#Dan Kanninen

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Smith at Vanity Fair:

On a sunny afternoon the views from Joe Biden’s campaign headquarters in downtown Wilmington, Delaware are so clear that if you squint hard you can almost see the White House, 100 miles to the south. The floor plan is open and the windows run just about floor to ceiling, so all 200 staffers share in the sweeping vista.

With the striking exception of probably the most important person on the premises. That Jen O’Malley Dillon sits at the very center of the office is appropriate, symbolically: She is a hub of the reelection effort’s leadership infrastructure. It also means that O’Malley Dillon, officially the campaign chair, is the only person on the team who occupies a dimly lit cubicle. Four years ago, J.O.D., as most everyone in Bidenworld knows her, became the first woman to manage a winning Democratic US presidential campaign, and the first person of any gender in three decades to knock off an incumbent. O’Malley Dillon, 47, has shunned credit and most interviews since. So her nondescript current workspace—blank walls, a tiny desk strewn with papers, a small bookshelf holding a jumble of binders and framed family photos—fits her no-nonsense approach. O’Malley Dillon is ferociously focused on reelecting Biden. Gazing out the window would be a useless distraction. “You have to keep in perspective what’s at stake because every second I waste is a second that we could lose the thing that matters most to me, which is a future for my kids,” she tells me.

Her relentlessness is a good thing, because her candidate is running uphill. For months polls have shown Trump beating Biden nationally, though the race remains tight; more important, thanks to our genius electoral college system, is Trump’s advantage in six of the seven battleground states that are likely to be decisive. Things look equally rugged for Biden when you go deeper than the horse race: A majority of Americans believe economic conditions were better under Trump—despite Biden delivering record-low unemployment numbers—and inflation remains stubbornly high. In March the share of voters strongly disapproving of Biden’s job performance reached a new peak, according to a New York Times survey. Many voters under 35 are angered by the administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. And voters of every age group think Biden, 81, is too old to bid for a second term.

The leaders of his reelection team aren’t in denial; they understand they’re facing daunting challenges. The coalition that elected Biden in 2020 has splintered. “We believe that Joe Biden has an important story to sell and has been a historic president,” a senior campaign strategist says. “But that doesn’t mean to say that everyone is going to love him perfectly.” Which may not make for the most stirring political rallying cry. But it underlies the campaign’s methodical drive to raise tens of millions of dollars to assemble a sophisticated operation that will press the fight in both conventional and innovative ways. The plan stretches from boosting Latino turnout in Arizona to winning Michigan—despite the state’s much-hyped “uncommitted” Democratic primary voters—to flipping North Carolina to wooing a meaningful number of Nikki Haley-Republican-primary voters to aggressively educating potential Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voters about his beliefs. For months the campaign has quietly built infrastructure in key states—a foundation that is now allowing it to capitalize on Republican gifts, like the Arizona supreme court’s approval of a near-total ban on abortion. “We know exactly the voters we need to turn out,” a senior campaign operative says, “and we’ve got a plan to do it.”

That confidence flows from data research that assigns probabilities to individual voters. It is also based on a deep roster of human political intelligence, like Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy campaign manager, who was a top aide on Raphael Warnock’s winning Georgia senate reelection campaign over Herschel Walker in 2022, and Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the 46-year-old campaign manager who is a granddaughter of pioneering labor leader César Chávez. “We wanted to make sure we had strong campaign experience, but also really strong lived experience for the communities and voters that we want to reach. So it’s not by default that it’s myself and Quentin running this campaign. That was extremely intentional,” Rodríguez says. “And being able to prioritize our base targets, it’s not the way that most presidentials have been run. They don’t usually invest in doing outreach to communities of color early.”

Yet much of the work of piecing together the strategy and the machinery has occurred in Wilmington, outside the national media spotlight, which has contributed to a perception among many Democrats that the Biden campaign is eerily, delusionally calm. “What scares me to death is they think they’ve proven everyone wrong every time,” a senior Democratic insider says. “They have this outward posture of, ‘We came from nowhere in the 2020 primary, we’re the only ones who beat Trump in the general, so trust us.’ But remember, in the fall of 2020, they sent Biden to Ohio and Kamala Harris to Texas where they had no chance, when they could have been in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. So let’s not get on too high of a horse.”

Maybe so—though Biden visited and won those four key states four years ago. And up close, it’s clear no one is resting on their horses, or their laurels. The 2024 campaign’s activities are intense and far-reaching, permeated by a deep sense of urgency. “I can certainly feel the weight of what we’re doing,” says Dan Kanninen, who leads the battleground-state effort. “But to be in it gives a measure of purpose that is different than just allowing your anxieties to take you somewhere else.” Biden’s lieutenants have forceful, detailed, logical pushbacks to every possible criticism of the campaign. There’s only one part of the reelection operation that feels unnerving: so much of the victory calculus hinges on voters, once they’ve heard the relevant facts, behaving rationally. That worry is compounded by the stakes. “If we lose this election,” a national Democratic strategist says, “we might not have another one.”

Rob Flaherty rates a private corner office. One of its walls is decorated with images of Biden’s trademark aviator sunglasses in a repeating pattern of green, blue, black, and orange. The opposite wall is dominated by a banner, its black background contrasting with large white letters reading “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.” Flaherty had better know something. His title, deputy campaign manager, doesn’t even hint at the magnitude of his responsibilities. The 32-year-old oversees two crucial aspects of Biden’s campaign: digital strategy and relational organizing. The first role means not simply figuring out how to target a multi-million-dollar pro-Biden online ad campaign, but trying to fight off a fire hose of right-wing attacks and disinformation. Flaherty did this craftily for Biden during the 2020 campaign, particularly in steering an effort to identify “market moving” issues—separating things that had the potential to actually influence voters, like concerns about Biden’s mental fitness, from mere noise, like the Republican obsession with Hunter Biden. In some respects—most notably Gaza and inflation—there are new substantive challenges this time. One major concern hasn’t changed: Biden’s advanced age. “The way you combat the age issue,” Flaherty says, “is, one, he gets out there and addresses it. What you see him doing in his paid [media] right now. And it’s by fighting on the issues that people care about. If we address the fact that they want to see him go and fight for them, the issue goes away pretty quick.”

Yet the online landscape has changed dramatically in four years, with media consumers fractured into ever-more-personalized content silos, many of them hardened against campaign messaging, a shift that seems to benefit Trump. “Voters who do not want to hear about politics never have to,” Flaherty says. “People who are not hearing about politics, they are not trusting of politicians, they’re not trusting the media. So it becomes incumbent on the campaign to think about, how do we reach those people where they are? You have to diversify the way you do paid media, right? You can't just spend 70% on linear broadcast television and hope you’re going to reach folks.”

One of Flaherty’s priorities is reaching tuned-out potential voters. “The voters who we think are pretty much the difference makers in this election, these voters, you have to persuade them to participate,” he says. “This is going to be a back-loaded election for when people start to pay attention. They are largely a younger, more diverse set of people who voted for us last time, who lean Democrat. They hate Trump. They are really hard to reach. And there’s just more of those this time.” A related task is neutralizing the deluge of Republican disinformation. “At the close of any campaign, I know my candidate is in trouble if key parts of the electorate are awash in more negative than positive information about my candidate,” a top Democratic strategist says. “And right now, particularly younger voters of color on social media, they’re hearing more negative than positive information about Joe Biden. How do they turn that?”

Massive spending is part of the answer. But the campaign believes the cash must be spread on a wider array of formats than ever before and in creative ways. So when Biden visited a North Carolina home in March, Flaherty’s team enlisted the family’s 13-year-old son to post a video on TikTok, generating more than five million views across a range of sites, the kind of reach a conventional rally doesn’t produce. The White House has bolstered the president’s online presence by encouraging the work of independent liberal influencers, including Aaron Rupar and Ron Filipkowski, who have driven news cycles by circulating video clips of Trump’s stumbles and incendiary comments. Biden’s team is also investing heavily in first-person testimonial ads from ordinary Americans. “Having elected officials give speeches or be on Sunday talk shows is important,” says Roger Lau, who was Elizabeth Warren’s campaign manager in 2020 and who now works closely with the Biden effort as deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee. “But finding that nurse in Nevada who can talk about why capping the cost of insulin at 35 bucks a month is important to their families because Filipinos have a much higher rate of type two diabetes than other communities—that kind of video, digital, and social content, it just cuts through in a totally different way.”

Flaherty comes across as ebullient and exhausted, which is understandable given that he’s crafting in-real-life organizing plans at the same time he’s trying to counteract the Laura Loomers of the world online. His digital turf overlaps with his more experimental turf, relational organizing. “You have to get people to share content through their friends and family, trusted messengers,” Flaherty says. “This is important because of what I think is the second trend that is different from ’20. In 2022, half of the content shared on Instagram was in private. So if you’re running a digital strategy that is aimed just at reaching people in their feeds, you’re missing where a lot of conversation on the internet is happening.”

[...] While Biden’s Gaza-fueled problems with younger voters have likely been overstated, the conventional wisdom has been understating the damage the war could cause the president with swing voters—and not because of their allegiances to Israel or Palestine. The conflict itself fueled a sense that the world remains volatile, though it was still happening at a distance, literally and politically. Now campus skirmishes have made the mess domestic, and the president’s brand is all about delivering calm. “Biden has got to be seen as the reasonable guy who gets shit done, where Trump is a madman,” a top Democratic strategist says. “You can’t do that when you’ve got chaos on the southern border or chaos on campuses.”

The Biden administration has put together a compelling record in some big-picture ways, including the revival of the economy, the defense of Ukraine, and advances in the battle against climate change. The campaign’s challenge is to translate the president’s record into gains that voters recognize in their everyday lives. “If we’re able to frame the president’s accomplishments in the face of Republican extremist obstructionism,” Tyler says, “you actually have a fantastic story to tell. I mean, I’ll talk about Black folks, for example, right? Since before the pandemic, Black wealth is up 60%, highest rate of small business growth for Black-owned businesses in a generation, cutting Black child poverty in half through the child tax credit before MAGA Republicans ripped it away, which Joe Biden is going to bring back in a second term to make permanent.”

There are also large vulnerabilities in Biden’s first-term record: the suffocatingly high price of housing and the immigration crisis, to pick two. But presidential elections are weird, unique animals that more often turn on personality than on policy, on what Americans are feeling they need in the White House as much as what might objectively be best for the country. Mood is a powerful force in national elections, and the Biden campaign has identified an intriguing, and ominous, headwind. “We don’t like to talk about the fact that COVID still has an impact,” a senior strategist says. “It’s easy to kind of be nostalgic for a time before COVID, to remember, ‘Oh, well, the economy was better, or I felt like prices were better.’ And you don’t hear Trump every day. People are not viscerally feeling how they felt when he was a leader, because he’s been silent for lots of reasons. So we have a lot of work to do. Now, it just so happens that Trump says such crazy stuff all the time that we have ample opportunity.” Everyone at Biden HQ is well aware of the possible consequences, both for the country and for themselves, of Trump winning and turning the craziness into policy. “The people behind him are very well organized,” a Biden campaign operative says. “It can feel like an abstraction, but actually there are people I know, and myself, who would be targets.”

Vanity Fair has a story on the Biden campaign’s re-election team that is navigating tough headwinds to get Joe Biden re-elected.

[pashterlengkap]

One of the most anti-LGBTQ+ politicians could cost Donald Trump the election

North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ+ Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R)—who is running for governor and considers LGBTQ+ people as “filthy” “demons” who “mentally rape” children—is reportedly turning off so many moderate Republicans that he could risk harming former President Donald Trump’s ability to win the state in November, recent polling shows. Trump endorsed Robinson last March, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.” “Trump is being weighed down by a very unpopular Republican candidate for governor,” Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff, told News Nation on August 17. “So Trump is going to have some difficulty in this state, in North Carolina, that he may not have in others.” Related GOP governor candidate calls to “kill” the left: “Kill them!” He also considers LGBTQ+ people as “filthy” “demons” who “mentally rape” children. Robinson—who was recently accused of regularly patronizing state porn shops—has called King a “inferior pastor” and “communist” who wanted to “subvert” America. Among his many anti-LGBTQ+ statements, he has called homosexuality “an abominable sin,” has compared LGBTQ+ people to cow dung, and Satanic demons, and said trans people should defecate on public street corners outside rather than using bathrooms matching their gender identity. He has also made numerous racist and antisemitic comments. Your LGBTQ+ guide to Election 2024 Stay ahead of the 2024 Election with our newsletter that covers candidates, issues, and perspectives that matter. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Recent polls suggest that voters disapprove of him. One showed Robinson running 14 points behind his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, and most polls show Stein beating Robinson anywhere from 6% to 10% — a significant gap, as the state’s 2020 and 2016 gubernatorial races were decided by less than 5%. A recent Elon University poll found that one in six state Republican voters plan to ticket-split by choosing one party for president but another party for governor — comparatively, only one in 20 Democratic voters plan to do the same. Another recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll showed the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, leading Trump in the state by 1%. While that might sound small, Trump had been leading in the state by 8% in July, before President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Also, Trump won the state by a margin of just 1.34% in 2020, winning its 16 electoral votes in the process. In other words, Harris’ 1% lead could prove key to her winning the Electoral College. Steve Kornaki, NBC News’ out gay national political correspondent, told WRAL, “Democrats say they hope that there’s an issue there with an unpopular Republican gubernatorial candidate sort of making the entire Republican ticket, the Republican brand in the state, less appealing…. Honestly, I think the Republicans are simply hoping that Trump is able to carry the state and, ultimately, that maybe lifts Robinson up a little bit.” David Plouffe, a senior advisor for the Harris campaign, told Axios on August 20 that Robinson’s unpopularity can help her win North Carolina. Plouffe, who served as a campaign manager for then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, helped make him the first and only Democrat to win the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. “Mark Robinson, the gubernatorial candidate, is, you know, even more MAGA than Trump, which is saying something,” Plouffe said. “There’s a bunch of people who right now are voting Democrat for governor who aren’t yet Democrat for president. So we need to run a campaign to them. Huge opportunity.” Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground state director, called Robinson the embodiment of “MAGA extremism” during an August 27 Pod Save America podcast, adding, “We’re going to link those two guys,” meaning Trump and Robinson. Eager to win over Republicans who dislike Trump, the Harris campaign has started a state chapter of “Republicans for… http://dlvr.it/TCrYRZ

[bllsbailey]

Under Pressure, Biden Camp Charts Narrowing Path to Reelection

President Joe Biden's campaign is pursuing a razor-thin path to reelection against his Republican opponent Donald Trump in November, senior Democrat officials say, with four of the seven key battleground states now looking increasingly out of reach.

Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – all claimed by Biden in 2020 – in addition to North Carolina which Democrats had hoped at one point to take back from Trump have grown more challenging, more than a dozen campaign officials and senior Democrats in battleground states told Reuters in interviews.

Trump, 78, had been leading the polls in all four states well before he was grazed by a bullet last weekend, a position that consolidated after Biden's disastrous debate performance on June 27.

Calculations can change before election day. But the campaign officials' latest assessment allows for almost no margin of error. Biden, 81, can only cobble together the 270 Electoral College votes needed to clinch the presidency if he wins the Rust Belt manufacturing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and a congressional district in Nebraska that could also soon be at risk.

"It's looking very tight" in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, a senior campaign official told Reuters. "Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin is the clearest path to 270. That is what we're focusing on."

However, Dan Kanninen, the director for battleground states, said the campaign was adding staff in Arizona and Nevada and that being "highly competitive" in all of the swing states remained a priority.

"I do not see the map narrowing for us," he said in an interview.

Biden was on the second day of a two-day trip to Nevada on Wednesday, when the White House announced he had a mild case of COVID and had canceled a planned speech.

Democrat lawmakers have voiced fears that Biden would lose not only the White House but also the House and Senate to the Republican party.

The campaign had hoped those voices would quiet after the shooting. But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is running for the Senate, warned donors in a private meeting Tuesday the party was likely to suffer major losses if Biden continued to run.

Trump's immediate, televised reaction to the shooting — a raised fist as blood streamed down his face from a grazed ear — contrasted with questions over Biden's mental acuity and whether he has the stamina for four more years in the White House.

Although most polls show Biden lagging Trump in the Rust Belt states the campaign is focused on, the Democratic candidate remains "within the margin of error," the senior official noted.

"This is the strongest path, one we're focused on right now," the official added.

The narrowing map for Biden means a widening one for Trump. Some polls before the shooting showed Trump competitive in Democratic-leaning Virginia, New Hampshire and even Minnesota, which hasn't supported a Republican presidential candidate since 1972.

"When things go south, they go south everywhere," James Carville, a veteran Democrat strategist, said. "This has been the worst summer for a national party since Republicans and Watergate," he added, referring to the Congressional investigation that resulted in Republican President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.

Battleground state polls have favored Trump for months, and particularly since the debate in which Biden stumbled and struggled to complete sentences, while Trump repeated a series of well-worn falsehoods. None have been published since the shooting, but the assassination attempt has increased enthusiasm for Trump among his fans, which could boost Republican turnout.

Biden "would have to draw an inside straight without missing a single potential electoral vote in order to just scrape over the finish line of 270," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, referring to a tough poker hand.

U.S. presidential elections in recent years have been decided by a narrow slice of voters in a handful of states, but the new map for Biden – if successful – would eke out a victory with just 270 electoral college votes to Trump's 268, the narrowest victory since Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won by one electoral college vote in 1876.

Nebraska is one of two states which splits their electoral college votes. (Maine is the other).

Biden won the congressional district which includes Omaha in 2020, but Republicans, who are in control of the state, are expected to hold a special session later this month to make Nebraska a winner-take-all election. That would block Biden from a single, clinching electoral vote – and could create an unprecedented 269-269 tie vote.

'Poll-ercoaster'

While some Democrats see a narrower map, many strategists and state party officials say they remain optimistic about wider wins against Trump.

"They're not any independent Democratic voters who looked at Donald Trump get shot in the ear and say, 'Oh my god, I gotta vote for this guy,'" said Bakari Sellers, a Democratic political analyst. "There's no such thing as a sympathy vote in the United States of America."

The campaign is spending $50 million on paid media in battleground states in July, and by the end of the summer those states will have more than 2,000 staffers, officials said.

Democrats had hoped earlier this year that the party could flip North Carolina, which has backed only one Democrat for president since 1976. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have visited multiple times, the campaign spent millions on hiring and advertising, and Anderson Clayton, the 26-year-old Democratic party chair there, has spent the year knocking on doors.

The campaign is not counting the state out, Clayton said.

"I don't ride a 'poll-ercoaster,' and I think that, you know, the investments on the ground would say that North Carolina is being prioritized just as much as we need it to be this year in order to, I think, put it on the map."

She added: "I feel like sometimes people that are so engaged in the bubble oftentimes forget to touch grass every once in a while."

[janepwilliams87]

Mitch McConnell ‘Pretends’ To Support Hemp Farmers, Democratic Challenger Claims In Ad

The Democratic candidate challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released a new ad accusing the incumbent of being insincere about his support for the hemp industry. The TV spot also calls out the top GOP lawmaker for promoting a hemp business that filed for bankruptcy amid controversial owed payments.

Amy McGrath, a retired Marine who won the Democratic primary for the Kentucky Senate race in June, is attempting to raise doubts about McConnell’s reputation as an ally of the hemp market. The campaign ad states that the senator “pretends to be a friend of hemp farmers.”

It also criticizes past comments he’s made about GenCanna, a Kentucky-based hemp company that at one point owed millions to creditors and that subsequently filed for bankruptcy. McConnell’s praise of the business came about one year before news of the financial problems surfaced.

Finally, the ad pulls a clip from a recent press conference with Senate Republican leadership, where McConnell said he wasn’t up-to-date on complications hemp farmers were facing in the absence of Food and Drug Administration regulations for CBD products.

“Mitch McConnell: Letting hemp dry up,” the ad concludes.

“The hemp industry’s struggles in Kentucky are directly traceable to McConnell’s failure and Washington’s dysfunction,” Dan Kanninen, McGrath’s campaign manager, said in a press release about the spot. “This ad emphasizes the ‘bureaucratic paralysis’ that Mitch took no action to address. His inaction was a significant cause of two major Kentucky hemp companies’ bankruptcies.”

Of course, missing from the ad is mention of McConnell’s role in federally legalizing hemp and its derivatives through the 2018 Farm Bill.

Despite his opposition to broader marijuana reform, the senator is an especially vocal advocate for the industry, consistently touting his policy work around the crop—from championing its very legalization in 2018 to pressing federal agencies on the law’s implementation. He’s made the case that hemp represents a viable alternative to tobacco in Kentucky’s agriculture economy.

“I can attest that, without any hyperbole, we wouldn’t have a domestic hemp industry without Senator McConnell: The 2018 Farm Bill’s legalization of the crop is a testament to his unrivaled support for hemp farmers,” Jonathan Miller, general counsel with the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told Marijuana Moment. “Certainly, this year has been a rocky one for the industry due to federal bureaucratic overreach. But I know from extensive personal experience that McConnell and his excellent staff are focused on policy solutions that will ensure long term progress for the industry.”

It’s clear that McConnell wants voters to view him as the hemp candidate. His campaign released B-roll footage of the majority leader frolicking through a field of cannabis, and he’s done events at hemp companies like one from last week where he encouraged Americans to use hemp-made face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A spokesperson for his campaign pointed Marijuana Moment to a Kentucky Farm Bureau forum he participated in on Monday, where he discussed the ongoing challenges the industry is facing. McGrath was invited to debate the senator at the campaign event but declined, the spokesperson said.

At that event, McConnell said he’s “still optimistic that once the rough start [of the hemp industry] is over, it could be an important thing for Kentucky agriculture.” He was also asked about recent Drug Enforcement Administration proposed rules for hemp and CBD that have sparked concern in the industry, but said he wasn’t familiar with the details and needed to consult with staff, The Courier Journal reported.

McConnell touted what he had done for the hemp industry in this forum. I asked him what he thought of the new DEA rule calling possession of hemp concentrate over .3% THC a Schedule 1 felony like heroin. He said he didn’t know anything about that and would have to ask his staff.

— Joe Sonka

(@joesonka) August 31, 2020

In any case, the McGrath campaign’s ad is yet another example of the significance cannabis policy has taken on this election cycle. Another example comes from Massachusetts, where incumbent Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and primary challenger Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA)—both formerly opposed to legalization—have repeatedly emphasized their support for a regulated and equitable marijuana industry and criticized the the other candidate for being slow to evolve on the issue.

McConnell is decidedly not on board with marijuana legalization. McGrath, meanwhile, supports medical cannabis but says more studies should be done before she backs broader reform. Her former primary rival Charles Booker advocated for adult-use legalization and decriminalizing possession of all currently illicit drugs.

The majority leader has criticized Democratic efforts around even more modest reform proposals such as allowing banks to service state-legal marijuana businesses without being penalized by federal financial regulators. He specifically took issue with that measure being included in a coronavirus relief bill approved by the House.

But when it comes to Kentucky in particular, hemp is a big deal. And the bipartisan push to attract farmers who would grow the crop and their would-be customers shows how far the issue has come in the Bluegrass State.

California Must Turn Over Marijuana Documents To DEA, Federal Court Rules

Photo courtesy of YouTube/Amy McGrath campaign.

The post Mitch McConnell ‘Pretends’ To Support Hemp Farmers, Democratic Challenger Claims In Ad appeared first on Marijuana Moment.

from Updates By Jane https://www.marijuanamoment.net/mitch-mcconnell-pretends-to-support-hemp-farmers-democratic-challenger-claims-in-ad/

[opedguy]

Bloomberg Makes His Uphill Push

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Feb. 18, 2020.--Republican-turned-Democrat for the 2020 presidential race, 77-year-old former New York Mayor Michael Bloom makes his pitch that he’s the only Democrat candidate capable of beating 73-year-old President Donald Trump.  Trump calls the billionaire and media mogul “Mini Mike” for his diminutive size, something that works against candidates running for president.  With 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign in a tailspin, Bloomberg claims to be the only one left run competitively against Trump.  Whether that true or not is anyone’s guess.  That’s the same argument that failed for Biden, who insists on the campaign trail, he’s the only one capable of beating Trump.  Biden said “he’d beat Trump like a drum,” the old cliché in presidential politics.  Biden’s poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire breathed new life in Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt ) and Bloomberg’s campaigns.

            While national polling still shows that Biden’s a viable candidate on Super Tuesday, March 3, he’s showing vulnerability in the Feb. 22 Nevada Caucus and the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary.  Whether those races remain viable again for Biden is anyone’s guess.  Before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucus, Biden was considered competitive, though not expected to win either Iowa or New Hampshiire.  When Joe finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, the whole Democrat primary landscape shifted, with momentum going to Sanders and Bloomberg. Bloomberg hasn’t yet been in any caucus or primary yet to test the waters, even though Joe’s no longer expected to do well in Nevada and South Carolina.  Biden’s poor performances in Iowa and New Hampshire gave Bernie and Bloomberg a shot-in-the-arm, even though Bloomberg has yet to appear in any caucus or primary.

            Now that Biden’s on the ropes, Bloomberg sets his sights on Bernie, who’s seized much of the momentum heading into Nevada and South Carolina.  “We are really down to a race where there are three people left who could really be considered viable to be sworn into office next years, and that’s Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump,” said Bloomberg states director Dan Kanninen.  Whether Kannien’s jumping the gun or not is anyone’s guess.  Biden’s still riding on his name-recognition heading into Super Tuesday.  If Joe falls flat in Nevada and South Carolina, Kanninen could be right about Joe’s campaign.  Biden hopes to pull off a Bill Clinton in 1992, when he lost Iowa and New Hampshire before sweeping through Super Tuesday.  Biden’s no Bill Clinton when it comes to charisma and raw campaign talent, especially playing the “Come Back Kid” in the 2020 race.

            With Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) now polling at 12.6% nationally, Bloomberg who’s at 14.6% expects to make a big jump. Bloomberg, who’s a media tycoon worth around $58 billion, spends unlimited cash on ads, propelling him to third place nationally, without participating in one primary or presidential debate.  That all changes for Bloomberg Wednesday night when he tests the water in the ninth presidential debate at Paris Theater in Las Vegas.  Bloomberg wants to focus on Berine but former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg still polls at 10.%.  Buttigieg surprised a lot of people edging Bernie out in Iowa, then losing by a small margin in New Hampshire. “Vice President Biden, although he had a very strong public polling posture through most of the summer and into the fall—that has really collapsed,” Kanninen said, pitting the contest between Sanders and Bloomberg.  Bloomberg finds out the hard way tomorrow, when he’s mobbed by rival candidates.

            Bernie barely has to utter a word against Bloomberg before Biden, Warren and Buttigieg pounce on him to elevate their status before the Nevada primary.  “Since the campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire . . . he’s [Biden] has dropped 9 points, and Mike has now surpassed him,” Kanninen said.  In case Kanninen checked, Joe still leads Mike in national polling 17.6% to 14.8%.  Sen. Amy Klobushar (D-Minn.), hoped to make a strong showing in Nevada, after her 19.8%, third place finish in New Hampshire.  When Bloomberg takes the stage at the Paris Theater Feb. 19, he’s going to have a target on his back.  Sanders, Biden, Warren and Buttigieg have already run nasty campaign ads against Bloomberg, accusing him of racism and practically everything else. Bloomberg’s recent ads feature 58-year-old former President Barack Obama—a symbol for civil rights and racial equality.

            When Bloomberg faces Sanders Wednesday night in Las Vegas, sparks are going to fly over charges-and-counter-charges about racism and oligarchy.  Sander’s campaign co-chairwoman Nina Turner  called Bloomberg and “oligarch” Feb. 4, causing a media hubbub.. Sanders prides himself on his average donation size under $20.  Bloomberg, on the other hand, writes his campaign unlimited funds, spending more in political advertising than any other presidential candidate, including Trump. Whether Bloomberg survives Wednesday-night’s debate is anyone’s guess.  Judging by past debates, there’s a lot at stake for Bloomberg who stayed under the radar up till now.  Going toe-to-toe with other hungry presidential candidates, especially Warren, could knock Bloomberg off the pedestal before Nevada and South Carolina. Bloomber is about to take his lumps in Nevada, something he can’t avoid.

About the Author  

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

Bloomberg’s Big Bet: Can Money Beat Biden’s Momentum?

In his brief three-month campaign for president, Michael Bloomberg poured nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars into building an advertising and data-mining juggernaut unlike anything the political world had ever seen.

But a big part of the strategy hinged on a wildcard named Joe Biden.

Bidens’s resurgence after a dominant victory on Saturday in South Carolina has upset that calculation in the critical do-or-die sprint before “Super Tuesday,” when Democrats in 14 states vote for the candidate to challenge Republican Donald Trump in November’s election.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The billionaire former New York City mayor’s strategy was partly based on expectations that Biden would falter in the first four states. Bloomberg, who skipped the early contests, would then become the moderate alternative to frontrunner Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist.

Although Biden underperformed in Iowa and New Hampshire, he did better in Nevada and bounced back in South Carolina on a wave of African-American support to end Sanders’ winning streak and establish himself as the race’s top-tier moderate Democrat.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s once-ascendant campaign has struggled after he came under fire in debates over past comments criticized as sexist and a policing policy he employed as New York’s mayor seen as racially discriminatory. He has apologized for the policing policy and for telling “bawdy” jokes.

Advisors and people close to the Bloomberg campaign say they are still in the race and rebuff criticism that he’s splitting the moderate vote and making it easier for Sanders to win.

The campaign’s internal polling showed that Bloomberg’s supporters have both Biden and Sanders as their second choices, contrary to the perception that he was mostly peeling off Biden’s support, one campaign official said.

If Bloomberg dropped out, Sanders would be on a stronger path to victory, the official said.

Bloomberg has hovered around 15% in national polls, suggesting he will earn some delegates on Tuesday. If those polls are correct, he will likely earn fewer delegates than Sanders and Biden.

Another moderate, Pete Buttigieg, dropped out on Sunday, driven in part by a desire not to hand the nomination to Sanders, a top adviser said. “Pete was not going to play the role of spoiler.”

Bloomberg, however, has vowed to stay in the race until a candidate wins a majority of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. His campaign has spent heavily on advertising in states that vote on Tuesday, when a third of the available delegates that help select a Democratic nominee are awarded in a single day.

And it’s pinning some of its hopes on Virginia, the fourth-biggest state at stake on Tuesday and a key testing ground for Bloomberg. He made his first campaign visit here last November, and has visited another six times since. Last week, his campaign had hopes he could win or come close.

But even that plan is facing new headwinds.

After Biden’s win in South Carolina, the former vice president picked up endorsements from former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate — underlining how Biden’s comeback is drawing establishment Democrats who might have otherwise backed Bloomberg.

Dan Blue, a prominent Democrat in the North Carolina State Senate who endorsed Bloomberg last week, said Biden’s strong showing in South Carolina reset the race. But he said he still believes that Bloomberg can win by playing the long game and gradually accumulating delegates.

“There’s no question in my mind that this thing is very fluid and not absolute,” he said.

‘HUGE NATURAL EXPERIMENT’

Bloomberg’s heavy advertising spending, however, makes him a uniquely powerful candidate even if he lags in opinion polls.

He has spent more than half a billion dollars on ads ahead of Tuesday, more than four times the combined ad spending of his four remaining main rivals – Sanders, Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Amy Klobuchar, according to data from ad tracker Advertising Analytics.

The biggest chunk was spent in Super Tuesday states, $214 million through Feb. 25, including more than $63 million in California and $50 million in Texas, where one analysis said 80 percent of the ads were Bloomberg’s.

Already, Bloomberg has spent more on television ads than Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in their entire 2016 campaigns.

“It’s truly astonishing,” said Michael Franz at Bowdoin College in Maine, a leading researcher on political advertising. “He is giving us a huge natural experiment.”

Many of his ads feature Trump, mocking the president as a “bully.” Others introduce his life story. When he drew criticism for sexist comments and past treatment of women on the job, one ad countered with endorsements from longtime women employees.

The campaign also has pushed beyond old frontiers with digital spending. More than $106 million have been poured into Google and Facebook ads, according to disclosures by the social media giants.

Without a young network of enthusiasts on social media like the one enjoyed by Sanders, Bloomberg has tried to boost his online presence by paying for one: he has hired influential meme accounts to post messages on Instagram, and paid others $2,500 a month to share pro-Bloomberg messages on texts and social media.

Inside his campaign headquarters in New York, the staff of Hawkfish, a start-up digital analytics company, sift through huge tranches of voter data to help chart his campaign strategy.

Bloomberg decided Hawkfish was necessary because Democrats haven’t kept up with Trump’s ability to target voters and bombard them with messages, said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s states director. “It’s a very potent, very difficult-to-overcome weapon.”

‘HOW MUCH CAN IT BUY HIM?’

His unprecedented spending has likely fueled his rise in public opinion polls from just around 5% when he entered the race on Nov. 24 to about 16% in recent polls.

“The question is, how much can it buy him, and there’s definitely a ceiling,” said Amanda Wintersieck, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

In South Carolina, where he was not on the ballot but had still spent $2.3 million on advertising through Feb. 25, two thirds of the primary voters said they viewed Bloomberg unfavorably, according to Edison Research exit polls. About 77% and 51% of these voters had favorable views of Biden and Sanders, respectively.

The spending has also provided a target for opponents who say Bloomberg is stark proof that the wealthy wield too much influence over U.S. elections.

In conversations with dozens of mostly Democratic voters across seven states last week, Reuters found that Bloomberg’s spending blitz had won him a little enthusiasm, and some respect. “He might be the one,” said Garolyn Greene, 41, as she waited at a bus stop in Houston where Bloomberg held a rally on Thursday.

Others were less forgiving. Bloomberg has apologized for overseeing an increase in the use of a police practice called “stop and frisk” in New York City that disproportionately affected black and other racial minority residents.

On Sunday, as Bloomberg started to speak about racial inequality at a chapel in Selma, Alabama — one of the 14 Super Tuesday states — about 10 people, mostly black, stood up and turned their backs. Biden was seated in a place of honor with the pastor at the same church.

“I think it’s just an insult for him to come here,” said Lisa Brown, who is black and a consultant who traveled to Selma from Los Angeles, referring to Bloomberg.

The incident underlined Bloomberg’s continued struggles to win over black voters — a core constituency for the Democratic Party.

A VIRGINIA BATTLEGROUND

Bloomberg’s supporters say they hope his spending will deliver dividends in battleground states that favor moderates like Virginia, where some polls put him ahead of Biden but at a close second behind Sanders.

Bloomberg made friends in Virginia long before his campaign, spending millions to elect Democrats to state offices and congressional seats, culminating with Democrats taking control of the state legislature last November. Last week, those legislators gave final approval to a sweeping set of gun control laws – a signature cause for Bloomberg.

“I think people are appreciative,” said Lori Haas, Virginia director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and a Bloomberg supporter.

Bloomberg has opened seven field offices in the state, part of a national network of offices and paid staff that has far outpaced his rivals. The campaign had more than 2,000 paid workers and 214 offices in 43 states, not counting the several hundred in his New York headquarters, said Kanninen, the campaign’s states director.

Whatever happens on Tuesday, Bloomberg and his campaign staffers have been stressing that he will keep spending into the fall to defeat Trump, whether he’s the candidate or not.

“Someone said you shouldn’t be spending all that money,” Bloomberg said on Saturday at a get-out-the-vote rally aimed at women in McLean, Virginia. “I said, ‘Yes, well I’m spending it to remove Donald Trump,’ and he said, ‘Well, spend more.’”

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax, Elizabeth Culliford, Tim Reid and Trevor Hunnicutt Editing by Soyoung Kim and Jason Szep)

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Mike Bloomberg sees Bernie Sanders as only threat to capturing nomination

Mike Bloomberg sees Bernie Sanders as only threat to capturing nomination

Mike Bloomberg’s campaign said on Tuesday that it sees Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as the only threat to Bloomberg winning the Democratic nomination and defeating Donald Trump in 2020.

Dan Kanninen, the lead state strategist for Bloomberg’s campaign, led off a briefing with reporters by saying Bloomberg and his team view Sanders as the only other candidate who has a shot at being “sworn into…

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What kind of welcome would Roy Moore receive in Washington? Brad Blakeman and Dan Kanninen debate what comes next if the Republican wins Alabama's Senate seat.

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ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 15: Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff arrives to greet supporters at a campaign office as he runs for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in a special election to replace Tom Price, who is now the secretary of Health and Human Services on April 15, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia. The election on April 18th will fill the congressional seat that has been held by a Republican since the 1970s. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By: PHILLIP STUCKY

Democrats are worried that they could lose the extremely close Georgia special election runoff to replace former Rep. Tom Price.

Party leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi invested time hosting fundraisers and urging others to campaign on behalf of Democratic contender Jon Ossoff, but as Republican contender, Karen Handel narrows the gap between the two candidates, party strategists worry that they will lose in Tuesday’s runoff election.

“Just like any sporting event, however unlikely it is that you’re close heading into the fourth quarter, a loss is bitterly disappointing and there will be some feeling of, “when do we get this done if it’s not this race?’” Democratic strategist Dan Kanninen told Politico. “You’ll definitely see some hand-wringing from Democrats wondering when we’re going to get over that hump.”

So far, Democratic candidates have lost in Kansas, Montana and the April 18 Georgia special election.

“There’s a lot of anticipation that Democrats could do better than Hillary [Clinton] did, but it remains to be seen if Democrats can turn these so-called red districts into something purple,” former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile told Politico.

Even the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hedged on the potential outcome of the Georgia special election, observing that they never really expected to win in the deep red district that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

“From the start, the DCCC understood that winning the Georgia 6th special election would be a monumental task,” Executive Director Dan Sena told party donors in a private expectation-setting email sent out last Tuesday. Simply put, virtually every structural advantage benefits Republicans in a special election in this traditionally conservative district,”

Democrats sank over $23 million into the race, utilizing every avenue in their attempt to turn the seat blue in the runoff election held June 20.

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U.S. Democratic Presidential Hopeful Bloomberg’s Campaign Staff Swells to 800

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg has hired about 800 staff members as part of a plan to compete in the 14 states that hold Super Tuesday primary contests on March 3, his campaign said on Monday.

The billionaire media tycoon and former New York mayor has used his personal fortune to quickly build a national campaign since joining the presidential race in November – many months after Democratic Party front-runners started campaigning.

He trails leading Democrats Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in public opinion polls as they seek to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.

Bloomberg’s campaign hires reflect an unorthodox, risky strategy of focusing on the Democratic nominating contests in March and skipping the important first matchup – the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3 – as well as key primaries in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

He has hired about 500 staff members in more than 30 states, in addition to about 300 at his New York campaign headquarters, a campaign spokeswoman said.

The campaign did not disclose state-by-state staffing tallies, but the organization’s states director, Dan Kanninen, said there were staff “on the ground in every Super Tuesday” contest.

“We will compete everywhere,” said Kanninen. “Our campaign is building the most robust national organization and infrastructure to beat Donald Trump.”

The size of Bloomberg’s campaign staff was first reported by NBC News.

The candidate is also using his estimated $53 billion fortune to fund a massive advertising campaign that has prompted criticism from other candidates, including progressives Warren and Sanders, that Bloomberg is trying to buy the U.S. election.

Bloomberg, who is campaigning as a centrist Democrat, spent more than $76 million on television ads between mid-November and mid-December, more than all other presidential candidates put together, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

His spending includes ad buys in delegate-rich Super Tuesday states like California and Texas, as well as in Florida, Illinois and Arizona, which won’t hold contests until March 17.

Bloomberg has proposed creating a public health-insurance option, banning assault weapons and slashing U.S. carbon emissions – ideas that resemble those of fellow centrists Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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