US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘A sad circus’: Iowa caucuses arrive with little doubt over likely Republican victor

      by

      Few people relish the Iowa caucuses, the first act of the greatest political show on earth, more than Mike Draper. Since 2008 the Iowa native has hosted US presidential candidates at his novelty retail store and made tongue-in-cheek political merchandise. But this time, he feels, something is missing.“We’ve always had a fairly good finger on the pulse and it’s normally a circus but this year is just a sad circus,” said Draper, owner of Raygun in the state capital, Des Moines. “People are still going through the motions but there’s no real drama to it.”That is because Donald Trump, a twice-impeached former president still facing 91 criminal charges, is poised to complete his political resurrection on Monday with victory in the first nominating contest to decide which Republican takes on the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in November’s election.Opinion polls show Trump casting a giant shadow over the sparsely populated, snow-swept state despite campaigning far less there than his rivals Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Most analyses say the question is not if he will win but by how much.It is a rare anti-climax for political aficionados in Iowa, which takes its outsized role in vetting the world’s most powerful person very seriously. Draper, 41, who votes Democratic, reflected: “We make a lot of shirts about sports and it’s tricky because it’s hard to make product that sells for a losing team but it’s also hard to make product that sells for a team that’s blowing everybody out.“This year, even on the Republican side, it’s almost like an incumbent is running uncontested and then you had DeSantis and Haley having a two-person debate in Des Moines while the guy who’s blowing them out of the water doesn’t even show up.”Such is the lack of engagement that, when Draper’s staff mounted a display to celebrate the caucuses, curious onlookers assumed it must be related to Presidents’ Day in February or Independence Day in July. The store responded with characteristic dry wit on a T-shirt: “Election 2024: You’d think battling a fascist takeover of America would spark more interest from people.”Another T-shirt, based on a snatch of conversation overheard on the New York subway, says: “What the hell is a caucus? And where the hell is Iowa?” These are questions that get asked every four years. A caucus is a gathering at a neighbourhood location, such as a school, church or union hall, where representatives make speeches on behalf of their favoured candidates. People then vote by secret ballot.Iowa is a midwestern state with the same population size as Wales (3.1 million). Hogs outnumber people by more than seven to one. It is whiter and more rural than most of the US. It has hosted the official start of every presidential campaign for the last half-century, offering a test of humility as candidates brave the icy plains to visit churches, diners, farms and school gyms, look voters in the eye and make their pitch.But the old maxim that “all politics is local” applies less in today’s nationalised, media-driven political landscape. Trump, 77, is the first loser of a presidential election to compete in Iowa four years later. He has the infrastructure and money to run the organised ground game that caucuses demand. His celebrity status has overwhelmed his hard-toiling opponents and enabled him to campaign at arm’s length.He held only 24 events in 19 counties in Iowa between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, according to data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper. This was far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties). Even Trump’s campaign surrogates have been drawing bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “For people like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, first-time candidates, Iowa’s important to be there in person but Trump is campaigning on the persona and mythology of Trump as much as anything else.“People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person. He’s become a standard bearer for people who feel disenfranchised by whatever they view as the establishment and, even though they get a lot of benefits from the Biden administration programmes, Biden has been terrible at selling them.”A recent survey put Trump 34 percentage points clear of the field, suggesting that voters here care little for warnings that he is a nascent dictator ready to shred democracy. One major reason is born-again or evangelical Christians, who made up nearly two-thirds of caucus-goers during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, according to exit polling.This group seems willing to overlook his moral shortcomings if it means electing a perceived fighter who will deliver its objectives. Karen Johnson, a 67-year-old evangelical Christian, told the New York Times: “Trump is our David and our Goliath,” – neatly capturing his combination of sacred and profane.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, said: “North-west Iowa, where I live, is the most conservative part of the state and it’s just very solidly pro-Trump, including a lot of evangelicals who Ron DeSantis has been trying to court.“Trump is just dominant in Iowa. It’s going to be a good night for him.” But elections are also an expectations game and, if Trump dips below 50% of the vote in Iowa, it will be seen as a disappointment. In recent days his advisers have been reminding reporters that no Republican presidential candidate has won a contested Iowa caucus by more than 12 points since Bob Dole in 1988.There is another wild card: weather.During the weekend, extreme weather made Iowa’s roads dangerous and wreaked havoc with the final sprint of the caucus campaign. On Friday the state patrol posted a warning on social media that said: “Please, don’t put yourself or others in danger.”Trump’s campaign was forced to cancel three out of four in-person rallies over the weekend, opting to hold tele-rallies instead “out of an abundance of caution amid severe weather advisories”. Haley, who cancelled all three of her events on Friday, quipped to voters during a virtual town hall: “I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore.”DeSantis did manage to hold an event on Friday morning in Ankeny, close to Des Moines, and said of the caucuses: “I know it’s gonna be cold. I know it’s gonna be not the most pleasant, but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to pass a vote that has more impact.”Iowans are famously hardy but Monday is forecast to be a record cold caucus night with temperatures predicted to dip as low as -14F (-26C). Biting winds could make it feel as cold as -45F in some places.This could reduce turnout but again might favour Trump because he has a fiercely loyal base. He confidently predicted last weekend: “We won’t lose one vote, because our people, they’re going to walk on glass.”Two subplots of this year’s caucuses are the implosion of DeSantis, 45, and the rise of 51-year-old Haley. A year ago the Florida governor was being hailed as a new Republican saviour who could offer Trumpism without Trump: rightwing populist policies without legal baggage or crass antics. Tens of millions of dollars, countless air miles and several staff departures later, he has little to show for it.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The biggest surprise in the past 12 months politically has been the steady weakening of the DeSantis candidacy. He was presented to the world as a person who had just about all Donald Trump’s virtues – as Republicans define them – with none of his vices and look at what’s happened to him.”A third-place finish for DeSantis on Monday could end his bid for the White House. Galston added: “Ron DeSantis has bet the farm on Iowa and, if he finishes an ignominious third, he will be a dead man walking and the only question is how long will he walk before he collapses. If he finishes a stronger than expected second, which you can’t rule out based on the amount of ground-level work he and his team have done there, that would be a surprise.”DeSantis has been criticised for lacking charm and charisma, more naturally predisposed to a scowl than a smile. One commentator memorably described him as the kind of guy who might unplug your life support to recharge his mobile phone.Schiller of Brown University said: “He’s not quite as good in person on the stump as people had hoped he would be and that was a problem. DeSantis tried to be Trump version two but the problem for him is that version one is running. At the end of the day, people like the original.“That happens in American politics: if you are unique – and Trump is, we can argue safely, unique – it’s hard to imitate it. You’ve seen all these candidates who try to imitate Trump fall flat on their face. Ron DeSantis is just an extended example of what happened to Senate candidates in 2022. As long as Trump is out there and is walking, talking and breathing, nobody wants the imitation.”Despite a recent gaffe over the cause of the civil war, when she failed to mention slavery, Haley has donor money and momentum on her side. A strong finish in Iowa would set her up well for New Hampshire, where some polls show her cutting Trump’s lead to single digits, and where the anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie’s recent decision to drop out could give her a further boost in support.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “She’s run the best campaign and she’s also the best candidate in terms of the tools and the rules. She is very good on her feet most of the time and she has a cheerful personality and is very subtly appealing to moderate and independent voters.”Normally, victory in Iowa is a step, not a leap, towards the White House. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won and John McCain trailed in fourth, but McCain became the nominee. In 2012, Rick Santorum edged out Mitt Romney but it was Romney who became the party’s standard bearer. And in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Trump into second place, only for Trump to secure the nomination and the presidency.But a big win for Trump on Monday will imply that his iron grip on the Republican party endures and a third consecutive nomination is his to lose. It will also signify a remarkable comeback for a man who suffered a crushing defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election, instigated a riot at the US Capitol in a desperate bid to overturn it and became the first former president hit by criminal indictments. And it will serve as a warning against complacency for Democrats and anyone around the world who fears a second Trump presidency.Joe Walsh, a former congressman who challenged the incumbent Trump in the 2020 Iowa caucuses and polled at 1%, said: “I expect him to win big. I expect Haley and DeSantis to be very distant. I expect maybe Haley to end up ahead of DeSantis and I wouldn’t be surprised if DeSantis gets out before New Hampshire and endorses Trump.”Walsh has not been surprised to see few Republican candidates directly attack Trump for most of the campaign. “Both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, everybody in this primary, it’s been fucking mission impossible. This is Trump’s party and none of them have been trying to beat him. If you attack Trump, you’re done as a Republican. There’s no anti-Trump lane in that party. Period.” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      The Rebels review: AOC, Bernie, Warren and the fight against Trump

      by

      In 2017, mere months after Donald Trump settled into the White House, Joshua Green of Bloomberg News delivered Devil’s Bargain, a mordantly amusing but deadly serious take on the 45th president and his relationship with Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who became Trump’s chief strategist. With wit, insight and access, Green informed, entertained and horrified. More than six years later, both Trump and Bannon face criminal trials. Then again, the band may soon be back together – in the West Wing.Green is acutely aware of the economic and social cleavages that roil the US and divide Democrats ranged against the Republicans’ rightward turn. With his new book, The Rebels, he shifts his gaze to three notables of the Democratic left: two senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York. Once again, Green’s work is smart, sharp and smoothly written.Warren and Sanders failed in bids to become president. In 2020, his second such primary campaign, Sanders won early contests but saw his ambitions crash in South Carolina. That heavily African American primary electorate wasn’t all that keen on Brooklyn-bred progressivism, as Sanders offered.As for Warren, she failed to win a single contest and finished third in her home state, behind Sanders and Joe Biden. What worked for her in debates, congressional hearings and the faculty lounge did not resonate with voters. A highly contentious claim to be Native American raised damning questions too.Still, Warren’s critiques of the mortgage meltdown and resulting displacements provided intellectual heft for the populist left. Furthermore, unlike Biden she was intellectually brilliant and not beholden to Delaware and its credit card giants. Warren was a harsh critic of Wall Street too. The two billionaires in the 2020 race, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, regularly felt her sting. Ditto Tim Geithner, first treasury secretary to Barack Obama and another key character in Green’s book.Warren made an impact. Green writes: “Knowing [Trump’s] commitment to economic populism was merely rhetorical, Bannon fretted that Warren would lure away blue-collar voters with a program he described as ‘populist Democratic nationalism’.”In the House, Ocasio-Cortez, who at 34 is decades younger than Warren, Biden and Sanders, is the one member of the “Squad” of progressives who possesses the tools and dexterity to play politics nationally. She is emotionally grounded.At one 2019 hearing, the congresswoman widely known as AOC filleted Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s ties to Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct data-harvesting and research firm owned by Bannon and the rightwing Mercer family. She also put the wood to Exxon over its early but non-disclosed knowledge about global heating and its effects.All three of Green’s subjects convey seriousness. Humor, less so. Nonetheless, the book offers a valuable recapitulation of the crack-up of the New Deal coalition, the impact of Ronald Reagan’s victories and the continued reverberations of the Great Recession of 2008.The Democrats hold the White House and the Senate but their future is unclear. Non-college graduates, regardless of race, find less to love in the historic home of working America. Green seizes on the havoc wrought by economic liberalization, financialism and expanded trade with China – factors that have driven a wedge between the Democrats and what was once their base.Convincingly, Green argues that neo-liberalism is in retrograde and that Biden is more a transitional figure than a harbinger of what comes next. Even so, Biden tacked left – instead of pivoting toward the center – as he faced Trump in 2020.In 2021, on inauguration day, Biden issued the Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. His White House intoned: “Advancing equity is not a one-year project – it is a generational commitment that will require sustained leadership and partnership with all communities.”Good luck with that. The controversial fall of Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, who came under sustained conservative fire over the Israel-Hamas war, student protest and allegations of plagiarism in her work, is just one recent illustration of how tough such terrain will remain.Green traces many Democratic dilemmas to 1980, when Reagan handily defeated an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. Afterwards, Democratic mandarins concluded that the old-time religion of lunch-bucket liberalism needed to make room for market-based economics. Reagan’s embrace of tax cuts and reduced government resonated with the public. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama came to stand as heirs of that strategic decision. But it was about more than “it’s the economy, stupid”, as Clinton would learn on the job.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Clinton told Robert Rubin, his treasury secretary, a former head of Goldman Sachs.James Carville, the guru of Clinton’s first victory, later said that were he to be born again, he wanted to be reincarnated as the most powerful thing in the world: the bond market.Green homes in on the close relationships that existed between the Obama administration and Wall Street. In 2008, for all the then Illinois senator’s talk of hope and change, he was the financial sector’s choice for president over John McCain. Green quotes Geithner’s pitch to Obama for the treasury slot, and describes how Geithner beat out Larry Summers, Rubin’s successor, to secure the job.Green also examines how in saving the financial system despite its players’ unadulterated greed and stupidity, Geithner helped incubate resentments that haunt the US today.“In a crisis, you have to choose,” Geithner said. “Are you going to solve the problem, or are you going to teach people a lesson?”In 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, voters did the latter. Ten months from now, they may do so again.
      The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s novel take on January 6: calling convicted rioters ‘hostages’

      by

      Supporters of Donald Trump have long been forced to suspend their belief in reality: expected to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the one-term president won the 2020 election, hasn’t committed any crimes and is a successful businessman.But as another tight presidential election looms, the recent efforts by Donald Trump to reimagine the people imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection as “hostages”, and to downplay the horrors of that day as a peaceful protest, could have serious ramifications for democracy and his own party, onlookers have warned.Trump, who has been charged with four federal crimes in relation to the riot at the Capitol in 2021, has repeatedly sought to whitewash the event. But in recent days – and backed up by Elise Stefanik, one of the most powerful Republicans in the House – he has used the term “hostages” prominently as a description of the hundreds of people prosecuted and jailed for their actions attacking the US Capitol.The terminology worries some experts who see it as explicitly undermining the US legal system by saying its treatment of Trump supporters is illegitimate – something he has repeatedly tried to do while he faces a multitude of prosecutions himself.At rallies and television interviews, Trump and Stefanik have also pitched a novel history of January 6 that requires anyone aware of the events that day to ignore or forget what they witnessed and read.Rather than engaging in a storming of the seat of US democracy that left 140 police officers injured and four people dead, people that day acted “peacefully and patriotically”, Trump said in a recent speech in Iowa.Of the hundreds of people imprisoned for their role in the attack, for crimes including assaulting police officers, illegally entering federal grounds with a weapon and seditious conspiracy, Trump had a similarly positive spin.“Some people call them prisoners. I call them hostages,” Trump said.“Release the J6 hostages, Joe [Biden]. Release them, Joe. You can do it real easy, Joe.”In Trump’s fresh telling, the tens of thousands of people from across the US who gathered on January 6 quietly voiced their concerns about the electoral process, apparently doing nothing more than engaging in a sort of elf-like merriment.“A beautiful day,” Trump has called it, which featured “great, great patriots”.Some have already bought into the idea.“I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages,” Stefanik, who as chair of the House Republican conference is one of the most powerful GOP members in Congress, said in an interview over the weekend.“I believe that we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump, but we’re seeing it against conservatives.”The idea that the Trump supporters charged in connection with the insurrection have been mistreated is false. An analysis by the Intercept found that, actually, federal judges “have overwhelmingly issued sentences far more lenient than justice department prosecutors sought”.And apart from being untrue, this sanitizing of political violence is particularly troubling ahead of a presidential election between Trump and Joe Biden that could be just as tight as the 2020 race.“People convicted of violently assaulting police officers and conspiring to overthrow the government are not ‘hostages’,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman who served on the January 6 select committee, wrote on X.“Stefanik must apologize to the families of 130 people being held hostage by Hamas right now. Her pandering to Trump is dangerous.”It’s not just Democrats who are concerned.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s outrageous and it’s disgusting,” said Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman who has been a vocal critic of Trump, told Face the Nation.“It’s a disgrace, and you cannot say you are a member of a party that believes in the rule of law, you cannot say you are pro-law enforcement if you then go out and you say these people are ‘hostages’, it’s disgraceful.”Some serving Republicans, including those in vulnerable swing districts, also distanced themselves from the hostages concept this week, in a sign that the revisionism of January 6 could become a source of division.“Not my choice of words, but to each his own,” Jen Kiggans, a Republican congresswoman who defeated an incumbent Democrat in 2022, told the Washington Post. “It’s not what I describe them as, no.”“They’re criminal defendants, not hostages,” Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman whose Pennsylvania district voted for Biden over Trump in 2020.Don Bacon, a Republican whose district also chose Biden in 2020, told the New Republic: “I don’t defend people who hit cops, who vandalized our Capitol.”For Trump the claims of mistreatment appear to be a strand of his enduring complaint that the Biden administration has “weaponized” the justice department – mostly against himself.The treatment of January 6 convicts has generally taken second place behind Trump lashing out at the 91 charges he is facing, many relating to his attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election.But even if Trump’s newfound concern for others proves to be merely an attempt to exonerate himself from blame, his supporters seem to genuinely believe his claims.In the fervid environment that is Truth Social, the social media platform Trump established in a huff after he was banned from Twitter, people have breathlessly echoed Trump’s claims about “hostages” being subjected to ill-treatment.The people convicted are variously referred to as “PRISONERS OF WAR!!!!”, victims of “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” and “political prisoners”.Trump’s base, it seems, are happy to continue to suspend disbelief. But the furore has illustrated an unwanted split in the Republican party in what will be a key year at the polls – and more broadly, the attempt to exculpate the people who stormed the Capitol has dark implications ahead of a stormy presidential election. More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Iowa caucuses are ‘important because they’re first’ – but are they democratic?

      by

      Iowans are set to brave subzero temperatures on Monday when they arrive at their caucus sites at 7pm to formally kick off the process to choose their nominee.In terms of pure numbers, the Iowa caucuses won’t have much of a role in determining who the Republican nominee is. The state allocates 40 delegates in the Republican nominating contest, roughly just 1.6% of the more than 2,400 that are up for grabs. But that small total belies the outsized influence the state can have on US presidential politics.For more than half a century, Iowa has come to occupy a near-mythological place in American politics – becoming known as the place where underdogs can become serious contenders and where dreams of the White House can die. The rural state’s voters often reward retail politicking, giving hope to candidates who visit its 99 counties to shake hands and give stump speeches.Since the 1970s, its caucuses have been the first nominating contest in each presidential cycle. Candidates crisscross the state in hopes of exceeding expectations and gaining momentum. And while it does not always pick the eventual nominee – Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have all won there – victories there have been rocket fuel to candidates like Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.While Republicans are proceeding as usual with their first-in-the-nation caucuses, Democrats have chosen to shake up their calendar this year. In a largely symbolic move since there is no competitive Democratic primary, the Democratic National Committee has stripped Iowa’s caucuses of their first-in-the-nation status after mounting concerns that the overwhelmingly white state does not reflect the makeup of the party. But a battle over Iowa’s status probably looms for 2028, when there will be a competitive primary.“Iowa is not first because it’s important. It’s important because it’s first,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor at Drake University in Des Moines and the co-author of The Iowa Precinct Caucuses: The Making of a Media Event. “The morning after the caucuses, Iowa falls off the face of the earth.”The importance of being firstIowa wound up being the first state to nominate presidential candidates largely by accident.After Democrats saw violent protests at the 1968 Democratic convention, the party moved to change the way it selected delegates to limit the power of party bosses. In Iowa, that meant holding precinct caucuses, and then conventions at the county, congressional district and state levels. In 1972, the state convention was set for 20 May because a hall was available for that day, according to the New York Times. A slow mimeograph machine meant that first stage of the process, the precinct caucuses, needed to start in January.“It was simply a historical accident,” Goldford said.The caucuses exploded in 1976. In that cycle, Jimmy Carter was not seen as a serious presidential candidate. But his campaign went all in on Iowa, betting that if he won there it would create enough momentum to make him a viable candidate. Carter earned the most votes of any candidate in the caucuses (he finished second behind “uncommitted”) and wound up winning the presidency.Gordon Fischer, a former chair of the state’s Democratic party, said there had been several efforts over the years by other states wanting to edge out Iowa. When he was chair in the early 2000s, Michigan made an unsuccessful play to go first.“As much as I like, love and respect the Iowa caucuses and what Iowans have done over the years, probably it was unrealistic to think we were going to keep it for ever,” Fischer said. “It was just too special.”The growing party divide and its consequencesThere has been a mounting push in recent years to have Democrats change their nomination schedule and strip Iowa of its place at the start of the nominating process.Allowing Iowa to go first, critics argued, gave outsized importance to a state that is overwhelmingly white and did not reflect the base of the Democratic party. It also brought a surge of Democratic attention to a state where Republicans have dominated in recent years (Trump won Iowa in 2020 by more than eight points). The push was exacerbated in 2020 when the Iowa Democratic party botched the release of the caucus results.The Iowa caucus being first also ignores Black voters, Joe Biden has argued, who have been the “backbone” of the party and should have a “louder and earlier voice in the process”, something the Democrats are trying to do by putting South Carolina as the first official contest this year.Last year, the Democratic National Committee officially stripped Iowa of its place at the front of the nominating contest. State Democrats have signaled that Iowa will try to compete again in 2028 for the first spot in the nominating contest.It’s not only bad for Iowans to lose their early status, but for the country as a whole, Fischer said. Iowa has a lot to offer Democrats: media markets are more affordable and the state often rewards candidates who campaign on the ground, de-emphasizing the outsized role of money in politics.And, perhaps crucially for the party, the state is rural, and Democrats have a problem with rural voters, who have increasingly turned toward the GOP. “Iowa gave candidates the opportunity to talk with and hear from voters that had a rural perspective. I’m not sure that’s the case with the other early states,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor Republicans, however, the caucuses don’t appear to be going anywhere.“I would be shocked if the Republicans wanted to change any of this,” Goldford said. “The Republicans now are essentially the party of rural America. It makes Iowa relevant to maintain for the Republicans and the position it’s in in the nomination process.”Because Republicans are keeping their caucuses, Fischer thinks that gives Iowa a “fighting chance” to make a case for Democrats keeping it, too.‘A nice exercise in democracy’On their face, the caucuses themselves seem to be the picture of what democracy looks like: Americans gathering with their neighbors to debate their political differences.“They force you to do that once every four years. To go and sit and actually have a civil discussion with your neighbors in a moderated atmosphere – if anybody’s seen it operate it’s a marvel,” Art Cullen, the editor of the Storm Lake Times, said. “It’s a nice exercise in democracy and healthy.”But in recent years there has been more discussion of the undemocratic aspects of the caucus. Only allowing people to caucus on a specific day at a specific time shuts out people who might have to work or who can’t find childcare, or who can’t make it because of bad weather.Fischer doesn’t agree with the criticisms of the format. Voters caucus in their own neighborhoods, in small precincts, on a date that’s set well in advance. The caucus allows for people to come together to talk politics and persuade each other for one night.“I think there’s something cool about that. I think there’s something valuable about that. I realize it’s a bit of a barrier, but I think it’s a barrier that can be overcome,” he said.President Biden criticized the caucus process in a letter to the Democratic National Committee in 2022, saying they hinder participation in the voting process.“Caucuses – requiring voters to choose in public, to spend significant amounts of time to caucus, disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time – are inherently anti-participatory,” Biden wrote. “It should be our party’s goal to rid the nominating process of restrictive, anti-worker caucuses.”Cullen dismissed those concerns, and those that say Iowa is too white to hold this status in the election. He noted that it was Iowa that catapulted the candidacy of Obama, the US’s first Black president.“Spare me the ‘racist’ bullshit. It’s an excuse to get rid of us because they don’t like our airports and our hotels and they really don’t like the cold weather and have an answer about social security. Or having to answer about why two-thirds of Iowa’s counties are losing population.’“It gets criticized because you have to sit around for an hour, and, you know, who wants to spend an hour for democracy? An hour every four years,” he added. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Sanders warns Biden: address working-class fears or risk losing to demagogue

      by

      Bernie Sanders, America’s leading progressive politician, has issued a stark warning to Joe Biden at the start of presidential election year: be more aggressive in addressing the anxieties of millions of struggling voters or risk handing back the White House to the anti-democratic demagogue Donald Trump.In an interview with the Guardian from his home base in Burlington, Vermont, Sanders urged the Democratic president to inject more urgency into his bid for re-election. He said that unless the president was more direct in recognising the many crises faced by working-class families his Republican rival would win.“We’ve got to see the White House move more aggressively on healthcare, on housing, on tax reform, on the high cost of prescription drugs,” Sanders said. “If we can get the president to move in that direction, he will win; if not, he’s going to lose.”The US senator from Vermont added that he was in contact with the White House pressing that point. “We hope to make clear to the president and his team that they are not going to win this election unless they come up with a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country.”Sanders’ warning comes at a critical time in American politics. On Monday, Republicans in Iowa will gather for caucuses that mark the official start of the 2024 presidential election.Biden faces no serious challenger in the Democratic primaries. But concern is mounting over how he would fare against Trump given a likely rematch between them in November.Recent polls have shown Trump not only doing well in key battleground states but gaining traction with demographic groups who proved vital to Biden’s 2020 victory, including Hispanic and young voters.In his Guardian interview, Sanders cast the threat of a second Trump presidency in existential terms. “It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy,” he said.He predicted that over a further four years, Trump would shift the electoral goalposts so that “many people who would vote against Trump are unable to do so. He will make it harder for young people, people of colour, to participate in the political process.”It is in that dystopian context that Sanders criticises the president’s re-election team for failing to bang the drum hard enough. “They’re not their own best advertisers, they don’t do a particularly good job in explaining what Biden has accomplished,” he said.Sanders praised Biden for the $1.9tn Covid rescue plan which he said helped avoid economic collapse during the pandemic, and for the Inflation Reduction Act which pumped money into transforming US energy away from fossil fuels. He was also effusive about Biden’s historic decision to join a United Auto Workers (UAW) picket line during the union’s strike with the three biggest carmakers, which he said made him “the strongest pro-union president that we have had, certainly, since FDR [Franklin D Roosevelt]”.But Sanders urged the White House to resist sitting back on its laurels. “The president has got to do something that’s very, very hard,” Sanders said.“He should be proud of his accomplishments, but he’s also got to say that he understands that there is a housing crisis, that people can’t afford healthcare or prescription drugs or childcare – that he’s trying, but he hasn’t yet succeeded.”Biden could find a historical template for such messaging, Sanders suggested, in Roosevelt’s 1936 re-election campaign. By then, the Democratic president had been in office for almost four years and had implemented the first two of his groundbreaking New Deal programmes.“Roosevelt didn’t go around saying, ‘Look at all I’ve done’,” Sanders explained. “He said: ‘I see a nation that is ill-clad, ill-housed. We made some progress, but I know there are enormous problems.”Critics will accuse Sanders of attempting to press his own brand of politics on to the establishment of the Democratic party. But he has credibility when it comes to presidential campaigns, having come close to securing the Democratic nomination twice and having given Biden a leg up into the White House in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Vermont senator not only rallied his millions of young supporters to vote for Biden, he also used his influence as runner-up in the 2020 Democratic primaries to push the candidate in a more progressive direction. He formed a set of “taskforces” in which top Biden and Sanders advisers worked together to forge policy agreements in several key areas including the economy, immigration and the climate crisis.In his new book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, Sanders sets out a similar progressive agenda for 2024. He calls for the Democratic party to wean itself from “corporate elites” and redirect its sights on to working-class struggles.He told the Guardian that if that does not happen, he fears that many young Americans will simply stay at home in November. “The polling is clear. Given the choice between Biden and Trump, a lot of people are saying, ‘Thank you, but no thank you’.”The danger of support for Biden fading among young voters has been enhanced by the Israel-Hamas war. The senator said that Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza could affect his standing among young progressive voters in November.He implored Biden to detach himself from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who has taken a hard line on the military assault. “I hope that he [Biden] understands that you can be pro-Israel without supporting Netanyahu and the horrific war he is waging against the Palestinian people.”Opinion polls have shown a generational divide, with younger Americans tending to be more critical of US backing for the bombardment of Gaza. Almost three-quarters of voters aged 18 to 29 disapproved of Biden’s handling of the conflict, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll found.Sanders also faces challenges over his position on the war. Though he has become steadily more damning of the Israeli onslaught, calling it a “mass atrocity”, he continues to resist calling for a permanent ceasefire which he says would open the door to further Hamas outrages following the 7 October attack.That has strained relations with some of his army of young supporters. Asked whether he feared that the coalition he has so diligently nurtured since the 2016 presidential election was in danger of splintering, he said: “I think, at the end of the day, we’ll be all right”.The senator said he was actively working with allies to develop what he called a “progressive strategy to defeat Trump”. Central to that is “rallying the working class of this country to stand up to Trump”.He said he draws confidence from recent labor union victories, including wage increases won by the UAW and new agreements secured by the Teamsters at UPS and by Hollywood writers and actors. “We are seeing the revitalisation of the trade union movement in this country in a way that we have not seen for many, many decades.” More

    • 263 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It will be the end of democracy’: Bernie Sanders on what happens if Trump wins – and how to stop him

      by

      Bernie Sanders sweeps into his state office in Burlington, Vermont, itching to get on with our interview. When I try to break the ice by asking the US senator how he is, he replies gruffly, “Good,” and motions with his outstretched hand for our conversation to begin.It’s a Saturday, and Sanders is dressed in his casual weekend uniform of cream chinos, blue shirt and sweater, no tie. I’d been hoping the day would be so cold and crisp in Burlington, the idyllic college town which has been his home since 1968, that he’d be wearing the mittens captured in a cult photo of Sanders huddled against biting winds at Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration. The ones that launched a quadrillion memes and sent the US senator hurtling into the cyber stratosphere. “I couldn’t believe it, all I was doing was trying to keep warm!” he says, before breaking the bad news. Not only is he not wearing the mittens, “I don’t even know where they are.”Sanders always seems to be in a hurry. Like Alice’s white rabbit, he’s forever racing against the clock in his battle with the billionaires and corporate interests. He is the most unlikely harbinger of change: a politician who drove young voters wild with “Berniemania” in 2016, when he was already 74; a man with none of the usual TV good looks and smooth talking attached to presidential candidates, but one who, by being absolutely himself, still turned out to be hugely charismatic.In the past decade, he’s done more than almost anyone to change the political lens in the US, bringing income inequality, poverty and what he calls “uber-capitalism” into focus. And yet before that he was a virtual unknown.In his 20s and 30s, Sanders worked lean years as a carpenter and freelance writer, alongside campaigning for the local socialist party, Liberty Union. It took him 10 years to learn how to win an election, which he did in 1981, aged 39, by all of 10 votes, to become Burlington’s mayor, before taking Vermont’s only congressional seat a decade later.He remained for the next quarter of a century largely in the shadows, a rare overtly leftwing voice in Congress, diligently ploughing his self-styled democratic socialist furrow. And then in 2016, he suddenly burst on to the national stage in his challenge against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, attracting an army of young voters chanting: “Feel the Bern”.Eight years on, he’s still in a rush, but he comes across as more sombre now, more edgily reflective. He imbues that mood in an afterword to the new paperback edition of his book, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, in which he writes that though he would like to be optimistic about the future, he cannot. He invokes his seven grandchildren, and laments that they will inherit a world that faces “more urgent and undeniable crises than at any time in modern history”.I ask him to spell that out. “We’re looking at a series of extraordinary crises. Climate: it’s up in the air whether the world community will make the cuts in carbon emissions to provide a habitable planet for our grandchildren. The growth of oligarchy: a small number of extremely wealthy people control the economic and political life of billions. Democracy: under severe threat from those capitalising on people’s fears.”Not long ago, Sanders used to be ridiculed for such disquieting rhetoric; he was denounced as a firebrand, a rabble-rouser. No one’s laughing at him now. Two wars, a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, vast swathes of North America literally burning, inequality between rich and poor at mind-sizzling levels. As the New Yorker memorably noted, “reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders”.Is that how it seems to him, that all his fears are coming home to roost? “It’s not a great feeling,” he says. “I’m extremely nervous about what is coming.”Ah yes. Donald Trump.Sanders has long had the measure of Trump. In 2016, when Trump said, “I alone can fix it,” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination, Sanders commented: “Is this guy running for president or dictator?” Two months before the 2020 election, he predicted that a defeated Trump might not go peaceably – another portent that was dramatically fulfilled.Now, as the Iowa caucus kicks off the 2024 primary season on Monday, Sanders is at it again. Except this time, he says, the stakes are much higher.Even for a politician who doesn’t mince his words, his assessment of a Trump victory in November is sobering. “It will be the end of democracy, functional democracy.”It may not happen on day one, he says. Trump wouldn’t be as obvious as to abolish elections. But he would steadily weaken democracy, making it harder for young people and people of colour to vote, enervating political opposition, whipping up anger against minorities and immigrants.A second Trump presidency would be much more extreme than the first. “He’s made that clear,” says Sanders. “There’s a lot of personal bitterness, he’s a bitter man, having gone through four indictments, humiliated, he’s going to take it out on his enemies. We’ve got to explain to the American people what that means to them – what the collapse of American democracy will mean to all of us.”He doesn’t ascribe the rise of Trump solely to a lumpen mass of redneck working-class Americans, deplorables to borrow a phrase. “I do not believe that all of Trump’s supporters are racist or sexist or homophobes. I think what’s going on in this country is a belief that the government is failing ordinary Americans.”Sanders’ office sits in the main street of Burlington and is, like the man, minimalist and spare. There are posters from different stages in his political life, including an inevitable “Feel the Bern” placard and a photograph from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, which mayor Sanders twinned Burlington with during Ronald Reagan’s Contra war against the leftwing Sandinistas. A third wall-hanging says: “In recognition of your support for fish hatcheries in the Lake Champlain Basin”.He lives in a modest house a little way from the centre of town, with Jane O’Meara Sanders, whom he married in 1988 and to whom he dedicates It’s OK to Be Angry, calling her his “wife, co-worker and best buddy”. He also dedicates the book to his brother, Larry Sanders, who lives in Oxford, England, and is a former Green party councillor, and to his four children – one by his first wife, Deborah Shiling Messing, and three stepchildren, who are Jane’s but whom he considers his own – as well as to those seven grandchildren.He has built his political persona around reciting startling and infuriating statistics, and my encounter with him is no exception. With his index finger jabbing as though pointing to an invisible crowd, he tells me that before the pandemic three multibillionaires (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) owned more between them than the combined wealth of the 160 million Americans who make up the bottom half of society. “Three people! That’s unbelievable! Incredible! Wages, accounting for inflation, are lower today for working people than they were 50 years ago. Think about that! My grandchildren will have a lower standard of living than my generation.”In this scheme of things, Trump is merely doing what demagogues are doing the world over – capitalising on the anxieties and struggles of the people. “Trump comes along and says, ‘I’ll be your strong guy, I’ll deal with all your anxieties – immigration, transgender issues, race – I’ll be there for you.’”Uncomfortably for his colleagues in Congress, Sanders reserves much of his sharpest criticism for the Democratic party. Officially, he has sat as an independent since entering the House of Representatives in 1991, but he votes as a Democrat in Congress and ran both his presidential campaigns as one. Yet he denounces the party establishment as a “consultant-driven, ad-producing election machine”.It is “beyond pathetic”, he writes in the book, that a phoney corporate hack like Trump should be able to present himself as the “champion of the working classes”, while the Democratic party stands back and cedes territory to him. He caricatures the Democratic promise to voters as, “We’re pretty bad, but Republicans are worse”, and warns that is simply not good enough.Which brings us to Biden.Sanders describes Biden, whom he has known since he was elected to the Senate in 2007, as a likable and decent man. But he has a clear message for the sitting president: step up to the plate or the future of the United States, of the world, is in peril. “The challenge we face is to be able to show people that government in a democratic society can address their very serious needs. If we do that, we defeat Trump. If we do not, then we are the Weimar republic of the early 1930s.”Sanders says he’s in touch with the White House, exhorting them to be more vocal in their appeals to working Americans. “He has got to say, in my view, that if he is re-elected, within two months he will bring about the sweeping changes the working class of this country desperately need.”So are they listening? “As is always the case, not as strongly as I would like.”You can see why Sanders was enticed to move to Burlington as a 27-year-old, having been brought up in a Brooklyn tenement. The town, which is famous as the birthplace of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, is flanked by Lake Champlain on one side and the Green mountains on the other, its steeples and cobbled streets dusted with snow. It feels like an oasis of peace in a very disturbed world.Until it doesn’t.On 25 November, three 20-year-old Palestinian-American students, best friends from Ramallah in the West Bank who had come to the US to pursue a safe university education, were shot in a Burlington street by a hate-filled stranger. One of the men, Hisham Awartani, is paralysed from the chest down.The incident has left Sanders shaken. In a speech to the Senate five days after the shooting, he stepped out of the limited emotional range he usually displays in public – anger, outrage, disgust – and sounded palpably upset.He sounds upset now. “Less than a mile away from where we are right now, three really bright young people were walking down the street, talking some Arabic. Words fail to describe the ugliness and the horror of this, in this city.”The Israel-Hamas war that erupted on 7 October with the Hamas massacre has troubled Sanders like few other events in his 40 years in politics. “It’s on my mind all of the time,” he says. “This is something I literally dream about.”That’s not surprising, given that he is both one of the most prominent Jews in the United States and a politician who puts human rights front and centre. And this is profoundly personal for him.During his 2020 presidential campaign he told a CNN town hall that there were two main factors behind his worldview. One was growing up in a cash-strapped Brooklyn family supported by his father’s job as a paint salesman. The other was being Jewish.Sanders recalls the visceral way he learned as a young child about the Holocaust. He lifts up the sleeve of his left arm and rubs his skin as he tells me: “I remember going down a few blocks to the shopping area, and there were people working in the markets, and they had their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms.”His father, Elias Ben Yehuda Sanders, emigrated from Poland to the US in 1921. He was 17 and penniless, and fleeing antisemitic pogroms. Most of that side of Sanders’ family remained in Poland and were almost entirely wiped out by the Nazis.A few years ago, Sanders went with his brother, Larry, to Słopnice, the Polish village where their father had been raised. “There was a mound, and it was a mass grave of people slaughtered in the town,” he says. “So racism, wiping out people because of a different religion, that’s stayed with me my whole life.”His deep personal understanding of the horrors human beings can inflict on each other helps explain the tightrope Sanders has been walking over the war. He has always stood firmly beside Israel as a safe haven for Jews, and has also spoken up over many years for the right of the Palestinians to live in peace. It’s a classic two-state position.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat has translated in the current crisis as Sanders steadfastly defending the right of Israel to go after Hamas, which he calls a “disgusting terrorist organisation”. At the same time, he has become steadily more damning of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military’s “mass atrocity” in Gaza.He has also grown increasingly disapproving of Biden’s staunch support for the Israeli war effort, condemning what he calls US complicity in “destroying the lives of innocent men, women and children in Gaza”. He is trying to block billions of dollars of extra US military aid to Israel, and is demanding a Senate investigation into how US arms are used in Gaza.I ask him whether he feels a special distress watching a country he has always supported as a post-Holocaust shelter for Jews inflict such indiscriminate bombing on others. “The answer is yes. If there are any people that have suffered, it’s Jewish people. And they should not be imposing that type of suffering on Palestinian children – killing children is not the solution.”To say the dual position Sanders is attempting to hold is uncomfortable would be a gross understatement. He has come under fire from pro-Israeli Democrats and Republicans who accuse him of betraying America’s great ally by failing to offer Netanyahu unconditional support.On his own progressive side, his refusal to countenance a permanent ceasefire, which he fears would merely embolden Hamas to renew its attacks with the aim of destroying Israel, has also landed him in hot water. More than 400 of his former staffers signed an open letter imploring him to shift his position; one of them, his 2020 campaign spokesperson, Briahna Joy Gray, tweeted “biggest political disappointment of our generation” in response to an interview in which Sanders explained his view.There has also been fallout among young Americans, whom Sanders has long cultivated as the sweet spot of his base. Young voters, drawn towards his no-nonsense takedown of the ultra-rich, are at the core of his 15.2 million following on X, formerly known as Twitter. Yet amid the Gaza crisis, polls show a stark generational divide, with young, progressive Americans coalescing around demands for a permanent ceasefire. I ask him, does he fear that his movement of youthful supporters could be starting to splinter?He clearly doesn’t want to go there. “I think, at the end of the day, we’ll be all right,” is all he’ll say.Is Sanders swimming against the tide of an increasingly polarised and social-media-driven world?“I’m trying to do my best,” he concedes, a little mournfully, “within the complexities.”When Sanders went up against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary, those who were paying attention could feel the tectonic plates of US politics shifting. An insurgent campaign focused around inequality and corporate greed was giving a figurehead of the Democratic establishment a run for her money.Not that there were many paying attention. Sanders clearly still feels riled by how marginalised he was in the 2016 race. While his gargantuan crowds chanted, “Feel the Bern”, pundits derided the “free stuff” he promoted, such as decent housing and healthcare for all, with the New York Times chiding that it would add $3tn a year to government spending.Many media outlets largely ignored him. Even those dismissive of him had to recognise that he had become a phenomenon. By the end of the primaries he had won 22 states and more than 13m votes. Though he lost, he gained a universe: an army of young, progressive, impassioned Americans fluent in Bernie-ese.Oh, and he also acquired a picture-perfect impersonation of himself on Saturday Night Live, courtesy of Larry David. The Curb Your Enthusiasm star was not only the spitting image of his subject, but he got Bernie’s arms-flailing stump speech and legendary crotchetiness to a T, and as a fellow Brooklyn Jew spoke his language (“yuuuge”). The two men appeared together on SNL just before the 2016 New Hampshire primary, and a few months later were revealed by genealogists to be distant cousins.The shorthand often used for the uprising Sanders catalysed is the Squad, the team of progressive Congress members around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that emerged in the wake of 2016. Sanders writes in his book that the Squad were a “breath of fresh air”, but to me he insists the sea change went even deeper. “When I was elected to the House in 1990, there were five members of the progressive caucus. Today, there are well over 100. It is far more powerful and progressive than back then.”Could there one day soon be a President AOC, not just a female president, but a progressive one?Sanders squirms a little, saying he doesn’t want to play the name game. But then he says: “Absolutely. Absolutely. The possibility exists, of course.”For all his talk of revolution, for all his tax-the-rich bills and declarations of radical populism, a large part of the Sanders creed is nothing more nor less than an appeal for the basic fundamentals of life – health, housing, a living wage, education – that are taken for granted by all other developed nations. He devotes an entire section of It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism to Finland, which is hardly a hotbed of revolution.Look at it that way, and it’s not Bernie who is the extreme radical, it’s the far-right march of the Republican party. Which brings us back to Biden, the threat of Trump, and the ominous 10 months ahead.Sanders has plenty of nice things to say about Biden. In the book he praises the president’s 2020 campaign platform, saying that if it had all been put into effect, he would have been the most progressive president since Franklin D Roosevelt. (The compliment is in part self-serving – Sanders credits himself with having pushed Biden further to the left in the run-up to the election.) He also applauds Biden’s decision to join a picket line during the recent auto workers strike, the first sitting president in history to do so.But as we enter election year, he warns that there is much more to be done. “Look, the president has put a historic amount of money into transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels, but the fossil fuel industry keeps on its merry way, and we’re not stopping them. The president is making efforts to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, but it’s nowhere near enough. He tried to lower student debt; it was reversed by the supreme court.”Sanders suddenly leans towards me and gives me a blast of rhetoric that is almost overpowering.“The president has got to acknowledge the enormous crises facing people’s lives. You can’t fool them. If I say to you all the great things I’ve done for you, you will come back and say, ‘Well, I can’t afford healthcare, I can’t send my kid to college.’ Americans are feeling anxious right now, and we’ve got to address that.”Is there a danger many young Americans and voters of colour who formed a critical part of the coalition that elected Biden – and defeated Trump – in 2020 will look at the rematch of the same two candidates in November, decide they aren’t inspired by either, and stay at home?“There’s no question. The polling is clear. Given the choice between Biden and Trump, there are a lot of people saying, ‘Thank you, but no thank you.’”It’s a strikingly different analysis from that offered by much of the commentariat, which has lasered in on Biden’s age. Which is interesting, because Sanders, at 82, is a year older than the president yet rarely gets labelled as old. If anything, he comes across as ageless – as crotchety and energetic as he’s ever been.I ask what he thinks of the focus on Biden’s age, remarking that it’s not just Biden. Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate, is the same age as Biden at 81, and has caused some alarm by freezing mid-speech. Is it time to drop to a younger cadre of political leaders?“It’s a nice phrase, a new generation of leadership, and yes most of the strongest progressives are young people. But you’ve got young Republicans who are among the most rightwing people in the country. So it’s not age, it’s what the individual stands for.”And what about him? On one level, with the world going up in smoke, his brand of urgent analysis is needed more than ever today. But he’s been at it a long time, he had a heart attack during the 2020 campaign, and must be feeling the weight of it all.He’s surprisingly candid. “I am tired. I’ve been doing this since I was elected mayor of this city in 1981. What I see in Washington is so dishonest. There’s no debate on the crumbling healthcare system, no debate on climate, no debate on wealth inequality. None! That’s distressing, and what we’re seeing in the world is distressing, and being 82 … this is painful stuff.”Just when I think Sanders might be about to announce his retirement, he sits back, rallies himself, and says: “Let’s get back to my grandchildren and the future generation. It’s in my DNA, it’s the way I look at the world. You’ve got to stand up and do the best you can. We don’t have the moral right to simply walk away.”“You keep going,” I suggest.“You gotta keep going.” More

    • 225 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Two more DeSantis events postponed amid Iowa storm; Trump weather could dent caucus turnout – as it happened

      by

      Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, says it has had to postpone two more events with him in Iowa today over “unsafe weather conditions”.The Florida governor will not be making it to Pella or Coralville, the group said in a statement.Mother Nature weighed in ahead of Iowa’s presidential caucuses on Monday, and her decision is: no campaigning today, at least not in person. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have both called off events in the Buckeye state as a blizzard renders travel perilous, though Haley has shifted to holding town halls via telephone. Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly worried the significant snowfall may dent caucus turnout, as he hopes for a big win in the state to cement his status as the Republican frontrunner. Back in a comparatively warmer Washington DC, House Republicans announced they will vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress next week, while his attorney said the president’s son will show up for a deposition, if lawmakers issue new subpoenas.Here’s what else happened today:
      Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is the among the longest of long shots, says he is still on the road in Iowa.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced his spending deal with Democrats is still on despite rightwing opposition, lowering the chances of a government shutdown.
      Oregon’s supreme court declined to toss Trump from the state’s primary ballot, at least not yet. The former president cheered the decision.
      Joe Biden acknowledged that defense secretary Lloyd Austin made a lapse in judgment when he waited days to inform the White House he had been hospitalized.
      Kyrsten Sinema, an independent senator from Arizona, said negotiations over changes to the immigration system were making progress.
      The Republican leaders of two House committees investigating Hunter Biden say the president’s son must schedule a behind-closed-doors deposition with them before they will call off their plan to hold him in contempt for defying a subpoena.The statement from the oversight committee chair, James Comer, and the judiciary committee chair, Jim Jordan, comes after Biden’s attorney earlier today notified them that his client would sit for a deposition with them, if they issued new subpoenas. The two committees ordered the president’s son in November to appear for an interview in private, but Biden defied the summons and gave only a brief statement to reporters at the Capitol on the day he was to appear. That has led Republicans to move to hold him in contempt.“House Republicans have been resolute in demanding Hunter Biden sit for a deposition in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. While we are heartened that Hunter Biden now says he will comply with a subpoena, make no mistake: Hunter Biden has already defied two valid, lawful subpoenas,” Comer and Jordan said.“For now, the House of Representatives will move forward with holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress until such time that Hunter Biden confirms a date to appear for a private deposition in accordance with his legal obligation. While we will work to schedule a deposition date, we will not tolerate any additional stunts or delay from Hunter Biden.”The stunt they referred to was likely Biden’s brief and unexpected appearance in the audience of the oversight committee on Wednesday, just as lawmakers were considering whether to hold him in contempt.It’s unclear if Comer and Jordan’s statement will meet the requirements set out by Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell, who said in his letter to them that new subpoenas were required because the House has now voted to authorize impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden. The GOP claims the younger Biden can prove allegations of corruption against the president.Here’s video of Joe Biden in Pennsylvania taking questions from a reporter about the news of the day, including the defense secretary’s Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization and the airstrikes ordered against the Houthis in Yemen:During a visit to Pennsylvania to highlight his administration’s efforts to help small businesses, Joe Biden replied “yes” when asked by a reporter if the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, made a lapse in judgment when he waited to tell him he had been hospitalized, Reuters reports.News broke a week ago that the defense secretary was in the hospital, and in the days since, it has been revealed that Austin waited days to inform the White House of his hospitalization resulting from complications related to prostate cancer treatment.While some Republican lawmakers and one Democrat have called on Austin to step down, noting that the secretary is supposed to be constantly available to respond to crises, the White House says Biden continues to have confidence in him:The Iowa caucuses are one of America’s more unique political rituals, since most other states hold the comparatively straightforward primaries to choose their candidates.Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly with an explainer demystifying the process that is a key part of the road to the presidency:Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly and Sam Levine with a rundown of all the ways in which Iowa’s blizzard has disrupted presidential campaigning ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses on Monday:Candidates and caucus-goers faced extra challenges in Iowa on Friday as a second major snow event in a week hit the state, three days before Republicans are due to kick off their presidential nomination process for the critical election year.According to the National Weather Service in Des Moines, most of Iowa could expect significant, possibly record snowfall, high winds stoking blizzard conditions.“Life-threatening winter weather is expected beginning tonight with heavy snow,” the NWS said on Thursday. “White-out conditions likely Friday into Friday night. To follow, extreme wind chills as low as -45F [-43C] possible through early next week. Plan ahead for this dangerous stretch of winter weather!”In Washington DC and New York, reporters packed thermal underwear and tried to find flights still scheduled. In Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, heavy snow covered streets overnight and continued to fall. Save for the occasional car, the streets were largely deserted as the temperature hovered at about 15F (-9C). At the local Target, students and other residents stocked up on supplies as snowplows worked outside.Schools and businesses closed. In the state capital, Des Moines Performing Arts announced the postponement of Civic Center shows by the percussion group Stomp.Joe Biden announced a new student loan forgiveness plan on Friday that will provide debt relief to some borrowers enrolled in the new Save plan.
      Starting next month, borrowers enrolled in Save who took out less than $12,000 in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years will get their remaining student debt canceled immediately.
      It’s part of our ongoing efforts to act quickly to give more borrowers breathing room,” Biden tweeted on Friday.
      In a separate statement released on Friday, the education department said that there are now 6.9 million borrowers enrolled in the Save plan as of early January, more than double the enrollment on the Revised Pay As You Earn (Repaye) plan that it replaced in August.Donald Trump’s campaign team has hailed the decision by the Oregon supreme court to turn down a petition to disqualify him from the state’s primary ballot over his involvement in the January 2021 Capitol insurrection.
      Today’s decision in Oregon was the correct one. President Trump urges the swift dismissal of all remaining, bad-faith, election interference 14th amendment ballot challenges as they are un-constitutional attempts by allies of Crooked Joe Biden to disenfranchise millions of American voters and deny them their right to vote for the candidate of their choice,” said a Trump spokesperson.
      He went on to add:
      President Trump will continue to fight these desperate shams, win in November and Make America Great Again.
      Equal Justice USA, a national criminal justice organization, has criticized federal prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York in May 2022.In a statement released on Friday, Jamila Hodge, the executive director of EJUSA, said:
      The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder.
      Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.
      Friday’s decision by federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty is a first for the justice department under Joe Biden’s administration.The Independent Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema has refused to share “differences of opinion” surrounding negotiations of a potential bipartisan border security package.In an interview with ABC 15, Sinema, who is a key negotiator in the talks, said:
      We’re down to the last one or two differences of opinion and I’m confident we’ll be able to resolve those and move forward with this legislation.
      Upon being asked if she could share what the differences in opinions are, Sinema replied: “No.”Mother Nature has weighed in ahead of Iowa’s presidential caucuses on Monday, and her decision is: no campaigning today, at least not in person. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have both called off events in the Buckeye state as a blizzard renders travel perilous, though Haley has shifted to holding town halls via telephone. Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly worried the significant snowfall may dent caucus turnout, as he hopes for a big win in the state to cement his status as the Republican frontrunner. Back in a comparatively warmer Washington DC, House Republicans announced they will vote to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress next week, while his attorney said the president’s son will show up for a deposition, if lawmakers issue new subpoenas.Here’s what else is happening today:
      Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor whose presidential campaign is the among the longest of long shots, says he is still on the road in Iowa.
      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced his spending deal with Democrats is still on despite rightwing opposition, lowering the chances of a government shutdown.
      Oregon’s supreme court declined to toss Trump from the state’s primary ballot, at least not yet.
      Never Back Down, the Super Pac supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, says it has had to postpone two more events with him in Iowa today over “unsafe weather conditions”.The Florida governor will not be making it to Pella or Coralville, the group said in a statement.The long-shot Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson says he is still campaigning, despite Iowa’s gnarly road conditions:The former Arkansas governor and avowed foe of Donald Trump is nowhere in the polls, yet has stayed in the race.Why Republican presidential candidates have called off campaigning today, from the Iowa State Patrol:With her schedule of campaign events in Iowa cancelled today due to the blizzard, Nikki Haley held a telephone town hall with voters in Fort Dodge.It was a fairly typical stump speech for the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, who took pains to point out the exceptionally bad snow storm, and the relief Iowans will feel in a few days, when politicians stop bugging them.“I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore. It is beyond cold,” Haley began.Nodding to the fact that aspiring Republican presidential candidates have been criss-crossing the state for months, hoping to win its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Haley said:
      I know you are excited, because it is three days until the commercials stop, and the mail stops coming to you, and the text messages, everything else. And, so, I can tell you as a governor of the first in the south primary [state], we always loved to see presidential candidates come, and we always love to see them go, so I can appreciate where you’re coming from, and I appreciate you putting up with all of the activity that happens during this time. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Final days of Iowa campaigning snarled by ‘life-threatening’ winter weather

      by

      Candidates and caucus-goers faced extra challenges in Iowa on Friday as a second major snow event in a week hit the state, three days before Republicans are due to kick off their presidential nomination process for the critical election year.According to the National Weather Service in Des Moines, most of Iowa could expect significant, possibly record snowfall, high winds stoking blizzard conditions.“Life-threatening winter weather is expected beginning tonight with heavy snow,” the NWS said on Thursday. “White-out conditions likely Friday into Friday night. To follow, extreme wind chills as low as -45F [-43C] possible through early next week. Plan ahead for this dangerous stretch of winter weather!”In Washington DC and New York, reporters packed thermal underwear and tried to find flights still scheduled. In Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, heavy snow covered streets overnight and continued to fall. Save for the occasional car, the streets were largely deserted as the temperature hovered at about 15F (-9C). At the local Target, students and other residents stocked up on supplies as snowplows worked outside.Schools and businesses closed. In the state capital, Des Moines Performing Arts announced the postponement of Civic Center shows by the percussion group Stomp.According to Iowa polling, Donald Trump will stomp all over his competitors on Monday. He has however largely chosen to skip in-person campaigning, spending his time in warm courtrooms in Washington and New York while surrogates make Arctic treks between churches and town halls.On Wednesday, Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who ran for president in 2016 then became housing secretary in the Trump administration, told churchgoers in Davenport backing Trump was OK. After all, Carson said, not everyone in the Bible was “a boy scout”.Trump – who as president famously confused boy scouts and angered parents with a speech about partying in New York – faces 91 criminal charges. Seventeen concern election subversion, 40 are for retention of classified information, and 34 arise from hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.The former president also faces civil suits over his business dealings and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”, and attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting the January 6 insurrection, one of which has reached the US supreme court.As reported by the Associated Press, Carson “drew vocal reactions – yeas and nays, amens and laughs – from the friendly room”.Polling averages give Trump huge Iowa leads: 35 points according to FiveThirtyEight, 36 at RealClearPolitics.Among his remaining challengers, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor widely held to be surging, canceled in-person events on Friday, replacing them with “tele town halls”. A spokesperson said the snow would not stop the campaign “ensuring Iowans hear Nikki’s vision for a strong and proud America”.At least initially, Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor widely held to be tanking, forged on. So did the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, telling followers: “George Washington braved the weather to cross the Delaware [in snow and ice on Christmas Day 1776, to attack the Hessians at Trenton]. Another snow day in Iowa, another day of events for us … we’ll continue to every last one for as long as we can physically make it.”Even before the second snow of the week, Ramaswamy documented a spot of difficulty with the weather.“Just got back to Des Moines after a five-plus-hour drive in snow from north -west Iowa,” he wrote on social media on Tuesday. “Got stuck in snow ditch on the way. Five of us tried to push [the] SUV out, finally got it done with extra help from a good Iowan.”A picture accompanying the post showed Ramaswamy with a man in a hooded sweater, lit by car break lights, smiling against the driving snow.Alas for Ramaswamy, who failed to qualify for the final debate in Des Moines this week, his insurgent campaign is widely seen to have run out of steam. He did point to a concern for all candidates, though – that caucus attendance might be hit by the freeze.“We honor the Iowa caucus process,” Ramaswamy said. “I encourage everyone in these communities to be safe and respect their decisions today, as we continue to do our best to show up.”CNN said a senior Trump campaign adviser indicated concern in the frontrunner’s camp.“The weather issue may take away the intensity,” the aide was quoted as saying. “But first of all, a win’s a win. And I know the expectations, but no one’s ever won Iowa by more than 12 points now. So that’s our goal.”Ultimately, with Trump so far ahead, the battle for second between Haley and DeSantis is set to draw most attention. Should Haley win it, thereby teeing herself up for a tilt at Trump in New Hampshire, most observers expect DeSantis to drop out. More