#1984 Democratic Presidential Candidates

[deadpresidents]

Is there anyone who could have given Reagan a bigger challenge than Walter Mondale did in 1984?

If John Glenn had just hired the right people and put together a better campaign strategy (and maybe had a bit more political charisma), he could have absolutely been able to give Ronald Reagan a run for his money in 1984.

Reagan's whole political identity was that he was the most All-Americany All-American that ever stepped foot on the political scene and that he was going to fight Communism and make America that shining city on a hill. Imagine if he had to run against John Fucking Glenn -- a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea who literally fought Communists in real combat. Oh, and then he was one of the Mercury Seven and just so happened to be the first American astronaut to ever orbit the Earth. John Glenn wasn't just an astronaut -- he was the image that people had in their heads when they thought about what an astronaut was. He's still the definition of astronaut to most Americans. He was also buddies with JFK and RFK and when he retired from NASA -- again, he was a fucking ASTRONAUT, in case I didn't make that clear -- instead of moving to Florida and going golfing, he became a U.S. Senator. Not only should John Glenn have been able to out-All-American Ronald Reagan, but he should have been able to make Reagan seem like Leonid Brezhnev. I mean, just picture Reagan trying to get cute in a debate and making some sort of joke and then Glenn saying, "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly. My ears are still adjusting from when I was a fighter pilot who shot down three actual MiG-15s and then became a FUCKING ASTRONAUT WHO ORBITED THE EARTH."

But when Glenn did seek the Democratic nomination in 1984, he ran a really crappy campaign and somehow lost to Walter Mondale (who went on to lose 49 out of 50 states to Reagan in the general election). Glenn's campaign is one of the all-time missed opportunities. He was running for President just a few months after The Right Stuff came out and reminded Americans that Glenn was not only an astronaut but THE astronaut! His campaign should have held screenings of that movie in every early primary state and just had Glenn serving apple pie and Coca-Cola outside every theater while wearing his space suit and sitting in a fighter jet and reminding folks that Reagan's "combat" duties during World War II was making training films in Burbank.

I don't know who ran John Glenn's disastrous 1984 Presidential campaign, but it was political malpractice. Just answering this question makes me mad because it's so obvious that he was the PERFECT candidate to run against Ronald Reagan. HE WAS JOHN GLENN. He was such a legendary astronaut that, years later, when NASA wanted to send an old guy to space to study the effects of space flight on aging people, they sent him! He was almost 80 years old and passed the same physicals as young astronauts! How the hell did Glenn lose the Democratic nomination to Mondale? John Glenn lost to a guy named "Fritz"! I can't believe that John Glenn couldn't even beat the guy who got beat in 49 out of 50 states in 1984.

I can't believe how frustrated I am from answering this question and slowly realizing the sheer political malpractice of John Glenn's failed 1984 Presidential campaign.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

[mariacallous]

Now that the Democratic National Convention is over, the next major battleground in the 2024 election is the media.

The Harris-Walz campaign needs to be ready.

Although former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has struggled to respond to the new Democratic ticket, Republicans will likely get in line with a unified media strategy. The message they will seek to promote is that Democrats are running the most radical, leftist candidates in U.S. history.

In recent elections, Democrats have had difficulty with the new turbocharged, fast-moving and unfiltered media landscape. In 2016, Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, harping on the investigation into her emails. In 2020, President Joe Biden defeated Trump, but under unusual pandemic circumstances that put much of the conventional campaign processes on hold. As campaign conditions returned to normal this year, things did not go as well for Biden. One televised debate, noted New York Times columnist James Poniewozik, brought his candidacy to an end: “There was simply a horrendous TV outing—less than two hours that changed history.” But even before Biden stepped onstage, his poll numbers were lagging after a conservative media onslaught about his age and alleged corruption.

To sustain the energy that boosted Vice President Kamala Harris through the convention in Chicago, Harris’s campaign needs to devise an effective media strategy tailored to the current era. To do so, her team should look back to 1992, when then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s savvy war room figured out how Democrats could thrive in another new age—of cable television, investigative journalism, and state-of-the-art political advertising. While the news media has evolved significantly in terms of form and content since Clinton won the presidency, Harris will need to achieve a mastery similar to that of Clinton’s historic campaign team.

The early 1990s seem like simpler times. In January 1994, NBC Today Show’s Bryant Gumbel asked his cohost Katie Couric: “What is the internet anyway?” Email was a novelty. Surfing was done in the ocean. Cable news played by the traditional rules of objective reporting. Smartphones were in development, and cell phones remained a luxury. Social media meant going to the movies with friends.

Yet the 1992 presidential campaign—which pitted Clinton, then-incumbent President George H.W. Bush, and independent candidate Ross Perot against each other in a race for the White House—took place across a media landscape that had changed dramatically since the 1960s. Cable had created a 24-hour news cycle where stories came out quickly. These stations, as well as the increasingly popular one-hour network news zine-style shows (Nightline, for example), depended on a healthy audience share for their livelihood, in contrast to the public service ethos of the half-hour nightly news programs from earlier times. This shift meant that sensationalism became a hot commodity. Investigative journalism born from Watergate had given rise to a generation of reporters who were constantly on the hunt for wrongdoing. Moreover, conservative talk radio had exploded after the Federal Communications Commission abandoned the fairness doctrine in 1987. Syndicated hosts such as Rush Limbaugh commanded between millions of listeners on over 600 stations. Daily tabloid newspapers and comedic shows, too, were having a greater impact on politics.

And in advertising, the “Morning in America” campaign that helped then-incumbent President Ronald Reagan win reelection in 1984 set a new standard for sophisticated production techniques. Television spots became like short films, capable of seducing and devastating all at once.

Starting with the 1980 election, and as a party felt to be on the outs from the mainstream culture, the GOP saw an opportunity to shape the national conversation through an aggressive media strategy that defined the way the public perceived its opponents and itself. As they built a new conservative majority, Republicans made huge investments which very often paid off.

In 1980 and 1984, Reagan’s campaign team managed its message to transform the one-time conservative extremist into the nation’s savior. Then, in 1988, Bush pulled together one of the most brutal campaigns of modern history under the direction of South Carolina campaign consultant Lee Atwater. Atwater tore down all the guardrails as to what was permissible, institutionalizing an anything-goes philosophy. Playing on themes of patriotism, religious nationalism, and a racial backlash, Bush and Atwater redefined the promising Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis—an intelligent technocratic reformer—into a heartless left-wing radical who looked terrible in a tank.

In 1992, from its perch in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton’s inner circle was determined not to repeat these experiences. It had been hardened during the primaries when its candidate barely survived a sex scandal involving Arkansas state employee Gennifer Flowers. James “the Ragin’ Cajun” Carville had guided Clinton through the crisis and emerged as the central figure behind the “comeback kid.” In a scene captured in the 1993 documentary The War Room, which provides the best look into this critical campaign, Carville warned his staff that Democrats needed to step up or conservatives such as Fox News chairman Roger Ailes would destroy them. With Carville leading the way, Clinton’s war room also included George Stephanopoulos (communications), Paul Begala (chief strategist), Stanley Greenberg (polling), and Mandy Grunwald (advertising).

Several principles guided Carville’s army. Speed was essential. In the cable era, sitting out of stories was no longer an option. Being patient could leave a candidate in the dust. The war room deployed a rapid response style that left no charge unanswered for long and aimed to provide counterarguments before allegations could set in the public mind. When reporters raised an accusation, Clinton’s team rejected the claims with resolve and force. At the same time, whenever Carville and Stephanopoulos got hold of any potentially damaging information about Bush or Perot, they released it to the media immediately rather than trying to think up the best spin.

Tired of the defensive and despondent outlook of Democrats following the political bloodbath in 1988, Clinton’s war room insisted that Democrats needed to play offense. “Why can’t we attack George Bush?” the documentary shows Carville asking his team. The film portrays an effort that fizzled as the team tried to stir a story about Bush having campaign material made overseas rather than in the United States. Nor was it shy about ripping into the weaknesses of Bush’s record.

In doing so, the Clinton war room also elevated clarity into an artform. Carville’s team grasped how long and complicated arguments did not fly in an age of soundbites. They famously drew on a board: “the economy, stupid.” There were two other punchy slogans to guide them: “Change versus more of the same” and “don’t forget health care.” That reminder to staffers was also an example of how to convey a message with simplicity. According to the Los Angeles Times, the crew in Little Rock “share[d] a belief in the primacy of ‘the message’ as the driving force in a presidential campaign, downplaying the importance of such traditional political tools as precinct organizations, registration drives and Election Day turnout efforts.”

The team also worked to sell the message through the realm of popular culture, traditionally dismissed as undignified. Clinton appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show and MTV, in People, and more. The campaign blitzed talk show hosts with information that made Bush look like an out-of-touch well-to-do who only cared about foreign policy while constantly reminding them of Clinton’s humble origins.

In November 1992, Clinton won with 370 Electoral College votes. Four years later, he defeated Sen. Robert Dole and was reelected.

Subsequent Democrats could not replicate his success. In 2000 and 2004, respectively, Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry failed to be as effective on the media stage. Decorated Vietnam veteran Kerry, for instance, was shell-shocked when then-incumbent President George W. Bush’s campaign tagged him as a flip-flopping politician and an independent group invented the concept of “swift-boating” by throwing out false accusations to discredit his military record. Political consultant Chris LaCivita, who is currently co-managing Trump’s campaign, was one of the people who produced the spot for the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” smear campaign.

Barack Obama reset Democratic campaign strategy in 2008. David Axelrod and his band of campaign operatives updated Carville’s model, demonstrating how effective use of social media tools such as Facebook, well-produced television spots with Reagan-like narratives, and not responding to the daily noise from the internet and cable television could provide a recipe for victory. Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were no match.

Of course, the media campaign was a complement, not an alternative, to an aggressive turnout strategy that focused on driving up total votes in all 50 states.

The media challenges in 2024 have expanded again, even as the old ones remain relevant. One of the most grueling challenges facing Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be to survive the onslaught of disinformation, deepfakes, and openly partisan news that will hit them from all sides in the months to come. The recent hack by Iran, which Trump claims targeted his campaign, is a reminder that foreign interference will also be a problem.

Harris also needs to compete successfully in what New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has called the “attention field.” News moves at a fast speed and those who consume political news tend to move on very quickly. Attention spans are not easy to maintain. An effective campaign has to figure out how to keep the media focused on its candidate and message for substantial periods of time.

Between now and Election Day, Harris will be facing an opponent who has proven to be effective at working the media. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated an instinctive feel for the rhythm and dynamics of the news cycle. As president, he capitalized on the interconnected relationship between social media, cable news, online newspapers, and podcasts to dominate the national conversation and harden perceptions about opponents. He handled televised debates like a reality show, using body movements, facial expressions, controversial comments, and vicious insults. Most recently, he capitalized on an attempted assassination, standing up with blood dripping down his ear, surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents, defiantly pumping his fist in the air and yelling: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” It was as if he could see how the event looked on a television screen.

Thus far, Harris’s team has been extremely effective on this playing field. It has staged the rollout methodically to generate good feeling, excitement, and constant media attention. Harris’s memes have caught fire on social media. Harris appears to have selected Walz as her running mate in part because of how adroit he has proven to be in this playing field despite being 60 years old. By uttering one word, “weird,” Walz remade the messaging of his entire party. When Republicans lobbed their initial attacks against Walz’s military record, the social media army hit back hard, although some commentators believe it needs to hit back harder.

The fight is only beginning. Democrats should not fool themselves into thinking Trump will simply lay down his gloves and walk away. When backed into a corner, Trump traditionally becomes more brutal.

But as Clinton’s war room demonstrated in the 1992 election, a savvy Democratic campaign updated to suit the modern media environment can take down the fiercest opposition and pave a road that leads to the White House.

[usafphantom2]

January 1984: “Do They Know It’s Christmas” made everyone feel bad, “Where’s the Beef?” made everyone laugh, Britian gave Hong Kong back, and Geraldine Ferraro was selected as the vice-presidential candidate on the Democratic Ticket.

Meanwhile at Loring, winter is in full bloom and the snow blowers are doing their thing in front of a KC-135A. After the snow blowers, the ice polishing machines would follow and make it nice and smooth for us. We loved those guys.

(TSGT Jim Katzaman)

@tcamp202 via X

[planetofsnarfs]

Allan Lichtman, who has a near-perfect record of predicting presidential elections over the past 40 years, announced his pick this week for November’s showdown between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris.

The American University history professor told The New York Times he analyzes 13 “keys,” including midterm election gains, social unrest, charisma and scandal. The party and candidate to come out on top in seven or more of them is the winner. Lichtman says his election prediction system has correctly called almost every presidential election since 1984 — the exception being the results in 2000.

[azspot]

The irony wasn’t lost on me: Here we were in the Orwellian year of 1984, and one leading Democratic candidate wanted to rush into the new economy even at the cost of abandoning most workers trapped in the old one, while the other leading Democrat wanted to preserve the old economy even at the cost of slowing America’s move into the new one.

Biden's strong State of the Union — and my utter failure advising Democratic presidential candidates

[misfitwashere]

... keep the Democratic coalition together. If it’s the latter Biden should endorse her right away along with every other establishment Democrat and they should all campaign to the convention as if she is the presumptive nominee. (She was presumptively on the ticket that just won the primaries after all and the one that won the election in 2020.) That’s just me. Either stick it out or go with Harris right now as I’ve explained in earlier posts and will explain further in my column tomorrow morning.

Anyway, here’s a different view:

 Allan Lichtman, the historian who has correctly forecast the results of nine out of the 10 most recent presidential elections argued on Saturday that replacing President Joe Biden could cost Democrats the 2024 election.   Lichtman, a professor at American University, rejected the growing chorus of political pundits and Democratic activists who have called on Biden, 81, to bow out of the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump. The pivotal moment brought fresh questions about Biden’s age and ability to serve a second term. “It’s a huge mistake. They’re not doctors. They don’t know whether Biden is physically capable of carrying out a second term or not,” Lichtman said during an interview with CNN of calls to replace Biden. “This is all foolhardy nonsense.”  Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcome of almost every election over the last half century, except for the race in 2000, using a series of 13 historical factors or “keys.”   The system includes four factors based on politics, seven on performance, and two on candidate personality. Lichtman said the incumbent party would need to lose six of those actors, or “keys,” to lose the White House.  The keys range from whether a candidate is an incumbent president to the state of the economy and the presence of third-party hopefuls. Debate performance, however, is not one of the factors that determines the outcome of an election, he argued. Lichtman pointed to historical examples, including the 1984 election in which former President Ronald Reagan swept 49 states despite poor debate performances and concerns over his age.  When pressed about whether the questions surrounding Biden’s age and mental acuity are “fundamentally different” than his metrics as president, Lichtman doubled down.   “Debate performances can be overcome,” he said. “At the first sign of adversity the spineless Democrats want to throw under the bus, their own incumbent president. My goodness.” 

It may be that history is not a very good guide to this election. I suspect we are in a new political era that runs by a lot of different rules. And the media is out for blood saying they are personally hurt and angry that the White House didn’t share with them the alleged fact that Biden is more or less a vegetable. That’s yet another very difficult barrier to victory since they seem to care more about that than they care about the fact that Donald Trump wants to put them in camps if they don’t do exactly what he wants.

But Lichtman’s been right before and maybe he’s right now. He says that Biden still checks enough boxes for re-election. I thought you should know.

[liesmyteachertoldme]

Electing the Next Dictator: Ugly Truths You Won’t Hear from Trump or Biden

In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates.

1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.” Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control.

2. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.

3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.

4. Presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.

5. The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on foreign aid programs it can’t afford, all the while the national debt continues to grow, our domestic infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and our borders continue to be breached. What is going on? It’s obvious that a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy is running the country.

6. Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state. 1984 has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government. This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC. The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins. They have become one and the same entity.

7. When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can easily render you an “enemy of the state.” The government’s list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing by the day. What we are dealing with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it is conspiring to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority.

8. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it. Americans only think they’re choosing the next president. In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another manufactured illusion conjured up in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.

9. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.

10. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance. This draconian exercise in how to divide, conquer and subdue a nation is succeeding. This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.

11. The government long ago sold us out to the highest bidder. The highest bidder, by the way, has always been the Deep State. America’s shadow government—which is comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes right now and operates beyond the reach of the Constitution with no real accountability to the citizenry—is the real reason why “we the people” have no control over our government.

12. Every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.

13. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled.

14. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead. Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it will all be recorded, stored and used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

15. Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes. Likewise, private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family.

16. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security complex that continues to undermine our freedoms while failing to making us any safer. Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

17. From the moment they are born to the time they legally come of age, young people are now wards of the state. Parents no longer have the final say over what their kids are taught, how they are disciplined, or what kinds of medical care they need.

18. All you need to do in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

19. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.

20. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation. Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

Global Research, June 26, 2024

[alphaman99]

Jan Farris posted:

The Democratic Party has morphed into the Communist Party/Socialist Party. When I was young, the Communist Party, and/or the Socialist Party. usually had a candidate for President every four years. The last time that happened was 1984. Beginning in 1988, the Communist Party has supported every single person running for President representing the Democratic Party. Why do you think that is?

Notice their rhetoric of making "the world a better place", as opposed to making the United States of America a stronger, more secure land of the free. If you take the time to compare the 1960 Communist Party Platform to the Democratic Platform of today, you will find an amazing degree of similarity. They have invented the terms "Globalism" and "Populism", which are simply codes for Communism and Patriotism. They use emotional appeals of "income inequality", as their cover to justify the Communist's/Socialist’s desire to redistribute wealth. They use the subject of immigration in such a way as to ignore the nearly one million good and legal immigrants that we gladly accept every year. Their elected leaders have blatantly provided cover for the bad illegal immigrants that were allowed to flow across our border, and they have provided illegal sanctuary cities that exist solely to protect criminals who have hurt or murdered American citizens.

Their fiscal policies have doubled the national debt under potus number 44. The first 43 presidents accumulated 10 trillion dollars of debt. Obama single-handedly doubled that in ONE SINGLE Presidency, to 20 trillion dollars! Every single person working today now owes 160,000 dollars as their portion of the national debt. What this means is that we have indebted our children and grandchildren for our federal government's out-of-control spending. This is immoral and unconstitutional by anyone’s standards. If you take the time to discern their false narrative and their appeal to emotion at the expense of facts, you should be able to understand their true motives behind their actions. It has nothing to do with “kindness”, and everything to do with obtaining and controlling power.

The simple truth is that if you vote on the Democratic Party side of the ballot, you are an enemy of the principles upon which our great Country was founded.

---Bob Cushman, Feb 24, 2017, and Norman Matoon Thomas, Nov 20, 1884 – Dec 19, 1968,

six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. From his 1944 speech: “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But, under the name of "Liberalism", they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day, America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He went on to say: “I no longer need to run as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.”

---from Donald Coonis

[deadpresidents]

Has any state's electoral votes been won by the same party in every single presidential election since the beginning?

No state has, but following the ratification of the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, the District of Columbia has been awarding Electoral votes in Presidential elections since 1964, and the Democratic candidate has won DC's votes in every election.

Alaska and Hawaii have been awarding Electoral votes in Presidential elections since 1960. Alaska has gone to Republicans every year except 1964 when Lyndon B. Johnson won the state. Hawaii has been won by Democrats every year, except for 1972 (Richard Nixon) and 1984 (Ronald Reagan). Nixon and Reagan each won 49 of the 50 states (but lost the District of Columbia) in those elections.

[xtruss]

Historian Who Predicted 9 Of The Last 10 Elections Says 2024 Pick Set Off 'Avalanche'

— Marina Pitofsky | USA TODAY | September 22, 2023

Historian and American University Professor Allan Lichtman answers questions during an interview with AFP in Bethesda, Md. on Sept. 7, 2024. Lichtman created a model using 13 true/false criteria to predict whether the presidential candidate of the incumbent party will win or lose the next election. According to his model, democratic candidate Kamala Harris will win the US elections in 2024. Lichtman has correctly called all but one election since 1984. Pedro Ugarte, AFP Via Getty Images

Americans spent the summer eagerly awaiting two pivotal political statements.

The first was Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, who ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign. Swift formally backed the vice president moments after her debate with Donald Trump, calling her a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”

The second statement? It wasn’t from another pop star. Instead, some election-watchers waited on pins and needles for a prediction from Allan Lichtman, a 77-year-old distinguished professor of history at American University who lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

That’s because Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcome of almost every election for decades, except for the race in 2000. He uses a set of 13 “keys” to make his picks, which range from economic indicators to candidates’ charisma.

Here’s how his model works: If six or more of the keys cut against the party in the White House, they're predicted to lose. Otherwise, Lichtman forecasts the party in power will win again.

“This Has Been An Avalanche.”

Lichtman earlier this month predicted Harris would defeat Trump, sending shockwaves among political observers and picking up wall-to-wall news coverage. He told USA TODAY he's received a larger response about his 2024 prediction than ever before.

“Maybe because of how high stakes this election is, and how extraordinary this election is: The sitting president stepping down right before the convention, the challenging candidate convicted of 34 felonies,” Lichtman said.

Why Do Americans Love Political Predictions?

Lichtman’s work isn’t your average academic research, and the professor’s publications have drawn attention for years. But is there such a thing as a buttoned-up history professor who becomes an A-list election celebrity every four years?

If you search Lichtman’s name online, video after video of the professor breaking down his “keys” and weighing in on the latest election in interviews will flood your feed. You can watch him predict that Trump and his MAGA movement would defeat Hillary Clinton. You can read about his forecast that America would elect its first Black president in 2008.

When asked about the response his predictions receive, Lichtman smiles and pauses before simply saying he and his family have been “very bemused.”

“I've been amazed, in a sense, why they're so interested,” Lichtman said. “They'll find out soon enough who won or lost, why do they need to know in advance?”

But why are American politicos so drawn to all election-year predictions – not just Lichtman’s? The professor said he believes “it has to do with instant gratification.”

“We live in a society of instant gratification. That's part of it,” he said. “The other part of it is, we live in a society of predictions. It's not just politics. Look at sports. Sports talk radio is constantly giving you predictions about what's going to happen in upcoming games. Are coaches going to be fired? Who's going to be traded and who isn't?

“It's entertainment as well. You know, who's going to win the Oscar? When is this couple going to divorce? You know who's going to hook up with whom?” he asked. "It's everywhere."

After all, Lichtman says the "scandal" key is his favorite of the 13 keys, calling it a much juicer step than weighing economic data or wins and losses in midterm elections.

Still, the professor said a sea of interviews during election years isn't his favorite part about his work. Neither is keynoting conferences or other academic acclaim.

“The best part of becoming known is when every day people come up to me to say that they admire what I do: security guards at AU, Uber drivers, waiters and waitresses,” Lichtman said.

Yes, He Knows About The Critics

Lichtman is no stranger to criticism. The responses to his picks aren't just questions from media or conversations with D.C.-area voters. This year alone, he said he’s received messages accusing him of being a “Democratic tool” or being paid by Harris.

But he’s faced it for years.

Lichtman's first prediction was in 1982, when he said Ronald Reagan would win reelection. He developed the model with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a Russian seismologist who worked at understanding not elections, but earthquakes.

The professor explains that the first pushback he received was from fellow forecasters.

“I had committed the cardinal sin of subjectivity. Some of my keys were not just cut and dried statistical indicators like economic growth,” he explained. “And I said, ‘No, it's not subjectivity. It's judgment. We're dealing with human beings. Human beings make judgments all the time.’”

But as his work picked up steam, criticism also came from political operatives, journalists, pollsters and other analysts outside academic communities. These groups have long launched similar critiques, accusing his keys of being based on the opinions of the person deploying the model instead of static markers.

Lichtman’s response? He’d argue that his work does outline specific guidelines for each key. For example, a strong short-term economy doesn’t simply refer to how the person applying the method thinks Americans feel about the economy. Instead, the factor asks whether the economy is in recession during an election campaign.

The professor still regularly responds to negative feedback online. But he says he tries to remember that, over the years, people have leveled accusations as personal as questioning whether his hair is real. “As if my hair had anything to do with my predictions,” he said as he pulled on his brown locks to prove their legitimacy.

“But I have to tell you," Lichtman noted. “Being attacked is not the worst thing that can happen to you. You know what the worst thing is? Being ignored. And I have not been ignored now for a good 20 years.”

Lichtman Calls It For Harris

Virtually every major national poll has found the race within its margin of error and too close to call definitively.

But Lichtman earlier this month said his keys point to a historic victory for Harris this fall. That’s because she didn’t face a significant primary contest before becoming the Democratic nominee, there is no major third-party candidate after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his presidential bid and Lichtman’s definition for his model’s two economic keys fall in her favor.

He also said Democrats haven’t faced “sustained social unrest.” Lichtman argued the pro-Palestinian protests over Gaza that have rocked parts of the country don’t meet his bar for the key, along with other factors.

In 2000, Lichtman said eight of the 13 keys could be good news for Democrats, though Al Gore ultimately lost the race to George W. Bush after a protracted fight that ended up at the Supreme Court.

Lichtman did raise some eyebrows in June after he said Democrats shouldn’t drop Biden, even after the president's disastrous debate performance, which sparked an uproar and lead to the end of his campaign.

But the professor explained that he thought Democrats were risking losing two keys as questions about Biden's reelection campaign grew: The power of incumbency and the role that primary contests can play. With Biden dropping out, Democrats sacrificed the immediate name recognition and other advantages that have long come with running for reelection.

But Harris didn't face the typical primary process for the Democratic nomination and didn't have to battle other politicians, so the left managed to salvage that component of Lichtman's model.

And no, in case you were wondering, the recent Harris-Trump debate and the second assassination attempt targeting the former president don’t change anything.

“None of these ephemeral events, not the debate, not the purported attempted assassination, not JD Vance saying he made up a story about immigrants eating cats and dogs,” Lichtman said. “None of that changes the fundamentals of the election. So none of it changes my prediction.”

Political Predictions ... And A Senior Olympics?

Elections aren’t the only races Lichtman knows about.

He’s been a runner for 60 years, beginning when he was 16 and extending to today. He recently notched his own victories at the Maryland Senior Olympics, picking up bronze and gold medals and qualifying for next year’s national competition.

His wife, Karyn Strickler, is a triathlete, and the couple has long enjoyed playing basketball together. Lichtman explained that when the two used to play what was supposed to be a friendly game, their friends would remark “when Allan and Karyn play one-on-one, there's blood on the floor.”

Still, theirs is a family deeply interested in politics. Strickler is the founder and president of Vote Climate U.S. PAC, which "works to elect candidates to eliminate all human-made, greenhouse gas emissions by 2050," according to its website. Lichtman hosts a regular live show on YouTube talking about politics with his son, Sam.

Lichtman gave USA TODAY one more reason he – and Americans from coast to coast – might be so interested in political predictions.

“It's fun. It's interesting. I've been doing this for 40 years. I'm 77. I still get butterflies in my stomach every four years because I can be proved wrong,” he said. “Of course, I could be wrong. Anyone could be wrong.”

— Contributing: Karissa Waddick, Elizabeth Beyer

[mariacallous]

At its convention in Milwaukee, the Republican Party officially nominated Donald Trump as their presidential candidate. Democrats call Trump an existential threat to American democracy. If he returns to the White House, the former president would likely be able to have the criminal cases against himself dropped and significantly expand executive power. Developed by the Heritage Foundation and members of Trump's team, the Project 2025 program envisions mass deportation of illegal immigrants, a further assault on reproductive rights, a rollback of financial aid and health insurance programs for vulnerable populations, and the implementation of measures to place the Department of Justice under presidential control, which would allow Trump and his allies to bring cases against political opponents. The potential assault on human rights in the U.S. can be countered by Congress, local governments, and courts. However, matters are complicated by the Supreme Court — the ultimate arbiter in the American legal system — which may well end up siding with Trump on several contentious issues.

[sa7abnews]

Fox News Power Rankings: Voters’ appetite for ticket-splitting will decide the Senate

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/13/fox-news-power-rankings-voters-appetite-for-ticket-splitting-will-decide-the-senate/

Fox News Power Rankings: Voters’ appetite for ticket-splitting will decide the Senate

Republicans have a favorable map, but Democratic candidates are on top in several battleground states. It is anyone’s game in the first Fox News Power Rankings for the Senate this cycle.Ticket splitting will make the differenceIf you know one fact about the 1984 presidential election, it’s that Ronald Reagan won in a landslide. With wins in 49 states and a total of 525 electoral college votes, no candidate has ever pulled off a larger victory.You might not remember that in the same election, Republicans lost two Senate seats, leaving them with a total of just 53 in the upper chamber.Outcomes like these used to be normal. Voters have opted for different party winners in more than a hundred races with a presidential and senate election on the same ballot in the postwar era, with the practice reaching its peak in the 1970s and 1980s.Today, voters are much more loyal to their party. In the last presidential cycle, the electorate only chose different party winners in one out of the 35 states with presidential and senate races (Maine, where Susan Collins held on for a fifth term).Calculated another way, Democratic and Republican senate candidate vote-shares each differed from the top of the ticket by an average of 2.4 points.FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS: WITH VP PICKS, HARRIS AND TRUMP MISS OPPORTUNITIES TO BROADEN THEIR APPEALThe outcome of the presidential race will therefore heavily influence the result of most of the 34 senate seats up for election this year. In fact, the Power Rankings have the same party winning the presidential and senate races in every state where one party has an edge in both forecasts. However, the exceptions to this rule will determine who takes control of the upper chamber.Republicans are chasing wins in two Trump-leaning states that have held on to moderate Democratic incumbents.Nearby, a handful of Democratic candidates have been outperforming their presidential counterpart, even after the party’s last-minute candidate switch.The performance of the top of the ticket will be important in those races, but candidate quality, efficient campaigning and a message targeted to local voters will make all the difference.The Reagan era can feel long forgotten in America. This year, we find out if ticket splitting is a distant memory too.A favorable map puts Republicans close to victoryRepublicans have a head start on their road to a Senate majority thanks to a favorable map. The GOP has a clear advantage in all the seats they will defend this year, whereas Democrats must defend eight seats that are hotly contested.Democrats will also kick off the night with a very likely loss in West Virginia. The seat is currently held by Sen. Joe Manchin, who decided not to run for re-election earlier this year. The senator’s enduring relationship with West Virginians helped him eke out a 3-point win in 2018, but with Trump’s nearly 39-point win in the last presidential race, this is deep red territory. Democrats needed Manchin on the ballot to put up a good fight.That victory alone would give Republicans 50 senate seats, or one short of a majority. (If Trump wins the presidential race, the GOP would rule the senate even without a majority because the Vice President breaks ties.)To guarantee control, Republicans are looking for victories in Montana and Ohio.Some of the dynamics in these races are similar to West Virginia. In 2020, Trump won Montana by 16 points and Ohio by 8 points. Two years earlier, Democratic incumbent Sens. Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown won the same states by nearly four and seven points, respectively.Republicans are optimistic that victories in both races are within reach. Tester and Brown have mostly voted in line with the Biden administration’s priorities, and the GOP has fielded capable candidates in both states, including retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in Montana and businessman Bernie Moreno in Ohio.At the same time, the Democrats’ sitting senators have bucked their party on the items that matter most to their voters. Tester is a key proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, for example, and Brown has pushed his party to support more tariffs on Chinese imports.Montana and Ohio are toss-ups.Democratic senate candidates are outperforming their presidential ticket in battleground statesDespite a challenging Senate map, Democrats have been buoyed by strong polling in most of the seats they are defending. That includes Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three famously swingy rust belt states at the heart of the presidential race. Recent Fox News surveys for each of these three races show more than 50% of voters supporting the Democratic candidate.Slotkin, Casey and Baldwin are all experienced politicians. They are running well-funded campaigns and hoping that focusing on local issues like infrastructure, child safety and health care funding will get them over the line.These races are far from settled. Republicans will look to build more name awareness for their candidates as their races heat up, and hope to remind voters that their opponents have been supportive of the Biden administration’s economic and immigration policies.However, these polling leads give the Democrats an advantage today. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin’s senate races are rated Lean D. In the southwest, Republican and former local news anchor Kari Lake is running her second statewide race in Arizona after an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2022. Lake ran very close in that election, but her 17,117 vote loss was nearly double that of former President Trump’s in 2020, and in the 2022 Fox News Voter Analysis, she ran 28 points behind her Democratic opponent with independents.This time, she faces Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-3), an Iraq War veteran, progressive and critic of retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. With the border a top issue, Lake and allies have hit Gallego on his support for sanctuary cities, among other liberal immigration policies.Gallego has an edge on Lake in recent polls and more than triple her cash on hand. A strong Trump showing in Arizona may be enough to give Lake a victory, but this race begins at Lean D.The most competitive swing state race is in Nevada, where Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen is seeking a second term. She is up against Republican and Afghanistan War veteran Sam Brown.Rosen is running the same kind of small target campaign as her fellow incumbents in the rust belt, while Brown is leaning on his military experience and a Trump endorsement.Nevada is one of the closest states on the board in the presidential race, and neither candidate has a consistent polling lead. Rosen ended June with triple Brown’s cash on hand, but that is not enough to give an edge to either party yet. This race is a toss-up.An open seat in Maryland gives Republicans a chance to flip the scriptIn the races discussed in this forecast so far, Republicans are chasing wins in either very competitive or right-leaning presidential states.FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS: IS KAMALA HARRIS UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN?In Maryland, the GOP is looking for an upset in deep blue territory.The Old Line State voted for President Biden over Trump by a whopping 33 points in 2020, and its high proportion of Black voters and college-educated voters gives Democrats an advantage right out of the gate.If anyone can challenge this script, it is former Governor Larry Hogan. Hogan governed as a moderate and a Trump skeptic in his eight years in office. That is the recipe the GOP needs for a shot here, and so far, voters say they like Hogan. He started the race with a 64% favorable rating among Maryland registered voters.The challenge will be convincing Democratic voters who liked Hogan for governor that they should back him in the Senate too. Pro-Roe and anti-Trump positioning will help him with moderates, just as Trump’s surprise endorsement will keep rancor among “MAGA” voters at bay.Democrats still have an edge. Not only is the electoral math in their favor, but candidate Angela Alsobrooks has raised more money and is leaning effectively on her experience as a county executive and prosecutor. Endorsements from Vice President Harris and the Washington Post will be helpful. Maryland starts at Lean D.The first Power Rankings forecast for the House is out tomorrowPower Rankings mania continues tomorrow with the first U.S. House forecast. Check back here and watch America’s Newsroom to see predictions for all 435 districts.On Wednesday, come back again for a first look at the 11 governor’s races up for grabs in 2024. An all-new Power Rankings Issues Tracker caps off the week as Democracy 24 special coverage for the Democratic National Convention begins.

[lboogie1906]

Governor Deval Laurdine Patrick (July 31, 1956) is a politician, civil rights lawyer, author, and businessman who served as the 71st governor of Massachusetts. He was the first African American Governor of Massachusetts and the first Democratic. He served as the US Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. He was a candidate for POTUS in the 2020 presidential election.

Raised on the South Side of Chicago, he earned a scholarship to Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, in the eighth grade. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

As Governor he oversaw the implementation of the state’s 2006 health care reform program which had been enacted under Mitt Romney, increased funding to education and life sciences, won a federal Race to the Top education grant, passed an overhaul of governance of the state transportation function, signing a law to create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, increased the state sales tax from 5% to 6.25%, raised the state’s minimum wage from $8 per hour to $11, and planned the introduction of casinos to the state. Massachusetts joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

He is a managing director at Bain Capital and serves as the chairman of the board for Our Generation Speaks. He holds a Board of Directors position at the telehealth company American Well.

He Diane Patrick (1984) a lawyer specializing in labor and employment law. They have two daughters. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[drunk-on-starlight]

"In addition, some of the Project 2025 theses deviate from the traditional Heritage position but coincide with Trump's own stance, once again corroborating the thesis of his team’s involvement in the drafting of the document. For example, the Heritage Foundation has always recommended cutting social programs like Social Security and Medicare, but Project 2025 does not mention such proposals. Trump, on the other hand, has publicly opposed such cuts"

[mightyflamethrower]

The entire 2019-20 Biden candidacy and subsequent presidency were predicated on a rotten Faustian bargain. A hale Joe Biden would feign his aw-shucks, Joe from Scranton schtick. And an ossified working-class Joe’s camouflage would get the hard left elected—especially thanks to the changes in balloting laws that often saw only 30 percent of the electorate voting on Election Day in key states.

In exchange, the two narcissistic Bidens would bask in the power and attention of the presidency. From the start, Jill and the media would orchestrate deep cover for Joe’s escalating dementia as well as the true intentions of the now-in-power radical Democratic Party with its neo-socialist agenda. The former Obama acolytes would get their long-dreamed-of third presidential term. And this time they would enact a truly radical agenda while their string puppet mumbled to everyone that he was just old, familiar Joe working for the middle class.

The problem, inter alia, with the ruse was that it was based on a complete lie to the American people. Joe Biden was nowhere near cognitively competent. He could not campaign “normally” in 2020. And it would be impossible for his dementia to go undetected even in the ceremonial duties of the presidency for four, perhaps even eight, more years.

And there were plenty of other problems that transcended even Biden’s mental confusion.

First, the new Obama agenda—hyperinflation, open borders, woke crime theories, destroying deterrence abroad, green extremist mandates—was further to the left of the American people than in 2016.

And worse, it was nihilist and destructive. By the August 2021 Kabul withdrawal humiliation, Biden would never again win 50 percent approval from an increasingly exasperated public who felt they had been had by the mannequin Scranton Joe and his false 2020 calls for “unity” and “healing America.”

Second, Joe Biden, senator, vice president, quid-pro-quo sudden multimillionaire, was never a “nice guy.”

His (brief) 1984, 1988, and 2020 presidential runs were characterized by assorted gaffes, plagiarism, and racism (the first “clean” and “articulate” black presidential candidate, “junkie,” “you ain’t’ black,” and the corn-pop sagas).

He always displayed a short-fuse, mean streak (cf. his 1988 angry and falsified defense of his law school and stump speech plagiarism) and bullying (his 2020 slurs of “fat,” “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” etc.).

Biden’s scowls and outbursts grew as he seemed to come alive only when slurring and slandering half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” deplorables. So, in the recent debate, Biden at least admitted that he had written off half the nation that voted for Trump.

Third, if Trump was an exaggerator, Biden was a long-time mythologist, fabricating his bio, family history, and Trump’s record (from the yarn about cannibals eating his uncle to inheriting a completely unvaccinated country and 9 percent hyperinflation in 2021).

Fourth, there was a creepy side to Joe Biden—from stories of swimming nude in front of female Secret Service agents and the Tara Reade days to his 2020 apologies for sexual buffoonery and his fixations with pre-teen young girls, expressed by embarrassing crowd call-outs or blowing and touching “inappropriately” their hair, shoulders, and necks. Most Washington women knew in advance to avoid Joe’s too-long hugs and bizarre air blasts on their hair and ears.

In short, there were plenty of reasons why Joe Biden never got far as a presidential candidate, given he was a blowhard, cruel to people, a fabricator, of questionable ethics, and eerily interested in young girls—a far cry from ol’ Joe from Scranton, who, in a debilitated state, was supposed to offer the moderate veneer to a Jacobin agenda.

And now? Biden’s dementia has become so overt and so impossible to hide that the entire “crooked deal” has blown up. As a result, in the eleventh hour, there are very few pathways to salvation—as there never are when everything is birthed on a lie and its media-assisted cover-up.

Bidengate is far worse than Watergate. The media this time around was not exposing the wrongdoing of a conservative president but instead serving as a force multiplier in deceiving the very American people it was supposed to inform. “Democracy Dies in Deceit” is now the Washington Post’s de facto motto.

Remember, the left is worried only that Biden is so challenged that he cannot win an election. But they are not bothered that he has no business continuing in his dementia as commander-in-chief and putting the country in real danger each day he occupies the oval office—a bitter paradox that is beginning to infuriate the American people.

So, can Joe Biden just press ahead, sleep more, and fulfill his Faustian obligations? Or is he not in a doom loop? The more he rests, sleeps, and avoids the media, the more the public considers him an inadequate, one-quarter president. Yet the more he might welcome more exposure, interviews, press conferences, debates and town halls, the more his ensuing dementia becomes apparent to the public. So, his handlers haggle over the choice between an ensconced virtual president versus an all-too-real, obviously senile one.

Some House liberal presidential historians cite a failing FDR in 1944 who was visibly ill during the campaign and from a variety of serious ailments. They chirp in that Roosevelt nevertheless mocked his critics, got reelected, and entered his fourth term on January 20, 1945. But they forget; the end of the story negates their very point. FDR dropped dead in office, as his critics feared, just 11 weeks later, and as historians seem to pass over.

What if Biden does an FDR, ignores critics and runs—and likewise somehow wins?

Unlike a failing Biden, had FDR not given into intense pressure from the Democratic donor class, the big-city machine bosses, the Southern segregationists, and the liberal print media, and thus had he not removed then-current Vice President Henry Wallace as his running mate, then the wartime commander-in-chief overseeing the Okinawa campaign, the Potsdam Conference, the decision to drop the atomic bomb, and dealing with an ascendant Joseph Stalin and the postwar Soviet Union monster would have been socialist/communist President Henry Wallace.

But unlike FDR, Biden still has no plans to remove Vice President Kamala Harris. Most certainly, then, soon the next president of the United States in 2025-6 will be an unelected and more incompetent successor: President Kamala Harris. And that thought terrifies seasoned Democrat donors, insiders and politicos as much as it did in 1944.

More realistically, Biden is far more cognitively challenged than FDR was in 1944. The chances that he will stay cogent for the next five months and win the election are quickly vanishing. Even the Biden-inspired, now discredited lawfare campaign against Trump has not just failed but boomeranged by increasing Trump’s popularity.

And if a stubborn Biden stays on the ticket and more likely loses, he will destroy what is left of the vestigial Democratic Party of the once triangulating Clintons. He will forever discredit the old-boy hierarchy and final obstacle to the full and overt manifestation of a Democrat, woke European-socialist party of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, and the DEI caucuses.

Note Biden has already taken down with him most of the Washington-New York media, who only now confess they participated in suppressing real evidence of Biden dementia—and this from the same “journalists” who used to insidiously shout “25th Amendment”  during the Donald Trump years.

Biden and the apparat that presses on with the current farce might well lose more than the presidency—by losing both houses of Congress and ensuring Trump an unobstructed legislative trajectory to implement a complete reversal of the Obama-Biden years.

Yet, if Biden should step down voluntarily, pundits have run through the endless ensuing problematics. They are considerable: will his successor be on the ballot in all 50 states? What will the Party’s leftist base do if the identity-politics-selected Harris is pushed aside (and what will it do if she is not and steps up to the presidency?).

And how would a successor to Biden emerge in a free-delegate luche libre at a Chicago carnival convention, with chaos both inside the convention hall and a more violent “Death to America!’ bedlam on the streets outside?

So given all these nihilist alternatives, the two Bidens’ choice for now is to bark at the public. They will insult their own toadish media and deny the obvious. They will put the country’s interest dead last and connive that Joe can scowl, scold, lie, and yell at his critics—with not a care that our enemies abroad will conclude this is a golden Biden moment to do something stupid that may not come again.