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IT'S A CULT! Lara Trump Tells 'Anyone Who is Not On Board with Donald Trump' to Leave the GOP

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Just in case anyone was wondering who is in control of the Republican Party, the former reality TV game show host, and aspiring authoritarian dictator, Donald Trump, is making it abundantly clear that he is the divinely anointed master and all others must bend down and kiss his - let's say ring.

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As evidence of Trump's commandeering of the GOP (Groveling Obedient Peons), he has proposed to put his daughter-in-lawlessness, Lara Trump, at the helm of the Republican National Committee (RNC). From there she can allocate the funds it receives in donations from corporations, wealthy benefactors, and brainwashed simpletons, to paying for her Sugardaddy-in-law's lawyers and traveling salvation shows. In fact, that's precisely what she promised to do...

SEE THIS: Grifter Girl Lara Trump Says When She is RNC Chair ‘Every Single Penny Will Go to Donald Trump’

Never mind that the RNC is supposed to be a neutral enterprise that advances the prospects of all GOP candidates. In the Era of Trump there is only one mission. and that is to venerate Dear Leader Trump above everything and everyone else. Affirming that objective, Sister Lara appeared on the Trump-fluffing "news" website, "Real America's Voice," to declare that...

"I can assure you that there will be no funny business. Anyone who is not on board with seeing Donald Trump as the 47th president, and America-loving patriots all the way down the ticket being supported by the RNC, is welcome to leave. Because we are not playing games, and we have no time to waste. So we have to insure that every single penny of every dollar donated goes to the causes people care about."

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And make no mistake. In Trumpism the "causes that people care about" are all focused on exalting Trump. In other words, believe or be banished. No independent thought or fealty to heretics is permitted in the New Republican Ministry. That sort of disloyalty will be severely punished, and all apostates will be cast out. Rev. Trump said himself that any supporter of Nikki Haley will be permanently banned from the realm of MAGA.

Sister Lara went on to pitch herself for the leadership of the RNC, citing as her qualifications that "There is no one more loyal to Donald Trump." It is in that spirit of compulsory devotion that Rev. Trump declared that the Republican Party has never been more united. He said that right after the first few GOP primaries where he lost 40% of his own party’s vote. And republicans in Congress are such a disjointed mess that they've gone through two Speakers and secured a modern record low for legislative productivity.

MORE HERE: REALLY? Dementia Addled Trump Babbles that ‘I Have Never Seen the Republican Party So Unified’

But never fear, MAGA-naughts. The 2024 election is the bag for Trump. It is such an assured inevitability that Trump told his cult followers that he doesn't even need their votes. So Trump supporters can just skip the whole election and go to the monster truck show instead. That's a message that everyone - including Democrats - can get behind. See? Trump is uniting the country.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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Goal in Arizona: 1M Doors Knocked before Labor Day. Hope Springs' First Canvass Diary in 2024

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Anybody who’s been reading my Arizona diaries saw this coming.  Kyrsten Sinema will not seek re-election.  I’ve been writing about my doubt that she would run this year for more than a year, simply because of the obstacles involved in running as an Independent in the state.  By the Fall, it was increasingly obvious.  And, this year, well, two weeks ago, i wrote:

Last year, Conventional Wisdom was that Sinema had set up a three-person race, running as an independent (or, perhaps on the No Labels party line), against the Democratic Congressman, Ruben Gallego, and preferably the MAGA favorite, Kari Lake.  Now, people seem to be coming around to my view that Sinema won’t even run.

She bet everything she had on the bipartisan Border Security bill [pdf] in the Senate, even delaying her campaign plan to finish that bill.  Which landed with a thud.  In this increasingly divided country, there’s no value in being independent.  Especially when both sides think they are in a moral crusade.

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Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers have consistently found that voters weren’t with Sinema.  It was a bad time to leave a political party.  I don’t doubt that we found voters who would have ultimately pulled the lever for Sinema had she actually been able to get on the ballot, but we didn’t find enthusiasm for her running for re-election as an Independent.  And she clearly came to that same conclusion.

So voters, who have been jerked around all last year in Sinema’s vain attempt to find a foothold in the electorate, are finally free of that drama.  Many of our volunteers would see the results of voter impressions of Sinema and say, “good riddance.”  I don’t think they are alone, especially among Democrats.

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Consensus 2024 Senate Battleground Map

But Sinema’s acceptance of reality doesn’t change much (if anything) in the importance of the presidential and senate races in Arizona.  It remains the Quintessential Swing State in 2024, the only state where pundits agree that both the presidential and senate seats are toss-ups going into the Spring.  While there are a number of paths in the Electoral College for Biden to win re-election, Democrats have to win this seat to have any chance of maintaining the majority in the Senate.  “The race is consequential for determining the balance of power in the Senate in 2025.”

Still, Arizona remains one of the most unpredictable Senate race on the 2024 map.”  “Arizona's races have become among the closest-watched - and most expensive - in the country in recent years.”  Arizona is one of a few states to trend Democratic since the time of Trump.  “While it is still a toss-up, states like Arizona and Georgia are being pushed from ‘a reddish shade of purple to a bluish shade,’ ... because ‘big metro areas like Phoenix and Atlanta are getting bluer.’”

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152 volunteers came out to knock on doors for our first 2024 Arizona canvass in the eastern and southern suburbs of Phoenix and east of Tucson (in the 1st, 4th and 6th Congressional Districts).

As of this date, Ruben Gallego remains the likely Democratic nominee but the Statutory Filing Period is from March 9, 2024 to April 8, 2024.  So it is possible (but not probable) that another Democrat could file to run for this (now) open seat.

Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 10,913 doors on Saturday.  Volunteers talked to 791 voters, and 508 voters answered questions from at least part of the Issues Survey.

The Economy was the Number 1 issue for the Arizonans we talked to on Saturday.  Border Issues was the #2 issue voters raised and we heard from voters myriad comments about the twin visits to the Border on Thursday (iirc) from the two likely presidential nominees.  Political Stability was third, mostly centered around Trump’s adventures in courts and the recent SCOTUS ruling.

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Among the Arizonans we talked to Biden’s Job Approval was at 34%; 18% expressed some measure of Disapproval.  5% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Sinema was doing while 48% expressed Disapproval.   It is important to remember that we are knocking on the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters.  We also ask about whether voters Approve of likely Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego.  54% of the voters we talked to had a positive impression of the Congressman, and there were voters who spoke about Gallego’s experience in the Marines.  So his story is getting out there.  52% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. Hobbs was doing a good job, 8% said they disapproved of the job she was doing.

Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors last week in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are talking to Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical.  Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.

We registered 4 new voters and re-registered 11 voters who updated their addresses (or updated their voter registration to participate in the Active Early Voting List — the latter usually skews the number higher).  We differentiate between the new voters and re-registering voters because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they will also receive robocalls thanking them for registering.

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In Arizona, we had 32 voters fill out Constituent Service Request forms.  We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

One of the biggest revelations our Arizona volunteers found in 2023 was that the Trumpian revolt has “made it uncomfortable” to other Arizonans not in Trump’s cult.  It’s not like they have turned free thinkers off of politics, they have created a revulsion from others (those outside the cult) from anything Trump.  

Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 483,363 doors last year in Arizona, and we have now knocked on 32% of all doors in the state.  Hope Springs volunteers in Arizona have set a goal for 1 Million doors knocked before Labor Day.  We also collected 2,987 Constituent Service Request forms over the last two years, and gotten 41,172 Arizonans to complete at least part of our Issues Survey.  We registered or re-registered 4,304 voters in the state last year.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  

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But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

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                    2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.  Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches.  It’s a big year.  There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

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Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.  We spent less than $70,000 last year because we raised less than $70,000.  But what we have raised is thanks to you!

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

About those complacency scolds...

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I get why people are scared about November. We have good reason to be. One of the ways that people express this anxiety is by scolding people for sharing encouraging news or optimistic appraisals of Biden’s chances in November by implying that doing so will breed complacency. Some typical examples might be:

  • “This is great news but we can’t sit back and relax.”
  • “We need to fight like we’re 10 points down.”
  • “If we get too confident in the outcome, Democrats will become complacent and not vote.” 

Some observations: 

  1. Please understand that this kind of scolding is insulting. There isn’t a person here who thinks that the election is in the bag or that Trump can’t win. No one here is looking for an excuse to bow out or stay home on election day. We are all fully aware of the profound threat that Trump represents and the critical need to defeat him soundly. We honestly don’t need your warnings. 
  2. Regarding 2016, there is no evidence that Hillary lost because Democrats stayed home out of an excess of confidence. Remember, she won the popular vote, getting 2.9 million more than Trump. There are a number of things that probably played a role in her EC loss (the Comey sabotage, Russian interference, the media’s obsession with her “emails”, her corporate connections in a time of neoliberal collapse, third party spoilers, etc). But one of those reasons isn’t that Democrats got complacent due to overconfidence. And even if I can’t convince you of that, we’re now fully aware that Trump can win and we honestly don’t need you to remind us of that fact.
  3. This kind of scolding acts like a wet blanket on Democratic enthusiasm. It does nothing to inspire, encourage, or motivate. If you want to motivate, stop scolding people for sharing good news or informed optimism. Instead, I suggest that you lead by example: explain what YOU are going to do to “run up the score”. A comment like “I can’t wait to vote in November!” or “This diary inspired me to donate an extra $10 to the Biden campaign!” will do more to keep people engaged than implying that anyone is naive enough to think this election is as good as over and they therefore don’t need to vote. 

We already have national publications like the NYT doing everything they can to depress the Democratic vote. Please don’t help them by scolding people here for trying to build an optimistic case for Biden’s campaign. Now more than ever we need to stay positive, build excitement, and encourage all the ways we can get the Democrats over the finish line with time to spare. 

GOOD NEWS: Super Tuesday Shows Biden and Democrats Far More Popular and United than Trump and MAGA

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Super Tuesday has come and gone and, as expected, the leading presidential candidates of both the Republican and Democratic parties won the majority of their party's delegates. Donald Trump and President Joe Biden prevailed in the respective races and will likely go on to become the nominees in November.

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That, as is often the case, is not the whole story. The media is already offering simplistic, horserace analyses that misrepresent the most significant conclusions. They are pretending that the victories for each candidate are essentially the same and tell us nothing about how these contests reflect on the general election outcome. There is much to learn from these results, but don't rely on media outlets like Fox News to reveal that.

SEE THIS: Trump-Fluffing Fox News Host Doesn’t Get It: You Have to Hate Trump to Love America

Among the most notable differences between Trump's and Biden's victories is the disparity in the margins of victory. In the fifteen states that held Super Tuesday primaries, Biden won all but two of his races with more than 80% of Democrats voting. And in three of those he won by more than 90%. That's an average of 84.7% across all fifteen states.

Trump, on the other hand, was significantly less successful. While he did win most of his races (he lost to Nikki Haley in Vermont), he won all but three of those races with less than 80% of the vote. And in six of those he won by less than 70%, for an average of 71.5%.

So Biden's margin of victory bested Trump's by about 14 points across all of the Super Tuesday states. Trump lost more than a quarter of his party's voters. That stands in stark contrast to the bragging that Trump does about how beloved he is by his cult followers. Not only did he underperform the pre-primary polling, he underperformed his own rather ridiculous predictions, wherein he claimed to have 96% - or even 100% - support from the Republican Party.

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No one should wonder why Trump's intra-party support is so low. While he has an iron grip on his MAGA cult disciples, he has fiercely excluded and insulted everyone else who fails to be sufficiently worshipful. For instance, Trump declared that anyone who supported Nikki Haley is barred from MAGA. Also, through his daughter-in-lawlessness, Lara Trump - who he is putting in charge of the Republican National Committee - he told those who supported other GOP candidates to leave the party.

SEE THIS: IT’S A CULT! Lara Trump Tells ‘Anyone Who is Not On Board with Donald Trump’ to Leave the GOP

Perhaps most bizarre, Trump recently told the ultra-rightist MAGA website, "Real America's Voice," that he has all the votes he needs right now, and doesn't need any more. Judging by the results of Super Tuesday's primaries, that is flat out delusional. It's the sort of Trumpian lie that will surely come back to bite him in the arse. And Democrats should not be shy about reminding him - and all voters - that Trump believes he doesn't need them.

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RELATED STORIES:

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Threads.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

Hope Springs Kickoff Canvass in Florida: Reach State to Expand the Battleground Map

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It happens every year.  Before i knock on the first door, i get butterflies.  And the longer it takes for me to talk to that first voter, the more i start to question myself.  Why am i doing this again?

One of the first things we do in training, especially in the beginning (because the number of volunteers who come out is manageable), is ask people why they came out.  People call it an ice-breaker, but i’ve come to think of it as a resource.  So as my nervousness increases, i recount those reasons that people gave for coming out to knock on doors.

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You wouldn’t believe how many people have told me, “I could never do it!”  Somehow, the face-to-face interaction makes some (all?) inherently afraid to come out and talk to their neighbors.  I don’t know why.  I just know that, after decades of knocking on doors, i still get nervous in the beginning.

And i know better.  When volunteers have told me of the fears they have, they are usually things that i have never encountered.  And when i hear something i think of as crazy, like, what about those kids that got shot for knocking on the wrong door?, i’ll respond, we’re not knocking on MAGA doors!  To which, i will often hear back, yeah.  I’m not saying there aren’t crazy nuts out there.  There are.  Thankfully, i’ve never sent a volunteer to one of them.  Decades of experience, and it’s never happened to me.  Knock on wood, but i’m confident that trend will continue.

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I grew up in Florida, in Brevard County.  That’s where i learned to knock on doors.  It’s now MAGA country.  When i was growing up, it was all about the Apollo missions and, then, as i was graduating from high school, the Cape (Kennedy) downsized considerably, in wait for the Space Lab launches.  It was really hard times for the area and lots of the engineers, scientists and even technicians left the Space Coast for jobs elsewhere.  Brevard went from one of the most educated areas to, eventually, not so much.  So i learned to knock on doors and organize canvasses during increasingly down times economically.  And, yet, i still never had a bad experience.

But i have learned a lot.  Helmuth von Moltke coined the phrase, "no plan survives contact with the enemy."  In (political) field organizing, the same concept applies.  But you wouldn’t say "no plan survives contact with the enemy," you would say "no plan survives contact with the voter."  And that was true with the Dean and then Kerry campaigns, and it was especially true with the Obama campaign in 2007.  Brilliant organizing and messaging talent and, yet, when we first started knocking on doors in Iowa, we found that voters wanted to talk about thinks not exactly on the planner’s minds.  Sure, we started with “our story,” relating it to our candidate, but after the come-to-jesus meeting, we discovered that we needed to connect *their* story to the candidate.  Even the most field-organizer-friendly candidate in history had to change the campaign plan after contact with voters.

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And the takeaway was, listen to voters.  Listen closely.

This is the Hope Springs from Field PAC takes during our Early Organizing efforts.  Four years ago, the Biden campaign became increasingly leery of direct, in-person voter contact because of the rapid spread of Covid.  It looked for other means to reach voters.  So it hasn’t been a surprise to hear, as i have over and over, “no one’s knocked on my door in (fill in the blank).”  And i wasn’t too surprised to hear that on Saturday, as i joined our Jacksonville-area canvass.

We don’t have any goals, like we do in Arizona, here.  Remember that our canvassing goals have been driven by the grassroots, and that’s just our reality with volunteers here.  For one thing, our Florida volunteers don’t interact with each other like the other states.  In fact, the Jax volunteers have interacted more with our southern Georgia volunteers than the Orlando-area volunteers, largely because we had Georgia organizers come down to help with GOTV during the Jacksonville mayoral election last Spring.  Which is fine.  8 Georgia organizers, all Albany State alums, joined me for our Jax canvass — mostly because they were bummed that their southern Georgia canvasses were postponed because of the weather.

Florida is, by any standard, a reach state for Democrats.  But Florida Democrats, at least those that have spoken up to me, wish it weren’t so.  Florida volunteers were quick to point out that Sen. Rick Scott narrowly leads former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida Senate race by 3 points, according to a new poll.  Although Mucarsel-Powell is widely considered to be the favorite for the Democratic nomination, the primary is August 20th.  There may be a Republican primary, as well; the candidate filing deadline is April 26, 2024.

The other thing weighing on Florida is the prospect of the courts reversing the DeSantis map.  The Florida Supreme Court has taken a challenge to its Congressional redistricting plan, but it won’t be resolved before the candidate-filing deadline.  But this challenge is one reason why we have continued to canvass in the Jacksonville-area, in hope that Democrats can regain the Congressional seat it lost in 2022.

183 volunteers came out to knock on doors in 4 Florida counties on Saturday.  It was a beautiful day to canvass, and we started training early (we started an hour later in Arizona).  They knocked on 13,304 doors and talked to 1,912 voters.  1,212 of those voters answered questions on at least part of the Issues Survey.

The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were, first, Economic Anxiety.  Voters expressed concern about Jobs, the Recovery and increased Prices.  Although Spring Break was just starting up, Tourism has been a worry, because of prior Spring Break incidents.  Housing Issues was the second “urgent” concern.  Insurance continues to be a concern, especially since there have been, according to one voter, “5 years of major price increases in a row.”  Climate Issues was the third most cited concern.  These three things are interrelated.  For numerous reasons, we hear people say they can’t afford to stay there.  Some of us heard complaints about the governor’s inattention to the state.

Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors last week in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are talking to Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical.  Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.

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Biden Approval among the Floridians we talked to was 43% last Saturday; 11% expressed some measure of Disapproval.  14% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 36% expressed Disapproval.  This is relatively unchanged from last year.  16% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 44% said they disapproved of the job he was doing.  The Approval Rating for DeSantis doubled from last year.

68 Florida voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.  We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

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1 voter completed an Incident Report detailing what they could remember from an incident they witnessed of voter intimidation or suppression.  Three other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them).  Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day.

Our very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address.  We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well.  In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves.  Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal.  But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach.  Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting.  Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

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                                  Front of Lit

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change.  Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around.  You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted.  Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided.  But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

We registered 8 new voters and got 38 voters to update their voter registration addresses in Florida on Saturday.  We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to meet Florida’s difficult restrictions there.

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Our Georgia organizers accompanied Florida volunteers to Black Churches on Sunday.  They’ve become quite accustomed to talking about how important it is to make sure you are registered to vote at your current address.  They’ve became great ambassadors for Hope Springs from Field and their confidence has grown immensely since 2021.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.

But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.  (We also make Issues Surveys, Incident Reports and Constituent Service Request forms available at the churches we visit, but we don’t include numbers for those, in part because we don’t always get counts back, but also because we like to compare like to like.)

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

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                   2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.  Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches.  It’s a big year.  There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

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Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.  We spent less than $70,000 last year because we raised less than $70,000.  But what we have raised is thanks to you!

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

UM, OK! Trump Challenges Biden to Debate 'Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace,' Even If Run By the DNC

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In the wake of the Super Tuesday primaries, Trump was pleased to learn that his only remaining Republican opponent for the GOP presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, decided to call it quits and suspended her campaign. Naturally, Trump's response to that was to lash out Haley and condemn her for daring to challenge his divine sovereignty.

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To anyone giving more than a superficial glance at the results of Super Tuesday's races, they would have noticed the cratering weakness in Trump's campaign. Particularly when compared to President Biden, who managed to win his primaries without resorting to infantile name-calling, flagrant lies, and desperate smears.

SEE THIS: GOOD NEWS: Super Tuesday Shows Biden and Democrats Far More Popular and United than Trump and MAGA

Now that Trump is no longer distracted by that infernal, incompetent woman (who he had appointed as Ambassador to the United Nations), he is free to reset his focus on his arch enemy, Sleepy and/or Crooked, Joe Biden. It's puzzling how Trump regards Biden as both a senile communist, and a criminal mastermind. In either case, Trump is now challenging whichever Biden resides in his warped mind to a debates ahead of the general election. He wrote on his failing social media scam, Truth Social, that...

"It is important, for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate Issues that are so vital to America, and the American People. Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE! The Debates can be run by the Corrupt DNC, or their Subsidiary, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). I look forward to receiving a response. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

The first notable part of Trump's comment is his consent to meet Biden both "anyplace," and also "anywhere." Presumably he would also approve of meeting "wherever," and "at some location" or "destination." What's surprising is that Trump will only agree to meet at "anytime," but not "whenever."

Setting aside Trump's disturbingly repetitious mental malfunctioning, it is generous of him to extend this debate invitation to be conducted by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Biden should immediately take him up on that offer and have the DNC produce the debate. Then sit back and watch Trump spin furiously to renege on the invitation and insist that he never made it. Or he could use his old standby excuse for his frequent flubs: He was joking. He's such a card.

Trump's concession to consider participating in a debate run by the CPD is a blatant contradiction of the Republican National Committee's (RNC) already announced boycott of the organization that has been putting on these debates for thirty years. The RNC made that declaration two years ago:

SEE THIS: Cowardly Republican Party to Require Their Presidential Candidates to Boycott 2024 Debates

The RNC issued their rejection of the Commission because it wouldn't submit to their demands, including determining the composition of its members, dictating the dates of the debates, and intervening in the selection of debate moderators. In other words, they wanted to exert the kind of partisan control that Trump demands before participating in any public event. Trump has demonstrated that he cannot face any encounter that isn’t rigged to his advantage. It’s why he won’t submit to any interviews that aren’t conducted by his pals at Fox News or other similarly servile sycophants.

Never mind that Trump has spent years maligning President Biden as mentally unfit, it is the GOP that appears to be concerned about their own candidate’s ability to face off in an open forum. But if Trump were to comply with his new challenge, he would have to revoke the RNC's boycott. Which he could surely arrange since he recently announced that he's putting his daughter-in-lawlessness, Lara Trump, at the helm of the RNC. And she is already getting to work banishing anyone who isn't unflinchingly loyal to Trump from the party.

So let's set up these debates with the DNC. And let's get Rachel Maddow (MSNBC), Jessica Tarlov (Fox News), and Jon Stewart (Comedy Central) to moderate them. Then watch Trump's head explode. In the meantime, Trump is prepping for his encounter with Biden by outlining what he believes are the "Issues that are so vital to America, and the American People." And if you weren't already nauseated enough, don't watch this video...

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MD-Sen: "Moderate" Larry Hogan (R) Won't Commit To Federal Protections For IVF

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From Axios:

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), running for Senate in the state, would not commit Thursday to voting for federal IVF protections.

Why it matters: Republicans have largely argued IVF protections must happen at the state level after the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that restricted access to fertility treatments.

What he's saying: Hogan dodged on whether he would vote to codify IVF protections.

  • Hogan told Axios' Sophia Cai on Thursday that the Alabama Supreme Court's decision was "outrageous" but wouldn't say how he would vote on a bill.
  • "I don't want to speculate on what the legislation might look like," Hogan said.
  • Hogan also maintained that he would not vote for a federal abortion ban.

Also:

In recent weeks, Hogan has made clear that he opposes a federal abortion ban, but on Thursday he declined to say whether he would support legislation aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that granted the national right to abortion until the court overturned it in 2022.

"We’re going to have to take a look at that as we move forward," Hogan said about codifying Roe, adding that he'd have to consider "whether it’s needed or not."

"It wasn’t a yes or no [answer]," he said when pressed about whether he'd vote to codify Roe.

The answers illustrate the uncertain state and federal legislative landscape on reproductive health issues since the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision.

And he will have to answer for this soon:

“Look, I’m like 70 percent of the rest of the people in America who do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be president, and I’m hoping that there potentially is another alternative,” said Hogan, who recently launched his own bid for U.S. Senate in Maryland.

He added that “I don’t know yet” who that candidate will be.

Hogan, a frequent Trump critic, backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s bid for president, but she announced Wednesday that she was ending her campaign.

As former chair of No Labels, the centrist political group focused on launching a third-party run, Hogan was seen as a possibility to lead the group’s ticket. No Labels has been trying to secure ballot access in states ahead of the 2024 election but has not said which candidates would be leading the split-party ticket.

And there’s this:

Luis Borunda, a deputy state secretary under former Gov. Larry Hogan, was federally indicted last month on child pornography charges, complicating and elevating a sexual solicitation case brought against him last year in Anne Arundel County.

Borunda, 65, was arrested Aug. 30 following a sting operation in which Fort Meade criminal investigators posed as a teenage girl skipping school to meet him, according to charging documents. Before federal attorneys became involved, he was scheduled for trial in that case Thursday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court.

The new nine-page indictment submitted to the U.S. District Court of Maryland includes the August incident, while also accusing the longtime political figure of producing and distributing child pornography to interstate and international markets.

Borunda has been charged with the sexual exploitation of a child, coercion and enticement of a minor, two counts of distributing child pornography as well as the possession of child pornography. Additionally, if convicted, he would be ordered to forfeit any involved property, including a cellphone, two computers and three flash drives, to law enforcement.

And Democrats aren’t letting Hogan off the hook. Here’s Prince George’s County Executive and U.S. Senate candidate, Angela Alsobrooks (D. MD):

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The Democratic candidate told theGrio that she believes Hogan, who remains popular among Marylanders according to polling, will fail to get the momentum he needs in the general because Maryland voters “will understand that he is anti-choice, he does not support voting rights, and his party has been aligned with the NRA.”

Alsobrooks said Hogan’s run for office has “little to do with him” and “more to do with the larger Republican Party’s agenda … to elect a Republican and change the balance of power in the Senate.”

“That party is hook, line, and sinker connected to Trump right now in a way that is so dangerous and can never be trusted,” she argued.

And U.S. Senate candidate, Rep. David Trone (D. MD):

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The Maryland Primary is May 14th and is a closed primary. Click here to register to vote or check your voter registration.

Click below to donate and get involved with the Democratic candidate of your choice:

Angela Alsobrooks

David Trone

HE'S A PSYCHO! Excerpts From Trump's Pathetic Live-Bleating of Biden's State of the Union Address

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President Biden's State of the Union Address has been widely reviewed as a smashing success. He covered everything from the booming economy, to record job creation, to immigration, to abortion and reproductive rights, to gun safety reforms, to climate change, to foreign aid in Ukraine and Israel, to preserving democracy and civil liberties, and so much more.

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Biden spoke for about an hour, and his performance is being described as "fiery" and "forceful." He was so good that Republicans have abandoned their childish taunts about his age and mental acuity, and replaced them with asinine allegations that he was on drugs. Sean Hannity and others took to calling him "Jacked-Up joe." For which the Biden campaign should have t-shirts by the end of the week. They have been pretty good at trolling Trump and the MAGA crowd.

SEE ALSO: DARK BRANDON STRIKES AGAIN: Biden Drops Proof of Trump’s Mental Meltdowns on Truth Social

For his part, Donald Trump engaged in a live "truthing" of the speech on his failing social media scam, Truth Social. Which reportedly was crashing throughout his rage-fest. True to form, Trump's outbursts were utterly devoid of substance or any resemblance to reality. Although they were chock full of tastelessness inanities. What follows are just a few choice examples from among the 79 posts Trump made. And, yes, they are all real.

"The first statement that Crooked Joe Biden should make tonight when addressing the Nation is that he will immediately terminate the Witch Hunt against his Political Opponent, ME. Prosecutors and Judges have teamed up as though we were a third world nation!"
Naturally, Trump is most concerned about his own problems, rather than those of the American people. Biden appropriately chose to ignore this subject.

"Thankfully, we won’t have to be looking at RINO Mitt Romney much longer!"
Trump continues to alienate fellow Republicans who are insufficiently worshipful of him.

"Who kissed him on the cheek with lipstick? Now he’s got lipstick on his face. How stupid of her!"
It was probably George Santos, who was actually in attendance. In any case, lipstick on Biden's face is still better than that cheesy spray tan that Trump has on his.

"His hair is much better in the front than on the back!"
So now Trump is pretending to be a fashion critic. Although hair styling is not a subject that Trump seems to know much about.

"He looks so angry when he’s talking, which is a trait of people who know they are 'losing it.' The anger and shouting is not helpful to bringing our Country back together!" [and] "He is so angry and crazy!"
Now this is a subject that Trump does know something about. In fact, he seems to be talking about himself.

"THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!"
Here is another subject with which Trump has some experience. Just ask his doctor, Rep. Ronny Jackson, who dispensed narcotics at the White House like candy. Adderall anyone?

"He wants to take away everyone’s gun. Remember that when you go to the Voting Booth, because if I’m not elected, your guns are GONE, along with your Freedom!"
Sounds like Trump wants people to be packing heat when they vote. And Biden has been President for more than three years and no one's guns have been confiscated. He has never advocated disarming America. He just proposed to put common sense regulations in place to stop the carnage of gun violence.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO NANCY?"
Nancy Pelosi was in the chamber watching the speech. Maybe Trump meant Nikki Haley again. A better question might be "WHAT HAPPENED TO MELANIA?"

Trump closed his tirade by saying that "This was an angry, polarizing, and hate-filled Speech." He complained that Biden didn't begin with remarks about the border. And he made the ludicrous claim that Biden "wants our Country to be flooded with Migrants." Then he concluded by saying that "The Story is that he got through it, he’s still breathing, and they didn’t have to carry him out in a straitjacket."

That's right. Despite Trump saying that Biden can't put two sentences together, Biden delivered a powerful speech that was well received. A post-speech poll by CNN found that 60% of those who watched it had a positive reaction. 35% reacted very positively. Also, 62% said Biden's policies will move the U.S. in the right direction.

In addition, Trump said that Biden would not mention Laken Riley's name (he did); that migrant crime is rampant (it's not); and that Biden weaponized government for political purposes (that was Jim Jordan and James Comer). Those were just a few of the blatant lies Trump told. There were many more as documented in this fact-check. And he woke up Friday morning with still more lies to unload...

"Biden’s speech last night is getting 'panned' all over the World. Only the Radical Left lunatics are trying to make the best of it. It took him 41 minutes to talk, briefly, about Immigration and the Border, on the topic of which he was very weak. No talk of weaponization against his very calm and nice opponent. Angry as hell, this guy is a PSYCHO!"

Is there anything funnier - or more outrageously preposterous - than Donald Trump calling anyone else an "angry as hell""PSYCHO!"? It's textbook projection by a certified angry as hell psycho.

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UH-OH: Trump's Sanity is Questioned By Voters in Focus Groups Conducted By a Conservative Pollster

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The coverage of the presidential campaign to date has been pitifully lacking in substance. There is little discussion of the issues that divide President Biden from Donald Trump. The press fails to make appropriate distinctions between Biden's advocacy of economic equality, reproductive rights, climate change mitigation, and preserving democracy, and Trump's counter campaign that is almost entirely about himself, his legal problems, and his delusional insistence that he won in 2020.

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Instead, the media seems obsessed with the age of President Biden, while ignoring that Trump is only three years younger. More importantly, they fail to acknowledge that Trump's madness is obvious and alarming, but Biden's behavior shows no signs of cognitive decline. To the contrary, Biden has produced remarkable progress as President on critical matters including healthcare, gun reforms, tax equity, infrastructure, manufacturing, and more.

SEE THIS: DARK BRANDON STRIKES AGAIN: Biden Drops Proof of Trump’s Mental Meltdowns on Truth Social

While it's true that Biden has made some minor mistakes in his speeches, they were generally trivial mispronunciations that didn’t reflect on his ability to do his job. Trump’s “mistakes,” however, are more troubling and frightening. They reveal his ignorance, racism, vengefulness, and sociopathic narcissism.

However, what the media is neglecting to observe, the voters appear to be noticing. Conservative pollster Sarah Longwell has held focus groups to ascertain where voters stand on the question of Trump's fitness to serve. And the results aren't pretty...

"According to conservative pollster Sarah Longwell, voters are less concerned with Donald Trump's age than they are worried about his mental fitness as they look at the presidential choices in 2024. [...]

"'[V]oters don't question Trump's mental capacity, they are questioning his sanity,' she replied. 'They question whether he is fit enough to be commander in chief from a moral and ethical standpoint.'"

The distinction between "mental capacity" and "sanity" is an important one. Some people regard Trump's louder, more belligerent demeanor as a sign of mental fitness. It's not, It's just a sign that he is more severely disturbed and consumed with anger and delusions.

SEE ALSO: Trump Suffers Mental Collapse Over Poll that Asks About His Obviously Collapsing Mental Health

On the other hand, Biden's soft-spoken presentation is often interpreted by the press - and definitely by Trump's MAGA GOP - as a sign that he's weak or tired. Actually, it's sign that he's calm and thoughtful.

But don't try telling that to Trump or members of his cult. They remain devoted to him as their Dear Leader despite his conspicuous craziness. Their adoration wasn’t diminished when he bragged about grabbing women by the p***y, or when he said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue, or when he was found liable for defamation and rape, or when dined with a professed Nazi at Mar-a-Lago, or when he “encouraged” Vladimir Putin to attack our NATO allies, or when he exalted himself as akin to the messiah. So why would his severe mental handicaps bother them now?

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Analysis: WIN FOR TRUMP: Supreme Court Rules States Can't Enforce 14th Amendment

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U.S. Supreme Court rules Congress has the power to bar Trump from being on the ballot or create a process to do so, not state officials

Former President Donald Trump achieved a decisive victory at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week, as the Court unanimously ruled that states lack the authority to disqualify him, or any other federal candidates, from running for office based on a seldom-invoked constitutional provision in the 14th Amendment that forbids individuals who have “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office.

The ruling terminates an effort in multiple states to end the candidacy of Trump by invoking the provision in the 14th Amendment, which was crafted to prohibit former Confederates from holding public office following the Civil War.

The main reason the Court decided that states cannot enforce the 14th Amendment in this context is because allowing so would be chaotic.

The Court asserted that in order to enforce the 14th Amendment against a federal candidate, Congress must establish a comprehensive procedure.

This decision has greatly heightened the standards for disqualifying Trump or any other individual, especially in light of the current state of gridlock within Congress.

Although I wish the Court had attempted to make a ruling with regard to the 14th Amendment and whether Trump violated it, it seems logical that Congress should set the standers for federal candidates.

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Prof. Robert Reich

Former Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley Prof. Robert Reich has been outspoken about the fact that the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running for any office, ever again.

He recently posted a Substack article in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

He writes:

“[The Court] agreed that allowing states to make such decisions would lead to a patchwork of ballots, undercutting federal authority. But this may not be the most troubling aspect of their decision over the long term. The five justices in the majority went further, ruling that Section 3 could only be enforced by Congress. They rested their argument on Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which provides that Congress shall pass ‘appropriate legislation’ to enforce the Amendment — such as, for example, procedures to identify which individuals should be disqualified under Section 3. And Congress has not done so. But requiring that Congress first pass such legislation would prevent the federal government’s own Justice Department from bringing a suit alleging that someone should not be allowed on a ballot because they participated in an insurrection. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson were also rightfully concerned that the majority’s decision could be used to prevent the Justice Department or any aggrieved plaintiff from enforcing other provisions of the 14th Amendment…”

In sum, the Court’s ruling has made it easier for insurrectionists to run for office.

You are reading “Analysis: WIN FOR TRUMP: Supreme Court Rules States Can't Enforce 14th Amendment,” by Frank Faiola. ORIGINALLY Published in PAP, republished by Faiola on Daily kos. 

Hope Springs and the Power of Canvassing: Taking Back Our Grassroots Power & Winning in 2024

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Knocking on doors, or canvassing, (what Garber and Green call "face-to-face political mobilization") is the most effective way for a campaign to identify, motivate (persuade) and mobilize voters.  It is, without a doubt, the most powerful tool in a campaign’s toolbox for getting voters to actually cast a ballot for your candidate (and to have that ballot counted).  Or, as Beto O’Rourke put it, “Nothing beats meeting your voters eyeball to eyeball. We should always find a way to canvass directly at the voter’s door.”  But it was a tool that was largely unused by the Biden campaign and Democrats in 2020 because of Covid.

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Still, Biden won.  And Biden won with one hand — the right hand — tied behind his back.

Most people remember what Covid did to the country but few of us remember what Covid did to the 2020 campaign.  You see, the Trump campaign knew that it won on a fluke in 2016 and realized that it wasn’t likely to repeat that result in 2020 unless it changed things up.  And this was before Covid.

Like many presidential re-election campaigns, the Trump campaign did a deep-dive into the re-elect campaigns of the past and sought to incorporate the practices it believed worked best from those that it had admired.  It ”hired” Karl Rove, the architect of Bush (43)’s re-election campaign.  It created a “Trump Victory Leadership Initiative,” which it claimed was modelled after “the fellowship program Barack Obama’s campaign pioneered in 2008 and 2012” but was really an outgrowth of the Leadership Institute and Morton Blackwell’s Youth campaign efforts for the Reagan Campaigns.  And it borrowed heavily from the Obama campaigns:

As they build their program, Parscale and others on the campaign and at the RNC have been studying the book “Groundbreakers: How Obama’s 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America,” a senior campaign official told TIME. It’s not the first time Republicans have turned to Obama’s historic campaign for tactical guidance. In 2016, for example, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gave copies of Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe’s book to his senior presidential campaign team, telling them to “nakedly and shamelessly emulate this.”

“Volunteering is how you win,” Brad Pascale reported to have said to introduce this effort. “Don’t expect just money on TV and [a] digital program is going to win this again.” As a result, “Trump’s campaign knocks on a million doors a week. Biden’s knocks on zero.

I’ve argued before that this effort didn’t hurt Biden as much as you’d expect because he was running against Trump.  But it did hurt Democrats, especially those running for Congress and offices lower on the ballot.  And this year’s result may be the same.  Maybe voters will come to their senses and send Trump packing again.  Maybe Nov 8, 2016 was the only day Donald Trump could win an election.  Maybe.

But this isn’t a “Do the least effort to win” election, is it?  It’s a “Do Everything You Can to Win” election.  Here’s the problem:

Headed into caucus night, both private and public polls found that a majority of undecided voters – those most up-for-grabs this year – were still unsure of whether Trump will be his party’s nominee at all. Even Biden’s internal polling, according to top campaign officials, has highlighted this trend, with recent surveys finding around 75% of the campaign’s targeted undecided voters do not believe Trump will be Biden’s opponent in November.

This is probably the result of voters, especially less frequent or less partisan voters, think both major candidates are just too darn old to be president or disapprove of a Biden-Trump rerun.  Until those voters — a significant portion of the electorate accepts the Biden v Trump match is inevitable, we aren’t likely to see the kind of voter support that President Biden feels he deserves.

Hope Springs from Field PAC was designed to set the stage here.  We’ve been knocking on doors in the Electoral College (and Senate) Swing States with the kinds of interpersonal voter contact that is most effective in driving turnout.  Over the past 3 years, we have knocked on almost 10 Million doors (9,912,746) with a special emphasis on GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) in the places where it mattered.  As Green and Garber argued, "Face-to-face interaction dramatically increases the chance that voters will go to the polls." Hope Springs is well aware that repeated interactions increase voter participation which is why we are so committed to Early or Deep Organizing.

In more than one state, Hope Springs volunteers have been thanked by voters (presumably highly partisan Democrats) at their doors for canvassing.  More than once, volunteers have been invited inside voters’ homes because of their concern for them, whether because it was “too hot” or “too cold” to talk outside.  We don’t advise volunteers to do that, but it has happened often enough to note.  One of the last volunteers to tell me personally about his experience — this was in Ohio last Fall -- opened up his coat to show me his heated vest with heated mittens, an experience that has been permanently imprinted on my brain (i’ve told several Members of Congress who live in cold-weather states about this experience).

Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 2021 in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battlegrounds in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical.  We believe that in-person voter contact that is interactive and volunteer-driven is key to success in 2024.  But we need your help.

Following the data, Hope Springs volunteers are trained to understand that “Personalized methods and messages work better.” We use an Issues Survey to guide volunteers through their interaction with voters, even training them to show the questionnaire to the voter upfront (even allowing them to hold it), so they understand what we are trying to do at their door.  “Interpersonal influence can be powerful mobilizing forces.”

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Canvassing is not the only way to leverage the latter.  In fact, we aren’t suggesting that canvassing is the only form of communications should rely on.  We have seen first hand how a plethora of campaign communication with voters enhances the chances that voters will interact with us at the door.  In our experience, we have seen voters more willing to talk to us, and more likely to open their doors in the first place, as the media (paid and earned) has increased their coverage of this race, and campaigns have communicated with voters, whether through advertising or direct mail.

In the recent NY-03 special election, i had an interesting conversation with a Long Island voter about his “wide exposure” to Fox News and how unbelievable he found it.  “I trust you more than I trust them,” was how he put it.  And, i admit, this kind of stunned me.  So i asked why, “just so i can understand.”

“Because you’re a neighbor, a kind of friends-and-family plan.”

This attitude is not unknown to me, i just had never heard it put that way.  In fact, the Washington Post recently had a Philip Bump piece on the subject.  “Asked who they trust for election information, Americans were much more likely to say ‘friends and family’ than they were ‘poll results’ or the ‘news media.’” This is why we utilize relational organizing, and it comes out not just in canvassing or even our approach to Post Cards to New Voters.  This year, we will expand the concept beyond the door (and post card).  Make influencers of us all.

But the main point of this diary is that 2024 won’t be like 2020.  We aren’t holding anything back this year (because we won’t have to — a global pandemic was a pretty good reason to be cautious and think about the health risks to volunteers and voters).  We are all in.

Our volunteers have told us they want to double our numbers this year.  We’ve knocked on 9,912,746 doors over the last three years and our grassroots volunteers are pushing for a goal of 10 Million doors this year.  Before Labor Day.  10 Million doors knocked before Labor Day is set up a favorable “battlefield” for the Biden campaign “to romp over.” Volunteers say the darndest things.

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It’s a big goal but it’s a big task.  Hell, it’s a critical task.  Here’s the thing.  Voters are increasingly partisan, far less independent than they used to be.  How they vote for president is much more likely to decide how they vote for Senate, Congress or even for state and local candidates.  So while we are out there knocking on doors with positive messages about Democrats, the president or a specific Senator, the effect of the impressions we are leaving helps Democrats at all levels.  (This is magnified by the fact that we insert the data into VAN and make the data public, available to any Democrat using VAN in the Fall.)

This year is even more important than ever.  And we would appreciate your support.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check).  Thank you for your support!  This work depends on you!

MAGA: Make American's Golden-Years Awful - Trump Advocates Cutting Social Security - Again

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The debate over entitlements has a long history that reveals one of the most defining differences between the Democratic and Republican parties. Democrats were responsible for implementing broadly popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And they still support them. Most Republicans staunchly opposed them from the beginning, and still seek to diminish or terminate them.

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Donald Trump has been all over the map on this issue, generally based on whether his variable positions benefit him at the time. More often than not he has sided with right-wingers who are against these programs. But occasionally - when it suits his interests - he will claim to be a supporter.

For instance, Trump criticized Ron DeSantis for proposing cuts to entitlements. Even though they were some of the very same cuts that Trump has proposed. To be clear, Trump was not supporting entitlements. He was attacking DeSantis. And his opposition goes all the way back to his first campaign...

SEE THIS: GOP Insider Leaks Donald Trump’s Secret Plan To Slash Social Security

On Monday morning Trump was interviewed by rightist shill, Joe Kernan, on CNBC. Kernan raised the subject of entitlements with a blatantly leading question and attempted to get a coherent response from Trump. Which is always a loser's mission. The exchange confirmed Trump's commitment to undermining the programs that ensure quality of life for America's seniors.

Kernan: Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlements? Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. It seems like something has to be done. Or else we're gonna be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.
Trump: So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting. And in terms of, also, the theft and bad management of entitlements. Tremendous bad management of entitlements.

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Kernan's question has his bias built into it. He is more concerned about deficits than human lives. As for Trump, his answer is his latest embrace of a policy aimed at cutting benefits for entitlement programs. Then he adds that he would also address waste, something he obviously had no interest in doing for the four years that he previously occupied the White House.

This would be a good time to point out that entitlement programs are not welfare. They are paid into by the eventual recipients, and they are not included in budget deficit calculations. Although, their funds are often used to offset those deficits.

It is also important to note that - as both Kernan and Trump agree - there are things that can and should be done. But cutting isn't among them. Neither of them mention that contributions to the Social Security Trust Fund are capped for high income taxpayers. If that cap were raised it would eliminate any threat of underfunding for decades to come.

It would be foolish to ignore Trump's knee-jerk reaction to inquiries about entitlements. Despite what he might say in certain venues in order to pander to voters, he is squarely opposed to them and yearns to slash them. He has tried before, and his GOP confederates in Congress are determined to send him legislation to do so, if given the opportunity. And this is not just an issue for seniors. It is an issue for anyone who hopes to someday be a senior, and to anyone with elderly parents or other family.

This interview is just the most recent affirmation of Trump's anti-entitlement crusade. And along with cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, it will be a core part of the Trump/MAGA agenda.

It's comforting to note that President Biden, in his State of the Union address last week, vowed to stop anyone in Congress who tries to cut these programs. Which is just another of the many reasons to work furiously for his reelection. And to that end, his campaign just released a video showing the past attempts by Trump to rob America's seniors and future seniors...

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Rafah is a Red Line: I've got $3,300 for Dark Brandon

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Biden declared that it would be a “red line” for Israel to proceed with a ground invasion of Rafah.

Netanyahu spat in his face.

Okay then. Time to put up or shut up, and I’m happy to do both if it helps stop a genocide. I have been HIGHLY critical of the Biden administration’s weakness on Israel up to this point — however, as far as I’m concerned we can reset the narrative today. Like so many Americans, I am personally outraged by the disgusting crimes that my tax dollars continue to fund — however, I’ve got other dollars.

I hereby pledge both my uncritical support and the full maximum individual contribution of $3,300 to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign if he backs up his words with desperately-needed actions.

We love our “Dark Brandon” memes. We love the idea of an IDGAF Biden defying the bad guys and doing what is right. Well, here we are; tens of thousands of innocent lives are on the line, and the whole world is watching. Will we ride a show of strength and humanity into a brighter future and a November victory? Or will America’s weakness and failure bury our democracy along with the children of Gaza? Your call, Joe. I’ve got my checkbook ready — make me pay for ever doubting you.

Are you better off than you were *3* years ago?

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“Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”  
     
For those of us of a certain age, we knew that question well.
     
For those of you younger than we, that was the question that ended Jimmy Carter's presidency, and brought us the past 45 years of antagonism against workers, consumers, and, pretty much the entire bottom 99.9%
     
You might not be thrilled with where American society has gone for the past 45 years.  
     
But, that's why we made the shift away from the "we're all in this together" society to the "greed is good" society.  THAT VERY QUESTION.
     
And so it was that it stood out when Katie Britt asked "are you better off than you were 3 years ago?".  Stood out like a giant rhinoceros on a quiet beach.
     
Had she said "4", that would be a transparent play for the Reagan voters to come back to the fold.
     
But "3".  WTF is that?

     
It is an acknowledgement that 4 years ago, THINGS SUCKED.  2020 was a bad year, soup to nuts.  
     
I MEAN SUCKED.
     
People died.  People died a lot.  You couldn't buy toilet paper.  You couldn't leave your house.  Small businesses died by the millions.  The economy sucked.  The stock market sucked.  THINGS SUCKED.  Kinda the LAST THING that "people who want Trump to be President again" want people to remember was just HOW BAD THINGS GOT IN 2020.
     
It is far better to get people's notoriously short memories just to let 2020 to die, to paint the past with rosy brushes, and wax nostalgic about the good old days, ignoring the fact that those particular good old days were really the worst days that we, as a country, have seen since, I don't even know.  I mean, if we were England, it would be the Blitz. But there is no one left alive when the ravages that 2020 visited upon our country day after day, week after week, month after month, actually happened.  

     
If you’re a Republican, if you want Trump back in office, why not just gloss over that?  Why not just say “things suck now” without invoking images that are THERE TO BE INVOKED in every last one of your voters on just HOW BAD THINGS SUCKED 4 years ago?
     
I mean, it's kinda giving Biden a campaign commercial.
     
Look where we are now.
     
We can leave our homes!  We can hang out with our friends!  We can go to a game, or a movie, or a theatre or a bar or a restaurant! The jobs are back! The stock market is back!  New businesses are opening! You can buy toilet paper! People aren't dying by the millions!  We have vaccines and people aren't being told to inject themselves with bleach or drugs used to deworm farm animals! Kids are back in school!  Science is real!  We beat a pandemic!  And, yeah, we Built Back Better!

     
Every step of the way, Biden was the guy at the wheel.  
     
Biden beat back that pandemic.
Biden beat back brought us back.
     
And, frankly, the brush you can paint our society with today is a lot rosier than the dark, dank, and drear brush that our 2020 portrait was.
     
But, itz REALLY HARD to argue that *4* years ago was better than today, when all you need to do is look at the DJIA graph for the past 5 years and spot what *today* 4 years ago -- I mean to the day -- looked like.  
     
It's REALLY F***IN STARK.
     
ESPECIALLY to the Party that lives and dies by the stock market!!

djia5year.jpg
     
And, go ahead.  Look at the full thing in context, and look at before-and-after November 2020.  Or January 6 2021.  Or January 20 or 21 2021.  I don’t care.  Pick a date you like that you can compare before-and-after of the Biden presidency.
     
Now, which side of that graph do you really want to be on?
    
Honestly.
     
EVEN if you are a Greed Is Go[o]d Republican... don't YOU want Biden for 4 more years????

JON STEWART Hysterically Tramples Trump's MAGA Cult Crackpots for Calling Themselves 'Patriots'

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The 2024 presidential election is a stark departure from those that have preceded it for the past couple of centuries. It is not merely a choice between two competing political parties or ideologies. It is quite literally a choice between the preservation of democracy and American principles, or the autocratic tyranny of Donald Trump and his MAGA cult movement.

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Trump has embraced some of the most brazen dictators in the world, including Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. He praises them effusively and isn't shy about showing his envy for their strongarm styles of ruling their respective countries. Trump himself has promised to rule as a dictator. And while he says it would be for just one day, when has a dictator ever voluntarily relinquished his power once he's obtained it?

SEE THIS: Fox News Downplays Trump’s Flagrantly Fascist Remarks and Overtly Authoritarian Aspirations

The tyrannical tendencies of Trump are frightening in and of themselves. But the devotion of his glassy-eyed cult disciples may be even more disturbing. Trump will one day be gone. But his minions could linger to latch onto the next wingnut messiah who persuades them that they are the "real Americans" who are the rightful inheritors of the fatherland.

It was just that threat that Jon Stewart addressed in his opening segment of the Daily Show on Monday night. He warned about the "Republican mythology" that these right-wing extremists are "somehow more Americany" that the rest of us. Then he played a video compilation of StormTrumpers at his cult rallies embracing the notion of Trump becoming a dictator, and even pledging to support him if he committed murder "on the front steps of the White House." In response, Stewart delivered a monologue that was both profound and hilarious. The whole thing is worthy of your time, but in the last two minutes it concludes with the following insight...

"This is it. The Thomas Nast cartoon. Patriots festooned in American flags, cosigning dictatorship. Remember 'We the people'? You know, there’s more words after that, right? Smaller font, still binding. Look, if you want to love Trump, love him. Go to the rallies, buy the sneakers. You want to give him absolute power? You want him to be the leader über alles? You want him to have the right of kings? You do you.

"But stop framing it as patriotism. Because the one thing you cannot say is that Donald Trump is following the tradition of the founders. He is advocating for complete and total presidential immunity. His words, not mine. That is monarchy shit, and it’s your right to support it. But just do me a favor for historical accuracy. Next time you want to dress up at the rallies, wear the right f**king colored coats."

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DAMN RIGHT! The meatheads that profess to love Trump despite his anti-constitutional cravings for unchallenged dominion over everyone and everything are, by definition, not American patriots. They are traitors who acquiesce to the fascism favored by Trump's totalitarian heroes. And if they get their way there is no longer anything resembling a constitutional republic in America.

So the next time you hear Trumpists declare that they are patriots, remind of what they really are: American Hate-riots. And they can take their MAGA movement (Make America a Groveling Autocracy) to Russia where it will fit right in.

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TRUMP IS RECRUITING for the Next Insurrection with His Promise to Free January 6 Insurrectionists

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The 2024 campaign platform for Donald Trump has been conspicuously devoid of any rational substance. From the outset he has been singularly focused on his "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was "rigged and stolen" from him; that migrants were "invading" America in order commit crimes and vote for Democrats; and that "retribution" must be dealt out to his enemies in politics and the press.

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None of those issues are of the least bit of interest to most American voters. They aren't even representative of what matters to Republicans, such as banning all abortions and granting human status to frozen embryos; more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy; arming every citizen with AR-15s; and always, clamping down on any media that isn't sufficiently worshipful.

SEE THIS: THEY’RE EVIL! Wannabe Dictator Trump Says MSNBC ‘Shouldn’t Even Be Allowed’ to Be On the Air

This week Trump added a new plank to his perverse platform. It's closely related to his election denialism, but hits more specifically on a select faction of his cult followers. Trump promised in a comment posted to his floundering social media scam, Truth Social, to free the January 6th insurrections that he incited...

"My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!"

Let's set aside Trump's nonsense about closing the border (which he never did when he was occupying the White House), and his incessant chanting about drilling for oil (when the U.S. is currently producing more oil than ever, and more than any other country). Trump's pledge to release violent prisoners (about 1,400 of them), many of whom pleaded guilty (about 800), is a direct assault on the concept of "law and order." It is also an insult to the police officers who were attacked that day.

What's more, Trump's use of the term "hostages" is an additional offense to the victims in law enforcement and the members of Congress, and their staffs, who were the targets of the StormTrumpers. Hostages are innocent persons being held for ransom by criminals or terrorists. The January 6th insurrectionists were convicted by juries for having committed crimes against America. Some of them were specifically convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to terms of 10, 15, 20 years or more.

There is an enormous difference between Trump's offensive rhetoric of "hostages," and the savagery of the rioters he now wants to forgive. But mercy is not what's really on his mind. Trump couldn't care less about the well warranted misfortune of the January 6th insurrectionists. If he did, he could have issued pardons before his term ended on January 20th. The fact that he didn't do so is evidence of his insincerity.

So why is Trump making these brash declarations three years later? Perhaps because he wants his MAGA armies to believe that he has their backs when the next insurrection is waged. By pretending that he's concerned about the January 6th troops, he is giving assurances to future traitors that they will not suffer any consequences if they engage in similar lawlessness. Trump is, in fact, recruiting the next wave of insurrectionists.

That's why Trump's embrace of these criminals, no matter how disingenuous, must be seen as more than just an expression of support and a call for fresh fighters. It is Trump's declaration of war. It's a red flag to Americans who value our nation's principles and want to preserve them. And it's proof of Trump's terrorist intentions. He must never be permitted to prevail.

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It's The SCOTUS, Stupid

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Elie Mystal can run hot, but when he went off on Alex Wagner’s show a few weeks ago he gave the rant that I’ve been waiting for:  (part starts at 4:45)

The money quote:

What it says is that they are corrupted political actors who act in bad faith. The reason why people like Mark and people like Dalia seem to have a crystal ball is because they’re real.  Because they’re realists. And they understand the court for what it is. 

And at some point people in the media, people at home, and people sitting in the White House have to stop pretending that the Supreme Court is some kind of benign, trying-to-do-its-best institution and start to realize that there are six Republicans- not conservatives- Republicans on the Supreme Court who view it as their job to help the Republican party.

And until we do something about that, until we take away that power, until we draw the line on them there, they will continue to do this. They will help Trump, they will take away abortion rights, they will end affirmative action, they will liberalize gun rights. They will do all of it. Until we stop them. 

And somebody, somebody needs to start listening in the higher echelons of the Democratic party.  Because we will keep losing every day we allow these six Republicans in robes to rule over all of us.

That’s it.  That’s the message every Democratic voter needs to know.

Winning elections won’t mean as much until the partisan SCOTUS is taken care of.  And that means expanding the court by 4 seats- all of them picked and appointed by the Democrats.  The 6-3 court becomes 7-6 in favor of us.  We can figure out the details on term limits- which we need for the SCOTUS- later.

What’s that?  It’s impossible?  No, it’s not.  Congress can pass it, the White House can sign it, the Administration can pick the Justices and the Senate can confirm them.

What’s that?  Biden said he didn’t support it?  I understand him saying it before Dobbs, and before whatever will happen this term, but he can’t say it much longer.

What’s that?  The upper echelons of the Democratic party don’t want to go that far?  Sure, and a bunch of not-so-high-up ones probably don’t either.  Most centrists and cautious Democrats obviously don’t feel confident enough to do what has to be done because there aren’t oligarchs for it, but there are oligarchs against it.  The MSM won’t provide the correct context for doing it: they’ll claim that it’s “just like” Mitch McConnell and the Republicans blocking Obama’s SCOTUS pick in 2016, though it’s not.

The people with the most agency are going to hem and haw and want to avoid this.

A bunch of voters are not going to understand why it has to be done, and will only hear either right wing propaganda about it, or nonsensical MSM handwringing.

Sorry everyone, it’s up to all of us to get everyone high and low on board with this.

Because not only will this partisan SCOTUS continue to put its thumb on the scale and give the GOP favorable rulings (see Trump, immunity) while thwarting the Dems (student loan debt)…

Not only will abortion rights NOT be secured, and gay marriage and even birth control be threatened…

The real work of this partisan SCOTUS has only just begun.

Their real intent, Christian nationalism and conservative culture issues aside, is to attack the regulatory state.  This term features Moore, a case on how company profits can be taxed: Loper Bright Enterprises, which is another look at the Chevron rule regarding how agencies can regulate and whether Congress has to SPECIFICALLY write into law what they can do: and Starbucks, regarding how the NLRB treats strikes.

They plan to upend the regulatory state that we need- and need to strengthen.  They plan to hear ludicrous cases blessed by right wing Trump judges and make them the law.

In other words, no matter what the Democrats plan to pass at either the federal or the state level, the partisan SCOTUS stands to undo it.  Whatever nonsense the GOP passes, the partisan SCOTUS looks to support it.  The only constant here is partisan outcomes, not even ideology (apparently abortion laws can go back to the states to decide, unless the GOP can get a national ban passed: then it’s okay).

This has been a long term project.  These judges don’t get elected, they don’t stand for re-election, and they don’t have term limits.  McConnell was among the first to see the great value in that.  Don’t give him or the rest of them that much credit: they’re working for the oligarchs.  Few things are easier than helping the richest and most powerful people stay that way.

And with Trump winning in 2016, and RBG dying 125 days short of Biden being sworn in, they got their trifecta.  Three Federalist Society Justices under 60 in 4 years.

We can’t afford to wait out Thomas and Alito either dying, losing their marbles, or whatever can take them off the court in the next few years.  Lord knows their deals with Satan will keep them there longer than you can imagine.

Every Democratic voter has to get this, understand what’s at stake, and act accordingly.

Protests, honestly, come in second to whatever can push the needle here.  Every Democratic House member has to understand this.  Every Democratic Senator has to understand this.  And the White House has to understand this.

It’s already “understood” but the timidity of too many Democrats who already understand what’s going on simply has to stop.  Just like the filibuster gives cover to meek Senators, this partisan SCOTUS will be too much of an excuse.  Obviously, if the Democrats don’t have a trifecta it can’t happen.  We all know that.  But whenever they do have one, it’s game on.  

Otherwise we’re simply spinning our wheels.

If you know this already, it’s obvious.  Of course this will be hard.  Doing anything against the oligarchs is, and taking away their ace in the hole most of all.  Tough- everything else will be a defensive measure until this gets fixed.

Do any of you like donating hard-earned money and spending hours volunteering on campaigns, in the hope of changing things?  What if the best possible result of all that is to simply hold off the very worst from happening, with no possibility of changing the major stuff.  Even with a trifecta?

That’s what’s before us.  The sooner everyone- everyone- gets that, the better.

It’s the SCOTUS, stupid.

Never trust Republicans. Never trust the Russians. Democrats shouldn't follow their lead on TikTok!

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Republicans and their Russian bankrollers + bedfellows are at it again, and I’m deeply alarmed that most Democrats don’t see the obvious and dangerous trap they’re laying. 

Let’s be clear, Republicans, drunk on pushing anti-democracy Christian-nationalist, authoritarianism, are leading the charge to destroy, dismantle, fire-sale TikTok. The scare-tactic propaganda Republicans are spreading (that Democrats are blindly gobbling up) is “the Chinese Government is going to use TikTok to influence the 2024 elections”! Oh, and “your personal data is at risk”.

It’s a five alarm fire! Let’s convince the Democrats and Biden to quickly pass some sloppy, shady, vague legislation to force TikTok to have mere months to sell to an unknown US billionaire (likely a Republican and Russian ally) before the election in November or be shut down.

Hurry! This is an emergency like none other before! A government report says TikTok is dangerous! Republicans say that TikTok is far more dangerous than trusted American companies of Facebook, Meta, or Twitter. Hurry! No time to waste. Republicans say we must pass this law immediately! The Chinese communists are on the march via TikTok. USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

Well, wait one damn minute. 

Let’s take a few steps back, calm down, to look rationally and objectively look at the situation.

1. Never trust Republicans. 

2. Never trust the Russians. 

3. We know that Republicans and the Russians have been in collusion since the 2016 election.

We know that Russians are deeply invested in Trump winning the 2024 election. They worked closely and openly with Republicans to install Trump in 2016 using Facebook and all their Russian bot farms.

If we as a nation are truly concerned about “foreign adversaries meddling in and influencing our elections” why didn’t we force the sale of Facebook and Meta? Why aren’t we concerned about a South African billionaire using Saudi cash to buy Twitter and turn it into a right-wing cesspool?

4. Never trust the billionaires, particularly the right-wing billionaires.

Why aren’t we noticing that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is annoyed that Amazon online sales are trending down as TikTok shop online sales are skyrocketing. Oh, he’s not happy with the competition?    

Why aren’t we noticing that with 170 million American users on TikTok, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk aren’t happy with the social media competition? 

Why aren’t we noticing who has been lobbying US Congress about the scary, bad, Chinese TikTok? It’s been Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos friendly lobbyists who are also leaning into anti-Chinese racism. 

5. What would happen if Republicans (and their Russian and billionaire backers) convince enough Democrats and President Biden to pass and sign some bogus legislation to disrupt or destroy TikTok prior to the November 5th elections? 

All will be lost. Democrats will lose the elections badly and hand over everything to Republicans. There will be 170,000,000 Americans and 7,000,000 small businesses on TikTok who would be pissed off and blame the Democrats, not the Republicans, but blame the Democrats for destroying their beloved TikTok ecosystem. Republicans cannot win on policy so all they have is fear-mongering and getting Democrats to panic and make stupid mistakes.

We can’t let Republicans get away with this scheme. Democrats cannot be so naïve to fall for and walk right into this obvious trap Republicans, the Russians, and their US billionaire friends have set. 

Solution:

All we need to do is to convince our Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to slow-roll, stonewall, delay bringing this legislation up for any votes. Don’t put it on the schedule but instead, set up a committee to begin a six month study on the Constitutionality of the US Government forcing the sale of a social media company. Passing this law is in fact censorship and against freedom, is it constitutional? Let’s take a long time to study that. 

Create a special Senate Committee take a very long and lengthy approach of writing a far better, more reasonable, more equitable bill that addresses social media safety, data privacy, national security, and disinformation as a whole industry rather than targeting a single app. 

Do we need legislation to protect our national security and data privacy? Yes. But not legislation that is written and lead in bad faith by Republicans who are openly doing Putin’s bidding. 

Democrats need to be smart enough to see what Republicans are doing, and be clever and strategic enough to out maneuver them, delaying any action on TikTok until next year. 

Action Item:

Please call your two US Senators, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to kindly ask them delay and drag out this TikTok scheme the way Trump is dragging out all his court cases. Ask them not to fall for the obvious trap Republicans and Russians have set for Democrats.  

US Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121

DELUSIONAL: Self-Anointed Messiah Trump Proclaims that 'I’ve Been Right About Everything'

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According to Christian doctrine, there is only one infallible person who ever walked among the humans on Earth. They believe that is Jesus Christ, who in their faith is the messiah and savior of all mankind. Perfection is regarded as a divine trait that only god can claim. Everyone else is a sinner by birth.

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But don't anyone tell Donald Trump that. He has been professing his perfection for most of life. In his mind he has never made a single mistake, despite his misfortune of being surrounded by people - who he selected - that fail repeatedly. It's a level of delusion that cannot be measured by modern instruments. He has even proclaimed that he is the "chosen one."

SEE THIS: Trump Says ‘I Am the Chosen One’ After Tweeting that He’s ‘The Second Coming of God’

In an interview with Greg Kelly on the ultra-rightist network Newsmax, Trump was given an opportunity to associate himself with the rest humanity that suffers from the heartbreak of fallibility. But true to form, he waved it off and reiterated his belief in his own holy transcendence and supremacy...

Kelly: You've been right a lot, but nobody is right all the time. Is there such a thing as overconfidence? Are you at this point tough to advise? I know you've got great advisors, but did you learn some negative lessons by being right when they were wrong and you might think, "Well, I'm always right. They must always be wrong."
Trump: Well, they do have a hat - and I don’t produce it. Somebody else - “Trump was right about everything.” .I mean, if you look at all of these - many, many things, I’ve been right about everything.

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Kelly could not have composed a more fawning and obsequious question, leading with the preposterous premise that Trump is "right a lot." But at least Kelly conceded the possibility that he may have been wrong on a few occasions. In reality he was wrong with impressive frequency. But Kelly's mild concession was the most that could be hoped for from a bona fide Trump-fluffer.

Trump, on the other hand, made no such concessions. he immediately referred to what is his most reliable source of information - a hat - to affirm his state infallible divinity. If it's printed on a hat, it must be true. Never mind that Trump has been wrong about some of the most critical matters that have faced the nation. Such as...

  • He said that COVID was no worse than the flu and would disappear in a few days.
  • He insisted that the stock market would crash if Biden were elected.
  • He lied that tariffs would bring in billions of dollars from China.
  • He maligned migrants as prisoners and mental patients who would increase crime.
  • He promised to eliminate the national debt.
  • He opposed NATO and heralded its demise.
  • He predicted that his tax cuts for the rich would create jobs and boost the economy.
  • He continues to push his "Big Lie" that he won the 2020 election.

None of those things were remotely true. And just to cap his record of wrongness, in the same interview Trump proved how utterly idiotic he can be. Reaching back in time to attack a perennial foe, Trump brought up Bill and Hillary Clinton to say that...

Hillary Clinton did "all sorts of acid testing and everything else. They call it BleachBit. But it's essentially acid that will destroy everything within 10 miles. What she did was unbelievable. Nothing happens to her. Nothing happens to Bill Clinton. He took it out in his socks. You know, the famous "socks" case, which he actually ended up winning."

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That is indeed "unbelievable." Because it is flagrantly false. And not just false but ridiculous. Hillary Clinton followed State Department guidelines for retiring digital devices when leaving office. She used a software program called BleachBit to erase any potentially exploitable data. She did not use some imaginary acidic substance that could "destroy everything within 10 miles."

As for Bill Clinton, he never took anything hidden in his socks. The story that Trump is mangling is one where Clinton voluntarily handed over to investigators documents for his memoir that he had stored at home in a sock drawer. They were eventually ruled to be his personal property and not sensitive government materials in any respect.

Given how often Trump is wrong, paired wit how often he is merely stupid, it would be insane to support him for any office in any government. But the devotion of his glassy-eyed disciples is just further evidence that he is leading a cult, not a political party. Which only makes it more imperative that he be soundly defeated in November. Because if there is anything that Trump has been right about, it's his intention to rule as a dictator should he be given the chance.

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The GOP Playbook: Purge Voters, Cast Doubt, Keep Lying

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“It really is aimed at being able to cast doubt on the results after the fact. But also, before the election itself, at being able to shape who turns out and how they turn out.”— Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center.

***

You’re standing at the starting line in a three-mile race against your next-door neighbor, the result of your over-competitive nature and his continuous reminiscing about his days as a star on his high school cross country team.

It’s at this point that you realize that your chronically sore right knee -- an old football injury sustained when you fell awkwardly on your way to buying a hot dog and soda at halftime -- along with your sedentary lifestyle, prevents you from beating a man 10 years younger who starts his mornings with a five-mile jog around the neighborhood.

So, you try to figure out a way to cheat. Maybe you can veer off the path and onto a shortcut that will cut a couple of miles off the race. Or maybe you can have a friend waiting a few hundred yards down the road in his car so you can jump in and be chauffeured to within sight of the finish line.

No, those seem like things that could easily be detected. They have no chance of working. That leads you to resort to what appears to be the only other way to approach this problem. You go to your car, take out a tire iron, and smash your opponent’s kneecap before the race even starts.

What does this have to do with politics? Well, Republicans are trying to kneecap Democrats before voting for the general election even starts.

The New York Times reported that a network of Right-wing activists and allies of twice-impeached/four-time indicted/sexual assaulter/tax fraudster/former president Donald Trump “is quietly challenging thousands of voter registrations in critical presidential battleground states, an all-but-unnoticed effort that could have an impact in a close or contentious election.”

All-but-unnoticed? Well, I think we better start noticing them, starting now.

Isn’t it funny that when the Right screams about unproven voter fraud that they almost always point to states that will ultimately decide the election. What a coincidence. What isn’t funny is that you can forget about our democracy and rule of law if they get away with this.

In a piece titled, “Trump’s Allies Ramp Up Campaign Targeting Voter Rolls,” the Times reports that activists, who have taken to calling themselves “investigators,” (but we’ll still call them activists) are using new data tools and disputed legal theories to urge officials to drop voters from the rolls. The article highlights their work in Michigan, Georgia, and Nevada.

They claim they want to maintain accurate voting records and remove voters who have moved to other jurisdictions. They’re lying. They want to cull as many Democratic votes as possible and cause enough chaos that they hope will give some level of plausibility to their lies about voter fraud. All the better to successfully steal the election after their 2020 efforts failed.

We’ve seen the extent to which these folks will lie. Why would we trust them now?

The Brennan Center for Justice, in a report titled, “Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth,” said, “The verdict is in from every corner that voter fraud is sufficiently rare that it simply could not and does not happen at the rate even approaching that which would be required to ‘rig’ an election.”

In conjunction with these efforts on the ground, Right-wing media outlets have joined the cause, slandering public officials as corrupt and laying the groundwork for legal challenges if Trump loses again in November.

As Joanna Lydgate, chief executive of the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, told the Times: “It really is aimed at being able to cast doubt on the results after the fact. But also, before the election itself, at being able to shape who turns out and how they turn out.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Joanna.

In Michigan, these cheaters have developed a data program used to hunt for their victims. It identifies addresses with irregularities such as missing an apartment number or having an unusually high number of registered voters.

Here’s something that’s no surprise: It’s picked out a lot of folks in dense areas of Detroit and in student housing in Ann Arbor – both overwhelming Democratic cities. Call me when they target rural Republican strongholds.

Remember, when Republicans push their voter fraud lie, they want you to associate it with big cities which have high minority populations, because when they don’t look like you, they would be more likely to cheat, right?

And they hate it when young people vote, especially highly educated ones, who can see through their lies and have a genuine concern about the future for them and their children.

Here’s another game they’re playing. Federal law requires that people who may have moved be kept on the voter rolls for two election cycles, unless they received notice from the voter. There are four Michigan cities or towns where activists have lobbied officials to implement a faster removal process, the Times said.

What’s the hurry? Maybe they just missed a couple of elections. We know the answer to that. Throw off as many from Democratic areas as you can. You may lose some Republicans, but it’s a numbers game, and the odds are you’ll boot more from the other team than yours.

Here’s something to know, in Georgia 360,000 voters were challenged in the 2021 Senate runoff elections alone. In some cases, a single voter brought thousands of challenges, the Times said. A federal court found that this mockery, didn’t amount to voter suppression. Now activists plan to ramp up their campaign heading into this year’s presidential election.

Also in Georgia, Republicans in the state Senate are pushing legislation that would make it easier to challenge a voter’s eligibility. Of course, because when your game plan is based on the Big Lie, you want to make it as easy as possible to circumvent any safeguards against such a fabrication.

In Nevada, they’re doing door-to-door canvassing and have worked with landlords to compare voter rolls with their leasing records.

Look at what’s happening here. This isn’t a matter of someone votes or tries to vote and an activist says, “Wait a minute. Let’s check this one out.” In this case they’re literally knocking on your door in an effort to come up with as many challenges as possible.

Do you think this is the way the system is supposed to work? That our property should be entered and our privacy infringed upon in an effort to deny us our legal right to vote?

These trespassers are identifying themselves as a “quasi-governmental effort,” the Times said. This despite having no connection to government at all. Liars gonna lie.

You can read this very important Times story here.

***

It’s important to note that in some states a challenge alone is enough to limit a voter’s access to a mail ballot, or requires that person to provide additional documentation at the polls. The Times reported that activists consider such a result a victory.

That’s because they not only want to knock as many Democrats out of the game as possible, they also want to sow doubts that will cause their cult to believe the whole thing is rigged in the event Trump, or any Republican (we see you Kari Lake) loses. It just makes it easy for them to gin up violence for another possible insurrection.

What does it say about a political party that sees democracy as an impediment to its pro-rich, anti-poor-and-middle-class, anti-environment agenda? One that believes minority rule is a worthy goal because it’s their only way to retain power.

All this reinforces that the GOP is a corrupt political party lead by a corrupt ex-president.

I have this fear that Republicans are planning something if the vote total goes against Trump. I’m not talking about another insurrection, which certainly could happen, but something to flip the count in favor of Trump.

I don’t know what it could be, maybe disqualifying votes or outright changing votes. I just find it hard to believe that they aren’t at least thinking about something that extreme. I hope I’m wrong. And I hope Biden wins by such a large margin that such an effort would never work.

Hopefully Democrats will be prepared to thwart any post-election illegalities. Right now, we need to understand what Republicans are doing to cheat right now. They’re laying the groundwork to steal the election before the first vote is even cast.

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.

HAHAHA: RNC Chair Accidently Admits the Truth: 'We Are Better Off Today' than Four Years Ago

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Forty four years ago Ronald Reagan asked a question that has become a staple of every presidential election that has followed. During a debate with President Jimmy Carter, Reagan asked "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" It was really a rather simplistic question that didn't get to the heart of any specific issue. But it was an effective rhetorical worm that borrowed into the minds of voters.

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Ever since, American voters have been asked to make the same comparison. And the 2024 presidential election is no exception. However, it does make a huge difference who is asking this question now. President Biden has presided over a booming economy, unprecedented job creation, and a legislative agenda that includes progress on climate and the environment, healthcare, gun reforms, tax equity, infrastructure, manufacturing, and more. It's a record that Republicans are having a hard time criticizing...

SEE THIS: President Biden Trolls Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Hysterically Lame Swipe at Democratic Successes

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been spending his days in court defending himself against dozens of civil and criminal charges, including election interference, inciting an insurrection and rape. And that will continue to dominate his time through November and beyond.

Which makes it difficult for the GOP to ask the "better off" question now. But that hasn't stopped them from doing so. The latest Republican to venture down this path is the newly installed co-chair (along with Trump's daughter-in-lawlessness, Lara Trump) of the Republican National Committee (RNC), Michael Whatley. He appeared on Fox News and asked that question. But the answer he provided was a bit of surprise...

"At the end of the day, this comes down to a very simple contrast between President Trump and President Biden. Were you better off four years ago than you are today? The answer for this entire country is no. I mean yes. We are better off today."

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That's right. Whatley's first stab at the answer was to say that, no, we were not better off four years ago during the Trump administration. Then when he tried to clean up his gaffe, he made it worse by saying that, yes, we are better off today. It's hard to argue with him. But it's par for the course for the new RNC leadership that is doing more to help Democrats than Republicans.

SEE ALSO: IT’S A CULT! Lara Trump Tells ‘Anyone Who is Not On Board with Donald Trump’ to Leave the GOP

What's more, in the past few days this question has been asked by everyone in the Trump cult, from Lara Trump to Sean Hannity, who insisted that Democrats "cannot run on 'are you better off than you were four years ago.'"

Really? For the record, four years ago thousands of Americans were dying every day from a virus that Trump mismanaged through neglect and/or ignorance; the stock market had crashed; jobs were eliminated as companies closed; and you couldn't buy toilet paper. He also added eight trillion dollars to the deficit, embraced foreign dictators, alienated allies, and appointed ultra-rightist judges that who reversed Roe v Wade and generally ruled in favor of wealthy elitists and corporations. All the while, Trump cast himself in the starring role of a daily reality TV show where he upstaged the experts and lied that "a lot of good things are gonna happen."

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Actually, Trump was right, just a little early. Because, as for whether we are better off than four years ago, well...a lot of good things did happen - after President Biden took over. For instance...

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Just the Stats, Ma'am: Weekly Canvass Wrapup from Swing States AZ, FL, GA, NC & TX

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Hope Springs from Field PACvolunteers have been chomping at the bit.  “When are we getting started?” they would ask (ever since i returned from the NY-03 special election).  When i tried to explain that the calendar (more than the cold weather) was the biggest impediment, i got eye rolls.  “Don’t you know….”  The stakes, i’d be told, were high!  And i would be told in the most serious fashion, like i was utterly unaware.

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We started knocking on doors in Arizona and Florida on March 2nd, but postponed scheduled canvassing in Georgia and Texas for that day.  Like every year, we have no idea what to expect and the weather drives some decisions.  but we had cut an enormous amount of turf, just in case.  It’s like a marathon, preparing for the first canvass.

This week (last Saturday), though, organizers responded to the pressing need to get out there, to start knocking on doors.  Let the kraken loose, as it were.  Organizers really don’t want to hear complaints about why didn’t we canvass?  It wasn’t that cold.  So, Saturday the 9th, we did.  And while we didn’t get the kind of response we would have had the temperature been better, we got volunteers started for 2024.

Hope Springs from Field knocked on doors in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas last Saturday, in-person voter contact in preparation for the November elections.  These states have Senate races and/or have been classified as competitive in the Electoral College (Florida lost that distinction late last year).  Having said that, we must acknowledge that Florida is not as important as Arizona, or Texas as important as Georgia, in terms of Senate races or the Electoral College.  Arizona, you could say, is rife with opportunities in 2024 whereas Florida is, well, just Florida.  Georgia is difficult, while Texas is a spec state (not yet a reach state) with regards to the Senate.  This matters less to volunteers, though; every state is important to those who live there.

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Our core mission is protecting a Democratic Senate (and the Electoral College) and our core tactic is face-to-face voter contact through canvassing.  The term most often associated with this approach is “Deep Organizing” but Early Organizing is equally appropriate.  The model or system we have been using has been derivative of old Democratic machine tactics as well as the old (and apparently no longer used) system of 5 rounds (or touches) of voters by political campaigns.  City Democratic machine precinct captains endeavored to knock on doors twice a year in off years and 4 times a year during an election year.  So Democrats used to have a lot of face-to-face contact with voters; now many (probably most) precinct captains never knock on the doors of all the voters in their precincts.

Campaign field programs used to get their volunteers to knock on doors as well, and targeted areas could expect someone to show up at their door 5 times before GOTV started.  Before voter databases became more computerized (and models more sophisticated), the first round was generally dedicated to list clean-up duty, making sure voters still lived where they lived in the last election cycle, registering new voters who might have moved in (or were now eligible to vote) and making them aware of government services, especially those things that fell under the candidate’s auspices.  Neither of these two things are as typical in urban areas, and are virtually unknown in the areas that Hope Springs from Field targets: swingy areas that tend to be suburban and where new building is often common.  They tend to have more people moving in than urban areas and we often meet people who are yet to register at their new address.  But these are the areas that are deciding elections in the 21st century.

On March 8th, Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 62,137 doors and talked to 4795 voters in five states.  3063 voters filled out our Issues Survey, at least in part.  They registered 23 new voters and re-registered 90 voters at their current address.  234 voters completed Constitute Service Request forms and eight voters filled out an Incident Report.

On the 2nd, Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 24,217 doors in Florida and Arizona, talked to 1912 voters, of whom 1212 took our Issues Surveys.  12 new voters were registered and 38 voters re-registered.  100 voters completed Constitute Service Request forms and one voter filled out an Incident Report.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical.  And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud).  We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are.  Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).  Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.

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We began knocking on doors again in Florida and Arizona on March 2nd, talking to voters, raising the Democratic banner and collecting data that will help Democratic candidates get voters to the polls in 2024.  In Florida, we are knocking on doors in Osceola, Volusia and Duval counties.  172 volunteers came out last Saturday, knocked on 12,005 doors and talked to 911 voters.  585 Issues Surveys were conducted, with 3 new voters registered and 14 voters re-registered (all using the Secretary of State website).  82 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 3 voters completed Incident Reports.

The “top” issue in Florida for the 8th was Economic Uncertainty.  Inflation or Prices was still a concern, fear of Layoffs, and whether the area would get a boost from Spring Break.  Housing Issues, especially wrt to Insurance or Insurance Prices was second and Spring Break Concerns was cited third most often.  

39% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden is doing in Florida.  16% disapproved.  9% approved of the job Rick Scott was doing; 43% disapproved.  14% approved of the job Ron DeSantis is doing; 41% disapproved.

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In Arizona, 184 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in the western and southern suburbs of Phoenix and Tucson.  We knocked on 13,211 doors in Arizona and talked to 1,076 voters.  697 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 5 new voters and re-registered 13 voters.  51 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 1 voter completed an Incident Report.

The Economy was the Top Issue in Arizona.  Border Security was second.  Prices was third.

Biden Approval among the Arizonans we talked to was 36% last Saturday.  Remember that we are knocking on doors of Democrats or unaffiliated voters; we endeavor not to knock on any doors where all voters in the household are Republicans (and will ask for a specific voter when it is a mixed household).  We only rarely talk to Republicans given how we cut turf (which i get to do again tomorrow!).  19% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  8% approved of Sinema, while 51% disapproved.  We also ask about the likely Democratic Senate nominee, Ruben Gallego; 53% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of Gallego.  52% approved of the Governor, Katie Hobbs.  7% disapproved.

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In Georgia, 312 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in the Atlanta suburbs and in southern Georgia Blackbelt counties.  We knocked on 22,245 doors and talked to 1,675 voters.  1,050 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 7 new voters and re-registered 48 voters.  86 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 3 voters completed Incident Reports.

Economic Uncertainty was the Top Issue in Georgia on Saturday.  Political Stability was second (there are still lingering suspicions in the Atlanta area about the upcoming Trump Trials).  Prices was third.

Biden Approval among the Georgians we talked to was 44% last Saturday.  12% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  26% approved of the Governor, Brian Kemp.  27% disapproved.

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83 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in North Carolina.  We are focusing on the new North Carolina Congressional District map, Districts 1 and 7, this year — all new areas.  We knocked on 5,685 doors and talked to 428 voters.  278 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 2 new voters and re-registered 4 voters.  17 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.

The Economy was the Top Issue in North Carolina on Saturday.  Political Extremism was second.  Reproductive Rights was third.

Biden Approval among the voters we talked to was 39% last Saturday.  12% disapproved of the president.  46% approved of the Governor, Roy Cooper.  15% disapproved.

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127 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in Texas.  All our volunteers here were veterans from our canvasses in Texas in 2021 and many of them had requested Hope Springs return this year, but we intend to get into TX-15 as well.  We knocked on 8,991 doors and talked to 705 voters.  453 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 6 new voters and re-registered 11 voters.  31 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 1 voter completed an Incident Report.

We are canvassing in Texas because of the Senate race.  We didn’t canvass there last year because we got push back from local Texas groups who thought Hope Springs was competing with them for volunteers.  But our absence was linked to their ability to feed VAN with data and that (apparently) did not happen.  Democratic candidates need this data, Democratic voters need to get that kind of voter contact.  So it’s an experiment.

Border Security was the Top Issue in Texas.  Prices was second and Abortion was third.  

Biden Approval among the Texans we talked to was 33% last Saturday.  23% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  4% of the voters voiced approval of Ted Cruz; 44% disapproved.  21% approved of the Governor, Greg Abbot.  45% disapproved.

If you are able to support this kind of intensive grassroots organizing and voter contact, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

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We canvass with an Issues Survey that is our jumping off point of conversations with voters.  We find this is an easy way to begin the canvass season.  All the data we collect will be entered into VAN, the Democratic database.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  We also ask voters if they have an problems that local, state or federal governments need to address in their neighborhoods.  

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

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Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach.  We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing.  We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work.  Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns).  After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.

As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing.  In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves.  Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal.  But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach.  Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting.  Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change.  Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around.  You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted.  Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided.  But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

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We also ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections.  Last year, we walked with lit about the changes in voting laws, but we also asked voters about their fears and experience in prior elections.  So far there haven’t been significant changes in the laws but we still ask about fears and experience vis-a-vis elections.  Voters who say they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports.  

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.  There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year.  And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.

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                  2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!


If you live in Arizona

The BIDEN-HARRIS Campaign Exposes the GOP's Bogus and Failed Biden Probe - on Truth Social

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Fourteen months ago Republicans assumed a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives. What they have done with it since then is a masterclass in incompetence, failure, and humiliation. They have chosen to conduct the business of government in a manner that replicates how Donald Trump conducts business - by driving it into bankruptcy.

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After taking fifteen votes to select their first Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans threw him out after only none months. Then they spent three weeks to select their replacement, Mike Johnson, who was their fourth choice. And throughout all of this infighting and chaos, they have managed to score a modern day record for low productivity, essentially accomplishing nothing on behalf of the people they allegedly represent.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Most Productive Ever (LOL)

Having nothing affirmative to run on, Republicans decided that their only recourse was to stage phony investigations and baseless impeachment inquiries aimed at smearing President Biden, his family, and other Democrats. But even that has ended in abject failure because of one slight flaw in their strategy: They have absolutely zero evidence of any wrongdoing on Biden's part. In fact, most of their own witnesses have testified that Biden never engaged in anything improper, much less illegal. Consequently, their defamatory scheme is falling apart and will likely be abandoned. As reported on CNN...

"This is not how Republicans thought their 15 month investigation would be going. When they got the majority, investigating the President and his family was a huge focus, But after 15 months pouring over a hundred thousand bank records, interviewing around 40 people, including the President's son, Hunter, and brother James, their business associates, Department of Justice officials, IRS whistleblowers, Republicans haven't found any evidence of wrongdoing by the President, and they don't have the votes to impeach

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To make matters worse for Republicans and Trump, this segment from CNN outlining the failure of the Republican smear job was also posted on Trump's failing social media scam, Truth Social, by the Biden-Harris campaign. Of course, most of the users of that website won't care much about reporting from CNN, but it still expands the exposure of this news into territory it might not otherwise reach.

However, the story doesn't stop with CNN. The futility of the GOP's fake probes has been so obvious that even Fox News had to acknowledge it. In a segment reporting on the current state of the GOP's inquisition and the prospects for a Biden impeachment, Fox's Shannon Bream reported that...

"I think it's increasingly unlikely...I think Republicans are trying to be realistic with the margins that they have. And the Speaker seems to signaling that 'maybe we're not gonna push this to the floor for a vote.'"

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That's right. According to Fox News, the GOP doesn't even have enough votes among their majority to pass the articles of impeachment that they have been yammering about for nearly a year and a half. To be sure, some of the hardcore deadenders will continue to try to push this nonsense. But they will soon tire of beating that deceased old nag. And when they do, the Biden-Harris account on Truth Social will let all of the Trump cultists know what is actually going on.

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Biden's economic plan is working

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Over the past 50 years, before the GOP went all in on fascism and isolationism, the most dramatic difference between Democrats and Republicans lurked in the driest of places: tax policies.

Democrats essentially wanted to tax the rich to help the middle class and working poor, while Republicans argued that helping the rich would lift all ships and eventually help everyone.

Trickle-down economists gave the GOP political cover for decades, providing Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush and Trump the plausible justification they needed to pass massive tax cuts for their donor class. Conservative economists-for-hire claimed that gifts to wealthy individuals and corporations would drive economic investment. Tax breaks for top-bracket earners, they argued, would result in the creation of more jobs, higher average wages, and an overall upturn in national economic indicators.

Decades of Republicans’ welfare-for-the-wealthy have finally delivered enough data to put trickle-down where it belongs: in the political scam column.

Research debunks trickle-down as a scam

Economic indicators reveal that helping the rich helps only the rich.

As National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard told the Economic Club of New York last year, although tax cuts for the wealthy added trillions to the national debt, the cuts didn’t deliver measurable gains in jobs, they didn’t cause an increase in wages earned by the average worker and they didn’t — despite a promise of more “capital to build factories, to buy equipment, and hire more people”— lead to any increase ininvestment whatsoever.  

Instead of delivering these — or any — economic benefits to the middle and lower classes, tax gifts to the rich caused economic inequality to increase, as many communities suffered from stagnated investments in infrastructure and sustained disinvestment.  

For the first four years following Trump's 2018 corporate tax cuts, the largest corporations spent their savings to enrich themselves and their shareholders through stock buybacks. Instead of investing the money in plants, employees or equipment to increase production, they spent the tax windfall on themselves.

Reduced tax income from the top, which increased the national debt, also led to higher interest rates overall, increasing the costs of day to day necessities. In result, while top earners retained even more disposable earnings, income for other Americans failed to keep pace with rising costs of living.

A con job

The U.S. economy is not alone in debunking the GOP’s trickle-down con job.

A joint paper by the London School of Economics and King’s College of London tracked data from 18 developed countries over a 50-year period. Researchers compared economic data from countries that passed tax cuts for the rich in a specific year with countries that did not pass tax cuts for the rich that same year, between 1965 to 2015.

The conclusion? “Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t.”

Forbes reported the same thing about Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy. Noting that “Trump tax cuts helped billionaires pay less taxes than the working class in 2018,” Forbes reported that for “the first time in American history, the 400 wealthiest people paid a lower tax rate than any other group,” citing economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman’s book, The Triumph Of Injustice: How the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay.

In 2022, after Joe Biden had been in office for nearly two years, income inequality finally declined for the first time since 2007. But the disparity remains striking: 10 percent of households in 2022 had income above $216,000 (a 5.5 percent reduction from the 2021 estimate of $228,600), while 10 percent of households had income at or below $17,100.

Biden’s budget vs. Trump’s tax giveaway to the rich

Seeking to reduce such aggressive imbalances, which lead to other costs which increase other taxes, the Biden administration last week released its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Biden’s plan requires wealthy and high earners to contribute more in taxes (cue the massive dark money contributions to Trump), while keeping Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year.

Biden’s proposed budget also reigns in national debt after Republicans added an unprecedented $8 trillion to the nation’s debt under Trump. In 2017, Republicans reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, gifting corporations — strong political donors — with a 40 percent reduction in their tax burden, largesse that did not trickle down.

As former Republican Rep. David Jolly of Florida observed, a quarter of the nation’s total debt was incurred under Trump alone:  “Roughly 25 percent of our total national debt incurred over the last 230 years actually occurred during the four years of the Trump administration.”

Following Trump’s colossal $2.3 trillion tax giveaway to corporations and the nation’s wealthy, Trump reminded his rich donor friends, “You all just got a lot richer.” 

Did they ever.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that, over the next 11 years, Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts would increase the national debt by another $1.9 trillion. As Trump so sagaciously observed, “This is the United States government … you never have to default because you print the money.” 

Biden’s proposed budget

Fast forward to when there’s an adult in the room.

Under Biden’s plan, wealthy individuals and corporations would pay more in taxes — partially rescinding Trump’s gifts to the rich — which would pay for tax credits to the working poor and middle class. Economists project that Biden’s plan will cut $3.3 trillion from the deficit over 10 years as it lifts families with children out of poverty and cuts annual taxes by an average of $2,600 for low to middle income families.

According to Biden’s fact sheet, the plan would also close the windfall for high wage earners who stop paying Social Security payroll taxes after they’ve earned $168,000 in income, which, for the highest earners, happens in the month of January alone, leaving the rest of their annual earnings free of Social Security taxes.  

Biden’s proposed budget would also help young people become first-time home buyers after the Supreme Court overturned Biden’s student debt forgiveness that would have benefitted the same group. It calls for an annual $5,000 tax credita year for two years, effectively reducing themortgage rate by more than 1.5 percentage points for those two years. Biden’s plan also encourages people to move out of starter homes and put them on the market, and commits to build and preserve 2 million homes.

Biden also tackles rising rents by subsidizing new construction and renovation and seeks to “curb unfair and illegal pricing across the economy” to “combat egregious rent increases and other practices driving up rents.” David Dworkin, president and chief executive officer of the National Housing Conference, told the Washington Post that Biden’s plan, as revealed in his State of the Union address, was “the most consequential set of housing recommendations in a State of a Union in over 50 years...”

Democrats need to recognize Biden’s seeds of success

When they review Biden’s proposed budget, Republicans will howl about redistributive wealth and pennies to welfare recipients, without acknowledging their $2 trillion tax giveaway to their uber-wealthy donors.

Democrats — during this election year when the White House, U.S. House and U.S. Senate are all in play— should counter the gaslighting with economic fact.

Bidenomics are working, but lasting effects will take time. When compared to other G7 industrial economies post-COVID, the U.S. economy recovered faster and with lower inflation — a credit to both the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration’s investment in key industries. In less than a year, the Inflation Reduction Act prompted massive investment in a manufacturing and transportation buildout across the states. 

As Biden predicted, private investment and hiring did, indeed, follow public investment. This stands in stark contrast to the previous administration’s gifts to the rich. The U.S. Treasury department reported that more than 10½ million businesses started up in 2021 and 2022, leading to the creation of 3 million new jobs, as a direct result of federal investments under the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan.  

Since Biden took office, companies have announced over $500 billion in investments in the United States, including over $200 billion in semiconductor and electronics manufacturing and nearly $225 billion in clean energy, electric vehicle, and battery investments. Overall, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, spending on manufacturing construction has nearly doubled since the end of 2021.

Although Biden’s budget faces significant pushback from donor-protective Republicans, years of disinvestment from the GOP’s trickle down scam are finally over. Manufacturing trends are demonstrably, undeniably and remarkably moving up.  

Democrats can do themselves- and the nation- a favor by owning this success and selling it to a public that sometimes forgets, even as they begin to reap the benefits.


Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.

Biden HYSTERICALLY ROASTS 'Mentally Unfit' Trump and Honors the Free Press at Annual Gridiron Dinner

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The Gridiron Club is a renowned organization comprised of journalists and other media professionals that hosts a dinner every year featuring pundits and politicians delivering humorous observations of the state of the media and the nation. Among the regular participants is the President of the United States. And this year President Joe Biden came prepared to mock his friends and foes alike, and even himself.

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Coming shortly after Biden's State of the Union Address (SOTU), this was another opportunity for Biden to demonstrate the fallacy of the Republican smear campaign demeaning him as cognitively impaired. The SOTU so effectively put that nonsense to rest that the GOP had to resort to accusing Biden of being pharmaceutically enhanced because they couldn't otherwise explain his sharpness and vigor. In the meantime, their own guy, Donald Trump, made an ass of himself live "truthing" Biden's speech...

SEE THIS: Trump’s Live-Bleating of Biden’s State of the Union Address Was Predictably Petty and Pathetic

Biden's remarks at the Gridiron Dinner will only exacerbate the anxieties of the MAGA cult. Once again, he showed that he is on top of his game. He delivered the comedic material like a pro, and deftly segued to more serious subjects when necessary. And he wasn't shy about referencing his opponent with what will likely be the event’s most memorable line...

"The big news this week is two candidates clinched their parties’ nomination for president. One candidate is too old and mentally unfit to be president. The other is me."

That however, was not the only zinger in Biden's monologue. What follows are few choice excerpts from the White House transcript...

"It’s great to be here at the Gridiron dinner, though it’s six hours past my bedtime."

"Look, it’s been a long night. So, I’ll keep my remarks just a few minutes less than my State of the Union."

"Kamala and I and the members of the administration here tonight are proud — proud of our accomplishments on behalf of the American people: record job growth, wages rising, rigging the Super Bowl for Taylor Swift."

"Our big plan to cancel student debt doesn’t apply to everyone. Just yesterday, a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, 'I’m being crushed by debt. I’m completely wiped out.' I said, “Sorry, Donald, I can’t help you.'"

"I heard House Republicans were going to do a skit tonight, but they couldn’t get a speaker."

"And the biggest joke of the night: an impeachment inquiry. Imagine believing something so baseless that has a zero chance of succeeding. But Republicans would rather fail at impeachment than succeed at anything else."

"I’m running against the same guy that I beat in 2020. But don’t tell him. He thinks he’s running against Barack Obama."

"In the coming months, Kamala and I will be making the case how Americans are better off than four years ago. [...] All without destroying the economy, embarrassing us around the world, or — or itching for insurrection."

Not bad for someone that Trump and his MAGA media minions malign as a senile commie who can't string two sentences together. And in his closing remarks Biden displayed another characteristic that he is well known for, but that his opponent lacks: Reverence for the American Constitution, and in particular, freedom of the press...

"As I said in my State of the Union Address, we live in an unprecedented moment in democracy, an unprecedented moment for history. Democracy and freedom are literally under attack. [...] The lies about the 2020 election, the plots to overturn it, to embrace the January 6th insurrectionists pose the gravest threat to our democracy since the American Civil War. [...]

"All the while, the other guy calls you the free press. Well, he calls you the enemy of the people, even as many of you risk your lives to do your job and sometimes even give your lives to do your jobs. [...] Let me state the obvious. You’re not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society." [...]

"Good journalism holds a mirror up to a country for us to reflect the good, the bad, the truth about who we are. [...] As a result, the choices you make really matter. And each story you make makes democracy stronger."

That respect for the values articulated in the First Amendment stands in stark contrast to how Trump views this subject. In a Sunday interview on Fox News Trump clumsily slapped a backhanded compliment on the media that he despises.

"They’re like the police and frankly, they keep our country honest in a certain way if they do their job properly, and they haven’t been doing it properly."

Describing the role of the press as that of the "police" reveals Trump's twisted perception of the media's function in a free society. He doesn't see it as a "mirror," but rather an authoritarian force to exert control. And he doesn't think they're doing that good enough. Were he to have his way, he would revoke the licenses of any media that isn’t sufficiently worshipful of him. And he has said so explicitly...

SEE ALSO: Herr Trump Decrees: If Media Doesn’t Air My Speeches They Should Have Their Licenses Revoked

Every American needs to remember that when they vote in November. There is one candidate who abhors the press and the Constitution; who is facing 91 felony charges for crimes against America; who has been found civilly liable for financial fraud and rape. And the other one is Joe Biden.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

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President Biden's Stutter Made Him A Better Person: Boosting Biden Day 56

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Joe Biden is a stutterer. It shaped his life. Not only did it teach him to work hard to improve himself, but it gave him empathy for everyone who is struggling. It gave him a lifelong disdain for bullies. And it introduced him to the joy of making a difference in people’s lives.

This six-minute video tells the story of his stutter:

In his adult years, he has helped many young people like this great boy, Brayden, who he met in New Hampshire back in 2020.

Recently, Biden reached out to Harry, another young stutterer who had written him a letter asking how he could overcome his stuttering.

Some people face adversity, and succeed — and become vain that they beat something. Not Joe Biden. Not only did Biden learn grit and perseverance from his experience, but he became more empathic and caring. We can see the results in his amazing record so far as President.

Is there still more work to be done? 100%! Lots more work. But Biden has done so much more than many people guessed could be done. He deserves a lot of credit. AND he deserves to be re-elected.

What can you do to help?

Donate to re-elect Joe Biden!

Your donation will come bundled with others from our Good News community and will show Biden that there are many of us who support him and combine hard work with optimism in our battles for a better America!

Want to do something else?

Rec and comment on these posts to keep them alive at DKos and share them with others who might not realize how great a president Joe Biden has been.

Looking for something else?  Here are some other ideas:

This is an entry in my ongoing series Boosting Biden.  

Check the comments for more information on how to find other entries and subscribe.

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These posts are written by Goodnewsroundup (Goodie),
edited by Matilda Briggs, and supported by 2thanks and WolverineForTJatAW
as well as several other notable Kossacks.
As with all good things, it takes a village.

Initial Impressions or Takeaways of Canvassing in 2024 in AZ, FL, GA, NC & TX

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I don’t watch Fox News.  That doesn’t mean i can escape it.  Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas this month.  This means (for me) flying into a state where Fox News could be on in the airport, any fast food restaurant i visit, or at many of the homes whose doors i knock on.  So just because i don’t choose to be exposed to the Crazies doesn’t mean i can avoid it.

The presence of Fox News pervades the 2024 Swing States.  One of the impacts of this kind of mass exposure to Faux News is that volunteers wondered if the voters they’d be talking to could escape the MAGA news ecosystem or conversations with voters would be peppered with topics driven by the crazies.  It was a real concern.

After three weeks of canvassing, Hope Springs from Field volunteers have learned the answer to that.  One word, one impression, one takeaway from 3 weeks of canvassing has been risen to the top.  And that word or takeaway is relief.  Voters are relieved to be talking to someone who isn’t pushing the crazy topics.  Who talk as if they still have a choice.  Isn’t taken in by Russian propaganda.  Who believe that we can really still save this country from tyranny.

Volunteers are relieved that the entire electorate hasn’t gone crazy.  I’ll admit, i’ve talked to a few voters this year at their doors who say they feel intimidated by the Trumpie’s “excessive exuberance.”  But they also admitted that they knew that the whole purpose was to intimidate them, to deny them their freedom of thought.  To the three voters i’ve talked to about this particular thing this month, i also bring up the pressure to conform, how important it is to Trump for everyone to think like he does, see the world like he does, to act like he does.  Conformity.  AKA to be a crazy.

I also tend to say, Fox News makes everyone stupid.  It’s their mission.

I live in Arlington, VA, so i get away from the MAGA ecosystem every week.  But the voters i am talking to can’t.  It’s all around them, 24-7.  Sure, the Internet provides some relief, but it’s still all around them.  Knocking on doors in the Swing States, and the Early Organizing Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers do in this regard, is even more important because these voters can’t escape the MAGA ecosystem.

While i haven’t personally run into this (yet —  not sure i’d even be aware of it if i did), some of our volunteers have noted that they ran into voters who have mentioned that the Trumpies are acting like they are on some religious Crusade.  And that’s where it gets weird.  The Big Lie turned into the Big Conversion.  If you think the J6 convicts are hostages, if you accept that terminology, you aren’t very likely to vote for Democrats.  But you are constantly exposed to that terminology.  Even think it is normal.

But we aren’t finding those voters.  Our models, our targeting of Democratic and Independent households, still allows us to talk to the “normies” (which is apparently an insult).  We aren’t knocking on doors of the Cultists; but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a concern.  Again, when you are surrounded by that kind of propaganda 24-7, you can (reasonably) worry about it.

Which is why this initial impression is so interesting.  Independent voters, Democratic voters, are still able to escape the Crazy Dome (patent pending, according to the volunteer who mentioned it (in jest, no doubt)).  But i have a few thoughts.

First of all, i can say that more than once over the last three years, i’ve gotten on the plane and said to myself, thank god we are doing this.  I know that i focus on the Data Collection we are doing, replicating that First and Second Rounds of the traditional Five Round canvass.  But many times i come away from talking to voters thinking, i just “armed” them for the battle.  It’s not uncommon to be told, “i heard Democrats are ‘dying,’” or disappearing, there, that there are no Democrats in their neighborhood or town, or that they thought they were the only one.  When i had paper walk lists, i’d always show voters how many Democrats were on my list when i heard that (this isn’t new), but i can’t do that with mini-VAN (technology isn’t always better).  But the presence of a Democrat at their door is always reassuring.

Last year, i’d wear my old Obama campaign gear, but this year i’ve been going out in Biden gear.  In route and knocking on doors.  Old white guy advertising.  AKA invitation to invite comments.  Both good and bad, i admit.  Now the worst comment i’ve heard this year (so far) has been, “you’re brave.”  A couple of laughs (pretty sure that’s supposed to be an insult or intimidating), more than a few “you like that guy?,”“are you going to vote for HIM?,” or “you got to be kidding!”  But i also got a “Go Biden!” in the Atlanta airport.  We’re not supposed to be supporting the president, but it’s okay to publicly show support for the traitor.  Or something like that.  I did mention that Fox News pervades these places.  And i am battle-hardened.

But it used to be worse.  In 2021, it was far more obvious.  I don’t think i traveled into a Swing State that year without passing people in Trump gear.  Maybe i just don’t notice it anymore, but it’s not as prevalent.  I’ve yet to see a pickup truck with a Trump flag flying in the back this year.  It’s early, but still.  But going out in Biden gear isn’t brave, it’s normalizing.  Makes it easier for others to follow.  And i know it is easier for others to follow, to not feel alone.  To feel part of a group.

Not this year (yet), but occasionally, i’ve heard people say (or yell) things like, “Trump won” (to which i will immediately reply, “prove it!”) or, more politely, “Trump’s going to win” (to which i will say, if i say anything, “isn’t that the cool thing about America, we all get a vote?”).  I don’t get into arguments, although i feel free to point out facts; we all have a right to vote and to express ourselves.  Trump wants to embolden his supporters to try to suppress “dissent” to his views.  And while i don’t think i am being confrontational (my wife might disagree), i’ll be the first to admit i don’t feel that pressure to conform.

So i really think it’s a good sign that voters and volunteers are feeling relieved.  Because Biden isn’t as popular as we’d hope.  Lots and lots of effort out there to make people think he’s really unpopular and can’t possibly win.  Lots of money behind that proposition.  Lots.

But one thing we can all do is to reach out to our friends and family in the Swing States and remind them that normal is not the MAGA media ecosystem.  That Biden is less popular than we’d want him to be, but that Biden still has support — even in their state.  That this is going to be a close election, as near as we can tell, and every vote will matter.  Especially in their state.

They may already know this, but it seems that likely Biden voters in the Swing States, who are exposed to the relentless Fox News foolishness, may feel battered, under siege.  That seems weird to me, in my safe, very, very Blue city of Arlington, VA.  But that’s my impression of knocking on doors in these Swing States (so far, i’ve gone to Arizona, Florida and Georgia).  Relief isn’t what i expected to be my initial takeaway.  Helping to undergird that feeling of relief is something that all of us can do something about.  Virtually every single one of us.  And we need to.

This year is even more important than ever.  And Hope Springs from Field would appreciate your support.

If you are able to support our weekly efforts at in-person voter contact, to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check).  Thank you for your support!  This work depends on you!

TRUMP'S 2024 Campaign Theme: "What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?" Here's What...

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Now that both Democrats and Republicans have presidential candidates who have exceeded the number of delegates needed to secure their respective party nominations, the 2024 election season can be regarded as unofficially in progress. President Biden, and the former reality TV game show host under multiple felony indictments, Donald Trump, must still be confirmed at the their conventions.

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Those confirmations are likely to be consummated this summer. Although Trump's could be hampered by his own criminal prosecutions that are pending. Undeterred, this weekend Trump unleashed some of the most reprehensible rhetoric he has spewed since he began his misadventures in politics.

Among them were his denigration of migrants as animals, his warning that a Biden victory would mean the end of democratic elections in America, and his threats of a "bloodbath for the country" if he is not reelected. Then again, he's made similar "bloody" threats of retribution even if he wins. And his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, has helped him to disseminate that.

SEE THIS: Fox News Hypes Hostile ‘Trump Revenge Tour’ Promising that ‘If He Wins He’ll Be Out for Blood’

On Monday morning Trump posted some comments on his floundering social media scam, Truth Social, that elaborated on his thirst for blood. He tried to temper his remarks by saying that they were taken out of context and by claiming that "The Fake News Media, and their Democrat Partners in the destruction of our Nation, pretended to be shocked at my use of the word BLOODBATH." He asserted that he was only talking about the auto industry.

However, Trump didn't say that the auto industry would suffer a bloodbath. He said that the whole country would. And if it's context he wants, note that he made these remarks in the same speech wherein he praised the January 6th insurrectionists who already engaged in a bloody assault on America, then promised to free them all from prison. In light of Trump's heinous commentaries, he posted another comment that appears to reveal his 2024 election campaign theme...

"OUR ONCE GREAT COUNTRY IS GOING DOWN THE DRAIN. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE! VOTE FOR TRUMP, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE?"

So Trump's appeal to voters is that America sucks. It is a grotesque sewer that is only getting worse. Contrast that with Biden's vision for the country that he eloquently spoke about this weekend during a speech at the Gridiron Dinner (where he also delivered some stinging zingers aimed Trump)...

"I know the American story. We’re a great nation. We’re good people, defined by core values of honesty, decency, dignity, light over darkness, courage over fear, and truth over lies."

Biden clearly loves this country. Trump has nothing but hatred for it because it failed to exalt him in 2020. Which of those visions would you rather support? Trump isn't campaigning on a positive platform of what he would do for America or Americans. His inquiry as to "what you have to lose" is just a suggestion that things wouldn't get any worse under his incompetent, sociopathic stewardship.

But just to answer him directly, we would have plenty to lose under another Trump occupation of the White House. Recall that the last time we lost hundreds of thousands of fellow Americans due to his gross mismanagement of the COVID pandemic. And that's not all we would lose were he given another term. For instance...

  • Democracy
  • Civil Rights
  • Healthcare
  • Social Security
  • The Free Press
  • A Prosperous Economy
  • Record Job Growth
  • A Sustainable Climate
  • Religious Freedom
  • Fair Elections
  • Amicable Diplomatic Relations
  • Our Constitutional Republic

And that's just for starters. Trump's entire political career has been based on his cheesy sloganeering to "Make America Great Again" (MAGA). Which is an overt denunciation of what America is right now. He has never appreciated what the country stands for. To the contrary, he yearns to undo its most cherished principles and rule as a monarch. So, yeah...We would have a whole hell of a lot to lose. Thanks, but no thanks.

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A Whole New Playing Field in North Carolina, no thanks to MAGA Republicans. Still, We Persist!

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What a difference a year (or so) makes.  Last year, Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers went into the field excited about having elected a Democratic Congressman (Wiley Nickel), thrilled about the Biden campaign’s inclusion of NorthCarolina in their campaign plan, eager to replicate the Voter Photo ID success in Georgia and determined to push our super-compliance efforts to mitigate Republican efforts to suppress minorities and Democrats voting.  

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But then came another round of redistricting (again), eliminating three Democratic seats and making another a lot more competitive.  You might observe that the new map is a lot less “red,” as it combined those four Democratic seats with Republican counties.  The GOP Dream here is to win 11 congressional seats here.

 When i visited volunteers and organizers in January they remained excited about Joe Biden winning the state but bewildered by the new maps because it totally blew up our canvassing locations from last year.  Our main effort in 2022 was in NC-13, then an open seat, to support Nickel and Beasley.  While we will continue to canvass in suburban areas in the new 13 (in support of the President and the Democratic candidate for Governor), we also started canvassing in NC-01 (which will stretch our existing resources) but will also redouble last year’s efforts in NC-07 and NC-09, where we have been focusing on boosting voter registration in counties with high historical propensities of lynchings.  Like in Georgia and Florida, we have been organizing Divine Nine groups for this purpose, who generally travel to canvass in these counties.

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the darker the county, the more lynchings & lower AA voters registered

This intensive Voter Registration effort in the counties that Jhacova Williams identified with lower voter registration rates among African-Americans than the norm has become a labor of love for both organizers and volunteers.  Williams wrote that Black Americans who reside in counties in the South where there was a higher number of lynchings from 1882 to 1930 have lower voter registration today.” Hope Springs has been using this data to target Voter Registration efforts in those counties, especially in our recruiting and prepping Divine 9 chapters to canvass in counties like Chatham and Rowan (among others).  Again, North Carolina is not the only state, Georgia and Northern Florida are also part of this program.

But Hope Springs from Field volunteers believe that, if we can reverse this historical trend, not just by voter registration but voter mobilization, we can reverse a couple of these less Republican Congressional seats in the state.  Still, our (overwhelmingly) African-American volunteers who canvass in those counties, they are (admittedly) less interested in reversing gerrymandered seats than in reversing historical inequaties.

Until Justice is Real.

So we are venturing into new areas, focusing less on the old Nickel territory, and expecting to face a lot more resistance from MAGAland.  Regardless,

North Carolina looks like a more appealing target this year, even though a Democratic presidential candidate has not won the state since 2008. But Republicans recently nominated a candidate for governor with a well-documented history of antisemitic comments, staunch opposition to abortion and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. views, and Democrats hope he will drag down the Republican ticket to Mr. Biden’s advantage.

And we have found that North Carolina is one of the main battlegrounds in the fight for Reproductive Freedom in 2024.  Republicans in North Carolina overrode a veto from Gov. Cooper last year to narrow the legal window for legal abortions in the state from 20 weeks of gestation to 12 weeks.  In our two weeks of canvassing, the subject of Abortion has risen to one of the Top Three issues voters mention when we ask them what were the most urgent issues facing the country.  More to the point, more voters (realizing there is only two weeks of data here) are raising Abortion as their single issue that will determine how they vote this year.  This is especially interesting, given the fact that the voters we have talked to this year are far more likely to be African-American than last year.

121 volunteers came out to knock on doors in NC-01, NC-07, NC-09 and NC-13.  Of these, 39 were members of Divine Nine chapters from North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina.  Divine Nine volunteers tend to dress for success, understanding that they are setting a high standard for those people whom they visit.  Me, i canvass in shorts and a t-shirt — not setting a wardrobe example for anyone.  But i am an example of historical privilege, not historical repression.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical.  And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud).  We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are.  Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).  Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.

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121 volunteers came out last Saturday and knocked on 8,312 doors in North Carolina.  They talked to 645 voters, of whom 405 completed our Issues Survey, at least in part.  Volunteers registered 11 new voters and re-registered 16 voters, primarily correcting their current address.  We also had 37 voters complete Constitute Service Request forms.

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Economic Uncertainty was the Top Issue voters expressed concern about on Saturday.  Political Stability was second, and we heard fears of a “new” civil war.  Reproductive Rights was the third highest issue, and at least one voter said they were afraid she would lose access to regular healthcare because of pressure on abortion clinics.  For this voter, at least, abortion was health care, even though the medical issues she was afraid she would lose access to was not abortions.

Joe Biden had the approval of 43% of the voters we talked to on Saturday (this was up 4 points).  10% express disapproval of the job the president was doing.  Gov. Cooper had the approval of 51% of the voters who took the survey.  His job approval was up 5 points.  Eight percent disapproved of the job the governor was doing.

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37 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.  In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the CSR and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

We continue to find voters who say they need a photo voter id to comply with the new law and Hope Springs organizers are already working Voter ID Days with local county Board of Elections offices and our partner Black Churches.  We consider it a core mission to help voters in need obtain the required document to vote in November 2024.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican in the Fall.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions (like the photo ID requirement), Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

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                  2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

Knocking on Doors in Swing State Arizona: A Hope Springs Canvass Report

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Something’s happening here.  Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers are seeing it at the doors.  The “great unanswered question,” as one voter called it, has been resolved.  And, to repeat a word, it’s a relief.

Sinema's retirement will have important ramifications for the 2024 election and the future of the Senate. The race to succeed her will now likely pit progressive Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego against Kari Lake, a Republican close to former President Donald Trump who narrowly lost Arizona's 2022 gubernatorial election. Either prospective successor would mark a notable departure from the more centrist Sinema, thereby shifting the Senate's ideological makeup. And given Sinema's support for the filibuster, her retirement could also lead to fundamental changes in how the Senate functions.

[...]

Even without Sinema, the Arizona race has all the makings of a toss-up contest, and given the unusual circumstances, it's not totally certain whether Gallego or Lake — who's led Lamb by around 30 points in recent Republican primary polls — might benefit more from her departure. However, early polling suggests Gallego might have the edge here. In surveys since October that compared a prospective Gallego-Lake matchup with or without Sinema in the race, Gallego led Lake by an average of 1 percentage point with Sinema running, but Gallego's edge grew to an average of 3 points over Lake if Sinema wasn't an option.

This holds true for the presidential race, as well.  One of our (male) volunteers said he expects a “knock down, drag out fight” here in Arizona.  Which is why we are out knocking on doors, talking to voters and collecting data that could very well make the difference in November.

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                      Consensus 2024 Senate Battleground Map

Arizona is the only state where there’s a broad consensus that it’s a toss-up state in both the Electoral College and the (now open) Senate race.  Our volunteers and organizers there have set a goal for themselves of 1 Million Doors Knocked before Labor Day.  We’ve already knocked on more than 32% of the households in the state, and hope to increase that, as well.

Yes, they got ambition!  But, mostly, there’s just an intense desire to win in Arizona, to cement its status as the ultimate swing state.  And there is a determination to prove that 2020 wasn’t a fluke, that Trump really did lose in Arizona and, heh!, let’s do it again!

Winning is not only contagious, it’s also the ultimate vindication.

Still, Arizona remains one of the most unpredictable Senate race on the 2024 map.” “Arizona's races have become among the closest-watched - and most expensive - in the country in recent years.” Arizona is one of a few states to trend Democratic since the time of Trump.  “While it is still a toss-up, states like Arizona and Georgia are being pushed from ‘a reddish shade of purple to a bluish shade,’ ... because ‘big metro areas like Phoenix and Atlanta are getting bluer.’”

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229 volunteers came out to knock on doors for our second 2024 Arizona canvass in the eastern and southern suburbs of Phoenix and east of Tucson (in the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 6th Congressional Districts).

I meant to point this out last week, but i forgot.  We are now knocking on doors in the southern suburbs of Phoenix in the 2nd Congressional District.  It’s a big red district (takes up most of the upper eastern part of the state, but it wraps around the southern suburbs of the biggest city in the state.  Over the winter months, grass-roots volunteers started to ask themselves in this was a district that could defy expectations.  One of the reasons why we did this is because there is now a more concerted effort to register and mobilize the Native American population in Arizona, a large part of which reside in AZ-02.

According to Wikipedia,

The district includes 12 Native American reservations including the Hualapai, HavasupaiHopiNavajoSan Carlos Apache, and White Mountain Apache people. Twenty-two percent of the district's citizens were Native American.

Despite being a red district, in 2020 it supported Biden 55 - 44% (and Clinton by 50 - 45% in 2016) but is has a Cook PVI of R+6.  But there are two other reasons why Hope Springs volunteers wanted to start knocking on doors here.  First of all, the incumbent is running in his first re-election effort, and that’s the time when they are most vulnerable.  Secondly, Democrats have a candidate in Jonathan Nez that seems like a perfect fit, both for increasing voter registrations among the Native American population and turning them out in the Fall.  Nez is the former Navajo Nation President.

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Our work, of course, is in the suburbs, where there isn’t much of a concentrated Native American population.  The primary (and there is a Democratic primary for this seat) is July 30.

As of this date, Ruben Gallego remains the likely Democratic nominee but the Statutory Filing Period is from March 9, 2024 to April 8, 2024.  So it is possible (but not probable) that another Democrat could file to run for this (now) open seat.

Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 16,419 doors on Saturday.  Volunteers talked to 1,131 voters, and 746 voters answered questions from at least part of the Issues Survey.

Border Security was the Number 1 issue for the Arizonans we talked to on Saturday.  The Economy was the #2 issue voters raised.  Housing Issues was third, mostly centered around pricing, availability (several voters mentioned being locked out by all cash offers) and Insurance costs.

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Among the Arizonans we talked to Biden’s Job Approval was at 39%; 17% expressed some measure of Disapproval.  12% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Sinema was doing while 38% expressed Disapproval.  If you don’t realize it, Sinema’s approval rating has risen (sharply) and disapproval rating fallen since she announced her retirement.  There seemed to be a little bit of bitterness attached before she did so.

It is important to remember that we are knocking on the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters.  We also ask about whether voters Approve of likely Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego.  53% of the voters we talked to had a positive impression of the Congressman, and there were voters who mention Gallego’s experience as a Marine.  So his story is getting out there.  54% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. Hobbs was doing a good job, 7% said they disapproved of the job she was doing.

Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors last week in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are talking to Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical.  Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.

We registered 6 new voters and re-registered 27 voters who updated their addresses (or updated their voter registration to participate in the Active Early Voting List — the latter usually skews the number higher).  We differentiate between the new voters and re-registering voters because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they will also receive robocalls thanking them for registering.

GenericConstituentServiceRequestForm.png

In Arizona, we had 92 voters fill out Constituent Service Request forms.  We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

Two voters filled out Incident Reports, as witnesses to voter intimidation in prior elections.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  

BidenWins.jpg

But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

Clipboard01.png
                   2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.  Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches.  This is really dependent upon the Native American tribes, though.  It’s a big year.  There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Clipboard01.png

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.  We spent less than $70,000 last year because we raised less than $70,000.  But what we have raised is thanks to you!

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

HUH? Trump Hypes CNN Report that Reveals His Failing Fundraising and Reliance on GOP Billionaires

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The comments that Donald Trump posts on his dreadfully failing Truth Social scam are predominantly vicious attacks on his political foes and delusional exaltations of himself. It's basically an online journal of a malignant narcissist compulsively whining and lying in desperate pursuit of attention.

Click here to Tweet this article

On Wednesday morning, however, Trump may have exhausted his supply of self-reverential content. That could be because most of the news about him is profoundly negative. He continues to lose about 20% of Republican votes in GOP primaries where he has no opponents. He recently lost civil lawsuits that resulted in judgments against him for nearly half a billion dollars. And he is still battling some 88 felony criminal charges on multiple indictments in four jurisdictions. Yet somehow he still has the time to file his own laughably frivolous lawsuits...

SEE THIS: Trump Sues ABC and Stephanopoulos for Accurately Reporting a Judicial Opinion that He’s a Rapist

In desperation, Trump posted a link to an article from CNN with the headline "Republican billionaires rally around Trump for April fundraiser as election – and scramble for cash – heats up." Let's set aside the peculiar aberration of Trump promoting content from the network that he regards as "failing" and "fake" news. The article itself was not particularly positive. To the contrary, it focused on his failures as a candidate. CNN reported that...

"Hedge fund founder John Paulson is hosting a high-dollar fundraiser next month to benefit Donald Trump’s presidential campaign that is drawing some of the Republican Party’s wealthiest donors, according to an invitation obtained by CNN.

The April 6 event, slated to be held in Palm Beach, Florida, is a sign that some ultra-rich GOP figures who remained on the sidelines during the primary season – or backed other candidates – are coalescing behind the former president, now that he is the party’s presumptive nominee and scrambles to catch up with President Joe Biden and Democrats in the funding race."

So Trump apparently wanted his cult followers to know that his fundraising was seriously trailing that of President Biden, who raised a record $53 million in February, contributing to his total cash on hand of $155 million. The article also noted that the "high-dollar fundraiser" by the RNC (now co-chaired by his daughter-in-lawlessness, Lara Trump) is "aimed at helping him quickly raise large sums as he works to close the fundraising gap with Biden and Democrats."

What's more, the article reported that the admission price for the event ranged from $250,000 per person to $814,600 per person if you want to sit at the former reality TV game show host's table. And those who continued reading would learn that the fundraiser was also financing a PAC that has been paying some of Trump’s legal bills. Donors who thought they were helping Trump and/or other Republicans get elected might be surprised to hear about that.

Furthermore, Trump's promotion of the news that he's begging actual billionaires (unlike himself) for big money bailouts isn't exactly the sort of information that would endear him to the working-class rubes he has been fleecing for votes and small dollar donations. They might also be put off to learn that two Fox News hosts - Larry Kudlow and Mark Levin - have pleaded on air for wealthy Republicans to finance the half billion dollars in legal judgments (so far) that Trump has been ordered to pay.

Nevertheless, Trump is surely convinced that he won't suffer any consequences from holding his red hat out to tycoons who later will undoubtedly call in favors should Trump reoccupy the White House. And he will obediently serve their interests, not those of the little people who Trump has always exploited and despised.

Finally, don't be surprised if the fat cats who bankroll Trump include foreign oligarchs and representatives of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other dictators that Trump so admires. It's just another way that he will be putting the democracy and sovereignty of America at risk if he is given the opportunity.

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Knocking on Doors in Reach State Florida: A Hope Springs Canvass Report

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So i am a rocket kid.  I’ve worn that label proudly for almost 60 years.  What’s a rocket kid?  We are the children of the scientists, engineers and managers of the Apollo space program.  My father was an aerospace engineer, who proudly took me to the first Space Shuttle rollout when i was in college home for spring break. 

shuttlerollout.jpg

We mostly lived in Central and Northern Brevard County, an area that grew from 50,000 to 500,000 in less than a decade.  Because of this explosive growth, we didn’t have “neighborhoods” like you would find in Chicago, where people lived amongst their ethnic communities.  We didn’t have private schools, although both the Episcopal and Catholic Churches had religious schools.  By 4th or 5th grades, most of the students in the religious schooling would join the rest of us in the public schools. 

And their parents made rational choices there.  In junior high, we’d be taught by teachers with their masters and by high school we had teachers with PhDs, or ABDs.  In my high school, our favorite teacher was a History ABD who had to drop out because he got his girl friend pregnant.  My math teacher was a female PhD whose husband also worked out at the Cape.  So fond memories.

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But that’s what they are, memories.  When the Apollo program ended, many of the people who worked out at the Cape left.  Brevard County is not full-on MAGA.  The county sheriff there has, according to MALDEF, instructed his deputies to arrest Mexicans to see “if they belong in this country.”  Now i grew up with this person, we attended the same church, my parents went on to co-found a new church closer to their home, his father’s company provided the steel structures that are littered throughout Cape Kennedy.  But i won’t step into Brevard right now, because his threat could mean arresting, or at least detaining, my wife (whose family has been north of the Rio Grande since the 1720s).  That’s bullshit.

Which begs the question, why is Hope Springs from Field PAC here?  Well, Barack Obama won Florida in 2008.  There are still organizers and volunteer lists here.  Moreover, the Biden campaign considers it a reach state and there’s a Senate seat on the ballot.  Rick Scott, who is up for re-election this year, is held in the same low esteem as Ron Johnson (and, i will freely admit that i am still deeply disappointed that we didn’t beat Johnson last year), perhaps even “Uniquely Unpopular in Florida.”  More to the point, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell lost her congressional seat in 2020, largely because Democrats didn’t knock on doors that year; it’s a seat we really shouldn’t have lost.

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But we are trying to expand our reach this year.  Last year we went up to Duval County and this year we have started knocking on doors in (south) suburban Dade County.  We’ve been increasing our reach into Black Churches in Northern Florida, and helped 28 churches there identify 942 African-Americans who are not registered and probably could be through matching their congregations to the voter file.  We still have more to do in that area (this is actually one of the things we could do better or, rather, faster with actual staff).  

Florida is a must-win state for Republicans.  So canvassing here is probably the definition of “Good Trouble,” just not the way John Lewis meant it.  Forcing Trump to have to campaign in his home state, though, keeps him out of other states he needs in order to win.

But Trump likes to sleep in his own bed, so this we are only looking out for him.  It’s better if he stays in Florida, right?

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Sen. Rick Scott narrowly leads former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida Senate race by 3 points, according to a new poll.  This is surprising, since Scott has been governor of the state before becoming a senator; he’s been on the statewide ballot since 2010.  This would be Mucarsel-Powell’s first time.

Although Mucarsel-Powell is widely considered to be the favorite for the Democratic nomina-tion, the primary is August 20th.  There may be a Republican primary, as well; candidate filing deadline is April 26, 2024.

Most of the neighborhoods where we are knocking on doors in Florida are minority (non-white) and we endeavor to send out as many minority volunteers as possible.  Obviously, i’m Caucasian and i’ve never been alone in that when canvassing in Florida.  But we often knock on doors in areas that many (white?) people consider less than desirable.  One of the benefits of growing up as a rocket kid is that you grew up with everyone, River Heights (where i grew up) was a panoply of Americans, and i’ve never had a problem knocking on doors of people who didn’t look like me (i’d have to admit that the rudest voters i’ve encountered have always been white, but maybe that’s just me).

Not sure if anyone has picked up on this, but i usually write these diaries backwards, with a lower volunteer turnout first and the state with the highest vol turnout last.  This is not really significant, as a higher turnout means that i can get the data all in later in the week than a lower turnout.  Not every volunteer has smart phones and thus walks with mini-VAN.  But the point here is that Florida had the second highest number of volunteers show up last Saturday.

241 volunteers came out to knock on doors in 5 Florida counties on Saturday.  It was another beautiful day to canvass, and we started training early (compared to the other states).   They knocked on 17,401 doors and talked to 1,334 voters.  864 of those voters answered questions on at least part of the Issues Survey.

Hope Springs from Field PAC started knocking on doors last week in a grassroots effort to prepare the 2024 Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are talking to Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up), GOTV and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical.  Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.

The Top 3 concerns of the voters we talked to last Saturday were, first, The Economy.  Voters expressed concern about Jobs, the Recovery and increased Prices.  Although Spring Break was just starting up, Tourism has been a worry, because of prior Spring Break incidents.  Housing Issues was the second “urgent” concern.  Insurance continues to be a concern, especially since there have been, according to one voter, “5 years of major price increases in a row.” Border Security was the third most cited concern.  The crisis in Haiti has a direct impact on Florida and concern about Haitian migrants is often racist.

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Biden Approval among the Floridians we talked to was 41% last Saturday; 10% expressed some measure of Disapproval.  8% of the voters who responded Approved of the job Sen. Rick Scott was doing while 44% expressed Disapproval.  This is relatively unchanged from last year.  11% of the voters we talked to thought Gov. DeSantis was doing a good job, 38% said they disapproved of the job he was doing.  The Approval Rating for DeSantis has doubled since last year.

79 Florida voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.  We send completed CSRs to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.

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2 voters completed an Incident Report detailing what they could remember from an incidents they witnessed of voter intimidation or suppression.  Seven other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them).  Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day.

Our very first question on the Issues Surveys is whether the person we are talking to is registered to vote at their current home address.  We also ask if there is anyone living there who needs to be registered as well.  In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves.  Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal.  But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach.  Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting.  Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

BidenWins.jpg
                                 Front of Lit

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change.  Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around.  You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted.  Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided.  But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

We registered 7 new voters and got 22 voters to update their voter registration addresses in Florida on Saturday.  We use the Secretary of State website to register voters in Florida, in order to meet Florida’s difficult restrictions there.

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We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.

But the main focus of our canvassing is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.  (We also make Issues Surveys, Incident Reports and Constituent Service Request forms available at the churches we visit, but we don’t include numbers for those, in part because we don’t always get counts back, but also because we like to compare like to like.)

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with some really, really onerous new voter regulations, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.  Several of our Arizona organizers are also talking to Native American groups about replicating our Voter Matching service that Hope Springs provides for Black Churches.  It’s a big year.  There’s lots to be done, and, hopefully, we won’t have to suspect in-person voter contact because of a heatwave this year.

Clipboard01.png
                  2023 Hope Springs expenses

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.  We spent less than $70,000 last year because we raised less than $70,000.  But what we have raised is thanks to you!

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, A "Dictatorship" on Day One?

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This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Let’s start with the obvious. Yes, in the MAGA world of Donald Trump’s Republican Party, white supremacism and Christian nationalism have been on the rise for years. But to be clear, Donald Trump isn’t a Christian nationalist; he isn’t even an evangelical Christian. He’s an evangelical Trumpian. And he isn’t a white supremacist either, not because he isn’t “white” or distinctly prejudiced, but because he doesn’t believe in the supremacy of anything but Donald Trump and whatever in the world will make him the Biggest Man Around. Whatever he says, The Donald isn’t an advocate for an ultimate white or evangelical Christian right to power, even if he’s lent a grotesque helping hand to both. The only power he’s focused on, the one that’s at the very heart and soul of the MAGA world and of Trumpism, is his own.

The Donald, in other words, is the ultimate Trumpist. If it turned out that Zen Buddhists or “the Blacks” were the key to that goal becoming our reality, he would be doing his damnedest to woo them. In fact, when it comes to Blacks, he’s been doing that, however awkwardly, of late. But the remarkable thing about him is that, in some sense, he’s awkward with everyone, every group, every person but himself. And yet, his appeal, explain it as you will, has been, and continues to be, stunning for someone for whom no one else in the world seems to truly exist (unless they’re in his camp and dedicated to helping him 24 hours a day).

In some sense, before he ever entered American politics, in his own mind at least, Donald Trump was already the ultimate autocrat, a Power of One and Only One. Today, TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino considers just what that Power of One might lead to in a future almost too close and too possible to bear. Tom

If America Were a Trumpian Autocracy
The Lies We’d Be Told About War (and So Much Else)

We should already be talking about what it would be like, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, to live under a developing autocracy. Beyond the publicized plans of those around him to gut the federal civil service system and consolidate power in the hands of You Know Who, under Trump 2.0, so much else would change for the worse.

All too many of us who now argue about the Ukraine and Gaza wars and their ensuing humanitarian crises, about police violence and extremism in the military here at home, about all sorts of things, would no longer share a common language. Basics that once might have meant the same thing to you and me, like claiming someone won an election, might become unsafe to mention. In a Trump 2.0 world, more of our journalists would undoubtedly face repercussions and need to find roundabout ways to allude to all too many topics. A moving opinion column by the New York Times’s David French, who faced threats for his writing about Donald Trump, highlighted how some who voiced their views on him already need round-the-clock police protection to ensure their safety and that of their family.

I often think about the slippery slope we Americans could soon find ourselves on. After all, from the time Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president in 1999, I spent 20 years traveling to his country and back, working there first as an anthropology doctoral student and later as a human rights researcher. I’ve followed Russian politics closely, including as a therapist specializing in war-affected populations, asylum seekers, and refugees. Friends and colleagues of mine there have faced threats to their safety and their careers amid a Kremlin crackdown on public discussion after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and several fled the country with their families in search of safety and a better life.

To be sure, there are many differences between the United States, with its robust democratic tradition, and Russia, which only briefly had competitive elections and a free press. Nonetheless, my experiences there offer a warning about how a Trumpian version of top-down rule could someday stifle any possibility of calling out state-sponsored violence for what it is, and what it might feel like if that’s our situation here someday.

Tucker Carlson’s Moscow

On first look, far-right journalist Tucker Carlson’s recent visit to Moscow, covered exuberantly by Russia’s state media, might seem like an example of an American tourist’s naïve glorification of another country’s luxuries. Carlson marveled at the fancy tilework of the city’s subway system, visited the national ballet, and noted that you can buy caviar cheaply at the local grocery store. He also pointed out that Moscow’s pristine streets had no homeless people and no apparent poverty.

In the gilded halls of the Kremlin palace, he interviewed President Putin for more than two hours. Despite his guileless expression, Carlson occasionally appeared flummoxed as Putin lectured him endlessly on Russian history and the centuries-old claim he insisted Moscow has on Kyiv as its protector from aggressors near and far. Of course, he never challenged Putin on his rationale for invading that country (nor did he refer to it as an invasion) or any of the Russian leader’s other outrageous claims.

I’m of the school of thought that considers Putin’s Russia exactly the sort of anti-woke paradise the MAGA crowd craves. Anyone of Carlson’s age who grew up during the Cold War and turned on his or her television in that pivotal period when the Berlin Wall fell should certainly know that all of Russia doesn’t look anything like what he was shown. He should also have known about the recent history of economic “shock therapy” that drained Russian public services of funding and human resources, not to speak of the decades of corruption and unfair economic policies that enriched a choice few in Putin’s circle at the expense of so many.

Of course, something had to happen to turn the Moscow that Carlson saw into a sanitized moonscape. If you haven’t been following developments in Russia under Putin, let me summarize what I’ve noticed.

Protesters— even many going to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s recent memorial service — have been arrested or at least intimidated when appearing to sympathize with anything that’s not part of the Kremlin’s official pro-Putin ideology. Many groups, from Asian migrants to the homeless, have either been rounded up by the police or at least relocated far out of the view of tourists of any sort. In fact, the imprisoned American journalist whom Carlson briefly gestured toward emancipating, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, had written on the practice of zachistki, or mop-up operations by the Russian authorities that, for instance, relocated homeless services to the outskirts of Moscow, far from public view. Of course, Gershkovich is now imprisoned indefinitely in Russia on charges of espionage for simply reporting on the war in Ukraine, proving the very point Carlson so studiously avoided, that an endless string of lies underscore Putin’s latest war.

What’s more, amid sub-subsistence wages, housing shortages, and the thin walls of so many city apartments, ordinary Russians are not always able to engage in the “hard conversations” that conservatives like Alabama Senator Katie Britt boast of having in their well-furbished kitchens. After all, neighbors are now encouraged to denounce each other for decrying Russia’s war. (You could, it seems, even end up in prison if your child writes “no to war” on a drawing she did for school.)

There are very personal ramifications to living in an autocracy with which Tucker Carlson and, of course, the Orange Jesus himself are signaling their agreement when they entertain the views of leaders like Vladimir Putin or call Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán “fantastic.” They’re signaling what their end goal is to Americans and, sadly enough, it’s not particularly far-fetched anymore to suggest that, someday, we won’t even have the freedom to talk about all of this with each other.

The Thing That Cannot Be Named

Tucker Carlson at least did his homework. He clearly knew that you couldn’t describe the war in Ukraine as an unprovoked Russian invasion, given that country’s carefully crafted censorship laws.

Since his February 2022 invasion, Putin has referred to it as a “special military operation” focused on the defense of Russia from NATO and the “denazification” of Ukraine. During that first spring, the Russian president signed a law forbidding journalists from even calling the invasion a “war,” choosing instead to frame the killing, displacement, abduction, torture, and rape of Ukrainian citizens as a surgical rescue operation provoked by the victims themselves. Broader, vaguer censorship laws were then passed, further limiting what Russians of all stripes could say, including one against “discrediting the army,” which imposed stiff fines and prison sentences, and more recently, property confiscations on anyone deemed to have said anything negative about Russia’s armed forces. While the thousands of arrests made may seem modest, given Russia’s 146 million people, it’s still, in my opinion, thousands too many.

The Russian leader’s perverse framing of his unprovoked war is undoubtedly what also allows him to admit that hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed or wounded so far, something he couldn’t otherwise say. In a country suffused with right-wing Christian nationalism, it also certainly helps his cause that most of Russia’s war dead come from remote, poor, and predominantly minority regions.

This is the sort of muddling of meaning and motives that autocratic leaders engage in to justify deaths of all kinds. American equivalents might be what the MAGA crowds do when they blame the January 6th far-right assault at the Capitol, aimed at police and lawmakers, on the “Antifa,” or extreme leftists, without disputing that people were hurt. Or consider then-President Donald Trump’s comment that far-right white supremacist Charlottesville rioters and counter-protesters included “very fine people on both sides”— no matter that one such fine person plowed down a counter-protester in his car, murdering her, or that certain of those “fine” white supremacists espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories considered by some an incitement to violence.

For their part, Russians of various political stripes enjoy an ancient tradition of using dark humor and irony to engage in the kinds of conversations they really want to have. Take as an example the way progressive journalists like those at the news stations TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta (since banned from operating) began discussing the war in Ukraine as “the thing that cannot be named.” Eventually, however, sweeping censorship laws prevented even workarounds like those.

It’s not a small thing to live in a place where you can’t say what you want to for fear of political persecution, especially when you’ve grown up in other circumstances. A good friend of mine who came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall and led a prosperous, happy life in St. Petersburg, fled the country on the last train out of that city to Helsinki, Finland, her young child in tow. Her goal: to start life over from scratch and avoid having to raise her child in a place where he would be brainwashed into thinking Russia’s armed forces and police were infallible and beyond critique. I suspect that many of the hundreds of thousands of Russians who joined her in fleeing the country weren’t that different.

Imagine raising a child whose unquestioning mind you can’t recognize. (That goes for you, too, Trump supporters, because — count on it! — once in office again, he would undoubtedly move toward ending elections as we know them, not to speak of shutting down whatever institutions protect our speech!)

America and the Lie that Begot Other Lies

Events in recent years indicate that Americans — particularly those in the MAGA camp — have grown inured to the public mention of armed violence. Who could forget the moment in 2016 when candidate Trump boasted at a campaign rally before winning the presidency that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”? As racially and politically motivated violence and threats have proliferated, so many of us seemed to grow ever less bothered by both the incidents themselves and the rationales of those who seek to encourage and justify them.

My own adult life began as Vladimir Putin consolidated power in Russia, while former President George W. Bush launched his — really, our — disastrous Global War on Terror, based on lies like that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, we’ve spilled all too little ink here on the nearly one million people who died across our Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African war zones since 2001 (and the many millions more who lost their lives, even if less directly, or were turned into refugees thanks to those wars of ours). And don’t forget the more than 7,000 American troops (and more than 8,000 contractors!) who died in the process, essentially baptizing our national lies in pools of blood. And how could that not have helped normalize other lies to come like Trump’s giant one about the 2020 election?

Thankfully, in this country we can still say what we want (more or less). We can still, for instance, call out the Pentagon for underreporting the deaths its forces have caused. In other words, something like the Costs of War Project that I helped to found to put our lies in context can still exist. But how long before such things could become punishable, if not by law, then through vigilantism?

Yes, President Biden is arming Israel in its gruesome fight against Hamas while providing only the most modest aid to Gaza’s war-devastated population, but we can still hold him to account for that. If the 2024 election goes to Donald Trump, how long will that be true? If we don’t get to the point right now where all of us are calling out lies all the time, then every Trumpian lie about violence — from Republican members of Congress calling the January 6th rioters “peaceful patriots” to The Donald’s claim that he would only be a dictator on “day one” of his next presidency (a desire supported by a significant majority of Republicans) — will amount to lies as consequential as the 1933 burning of the Reichstag parliament building in Germany, which Hitler’s ascendant Nazi party attributed to communists, setting the stage for him to claim sweeping powers.

We are entering a new and perilous American world and it’s important to grasp that fact. In that context, let me mention a Russian moment when I did no such thing. I still feel guilty about a dinner I had with human-rights colleagues in 2014, including a Russian activist who had dedicated his career to documenting political violence and war crimes committed under successive Russian leaders from Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin. I was sitting at the far end of the table where I couldn’t catch much of the conversation and I joked that I was “out in Siberia.” Yes, my dinner companions graciously laughed, but with an undercurrent of discomfort and tension — and for good reason. They knew the dangerous world they were in and, in fact, that very activist has since been sent to a penal colony for his work discrediting the actions of the Russian armed forces. My joke is anything but a joke now and consider that a reminder of how quickly things can change — and not just in Russia, either.

In fact, oppression feels closer than ever in America today and verbal massaging, joking, or willful ignorance can only mask what another Trump presidency could mean for us all.

Copyright 2024 Andrea Mazzarino

OH-Sen: Watch Bernie Moreno (R) Tell Moderate GOP Voters To Vote For Sherrod Brown (D) Over Him

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Well, Trump got his candidate in Bernie Moreno (R. OH) on Tuesday, beating out both State Senator Matt Dolan (R. OH) and Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R. OH) in the primary. Trump really didn’t want Dolan to win because Dolan refused to push The Big Lie and was endorsed by Governor Mike DeWine (R. OH) and former U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R. OH). Hence, why Trump had to campaign for Moreno ahead of the primary to turn out the MAGA base for Moreno. Ohio has an open primary where Independents and Democrats could vote in the GOP primary. Dolan, DeWine and Portman would be considered “Moderate Republicans” now in the Trump party and Moreno has a message for them:

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It’s no wonder Democrats wanted Moreno to win the primary. This guy is discouraging his own voters from supporting him and crossing over to Brown, who is wasting no time attacking Moreno:

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Brown has also been delivering for the the people of Ohio:

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And racking up endorsements:

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Here are the latest H2H polls in Ohio:

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Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip Ohio Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Brown and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:

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Marcy Kaptur

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Trump's Lawyer on Fox News Refuses to Rule Out Getting Russia to Pay His $345 Million Judgment

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The trials and tribulations of Donald Trump continue to trigger his ultra-thin, spray-tanned skin. He is currently sweating out at least 88 felony charges on matters ranging from election interference, to stealing and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago hotel/home. He's already been been found civilly liable for defamation and sexual assault, and financial fraud.

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With regard to the financial fraud affair, Trump was ordered to pay $345 million in penalties for deliberately misstating the value of his assets in order to fraudulently obtain more favorable terms for loans and tax obligations. Ever since then, Trump has been whining petulantly about being held accountable for his gross misconduct, for which he thinks he should have "total immunity."

SEE THIS: Felonious Punk Trump Demands ‘TOTAL IMMUNITY’– Even for Acts that ‘CROSS THE LINE’

The nearly half billion dollars Trump now owes is weighing considerably on him financially and emotionally. He is complaining that he cannot come up with the money to pay the judgement, or a bond to guarantee it. Never mind that he and his attorneys have previously insisted that he has more than enough to cover the judgment. In a deposition he gave last year Trump claimed that "We have a lot of cash. Substantially in excess of $400 million in cash...and going up very substantially every month."

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That appears to be another Trump lie. In a comment posted to his floundering Truth Social scam, he is now declaring that the judgment is "impossible" for him pay. He called the judge a "Radical Left...true Trump Hater" and lied that "When I win the Appeal, all of that money is gone." For the record, he is unlikely to win the appeal,, but even if he did, the money would then be returned to him.

Meanwhile, Trump's parking lot lawyer, Alina Habba, was on Fox News again demonstrating her extraordinary ability to make things far worse for her client than prior to her babbling interview. In an exchange with Fox News host Marth MacCallum, Habba implicated Trump in some international intrigue...

MacCallum: Is there any effort on the part of your team to secure this money through another country, Saudi Arabia or Russia, as Joy Behar seems to think?"
Habba: Well, there’s rules and regulations that are public. I can’t speak about strategy, that requires certain things and we have to follow those rules. Like I said, this is manifest injustice. It is impossible — it is an impossibility. I believe they knew that...It’s the demise of our country, not the demise of Trump.

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And there you have it. Habba could have easily denied that Trump would ever consider seeking funds from foreign dictators to satisfy his personal legal bills. But she didn't. And the prospect of Trump keeping that option open makes him a grave threat to national security. He would be beholden to the likes of Vladimir Putin or Mohammed bin Salman.

Even before this revelation, it was apparent that Trump is threat to American democracy. He incited a violent insurrection in an attempt steal the 2020 election. He has yearned for the tyrannical powers of dictators like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un. He pledges to persecute and imprison his political foes. He has said that he would "terminate" parts of the Constitution.

SEE ALSO: Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

Trump even said explicitly - more than once - that he would rule as a dictator "on day one." And anyone who believes that he would relinquish his dictatorship the next day is terminally naïve, or a MAGA cult disciple. Which is, of course, redundant. It would have made much more sense if that's what Habba really had in mind when she warned about "the demise of our country." But unfortunately, she is just as compromised and anti-American as Trump.

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Just Another Canvassing Diary: Georgia Matters and the Grassroots Delivers!

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What a difference a year makes.  Last year, especially in the Atlanta suburbs, Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers would regularly run into voters who considered Political Stability a urgent concern, citing the Trump Trials and the threat of political violence concurrent with his trial in Atlanta.  Concern for Political Stability, or, as the Emerson College poll put it, threats to democracy, are still being raised.  It was our third highest “Urgent Concern” this week (the Emerson College poll put it at 8% statewide, but they include Republicans, which probably explains why it is lower there).

But the attacks on Fani Willis has had an effect, and we are finding it is less a concern than last Summer.  The biggest question is, when will the Georgia Trump Trial begin.  

McAfee has yet to set a trial date in the case. In November, the DA's office had asked for an August 5, 2024 trial. Sadow told the judge at a hearing in December that date would be the “most effective election interference in the history of the United States,” given that Trump was likely to be the Republican presidential nominee by then.

Sources close to Willis tell CNN that the DA’s office is effectively ready to go to trial. Willis has said she needs only 30 days to prepare once a date is set.”  But there doesn’t seem to be as much interest from voters this year as we were seeing last Summer.  And that seems to be the biggest change in Georgia over the Winter.  It seems to have taken the air out of the tire here.

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Which doesn’t mean that voter concern over Trump’s threats to Atlanta and its economy won’t return.  But his team has certainly distracted or overshadowed the criminal allegations charging Trump and 18 others with trying to overturn his loss in Georgia.

But the Biden campaign has become “less confident that Mr. Biden can hold on to Georgia” in 2024.  Our intrepid volunteers aren’t so sure.  There are still a lot of moves left before November, and our job is to build out the best political environment for the President we can before Labor Day.  Georgia is a purely Electoral College play; there is no U.S. Senate race on the ballot in Georgia — something that has invigorated the electorate in the last two election cycles.

Yesterday, i had a conversation with an old organizer friend, and i was detailing how much our open-door rate and Issues Survey participation increased when there was media support from the campaign.

Mr. Biden’s campaign has not written off Georgia and maintains that it remains a top priority. The president visited the state for a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, one week after Jill Biden, the first lady, hosted an event there. Vice President Kamala Harris has visited the state twice this year and 11 times since being elected. A slew of surrogates, including Doug Emhoff, Ms. Harris’s husband, and Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland have traversed Georgia in recent weeks.

The nearly $24 million on television advertising the Biden campaign is spending in Georgia right now is having an effect, making voters more likely to talk to our volunteers and for a longer period of time.  And it is something that Hope Springs volunteers are noticing.  “Some one should do a study of that!,” one volunteer observed.

308 volunteers came out to knock on doors  in Georgia last Saturday.  That was a slight decrease from the prior weekend.  We continue to knock on doors of voters in the Black Belt in Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta, and we now have more volunteers in the Atlanta area than we have out knocking on doors in southern Georgia.  They knocked on 22,391 doors and talked to 1,607 voters.  1,009 voters answered at least some of our questions on the survey this week.

We continue to find (mostly) minority voters who admit they don’t have the required Voter Photo ID to vote this year.  This week, we found 14 — 4 in one house; only one voter there had a Driver’s License.  This was notable because this wasn’t an African-American household but an AAPI household.

So we continue to schedule Voter Photo ID Days at the Registrar’s offices.  Most of the voters who have taken advantage of this have come from the Black Churches.

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There’s also been a concerted effort in Georgia to remove voters from the voting rolls in bluer areas and precincts.  Reaching out to voters who makes these lists — and i do mean, plural, lists — about their voter status drives a key part of our walk lists or turf.  Hope Springs volunteers know when they are talking to a purged voter or someone whose voter status may be pending.  But the significance here, in discussing beginning canvassing before we would have last year, is that we haven’t yet knocked on all the doors where a voter has been, or could be, purged from the voter rolls.  We haven’t, as i was reminded, even knocked on half those doors in the counties where we are canvassing, something we’d like to correct before Labor Day.

Hope Springs from Field organizers as well as our volunteers like to think of ourselves as counterweights to Rightwing Voter Suppression.  While there are many attempts to do so by using the courts, we have taken up the effort in the field, registering (or, more accurately, re-registering) purged voters, making sure voters who could soon be on the Republican Purge Lists are aware of their status and what they can do about it.  At their doors, in the comfort of their neighborhood.

But we don’t just talk to Purged Voters and those under that threat, we talk to their neighbors, making sure voters in the area know, as well.  Because we don’t reach them all, and we have found that voters in the area where Purged Voters live are much more likely to vote in the next election when they learn someone in the area (they don’t know who) got purged.  Most people we talk to are offended when they find out about it — even if they don’t know who is was.  But Republicans are targeting lower income, immigrants and students trying to narrow the electorate so that Trump can win.  Because we all know Trump can’t win with a level playing field.

Just as importantly, we found volunteers who like the idea of chasing down people who have been removed from the voter rolls, at least in the manner in which we conduct the search.  Volunteers would come and specifically ask for the walk lists that included purged voters.  I can’t explain why, and we don’t create special lists; we simply marked it when there was a voter who had been purged from the rolls.  But because we were telling everyone we talked to that we knew that there are people in their neighborhood who had been callously removed, neighbors were often willing to share what they knew. 

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Last year, in Georgia, we found and re-registered — and thus returned —1,116 voters to the rolls.  Partly, this is the result of canvassing now in the Atlanta suburbs.  Several Georgia attorneys have talked to us about this effort, collecting the names of those we had re-registered at the same address.  But Georgia officials still claim they have to remove these voters because they aren’t responding to the post-cards they send out warning voters about that step.  I know i throw out my junk mail, but we expect these voters to look at it more thoroughly.  SMH.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 4th in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical.  And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud).  We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are.  Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).  Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.

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We continue to knock on doors of voters in the Black Belt in Georgia and the suburbs of Atlanta, but last weekend, we had more more volunteers in the Black Belt counties than the Atlanta area!  Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 22,391 doors and talked to 1,607 voters.  1,009 voters answered at least some of our questions on the survey this week.

The Top Issue volunteers found in Georgia on Saturday was Economic Uncertainty.  The second most frequently cited concern in Georgia this weekend was Immigration Concerns.  One voter asked about people dying at the border, “caught in barbed wire.  That’s barbaric.”  The third most frequently Issue this week was Crime.

Biden’s Approval numbers among the voters we talked to was at 46% last Saturday, with a Disapproval number of 8%.  In comparison, Approval of Governor Kemp was 28% and Disapproval was 27% last Saturday.  There is no senate race in Georgia this cycle and while we ask if voters approve of the job their senators are doing, we are not tracking that.

Volunteers registered 15 new voters at their door and re-registered 47 voters.  We differentiate between the new voters and re-registering voters because brand new voters are often ignored by campaigns and we hope to compensate for that somewhat by having volunteers send them post cards before the election and they will also receive robocalls thanking them for registering.

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111 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.  In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along.  For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the CSR and let them know they are working on the issue.  This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder. 

6 voters in Georgia completed an Incident Report as well (can you tell we hit more doors in the Black Belt this week?).  A couple other voters expressed concerns about the 2024 elections but did not fill out incident reports because they didn’t say they witnessed voter suppression or intimidation (they just expressed concerns or worries about them).  Incident Reports are used to plan Election Protection activities, and will be combined with other, historical incidents and handed over to District and State Attorneys, Attorney Generals and the DoJ Civil Rights Division right before Election Day as a precaution against Election Day Incidents in November.  Past polling place activity is a predictor of future voter intimidation or suppression activity.

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We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

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                  2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.

But our volunteers understand that the work we are doing now, the Early Organizing and Early (in-person) Voter Contact will pay dividends in the Fall GOTV efforts.

Biden’s reelection bid will have to energize the state’s significant Black population, which makes up roughly a third of the battleground state, while facing polls that show the incumbent struggling nationally with the demographic.

Through our conversations with voters now, registering (and re-registering) voters at their doors, offering up opportunities to improve their neighborhood through Constituent Service Requests or protect their polling places and their Right to Vote through Incident Reports, Hope Springs volunteers are creating a more positive electoral environment for Democrats in 2024.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

Why I could Never Vote for Donald Trump

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WHY I COULD NEVER VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP

By Don C. Reed

Although  raised in a  Republican household,  I could  never vote  for Donald  Trump. This is  for a variety  of reasons, but  today I want to touch on only one:  

I consider Trump  an habitual   liar,  who will  say whatever suits his needs of the moment.

Of course,  everyone tells  a  fib or  exaggeration occasionally.  But Trump  lies so frequently  that the  New York  Times set  up a board of reporters to keep track of them. They found Trump  lied  about twenty-one times a day  while  in office.    (1)

Some say,  “Oh,  that’s  just Trump being Trump!”  But that is no excuse—we  cannot  overlook his  constant  lies.                                                        

The  first time I realized I could not trust Donald  Trump  was when he implied Barack Obama was not an American citizen. (2). If true,  (and of course it was not) that would have disqualified Obama for the Presidency.

This  was no mere  slip of  the tongue,  to be set right by an apology, but  a deliberate falsehood,  repeated  often,  over a period of five years. When it  seemed he had squeezed out all  the political benefits  from that particular lie,  he  reversed his  statement--  trading one lie  for another,  saying   Hillary  Clinton was the author of that falsehood. (3)

Trump  appears  to have no shame about these frequent fabrications. Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham recalled a moment when Trump told her, "As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn't matter what you say." (4)

Is that not the  Nazis’ “Big  Lie” technique,  to just choose a falsehood  and say it over and over again,   until people  begin  to  believe it?

And  what is  Trump’s biggest lie?

Trump pretends  Biden did not win the 2020 election,  though every  count and  re-count says he did. In the popular  vote,  Biden  won by seven million  votes. And in the electoral count?  Biden’s  score--306 votes, Trump-- 232. (5)

Sometimes Trump uses  what I  what  I call “lawyer lies” where  the  words  are not in themselves false, but their impact is damaging. These can be evil.  Like when he smiled  and says “Where’s  Paul?” (Pelosi)  while knowing perfectly well that the husband of Nancy Pelosi had been  attacked by a man with a hammer, who  literally pounded a hole in the top of Frank’s skull.  And  when Trump smiled, his followers in the  room began to laugh,  as if he had given them permission to mock the  attempted murder of a man. (6)

Trump  even blamed  Speaker Emerita Pelosi for the  January 6  insurrection!

“I think it was an insurrection caused by Nancy Pelosi,” Trump said.

“Facts First: This claim is complete fiction – an abject lie. Pelosi did not cause a mob of pro-Trump supporters… to storm the Capitol.

So  many lies… Here’s one  where Trump tries to steal credit  for someone else’s work.  “We took care of the vets….91% approval rating…”—that figure was  in fact achieved by President Barack Obama…” (7)

What a  contrast between him and another Republican President,  Abraham  Lincoln.

“Lincoln earned a reputation for honesty while working as a lawyer…“The nickname ‘honest Abe’ was not the fabrication of party publicists but a mark of the universal respect in which he was held as a lawyer of scrupulous honesty.”

Lincoln was  regarded  as “the  very soul of integrity”. (8)

When was the  last time you heard Donald  Trump  referred  to  as “Honest  Don”—in anything but a joking  way?

This matters; we must  be able to trust our  nation’s leader.   If   trouble comes, and the  President  needs our support,  will  we have to ask--  is he telling the truth this time?

And as for President Biden?  That’s easy;  I know he will  be straight with us: plain and  blunt, honest  as a  man can be.   We may not  always  agree, (can any  two people agree  on everything?)  but he will say what he honestly believes, clear, understandable,  and you can count on it.

And back to Trump?

I believe he sees us (the audience) as a manipulable  object. When he  speaks, he wants  something from us —perhaps a contribution to his  ever-mounting legal  fees—and he will say  whatever  he thinks we want to  hear.

For example, how many times  has he changed  his stance   on abortion? The Washington Post shows him voicing five   different  opinions on that  subject—in  three  days. (9)

I do not trust Donald Trump, and that’s a fact.

If he told  me what time it  was,  I would look at my watch.

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump
  2. https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/index.html
  3. https://apnews.com/united-states-presidential-election-general-news-events-61f7085d848248cd98410027d33f2101
  4. https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/08/02/trump-indictment-2020-election-grisham-jack-smith-ebof-vpx.cnn
  5. https://apnews.com/article/trump-2020-election-lies-debunked-4fc26546b07962fdbf9d66e739fbb50d
  6. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/fact-check-trump-january-6/index.html
  7. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_11
  8. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/15/fact-check-joe-biden-legally-won-presidential-election/6537586002/
  9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/03/donald-trumps-ever-shifting-positions-on-abortion/

Just the Stats, Man: Weekly Canvass Wrapup from Swing States AZ, FL, GA, NC & TX

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Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers knew it was coming.  They’ve been asking since the start of the new year, “When are we getting started?”  And they weren’t put off by the weather requirement.  “This is important — better early than late….” So, like every year, we watch the weather predictions and start an hour later when the early morning temps are predicted to be in the low 60s.  And this has meant that some volunteers showed up an hour early (because they didn’t read their email).  But we haven’t lost anybody yet (in prior years, disruptions in the schedule have meant some volunteers don’t show up).

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But our volunteers are speaking with their continued presence that Early Organizing is important to them.  We started knocking on doors in Arizona and Florida on March 2nd, but postponed scheduled canvassing in Georgia and Texas for that day.  Like every year, we have no idea what to expect and the weather drives some decisions.  One donut shop even allowed us to put up a crude sign in their window that canvassing was delayed an hour.  What happened?  Those who showed up early stayed and consumed sugar — they were yucking it up with employees when everyone else arrived.  Building report with the community, they called it.  Uh-huh.

Hope Springs from Field knocked on doors in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas last Saturday, in-person voter contact in preparation for the November elections.  These states have Senate races and/or have been classified as competitive in the Electoral College (Florida lost that distinction late last year).  We thought we were expanding into Nevada (Las Vegas) last Saturday, but it was postponed due to weather concerns.  But the big decision for volunteers who showed up last weekend was whether they wanted to canvass this weekend (it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow), and most groups decided they did.  Some of the volunteers seemed annoyed we asked.  Grassroots. 

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Our core mission is protecting a Democratic Senate (and the Electoral College) and our core tactic is face-to-face voter contact through canvassing.  The term most often associated with this approach is “Deep Organizing” but Early Organizing is equally appropriate.  The model or system we have been using has been derivative of old Democratic machine tactics as well as the old (and apparently no longer used) system of 5 rounds (or touches) of voters by political campaigns.  City Democratic machine precinct captains endeavored to knock on doors twice a year in off years and 4 times a year during an election year.  This was in addition to what the campaigns did.  So Democrats used to have a lot of face-to-face contact with voters; now many (probably most) precinct captains never knock on the doors of all the voters in their precincts.

Campaign field programs used to get their volunteers to knock on doors as well, and targeted areas could expect someone to show up at their door 5 times before GOTV started.  Before voter databases became more computerized (and models more sophisticated), the first round was generally dedicated to list clean-up duty, making sure voters still lived where they lived in the last election cycle, registering new voters who might have moved in (or were now eligible to vote) and making them aware of government services, especially those things that fell under the candidate’s auspices.  Neither of these two things are as typical in urban areas, and are virtually unknown in the areas that Hope Springs from Field targets: swingy areas that tend to be suburban and where new building is often common.  They tend to have more people moving in than urban areas and we often meet people who are yet to register at their new address.  But these are the areas that are deciding elections in the 21st century.

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On March 16th, 1,010 volunteers showed up to knock on the doors of Democratic and unaffiliated voters in their neighborhoods.  Since we were canvassing in the same areas as the prior week, you can see the natural growth that happens after we get started.  The more than doubling of volunteers from the first week to second week is obvious as we more than doubled the number of states we were in that week.  

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Hope Springs volunteers knocked on 72,337 doors last week, a little more than 10,000 more than the prior week.  They talked to 5,305 voters in these five states.  3,414 voters filled out our Issues Survey, at least in part.  We registered 42 new voters and re-registered 124 voters at their current address.  345 voters completed Constituent Service Request forms (more than a hundred more than the prior week) and twelve voters filled out an Incident Report.

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Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical.  And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud).  We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are.  Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).  Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.

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We began knocking on doors again in Arizona and Florida on March 2nd, talking to voters, raising the Democratic banner and collecting data that will help Democratic candidates get voters to the polls in 2024.  In Arizona, 229 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in the western and southern suburbs of Phoenix and Tucson.  We knocked on 16,419 doors in Arizona and talked to 1,131 voters.  746 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 6 new voters and re-registered 27 voters.  92 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 2 voters completed Incident Reports.

Border Security was the Top Issue in Arizona.  The Economy was second.  Housing Issues was third.

Biden Approval among the Arizonans we talked to was 39% last Saturday.  Remember that we are knocking on doors of Democrats or unaffiliated voters; we endeavor not to knock on any doors where all voters in the household are Republicans (and will ask for a specific voter when it is a mixed household).  We only rarely talk to Republicans given how we cut turf (which i get to do again tomorrow!).  17% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  8% approved of Sinema, while 51% disapproved.  We also ask about the likely Democratic Senate nominee, Ruben Gallego; 53% of the voters we talked to on Saturday approved of Gallego.  54% approved of the Governor, Katie Hobbs.  7% disapproved.

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In Florida, we are knocking on doors in Dade, Osceola, Volusia and Duval counties.  241 volunteers came out last Saturday, knocked on 17,401 doors and talked to 1,334 voters.  864 Issues Surveys were conducted, with 7 new voters registered and 22 voters re-registered (all using the Secretary of State website).  79 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 2 voters completed Incident Reports.

The “top” issue in Florida for the 8th was The Economy.  Housing Issues, especially wrt to Insurance or Insurance Prices was second and Border Security was cited third most often.

41% of the voters we talked to approved of the job President Biden is doing in Florida.  10% disapproved.  8% approved of the job Rick Scott was doing; 44% disapproved.  11% approved of the job Ron DeSantis is doing; 38% disapproved.

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In Georgia, 308 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in the Atlanta suburbs and in southern Georgia Blackbelt counties.  We knocked on 22,391 doors and talked to 1,607 voters.  1,009 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 15 new voters and re-registered 47 voters.  111 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 6 voters completed Incident Reports.

The Economy was the Top Issue in Georgia on Saturday.  Immigration was second and Crime was third.

Biden Approval among the Georgians we talked to was 46% last Saturday.  8% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  28% approved of the Governor, Brian Kemp.  27% disapproved.

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121 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in North Carolina.  We are focusing on the new North Carolina Congressional District map, NC-01, NC-07, NC-09 and NC-13, this year.  We knocked on 8,312 doors and talked to 645 voters.  405 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 11 new voters and re-registered 16 voters.  37 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms.

Economic Uncertainty was the Top Issue in North Carolina on Saturday.  Political Stability was second.  Reproductive Rights was third (again).

Biden Approval among the voters we talked to was 43% last Saturday.  10% disapproved of the president.  51% approved of the Governor, Roy Cooper.  8% disapproved.

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111 volunteers came out to knock on doors last Saturday in Texas.  All our volunteers here were veterans from our canvasses in Texas in 2021 and many of them had requested Hope Springs return this year, but we intend to get into TX-15 as well.  We knocked on 7,814 doors and talked to 588 voters.  390 of those voters answered at least some of our questions on our Issues Survey.  We registered 3 new voters and re-registered 12 voters.  26 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms and 2 voters completed Incident Reports.

We are canvassing in Texas because of the Senate race.  We didn’t canvass there last year because we got push back from local Texas groups who thought Hope Springs was competing with them for volunteers.  But our absence was linked to their ability to feed VAN with data and that (apparently) did not happen.  Democratic candidates need this data, Democratic voters need to get that kind of voter contact.  So it’s an experiment.

Economic Uncertainty was the Top Issue in Texas.  Border Security was second and Political Stability and Extremism was third.  

Biden Approval among the Texans we talked to was 36% last Saturday.  12% of the voters we talked to disapproved of the president.  7% of the voters voiced approval of Ted Cruz; 41% disapproved.  22% approved of the Governor, Greg Abbot.  48% disapproved.

If you are able to support this kind of intensive grassroots organizing and voter contact, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

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We canvass with an Issues Survey that is our jumping off point of conversations with voters.  We find this is an easy way to begin the canvass season.  All the data we collect will be entered into VAN, the Democratic database.

We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters.  At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand.  The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter.  We also ask voters if they have an problems that local, state or federal governments need to address in their neighborhoods.  

But the main focus of our canvassing right now is the Issues Survey, asking voters for their input and concerns.  We find that most voters who aren’t in a hurry or in the middle of something are willing to answer at least a couple of these questions, especially their top issue or concern and their views of President Biden.  Voter responses to the questionnaire are entered into VAN and made available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN in the state after the primary.  Creating this kind of data isn’t done with a specific goal in mind but has the purpose of engaging voters and creating a dataset that any Democratic candidate can use in opposition to a Republican.

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Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach.  We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing.  We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their own intensive field work.  Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns).  After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.

As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing.  In Florida, given the current laws, we offer up a tablet with the Secretary of State website up so that voters can register or update their information themselves.  Part of this is making sure that voters are registered in compliance to the new, confusing and frustrating Election law that is particularly onerous for people who change residences more frequently than normal.  But registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is also critical to our approach.  Arizona has a much more friendly voter registration system, including the ability to opt in to permanent early voting.  Of course, canvassing is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.

In Florida, though, the new law requires voters to provide, in addition to their date of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security number OR their driver license OR state ID card number to make an address change.  Which is par for the course this year, but here’s the part that is likely to stump people who move around.  You have to remember which one you provided, because you have to provide the same one every single time you interact with your local Supervisor of Elections, or your request won’t be granted.  Supervisors of Elections won’t have access to other databases, so they can only "verify” a request by the information the voter has provided.  But this is something we have learned to track so that if the voter registration was not successful, we can go back.

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We also ask voters if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections.  Last year, we walked with lit about the changes in voting laws, but we also asked voters about their fears and experience in prior elections.  So far there haven’t been significant changes in the laws but we still ask about fears and experience vis-a-vis elections.  Voters who say they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports.  

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine Republican efforts to throw Democrats off the voter rolls, informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.  There’s a lot of work to be done, but fortunately, the three states that are making it most difficult are also states in which you can knock on doors at least 10 months out of the year.  And, with your help, we will be there, getting our people to super-comply with these restrictive provisions.

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                 2023 Hope Springs expenses

We are also — this being an election year — adding the Post Cards to New Voters component back into our Voter Outreach, both New Voters we find at their doors as well as New Voters we target in the Voter File.

Our biggest expense is the Voter File.  But it is also a fixed cost.  That won’t change as we raise and spend more money.  Printing literature is our second largest cost.  Printing and mailing our our Post Cards to New Voters is our third cost and paying the fees for ActBlue is the smallest of our monthly costs.

Hope Springs is a seat-of-the-pants grassroots-driven operation.  We don’t have employees but we realize that to formalize and professionalize this effort that will have to change.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

News network appears to show the political side it taking

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“NBC News on Friday announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair who has repeatedly attacked the network and its journalists, labeling the news media as “fake news” and promoting false claims around the 2020 voting as an on-air commentator ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics at NBC News, said in a memo to staff. (what??!!??)  During her time as chair of the RNC, McDaniel repeatedly attacked the press labeling it as “fake news” and calling the media “corrupt.”

NBC’s hiring of McDaniel appears to follow the trend of media networks and their outlets to accept as news Trump and his republican cohorts peddling their lies and conspiracy theories as news, on air without scrutiny.

MSNBC has even started carrying Trump’s remarks live on television, a practice that the network boasted for years it would not do.”This is adapted from a  news item by Oliver Darcy, CNN  

Looks like NBC will now also be on my  DO NOT WATCH LIST as I’m sure the false and/or uncontested reporting will come thick and fast the closer we come to election time. MY guess is they are doing this to cover their behind in case Republicans should win the election.

I can just imagine her appearance on Morning Joe and the sunday morning shows to give her warped view of how the world should be run. Looks like I can sleep in on sundays.

Another reminder of Trump's unfitness

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Back in September, 2019 the National Weather Service predicted Hurricane Dorian would hit Florida and possibly parts of Georgia.  Trump tweeted that Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia would “most likely be hit harder than anticipated.”

Approximately 20 minutes later, the National Weather Service posted on Twitter to clear up Trump’s misinformation.  The National Weather Service tweeted, “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.  We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”

That’s when Trump used a black Sharpie to doctor a weather map, scaring Alabama residents who were not in danger.

He can never be in elected office again.

HAS FOX NEWS Finally Figured it Out? 'This is Why Conservatives Call the GOP the Stupid Party'

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If it seems to you like every day Republicans in Congress do something new to humiliate themselves, while advancing their ultra-rightist smear campaigns against President Biden and other Democrats, and sucking up to their Dear Leader Donald Trump, then it's clear that you are paying attention.

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It's almost as if the GOP is purposefully planning these embarrassing political pratfalls as their strategy for winning back the White House. What else could explain stunts like the one that Marjorie Taylor Greene just pulled by filing a motion to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson after only five months as Speaker? And recall that he got that post because Republicans ousted the previous Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, after only nine months.

SEE THIS: DO-NOTHING CONGRESS? The Republican House of Representatives is the Most Productive Ever (LOL)

The reaction to Green's motion has been swift and hilarious. Most of her GOP colleagues have condemned her for reinforcing the accurate impression that the Republican Party is populated by idiots and is awash in chaos. But those condemning her are doing their own part in reinforcing that impression. They surely are not exhibiting the unity that Trump recently bragged about...

SEE ALSO: REALLY? Dementia Addled Trump Babbles that ‘I Have Never Seen the Republican Party So Unified’

And if that weren't bad enough, Fox News isn't taking any of this very well. It is presenting them with more obstacles to their propaganda mission of propping up Republicans and Trump-fluffing. That was glaringly evident in the monologue of Fox's Laura Ingraham who whined that...

"I have been in Washington for 30 years. I have never witnessed what I'm witnessing now. A party with a narrow majority in the House of Representatives - everything on the line in the country - but committing a slow suicide. This is why conservatives call the GOP the stupid party."

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First of all, it isn't conservatives calling the GOP "The Stupid Party" (which would make a great new name for them). It is mainstream Republicans and most Americans. If anything, it's the conservatives like Greene and the GOP's Freedom Caucus who are attacking Johnson, advocating extremist policies (i.e. banning abortion, cutting Social Security, etc.), and generally spreading around the stupid.

What's more, Ingraham is complaining about the GOP being incapable of governing with their "narrow" and shrinking majority. But she is steadfastly against working with Democrats on compromise legislation such as funding the government, securing the border, or providing aid to Ukraine. She and her right-wing confederates have no positive solutions to the nation's problems. Instead, they are laser focused on impeaching President Biden and maligning his family and Cabinet. It is that agenda that is causing their "slow suicide."

However, Ingraham is not alone. Her Fox News comrade, and former Trump press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, joined the pile-on following Green's Johnson-busting business. On Friday's episode of Fox's "Outnumbered" McEnany offered a uniquely perverse point of view...

"So, Marjorie Taylor Greene said 'I have not talked to president Trump about this.' Largely president Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson have had a great relationship. Speaker Mike Johnson just put out a piece congratulating him on securing the nomination. I think it's a pretty big voice you would want to get input from since he's the titular head of the party at the moment."

x

What McEnany is proposing is that Trump be given the right of approval as to who Republicans in the House choose to lead their party. Never mind that the Constitution explicitly divides the government into three independent branches. McEnany would do away with the principle of "separation of powers" so that Trump could reign as a monarch, imposing his will on the legislative and judicial branches, in addition to the executive. Which, by the way, he does not currently occupy.

This is just further evidence that the Stupid Party is more of a cult than a political enterprise. And it's Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) is fully on board with elevating Dear Leader Trump to messiah status as they pray for him to be their savior. But if the abject foolishness of Republicans is regarded as the party having committed suicide, it is one that will benefit the nation and its citizens, So perhaps a more fitting description for the demise of the GOP is that it's a mercy killing.

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Carville caught clutching pearls, worries Dems are losing white men to Trump's "energy"...

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Has the Ragin’ Cajun lost something off his fastball?  Has retirement in the bayou with Mary softened that edge that railed against seemingly impossible odds? In Maureen Dowd’s almost weekly column in the NYTimes this week (James Carville, the Cajun Who Can’t Stop Ragin’), she spotlights onetime presidential campaign strategist James Carville and his now continual warnings that Biden faces real problems in his reelection bid.  Like Greek mythology’s Cassandra fated to tell the future but never to be believed,  the Ragin’ Cajun sends out these forewarnings as if he thinks the rest of us are cocksure of a fall victory.  James, set aside your entrails. Hide those jangling worry beads. We have all followed the meandering polls, listened endlessly to the on-air pundits, and in the deep recesses of our beings have considered volunteering for Elon’s next Mars mission aboard one of his exploding cigar-like rockets. James needn’t remind us that Biden is old and suggesting that Trump somehow projects “energy.” We know the real danger and it is not that Biden stands in the way of a younger Democratic savior:

“Now don’t tell me that Biden has more energy or cognition than Trump because it’s evident that, yeah, Trump’s got word salads, but he projects energy,” Carville said. “He’s insane. He’s a criminal of the first order. But he does have a little timing and a little sense of humor and knows how to move from one story to the other.”

Biden clinging to power has eclipsed the other talent in the party.

— NYTimes, by Maureen Dowd

The last sentence rankles, especially since James is prone to spicey word salads of his own. Dowd refers us to Carville’s chops as a campaign advisor to Bill Clinton.  Carville rightly can claim that victory as an achievement that bears remembering.  He also can claim victory over Bibi Netanyahu as he was a key strategist to Ehud Barak who won a landslide victory over the current Israeli president. During the 1992 campaign against incumbent George Bush, Clinton faced “bimbo eruptions” and earned the nickname “Slick Willie” from the right for stories about his philandering.  Carville coined the strategy that focused on three main talking points to counteract the GOP’s personal attacks (that later would rebloom into L'Affaire Lewinsky) — focus on youth and change vs. the older and more traditional Bush candidacy, tout health care, and repeat until the crawfish come home the now political snowclone “it’s the economy stupid!”  Carville was at the top of his game.

But before he helped lead Clinton to the White House, recall that Carville was the man who first achieved political success advising Robert P. Casey who became Governor of Pennsylvania on his fourth try.  Casey had lost the Democratic primary three times before Carville joined on and led his successful campaign against Bill Scranton III, son of William Scranton a popular governor and -presidential candidate for president in 1964.  The Cajun's closing TV ad in the campaign was of a younger Scranton practicing Transcendental Meditation.  The now infamous ad (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/weekinreview/10ferrick.html) was devastating and was credited with defeating "Billy three sticks" and gaining Casey the governorship in 1986:

“This television advertisement portrayed Scranton as having been a regular drug user in the 1960s and mocked Scranton's interest in transcendental meditation and his ties to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.[1][5] The image of Scranton as a "long haired, dope-smoking hippie" is seen by political observers as having tipped the scales against Scranton in the socially conservative rural sections of Pennsylvania.[1][5] Casey went on to win the election by a narrow margin of 79,216 out of 3.3 million votes cast...”

It is hard to disagree with Carville except to note that in this case the time to have found a younger version of Biden was in 2019 and not 2023, and no one stepped up to the plate at the time.  Biden with a coalition of Democrats and independents led by women and an outpouring of minorities defeated Trump.  Carville bemoans the party’s focus on women, especially, and the left, in general,  

“If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’”

— Dowd

While admitting to liking Biden, Carville let's slip the secret of Biden’s success so far and the reason no other Democrats have stepped up to challenge him:

“I actually like Biden. He’s a tenacious guy that’s had a real life. He’s a state school guy. He doesn’t have an iota of elitism. He doesn’t even know what ‘woke’ is. He’s been demonstrably the best president that Black America’s ever had, Clinton and Obama included. You look at incomes, employment, poverty rates, access to health care. It’s not where whites are, but it’s closer than it’s ever been.”

The Cajun has one thing wrong, in this case, Biden like Robert P. Casey is a persistent son of a gun and both share a heritage coming from the hardscrabble politics practiced in and around Scranton, PA.  The difference between Biden/Trump and Casey/Scranton III is that little came easy for the kids from Scranton, unlike their wealthier and pampered-from-birth opponents.  Casey Sr.’s father was a former coal miner who worked the mines at age 10 before becoming a lawyer.  Biden’s Pop was a car salesman and middle-class hero to his son, Joe. To be sure, neither Biden nor Casey would have wanted it any other way.

So Carville, and Dowd whose columns often have slighted Biden damning him with faint praise, forget that this is a player accustomed to being undervalued. Their complaints that his perception is in large part conditioned by detractors from within the party and the media.  Biden’s age and the burdens that all of us past a certain age must bear because of its ravages are countered by his deeds. Biden’s work as president starkly contrasts Trump’s failed presidency and the pending results of his misdeeds in civil and criminal courts.  While Carville speaks to our inner fear of what it would mean if Donald Trump succeeded in gaining a second term, he fails to recognize the genius of a younger and more politically agile strategist who once countered Republican attacks with far greater peril with a simple set of talking points that included a comparison of life under Trump vs, life under Biden, a defense of health care for women, and the refrain”it is still the economy, stupid!”— a talking point that in the end should resonate among those white men the Cajun is so worried about appealing to. 

Carville seems to be clutching Dowd’s pearls in this column.  They both discuss age in hushed tones as if to avoid its inevitability.  I like to quote Mark Twain in times like these— I even like those sayings he might have or should have said.  Here is one that if he didn’t say he could have: “Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many...”  Many of us remember the pandemic and the “privilege” of life that was tested by Trump’s incompetence. A second term suggests more of the same given his doltishness.  His limitations are far more troublesome than age.  Those who worry about Biden growing old should consider another Twainism— 

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”

We should all worry, but less about Biden than about his alternative. 

Vote!


OH-Sen: CNN Calls Out Bernie Moreno's (R) Waffling & Flip Flopping On The Big Lie

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This is the type of coverage we need to see more of from CNN:

Donald Trump-backed Senate Republican candidate Bernie Moreno, who won a tough primary race last week in Ohio, refused to say if he believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the former president.

“Oh my gosh, are we talking about that? We’ve had like three elections since then,” he told CNN last week as he departed a meeting of the Republican conference in the Capitol. “The reality is, we’re gonna look to the future. The people in Ohio, what they care about is when they go to McDonald’s, they can’t afford French fries.”

Pressed to say yes or no if it was stolen, he didn’t answer directly, and entered the office of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

“This is not the topic I think people think about,” he said.

In January, Moreno’s campaign released a digital ad in which Moreno looked directly into the camera and said, “President Trump says the election was stolen, and he’s right.”

Moreno also pushed The Big Lie back in 2021 when he was briefly running in the 2022 GOP primary for retiring U.S. Senator Rob Portman’s (R. OH) open seat:

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno released a new ad this week called “Truth,” but what it claims is false.

“President Trump says the election was stolen, and he’s right,” Moreno says to the camera.

The Justice Department and election officials have said there is no evidence the 2020 election was stolen. Audits and recounts have confirmed Joe Biden won the presidency fair and square.

But former President Donald Trump still insists otherwise; and several of the Republican U.S. Senate candidates in Ohio are supporting his baseless claim as they fight for his endorsement.

Moreno’s new ad is notable because it contradicts his tweets from November 2020.

“To my conservative friends: accept the results of 140m+ votes cast. Was it perfect, no…was it anywhere near enough to change the result, no. #ElectionIsOver #Unite,” Moreno wrote in a November 7, 2020 tweet.

That same day, he congratulated Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, in a separate tweet “for their hard fought victory.”

Moreno’s former GOP primary rival, Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R. OH), said it best about Moreno:

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Even though LaRose cowardly endorsed Moreno after saying voters couldn’t trust him:

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined other GOP statewide officeholders Thursday in endorsing his former rival, Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno — after a bruising and expensive primary in which he repeatedly attacked his rival as untrustworthy.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, LaRose said he joined the Senate race because he was concerned about the direction of the country and that he believes Moreno “has what it takes to bring real change to Washington and work with President Trump to make America great again.”

"We urgently need to change course," tweeted LaRose, who lost the former president's endorsement to Moreno. "That starts by retiring Sherrod Brown and replacing the failed leadership in Washington." LaRose said he stands ready to help.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) understand he is the fight for his life but is ready to run on his record:

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But beneath that image is trouble. On Monday, he had just received an endorsement from the 100,000-strong Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, when a retired bricklayer, Jeff King, pulled him aside in a weathered union hall in Dayton.

Mr. Brown has had plenty of achievements to run on, Mr. King, who made the trip from his local in Cincinnati, told the senator. But, he asked, would workers in a blue-collar state that has twice handed Mr. Trump eight-percentage-point victories understand who should get the credit?

“That’s the mission,” Mr. Brown said, leaning in. “They don’t know enough.”

The party and its union allies have made the re-election of Ohio’s senior senator their highest priority —“the very top,” said Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s political committee.

The election could be breaking Mr. Brown’s way. With Mr. Trump’s endorsement — and a nudge from a Democratic super PAC — the Democrats’ preferred Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, easily prevailed in the Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, handing the incumbent a foil with staggering wealth, little political experience and the imprimatur of a former president who could prompt some voters to split their tickets.

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The next day, the Biden administration announced an $8.5 billion deal to fund Intel Corporation’s semiconductor manufacturing, much of it destined for Ohio, courtesy of legislation that Mr. Brown helped secure. Because of Mr. Brown, that law, the Chips and Science Act, requires so-called project labor agreements to be struck between management and union laborers before plant construction could begin. So 7,000 union tradesmen will be employed at the massive Intel complex outside of Columbus.

On that same Wednesday, the administration finalized stringent new car and truck emissions standards that should increase electric-vehicle manufacturing at the Stellantis Jeep complex in Toledo and automotive battery plants around Youngstown.

Finally, construction should begin around election time on a long-sought replacement for the Brent Spence Bridge, linking Cincinnati to its suburbs in Kentucky. That, too, was delivered in part by Mr. Brown.

And Brown is out there reminding voters who he is:

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Knows the issues to run on:

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And has a strong campaign message:

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Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip Ohio Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Brown and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:

U.S. Senate

Sherrod Brown

Congress

Emilia Sykes

Greg Landsman

Marcy Kaptur

Shontel Brown

Ohio Supreme Court

Lisa Forbes

Melody Stewart

Michael Donnelly

State Party

Ohio Democratic Party

Gaza, Biden and Abortion: What We've found at Swing State Doors so far in 2024 (a Periodic Update)

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There’s a dramatic difference between what you read on the Internet and what you hear at the door.  But only one of those things consistently drives electoral outcomes, and it is what voters tell Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers at their doors.

I’ve done campaign consulting for decades, and in almost every election cycle, some staffer or consultant will ask me, “Why are you still knocking on doors?”  It’s simple.  Voters, especially swing state voters, give you the real measure of the electorate that will decide elections.  It provides context.  For example, canvassing was how we learned that the term “Reproductive Freedom” was more appealing to voters in Ohio and Kansas.  “Reproductive Rights” not as attention grabbing there.  The language of the coasts didn’t work as well in the heartland.  And it was the concept of Freedom that really allowed Democratic and Republican women to unite in amending their state constitutions to enshrine their individual, fundamental Rights in Kansas and Ohio.

Language matters, but the language of the voters, not the interpreters.  And you learn that language not by polls (where the language is determined by interpreters) but at the doors.

You may have read that, before the State of the Union address, “Dozens of protesters blocked Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest Washington along Biden’s route on his way to delivering the address.”  Of course, the president didn’t see them (his route took him away from them), and his presence may not even have been the point.  But they wanted to be part of the debate, part of the conversation about the State of the Union address.

And maybe they were.  But no voter we have talked to over the past four weeks has brought up Gaza.  Not late last year (in Ohio or the other states we canvassed in after October 7th), or over the last four weekends in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina or Texas.  Several voters, both Democrats and unaffiliated, mentioned U.S. support for Israel positively in Arizona and at least one other voter mentioned the hostages taken by Hamas.  But, despite efforts by the Free Palestine organizers to brand Joe Biden, not a single voter mentioned the concept of genocide.  It’s increasingly clear that genocide won’t be a topic in this election for President.  From voters at least.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t activists who won’t try to change that.  There’s real money behind the effort to bring Gaza to the fore.  But the farther we get away from the October 7th attack and its aftermath, the less that it will garner attention from the electorate.  Pro-Palestinian activists really need for Joe Biden to lose in November — and those who don’t want to see that happen need to understand that we won’t change their minds.  We have to focus our efforts on mobilizing otherwise infrequent voters and expand the electorate, a general requirement for Democrats to win.

But even if genocide (and i wholeheartedly reject the assertion that Joe Biden or the United States has engaged in genocide) isn’t driving voter opinion in these Swing States, Joe Biden isn’t fairing as well.  And there’s an analogy here that seems to be in effect right now.  In 2021, Joe Biden’s approval ratings fell markedly after the U.S. completed its treaty obligations to pull our soldiers out of Afghanistan in 2021.  In every state, in August we saw Biden approval ratings slip significantly.  Some people would raise the issue, but it was really obvious when you saw the effect on his approval.

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                                         2024

In Arizona, Biden’s Approval at the doors was 47% on November 18, 2023.  Less than 5 months later, on March 2nd, it was 34% — a loss of 13 percentage points.

In Florida, Biden’s Approval at the doors was 52% on August 26, 2023.  More than six months later, on March 2nd, it was 43% — a drop of 9 percentage points.  

Remember, we aren’t knocking on the doors of purely Republican households.  Democratic doors and those of unaffiliated voters.  So about a third of the electorate is left out.

In Georgia, Biden’s Approval at the doors was 51% on October 28, 2023.  Almost five months later, on March 9th, it was 44%.  That’s a slip of 7 percentage points. 

In Nevada, Biden’s Approval at the doors was 49% on October 28, 2023.  Five months later, on March 23, it was 44%, a 5 point drop.

And in North Carolina, Biden’s Approval at the doors was 51% on August 26, 2023.  Almost seven months later, it was 39%.  That’s a loss of 12 percentage points.

Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 2nd in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground with what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass.  We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.

Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024

Hope Springs from Field understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical.  And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud).  We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are.  Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters).  Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be (and can be) cured.

I was talking last week to a fellow (old) field organizer.  He’s a little bit older than me, in a very Blue state, looking for signs of hope in the November election.  He’s also an Obama alum, and among those who are disappointed by what they see from the Biden re-election campaign.  It’s a different era, different candidates with different strengths and weaknesses.  “Tell me this isn’t a lost cause,” he asked.

Of course not!  Biden and Democrats in general have a secret weapon this year, i reassured him.  Reproductive Freedom is driving voters in expected and surprising ways.  Not just in Ohio, not just in states where there have been Constitutional Amendments.  In the special election last month in NY-03, we didn’t find that many voters voicing Reproductive Rights as their Most Urgent Concern, or even a significant number of single issue Abortion voters.  But even if we didn’t hear that much about Abortion during the quick campaign, when we were doing Election Day GOTV, one of the reasons voters gave us when we found them on Election Day was the importance of electing pro-choice Democrats — even those who didn’t really think of Suozzi as a pro-choice Democrat!  He was better than the “other Democrat” who considered herself “pro-life.”

The results on the same day in Pennsylvania’s 140th Legislative District was equally reassuring:

What I heard from voters is that Bucks County residents need help supporting their families, want control over their own bodies, and ensure they have the ability to chart their own paths in life

Jim Prokopiak said.  Here’s the electoral reality.  This presidential election will be determined in the suburbs, and the single most important issue driving voters in the suburbs is Reproductive Freedom.  Period.

As of March 16th (the last date we have final data for), Hope Springs volunteers have had Issues discussions with 7,689 voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas (Nevada was an addition this past weekend).  But we have found 1,806 Abortion voters in that mix.  That’s in addition to the 150,113 Abortion single issue votersHope Springs from Field volunteers had found over the last two years — when Dobbs had put Roe v Wade on the map again.  And Reproductive Rights seems to be a double pump issue — Democrats are doing all the right things to appeal to suburban voters here, while Republicans continue to go out of their way to make it worse for themselves.  It’s the silent MAGA killer.

Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races and/or the Electoral College in 2024, as well as Congressional Districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year (specifically those where a Republican won a Congressional District that voted for Biden in 2022).  There is a lot of work to be done!  Especially since we have had to expand the map this year.

By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with these really, really onerous provisions, Hope Springs from Field seeks to undermine that strategy, while informing voters about the new laws and regulations aimed at them.

Through our conversations with voters now, registering (and re-registering) voters at their doors, offering up opportunities to improve their neighborhood through Constituent Service Requests or protect their polling places and their Right to Vote through Incident Reports, Hope Springs volunteers are creating a more positive electoral environment for Democrats in 2024.

If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization2024

If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page.  Thank you for your support.  This work depends upon you!

Investing Early in Infrastructure Can Yield Big Results for Democrats in 2024 and Beyond

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By Lauren Baer and Mandela Barnes

The worst kept secret among Democratic organizations and campaigns last year was that Democrats are facing funding challenges. Financial resources are drying up, sparking concern across the Democratic ecosystem as we stare down the 2024 election, and the left now finds itself at a crossroads. This challenge, however, also presents our party with an opportunity to reset; we find ourselves in a position to rethink how we invest in our electoral programming, and we should seize the opportunity.

That ought to mean prioritizing investments in more sustainable campaign infrastructure and a new generation of diverse candidates and political staff—efforts that can increase our chances of success this election year, but also build power in the long run.

Campaign infrastructure, in a nutshell, is everything good candidates need to be successful but can’t be expected to build themselves in the short timeline of a campaign. This includes permanent, year-round organizing infrastructure to register and mobilize voters; the recruitment and training of diverse campaign staff to ensure an skilled, effective, and reflective talent pool to hire from; and strong state parties and advocacy organizations to lean on for support.

Investments in this kind of infrastructure are not sexy. The work is inherently less visible, but the reality is that this work serves as the linchpin of electoral success. The capacity to mobilize voters, engage in effective outreach, and run a well-organized ground game is pivotal, especially in closely contested races. These efforts require time, dedication, and resources and can’t simply be stood up in the final weeks before an election. 

Unfortunately, though, Democratic donors have historically waited until the final stretch of an election to invest heavily, and that has led to missed opportunities for candidates and the Democratic movement as a whole. Last-minute massive cash injections may generate a brief surge in visibility, as the resources are traditionally used to fund advertising, but without a solid campaign infrastructure in place, those gains are unlikely to translate into electoral victories. 

As leaders of two key Democratic infrastructure organizations, and as former candidates ourselves, we’re suggesting a different approach. Instead of keeping their powder dry until later in the campaign season, donors should shift their focus towards early investments in campaign infrastructure, particularly staffing and building a Democratic bench. 

What might this look like? 

One example is an innovative fellowship program launched in 2022 by Arena. Rather than deploying financial resources at the end of the election cycle, Arena placed trained campaign staff on critical but under-resourced state legislative races that would be key to securing Democratic majorities. Arena spent only $25,000 per race, but won nearly 75% of the races they invested in, and the program was credited with helping flip the Pennsylvania House for Democrats. As it turns out, paying for talented people, not late cycle campaign ads, wins races. 

Another example is identifying and investing in young, diverse, LGBTQ+, and working class candidates who can win in their critical races as long as they have the support they need from the beginning. Mandela Barnes started The Long Run PAC to do just that. They are uplifting diverse candidates and creating proof that “different” candidates can win critical elections if only they have support from day one. And, at the same time, they are helping build a bench of Democratic leaders for the future, which is essential for the long-term success of the Democratic movement. 

In both cases, the common thread is that investing early and investing in infrastructure can yield big results, and that can pay off for Democrats not just this year, but for years to come. 

But, if we are going to see any of these gains in 2024, we need to course correct now. We can’t stay on the same funding trajectory and just hope for things to change this fall when we’re in the home stretch. Democratic wallets should open while there is still time to make meaningful investments in campaign infrastructure and set us on a course for victory in 2024 and beyond. The stakes are simply too high to hope for a miracle in the eleventh hour. Protecting our democracy and advancing our Democratic values requires that we start investing smartly now. 

Lauren Baer is Managing Partner of Arena, the flagship organization for convening, training, and supporting the next generation of Democratic candidates and campaign staff.

Mandela Barnes was Wisconsin’s first black Lt. Governor, 2022 candidate for the United States Senate and Founder of the Long Run PAC, which supports diverse and groundbreaking pro-democracy candidates around the country who are helping to flip critical swing districts and bring more working-class voices to the table.

Waiting and waiting . . . but justice eludes us again and again

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In the eleventh hour, the cavalry (juristically speaking) once again comes to Trump’s rescue. Is there still anyone left who is surprised?

100 years ago, Dorothy L. Sayers’ sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey asked his lawyer, ‘Why do they make laws so complicated that no one can be certain what they mean?’ He then answers his own question, suggesting they do it to keep themselves and fellow lawyers in business in the future.

I’ll take it one step further and say they deliberately make it complicated while leaving enough loopholes to guarantee that if a client pays his lawyers enough, that client will never be brought to justice.

Maybe ‘never’ is too strong a word. There are other factors helping Trump, and since he’s probably the first person to use them on this scale, their ultimate effectiveness is unknown at this point.

By ‘other factors’, I don’t just mean his cult base keeping the entire GOP in line, although that’s of obvious importance. But the thing that’s new is his mafia-like threat machine. Virtually every judge, lawyer, juror, and witness Trump’s thugs can identify gets so seriously threatened they have to request physical protection or even move out of their home.

And while we’re on the subject, ask yourself what kind of person would vote for someone who bases his power on a twisted legal system and threatening his critics? How can a Trump supporter justify their candidate needing absolute immunity and legal delays, not to mention resorting countless times to ‘The 5th’ or being ‘unable to recall’ whenever under oath?

I’m doing my best to  stop anticipating legal judgements against Trump, trials beginning for Trump, or new indictments against Trump. Since Mueller’s time we’ve all been waiting for justice, but this guy with the brains of a mouse but the cunning of a snake outsmarts us every time.

Niemöller’s urgent message to Americans – speak out against the evils of Trump and the MAGA movement

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The striking parallels between Germany in the 1930s and the United States today keep piling up.

In January a movement called Faithful America began to mobilize Christians in opposition to presidential candidate Donald Trump. These American Catholics and their ecumenical allies were responding directly to Catholic bishops openly supporting Trump.

This replicates the Pastors Emergency League (PEL) formed in 1933 by Martin Niemöller and his clerical colleagues in Germany’s churches. The PEL opposed church leaders proclaiming God sent Adolf Hitler to save Germany.

Germany then, America now

The scenarios are near identical. In both pre-war Germany and the USA in the 2020s, large swathes of the population were in the thrall of a leader who advocated white supremacy, blamed social problems on migrants and embraced easily-debunked falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

Swastikas and other Nazi symbols were proudly displayed, and hate crimes aimed at ethnic minorities, synagogues and other places of non-Christian worship surged.

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Hitler and Trump alike relished public displays of adoration, claimed they were not subject to criminal laws, and sought loyalty to himself personally rather than to the party or the nation.

Both leaders had trouble with the courts of law before seeking high office, Hitler over a failed coup and Trump over business fraud and sexual abuse. Both described people they despised as vermin, urged supporters to attack opponents physically, and favored locking up political enemies who had not broken the law and releasing political supporters who had.

They both denigrated democratic elections, and publicly humiliated senior military leaders and department heads following policy disagreement.

In both nations, many professing Christians strongly supported the leader, sparking hurtful divisions.

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There are, of course, significant differences. The German churches had moved to expel all pastors of Jewish descent, which thankfully American churches have not done.

Opposition to the pro-Trump Christians

The Faithful America movement sees itself as “organizing the faithful to challenge Christian nationalism and white supremacy and to renew the church's prophetic role in building a more free and just society.”

Organizers claim an ally in the current pope: “When bishops embrace discrimination and partisanship, we stand with our plurality Catholic members to hold the U.S. hierarchy accountable to the inspiring words of Pope Francis.”

Their activism is not directed only at Catholics. “We're sticking up for courageous Christian voices acting for fairness and freedom in every denomination ... and upholding the Gospel's values of love, equality, and dignity.”

This movement mirrors the passion of Lutheran minister Martin Niemöller who watched support for Adolf Hitler’s nationalism expand rapidly within Catholic and Protestant churches in the 1930s.

Safeguarding the mission of the church

In June 1937 Niemöller asked these questions of his Berlin congregation: “It is not a case now – though we repeat it a thousand times – of: ‘What benefits the nation, the German nation, is right; what I regard as right is right.’ It is God who now asks the question: ‘What is right or wrong? What is good or evil? What does the living God say about it? What does He want from us?”

The answers, according to Niemöller, demanded opposing the Nazis, despite the risks:

“I have to tell you that to-day once again as plainly as I can, for who knows what next Sunday may bring forth? But it is our duty to speak: on this charge of ours depends the promise, it depends upon it whether God will keep His word and keep alive the light ...”

Just twelve days after that sermon, on 1 July 1937, the Gestapo arrested Niemöller and imprisoned him for eight years. Significantly, his protests before his arrest had only been at Hitler’s meddling in church affairs, not at the authoritarianism or the atrocities against Jews or other minorities. That came later, towards the end of his imprisonment.

Niemöller initially supported Hitler’s election in 1933 and commended his fanatical nationalism. But by the end of hostilities in Europe in 1945, having seen the monstrous evils of Hitler’s regime, Niemöller had changed his views dramatically.

In fact, his famous quote –“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist ...”– was an admission not of timidity or indifference, but of complicity.

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Finding comfort and forgiveness

After his liberation, Niemöller called Christians to repent.

“We, that is the Church, have failed for we knew the wrong and the right path, but we did not warn the people and allowed them to rush forward to their doom. I do not exclude myself from this guilt; on the contrary, I stress at every opportunity that I too have failed, for I too have been silent when I should have spoken!”

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This is an edited version of an article published yesterday in The Christian Messenger, available in full here for free:

https://www.christianmessenger.in/martin-niemollers-urgent-message-to-american-christians-today/

Rebuilding Together: The Unbreakable Spirit Behind the Francis Scott Key Bridge Reconstruction

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In the early hours of a day that will be etched in the history of Maryland, the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a vital artery in Baltimore's infrastructure, succumbed to an unforeseen disaster. The bridge, a symbol of strength and connectivity, experienced a catastrophic collapse following a collision with the MV Dali, a Singapore-registered container ship. This event not only tested the resilience of the local community but also beckoned a nationwide reflection on infrastructure safety and emergency response.

The immediate aftermath of the collapse was marked by a flurry of fear, uncertainty, and heartbreak. The bridge, after all, was not just a structure of steel and concrete; it was a lifeline for millions. Amidst this chaos, the response from the Biden Administration was swift and decisive. President Joe Biden's pledge that the federal government would bear the full cost of reconstruction emerged as a beacon of hope. This commitment underscored a powerful message: in times of crisis, America stands united, ready to rebuild stronger than ever.

The administration's response serves as a testament to the power of collective action and federal support in navigating the aftermath of tragedies. It is a reminder that, while the physical structures we build may falter, our spirit of resilience and unity endures. As the people of Maryland, and indeed the entire nation, watched the unfolding events, the story of the Francis Scott Key Bridge became more than just a tale of a bridge collapse. It evolved into a narrative of courage, community, and unwavering support, showcasing the indomitable American spirit that thrives in the face of adversity.

As we look forward to the reconstruction of the bridge, there's a palpable sense of optimism in the air. This incident, while tragic, has ignited conversations about infrastructure safety, emergency preparedness, and the importance of mental health support for all affected. It has demonstrated the strength found in unity and the remarkable ability of communities to come together in support of one another. The road to recovery may be long, but with the commitment of the Biden Administration and the resilience of the Maryland community, the future is bright. The new bridge will stand not just as a symbol of Baltimore's resilience but as a monument to national solidarity in the face of challenges.

THANKS FOX NEWS: Poll Reveals How Dishonest and/or Delusional Republicans Are (Surprise!)

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The 2024 presidential election season is heating up as both candidates exert their best efforts to draw voters to their cause. Which for President Biden means campaigning vigorously in every swing state and advancing initiatives that benefit all Americans. For Donald Trump it means dining with rich pals at Mar-a-Lago, golfing, and sitting in courtrooms scowling and whining.

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The media's horserace coverage of the campaign is predictably useless as they focus almost entirely on polls, while ignoring the substantive actions taken by the candidates. For instance, Biden is building national infrastructure, creating jobs, and protecting healthcare, including women's reproductive rights. Trump, on the other hand, is pledging to cut Social Security, promising to release all of the violent January 6th insurrectionists, and doing infomercials for Trump-endorsed bibles.

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Trump's Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, is playing its staunchly Republican part in this political potboiler. They just released a poll that shows Trump leading Biden 50-45%, within the margin of error. And Fox's Harris Faulkner thinks that she knows why Trump is enjoying a small lead.

"A new round of Fox News polling shows former president Trump widening his lead over President Biden. One big reason? The economy. Fifty-two percent of voters say they're worse off financially today than they were in 2020, just before Biden took office."

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Faulkner appears to be oblivious to the fact that four years ago the nation was locked up in their homes, terrified of a deadly virus, losing their jobs as companies closed, and unable to find toilet paper or other household goods at the grocery stores. And The Republican respondents to the poll also seem to be suffering from the same selective amnesia.

Digging a little deeper, the poll found that among Democrats only 28% said they are worse of today than four years ago. However, it also found that 72% of Republicans consider themselves worse off now. That's a disparity that makes no sense if it were actually tied to real world economic conditions. So the GOP respondents are either having memory lapses (a symptom of Long COVID) or they are lying to the pollsters for political reasons.

Another possibility is that Republicans actually are suffering more severe economic circumstances than Democrats because they live in states run by Republicans, where conditions are worse due to bad management and the insensitivity of GOP leaders to the real problems of their citizens. If that's the case, then the Fox News poll is helpfully exposing the harm caused by electing Republicans.

It says something unmistakable that 72% of Democrats say they are the same or better off now, but only 27% of Republicans are saying that. Is that a problem caused by the President, or the GOP losers who are doing so poorly during a time of economic growth? Based on the results of this poll, who would you rather be now, a Democrat or a Republican? And based on your answer to that question, who would you rather vote for in November? And if you say "Republican," you are validating the absurdity of the GOP responses in this poll. And what's more, you deserve what you get.

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