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wings wrote: Thu Mar 17, 2022 6:06 am I doubt Putin could be deterred from anything by sending arms. The only thing that makes him hesitate is the nuke umbrella. And maybe invading his personal space.

Yes, Herbert Walker supposedly told Gorby that we wouldn't push to add the Baltics to NATO. They still wanted in, they followed the rules to apply, and telling them no would have put them higher up Putin's list than Ukraine was. Expanding NATO was certainly not the least provocative option available in the 90s, but the EU wasn't exactly standing up to replace it as a collective security agreement. I think NATO's involvement in the Yugoslavian conflict played a much stronger role in alienating Russia's apparatchiks than anything else. They still have a chip on their shoulder about that. Still, I agree with sikacz that we missed many real opportunities to offer Russia assistance in growing into a real democracy instead of declaring victory and ignoring them for twenty years.

Back on topic. The latest take on redistricting.
The Crystal Ball favors Democrats in 185 of the seats that have been drawn, to 169 for Republicans (22 districts are Toss-ups). But the 5 states that have yet to produce maps account for a sizeable 59 seats. Perhaps more notably, Republicans, at least on paper, technically control redistricting in 4 of those states — Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Ohio — while they also may end up getting their way in the 5th, Louisiana, despite its Democratic governor.

Altogether, Republicans currently hold 39 of the quintet’s 59 seats, so in terms of the overall House count, even a relatively status quo arrangement would likely benefit the GOP (while Ohio is losing a seat, Florida is gaining one).
https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalba ... hats-left/

Lessee, how many fingers do I have left? Current redistricting has Dems up by 16 seats, remaining seats favor the GOP by 20 prior to redistricting, carry the two - that's a four seat edge for the GOP with 22 tossups. The GOP have few pickup opportunities remaining, with Ohio's Supreme Court gutting their gerrymandering efforts.

This is likely to be close.

It's really too early to tell which party is ahead in the redistricting game, states like FL, MO, LA & NH still haven't completed the process. And there were court challenges over gerrymandered maps in OH, NC and NY.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Checked my March 1 primary ballot status again this morn - seems it was finally marked approved and accepted - 25 days later.
"Being Republican is more than a difference of opinion - it's a character flaw." "COVID can fix STUPID!"
The greatest, most aggrieved mistake EVER made in USA was electing DJT as POTUS.

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For the actual mid terms, we have to make the R's ashamed and embarrassed over the facts so they won't vote or will not do controversy, electing competent dog catchers and so on. Biden said "autocracy versus democracy."
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

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President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings keep falling in his second year in the White House, with just 40% of Americans approving of the job that he is doing, a new NBC News survey finds.

That is the lowest rating Biden has seen in his presidency.

Biden’s 3-percentage-point drop in job approval since January comes as a large majority of Americans continue to say the United States is headed in the wrong direction, the poll found.

A total of 71% of respondents to the poll said they believe the country is “off on the wrong track.” That is a single percentage point less than the portion of respondents who gave that answer in the same poll taken in mid-January.

The latest grim numbers for Biden come as he leads a Western coalition backing Ukraine’s resistance to its invasion by Russia, Americans are dealing with an inflation rate not seen since the 1980s, and as the U.S. enters the third full year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“What this poll says is that President Biden and Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election,” Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinions Strategy, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, told NBC News.

The poll surveyed 1,000 adults, 790 of whom were registered voters, over four days last week. It has a margin of error of 3.1% among all respondents.

The political party of incumbent presidents as a rule sees a loss of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in mid-term elections. All 435 House seats are at stake in the November 2022 elections, while 35 Senate seats are at stake.

Democrats hold a narrow 12-vote majority in the House.

Democrats only control the Senate because of the tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris, who can tip the scales in their favor when all 48 Democrats and the two independent senators who caucus with them vote as a bloc against the 50 GOP senators.

Biden has seen his public approval fall significantly since taking office in January 2021 after defeating then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump recently has strongly suggested he will seek the Republican presidential nomination again in 2024.

Biden said Thursday he would be “very fortunate” to have Trump as an opponent in the next election, a jibe that might be warranted by Trump’s own relatively high negative approval ratings.

But the Democratic incumbent finds himself in a public approval hole that keeps getting bigger.

In the March 2021 poll by NBC News, three months into his presidency, Biden had a 53% approval rating by all Americans, and 51% among registered voters. That same poll found that 39% of all Americans, and 43% of registered voters disapproved of his performance.

In the new poll, just 41% of registered voters approved of Biden’s performance, and 54% of voters disapproved of it.

Only 16% of registered voters said they strongly approved of the job Biden was doing, while 43% strongly disapproved of it.

When Biden took office in January 2021, just 21% of Americans thought the U.S. was headed in the right direction, with 73% saying it was on the wrong track.

Three months later, the numbers had shifted significantly, with 36% saying the country was moving in the right direction, and 56% saying the opposite.

After that, however, Americans again became more pessimistic, with only 22% of people saying the U.S. is headed in the right direction, a percentage that has not changed since October’s NBC poll.

When Americans were asked how they personally felt about Biden, a total of 37% said they had very positive or somewhat positive feelings. A total of 46% said they had very negative or somewhat negative feelings about him.

When people were asked about Trump, a total of 36% said they had very positive or somewhat positive feelings about him. A total of 50% had very negative or somewhat negative feelings about the former president.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/27/biden-j ... worry.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Polls mean nothing. Polling is everything. (apologies to Ike). Only real poll comes in November.

If the Dems successfully tar the Hapless R's with a treasonous orange brush, they will force joys of working in the private sector upon the R's after having them thrown out of office on their ears for piss poor job performance and the indelible taint of orange slime.

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

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The problem Biden has is a much too narrow margin in the senate and the house is rather shaky. So he could promise a pot of gold to every man, woman and child along with the second coming and world peace, the Repugs would fight it tooth and nail, even if he could show that he could do it.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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wings wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:25 pm That's the point. Thanks to gerrymandering, it's gonna be tight. Big wave elections are going to tough to swing.
And because it’s going to be tight, why are the dems stupid enough to push gun bans and restrictions. It doesn’t take many lost votes to lose elections. They don’t have to even vote for the other side, just not vote for the dem. Idiots.
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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

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sikacz wrote: Sun Mar 27, 2022 4:21 pm
wings wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:25 pm That's the point. Thanks to gerrymandering, it's gonna be tight. Big wave elections are going to tough to swing.
And because it’s going to be tight, why are the dems stupid enough to push gun bans and restrictions. It doesn’t take many lost votes to lose elections. They don’t have to even vote for the other side, just not vote for the dem. Idiots.

Politicians on both ends of the spectrum have memorized responses to the hot button culture war issues. They don't use their critical thinking skills, they just give the party response. They're like Pavlov's dogs, their stimulus is campaign money and votes if they deliver the correct responses. Gone are the days when Democrats represented the working class and Republicans the wealthy, both parties contain working class and wealthy and we know which group has the most influence, the wealthy.

Sadly I see Democrats making the same mistakes this election cycle as they did the last election cycle on gun control. The DNC is programmed to lobby for gun control, I don't see them changing. A few Democratic candidates in purple districts may be 2A supporters like some Republicans in purple districts may support abortion, but they are the exception.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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highdesert wrote: Mon Mar 28, 2022 8:55 am
sikacz wrote: Sun Mar 27, 2022 4:21 pm
wings wrote: Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:25 pm That's the point. Thanks to gerrymandering, it's gonna be tight. Big wave elections are going to tough to swing.
And because it’s going to be tight, why are the dems stupid enough to push gun bans and restrictions. It doesn’t take many lost votes to lose elections. They don’t have to even vote for the other side, just not vote for the dem. Idiots.

Politicians on both ends of the spectrum have memorized responses to the hot button culture war issues. They don't use their critical thinking skills, they just give the party response. They're like Pavlov's dogs, their stimulus is campaign money and votes if they deliver the correct responses. Gone are the days when Democrats represented the working class and Republicans the wealthy, both parties contain working class and wealthy and we know which group has the most influence, the wealthy.

Sadly I see Democrats making the same mistakes this election cycle as they did the last election cycle on gun control. The DNC is programmed to lobby for gun control, I don't see them changing. A few Democratic candidates in purple districts may be 2A supporters like some Republicans in purple districts may support abortion, but they are the exception.
Correct analysis. This is going to be depressing.
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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

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More than 12% of mail-in ballots were rejected in Texas under new GOP voting rules, final tally shows

The votes of more than 24,000 Texans who tried to cast ballots by mail were thrown out in the March primary — a dramatic increase in rejected ballots in the first election held under a new Republican voting law.

Roughly 12.4% of mail-in ballots returned to the state’s 254 counties were not counted, according to figures released Wednesday by the Texas secretary of state. Just over 3 million people voted overall in the low-turnout primary.

Of 24,636 rejected mail-in ballots, 14,281 belonged to voters attempting to participate in the Democratic primary, and 10,355 belonged to voters in the Republican primary. But the rejection rate by party was fairly aligned; 12.9% of Democratic ballots were rejected and 11.8% of Republican ballots were rejected.

Put another way, 1 in every 8 mail-in voters lost their votes in their primary. The rate amounts to a significant surge in rejections compared with previous years, including the higher-turnout 2020 presidential election, when less than 1% of ballots were tossed.

Data previously collected by The Texas Tribune found rejection rates ranging from 6% to nearly 22% in 16 of the state’s 20 counties with the most registered voters, which overall rejected 18,742 mail-in ballots. In most cases, county officials said, ballots were rejected for failing to meet new, stricter ID requirements enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year that require voters to provide their driver’s license number or a partial Social Security number to vote by mail.

By contrast, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found less than 2% of mail-in ballots were rejected statewide in the 2018 midterm election. The statewide rejection rate in the 2020 presidential election was less than 1%. In the higher-turnout 2020 election, 8,304 ballots were tossed statewide. In the 2022 primary — for which turnout fell shy of 18% — roughly three times as many ballots were rejected.

The data released by the secretary of state is the most official measure of the fallout of the tighter restrictions on voting by mail, which have so far proven the most frustrating aspect of Republicans’ voting law in its first test.

The requirements were part of a package of voting changes and restrictions enacted last year through legislation known as Senate Bill 1, which Republicans argued were needed to enhance the security of the state’s election even though they lacked evidence that previous elections had been foiled by widespread irregularities. Republican leaders who championed the law often said the measures in SB 1 would make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.

But the requirements vexed both voters and election workers responsible for processing mail-in ballots. In the lead-up to the election, county officials reported that qualified voters — some of whom had previously voted by mail many times — were being hampered by the law. In some cases, it took Texans as many as three attempts to get their votes through. Others abandoned the voting-by-mail option altogether, opting to vote in person instead for fear of being disenfranchised, county election officials previously said.

Texas’ strict eligibility criteria for voting by mail means the thousands of tossed votes most likely belonged to people 65 and older and people with disabilities.

Tina Tran, director of AARP Texas, called the reported numbers "deeply troubling and a sad indication that too many voters, including many older voters, are being disenfranchised" because of the changes to the state's vote-by-mail rules.

"With a primary runoff election approaching and the state’s general election scheduled for the fall, it is imperative that state and local election officials work extraordinarily hard and fast to better communicate new identification rules to voters," Tran said in a statement. "Lessons must be learned to prevent more voter disenfranchisement in the upcoming elections."

The office of Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the bill into law, has not responded to requests for comment about the ballot rejection issues. The secretary of state's office has vowed to ramp up voter education about the rules ahead of the general election. But local election officials remained limited in how they can interact with prospective mail-in voters, including a new prohibition on "soliciting" requests for mail-in ballots from voters that county election administrators say they fear violating.

County election officials have also walked away from specific outreach to regular mail-in voters in light of the prohibition.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/06 ... on-voting/

It would be wonderful if they would release how many of the Ballots were for each party and how many were for non-incumbents.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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The professionals who track American attitudes toward the economy say they can see the trouble coming.

Angry voters slammed by higher prices and scarred by two years of fighting the pandemic are poised to punish Democrats in midterm elections, according to some of the leading experts in consumer sentiment and behavior.

And with inflation persisting and Russia’s war on Ukraine stoking uncertainty, there are indications that public sentiment is getting worse, not better, posing a growing threat to Democrats’ already slim chances of holding onto Congress, they say.

The widely watched University of Michigan consumer confidence survey recently touched its lowest level in almost 11 years. An Associated Press/NORC survey showed that almost 70 percent of Americans think the economy is in poor shape, and 81 percent of those in a poll released by CNBC see a recession coming this year. Gallup found the share of Americans citing inflation as the top issue is now at its highest level since the 1980s.

“The big run-up in gas and food and home prices has really caused great hardship for many households,” said Richard Curtin, a veteran economist who has run the University of Michigan consumer survey since 1976. “And the Biden administration made a critical error in saying it would be transient and people should just tough it out. It wasn’t transient. A lot of people couldn’t just tough it out. And it caused a big loss of confidence in [President Joe Biden’s] policies.”

Inside the West Wing, Biden and his top advisers know that the window to change the economic narrative through executive action is rapidly closing, according to a senior Biden aide and an outside adviser. The options, they say, mostly include whatever can be done to ease oil prices, the biggest drag on the party right now. But even that could have only limited impact.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and lead author of a closely followed model that ties political outcomes to economic conditions, said this is among the toughest environments for the incumbent party that he’s ever seen, despite a booming job market.

Moody’s is working on its model for the 2022 midterms, and Zandi said that as of now it’s likely to show a very tough path for Democrats to hold either the House, where they have a razor-thin margin, and the Senate, which is split 50-50.

“Most Americans have never experienced high inflation like this, particularly on gas prices, and it has gotten everyone very upset,” he said. “Behavioral economics reveals that people hate inflation more than they love a low unemployment rate. And the pandemic still colors everything. People have been through the wringer.”

None of this is lost on Democratic aides and economists inside and outside the White House. One senior Biden aide, who declined to be identified by name because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said efforts to free up more oil and further ease supply chain bottlenecks would continue.

And the president will point to strong positives in the economy including continued strong job growth, a large number of available positions, higher wages and a jobless rate of just 3.6 percent, a pandemic low. Most of those numbers are far better than economists were predicting a year ago.

“There are still things we can do and arguments we can make, but frankly it would have been better had Vladimir Putin not invaded Ukraine,” the aide said. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Inflation was rapidly rising long before the war suddenly sent energy and food prices spiking even more and injected new volatility into global markets that were previously celebrating the end to the worst of the pandemic. Still, other indicators were trending the administration’s way.

Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor who served as a top adviser to then-President Barack Obama, said the economy looks like it will be a headwind for Democrats. But he said some things could go right between now and Election Day in November.

“There are still some glimmers of light for the White House right now,” Goolsbee said. “Supply chain pressures really may ease up. And the virus, which was way worse than expected, has been the primary driver of everything. And if we are in fact going to get out from under the grip of the virus, that should reverse some of the sourness that is now in all the polling and consumer surveys.”

There is a lot to reverse, at least according to the latest survey conducted by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago.

“With energy and consumer prices on the rise, 69 percent consider the national economy to be in poor condition,” Marjorie Connelly, a senior fellow in public affairs and media research at the NORC Center, said in a note. “Fifty-five percent say they don’t blame … Biden for high gasoline prices, but 65 percent disapprove of how he is handling the economy. Americans are more likely to think his policies have done more to hurt the national economy than to help it.”

The survey offered some reason for optimism for Democrats, given that a majority of Americans don’t blame Biden for the higher gas prices. The numbers also generally break down along partisan lines in most polling, with Republicans more likely to blame the president for economic problems. People also mostly still feel confident in their own personal finances even as they worry about other people and the national picture, the survey said. And they worry a lot.

“It’s just a tough road for Biden and Democrats to hoe right now,” said Curtin.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/0 ... -000242183
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Presidents don't get to pick the crises that will bedevil their administrations, they can't control all events. While unemployment numbers are good, inflation is rampant, there are still supply chain problems and recession hangs on the horizon. Even people who don't follow the news, see the price increases every time they go grocery shopping.

The generic congressional poll still favors Republicans this November.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... html#polls

2024 is over two years away, but polling is mixed on candidates.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/po ... /national/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Wisconsin Supreme Court reverses itself, picks GOP maps for Legislature

On Friday evening, the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed course and chose new political maps decided by the Republican-held Legislature — extending the state’s strict partisan gerrymander for another ten years.

March 1, the state Supreme Court decided Wisconsin’s new political dividing lines in a 4-3 decision. Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with the court’s liberals in choosing maps proposed by Gov. Tony Evers — which included an added majority-minority district in Milwaukee.

On March 23, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state court’s decision on Wisconsin’s legislative maps, saying there needed to be more proof to justify the added majority-minority district.

On Friday, Hagedorn sided with the conservatives. In the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, the conservatives said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the added district was necessary.

“Upon review of the record, we conclude that insufficient evidence is presented to justify drawing state legislative districts on the basis of race,” Ziegler wrote. “The maps proposed by the Governor, Senator Janet Bewley, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (“BLOC”), and Citizen Mathematicians and Scientists (“CMS”) are racially motivated and, under the Equal Protection Clause, they fail strict scrutiny.”

Sachin Chheda, director of the Fair Elections Project, said in a statement that the court had killed Wisconsin’s democracy. Since 2011, Wisconsin has had one of the strictest partisan gerrymanders in the country, baking a Republican majority into the Legislature that is nearly impossible for Democrats to overcome in the 50-50 state.

“After years of organizing, hundreds of hours of litigation, tens of thousands of volunteers advocating, and millions of citizens calling for fair maps, the extremely partisan justices on the State Supreme Court are choosing to kill democracy in 2022,” Chheda said “Today, the justices in the majority chose judicial activism. The rigged maps drawn by the legislature last year were previously rejected three times — and these maps are even more gerrymandered than those drawn in 2011. Without any legal basis or precedent, and ignoring a decision they made just a month ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is showing its true colors: political gain over judicial fairness.”

Because the decision took so long, candidates for office were unable to start collecting nominating signatures on Friday, which was officially the day that candidates running for election this fall could begin circulating nominating papers and gathering signatures to get on the ballot. For legislative candidates, the lack of new maps has inserted confusion into that process.

“Happy Nomination Signature Day to all WI candidates still wondering what their district boundaries are!” Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton) tweeted.

Candidates need to know where the lines of their district fall so they and their campaigns know which doors to knock on and which grocery stores to stand in front of. For the voters signing the papers, they need to certify that they live in the district in which the candidate is running — which, for now, is impossible to know.

If legislative candidates do collect signatures before the maps are set, those signatures are open to challenges from opponents. How can someone have certified they live in the district if the district didn’t exist when they signed?

Before Friday’s decision was announced, Rep. David Bowen (D-Milwaukee), who is running for lieutenant governor and therefore not dependent on district lines, said the lack of maps has inserted a lot of confusion in the process and hampered attempts to recruit candidates to run in a year that is full of legislative retirements.

“I have so many folks interested in running on the Democratic side and they have no idea, that’s causing a lot of confusion,” he said. “That’s not good for an era where we’re trying to protect democracy. It hurts people’s chances to get involved. It’s hard for candidate recruitment for sure as a number of conversations are happening for Assembly seats and we have a number of people who are not going to return next year. It’s important we have it ironed out. It is April 15 and we have no idea what these districts are going to look like.”

Even with a decision, it’s unclear how long it will take for the maps to be in place. The Wisconsin Elections Commission is responsible for implementing the maps once they’re decided, which involves the complicated work of precisely placing the dividing lines in the state’s WisVote system.

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe has previously said it can take a while to input the lines, especially in locations where districts are divided by certain sides of a street or neighboring houses.

Riley Vetterkind, a spokesman for the WEC, says how long that process takes is dependent on the direction the agency receives from the court, and he added he couldn’t give any more information on how candidates are supposed to proceed.

“The timeline for implementing state legislative maps will depend on the direction provided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” he said in an interview before the court released its decision.

Wisconsin’s new congressional maps were left alone by the U.S. Supreme Court, so Vetterkind said those lines were set in the system by Thursday so those candidates are able to proceed as normal.

Spokespeople for the state’s Democratic and Republican parties did not respond to questions about what guidance they’re giving candidates.
https://www.rawstory.com/wisconsin-supr ... gislature/

Just another Repug CF for the midterm elections.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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Such is the redistricting process with gerrymandering on both sides. A Maryland judge through out the state redistricting map produced by the Democratic dominated MD Legislature because it was gerrymandered. They had to come up with one that was more neutral. New York's redistricting map is still in the courts.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Gradually, then suddenly” is the reply.

This formulation might also help explain how it feels to lose an election. President Joe Biden’s collapse of popular support has been so long coming that a new Quinnipiac poll showing him with just a 33 percent approval rating (!) was greeted mostly with yawns.

Dig a little deeper, though, and things are even scarier for Democrats.

Biden is polling at a dismal 24 percent approval among Hispanics (with 54 percent disapproving). And while his numbers among African-Americans are still above water at 63 percent, his numbers have fallen almost 20 percentage points since last April.

This poll may constitute a new low, but it’s no flukey outlier. The trends are clear. NBC News recently compared polling from 2018 (a great midterm year for Dems) with its own 2022 polling—and college-educated women are the only cohort that has become bluer. (Conversely, NBC News found a “pronounced [Republican] shift among men of 20 points,” as Steve Kornacki noted.)

So why is this all happening, and what does it all mean? Let’s unpack this.

There are a lot of theories about why Hispanics have soured on Biden, but let’s just start with a few choice cuts.

Many Hispanics work in the service sector, and were disproportionately harmed by lockdowns (a policy that is more likely to be associated with the Democratic Party). Some Hispanics came to America from socialist countries with political repression and failed economies, and thus, aren’t fond of the Democratic Party’s increasingly socialist tilt. And some are repelled by the party’s “woke” politics. For example, many Latinos really don’t like the word “Latinx.” And there is polling to suggest that Hispanic Democrats were especially turned off by “defund the police” rhetoric.

What about Black Americans? One theory holds that Biden’s failure to pass progressive legislation, like a voting rights bill or police reform, is to blame. But there really isn’t any data to suggest that Black voters prioritized these goals. Likewise, Biden’s slide with Black Americans started before his legislative failures. (Interestingly, it seems more plausible that Biden’s vaccine mandates might actually have something to do with this decline.)

The main explanation, though, is probably a simple one: Hispanics and African-Americans—like a lot of us—are worried about inflation.

As Democratic pollster Jay Campbell told CNBC, “Cost of living has just blown everything else, including COVID, out of the water. And part of the reason for that is, there are attitudes about the economy that are largely a partisan phenomenon,” Campbell said. “That is not the case with inflation, or at least not right now. It is the top issue for Democrats, independents, and Republicans.”

This makes even more sense when you consider that inflation hurts low-wage Americans worse than anyone, and a disproportionate percentage of minorities belong to that economic cohort. As a result, some formerly reliable Democratic voters may be prioritizing their “working class” status over their racial identity.

To understand just how dangerous this attrition is for Dems, consider that only about 37.5 percent of Americans have a bachelor's degree, and that about 60 percent of Americans are white (about 65 percent of whites did not graduate from college). Because non-college educated whites have been strongly trending toward Republicans, Democrats have to over-perform with everyone else just to keep pace. It’s not enough to win college graduates and minority voters—the margins matter. And Joe Biden isn’t delivering.

Further complicating the problem is that the most predictable quick-fix solutions might actually deepen Democrats’ long-term problems.

If you assume that college-educated women are your core base, what do you do or say to juice their turnout numbers? And if you assume that minority votes are vital to prevent an electoral tsunami, what (aside from actually fixing inflation) do you say or do?

It’s a Catch-22. The quickest way for Democrats to boost their numbers may be to do or say progressive things that would ironically perpetuate their long-term decline.

In this regard, Democrats are sort of like a man lost at sea who finally decides to quench his thirst by drinking saltwater. And if the Democrats are out to sea, Biden deserves much of the blame.

Upon winning office, Biden promptly ignored the “Biden coalition” that got him elected, and tried to become the second coming of LBJ. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan came on his watch, and that seems to have begun his polling decline. Similarly, Biden’s policies and rhetoric likely contributed to a range of problems, including inflation and the border crisis. And lastly, Biden’s inability to effectively lead or inspire as a public speaker makes it very hard for him to change the current trajectory.

With his approval ratings hitting a new low, Joe Biden had better hope that April is, indeed, the cruelest month of the year. We were already expecting a complete wipeout for Dems, come November. Make no mistake: It could get even worse.

The Sun Also Sets.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-biden ... ref=scroll
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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The Utah Democratic Party on Saturday threw its support behind the independent candidacy of former presidential contender Evan McMullin to take on GOP Sen. Mike Lee.

The decision to get behind McMullin could help bolster his Senate bid at a time when Lee is on the defensive over newly revealed text messages showing he communicated for weeks with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Party delegates voted 57% to 43% Saturday at their convention in Murray, Utah, to not nominate a candidate of their own. Former State Department official Kael Weston had been seeking the Democratic endorsement for US Senate.

"Today Utah Democrats voted to join Evan McMullin's cross-partisan coalition and not to nominate a candidate into the 2022 midterm US Senate race," McMullin's campaign said in a statement Saturday. "This marks the first time in Utah's history that the Democratic Party has not put forward a candidate for a statewide race choosing instead to put country over party."

Weston said he respected the decision. "Let's all help get other Democrats elected this year. And let's all help defeat Mike Lee -- the sooner the better," he said on Twitter.

Lee, who is seeking a third term in November, remains the favorite in deep-red Utah, which backed then-President Donald Trump by over 20 points in 2020. Democrats have not won a US Senate election in Utah since 1970.

Lee also has a strong cash-on-hand advantage over McMullin, according to their most recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. The senator faces a June primary against two Republicans, former state Rep. Becky Edwards and former state government official Ally Isom, who qualified for the ballot by submitting the required number of signatures.

McMullin, a former CIA officer and onetime House GOP aide, ran for president in 2016 as an anti-Trump conservative. While he got less than 1% of the popular vote, his candidacy earned about 22% of the vote in Utah, his best showing of any state.

"I'm humbled and grateful to the Democratic delegates today for their decision to support this growing cross-partisan coalition," McMullin said Saturday. "Today, and moving forward, this coalition represents a majority of Utahns who want to replace Senator Mike Lee. He is a threat to the republic and consistently fails to represent our interests and our values."

Former Utah Rep. Ben McAdams, who lost reelection in 2020 after serving one term, was among the state Democrats actively engaged in trying to get his party to not nominate a candidate at the convention. He wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday that he was "proud to be part of Evan's growing coalition of independents, Democrats and Republicans. Together we can win this race and defeat Senator Mike Lee."

McAdams had looked at running for the Senate seat himself, but he said he ultimately decided against it after seeing his own polling on how hard it would be to win as a Democrat in a longtime Republican state.

CNN reported earlier this month that texts between Lee and Meadows show a series of communications beginning just days after the 2020 election in which Lee initially expressed support for challenging the election results. In early December 2020, the senator began texting Meadows about the idea that states could submit alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress on January 6, 2021.

But in statements since the insurrection, Lee has given the impression that he was simply monitoring activity from states, as opposed to promoting the idea of separate electors to Meadows.

In an interview last week with the Utah-based Deseret News, Lee defended himself and attempted to dismiss the narrative that he was working to overturn the election or that he was working on behalf of the White House. "At no point in any of those was I engaging in advocacy," Lee said in reference to calls he made to states about whether they were submitting alternate slates of electors.

"I wasn't in any way encouraging them to do that. I just asked them a yes or no question," he told the Deseret News.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/24/politics ... index.html
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