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Candidates offer dramatically different visions at dueling town halls
Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory
McConnell says he has votes to confirm Amy Coney Barrett
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The Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, on Thursday abruptly canceled her travel for the coming few days after two people associated with the Joe Biden-Harris election campaign tested positive for coronavirus.Harris was on a flight with both individuals two days before their positive Covid-19 tests. The individuals were Harris’s communications director, Liz Allen, and a “non-staff flight crew member”.Because Harris and these contacts wore medical-grade N95 face masks during the flight and they were not within 6ft of the vice-presidential nominee for more than 15 minutes, they do not meet the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’ (CDC) definition of “close contact”.For that reason, Harris does not meet full quarantine criteria, which would normally require an individual to be in isolation for two weeks.But “out of an abundance of caution” the campaign has canceled her events through Sunday. She will still attend virtual campaign events.The individuals were not in contact with the Democratic president nominee, Joe Biden.The Harris campaign put out a statement saying the news of the positive tests came in late on Wednesday.NEWS: Sen. Harris’s campaign communications director and a non staff flight member have tested positive for COVID-19. The Biden campaign is canceling some of Harris’s planned travel. pic.twitter.com/TBme8kjFv4— Daniel Strauss (@DanielStrauss4) October 15, 2020
It added that the California senator and vice-presidential candidate would “deep a robust and aggressive schedule of virtual campaign activities to reach voters all across the country” and that she intended to return to in-person campaigning on Monday.The precautions, the statement noted, are “the sort of conduct we have continuously modeled in this campaign”.The campaign said that Harris last tested negative for coronavirus on Wednesday and she will be tested again.More details soon … More
It took less than one day after Kamala Harris was announced as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee for a racist and baseless “birther” conspiracy theory to start circulating among her critics.The morning after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, making her the first black woman and the first Asian American to join a major party’s presidential ticket, Newsweek published an op-ed casting doubt upon the California senator’s US citizenship because she was born to immigrant parents.The argument was immediately discredited by legal experts, who noted Harris was born in a hospital in Oakland, California, and was thus undeniably a US citizen.But that irrefutable evidence did not stop Donald Trump, one of the champions of the similarly baseless birther claims against Barack Obama, from stoking the conspiracy theory.“I just heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said at an August press conference. “But that’s a very serious, you’re saying that, they’re saying that she doesn’t qualify because she wasn’t born in this country.”The president has continued his attacks against Harris in the two months since, most recently calling her a “monster” after last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate.Trump’s efforts to demonize Harris have taken on an added element of desperation heading into the final weeks of the presidential election, as polls show Biden leading nationally and in major battleground states.The Democratic ticket’s significant polling advantage increases the likelihood that Harris will indeed become the country’s first female vice-president, potentially setting her up for a successful White House bid after Biden leaves office.But Trump’s comments have underscored a consistent theme of Harris’s entire political career, one that will probably only be amplified if she becomes vice-president: it’s not easy being the first.…Harris’s involvement with political activism started when she was a child, a fact that she has frequently touted on the campaign trail. Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and became involved with the civil rights movement. More
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Supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was questioned by Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris over the Affordable Care Act, known popularly as Obamacare, during day two of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. Barrett made the claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare. Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it. Republicans want to have Barrett confirmed before election day
Amy Coney Barrett dodges abortion, healthcare and election law questions
Kamala Harris grilling prompts doubtful claim from Amy Coney Barrett
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Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee condemns Republican push to overturn healthcare law and abortion rights
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Kamala Harris questions Amy Coney Barrett over the Affordable Care Act – video
Kamala Harris delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican efforts to tear down healthcare and abortion access as she grilled Amy Coney Barrett, prompting the supreme court nominee to make the unbelievable claim that she was not aware of Donald Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare.
Speaking via teleconference during Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, the Democratic senator and vice-presidential nominee began with a campaign speech about the importance of accessible healthcare amid the coronavirus – highlighting the number of Americans who would lose insurance if the 2010 Affordable Care Act were repealed in five states where Republican senators are struggling to win re-election.
She then addressed Barrett: “Prior to your nomination, were you aware of President Trump’s statement committing to nominate judges who will strike down the Affordable Care Act? And I’d appreciate a yes or no answer.”
Barrett maintained that before she was nominated to the supreme court, she was unaware of his public statements. “I don’t recall hearing about or seeing such statements,” Barrett said.
Harris asked how many months after Barrett wrote an article criticizing John Roberts’ decision upholding the Affordable Care Act she received her nomination for her appeals court position.
“The Affordable Care Act and all of its protections hinge on this seat,” Harris said.
“I would hope the committee would trust my integrity,” Barrett said, noting, as she has done throughout the hearings, that she has not made any commitments to rule a certain way on the healthcare law.
The assertion, and Barrett’s implication that she had somehow tuned out the president’s loud, public criterion for judges he’d appoint, is difficult to believe.
Harris, the former attorney general of California, is famous for her prosecutorial style of questioning. Her sharp interrogation of Donald Trump’s last Supreme Court nominee – now Justice Brett Kavanaugh – helped elevate her political profile.
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Complete exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris and Judge Kavanaugh on Mueller Investigation.Kavanaugh: “I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”Sen. Harris: “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.” pic.twitter.com/3bP7rJ6u0L
August 11, 2020
Harris also tackled Barrett’s views on abortion, making a carefully laid-out case that despite Barrett’s equivocation and insistence that she is unbiased on the issue of reproductive rights, she is far from it.
Barrett was a member of a “right to life” organization that in 2016 promoted a crisis pregnancy center in South Bend, Indiana, that has been criticized for misleading and misdirecting vulnerable women seeking abortions. She has signed off on a newspaper ad calling Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 ruling protecting the right to choose – “barbaric”. A Notre Dame Magazine article from 2013 describes a lecture series during which Barrett “spoke … to her own conviction that life begins at conception”.
As a federal judge, she has considered three laws restricting abortion and expressed misgivings about rulings that had struck down the laws. She joined the dissent against a decision to strike down an Indiana abortion rule – signed into law by Mike Pence when the vice-president was Indiana’s governor – that mandated the fetal remains be buried or cremated.
“I would suggest that we not pretend that we don’t know how this nominee views a women’s right to choose or make her own decisions,” Harris said. The senator noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Barrett has cited as her model in declining to give any hints on how she would vote on future cases, was, unlike Barrett, much more forthcoming with her own personal views on abortion.
Harris did not ask Barrett a direct question about Roe v Wade, driving home the point that her views have already been made plain.
Harris ended by asking to enter into the record letters opposing Barrett’s nomination from the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood.
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Mike Pence and Kamala Harris met in Utah for the only vice-presidential debate of the election, separated by Plexiglass barriers as a protection against coronavirus.
From the pandemic to healthcare and race to the supreme court, via a fly, here are some of the key moments
Pence-Harris vice-presidential debate: six key takeaways
Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video
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One of the most memorable moments of the vice-presidential debate was on healthcare, when Harris issued a stark warning about the Trump administration’s intentions.
Trump is seeking to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, which prevents health companies turning away patients with pre-existing conditions.
‘If you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they’re coming for you.’
Pence responded by claiming the Trump administration has a plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Trump has spent years claiming he will release a comprehensive healthcare plan. We’re yet to see it
US election polls tracker: who is leading in the swing states?
Battle for the suburbs: can Joe Biden flip Texas? – video
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The vice-presidential debate was more courteous than last week’s horror show but still showed two contrasting faces of America
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‘They’re coming for you’: Harris slams Trump and Pence on healthcare – video
It was always going to be about the two faces of America.
One: white, male, midwestern, evangelical Christian. The other: Black, female, coastal, progressive.
What wasn’t so predictable about the face-to-face at Wednesday’s US vice-presidential debate was that Mike Pence would show up with bloodshot eye – never a good look during a pandemic – or that a fly would nestle in his snowy white hair.
Equally striking was Kamala Harris’s ability to weaponise facial expressions. The California senator’s fusillade of raised eyebrows, pursed lips and withering stares at her opponent will live in Democrats’ memory long after the words are forgotten (and probably be viewed by Republicans as sneering elitism).
It was also notable that both candidates did a better job than their bosses in last week’s debate apocalypse. Both were adept at sidestepping questions – such as whether they had discussed “the issue of presidential disability” with their septuagenarian running mates – in favour of talking points. At times, it almost felt like a brief holiday in political normality.
This may also have been a sneak preview of the 2024 election. Harris was on her game and looked ready to take over from Trump’s Democratic presidential challenger, Joe Biden. Pence, the current vice-president, used attack lines on taxes, the Green New Deal and the supreme court that Trump failed to land against Biden last week.
It was hardly a surprise that Pence reeked of white male privilege; it was less anticipated that the target was the moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, as much as Harris. Showing no respect for her questions, rules or timekeeping, he just kept talking and often called her “Susan”.
Struggling to gain control, she pleaded: “I did not create the rules for tonight … I’m here to enforce them.”
So with that, Republicans may have lost more suburban women voters, if that is even possible. But the bottom line is that this VP debate won’t change the race.
It took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, with the candidates separated by two Perspex screens, a metaphor if ever there was one for America’s divisions and self-affirming bubbles.
Pence wore a dark suit, white shirt and Trumpian red tie; Harris sported a black jacket, dark blouse and necklace; both wore Stars and Stripes badges.
The former prosecutor made her case to the jury with a bald statement about the coronavirus pandemic that would prove impossible to top: “The American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.”
She added for good measure that “this administration has forfeited their right to re-election based on this”.
Pence had the unenviable task of defending the indefensible. “From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first,” he claimed unconvincingly, during a pandemic that has claimed more than 210,000 American lives and infected more than 7 million people. Harris pulled another of her scathing lawyerly expressions.
Pence, head of the White House coronavirus taskforce, went on to offer a highly disingenuous defence that bore little relation to Harris’s critique: “When you say what the American people have done over these last eight months hasn’t worked, that’s a great disservice to the sacrifices of the American people.”
Pence also claimed that the Biden-Harris plan for dealing with Covid-19 looks awfully similar to what the Trump administration is already doing. “It looks a bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.”
It was a reference to Biden failing to credit the British Labour leader Neil Kinnock in a speech 33 years ago. Harris shook her head wryly. More
