In his insightful post “Black Democrats Want To See Bigger, Earlier Voter Turnout Efforts,” Darren Sands notes at BuzzFeed News, “Many of the political committees and campaigns seem to be a standstill when it comes to planning and moving money into programs that will turnout base democratic voters,” Quentin James, a Democratic strategist said. “Coming out of the 2012 cycle, we saw African-American voters cast ballots at a higher rate than white voters for the first time. I’m not a rocket scientist, but it seems a smart strategy would be to double down on turning out that demographic.”…”People are tired of the last-minute money,” one well-connected Democrat said, alluding to a trend in recent years to put resources into black outreach beginning in the fall. “That is a huge concern and they don’t want that. They want see that early investment. It needs to happen on the ground and now.”
Catastrophoic visions and squirmage epidemic in GOP over Trump’s doubling down on Latino-bashing.
But Trump’s attack against Judge Curiel may be more about creating a distraction from his growing fear that the ‘Trump University’ scandal can get even uglier, as the press uncovers the outrageous details, notes Heather Digby Parton at salon.com.
“Top Republicans in the state legislature are seeking to block Mr. McAuliffe’s sweeping order, which re-enfranchised 206,000 Virginians who have completed sentences, probation or parole. Last week, the Supreme Court announced a special session to hear arguments in July — in time to rule before the November election…Still, race is a powerful subtext; African-Americans make up 19 percent of Virginia’s population, but 45 percent of those covered by the governor’s order. The Sentencing Project, a Washington research organization, says one in five African-Americans in Virginia cannot vote because of felony convictions…But what Mr. McAuliffe granted, the Virginia Supreme Court may now take away.” – from Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s NYT article, “Virginia at Center of Racially Charged Fight Over the Right of Felons to Vote.”
Significant pros and cons about this idea. But keeping Biden close makes a lot of sense.
Politifact says “For median income, we found that 95 of the 100 poorest counties were located in red states” and “For percentage of residents in poverty, we found that 93 of the 100 poorest counties were in red states.” In the spirit of false equivalence, Politifact adds stretchy yada yada about Republicans doing well in rural areas and these counties being poor way back when the states were Democratic, but the fact nonetheless remains that Republican dominated state government has utterly failed to reduce poverty in these areas.
At The Atlantic Michelle Cottle explains why “There’s No Escaping the Top of the Ballot,” and notes “The level of split-ticket voting between the presidential race and races in the House and Senate is down to about 5 percent at this point,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at NYU who has written on the nationalization of U.S. elections. Getting that number up much higher, predicted Pildes, “will be like pushing a boulder up a hill.”
Well, this is encouraging: “Senate Democrats are doing everything they can to link candidates in swing states to Trump, launching their “Party of Trump” campaign in March aimed at vulnerable GOP incumbents. The DSCC has reserved about $50 million worth of television airtime in the fall to hammer that message home,” reports Alexander Bolton at The Hill.
Will violence at demonstrations against Trump help him? Jose A. DelReal and Sean Sulivan address the concern at the Washington Post.