springfield since the campaign against them began.
      Donald Trump’s press conference has concluded, but before he wrapped up, the former president was prompted to talk about what he might do for California if he wins the election.Trump turned it into a campaign pitch to Golden State voters, who haven’t backed a Republican presidential candidate since George HW Bush was on the ballot in 1988:
      Vote for me, California. I’m going to give you safety. I’m going to give you a great border, and I’m going to give you more water than almost anybody has.
      Notice the reference to water, an all-important issue in the western state, which is also the nation’s most populous:Trump was asked again about his association with Laura Loomer, and what he thinks she brings to his campaign.Loomer has pedaled conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks, and made racist posts on social media. Nonetheless, Trump said:
      She brings a spirit to us that a lot of people have. We have very spirited people. And, in all fairness to her, she hates seeing what’s happened to the country. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Democrats are losing’: a battle on EVs could cost Kamala Harris votes in Michigan

      by

      As the critical swing state of Michigan hangs in the balance, experts warn that Democrats’ poor messaging over the shift to electric vehicles could lose them the state in November’s election.“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now,” Donald Trump told the Republican national convention in a speech this summer that would reach tens of millions of people.Despite his burgeoning friendship with Tesla’s Elon Musk, Trump has remained a consistent critic of EVs and battery-powered vehicles more generally. The messaging has resonated with many United Auto Workers (UAW) members, eroding Joe Biden’s support among union members in Michigan by as much as 25 points since the 2020 election.The claim that EVs require less labor is probably not true: multiple studies and industry executives have said it takes about as much or more labor to produce EVs. Still, the Biden-Harris campaign has not pushed that essential point, and in the process is losing the messaging war over EVs, imperiling Democrats’ chances in tightly contested Michigan as union support sputters, according to Bernie Porn, an Epic-MRA Michigan pollster.“Biden and Democrats are doing a lousy job on messaging [on EVs],” said Porn. “Democrats are losing support … but they’ve been silent.”Autoworker votes are critical to Michigan and other must-win upper midwest industrial swing states – Trump won there by a narrow 10,000 votes in 2016.Biden retook the state with broad union support four years later, but by late 2023, union members here preferred Trump over Biden by a 47-40 margin, Epic-MRA found. Following the UAW endorsement early this year, Biden’s support among unions bounced up to 52% – but still 13 points below the last election.About 55% of state residents are also opposed to the EV transition, polling found.Trump’s claim that the EV transition represents the US auto industry’s death knell began to deeply worry union members as Biden guided the nation into the EV transition via the billions of dollars of investment in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act.Trump regularly claims EVs require up to 40% less labor to make than gasoline cars, a statistic repeated by Brian Pannebecker, who backs Trump and is a former UAW member.Even with the evidence that EVs take the same or more time to produce, skepticism among many autoworkers persists, he said.“Of course we’re not going like that,” Pannebecker said. “We’d be suicidal or stupid if we did.”But Trump’s claims are not true, and the job-creating power of EVs is “the biggest secret in politics”, said Mike Murphy, a Republican with the EV Politics Project, a non-profit that pushes for stronger EV policy.Its recent focus groups and polling found people across the political spectrum are more supportive of EVs when they learn that it creates jobs, and EV Politics Project is planning to air a television commercial that hits on that point in the coming weeks.“I don’t know why the Biden-Harris administration has been so bad at telling the story,” Murphy added. “They need to go on the offense.”Democrats could point to recent General Motors statements on the issue.“We’ve done our own analysis at General Motors, and there are other studies that have affirmed that the employee base needed in the future for EV production is very similar to what’s needed for a comparable [internal combustion] vehicle today,” GM executive Gerald Johnson said.GM is building a massive new battery plant in Michigan, which has the most announced battery production nationwide. At least seven plants have opened or are in the works, and UAW leadership has been supportive of the EV expansion.A spokesperson for UAW said support for the EV transition among union members was strong, dismissing opposition within its ranks as rooted in partisan politics.Parsing EV productionThe idea that EV production requires fewer hours can be traced back to several out-of-context comments made by auto executives and companies underestimating the time demands in 2017, a Heatmap analysis found.Trump has run with the comments, and the messaging has bounced around the echo chamber without much media scrutiny. On its face the claim makes sense – EVs require fewer parts in their powertrain, so it takes less time to assemble.The powertrain is what propels the car, and in gas-powered vehicles it contains over 1,000 parts that make up the engine and transmission. An EV powertrain is seemingly simpler – just a few hundred components with batteries, electric motors and power management systems.But industry observers say the claims about labor hours seem to omit battery packs. And when every component and the complexity of the EV powertrain production process is factored in, it takes about the same or more time to put it together, a recent Carnegie Mellon study found.The research used shop floor level data and interviews with autoworkers at nine plants to determine how long it takes to make each EV powertrain part. The researchers found EV powertrains require about two to three times more labor to produce than gas – up to 11 worker hours per gas powertrain compared with up to 24 worker hours for a battery powertrain.“You need to unpack the black box of the production process to figure out whether the assembly time reduction was outweighed by an increase in fabrication complexity,“ said Christophe Combemale, a study co-author. “We can say very strongly at the moment the evidence suggests it takes as many or perhaps more labor hours to produce [an EV powertrain].”Recent University of Michigan research took a different approach. It examined output at three factories where EV production replaced gas production. It found output is higher at gas plants, meaning more hours are required to build EVs – a former California GM/Toyota plant produced 80 vehicles per person per year, while a Tesla plant now in the facility averages 30.Researchers at the Boston Consulting Group came to a similar conclusion in an analysis that looked at an entire car’s assembly. It also noted time-consuming complexities in EV production, like the battery pack’s heavy weight, which requires the rest of the car to be much lighter than a gas-powered vehicle. The Tesla Model S battery pack weighs more than half a ton, which is offset by using aluminum instead of steel, as is standard with gas vehicles, the paper notes.However, aluminum is “trickier to work with in a factory” because it is comparatively weak, the paper states, demanding expensive adjustments like spot welding to shore up its strength. The installation of the charging unit, additional wiring, battery loading and alignment all require time not needed in gas assembly.“This is a significant change for an industry that has spent more than 100 years developing and improving engine manufacturing and vehicle assembly to the highest degrees of efficiency,” the paper states.CaveatsAs the nascent EV production process matures, automakers will find efficiencies that will reduce the manufacturing time. Meanwhile, while the EV market is growing, sales have been slower than expected, and some Michigan plants have recently laid off workers or scaled back employment figures.In his critique of EVs, Pannebecker, the Trump-backing former UAW member, pointed out the most obvious caveat to research showing they take more hours: batteries and their components largely are not made in the US at the moment, so they are not of use to the UAW.“No matter which way you look at it, it’s a losing proposition for autoworkers,” Pannebecker said.As much as 80% of lithium ion batteries are estimated to be produced in China, but that is changing. A slew of battery plants are scheduled to come online in the US in the coming years in addition to more than 30 already operating, and five of those will be in Michigan.Even if those plants are built, Pannebecker noted, many of them are not unionized and only pay $15-$18 an hour. Near Youngstown, Ohio, an Ultium battery plant near the once-storied GM Lordstown plant suffers from high turnover because of the low pay that workers there say is in line with a local Waffle House.But that is also changing. Late last year and early this year the UAW made battery plants a priority in its negotiations with automakers, and the plants’ workers can now unionize.Meanwhile, the Chips and Science Act aimed at reshoring the semiconductor industry that produces critical components to EVs is also helping shift component production to the US. Combemale said there is some potential for autoworkers to be retrained or take on jobs in semiconductor plants or other higher tech settings than a shop floor.Still, this broad narrative does not seem to be reaching many Michiganders, whether in a union or not. The most recent polling shows only 56% of Michigan union members approve of the EV transition – far below the 74% of Democrats who approve of it. Meanwhile, union members’ families disapprove by a 51-45% margin, and support among independent voters is even lower.But it’s not too late to change the messaging for this election, and into the future, said EV Politics’ Murphy. Part of the problem may be generational within union ranks – older guys are less supportive because they won’t be around as the EV transition progresses, Murphy said.Democrats need to stop making EVs an environmental issue, which will “divide the voters in half”, Murphy said, and instead push the job creation narrative. His focus groups found an up to 19-point improvement on EV approval rating when messaging focused on the latter.“It’s a very powerful way to reframe the argument,” Murphy said. “It’s one of the best bragging rights they’ve got. This isn’t hard, it’s just a story no one knows.” More