Trump's election tweet shows a frightened narcissist afraid of losing
Opinion by John Avlon
President Donald Trump doesn't really like democracy.
That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from his latest statements which undercut confidence in the presidential election now less than 100 days away.
On Thursday morning he fired off this tweet -- designed to alarm people and distract from the worst quarterly GDP loss in recorded American history: "With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"
Make no mistake -- this is the sitting President of the United States, who is seeking a second term, floating the idea of delaying the upcoming election. That's something America has never done -- even in the depths of the Civil War.
But Trump's comments are part of a pattern from his team.
In an interview with Time magazine, last May, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner was asked if he was willing to "commit that the elections will happen on November third," due to the coronavirus. He answered: "I'm not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that's the plan."
The princeling was immediately slammed then for his weak grasp of the facts: that the timing of elections is determined by the Congress, not the President, according to the US Constitution.
But that basic rule was still news to Attorney General William Barr when he was asked in a hearing before the Judiciary Committee this week by Congressman Cedric Richmond whether a presidential election could be single-handedly delayed by the President.
"Actually, I haven't looked into that question under the Constitution," Barr said.
The correct answer, for those playing at home, is "Hell no -- we do not delay elections in the United States and in any case, the President doesn't have that power under the Constitution."
But Barr's rhetorical shrug is either a statement of basic ignorance from a smart man entrusted to protect and defend the Constitution, or it is another "tell" from a Trump toady who is reluctant to contradict his boss or the cause of expanded presidential power. (Keep in mind that in the same congressional hearing Barr had to be asked twice whether it was ever appropriate for a president to ask a foreign power to interfere in an election on their behalf, before croaking "No.").
Delaying the election is not an option for a president, even during a pandemic with 150,000 dead, when he is falling behind in the polls. So why is he doing this?
This dangerous game is really part of an extended effort by the President to sow the seeds of doubt in the legitimacy of the election if he should lose.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to President Trump in his interview with Chris Wallace last weekend when asked whether he would accept the results of the election.
"It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do," Trump said.
"Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?" Wallace prodded.
Trump responded, "No. I have to see."
This is part of a pattern of recent statements from Trump preemptively calling the 2020 election results rigged, as on July 26, when he tweeted: "Rigged Election, and EVERYONE knows it!"
And that's one of some 40 times this year alone that President Trump has called the upcoming election rigged.
The usual target that triggers him is mail-in voting -- a common form of absentee voting that is predominant in five states and accounted for roughly 25% of the votes cast in 2016.
But Trump insists it is major source of voter fraud while Barr has suggested without evidence that it could be a tool of foreign interference. In fact, studies show that the rate of mail-in ballot fraud is a miniscule .0025%.
Let's be clear: this is a desperate self-interested attempt at undercutting our democracy by a frightened narcissist who is terrified that he will be exposed as a loser. And he is willing to dismantle faith in our democracy to avoid that personal pain.
That is a hostile action that his partisan defenders on this count are gleefully aiding and abetting. Witness the comment by GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer to CNN about Trump's tweet to delay the elections: "I think that if you guys take the bait, he'll be the happiest guy in town. I read it. I laughed I thought my gosh this is going to consume a lot of people, except real people. And it was clever."
In other words, "don't worry, be happy." Now imagine Cramer's response if former President Barack Obama had said something even remotely similar.
Threats to delay our elections or undercut faith in their results should not be a partisan issue. This cuts to the core of who we are as a democracy. It is exposing again just how much hyper-partisan rot has addled the brains of so many senior elected officials from an allegedly co-equal branch of government.
Remember, Trump also repeatedly refused to say whether he'd accept the results of the 2016 election, believing that he would lose -- as polls showed he would (accurately reflecting the popular vote, but not the electoral outcome).
Since he took office, Trump has consistently acted in ways to expand presidential power and dismantle democratic norms, with the acquiescence of Senate Republicans. And we know from former Trump aides like John Bolton that Trump tries to do favors for dictators and often expresses admiration for their uncontested power.
This was an instinct in evidence long before he entered politics, as when he praised China's communist party for violently crushing the protests of the country's own citizens in Tiananmen Square. And, of course, he has consistently refused to condemn or confront Russia's Vladimir Putin, most recently declining to even discuss intelligence reports that Russia paid bounties to Taliban leaders to kill US troops -- despite having repeated calls with the autocratic leader.
This is not a joke. This is our democracy that Trump is playing with. And he is making his intentions known in plain sight.
Unless the election is a blow-out, Trump will almost certainly contest the results, which could lead to unprecedented chaos. This would be compounded by the the massive number of absentee and mail-in votes that will be cast during Covid, possibly keeping the nation from knowing the winner until well after Election Day. It is a nightmare scenario that could make the United States look like a failed state.
In the middle of a bloody Civil War -- a far greater crisis than we face—Abraham Lincoln heard suggestions that he delay the 1864 election. It looked to many like he would lose. But he rejected that advice, later explaining: "we cannot have free government without elections, and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or post-pone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered or ruined us."
The same logic applies today. But Trump is the anti-Lincoln, the prime driver of our destabilization rather than a reconciler who aims to heal our divided nation.
Trump is making his intentions clear. So it is up to up to the rest of us to buckle up for a fight to save the republic against a President who will do anything he can to hold on to power, regardless of rules -- including destroying trust in our democracy.
July 31, 2020
2020 mail-in voting alarm
Washington Post: USPS workers sound alarm about new policies that may affect 2020 mail-in voting
By Veronica Stracqualursi and Jessica Dean
Postal workers and union leaders are worried that new, recently implemented procedures -- which have led to delays across the country in mail delivery -- could impact mail-in voting for the November election, according to a Washington Post report.
Citing multiple postal workers and union leaders, the Post reported that parts of the country are experiencing at least a two-day delay in receiving mail, including for express mail, as a result of the US Postal Service's new policies.
The current backlog is worsening to the point where workers fear they won't be able to locate all voters' ballots in time for them to be processed, the newspaper reported.
The new procedures for the USPS were laid out in a memo earlier this month and come under the leadership of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Donald Trump supporter and fundraiser, who stepped into his role in June.
Trump has been a vocal critic of several states' expanding mail-in voting, despite using that option to cast his own ballot. As he currently trails his 2020 rival Joe Biden in the polls, Trump claimed on Thursday that delays processing the mail-in votes would undermine the legitimacy of the November 3 election and suggested delaying it, though the power to set the election date lies with Congress. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud associated with vote by mail.
In a statement to CNN Thursday, the USPS acknowledged some "temporary service impacts" from the recent changes but disputed concerns that its cost cutting and efficiency measures put in place by DeJoy will interfere with timely delivery of mail-in votes.
"To be clear however, and despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail consistent with our standards," USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer said.
The new policies include hours being cut back within the US Postal Service, according to the memo obtained by CNN that shows talking points given to USPS managers across the country on July 10.
According to the memo, overtime, including late trips and extra trips by USPS workers, is no longer authorized or accepted. This is explained as a cost cutting measure that could save the financially struggling USPS around $200 million.
"One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that, temporarily -- we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks ... which is not typical," reads the memo.
The memo states any mail left behind will be reported with the "root causes" of the delays addressed the next day, with the intention of the volume of delayed mail shrinking over time, but the reality of that remains unclear as the changes are new.
The Washington Post reported that bins of mail otherwise ready for delivery have been left in post offices due to the scheduling and route changes, and letter carriers are sorting more mail themselves, increasing the delivery time. US Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey last week wrote to DeJoy, saying that his constituents have been experiencing delivery delays for more than three days.
DeJoy said in a statement Monday that the Postal Service is in a "financially unsustainable position" and that the agency needs to "take a fresh look at our operations and make necessary adjustments" to operate efficiently.
Partenheimer said in the statement that any "such impacts will be monitored and temporary as the root causes of any issues will be addressed as necessary and corrected as appropriate."
He went on to say that DeJoy is not beholden to the influence of Trump and that the "notion that the Postmaster General makes decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President is wholly misplaced and off-base."
The USPS' financial struggles are not new, but the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem and taken its toll on the agency's employees. Former Postmaster General Megan Brennan had warned the agency would run out of money by September if financial assistance wasn't provided.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced that it reached an agreement with USPS on the "terms and conditions" for $10 billion in the form of loans -- funding the department and President Donald Trump had blocked unless the USPS made reforms.
"While the USPS is able to fund its operating expenses without additional borrowing at this time, we are pleased to have reached an agreement on the material terms and conditions of a loan, should the need arise," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The union's president, Mark Dimondstein, had previously told CNN that receiving the emergency funding the USPS requested is crucial for postal workers to continue doing their job, including ensuring vote by mail ballots are handled properly.
"If the funding doesn't come through, everything we do, including vote by mail will be much harder," Dimondstein told CNN.
By Veronica Stracqualursi and Jessica Dean
Postal workers and union leaders are worried that new, recently implemented procedures -- which have led to delays across the country in mail delivery -- could impact mail-in voting for the November election, according to a Washington Post report.
Citing multiple postal workers and union leaders, the Post reported that parts of the country are experiencing at least a two-day delay in receiving mail, including for express mail, as a result of the US Postal Service's new policies.
The current backlog is worsening to the point where workers fear they won't be able to locate all voters' ballots in time for them to be processed, the newspaper reported.
The new procedures for the USPS were laid out in a memo earlier this month and come under the leadership of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Donald Trump supporter and fundraiser, who stepped into his role in June.
Trump has been a vocal critic of several states' expanding mail-in voting, despite using that option to cast his own ballot. As he currently trails his 2020 rival Joe Biden in the polls, Trump claimed on Thursday that delays processing the mail-in votes would undermine the legitimacy of the November 3 election and suggested delaying it, though the power to set the election date lies with Congress. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud associated with vote by mail.
In a statement to CNN Thursday, the USPS acknowledged some "temporary service impacts" from the recent changes but disputed concerns that its cost cutting and efficiency measures put in place by DeJoy will interfere with timely delivery of mail-in votes.
"To be clear however, and despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail consistent with our standards," USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer said.
The new policies include hours being cut back within the US Postal Service, according to the memo obtained by CNN that shows talking points given to USPS managers across the country on July 10.
According to the memo, overtime, including late trips and extra trips by USPS workers, is no longer authorized or accepted. This is explained as a cost cutting measure that could save the financially struggling USPS around $200 million.
"One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that, temporarily -- we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks ... which is not typical," reads the memo.
The memo states any mail left behind will be reported with the "root causes" of the delays addressed the next day, with the intention of the volume of delayed mail shrinking over time, but the reality of that remains unclear as the changes are new.
The Washington Post reported that bins of mail otherwise ready for delivery have been left in post offices due to the scheduling and route changes, and letter carriers are sorting more mail themselves, increasing the delivery time. US Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey last week wrote to DeJoy, saying that his constituents have been experiencing delivery delays for more than three days.
DeJoy said in a statement Monday that the Postal Service is in a "financially unsustainable position" and that the agency needs to "take a fresh look at our operations and make necessary adjustments" to operate efficiently.
Partenheimer said in the statement that any "such impacts will be monitored and temporary as the root causes of any issues will be addressed as necessary and corrected as appropriate."
He went on to say that DeJoy is not beholden to the influence of Trump and that the "notion that the Postmaster General makes decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President is wholly misplaced and off-base."
The USPS' financial struggles are not new, but the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the problem and taken its toll on the agency's employees. Former Postmaster General Megan Brennan had warned the agency would run out of money by September if financial assistance wasn't provided.
On Wednesday, the Treasury Department announced that it reached an agreement with USPS on the "terms and conditions" for $10 billion in the form of loans -- funding the department and President Donald Trump had blocked unless the USPS made reforms.
"While the USPS is able to fund its operating expenses without additional borrowing at this time, we are pleased to have reached an agreement on the material terms and conditions of a loan, should the need arise," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
The union's president, Mark Dimondstein, had previously told CNN that receiving the emergency funding the USPS requested is crucial for postal workers to continue doing their job, including ensuring vote by mail ballots are handled properly.
"If the funding doesn't come through, everything we do, including vote by mail will be much harder," Dimondstein told CNN.
Consequences far beyond America
Trump's trashing of democracy will have consequences far beyond America
Analysis by Luke McGee
When you are President of the United States, your words matter. Not just to your own voters, not just to your own citizens, but to people in every corner of the planet.
It's the inevitable reality of holding the most powerful office in the most powerful country on earth. Every other world leader, ally or enemy, is beneath you on the food chain and watches your every action. They take cues from you; they seek your leadership and they attempt to find ways to exploit your weaknesses.
That's why Donald Trump's suggestions that the election should be delayed for the first time ever -- and his evidence-free claims that "2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent" vote in history -- matter for reasons beyond the President's own political fate.
The primary focus is rightly on the democratic damage Trump's claims will wreak domestically. "His false claims that the election is being rigged against him are part of that strategy. They aren't true, but they will prime his base to reject the results," said Brian Klaas, assistant professor of global politics at University College London.
But experts say Trump's comments also send the wrong message at a time of growing concerns that leaders around the world are trying to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to erode the rule of law.
They also undercut the Trump administration's strident criticism of China in the wake of Beijing's move to strip semi-autonomous Hong Kong of some of its freedoms.
On the same day Trump floated the idea of delaying the US election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was demanding that Hong Kong hold its own legislative elections on time in September.
"They must be held," Pompeo said Thursday. "The people of Hong Kong deserve to have their voice represented by the elected officials that they choose in those elections." On Friday, Hong Kong's leader announced the elections would be delayed due to the growing coronavirus outbreak, but the opposition has questioned whether there are political motives at play.
"The problem isn't just Trump failing to endorse democratic process, it's that he uses the same strategies as undemocratic leaders to undermine the democratic process," said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham.
Cheeseman says there is a "real threat in Trump sending out a message that he won't stand up for democracy" that less democratic global leaders will take this as a green light to lower their own standards.
"Leaders around the world really do look at the international climate to see what they can get away with. If you see that Trump is unwilling to promote democracy in other countries then backs that up by undermining democracy in his own country, the risk at play for you, say, rigging your own election is significantly lowered."
Trump's tweet is the latest in a long line of norm-smashing moves that experts say have damaged America's global reputation. During the course of his presidency, he has picked fights with friends and foes alike, threatened supranational institutions like NATO and the World Health Organization, and withdrawn from multilateral treaties like the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord.
These unilateral actions also diminish America's diplomatic heft, according to Dr. Jennifer Cassidy, a diplomatic scholar at Oxford University.
"The truth is, that is where real soft power lies and he has done a lot of damage over his four years in office," Cassidy said. "And while America's allies might welcome a Biden presidency, seeing it as a return to something more normal, America's enemies may arguably be much slower to view the Trump presidency as an outlier. If Trump happened once, then why would Iran or China believe someone like him won't happen again?"
It's also impossible to ignore that this behavior has been on full display during the greatest crisis to face the world in decades.
"During a global pandemic, the world needs a leader — someone to help coordinate responses to a virus that knows no borders. Instead, Trump has spent much of his time hawking disproven medicines, tweeting conspiracy theories," said Klaas. "When the world looks to America to lead, they are finding a man who is singularly incapable of leading his country, let alone the world."
The consequences of this lack of global leadership from the most powerful man on the planet goes beyond his response to the health crisis. The Institute for Democracy published an open letter last month, in which more 500 former world leaders and Nobel Laureates warned that authoritarian regimes are using the pandemic to erode democracy.
Cheeseman believes that their cries would have packed more of a punch had they been arranged by the world's only hyperpower. "If America had marshalled democratic countries around the world to support democracy in the age of coronavirus, I think that could have been really significant. The signal that sends is we are watching you and we are on it."
Instead, the President has spent much of the pandemic as he has spent much of his presidency: picking fights and sowing division both at home and abroad.
But experts said the consequences of his latest attempt to undermine November's election could be more far-reaching than the damage wrought by the pandemic.
"If he loses, he seems to be signaling that he will happily try to burn American democratic institutions to the ground if he believes it will help save himself or help him save face," said Klaas.
Should this happen, it's hard to see how it benefits anyone in America other than the President, nor how it stops the international impression that the US is at serious risk of being on an inexorable slide towards becoming an unstable political basketcase.
And both America's allies and enemies will be acutely aware that the country could do it all again in four years' time, should someone Trumpier than Trump decide to run in 2024.
Analysis by Luke McGee
When you are President of the United States, your words matter. Not just to your own voters, not just to your own citizens, but to people in every corner of the planet.
It's the inevitable reality of holding the most powerful office in the most powerful country on earth. Every other world leader, ally or enemy, is beneath you on the food chain and watches your every action. They take cues from you; they seek your leadership and they attempt to find ways to exploit your weaknesses.
That's why Donald Trump's suggestions that the election should be delayed for the first time ever -- and his evidence-free claims that "2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent" vote in history -- matter for reasons beyond the President's own political fate.
The primary focus is rightly on the democratic damage Trump's claims will wreak domestically. "His false claims that the election is being rigged against him are part of that strategy. They aren't true, but they will prime his base to reject the results," said Brian Klaas, assistant professor of global politics at University College London.
But experts say Trump's comments also send the wrong message at a time of growing concerns that leaders around the world are trying to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to erode the rule of law.
They also undercut the Trump administration's strident criticism of China in the wake of Beijing's move to strip semi-autonomous Hong Kong of some of its freedoms.
On the same day Trump floated the idea of delaying the US election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was demanding that Hong Kong hold its own legislative elections on time in September.
"They must be held," Pompeo said Thursday. "The people of Hong Kong deserve to have their voice represented by the elected officials that they choose in those elections." On Friday, Hong Kong's leader announced the elections would be delayed due to the growing coronavirus outbreak, but the opposition has questioned whether there are political motives at play.
"The problem isn't just Trump failing to endorse democratic process, it's that he uses the same strategies as undemocratic leaders to undermine the democratic process," said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham.
Cheeseman says there is a "real threat in Trump sending out a message that he won't stand up for democracy" that less democratic global leaders will take this as a green light to lower their own standards.
"Leaders around the world really do look at the international climate to see what they can get away with. If you see that Trump is unwilling to promote democracy in other countries then backs that up by undermining democracy in his own country, the risk at play for you, say, rigging your own election is significantly lowered."
Trump's tweet is the latest in a long line of norm-smashing moves that experts say have damaged America's global reputation. During the course of his presidency, he has picked fights with friends and foes alike, threatened supranational institutions like NATO and the World Health Organization, and withdrawn from multilateral treaties like the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord.
These unilateral actions also diminish America's diplomatic heft, according to Dr. Jennifer Cassidy, a diplomatic scholar at Oxford University.
"The truth is, that is where real soft power lies and he has done a lot of damage over his four years in office," Cassidy said. "And while America's allies might welcome a Biden presidency, seeing it as a return to something more normal, America's enemies may arguably be much slower to view the Trump presidency as an outlier. If Trump happened once, then why would Iran or China believe someone like him won't happen again?"
It's also impossible to ignore that this behavior has been on full display during the greatest crisis to face the world in decades.
"During a global pandemic, the world needs a leader — someone to help coordinate responses to a virus that knows no borders. Instead, Trump has spent much of his time hawking disproven medicines, tweeting conspiracy theories," said Klaas. "When the world looks to America to lead, they are finding a man who is singularly incapable of leading his country, let alone the world."
The consequences of this lack of global leadership from the most powerful man on the planet goes beyond his response to the health crisis. The Institute for Democracy published an open letter last month, in which more 500 former world leaders and Nobel Laureates warned that authoritarian regimes are using the pandemic to erode democracy.
Cheeseman believes that their cries would have packed more of a punch had they been arranged by the world's only hyperpower. "If America had marshalled democratic countries around the world to support democracy in the age of coronavirus, I think that could have been really significant. The signal that sends is we are watching you and we are on it."
Instead, the President has spent much of the pandemic as he has spent much of his presidency: picking fights and sowing division both at home and abroad.
But experts said the consequences of his latest attempt to undermine November's election could be more far-reaching than the damage wrought by the pandemic.
"If he loses, he seems to be signaling that he will happily try to burn American democratic institutions to the ground if he believes it will help save himself or help him save face," said Klaas.
Should this happen, it's hard to see how it benefits anyone in America other than the President, nor how it stops the international impression that the US is at serious risk of being on an inexorable slide towards becoming an unstable political basketcase.
And both America's allies and enemies will be acutely aware that the country could do it all again in four years' time, should someone Trumpier than Trump decide to run in 2024.
A scumbag to the end...
Herman Cain’s Enduring Lobbying Triumph
It has kept restaurant workers poor for decades.
TOM PHILPOTT
Herman Cain, who died this week of COVID-19, lived quite a life: He was a fast-food magnate, a zealously anti–immigrant presidential candidate, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump to the very end, and more. But his accomplishment with the most lasting impact happened during his days as the number-one lobbyist for the restaurant industry.
During the 1990s, as president of the National Restaurant Association—an outfit representing mainly chain restaurants—Cain transformed the NRA “from a sleepy little trade association to earning a spot in Forbes magazine’s 1997 Survey of Washington’s 25 most powerful pressure groups, coming [in] at number 24,” as labor reporter Mike Elk put it in a 2011 piece. Cain earned his stripes as an ace lobbyist in 1994, when he emerged as a key cog in the successful corporate campaign to kibosh President Bill Clinton’s push to reform the healthcare system.
In 1996, Cain won his greatest triumph as a lobbyist. In a 2016 piece on the racist history of tipping, my colleague Maddie Oatman explained:
America’s first minimum-wage law, passed by Congress in 1938, allowed states to set a lower wage for tipped workers, but it wasn’t until the ’60s that labor advocates persuaded Congress to adopt a federal tipped minimum wage that increased in tandem with the regular minimum wage. In 1996, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who was then head of the National Restaurant Association, helped convince a Republican-led Congress to decouple the two wages. The tipped minimum has been stuck at $2.13 ever since.
Restaurant employers were supposed to help servers earn tips to make up the difference between this tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage. But the result was by and large a disaster for restaurant servers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1996, the tipped minimum was half the regular minimum wage; by 2014, it was “equal to a record low 29.4 percent of the regular federal minimum wage of $7.25,” where it remains today. Around two-thirds of workers making the tipped minimum are women, EPI reports. Forcing women to rely on the whims of customers for the bulk of their livelihoods exposes them to sexual harassment: “Tipped workers have a median wage (including tips) of $10.22, compared with $16.48 for all workers. While the poverty rate of non-tipped workers is 6.5 percent, tipped workers have a poverty rate of 12.8 percent.” Tipped workers rely on food stamps at a rate twice that of the general population.
A recent report from One Fair Wage, which seeks to abolish the lower minimum wage for tipped workers, shows that the burden of Cain’s lobbying accomplishment falls heaviest on Black women. “The subminimum wage results in a nearly $5 per hour differential in wages (including tips) between Black tipped women and white men tipped workers nationally, and a nearly $8 per hour differential in New York,” the group found. The low minimum is more painful still, the group adds, as the coronavirus destroys demand for restaurant dining, and a “majority of workers and employers surveyed are reporting that tips are down at least 50 percent.”
Under pressure from One Fair Wage and other advocates, there has been a stirring among restaurateurs in recent years to abandon the whole vexed institution of tipping and pay all workers a regular wage. But one of the most high-profile of the nation’s no-tip restaurant pioneers has backslid. In 2015, the influential New York City restaurant empire Union Square Hospitality Group began phasing out tips. In July 2020, the company’s CEO, Danny Meyer, announced he would return to the practice, suggesting the current economic climate made it too onerous to factor “full liveable wages and benefits for all of our employees into our menu prices,” while competitors still relied on the generosity of diners to provide the bulk of compensation to servers.
Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy, a small, celebrated no-tip Manhattan restaurant, wasn’t impressed by the logic.
It has kept restaurant workers poor for decades.
TOM PHILPOTT
Herman Cain, who died this week of COVID-19, lived quite a life: He was a fast-food magnate, a zealously anti–immigrant presidential candidate, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump to the very end, and more. But his accomplishment with the most lasting impact happened during his days as the number-one lobbyist for the restaurant industry.
During the 1990s, as president of the National Restaurant Association—an outfit representing mainly chain restaurants—Cain transformed the NRA “from a sleepy little trade association to earning a spot in Forbes magazine’s 1997 Survey of Washington’s 25 most powerful pressure groups, coming [in] at number 24,” as labor reporter Mike Elk put it in a 2011 piece. Cain earned his stripes as an ace lobbyist in 1994, when he emerged as a key cog in the successful corporate campaign to kibosh President Bill Clinton’s push to reform the healthcare system.
In 1996, Cain won his greatest triumph as a lobbyist. In a 2016 piece on the racist history of tipping, my colleague Maddie Oatman explained:
America’s first minimum-wage law, passed by Congress in 1938, allowed states to set a lower wage for tipped workers, but it wasn’t until the ’60s that labor advocates persuaded Congress to adopt a federal tipped minimum wage that increased in tandem with the regular minimum wage. In 1996, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who was then head of the National Restaurant Association, helped convince a Republican-led Congress to decouple the two wages. The tipped minimum has been stuck at $2.13 ever since.
Restaurant employers were supposed to help servers earn tips to make up the difference between this tipped minimum wage and the regular minimum wage. But the result was by and large a disaster for restaurant servers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1996, the tipped minimum was half the regular minimum wage; by 2014, it was “equal to a record low 29.4 percent of the regular federal minimum wage of $7.25,” where it remains today. Around two-thirds of workers making the tipped minimum are women, EPI reports. Forcing women to rely on the whims of customers for the bulk of their livelihoods exposes them to sexual harassment: “Tipped workers have a median wage (including tips) of $10.22, compared with $16.48 for all workers. While the poverty rate of non-tipped workers is 6.5 percent, tipped workers have a poverty rate of 12.8 percent.” Tipped workers rely on food stamps at a rate twice that of the general population.
A recent report from One Fair Wage, which seeks to abolish the lower minimum wage for tipped workers, shows that the burden of Cain’s lobbying accomplishment falls heaviest on Black women. “The subminimum wage results in a nearly $5 per hour differential in wages (including tips) between Black tipped women and white men tipped workers nationally, and a nearly $8 per hour differential in New York,” the group found. The low minimum is more painful still, the group adds, as the coronavirus destroys demand for restaurant dining, and a “majority of workers and employers surveyed are reporting that tips are down at least 50 percent.”
Under pressure from One Fair Wage and other advocates, there has been a stirring among restaurateurs in recent years to abandon the whole vexed institution of tipping and pay all workers a regular wage. But one of the most high-profile of the nation’s no-tip restaurant pioneers has backslid. In 2015, the influential New York City restaurant empire Union Square Hospitality Group began phasing out tips. In July 2020, the company’s CEO, Danny Meyer, announced he would return to the practice, suggesting the current economic climate made it too onerous to factor “full liveable wages and benefits for all of our employees into our menu prices,” while competitors still relied on the generosity of diners to provide the bulk of compensation to servers.
Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy, a small, celebrated no-tip Manhattan restaurant, wasn’t impressed by the logic.
Atlas V rocket
On Thursday this snapshot from a small plane 5,000 feet above Florida's Space Coast caught a rocket's trail rising into the blue morning sky. It was July's third launch of a mission from planet Earth bound for Mars. The Atlas V rocket left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station from Space Launch Complex 41 at 7:50am EDT carrying NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. The car-sized Perseverance is headed for a landing at Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February 2021. On board the sophisticated rover is the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.
Cuts unemployment benefits
‘A meaningful hit to the economy’: What could happen if Congress cuts unemployment benefits
White House economic advisers and GOP lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contend the extra payment acts as a disincentive for workers to seek new jobs.
By REBECCA RAINEY and ELEANOR MUELLER
More than 30 million people are receiving unemployment benefits and new applications for jobless aid have started to rise again. But Republicans want to reduce a $600 enhanced unemployment benefit in the next coronavirus relief package, a proposal that could leave families with billions of dollars less to spend to bolster the economy.
White House economic advisers and GOP lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contend the extra payment acts as a disincentive for workers to seek new jobs, because some people are receiving more money in benefits than they would earn working. Democrats and many economists say there are no jobs for those people right now anyway, and the payments are essential for keeping the economy afloat — and ensuring Americans can buy food and pay the rent.
Here’s a look at the potential impact of cutting benefits right now:
The GOP argument
The Senate GOP’s latest $1 trillion plan calls for the reduction in increased unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 a week for 60 days, or until states are able to provide a 70 percent wage replacement. Some Republican senators are rolling out their own proposals that would reduce the benefits with varying levels of wage replacement.
Their argument is that payments should be pegged to workers’ former wages as an incentive for them to seek jobs instead of remaining on benefits.
“Should we have generous unemployment insurance in this crisis? Of course,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “But obviously we should not be taxing the essential workers who’ve kept working so the government can pay their neighbors a higher salary to stay home.”
Under the GOP plan, weekly benefits would drop from a national average of $920.68 per week to $520.68 per week, an average overall cut of 55 percent, according to a recent analysis by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
Laid-off workers would lose more than $10 billion per week, under the GOP proposal. And by the end of September, the losses would reach $90 billion, the analysis found.
But White House economists say the checks aren’t stimulating the economy.
“Do not repeat this idiot notion that giving people money is somehow a stimulus to the economy,” said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist and outside adviser to President Donald Trump, in an interview. “I mean, in that case we could just give everybody $100,000 and we'd all be rich right? It’s just so stupid.”
The impact on the economy
It’s a “meaningful hit to the economy,” if lawmakers reduce or cut off the enhanced benefits, wrote Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. He estimates that cutting the benefit to $200 per week as the GOP has proposed would cost nearly 1 million jobs by the end of the year and raise unemployment by 0.6 percentage points.
Other estimates of job losses are higher. Economists caution that a reduction in benefits could spark a drop in demand, setting off a “vicious cycle” that eventually results in the permanent loss of millions of jobs. Slashing the extra $600 week could destroy as many as 5 million jobs, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“People will have to make terrible choices between things like medicine and rent, but it also means that they will no longer be buying things that they had been buying, and the workers that produce the goods and services that they will no longer be buying will lose their jobs,” said Heidi Shierholz, EPI policy director and former Labor Department chief economist. “And the vicious cycle is set off. So it’s terrible macroeconomic policy.”
Federally enhanced unemployment benefits led to a 10 percent increase in consumption among those out of work when they were first rolled out, according to an analysis by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, estimates that have alarmed business groups.
A disruption could result in a drop in spending as high as 20 percent, the research found.
“Small businesses desperately need the consumer demand” Small Business for America’s Future, a coalition of small business owners, said in a statement. “We need legislation that puts money in the hands of people who will spend it at local small businesses. The future of our Main Street economies depend on it.”
Rachel Greszler, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, agreed that the change in benefits will have short-term negative impacts on the economy. But she warned the increased spending will have the longer-term consequence of running up the national debt.
“If you continue excessively high payments, then you end up just trading a global health pandemic for a fiscal crisis,” she said.
The impact on Black and Hispanic workers
Because Black and Hispanic workers are disproportionately reliant on unemployment aid, slashing the benefits could do permanent damage to the economic well-being of those demographics, already among those the pandemic has hit hardest. Forty-seven percent of recipients of state unemployment benefits in July are projected to be nonwhite, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“These universal approaches to addressing economic issues ignore the recent and past history of structural racism, and how wealthy is distributed in the country,” said Andre Perry, a research fellow at Brookings Institution.
“We need to think about the long-term protection of the most vulnerable,” Perry said. “And unemployment insurance provides that safety net for now.”
Is a $600 payment causing workers to stay home?
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June that extending the boost by six months would likely lead to greater economic output in the second half of 2020. But the non-partisan scoring office also forecast that the work disincentive would lead to lower levels of employment for the remainder of the year and into 2021 — an estimate Republicans have seized on during discussions over the benefits.
Yale University researchers recently found “no evidence” that the boosted unemployment benefits increased layoffs at the outset of the pandemic or discouraged workers from returning to their jobs over time, according to a report based on data from the business scheduling software company Homebase.
“If there is still really depressed labor demand, asking people to go out and search more intensely will not necessarily yield higher employment,” said Dana Scott, the primary author of the report. “And on the flip side of the coin, reducing people's income will also decrease those stimulus effects...where they’ll have income replaced, go out and spend more money, which isn't just for the economy.”
But those close to the White House disagree. “I get ten calls a day from employers telling me the workers will not come back on the job,” Moore told POLITICO. He pointed to the 5.4 million new job openings reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in May. “That's a lot of jobs,” Moore said, “but look that's not 20 million.”
The most recent jobs report from BLS indicated that the number of workers who permanently lost their job increased to 2.9 million in June. Some 9.1 million workers would have preferred working full-time, but were only able to get part time jobs in June. And 8.2 million individuals said they would like a job, but were unavailable or not actively seeking out work in June, according to BLS.
What about just sending stimulus checks?
Republicans’ proposal would suggest another round of stimulus checks, similar to those enacted via a previous round of aid, in an effort to bolster consumption.
“The way the previous bill was crafted, five out of six workers are actually making more staying at home than going back to work,” McConnell said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Tuesday. “And remember, all of these folks are going to get another $1200 in direct payment.”
But the cash is a less efficient way to rejuvenate the economy because it is not as narrowly tailored, economists warn.
“Spending less on unemployment insurance and also doing the stimulus check … is terrible economic policy,” Shierholz said. “You’re taking something that’s very, very well targeted — getting money to people who’ve lost their jobs — and giving it broadly.”
White House economic advisers and GOP lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contend the extra payment acts as a disincentive for workers to seek new jobs.
By REBECCA RAINEY and ELEANOR MUELLER
More than 30 million people are receiving unemployment benefits and new applications for jobless aid have started to rise again. But Republicans want to reduce a $600 enhanced unemployment benefit in the next coronavirus relief package, a proposal that could leave families with billions of dollars less to spend to bolster the economy.
White House economic advisers and GOP lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contend the extra payment acts as a disincentive for workers to seek new jobs, because some people are receiving more money in benefits than they would earn working. Democrats and many economists say there are no jobs for those people right now anyway, and the payments are essential for keeping the economy afloat — and ensuring Americans can buy food and pay the rent.
Here’s a look at the potential impact of cutting benefits right now:
The GOP argument
The Senate GOP’s latest $1 trillion plan calls for the reduction in increased unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 a week for 60 days, or until states are able to provide a 70 percent wage replacement. Some Republican senators are rolling out their own proposals that would reduce the benefits with varying levels of wage replacement.
Their argument is that payments should be pegged to workers’ former wages as an incentive for them to seek jobs instead of remaining on benefits.
“Should we have generous unemployment insurance in this crisis? Of course,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “But obviously we should not be taxing the essential workers who’ve kept working so the government can pay their neighbors a higher salary to stay home.”
Under the GOP plan, weekly benefits would drop from a national average of $920.68 per week to $520.68 per week, an average overall cut of 55 percent, according to a recent analysis by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.
Laid-off workers would lose more than $10 billion per week, under the GOP proposal. And by the end of September, the losses would reach $90 billion, the analysis found.
But White House economists say the checks aren’t stimulating the economy.
“Do not repeat this idiot notion that giving people money is somehow a stimulus to the economy,” said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist and outside adviser to President Donald Trump, in an interview. “I mean, in that case we could just give everybody $100,000 and we'd all be rich right? It’s just so stupid.”
The impact on the economy
It’s a “meaningful hit to the economy,” if lawmakers reduce or cut off the enhanced benefits, wrote Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. He estimates that cutting the benefit to $200 per week as the GOP has proposed would cost nearly 1 million jobs by the end of the year and raise unemployment by 0.6 percentage points.
Other estimates of job losses are higher. Economists caution that a reduction in benefits could spark a drop in demand, setting off a “vicious cycle” that eventually results in the permanent loss of millions of jobs. Slashing the extra $600 week could destroy as many as 5 million jobs, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“People will have to make terrible choices between things like medicine and rent, but it also means that they will no longer be buying things that they had been buying, and the workers that produce the goods and services that they will no longer be buying will lose their jobs,” said Heidi Shierholz, EPI policy director and former Labor Department chief economist. “And the vicious cycle is set off. So it’s terrible macroeconomic policy.”
Federally enhanced unemployment benefits led to a 10 percent increase in consumption among those out of work when they were first rolled out, according to an analysis by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, estimates that have alarmed business groups.
A disruption could result in a drop in spending as high as 20 percent, the research found.
“Small businesses desperately need the consumer demand” Small Business for America’s Future, a coalition of small business owners, said in a statement. “We need legislation that puts money in the hands of people who will spend it at local small businesses. The future of our Main Street economies depend on it.”
Rachel Greszler, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, agreed that the change in benefits will have short-term negative impacts on the economy. But she warned the increased spending will have the longer-term consequence of running up the national debt.
“If you continue excessively high payments, then you end up just trading a global health pandemic for a fiscal crisis,” she said.
The impact on Black and Hispanic workers
Because Black and Hispanic workers are disproportionately reliant on unemployment aid, slashing the benefits could do permanent damage to the economic well-being of those demographics, already among those the pandemic has hit hardest. Forty-seven percent of recipients of state unemployment benefits in July are projected to be nonwhite, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“These universal approaches to addressing economic issues ignore the recent and past history of structural racism, and how wealthy is distributed in the country,” said Andre Perry, a research fellow at Brookings Institution.
“We need to think about the long-term protection of the most vulnerable,” Perry said. “And unemployment insurance provides that safety net for now.”
Is a $600 payment causing workers to stay home?
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June that extending the boost by six months would likely lead to greater economic output in the second half of 2020. But the non-partisan scoring office also forecast that the work disincentive would lead to lower levels of employment for the remainder of the year and into 2021 — an estimate Republicans have seized on during discussions over the benefits.
Yale University researchers recently found “no evidence” that the boosted unemployment benefits increased layoffs at the outset of the pandemic or discouraged workers from returning to their jobs over time, according to a report based on data from the business scheduling software company Homebase.
“If there is still really depressed labor demand, asking people to go out and search more intensely will not necessarily yield higher employment,” said Dana Scott, the primary author of the report. “And on the flip side of the coin, reducing people's income will also decrease those stimulus effects...where they’ll have income replaced, go out and spend more money, which isn't just for the economy.”
But those close to the White House disagree. “I get ten calls a day from employers telling me the workers will not come back on the job,” Moore told POLITICO. He pointed to the 5.4 million new job openings reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in May. “That's a lot of jobs,” Moore said, “but look that's not 20 million.”
The most recent jobs report from BLS indicated that the number of workers who permanently lost their job increased to 2.9 million in June. Some 9.1 million workers would have preferred working full-time, but were only able to get part time jobs in June. And 8.2 million individuals said they would like a job, but were unavailable or not actively seeking out work in June, according to BLS.
What about just sending stimulus checks?
Republicans’ proposal would suggest another round of stimulus checks, similar to those enacted via a previous round of aid, in an effort to bolster consumption.
“The way the previous bill was crafted, five out of six workers are actually making more staying at home than going back to work,” McConnell said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Tuesday. “And remember, all of these folks are going to get another $1200 in direct payment.”
But the cash is a less efficient way to rejuvenate the economy because it is not as narrowly tailored, economists warn.
“Spending less on unemployment insurance and also doing the stimulus check … is terrible economic policy,” Shierholz said. “You’re taking something that’s very, very well targeted — getting money to people who’ve lost their jobs — and giving it broadly.”
He doesn't care....
‘He’s Willing to Put Democracy on the Block’
Trump’s tweet about delaying the election shocked Washington into speaking out. But it didn’t surprise those who have tangled with him over the years.
By MICHAEL KRUSE
With three question marks, two words in all caps and one incendiary tweet, Donald Trump on Thursday morning unleashed one of his most hostile sallies on democracy yet. The corrosive missive, smearing the November election as “INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT” before the first vote has been cast and floating the notion of delaying the date, was probably shocking not so much because of its content as by the reaction it swiftly elicited. People who habitually do not respond to the president’s tweets responded to this one—a point-blank and bipartisan repudiation that included a roster of important Republicans.
The tweet even alarmed a cadre of longtime Trump observers—the biographers and former staffers and executives who long ago became accustomed to his provocations. But they also weren’t that surprised.
From Trump’s financial failures of the early to mid-1990s, after all, to his failures then and later as a casino owner in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to the similar tactics he deployed in the stretch run of the election in 2016, the people who know Trump best have seen versions of this before. And always the motivation is the same—to save face by muddying the runway headed toward a looming loss by calling into question if not outright attacking the validity of the system itself.
The sole difference, they say, and it’s a big one, they grant, is the gravity of his role—he’s the president not of the Trump Organization but of the United States of America—and what’s at stake: the health and sustenance of the country’s democracy.
“The only thing that has changed is that he’s doing it on the world stage, and it is enhanced by the powers and the platform that the presidency offers,” biographer Tim O’Brien told me. “We don’t need to believe now that there’s anything Donald Trump won’t do to preserve his own sense of himself. And for the history books alone, certain incidents are worth cataloging, and this is one of them. He’s willing to put democracy on the block.”
But Trump never has altered his fundamental M.O. to match the scale of the moment. He’s always placed his own interests first, say those who know him, whether it’s a business deal or a matter of state.
“This is all very consistent with the man I worked with 30 years ago,” Bruce Nobles, the former president of the Trump Shuttle, told me. “He’s very competitive and wants to always win, and if he thinks he can’t win, then by definition there must be something wrong with the system, because otherwise, of course, he would win,” Nobles said. “He believes that, if for some reason he doesn’t get what he wants, it’s not his fault—it’s some other corrupt system that’s keeping that from happening.”
Back in 1990, when he owed his bank lenders billions of dollars, Trump blamed the overall economic downturn instead of acknowledging the litany of his own reckless decisions, “saying, ‘OK, well, you run the building, you run the debt, you run the airline, you run the Plaza,’” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me. And he made sure that his plight was every bit their plight, in a sense faulting the system, then distorting the system—then (ab)using the system to survive. “He’d say, ‘Hey, if I fail, everybody fails,’” said Marcus.
“When he was deeply indebted with bank loans he couldn’t repay,” added O’Brien, the biographer, “he basically said that he would just blow up the banks and leave them hanging and walk away from his debts—when they needed him to play ball, so they could rationally dispose of the properties he used to control. And once he realized that they needed his involvement, he began playing with fire—like all 7-year-olds do.”
Steven Perskie, the chairman of New Jersey’s Casino Control Commission from 1990 to 1994, on Thursday recalled the instance in December 1990 in which Trump’s father spent more than $3 million on casino chips he didn’t use—an illegal loan that helped his beleaguered son make a debt payment that was due.
“It doesn’t have remotely the profile and political impact of the tweet this morning, which is a direct attack on our system of government,” Perskie told me. But still, he said: “The connection, or the tie, if you will, is simply his instinctive ability to reinvent reality.”
Reinventing reality in that case meant an assault on the state’s regulatory infrastructure—and in this case means sowing doubt about the trustworthiness of the nation’s voting system.
“Every failure he’s ever had,” O’Brien told me, “he has blamed it on outside forces.”
Only now, of course, Trump is one of the most powerful people on the planet, and one of the most consequential presidents ever, and what he’s assailing is not the banks or Atlantic City.
“It’s democracy,” O’Brien said.
“You have to have empathy to be bothered by collateral damage. And he is devoid of empathy. He never thinks about collateral damage. He just thinks about how cool the mushroom clouds will look.”
At least on Thursday, though, the response on Capitol Hill and around the political world seemed to suggest that Election Day—which the Constitution empowers Congress to set and therefore can be changed only by Congress—is one pillar of democracy this norm-eviscerating president won’t be able to gut. He’d been “edging” toward the idea of postponing or poisoning this fall’s election, biographer Gwenda Blair told me, “but now he’s going full speed ahead.” Republicans, from Mitch McConnell on down, however, said in essence stop right there.
But the people who’ve known and watched Trump—not for five years but parts of five decades—say one thing is for sure. He will not. As predictable as Tuesday’s tweet might have been given his patterns of behavior in the past, it also could and should be seen, they said, as a preview of what’s to come these next 96 days and for who knows how long after that.
“He’s going to keep the rhetoric up,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell told me. “He’s going to do it for the next three months, and he’s going to talk about this ‘rigged’ election and this ‘fraudulent’ election. Because he can’t lose in his mind. And this is how he’s going to cover in case he does.”
Trump’s tweet about delaying the election shocked Washington into speaking out. But it didn’t surprise those who have tangled with him over the years.
By MICHAEL KRUSE
With three question marks, two words in all caps and one incendiary tweet, Donald Trump on Thursday morning unleashed one of his most hostile sallies on democracy yet. The corrosive missive, smearing the November election as “INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT” before the first vote has been cast and floating the notion of delaying the date, was probably shocking not so much because of its content as by the reaction it swiftly elicited. People who habitually do not respond to the president’s tweets responded to this one—a point-blank and bipartisan repudiation that included a roster of important Republicans.
The tweet even alarmed a cadre of longtime Trump observers—the biographers and former staffers and executives who long ago became accustomed to his provocations. But they also weren’t that surprised.
From Trump’s financial failures of the early to mid-1990s, after all, to his failures then and later as a casino owner in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to the similar tactics he deployed in the stretch run of the election in 2016, the people who know Trump best have seen versions of this before. And always the motivation is the same—to save face by muddying the runway headed toward a looming loss by calling into question if not outright attacking the validity of the system itself.
The sole difference, they say, and it’s a big one, they grant, is the gravity of his role—he’s the president not of the Trump Organization but of the United States of America—and what’s at stake: the health and sustenance of the country’s democracy.
“The only thing that has changed is that he’s doing it on the world stage, and it is enhanced by the powers and the platform that the presidency offers,” biographer Tim O’Brien told me. “We don’t need to believe now that there’s anything Donald Trump won’t do to preserve his own sense of himself. And for the history books alone, certain incidents are worth cataloging, and this is one of them. He’s willing to put democracy on the block.”
But Trump never has altered his fundamental M.O. to match the scale of the moment. He’s always placed his own interests first, say those who know him, whether it’s a business deal or a matter of state.
“This is all very consistent with the man I worked with 30 years ago,” Bruce Nobles, the former president of the Trump Shuttle, told me. “He’s very competitive and wants to always win, and if he thinks he can’t win, then by definition there must be something wrong with the system, because otherwise, of course, he would win,” Nobles said. “He believes that, if for some reason he doesn’t get what he wants, it’s not his fault—it’s some other corrupt system that’s keeping that from happening.”
Back in 1990, when he owed his bank lenders billions of dollars, Trump blamed the overall economic downturn instead of acknowledging the litany of his own reckless decisions, “saying, ‘OK, well, you run the building, you run the debt, you run the airline, you run the Plaza,’” former Trump publicist Alan Marcus told me. And he made sure that his plight was every bit their plight, in a sense faulting the system, then distorting the system—then (ab)using the system to survive. “He’d say, ‘Hey, if I fail, everybody fails,’” said Marcus.
“When he was deeply indebted with bank loans he couldn’t repay,” added O’Brien, the biographer, “he basically said that he would just blow up the banks and leave them hanging and walk away from his debts—when they needed him to play ball, so they could rationally dispose of the properties he used to control. And once he realized that they needed his involvement, he began playing with fire—like all 7-year-olds do.”
Steven Perskie, the chairman of New Jersey’s Casino Control Commission from 1990 to 1994, on Thursday recalled the instance in December 1990 in which Trump’s father spent more than $3 million on casino chips he didn’t use—an illegal loan that helped his beleaguered son make a debt payment that was due.
“It doesn’t have remotely the profile and political impact of the tweet this morning, which is a direct attack on our system of government,” Perskie told me. But still, he said: “The connection, or the tie, if you will, is simply his instinctive ability to reinvent reality.”
Reinventing reality in that case meant an assault on the state’s regulatory infrastructure—and in this case means sowing doubt about the trustworthiness of the nation’s voting system.
“Every failure he’s ever had,” O’Brien told me, “he has blamed it on outside forces.”
Only now, of course, Trump is one of the most powerful people on the planet, and one of the most consequential presidents ever, and what he’s assailing is not the banks or Atlantic City.
“It’s democracy,” O’Brien said.
“You have to have empathy to be bothered by collateral damage. And he is devoid of empathy. He never thinks about collateral damage. He just thinks about how cool the mushroom clouds will look.”
At least on Thursday, though, the response on Capitol Hill and around the political world seemed to suggest that Election Day—which the Constitution empowers Congress to set and therefore can be changed only by Congress—is one pillar of democracy this norm-eviscerating president won’t be able to gut. He’d been “edging” toward the idea of postponing or poisoning this fall’s election, biographer Gwenda Blair told me, “but now he’s going full speed ahead.” Republicans, from Mitch McConnell on down, however, said in essence stop right there.
But the people who’ve known and watched Trump—not for five years but parts of five decades—say one thing is for sure. He will not. As predictable as Tuesday’s tweet might have been given his patterns of behavior in the past, it also could and should be seen, they said, as a preview of what’s to come these next 96 days and for who knows how long after that.
“He’s going to keep the rhetoric up,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell told me. “He’s going to do it for the next three months, and he’s going to talk about this ‘rigged’ election and this ‘fraudulent’ election. Because he can’t lose in his mind. And this is how he’s going to cover in case he does.”
No charges
Prosecutor: No charges for officer in Michael Brown’s death
The county prosecutor announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
St. Louis County’s top prosecutor announced Thursday that he will not charge the former police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a dramatic decision that could reopen old wounds amid a renewed and intense national conversation about racial injustice and the police treatment of minorities.
It was nearly six years ago that a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot Brown, a Black 18-year-old. Civil rights leaders and Brown’s mother had hoped that Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, the county’s first Black prosecutor, would reopen the case after he took office in January 2019.
Bell announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review.
The August 2014 police shooting touched off months of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and made the St. Louis suburb synonymous with a national debate over police treatment of minorities. The Ferguson unrest helped solidify the national Black Lives Matter movement that began after Trayvon Martin, a Black 17-year-old, was shot to death in Florida in 2012.
The issue has taken on new life since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May after a white police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed Black man’s neck for nearly eight minutes. Ferguson is among cities around the world that has seen protests since Floyd’s death.
Bell — who took office in January 2019 as a reform-minded prosecutor promising to eliminate cash bail for nonviolent offenders and to increase the use of programs that allow defendants to avoid jail time — faced no restrictions in re-examining Brown’s death for potential murder charges. Wilson was never charged and tried, so double jeopardy was not an issue. There is no statute of limitations on filing murder charges.
The shooting happened after Wilson told Brown and a friend to get out of the street as they walked down the middle of Canfield Drive on a Sunday afternoon. A scuffle between Wilson and Brown ensued, ending with the fatal shot. Wilson said Brown came at him menacingly, forcing him to fire his gun in self-defense.
Brown’s body remained in the street for four hours, angering his family and nearby residents. Some people initially said Brown had his hands up in surrender when Wilson fired, although a grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t find those accounts credible.
Bell’s predecessor, longtime prosecutor Bob McCulloch, drew considerable criticism for taking the case to a grand jury rather than charging Wilson himself. Critics also accused McCulloch of swaying the grand jury to its decision not to indict Wilson — an accusation he emphatically denied. Wilson resigned days after McCulloch’s Nov. 24, 2014, announcement that the grand jury would not indict the officer.
The Justice Department also declined to charge Wilson, but issued a scathing report citing racial bias in Ferguson’s police and courts.
Bell, a former Ferguson councilman, upset McCulloch, a staunch law-and-order prosecutor, in the 2018 Democratic primary and ran unopposed that November. Within days of taking office, Bell took steps to remove three veteran assistant prosecutors, including Kathi Alizadeh, who played a role in presenting evidence to the grand jury in the Ferguson case.
In his campaign to unseat McCulloch, Bell focused on larger criminal justice issues, not on McCulloch’s handling of the Wilson investigation.
Bell, who, like McCulloch, is the son of a police officer, said in an interview after the election that he would appoint independent special prosecutors for allegations of wrongdoing by officers. He said he would support police “200%” as long as they act appropriately. But he said officers who violate the law must be held accountable.
Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to reopen the investigation in 2018, saying Bell’s win was “a clear mandate from the people of St. Louis to reform the criminal justice system, which first begins with securing justice for my son.” But Parson’s office said it had no legal authority to appoint a special prosecutor.
Calls to reopen the Brown investigation also came from Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. In an August 2019 Washington Post op-ed, he called McCulloch’s ouster “a sign of hope and change.
The county prosecutor announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
St. Louis County’s top prosecutor announced Thursday that he will not charge the former police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a dramatic decision that could reopen old wounds amid a renewed and intense national conversation about racial injustice and the police treatment of minorities.
It was nearly six years ago that a grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot Brown, a Black 18-year-old. Civil rights leaders and Brown’s mother had hoped that Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, the county’s first Black prosecutor, would reopen the case after he took office in January 2019.
Bell announced his decision after quietly re-investigating the case in a five-month review.
The August 2014 police shooting touched off months of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and made the St. Louis suburb synonymous with a national debate over police treatment of minorities. The Ferguson unrest helped solidify the national Black Lives Matter movement that began after Trayvon Martin, a Black 17-year-old, was shot to death in Florida in 2012.
The issue has taken on new life since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May after a white police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed Black man’s neck for nearly eight minutes. Ferguson is among cities around the world that has seen protests since Floyd’s death.
Bell — who took office in January 2019 as a reform-minded prosecutor promising to eliminate cash bail for nonviolent offenders and to increase the use of programs that allow defendants to avoid jail time — faced no restrictions in re-examining Brown’s death for potential murder charges. Wilson was never charged and tried, so double jeopardy was not an issue. There is no statute of limitations on filing murder charges.
The shooting happened after Wilson told Brown and a friend to get out of the street as they walked down the middle of Canfield Drive on a Sunday afternoon. A scuffle between Wilson and Brown ensued, ending with the fatal shot. Wilson said Brown came at him menacingly, forcing him to fire his gun in self-defense.
Brown’s body remained in the street for four hours, angering his family and nearby residents. Some people initially said Brown had his hands up in surrender when Wilson fired, although a grand jury and the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t find those accounts credible.
Bell’s predecessor, longtime prosecutor Bob McCulloch, drew considerable criticism for taking the case to a grand jury rather than charging Wilson himself. Critics also accused McCulloch of swaying the grand jury to its decision not to indict Wilson — an accusation he emphatically denied. Wilson resigned days after McCulloch’s Nov. 24, 2014, announcement that the grand jury would not indict the officer.
The Justice Department also declined to charge Wilson, but issued a scathing report citing racial bias in Ferguson’s police and courts.
Bell, a former Ferguson councilman, upset McCulloch, a staunch law-and-order prosecutor, in the 2018 Democratic primary and ran unopposed that November. Within days of taking office, Bell took steps to remove three veteran assistant prosecutors, including Kathi Alizadeh, who played a role in presenting evidence to the grand jury in the Ferguson case.
In his campaign to unseat McCulloch, Bell focused on larger criminal justice issues, not on McCulloch’s handling of the Wilson investigation.
Bell, who, like McCulloch, is the son of a police officer, said in an interview after the election that he would appoint independent special prosecutors for allegations of wrongdoing by officers. He said he would support police “200%” as long as they act appropriately. But he said officers who violate the law must be held accountable.
Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to reopen the investigation in 2018, saying Bell’s win was “a clear mandate from the people of St. Louis to reform the criminal justice system, which first begins with securing justice for my son.” But Parson’s office said it had no legal authority to appoint a special prosecutor.
Calls to reopen the Brown investigation also came from Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. In an August 2019 Washington Post op-ed, he called McCulloch’s ouster “a sign of hope and change.
An explosive spectacle
Trump revisits his playbook for disastrous news: An explosive spectacle
Minutes after the government announced the worst economic contraction on record, the president upended a day in Washington with his suggestion of delaying the election.
By CORY BENNETT, MERIDITH MCGRAW and TINA NGUYEN
President Donald Trump’s go-it-alone presidency crested on Thursday with a suggestion that the country delay the November election.
The idea undercut allies and aides who months ago accused Joe Biden of promoting “conspiracy theory ramblings” by predicting Trump would do this very thing. It aggravated his own negotiations on Capitol Hill, emboldening Democrats who want more election funding. And it forced Trump’s supporters either to defend the president’s musings as a savvy attempt to troll and distract his critics, or to insist it was just the president playing thoughtless pundit.
Notably, many people he needed to play along — particularly Congress, which has the power to change an election date — refused even to engage.
On Thursday night, Trump himself explained the tweet as an attempt to focus the country on the prospect of massive mail-in voter fraud, a phenomenon that researchers say does not exist and could be guarded against with more funding. At a news briefing, Trump flashed article after article for the cameras about anecdotal problems with absentee votes during the primaries.
“I don’t want to delay,” he claimed. “I want to have the election. But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election means nothing.”
“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”
As is often the case, Trump dashed off his attention-hoovering tweet at an opportune moment Thursday morning. The worst economic decline ever recorded in U.S. history had just been announced. An aid package to save tens of millions of consumers was stuck in a deadlock. The rampant pandemic at the core of the problem was spiraling further out of control. And his poll numbers were floundering just three months away from the election.
So Trump did what he so often does when under pressure: He tried to change the subject, giving himself cover for any future failures.
For months, faced with the dual crises of a life-altering pandemic and a nationwide protest movement against racism, Trump has been laying the groundwork to contest the election results — refusing to commit to accepting the results, leveling baseless allegations that mail-in balloting will create the “the greatest Rigged Election in history.”
Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, even raised alarm in liberal circles in May when he told Time magazine that he could not “commit one way or the other” to holding the election on Nov. 3, the date that is set by law. “Right now that’s the plan,” he said, later clarifying that there had not been any “discussions” inside the White House about changing Election Day.
Indeed, each time Trump or anyone in his circle walks up to the line of saying the election may be delayed or that the president may refuse to leave office — nightmare scenarios frequently bandied about in progressive circles and joked about on late-night shows — they always back off.
“Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win,” Trump told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in a June interview. “You go on, do other things.”
But Trump and his sprawling circle of MAGA supporters like to needle liberals over their fears. During one stretch earlier this year, the president would often make playful suggestions about staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms, sarcastically tweeting and joking about it at rallies.
Any time one of Trump’s critics has suggested that the president might be serious about these authoritarian ponderings, MAGA world has attacked. The reaction was most pronounced in April, when Biden, Trump’s presumptive 2020 Democratic rival, predicted Trump would try to find a way to push back the November election.
“Mark my words,” Biden said at a fundraiser. “I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow; come up with some rationale why it can't be held."
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh lashed out at the time, calling the remarks “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality. President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on November 3rd.”
On Fox News that night, anchors and guests castigated and mocked Biden for the remarks, saying he was deranged and trying to instill fear in the electorate. “Someone might want to check up on Joe Biden during this lockdown — he’s saying some very strange things,” said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former GOP presidential candidate, calling Biden’s prediction “a bizarre conspiracy theory.”
Three days later, Trump himself explicitly shot down the prospect: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that?”
Yet Thursday’s tweet appeared to put the concept back in the realm of possibility — despite the fact that Trump can’t unilaterally move the election. Congressional leaders flatly rejected the idea and those in Trump’s circle reaffirmed it’s not being discussed.
Trump himself Thursday night even disavowed any desire to delay the election, describing a desired image of himself on election night “standing, hopefully hand held high, big victory.”
It’s “not real.” said a former Trump adviser who remains close to the campaign, claiming no one has spoken about it. The person described it as Trump just tweeting something without giving it much thought or discussion.
“Like many tweets, people either cringed or laughed when they read it. But no one seriously entertained the idea,” a senior Republican aide agreed.
That said, the former Trump adviser heard an administration official had contacted an outside attorney to see whether Trump could halt the U.S. Postal Service from sending out mail-in ballots, citing attempted fraud or foreign interference. The attempt does not mean there is a plan to do this, however.
In the online echo chamber of Trump’s conservative followers, many portrayed Trump’s tossed-off thought as an attempt to troll his liberal critics.
Wayne Dupree, a far-right radio host whom Trump has retweeted, said the president had intentionally “triggered” the political class with his suggestion. “Now watch them trip over their ankles until Sunday morning television programs slamming him for even ‘suggesting out loud’ that the election be delayed,” he tweeted, adding, “FYI. A POTUS can't delay an election, it takes an act of Congress.”
“POTUS is quite likely baiting a hysteric response,” tweeted Fred Lucas, a White House correspondent at The Daily Signal, a conservative, Heritage Foundation-backed news site.
The point, said Stephen L. Miller, conservative media critic and contributor to The Spectator, is “to get you and an entire media apparatus to write about it instead of GDP crashing, or John Lewis’ funeral, which Trump should be attending instead of tweeting, and like usual, it worked.”
By that measure, it has worked. Before Trump got online Thursday morning, the predominant media narrative was challenging Trump’s ever-hopeful prognostications about how the country is recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, poll after poll and story after story — all of which Trump claims are fake or biased — have been chronicling the president’s tumbling reelection prospects.
But after Trump’s Thursday morning tweet, everyone turned their attention away from those issues — and to Trump himself.
Lawmakers were asked about whether they would delay the election (they won’t). Legal scholars resurrected their explanations for how American elections work (the president doesn’t control them). Pundits chided the president for trampling yet another norm. It was the first question Trump got at his Thursday evening news conference, and took up the bulk of the brief Q&A session.
So in the end, Trump got more cover for a potential loss — building on his evidence-deficient warnings that existing laws will create a fraudulent result in November.
“I don't want to see a crooked election,” Trump said. “This election will be the most rigged election in history, if that happens.”
And Trump had doused yet another media cycle with his own narrative — rinse, repeat.
Minutes after the government announced the worst economic contraction on record, the president upended a day in Washington with his suggestion of delaying the election.
By CORY BENNETT, MERIDITH MCGRAW and TINA NGUYEN
President Donald Trump’s go-it-alone presidency crested on Thursday with a suggestion that the country delay the November election.
The idea undercut allies and aides who months ago accused Joe Biden of promoting “conspiracy theory ramblings” by predicting Trump would do this very thing. It aggravated his own negotiations on Capitol Hill, emboldening Democrats who want more election funding. And it forced Trump’s supporters either to defend the president’s musings as a savvy attempt to troll and distract his critics, or to insist it was just the president playing thoughtless pundit.
Notably, many people he needed to play along — particularly Congress, which has the power to change an election date — refused even to engage.
On Thursday night, Trump himself explained the tweet as an attempt to focus the country on the prospect of massive mail-in voter fraud, a phenomenon that researchers say does not exist and could be guarded against with more funding. At a news briefing, Trump flashed article after article for the cameras about anecdotal problems with absentee votes during the primaries.
“I don’t want to delay,” he claimed. “I want to have the election. But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election means nothing.”
“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”
As is often the case, Trump dashed off his attention-hoovering tweet at an opportune moment Thursday morning. The worst economic decline ever recorded in U.S. history had just been announced. An aid package to save tens of millions of consumers was stuck in a deadlock. The rampant pandemic at the core of the problem was spiraling further out of control. And his poll numbers were floundering just three months away from the election.
So Trump did what he so often does when under pressure: He tried to change the subject, giving himself cover for any future failures.
For months, faced with the dual crises of a life-altering pandemic and a nationwide protest movement against racism, Trump has been laying the groundwork to contest the election results — refusing to commit to accepting the results, leveling baseless allegations that mail-in balloting will create the “the greatest Rigged Election in history.”
Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, even raised alarm in liberal circles in May when he told Time magazine that he could not “commit one way or the other” to holding the election on Nov. 3, the date that is set by law. “Right now that’s the plan,” he said, later clarifying that there had not been any “discussions” inside the White House about changing Election Day.
Indeed, each time Trump or anyone in his circle walks up to the line of saying the election may be delayed or that the president may refuse to leave office — nightmare scenarios frequently bandied about in progressive circles and joked about on late-night shows — they always back off.
“Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win,” Trump told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in a June interview. “You go on, do other things.”
But Trump and his sprawling circle of MAGA supporters like to needle liberals over their fears. During one stretch earlier this year, the president would often make playful suggestions about staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms, sarcastically tweeting and joking about it at rallies.
Any time one of Trump’s critics has suggested that the president might be serious about these authoritarian ponderings, MAGA world has attacked. The reaction was most pronounced in April, when Biden, Trump’s presumptive 2020 Democratic rival, predicted Trump would try to find a way to push back the November election.
“Mark my words,” Biden said at a fundraiser. “I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow; come up with some rationale why it can't be held."
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh lashed out at the time, calling the remarks “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality. President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on November 3rd.”
On Fox News that night, anchors and guests castigated and mocked Biden for the remarks, saying he was deranged and trying to instill fear in the electorate. “Someone might want to check up on Joe Biden during this lockdown — he’s saying some very strange things,” said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former GOP presidential candidate, calling Biden’s prediction “a bizarre conspiracy theory.”
Three days later, Trump himself explicitly shot down the prospect: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that?”
Yet Thursday’s tweet appeared to put the concept back in the realm of possibility — despite the fact that Trump can’t unilaterally move the election. Congressional leaders flatly rejected the idea and those in Trump’s circle reaffirmed it’s not being discussed.
Trump himself Thursday night even disavowed any desire to delay the election, describing a desired image of himself on election night “standing, hopefully hand held high, big victory.”
It’s “not real.” said a former Trump adviser who remains close to the campaign, claiming no one has spoken about it. The person described it as Trump just tweeting something without giving it much thought or discussion.
“Like many tweets, people either cringed or laughed when they read it. But no one seriously entertained the idea,” a senior Republican aide agreed.
That said, the former Trump adviser heard an administration official had contacted an outside attorney to see whether Trump could halt the U.S. Postal Service from sending out mail-in ballots, citing attempted fraud or foreign interference. The attempt does not mean there is a plan to do this, however.
In the online echo chamber of Trump’s conservative followers, many portrayed Trump’s tossed-off thought as an attempt to troll his liberal critics.
Wayne Dupree, a far-right radio host whom Trump has retweeted, said the president had intentionally “triggered” the political class with his suggestion. “Now watch them trip over their ankles until Sunday morning television programs slamming him for even ‘suggesting out loud’ that the election be delayed,” he tweeted, adding, “FYI. A POTUS can't delay an election, it takes an act of Congress.”
“POTUS is quite likely baiting a hysteric response,” tweeted Fred Lucas, a White House correspondent at The Daily Signal, a conservative, Heritage Foundation-backed news site.
The point, said Stephen L. Miller, conservative media critic and contributor to The Spectator, is “to get you and an entire media apparatus to write about it instead of GDP crashing, or John Lewis’ funeral, which Trump should be attending instead of tweeting, and like usual, it worked.”
By that measure, it has worked. Before Trump got online Thursday morning, the predominant media narrative was challenging Trump’s ever-hopeful prognostications about how the country is recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, poll after poll and story after story — all of which Trump claims are fake or biased — have been chronicling the president’s tumbling reelection prospects.
But after Trump’s Thursday morning tweet, everyone turned their attention away from those issues — and to Trump himself.
Lawmakers were asked about whether they would delay the election (they won’t). Legal scholars resurrected their explanations for how American elections work (the president doesn’t control them). Pundits chided the president for trampling yet another norm. It was the first question Trump got at his Thursday evening news conference, and took up the bulk of the brief Q&A session.
So in the end, Trump got more cover for a potential loss — building on his evidence-deficient warnings that existing laws will create a fraudulent result in November.
“I don't want to see a crooked election,” Trump said. “This election will be the most rigged election in history, if that happens.”
And Trump had doused yet another media cycle with his own narrative — rinse, repeat.
Lose $600 weekly jobless aid
Millions to lose $600 weekly jobless aid amid Senate stalemate
A late night meeting with negotiators yielded little progress.
By JOHN BRESNAHAN, MARIANNE LEVINE and JAKE SHERMAN
With federal unemployment benefits expiring on Friday — a serious blow to millions of Americans who lost jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic — the Senate became bogged down in partisan fighting and left town without a resolution to the crisis.
And two more hours of high-level talks on Thursday night between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on one side and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the other yielded almost no progress. The talks will continue through the weekend, but a deal seems far off at this point.
"We had a long discussion," Schumer told reporters after the meeting ended late Thursday night. "And we just don't think they understand the gravity of the problem. The bottom line is this is the most serious health problem and economic problem we've had in a century and 75 years, and it takes really good strong bold action, and they don't quite get that."
The end of the $600-per-week federal benefit, when combined with the lapsing of an eviction moratorium, will likely lead to serious financial problems for those hit hardest by the pandemic and economic collapse. More than 1.4 million people filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to the Department of Labor, while the U.S. economy contracted by more than nine percent in the second quarter of 2020, the worst drop on record.
Faced with Democratic resistance, as well as opposition in their own ranks, Senate Republicans temporarily abandoned their hopes for a large-scale coronavirus relief package on Thursday tried to pass a standalone extension of federal unemployment insurance. But that effort was blocked by Democrats.
As the Senate prepared to leave Washington Thursday afternoon, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a procedural step to force debate on the issue on the floor next week, although he never specified what he wants a vote on. In a floor speech, McConnell accused Schumer of resisting any kind of agreement.
“If that is their position, they’ll have to vote on it for the entire country to see,” McConnell said.
Schumer, however, dismissed the move as nothing but a stunt and blamed an intra-party GOP struggle for the stalemate over the federal benefits.
“They’ve woken up to the fact that we’re at a cliff, but it’s too late,” Schumer said. “It’s too late because even if we were to pass this measure, almost every state says people would not get their unemployment for weeks and months. All because of the disunity, dysfunction of the Republican caucus.”
The leading GOP proposal, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), would renew federal unemployment payments at 66 percent of lost wages, or $200 per week. The strategy had the general backing from the White House, which is eager to extend the bulked up unemployment insurance.
Republicans viewed the Johnson proposal as a way to put pressure on Senate Democrats the day before the benefit lapsed. And they noted, it was far more than what was approved more than a decade ago as the Democratic-run Congress reacted to the 2008 financial crisis.
But Schumer retorted that Johnson's bill was a step in the wrong direction. Schumer instead offered a unanimous request proposal to have the Senate approve the House-passed Heroes Act, which Johnson objected to.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) later attempted to pass a one-week extension to the $600 in boosted benefits. But Schumer objected, deriding the effort as another stunt. The New York Democrat then proceeded to try again to pass the Heroes Act, which Republicans blocked.
At a White House press conference on Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he supported the week-long extension offered by McSally as a "temporary measure" to allow negotiations to move forward and complained when Democrats objected.
He also promised Meadows and Mnuchin would make some new proposals to break the deadlock, although he didn't go into details.
In the discussions in Pelosi's office later in the evening, Mnuchin and Meadows offered a longer extension of the $600-per-week benefit to cover several months, but only as a stand-alone measure, according to sources familiar with the talks. Pelosi and Schumer rejected the offer, saying they don't want to negotiate an agreement in piecemeal fashion. Democrats also insist the federal payment should extend well into 2021, which Republicans are unwilling to do.
The two sides also squabbled over a number of other flashpoints, including state and local aid, which has emerged as a major difference between the parties. Democrats are seeking more than $900 billion in such funding, while the White House and Senate Republicans — arguing that a huge chunk of such money already approved by Congress hasn't been spent — want to spend only a fraction of that amount.
"The proposals we made were not received warmly," Meadow told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting broke up late Thursday evening.
For Pelosi and Schumer, the White House and Senate GOP leadership don't understand the enormity of the problems the country faces, and they refuse to try to break their package down into smaller pieces.
"They understand that we have to have a bill, but they just don't realize how big it has to be," Pelosi added.
The partisan jockeying could not come at a worse moment. There is no end in sight to the coronavirus, which so far has claimed 150,000 American lives and sickened more than 4 million.
The Trump administration remains at an impasse with both members of its own party and Democratic leadership over the boosted federal unemployment benefits. The March CARES Act provided an additional $600 weekly benefit that’s on the cusp of expiring, while Democrats are pushing for the full $600 to go into next year.
Meanwhile, Republicans argue the benefits provide a disincentive to work and instead want to see a temporary flat payment of $200 a week until states can adjust their systems to offer 70 percent wage replacement.
McConnell, for his part, accused Pelosi and Schumer of not wanting to engage on any issue in order to pressure Republicans to cave in on the Heroes Act.
“Both Republicans and Democrats agree that in these extraordinary times it makes sense for the federal government to provide historic additional help on top of normal unemployment,” McConnell said. “But the speaker and the Democratic leader say they won’t agree to anything unless the program pays people more to stay home than to work.”
Schumer retorted earlier in the day that negotiating with White House and Senate Republicans is like “trying to nail JELL-O to the wall.”
“Who is leading the effort on the Republican side,” Schumer asked. “Chief Meadows and Secretary Mnuchin….Leader McConnell has said that Democrats won’t engage. I would remind him if he refuses to go into the room when Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Mnuchin, chief of staff Meadows and I sit in there.”
A late night meeting with negotiators yielded little progress.
By JOHN BRESNAHAN, MARIANNE LEVINE and JAKE SHERMAN
With federal unemployment benefits expiring on Friday — a serious blow to millions of Americans who lost jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic — the Senate became bogged down in partisan fighting and left town without a resolution to the crisis.
And two more hours of high-level talks on Thursday night between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on one side and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the other yielded almost no progress. The talks will continue through the weekend, but a deal seems far off at this point.
"We had a long discussion," Schumer told reporters after the meeting ended late Thursday night. "And we just don't think they understand the gravity of the problem. The bottom line is this is the most serious health problem and economic problem we've had in a century and 75 years, and it takes really good strong bold action, and they don't quite get that."
The end of the $600-per-week federal benefit, when combined with the lapsing of an eviction moratorium, will likely lead to serious financial problems for those hit hardest by the pandemic and economic collapse. More than 1.4 million people filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to the Department of Labor, while the U.S. economy contracted by more than nine percent in the second quarter of 2020, the worst drop on record.
Faced with Democratic resistance, as well as opposition in their own ranks, Senate Republicans temporarily abandoned their hopes for a large-scale coronavirus relief package on Thursday tried to pass a standalone extension of federal unemployment insurance. But that effort was blocked by Democrats.
As the Senate prepared to leave Washington Thursday afternoon, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a procedural step to force debate on the issue on the floor next week, although he never specified what he wants a vote on. In a floor speech, McConnell accused Schumer of resisting any kind of agreement.
“If that is their position, they’ll have to vote on it for the entire country to see,” McConnell said.
Schumer, however, dismissed the move as nothing but a stunt and blamed an intra-party GOP struggle for the stalemate over the federal benefits.
“They’ve woken up to the fact that we’re at a cliff, but it’s too late,” Schumer said. “It’s too late because even if we were to pass this measure, almost every state says people would not get their unemployment for weeks and months. All because of the disunity, dysfunction of the Republican caucus.”
The leading GOP proposal, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), would renew federal unemployment payments at 66 percent of lost wages, or $200 per week. The strategy had the general backing from the White House, which is eager to extend the bulked up unemployment insurance.
Republicans viewed the Johnson proposal as a way to put pressure on Senate Democrats the day before the benefit lapsed. And they noted, it was far more than what was approved more than a decade ago as the Democratic-run Congress reacted to the 2008 financial crisis.
But Schumer retorted that Johnson's bill was a step in the wrong direction. Schumer instead offered a unanimous request proposal to have the Senate approve the House-passed Heroes Act, which Johnson objected to.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) later attempted to pass a one-week extension to the $600 in boosted benefits. But Schumer objected, deriding the effort as another stunt. The New York Democrat then proceeded to try again to pass the Heroes Act, which Republicans blocked.
At a White House press conference on Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he supported the week-long extension offered by McSally as a "temporary measure" to allow negotiations to move forward and complained when Democrats objected.
He also promised Meadows and Mnuchin would make some new proposals to break the deadlock, although he didn't go into details.
In the discussions in Pelosi's office later in the evening, Mnuchin and Meadows offered a longer extension of the $600-per-week benefit to cover several months, but only as a stand-alone measure, according to sources familiar with the talks. Pelosi and Schumer rejected the offer, saying they don't want to negotiate an agreement in piecemeal fashion. Democrats also insist the federal payment should extend well into 2021, which Republicans are unwilling to do.
The two sides also squabbled over a number of other flashpoints, including state and local aid, which has emerged as a major difference between the parties. Democrats are seeking more than $900 billion in such funding, while the White House and Senate Republicans — arguing that a huge chunk of such money already approved by Congress hasn't been spent — want to spend only a fraction of that amount.
"The proposals we made were not received warmly," Meadow told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting broke up late Thursday evening.
For Pelosi and Schumer, the White House and Senate GOP leadership don't understand the enormity of the problems the country faces, and they refuse to try to break their package down into smaller pieces.
"They understand that we have to have a bill, but they just don't realize how big it has to be," Pelosi added.
The partisan jockeying could not come at a worse moment. There is no end in sight to the coronavirus, which so far has claimed 150,000 American lives and sickened more than 4 million.
The Trump administration remains at an impasse with both members of its own party and Democratic leadership over the boosted federal unemployment benefits. The March CARES Act provided an additional $600 weekly benefit that’s on the cusp of expiring, while Democrats are pushing for the full $600 to go into next year.
Meanwhile, Republicans argue the benefits provide a disincentive to work and instead want to see a temporary flat payment of $200 a week until states can adjust their systems to offer 70 percent wage replacement.
McConnell, for his part, accused Pelosi and Schumer of not wanting to engage on any issue in order to pressure Republicans to cave in on the Heroes Act.
“Both Republicans and Democrats agree that in these extraordinary times it makes sense for the federal government to provide historic additional help on top of normal unemployment,” McConnell said. “But the speaker and the Democratic leader say they won’t agree to anything unless the program pays people more to stay home than to work.”
Schumer retorted earlier in the day that negotiating with White House and Senate Republicans is like “trying to nail JELL-O to the wall.”
“Who is leading the effort on the Republican side,” Schumer asked. “Chief Meadows and Secretary Mnuchin….Leader McConnell has said that Democrats won’t engage. I would remind him if he refuses to go into the room when Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Mnuchin, chief of staff Meadows and I sit in there.”
Big comeback in 2020
State Democrats mount big comeback in 2020
Democratic state party groups in traditional and emerging swing states are seeing a huge cash influx from donors looking to beat Trump.
By ELENA SCHNEIDER, DAVID SIDERS and ZACH MONTELLARO
Once ignored, underfunded and often written off, Democratic state party organizations are harvesting record-setting cash heading into the 2020 election, reasserting their roles inside the Democratic infrastructure after suffering for years in competition with super PACs and campaigns.
Across 15 possible battleground states, nearly every Democratic state party group is hitting higher quarterly fundraising totals or holding more cash on hand in their federal accounts than they did at this point during the 2016 presidential campaign, and a majority of them did both, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings and in interviews with party officials. Many of these state parties — responsible for field operations and coordinating a ticket-wide campaign — are seeing three, four or five times the amount of cash they did before.
Those surges are happening in traditional swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida as well as emerging targets for Democrats like Texas and Arizona. The Arizona Democratic Party raised $4.6 million in the second quarter, a more than 300 percent increase over its haul at this point in 2016, while Texas is sitting on five times more cash than it had at this point in 2016. North Carolina banked more than doubled its 2016 totals, from $2.5 million to just under $6 million, and racked up its strong online fundraising numbers in June since late 2018. Wisconsin, a stand out among the states, brought in a record-breaking $10 million last quarter.
The influx of money is giving an organizing boost to Joe Biden, Senate Democrats and other candidates heading into November 2020. Presidential candidates typically spend the final months of an election anxiously shoveling money toward state parties to fund get-out-the-vote operations and other critical infrastructure, but Democrats are running ahead of schedule this year.
That is largely thanks to donors across the country who are newly interested in funding the party’s grassroots operations as a way to combat President Donald Trump, as well as state party leaders who have stepped up efforts to attract top donors with the promise of getting the most bang for their buck.
"A lot of donors are looking for the ‘Moneyball’ opportunity, where a dollar has the greatest possible impact,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman, citing Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland Athletics’ pioneering data-driven approach to baseball, a style that state parties are now trying to mimic with their own pitches to top donors. “State parties may not seem sexy, but when you dig into the numbers, then they have tremendous math appeal.”
Some of the top givers in the Democratic Party — people known for writing six- or seven-figure super PAC checks — have turned state parties’ donor rolls into who’s-who lists of mega-givers from New York to California. Alphabet Inc.’s Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and investor Jonathan Soros were among those donating directly to multiple state Democratic Party organizations well ahead of the 2020 election — which they did not do ahead of 2016 or 2012, federal filings show.
“There is a much more strategic giving regimen this cycle,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant. “There’s a growing recognition that the state parties have a fundamental role to play … and all those donor advisers, donor tables talk to each other about what they’re doing and how best to spend their money.”
State parties appear to be benefiting in part from an improved relationship with the Democratic National Committee leading up to this election and, now, a nominee who is more invested in the party apparatus than President Barack Obama was.
“For a long time, state parties were ignored during Obama’s presidency and they were incredibly weak,” said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who chaired the DNC from 2005 to 2009, and described the shift of focus from the DNC and state parties to Organizing for America, the Obama campaign apparatus. “Now, they’re not [weak], which is a combination of increased competency among state parties and a donor base that’s outraged by Trump.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have also been building a strong in-state party structure for several years, investing in organizing in particular, with over 1,500 staffers on the ground in 23 targeted states. They’ve maintained more stable data-sharing relationships in recent years, an issue which has at times proven challenging for Democrats.
“The RNC has consistently invested resources in building a strong state party system as we know it is vitally important to build the Party for years to come where we are the strongest – our grassroots and infrastructure,” Mandi Merritt, the RNC’s national press secretary, said in a statement.
Now, the growing strength of Democrats' state party infrastructure is proving especially helpful to Biden, who largely struggled to raise money until he charged into the lead for the Democratic nomination in March.
“They came out of the primary probably with the smallest footprint of any modern-day presidential nominee,” said Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman and president of the Association of State Democratic Committees. “In terms of the size and scope of the campaign, it was a very small effort, as you know. In some ways, the Biden campaign really needed to lean into the DNC and into state parties, because they needed infrastructure, and they needed it fast.”
A cash injection
During the entire 2016 election cycle, the 15 state Democratic parties tracked by POLITICO raised $74.3 million in federal contributions — but the vast majority of that money was doled out by centralized joint fundraising committees like Hillary Victory Fund, which allowed wealthy donors to write six-figure checks and then directed the proceeds to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and other groups. Individual donors acting on their own gave $13.1 million to those 15 state parties, according to FEC records.
But in 2019 and 2020, Democratic donors acting outside the party’s joint fundraising committees have already surpassed the mark from four years ago, giving $17.7 million directly to those state party organizations with three months to go until the election. Biden’s joint fundraising efforts will pile on top of that in the coming months.
“A lot of big donors for years have invested in independent-side work and are starting to come to the realization that building out the infrastructure on the [party] side is just as important,” Martin said.
One donor adviser, granted anonymity to discuss fundraising discussions candidly, said it’s the “power of the pitch” from state parties that’s changed the dynamic, convincing big donors that their maximum $10,000 federal contributions to state parties could be more valuable than writing a bigger check to a super PAC. (Some states also have higher limits on state-level donations, or no limits at all.)
Some of those early pitches came from Kimberly Reynolds, who served as the North Carolina Democratic Party executive director from 2015 to early 2019. Over the phone and in conference rooms in Washington, D.C., Reynolds sold donors on her party’s efforts to “Break the Majority” — ending the North Carolina GOP’s legislative supermajority in the legislature and educating donors on the state party’s role in bench-building and field operations.
Reynolds’ efforts paid off in record funds and, ultimately, a campaign that cracked the GOP’s hold on the legislature. And she and other state party executive directors have shared their best practices with each other.
“Every discussion I have with donors focuses on what the party, and only the party, can do — building volunteer infrastructure, protecting the vote and doing year-round coalition building,” said Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party. “Because, if the state party doesn’t have the resources to do that work, our candidates begin the race three feet behind the starting line.”
In 2019, state Democratic Party officials often pointed to their successes in the midterm elections — and likely difficult elections after 2020 — as reasons to invest. And in Wisconsin, Democrats could also point to their coordinated victory in a state Supreme Court race earlier this year, an all-in approach to mail-in balloting that pulled out a surprise victory for Democrats. State parties can be the hub for the “coordinated campaign,” connecting candidates up and down the ballot to resources like data-rich voter files and get-out-the-vote field operations.
“Look, we have to hustle to make our case,” said Jason Henry, executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “And donors want to make smart investments.” Following the midterm elections, he said, “Our track record is really what we push on a lot of [donors].”
Scott Hogan, the Georgia Democratic Party executive director, noted that “there’s more money in the system, which helps all across the board, including state parties,” citing record fundraising among Democratic candidates this cycle, but the party is “the sustaining organization.”
The top expenditure line for most state parties is staff. The Georgia Democratic Party grew its paid staff from four in 2019 to 120 this month. In Florida, they had 30 to 40 staffers ahead of the convention in 2016, but now, they’re topping out at over 200. And in Wisconsin, staffers and volunteers knocked on twice as many doors during the 2018 cycle than during the 2016 presidential cycle.
“The one difference between our field programs in 2010 and 2014, [when we lost], compared to 2018 and 2020 is money,” said Felecia Rotellini, the Arizona Democratic Party chair, citing the party’s congressional and Senate victories in 2018. “I think donors were more comfortable giving to candidates because they knew what they were paying for, like commercials or field organizing, so we have to explain that it’s a one-stop shop with the state party.”
Democratic state party groups in traditional and emerging swing states are seeing a huge cash influx from donors looking to beat Trump.
By ELENA SCHNEIDER, DAVID SIDERS and ZACH MONTELLARO
Once ignored, underfunded and often written off, Democratic state party organizations are harvesting record-setting cash heading into the 2020 election, reasserting their roles inside the Democratic infrastructure after suffering for years in competition with super PACs and campaigns.
Across 15 possible battleground states, nearly every Democratic state party group is hitting higher quarterly fundraising totals or holding more cash on hand in their federal accounts than they did at this point during the 2016 presidential campaign, and a majority of them did both, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission filings and in interviews with party officials. Many of these state parties — responsible for field operations and coordinating a ticket-wide campaign — are seeing three, four or five times the amount of cash they did before.
Those surges are happening in traditional swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida as well as emerging targets for Democrats like Texas and Arizona. The Arizona Democratic Party raised $4.6 million in the second quarter, a more than 300 percent increase over its haul at this point in 2016, while Texas is sitting on five times more cash than it had at this point in 2016. North Carolina banked more than doubled its 2016 totals, from $2.5 million to just under $6 million, and racked up its strong online fundraising numbers in June since late 2018. Wisconsin, a stand out among the states, brought in a record-breaking $10 million last quarter.
The influx of money is giving an organizing boost to Joe Biden, Senate Democrats and other candidates heading into November 2020. Presidential candidates typically spend the final months of an election anxiously shoveling money toward state parties to fund get-out-the-vote operations and other critical infrastructure, but Democrats are running ahead of schedule this year.
That is largely thanks to donors across the country who are newly interested in funding the party’s grassroots operations as a way to combat President Donald Trump, as well as state party leaders who have stepped up efforts to attract top donors with the promise of getting the most bang for their buck.
"A lot of donors are looking for the ‘Moneyball’ opportunity, where a dollar has the greatest possible impact,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman, citing Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland Athletics’ pioneering data-driven approach to baseball, a style that state parties are now trying to mimic with their own pitches to top donors. “State parties may not seem sexy, but when you dig into the numbers, then they have tremendous math appeal.”
Some of the top givers in the Democratic Party — people known for writing six- or seven-figure super PAC checks — have turned state parties’ donor rolls into who’s-who lists of mega-givers from New York to California. Alphabet Inc.’s Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and investor Jonathan Soros were among those donating directly to multiple state Democratic Party organizations well ahead of the 2020 election — which they did not do ahead of 2016 or 2012, federal filings show.
“There is a much more strategic giving regimen this cycle,” said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant. “There’s a growing recognition that the state parties have a fundamental role to play … and all those donor advisers, donor tables talk to each other about what they’re doing and how best to spend their money.”
State parties appear to be benefiting in part from an improved relationship with the Democratic National Committee leading up to this election and, now, a nominee who is more invested in the party apparatus than President Barack Obama was.
“For a long time, state parties were ignored during Obama’s presidency and they were incredibly weak,” said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who chaired the DNC from 2005 to 2009, and described the shift of focus from the DNC and state parties to Organizing for America, the Obama campaign apparatus. “Now, they’re not [weak], which is a combination of increased competency among state parties and a donor base that’s outraged by Trump.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have also been building a strong in-state party structure for several years, investing in organizing in particular, with over 1,500 staffers on the ground in 23 targeted states. They’ve maintained more stable data-sharing relationships in recent years, an issue which has at times proven challenging for Democrats.
“The RNC has consistently invested resources in building a strong state party system as we know it is vitally important to build the Party for years to come where we are the strongest – our grassroots and infrastructure,” Mandi Merritt, the RNC’s national press secretary, said in a statement.
Now, the growing strength of Democrats' state party infrastructure is proving especially helpful to Biden, who largely struggled to raise money until he charged into the lead for the Democratic nomination in March.
“They came out of the primary probably with the smallest footprint of any modern-day presidential nominee,” said Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chairman and president of the Association of State Democratic Committees. “In terms of the size and scope of the campaign, it was a very small effort, as you know. In some ways, the Biden campaign really needed to lean into the DNC and into state parties, because they needed infrastructure, and they needed it fast.”
A cash injection
During the entire 2016 election cycle, the 15 state Democratic parties tracked by POLITICO raised $74.3 million in federal contributions — but the vast majority of that money was doled out by centralized joint fundraising committees like Hillary Victory Fund, which allowed wealthy donors to write six-figure checks and then directed the proceeds to the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and other groups. Individual donors acting on their own gave $13.1 million to those 15 state parties, according to FEC records.
But in 2019 and 2020, Democratic donors acting outside the party’s joint fundraising committees have already surpassed the mark from four years ago, giving $17.7 million directly to those state party organizations with three months to go until the election. Biden’s joint fundraising efforts will pile on top of that in the coming months.
“A lot of big donors for years have invested in independent-side work and are starting to come to the realization that building out the infrastructure on the [party] side is just as important,” Martin said.
One donor adviser, granted anonymity to discuss fundraising discussions candidly, said it’s the “power of the pitch” from state parties that’s changed the dynamic, convincing big donors that their maximum $10,000 federal contributions to state parties could be more valuable than writing a bigger check to a super PAC. (Some states also have higher limits on state-level donations, or no limits at all.)
Some of those early pitches came from Kimberly Reynolds, who served as the North Carolina Democratic Party executive director from 2015 to early 2019. Over the phone and in conference rooms in Washington, D.C., Reynolds sold donors on her party’s efforts to “Break the Majority” — ending the North Carolina GOP’s legislative supermajority in the legislature and educating donors on the state party’s role in bench-building and field operations.
Reynolds’ efforts paid off in record funds and, ultimately, a campaign that cracked the GOP’s hold on the legislature. And she and other state party executive directors have shared their best practices with each other.
“Every discussion I have with donors focuses on what the party, and only the party, can do — building volunteer infrastructure, protecting the vote and doing year-round coalition building,” said Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party. “Because, if the state party doesn’t have the resources to do that work, our candidates begin the race three feet behind the starting line.”
In 2019, state Democratic Party officials often pointed to their successes in the midterm elections — and likely difficult elections after 2020 — as reasons to invest. And in Wisconsin, Democrats could also point to their coordinated victory in a state Supreme Court race earlier this year, an all-in approach to mail-in balloting that pulled out a surprise victory for Democrats. State parties can be the hub for the “coordinated campaign,” connecting candidates up and down the ballot to resources like data-rich voter files and get-out-the-vote field operations.
“Look, we have to hustle to make our case,” said Jason Henry, executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “And donors want to make smart investments.” Following the midterm elections, he said, “Our track record is really what we push on a lot of [donors].”
Scott Hogan, the Georgia Democratic Party executive director, noted that “there’s more money in the system, which helps all across the board, including state parties,” citing record fundraising among Democratic candidates this cycle, but the party is “the sustaining organization.”
The top expenditure line for most state parties is staff. The Georgia Democratic Party grew its paid staff from four in 2019 to 120 this month. In Florida, they had 30 to 40 staffers ahead of the convention in 2016, but now, they’re topping out at over 200. And in Wisconsin, staffers and volunteers knocked on twice as many doors during the 2018 cycle than during the 2016 presidential cycle.
“The one difference between our field programs in 2010 and 2014, [when we lost], compared to 2018 and 2020 is money,” said Felecia Rotellini, the Arizona Democratic Party chair, citing the party’s congressional and Senate victories in 2018. “I think donors were more comfortable giving to candidates because they knew what they were paying for, like commercials or field organizing, so we have to explain that it’s a one-stop shop with the state party.”
Shrinks by record 12.1 percent
Eurozone economy shrinks by record 12.1 percent in second quarter
Spain was worst hit, followed by Portugal and France.
By LAURENZ GEHRKE
The eurozone economy shrank by 12.1 percent in the second quarter of this year while the EU's overall GDP contracted by 11.9 percent, the bloc's statistics office Eurostat said Friday.
"These were by far the sharpest declines observed since time series started in 1995," Eurostat said.
Among EU members for which Eurostat obtained economic data, Spain recorded the steepest decline in the second quarter compared to the previous one at -18.5 percent, followed by Portugal (-14.1 percent) and France (-13.8 percent). At -5.1 percent, Lithuania recorded the mildest decline.
Italy reported a contraction of 12.4 percent, while the German economy shrank by 10.1 percent.
The sharp contraction between April and June followed a first-quarter decrease of 3.6 percent in the eurozone and 3.2 percent across the EU.
Calling the figures "a preliminary flash estimate," Eurostat said the data was seasonally adjusted and reflected the coronavirus containment measures adopted by most EU countries in the spring. Findings are "based on data sources that are incomplete and subject to further revisions," it said.
Compared with the second quarter of 2019, seasonally adjusted GDP decreased by 15 percent in the eurozone and by 14.4 percent in the EU.
Eurostat said it will publish new estimates for the second quarter on August 14.
Spain was worst hit, followed by Portugal and France.
By LAURENZ GEHRKE
The eurozone economy shrank by 12.1 percent in the second quarter of this year while the EU's overall GDP contracted by 11.9 percent, the bloc's statistics office Eurostat said Friday.
"These were by far the sharpest declines observed since time series started in 1995," Eurostat said.
Among EU members for which Eurostat obtained economic data, Spain recorded the steepest decline in the second quarter compared to the previous one at -18.5 percent, followed by Portugal (-14.1 percent) and France (-13.8 percent). At -5.1 percent, Lithuania recorded the mildest decline.
Italy reported a contraction of 12.4 percent, while the German economy shrank by 10.1 percent.
The sharp contraction between April and June followed a first-quarter decrease of 3.6 percent in the eurozone and 3.2 percent across the EU.
Calling the figures "a preliminary flash estimate," Eurostat said the data was seasonally adjusted and reflected the coronavirus containment measures adopted by most EU countries in the spring. Findings are "based on data sources that are incomplete and subject to further revisions," it said.
Compared with the second quarter of 2019, seasonally adjusted GDP decreased by 15 percent in the eurozone and by 14.4 percent in the EU.
Eurostat said it will publish new estimates for the second quarter on August 14.
China is grabbing Hong Kong
Hong Kong asks China’s top legislative body to resolve legal problems with postponing elections
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced the controversial move on Friday.
By TONY CHEUNG
Hong Kong’s embattled leader has invoked emergency powers to postpone the Legislative Council elections scheduled for September by one year, citing health risks from the resurgent Covid-19 crisis.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced the controversial move on Friday, revealing that China’s top legislative body would step in to rule on resolving any legal issues stemming from uncertainties over the fate of the current legislature and the year-long gap without a new election.
“Since January, we have been fighting the pandemic for seven months. This pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to our economy,” she said. “Some people have said that if I am not postponing the elections, they might take legal action … while others have said if you are postponing it, you must explain clearly.”
Lam said she was invoking the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to push the elections back from September 6 this year to September 5 next year, and her decision was fully supported by the central government.
Under the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, each Legco term could only last for four years, the chief executive noted, and that would raise legal questions.
To resolve them, she had submitted an emergency report to the State Council in Beijing, which informed her that the central government would ask China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, to make a decision on the outstanding legal and constitutional issues.
This would mark the second time in a year that Lam has invoked such powers, first introduced nearly a century ago under British colonial rule. She used the law last October to ban mask-wearing by protesters hiding their identities during anti-government demonstrations.
Lam cited examples of other governments postponing elections, saying more than 60 countries had done so since July 15, and only 49 countries had gone ahead with their scheduled polls.
“In Britain, an emergency law was passed to postpone an election in May by one year,” she said, adding that an Australian election was also deferred by 12 months.
“If we continue with our election, millions of voters will be visiting polling stations on the same day. The risk of infection would be very high.”
Lam noted that despite preventive measures, new coronavirus infections since July had increased by 1,852 – a 140 per cent surge compared with the first six months.
“We are particularly worried about the situation in elderly care homes … and there is no sign that the situation in the city is improving yet,” she said. “The situation has been most critical since January 2020, as the virus will continue to spread in the city, and the risk of large-scale community outbreaks has been increasing every day.”
On the logistical challenge in the middle of a public health crisis, Lam said the government would have to recruit 34,000 electoral officers, and large crowds would be out on the streets on voting day.
She noted that registered voters living across the border in mainland China would not be able to cast their ballots with quarantine measures preventing travel.
Social-distancing measures had also made it hard for candidates to carry on with their campaign, she added.
Her announcement came after the two-week nomination period for candidates closed at 5pm and a dozen opposition hopefuls were disqualified on Thursday.
The decision throws up a series of legal questions, including whether council sessions could be extended and for how long, and if those disqualified would still act as lawmakers.
In a statement released earlier, 22 pan-democrat lawmakers, including four barred from seeking another term, said the Legislative Council elections were a core element of Hong Kong’s constitutional foundation.
“According to the Legco Ordinance, the polls can only be postponed by 14 days,” the statement said. “To postpone it [beyond that] is to trigger a constitutional crisis in the city.”
“After a year of democratic movement, it is urgent for Legco to undergo a baptism of public opinion, that is the root of the city’s governance … The government and the whole of society must make every effort to make sure that the general elections can be held as planned.”
The official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday that the National People’s Congress Standing Committee would meet again in Beijing from August 8 to 11 to discuss a series of laws. No item related to Hong Kong has been placed on the agenda yet.The opposition also accused the government of trying to deprive residents of their right to vote.
“Hong Kong’s constitutional and legal frameworks would not allow such kind of manipulation,” the statement said. “It was also suggested that the National People’s Congress will intervene … that would spell the total collapse of our constitutional order.”
The camp noted more than 60 countries or regions around the world had successfully held elections during the pandemic, either on schedule, or with a brief delay. Hong Kong authorities should learn from their examples, it said.
The postponement came a day after the opposition camp suffered a stunning blow with 12 members, including veteran and moderate politicians, having their candidacy invalidated by returning officers, while the government warned more might be disqualified.
At least 22 other opposition hopefuls are still waiting for returning officers’ verdicts on their applications.
In letters to the aspirants on Thursday, election officials cited the city’s new national security law and the pan-democrats’ previous calls for foreign governments to sanction Beijing and Hong Kong as reasons for barring four incumbent lawmakers – the Civic Party’s Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, Dennis Kwok and Kwok Ka-ki, as well as accountancy sector lawmaker Kenneth Leung.
Other disqualified opposition figures included Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Ventus Lau Wing-hong, Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam and Alvin Cheng Kam-mun, along with district councillors Cheng Tat-hung, Lester Shum, Tiffany Yuen Ka-wai and Fergus Leung Fong-wai.
Returning officers cited similar reasons for their invalidation and their earlier vow to vote down the government’s budget and other bills, should the bloc win an unprecedented majority in the legislature.
The government warned that more candidates might meet the same fate. But a source familiar with the matter said no additional disqualifications would be announced on Friday. “But returning offices are empowered to do so after the nomination period closes on Friday,” the source said.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced the controversial move on Friday.
By TONY CHEUNG
Hong Kong’s embattled leader has invoked emergency powers to postpone the Legislative Council elections scheduled for September by one year, citing health risks from the resurgent Covid-19 crisis.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced the controversial move on Friday, revealing that China’s top legislative body would step in to rule on resolving any legal issues stemming from uncertainties over the fate of the current legislature and the year-long gap without a new election.
“Since January, we have been fighting the pandemic for seven months. This pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to our economy,” she said. “Some people have said that if I am not postponing the elections, they might take legal action … while others have said if you are postponing it, you must explain clearly.”
Lam said she was invoking the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance to push the elections back from September 6 this year to September 5 next year, and her decision was fully supported by the central government.
Under the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, each Legco term could only last for four years, the chief executive noted, and that would raise legal questions.
To resolve them, she had submitted an emergency report to the State Council in Beijing, which informed her that the central government would ask China’s top legislative body, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, to make a decision on the outstanding legal and constitutional issues.
This would mark the second time in a year that Lam has invoked such powers, first introduced nearly a century ago under British colonial rule. She used the law last October to ban mask-wearing by protesters hiding their identities during anti-government demonstrations.
Lam cited examples of other governments postponing elections, saying more than 60 countries had done so since July 15, and only 49 countries had gone ahead with their scheduled polls.
“In Britain, an emergency law was passed to postpone an election in May by one year,” she said, adding that an Australian election was also deferred by 12 months.
“If we continue with our election, millions of voters will be visiting polling stations on the same day. The risk of infection would be very high.”
Lam noted that despite preventive measures, new coronavirus infections since July had increased by 1,852 – a 140 per cent surge compared with the first six months.
“We are particularly worried about the situation in elderly care homes … and there is no sign that the situation in the city is improving yet,” she said. “The situation has been most critical since January 2020, as the virus will continue to spread in the city, and the risk of large-scale community outbreaks has been increasing every day.”
On the logistical challenge in the middle of a public health crisis, Lam said the government would have to recruit 34,000 electoral officers, and large crowds would be out on the streets on voting day.
She noted that registered voters living across the border in mainland China would not be able to cast their ballots with quarantine measures preventing travel.
Social-distancing measures had also made it hard for candidates to carry on with their campaign, she added.
Her announcement came after the two-week nomination period for candidates closed at 5pm and a dozen opposition hopefuls were disqualified on Thursday.
The decision throws up a series of legal questions, including whether council sessions could be extended and for how long, and if those disqualified would still act as lawmakers.
In a statement released earlier, 22 pan-democrat lawmakers, including four barred from seeking another term, said the Legislative Council elections were a core element of Hong Kong’s constitutional foundation.
“According to the Legco Ordinance, the polls can only be postponed by 14 days,” the statement said. “To postpone it [beyond that] is to trigger a constitutional crisis in the city.”
“After a year of democratic movement, it is urgent for Legco to undergo a baptism of public opinion, that is the root of the city’s governance … The government and the whole of society must make every effort to make sure that the general elections can be held as planned.”
The official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday that the National People’s Congress Standing Committee would meet again in Beijing from August 8 to 11 to discuss a series of laws. No item related to Hong Kong has been placed on the agenda yet.The opposition also accused the government of trying to deprive residents of their right to vote.
“Hong Kong’s constitutional and legal frameworks would not allow such kind of manipulation,” the statement said. “It was also suggested that the National People’s Congress will intervene … that would spell the total collapse of our constitutional order.”
The camp noted more than 60 countries or regions around the world had successfully held elections during the pandemic, either on schedule, or with a brief delay. Hong Kong authorities should learn from their examples, it said.
The postponement came a day after the opposition camp suffered a stunning blow with 12 members, including veteran and moderate politicians, having their candidacy invalidated by returning officers, while the government warned more might be disqualified.
At least 22 other opposition hopefuls are still waiting for returning officers’ verdicts on their applications.
In letters to the aspirants on Thursday, election officials cited the city’s new national security law and the pan-democrats’ previous calls for foreign governments to sanction Beijing and Hong Kong as reasons for barring four incumbent lawmakers – the Civic Party’s Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, Dennis Kwok and Kwok Ka-ki, as well as accountancy sector lawmaker Kenneth Leung.
Other disqualified opposition figures included Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Ventus Lau Wing-hong, Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam and Alvin Cheng Kam-mun, along with district councillors Cheng Tat-hung, Lester Shum, Tiffany Yuen Ka-wai and Fergus Leung Fong-wai.
Returning officers cited similar reasons for their invalidation and their earlier vow to vote down the government’s budget and other bills, should the bloc win an unprecedented majority in the legislature.
The government warned that more candidates might meet the same fate. But a source familiar with the matter said no additional disqualifications would be announced on Friday. “But returning offices are empowered to do so after the nomination period closes on Friday,” the source said.
Get ready for a fight...
‘Rigged election’ goes from Trump complaint to campaign strategy
The notion that the president might not accept the election results has jumped from the partisan fever swamps to center stage in the campaign.
By DAVID SIDERS
Donald Trump’s suggestion that he might try to delay the election — or might not accept the result — is rapidly coming to the forefront of the presidential campaign, foreshadowing a final stretch roiled not only by the coronavirus and the economy, but by clashes over the nation’s most fundamental democratic norms.
Though Trump has no authority to move the election — an idea he floated Thursday — Democrats are already bracing for Republican challenges to absentee ballots and at vote counting on Election Day. They have good cause to be prepared: the president has repeatedly raised the prospect of a “rigged election” and recently declined to say if he’ll accept the results.
Trump’s rhetoric points increasingly to the possibility that he will dispute the outcome in a year marked by primary election administration meltdowns — a prospect that is heightened by his absolute control of state and national party machinery and an attorney general who has amplified Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting fraud.
“I don’t have any doubt that’s where he’s headed,” Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns, said of Trump’s effort to discredit the election. “He wants to delay the election because if they had the election today, he’d lose. The further out he gets from today, the better off he is … So, he wants more time to jerry-rig the system to somehow spit him out as the winner.”
Even before he was elected president, Trump frequently made unsubstantiated assertions about widespread voter fraud. He called for a do-over after losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in 2016, and he made claims about “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California” after failing to carry those states in the general election that year.
But with Trump continuing to run far behind Biden in national and swing state polls — and with the election now less than 100 days away — the Republican president’s rhetoric has thrust the notion that Trump might not accept the election results from the partisan fever swamps to center stage in the campaign debate.
Earlier this month, in an interview with Fox News, Trump declined to say if he will accept the results of the election, saying, “I have to see.” And in floating the possibility of a delay on Thursday, Trump suggested that what he was seeing so far wasn’t promising.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Later in the day, Trump insisted he did not want to see the election delayed but refused to foreclose on the possibility.
Delaying the election, "suburban lifestyle dreams" and the fight for Covid-19 relief
SharePlay Video
“Do I want to see a day change? No. But I don’t want to see a crooked election,” he told reporters.
Democrats cast Trump’s tweet as an effort to distract from the release that day of dismal second-quarter economic news, given his lack of power to move the election. A Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, Lily Adams, called it “nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract from today’s devastating economic numbers,” and Biden’s campaign responded to questions about the tweet only with a prepared statement on the economic numbers.
“President Trump is obviously scared and is reacting in a way that … is indicative of how he treats everything else — looking for the most extreme, unlawful way to reflexively address a matter, in this instance being woefully behind in the polls,” said Wayne Goodwin, chairman of the Democratic Party in North Carolina, where requests for mail-in ballots have exploded ahead of the November election. “But the election is going to happen, period.”
But Democrats remain wary of Trump’s efforts to limit access to mail-in voting, with legal battles continuing over mail voting that has expanded amid the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats are also fearful that in states in which the outcome is close, Trump may appeal to courts to intervene, casting a cloud over the result. Biden and the Democratic National Committee, in coordination with state parties and advocacy groups, have lawyers and political operatives working across the battleground map and have hired voter protection directors in 20 states.
“I don’t think it can be understated how serious it is,” said Les Francis, a Democratic strategist and former deputy White House chief of staff in the Carter administration. “I don’t want it to be just a campaign issue. It’s bigger than that. This is a constitutional issue. This is an issue about the future of the republic, and the sanctity of our civic institutions.”
One veteran of the Clinton administration who has ties to the Trump administration, said, “I think we’re dealing with a person who doesn’t know there are boundaries.”
And this is only the beginning. The issue of the legitimacy of the election promises to become even more prominent once voters begin receiving mail ballots — in some states as early as September. And it will likely factor in the presidential debates this fall.
Already, Biden has shown a willingness to engage, predicting on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” last month that Trump would “try to steal” the election by depressing turnout.
“This is the guy who said all mail-in ballots are fraudulent — voting by mail — while he sits behind a desk in the Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in a primary,” Biden said.
What the Biden campaign’s posture Thursday implicitly acknowledged was that, for Trump, turning coverage of the election to anything other than the coronavirus and the economy is likely to be beneficial.
Because of the coronavirus and the slumping economy, “driving a narrative for him is really difficult right now,” said Amanda Renteria, who was national political director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
In floating the possibility of a delay, she said, Trump is seizing an opportunity to go on offense.
“It’s edgy, it’s crazy, it gets us all talking,” Renteria said. “Now, the question is whether or not it’s strong enough or compelling enough to keep him in the headlines talking about it, given coronavirus and everything else that’s happening … We’ll learn that in the next couple of days.”
But there are also political risks for Trump. On Thursday, Republicans roundly rejected the idea of moving the election, marking an unusually clear — and rare — break between the president and officials in his party. Against the backdrop of a presidency in which down-ballot Republicans have paid steep prices for crossing the president, top GOP elected officials nevertheless appeared to draw a line.
“He can suggest whatever he wants,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters. “The law is what it is. We’re going to have an election that’s legitimate, it’s going to be credible, it’s going to be the same as we’ve always done it.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also said he opposes delaying the election. “No way should we ever not hold an election on the day that we have it,” McCarthy told reporters.
By late Thursday, Trump was framing his tweet more as a provocation than anything else, writing on Twitter, “Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting (not Absentee Voting, which I totally support!).”
He vowed to win the election “BIG!” and said election results must be known on the night of the election, “not days, months, or even years later!” a reference to the possibility that a deluge of mail-in ballots will prevent a close contest from being called on election night.
Asked for follow-up on Trump’s tweet, Hogan Gidley, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, suggested that the president was making a point more than outlining a course of action.
“The President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting,” Gidley said in a prepared statement. “Universal mail-in voting invites chaos and severe delays in results, as proven by the New York Congressional primary where we still don’t know who won after more than a month.”
The notion that the president might not accept the election results has jumped from the partisan fever swamps to center stage in the campaign.
By DAVID SIDERS
Donald Trump’s suggestion that he might try to delay the election — or might not accept the result — is rapidly coming to the forefront of the presidential campaign, foreshadowing a final stretch roiled not only by the coronavirus and the economy, but by clashes over the nation’s most fundamental democratic norms.
Though Trump has no authority to move the election — an idea he floated Thursday — Democrats are already bracing for Republican challenges to absentee ballots and at vote counting on Election Day. They have good cause to be prepared: the president has repeatedly raised the prospect of a “rigged election” and recently declined to say if he’ll accept the results.
Trump’s rhetoric points increasingly to the possibility that he will dispute the outcome in a year marked by primary election administration meltdowns — a prospect that is heightened by his absolute control of state and national party machinery and an attorney general who has amplified Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting fraud.
“I don’t have any doubt that’s where he’s headed,” Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns, said of Trump’s effort to discredit the election. “He wants to delay the election because if they had the election today, he’d lose. The further out he gets from today, the better off he is … So, he wants more time to jerry-rig the system to somehow spit him out as the winner.”
Even before he was elected president, Trump frequently made unsubstantiated assertions about widespread voter fraud. He called for a do-over after losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz in 2016, and he made claims about “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California” after failing to carry those states in the general election that year.
But with Trump continuing to run far behind Biden in national and swing state polls — and with the election now less than 100 days away — the Republican president’s rhetoric has thrust the notion that Trump might not accept the election results from the partisan fever swamps to center stage in the campaign debate.
Earlier this month, in an interview with Fox News, Trump declined to say if he will accept the results of the election, saying, “I have to see.” And in floating the possibility of a delay on Thursday, Trump suggested that what he was seeing so far wasn’t promising.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
Later in the day, Trump insisted he did not want to see the election delayed but refused to foreclose on the possibility.
Delaying the election, "suburban lifestyle dreams" and the fight for Covid-19 relief
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“Do I want to see a day change? No. But I don’t want to see a crooked election,” he told reporters.
Democrats cast Trump’s tweet as an effort to distract from the release that day of dismal second-quarter economic news, given his lack of power to move the election. A Democratic National Committee spokeswoman, Lily Adams, called it “nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract from today’s devastating economic numbers,” and Biden’s campaign responded to questions about the tweet only with a prepared statement on the economic numbers.
“President Trump is obviously scared and is reacting in a way that … is indicative of how he treats everything else — looking for the most extreme, unlawful way to reflexively address a matter, in this instance being woefully behind in the polls,” said Wayne Goodwin, chairman of the Democratic Party in North Carolina, where requests for mail-in ballots have exploded ahead of the November election. “But the election is going to happen, period.”
But Democrats remain wary of Trump’s efforts to limit access to mail-in voting, with legal battles continuing over mail voting that has expanded amid the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats are also fearful that in states in which the outcome is close, Trump may appeal to courts to intervene, casting a cloud over the result. Biden and the Democratic National Committee, in coordination with state parties and advocacy groups, have lawyers and political operatives working across the battleground map and have hired voter protection directors in 20 states.
“I don’t think it can be understated how serious it is,” said Les Francis, a Democratic strategist and former deputy White House chief of staff in the Carter administration. “I don’t want it to be just a campaign issue. It’s bigger than that. This is a constitutional issue. This is an issue about the future of the republic, and the sanctity of our civic institutions.”
One veteran of the Clinton administration who has ties to the Trump administration, said, “I think we’re dealing with a person who doesn’t know there are boundaries.”
And this is only the beginning. The issue of the legitimacy of the election promises to become even more prominent once voters begin receiving mail ballots — in some states as early as September. And it will likely factor in the presidential debates this fall.
Already, Biden has shown a willingness to engage, predicting on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” last month that Trump would “try to steal” the election by depressing turnout.
“This is the guy who said all mail-in ballots are fraudulent — voting by mail — while he sits behind a desk in the Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in a primary,” Biden said.
What the Biden campaign’s posture Thursday implicitly acknowledged was that, for Trump, turning coverage of the election to anything other than the coronavirus and the economy is likely to be beneficial.
Because of the coronavirus and the slumping economy, “driving a narrative for him is really difficult right now,” said Amanda Renteria, who was national political director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
In floating the possibility of a delay, she said, Trump is seizing an opportunity to go on offense.
“It’s edgy, it’s crazy, it gets us all talking,” Renteria said. “Now, the question is whether or not it’s strong enough or compelling enough to keep him in the headlines talking about it, given coronavirus and everything else that’s happening … We’ll learn that in the next couple of days.”
But there are also political risks for Trump. On Thursday, Republicans roundly rejected the idea of moving the election, marking an unusually clear — and rare — break between the president and officials in his party. Against the backdrop of a presidency in which down-ballot Republicans have paid steep prices for crossing the president, top GOP elected officials nevertheless appeared to draw a line.
“He can suggest whatever he wants,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters. “The law is what it is. We’re going to have an election that’s legitimate, it’s going to be credible, it’s going to be the same as we’ve always done it.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also said he opposes delaying the election. “No way should we ever not hold an election on the day that we have it,” McCarthy told reporters.
By late Thursday, Trump was framing his tweet more as a provocation than anything else, writing on Twitter, “Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting (not Absentee Voting, which I totally support!).”
He vowed to win the election “BIG!” and said election results must be known on the night of the election, “not days, months, or even years later!” a reference to the possibility that a deluge of mail-in ballots will prevent a close contest from being called on election night.
Asked for follow-up on Trump’s tweet, Hogan Gidley, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, suggested that the president was making a point more than outlining a course of action.
“The President is just raising a question about the chaos Democrats have created with their insistence on all mail-in voting,” Gidley said in a prepared statement. “Universal mail-in voting invites chaos and severe delays in results, as proven by the New York Congressional primary where we still don’t know who won after more than a month.”
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