"Happily giving a white supremacist a platform despite the impact on society"
Americans are angrily denouncing NBC News and MSNBC after network executives announced Wednesday they will hold a town hall for President Donald Trump on Thursday, directly competing with ABC's town hall for Joe Biden. The two presidential nominees were to appear together in a town hall but Trump pulled out when the Commission on Presidential Debates announced due to his COVID-19 the event would be virtual.
In fact, NBC News seems desperately aware of the danger.
"Moderated by 'TODAY' anchor Savannah Guthrie, the event will take place outdoors and be socially distanced," was the first sentence in the network's announcement.
But the network seemed especially unaware of the anger it would generate by handing the former host of its own TV series, "The Apprentice," airtime to compete with a scheduled election event. Many expressed frustration that NBC appeared to be forcing voters to choose between the competing events to learn more about the candidates, which is the presumed goal of town halls.
And the anger for many seems to be focused on a lack of respect for the democratic process.
Leaked videos taken from inside a secretive right-wing organization show many top conservative operatives openly advocating ballot harvesting during the 2020 presidential election, even as President Donald Trump accused Democrats of using such tactics to steal elections.
The Washington Post reports that the videos show longtime evangelical operative Ralph Reed boasting of his plans to harvest ballots from multiple places of worship for the benefit of Republican candidates.
"Our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to White evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”
Trump, however, tweeted earlier this year that he wanted to "GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD."
J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, was also shown on video attacking mail-in voting, which he said he wanted to stop by any means necessary.
"Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth," he said as he encouraged conservatives to go out of their way to block mail-in ballots.
The far-right QAnon conspiracy cult not only opposes abortion — it also opposes the use of any type of fetal tissue for medical research. But in Vice, journalist Anna Merlan notes a major contradiction: President Donald Trump, who QAnon idolizes, was recently treated with a drug that was "developed using a stem cell line made from aborted fetal tissue."
When Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland after testing positive for COVID-19, he was treated with an antibody cocktail from the company Regeneron — and that cocktail, Merlan notes, "was developed using a fetal tissue cell line from the 1980s."
QAnon aren't the only anti-abortion extremists on the far right who oppose the use of fetal tissue in medical research. But QAnon carries it much further, claiming that an international cabal of pedophiles and Satanists are making use of fetal tissue. QAnon believes that the cabal/Satanic child sex ring has infiltrated the federal government in the United States and that Trump was placed in the White House to combat the cabal. According to QAnon, an anonymous figure named "Q" is giving members updates on Trump's battle.
The antibody cocktail that Trump received, Merlan points out, "manages to slot with almost painful neatness into an ongoing storyline in the right-wing conspiracy verse: that powerful Democratic elites extract the lifeblood or some other vital force from children and feed on it. It's a trope with roots in the anti-Semitic medieval blood libel, and has recurred in various forms for hundreds of years."
"Among QAnon fans," Merlan notes, "that substance is commonly claimed to be 'adrenochrome,' and the claim, more or less, is that the Satanic Democrat Illuminati elites extract it from children being tortured and killed and then inject it to maintain their youthful vigor. Adrenochrome is a chemical compound that's used mainly to slow blood clotting; its mythology as a supposed intoxicating drug is almost completely derived from fiction. It's not, in any circumstances, necessary or possible to harvest it from tortured children."
Merlan observes that there is a major "irony" in the fact that Trump, QAnon's idol, was treated with that antibody cocktail when the cult opposes using any type of fetal tissue for scientific research. And she points out that Trump's supporters, including QAnon extremists, have been looking for ways to rationalize the use of that antibody cocktail when he was hospitalized.
"It's virtually certain that in the coming days, the sentiments around Trump's antibody cocktail will coalesce, and these divergent, competing points of view will be absorbed into a more dominant narrative — most likely, one that urges trust in Trump and in what his followers so fondly call 'the Plan,'" Merlan writes. "By Tuesday, in fact, there were signs that the controversy, such as it was, was simply being allowed to die away, and that the details of how Trump was 'cured' were less relevant than the fact that he'd returned to public life…. The future of QAnon, after all — a movement based on lionizing one man, putting him into the role of savior, leader of mankind, and, of course, tireless, extremely healthy strongman — depends on believing that to the bitter end."
The View co-host Sara Haines blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) after she clashed with CNN host Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday night.
Pelosi had accused Blitzer of pushing pro-GOP talking points after the CNN host asked why she wouldn’t accept the president's latest coronavirus stimulus offer.
“Even members of your own caucus, Madam Speaker, want to accept this deal, $1.8 trillion, Congressman Ro Khanna for example,” Blitzer said.
“What I say to you is, I don’t know why you’re always an apologist – and many of your colleagues – are apologists for the Republican position,” Pelosi fired back.
Haines was not impressed with her remarks, criticizing Pelosi for not providing an answer to Blitzer’s question.
"I found the exchange very frustrating because right now we live in a time where we can't question an idea. If you question an idea, you are immediately accused of being an apologist for everything the other side stands for. And CNN, by the way, are not apologists for Trump," Haines said.
"Rather than getting snarky and dismissing it because he was asking tough questions, and a good idea should be able to withstand question and challenge, and she did not prove to handle that very well."
A new poll out of Michigan doesn't just show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden beating President Donald Trump -- it also shows that a large chunk of Trump's own voters don't like his behavior.
CBS News reports that its most recent battleground poll of Michigan shows that 34 percent of Trump voters in the state say they don't approve of the way he handles himself, versus just nine percent of Biden voters who say the same thing about their candidate.
CBS News interviewed some of these Trump voters and found that many were backing him simply because they approved of his policies on issues such as abortion or the economy -- not because they were actually fond of him.
"I guess sometimes when he speaks things that he says aren't very polite," said Trump voter Jacque Hinds, who is voting for him because of her opposition to abortion. "I'm just not a fan of him as a person."
Trump voter Kim Hensley said she liked how the president had handled the economy -- even while acknowledging he has made racist remarks.
"I don't like the things that Donald Trump has to say about women, about minorities, about different ethnic groups," she said. "But I think he is appropriate to lead an economy and grow. He's a businessman, so I agree with that."
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pressed Amy Coney Barrett to explain why she'd keep an open mind on President Donald Trump hypothetically delaying the election, and said that undercut her guiding legal philosophy.
The Supreme Court nominee has repeatedly refused to say whether she believed the president had the right to change the election date, which the Constitution plainly states is the authority of Congress, and said she would have to consider the facts of any lawsuit brought to challenge such an order.
"I've given a response to every hypothetical that I've been asked in the hearings," Barrett told Durbin. "As I said yesterday, I do that regardless of whether it's easy or hard. I don't do that to try to -- whether the question, I mean, would be easy or hard. I don't try to do that to signal, but because it would be inappropriate for me to make a comment, and I don't think I've answered any legal hypotheticals in keeping with the 'Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg rule.'"
Durbin was less than satisfied with Barrett's explanation.
"I guess what troubles me is this," Durbin said. "You style yourself an originalist, textualist, factualist -- whatever the term is -- which means you go right to the words and try to understand the words in their original meaning. If I change Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein's question and didn't ask you if the president has the authority to unilaterally delay an election, asked you does the president have the right to deny a person a right to vote based on their race, what's your answer?"
Barrett told the senator that the Constitution prohibited the example he suggested.
"Obviously there are many laws in effect, including the Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, including the 15th Amendment, which protects the right to vote against discrimination based on race," she said. "There's a principle and constitutional law called external constraints. Even if one evaluates what the authority a branch might have to act, there are external constraints from other parts of the Constitution. Here it's the 14th and 15th Amendments."
Durbin continued.
"Of course, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States on the account of race," he agreed. "For a textualist, that is clear text as I see it, but when asked whether or not the president has any authority to unilaterally deny that right to vote for a person based on race or even gender, are you saying you can't answer that question?"
Barrett argued that she'd simply cited the constitutional amendments that addressed his question, and Durbin asked why she wouldn't do the same with the election delay issue that's also addressed by the Constitution.
"But whether a president can unilaterally deny, you're not going to answer yes or no?" he said.
Barrett told the senator she wouldn't answer hypotheticals, and Durbin said her refusal contradicted her guiding philosophy.
"It strains originalism," Durbin said, "if the clear wording of the Constitution establishes a right and you will not acknowledge it."
More than 3,000 Amazon employees have signed a petition asking the technology and retail giant to provide a holiday for voting in the November 3 US election, organizers said.
The petition was organized by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group active on several social issues involving the company.
"Removing barriers to voting is critical to ensure we have a voice on the issues we care about. There is no racial or climate justice without voting justice," the group said in a blog post Tuesday.
"With reduced polling locations in many states, eight hours is necessary to ensure nobody is unable to vote because they have to work."
The group said other large firms including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Twitter, Nordstrom, and Apple have announced a holiday for employees on election day.
"As the United States’ second largest employer, Amazon can have a huge impact on voter participation," the blog post said.
Amazon had nearly 900,000 employees worldwide at the end of the second quarter, with more than half believed to be in the United States, making it the second-largest private employer behind Walmart. It is also hiring an estimated 100,000 for the holiday season.
Amazon did not immediately respond to an AFP query on its voting policies.
It is not among the more than 700 US firms which have joined the Time to Vote coalition pledging to give employees the time and tools they need to cast ballots next month.
I keep hearing from progressives who lament that even if Biden wins, Trump and McConnell have tilted the playing field forever.
They point to McConnell’s rush to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, after blocking President Obama’s nominee for 293 days because it was “too close” to the next election. And to the fact that Republicans in the Senate represent 11 million fewer Americans than their Democratic counterparts, and are still able to confirm a Supreme Court justice and entrench minority rule.
But that’s not the end of the story.
The Constitution doesn’t prevent increasing the size of the Supreme Court in order to balance it. Or creating a pool of circuit court justices to cycle in and out of it. In fact, the Constitution says nothing at all about the size of the Court.
I also hear progressives express outrage that this imbalance of power exists in the Electoral College, which made Trump president in 2016 despite having lost the popular vote by 3 million, and made George W. Bush president in 2000, despite losing the popular vote by about half a million.
But this doesn’t have to be the end of the story, either. From granting statehood to Washington, D.C. to abolishing the Electoral College, nothing should be off the table to strengthen our democracy.
There is no reason to accept the structure of our democracy when it repeatedly empowers a ruthless minority to impose its will over the majority. Or when it denies full representation to U.S. citizens, as is the case for Puerto Rico, which absolutely deserves self-determination.
Pay no mind to those who argue that these moves would be unfair abuses of power. Unfair, after what Trump and McConnell have done?
Abuses of power? When Trump is urging his followers to intimidate Biden voters? When he won’t even commit to a peaceful transition of power and refuses to be bound by the results? When he’s already claiming the election is rigged against him and will be fraudulent unless he wins? When he’s threatening to have states that he loses declare the votes invalid and certify their own slate of Trump electors in January?
I’m sorry. There’s nothing unfair about making our democracy fairer. There’s no abuse of power in remedying blatant abuses of power.
RANGELEY, Maine — On a crisp, sunny day in late September, Susan Collins was on a campaign bus tour through Maine, the state she’s represented in the U.S. Senate since 1997.
Collins, up for reelection in November, had started the day’s bus tour at a sawmill in nearby Dixfield — “I’ve never seen such a sophisticated, high-tech mill, it is truly extraordinary” — and she would end it in Farmington at Gifford’s Ice Cream Stand, the company that produces the ice cream Collins serves with Maine blueberry pie when she hosts the weekly Senate Republican lunch.
In between, she took a walking tour of the business district in Rangeley, a mountainous, nearly all-White town in the western region of the state where the average annual household income is just under $60,000 — slightly less than the national average — and the year-round population of roughly 1,200 swells to more than 10,000 in the summer when tourists arrive. Collins dined with supporters at Moose Alley, a bowling and arcade center, then walked Main Street with a town selectman, stopping at the local hardware store, restaurants and a coffee shop.
During this quintessential campaign swing, it was easy to conjure what the previous three reelection bids, won by double-digit margins, may have looked like for the last Republican representing New England in Congress. Cars slowed down and drivers beeped their horns, leaning out windows shouting: “We love you, Susan!” and “Alright, Susie!”
But it wasn’t one of Collins’ past reelection bids. As Collins walked the streets of Rangeley, polls showed her underwater, trailing by an average of 6.5 points. Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, the 48-year-old outgoing speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, had as of June 30 raised $24 million to Collins’ $17 million, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets, with much of it from out-of-state.
“Look at this way: if it were any other year we wouldn’t even know who Sara Gideon is. This would be a slam-dunk, 60-40, 70-30 vote for Susan Collins,” said Moose Alley owner Nancy Bessey, a Collins supporter. “We only know about [Gideon] because people outside the state have decided to make us know about her.”
Just two years ago, Collins, a Republican from this frontier state where the prevailing political ideology has long been nonconformity, seemed poised for a smooth reelection to her fifth term.
Look at this way: if it were any other year … This would be a slam-dunk, 60-40, 70-30 vote for Susan Collins.
Nancy Bessey, a Collins supporter
Born into the fifth-generation of a lumber family in Aroostook, Maine’s northernmost county on the U.S.-Canada border, Collins, 67, cut her political teeth as an aide to William Cohen, a Republican representative and senator who famously broke with his party by voting to impeach Richard Nixon. After succeeding her mentor to the Senate in 1996, Collins coasted to reelection in 2002, 2008 and 2014 by 16-, 23- and 37-point margins, winning each of the state’s 16 counties even when a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state. She was in the top tier of the most popular senators and considered by some to be the most bipartisan. In 22 years, she had never missed a single vote.
Then, in 2018, Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and everything changed for Collins, who ultimately voted to confirm him after weeks of national scrutiny.
“I don’t look at whether the person would be the individual whom I would appoint if I were president. That is not my test. I’m not a president; I’m a senator,” Collins said in a recent interview.
“I look at whether their political philosophy is within the mainstream, whether they’re qualified for the position and whether they have the experience for the position,” she added.
After the vote, Collins’ approval ratings went down and her unfavorables went up. Democrats saw her seat as an easy target to flip in 2020 to win Senate control. The race long ago became the most expensive in Maine’s history. Outside groups have spent more than $60 million supporting or opposing the two women. For months, Collins has trailed Gideon in polls, though one released on Tuesday showed Collins having narrowed the gap to one point.
Maine, a state of roughly 1.3 million that casts just four electoral votes and has largely been a nonfactor in presidential elections, has been thrust into the national spotlight like never before.
The narrative in the Maine Senate race — advanced since Gideonentered in June 2019 and echoed in media coverage — is that Collins is no longer the independent lawmaker that she once was. But has she changed over her years in the Senate?
Liberals lauded Collins when she helped “save” Obamacare in 2017. But she opposed President Barack Obama’s signature health care law when it first passed Congress in 2009 and 2010, along with then Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a fellow Republican. Last week, she was one of six Republicans who joined Democrats in a largely symbolic effort to protect individuals with preexisting conditions should the Supreme Court rule against Obamacare in a case it is expected to hear next month.
Collins voted in 2017 with her Republican colleagues to support a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that delivered major savings to corporations and the wealthy, as well as eliminating the penalty for not complying with the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate.” But before voting, she asked for and received assurances from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that there would be votes on Obamacare market stabilization bills. The measures later stalled over partisan disagreement about abortion.
Last year, she voted against a Democratic amendment in a larger defense spending package that would block a U.S.-Mexico border wall’s construction, saying the amendment was too broadly written. Yet she’s also twiceintroduced measures to block Trump from diverting military funds to construct the wall, saying it was not about whether she supported or opposed the wall itself, but to prevent a presidential power grab. (Trump vetoed both.)
When the Senate began preparing for its impeachment trial early this year, Democrats saw Collins as a potential collaborator in their quest to call witnesses and review documents. She convened meetings with several like-minded Republicans to consider it. At the trial’s outset, she opposed the subpoena efforts, saying she wanted to stick to the sequence and process used during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. By its end, she was one of two Republicans who voted to subpoena additional documents and witnesses, including Trump’s former national security adviser. The effort failed.
Collins ultimately voted to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment. She reminded reporters that she broke with her party to do the same in 1999, when she was among only a handful of Republicans who voted to acquit Clinton on both impeachment counts that he faced. She told the New York Times earlier this year that she was “furious” with Clinton even as she voted to acquit him. Ahead of Trump’s acquittal, she lamented the president’s “poor judgement” and said she hoped he had learned a lesson.
Collins has earned a reputation as a moderate because she has at times been a critical swing vote. But the longtime senator is ideologically conservative, albeit with a more socially liberal bent than many of her colleagues. It is the conservativeness of her approach, more than anything, that dictates when she breaks with her party, and it is usually to uphold precedent or balance executive and congressional powers. She believes the system works, even in a time when that is up for debate.
“Her record, if anything, is almost a model of consistency, pretty much across the board,” said Mark Brewer, a professor of political science at the University of Maine.
As Collins was finishing up that late September campaign swing, news broke that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. For many conservatives, the Supreme Court is a driving political force. For Collins, the court is what has troubled her current reelection bid.
When Trump nominated Kavanaugh, liberals believed he was skeptical of Obamacare and would not uphold Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. So they zeroed in on Collins, who supports abortion rights and had cast a deciding 2017 vote to protect Obamacare, as a potential ally willing to cross the president. After all, Collins had in the months before the 2016 election said publicly that she would not vote for him.
The group Mainers for Accountable Leadership began soliciting pledges and promised to funnel millions of dollars to Collins’ eventual Democratic opponent if she did not vote no on Kavanaugh — a move she characterized as bribery. In the U.S. Capitol, reporters keen to decipher the nominee’s chances trailed Collins, along with Sens. Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski, who were also thought to be potential party defectors in the chamber where Republicans held a slim 51-to-49 majority.
Collins’ political predicament grew more precarious after sexual assault allegations surfaced against Kavanaugh once his confirmation was underway. The FBI got involved. Protesters staged sit-ins wearing the red cloaks of the “Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian novel and television series. In addition to an initial two-hour meeting, Collins interviewed Kavanaugh for another hour by phone.
On October 5, 2018, word began to circulate that Collins would appear on the Senate floor to announce her vote. In a 43-minute speech, Collins said Supreme Court confirmation processes had been in partisan decline for 30 years and with Kavanaugh’s it had hit “rock bottom.” She had always opposed “litmus tests” for nominees, she said, and had “never considered the president’s identity or party” when she voted to confirm all six justices collectively nominated during her Senate career by Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama and Trump. She believed Kavanaugh would uphold court precedent related to Roe, she said, along with the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage.
Collins said she found Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony alleging that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her “sincere, painful and compelling.” But, Collins continued, the witnesses who testified during the proceedings “could not corroborate any of the events.” It was not a criminal trial with a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, she said, but “fairness would dictate that the claims at least should meet a threshold of more-likely-than-not.” She did not think they did.
The next day, the Senate voted 50-to-48 to confirm Kavanaugh, with Sen. Joe Manchin being the only Democrat to vote in the affirmative. Murkowski voted “present,” and Republican Sen. Steve Daines missed the vote due to his daughter’s wedding. Collins and members of her staff received death threats. Former television journalist Dan Rather said she had sided with the “old bulls” over women. Collins said later that she was sad, given her fulsome explanation at the time, that the Kavanaugh decision might cost her votes. Her approval ratings have declined ever since.
Sen. Susan Collins, photographed after the confirmation vote of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in 2018.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“I normally would not be one to put too much stock in one vote, in terms of changing a politician’s focus, but you can trace a lot of this, for Collins, back to the Kavanaugh vote,” Brewer said. “It was unlike any other vote for her. I thought, initially, it would create this firestorm and then it would die down, but it hasn’t.”
Collins points out that in addition to Trump’s two Supreme Court nominees (Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch) she likewise voted to confirm those nominated by Obama (Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) and Bush (Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito). Her approach to lower-court nominees has been as consistent: Under four different presidents — two Democrats; two Republicans — she has voted to approve nearly every nominated federal judge, according to a 2020 analysis by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
Even still, after Ginsburg’s death last month, Collins said she would not vote for a Trump Supreme Court nominee before the November election. The promise — made before Trump named appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his replacement — had nothing to do with whom the president might pick and everything to do with abiding by a precedent set during Obama’s presidency by McConnell, which the majority leader himself has abandoned.
Gideon nonetheless tried to keep focus on Collins’ judicial nominations record, airing an ad that accused Senate Republicans, Collins included, of “just rubber-stamping Trump’s judicial nominees.”
After a recent “Supper with Sara” near her home in Freeport, Gideon was more circumspect on the topic of just how much Collins has changed than some of her campaign ads. “There’s a degree to which perhaps she has changed. I also think that when Donald Trump is president and Mitch McConnell is majority leader it becomes much harder to sit on both sides of the issue, which is something that she loves to do,” Gideon said.
Both Collins and Gideon are running — if not as ideological moderates — as pragmatists, who say they want to put national partisan rancor aside in order to get things done for people in Maine. But the most-watched Senate campaign in Maine’s history, and among the most well-funded nationally, has not been without its own policy distortions, record misrepresentations and political acrimony.
Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon and Collins participate in the debate at the Holiday Inn By The Bay alongside fellow candidates on Friday, September 11, 2020.
(Staff photo by Brianna Soukup)
One Gideon ad suggests that the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the coronavirus relief package that Collins played a key role in drafting and that she touts on the campaign trail, mostly benefits big donors and ignores small businesses. It was called a “misleading narrative” and given three (of four) “Pinocchios” by Washington Post fact checkers. Another from the campaign on Collins’ prescription drug record was described by fact checkers as “cherry picking” and presenting an “incomplete picture.” One from the outside group Maine Momentum, which is run by former staffers to Gideon and U.S. Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree and does not have to disclose its donors, says Collins “voted for a tax bill that puts Medicare and Social Security in jeopardy.” That ad also received three Pinocchios.
The ad barrage turned more personal over the summer as both candidates ran spots about one another’s husbands. Collins pushed back against Gideon’s PPP ad by releasing one that highlighted how the law firm where Gideon’s husband works had received a $1 million to $2 million forgivable loan from the program. Gideon then ran one saying Collins is in a “perfect Washington marriage” with her lobbyist husband and that she has “pushed for policies that benefited his lobbyist business.” The Associated Press evaluated the ad’s claims as “unsupported” and said it offered “no proof.” The ad cited actions Collins took in 2011, before she was married. Her husband last registered as a lobbyist in 2006 and retired altogether in 2016.
Collins has waded into the muck in other ways. One recent ad from her campaign, which said that Gideon had “voted to defund” the police when she was on Freeport’s town council and direct the money to a nonprofit for which she was a board member, was rated as false. She has also implied that Gideon could do more to reconvene the legislature to deal with COVID-19; state Republicans have blocked Gideon’s effort.
Perhaps most striking in a state with one of the nation’s highest rates of registered female voters and women who cast ballots are the gendered attacks on Collins. The Lincoln Project ran an ad saying “Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump control her voice.” A mailer sent to voters this week, with no information about its funder, shows Collins in Trump’s embrace as he kisses the nape of her neck, saying she was “swept into the arms of a golden-haired hottie.” Collins has bristled at suggestions it is a man, and not she, who is responsible for her decisions.
Collins is trying to keep her focus local even as the country watches. Maine is the state with the oldest average population, and her Senate office has in recent weeks highlighted bipartisan efforts to improve access to osteoporosis testing and examine barriers women face to retirement security. Multiple times during her most recent debate, she brought up potato farming, an agricultural mainstay in the state’s northern region from which she hails. Collins is in line to be the top Republican on the appropriations panel — a fact that is brought up often by Maine’s pragmatic voters.
Her campaign released a new ad campaign this week highlighting a recent endorsement from Bill Green, a retired television personality familiar to nearly everyone in Maine. In one, he says: “Did you know that Susan Collins hates dogs? That’s kind of what I’m expecting to hear next from a ridiculous smear campaign.” Collins has a black Labrador Retriever.
Adding to the race’s uncertainty is the fact that in November, Maine will be the first state to use ranked-choice voting in a presidential election — a system that is untested but experts speculate could ultimately benefit Gideon over Collins.
After the ice cream stop in Farmington, Collins hypothesized about what had changed over the past two years, if anything, to make her race so competitive. It was clear she had given it some thought. She traced it back to before Trump’s presidency, and even before the 2011-2019 tenure of former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a bombastic and divisive leader who liked to say he was “Donald Trump before Donald Trump.”
When she joined the Senate, Sen. John Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island, had counseled her to never campaign against a Senate colleague from either party, she said. That custom began to erode in 2004, when then Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist — a “good friend” of Collins’ — campaigned against then Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
Reporting and commentary have become “totally intermingled,” and “social media reinforces what people already think, rather than exposing them to alternative viewpoints,” she lamented. Then there is the “enormous amount of out-of-state money,” which has “taken a toll,” she said.
It has become more and more difficult to be a senator in the middle, whatever that might mean.
“It started with the growth of these groups on the far left and the far right who started to demand 100 percent adherence to 100 percent of their views 100 percent of the time. And if you didn’t? You were threatened with a primary or a massive amount of money being spent against you,” Collins said.
If former Vice President Joe Biden carries every state that 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won four years ago and flips Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, he will defeat President Donald Trump in November and be sworn in as president of the United States in January 2021. Biden, of course, has other possible paths to victory in addition to the Rust Belt; Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are among the Trump states in the Sun Belt that are in play for the former vice president. But flipping Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin is a high priority for Biden's campaign, and according to journalist Daniel McGraw, Biden has a very good chance of doing that if seven Rust Belt counties are any indication.
McGraw, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 13, takes a look at swing counties in Pennsylvania (Northampton, Erie, Luzerne), Michigan (Macomb) and Wisconsin (Chippewa, Brown, Racine). The journalist describes them as Rust Belt swing counties that Trump won in 2016 and stresses that in most of them, he isn't performing well in 2020.
McGraw explains, "In March of 2019, I asked a simple question: President Donald Trump won the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a combined 77,000 votes — what counties in those states would have changed that if they had not swung his way?…. We pared it down to just seven counties total: three in Pennsylvania, one in Michigan and three in Wisconsin. Think about it this way: there are 3142 counties in the United States. President Trump could lose reelection if 3135 counties voted as they did in 2016, but seven counties do not."
McGraw notes that in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Trump "beat Clinton by 5000 votes after" President Barack Obama "beat" 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney "by 6000." In that county, according to a Morning Call poll, Biden is leading by 7%. And Erie County, Pennsylvania, according to McGraw, is a place where "Trump beat Clinton by 2000 votes" and "Obama beat Romney by 20,000 votes" — as well as a place where, in 2020, Biden is leading by 11% with voters who are 65 or older, according to an AARP poll.
Luzerne County, McGraw observes, is one of Trump's best counties in Pennsylvania: he won Luzerne by 20% in 2016. But it's uncertain whether Trump can "hold" that margin in 2020 in Luzerne.
McComb County, according to McGraw, is a Michigan County where "Trump beat Clinton by 48,000 votes" and "Obama beat Romney by 16,000 votes" — and where "the number of absentee ballot applications for this election" is "215,000 this year compared with 121,000 in 2016." Those applications, McGraw writes, are "not good for Trump" in a "state where Trump only won by about 11,000 votes."
In Racine County, Wisconsin, McGraw explains, "Trump beat Clinton by 4000 votes" and "Romney beat Obama by 3600 votes" — and in Wisconsin's Chippewa County, "Trump beat Clinton by 6000 votes" and "Romney beat Obama by 150 votes." Meanwhile, Brown County, Wisconsin, McGraw adds, is a place where "Trump beat Clinton by 14,000 votes" and "Romney beat Obama by 2300 votes." And Wisconsin, McGraw emphasizes, is a state that is being hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic — and polls are showing that most voters disapprove of Trump's handling of the pandemic.
"In sum: of the critical seven counties, none of them look better for Trump than they were in 2016," McGraw writes. "And most of them look a good deal worse."
Staffers at NBC, CNBC and MSNBC were said to be angry this week after learning that President Donald Trump was offered the opportunity to hold a solo town hall event.
NBC announced on Wednesday that the network will host a 90-minute town hall event for Trump opposite a similar event for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, which will air on ABC.
The event was only scheduled after a debate with Biden was cancelled because the president, who tested positive for COVID-19, refused to participate virtually.
Reporter Yashar Ali said that he had been contacted by "over a dozen" staffers at NBC and its sister networks.
"I've heard from over a dozen NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC sources (talent and staff) and the frustration with and anger toward their employer for scheduling a town hall against Biden is palpable," Ali revealed.
Others on Twitter also lashed out at NBC for "rewarding" Trump with a 90-minute event.
Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society published a working paper earlier this month studying disinformation around the subject of mail-in voting, Recode reports.
Analyzing millions of social media posts, the study found that President Trump was one of the main sources of debunked claims that mail-in ballots are being used in election fraud.
"In particular, the study found that the president himself, on Twitter as well as through press conferences and interviews, was the main source of falsehoods about mail-in voter fraud," Recode's Rani Molla writes. "In turn, right-wing media organizations and media organizations in general abetted the spread of that misinformation by uncritically parroting it without full context."
On Wednesday, prosecutors charged Amy Cooper, the white woman who called 911 on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park, with false reporting — and according to The Daily Beast, revealed that she placed a second, even more incriminating phone call to the police.
"Cyrus R. Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement Wednesday that Cooper allegedly 'engaged in racist criminal conduct' when she made a second 911 call in which she 'falsely accused a Black man of trying to assault her,'" reported Pilar Melendez. When police arrived, she admitted that no such attempted assault had occurred.
The original video of Cooper placing the first call to police sparked nationwide outrage and resulted in her losing her job. The Black parkgoer, Christian Cooper, has urged prosecutors to show her mercy.
"Cooper is negotiating a plea deal with Manhattan prosecutors that would spare her jail time," said the report. "[ADA Joan] Illuzzi said she is prepared to 'take responsibility for her actions' and will be working with her defense team to explore a rehabilitative program that would 'educate her and the community on the harm caused by such actions.'"
