Jamaal Bowman has defeated House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th congressional district’s Democratic primary, which took place on June 23, Axios reports.
Texas is the Big Prize for Democrats
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Biden Widens His Electoral College Lead
Inside Elections has a new Electoral College forecast with Joe Biden beating Donald Trump 319 to 188 and just 33 electoral votes still a Toss Up.
“While the precise cause can be argued, Trump’s job rating has been on a precipitous decline over the last two months, not only putting a second term increasingly out of reach but potentially wreaking havoc on GOP candidates down the ballot…”
“The biggest mistake of 2016 was not underestimating Trump’s support but a failure of imagination. Too many people couldn’t comprehend how he could win. Four years later, too many people can’t comprehend how he could lose and underestimate how far he could possibly fall.”
For comparison, the consensus electoral map has Biden leading 320 to 125 with 93 electoral votes still a Toss Up.
A Stark Divide Emerges Inside the GOP
First Read: “As President Trump’s numbers have declined in recent weeks, our NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that some of that erosion has come from inside his own party — among the non-Trump wing of the GOP. In short, Trump doesn’t have a base problem. Rather, he has a Republican problem.”
“According to the poll, 53% of all Republican voters say they consider themselves more supporters of Trump than the party, while 39% say they’re more supporters of the party than Trump.”
“It might be easy to dismiss these non-Trump Republicans as a minority of the party. But you need them if you want to win re-election.”
New York Still Doesn’t Have Results from Primaries
“More than three weeks after the New York primaries, election officials have not yet counted an untold number of mail-in absentee ballots, leaving numerous closely watched races unresolved, including three key Democratic congressional contests,” the New York Times reports.
“The absentee ballot count — greatly inflated this year because the state expanded the vote-by-mail option because of the coronavirus pandemic — has been painstakingly slow, and hard to track, with no running account of the vote totals available.”
U.S. Weighs Ban on TikTok
Financial Times: “The White House is considering putting TikTok on a blacklist that would effectively prevent Americans from using the popular video app, as one option to prevent China from obtaining personal data via the social media platform.”
20 House Races Move Towards the Democrats
Cook Political Report: “President Trump’s abysmal polling since the pandemic began is seriously jeopardizing down-ballot GOP fortunes. We may be approaching the point at which dozens of House Republicans will need to decide whether to cut the president loose and run on a ‘check and balance’ message, offering voters insurance against congressional Democrats moving too far left under a potential Biden administration.”
“This week, we’re shifting our ratings in 20 races, all reflecting movement towards Democrats.”
McConnell Holds Small Lead In Kentucky
A new Garin-Hart-Yang (D) poll in Kentucky finds Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) leading challenger Amy McGrath (D) in the U.S. Senate race, 45% to 41%.
In the presidential race, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden, 53% to 41%.
‘The Third Hour of AM Talk Radio’
E.J. Dionne: “The display on Tuesday simultaneously violated all norms about presidents eschewing the rankest form of politicking from the White House and shredded all rules for speaking comprehensible English. Trump has supported English-only policies. Maybe we should apply them to presidents who claim to be using that language.”
“I won’t waste space here, but check out the transcript for the blocky paragraphs of cascading sentences with little connection to each other. The Post’s Matt Viser nicely captured the vibe when he observed that Trump’s comments had ‘the stream-of-consciousness feel of the third hour of AM talk radio.'”
Trump’s Refusal to Lead Is Making Pandemic Worse
Stephen Collinson: “Trump’s refusal to use his full powers of his office and the government to confront the worst domestic threat since World War II is looking more negligent, callous and politically self-defeating with each virus ravaged day that passes.”
“Not only is Trump refusing to act in a manner appropriate to the magnitude of the emergency, he is using the country’s loudest megaphone in a way almost guaranteed to make it worse, from presiding over a White House campaign to discredit the lifelong work of Dr. Anthony Fauci — a new front in his war on science and truth — to undermining efforts by local officials to convince people to wear masks to slow the spread of the disease.”
Feinstein Seeks to Tie Relief Funds to Mask Mandates
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said in a statement Thursday that she will introduce an amendment to the Senate’s next coronavirus stimulus bill that would withhold federal relief funds from states that do not require people to wear masks in public, Axios reports.
Operation Grant
John Weaver and Bill Kristol announce in the Cleveland Plain Dealer they are launching “Operation Grant” in Ohio.
“The politics of this decision are simple. For President Trump, there is a narrowing electoral map that gives him few paths to re-election. None of those paths exist without Ohio. And so Operation Grant aims to use the great American general’s home turf to put the nail in the coffin of today’s Neo-Confederate president…”
“During battle, General Grant said, ‘no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.’ We offer the same terms to President Trump today.”
Huckabee’s Company Accused of Scamming Parents
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s education company is giving away its educational booklets — such as “The Kids Guide to President Trump” — for free, or just $1 per item, in a “patriotic bundle” special, the HuffPost reports.
“But the offer is far from free. Parents across the country described a bait-and-switch scheme that they said duped them into signing up for $20-per-month subscriptions without their knowledge. Many said that Learn Our History ignored their repeated requests to cancel the subscriptions, leaving them locked into payments for products that they never wanted in the first place — all so their children can learn Huckabee’s version of history, which critics described as ‘pretend,’ ‘kiddie propaganda’ and ‘full of Christian nationalist revisionism and right-wing political propaganda.'”
Republicans Tell Trump to Change Tune on Mail Ballots
“Republican officials throughout the country are reacting with growing alarm to President Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots, saying his unsubstantiated claims of mass voting fraud are already corroding the views of GOP voters, who may ultimately choose not to vote at all if they can’t make it to the polls come November,” CNN reports.
“Behind the scenes, top Republicans are urging senior Trump campaign officials to press the President to change his messaging and embrace mail-in voting, warning that the party could lose the battle for control of Congress and the White House if he doesn’t change his tune… Trump officials, sources said, are fully aware of the concerns.”
Trump Faces Widespread Distrust on Coronavirus
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Americans’ views of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have deteriorated significantly as cases rise across the country and personal fears of becoming infected persist.
Key finding: “More than half of the public — 52% — now disapproves ‘strongly’ of Trump’s handling of the outbreak, roughly double the percentage who say they strongly approve of his efforts and an increase from 36% in strong disapproval since March.”
Federal Officers Respond to Portland Protests
“Portland demonstrators reacted Thursday to a wave of national attention from President Donald Trump and his administration by once again amassing throughout the city to decry police violence against Black Americans,” the Oregonian reports.
“Federal officers responded to one late-night demonstrations downtown by using gas, smoke and impact munitions to press protesters away from two federal buildings.”
Democrats Tell Lawmakers, Delegates to Skip Convention
New York Times: “Democratic officials are instructing House and Senate members and party delegates to skip attending their national convention this summer, a sign of the ever-shrinking aspirations for their big campaign event in the face of surging coronavirus cases in the United States.”
Trio of GOP Political Heirs Push Back on Trump
New York Times: “Even as Mr. Trump’s takeover of his party is largely complete, a trio of heirs to the old guard have been among the most prominent dissenting voices. A high-profile club of elected Republicans — all descendants of the Republican establishment of the past, whether rebellious or resolute — has emerged as a kind of shadow conscience of the party during these days of turmoil.”
“Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland has been a leading voice of frustration over Mr. Trump’s management of the Covid-19 outbreak. He was also one of the few Republican governors to say, in 2016, that he would not support his party’s nominee. Instead he wrote in the name of his late father, Representative Lawrence J. Hogan, the only Watergate-era Republican in the House who voted to recommend all three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon.”
“Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has been perhaps her party’s most persistent critic of Mr. Trump’s national security program. … Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, has made plain his disgust for Mr. Trump on a variety of occasions. (The feeling is mutual.) His father, George Romney, was a three-term governor of Michigan and a Republican presidential candidate who repeatedly ran afoul of the party’s orthodoxy on civil rights and Vietnam.”