US midterm elections 2022

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Sanders: Democrats shouldn’t court far-right ‘racist, sexist, homophobic’ voters

      by

      Sanders: Democrats shouldn’t court far-right ‘racist, sexist, homophobic’ votersSenator says nonetheless Democrats should appeal to ‘millions of … working-class people’ who can’t afford healthcare or tuition Democrats should give up trying to appeal to racist, sexist or homophobic voters on the far right even as their party tries to preserve thin majorities in both congressional chambers, the progressive US senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday.Sanders’ remarks came during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press after host Chuck Todd asked a question about attempting to woo over supporters of Donald Trump, which include white nationalists who helped stage the deadly January 6 Capitol attack on the day that Congress certified the former Republican president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Todd said Sanders “made a big deal about wanting to court Trump voters” in both the 2016 election that Trump won as well as the 2020 race that he lost and wondered if the Vermont senator still felt they were worth that.“There are some extreme rightwing voters who are racists, who are sexists, who are homophobes – xenophobes,” Sanders said. “No, I don’t think you’re ever going to get them.”Sanders nonetheless said Democrats should sympathize with “millions of … working-class people” who can’t afford healthcare, college tuition for their children or their prescription drugs. And he said one way to appeal to undecided voters is to have the political resolve to punish corporate greed from insurance firms, drug companies and Wall Street traders.“Some of those people – I’m not saying all – will say, ‘You know what, I’m going to stand with the Democratic party because on these economic issues, they’re far preferable to right-wing Republicans,” Sanders told Todd.Sanders is an independent but votes in line with the Democrats’ agenda on Capitol Hill.He recently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian that warned Democrats should not only focus on protecting abortion rights in the closing phases of this midterm election cycle but also needed to communicate a plan for the economic woes facing Americans that Republicans as a party purport to care more about.Sanders said his voting record starkly illustrates his opposition to the US supreme court’s decision in June to eliminate federal protections for abortion, which a majority of voters believe should be legal in most cases, according to some polling.The supreme court’s ruling overturning the nationwide abortion rights established by the 1973 Roe v Wade case has led to fears that the justices could also target the elimination of same-sex marriage.But Sanders said his party should also be concerned about how six in 10 Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And he has said Democrats should be more vocal about how they have better ideas than Republicans on rectifying that reality, including through methods such as ending tax breaks, raising the federal minimum wage and even providing universal healthcare.The Democrats go into the midterms with an eight-seat advantage in the House. The Senate is split evenly but Biden’s Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris currently gives their party a tiebreaker.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Bernie SandersUS politicsReuse this content More

    • 213 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans are trying to win by spreading three false talking points. Here’s the truth | Robert Reich

      by

      Republicans are trying to win by spreading three false talking points. Here’s the truthRobert ReichRepublicans want midterm voters to believe lies about crime, inflation and taxes. This is what they’re claiming – followed by the facts Republicans are telling three lies they hope will swing the midterms. They involve crime, inflation, and taxes. Here’s what Republicans are claiming, followed by the facts.1. They claim that crime is rising because Democrats have been “soft” on crimeThis is pure rubbish. Rising crime rates are due to the proliferation of guns, which Republicans refuse to control.Here are the facts:While violent crime rose 28% from 2019 to 2020, gun homicides rose 35%. States that have weakened gun laws have seen gun crime surge. Clearly, a major driver of the national increase in violence is the easy availability of guns.The violence can’t be explained by any of the Republican talking points about “soft-on-crime” Democrats.Lack of police funding? Baloney. Democratic-run major cities spend 38% more on policing per person than Republican-run cities, and 80% of the largest cities increased police funding from 2019 to 2022.Criminal justice reforms? Wrong. Data shows that wherever bail reforms have been implemented, re-arrest rates remain stable. Data from major cities shows no connection between the policies of progressive prosecutors and changes in crime rates.Research has repeatedly shown that crime is rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states. The thinktank Third Way found that in 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Trump than in those won by Joe Biden.Let’s be clear: it’s been Republican policies that have made it easier for people to get and carry guns. Republicans are lying about the real cause of rising crime to protect their patrons – gun manufacturers.2. They claim that inflation is due to Biden’s spending, and wage increasesBaloney. The major cause of the current inflation is the global post-pandemic shortage of all sorts of things, coupled with Putin’s war in Ukraine and China’s lockdowns.The major domestic cause of the current inflation is big corporations that have been taking advantage of inflation by raising their prices higher than their increasing costs.Here are the facts:Inflation can’t be explained by any of the Republican talking points.Biden’s spending? Rubbish again. That can’t be causing our current inflation because inflation has broken out everywhere around the world, often at much higher rates than in the US.Democrats shouldn’t focus only on abortion in the midterms. That’s a mistake | Bernie SandersRead moreBesides, heavy spending by the US government began in 2020, before the Biden administration, in order to protect Americans and the economy from the ravages of Covid-19 – and it was necessary.American workers getting wage increases? Wages can’t be pushing inflation because wages have been increasing at a slower pace than prices – leaving most workers worse off.The biggest domestic culprits are big corporations using inflation as an excuse to raise prices above their own cost increases, resulting in near-record profits.US corporate profits are at the highest margins since 1950 – while consumers are paying through the nose.Let’s be clear: the biggest domestic cause of inflation is corporate power. Republicans are lying about this to protect their big corporate patrons.3. They say Democrats voted to hire an army of IRS agents who will audit and harass the middle classNonsense. The IRS won’t be going after the middle class. It will be going after ultra-wealthy tax cheats.Here are the facts:The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in July, provides funding to begin to get IRS staffing back to what it was before 2010, after which Republicans diminished staff by roughly 30%, despite increases since then in the number of Americans filing tax returns.The extra staff are needed to boost efforts against high-end tax evasion – which is more difficult to root out, because the ultra-wealthy hire squads of accountants and tax attorneys to hide their taxable incomes.The treasury department and the IRS have made it clear that audit rates for households earning $400,000 or under will remain the same.Let’s be clear: the IRS needs extra resources to go after rich tax cheats. Republicans are lying about what the IRS will do with the new funding to protect their ultra-wealthy patrons.None of these three lies is as brazen and damaging as Trump’s big lie. But they’re all being used by Republican candidates in these last weeks before the midterms.Know the truth and share it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsRepublicansUS economycommentReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Paul LePage: is Maine ready to welcome back the ‘Trump before Trump’?

      by

      Paul LePage: is Maine ready to welcome back the ‘Trump before Trump’? The Republican ex-governor was known for his offensive, belligerent attitude – but this time, he says he’s reformedIn the late summer of 2016, Drew Gattine received a surprising voicemail. The sender was Paul LePage, then the governor of Maine, and he called Gattine “a little son-of-a-bitch socialist cocksucker”.Amid the inevitable media frenzy that followed, LePage lamented not having the opportunity to engage Gattine, a Democrat in the Maine house of representatives, in a duel. Rather than follow in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, who pointed his gun in the air when he dueled Aaron Burr in 1804, LePage told reporters, “I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt.”.The incident made national headlines and shocked many Americans, not least Gattine’s aunt, who called him from Arizona after learning of the threat on National Public Radio. “It was an interesting five or six days of my life,” Gattine says now.But for Gattine and other Mainers, LePage’s behavior was somewhat typical by that point. Over his eight years in office, LePage cultivated a reputation for offensive comments and for adversarial relationships with reporters, Democrats and even fellow Republicans.America’s love for cars continues – will gas prices decide the midterms?Read moreNow, after briefly leaving Maine for Florida, LePage has come home with a mission: to return to the governor’s mansion. Contradicting his previous claims that he was “done with politics” after his two terms in office – “I’m going to retire and go to Florida,” LePage proclaimed in late 2018, “I’ve done my eight years. It’s time for somebody else” – LePage is back, making a pitch for another term as he attacks Democratic governor Janet Mills’ economic record.“I’m running again, because Maine is in serious, serious trouble,” LePage said at a forum in Waterville on Tuesday. “Maine’s economy is going backwards, and it’s not growing. We need to get somebody there that can grow it. I did it once. I will do it again.”Mainers may have some understandable misgivings about revisiting the LePage era. When the NAACP criticized LePage forskipping Martin Luther King Day events in 2011, the then-governor responded by noting that his adopted son is Black. “Tell them to kiss my butt,” LePage said. “If they want to play the race card, come to dinner; my son will talk to them.”The comment sparked accusations of racism, which dogged LePage during his tenure. In 2016, LePage complained that Maine was struggling with the opioid epidemic because drug dealers “with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” were coming into Maine from other states and would often “impregnate a young white girl before they leave”. Months later, LePage told reporters that it was important to identify the “enemy” in the opioid epidemic, saying: “The enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”It was Gattine’s criticism of LePage’s race-related comments about the opioid epidemic that culminated in the governor’s threat of a duel.“The irony is, the comments that I had made that got him so angry, I was trying to be very measured,” said Gattine, who now serves as chair of the Maine Democratic party. “I think he has such a reputation for saying these off-the-wall things that people just used to sit around waiting for him to say them.”That reputation invited many comparisons between LePage and another Republican known for causing controversy: Donald Trump. Both men built political personas off their sensational rhetoric, and some of LePage’s stunts as governor even seemed to foreshadow Trump’s later acts as president. In 2018 for example, LePage registered his discontent with Democrat Jared Golden’s victory in a Maine congressional race by writing on the certification form “stolen election,” previewing Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 race.The two politicians now find themselves in similar situations again – with LePage seeking to return to office just as Trump contemplates another presidential bid in 2024. But despite LePage’s past praise of the former president – he once described himself as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular” – he has struck a notably different tone in recent months.LePage now rarely invokes Trump’s name while campaigning, and he has abandoned his past support for the former president’s lies about the 2020 election. “I believe that President Biden won the election,” LePage said at a debate earlier this month. When asked last month whether Trump should run again, he dodged the question: “I’m running for governor of the state of Maine, all right? And that’s it.”LePage’s efforts to distance himself from Trump fit into his campaign’s broader goal of presenting a toned-down version of the pugnacious leader that Mainers came to know over his eight years in office. “What I’m saying is, life is a journey,” LePage told the Atlantic. “And along the way you learn and you get better, and hope that every day, the rest of my life, I’m a better man.”Democrats scoff at the idea of a reformed LePage, and they say his behavior on the campaign trail has provided ample evidence that the former governor is the same as he ever was. They specifically point to an incident in August when LePage threatened to “deck” a Maine Democratic party staffer paid to track his events.“Initially [in] this campaign, he was fairly even in his temperament … But really, I think since sometime in August, that’s been less effective,” said Amy Fried, chair of the University of Maine’s political science department. She said of LePage’s threat against the tracker, “It really gave Democrats an opening to say, this is not a new LePage. This is the old LePage.”Mills has hammered that theme in her messaging as well, using her campaign ads and speeches to resurrect LePage’s past comments and conduct while in office. Speaking at a fundraising event in Portland on Thursday, Mills reminded supporters that LePage once expressed openness to overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark supreme court case that established federal protections for abortion access. The supreme court did indeed reverse Roe in June, and LePage has since sent mixed messages about his stance on abortion policy.Asked at the debate how he would respond if the state legislature attempted to limit abortion access to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, LePage pleaded ignorance. “I don’t know what you mean by 15 weeks or 28 weeks,” LePage said. “I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure I understand the question.”Mills accused LePage of attempting to hide his true views from Maine voters, repeatedly telling the Portland crowd: “We won’t go back.”In an interview after her speech, Mills expressed doubt that LePage’s efforts to present a new side of himself would prove successful.“People know better. People knew him for eight years. They knew how rudely he treated legislators of his own party. They know how he treated the Maine people,” Mills said. “They know Paul LePage, and hopefully they don’t forget the true Paul LePage.”Like many other Republican candidates nationwide, LePage seems to be hoping that record-high inflation and Joe Biden’s lackluster approval rating will be enough to sweep him back into office. He has focused his campaign events on kitchen-table issues such as rising oil prices and the struggles of Maine’s lobster industry, while keeping a relatively low profile when it comes to press access. (Multiple calls and emails to LePage’s campaign office and one of his senior advisers went unanswered.) Directly linking Mills to Biden, LePage’s allies insist his experience as governor will translate into an improved economy for the state.“Janet Mills and Maine Democrats only have soaring prices and a track record of failures to offer voters,” said Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. “Paul LePage is the only candidate who will move Maine forward, protect our iconic lobstering industry from far-left activists, put an end to the Biden-Mills heating oil crisis that is crushing Mainers, and get our economy working again.”Mills rejected LePage’s characterization of her economic policies, noting that one study ranked Maine’s pandemic-era economy to be the 11th strongest in the nation. The sitting governor acknowledged the pain caused by rising prices, but rejected the idea that LePage would better address the global issue of inflation. Mills cited her approval of $850 relief checks to Maine families to help mitigate the effects of inflation, and said she has received letters from constituents thanking her for the checks, which allowed them to fill their gas tanks or pay for prescription drugs.“I’m not saying everything’s rosy. I’m not foolish,” Mills said. “At the same time, we, in a bipartisan budget, enacted one of the most generous, one of the most effective inflation relief programs in the country.”Mills’ efforts to work across the aisle could pay dividends at the ballot box, Fried said. As more states have embraced one-party rule, Maine has become an outlier in electing both Republican and Democratic candidates at the statewide level. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by nine points, even as Republican senator Susan Collins won re-election with a similar margin.“Maine has tended to like the idea of people working together, and that was part of Susan Collins’s pitch all these years,” Fried said. “She definitely has more credibility on that, on being bipartisan, than LePage does.”LePage’s adversarial history could be contributing to his poor performance in recent polls, some of which show Mills with a double-digit lead in the race. Fried expressed skepticism of those results, but she acknowledged that LePage may be struggling with an issue that also plagued the man he once endorsed for president. Like Trump, LePage has a unique ability to motivate his biggest critics to turn out at the polls.“It’s hard for me to totally believe these polls that have a really large Mills lead. It’s likely it’s going to be closer,” Fried said. “Ultimately, in some ways, LePage is like a Trump figure in that people will come out on the left to prevent the least-liked candidate from winning.”TopicsMaineUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Divided midterms: parties play up different issues as US elections loom

      by

      Divided midterms: parties play up different issues as US elections loomDemocrats and Republicans are largely talking past each other as they campaign, with little to no overlap on what they consider major issues Ron Johnson’s priorities were clear. “We have a huge problem with skyrocketing crime,” insisted the US senator for Wisconsin, accusing his debate opponent, Mandela Barnes, of pushing to reduce cash bail, release violent criminals and slash police funding.Minutes later it was Barnes’s turn to go on the offensive. Johnson, the lieutenant governor said, had described the end of the constitutional right to abortion as a “victory” and shown himself to be “callous” and “out of touch”. Barnes promised to codify that right into law if elected.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead moreA casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking the two candidates were fighting two different elections. For in split-screen America, Democrats and Republicans are largely talking past each other as they campaign for midterms that will decide control of Congress on 8 November.Each party is playing to its perceived strengths. A recent poll by the political research firm Public Opinion Strategies for NBC News found that 90% of voters would prefer Republican control of Congress for the issue of immigration and the border, 65% favour Republicans on crime and 60% want Republicans to handle jobs and the economy.The same survey showed that 86% of voters would prefer Democratic control of Congress to address climate change, 74% favor Democrats on guns, 71% prefer Democrats on abortion and 67% choose Democrats to cope with threats to democracy. The divide is unusually stark.“In past campaigns, the top one or two issues in the election were closely contested and divided between the two political parties,” said Bill McInturff, a partner of Public Opinion Strategies. “This election is different. Each party holds a wide marginal advantage on a distinct set of issues.”McInturff added: “America is more polarised than at any point in the last 40-plus years. Partisans have retreated to their own corners, with limited engagement between partisans, and very little to no overlap of agreement on any major issue.”Perhaps the most vivid illustration of America’s divide is abortion. In June the supreme court’s rightwing majority overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that had enshrined it as a constitutional right for nearly half a century. The political consequences could be profound.The court’s decision prompted a surge among women registering to vote in some states. In conservative Kansas, people overwhelmingly voted to continue to protect abortion in the state constitution.The upshot is a Democratic campaign intensely focused on mobilising women and young people around reproductive rights. Citing data from Bully Pulpit Interactive, the Axios website reported that Democrats have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads about abortion over the past three months.They were handed more ammunition when Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina, proposed a national abortion ban at 15 weeks, and when Herschel Walker, who supports an absolute national ban and is running for a Senate seat in Georgia, was reported to have encouraged and paid for an abortion in 2009 for a woman with whom he later fathered a child.Just as Democrats are eager to talk about abortion rights, Republicans – who spent decades promoting it as a hot button topic – are now equally eager to avoid the topic. Candidates are waffling around it in debates and interviews, deleting hardline positions from their campaign websites and seeking to change the subject whenever they can.But Democrats can take nothing for granted. Writing in the Guardian this week, Bernie Sanders, a senator for Vermont, said he was “alarmed” to hear that Democratic candidates are being advised that their closing arguments should focus only on the right to choose. “In my view, while the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy and allow Republican lies and distortions to go unanswered,” Sanders wrote.James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist, also struck a note of caution, telling the Associated Press: “A lot of these consultants think if all we do is run abortion spots that will win for us. I don’t think so. It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on the cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word.”Democrats have other cards to play: the climate crisis, gun safety and threats to democracy. While the last of these may be complex and abstract to some voters, former president Donald Trump’s continued scandals and campaign rallies are helping to keep it front and centre.House Republicans, meanwhile, made their priorities clear with last month’s launch of a “Commitment to America” policy agenda, emphasising the economy, crime, freedom of choice and government accountability. They claim that Democratic rule has produced 40-year high inflation, 12 cities with record murder rates, a 60% increase in petrol prices, 3.5m illegal border crossings under Joe Biden and record-high drug overdoses.Some of the attacks could be touching a nerve. Only 36% of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, according to a poll by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research, while 63% disapprove. Although the president has blamed rising energy and food prices on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, critics argue that his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package last year was excessive.In a mirror of Republicans’s dissembling around abortion, Democrats are being forced on the defensive despite low unemployment. Biden told CNN this week: “I don’t think there will be a recession. If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession. That is, we’ll move down slightly.”With Democrats similarly reluctant to discuss border security, Republicans believe that they hold the winning hand. Ed Rogers, a political consultant who worked in the Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush administrations, said: “Both parties are talking about what they can talk about. Republicans have the big four: inflation/economy; crime/lawlessness; public education, underreported in the US; the border/immigration.“The Democrats have abortion and name-calling – you’re a fascist, you’re a Nazi, you’re an extremist. That’s all they have. I can’t believe how the Democrats have abandoned the big four. They just don’t talk about them. They’re in a swirl of denial, of obfuscation, of defeat.“They just abandoned the ground. They’re not looking at the polling and selfishly saying, ‘Hey, gang, look at what people care about. We should have a well-crafted, affirmative message about these things.’ They didn’t have that meeting this cycle for some reason. It’s inexplicable to me.”For voters, it can often seem like two campaigns running in parallel with little overlap. Instead of coming at the same issue from different sides, now the issues themselves are different. One team is playing baseball, the other cricket. Longtime political observers say it used not to be this way.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “Usually there’s one set of issues. Pro, con, yay, nay. Not always but generally the economy. In the mid-90s crime was a big issue and there was no changing the subject. ‘Here’s our approach, here’s their approach.’ There was a common set of issues with different approaches. This is an election about different realities.”He added: “We talked politics even when I was a little kid and there were always disagreements but what makes this so unique is, as [former White House counselor] Kellyanne Conway pointed out, there’s ‘alternative facts’ that are involved.”The parties’ supporters do agree on one issue: last month a Quinnipiac University poll found that 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans say that democracy is “in danger of collapse”. But they have fundamentally divergent explanations: Democrats blame Trump and “ultra-Maga Republicans”, Republicans condemn Biden and socialism.Biden ran for election as a moderate promising to heal divisions and he still peppers his speeches with an emphasis on the “United States of America”. But the past two years have seen continued acrimony and even talk of civil war as Trump continues to dominate an extremist Republican party.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead moreNot everyone believes that the trend is irreversible, however. The Common Ground Committee, a non-partisan organisation, has launched a “score card” to assess the degree to which elected public officials and candidates for office seek points of agreement. Bruce Bond, co-founder and chief executive of the committee, argues that bipartisanship can actually be a selling point in the midterms.He said via Zoom: “Because politics have become national and if I’m a Republican I’m going talk about inflation, and if I’m a Democrat I’m going to talk about the Dobbs decision [by the supreme court on abortion], there’s now a little bit more interest in saying, ‘I have this strong position on this issue and I agree with my base but I also can work with people from the other side’.”Bond pointed to the example of Tim Ryan, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Ohio, who has said he wants to represent “the exhausted majority” and work across the aisle. “What we’re seeing is that the candidates recognise that people are tired of the political divide. If you’re going to talk about the issues that you know your guys care about, that’s not going to be enough.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022The ObserverUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Barack Obama to campaign for Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin Senate race

      by

      Barack Obama to campaign for Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin Senate raceBarnes, who would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin, is looking to unseat Republican Ron Johnson Barack Obama, who twice won Wisconsin by large margins, will travel to the battleground state in the final weeks of the current midterm elections, seeking to boost Mandela Barnes, the young lieutenant governor looking to unseat the Republican Ron Johnson in a key US Senate contest.Barnes would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin. He held early leads over Johnson but the Republican, a prominent figure on the GOP hard right, has surged back. This week, a Marquette University Law School poll showed Johnson in the lead.Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debateRead moreBarnes, who is from Milwaukee, has been trying to energize Black voters in a contest that could decide control of the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 and controlled by Democrats through the vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris.Obama, the first Black US president, is set to hold an early voting event on 29 October, less than two weeks before election day, in Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin and home to its largest group of African American voters.Politico reported this week that the Barnes campaign was reaching out to high-profile Democrats, seeking support as he slips in the polls. Joe Biden, Harris and Bernie Sanders were also named as potential guests.Since his first run for the Senate in 2010, Johnson has marketed himself as a successful businessman upholding conservative values.But he has leaned heavily into rightwing conspiracy theories around the 2020 presidential election and Covid-19 vaccines and remedies. In turn, his approval rating has dropped to 45%, the second-lowest for a Republican senator.In a recent editorial, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in the state, called Johnson “the worst Wisconsin representative since the infamous Joseph McCarthy” and reminded readers he promised to serve no more than two terms, which he has now completed.“Voters should hold him to that pledge in November,” the newspaper said.But Johnson’s campaign has been gaining steam. Early polls showed Barnes with a slight edge but Johnson has launched an intense negative ad campaign, attempting to portray Barnes as bad for the economy in a time of high inflation and as a supporter for activists who want to defund police departments.The lieutenant governor has not backed such campaigns.At a heated debate last Thursday, Johnson, when asked to say something nice about his opponent, said that Barnes had loving parents and added: “What puzzles me about that is with that upbringing, why has he turned against America?”Wisconsin has long been a swing state. After voting for Obama twice, Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton in 2016 by less than one point. Biden won with a similarly small margin four years later.The state is home to more tight races this midterm season, including the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, being challenged by Tim Michels, a construction company co-owner endorsed by Trump. Marquette polls have for months shown that race to be about even.Tammy Baldwin, the state’s other US senator, and Gwen Moore, a congresswoman who represents Milwaukee, are also slated to appear with Democratic candidates for office, including the serving attorney general, Josh Kaul.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Barack ObamaWisconsinDemocratsUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Senate candidate Herschel Walker brandishes 'police badge' in Georgia debate – video

      by

      The Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker addressed his past claims about being a law enforcement officer by producing what he said was a police badge. The former college football and NFL star, who is endorsed by Donald Trump, was accused of ‘pretending to be a police officer’ by his rival, Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, during a debate on Friday. Saying ‘I have to respond to that,’ Walker produced his badge. Walker has never been a trained law enforcement officer, though he has law enforcement endorsements 

      Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debate More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

      by

      AnalysisPeter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracyAndrew Gumbel in Los AngelesRe-energized this election cycle, the tech entrepreneur joins other mega-donors apparently out to undercut the political system Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as “deranged” and in urgent need of “course correction”.The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley “disrupter” who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this year’s midterm elections.Democracy, poisoned: America’s elections are being attacked at every levelRead moreHe’s not merely favoring one party over another, but is supporting candidates who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president and have, in their different ways, called for the pillars of the American establishment to be toppled entirely.Thiel’s priorities this midterm cycle have partly aligned with those of Donald Trump, with whom he has had an on-again, off-again relationship since writing him a $1.25m check during the 2016 presidential campaign.Thiel, like Trump, has made it his business to end the careers of what he calls “the traitorous 10”, Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Four of these members opted not to run for re-election at all, and four more, including Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the House committee investigating January 6, went down in the primaries.But there are also signs that Thiel is thinking around and beyond the former president. The lion’s share of his largesse – $28m and counting – has been directed towards two business proteges who, with his help, have established themselves as gadfly rightwing darlings: JD Vance, the best-selling author of the blue-collar memoir Hillbilly Elegy, who is running for Senate in Ohio, and Blake Masters, a self-styled “anti-progressive” and anti-globalist who is running for Senate in Arizona.Over the past decade, ever since the supreme court dramatically loosened the rules of political campaign giving in its Citizens United decision, Thiel has placed sizable bets on candidates who are not only conservative but have sought to challenge longstanding institutional traditions and break the Republican party’s own norms: Senator Ted Cruz in Texas and Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri as well as Trump himself.Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that “psychopaths are running the country right now” and spoken approvingly of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says “universities are the enemy”, fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon, whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed “little hope that voting will make things better”. While a member of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016, he flashed his institution-busting instincts by proposing that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, be appointed as White House science adviser. He also pushed for a libertarian bitcoin entrepreneur who did not believe in drug trials to head up the Food and Drug Administration.Conservatives could soon be swiping right on Peter Thiel-backed dating appRead moreSuch proposals were too much even by Trump’s iconoclastic standards. Steve Bannon, Trump’s ultra-right campaign manager and political strategist, told a Thiel biographer: “Peter’s idea of disrupting government is out there.”Thiel did not respond to a request for an interview, and his representatives did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.Masters and Vance also did not respond to inquiries.Democracy under attack: the mega-donorsThiel sat out the 2020 election but appears to have been re-energized by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s claims of a stolen presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Addressing a NatCon convention this time last year, he denounced the “incredible derangement of various forms of thought, political life, scientific life and the sense-making machinery generally in this country”.Liberal democracy, in his view, had turned the United States government into a dissent-squashing Ministry of Truth working toward a “homogenizing, brain-dead, one-world state” – a problem to which only rightwing nationalism could provide an “all-important corrective”.“We’re close to a Toto moment, a little dog pulling aside the curtain on the holy of holies only to find there’s nobody there,” he told the crowd. “We always think of democracy as a good thing. But … where do you shift from the wisdom of crowds to the madness of crowds? When does it become a mob, a racket, a totalitarian lie?”Such views might be easy to write off as the eccentricities of a wealthy man but for the money that Thiel has spent buying influence and supporting like-minded candidates – thanks in large part to a campaign financing system that, while still capping contributions to individual campaigns, allows unlimited funding of nominally outside groups and political action committees.Campaign finance experts see Thiel as a symptom of a much broader problem: a political environment in which a small group of mega-donors are growing ever bolder in the size of the checks they write and the erosion of any nominal firewall between the war chests run by candidates and the funds controlled by outside groups dedicated to their success.America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces | Robert ReichRead more“It does seem to be getting worse,” said Chisun Lee, an expert on campaign finance who directs the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government program at New York University. “Outside spending in this federal midterm cycle is more than double the last midterm cycle. Since Citizens United, just 12 mega-donors, eight of them billionaires, have paid one dollar out of every 13 spent in federal elections. And now we’re seeing a troubling new trend … that some mega-donors are sponsoring campaigns that attack the fundamentals of democracy itself.”Thiel’s spending has been dwarfed this year by at least three other mega-donors – Soros ($128m to the Democrats), shipping products tycoon Richard Uihlein ($53m to Republicans) and hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin ($50m to Republicans). And Thiel has some way to go to match the consistent giving, cycle after cycle, of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.Many experts also believe the attack on democracy began long before it became as explicit as Thiel has made it, because the whole point of funneling large amounts of money into the political system is to sway policy away from the will of the majority to the narrow interests of the donors and their friends.This ability to control the policy agenda drives spending even more than the desire to see specific candidates win, says the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, whose 2011 book Republic, Lost offers an enduringly devastating analysis of the relationship between money and political influence. And the spending is likely only to increase.“You’re going to see much, much bigger individual contributions and an acceleration of contributions to Super Pacs [like the ones established to support Vance and Masters],” Lessig said. “The candidates and the Super Pacs can’t coordinate on spending, but that doesn’t mean they can’t coordinate on the fundraising. Since the Super Pacs are outspending candidates by orders of magnitude, it’s all a dance to flush money into Super Pacs … They basically call the shots, and politicians can’t get anything through that they oppose.”Less than a month from election day, both Vance and Masters are trailing their Democratic opponents in the polls (Vance by less than Masters). But, Lessig says, it would be wrong to conclude Thiel – or any of the other mega-donors – are wasting their money.“If you’re a candidate and you know $10m is going to come in against you on a particular issue,” he said, “you are going to bend to avoid the effect of that money, whether or not it’s going to decide the race … If you’re someone who would otherwise be a strong climate activist, but you know that if you mention a carbon tax, a million dollars will drop from some anti-carbon tax Super Pac, you won’t talk about it.”Thiel’s bid to overthrow the system, in other words, goes well beyond his ability to determine which party controls the Senate next year. The money will solidify the notion that the country is being run by psychopaths, at least among a hard core of Republican voters, analysts warn, and will further harden the ideological battle lines that have split the country in two and made common ground ever harder to find. It also brings the extreme opinions of NatCon further into the mainstream, making it easier for radical Republican candidates to run and win in future races, they say.“We are at a crisis point here, not so much because the ideas are hard to defeat but we don’t have a context in which to defeat them,” Lessig said. “The fact that the same number of people believe the election was stolen as believed it on 6 January is a profound indictment of the information ecology in America.”The Brennan Center believes there are ways of improving the system, at least at the state and local level, and points to efforts in both red and blue states to close certain loopholes and introduce public financing models to rein in the influence of the mega-donors. Lee said she would also like to see federal legislation to build a meaningful firewall between campaign funds and Super Pacs.“The legislation exists,” she said, “and it would be a constitutional improvement even under [the] Citizens United [ruling]. All we need is the political will to act.”TopicsPeter ThielUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS political financinganalysisReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debate

      by

      Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debateRepublican spars with Democratic senator Raphael Warnock in one-off contest in vital midterms race The Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, a staunch anti-abortion politician accused by a former girlfriend of encouraging and paying for her abortion in 2009, used his only debate against the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock on Friday to deny his previous support for an outright national abortion ban.The former college football and NFL star, who is endorsed by Donald Trump, was asked about his support for “a complete ban on a national level”. He said the moderator misstated his position. That contradicted statements made repeatedly on the campaign trail, including in July when Walker said it was “a problem” that no national ban existed.Walker also answered an attack from Warnock about his past claims about being a law enforcement officer by producing what he said was a police badge.Woman tells New York Times that Herschel Walker urged her to have second abortionRead moreWarnock said: “You can support police officers as I’ve done … while at the same time holding police officers, like all professions, accountable. One thing I have not done, I’ve never pretended to be a police officer. And I’ve never, I’ve never threatened a shootout with the police.”Saying “I have to respond to that”, Walker produced his badge.Walker has never been a trained law enforcement officer, though he has law enforcement endorsements.As Walker brandished his badge, the debate moderator said: “Mr Walker, Mr Walker – excuse me, Mr Walker. I need to let you know, Mr Walker, you are very well aware of the rules tonight. And you have a prop that is not allowed. Sir, I asked you to put that prop away.”Walker did not do so immediately.The moderator said: “Excuse me, sir. You’re very well aware of the rules, aren’t you?”Walker said: “Well, let’s talk about the truth.”Walker’s apparent battle with the truth over abortion has become a theme of the midterm elections. On Friday, he said his position was the same as Georgia’s state law, a so-called heartbeat bill that bans abortion at six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. That law went into effect this year after the US supreme court overturned the right to abortion.The heated exchange on abortion was one of many that highlighted stark differences between Warnock and Walker. Warnock did not directly bring up the allegation about Walker paying for an abortion, leaving moderators to elicit a flat denial. Walker blasted Warnock for being a Baptist pastor who supports abortion rights.“Instead of aborting those babies, why aren’t you baptizing those babies?” he said.Warnock said “God gave us a choice and I respect the right of women to make a decision”, adding that Walker “wants to arrogate more power to politicians than God has”.Warnock and his fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff won their Senate seats in a January 2021 special election, two months after Joe Biden beat Trump in Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes. It was the first time in two decades Democrats won federal elections in the state, raising questions about whether Warnock can win again as Biden’s popularity falls.In-person voting begins on Monday. The outcome will help determine control of the Senate, currently split 50-50.Republicans throw support behind Herschel Walker after abortion denialRead moreOnstage, Walker claimed Warnock was a Biden puppet, saying the election was about what they “had done to you and your family” in an inflationary economy. Warnock said the election was about “who is ready to represent Georgia”.Walker blamed Warnock and Biden for inflation but offered little when asked what he would do to fix it. Walker said the first step was “getting back” to energy independence rather than depending “on our enemies”. The US had never been free from fossil fuel imports, some from countries such as Russia.Warnock highlighted Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, focusing on provisions he sponsored capping insulin and other healthcare costs, the extension of the child tax credit and infrastructure provisions he shepherded with Republicans. He offered few specifics about further steps.Warnock declined to say if Biden, nearing 80, should seek re-election in 2024. Walker deviated from Trump by saying Biden won legitimately in 2020. But he said he would support Trump if he ran in 2024. Both Walker and Warnock said they would accept the outcome of their election.Both men discussed their personal lives. Recent reporting by the Daily Beast disclosed records of an abortion receipt and personal check from Walker to a woman who said he paid for her abortion. Walker’s denials have continued even after the woman identified herself as the mother of one of his four children. Walker acknowledged three children publicly for the first time only after Beast reporting.Other reports have detailed how Walker has exaggerated academic achievements, business success and philanthropic activities, as well as accusations he threatened the life of his ex-wife beyond details acknowledged in a 2008 memoir. In perhaps his most effective debate move, Warnock alluded to such stories.“We will see time and time again tonight, as we’ve always seen, that my opponent has a problem with the truth,” said Warnock.Dismissing reports that a foundation tied to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he is senior pastor, had evicted tenants from real-estate holdings, Warnock said Walker was trying to “sully the name of Martin Luther King’s church”.Walker pointed to his memoir, in which he detailed a diagnosis of dissociative personality disorder. Walker said he had “been transparent” and “continue[d] to get help if I need help, but I don’t need any help. I’m doing well. I’m ready to lead today.”Walker declined three debates typical in Georgia campaigns. The Savannah debate did not include the libertarian Chase Oliver, who did not meet a polling threshold. Warnock will meet Oliver in a Sunday debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. Walker will be represented by an empty podium.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022GeorgiaUS politicsUS CongressUS SenateRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More