Democrat's Small Donors Overpower McConnell's Billionaire Buddies

I have to admit to a pretty heavy dose of schadenfreude when I got to this paragraph in an article about how Trump's campaign is struggling in the Sun Belt.

On Thursday, in a conference call with a group of lobbyists, Mr. McConnell vented that the party’s Senate candidates are being financially overwhelmed because of small-dollar contributions to ActBlue, the online liberal fund-raising hub.

McConnell is, after all, more responsible than anyone else for the corrupting role of big money in politics. 

But then the news just kept getting better and better. First there was this:

South Carolina Senate candidate Jaime Harrison's campaign announced Sunday it raised $57 million in the third quarter of 2020, shattering the quarterly fundraising record for a Senate race set by Beto O'Rourke in 2018 by almost $20 million.

Harrison isn't the only one.

.@BarbaraBollier's record-shattering $13.5m Q3 is more than Orman and Roberts' 2014 total fundraising — combined.

In just three months.

Momentum is on our side coming into these final days of the election. We're pretty darn excited. #KSSEN https://t.co/3JrQg4Wegc

— Alexandra De Luca 🧬 (@AlexDe_Luca) October 12, 2020

James Larkin and Elena Schneider explained what's going on.

The online fundraising edge that Democrats have enjoyed for years has mushroomed into an overpowering force, with small-dollar donors smashing “donate” buttons over the last three months to process their disgust for President Donald Trump, fury with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and grief for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg...

Josh Holmes, a top McConnell adviser, said every news development activates Democrats’ donor base and “their default is to give $5 every time something angers them.”

So every time right wingers think that Trump has "owned a lib," what Democrats do is head to ActBlue and donate more money. Keep it up, folks!

What do Republicans do in response to all of that? They continue to go back to the same well over and over again.

Last month, Republicans were lifted by the news that Sheldon and Miriam Adelson had upped their contribution to Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with the Senate GOP, to a whopping $50 million for the year. 

Here's the catch:

But days later, ActBlue’s FEC report showed that the top nine Democratic Senate candidates raised over $50 million online in August alone.

In light of all of this, I'd like to dedicate this song to the Adelsons, the Kochs, the Mercers, and all the rest of McConnell's big donor buddies.

The Role of Media in Spreading Trump's Lies About Mail-In Voter Fraud

At Wednesday’s debate, when Pence was asked what his role would be if Biden won the election and Trump refused a peaceful transfer of power, the vice president packaged several right wing lies into a grand evasion of the question, ending with a suggestion that mail-in voting creates “a massive opportunity for voter fraud.” In doing so, he affirmed the lie Trump will use to create chaos about the outcome of the election.

While fact-checkers have debunked that lie over and over again, polling shows that nearly half of Republicans believe that mail-in voter fraud is a “major problem.” If Trump is able to convince a large share of his supporters that counting mail-in ballots amounts to Democrats stealing the election, it could pave the way for massive civil unrest.

According to a recent report published by the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, those poll results stem from the fact that Donald Trump, his campaign, and the Republican National Committee have engaged in a strategic disinformation campaign about mail-in voter fraud that has been “elite driven and mass media led.” 

Our findings here suggest that Donald Trump has perfected the art of harnessing mass media to disseminate and at times reinforce his disinformation campaign by using three core standard practices of professional journalism. These three are: elite institutional focus (if the President says it, it’s news); headline seeking (if it bleeds, it leads); and ​balance​, neutrality, or the avoidance of the appearance of taking a side.

The report documented activity from major media outlets, right wing news sites, and social media related to mail-in ballot fraud from late March through August 2020. In just one example, the report notes that, during a press briefing on April 3, Trump said that “a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.” That tapped into the first and second core standard practices of professional journalism: the president publicly said something explosive. 

The Associated Press—which is syndicated both nationally and in local papers all over the country—demonstrated the observance of neutrality with a headline the next day that read: “Trump, Dems clash on boosting mail-in voting during the pandemic.” Instead of pointing out that the president was lying, the issue was framed as a “clash” between Republicans and Democrats over how to vote during a pandemic. It was a classic case of bothsiderism. 

The Berkman Klein Center found that every piece of disinformation about mail-in ballot fraud during that time period originated with the president, his campaign, or the Republican National Committee—with one exception. On April 24, RealClearPolitics published an article by Mark Hemingway titled “29 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four Elections,” which I wrote about here at the Washington Monthly at the time. Hemingway based the entire piece on data from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative organization dedicated to purging voter rolls and spreading claims about voter fraud. His story was initially picked up by conservative outlets like the New York Post and Gateway Pundit. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, wrote a similar piece that was syndicated at several right wing sites. On April 30, Hemingway’s article was tweeted by his wife, Mollie Hemingway, who writes for The Federalist. It was retweeted by Trump the next day.

While news sites like RealClearPolitics and the Federalist were previously considered to be reputable center-right publications, they are now firmly rooted in the kind of conspiracy-mongering that has infected conservative media during the Trump presidency. 

Here is how the Berkman Klein Center report concludes:

When President Trump concluded his performance in the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020, he reiterated the false claim that mail-in ballots were subject to mass election fraud, and cited this concern to justify his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election should he be defeated. This assertion capped a six months long disinformation campaign waged by the president and his party against expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic of 2020. ​There is no disinformation campaign more likely to affect voter participation in the 2020 U.S. election and perceptions of the election’s legitimacy than the repeated false assertion that mail-in voting is fraught with the risk of voter fraud.

Since that report was published, Vice President Pence also closed his performance in a debate by repeating the false claim that mail-in ballots are subject to fraud. We now know the strategy they’ve used to spread that disinformation campaign and can be sure they will continue to employ it as long as it works for them. That’s why the report ends with advice for the mass media outlets whose standard practices have been exploited by the president.

In the coming months, it will be critical for editors of these national and local media...not to fall for the strategy that the president has used so skillfully in the past six months, not to capitulate to the inevitable charges of partisanship that will befall any journalists and editors who call the disinformation campaign by its name, and not to add confusion and uncertainty to their readers, viewers, and listeners by emphasizing false equivalents...

That is obviously a lesson that some, but not all members of the media have learned over the last four years. In the case of Trump’s disinformation campaign about mail-in ballots, the stakes are too high for them to get this one wrong.

Donald Trump's Delusion of Dominance

Trump’s latest delusion is that he can ignore science and dominate a virus. Just before leaving the Walter Reed Military Medical Center on Monday, the president tweeted that he was feeling really good and advised others to not let Covid dominate their lives. He then released a statement suggesting that contracting the disease was a sign of bravery.

Trump’s enablers followed suit. Mike Huckabee said that Republicans are “the party of the emancipation proclamation, not the emasculation proclamation” and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R- FL) opined that “President Trump won’t have to recover from COVID. COVID will have to recover from President Trump.” But the most bizarre pile-on came from Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA).

COVID stood NO chance against @realDonaldTrump! pic.twitter.com/GtNPOHkDqF

— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) October 5, 2020

Where this is all heading is that Trump and his supporters will mock Biden for being weak if he follows CDC guidelines and refuses to debate the president before his quarantine period is over—just as they’ve mocked him for wearing a mask and practicing social distancing. 

Even as COVID-19 is spreading throughout the White House, the message is that, in order to be a manly man, one has to not only pretend to dominate a virus, but be willing to spread a disease to everyone with whom you come in contact. In a sane world, that would be a skit on Saturday Night Live making fun of hyper-masculinity. But we’re not living in a sane world right now and given that lives are at stake, the whole scene is more pathetic than parody.

The president’s response to coronavirus reminds us that he views every interaction in life as a test between dominating or being dominated. It wasn’t that long ago that he was telling governors that they needed to “dominate the streets” or he would come in with federal troops and “solve the problem” of people protesting against police brutality. Going back to the early days of Trump’s presidency, this is something Josh Marshall understood better than anyone.

Trump lives in a psychic economy of aggression and domination. There are dominators and the dominated. No in between. Every attack he receives, every ego injury must be answered, rebalanced with some new aggression to reassert dominance.

But it would be a mistake to simply write this off as yet another indication of the president’s mental health issues. It is also what animates his supporters. That’s why “owning the libs” has become a rallying cry on the right. As Eve Peyser explained, “To ‘own’ someone on the internet is to dominate and humiliate them, and the ‘libs’ can loosely be defined as anyone to the left of Sean Hannity.”

In order to understand what Trump is tapping into, it is helpful to remember what Riane Eisler pointed out in her book, The Chalice and the Blade. 

Underneath all the complex and seemingly random currents and crosscurrents, is the struggle between two very different ways of relating, of viewing our world and living in it. It is the struggle between two underlying possibilities for relations: the partnership model and the domination model.

Eisler went on to study cultures all over the globe and came to the conclusion that conventional classifications such as religious versus secular, right versus left, East versus West, and developed versus developing don’t capture the trend towards authoritarianism because they fail to distinguish those that rely on domination backed up by fear and force. That is the tie that binds Stalin’s Russia to Hitler’s Germany, as just one example. 

What we are witnessing in this country (as well as other places around the world) is a resurgence of dominance in reaction to change. At the heart of that resistance are Christian nationalists who, imbued in patriarchy, view all relationships as hierarchical, insisting that men must submit to God, women must submit to men, and children must submit to their parents. Here is Eisler talking about how that weaves dominance and control into gender stereotypes.

In dominator cultures, to accuse a man of exhibiting stereotypes commonly associated with femininity is the ultimate insult. So, for example, when Tomi Lahren responded to Biden’s insistence on wearing a mask by tweeting that he might as well carry it in a purse, she was “owning a lib” with the ultimate put-down: he’s a wimp, just like a girl.

As Katherine Stewart pointed out, it is Donald Trump’s embrace of dominance that makes him the leader Christian nationalists have been looking for.

As the Trump presidency falls under siege on multiple fronts, it has become increasingly clear that the so-called values voters will be among the last to leave the citadel. A lot of attention has been paid to the supposed paradox of evangelicals backing such an imperfect man, but the real problem is that our idea of Christian nationalism hasn’t caught up with the reality. We still buy the line that the hard core of the Christian right is just an interest group working to protect its values. But what we don’t get is that Mr. Trump’s supposedly anti-Christian attributes and anti-democratic attributes are a vital part of his attraction…

Today’s Christian nationalists talk a good game about respecting the Constitution and America’s founders, but at bottom they sound as if they prefer autocrats to democrats...This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. They aren’t fighting a culture war. They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

This country’s great experiment with democracy was an attempt to break away from a long history of autocratic kings who ruled via dominance. But it’s been a work in progress for almost 250 years because the marriage between patriarchy and dominance has been difficult to overcome. Every social justice movement—from labor rights to women’s rights to civil rights—has been rooted in the power of partnership and taken direct aim at the dominance of rich white men.

The reason that President Barack Obama further ignited a resurgence in dominance is not simply because he was our first African American president. Perhaps due to his history as a community organizer, his entire world view was shaped by the power of partnership. That is why, when it became clear that we were in the midst of a pandemic, I pinned this quote from his 2009 speech in Cairo to the top of my Twitter feed. 

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere.  When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk.  When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations.  When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean.  When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century.  That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.

And this is a difficult responsibility to embrace.  For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes -- and, yes, religions -- subjugating one another in pursuit of their own interests.  Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating.  Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.  So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners to it.  Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; our progress must be shared.

For eight years this country had a president that challenged the dominance of white patriarchy. The backlash was so severe that we now have a delusional president who has convinced his supporters that manly men can ignore science and dominate a virus. The inflection point we face as a country is whether we will continue perfecting our union via democratic processes that demonstrate the power of partnership.  

A Soulless White House

 A group called Dog Lovers for Joe put out one of my favorite ads of this election season.

New favorite ad pic.twitter.com/qfNQTqQNIe

— Santiago Mayer (@santiagomayer_) October 1, 2020

But it isn't just dogs that have been missing from the White House for the last four years. Let's take a walk down memory lane and remember what used to happen there.

The Obama White House wasn't just a place where the president lived and conducted business. I remember noticing that things were going to be different in February 2009 when Michelle Obama hosted an event for middle school children to celebrate Black History Month, which featured a performance by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Here's what she said at the time:

As President and First Lady, Barack and I are just the caretakers of this house.  We're just borrowing it for a little bit.  But while we live here, we're your neighbors, okay?  And we want you to feel welcome here at the White House, which really is, as the Admiral said, it's the people's house that belongs to all of us.  So just remember that, okay?

And as the people's house, we believe the White House should be a place for learning and for sharing new and different ideas, sharing new forms of art and culture, and history and different perspectives.  We want you to visit and we want you to take advantage of these opportunities and maybe see something for yourselves that maybe you never thought you could do or be.

Events at the White house ranged from their annual science fair to campouts for Girl Scouts on the front lawn.  Did you know that the first time Lin Manuel Miranda performed a piece that would later become part of the musical "Hamilton" was at an event sponsored by the Obama's at the White House? It was part of a musical series that included a night dedicated to the Blues, where this happened. 

The Obama White House was a place of joy, family, culture, music, art, science, and laughter...but most of all children. I was reminded of all of that when I read a Facebook post by Elayne Griffin Baker.

There is no art in this White House. There is no literature or poetry in this White House. No music. No Kennedy Center award celebrations. 

There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend. No Socks the family cat. No kids science fairs. 

No times when this president takes off his blue suit-red tie uniform and becomes human, except when he puts on his white shirt- khaki pants uniform and hides from Americans to play golf. 

There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation.  

There are a lot of reasons why these last four years have been difficult for all of us. But on top of everything else, the White House has become a soulless place. 

Back when Obama was first elected, Alice Walker counseled the new president about his primary responsibility.

A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on...Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies.  

It seems pretty clear that Trump's soul died long before he moved into the White House. The place has felt like a mausoleum since he's been living there. While not the biggest issue we face these days, it is worth remembering how things used to be and look forward to the day that a new President and First Lady (and their dog) will make it the people's house once again. 

What You Can Do to Stop the Process of Politicians Picking Their Voters

One of the most effective strategies that Republicans have employed to maintain power, even as their party slides into minority status, is for politicians to pick their voters, which is how former Attorney General Eric Holder has described the process of gerrymandering.

Every ten years, once the national census is complete, states engage in the process of redistricting, meaning that they redraw the lines of both state and local districts to account for any changes in population. Gerrymandering is the process of drawing those districts in a way that favors the party in power. To give you some idea of the lengths to which Republicans have gone to pick their voters, here is how they initially drew the map of North Carolina’s 12th congressional district.

As we’ve seen over the last decade, these gerrymandered districts have had a tremendous impact, not just on national politics, but at the state and local level as well. Nowhere is that better demonstrated than the divergent paths taken by Wisconsin and Minnesota in response to the 2010 elections. Republicans gained control of legislatures in both states. But while Scott Walker won the governor’s race in Wisconsin, Democrat Mark Dayton squeezed out a win by 0.4 percent in a three-way race. 

The paths of these two states—who share a lot in common—diverged dramatically because Dayton was able to veto the gerrymandered districts that were drawn by Minneosta’s Republican legislature, leading to a court-appointed commission that took over the process. After the 2018 midterms, journalist Craig Gilbert ran the numbers on how gerrymandering in Wisconsin gave Republicans a major advantage.

Republicans enjoy a built-in 64-35 advantage in the partisan makeup of the 99 Assembly districts. In a hypothetical 50-50 election, in which there are equal numbers of Democratic and Republican voters in Wisconsin, no one crosses party lines and independents split down the middle, that translates into a massive 29-seat GOP advantage in the Assembly. That's very close to the 27-seat margin (63-36) that Republicans won last month.

As Democrats focus on defeating Donald Trump and winning a majority in the Senate, it is equally important to pay attention to the redistricting process that will be underway in 2021. That is precisely why Barack Obama and Eric Holder teamed up to launch the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. 

As Holder explained, “this is our once-in-a-decade chance to get it right.” On October 9th, Obama and Holder will host a virtual event to “engage grassroots supporters on the importance of getting involved in the fight to strengthen our democracy, encourage people to vote in the elections this fall, and engage participants ahead of the 2021 redistricting process.”

With the 2020 elections just over a month away, it is worth looking at the races the NDRC has targeted in 13 states: Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. The first line of defense in these states is to ensure that Democrats gain or maintain control of at least one branch of government to provide them with leverage in the negotiations over redistricting. 

Eight of the states being targeted by NDRC currently have divided government. Voters in Ohio, where Republicans control all three branches, overwhelmingly passed a referendum in 2018 that would set up a bipartisan redistricting commission if the General Assembly failed to pass a plan with a supermajority. That leaves three states that should be prime targets in the 2020 election: Florida, Georgia, and Texas. According to recent population estimates, Texas is likely to add three Congressional seats based on the 2020 census and Florida could gain two, making their redistricting processes even more critical.

Interestingly enough, a look at the numbers indicates that the best chance Democrats have of flipping control comes in Texas. Abby Springs from Progress Texas noted that it would only take nine seats to give Democrats control of the Texas House and she identified 22 opportunities. Here is what would be required in all three states:

Florida: 14 in lower chamber, 4 in upper chamber

Georgia: 17 in lower chamber, 8 in upper chamber

Texas: 9 in lower chamber, 4 in upper chamber

You can check out the NDRC’s list of endorsed candidates in Florida, Georgia, and Texas to find which seats they consider to be at play. 

I would remind you once again that one of the main reasons that Minnesota avoided going down the same road as Wisconsin is that Mark Dayton won the governorship a decade ago by 0.4 percentage points. In other words, when it comes to preserving democracy, every vote matters.

Donald and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

When young Alexander had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, children delighted in the hyperbole of seeing someone their age stumbling through a series of challenges from the time he got out of bed in the morning until he retired that night. But when a president has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, the nation hangs its head in shame and cringes over what might come next. 

On Saturday, the president announced that he would nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, sparking a debate among Democrats over how to respond to the blatant display of hypocrisy from Republicans. For the Trump campaign, it was a high point. Things went downhill from there.

It all began on Sunday evening when the New York Times dropped their bombshell report on Trump's tax returns. We found out precisely why he's worked so hard to keep them secret.

1. His $400 million in debts pose a national security threat.

2. He's a lousy businessman who has lost $315 million since 2000.

3. He paid a grand total of $750 per year in federal income taxes over the last two years—significantly less than the amount he has shelled out to keep former mistresses quiet. 

As we were all absorbing that news, the police in Ft. Lauderdale were taking Trump's former campaign manager into custody for being armed, intoxicated, and threatening to kill himself while being barricaded in his home. Video of the police trying to subdue Brad Parscale and wrestling him to the ground spread across the internet. We subsequently learned that Parscale is reportedly under investigation for stealing up to $40 million from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. If true, the president has to worry about yet another member of his team turning on him in exchange for leniency. 

As if that wasn't bad enough, Trump topped things off with a debate performance on Tuesday that can only be described as a "shitshow." Sources told Gabriel Sherman that America got a lesson in what the president looks like behind closed doors.

Trump doesn’t accept the consensus that the debate was a disaster because, sources said, he was unabashedly himself. “The thing about the debate is people got to see why no one that has any integrity can work for Trump. This is what Trump is like in the Oval Office every day. It’s why [John] Kelly left. It’s why [Jim] Mattis quit,” said the prominent Republican. “Trump doesn’t let anyone else speak. He really doesn’t care what you have to say. He demeans people. He talks over them. And everyone around him thinks it’s getting worse.”

All of this comes as Trump trails Biden badly in the polls. Any honest accounting would categorize this past week as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad for Donald Trump.

Update 10-02-20:

Oh my...Trump's week just got a lot worse.

Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2020

Keep in mind, this is the guy who has constantly mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask and campaigning from his basement. So yeah, karma really is a bitch. 

And just to be clear: 

#BREAKING

CNN

Biden negative

— Biden Army (@Biden_Army) October 2, 2020