Wolff Responds: No "Tradeoff" Between Fighting COVID-19 and the Economy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W875dUMa0QM&t=464s&ab_channel=RichardDWolff

Election Night: Not A Biden Landslide

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMAKBwnRIIo&ab_channel=TheRationalNational

Joe Biden can still win, but Bernie Sanders WOULD have won the 2020 Election

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD5Eu-myrg0&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis

Shocking Election Night Fox Polls -- What Americans Want

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxsjd8oYg9Y&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

Six Takeaways From Election Night

Dems’ weak economic message helped Trump, the Lincoln Project embarrassed itself, and a ton of grassroots money was set on fire.

David Sirota, Andrew Perez, and Julia Rock
Nov 4




This report was written by David Sirota, Andrew Perez and Julia Rock




As the country awaits the final results of the presidential election, there are already six key lessons to be gleaned from election, campaign finance and public opinion data.
1. Democrats’ Weak Economic Message Hugely Helped Trump

The Democratic ticket pretty much ran away from economic issues — sure, it had decent position papers, but economic transformation was not a huge part of its public messaging, and that failure buoyed Trump, according to exit polls from Edison Research.

Trump won 81 percent of the vote among the third of the electorate that listed the economy as its top priority. Even more amazing — Trump and Biden equally split the vote among those whose priority is a president who “cares about people like me.”
2. The Lincoln Project And Rahm Emanuel Embarrassed Themselves

The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump cash cow for veteran Republican consultants, has raised $40 million from MSNBC-watching Brunch Liberals in just the last few months, and is now set to launch a media brand off the idea that its GOP operatives are political geniuses.

Their ads focused on trying to court disaffected Republican voters and attack Trump’s character, as Biden loaded up the Democratic convention with GOP speakers. When polls during the summer showed that the strategy wasn’t working, galaxy brain Rahm Emanuel defended it to a national televised audience, insisting that 2020 would be “the year of the Biden Republican.”

Now survey data show the strategy epically failed, as Trump actually garnered even more support from GOP voters than in 2016. Indeed, Edison Research exit polls on Tuesday found that 93 percent of Republican voters supported Trump — three percentage points higher than in 2016, according to numbers from the same firm.

The takeaway: There may be a lot of so-called “Never Trump Republicans” promoted in the media and in politics, but “Never Trump Republicans” are not a statistically significant group of voters anywhere in America. They basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable news green rooms -- and after tonight’s results, we shouldn’t have to see them on TV or even see their tweets ever again.

As for the Lincoln Project’s focus on trying to scandalize Trump’s character, the exit polls found that voters are far more concerned about policy issues than personality. Seventy-three percent of voters said their candidate's positions on the issues were more important in their vote for president than their candidate's personal qualities.
3. People Don’t Love The Affordable Care Act

While it may have made short-term sense for Democrats to focus on the GOP’s efforts to repeal protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, Americans actually aren’t particularly pleased with the Affordable Care Act at a moment when millions have lost health insurance and insurers’ profits are skyrocketing because people can’t or don’t want to go to the doctor.

Edison Research exit polls found that 52 percent of voters think the Supreme Court should keep Obamacare, while 43 percent said the court should overturn it.

A Fox News Voter Analysis survey, which went to more than 29,000 people in all 50 states between Oct. 26 and Nov. 3, found similar numbers but suggests the ACA’s support is fairly thin: 14 percent of people want to leave the law as is while 40 percent of people would like to improve it.

The same poll asked voters if they would support changing the health care system so that any American can buy into a government-run health care plan if they want to — also known as a public health insurance option — and found that 71 percent of people support the idea and only 29 percent oppose.

Although Biden and Senate Democrats both supported a public health insurance option plan, their campaigns and outside spending groups spent more time messaging around protecting the ACA. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s tracking poll has shown consistently middling support for the ACA — and showed that during the summer COVID burst, the law was underwater among Americans aged 50-64.

The ACA’s protections for patients with pre-existing conditions was a key topic in recent weeks in the lead-up to new Trump Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, with the court set to hear a challenge to the law soon.

In a speech that Biden gave from Wilmington on Oct. 28, focused on COVID-19 and his health care plan, Biden spoke about the importance of trusting science and mask wearing, and highlighted Trump’s attacks on the ACA, but he only mentioned a public option once.
4. A Lot Of Grassroots Money Was Set On Fire

Democrats raised roughly a quarter billion dollars for senate races in Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas and Alabama — and their candidates all appear to have gone down to defeat by 10 points or more.

These are tough states for Democrats, but there’s a cautionary tale about resource allocation among Democrats’ donor base. While grassroots-funded advocacy and media organizations are starved for resources, a handful of candidates can snap their fingers and be awash in cash at election time — and still get crushed.

Democratic Senate candidates saw a massive surge in donations after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September — before the party barely put up a fight and Justice Amy Coney Barrett was quickly confirmed to the Supreme Court.
5. Democrats’ Court Calculation Was Wrong

When Trump nominated right-wing extremist Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the conventional wisdom was that Democrats shouldn’t seriously combat the nomination, because a court fight would primarily motivate conservative voters. Exit polls prove that false: 60 percent of voters said the court was a significant factor in their vote, and a majority of those voters supported Biden — who barely spoke up against the nomination. Had there been a more intense fight, it might have helped the Democrats.

All but one of the top tier Democratic Senate candidates shied away from talk of adding new Supreme Court court seats if their party won control of the Senate — which doesn’t matter now, since many of them lost anyway.
6. A Large Percentage Of Americans Have Lost Their Minds

In mid-October, Bloomberg News reported that “the proportion of Americans dying from coronavirus infections is the highest in the developed world” — and yet exit polls show 48 percent of Americans believe their government’s efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic are going very well or somewhat well.

After a season of destructive wildfires and hurricanes, the same exit polls show 30 percent of Americans say climate change is not a serious problem.

What's the Plan If Trump Tries to Steal the Election? Here's the Plan

"Trump is trying to steal the election, more blatantly than any previous president, and providing a clear preview of how Republicans would move to further erode democracy if given another four years in power."


Common Dreams staff



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/03/whats-plan-if-trump-tries-steal-election-heres-plan




Prompted by President Donald Trump's open, repeated, and lie-filled attacks on the legitimacy of Tuesday's election and persistent refusal to commit to a peaceful transition, the question of what America's authoritarian incumbent will do as results begin trickling in on Election Night has for months been a topic of grave concern and speculation.


If Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins, will Trump refuse to accept the results and turn to the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court to help him steal the election?If the president has an early lead among in-person votes, will he attempt to falsely declare victory and dismiss as fraudulent any ballots counted after Election Day?

Those potential nightmare scenarios have spawned an additional key question: What are advocacy groups, media outlets, social media platforms, state election officials, and the national Democratic Party preparing to do in response?

Here's what we know so far.
The 'Protect the Results' Coalition

Officially launched in June by Stand Up America and Indivisible, the Protect the Results Coalition grew exponentially as Trump's threats to spurn the results intensified in the months leading up to Tuesday's election.


Now consisting of more than 130 national and state-level advocacy groups—including voting rights, labor, and environmental organizations—the coalition has organized more than 500 events nationwide contingent upon any effort by Trump to undermine the election results. Stand Up and Indivisible have said they hope to mobilize millions of Americans should the president refuse to accept the outcome.

"If Trump loses, he must accept those results," the coalition's website declares. "Our democracy depends on it."

Find an event near you:
Social Media Platforms

Facebook and Twitter, the two social media platforms on which Trump and his campaign are most active, have both vowed to add labels to posts and tweets by political candidates attempting to claim victory before the results have been officially called by states or prominent news organizations.


On Monday, Twitter offered further details on its plan to combat Election Night misinformation."If any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the final results are in, we'll add a label to their posts directing people to the official results from Reuters and the National Election Pool," Facebook announced in September.

"People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called," the company said in a blog post. "To determine the results of an election in the US, we require either an announcement from state election officials, or a public projection from at least two authoritative, national news outlets that make independent election calls. Tweets which include premature claims will be labeled and direct people to our official U.S. election page."
State and Local Officials

Election officials in key battleground states have for weeks been working to counter Trump's attacks on expansions of mail-in ballot access amid the coronavirus pandemic.

With Trump continuing to falsely insist that counting ballots after Election Day—a completely normal and legal practice—is an indication of fraud, state officials have been making the media rounds to debunk the president's lies and ensure the public that they are doing everything in their power to prevent Trump and his Republican allies from invalidating legally submitted absentee ballots.


Josh Shapiro, Democratic attorney general of the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, said in an appearance on CNN Monday that "it's not the president that picks the president, it's the people that pick the president.""There's a whole cottage industry devoted to all kinds of hypotheticals about how the election could go wrong," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said on a Monday call organized by the Voter Protection Program. "Here in Michigan, we know how to administer elections, we know how to count votes, and we know how to resolve election disputes... We are not about to allow anyone to steal this election."




"So Donald Trump can get out there and say whatever the hell he wants on election night, but the only thing that matters is when we've counted all the legal, eligible votes here in Pennsylvania and the other states, and what the people have said," said Shapiro. "I could care less what Donald Trump says, we will count these ballots."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, National Democrats

In an interview with HuffPost on the eve of Election Day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted the national Democratic Party is well-prepared for any Trump effort to steal the election.


HuffPost noted that for months Pelosi has "been working closely with a team of lawyers, constitutional experts, and institutions to game out responses to Trump's potential chaos before, during, and after the election. That team includes attorneys with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Republicans, and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.""We're ready for it all," Pelosi told HuffPost in a Friday interview. "I would just like him to know it ain't going to happen for him at the end of the day."

The House Speaker said she and her team have "been prepared for the worst for a long time because what we have seen is the worst on the part of this president in terms of his disrespect for the Constitution, his disregard of free will of the people, and his stooping to any level for his own reelection."

"We have tremendous intellectual, political and financial resources at our disposal," Pelosi said. "We have our lawyers poised to move on a dime on Election Day or evening, as we see a problem."
Media Outlets

With Trump reportedly planning to deliver a speech on Election Night declaring victory if he takes an early lead, media outlets are facing pressure to take a more cautious approach to covering the president's remarks to avoid giving him a megaphone to spread potentially dangerous misinformation.


CNN's Brian Stelter reported Monday that "though network executives are reluctant to talk publicly about such a hypothetical and disturbing scenario, five people at various networks said on condition of anonymity that they fully expect the president's Election Night remarks to be shown live virtually wall to wall.""If Trump goes on for more than a minute or two with falsehoods, cut away from the live feed and have your reporters explain that elections are not 'called' by their contestants," advised Vivian Schiller, the former president and CEO of National Public Radio. "Explain why such a premature declaration of victory is both wrong and dangerous."

"However, any premature claims by the president—or by Joe Biden, for that matter, though there is no equivalent fear of that happening—will be wrapped in televised context, with vigorous corrections and visual proof that the race is too close to call. One plan publicly described by NBC News president Noah Oppenheim has been echoed by leaders at other networks, including CNN."


Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent on Monday urged reporters to "convey clearly how many votes, and what percentages of votes, remain to be counted" when combating potential Trump lies.


"Separately, [New York University professor] Jay Rosen has urged a break with the "what a president says is news reflex," to avoid amplifying Trump's insistence that outstanding ballots are illegitimate," Sargent continued. "And [Washington Post media columnist] Margaret Sullivan suggests reporters embrace the mission of explaining the uncertainty surrounding the count. Other ideas include emphasizing that the election calendar already requires states to wait weeks before certifying a winner."
The Stakes

In an Election Day column, The Week's Ryan Cooper pointed to Trump and the Republican Party's nationwide legal effort to invalidate absentee ballots, sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service, and celebration of the dangerous behavior of his supporters as evidence that the president is "not behaving like someone who expects to win fairly."

"In short, Trump is trying to steal the election, more blatantly than any previous president, and providing a clear preview of how Republicans would move to further erode democracy if given another four years in power," wrote Cooper. "It's an unusually clear and stark choice this election: a continuation of America's republican institutions, or its probable replacement with a tyranny."

STEALING ELECTIONS! - Investigative Reporter Greg Palast

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoY-oLDrtk0&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow