As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds. We have some long excerpts today, so let's get started.
Leonard Pitts, Jr., has some good advice on how to keep Republicans from cheating you out of your vote (garnered from Carol Anderson of Emery University). Here are the first four things you should be aware of now, and take action if needed:
1. Check periodically with election officials in your state to make sure you’re properly registered and that your name has not been purged. “We know these lists are flawed. So it’s really important to double check and make sure that you haven’t been wiped off the list erroneously”...
2. If you’ve moved, “Alert election officials just to give them your new address”...
3. “Make sure that your polling place is where you think it is. Georgia, for instance, is continuing to shut down polling places. So whereas you may have always gone to Southside Church to vote, Southside Church may not be the place anymore. They may have moved it five miles away from you”...
4. “Be prepared for chicanery.” In other words, be on the lookout for fake sample ballots, misleading robo-calls and other dirty tricks...There are several more, so go check out the rest. Because, even though there are more of us than there are of them,
Trump’s party knows all too well that the numbers are against them, that they cannot win nationally without cheating. So they do. Behind a fig leaf of concern over imaginary voter fraud, Republicans have imposed photo I.D. laws, voter purges and polling-place closures that disproportionately disenfranchise those who don’t vote GOP. Meaning, pretty much everyone who’s not a straight, white, angry, older male lacking a college diploma.2020 is an all- hands- on- deck election; make sure your vote is counted.
Speaking of 2020, Electoral Vote looks at a possibly significant shift in the white working- class female demographic (found via Infidel 753):
McClatchy is running a series of studies of key demographic groups that will probably determine who wins the White House in 2020. The first one is about white working-class women, who make up about 20% of the electorate. They went solidly for Trump in 2016, but many are now having misgivings about doing that again in 2020 (in contrast to white working-class men, whose support of Trump is unwavering).
A study of polls, focus groups, and interviews with voters and over a dozen party strategists, shows that Trump has little chance of winning white working-class women by 27 points again, as he did in 2016. One hint came in 2018, when they went from R+27 to R+14, a drop of 13 points. Forty percent of them now favor impeaching him, up from only 11% in September.
Many voters told the McClatchy reporter that they didn't especially like Trump in 2016, but they hated Hillary Clinton. She won't be on the ballot in 2020. Also important is that Democrats are showing up in rural areas like Howard County, IA, which went for Obama by 21 points in 2012 and for Trump by 20 points in 2016. One resident, April Cheeseman, was repelled by both Trump and Clinton in 2016, but now says she will probably support whomever the Democrats nominate. Many other people had the same story to tell.
The Democrats don't have to win white working-class women outright to capture Iowa's 6 electoral votes, but if they can knock 10 or 15 points off Trump's margin with them, that might be enough. The same holds for most of the neighboring states. If the Democrats show up, listen to people, and take what they hear to heart, they have a good chance of making big gains with this key demographic group.These aren't Trump dead- ender cultists. They've been paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and they also vote pocket book issues like health care and minimum wage.
The public impeachment hearings are starting this week, and Margaret Sullivan has some pointers for the media on how to serve the public interest:
Stress substance, not speculation. Journalists and pundits love to ponder about how the public is reacting to news, though they aren’t much good at it. [snip]
“Decline to speculate on how this is playing to voters in the swing states,” is the advice of New York University professor and press critic Jay Rosen.
A related issue: The extreme likelihood that the media will be focusing on the partisan fight, rather than the substance of what is being proved or not proved in the hearings themselves...[snip]
Don’t let stunts hijack the coverage. If we know anything about Trump’s reaction when things get tough, it’s that he and his allies will haul out some attention-grabbing performance art and its distractions. [snip]
Avoid Barr-Letter Syndrome. It was a little over six months ago that Attorney General William P. Barr took it upon himself to summarize the Mueller report in a misleading letter that the news media — pretty much en masse — represented as an accurate summation of the 448-page report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and its aftermath. [snip]
You’d think journalists would have learned that lesson. But then more recently came the release of a partial, rough summary of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that asked for “a favor.” (The phone call, of course, is at the heart of the impeachment hearings, which explore Trump’s holding up military aid to Ukraine in trade for help in damaging his political opponents.)
In the initial round of coverage, almost all in the news media characterized this as “the transcript,” which strongly suggested that it was verbatim. It wasn’t — though it was damning enough, anyway.
Partly as a result, we see legions of Trump fans in T-shirts with the words “Read the Transcript.”(Actually, anybody who reads the transcript would discern abuse of power.) [snip]
Beware mealy-mouthed and misleading language. Punditry will be running even more amok than usual once the hearings begin. And we’ll be hearing a lot about what a divided nation we have and how ugly politics has become. We’ll be hearing the term “quid pro quo” endlessly..."Extortion" and "bribery" make the point more accurately and directly (or "shakedown," as crime family boss Trump would understand the word).
In case you missed it, it looks like one of Trump consigliere Rudy "You Have A Fool For A Lawyer" Giuliani's bagmen is flipping:
An associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who was involved in a campaign to pressure Ukraine into aiding President Trump’s political prospects has broken ranks, opening a dialogue with congressional impeachment investigators and accusing the president of falsely denying their relationship.
The associate, Lev Parnas, had previously resisted speaking with investigators for the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings, which are examining the president’s pressure attempts in Ukraine. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump was then representing Mr. Parnas.
But since then, Mr. Parnas has hired new lawyers who contacted the congressional investigators last week to notify them to “direct any future correspondence or communication to us,” according to a copy of the letter.
Needless to say, the legal peril for Rudy just went up exponentially.The lawyers also signaled on Monday that Mr. Parnas, who was arrested last month on campaign finance charges, is prepared to comply with a congressional subpoena for his documents and testimony. (our emphasis)
We once again close by recommending you visit Infidel 753's link round- up for much more variety and scope than we can offer. He puts in a lot of effort every week just on this one feature, and you owe it to yourselves to check it out.
