Horizons

One year ago, Rep. Cheri Bustos, Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, declared that “Texas is ground zero in 2020.” She was referring to the fact that five House Republicans had announced their retirement following narrow wins in 2018, a phenomenon that became known as “Texodus.” As a result, Democrats targeted their districts to fip in 2020. The forecast model at FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 95 in 100 chance of maintaining control of the House, which is why most of the attention has been on whether Republicans can hold onto their Senate majority. The comments from Bustos, however, indicate that Democrats are actually working on adding members to their ranks in the House—and the one state where that is likely to happen, interestingly enough, is Texas. One of the districts that is being targeted by Democrats is Texas’s 22nd, which covers the south and southwestern suburbs of Houston. From the late 70s to the mid-80s the district chose Libertarian Ron Paul t

Joe Biden is running on a more progressive policy platform than any Democratic presidential nominee in modern history. His proposals include major investments in healthcare, climate change, housing, education, and infrastructure. In addition, he supports comprehensive immigration reform and an overhaul of our criminal justice system. His web page contains policy proposals in 48 different areas, indicating that—much like Sen. Elizabeth Warren—he “has a plan for that.”  The former vice president demonstrated his mastery of those plans at the ABC town hall forum. But this was his final statement Thursday night.   We have to heal this nation. pic.twitter.com/wD45ZGcKO2 — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 16, 2020 Last week Biden went to Gettysburg to give a speech that his aides say was prompted by Trump’s remarks during the first debate telling white supremacists to “stand down and stand by.” He took the opportunity to lay out his closing argument. There’s no more fitting place than here to

According to John Cheves, a reporter with The Lexington Herald-Leader , when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell taught a college course on politics back in the 1970s, he identified the three things you need to succeed in politics: money, money, and money. Over the course of his 35-year Senate career, McConnell hasn’t simply blocked attempts to reform the campaign finance system, he’s actually argued for more money in politics. Perhaps the crowning glory of his efforts was the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v FEC , which allowed the flow of unlimited dark money into politics. But when it comes to congressional elections, McConnell’s efforts aren’t producing what he expected, as journalists James Larkin and Elena Schnieder noted in Politico about the “green tsunami” Democrats are building via small donor contributions online. According to an article in the New York Times, McConnell recognized this when, during a phone call with lobbyists this week, he “ vented t

I have to admit to a pretty heavy dose of s chadenfreude  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. I

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 disinformat

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 befo