SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I was mostly joking. I doubt he'll pick anyone that bad.

Can't decide if I'm rooting for Warren or Harris, but if Warren has strong Black support, then I'm leaning Warren.

[The Romulan Republic]

America has seen a surge in support for black candidates:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7118682/blac ... -grows-us/

It was a scene Jeannine Lee Lake never would have imagined when she first ran against Greg Pence, Vice-President Mike Pence’s brother, for a rural Indiana congressional seat two years ago: an almost entirely white crowd of more than 100 people marching silently in the Pences’ hometown this month, offering prayers for Black people killed by police and an end to systemic racism.

Leading them was Lake, who is in a rematch against Pence. She is the only Black woman running for federal office in Indiana this fall.

The Democrat, who lost badly in 2018 and again faces long odds in the deeply conservative district, has spent much of the past few weeks at events such as the one in Columbus on Juneteenth. In communities across a district that is 93 per cent white, Lake has talked about seeing her children pulled over by police and “harassed for no reason.” She has spoken the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people killed by police, telling crowds “we’re here to call for change.”

“In no way, shape or form is 2018 the same as the 2020 race in regard to the grassroots effort and the galvanization of the movement that is now Black Lives Matter,” said Lake, 50. “It’s just a total shift.”

The reenergized movement against racial inequality has amplified the voices of Black candidates, in some cases pushing the political debate over race into Republican-leaning areas. Democrats say they’ve seen a significant boost in fundraising and other engagement for candidates running on racial justice issues, and believe it could help the party flip some Republican-held districts in November.

Polls show unusually broad bipartisan support for some change to the nation’s criminal justice system. But lawmakers in Washington are at an impasse after far-reaching federal legislation passed the Democrat-led House on Thursday over objections from Republicans. Pence voted no, saying he opposes changes to the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.

In Arkansas, Democratic state Sen. Joyce Elliott says she’s seeing new momentum in her bid to unseat GOP Rep. French Hill and become the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress. She began running digital ads shortly after Floyd’s death last month. In them, she spoke about her experience integrating a school in the 1960s where she and other Black students weren’t wanted.

It was the kind of fundraising appeal that typically would bring in about $1.50 for every $1 a congressional campaign spent on the ad buy. This ad cost Elliott’s campaign about $2,500 and raised $24,000 within one week, said Julia Ager, president of Sapphire Strategies, the digital firm for Elliott’s campaign. Other Black candidates are seeing a similar trend, she said.

“The environment is different, and that environment has created a boon of support,” Ager said. For people who are tired of inaction and want to see more Black people in Congress, “it seems like a clear place to direct money.”

Elliott, 69, has also been travelling to Black Lives Matter protests around the district, which includes Little Rock and its suburbs and has been represented by a Republican for more than a decade. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the kidney donor speaks to crowds from the back of a pickup truck, often to predominantly white audiences. She tells her story of overcoming adversity, mentioning the people in school who didn’t want her or other Black students there. At one recent event, the crowd gathered in the shadow of a Confederate statue, where the discussion turned to trying to have it removed.

After a lifetime of feeling like she had to “push, push, push,” Elliott said, “now it feels like this is a big warm embrace.”

Her campaign has been backed by EMILY’s List, which supports women in politics, and the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is in the running to be the Democratic nominee for vice-president, endorsed Elliott’s campaign on Saturday.

“I’m feeling now as if a door has opened,” Elliott said. “People can look at someone like me and say, ‘Why not Joyce Elliott? Isn’t she the right person for this moment?”’

In North Carolina, Democrats saw Pat Timmons-Goodson as a strong candidate for a newly redrawn congressional district held by Republican Rep. Richard Hudson even before the discussion over policing and racial inequality was reinvigorated.

Timmons-Goodson was the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of North Carolina and served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where she helped write recommendations on policing. In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated her to the federal court, though the nomination was among those blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans.

Timmons-Goodson received national attention during that debate, as the seat on the court was left vacant for years and became part of a national fight over the courts. But her campaign says support for her candidacy exploded in recent weeks. Timmons-Goodson reported fewer than 1,000 individual contributions for the first quarter of 2020. In the quarter that ends Tuesday, the campaign expects to report some 20,000 contributions.

Lake may have a tougher fight ahead in Indiana, but she’s had to order more campaign signs and more than doubled her ranks of campaign volunteers. Pence’s campaign largely ignores her bid.

Other Black activists tell Lake they’re considering running for office, too. Her campaign also is organizing “Candidates for Change” events, which will be held in more than half the district’s 19 counties and will focus on issues of policing, inequality and systemic racism — conversations that may not have occurred before in some places. Even as the pandemic has cancelled much campaigning, the protests have gone on.

“I’m going to keep on going, as long as they do,” she said.

© 2020 The Canadian Press

[Ace Pace]

Considering some of my non SDN facebook friends, I wonder how much of that is people answering surveys with what they want to be true and not with what they will do in the ballot box.

[The Romulan Republic]

Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma voting today (not sure about the others, but Colorado is just the state primary- our Presidential one was on Super Tuesday).

I sent my vote in for Romanoff in Colorado, hoping for another progressive upset against Hickenlooper.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Senate removed a provision from an intelligence bill to require campaigns to report foreign election help:

https://cnn.com/2020/06/30/politics/sen ... index.html

(CNN)The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act -- but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Senate Republicans forced the removal of the election reporting provision as a condition to include the intelligence bill on the must-pass defense policy legislation.

Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved an amendment on an 8-7 vote from Warner and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which added a provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring campaigns to notify federal authorities about offers of foreign election help.

That bill, however, was unlikely to get Senate floor time on its own, which is why it's being included in the National Defense Authorization Act. The effort to strip the foreign election help provision from the intelligence bill was not a surprise, as acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, predicted earlier this month it would be removed before the bill was on the floor, because of an objection from the Senate Rules Committee.

Warner bemoaned what he called a "back-room deal" to strip out the provision.

"If my Republican colleagues want to strip this legislation out of the NDAA behind closed doors, then I'm going to offer it up as an amendment to force an up-or-down vote and put every member of this body on the record," Warner said on the Senate floor.

The amendment approved by the Intelligence Committee was an adopted version of Warner's FIRE Act, which he introduced last year. It would require all presidential campaign officials report to the FBI any contacts with foreign nationals trying either to make campaign donations or coordinate with a campaign.

Warner tried to bring up his bill on the Senate floor several times over the past year, but Republicans objected each time. When Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, blocked the bill in June 2019, calling it a "blatant political stunt." President Donald Trump applauded her efforts on Twitter.

It's not clear if Warner's amendment will get a vote. The Senate is debating the defense authorization legislation on the floor this week.

Just a reminder that the Republican Party is still actively and deliberately facilitating illegal manipulation of elections by foreign governments.

[The Romulan Republic]

Kentucky primary called for Mcgrath, unfortunately.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sigh... looks like Hickenlooper won the Colorado Senate primary:

https://npr.org/2020/06/30/884625852/tu ... d-oklahoma

Oh well, you can't win them all.

[The Romulan Republic]

Aaaand, Hickenlooper's been caught in a racial stereotyping/cultural appropriation scandal:

https://cpr.org/2020/06/29/hickenlooper ... -drop-out/

Seven Indigenous women, several of whom are prominent in Indigenous and environmental advocacy, have written a letter demanding that former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper end his bid for the U.S. Senate because of his participation in an annual hunting competition in Wyoming that he attended multiple times, up until 2018, and wore a headdress and a scarf from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe.

When the letter was published on Sunday, five groups and individuals advocating for Native communities and environmental issues signed on. That number more than doubled to 16 by the end of the day. Some signers have been part of prominent efforts to end the use of Native imagery in mascots. The appeal for Hickenlooper to drop out came just two days before the primary election, in which nearly 600,000 ballots for the Democratic primary have already been returned according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

Voters are deciding who will challenge Republican Sen. Cory Gardner this fall: Hickenlooper or former state house Speaker Andrew Romanoff. Several people circulating the letter have strong ties to environmental activism and back Romanoff, who, unlike Hickenlooper, endorses a fracking ban and the Green New Deal. Former Democratic Colorado Rep. Joe Salazar, a vocal Hickenlooper opponent, was first made aware of Hickenlooper’s involvement in the hunting event when someone sent him an anonymous letter in November. Salazar has sponsored legislation supporting Indigenous communities and circulated the document to a few people, but said he wasn’t the person who made Sunday’s letter-signers aware of the images.

Kandi White, one of the letter’s co-authors, is with the Indigenous Environmental Network. She said she first saw the pictures of Hickenlooper and others at the hunting event last week, after she had a conversation with other people in the environmental movement.

“I literally felt physically sick. And I was also mad. I was just disgusted that somebody who's supposed to be a prominent figure and is supposed to represent several voices in their community would have that kind of behavior,” said White, a mother of two who currently lives in Montana and is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.

She cried over the phone as she explained her feelings about the photographs and was especially upset over an image of Hickenlooper wearing a woman’s scarf.

“This was just like a slap in the face, rubbing it in of how they made something like this into a game. And that it was funny. And immediately I thought of missing and murdered Indigenous women.” In past years, the event has used a slur for Indigenous women to refer to the “losers” of the hunt, but that term was not known to be used when Hickenlooper participated. Women are not permitted to participate in the One Shot hunting event.


Courtesy of PBS
In a story on PBS’ “Wyoming Chronicle” about the event in 2012, Hickenlooper is shown wearing a shawl-like scarf over his head, which was put on by an Eastern Shoshone woman to denote the "losers" in the antelope hunt.
The letter states that “Gov. Hickenlooper displayed an unacceptable lack of judgement in choosing to participate in this event, while disrespecting Indigenous women and appropriating traditional dress of Native peoples,” and that, “throughout the history of colonization, these tropes have been weaponized to subject Indigenous women to sexual violence and dehumanization.”

The hunt is held on the opening day of antelope season in the vicinity of Lander, Wyoming. Colorado governors have a long history of participating and according to the organization’s website, 11 Colorado governors have attended, starting with Ralph Carr in 1941. In all, governors from 30 states have participated at one time or another.

Hickenlooper’s campaign did not make him available for an interview but campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa gave CPR a comment: "John has longstanding ties with Native communities, was the first governor to apologize for the massacre at Sand Creek, and was honored to be invited to participate in cultural celebrations like this one with the Shoshone tribe. This is a deeply disappointing attempt to misrepresent John's record and ongoing commitment to respecting and honoring Native people and traditions."

Former Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, who headed the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs under Hickenlooper, said the former governor has a strong track record of addressing issues important to Native communities.

“There are plenty of reasons to disagree with the governor on policy issues, but to mischaracterize an event in which tribal people were involved in to pretend that they weren't and to put this all together I think is deliberately misleading and unfair,” said Garcia.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, an Indigenous climate activist and hip hop artist from Boulder, signed the letter and is circulating it online. He disagrees with Garcia’s characterization and said he became aware of the pictures last week. Martinez opposes Hickenlooper’s climate policies and said even if some members of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe support the event, that doesn’t make it OK for Hickenlooper to participate.

“It’s not about one Native person or a group condoning these actions because the issue is much more systemic. It plays into a much larger thing,” he said. “That’s what we’re calling out, the participation in this larger system. Creating a show for guests is problematic. It’s a struggle Native peoples deal with every day.”

The “One Shot Antelope Hunt” is dubbed as an elite men’s hunting contest that dates back to 1940.
In recent iterations of the event, in which some citizens of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe participate, the “winners” of the hunt wear a headdress put on by a member of the tribe, and the “losers” wear headscarves put on by an Eastern Shoshone woman and stand or dance with some of the women from the tribe. In photographs and video from a PBS story, as well as photographs from the event’s website, Hickenlooper appears to take on both of those roles over the years, as recently as 2018. The event has traditionally been hosted by the governors of Wyoming and Colorado.

Hickenlooper’s campaign provided a comment from Arlen Shoyo, an Eastern Shoshone elder who was known as the hunt chief during the event. “Our people have enjoyed a warm and friendly relationship with the One Shot and we have a lot of fun poking fun at the hunters by giving them official Shoshone Indian names and having the celebration after the hunt where we honor the successful hunters.” Shoyo was not immediately available for an interview.

But a spokeswoman for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe said while some respected members are involved, the Tribe does not host the hunt nor provide any funding, though it does lend the war bonnet to Shoyo for use in the event. “I could also add that from what I've heard here from tribal members, there's mixed feelings when it comes to the act of placing the warbonnet on a hunt winner,” said Public Relations Director Alejandra Robinson.

“I would say most tribal members find it disrespectful to place a war bonnet on a hunt winner — as he is white — but there isn't a big outcry or huge opposition, probably because it's been happening for years.”

In a story on PBS’ “Wyoming Chronicle” about the event in 2012 Hickenlooper is shown wearing a shawl-like scarf over his head. Then, in photographs displayed prominently on the “Reigning Champions” section of the One Shot website, Hickenlooper is wearing a headdress in 2018, when his team won the event. Participants in the hunt are made up of three-man teams, and each man pays $1,600 to participate. The website says hunters hear the “Legend of the Hunt” and are made “blood brothers of the Shoshone Indian Tribe. Each hunter is given an Indian Name, which usually corresponds to his vocation.”

In an interview with Colorado Public Radio in 2015, Hickenlooper said he wasn’t a regular big game hunter but participated in the One Shot competition because it was a tradition and rivalry between the two states.

“I think tradition is a big part of it. It's part of Western culture. When you go out to Lander, the dinner the night before, there's a long dance with the Native American tribes of the area, you have a powwow together and they end up blessing each, each hunter has one bullet. And so it is blessed by the Indians. There's a great deal of the traditional Indian lore, kind of mixed in with this. And then you go out and you try it. And let me tell you, it's very, very hard with one shot to kill an antelope.”

Several tribal citizens say the "ceremonies," including the one blessing the hunters' bullets and the “blood brothers” ceremony, are pageantry, and are not actual Eastern Shoshone traditional ceremonies.

Not all of Colorado’s governors have participated, and not all have dressed up as Hickenlooper did.
Gov. Jared Polis did not attend the hunt in 2019 and his office said they do not have a record showing that he was invited to participate.

“My understanding was he didn’t participate because he’s not a hunter and not a big proponent of gun rights,” said Scott Harnsberger, the Executive Vice President of the Water for Wildlife Foundation & One Shot Past Shooters Club. Harnsberger said he’s been affiliated with the event for about 30 years.

Hickenlooper’s predecessor, Bill Ritter, went to the One Shot event but says he did not wear the Eastern Shoshone headdress or the woman’s scarf. A picture from 2009 on the event’s website shows Shoyo welcoming Ritter, who is wearing an orange baseball hat.

“I was a very good friend to the Wyoming governor so I went,” said Ritter in an interview on Sunday. Ritter said he attended the first three years he was in office, but skipped the hunt in 2010 to attend a funeral.

Ritter said he had heard about the losers of the hunt in the past having to dress up as a “squaw,” which is a derogatory term for Indigenous women. But Ritter said he didn’t see or hear anyone using that offensive language the years he attended. Harnsberger told CPR News that term had been used in the past but that “it has been a long time.” In the letter on Sunday, the people who signed say the term “squaw” is “associated with the sexual assault, targeting, dominating, and violation of Native North American Indian women.”

Ritter said he believed in the past that the event was not culturally sensitive, but that “The three years I was there, I did not witness anything that appeared to me to be culturally insensitive.”

Ritter, who endorsed Hickenlooper for Senate on June 24, declined to comment on Hickenlooper wearing Eastern Shoshone attire.

Other former Colorado governors who have attended the hunt include Roy Romer and Dick Lamm. It’s not immediately clear if any of them also dressed in Native attire.

Garcia, who served as Hickenlooper's lieutenant governor, said there are a lot of different perspectives even within Indigenous communities about whether it would be appropriate to participate as Hickenlooper did. "Some in the native community may say it's always wrong for an Anglo to wear a native headdress. I would say again, as someone who's part native myself, that if the tribe is not only sanctioning it, but involving you, it would be disrespectful to decline to participate. And I think John went along within an event that the tribe was very closely tied to and has been for decades."

Climate and Indigenous advocates are drawing attention to Hickenlooper’s participation in the One Shot event.
One of the seven women who co-authored the letter is a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe, but she declined to comment for this story. Some of the women are prominent voices in the Indigenous community around issues of climate justice, including White and Tokata Iron Eyes, who is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Amanda Blackhorse is a social worker and lead plaintiff on Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc. which seeks to revoke trademark protection for the name of the Washington, D.C., NFL team.

Tara Houska is the co-founder of “Not Your Mascots” a nonprofit which educates people about the harms of stereotyping and promoting positive representation of Native Americans in the public sphere.

.@Hickenlooper, friend of the oil & gas industry vehemently opposed by indigenous land defenders, participates a hunt where winners don headdresses & losers dress as “squaws”. Ever heard of #MMIW?

Why are Dems endorsing this guy? @ewarren @SenBooker pic.twitter.com/XuRRjvvLAV

— tara houska ᔖᐳᐌᑴ (@zhaabowekwe) June 28, 2020
Several progressive environmental groups that are supporting Romanoff in the race against Hickenlooper this week also signed the letter. Hickenlooper does not support a broad moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, and Romanoff does and says it will help protect communities of color. Climate Hawks Vote, 350 Colorado, and the Sunrise Movement are among the groups that have endorsed Romanoff and signed onto the letter condemning Hickenlooper’s actions in the One Shot events.

Kandi White said that permission from some members of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe doesn’t make the event less racist and she isn’t surprised that the tribal community is conflicted about it.

“We are oppressed by our own history of oppression to the point where we give up, we get stuck in apathy and we say, there's nothing we can do,” she said.

“We've been beaten down by every single source that we've ever fought against and ended up on a reservation. There's a sense of, there's nothing you can do. It's almost like if you can't beat them, join them, just forget about your culture, forget about your ways. And that is really sad and scary.”

Wyoming Public Radio Reporter Savannah Maher contributed to this story.

Editor's note: A source has been removed from this story because Hickenlooper's campaign says the interview with the source was on background.

I wish this had gotten more press before the primary.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just when I thought we were past the point where we had to worry about major third party candidates coming along and splitting the vote, Kanye West has announced he's running for President. He's already picked up a major endorsement from... Elon fucking Musk.

https://theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/ ... nt-in-2020

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, rapper Kanye West declared his candidacy for US president.

The unlikely challenger to Donald Trump – of whom he has been a vocal supporter – and Joe Biden, chose American independence day to make the surprise announcement on Twitter, triggering a social media storm.

“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future,” West wrote. “I am running for president of the United States.”

ye
(@kanyewest)
We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States ! #2020VISION

July 5, 2020
The post was accompanied by a stars and stripes flag, an exclamation mark and “#2020VISION”. His wife, Kim Kardashian West, replied to the tweet with an American flag.

With just four months to go before polling day on 3 November, it was not clear whether West’s tweet would have been more fitting on April Fools’ day than American Independence Day.

US President Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West at the White House in 2018.
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Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West at the White House in 2018. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Nor was it clear whether the 43-year-old had filed any official paperwork to appear on state election ballots. The deadline to add independent candidates to the ballot has not yet passed in many states.

But after businessman and reality TV star Trump won the White House in 2016, perhaps the idea of Kim Kardashian as first lady could be written in the stars as America’s fate.

And West, a 21-time Grammy award winner, picked up an immediate endorsement from Elon Musk, the chief executive of electric-car maker Tesla and another celebrity known for eccentric outbursts, who tweeted in reply: “You have my full support!”

A West-Musk ticket is not what anyone was expecting in an election that has already delivered a cornucopia of the unexpected.

West and his wife have visited Trump in the White House to discuss prison reform. At one bizarre meeting in 2018, West wore a red “Make America Great Again” cap and uttered words such as “motherfucker” and “infinite amounts of universe”. He said Trump made him feel like Superman, hugged him and declared: “I love this guy right here.”

Asked if West could be a future presidential candidate, Trump replied: “Could very well be.”

West replied: “Only after 2024. Let’s stop worrying about the future. All we really have is today. We just have today.”

Indeed, the rapper has floated the idea of running for president before. In January last year, a tweet that said simply “2024” was interpreted as a sign that he would run for the White House that year.

West was criticised last week after declaring: “I am so proud of my beautiful wife Kim Kardashian West for officially becoming a billionaire.” She had sold a stake in her beauty brand for $200m. But he also earned praise for releasing a single about racism and religion.

If he ran, West would follow in a long tradition of independent or third-party campaigns challenging the Democratic and Republican stranglehold. In 1992, Ross Perot, an eccentric Texan billionaire, took 19% of the vote. In 2000, Ralph Nader’s Green party took less than 3% but was widely blamed for costing Democrat Al Gore the presidency.

The cynic in me thinks, given his support for Donald, that this may be a fake campaign intended to try to peel off enough votes from Biden to ensure Trump's reelection. That or an extremely ill-timed and selfish publicity stunt.

Then again, given said past support for Donald, he might not only be splitting votes from Biden.

I do like how the Guardian filed the report on his announcement under culture/music rather than news/politics.

[bilateralrope]

Remember when Kanye called for the 13th amendment to be abolished ?

this represents good and America becoming whole again. We will no longer outsource to other countries. We build factories here in America and create jobs. We will provide jobs for all who are free from prisons as we abolish the 13th amendment. Message sent with love

Sure, I saw some articles saying that Kanye meant to just get rid of the exception that allows prison slavery. But that was people guessing at Kanye's motivations, not relying on anything that he had said. Given that he's a Trump supporter, my first comparison is with Trump's "plan" to destroy Obamacare then replace it with something better, without giving any details for the "something better".

[Knife]

It's an attention whore move. I'm not even close to worried about it. At the very least, a majority of American's are tired of having the country run by people who have no idea how to, or lack the want to do so.

[bilateralrope]

I'm hoping that his "abolish the 13th" tweet can be used to get racists voting for him instead of Trump.

[The Romulan Republic]

After several days of holding perfectly steady (as in, to the tenth of a percent) on fivethirtyeight, BOTH Trump and Biden's numbers have dipped ever-so-slightly.

Whenever that happens, I find it interesting, and a bit depressing. Because it means that there are people out there now, after the last four years, who are saying "You know, I've just decided I haven't made up my mind".

Or, that little dip is Kanye voters.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Biden/Bernie joint policy taskforces have submitted their recommendations:

https://nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elect ... p-n1233198

WASHINGTON — A coalition of Democrats has presented Joe Biden with a roadmap for an ambitious, progressive agenda in the White House that would include proposals to immediately address ongoing crises, reflecting areas of consensus reached after weeks of deliberations between allies of the presumptive nominee and Bernie Sanders.

The former primary rivals, whose sharp differences were on display throughout the year-long Democratic nomination battle, will jointly release the specific policy recommendations made by the so-called Unity Task Forces they appointed in April to find common ground on six key areas: climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, health care and immigration.

The recommendations include draft language that will be submitted to the Democratic National Committee’s party committee as a “starting point” for their consideration, the Biden campaign said, adding that the former vice president “looks forward to reviewing” their work.

A review of the 110-page document provided to NBC News in advance of its public release offers fresh evidence of how the Biden campaign, having held firmly to the center in a Democratic primary that began with a record field of candidates racing to the left, is open to some — but not all — of the progressive wing’s approaches as he prepares for the general election campaign.

The health care task force, for instance, focused on ways to expand coverage through Biden’s firmly held position of building on the Affordable Care Act, rather than pursuing a single-payer system like Medicare for All. But the climate task force, co-chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., recommended more aggressive timelines for achieving net-zero carbon emissions than Biden had called for in the campaign.

Both sides highlighted the final work product as reflecting unprecedented — and to many unexpected — party unity. The idea of the task force was an outgrowth of discussions between the campaigns as Biden began to build an insurmountable delegate advantage, motivated by the shared goal of defeating President Donald Trump and the recognition that the party needed to be fully united to do so.

Each camp saw mutual benefit in the arrangement: for Biden, smoothing a process to win over the Vermont senator’s most ardent supporters and avoid the intraparty tension that plagued Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy; and for Sanders, a guaranteed seat at the table on policy and personnel that would ensure that his “movement” lasted beyond his candidacy.

But as the six eight-person teams set about their work, the unfolding health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus and the renewed national debate over race gave their work new urgency that helped focus their efforts.

The final product reflects the growing recognition across the party that a Biden administration will have a unique opportunity, and in their view necessity, to take far more aggressive actions on multiple fronts than many were considering at the start of the campaign.

Even Biden, who campaigned throughout the primaries as a pragmatic Democrat and argued that Americans were more interested in “results” than a “revolution,” has increasingly spoken of a New Deal-style agenda to start his administration, nodding to the robust federal response to the Great Depression promised by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In May, when most of the U.S. was still in a lockdown due to the pandemic, Biden declared on his podcast “Here’s the Deal” that the moment had led the country to “need some revolutionary institutional changes.”

“For the millions of Americans facing hardship due to President Trump’s failed coronavirus response, this election offers the chance to usher in a stronger, fairer economy that works for our working families,” Biden said in a statement welcoming the task forces’ recommendations.

“I commend the task forces for their service and helping build a bold, transformative platform for our party and for our country. And I am deeply grateful to Senator Sanders for working together to unite our party, and deliver real, lasting change for generations to come," Biden said.

2020 ELECTION
Biden coasts to victory in New Jersey, Delaware primaries, NBC News projects
Sanders said that while he, Biden and their supporters “have strong disagreements” about some policy issues, “we also understand that we must come together in order to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history.”

“Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working families throughout our country. I look forward to working with Vice President Biden to help him win this campaign and to move this country forward toward economic, racial, social and environmental justice,” he said.

The Trump campaign, having found little success so far in defining Biden as out of the mainstream, is likely to pounce on the policy moves as evidence that the veteran, familiar Democrat is something of a Trojan horse for the extreme left.

Policies Republicans characterize as radical reform — including the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, defunding the police and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — are notably not mentioned as recommendations.

But former Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir, who has been a key part of the unity efforts, argued that doing so “asks you to ignore the reality of what happened” in the primary, when Biden and Sanders’ philosophical differences were regularly on display.

“Even in the steps that he’s making toward our direction, they seem consistent with the Joe Biden who is evolving with the times,” Shakir said. “The country is in a place of economic and health desperation … and the times are really compelling that movement.”

Top officials in both camps insisted that the “odd couple” pairings on panels — former Secretary of State John Kerry leading the climate panel along with Ocasio-Cortez, for starters — were not just for optics. The five Biden and three Sanders representatives on each task force were full participants in weekly Zoom meetings and conference calls that in most cases lasted no less than an hour, and in many cases longer than that. Each panel’s co-chair worked with Sanders adviser Analilia Mejia and Biden adviser Carmel Martin to shape the discussions and move both sides toward consensus.

Aides say the task force’s work could be a model for how the party could govern next January, building goodwill across the ideological spectrum of the party that will be key if Democrats are in position to govern with the White House and majorities in one, or both houses of Congress.

The recommendations, though, include a significant number of actions Biden could direct the executive branch to take without congressional approval, much as the Trump administration has systematically reversed Obama-era actions over his four years. They include executive orders on issues that are currently on the forefront of people’s minds, like helping front-line workers, new guidelines on policing use-of-force measures, housing, outsourcing jobs, addressing health care disparities and undoing Trump’s executive orders on immigration.

Biden on Wednesday, speaking to union supporters, emphasized the “extraordinary chance” Democrats have to enact meaningful changes if elected — and acknowledged the work needed to ensure that he is.

“Not only are we going to win. We're going to take a monumental step forward for the prosperity, power, safety and dignity of all American workers," Biden said. "I truly, truly believe that."

More modest than I hoped for, though it does look like AOC managed to pull them somewhat Left on climate policy. She really is the best Democrat.

The omission that makes me really angry is the absence of any recommendation to abolish ICE. ICE is carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing for Trump. Its leadership and staff should be treated in much the same manner as the Nazis at Nuremberg.

[Darth Yan]

Having a voice at all is a victory. Moving biden leftwards on the environment is good given what we need at this point

[The Romulan Republic]

Having a voice at all is a victory. Moving biden leftwards on the environment is good given what we need at this point

The climate issue is a big part of what allows me to back Biden despite his inadequacies.

Short-term, beating Trump is everything, because no other major reform can succeed while he's in power.

Medium-to-long-term, climate change is everything, because its an existential threat to the entire planet like no other we face.

As long as Biden is substantially better on climate policy than Trump, then his victory WILL be substantially to the benefit of the entire planet. And as long as he doesn't aspire to become a dictator (he doesn't), then we can continue pushing him to move Leftward, and he may soon be succeeded by someone more progressive.

On that note, I also think that who he picks as VP is very important, because they will likely be the nominee in four years if Biden wins.

[The Romulan Republic]

Some more details on the taskforce recommendations. Its not everything I might have hoped for, but there's some good stuff in there:

https://nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/polit ... nders.html

Allies of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled a sweeping set of joint policy recommendations on Wednesday, a significant if tentative sign of cooperation among Democrats as Mr. Biden’s campaign continues its appeals to the progressive left.

Mr. Biden is expected to adopt many of the recommendations, which were submitted by six policy task forces and cover a wide range of issues including health care, criminal justice, education and climate change.

For all of the details, the lengthy recommendation document amounted to a collection of widely acceptable liberal proposals, many of which Mr. Biden has already embraced in his bid for party unity. And they come at a time when policy differences that stood out in the primary campaign have largely faded to the backdrop as Democrats look toward a shared goal: defeating President Trump.

The recommendations to Mr. Biden on economics include broader and costlier plans than he has championed so far in his campaign, and the proposals on climate change include new benchmarks for reducing carbon emissions. Though Mr. Sanders favors universal, single-payer health care, the recommendations adhere to Mr. Biden’s approach of building on the Affordable Care Act. And Republicans will find plenty to fault among the proposals, like a 100-day moratorium on deportations, a move that Mr. Biden had previously backed.

The policy recommendations will also most likely frustrate some in the Democratic Party’s activist wing who believe they do not go far enough. The task forces did not recommend plans that Mr. Sanders promoted like “Medicare for all,” tuition-free public college for everyone or canceling all student debt.

As the economic and public health impact of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, some consensus between the two factions of the party had already begun to form. The groups also met amid intense unrest over racial injustice, spurred by the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, that has focused attention nationwide on systemic racism and inequality.

Among the recommendations put forth by the health care task force are new health insurance programs for the duration of the pandemic. The task force suggested government-funded COBRA coverage for people who recently lost job-based coverage, and the creation of a new Obamacare plan that would have no deductible and would be free for low-income Americans.

The document also adds new details to an existing Biden campaign proposal to create a “public option” plan, which would be run by the Medicare system to compete with private health insurers. That plan would include a no-deductible option. Low-income Americans who are not eligible for Medicaid would be automatically enrolled in the plan at no cost, though they could opt out if they wished. Anyone else would be eligible to buy it if they preferred it to other choices.

Other recommendations included a proposal from the economy task force for an executive order to prohibit federal contracts with companies that pay less than a $15 minimum wage or that do not remain neutral in unionization efforts; a goal from the climate change task force to eliminate carbon emissions from power plants by 2035; and the creation of an environmental justice fund to address the disproportionate burden of pollution and environmental hazards that communities of color bear.

The task forces also gave broad policy recommendations to the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee.

In a statement, Mr. Biden commended the task forces’ work and expressed gratitude toward Mr. Sanders “for working together to unite our party, and deliver real, lasting change for generations to come.”

Mr. Sanders, for his part, acknowledged the progress his supporters had made — but also nodded to some lasting disappointment.

“Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working families throughout our country,” he said.

The extensive recommendations concluded nearly two months of sometimes tense deliberations by the task forces, which Mr. Biden formed as part of his effort to bridge the division between the Democratic establishment and progressives who are unenthusiastic about his candidacy and his longtime message of incremental change.

The task forces included core Biden supporters like former Secretary of State John Kerry and Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general under President Barack Obama, as well as top Sanders allies like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Mr. Kerry and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez were co-chairs of the climate change task force, which was hailed from the outset as an important development that signified in part the Biden campaign’s commitment to winning over younger and more liberal voters.

The former vice president’s allies and some of the Democratic Party’s leading progressives have quietly started to forge common ground to shape a climate plan before Election Day.

The formation of joint policy working groups had been a crucial compromise from the Biden campaign that helped ease the way for Mr. Sanders to withdraw from the presidential race in early April. But when Mr. Biden announced the task forces in mid-May — on health care, immigration, criminal justice reform, education, climate change and the economy — it was unclear whether they would produce policy results or simply the more symbolic appearance of political harmony.

To facilitate Mr. Biden’s approval of the recommendations, the co-chairs of the committees worked with the campaign to seek agreement on the language, several people involved with the task forces said.

“The campaign accepted these recommendations, which I think is a huge achievement,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a co-chair of the health care task force.

She added, “Most of the people on the task force were probably even to the left of where we ended up because the Biden campaign had to essentially approve everything as we went along and agree to everything as we went along.”

And though the set of recommendations from her task force “doesn’t go as far as we all wanted on the Sanders side,” Ms. Jayapal said, she still viewed it as “a real step forward.”

Committee meetings, which were conducted remotely by Zoom and at times stretched to three or four hours, were generally respectful and civil even when they grew contentious, several people said. The fact that there were very few leaks about the conversations to the news media made members feel they were able to be more candid with their disagreements.

But even as there was a sense among some Sanders-aligned members of the task forces that they had made valuable inroads, the ultimate proposals reflected a compromise that hewed toward what the Biden campaign would find palatable.

Mr. Biden’s supporters, for instance, did not fully embrace a plan to eliminate all student debt — a key pillar of Mr. Sanders’s agenda — resulting in a series of compromises, including canceling $50,000 of debt for educators. (Mr. Biden had already introduced his own student debt cancellation proposal in April, though it was narrower than what Mr. Sanders had advocated in his campaign.)

Members of the criminal justice reform task force also butted heads over the legalization of marijuana, a policy Mr. Biden does not support.

Ideological fissures were particularly fierce on the economic task force, according to several people, with Biden representatives remaining skeptical of the kinds of universal economic programs espoused by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and backed by the Sanders-aligned members.

“There were all kinds of frustrations here,” said Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants union and a Sanders-aligned co-chair of the economy task force, adding: “If somebody were to say, ‘Well, are you pleased with the outcome?’ That’s all relative.”

But she also said it was important to consider the relatively unprecedented nature of the joint task forces and what they actually did achieve.

“The people who supported Bernie Sanders — this absolutely gives us a step forward,” she said. “We improved Biden’s policies, and you can always be stronger in the fight when you’re fighting from higher ground.”

Even if some progressives remain unhappy with Mr. Biden, there are signs that some who opposed him in the primary are increasingly willing to actively support him in the general election against Mr. Trump.

On Wednesday, Ady Barkan, a prominent liberal activist and advocate for Medicare for all who supported Senator Elizabeth Warren and then Mr. Sanders in the primary, endorsed Mr. Biden, saying, “Even though he wasn’t our first choice, I don’t think that progressives and democratic socialists should sit out the election, or vote third party, and I wanted to make that clear.”

Katie Glueck, Lisa Friedman and Margot Sanger-Katz contributed reporting.

As frustrating as it sometimes is, this sort of negotiation and compromise is actually exactly how government in a democracy is supposed to work. Of course, this kind of approach would be impossible with Trump and his supporters, and foolish to try- they don't really believe in compromise, and they'd likely break any promises they made, as they've proven many times. But its possible still within the Democratic Party- which is perhaps the best possible illustration of how Biden is different from Trump as a leader.

[bilateralrope]

The Supreme Court has made their ruling on states punishing/removing faithless electors.

Supreme Court Rules State 'Faithless Elector' Laws Constitutional

The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously upheld laws across the country that remove or punish rogue Electoral College delegates who refuse to cast their votes for the presidential candidate they were pledged to support.

The decision Monday was a loss for "faithless electors," who argued that under the Constitution they have discretion to decide which candidate to support.

Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan, in a decision peppered with references to the Broadway show Hamilton and the TV show Veep, said Electoral College delegates have "no ground for reversing" the statewide popular vote. That, she said, "accords with the Constitution — as well as with the trust of the Nation that here, We the People rule."

The decision was a relief to election law experts as well as Democratic and Republican party officials, who have long supported faithless elector laws such as those upheld Monday.

If the case had gone the other way, it would have been a "nightmare scenario" in which people unhappy with the general election results could "go after electors and try to threaten them or cajole them or bribe them to vote in a particular way," said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser echoed those sentiments: "This was one where I did not want to contemplate what the other consequence would have looked like," he said.

Even Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who represented the rogue electors before the Supreme Court, appeared only mildly disappointed at the loss. "We took this case initially because we just thought this needed to be resolved before it created a constitutional crisis," he said.

Thirty-two states have some sort sort of faithless elector law, but only 15 of those remove, penalize or simply cancel the votes of the errant electors. The 15 are Michigan, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington, California, New Mexico, South Carolina, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Although Maine has no such law, the secretary of state has said it has determined a faithless elector can be removed.

Monday's Supreme Court decision, however, is so strong that it would seem to allow states to remove faithless electors even without a state law. Duke University School of Law professor Guy-Uriel Charles said that nonetheless, it would be prudent for states to pass laws to prevent electors from going rogue.

"States certainly would be better off by imposing some statutory basis ... for removing or sanctioning rogue electors," Charles said, adding, "But I don't see anything in this opinion that requires them to do so."

Monday's case began after the 2016 election when a handful of Electoral College delegates pledged to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Colorado and Washington state voted for other individuals, such as Colin Powell or John Kasich.

As Michael Baca, the faithless elector from Colorado, put it in an NPR interview, the idea was to "reach across the aisle" to Republican electors in 2016 and try to find a candidate that some Republican delegates would be willing to support other than Donald Trump.

Baca was removed on the spot under Colorado's faithless elector law, and the Washington state delegates were fined $1,000 each. In 2019, Washington's law was amended to require that faithless electors be removed as well.

On Monday, the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on either approach, at minimum.

Kagan's opinion noted that the original Electoral College system created by the framers of the Constitution failed to anticipate the growth of political parties. By 1796, the first contested election after George Washington's retirement, the system exploded in disarray, with two consecutive Electoral College "fiascos."

That led to passage of the 12th Amendment in 1804, "facilitating the Electoral College ... as a mechanism not for deliberation but for party line voting," Kagan wrote.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents the states from "taking away presidential electors' voting discretion," she said. For centuries, almost all electors have considered themselves bound to vote for the winner of the state popular vote. If the framers of the Constitution had a different idea, she said, they never committed it to the printed page.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch, agreed with the outcome but wrote separately to explain his different reasoning.

Rather than interpret the Constitution's sparse language about the Electoral College as authorizing states to impose conditions on electors, Thomas argued that power is reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment.

Although many Americans think that they elect the president and vice president, in fact, it is the Electoral College, an arcane intermediary mechanism dreamed up by the Founders, that formally determines who wins the election.

The system has been considered a formality because usually the winner of the popular vote also wins the Electoral College.

But twice in the past two decades, the unexpected took place: The winner of the popular vote did not become president; instead, the winner in the Electoral College prevailed. Trump, who got nearly 3 million fewer votes overall than Clinton, won the state-by-state allotment of Electoral College votes in 2016 and became president. And in 2000, George W. Bush became president, winning five more Electoral College votes than Al Gore, though Gore won roughly half a million more popular votes.

In total, the popular vote winners have failed to win the Electoral College vote on four occasions, the first two occurring during the 1800s.

But the fact that the last two occurred in just the past 20 years has provoked various suggestions for reform, including getting rid of the Electoral College altogether. With the country as polarized as it is, however, that seems unlikely, as it would require a constitutional amendment, and that in turn requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, and approval by three-quarters of the states.

Several states have signed on to a proposal to sidestep the Electoral College altogether by joining a "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" to pledge their Electoral College votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, regardless of how the candidates perform in their state. So far, the compact has the support of 15 states and the District of Columbia, making up 196 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win the White House.

That scheme, which would only go into effect once enough states have joined to tip the election, would surely be challenged in court as well.

Flawed as the Electoral College system may be, at the oral arguments in May, the justices expressed concern about tinkering with laws that bind the delegates to vote for the popular vote winner in their states.

Justice Samuel Alito observed that if the popular vote is close, the possibility of "changing just a few votes" in the Electoral College would rationally "prompt the losing party ... to launch a massive campaign to try to influence electors, and there would be a long period of uncertainty about who the next president was going to be."

Similarly, Justice Brett Kavanaugh alluded to what he called "the chaos principle of judging, which suggests that if it's a close call ... we shouldn't facilitate or create chaos."

None of those concerns surfaced explicitly in Kagan's majority opinion. She instead pointed to the text of the Constitution as well as more than 200 years of history and tradition to make her case.

"The Constitution's text and the nation's history both support allowing a state to enforce an elector's pledge to support his party's nominee — and the state voters' choice — for President," Kagan wrote.

"... The Electors' constitutional claim has neither text nor history on its side."

A ruling so strongly against faithless electors that states might not need laws against them to stop them. Though it's still best to have such laws to remove that uncertainty.

[Tribble]

That does cut both ways- as has been mentioned before, theoretically a state could make electors vote for their preferred candidate regardless of the popular vote by removing them and replacing them by someone willing to toe the party line.

This decision makes that easier in that states can now in theory directly order the electors to vote how they want or risk legal repercussions. In a close contest where 1-2 states may make the difference... I wouldn’t be surprised if someone (probably Republicans) try that, on the pretext of “voting irregularities“.

Have fun.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh thank God. That's my single biggest fear for this November removed.

In other news, the Supreme Court also ruled that Trump's accounting firm must comply with subpoenas from New York prosecutors and release his financial records:

https://nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/trump ... court.html

Apparently its unlikely they'll be released before the election due to various caveats, but NY prosecutors will be able to gain access to them, which will hopefully build a case for post-Presidency prosecution.

[bilateralrope]

It takes time for Trump to file any objections to the subpoena, and the tax returns are held by third parties. Can Trump get his objections filed before those third parties comply ?

I do remember hearing at least on of the subpoenas described as "friendly". As in, the people with the information were happy to hand it over and just wanted to subpoena to shield them from legal trouble.

[MKSheppard]

https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads ... ATIONS.pdf

Biden-Sanders unity task force. 110 pages and the only thing on guns is basically

End the Gun Violence Epidemic: Nearly 40,000 Americans die every year from gun violence.
The Task Force believes gun violence in this nation is a public health crisis and must be treated
as such. There continues to be insufficient research on effective gun prevention policies, which is
why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must have the resources it needs to
study gun violence as a public health issue.

I guess their handlers took a look at gun sales for 2020 and current events and decided to drop their usual planks

[Mr Bean]

https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads ... ATIONS.pdf

Biden-Sanders unity task force. 110 pages and the only thing on guns is basically

End the Gun Violence Epidemic: Nearly 40,000 Americans die every year from gun violence.
The Task Force believes gun violence in this nation is a public health crisis and must be treated
as such. There continues to be insufficient research on effective gun prevention policies, which is
why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must have the resources it needs to
study gun violence as a public health issue.

I guess their handlers took a look at gun sales for 2020 and current events and decided to drop their usual planks

In there defense the President seems to be a Nurgle Cultist so gun violence has fallen pretty far behind the plague, the graft and the twenty odd international crises going on that are being ignored.

[The Romulan Republic]

Speaking of Der Fuhrer, here's from his Twitter feed today:

Absentee Ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?

"voting privilege"

VOTING PRIVILEGE

This worthless fucking cumbucket just called the foundational right of our entire system of government a "privilege", while (again) laying the groundwork to reject any result where he doesn't win.

There could not be a clearly indication of what his views and goals are. Or of why the Left needs guns now.

[Tribble]

Speaking of Der Fuhrer, here's from his Twitter feed today:

Absentee Ballots are fine because you have to go through a precise process to get your voting privilege. Not so with Mail-Ins. Rigged Election!!! 20% fraudulent ballots?

"voting privilege"

VOTING PRIVILEGE

This worthless fucking cumbucket just called the foundational right of our entire system of government a "privilege", while (again) laying the groundwork to reject any result where he doesn't win.

There could not be a clearly indication of what his views and goals are. Or of why the Left needs guns now.

Well yes, a lot of rich white men with property probably do believe that anyone else voting is a privilege. And as far as someone like Trump is concerned, anyone who doesn’t vote for him doesn’t deserve to vote and is an enemy.

There’s practically zero chance he’s going to accept the election results (even if he wins!) so this will be a tooth and nail fight to the finish.