The New York Times informs us that Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is blitzing the online world (10/20):
“On any given day, the Trump campaign is plastering ads all over Facebook, YouTube and the millions of sites served by Google, hitting the kind of incendiary themes — immigrant invaders, the corrupt media — that play best on platforms where algorithms favor outrage and political campaigns are free to disregard facts.
“….That campaigns are now being fought largely online is hardly a revelation, yet only one political party seems to have gotten the message. While the Trump campaign has put its digital operation firmly at the center of the president’s re-election effort, Democrats are struggling to internalize the lessons of the 2016 race and adapt to a political landscape shaped by social media.”
Kevin Drum noted at MotherJones.com (10/20): “My goodness. I guess Democrats must be taking a pummeling as Trump’s approval rating climbs and climbs. Let’s take a look.
“Huh. After six months of blitzing, Trump’s net approval rating has gone down from -8.2 to -11.5 (46.5% to 54.1% as of Oct. 18). It’s almost as if all those outrageous online ads have had no appreciable effect on anyone but Trump’s base, which already approved of him anyway.
“It’s possible, of course, that without all the online ads Trump’s approval rating would have dropped even more. However, it’s also possible that incendiary online ads are mostly a waste of money because they appeal only to true believers in the first place. I think the latter is more likely.
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with keeping your base worked up. It’s a time-honored strategy, and Democrats will be doing it too once they agree on a candidate. But Trump isn’t going to win in 2020 with a base strategy. His base is just way too small. He’s going to win—if he wins—by taking some votes from the middle. He might or might not do that via social media, but he definitely won’t do it with obviously scurrilous ads. That’s the kind of thing that turns off moderates.
“Bottom line: don’t worry too much about the fact that Trump is able to lie online, especially this far ahead of Election Day. It may keep his base frothing at the mouth, but that’s about all. It’s not the game changer people sometimes make it out to be.”
AMERICANS SHIFT TO SUPPORTING TRUMP IMPEACHMENT. Support for starting the impeachment process has moved to a clear majority since news broke in September that President Trump had pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr in opening an investigation of a company involved in the beginnings of the FBI inquiry of Russia’s 2016 election interference, as well as to start an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, as a “favor,” before Trump approved a $400 million military aid package Ukraine desperately needed to fight a Russian-supported insurgent fighters, FiveThirtyEight.com noted (10/21).
When Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible involvement with Russia was released in April, 57.5% did not support an impeachment inquiry while 35.4% supported it, the polls showed. By the time Mueller testified to Congress in September, 36.9% supported the impeachment inquiry while 52.5% disapproved, but as of Oct. 22, after news of the Ukraine scandal snowballed, 52.3% supported beginning the inquiry while 42.9% disapproved, and 48.6% supported Trump’s impeachment while 43.3% disapproved.
Polls also showed Trump’s disapproval at 54.8%, while 41.2% approved of Trump’s performance so far.
As for Trump’s re-election prospects, he remains “underwater” by double figures in key Midwestern states he won in 2016, including Iowa (13 points net disapproval), Michigan (-16) and Wisconsin (-11), and single digits in Pennsylvania (-7) and Ohio (-5), in Morning Consult tracking polls as of 10/3.
CONFUSION CONTINUES IN WHITE HOUSE AS TRUMP CHANGES COURSE ON LEAVING TROOPS IN SYRIA. Facing fierce, bipartisan, and global criticism for his decision to abandon the Kurds and withdraw US troops from Syria, Donald Trump seems to be backing away from previous insistence that he was “bringing the troops home” (except the ones he’s sending into Saudi Arabia), Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos.com (10/21). It now seems likely that a couple of hundred America troops will remain in eastern Syria, to protect Syrian oil fields.
Trump tweeted as much (10/20), saying, “We have secured the Oil.” Securing “the Oil” is far more important to Trump than Kurdish lives are. That’s more than apparent to those Kurds who expressed their rage and terror at the unfolding situation by hurling insults and rocks and potatoes at American forces withdrawing from Kurdish-held areas. They have no recourse but to flee, and more than 176,000—about 70,000 of whom are children—are now refugees seeking shelter where possible. “Thousands of children and their families have once again had to leave everything they own to flee conflict and take shelter in unhygienic conditions without the basic necessities,” said Sonia Khush, Save the Children’s Syria response director.
Meanwhile, Turkey continues to violate the cease-fire agreement that it told Vice President Mike Pence the US had to accept, a 120-hour pause to give the Kurds time to flee their homeland. Senior Kurdish official Redur Khalil says his forces were complying with the agreement and trying to get the hell out. He’s attempting to get international assistance to ensure that the Kurds who decide to stay are protected once Kurdish-led fighters leave. He got good reason, since the US can’t even be relied on to force Turkey to abide by the cease-fire. “The American guarantor remains weak in its position in deterring the Turkish violations,” Khalil said, with remarkable diplomacy.
The White House is desperately trying to spin the disaster away, rewriting history on the fly by saying Trump didn’t “greenlight” the Turkish incursion into Kurdish territory in Syria when he told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan he was going to withdraw forces. Instead, it says, Erdogan called him to tell Trump that Turkey was going to invade, so what could Trump do but send a ridiculous letter telling Erdogan not to do it, and then acquiesce to the formidable power that is Turkey by clearing the way for Erdogan’s forces?
TRUMP PASSES 13,435 FALSE OR MISLEADING CLAIMS IN OCTOBER. As Donald Trump approached his 1,000th day in office (10/16), he significantly stepped up his pace of spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker reported (10/14)
As of Oct. 9, his 993rd day in office, he had made 13,435 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of almost 22 claims a day since the previous update 65 days earlier.
“One big reason for the uptick: The uproar over Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25 — in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival — and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. We’ve added a new category of claims, Ukraine probe, and in just a few weeks it has topped 250 entries,” Fact Checker reported.
“In fact, Trump earned his fastest Bottomless Pinocchio ever with his repeated false statement that the whistleblower compliant about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump’s call and many other details have been confirmed, yet Trump has repeated this Four Pinocchio claim 29 times. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three or Four Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 27 entries.)
“Another false claim — that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter — just barely missed the cutoff for inclusion. (Trump has said it 18 times.) We presume the falsehood will earn a spot on the Bottomless Pinocchio page in the next update.”
Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 14 false claims a day.
Almost one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 218 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”
False or misleading claims about trade, the economy and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign each account for about 10% of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated.
Trump has falsely claimed 204 times that the US economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can brag about the state of the economy, which he inherited from Barack Obama, but Trump runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump’s trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.
The Washington Post normally does not call Trump’s “false or misleading claims” lies. But Dispatches does.
HILLARY’S EMAILS WERE ALWAYS A NOTHINGBURGER. THE STATE DEPARTMENT FINALLY CAUGHT UP. Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (10/21). “Found: deep in the A-section of Friday’s New York Times. Did you miss this story? I did.”
The nine-page unclassified report, completed last month and shared with Congress this week, appears to bookend a controversy that dogged Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign against Donald J. Trump. Mrs. Clinton blamed the F.B.I.’s handling of the inquiry for crippling her campaign after James B. Comey, then the bureau’s director, reopened his investigation into the server days before the general election after initially declining to bring charges. “While there were some instances of classified information being inappropriately introduced into an unclassified system in furtherance of expedience,” the report said, “by and large, the individuals interviewed were aware of security policies and did their best to implement them in their operations.”
“Bookend a controversy” that “dogged” HRC’s campaign? How about “central to an ongoing act of journalistic malpractice that helped install a vulgar talking yam into the presidency*”?
Pierce added, “I will never forget the day that James Comey came bumbling his way back to center stage in October, right before the election. I attended two Trump rallies that day—the first in Manchester, N.H. and the second in a small town in Maine. The Comey letter dropped into the news while I was driving from Manchester to Maine. The difference between the rallies was astonishing. In Manchester, prior to Comey’s re-emergence as The Accidental Ratfcker, the crowd was muted, almost nostalgic. They’d all had their fun but now it looked as though the ride was over. By the time I got to Maine, the crowd in the gym of a local Christian high school was absolutely steaming. Somewhere on the darkening New England landscape, a once-immutable timeline seemed to have shifted. And here we are.
“It was always a nothingburger, just as the Whitewater part of Whitewater had been 20 years earlier. I watched in fascination as person after person after person fell under the spell of yet another Clinton scandal for which we were all just one interview, one document, one congressional hearing away from finding out What Really Happened. Of course, we never quite caught up to those things because, well, Nothing Ever Really Happened. I can’t help but recall that day when Ken Starr appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and had to admit there was never anything to Whitewater, Filegate, TravelGate and assorted other Gates.
“Now, this. I think I blew out a rotator cuff throwing up my hands.”
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TRUMP IS GONE? Donald Trump may be removed from the White House via impeachment or the ballot box. But then, Mark E. Anderson asks at DailyKos (10/20), “how in the hell do we undo all the damage he and the GOP have done to this country?”
One thing to look out for is a right-wing movement to hold an “Article V” constitutional convention.
Common Cause warned last year, “A well-funded, highly coordinated national effort is underway to call a constitutional convention, under Article V of the US Constitution, for the first time in history. The result of such a convention could be a complete overhaul of the Constitution and supporters of the convention are dangerously close to succeeding. With special interest groups gaining more momentum, conservative advocates are just six states short of reaching the constitutionally-required 34-state goal. They are targeting Republican-controlled legislatures ... and are within striking distance.”
The main push for the constitutional convention is said to be to get a balanced budget amendment, but not only is that a bad idea — the convention would not be limited to that amendment.
Anderson noted, “Anything goes, think of the plethora of amendments conservatives would love to add to the Constitution. Banning abortion, making Christianity the law of the land, elimination of public education, removing birthright citizenship, limits to free speech, the list goes on. Congress must do all in its power to prevent a constitutional convention from happening. As Congress is limited in what it can do, a concerted effort must be made in states where legislation in support of a convention has been passed to repeal that legislation.”
After that, he wrote, “It will take decades to undo the damage he has done to our institutions. The first step in undoing the damage he has done, is that every executive order Trump has enacted, every rule his administration has made, must be repealed, and if necessary replaced. None of his political appointees should remain past his tenure. If crimes were committed by him, the vice president, his family, or any member of his cabinet or staff they must be held accountable to the full extent and letter of the law. The Justice Department memo that a sitting president cannot be indicted must be put into the dustbin of history. No man or woman is above the law—including the president. His stupid trade war must end, every tariff he enacted must be immediately repealed.”
THANKS TO REPUBLICAN POLICIES, STD RATES HIT RECORD HIGHS. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an annual report (10/8) revealing that the number of combined reported cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia reached a record high last year. Titled "Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report", the report noted that, in 2018, there were more than 2.4 million syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia infections combined — an increase of more than 100,000 from the previous year, Nicole Karlis reported at Salon (10/10).
There was also a 71% increase in syphilis cases since 2014, along with a 22% increase from 2017 in the number of newborn deaths related to congenital syphilis.
The CDC said the rise in newborn deaths caused by congenital syphilis, which is passed from mother to child during pregnancy, is connected to rising syphilis rates among women having children. In a media statement, the CDC encouraged women to get tested for STDs by their health care providers and use protection.
While the CDC did not explicitly state it, STI testing is becoming harder to come by for vulnerable populations because free test clinics — including Planned Parenthood clinics — are being defunded by Trump administration policies and Republican-dominated state governments. Ironically, Republican “pro-life” policies have put newborn babies at a higher risk for death. Indeed, the Trump administration’s policy decision to cut off Title X funding to health care centers that provide abortion care or referrals is resulting in the closing of clinics that don’t offer abortion services, but do offer STD testing.
DEM CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES RAISE BIG SUMS, BUOYED BY SMALL DONORS. Despite some Democratic fears (and GOP hopes) that Team Blue’s crowded presidential primary would divert donors from the congressional battlefield, the House class of 2018 is continuing to raise money at a pace that would have been unthinkable little more than two years ago, Jeff Singer reported for DailyKos Elections (10/21).
The top fundraiser among vulnerable Democrats by far was Rep. Katie Porter (CA), who hauled in over $1 million and ended September with close to $2 million in the bank. Five more freshman Democrats in competitive seats raised over $700,000 for the quarter, as did sophomore Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ), who is defending a seat that Trump narrowly carried. An additional 19 Democrats who flipped seats last year also raised over $500,000 during the quarter.
Among nonincumbents, the top Democratic fundraiser was Texas’ Gina Ortiz Jones, who raised a cool $1 million in her campaign to flip the open 23rd Congressional District. Not far behind was another Texan, Wendy Davis, who took in $939,000 for her bid against GOP freshman Rep. Chip Roy in the 21st District (Roy raised $573,000).
Last year, Democratic challengers managed to outraise many Republican incumbents―often quite dramatically. So far, not many Republican candidates have accomplished that in their efforts to unseat Democrats, though Team Red did have a few notable fundraisers.
Two Republicans looking to flip blue House seats raised more than $500,000 for the quarter. In California’s 21st District, former Rep. David Valadao, who narrowly lost his seat last year, outpaced Democratic incumbent TJ Cox $539,000 to $398,000. In New Mexico’s 2nd District, oil businesswoman Claire Chase, who raised considerably more than any other Republican in the primary, took in $511,000. However, freshman Democratic Rep. Xochitl Torres Small still outraised her by bringing in $588,000.
Of course, as we noted last quarter, we’re comparing Democratic incumbents with Republican challengers, but that just reflects the reality of next year’s battlefield: The GOP has to go on offense, so the races that will determine control of the House will take place in districts held by potentially vulnerable Democrats. If Republicans can’t match resources with Democrats, they’re going to have a very hard time taking the 19 districts that they need for a majority now that Justin Amash has become an independent. (Speaking of Amash, he raised $150,000 during his first quarter since leaving the GOP.)
Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Team Blue’s Senate fundraising all-star was Kentucky’s Amy McGrath, who outraised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, $10.6 million to $2.2 million. The second-place spot went to Arizona’s Mark Kelly, who outraised appointed Sen. Martha McSally, $5.6 million to $3 million. The top GOP challenger, and the only one who outraised a Democratic incumbent, was Michigan’s John James, who took in $3.1 million to Sen. Gary Peters’ $2.5 million, though Peters still has a very large cash advantage.
BANKRUPT PG&E REJECTS SAN FRANCISCO BID TO BUY BACK POWER GRID. At the beginning of September, San Francisco offered to buy Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) electrical grid in the city for $2.5 billion. The energy giant filed for bankruptcy in January, after historic wildfires ravaged California, leading to billions in liability cases against the company. At the time, city attorney,Dennis Herrera told reporters, “There has been a lack of investment in infrastructure over the course of the last decade by PG&E. And that is, and was, motivated primarily by pursuit of profit. That’s not something that San Francisco is going to be pursuing. We’re not interested in profit. We’re interested in providing safe affordable power to ratepayers rather than trying to make sure that stockholders are getting some great rate of return on their investment.”
Reuters reported (10/11) that PG&E CEO Bill Johnson replied to the San Francisco offer with a letter of his own, saying “Although we cannot accept your offer, we want to clearly communicate that PG&E intends to continue working with the City to best serve the citizens and businesses of San Francisco.” Mayor London Breed and attorney Dennis Herrera, who sent the initial offer to the energy company, said they were not surprised by the response, but would continue trying to get control over the city’s power grid.
After being convicted in 2016 of five felony counts “of knowingly failing to inspect and test its gas lines for potential dangers,” in addition ot one felony obstruction count, PG&E continued to choose to pad their executives’ bonuses and shareholder prices instead of upgrading their infrastructure and performing speedy safety analysis of their power grid, Walter Eininkel noted at DailyKos (10/18). Those decisions have led to forced blackouts affecting millions of people.
SUPREME COURT WILL REVIEW CONSUMER FINANCE PROTECTION BUREAU. Taking up a case that will give its conservative majority another opportunity to press their vision of administrative agency power, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear an existential challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tim Ryan reported at CourthouseNews.com (10/18)
A subdivision of the Federal Reserve since 2010, the bureau must defend its creation under the Dodd-Frank Act as part of a court case with Seila Law, a Kansas-based firm that has been bucking the bureau’s investigative requests.
Seila, which represents consumers facing debt, says it did not have to comply with the requests because the bureau’s structure is unconstitutional.
When a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit disagreed in May, Seila petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari. The justices granted that writ Friday, without comment, as is their custom.
The CFPB was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who at the time was a law professor at Harvard.
Responsible for regulating banks, debt collectors and other financial institutions, the bureau is led by a single director who is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, which has caused conservative groups to argue the bureau is unconstitutional, vesting more authority in one person than the Constitution allows. Other independent federal agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission, are led by multiple members, reducing any one member’s power.
The CFPB signed onto this view of its structure and urged the court to take up the case. This spurred the Democrat-controlled House to file its own brief defending the bureau’s structure.
The D.C. Circuit found the structure unconstitutional, with then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh writing an opinion for a fractured majority, when it heard a similar challenge in 2016. The full court agreed to rehear the case and reversed the three-judge panel’s decision in 2018.
BILLIONS SPENT ON STOCK BUYBACKS SHOULD HAVE BEEN SPENT RAISING WAGES, CREATING JOBS, PATRIOTIC MILLIONAIRES SAY. Since the 2017 tax cuts went into effect, stock buybacks have shot up by 50%, Morris Pearl, former managing director at Blackrock Inc., and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, said as the House Financial Services Committee opened a hearing examining the buybacks. American companies spent $811 billion buying back their own stock in 2018 alone, Pearl noted, and that number is expected to go up this year. The biggest American companies are clearly making enough profit to spend these record amounts giving raises to their shareholders via stock buybacks, and yet average workers aren’t getting any raises.
“The plain truth is that spending corporate profits on raising worker wages and investing in new jobs, instead of spending it on stock buybacks that only serve to make rich investors even richer, will actually help all of those business people and investors make more money simply because workers will have more money to spend. Consumer spending is the backbone of our economy, and reinvesting record profits back into American workers is the best way of ensuring long-term economic prosperity. Spending billions on stock buybacks, instead of reinvesting that money where it’s needed most, is a short-sighted, unsustainable decision to enrich shareholders.”
For more information see patrioticmillionaires.org.
TEXAS HAS WORST HEALTH IN NATION. Texas has the worst healthcare coverage rate in the nation, with over 5 million Texans (17.7%) without health insurance. Among these, 870,000 Texas children (11.2%) are uninsured, and it’s getting worse.
The Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas, reported on its analysis of the US Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey.
Poverty rates increased in Texas, putting over 100,000 additional people below the federal poverty line, which is $25,465 per year for a family of four.
The median household income did not increase from 2017, and disparities persist by gender, race and ethnicity.
Texas is one of only nine states that saw worse income inequality in 2018.
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2019
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