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When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

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When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

How Republicans Made Common Cause With Southern Democrats On Economic Matters

Why Did the Democratic and Republican Parties Switch Platforms?

Roosevelts reforms also brought tensions in the Democratic coalition to the surface, as the solidly Democratic South wasnt too thrilled with the expansion of unions or federal power generally. As the years went on, Southern Democrats increasingly made common cause with the Republican Party to try to block any further significant expansions of government or worker power.

“In 1947, confirming a new alliance that would recast American politics for the next two generations, Taft men began to work with wealthy southern Democrats who hated the New Deals civil rights legislation and taxes,” Cox Richardson writes. This new alliance was cemented with the Taft-Hartley bill, which permitted states to pass right-to-work laws preventing mandatory union membership among employees and many did.

Taft-Hartley “stopped labor dead in its tracks at a point where unions were large, growing, and confident in their economic and political power,” Rich Yeselson has written. You can see the eventual effects above pro-Democratic unions were effectively blocked from gaining a foothold in the South and interior West, and the absence of their power made those regions more promising for Republicans’ electoral prospects.

And They Are Holding Tightly To Their Party Identities

Americans political behavior and beliefs have grown ever more partisan over the past 40 years. Democrats and Republicans alike have become more likely to support their own partys candidates, to adopt their own partys issue positions, and even to distort their perceptions of objective facts to fit their own partys preferred version of reality. While political scientists have spent two decades documenting these trends, Donald Trumps presidency has broadened and accelerated this process.

Republicans and Democrats attitudes toward politicians and political organizations are getting farther apart

To understand these changes, I compared the results of surveys conducted by the Internet survey firm YouGov in November 2017 and January 2020. The data were matched and weighted to be demographically representative of the adult U.S. population. The 2017 survey included 736 Republicans and 930 Democrats; the 2020 survey included 1,098 Republicans and 1,386 Democrats.

In 2017, Republicans and Democrats differed in their average ratings of President Trump by 5.8 points on a 10-point scale. By this January, the difference had grown significantly, to 6.7 points. The endpoints of the scale were labeled extremely unfavorable feelings and extremely favorable feelings. The share of Democrats who gave Trump a zero increased from 71 percent to 81 percent, while the share of Republicans who gave him a 10 increased from 28 percent to 48 percent.

Red States And Blue States List

Due to the TV coverage during some of the presidential elections in the past, the color Red has become associated with the Republicans and Blue is associated with the Democrats.

The Democratic Party, once dominant in the Southeastern United States, is now strongest in the Northeast , Great Lakes Region, as well as along the Pacific Coast , including Hawaii. The Democrats are also strongest in major cities. Recently, Democratic candidates have been faring better in some southern states, such as Virginia, Arkansas, and Florida, and in the Rocky Mountain states, especially Colorado, Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico.

Since 1980, geographically the Republican base is strongest in the South and West, and weakest in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast. The Republican Partys strongest focus of political influence lies in the Great Plains states, particularly Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, and in the western states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah.

Also Check: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

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The Republican Party Becomes The Party Of Rich Northerners

All this while, economic issues were growing more important to Republican politicians. Even before the Civil War, the North was more industrialized than the South, as you can see from this map of railway lines. After it, this industrialization only intensified.

And during the war, the federal government grew a lot bigger and spent a lot more money and that meant people got rich, and owed their wealth to Republican politicians. The partys economic policies, Cox Richardson writes, “were creating a class of extremely wealthy men.”

Gradually, those wealthy financiers and industrialists took more and more of a leading role in the Republican Party. They disagreed on many issues, but their interests rather than the interests of black Southerners increasingly started to become the partys raison detre.

The Republican Party Was Founded To Oppose The Slave Power

Dinesh D’Souza Debunks the Myth of the “Switch” between Republicans and Democrat Party

For the first half-century after the United States founding, slavery was only one of many issues in the countrys politics, and usually a relatively minor issue at that. The American South based its economy on the enslavement of millions, and the two major parties which by the 1850s were the Democrats and the Whigs were willing to let the Southern states be.

But when the US started admitting more and more Western states to the Union, the country had to decide whether those new states should allow slavery or not. And this was an enormously consequential question, because the more slave states there were, the easier it would be for the slaveholding states to get their way in the Senate and the Electoral College.

Now, the issue here wasnt that Northern politicians were desperate to abolish slavery in the South immediately, apart from a few radical crusaders. The real concern was that Northerners feared the “Slave Power” the South would become a cabal that would utterly dominate US politics, instituting slavery wherever they could and cutting off opportunity for free white laborers, as historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her book To Make Men Free.

Don’t Miss: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Summarizing The Party Systems As A Two

Current events and complexities aside, there has almost always been a two-party system in the United States. The mentality of each party can be expressed as northern;interests and southern interests, although I strongly prefer city interests and rural interests . Sometimes we see both;interests;in the same party, as;with Humphrey and LBJ, and sometimes it is less clear cut, but we can always spot it in any era.

Thus, we can use a simple two party answer as to which factions;held which interests over time, which I hope will be seen as helpful, and not divisive.;Remember the U.S. is a diverse Union;of 50 sovereign states and commonwealths where the need to get a majority divides us into red states and blue states as a matter of custom, not as enemies, but as a United Republic with a democratic spirit.

Northern City Interests: Federalists, Whigs, Third Party Republicans, Fourth Party Progressive era Republicans , Fifth Party Democrats , Modern Democrats.

Southern Rural Interests: Anti-Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Third Party Democrats, Fourth Party Progressive Era Democrats , Fifth Party Republicans , Modern Republicans.

TIP: One way to;summarize all of this is by saying the changes happened under, or as a result of, key figures including Jefferson and Hamilton, Adams and Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, Bryan, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Hoover, LBJ, and Clinton. See a;comparison of the political ideology of each President from Washington to Obama.

How The Republicans Became Socially Conservative

The Fourth;Party Republicans;began;to change when;the Progressive Republican Theodore Teddy Roosevelt broke;from the party in 1912 . Following the break, the Republicans;increasingly embraced social conservatism;and opposed social;progressivism .;From Harding to Hoover, to Nixon, to Bush they increasingly favored classical liberalism regarding individual and states rights over;central;authority. This attracted some socially conservative Democrats like states rights Dixiecrat Strom Thurmon. It resulted in a Southernization of the;Republican party and drove some progressive Republicans from the party over time.

TIP: See History of the United States Republican Party.

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President Truman Integrates The Troops: 1948

Fast forward about sixty shitty years. Black people are still living in segregation under Jim Crow. Nonetheless, African Americans agree to serve in World War II.

At wars end, President Harry Truman, a Democrat, used an Executive Order to integrate the troops.

These racist Southern Democrats got so mad that their chief goblin, Senator Strom Thurmond, decided to run for President against Truman. They called themselves the Dixiecrats.

Of course, he lost. Thurmond remained a Democrat until 1964. He continued to oppose civil rights as a Democrat. He gave the longest filibuster in Senate historyspeaking for 24 hoursagainst the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

Republicans Lose Black Voters

For more than half a century after the Civil War, black voters held strong loyalties to the Republican Party. But those loyalties began to wane with the depression and the New Deal, and by the time race returned to the forefront of national politics in the 1950s, the number of black voters who;identified as Democrats was twice the number who identified as Republicans.

Still, considering that the South had been Democratic for so long, it did briefly seem that it was possible the Republican Party would discover its roots as the party of civil rights for black Americans. It was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower who sent in federal troops to Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Courts decision to desegregate schools, after all.

But instead, it was a Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964. Republicans gave the bill a good share of support in Congress, but the partys presidential nominee that year, Barry Goldwater, argued that it expanded government power too much.

As a result, Republicans went from losing black voters to losing them spectacularly. Ever since, it’s been common for 80 percent or even more of black voters to support Democrats.

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The Kkk Was Founded By Democrats But Not The Party

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group was originally a social club but quickly became a violent white supremacist group.

Its first grand wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest, an ex-Confederate general and prominent slave trader.

Fact check:

Experts agree the KKK attracted many ex-Confederate soldiers and Southerners who opposed Reconstruction, most of whom were Democrats. Forrest even spoke at the 1868 Democratic National Convention.

The KKK is almost a paramilitary organization thats trying to benefit one party. It syncs up with the Democratic Party, which really was a;racist party openly at the time, Grinspan said. But the KKK isnt the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party isnt the KKK.

Although the KKK did serve the Democratic Partys interests, Grinspan stressed that not all Democrats supported the KKK.

The Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism senior fellow Mark Pitcavage told the Associated Press that many KKK members were Democrats because the Whig Party had died off and Southerners disliked Republicans after the Civil War. Despite KKK members’ primary political affiliation, Pitcavage said it is wrong to say the Democratic Party started the KKK.

Fact check:Yes, historians do teach that first Black members of Congress were Republicans

The Party Of Kennedy V The Party Of Nixon In The Civil Rights Era

Two things started happening at the same time:

Racist Democrats were getting antsy

Neither party could afford to ignore civil rights anymore

In 1960 Kennedy defeated Nixon. At the time of his election, the both parties unevenly supported civil rights. But President Kennedy decided to move forward.

After Kennedys assassination in 1963, Johnson continued Kennedys civil rights focus.

As you can imagine, that did not sit particularly well with most Southern Democrats. This is when Strom Thurmond flew the coop for good.

In fact, a greater percentage of Congressional Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats. Support for the Act followed geographic, not party, lines.

Soon after, the Republicans came up with their Southern Strategy a plan to woo white Southern voters to the party for the 1968 election.

The Kennedy and Johnson administrations had advanced civil rights, largely through national legislation and direct executive actions. So, the Southern Strategy was the opposite states rights and no integration.

As in the Civil War, the concepts of states rights and tradition, were codes for maintaining white supremacy.

Starting with Thurmond in 1964, and continuing throughout the Johnson and Nixon administrations, Dixiecrats left the Democrats for the Republicans.

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What Is The Democratic Party

Democratic Party is a big party in the USA. The Democratic-Republican Party processes this party. It is one of the two major political parties. It was most noteworthy in 1828 by Andrew Jackson, who was the first president of this party. Washington DC headquarters of this party. Its symbol is the donkey, and the color is blue. For instance:-

Read more: Management vs. Administration.

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Which Presidents Were Democrats And Republicans

: Lyndon B Johnson Vs Barry Goldwater

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The Democrats nominated Lyndon B. Johnson who had succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson, the first president from the South since Andrew Johnson, had been Democratic leader of the Senate. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, a longtime liberal, was nominated as Johnsons running mate. The Republicans chose Senator Barry Goldwater of for president and Congressman William E. Miller of New York for vice president.

In the campaign, conducted in the midst of the escalating Vietnam War, Goldwater, an ultraconservative, called for the bombing of North Vietnam and implied that the Social Security system should be dismantled. President Johnson campaigned on a platform of social reform that would incorporate Kennedys New Frontier proposals. Despite the countrys deepening involvement in Vietnam, the president also campaigned as the candidate of peace against the militaristic Goldwater.

Johnson won a decisive victory, polling 43,128,958 popular votes to 27,176,873 for Goldwater. In the Electoral College, he received 486 votes to Goldwaters 52.

The List Of American Presidents Who Came Before Donald Trump And Joe Biden

Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States in 2016. Four years later, Mr Trump lost the race to Democrat Joe Biden and become the tenth one-term president in US history.

On November 7, after a closely run contest, the former vice-president became the 46th president of the United States, finally claiming the presidency 32 years after his first run in 1988.

With Joe Biden now sworn in as the 46th US President, we look back at the 44 men before Mr Trump who have taken the presidential oath and the major events that marked their presidencies.

: Andrew Jackson Vs John Quincy Adams

Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 by a landslide, receiving a record 647,292 popular votes to 507,730 for the incumbent John Quincy Adams. John C. Calhoun won the vice presidency with 171 electoral votes to 83 for Richard Rush and seven for William Smith.

The emergence of two parties promoted popular interest in the election. Jacksons party, sometimes called the Democratic-Republicans or simply Democrats, developed the first sophisticated national network of party organizations. Local party groups sponsored parades, barbecues, tree plantings and other popular events designed to promote Jackson and the local slate. The National-Republicans, the party of Adams and Henry Clay, lacked the local organizations of the Democrats, but they did have a clear platform: high tariffs, federal funding of roads, canals and other internal improvements, aid to domestic manufactures and development of cultural institutions.

The 1828 election campaign was one of the dirtiest in Americas history. Both parties spread false and exaggerated rumors about the opposition. Jackson men charged that Adams obtained the presidency in 1824 through a corrupt bargain with Clay. And they painted the incumbent president as a decadent aristocrat who had procured prostitutes for the czar while serving as U.S. minister to Russia and spent taxpayer money on gambling equipment for the White House .

List Of Republican Us Presidents

Abraham Lincoln Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James Garfield Chester A. Arthur Benjamin Harrison William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt William H. Taft Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert C. Hoover Dwight D. Eisenhower Richard M. Nixon Gerald R. Ford Ronald W. Reagan George H. W. Bush George W. Bush Donald Trump

The Issue Of Slavery: Enter Abraham Lincoln

In the mid-nineteenth century, slavery was a widely discussed political issue. The Democratic Partys internal views on this matter differed greatly. Southern Democrats wished for slavery to be expanded and reach into Western parts of the country. Northern Democrats, on the other hand, argued that this issue should be settled on a local level and through popular referendum. Such Democratic infighting eventually led to Abraham Lincoln, who belonged to the Republican Party, winning the presidential election of 1860. This new Republican Party had recently been formed by a group of Whigs, Democrats and other politicians who had broken free from their respective parties in order to form a party based on an anti-slavery platform.

Republicans Vs Democrats In Launching Wars: We Have The Numbers

If one were to compare the US political system to a dystopian society divided into distinct factions based on how many wars they have started, an interesting outcome rebuking conventional perceptions would have been observed.

It is not aboutthe strong ondefense, hawkish Republicans juxtaposed withpeace-loving dovish Democrats anymore. Looking back atthe past118 years, there have been some ‘divergents’ warmongering Democrats and amicable Republicans. However, more interestingly and surprising forthe conventional-minded the number ofthe XX century Democratic presidents who kept fromstarting wars is actually zero.

According tothe research conducted bySputnik, sincethe turn ofthe 20th century outof 8 US presidents none have managed tostay away frominitiating military aggression.

In turn, outof 12 Republican leaders, two Warren Harding and Gerald Ford have deviated fromthe generally accepted party reputation.

Since 1900, 35 conflicts have been launched byRepublican administrations compared to23 byDemocrats, with10 GOP presidents launching one or more conflicts, compared to8 Democrats.

Values and Wars

Rooted inAmerican conservatism, the US Republican party commonly referred toas the GOP has always viewed strong national defense asone ofits core principles.

“Democrats believe that cooperation is better thanconflict,” the party’s online platform says.

So who started them, and who ended them?

Calvin Coolidge Republican Candidate For Vice

Calvin Coolidge, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing right

Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts first achieved national prominence during the Boston police strike of 1919, when he sent a telegram to Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, saying: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time.”

Coolidge was a reserved, uncommunicative New Englander; writer and wit Dorothy Parker once remarked he looked as though he had been “weaned on a pickle.” Even so, his obvious integrity and the simple American values he espoused soon made “Silent Cal” a popular figure. He succeeded to the presidency upon Harding’s death in 1923, and was elected to the White House in his own right in 1924.

Brief Audio Selection:Law and Order. Calvin Coolidge .

: Richard M Nixon Vs George Mcgovern

In 1972 the Republicans nominated President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. The Democrats, still split over the war in Vietnam, chose a presidential candidate of liberal persuasion, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri was the vice-presidential choice, but after it was revealed that he had once received electric shock and other psychiatric treatments, he resigned from the ticket. McGovern named Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps, as his replacement.

The campaign focused on the prospect of peace in Vietnam and an upsurge in the economy. Unemployment had leveled off and the inflation rate was declining. Two weeks before the November election, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger predicted inaccurately that the war in Vietnam would soon be over. During the campaign, a break-in occurred at Democratic National Headquarters in the complex in Washington, D.C., but it had little impact until after the election.

The campaign ended in one of the greatest landslides in the nations history. Nixons popular vote was 47,169,911 to McGoverns 29,170,383, and the Republican victory in the Electoral College was even more lopsided at 520 to 17. Only Massachusetts gave its votes to McGovern.

Acting President Of The United States

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An acting president of the United States is an individual who legitimately exercises the powers and duties of the president of the United States even though that person does not hold the office in their own right. There is an established presidential line of succession in which officials of the United States federal government may be called upon to take on presidential responsibilities if the president becomes , dies, resigns, is removed from office during their four-year term of office; or if a has not been chosen before Inauguration Day or has failed to qualify by that date.

If the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, the vice president automatically becomes president. Likewise, were a president-elect to die during the transition period, or decline to serve, the vice president-elect would become president on Inauguration Day. A vice president can also become the acting president if the president becomes incapacitated. However, should the presidency and vice presidency both become vacant, the statutory successor called upon would not become president, but would only be acting as president. To date, two vice presidentsGeorge H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney have served as acting president. No one lower in the presidential line of succession has so acted.

The Big List Of Alleged Malefactors

Each person identified as indicted, from 56 years of Executive branch investigations, is listed in Figure 4. Figure 5 provides the numbers, thus far, for the Trump administration. Two years into his term, President Trump has already proved greater than all but one of the previous 10 Presidents in number of indictments the Administration has scored. Congratulations Mr. Trump, you are the Greatest! Of course, the information in Figure 5 that is accurate in the morning may be out of date by the afternoon.

The Final Reports of the 28 Special Prosecution, Special Prosecutor, and Independent Counsel investigations between 1973 and 1999 are the go-to source for who was indicted for what. Before an investigation closes down it will be clear if the indictment itself survives legal challenge; cases will go to trial; there will be decisions. But the independent investigation may well close down before appeals are heard and decided. Therefore, the final reports are not, in some cases, the last word on total convictions and jail time. That still required further research of court records, news stories, and obituaries.

It is not necessary to read the many hundreds of pages of most of these documents for the raw numbers. There are, though, many engrossing distractions in the tales of greed for power or money, ambition, obstruction, arrogance, loyalty, ideological zealotry, duplicity, error and incompetence the reports lay out in generally careful legal language.

Interesting Insights Into Presidents And Gas Prices

To answer that question we took a look at every presidential term since vehicles became mainstream. Then to make a completely fair assessment, we took note of the actual price paid for a gallon of gas at the time and what the price would be if it was adjusted for 2020 inflation. Each gas price listed is an average for the length of that presidents term.

Weve also taken note of any major world events that might have affected the price of oil during that presidents term. Because all it takes is a large hurricane or signs of a recession to throw the numbers way off from the average.

The infograph here provides an overview of how gas prices have fluctuated from one President to the next. A few interesting insights include:

The very clear takeaway is that which party wins the presidency has less of an impact on gasoline prices than supply and demand. That usually isnt dictated by who is president but rather world events that either negatively/positively affect the supply chain or increase/decrease demand for gasoline.

Want some tips on how to save gas? Check out our post here to learn more!

*This article was updated on 7/21/2021.

: John Adams Vs Thomas Jefferson

The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.

The Republicans called for more democratic practices and accused the Federalists of monarchism. The Federalists branded the Republicans Jacobins after Maximilien Robespierres faction in France. The Republicans opposed John Jays recently negotiated accommodationist treaty with Great Britain, whereas the Federalists believed its terms represented the only way to avoid a potentially ruinous war with Britain. Republicans favored a decentralized agrarian republic; Federalists called for the development of commerce and industry.

State legislatures still chose electors in most states, and there was no separate vote for vice president. Each elector cast two votes for president, with the runner-up becoming vice president.

The Federalists nominated Vice President John Adams and tried to attract southern support by running Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina for the second post. Thomas Jefferson was the Republican standard-bearer, with Aaron Burr as his running mate. Alexander Hamilton, always intriguing against Adams, tried to throw some votes to Jefferson in order to elect Pinckney president. Instead, Adams won with 71 votes; Jefferson became vice president, with 68; Pinckney came in third with 59; Burr received only 30 and 48 votes went to various other candidates.

Republicans From Reagan To Trump

After running on a platform based on reducing the size of the federal government, Reagan increased military spending, spearheaded huge tax cuts and championed the free market with policies that became known as Reaganomics.

In foreign policy, the United States also emerged the victor in its long-running Cold War with the Soviet Union. But as the economy began to show signs of weakness, the growing national debt helped foster popular dissatisfaction with Reagans successor, George H.W. Bush.

The GOP recaptured the White House in 2000, with the highly contested victory of Bushs son, George W. Bush, over Democratic contender Al Gore. Though initially popular, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration lost support thanks to growing opposition to the war in Iraq and the faltering economy during the Great Recession.

After Democrat Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected U.S. president in 2008, the rise of the populist Tea Party movement harnessed opposition to Obamas economic and social reform policies to help Republicans gain a large majority in Congress by 2014.

: Franklin Pierce Vs Winfield Scott Vs John Pitale

The 1852 election rang a death knell for the Whig Party. Both parties split over their nominee and the issue of slavery. After forty-nine ballots of jockeying among Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, former secretary of state James Buchanan of Pennsylvania and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of , the Democrats nominated a compromise choice, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a former congressman and senator, with Senator William R. King of as his running mate. The Whigs rejected Millard Fillmore, who had become president when Taylor died in 1850, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster and instead nominated Gen. Winfield Scott of Virginia, with Senator William A. Graham of New Jersey for vice president. When Scott endorsed the party platform, which approved of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Free-Soil Whigs bolted. They nominated Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire for president and former congressman George Washington Julian of Indiana for vice president. Southern Whigs were suspicious of Scott, whom they saw as a tool of antislavery senator William H. Seward of New York.

Democratic unity, Whig disunity and Scotts political ineptitude combined to elect Pierce. Young Hickory of the Granite Hills outpolled Old Fuss and Feathers in the electoral college, 254 to 42, and in the popular vote, 1,601,474 to 1,386,578.

American Presidents: Life Portraits

American Presidents: Life Portraits is a series produced by in 1999. Each episode was aired live, and was a two- to three-hour look at the life and times of one particular president of the United States. Episodes were broadcast from locations of importance to the profiled president, featured interviews with historians and other experts, and incorporated calls from viewers. The series served as a commemoration of C-SPAN’s 20th anniversary.

The first program aired on March 15, 1999, and profiled George Washington. Subsequent programs featured each president in succession, concluding with Bill Clinton on December 20, 1999.

: William Howard Taft Vs William Jennings Bryan

After Theodore Roosevelt declined to run for reelection in 1908, the Republican convention nominated Secretary of War William Howard Taft for president and Representative James Schoolcraft Sherman of New York as his running mate. The Democrats chose William Jennings Bryan for president for the third time; his running mate was John Kern of Indiana.

The predominant campaign issue was Roosevelt. His record as a reformer countered Bryans reformist reputation, and Taft promised to carry on Roosevelts policies. Business leaders campaigned for Taft.

In the election, Taft received 7,679,006 popular votes to Bryans 6,409,106. Tafts margin in the Electoral College was 321 to 162.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson Prominent Republican Sister Of Theodore Roosevelt

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Famous G.O.P women arrive

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson was a frequent participant in charities and politics. Active in both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, she was also a member of the executive committee for the Republican National Committee, and the Republican New York State Committee.

A well-known Republican in New York, Corinne Robinson’s importance grew because the presidential campaign of 1920 marked the first election in which women could vote. Anxious to attract women’s votes, both the Republican and Democratic parties sought significant women to speak in support of their candidates. In the speech she recorded for the Nation’s Forum, Robinson speaks of her support for the Republican candidates because they are “one hundred percent American.”

Audio Selection:Safeguard America! Corinne Roosevelt Robinson .

: Martin Van Buren Vs Daniel Webster Vs Hugh White

The election of 1836 was largely a referendum on Andrew Jackson, but it also helped shape what is known as the second party system. The Democrats nominated Vice President Martin Van Buren to lead the ticket. His running mate, Col. Richard M. Johnson, claimed to have killed Indian chief .

Disdaining the organized politics of the Democrats, the new Whig Party ran three candidates, each strong in a different region: Hugh White of Tennessee, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Gen. William Henry Harrison of . Besides endorsing internal improvements and a national bank, the Whigs tried to tie Democrats to abolitionism and sectional tension, and attacked Jackson for acts of aggression and usurpation of power. Democrats depended on Jacksons popularity, trying to maintain his coalition.

Van Buren won the election with 764,198 popular votes, only 50.9 percent of the total, and 170 electoral votes. Harrison led the Whigs with 73 electoral votes, White receiving 26 and Webster 14. Willie P. Mangum of South Carolina received his states 11 electoral votes. Johnson, who failed to win an electoral majority, was elected vice president by the Democratic Senate.

: Abraham Lincoln Vs George B Mcclellan

The contest in the midst of the Civil War pitted President Abraham Lincoln against Democrat George B. McClellan, the general who had commanded the Army of the Potomac until his indecision and delays caused Lincoln to remove him. The vice-presidential candidates were Andrew Johnson, Tennessees military governor who had refused to acknowledge his states secession, and Representative George Pendleton of . At first, Radical Republicans, fearing defeat, talked of ousting Lincoln in favor of the more ardently antislavery secretary of the treasury Salmon P. Chase, or Generals John C. Frémont or Benjamin F. Butler. But in the end they fell in behind the president.

The Republicans attracted Democratic support by running as the Union party and putting Johnson, a pro-war Democrat, on the ticket. McClellan repudiated the Democratic platforms call for peace, but he attacked Lincolns handling of the war.

Lincoln won in a landslide, owing partly to a policy of letting soldiers go home to vote. But the military successes of Generals Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia and William T. Sherman in the Deep South were probably more important. He received 2,206,938 votes to McClellans 1,803,787. The electoral vote was 212 to 21. Democrats did better in state elections.

Emergence Of New Conservatism

The relief programs included in FDRs New Deal earned overwhelming popular approval, launching an era of Democratic dominance that would last for most of the next 60 years. Between 1932 and 1980, Republicans won only four presidential elections and had a Congressional majority for only four years.

Though the centrist Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, actively supported equal rights for women and African Americans, a conservative resurgence led to Barry Goldwaters nomination as president in 1964, continued with Richard Nixons ill-fated presidency and reached its culmination with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The South saw a major political sea change starting after World War II, as many white Southerners began migrating to the GOP due to their opposition to big government, expanded labor unions and Democratic support for civil rights, as well as conservative Christians opposition to abortion and other culture war issues.

Meanwhile, many black voters, who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War, began voting Democratic after the Depression and the New Deal.

: George W Bush Vs John Kerry

Total voter turnout for the 2004 presidential election numbered at about 120 million, an impressive 15 million increase from the 2000 vote.

After the bitterly contested election of 2000, many were poised for a similar election battle in 2004. Although there were reported irregularities in Ohio, a recount confirmed the original vote counts with nominal differences that did not affect the final outcome.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean was the expected Democratic candidate but lost support during the primaries. There was speculation that he sealed his fate when he let out a deep, guttural yell in front of a rally of supporters, which became known as the I Have a Scream speech, because it was delivered on Martin Luther King Day.

Popular Vote: 60,693,281 to 57,355,978 . Electoral College: 286 to 251

: Franklin D Roosevelt Vs Alfred M Landon

In 1936 the Democratic Party nominated President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner. The Republican Party, strongly opposed to the New Deal and big government, chose Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas and Fred Knox of Illinois.

The 1936 presidential campaign focused on class to an unusual extent for American politics. Conservative Democrats such as Alfred E. Smith supported Landon. Eighty percent of newspapers endorsed the Republicans, accusing Roosevelt of imposing a centralized economy. Most businesspeople charged the New Deal with trying to destroy American individualism and threatening the nations liberty. But Roosevelt appealed to a coalition of western and southern farmers, industrial workers, urban ethnic voters, and reform-minded intellectuals. African-American voters, historically Republican, switched to FDR in record numbers.

In a referendum on the emerging welfare state, the Democratic Party won in a landslide27,751,612 popular votes for FDR to only 16,681,913 for Landon. The Republicans carried two statesMaine and Vermontwith eight electoral votes; Roosevelt received the remaining 523. The unprecedented success of FDR in 1936 marked the beginning of a long period of Democratic Party dominance.

: Jimmy Carter Vs Gerald Ford

In 1976 the Democratic Party nominated former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia for president and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota for vice president. The Republicans chose President Gerald Ford and Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. Richard M. Nixon had appointed Ford, a congressman from Michigan, as vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned amid charges of corruption. Ford became president when Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of because of his involvement in an attempted cover-up of the politically inspired Watergate break-in.

In the campaign, Carter ran as an outsider, independent of Washington, which was now in disrepute. Ford tried to justify his pardoning Nixon for any crimes he might have committed during the cover-up, as well as to overcome the disgrace many thought the Republicans had brought to the presidency.

Carter and Mondale won a narrow victory, 40,828,587 popular votes to 39,147,613 and 297 electoral votes to 241. The Democratic victory ended eight years of divided government; the party now controlled both the White House and Congress.

President Of The United States

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The president of the United States has been chief of the executive branch of the United States of America since 1789.

Various other countries that are or were known as the United States have or had a presidential system:

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source https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-presidents-were-democrats-and-republicans/

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Marxists, evangelicals, business executives, working-class activists—meet Mexico’s strange new ruling coalition

By Dudley Althaus, Washington Post, July 6, 2018

ECATEPEC, Mexico--In winning Mexico’s presidency by a landslide, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has carried with him into office an untested swarm of politicians and neophyte bureaucrats of disparate ideologies, skills and intentions.

Now he’ll have to govern with them.

López Obrador took 53 percent of the vote Sunday--a full 30 percentage points over his nearest rival--and triumphed in all but one of Mexico’s 32 states. The coalition led by his National Regeneration Movement, known as Morena, will probably control both houses of congress, key statehouses and legislatures, and some of the country’s largest cities for at least the next few years.

López Obrador is a veteran leader of the left. But his coalition’s new officeholders include social progressives and evangelical Christians, committed Marxists and pragmatic entrepreneurs, longtime rebels and reviled former leaders of the once-monolithic Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Morena’s challenge now is “to maintain the integrity of our majority,” said Higinio Martínez Miranda, 62, the mayor of the Mexico City suburb of Texcoco, who claimed a senate seat on Sunday. “We come from many different paths.”

Newly minted federal senators for Morena include the fugitive exiled leader of Mexico’s miners union, a onetime U.S. immigrant freed from jail in 2016 after facing kidnapping charges and--most gratingly for many López Obrador supporters--the man widely blamed for a fraud-tinged 1988 election that denied a previous leftist candidate the presidency.

Scores of inexperienced lawmakers will take office Sept. 1. Thousands of state and federal jobs will have to be filled with movement loyalists also capable of public administration. First-time cabinet secretaries, governors and mayors alike will struggle to impose López Obrador’s zero-tolerance order for corruption in bureaucracies long oiled by it.

“It will be a learning process,” said Luis Valdepeña, a longtime leftist activist sporting a graying ponytail and goatee who helped lead the Morena campaign here in Ecatepec, a raw and impoverished sprawl of 1.6 million people bordering Mexico City. “Nothing is going to happen right away.”

Morena trounced the PRI in Ecatepec and across the state of Mexico, the country’s most populous. The state had been a PRI bastion for nearly a century--President Enrique Peña Nieto was governor here, the beneficiary of a political machine that dominated the state for decades.

But the PRI held on to only three of 45 state assembly seats. Morena also claims 38 of the state’s 41 seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of congress, and 44 of 125 city halls, including those in the teeming working-class suburbs of Mexico City that account for most of the state’s population.

The party’s mayor-elect here in Ecatepec, Fernando Vilchis, is a lawyer and longtime leader of a left-leaning grass-roots organization. But he’s never held public office. He’ll now have to administer one of Mexico’s largest, poorest and most violent cities.

López Obrador founded Morena little more than four years ago after the Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD--on whose ticket he lost two previous presidential runs--made a pact with the PRI and center-right National Action Party to pass free-market energy, education and labor overhauls reviled by many on the left.

The party started small, with just other PRD deserters, and built slowly by attracting independent unions and those fleeing the other parties. In its debut election in 2015, Morena won about 8 percent of the vote in federal midterm elections, as well as five of Mexico City’s 16 districts, and city halls and state assembly seats elsewhere.

The coalition led by Morena in this year’s election includes the Workers’ Party, which condemns capitalism as the root of Mexico’s inequality, and the conservative Social Encounter Party, or PES. The PES is a tiny evangelical Christian party that supports his anti-corruption message but little of his more socially liberal agenda.

Striving to forge even wider consensus, López Obrador has spent this week making nice with his political rivals and Mexico’s powerful business organizations, trying to calm both investors and the public. He met Tuesday with Peña Nieto to try to smooth the five-month transition of power.

After that meeting, the president-elect said that his administration would respect the independence of Mexico’s central bank and wouldn’t be seizing any private property. Mexico’s trade-focused and business-friendly macroeconomic policies would continue, he said.

“We have to agree on many issues,” López Obrador said of Peña Nieto, who leaves office Dec. 1. “That there are no shocks, that there is confidence in economic and financial matters. Above all, that peace and tranquility be guaranteed in this transition period.”

Maintaining the economic status quo may not sit well with many of López Obrador’s more radical followers. Neither will the electoral deals López Obrador made with political leaders, many of them formerly tied to the PRI, to win niche votes.

Morena leaders say they are intent on maintaining party discipline. They want to avoid the factional infighting that crippled the Party of the Democratic Revolution, which many assume will soon disappear.

“We must unconditionally support López Obrador,” said Martinez Miranda, a 62-year-old surgeon who has been involved in leftist politics for more than four decades.

“His program isn’t to make revolution,” he said of López Obrador. “It’s to allow people to hope again.”

#Mexico #Mexican politics #Andrés Manuel López Obrador #AMLO #Morena

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Democrats' path to the Senate runs straight through the Sun Belt

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/democrats-path-to-the-senate-runs-straight-through-the-sun-belt/

Democrats' path to the Senate runs straight through the Sun Belt

Sen. Martha McSally. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

To take back the White House, Democrats onlyneed to win back three key Rust Belt states. But if they want to move a president’s agenda through the Senate, they have to flip the Sun Belt.

From Arizona to North Carolina to a pair of seats in Georgia, Democrats have to clean up in that stretch of the country to have any chance of taking the chamber.

Story Continued Below

President Donald Trump carried each of those states in 2016, andin an era of polarized politics when Senate races are increasingly nationalized, Democrats need at least strong performances by the party’s presidential nominee in the Sun Belt states — if not victories — to have a shot at flipping their Senate seats.So while some Democrats are laser-focused on winning back the Rust Belt, Democrats across the Southern half of the countryare urging their party to invest heavilyin their states — not just as a way to flip the Senate, but as part of the path to 270 Electoral College votes.

“The path to the White House and the Senate majority must come through the Sun Belt and certainly must come through North Carolina,” said Wayne Goodwin, that state’s Democratic Party chairman. He referenced a House special election in the state last week that Republicans narrowly won in a district Trump carried by 12 points in 2016 as evidence of the party’s prospects. “Frankly, I think Republicans who are running statewide should be quaking in their boots for 2020.”

It’s not a simple equation for Democrats: Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been pilloried for investingresources in Arizona and Georgia, while overlooking Wisconsin and, to a lesser extent, Michigan.But Democrats don’t have Senate races in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania next year — in Michigan, they are defending Sen. Gary Peters — and investment in the emerging Sun Belt states will be critical down the ballot.

The question willremain unsettled until Democrats have a nominee — though many of the Senate states have relatively early primary contests, giving presidential contenders a chance to prove their mettle in potential battlegrounds.

“I think there’s both a Rust Belt and Sun Belt strategy that are not incompatible at all,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential and Senate campaigns. He pointed to the party’s gains among suburban women, in particular, as something that occurred across regions. “There are several places in both the Sun Belt and Rust Belt where they could make the difference.”

Priorities USA, a top Democratic Super PAC, lists the three Rust Belt states as among their core battlegrounds for 2020, and has Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina among possible expansion states. Guy Cecil, the group’s chairman, pointed to the overlap between expansion states and Senate races at a briefing for reporters Monday and said they would take a “serious look” at potentially investing in these states because of the Senate. He said North Carolina and Arizona should be on “everyone’s target list,” and that there would be “robust conversations” around Georgia.

“No agenda passes, nothing gets done, we have a much harder time dealing with judges if there’s a Democratic president and a Republican Senate,” Cecil said.

Democrats in those states are echoing the message. As the presidential contenders flocked to Houston for a debate last week, Texas Democrats homed in on arguments for why it could finally be a true battleground. Challenging for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would help the party contend for two Senate seats, including a special election for the seat Sen. Johnny Isakson will vacate when he resigns at the end of this year. And Arizona is seen as a potential opening after Trump carried it by less than 4 percentage points and Democrats won their first Senate race in three decades last year.

In Georgia, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in two decades,Stacey Abrams not running dampened the party’s chances to turn the race against Sen. David Perdue into a marquee matchup, and there is now a crowded primary of contenders. But the emergence of a second seat put the state squarely back into focus.

In a memo last week, Abrams detailed how 2020 candidates could build on her narrow defeat last year to put the state in play, both in the Senate races and at the presidential level. She called “any less than full investment” in the state “strategic malpractice.”

“Georgia faces historic electoral opportunities, and Democrats cannot achieve success nationally without competing and winning in Georgia,” she said.

Arizona represents a must-win for both parties. Lastyear,Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema defeated Republican Martha McSally, who was laterappointed to the state’s other Senate seat and now faces a battleground race against Democrat Mark Kelly. Felecia Rotellini, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said they continue to build on the infrastructure and ground game from 2018.

“This is the first time in a very, very long time — in my lifetime — Arizona has been considered a battleground state,” she said. “We have to work harder, be more disciplined and be more organized in order to turn this state blue.”

North Carolina, which Barack Obama carried in 2008 and lost four years later, may represent Democrats’ best chance in the Sun Belt. Theparty’scandidate lost a special election in a conservative district last week, but Democratswere buoyed by their overperformance compared with 2016.

“I think if you look in places like Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina, they’re chock full of suburban women,” said John Anzalone, a veteran Democratic pollster. He pointed out that DemocraticGov. Roy Cooper, who is up for reelection next year, won North Carolina in 2016 even as Trump carried the state. “You have to have the right type of nominee to win the race, but it’s not all about the top of the ticket.”

Thom Tillis, the first-term North Carolina senator, also faces a wealthy GOP primary challenger. Tillis recently launched his first ad of the cycle highlighting his endorsement from Trump — and in a local radio interview this week, he emphasized the importance of his state up and down the ballot.

“North Carolina is going to be ground zero of the Senate, keeping the majority. It’s going to be ground zero for the president winning his reelection,” Tillis said,adding that the GOP’s national party convention is in Charlotte.

Republicans scoffed at the Democratic optimism following the NorthCarolinaspecial election, calling it a moral victory and downplaying concerns about the state.

“The voters that are going to decide the outcome in 2020 were not voting in the special election,” said Paul Shumaker, a top adviser Tillis. He called Democrats’ optimism after the loss “more of a PR spin than a reality supported by data.”

More broadly, Republicans aren’t sweating their standing in these states, although they acknowledge that at least several of these Senate races are likely to be highly competitive. They argue Democrats’ eventual presidentialnominee is likely to provide plenty of fodder in a one-on-one matchup with Trump in states he carried.

“Democrats fail to recognize the socialist agenda being promoted by the loudest voices in their party render their Senate candidates unelectable in these reliably Republican states,” said Jesse Hunt, spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Mainstream voters are watching in horror as the Democratic Party embraces policies that eliminate employer-based health care and raise taxes on middle-class families.”

#Foreign #Politics #Senate #straight

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kayakingcrazy · 6 years

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Florida rep’s blackface problem — Trump’s $64m vacay tab — Gaetz v. Parkland dad — Face-licker quits

Good Thursday morning. Well, blackface has come to Florida….or, well, it has been here for a while.

INTO THE BARREL — As Virginia, the new capital of political blackface, dominates the news cycle, one of the Florida-based byproducts has been once again putting focus on the high school blackface photo of state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a Republican from just outside of Orlando. The 30-year-old said he does not think the high school picture is racist because he took it as part of a joke with a close high school friend who was black. The high school friend, Brandon Evans, backed Sabatini’s description, telling the Orlando Sentinel “I don’t know how it got to be seen as racial.”

THE POLITICS — Despite that explanation, the Florida Democratic Party pounced on the photo, which initially surfaced during the campaign. FDP Chair Terrie Rizzo called on Sabatini to resign, while Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva, a Republican, said blackface is “unacceptable.” He did, though, note that once the “facts were known” and Sabatini’s friend vouched for him, it became clear there was “no racial animus.” Despite that explanation, the story has caught media fire across the country.

—“State Rep. Anthony Sabatini dismisses Florida Democratic chair call for his resignation over high school ‘blackface’ photo,” by Orlando Sentinel’s Steven Lemongello: Read more

—“Florida pol rejects calls to resign over high school blackface photo,” by New York Post’s Joshua Rhett Miller: Read more

—“Florida politician says he won’t resign over blackface photo that surfaced during his campaign,” by Splinter’s Samantha Grasso: Read more

—“Florida state representative rejects calls for his resignation over high school blackace photo,” by Newsweek’s Christina Zhao: Read more

WELCOME TO THE PLAYBOOK FAMILY — Annabelle Dickson, POLITICO Europe’s London-based politics and technology correspondent, starting this Friday, will officially write the Friday edition of the London Playbook. Jack Blanchard will continue to oversee the newsletter and will write the other 4 editions. Subscribe

PERVERSION OF JUSTICE — “Justice Department opens probe into Jeffrey Epstein plea deal,” by Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown: “The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta’s role in negotiating a controversial plea deal with a wealthy New York investor accused of molesting more than 100 underage girls in Palm Beach. The probe is in response to a request by Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who was critical of the case following a series of stories in the Miami Herald. The Herald articles detailed how Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, and other DOJ attorneys worked hand-in-hand with defense lawyers to cut a lenient plea deal with multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2008.” Read more

‘POINT OF PRIDE?’ — via press release: “Allied Progress, which worked to raise public awareness about Acosta’s kid-gloves treatment of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sexual exploitation case during his Labor Secretary nomination process, is urging the more than 130,000 activists on its email list to share a new video, `Point of Pride,‘ on social media networks. Activists are also asked to sign a petition demanding the Senate hold Acosta accountable by moving forward H.R. 202, the bipartisan Inspector General Access Act, which cleared the U.S. House on January 15th and would allow a long overdue investigation to go forward. The video and petition are backed by paid ads on Twitter and Facebook.”

KA-CHING — “Eric Trump to hold fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago Thursday,” by Palm Beach Post’s Alexandra Clough: “President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address included a sweet spotlight on Grace Eline, a 10-year old girl who, at an early age, asked for donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital instead of presents, only to wind up battling cancer herself at age 9. Now 10, Grace Eline was seated next to First Lady Melania Trump during the speech and beamed with a broad smile when the president spoke about her story. The plug for St. Jude on national television came two days before Trump’s son, Eric, and his his wife Lara are set to co-chair a $750 per ticket dinner dance gala at Mar-a-Lago, the former Eric Trump Foundation benefiting St. Jude.” Read more

BAD LOOK — “Florida congressman Matt Gaetz clashes with Parkland dad at hearing on gun violence,” by Sun Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher: “A Florida congressman clashed Wednesday with a father who lost his son in the Parkland school shooting, inquiring at one point during a Congressional hearing on gun violence why the chair wasn’t enforcing decorum and having him removed. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Pensacola, drew shouts from Parkland dad Manuel Oliver when he said expanding background checks for gun sales would do nothing to stop murders committed by people who are in the country illegally.” Read more

AIDS EPICENTER — “Trump vowed to ‘defeat AIDS’ in his State of the Union. Florida is ground zero,” by Tampa Bay Times’ Steve Contorno: “President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to `eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years‘ during his State of the Union address. ‘Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach,’ Trump said. ‘Together, we will defeat AIDS in America.’ It’s a surprising declaration for a president who has proposed cutting tens of millions of dollars from federal HIV and AIDS programs in his previous budget.” Read more

NOT AGAIN — “Second federal shutdown would put hurricane recovery at risk,” by POLITICO Florida’s Matt Dixon: A second federal government shutdown could hamper Florida’s hurricane recovery efforts by depriving the state of rebuilding funds for Hurricane Michael, the state’s emergency management director warned. Department of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz said a second shutdown this month could prevent Congress from passing spending bills crucial to Florida. Read more

CHANGES COMING — “School safety changes proposed as Parkland anniversary nears,” News Service of Florida’s Ana Ceballos: “A week before the Parkland school-shooting anniversary, top Republican leaders in the Florida Senate have proposed plans to overhaul school-safety measures and expand a controversial program that allows school personnel to carry guns, a proposal that has overshadowed Democrats’ efforts to move away from arming school staff.“ Read more

SCHOOLS V. HOSPITALS — “The Sunshine Economy: The State Budget,” by WLRN’s Tom Hudson: “Familiar battlelines are being drawn over the biggest pieces Florida’s state budget — healthcare and education. Republicans plan on going after healthcare regulations they contend drive up the cost of care. Democrats say, after three failed attempts, Medicaid expansion returns as their priority." Read more

FOR WHOM THE TOLLS TOLL — “Lawmakers want tough stance on SunPass toll problems,” by News Service of Florida: “State lawmakers called Tuesday for transportation officials to maintain a hard financial line against a contractor blamed for a troubled project last summer to upgrade the SunPass system, as final toll invoices from a backlog go out to motorists this week.” Read more

CC. BROWARD COUNTY — “School board term limits proposal advances in Florida House,” by Tampa Bay Times’ Jeffrey S. Solochek: “Citing the importance of eliminating the ‘incumbency advantage’ and the need to generate fresh ideas, members of the Florida House PreK-12 Quality subcommittee unanimously backed a resolution (HJR 229) Wednesday to ask voters to approve term limits for school board members. Even with their support, several committee members signaled a desire to see some changes to the proposal for two four-year terms.” Read more

HISTORY UNEARTHED — “Hurricane Michael exposes WWII gun turret in St. Andrews State Park,” by News Herald’s Patti Blake: “A small piece of history was recently exposed by heavy wind and surge from Hurricane Michael and recent storms at St. Andrews State Park. A WWII gun turret is now visible on the Gulf side of the beach at the state park. According to Park Services Specialist David Morris, the turret is one of two built in 1943 to defend commercial vessels against attacking U-boats.” Read more

DEBRIS DOLLARS — “After Hurricane Michael’s blow, lawmaker pursues money for storm-ravaged Bay County,” by News Service of Florida’s Jim Turner: Read more

HANG ‘EM — “Roofing scammers stole nearly $500,000 from Volusia-Flagler residents after hurricanes, officials say,” by News-Journal’s Frank Fernandez: Read more

SHOCKED — “Maduro regime blocks international bridge to prevent aid from getting into Venezuela,” by Miami Herald’s Jim Wyss: “Venezuela’s determination to stop humanitarian aid from entering the country was on full display Wednesday, after the military dumped shipping containers and a tanker truck on a bridge that was supposed to be a thoroughfare for food and medicine pouring into the country.” Read more

THE OTHER HALF — “Report: Half of Marion households struggle to make ends meet,” by Star Banner’s Joe Callahan: “Half of Marion County’s households do not earn enough money to pay for basic necessities such as food, housing and child care, according to a study released today by the United Way of Florida. Even though Marion County’s unemployment rate is dropping and wages are rising, local United Way officials say many area residents are still struggling to make ends meet.” Read more

CC. MCCLATCHY’S CEO — “Booming economy? For South Florida residents, barely getting by is increasingly the norm,” by Miami Herald’s Rob Wile: “Miami-Dade’s unemployment rate sits at about 3.6 percent—the lowest in a decade. An all-time high of more than 1.2 million county residents have jobs. But for hundreds of thousands of Miami-Dade families, survival in the past decade has remained a struggle, according to the United Way’s latest ALICE report, a bi-annual study examining household finances by state and county.” Read more

ACCESSORY TO SUICIDE — “High court upholds manslaughter conviction of Michelle Carter, woman who sent texts urging boyfriend’s suicide,” by AP’s Alanna Durkin Richer: “A young woman who as a teenager encouraged her boyfriend through dozens of text messages to kill himself is responsible for his suicide, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Wednesday in upholding her involuntary manslaughter conviction.” Read more

S.S. SLIME HUNTER — “FAU’s Self-Driving Sailboat Will Monitor Algal Blooms In Lake Okeechobee,” by WLRN’s Andrew Quintana: “With clear skies and breezy winds, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) revealed its newest invention Tuesday at Pahokee Marina, in the southern half of Lake Okeechobee: a solar powered sailboat that will monitor and test for harmful algal blooms. The Nav2 is the first autonomous vessel to be used for in-land algae monitoring.” Read more

— “Crestview chooses first city manager,” by Daily News’ Wendy Victora: Read more

— “Developers make their pitch for new JEA headquarters,” by Times-Union’s Christopher Hong: Read more

— “To avoid potential conflict, Duval School Board member stepping down from education nonprofit," by Times-Union’s Teresa Stepzinski: Read more

— “Commissioner seeks to rescind $10 million in funding for proposed aquarium at Port Canaveral,” by Florida Today’s Dave Berman: Read more

TRULY SORRY — “How Tampa’s James Cordier went from high roller to YouTube apology after losing $150 million,” by Tampa Bay Times’ Susan Taylor Martin: “The collapse of Cordier’s OptionSellers.com was perhaps not as surprising as it appeared. The company nearly ‘blew up‘ once before, as former employee Michael Gross put it, because of its connection to a brokerage whose CEO landed in prison for embezzling more than $200 million from clients’ accounts.” Read more

FACE LICKER — “Madeira Beach commissioner accused of face-licking, groping city manager resigns,” by Tampa Bay Times’ Sheila Mullane Estrada: “City Commissioner Nancy Oakley resigned Tuesday, days after being fined by the state ethics commission for sexually harassing a former city manager by licking his face and groping him.” Read more

Want to make an impact? POLITICO Florida has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Sunshine State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness amongst this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: [email protected].

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Finance: The midterm elections could paralyze a key instrument of Trump's agenda for the US economy

"Every single arrow points to a significant Democratic victory in the fall," Steve Rattner, the former financier and lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry said. If the GOP keeps the Senate but not the House, Trump would lose his ability to enact policy through legislation.

History suggests that the Republican party would lose control of the House but keep the Senate in the midterm elections, according to Steve Rattner, the CEO of Willett Advisors.

"Every single arrow points to a significant Democratic victory in the fall," he said.

Rattner is basing his forecasts on the historical relationship between a president's approval ratings and the number of seats his party keeps at the midterm elections, and the number of Republican lawmaker retirements.

The implication for Trump's economic agenda, which has so far produced the biggest tax overhaul in decades, is that his administration would lose its ability to achieve any similar feat through legislation, Rattner said.

The pollsters, the pundits, the betting sites, and even President Donald Trump's Twitter account are just a few of the sources for predictions for the 2018 midterm elections.

But Steve Rattner is transfixed on his charts.

The former private-equity investor and lead adviser to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry is predicting that Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives while the GOP retains the Senate.

"The data just seems unbelievably compelling," Rattner told Business Insider in a recent interview.

The implication for Trump's economic agenda, he said, would be a glass-half-full-half-empty situation that would paralyze Trump's ability to achieve anything through the legislature.

"He would not be able to get a bill passed — essentially, all legislation would probably stop," Rattner said.

"If this were a couple of decades ago, the two sides would recognize that they have to work together and they'd produce a bunch of compromise legislation. In this environment — and this is what you saw under Obama after he lost control of Capitol Hill — I think it's more likely that legislation would just simply stop."

Trump, however, would still have administrative apparatus under his control. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has moved to roll back fuel efficiency rules enacted by the Obama administration.

Trump would also retain the power of his pen, through executive orders.

The flipside is that a future president could undo those actions with strokes of their own pen. So far, Trump has signed 54 executive orders on average per year, the highest number since Jimmy Carter was president, according to data compiled by the University of California Santa Barbara.

The charts

First is the correlation between a president's approval rating and the number of seats his party loses during the midterm elections. The lower the approval rating was, the more seats were lost. And, only three times since the Civil War has a president's party gained seats during a midterm election.

The red boxes on the chart below represent a midterm election, plotted by the president's approval rating and the number of House seats gained or lost. Based on Gallup's approval rating, at 39%, Rattner sees the GOP losing as many as 60 seats.

The other factor that Rattner believes plays to Democrats in this election cycle is the number of resignations from the Republican party. The chart below shows that Republicans are exiting Congress not just in greater numbers than Democrats, but at a rate not seen since at least the mid-1970s.

Rattner further observed that the majority of incumbents — 85% on average — are reelected, adding to his view that the exodus of Republican lawmakers would be costly in November.

"Every single arrow points to a significant Democratic victory in the fall," Rattner said.

"Trump will be able to continue to try to do things administratively," he said. "But his ability to do anything legislatively — to pass another tax bill, for example — will be zero."

See also:

Investors have turned complacent and are in danger of being sideswiped by a 'likely correction' that's approaching, Morgan Stanley says

MOODY'S WARNS: Mutual funds are bleeding cash at an unprecedented rate, and they're increasingly vulnerable to the next market meltdown

GOLDMAN SACHS: Big-money investors are dominating the market with the help of 10 stocks — here's the list and how they can continue crushing it

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/08/finance-midterm-elections-could_18.html

#News

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Which Presidents Were Democrats And Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-presidents-were-democrats-and-republicans/

Which Presidents Were Democrats And Republicans

: Lyndon B Johnson Vs Barry Goldwater

Johnson won a decisive victory, polling 43,128,958 popular votes to 27,176,873 for Goldwater. In the Electoral College, he received 486 votes to Goldwaters 52.

The List Of American Presidents Who Came Before Donald Trump And Joe Biden

Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States in 2016. Four years later, Mr Trump lost the race to Democrat Joe Biden and become the tenth one-term president in US history.

On November 7, after a closely run contest, the former vice-president became the 46th president of the United States, finally claiming the presidency 32 years after his first run in 1988.

With Joe Biden now sworn in as the 46th US President, we look back at the 44 men before Mr Trump who have taken the presidential oath and the major events that marked their presidencies.

: Andrew Jackson Vs John Quincy Adams

List Of Republican Us Presidents

Abraham Lincoln

Ulysses S. Grant

Rutherford B. Hayes

James Garfield

Chester A. Arthur

Benjamin Harrison

William McKinley

Theodore Roosevelt

William H. Taft

Warren G. Harding

Calvin Coolidge

Herbert C. Hoover

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Richard M. Nixon

Gerald R. Ford

Ronald W. Reagan

George H. W. Bush

George W. Bush

Donald Trump

The Issue Of Slavery: Enter Abraham Lincoln

Republicans Vs Democrats In Launching Wars: We Have The Numbers

According tothe research conducted bySputnik, sincethe turn ofthe 20th century outof 8 US presidents none have managed tostay away frominitiating military aggression.

In turn, outof 12 Republican leaders, two Warren Harding and Gerald Ford have deviated fromthe generally accepted party reputation.

Since 1900, 35 conflicts have been launched byRepublican administrations compared to23 byDemocrats, with10 GOP presidents launching one or more conflicts, compared to8 Democrats.

Values and Wars

Rooted inAmerican conservatism, the US Republican party commonly referred toas the GOP has always viewed strong national defense asone ofits core principles.

“Democrats believe that cooperation is better thanconflict,” the party’s online platform says.

So who started them, and who ended them?

Calvin Coolidge Republican Candidate For Vice

Calvin Coolidge, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing right

Brief Audio Selection:Law and Order. Calvin Coolidge .

: Richard M Nixon Vs George Mcgovern

Acting President Of The United States

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The Big List Of Alleged Malefactors

Interesting Insights Into Presidents And Gas Prices

The infograph here provides an overview of how gas prices have fluctuated from one President to the next. A few interesting insights include:

Want some tips on how to save gas? Check out our post here to learn more!

*This article was updated on 7/21/2021.

: John Adams Vs Thomas Jefferson

The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.

State legislatures still chose electors in most states, and there was no separate vote for vice president. Each elector cast two votes for president, with the runner-up becoming vice president.

Republicans From Reagan To Trump

: Franklin Pierce Vs Winfield Scott Vs John Pitale

American Presidents: Life Portraits

The first program aired on March 15, 1999, and profiled George Washington. Subsequent programs featured each president in succession, concluding with Bill Clinton on December 20, 1999.

: William Howard Taft Vs William Jennings Bryan

The predominant campaign issue was Roosevelt. His record as a reformer countered Bryans reformist reputation, and Taft promised to carry on Roosevelts policies. Business leaders campaigned for Taft.

In the election, Taft received 7,679,006 popular votes to Bryans 6,409,106. Tafts margin in the Electoral College was 321 to 162.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson Prominent Republican Sister Of Theodore Roosevelt

Famous G.O.P women arrive

Audio Selection:Safeguard America! Corinne Roosevelt Robinson .

: Martin Van Buren Vs Daniel Webster Vs Hugh White

: Abraham Lincoln Vs George B Mcclellan

Emergence Of New Conservatism

Meanwhile, many black voters, who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War, began voting Democratic after the Depression and the New Deal.

: George W Bush Vs John Kerry

Total voter turnout for the 2004 presidential election numbered at about 120 million, an impressive 15 million increase from the 2000 vote.

Popular Vote: 60,693,281 to 57,355,978 . Electoral College: 286 to 251

: Franklin D Roosevelt Vs Alfred M Landon

: Jimmy Carter Vs Gerald Ford

President Of The United States

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The president of the United States has been chief of the executive branch of the United States of America since 1789.

Various other countries that are or were known as the United States have or had a presidential system:

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Voters head to the polls in five states Tuesday to test whether Democrats will get their “blue wave” on Election Day this fall.

The most heated race to watch is a special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, where a Democrat hasn’t won since the 1980s. Despite big spending by Republicans, a huge ground push, and even campaign appearances by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, polls show the Democrat, Danny O’Connor, might actually beat Republican Troy Balderson.

Washington state’s top-two primary will be a similar test of how Democrats might perform in historically conservative districts.

In a governor’s race in Michigan and a House race in Kansas, meanwhile, Democrats will test whether the future of the party is rooted in its progressive wing.

To win back a House majority in November, Democrats will have to triumph in historically red districts, as they did in Pennsylvania earlier this year when Conor Lamb pulled off a surprise victory. Some big wins on Tuesday night could be another sign that a wave year is possible.

Here is every August 7 primary election you need to know about, briefly explained.

Ohio

Who is the Republican? State Sen. Troy Balderson. He was endorsed by Pat Tiberi, whose retirement opened up this seat. He seems as conventional a Republican as you could find.

Who is the Democrat? Franklin County Recorder Danny O’Connor is trying to become the first Democrat to win the 12th in more than 30 years. He’s running on a Conor Lamb-like platform, eschewing the newfound issues of the left like Medicare-for-all and “Abolish ICE,” but hitting his Republican opponent for wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security.

What’s the story? This district, covering parts of suburban Columbus as well as Appalachian areas, always sends a Republican to Congress. Trump won the 12th by 9 points in 2016. Cook ranks it as R+7.

But this district is a little better educated than Ohio as a whole, which might favor Democrats, and O’Connor has positioned himself to have a fighting chance. Recent polls have found him trailing by just a point or two, and the Democratic campaign feels good about the early voting numbers it’s seen.

Given the overall environment, and Democratic performances in prior special elections, election forecasters like Cook have rated the 12th special election as a toss-up.

Michigan

Who are the Republicans? Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is retiring with dismal approval ratings after the Flint water crisis. In a recent NBC/Marist survey, Attorney General Bill Schuette (36 percent) had a decent lead over Lt. Gov. Brian Calley (26 percent) with lots of voters undecided.

Who are the Democrats? State Senate Democratic leader Gretchen Whitmer narrowly led the NBC/Marist poll (35 percent) versus fellow Democrats Shri Thanedar (25 percent) and Abdul El-Sayed (22 percent) among likely voters.

Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer addresses the 37th United Auto Workers Constitutional Convention in Detroit. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

What’s the story? Both parties still need to get through their August primaries, but NBC/Marist polled a hypothetical general election matchup with the leading candidates. They found Democrat Whitmer leading Republican Schuette 47 percent to 38 percent. Cook thinks it’s a toss-up.

Who are the Republicans? Business executive and veteran John James and other business exec/Yale and Harvard economist Sandy Pensler are considered the Republican frontrunners. Historic preservationist Bob Carr is also running. Polls have shown James, one of the few black Republicans in big races this year, with a slight but persistent lead.

Who is the Senate Democrat? Debbie Stabenow, who has been in the Senate a long time. Elected in 2000. Medicare buy-in-for-people-over-55 sponsor.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) during a news conference at the Capitol in March to discuss Senate Democrats’ $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Alex Wong/Getty Images

What’s the story? Stabenow should be fine; polls put her up by a lot. Cook puts this in the Likely Democratic camp.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Jack Bergman, first elected to the House in 2016. He voted for Obamacare repeal (Michigan is a Medicaid expansion state) and the tax bill.

Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI), arrives for the House Republican Conference meeting in the Capitol on June 6, 2018. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

Who are the Democrats? Well, technically zero. Matthew Morgan, the presumptive Democratic candidate, did not qualify for the primary ballot because of an administrative error by his campaign, so he has to run as a write-in candidate. Assuming he gets enough signatures in the primary — and the former Marine has the endorsement of the state’s AFL-CIO — he should make it on the ballot in November.

What’s the story? The Cook Political Report rates the Michigan First as Likely Republican, meaning it’s just on the edge of competitiveness for Democrats. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 20 points here in 2016, and it is an overwhelmingly white and rural district. Cook rates it R+9, meaning all else being equal, it’s about 9 points more Republican than the country as a whole.

The case for Morgan, assuming he gets through this bureaucratic snafu, is Bergman doesn’t have much of an incumbency advantage and Morgan has a profile — moderate, military — that national Democrats hope will play well in areas like this. Conor Lamb’s Pennsylvania victory would probably be the model for a Morgan win.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Fred Upton, who has been in the House since 1986. Formerly chaired the influential Energy and Commerce Committee before being term-limited. You may remember that he played a key role in persuading some holdout Republicans to vote for the House’s Obamacare repeal bill.

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) runs out of the Capitol after the last votes of the week on April 27, 2018. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Who are the Democrats? It’s kind of a crowded field, with four Democrats on the ballot. Matt Longjohn, a former YMCA and public health official, has raised the most money and might have the most compelling story, having jumped into the race after Upton’s vote for the repeal legislation. David Benac is a Western Michigan history professor trying to run as the grassroots candidate. Rich Eichholz is a scientist arguing for evidence-based policy. George Franklin, a former Kellogg lobbyist, rounds out the field.

What’s the story? The Sixth District is, like the First, more of a long shot for Democrats. Cook has it as Likely Republican and rates the district as R+4. Upton is an entrenched incumbent.

But Trump’s margin of victory was narrower here — 8 points — and the district has been reelecting the more moderate Upton for decades. It seems at least conceivable that an anti-Trump wave could sweep him out of office, if Democrats successfully tie him to the president. But the wave would probably need to be significant.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Tim Walberg, first elected in 2006, though he lost reelection in 2008 before taking back the seat in 2010. Voted for Obamacare repeal and the tax bill.

Who are the Democrats? Gretchen Driskell was put on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue list, meaning Washington Democrats like what they’ve seen from her campaign. She comes from a Navy family and has served as a mayor and now in the state legislature. She has run here before, having lost to Walberg in 2016 by 15 points.

Her only competition on the ballot is Steven Friday, running as a self-identified “Berniecrat.”

Gretchen Driskell of Michigan District Seven, on May 10, 2018. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

What’s the story? This is another Likely Republican district, according to Cook, R+7. Trump won by 17 points. It’s very white and not particularly well-educated.

But the district has swung in prior wave elections (see 2008 and 2010), and Driskell profiles as the kind of candidate Democrats think can compete in areas like this. Her 2016 loss was actually a little narrower than Clinton’s too, if you’re looking for reason to be optimistic.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Mike Bishop, first elected in 2014. He also voted for Obamacare repeal, in spite of the Medicaid cuts for an expansion state, and the tax bill. He does technically face a primary challenger: Lokesh Kumar, running as an outsider against the establishment.

Who are the Democrats? Elissa Slotkin is another name on the DCCC’s Red to Blue list. She is a former CIA officer who worked on the White House National Security Council under Presidents Bush and Obama. She definitely has the look that Democrats like for these swing districts: a history of military and public service. Women are also cleaning up in Democratic primaries, as Vox has documented.

Elissa Slotkin, then the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, steps from the plane at right, while then Defense Secretary Ash Carter is greeted by US Ambassador to Iraq Stu Jones at the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq on July 23, 2015. Carolyn Kaster/Pool/Getty Images

Her only competition is Chris Smith, a Michigan State University public policy professor, running on good government and Medicare-for-all.

What’s the story here? The Eighth is a toss-up, according to Cook, and the district is just R+4. Clinton lost to Trump by less than 7 points here in 2016. It covers an area near Lansing, the state capital, and its constituents are a little better-educated — all ingredients that could give Democrats an edge.

Who is the Republican? Well, Rep. David Trott is retiring, so it’s an open seat. The GOP primary is very competitive, with a lot of credible candidates. Among them is former US Rep. Kerry Bentivolio and several state lawmakers: Sen. Mike Kowall, Rep. Klint Kesto, and former Rep. Rocky Raczkowski. Self-funding business executive Lena Epstein rounds out the field for the Republicans.

Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI) on Capitol Hill on October 16, 2013. Susan Walsh/AP

Who are the Democrats? Another wide-open field. Suneel Gupta, brother of doctor and CNN personality Sanjay Gupta, has the most money. Former Obama administration official Haley Stevens has some union support. Fayrouz Saad is angling to be the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, and she got the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsement. Current Michigan Rep. Tim Greimel is also on the ballot.

Suneel Gupta works at his campaign headquarters in Livonia, Michigan, on May 1, 2018. Paul Sancya/AP

Several of the candidates have raised at least six figures. Endorsements are also spread out, though Greimel (perhaps unsurprisingly, as a sitting elected official) has the most.

What’s the story here? It’s a toss-up. Trump beat Clinton by just 4 points here, and the district profiles as R+4. It’s a little more diverse and very well-educated.

Not having an incumbent could be an advantage for Democrats, but it’s hard to know exactly how the race will look until we see who wins the primaries on Tuesday. But the 11th should be a focus for both parties in the battle for the House.

Who are the Democrats? Well, Rep. John Conyers had to retire after sexual harassment allegations. His successor will be picked in this primary, barring something unforeseen.

HIs great-nephew, state Sen. Ian Conyers, is running. So is Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones. She’s the subject of a strong campaign to elect an African-American woman for this city district. Westland Mayor Bill Wild and lefty former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib round out the rest of the field, with Tlaib raising a lot of money and both running progressive platforms.

Who are the Republicans? There are none.

What’s the story? Whoever wins the primary will be the next representative for this 57 percent black district.

Missouri

Who are the Republicans? Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is by far the favorite in a massive field of Republican primary candidates. The state’s Republican Party effectively granted Hawley the nomination when it gave the Republican National Committee the go-ahead to spend money backing Hawley’s campaign before he had even won the primary. (An RNC rule doesn’t let it engage in spending for candidates in a contested primary unless the state’s GOP approves.) This move ruffled some conservatives, who saw it as the party disenfranchising its own voters.

Hawley has aimed to distance himself from former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was forced to resign in the wake of a contentious sexual misconduct scandal.

Sen. Claire McCaskill speaks in the US Senate. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Who are the Democrats? Two-term Sen. Claire McCaskill is being forced to defend her seat in the red state once more. McCaskill, who’s emphasized how fiercely independent she is, has already navigated races against two Republicans in 2006 and 2012. Most recently, she trounced Todd Akin by more than 15 percentage points in 2012 following his comments about “legitimate rape.” “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down,” he said during a television interview at the time.

McCaskill has some competition in the Democratic primary, but her real focus is on Hawley.

What’s the story? Because Hawley and McCaskill are pretty much the presumptive nominees for their respective parties, a good deal of the primary runup has already focused on the back-and-forth between the two. Given Missouri’s heavy conservative lean (Cook Political Report rates the Senate race as a toss-up), McCaskill has been consistently vulnerable.

“It’s going to be a squeaker in my view,” Adrianne Marsh, McCaskill’s campaign manager in 2012 and her communications director in 2006, told Vox’s Ella Nilsen. “The dynamics, they’re tough.”

Hawley has already gone on the attack in ads hammering McCaskill on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, suggesting that she’s too liberal to represent Missouri. This race is expected to be close in the general election, with polls vacillating between the two.

Who is the Republican? Rep. Ann Wagner, in office since 2013. Also known for serving as the ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush. She’s facing a primary challenger from a relatively unknown candidate named Noga Sachs, whose affiliation with the GOP has been called into question.

Who are the Democrats? Out of the field of five Democrats lining up to challenge Wagner, the frontrunners appear to be attorney Cort VanOstran and Army veteran Mark Osmack.

What’s the story? Wagner has largely voted in favor of the Trump administration’s policy priorities. Her district is rated R+8, but if Democrats can field the right candidate and the blue wave ends up materializing, this conservative Missouri district has a chance of becoming blue.

VanOstran and Osmack have out-fundraised the rest of their opponents in the primary. VanOstran leads the pack in campaign cash, but Osmack is also fundraising and has endorsements from VoteVets and politicians including Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (both veterans). Osmack is positioning himself as the progressive choice, running on a platform that includes Medicare-for-all, while VanOstran supports shoring up the Affordable Care Act.

Kansas

Who are the Republicans? Current Gov. Jeff Colyer and Secretary of State Kris Kobach are leading the pack. Jim Barnett and Ken Selzer are also part of a larger group that will be on the ballot.

President Trump with Kansas Secretary of State and Republican candidate for governor Kris Kobach. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Colyer — who took over the governor’s position after Sam Brownback became ambassador at large for international religious freedom earlier this year — has painted himself as the more low-key alternative to Kobach, whose close ties to Trump and broader notoriety precede him. Kobach has long been known for touting hardline anti-illegal immigration policies and is among those most associated with the president’s theories on voter fraud.

Who are the Democrats? Former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, state Sen. Laura Kelly, and former Kansas Secretary of Agriculture Josh Svaty are among the contenders. Kelly is seen as the leading candidate given her strong fundraising numbers, though she’s recently been embroiled in a controversy over a vote she made about supporting voter ID laws.

What’s the story? Colyer and Kobach have been polling very close to one another, though Kobach is widely perceived as the candidate with more name recognition who’s expected to come out on top. Some Republicans are worried, however, that Kobach’s extreme of positions on issues like immigration could push voters toward Democrats in the fall.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Kelly has gained some momentum after getting recruited to the race by former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Cook Political Report rates the race as Likely Republican.

Who are the Republicans? There are a lot of them. State Sens. Steve Fitzgerald, Dennis Pyle, and Caryn Tyson, state Rep. Kevin Jones, former state Rep. Doug Mays. Rounding out the list are Basehor City Council member Vernon Fields and Army vet Steve Watkins. There’s no clear frontrunner in the bunch.

Who is the Democrat? Former state Rep. Paul Davis. He unsuccessfully ran for governor against Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

What’s the story? Cook Political Report rates this district R+10, but if Democrats are hoping to flip a House seat in conservative Kansas, this very well may be their best shot. During Davis’s unsuccessful bid for governor in 2014, he won the Second Congressional District — which shows he’s already got appeal in the district, which includes Topeka.

The fact that Davis is the lone Democrat will set him up nicely against whoever emerges out of a seven-person Republican field, which has no obvious successor to replace retiring Rep. Lynn Jenkins. Plus, Davis has already far outraised all of the Republican candidates and has the backing of the DCCC. Kansas Republicans are nervous about this race, with good reason.

Who are the Republicans? Rep. Kevin Yoder, in office since 2011. He serves on the House Appropriations Committee.

Who are the Democrats? There are seven Democrats running in this primary, but four names stand out: MMA fighter Sharice Davids, former Bernie Sanders staffer Brent Welder, teacher Tom Niermann, and business leader Sylvia Williams.

What’s the story? Welder, in particular, is looking to test the theory of whether a Sanders-style progressive can win a primary in a conservative state. Since Sanders and rising progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stumped for Welder a few weeks ago, he’s kicked up his fundraising game. But he’s also got competition; Davids has the backing of Emily’s List, and Niermann has the endorsement of some local labor groups. Gun control is a prominent issue for Niermann, a high school teacher.

All are hoping for the chance to unseat Yoder, who is looking like one of the more vulnerable incumbents this year. Cook rates the district R+4, and it also went for Clinton in 2016, so there’s a definite chance it could flip this year. Democrats will hit Yoder on his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass GOP tax cuts.

Washington

Who are the Democrats? Washington State University professor Carolyn Long is seen as the frontrunner. Veteran Dorothy Gasque, business executive David McDevitt, and software company founder Martin Hash are also on the docket.

Long has raised the most money of the four Democrats and obtained the endorsement of high-profile national groups like Emily’s List, though McDevitt has the most cash on hand. Gasque, a staunch Bernie Sanders supporter who’s gotten the backing of the Justice Democrats, has sought to frame herself as the more progressive option.

Who are the Republicans? Four-term incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, former California State University professor Earl Bowerman, and retired electrician Michael Cortney.

Redistricting has helped Herrera Beutler coast to victory in past years.

What’s the story? This historically conservative district is one that Democrats have long been eyeing as a potential pickup opportunity, although Herrera Beutler has swept her reelection races by double digits in the past.

The district also went for Trump by 8 points. Earlier this year, Long released an internal poll that indicated she is within 5 percentage points of Herrera Beutler. In April, the Cook Political Report downgraded the district from Solid Republican to Likely Republican, suggesting that Democrats might have more of a fighting chance.

Who are the Democrats? Former state Sen. Lisa Brown is the presumptive Democratic pick. She’s already begun going after Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s ties to the Capitol and special interests, like pharmaceutical companies.

Who are the Republicans? Seven-term incumbent Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the No. 4 Republican in the House, needs to do well in the top-two primary to reaffirm her standing in the district.

She has a few Republican challengers, but her real threat is Brown.

What’s the story? While it’s uncommon for Republican leaders like McMorris Rodgers to lose their bids for reelection, it’s not without precedent. Democrats think momentum could be on their side: Trump captured just over 52 percent of the vote in the district in 2016, and constituents have hammered McMorris Rodgers for hewing too close to the president.

The Cook Political Report has shifted its rating on the eastern Washington district from Likely Republican to Lean Republican, though polls suggest that McMorris Rodgers maintains a slim lead over Brown.

Who are the Democrats? Pediatrician Kim Schrier, former prosecutor Jason Rittereiser, doctor Shannon Hader, and IT specialist Robert Hunziker.

Schrier has a fundraising edge, along with the support of Emily’s List and a bunch of national labor groups.

Who are the Republicans? Former state Sen. Dino Rossi is making yet another attempt for elected office in the state. He’s got strong name recognition after mounting failed bids for both governor and Senate.

What’s the story? Democrats see incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert’s retirement as a potential opportunity to capture the district, which Cook rates as a toss-up.

The district is also one of more than 20 held by Republicans that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Interestingly, it’s backed Democratic presidential candidates for numerous races in the past, while favoring Republicans for the House seat.

Original Source -> Every August 7 primary election you should know about, briefly explained

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Firefighters battle exhaustion along with wildfire flames (AP) They work 50 hours at a stretch and sleep on gymnasium floors. Exploding trees shower them with embers. They lose track of time when the sun is blotted out by smoke, and they sometimes have to run for their lives from advancing flames. Firefighters trying to contain the massive wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington state are constantly on the verge of exhaustion as they try to save suburban houses, including some in their own neighborhoods. Each home or barn lost is a mental blow for teams trained to protect lives and property. And their own safety is never assured. Oregon firefighter Steve McAdoo’s shift on Sept. 7 seemed mostly normal, until late evening, when the team went to a fire along a highway south of Portland. “Within 10 minutes of being there, it advanced too fast and so quick ... we had to cut and run,” he said. “You can’t breathe, you can’t see.” That happened again and again as he and the rest of the crew worked shifts that lasted two full days with little rest or food. They toiled in an alien environment where the sky turns lurid colors, ash falls like rain and towering trees explode into flames, sending a cascade of embers to the forest floor. “The sky was just orange or black, and so we weren’t sure if was morning or night,” he said. “My crew and I said that to each other many times, ‘What is going on? When is this going to end?’”

Rescuers reach people cut off by Gulf Coast hurricane (AP) Rescuers on the Gulf Coast used boats and high-water vehicles Thursday to reach people cut off by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Sally, even as a second round of flooding took shape along rivers and creeks swollen by the storm’s heavy rains. Across southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, homeowners and businesses began cleaning up, and officials inspected bridges and highways for safety, a day after Sally rolled through with 105 mph (165 kph) winds, a surge of seawater and 1 to 2 1/2 feet (0.3 to 0.8 meters) of rain in many places before it began to break up. Crews carried out at least 400 rescues in Escambia County, Florida, by such means as high-water vehicles, boats and water scooters, authorities said. In Alabama, on both sides of Mobile Bay, National Guard soldiers from high-water evacuation teams used big trucks Thursday to rescue at least 35 people. At least one death, in Alabama, was blamed on the hurricane. Nearly 400,000 homes and businesses were still without power Thursday night, mostly in Alabama and Florida.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87 (AP) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said. Her death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.

Flights to nowhere (Washington Post) With international travel in much of the world still disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, some airlines are resorting to “flights to nowhere” that target passengers who long for air travel—and some are willing to shell out plenty of money for the tickets. Qantas, among the latest to advertise a flight that departs and arrives at the same airport, told Reuters that the trip sold out less than 10 minutes after going on sale on Thursday. “It’s probably the fastest-selling flight in Qantas history,” a spokeswoman for the airline said.

Health-care workers make up 1 in 7 covid-19 cases recorded globally, WHO says (Washington Post) Health-care workers account for 1 in 7 coronavirus cases recorded by the World Health Organization, the U.N. agency said this week. “Globally, around 14 percent of covid-19 cases reported to WHO are among health workers, and in some countries it’s as much as 35 percent,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference in Geneva. The figures are disproportionate: Data collected by the WHO suggests that health workers represent less than 3 percent of the population in the majority of countries and less than 2 percent in almost all low- and middle-income countries. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that health-care workers accounted for 11 percent to 16 percent of covid-19 cases during the first surge of infections in the United States. When covid-19 began spreading through Western nations early this year, health-care workers faced critical shortages of personal protective equipment, also known as PPE. Even now, well over half a year into the pandemic, there are shortages of tests.

Bank of England considers negative interest rates (Yahoo Finance) The Bank of England yesterday indicated that it could cut interest rates below zero for the first time in its 326-year history as it tries to shore up a U.K. economic recovery that is facing the dual headwinds of the coronavirus and Brexit. After unanimously deciding to maintain the bank’s main interest rate at the record low of 0.1%, the nine-member rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee said it had discussed its “policy toolkit, and the effectiveness of negative policy rates in particular.”

Why French Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About Crime (NYT) In the Babel Tower of French politics, everyone agrees at least on this: Crime is out of control. The leader of the far right warned recently that France was a “security shipwreck” sinking into “barbarity.” A traditional conservative conjured up the ultraviolent dystopia of “A Clockwork Orange.” On the left, the presumed Green Party candidate in the next presidential contest described the insecurity as “unbearable.” And in the middle, President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers warned of a country “turning savage”—the “ensauvagement” of France—as they vowed to get tough on crime and combat the “separatism” of radical Muslims. The only catch? Crime isn’t going up. The government’s own data show that nearly all major crimes are lower than they were a decade ago or three years ago. But like elsewhere, and mirroring the campaign in the United States, the debate over crime tends to be a proxy—in France’s case, for debates about immigration, Islam, race, national identity and other combustible issues that have roiled the country for years.

India’s coronavirus cases jump by another 96K (AP) India’s coronavirus cases jumped by another 96,424 infections in the past 24 hours, showing little sign of leveling. The Health Ministry on Friday raised the nation’s total past 5.21 million, 0.37% of its nearly 1.4 billion people. India is expected to have the highest national total of confirmed cases within weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 6.67 million people have been infected. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on Thursday made a fresh appeal to people to wear masks and maintain social distance as his government chalked out plans to handle big congregations expected during a major Hindu festival season beginning next month.

Russia boosts its military presence near Chinese border (Foreign Policy) Russia is bolstering its troop presence in the country’s east in response to growing geopolitical threats in the region, though the Kremlin did not say what those threats are. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that 500 units of new, advanced equipment were being sent to the region, but he did not specify the destination. The moves are likely a response to China’s growing assertiveness, though some parts of the region have been gripped by protests against the government of President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. In July, people took to the streets in the city of Khabarovsk, which lies along the border with China, after the arrest of the region’s hugely popular governor, Sergei Furgal, who beat out Putin’s favored candidate in an election in September 2018.

Taiwan scrambles air force as multiple Chinese jets buzz island (Reuters) Taiwan scrambled fighter jets on Friday as multiple Chinese aircraft buzzed the island, including crossing the sensitive mid-line of the Taiwan Strait, in an escalation of tensions the same day a senior U.S. official began meetings in Taipei. Earlier on Friday, China’s Defence Ministry announced the start of combat drills near the Taiwan Strait, denouncing what it called collusion between the Chinese-claimed island and the United States. Beijing has watched with growing alarm the ever-closer relationship between Taipei and Washington, and has stepped up military exercises near the island, including two days of mass air and sea drills last week.

Apprehensive Thais await major political rally in Bangkok (AP) A two-day rally planned this weekend is jangling nerves in Bangkok, with apprehension about how far student demonstrators will go in pushing demands for reform of Thailand’s monarchy and how the authorities might react. In an escalation of tactics, organizers plan to march to Government House, the prime minister’s offices, to hand over petitions. The initial demands of the alliance of groups behind a series of anti-government demonstrations were for a dissolution of Parliament with fresh elections, a new constitution and an end to intimidation of political activists. But the main organizers behind this weekend’s rally have been promoting an additional point. They want restraints on the power of the monarchy, an institution long presented as the nation’s cornerstone and untouchable. This open challenge to the palace has dramatically raised the political temperature.

‘Boiling again’: Lebanon’s old rivalries rear up amid crisis (Reuters) An old rivalry between Christian factions who fought each other in Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war has flared again on the street and in political debate, renewing fears of fresh unrest as the nation grapples with its worst crisis since the conflict. The feud between supporters of Michel Aoun, now Lebanon’s president, and Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces (LF) led to a tense standoff this week near Beirut. Gunshots rang out, but no one was hurt. The rivalry today is about more than Christian politics: Aoun is allied with Hezbollah, the heavily armed, Iran-backed Shi’ite party. Geagea spearheads opposition to Hezbollah, saying it should surrender its weapons. The standoff was the latest in a country that has seen sporadic violence intensify as an economic crisis that erupted last year has deepened. It was compounded by a huge blast that ripped through Beirut on Aug. 4. The government has resigned and efforts to form a new one under French pressure are floundering. “The security situation is reaching a breaking point,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.

Israelis Prepare to Celebrate the Year’s Holiest Days Under Lockdown (NYT) As Israelis prepare to celebrate the holiest days on the Jewish calendar under a fresh lockdown, organizing prayer services is proving to be more of a mathematical brainteaser than a spiritual exercise. Rabbis are having to arrange worshipers into clusters of 20 to 50, separated by dividers, determining the number and size of the groups based on complex calculations involving local infection rates, and how many entrances and square feet their synagogues have. Masks will be required, and many seats will have to remain empty. The three-week national lockdown was timed to coincide with the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur holy days and the festival of Sukkot, in the hope of causing less economic damage because business slows down in any case around the holidays. It was also aimed at preventing large family meals that could become petri dishes for the virus. Israel successfully limited the spread of the virus in the spring, but recently its infection rate has spiraled into one of the world’s worst. The country has had more than 300 confirmed new cases per 100,000 people over the last week—more than double the rate in Spain, the hardest-hit European country, and quadruple that of the United States.

Violence in Ethiopia (Foreign Policy) More than 30 people were killed in militia attacks in western Ethiopia last week, officials said on Thursday, underscoring the country’s worsening security situation and creating new problems for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The attackers are “groups aimed at overturning the reforms journey,” Abiy said in a tweet. Abiy entered government promising sweeping reforms of the country’s political system, but his efforts have since faced criticism from opponents and former allies. Last week, the country’s Tigray region held parliamentary elections despite the national government’s decision to postpone the vote over coronavirus concerns. The region is home to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the country’s dominant political force before Abiy’s takeover in 2019.

#headlines #news

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takebackthedream · 7 years

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Pete Peterson's Ghost by Richard Eskow

Peter G. “Pete” Peterson, the billionaire businessman and anti-government crusader, died last week at the age of 91. He leaves behind family and friends who will miss him, and a vast coterie of consultants and politicians who may miss his checks even more. They can take comfort from the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley: “He doth not sleep/he hath awakened from the dream of life …”

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Peterson will be mourned by those who loved him. But that’s no reason to forget the harm he has done, especially since his family vows to continue his work. His son, speaking on behalf of the foundation Peterson created, says that “we will carry on his legacy with passion and pride.”

That legacy is marked by Pete Peterson’s long war against Social Security and Medicare, his austerity economics, and the false aura of objectivity Peterson used to promote his ideology.

Behind his carefully stage-managed veneer of bipartisanship (his team once tried to get me suspended from a publication for calling him right-wing), Peterson engaged in a decades-long war on the social contract. Programs like Social Security and Medicare were his immediate targets, but his ultimate goal was even broader: He wanted to extinguish the ideal of public goods, and put an end to the notion that certain social programs should be universal.

Peterson took conservative ideas and gave them an undeserved air of truth and neutrality. Politicians who embraced them were more likely to receive a steady flow of high-dollar contributions and gaining entrée to the right salons and alliances.

Thanks to Peterson, prominent journalists can make outlandish and inaccurate statements about “entitlement” programs, while still laying claim to journalistic objectivity. That’s no mean feat on Peterson’s part – although it becomes easier when you can spend nearly half a billion dollars in four years to promote your agenda, as Peterson did. (Peterson engaged in his crusade for decades; his total spending isn’t known.)

Peterson may be gone, but his ideology still holds sway in the corridors of political and media power.

Doing the Math

Peterson was a corporate success at a young age, and then joined Richard Nixon’s Cabinet. But he became a billionaire as co-founder of the Blackstone Group, one of four firms that exemplify what The Economist calls “the barbarian establishment.” As that (hardly left-wing) publication writes:

The standard operating procedures of private equity—purchasing businesses, adding debt, minimizing taxes, cutting costs (and facilities and employment), extracting large fees—are just the sort of things to aggravate popular anger about finance.”

Peterson promptly put his billions to work on a new mission: Cutting government programs, especially Medicare and Social Security, and reducing government deficits. (The fact that these moves would reduce the political incentive to tax billionaires is never mentioned in Peterson’s work.)

Peterson’s sleight-of-hand trick, and it was a brilliant one, was to present his opinions as neutral and objective truth. As the New York Times reported in 2011:

“If some consider him Cassandra and others Chicken Little, Mr. Peterson considers himself, in self-deprecating (and self-interested) terms, as a data-driven businessman who ‘simply did the math.’”

Here’s some real math: Medicare saves lives, and “greater spending per beneficiary is associated with significantly lower mortality rates.” So does Medicaid. Social Security lifts 22 million Americans out of poverty, including children and non-elderly adults.

The Peterson team claims that its proposals would exclude the poor, but cuts are a slippery slope. Social Security benefits are already meager, and any reductions – including cuts to cost-of-living increases and increases in the eligibility age – will lead to added poverty.

And poverty kills.

Sleight of Hand

Deficits were Peterson’s obsession. But when it came to economics, Peterson did the arithmetic, not “the math.” His zero-sum approach to government budgets failed to recognize the wide range of policy choices that are open to governments or the ways that government spending can create economic growth.

In a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Peterson argued that “spending cuts must play a lead role in any solution to our long-term structural deficits.” That’s an ideological statement that can’t be found anywhere in “the math.” For revenue, Peterson’s go-to solution was a consumption tax that would disproportionately harm the middle class.

No cut is too cruel for the Peterson crowd. A Peterson-backed group praised the draconian spending cuts in Donald Trump’s budget proposal last year, writing, “The President deserves credit for setting a fiscal goal and working to meet it.”

But it chastised the Republican for failing to apply an equally heavy hand to Social Security and Medicare.

Testing Mean

The policy heart of the Peterson agenda is means testing: of Social Security, Medicare, and other vital government programs. The Concord Coalition, which Peterson co-founded, pioneered the idea of means-testing Social Security benefits and reducing them for anyone making $40,000 per year or more. The idea quickly spread to Medicare and other universal programs.

It sounds reasonable, at first. Why should rich people collect taxpayer-funded benefits? One answer – because it’s an insurance program – can be hard to convey, but is nevertheless important.

Voters forget that means-testing is a slippery slope. Once it’s applied to vital programs, it can be ratcheted down until most Americans are excluded from them. Should we means-test public high schools? Elementary schools?

Means-testing works for anti-poverty programs. But under social insurance programs like Social Security, everybody contributes and everyone is eligible for benefits (with limited exceptions).

For 50 years, both political parties favored these kinds of universal programs. Peterson changed that.

When people are debating means-testing, they’re not asking a more obvious question: If we’re so concerned about giving “free rides” to rich people, why don’t we just raise their taxes?

Supporting Cast

Peterson assembled an ensemble cast of characters to push his message. Ex-senator Alan Simpson became a key spokesman, primarily because he shared Peterson’s gift for making a heavily ideological agenda sound like blunt truth-telling. Erskine Bowles, David Walker, and a coterie of economic and policy consultants also filled the ranks.

Peterson recruited media figures, too, through his “Fiscal Summits” and other events. Prominent journalists were offered hosting and guest appearances at Peterson events (and were presumably paid for them) At least one received a board seat on a Peterson organization, while at the same time “objectively” covering Peterson-style initiatives. (I reported on Lesley Stahl’s conflict of interest in 2013.) Journalists were also given talking points to help them sound knowledgeable about fiscal policy.

Politicians of both parties embraced the Peterson agenda for years. Bill Clinton, who received Peterson funding on the road to the White House. turned the Democratic Party in a more Peterson-friendly fiscal direction. Clinton emphasized deficit reduction, privatization, and means-testing as president, while over-praising the skills of the private sector.

Reaching the Summit

Clinton was a regular highlight at Peterson’s Fiscal Summit presentations, which feature the self-satisfied musings of privileged individuals who think they’re being brave for proposing policies that would pummel other Americans. These events typically treat even the worst political hacks, like John Boehner, as if they were statesmen. Paul Ryan, that empty-headed master of the Potemkin PowerPoint presentation, owes much of his undeserved “policy wonk” reputation to his hobnobbing with the Peterson crowd.

As president, Barack Obama followed in Clinton’s footsteps. As the nation grappled with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Obama began his presidency by appointing Peterson acolytes Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to co-chair a commission. That commission wasn’t tasked with addressing soaring unemployment, or lost middle-class wealth, or the foreclosure crisis brought on by Peterson’s colleagues on Wall Street.

Instead, the Simpson/Bowles Commission was charged with reducing government deficits – and cutting Social Security, too, even though that program is forbidden by law from contributing to the federal debt.

Peterson won, again.

There is a clear and direct connection between Obama’s embrace of Peterson-style fiscal austerity, including his administration’s reliance on many old Clinton economic hands, and the Democrats’ loss of political power over the last ten years.

That’s Peterson’s handiwork, too.

A Little Something for the Kids

While he succeeded in penetrating the political and media establishments, Peterson was never able to build popular support for his ideas. No wonder. Among his wacky-sounding and ill-advised publicity campaigns, gimmicks, and astroturf organizations were “Budgetball,” the foolish mock politician “Hugh Jidette” (Huge debt. Get it?), “The Can Kicks Back,” and the “America Speaks” town halls, where attendees saw through the slanted material and rejected Peterson’s ideas anyway.

Peterson and his minions tried to recruit millennials by undermining their trust in the social contract and fomenting generational war. Simpson, himself the beneficiary of government pensions, called older Americans “greedy geezers” while other Peterson acolytes tried to persuade young people that Social Security will go broke before they retire.

That was an especially dirty trick. Peterson-backed cuts would target millennials, not Baby Boomers, because they would gradually be phased in over a period of years. Fortunately, nobody went for their “Budgetball” pitch.

Pete Peterson’s Ghost

For the most part, the political tide has turned against Peterson – at least for now. His ideas are being shunned, at least publicly, by Democrats looking to capture the disaffected mood of struggling working-class Americans — a mood that cuts across lines of race, gender, and geography.

Conor Lamb’s recent Congressional victory in Pennsylvania’s 18th District was embraced by the “centrist,” Peterson-friendly crowd. But Lamb’s campaign included both a hearty embrace of unions and an eloquent defense of Social Security. This Lamb TV ad, for example, explicitly targets the Peterson-friendly smearing of “entitlement programs.” Lamb’s opponent embraced Peterson-style benefit cuts, a position that is considered a major reason for his loss.

But Pete Peterson’s ghost still haunts the American political landscape. The truth is, it was haunting us years before his death.

When Bill Clinton promised in his 1996 State of the Union speech to “give the American people (a government) that lives within its means” and declared that “the era of big Government is over,” Pete Peterson’s ghost was in the hall.

When George W. Bush used a filing cabinet as a prop while asserting that there is no Social Security trust fund – “just IOUs” – Peterson’s ghost was smiling from the wings.

When TV journalist Martha Raddatz said that “both Medicare and Social Security are going broke” as she moderated a vice presidential debate – a statement that is demonstrably false – Peterson’s ghost was sitting beside her.

When Barack Obama debated Mitt Romney and said, “I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position,” Peterson’s ghost was standing at his elbow. (He was standing at Romney’s side, too, since both candidates shared Peterson’s view.)

When Hillary Clinton scorned the idea of tuition-free higher education in a debate with Bernie Sanders because it wasn’t means-tested, saying “I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump’s kids to college,” Peterson’s ghost was whispering in her ear.

Peterson’s ghost walks beside John Harwood, Dana Bash, Mark Halperin, and every other television pundit who has appeared at a fiscal summit. It’s looking over the shoulders of Peterson-backed economists and policy advisors as they write their next op-ed about “hard choices” for the middle class. It’s sitting with Republicans in Capitol Hill and White House meeting rooms as they plan for a brutal round of “entitlement cuts.”

Peterson’s family deserves our condolences. But Pete Peterson was not the “profoundly good man” mourned by Bill Clinton – at least, not for the rest of us. Peterson did great harm to people who were far more vulnerable than he was. And, unfortunately, his work lives on.

Pete Peterson does not sleep, according to Percy Bysshe Shelley. But the rest of us need to wake up.

#Blog

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Which Presidents Were Democrats And Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-presidents-were-democrats-and-republicans/

Which Presidents Were Democrats And Republicans

: Lyndon B Johnson Vs Barry Goldwater

Johnson won a decisive victory, polling 43,128,958 popular votes to 27,176,873 for Goldwater. In the Electoral College, he received 486 votes to Goldwaters 52.

The List Of American Presidents Who Came Before Donald Trump And Joe Biden

Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States in 2016. Four years later, Mr Trump lost the race to Democrat Joe Biden and become the tenth one-term president in US history.

On November 7, after a closely run contest, the former vice-president became the 46th president of the United States, finally claiming the presidency 32 years after his first run in 1988.

With Joe Biden now sworn in as the 46th US President, we look back at the 44 men before Mr Trump who have taken the presidential oath and the major events that marked their presidencies.

: Andrew Jackson Vs John Quincy Adams

List Of Republican Us Presidents

Abraham Lincoln

Ulysses S. Grant

Rutherford B. Hayes

James Garfield

Chester A. Arthur

Benjamin Harrison

William McKinley

Theodore Roosevelt

William H. Taft

Warren G. Harding

Calvin Coolidge

Herbert C. Hoover

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Richard M. Nixon

Gerald R. Ford

Ronald W. Reagan

George H. W. Bush

George W. Bush

Donald Trump

The Issue Of Slavery: Enter Abraham Lincoln

Republicans Vs Democrats In Launching Wars: We Have The Numbers

According tothe research conducted bySputnik, sincethe turn ofthe 20th century outof 8 US presidents none have managed tostay away frominitiating military aggression.

In turn, outof 12 Republican leaders, two Warren Harding and Gerald Ford have deviated fromthe generally accepted party reputation.

Since 1900, 35 conflicts have been launched byRepublican administrations compared to23 byDemocrats, with10 GOP presidents launching one or more conflicts, compared to8 Democrats.

Values and Wars

Rooted inAmerican conservatism, the US Republican party commonly referred toas the GOP has always viewed strong national defense asone ofits core principles.

“Democrats believe that cooperation is better thanconflict,” the party’s online platform says.

So who started them, and who ended them?

Calvin Coolidge Republican Candidate For Vice

Calvin Coolidge, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing right

Brief Audio Selection:Law and Order. Calvin Coolidge .

: Richard M Nixon Vs George Mcgovern

Acting President Of The United States

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The Big List Of Alleged Malefactors

Interesting Insights Into Presidents And Gas Prices

The infograph here provides an overview of how gas prices have fluctuated from one President to the next. A few interesting insights include:

Want some tips on how to save gas? Check out our post here to learn more!

*This article was updated on 7/21/2021.

: John Adams Vs Thomas Jefferson

The 1796 election, which took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans, was the first contested presidential race.

State legislatures still chose electors in most states, and there was no separate vote for vice president. Each elector cast two votes for president, with the runner-up becoming vice president.

Republicans From Reagan To Trump

: Franklin Pierce Vs Winfield Scott Vs John Pitale

American Presidents: Life Portraits

The first program aired on March 15, 1999, and profiled George Washington. Subsequent programs featured each president in succession, concluding with Bill Clinton on December 20, 1999.

: William Howard Taft Vs William Jennings Bryan

The predominant campaign issue was Roosevelt. His record as a reformer countered Bryans reformist reputation, and Taft promised to carry on Roosevelts policies. Business leaders campaigned for Taft.

In the election, Taft received 7,679,006 popular votes to Bryans 6,409,106. Tafts margin in the Electoral College was 321 to 162.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson Prominent Republican Sister Of Theodore Roosevelt

Famous G.O.P women arrive

Audio Selection:Safeguard America! Corinne Roosevelt Robinson .

: Martin Van Buren Vs Daniel Webster Vs Hugh White

: Abraham Lincoln Vs George B Mcclellan

Emergence Of New Conservatism

Meanwhile, many black voters, who had remained loyal to the Republican Party since the Civil War, began voting Democratic after the Depression and the New Deal.

: George W Bush Vs John Kerry

Total voter turnout for the 2004 presidential election numbered at about 120 million, an impressive 15 million increase from the 2000 vote.

Popular Vote: 60,693,281 to 57,355,978 . Electoral College: 286 to 251

: Franklin D Roosevelt Vs Alfred M Landon

: Jimmy Carter Vs Gerald Ford

President Of The United States

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The president of the United States has been chief of the executive branch of the United States of America since 1789.

Various other countries that are or were known as the United States have or had a presidential system:

President of the United StatesIf an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.Add links

This page was last edited on 2 January 2021, at 00:59 .

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