Workers on Sanders’ 2020 White House campaign join union

March 15, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Workers on Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign have joined a labor union, becoming the first presidential campaign in history to unionize.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 will represent the campaign workers as Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, seeks the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Sanders, a progressive who is a staunch supporter of unions, said on Twitter he was “proud that our campaign is the first presidential campaign to unionize.”

Mark Federici, president of Local 400, said in a statement he hoped “this breakthrough serves as a model for other presidential campaigns, as well as party committees and candidates for other offices.”

Sanders, 77, announced his candidacy in February and will compete in a crowded field of more than a dozen Democratic challengers seeking the nomination to face the likely Republican candidate – President Donald Trump – in the 2020 election.

Sanders, who narrowly lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, has been among the leaders in early opinion polls of prospective 2020 Democratic candidates.

In January, Sanders apologized to women campaign workers who said they had been harassed or mistreated by male campaign staffers during his 2016 White House bid.

A majority of Sanders’ campaign workers signed a union card by Friday, triggering the union’s recognition, the union said. All campaign employees below the rank of deputy director will be represented by the union, which said the number could grow to more than 1,000 members.

The next step is for the campaign and the union to begin negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement, the union said.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; editing by Diane Craft)

Senator Warren swears off expensive campaign fundraisers

February 25, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren will hold no political fundraising events with pricey admission fees to collect cash to fuel her bid for the Democratic nomination for president, she announced Monday morning, becoming the first candidate to formally swear-off the traditional means of campaign funding.

With as many as two dozen Democrats expected to vie for the chance to take on President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election, the ability to raise funds could become critical for lesser-known contenders trying to break through the crowd.

Democrats have grown increasingly critical that corporations and the wealthy hold too much sway over U.S. elections, and several who are running to be the party’s nominee say they have refused to take corporate money.

Warren, who launched her campaign earlier this month, already promised not to take money from lobbyists or political action committees established by corporations. Monday’s announcement takes the pledge a step farther.

Instead of fundraisers with large entry fees, Warren will have to depend mainly on contributions collected online or from supporters willing to chip in smaller donations, known as “grassroots” supporters.

She will hold no fundraising dinners or cocktail parties, her campaign said.

“That means no fancy receptions or big money fundraisers only with people who can write the big checks,” Warren said in an email to campaign supporters on Monday morning, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

Traditionally, presidential candidates have used fundraising events to tap donors capable of writing larger checks. This year, candidates are allowed to accept two $2,800 checks from an individual donor, one to be used during the primary and another if they compete in the general election.

Wealthy supporters are often willing to write large donation checks in exchange for access to the candidate.

Since party nominees have typically hosted expensive fundraisers to help others in their party, if Warren wins the nomination her rejection of fundraisers could curb the spending power of other Democratic candidates for congressional offices.

Warren acknowledged the potential for opposition within her own party.

“There are some Democrats who are so deeply afraid of losing to Donald Trump that they don’t want to risk saying or doing anything different at all,” she wrote to supporters.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Virtue-signaling Leftist banks are deplatforming POTUS Trump supporters using financial tyranny

(Natural News) For more than a year ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the Left-wing Nazis who run the social media behemoths deplatformed one conservative, Right-leaning voice after another in what was obviously a concerted attempt to censor any and all dissent to Democratic candidates and their socialist policies. Though financial institutions and online advertising…

Are the Democrats Bent on Suicide?

Pat Buchanan says the New Green Deal proposed by far-left Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders reads like a “Democratic Party suicide pact.” The question he asks is “why Democrats, who, if nominated, are likely to face Donald Trump in 2020, are signing on to so radical a scheme.”

By Patrick J. Buchanan

After reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as “the longest suicide note in history.”

The phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president.

The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression.

Only that story is more than a small myth.

The unemployment rate when FDR took the oath in 1933 was 25%. It never fell below 14% through the 1930s. In June 1938, despite huge Democratic majorities in Congress, FDR was presiding over a nation where unemployment was back up to 19%.

World War II and the conscription of 16 million young men gave us “full employment.” And the war’s end and demobilization saw the return of real prosperity in 1946, after FDR was dead.

Yet this Green New Deal is nothing if not ambitious.

To cope with climate change, the GND calls for a 10-year plan to meet “100% of the power demand of the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

This appears to require a phase-out by 2030 of all carbon-emitting power plants fueled by coal and oil and their replacement by power plants fueled by wind and solar.

Will natural gas be permitted? Will nuclear power? There are 60 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 98 nuclear reactors in 30 states. Will they be shut down? Will the Greens agree to dam up more U.S. rivers to produce renewable hydroelectric power?

Air travel consumes huge quantities of carbon-producing jet fuel. What will replace it? Perhaps progressive Democratic candidates will set an example by not flying, and then by voting to end production of private aircraft and to ground all corporate jets. Let the elites sail to Davos.

The GND calls for an overhaul of the “transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector … through … clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and high-speed rail.”

Take Back Your Power DVDs at AFP Store.

Gas-powered cars are out. How long will that train trip from DC to LA take? And if China continues its relentless rise in carbon emissions until 2030, as permitted by the Paris climate accord, while the U.S. spends itself into bankruptcy going green, where would that leave America and China at midcentury?

“By the end of the Green New Deal resolution (and accompanying fact sheet) I was laughing so hard I nearly cried,” tweeted the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel: “If a bunch of GOPers plotted to forge a fake Democratic bill showing how bonkers the party is, they could not have done a better job. It is beautiful.”

The Green New Deal, say its authors, has as a goal “stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, the elderly, the unhoused, peoples with disabilities, and youth.”

Fifty years after the Great Society, apparently half the country consists of victims of oppression.

Who are their oppressors? Guess.

Among the endorsers of this Green New Deal is Sen. Cory Booker, who compares the battle to stop climate change to fighting the Nazis in World War II. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren have all endorsed it. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls climate change “an existential threat,” was an original co-sponsor.

Nancy Pelosi has more sense. Interviewed last week, the speaker batted the Green New Deal aside: “It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”

Coddling of the American Mind
New at AFP’s Online Store.

With her own agenda and priorities, Pelosi does not want to be dragged into having to defend a document that reads like it was written by the college socialists club.

The question, though, is why Democrats, who, if nominated, are likely to face Donald Trump in 2020, are signing on to so radical a scheme.

In a presidential election, the “out” party candidate usually has an advantage. No record to defend. He or she can choose the terrain on which to attack the incumbent, who has a four-year record.

Rarely does an out party present a fixed and stationary target as exposed as this, as out-of the-mainstream as this, as vulnerable as this.

The only explanation for the endorsement of the Green New Deal by candidates with a prospect of winning the Democratic nomination is that they are so fearful of Ocasio-Cortez and the left for whom she speaks that they must endorse her plan.

That British Tory got it right. This thing reads like a Democratic Party suicide pact.

Pat Buchanan is a writer, political commentator and presidential candidate. He is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever and previous titles including The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? and Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, all available from the AFP Online Store.

COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM

Booker focuses on race relations in initial 2020 White House swing

February 10, 2019

By Amanda Becker

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Cory Booker made the nation’s complicated history with race relations and racial disparities a focal point at events in the key state of Iowa during his first 2020 presidential campaign swing over the weekend.

Booker, 49, a former Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, frequently discussed incarceration and employment disparities, while also telling his parents’ story of trying to buy a house in an un-integrated New Jersey suburb in the late 1960s with the help of a volunteer civil rights lawyer.

Booker’s focus was an overture to the coalition of young, diverse voters that twice elected former Democratic President Barack Obama, while also differentiating his style from that of the first black U.S. president, who rarely discussed race during his campaign.

Booker’s emphasis on his personal and mayoral past, as well as his work as a senator on criminal justice issues, may also set him apart in a crowded field of Democratic candidates aiming to take on Republican President Donald Trump in what could be an historic election.

There are already four Democratic candidates vying to be the country’s first woman president, including U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, a former top prosecutor in the city of San Francisco and the state of California, who would also be the first black woman.

“Right here in Iowa, people meeting in barns – white folk and black folk – built the greatest infrastructure project this country has ever seen: the Underground Railroad,” Booker told a packed crowd at a brewery in Marshalltown, Iowa, on Saturday, referring to a network of safe houses used to assist black Americans fleeing slavery states to free states ahead of and during the U.S. civil war in the 1860s.

In Iowa, which hosts the first presidential party-nominating contest, African Americans make up just 3.8 percent of the population, according to government statistics. But black voters are a crucial Democratic bloc in states like South Carolina, which also hosts an early nominating contest.

Booker’s trip to Iowa occurred as prominent Democratic officials in Virginia faced calls to resign due to past racist photos and sexual assault allegations. Booker is set to campaign in South Carolina on Sunday.

At a roundtable in Waterloo, Iowa, on Friday, two-thirds of the panelists Booker’s campaign assembled were African-American community leaders. A subsequent forum at the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids included Iowa City Council member Mazahir Salih, a Sudanese refugee.

Diane Lemker, 64, attended the Marshalltown brewery event and plans to participate in next year’s Democratic nominating caucuses for the first time. She liked Booker’s message of unity and inclusivity.

“Obama won the caucus in Iowa in 2008 and that’s what set him off – people couldn’t believe that a primarily white state would launch his candidacy and it did,” Lemker told Reuters.

Andrew Turner, an up-and-coming Democratic activist and strategist in Iowa who managed successful Des Moines City Council and state auditor races, said he thought Booker hit the right notes on his first trip to the state.

“He really got the rising leaders in the party,” Turner said of Booker’s campaign roundtables. “They crushed this.”

(Reporting By Amanda Becker; Editing by Robeert Birsel)

Senator Amy Klobuchar expected to join widening presidential field

February 10, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

(Reuters) – U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to enter the 2020 presidential race on Sunday, becoming the first moderate in an increasingly crowded field of Democrats vying to challenge Republican President Donald Trump.

Klobuchar, 58, now in her third six-year term as a senator for Minnesota, will seek to position herself as a contrast to Trump, who is expected to be the Republican candidate in the November 2020 election, focusing on both policy differences but also style and tact.

A former prosecutor and corporate attorney, Klobuchar joins a list of Democratic hopefuls that includes fellow Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Warren heads to Iowa to campaign on Sunday after formally launching her bid on Saturday. Booker is also spending the weekend in the Midwestern farm state.

Klobuchar’s campaign announcement comes amid several news reports that staff in her Senate office were asked to do menial tasks, including some personal in nature like laundry, making it difficult for her to hire high-level campaign strategists

Klobuchar gained national attention in 2018 when she sparred with Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings on his Supreme Court nomination. Her questions earned her recognition in Democratic circles for working to advance the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.

But the senator will have work to do to build a national profile. She barely registers in early opinion polls of potential Democratic candidates.

Klobuchar hopes her moderate policies and strong electoral record in Minnesota will help her win back states Trump took from Democrats in the 2016 White House contest, including nearby Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania.

Klobuchar has focused her legislative efforts on issues like antitrust oversight, agriculture and voter security. Recently, she pushed for Senate investigations into whether Facebook Inc broke the law when it resisted oversight on how Russians used its platform to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

She has been measured in her criticism of Trump, attacking the effects of his trade tariffs on farmers but avoiding more explosive issues like immigration and gun control.

Klobuchar won her most recent Senate race in November with more than 60 percent of the vote. But she raised only about $7.4 million, a relatively small amount compared with Senate candidates in more competitive races. She will need to raise millions more to be a competitive presidential candidate.

Klobuchar is expected to focus her early presidential campaign efforts on Iowa, which borders Minnesota and holds the nation’s first nominating contest.

An aggressive focus on Iowa and a win there in 2008 helped catapult Barack Obama from underdog status to the Democratic Party’s nomination and eventual victory in that year’s presidential election.

Klobuchar began her foray into Minnesota politics by advocating for better access to healthcare for babies and new mothers after her own daughter was born with health complications, a personal narrative she is likely to use in the debate about the future of the nation’s healthcare system.

Klobuchar has not endorsed universal healthcare, an issue that will be heavily debated during the Democratic nominating race and could distinguish her from more liberal candidates who favor it.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson. Additional reporting by Amanda Becker in Iowa City, Iowa.)

Armed with new power, Democrats push for stricter gun laws

February 10, 2019

By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic lawmakers are pushing stricter gun laws in statehouses across the country, emboldened by sweeping electoral victories in 2018 and confident that public opinion is on their side a year after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Last year’s wins handed Democrats control of the governorship and legislature in several more states, including New Mexico, New York, Colorado, Maine and Nevada, and lawmakers are using their new power to draft or pass gun laws.

In Colorado, Tom Sullivan spent years urging lawmakers to tackle gun violence after his 27-year-old son, Alex, was killed in the 2012 movie theater shooting there.

Now Sullivan is helping write those bills after winning a state Assembly seat, part of a Democratic wave in November that gave the party full control of Colorado’s government for the first time in five years.

“People are standing up and having their voices heard,” said Sullivan, who wears his son’s leather jacket to the capitol. “Now they have to see me every single day.”

Polls show Americans favor tougher gun laws after decades of mass shootings, including the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students and staff members. But the political might of the National Rifle Association – and its deep coffers – made supporting gun restrictions a risky proposition for many officials.

That changed last year, when Democratic candidates ran on the issue of gun violence in unprecedented numbers.

At the federal level, where Democrats captured the U.S. House of Representatives after eight years of Republican control, nearly 80 percent of the 62 freshman Democrats elected in November included gun safety in their campaign platforms, a Reuters analysis found. That far outstripped the proportion of candidates who did so in 2016.

House Democrats have introduced a bill requiring criminal background checks for private and gun show firearm sales, closing what advocates call a deadly loophole in federal law.

But with Republicans, who typically oppose gun restrictions, still in control of the U.S. Senate, the legislation’s prospects appear dim.

Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey said a Democratic House could put pressure on the Senate to reconsider a bipartisan background checks measure he sponsored after the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first-graders. The bill narrowly failed to get the 60 votes needed for passage.

Now, he said, “there is a distinct possibility that we could have enough Republicans to get to 60, but that’s still an open question.”

SHIFT TO STATES

National gun safety groups are more optimistic about making progress outside Washington, with nearly 20 states poised to take up gun safety bills this year, they said.

Lawmakers are focusing on bills with widespread approval in public polling, including background checks, “red flag” bills that allow judges to confiscate guns from dangerous people and bans on domestic abusers owning guns. Several states passed similar laws last year, including some with Republican governors or legislatures, and advocates say they hope to draw Republican votes in numerous states this year.

Gun rights groups also are pursuing new state laws. South Dakota in January began allowing residents to carry concealed handguns with no permit, while other states are considering arming teachers.

“We continue to defeat gun control legislation across the country while passing gun rights legislation,” said NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker.

So far this year, gun safety advocates have found success in several states while encountering roadblocks in others, including from some Democrats.

New York last month passed a red flag law, extended waiting periods and prohibited armed teachers in schools.

In Nevada, where the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history occurred at a 2017 music festival in Las Vegas, Democratic leaders have vowed to implement the background checks approved by voters in a 2016 referendum. The state’s former Republican attorney general had refused to do so.

“It’s a high priority,” said Jason Frierson, speaker of the state Assembly. “We have a new class of candidates who feel passionately about this issue.”

In New Mexico, newly elected Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has called for red flag, domestic abuser and background check bills. The Democratic-led legislature is expected to pass all three within weeks, said Speaker of the House Brian Egolf.

Some Democratic lawmakers in Maine, which has a strong hunting culture, introduced a raft of measures including a large-capacity magazine ban, a background check bill and a red flag law.

But newly elected Democratic Governor Janet Mills has said she opposes the background check bill after voters rejected a similar measure in 2016. Gun safety advocates privately concede they do not expect any of the major legislation to become law.

Perhaps no state better encapsulates the political volatility around guns than Colorado, which has both a deep tradition of gun ownership and a history of mass shootings, including the 1999 Columbine school massacre and the Aurora movie theater killings.

In 2013, after the Aurora attack, the legislature passed background checks and a high-capacity ammunition magazine ban. In response, an NRA-backed recall election removed the Democratic state Senate leader and another member, and Democrats lost their Senate majority the following year.

John Morse, the ousted Senate leader, said Democrats should be even more aggressive now in passing gun laws.

“No one in Colorado needs to fear what happened to us,” he said. “The country is starting to get that the gun lobby has no interest whatsoever in any kind of common sense things.”

For now, however, Colorado Democrats say they will focus solely on a red flag bill before considering other measures.

“I’m a fourth-generation Coloradan, and gun ownership is a way of life,” said Alec Garnett, the state Assembly Democratic majority leader. “What I’ve learned in this business is there’s no clear path for anything.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Tom Brown)

Mega-Rich Scoff At Democrat Tax Grab Even As Most Americans Support

Ultra-rich partygoers at a Palm Beach soirée thumbed their noses at robin-hood tax proposals pitched by various Democratic candidates going into 2020, according to Bloomberg

The party at the Norton Museum of Art Saturday night had all the trappings of the Palm Beach high season – those Stubbs & Wootton slippers, some fabulous gowns, and, with President Trump ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, a healthy disregard for the tax plans being floated by a wide field of potential Democrat candidates in 2020.

They’re going to eat themselves alive,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. –Bloomberg

Except – a majority of Americans are now saying they’re cool with plans to extract up to 70% from the income of the super-rich over certain levels, according to Politico

Out of several polls showing support for the money grab, a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday reveals that 76% of registered voters think the rich should pay more in taxes, while a survey conducted by Fox News concluded that 70% oif Americans thought raising taxes on those earning more than $10 million was warranted – including 54% of Republicans

The surveys suggest that perhaps the Palm Beach crowd might want to take such proposals more seriously, as average voters are keenly aware of the rise in income inequality in the United States. Imagine how voters will feel during the next recession, should one materialize? 

There is a deep wellspring in terms of perception of unfairness in the economy that’s been tapped into here that either didn’t exist five years ago or existed and had not had a chance to be expressed,” said JPMorgan chairman of market and investment strategy, Michael Cembalest. “This is quite a moment in American economic history where all of a sudden in a matter of months this thing has kind of exploded like this.”

A plan from first-term Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to slap a 70 percent marginal rate on income earned over $10 million clocked in at 59 percent support in a recent Hill/HarrisX poll.

The new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, conducted Feb. 1-2, found that 61 percent favor a proposal like the “wealth tax” recently laid out by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that would levy a 2 percent tax on those with a net worth over $50 million and 3 percent on those worth over $1 billion. Just 20 percent opposed the idea. The poll surveyed 1,993 registered voters and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

It showed 45 percent favored a plan like that laid out by Ocasio-Cortez while 32 percent opposed it. –Politico

In short, Republicans who think they’ll be able to easily spin the Democrat tax plans as irrational cash-grabs in 2020 may find it difficult to make their case. 

“There is certainly an appetite for more taxes on the rich, though the threshold matters,” said polling expert Karlyn Bowman with the American Enterprise Institute. “There is also some support for redistributing income.

Last year, 48% of taxpayers described their own taxes as “about right,” while around 45% said they were “too high.” Democrats, keenly aware that raising taxes on the middle class is probably a really bad idea at this point, have concluded that raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy is a safe bet that could help pay for government programs such as a “Green New Deal” or “Medicare for All.” 

That said, proposals have varied as to who exactly would end up paying more taxes under a Democrat president in 2020. 

Some Democrats piling into the 2020 race are now competing to get further to the left on boosting taxes on the rich. After Warren’s wealth tax announcement, likely candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who bucked recent political tradition with calls for tax hikes in his 2016 campaign, unveiled a proposal to increase the number of wealthy Americans subject to the estate tax.

Those who aren’t calling for big new taxes — including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who prefers refundable tax credits — are facing some heat on the left as insufficiently progressive. –Politico

“It’s not surprising to me at all. Washington has been working so long for the billionaire class that people around here cannot imagine crossing them,” said Elizabeth Warren, adding “It never even becomes a topic of conversation. The ultra-millionaires have gotten so much from this country that it’s not unreasonable to ask them to give back a little bit.”

Warren claimed that she wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class, should she win the Democratic nomination. “That’s just wrong. Why on earth would I do that? It makes no sense. I think I’ve already lost the billionaire vote,” she said. 

Trump once pushed for an ultra-wealth tax

President Trump pushed for a measure in 1999 while pondering a presidential bid on the Reform Party ticket – suggesting a 14.25% one-time tax on those with a net worth of more than $10 million. Trump suggest this would wipe out the national debt entirely – which was just $5.5 trillion at the time, as opposed to today’s nearly $22 trillion

“By my calculations, 1 percent of Americans, who control 90 percent of the wealth in this country, would be affected by my plan,” said 1999 Trump. 

Trump has long since abandoned that idea, focusing instead on wedge issues like immigration to target voters concerned about their jobs and wages as well as those worried about demographic changes in the country.

But he may have vulnerability on the tax issue heading into 2020 given his biggest legislative accomplishment as president so far was a $2 trillion tax cut that showered most of its benefits on corporate America while offering much smaller reductions to middle-class taxpayers. –Politico

Trump’s $2 trillion tax cuts, meanwhile, has been lauded by Republicans for the promse of faster growth and higher wages – however the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that just 33% of those surveyed thought the tax bill was helping the economy, while 41% said it made no difference, and 25% had no idea or no opinion on how effective it was. 

While the progressive plans have been panned by most of the ultra-wealthy, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last week: “I believe that individuals earning the most can afford to pay more,” adding “And I have no problem paying higher taxes to address some of the fundamental challenges and inequities in our society.”

Trump re-election campaign began 2019 with $19 million in cash

January 31, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump began the year with $19.2 million in campaign cash, a war chest that gives him a head start on Democrats lining up for the chance to run against the Republican in the 2020 White House race.

Trump raised $21 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, his campaign said on Thursday. Unlike any other president in the modern era, Trump filed for re-election on the day he took office in January 2017, instead of waiting the traditional two years. That allowed him to raise and spend campaign cash his entire term.

He is likely to far outpace the fundraising by Democrats who are just beginning to build campaigns. None of the Democratic candidates have yet been required to disclose their money hauls, although U.S. Senator Kamala Harris’ campaign said she raised $1.5 million in the 24 hours after she launched her run.

More than two dozen Democrats are expected to mount a campaign in hopes of winning the party’s nomination.

David Brock, a Democratic fundraiser who oversaw the largest Super PAC his party has backed, said Trump’s haul will make Democrats nervous.

“There is not going to be enough money in the system, whether its online or big dollars, to support more than six or eight candidates,” Brock told Reuters. “There is a disadvantage that Democrats have to raise money to fight each other first before you can raise a war chest to fight Trump.”

Some of the Democrats’ biggest donors are waiting to decide which candidate to back, Brock said.

“There is a lot less interest among donors on the ideological split as there is imagining the person who is best to stand up against Trump and really take the fight to him and just beat him,” Brock said.

Greg Berlin, a Democratic fundraiser at the firm Mothership Strategy, said he is confident Democrats will ultimately be able to compete with Trump’s cash levels.

“Whoever is the nominee will have well over a billion dollars combined with their primary and general money to compete with Trump,” Berlin said. “Trump will likely have well over a billion dollars, so I don’t think money matters at the end of the day.”

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Peter Cooney and Cynthia Osterman)

Democrat Julian Castro expected to launch 2020 U.S. presidential bid

January 12, 2019

By Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Texas Democrat Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor who went on to be the top U.S. housing official, was expected to formally announce his White House bid on Saturday, the first Hispanic in what looks to be a crowded field of candidates vying to challenge President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.

Castro, 44, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama and has long been viewed as a rising star in the party. He will seek to position himself as a political outsider with liberal credentials.

Since announcing formation of an exploratory committee in December, Castro has begun to stake out positions on policy debates that will dominate the nominating contests that kick off early next year.

“I’m not going to be a single-issue candidate,” he told ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday. “My vision for the country’s future is that we aim in the 21st century to be the smartest, the healthiest, the most fair and the most prosperous country.”

Castro has endorsed the “Medicare for all” proposal, which would in effect create a national health care plan by allowing anyone to join the public health care system. That policy point is likely to divide Democrats in the primary, with more moderate candidates favoring a less drastic approach.

Castro, whose grandmother was born in Mexico, has sought to use his family’s personal story to criticize Trump’s border policies.

Castro, who will make his announcement in San Antonio, would be the second candidate to formally launch a campaign. Former U.S. Representative John Delaney has been running for more than a year, and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has formed an exploratory committee and has begun holding campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states with the earliest contests.

More than a dozen potential Democratic candidates are exploring a possible run for president in 2020. Moderates and progressives in the party have been debating about how to best challenge Trump, the likely Republican nominee.

Some Democrats believe an establishment figure who can appeal to centrist voters is the way to win back the White House. Others contend a fresh face is needed to energize the party’s increasingly left-leaning base.

Castro, who was considered on the short list to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the 2016 election, will try to leverage his Obama administration experience while making the case he is still a political newcomer.

Castro’s identical twin brother, Joaquin Castro, is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas. Joaquin Castro’s position on the House Intelligence Committee has made him a frequent public critic of the president.

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and David Gregorio)

Democrats Desperate for Presidential Candidates

The current top contenders for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates include Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke.

By S.T. Patrick

The Democratic Party has caught “Betomania,” and it’s spreading all the way to a potential 2020 nomination for president. One prominent Democrat has yet to purchase his own ticket for the Beto bandwagon. Outgoing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is hesitant about the early hype of Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas). The former chief of staff to President Barack Obama questioned the wisdom of getting behind O’Rourke, who just lost a surprisingly close Senate race to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“If Beto O’Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him. He should put his hat in and make his case,” Emanuel recently told MSNBC. “But, he lost. You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of party.”

Emanuel, a power player in the Democratic Party, was on MSNBC to publicly support Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in her effort to once again become House speaker. “Nancy Pelosi led the Democratic Party for the last two years from a really bad election in 2016,” Emanuel said. “I’m from Chicago. Maybe I’m really old school, but to the victor go the spoils.”

When asked if a presidential run is possible, O’Rourke has responded that “anything is possible.” A “Draft Beto 2020 PAC” has already been formed by Lauren Pardi, Will Herberich, and Adam Webster, three Democratic strategists based in the Northeast.

“Make no mistake about it,” the strategists wrote, “Beto can win. A recent Politico poll showed that among the field of potential Democratic candidates, Beto was third—behind only Vice President Joe Biden and [Vermont] Sen. Bernie Sanders. . . . Our goal is to show Beto that there is support for his candidacy, starting here in New England.”

In 2016, Emanuel supported Hillary Clinton over both Biden and Sanders. If Mrs. Clinton runs again, he may re-up his support or he may go another direction. It’s feasible that he could run, himself, though there are few Democratic strategists predicting an Emanuel campaign. The strategy at this point would be to appear cold and unimpressed by all potential candidates. In doing so, Emanuel’s support becomes more valuable and could earn him a better position within his chosen candidate’s administration. In politics, support is a commodity. The wise political move is to use it as such, especially when a candidate needs a boost among the party faithful in the primary polls.

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While Obama has not yet endorsed even the possibility of an O’Rourke run—and did not officially endorse his Senate candidacy—the former president has recently made some glowing remarks about the Democratic Party’s favorite new hope.

“It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed,” Obama said. “And that, you’d like to think, is normally how things work. Sadly, it’s not.”

When O’Rourke was a city councilman in El Paso in 2008, he broke with his local party faithful and supported Obama over Mrs. Clinton in the primaries. Like Obama and Trump, he would hope to catch a sort of “rock star vibe” that pushes candidates through primaries in this new millennium. He has already embraced social media and eschewed consultants, preferring an online presence to a sizeable staff.

In a November poll of Democratic voters, O’Rourke ranked third among 21 other choices. Biden ranked first with Sanders coming in a strong second. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.), and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg were the only other candidates to receive over 1% in the poll. Whispers within the party are still discussing the remote possibility of a billionaire celebrity run by someone such as television production mogul Oprah Winfrey or Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The Democratic Party may be in the midst of an identity crisis, still guessing what it will be in 2020. Will it be the blatantly Democratic Socialist party of Sanders and 28-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or will it move toward a more popular centrism as it did in Pennsylvania when 34-year-old Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Penn.) flipped a long-held Republican seat in conservative southwestern Pennsylvania? Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor, pushed his military service and moderate views on issues to a victory.

As the Democrats learned in November, they underestimate President Trump at their own expense. Chastising him has only strengthened his base. Antagonizing the base will only further the separation and drive moderates to the right. In a country rife with polarization, both parties will still have to seek those in the middle to win in 2020.

S.T. Patrick holds degrees in both journalism and social studies education. He spent 10 years as an educator and now hosts the “Midnight Writer News Show.” His email is [email protected].

N.D. Tea Party debate skipped by top GOP candidates

By: Kristen M. Daum, GrandForksHerald.com

Tonight will be the last scheduled debate for candidates in North Dakota’s top races prior to the state nominating conventions in March.

But with several high-profile contenders from both parties not attending, less than half of the invited candidates will face their competition on stage.

At least one participant is calling out his opponent’s absence, prompting a campaign issue over candidates’ willingness to debate in front of their party’s base of support.

Today’s event is the second of two debate nights organized by the North Dakota Tea Party Caucus and a coalition of more than a dozen conservative-leaning organizations.

It begins with a half-hour pre-show at 6 p.m. at Fargo’s Best Western Doublewood Inn, 3333 13th Ave. S.

As with the first event in Bismarck last month, the caucus aimed to have three one-hour debates for the U.S. House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates.

But two key Republicans and all Democratic candidates have once again declined to participate, forcing a change in the debate format.

Of the 15 candidates invited, nine candidates will attend, but two will address the audience unopposed.

To read more, visit:  http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/230505/

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