Archives for category: Elections

Senator Gary Peters is in a close race for re-election. He is a strong supporter of public schools. He has shared reports of the Network for Public Education with his colleagues. He needs us. I just sent him a contribution. I hope you will do the same. Gaining the majority in the Senate is crucial. Gary Peters deserves our support.

Four years ago, Donald Trump won Michigan by only a few thousand votes — and immediately, Democrats here got to work. Thanks to a swell of grassroots support, two years later we made massive progress with victories across Michigan.
And now once again, our battleground state of Michigan is in the spotlight as all eyes turn here to re-elect Senator Gary Peters. And this race couldn’t be more important — analysts at CBS News are reporting that Democrats can’t win the Senate majority if we don’t first win here in Michigan.
Here’s the bad news: far-right billionaires like Betsy DeVos’ family are trying to buy Michigan’s Senate seat, and now Gary’s officially been outraised for four of the last five quarters. That’s because the GOP is dumping millions of dollars to try and defeat Gary — and if they succeed, we can say goodbye to the future of the Supreme Court and hello to at least two more years of Mitch McConnell calling the shots in Washington.
Gary is in the final two weeks before Election Day, so he reached out to ask me if I could help him close the gap on his $20,000 goal for today — and right now, we’re still falling $13,582 short. Can you chip in $100 (or whatever you can) to make sure Gary doesn’t get outraised again so we can send him back to the Senate?
If you’ve saved payment info with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:Click to donate $100Click to donate $200Click to donate $400Or click here to donate another amountIt’s never been more important for us to elect Democrats like Gary Peters who are going to continue fighting the good fight to move Michigan forward. And with control of the Senate and the future of the Supreme Court on the line, we need a fighter like Gary standing up for Michiganders in Washington. So I’m asking one more time — with a recent poll showing Gary down by nearly two points, I’m asking you to donate $100 today to help secure victory for Gary Peters in Michigan to help us win back the Senate.

Sincerely,

Gretchen Whitmer
Governor of Michigan  

The children of prominent politicians are causing mighty waves. Kellyanne Conway’s daughter Claudia has one million followers on TikTok, Twitter and other social media outlets, where she regularly excoriates Trump and her parents. The niece of Donald Trump, Mary Trump, wrote a bestseller about the dysfunctional family that produced The Donald and regularly appears on cable news to denounce his policies.

But the latest shocker is this article in Vanity Fair by Caroline Rose Guiliani, daughter of Trump’s personal attorney and former Mayor of New York City. She argues with her father’s political views and urges readers to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Caroline is a political activist, and she speaks out eloquently against her father and his famous client.

The article is titled: “Rudy Guiliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

She writes:

I have a difficult confession—something I usually save for at least the second date. My father is Rudy Giuliani. We are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise. I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a “Giuliani” feels counterintuitive, but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now. The stakes are too high. I accept that most people will start reading this piece because you saw the headline with my father’s name. But now that you’re here, I’d like to tell you how urgent I think this moment is.

To anyone who feels overwhelmed or apathetic about this election, there is nothing I relate to more than desperation to escape corrosive political discourse. As a child, I saw firsthand the kind of cruel, selfish politics that Donald Trump has now inflicted on our country. It made me want to run as far away from them as possible. But trust me when I tell you: Running away does not solve the problem. We have to stand and fight. The only way to end this nightmare is to vote. There is hope on the horizon, but we’ll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Around the age of 12, I would occasionally get into debates with my father, probably before I was emotionally equipped to handle such carnage. It was disheartening to feel how little power I had to change his mind, no matter how logical and above-my-pay-grade my arguments were. He always found a way to justify his party line, whatever it was at the time. Even though he was considered socially moderate for a Republican back in the day, we still often butted heads. When I tried to explain my belief that you don’t get to be considered benevolent on LGBTQ+ rights just because you have gay friends but don’t support gay marriage, I distinctly remember him firing back with an intensity fit for an opposing politican rather than one’s child. To be clear, I’m not sharing this anecdote to complain or criticize. I had an extremely privileged childhood and am grateful for everything I was given, including real-world lessons and complicated experiences like these. The point is to illustrate one of the many reasons I have a fraught relationship with politics, like so many of us do.

Even when there was an occasional flash of connection in these disagreements with my dad, it felt like nothing changed for the better, so I would retreat again until another issue I couldn’t stay silent on surfaced. Over the years other subjects like racial sensitivity (or lack thereof), sexism, policing, and the social safety net have all risen to this boiling point in me. It felt important to speak my mind, and I’m glad we at least managed to communicate at all. But the chasm was painful nonetheless, and has gotten exponentially more so in Trump’s era of chest-thumping partisan tribalism. I imagine many Americans can relate to the helpless feeling this confrontation cycle created in me, but we are not helpless. I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.

Trump and his enablers have used his presidency to stoke the injustice that already permeated our society, taking it to dramatically new, Bond-villain heights. I am a filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community who tells stories about mental health, sexuality, and other stigmatized issues, and my goal is to humanize people and foster empathy. So I hope you’ll believe me when I say that another Trump term (a term, itself, that makes me cringe) will irrevocably harm the LGBTQ+ community, among many others. His administration asked the Supreme Court to let businesses fire people for being gay or trans, pushed a regulation to let health care providers refuse services to people who are LGTBQ+, and banned trans people from serving their country in the military.

Women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and people of color are all also under attack by Trump’s inhumane policies—and by his judicial appointments, including, probably, Amy Coney Barrett. Trump’s administration has torn families apart in more ways than I even imagined were possible, from ripping children from their parents at the border to mishandling the coronavirus, which has resulted in over 215,000 in the U.S. dying, many thousands of them without their loved ones near. Faced with preventable deaths during a pandemic that Trump downplayed and ignored, rhetoric that has fed deep-seated, systemic racism, and chaos in the White House, it’s no surprise that so many Americans feel as hopeless and overwhelmed as I did growing up. But if we refuse to face our political reality, we don’t stand a chance of changing it.

John Merrow warns readers not to commit the eighth deadly sin: the sin of indifference.

Merrow begins:

I imagine that almost everyone has at least a passing acquaintance with the Seven Deadly Sins, even if their names don’t roll easily off your tongue. For the record and to jog your memory, the Seven Deadly Sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

If you’re like me, you have known most (maybe all) of them intimately, although hopefully only occasionally.

But my point is not to confess my own transgressions or to list how the current occupant of the White House seems to embody all Seven Sins. 

Instead, I hope to convince you that, in this Elections Season, an 8th Deadly Sin is the greatest and most offensive of all. Let’s call this sin ‘Indifference,’ although it is often expressed in other terms, like ‘I’m So Tired of Politics,’ ‘Pandemic Fatigue,’ ‘I’m Sitting Out The Election,’ or even the absurd ‘Trump and Biden are Two Peas in a Pod so I say “A Plague on Both Their Houses.“‘ 

Indifference is a Cardinal Sin because this November the future of America is at stake. 

In his post, he delineates the crucial differences between Biden and Trump.

They are not small. They define the future of our society.

The Network for Public Education Action is delighted to endorse the following candidates for election to the United States Senate:

Mark Kelly-Arizona

Jon Ossoff-Georgia

Theresa Greenfield-Iowa

Barbara Bollier-Kansas

Amy McGrath-Kentucky

Sara Gideon-Maine

Steve Bullock-Montana

Cal Cunningham-North Carolina

Jaime Harrison-South Carolina

We endorse these nine candidates as friends of public education. We are not able to send them money, but we urge friends of public education in their states to donate to their campaigns and vote for them.

The Network for Public Education Action Fund is delighted to endorse Candace Valenzuela, who is running for Congress in District 24 in Texas. She was also endorsed by Emily’s List.

This is Candace’s campaign video, where she thanks her teachers and her school for enabling her to overcome poverty.

The Network for Public Education Action is pleased to endorse Candace Valenzuela for Texas House District 24. Candace is a former school board trustee who knows first hand that our public education system is under attack. She understands that corporate special interests have been undermining public education in favor of alternative models. Candace believes that public education delivers the best results on a consistent basis and true opportunity means giving every child the opportunity to learn and grow regardless of their zip code.

Candace served as a member of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District Board of Trustees At-large in Texas for two years. She expanded STEM academies and job training in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools and her community is already reaping the economic benefits. Candace wants to make those opportunities a reality for all children living in TX-24. She will use her experience to stand up to Betsy DeVos’s devastating agenda that strips vital funding from our schools. 

Candace will fight for universal pre-K, because she believes every child deserves a chance to get ahead. Finally, she believes that we need to pay teachers higher salaries so that we can keep more of them in our schools for longer. That also means finding a way to remove their student loan debt.

Candace is an outstanding candidate and friend of public education. We urge voters in Texas House District 24 to cast their vote for Candace in the general election on November 3, 2020.

You can post this endorsement using this link: 

Candace Valenzuela for Texas House District 24

No candidate authorized this ad. It is paid for by Network for Public Education Action, New York, New York.

Thanks for all you do,

The only sure way to guarantee that your vote is counted is to stand in line and vote in person.

Put on your face mask, practice social distancing, and wait your turn.

Trump is trying to discredit mail-in ballots and absentee ballots.

He hopes to throw the election into the courts, where he expects to fare better than with the electorate.

Trump and his hand-picked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are doing their best to mess up postal service. If you are in a battleground state, bags of mail from certain districts might get “lost.”

Don’t take that chance!

Block that coup!

Show up. Cast your ballot. Vote to save our democracy.

Every vote counts.

James Hohmann of the Washington Post gathered interesting post-debate happenings.

Joe Biden left Cleveland on a chartered Amtrak train and made a six-city whistlestop trip through areas of Ohio and a Pennsylvania that Trump won in 2016.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to face negative responses and from Republican leaders, silence, due to his inability to denounce white supremacists, and his dog whistle that inspired the violent rightwing “Proud Boys,” which the Anti-Defamation League calls a hate group.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes make it one of the most critical battlegrounds, and Biden predicted that over the next month he will be able to win over more Trump 2016 voters in rural counties like the ones he visited on Wednesday. “Even if we just cut the margin, it makes a gigantic difference,” Biden said at the airport named for Murtha. “A lot of White working-class Democrats thought we forgot them and didn’t pay attention. I want them to know – I mean sincerely – that I’m going to be your president. I hear them. I listen to them. I get it. I get their sense of being left behind…”

Trump promised in 2016 to fight for “the forgotten man,” reviving a term that President Franklin Roosevelt had used during the New Deal. “But once he got into office, he forgot about them,” Biden said everywhere he went on Wednesday.

During his speech in Johnstown, Biden spoke directly to former Democrats who have perhaps grown disillusioned. He said that the debate showed that Trump is “a self-entitled, self-serving president who thinks everything is about him.”

“The truth is he never respected us,” Biden said. “Behind closed doors, it’s been reported he calls his own supporters disgusting. He looks down his nose at working families just trying to do the right thing. And it’s been confirmed by multiple sources that he thinks that those of you who sign up to put their lives on the line for our country — our veterans and service members — are just a bunch of ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ It’s despicable. It’s not how I was raised, and I bet it’s not how any of you were raised either.”
Biden recounted how his mom used to always say to him, “Joey, nobody’s better than you, but everyone is your equal.”

“Donald Trump may think there ought to be a different set of rules for him and his rich buddies: rules that let him get out of his taxes, get out of his responsibilities and get out of the consequences for every one of his mistakes,” Biden said. “I don’t. I think it’s about time we start rewarding work in this country, not wealth. I think it’s time working families get a break and the super wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. They’re still going to be doing just fine.”

The Democratic nominee framed the race as a choice between Park Avenue and Scranton, Pa., where he grew up. “Look, I’ve dealt with guys like Trump my whole life,” Biden told the crowd. “Guys who look down on you because they’ve got a lot of money. Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who might let you park their car at the country club – but would never let you in. Guys who inherited everything they ever got in life – then squandered it.”

Biden said he will never raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year. “Maybe you didn’t believe me that we could do it without raising taxes on the middle class, but I bet that was before you found out Donald Trump paid just $750 in income tax,” Biden said. “If Donald Trump and his Park Avenue pals start paying their fair share, we’ll have more than enough to finally build an economy that works for everyone…”

Biden accused Trump of caring more about the strength of the Dow Jones Industrial Average than the numbers of jobless claims. “He doesn’t have a plan to help you get back on your feet or deliver relief to the people who most need the help,” Biden said in Johnstown. “He’s too busy planning his next big tax give away to the 100 richest folks in the country.”

During the debate, Trump said everyone tries to pay as little in federal tax as possible “unless they are stupid.” He even tried to blame Biden for creating the tax credits not closing the loopholes in the tax code that allowed him to reduce how much he paid. “I don’t want to pay tax,” Trump said. “Like every other private person, unless they’re stupid, they go through the laws, and that’s what it is.”

Hohmann points out that Trump got his deductions due to claims of massive losses, which undercuts his claim to be a business genius.

Meanwhile, extremists took Trump’s advice to “stand by” as encouragement for election day trouble.

The president’s “stand by” remark has already become a galvanizing movement for the reactionary right. “By Wednesday morning, the hashtag #WhiteSupremacy was trending on Twitter in the United States,” Derek Hawkins, Cleve Wootson Jr. and Craig Timberg report. “Trump’s comments were enshrined in memes, including one depicting Trump in one of the Proud Boys’ signature Fred Perry polo shirts.

Another meme showed Trump’s ‘stand by’ quote alongside an image of bearded men carrying American flags and appearing to prepare for a fight. … One prominent Proud Boys supporter on Parler said Trump appeared to give permission for attacks on protesters, adding that ‘this makes me so happy.’ … For many members, the president’s remark was the validation they craved, quickly turning into a fundraising and recruitment drive while, experts worried, legitimizing the group’s violent tactics.”

“Trump’s debate-stage call for volunteers to stand watch at voting locations has prompted an enthusiastic response from known neo-Nazis and right-wing activists, leading many state election and law enforcement officials to prepare for voter intimidation, arrests and even violence on Election Day,” Amy Gardner, Joshua Partlow, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Josh Dawsey report.

“The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee for months have promised to recruit as many as 50,000 poll watchers to monitor voting locations on Election Day. The campaign’s ‘Army for Trump’ website has contributed to that effort. … But more-extremist supporters appeared to be joining that effort Wednesday, raising the prospect for confrontation and intimidation at polling locations. ‘I got shivers,’ Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, wrote in a post Wednesday. ‘I still have shivers. He is telling the people to stand by. As in: Get ready for war.’ …The Oath Keepers, a militia group that formed more than a decade ago that comprises current and former law enforcement and military members, also has pledged to have ‘volunteer security teams’ at Trump rallies and out on Election Day. …

And Hohmann added this bit of good news:

Former RNC chairman and Montana governor Marc Racicot announced he will vote for Biden. In an interview with Yellowstone Public Radio, Racicot spoke of the need for a president to have patience, decency and openness to contrary opinion, “qualities Racicot suggested are absent in the Trump administration,” the Missoulian reports.

As Donald Trump’s top campaign aides began a discussion in June 2016 about who the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should select as his running mate, the candidate piped up with an idea.
“I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?”
Trump asked the assembled group, according to a new book by his former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates set to be published Oct. 13.


Trump added: “She’s bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!”
In Gates’s telling, Trump’s suggestion of naming to the ticket his then-34-year-old daughter — a fashion and real estate executive who had never held elected office — was no passing fancy.


Instead, he brought up the idea repeatedly over the following weeks, trying to sell his campaign staff on the idea, insisting she would be embraced by the Republican base, Gates writes.


Trump was so taken with the concept of his eldest daughter as his vice president — and so cool to other options, including his eventual selection, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence — that his team polled the idea twice, according to Gates.




It was Ivanka Trump who finally ended the conversation, Gates writes, going to her father to tell him it wasn’t a good idea. Trump eventually came around and selected Pence, after the governor won him over by delivering a “vicious and extended monologue” about Bill and Hillary Clinton at a get-to-know-you breakfast later that summer, according to Gates’s account.
“

This is not true and there was never any such poll,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said Monday.




In an interview last week, Gates said he is not certain Trump would actually have gone through with making his daughter his running mate.
But he said he included the anecdote in his new book, first reported by Bloomberg News, as a prime example of the kind of unconventional thinking he believes made Trump an appealing candidate.


While others might see the episode as a distasteful symbol of Trump’s nepotism, Gates said it shows Trump’s commitment to family, loyalty and ensuring those around him support his agenda and not their own — “the values and assets that Trump cared most about,” he said.


The account in Gates’s book — “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost” — is one of several that he cites in praise of his former boss as he describes working on the campaign and ultimately becoming ensnared in the special counsel investigation that consumed much of Trump’s presidency.

Unlike a number of other memoirs by former Trump staffers, Gates’s book serves not as a tell-all, but rather a defense of the president and how he and others helped elect him.
In an interview, Gates said he believes Trump has been a good president — “the most decisive president we’ve had probably since Eisenhower” — and says he supports his reelection.
After working on the 2016 campaign and helping organize the inauguration, Gates pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal investigators in relation to lobbying work he and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort had done in Ukraine before joining Trump’s team.


CNN reporter Donnie O’Sullivan reports that the Trump campaign is releasing doctored videos that purport to show that Biden is senile or is an extremist. When the campaign is asked why they traffic in manipulated and false ads, they say it’s a joke. However, Trump’s followers are not in on the joke, and they believe what they see.

Somehow, I imagined that there was a federal elections commission to hold campaigns accountable for lies, but Trump must have killed it or filled it with loyalists to him.

At a Trump rally in Bemidji, Minnesota, last Friday, grievances against social media platforms Twitter and Facebook were a common refrain.

Many of the President’s supporters told CNN that they felt the platforms’ fact-checking processes were biased against conservative viewpoints. Others discussed social media posts that contained manipulated media as if they were real.

“Like when Joe Biden fell asleep during a live interview on television,” one supporter recalled, describing a video that went viral only a few weeks prior to the rally.

The video — which appears to show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sleeping as a TV news anchor repeats, “Wake up!” — was shared on Twitter by White House social media director Dan Scavino.

But the video was fake.

It was achieved by splicing together real footage of a 2011 interview between journalist Leyla Santiago, now of CNN, and entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte with footage of Biden looking down, his eyes appearing at least partially closed, to make it appear as if he were snoozing. An audio track of loud snoring was placed on the video to complete the effect.

When the video was fact-checked by news outlets, including CNN, and eventually labeled as “manipulated media” by Twitter, prominent Trump supporters complained that it was an obvious joke and a meme.

Open the link to see the video and other examples of lying by the Trump campaign.

For more examples of Trump ads that were lies about Biden, see here.

Trump needs to lie to defame Biden.
Biden can show actual clips of Trump at his rally to demonstrate his lies about the coronavirus.

Senator Bernie Sanders delivered a rip-roaring speech denouncing Trump’s threat not to relinquish the presidency.

He said this election is not a contest between Trump and Biden. It is between Trump and democracy, and “democracy must win.”