While this would not create widespread damage, given that iron has a density of 7,870 kg/m3, we would be looking at about 15,000 kg hitting the ground at about 10,000 m/s. (I am figuring an iron asteroid of 4 m3 volume, with half of it vaporizing before it hits the earth)
The kinetic energy involved is therefore ½mv2, or about 7.5✕1011 Joules.
This is roughly equivalent to the detonation of about 180 tons of TNT.
So, the blast is much smaller than Hiroshima, but about 15 times bigger than the GBU-43/B MOAB.
Definitely enough to depress property values:
A certain asteroid is currently moving toward Earth, said the world’s most prominent astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It could theoretically strike the planet just before the forthcoming US presidential elections slated on November 2.
The prominent astrophysicist said that if the planet eventually ends in 2020, it would not entirely be the world’s responsibility.
The asteroid identified as 2018VP1 has been on the radar since the moment it was observed by the famed Palomar Observatory in California in November 2018.
Now, the only question is whether or not they go full Andrew Jackson on this:*
A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack” on the agency that could disrupt the 2020 election.
Stanley A. Bastian, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, said policies put in place under DeJoy “likely will slow down delivery of ballots” this fall, creating a “substantial possibility that many voters will be disenfranchised and the states may not be able to effectively, timely, accurately determine election outcomes.”
“The states have demonstrated that the defendants are involved in a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service,” Bastian said in brief remarks after a 2½-hour hearing in Yakima. “They have also demonstrated that this attack on the Postal Service is likely to irreparably harm the states’ ability to administer the 2020 general election.”
The ruling — the first major decision to come out of several lawsuits filed by states against the Postal Service — was a victory for Democratic state officials who view Trump’s persistent attacks on mail voting and DeJoy’s operational changes as part of a concerted effort to impede the vote on Nov. 3. Partisan tensions are running high as millions of Americans prepare to cast mail ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic, and mail delays have heightened concerns that voters unfamiliar with the process will be disenfranchised.
………
“It is easy to conclude that the recent Postal Services’ changes is an intentional effort on the part the current Administration to disrupt and challenge the legitimacy of upcoming local, state, and federal elections,” he wrote.
Hopefully, this ruling will be followed.
*In case you are wondering, after the Supreme Court ruled against his Indian policies, Jackson is reported to have said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”
Not ballots, mind you, but this is just the dress rehearsal.
It’s a great way to depress turnout at the (overwhelmingly Democratic) Baltimore City:
An audit of U.S. Postal Service performance during this year’s primary election season has found 68,000 pieces of political mail sat untouched at a Baltimore mail processing facility for five days ahead of the June 2 primary.
The audit published Monday says the mail, sent May 12, “sat unprocessed” for five days before being discovered by management at the facility.
Baltimore was in the midst of several contentious political races at the time, including those for mayor, comptroller and City Council president. Numerous candidates for those offices spent thousands of dollars on campaign mailers in an attempt to sway voters in close primaries.
Ballots destined for those voters also were in the mail stream during the window when the political mail sat at the facility, but the audit specifically stated the delayed pieces were not ballots. “This was First-Class campaign mail from a political candidate,” according to a footnote in the report.
Senator Edward J. Markey, who rebranded himself from dutiful career politician to fierce progressive warrior over the course of a volatile 11-month campaign, won the Democratic primary for Senate on Tuesday, fending off a challenge from a much younger Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, whose increasingly bare-knuckled offensive failed to capture the imagination of Massachusetts voters. Kennedy called Markey to concede around 10 p.m. and the Associated Press called the race soon thereafter. The Malden native had achieved a singular feat: He beat a Kennedy in Massachusetts.
Kennedy was significantly more conservative than Markey, and had little to run on beyond the family name, but he was leading by double digits for much of the race.
On the downside, the three most conservative members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, including the Dem’s biggest opponent of Medicare for All, and biggest supporter of the Carried Interest Loophole in Washington, DC, Richard Neal won their primaries:
U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held off Democratic challenger Alex Morse in Tuesday’s primary after an acrimonious campaign that included allegations of sexual misconduct leveled at his younger opponent.
The contest was one of four in Massachusetts where U.S. House candidates were competing Tuesday for the chance to represent their party in the November general election.
In the 6th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran who saw combat in Iraq and mounted a brief campaign for president last year defeated to fellow Democratic challengers — Jamie Belsito and Angus McQuilken.
………
In the state’s 8th Congressional District, which stretches from portions of Boston south to Bridgewater, Robbie Goldstein, a 36-year-old South Boston resident, lost a challenge to longtime incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch.
Molton is a member of the corporate stooge New Democrat caucus, and Lynch is an anti-abortion conservative.
While progressives did not win every primary challenge, they won some big ones, and none of the incumbent progressives so far have lost a race, so I’ll call the glass half full.
This is not someone confident of the outcome of the primary:
Facing a spirited progressive primary challenge, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass. is pressuring a local television station to pull down an ad criticizing his reliance on corporate PAC money, according to a letter obtained by TMI from Neal’s attorney. Neal’s attempt to block Democratic primary voters from seeing the ads about his campaign financing comes at the very moment his reelection bid is being bankrolled by donors from industries with business before his congressional committee.
Justice Democrats’ super PAC, the group behind the ad, spent at least $150,000 to have the 30-second television spot run through the entire Democratic National Convention. The ad alleges that Neal “took more money from corporations than any other member of Congress” and says he “hasn’t held a town hall in years.” The group says the station has not pulled down the ad.
………
“You have full power to reject the ad for any reason,” wrote Neal’s attorney Brian Svoboda of the Democratic powerhouse law firm Perkins Coie to WWLP-22News, a local NBC affiliate. “To attack Representative Neal’s reputation in his community, the ad purposely confuses the illegal corporate contributions of which it falsely accuses him, with the entirely legal contributions he actually received from PACs — i.e., entities which receive voluntary, personal contributions from corporate and union employees, shareholders and their families, and make lawful contributions from those funds.”
Neal’s counsel called the commercial “defamatory” and implied that the station could face legal consequences: “Because you need not run this ad, you enjoy no immunity from liability for its false claims, and are fully responsible for the defamation and any other torts that might result from their dissemination.”
………
In February, Sludge reported that Neal had been the largest congressional recipient of money from corporate and business-affiliated political action committees (PACs) in 2019. Neal has received nearly $2 million from these PACs this cycle, and it accounts for more than 53 percent of his total fundraising, according to OpenSecrets. On Tuesday alone, Neal received donations from a slew of corporate PACs including $2000 from Allstate’s PAC, $2,500 from Microsoft’s PAC, and $2,500 from WalMart’s PAC, according to federal records reviewed by TMI.
The most recent polls have Neal up by less than 10%, and undecideds tend to break for the challenger, so I do understand why his campaign is freaking out.
This has been an amazingly good year for primary challenges by progressives, and taking out Neal, who is the head of the Ways and Means Committee, would still be a big f%$#ind deal.
This is not a surprise. Postmaster Louis DeJoy has been lying about a lot, and he has continued to sabotage it while promising that he is not doing so:
Postal workers in Washington State have reinstalled high-speed mail sorting machines—dismantled after controversial orders from the U.S. Postal Service— despite USPS orders not to put machines back in use.
………
Only two facilities, Seattle-Tacoma and one in Dallas, seem to be ignoring the Postal Service’s directive to leave decommissioned sorting machines out of use.
I’m kind of surprised that we haven’t seen more insubordination from the Post Office rank and file.
The documents were published by Rep. Carolyn Maloney ahead of a Monday hearing with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Motherboard previously reported that a mix of the coronavirus pandemic, more restrictive overtime policies, and a restriction on the amount of time that mail can be sorted and loaded onto mail trucks before they go out has led to delays in mail delivery. Maloney said that “these new documents show that the delays are far worse than we were told” by DeJoy.
The new documents, a Postmaster General “Service Performance Measurement” briefing prepared for DeJoy on August 12, seemingly show the actual impact of those policies. Across the board, “on-time” scores have fallen sharply since early July. Presorted first-class mail is getting delivered late 8.1 percent more often than baseline, marketing mail (8.42 percent), periodicals (9.57 percent), and even Priority Mail (7.97 percent) have seen similar drops.
Lies from Trump and his Evil Minions™? Hoocoodanode?
Yet another way that Louis DeJoy is ratf%$#ing the election at Donald Trump’s bidding:
In a nationwide rule change that went unnoticed this summer, the U.S. Postal Service has forbidden employees from signing absentee ballots as witnesses while on duty. The change could make it more difficult for Alaskans, particularly rural residents, to vote by mail. In Alaska and several other states, absentee ballots must be signed by a witness who can verify that a ballot was legitimately filled out by a particular voter. Without a signature, the ballot will not be counted. Alaska’s ballot instructions say to “have your signature witnessed by an authorized official or, if no official is reasonably available, by someone 18 years of age or older.” It lists postal officials as an example of an authorized official, but many Alaska voters said postal clerks told them they were forbidden from signing ballots.
Sooo I went to the post office to mail my absentee ballot and even tho it says very clearly on the instructions that postal officials can sign your witness affidavit, the folks working the counter downtown said they were not allowed 🤨 why?
Even if the campaign worker WEREN’T a minor, it’s stupid for a candidate to get into an argument with an opponent’s campaign worker.
You just walk away. It’s like wrestling with a pig: You get dirty, and the pig loves it.
My guess is that this was primarily a screaming match, though a police report was filed, though the kid, Martina Velasquez, declined to file charges.
My guess is that it was a “Karen” moment with excessively overbearing personal space which could probably be described as shoving, but it does make me wonder if DWS’ internal polling is not a as strong as she would like, because this Karen is losing her sh%$ completely.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is recalling the US House of Representatives early from its summer recess in a bid to protect the US Postal Service from efforts to block funding and suppress mail-in voting in November’s election.
Several states were also considering taking legal action to stop the service being run down to a level where it cannot deliver enough mail-in ballots in November, when almost half the country is expected to vote by post because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Pelosi said the House would return later this week to vote on a bill prohibiting the USPS from changing its operations or service levels from what it had in place at the start of 2020. Previously, the House had not been scheduled to vote until 15 September.
She said late on Sunday that Donald Trump was trying to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service, and called postmaster general Louis DeJoy “a complicit crony” by bringing in changes that degrades the service and delayed mail.
………
Her comments echoed those of Bernie Sanders, who told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting and his administration’s efforts to block funds for the US post office amounted to “a crisis for American democracy” ahead of the November presidential election.
Needless to say, Mitch McConnell has no plans to bring the Senate back into session, because he doesn’t give a sh%$.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was blocking Democrats’ effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic. Congressional Democrats accused Republican Trump of trying to damage the struggling Postal Service to improve his chances of being re-elected as opinion polls show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Trump has been railing against mail-in ballots for months as a possible source of fraud, although millions of Americans – including much of the military – have cast absentee ballots by mail for years without such problems. Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented logistical challenges to organizing as large an event as the Nov. 3 elections. “The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.” Trump later said at a news briefing that if a deal was reached that included postal funding, he would not veto it.
So, he is admitting that he wants to squelch vote by mail, but it’s too much of a wimp to veto a relief bill.
The United States Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given, Motherboard has learned through interviews with postal workers and union officials. In many cases, these are the same machines that would be tasked with sorting ballots, calling into question promises made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that the USPS has “ample capacity” to handle the predicted surge in mail-in ballots.
Motherboard identified 19 mail sorting machines from five processing facilities across the U.S. that either have already been removed or are scheduled to be in the near future. But the Postal Service operates hundreds of distribution facilities around the country, so it is not clear precisely how many machines are getting removed and for what purpose.
Even to local union officials, USPS has not announced any policy, explained why they are doing this, what will happen to the machines and the workers who use them. Nor has management provided a rationale for dismantling and removing the machines from the facility rather than merely not operating them when they’re not needed.
………
While the consequences of this new policy are mostly unclear for now, it neatly fits with the sudden, opaque, and drastic changes made by DeJoy, a longtime Republican fundraiser and Trump donor, in the less than two months he’s been postmaster general. Like his other changes, including the curtailing of overtime resulting in the widespread mail delays and sudden reorganization of the entire USPS, it is possible to see some semblance of corporate logic while second-guessing the decision to make drastic changes on the eve of the presidential election in which the USPS will play a critical role.
This is literally page 1 of the despot’s play book, and if it were happening in Venezuela Mike Pompeo would be condemning this as an affront to democracy.
Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday soundly defeated a well-funded primary challenger, the latest in a series of victories for liberals looking to secure their foothold in Congress and move the Democratic Party further left. The Minnesota Democrat was leading Anton Melton-Meaux 57 percent to 39 percent with 96 percent of precincts reported when the race was called, putting to bed weeks of speculation that her career on Capitol Hill could be cut short by an opponent who argued Omar was more interested in fame than representing her district. Residents of the Minneapolis-area district, however, chose the Somali refugee and first Muslim woman in Congress over Melton-Meaux, who raised a staggering $3.2 million last quarter from Omar critics around the nation. The race had become one of the most expensive House primaries this year, with each candidate bringing in north of $4 million.
On the less sane side of things, the crazy Q-Anon lady won her primary runoff in Georgia.
Florida man, meat Georgia woman:
In Georgia, however, Republicans didn’t have the same luck and in fact were up late into the night fretting over whether they should have done more to stop Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was running to replace retiring Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.).
Greene, who runs a construction company, has endorsed the QAnon conspiracy theory, which includes the idea that Trump is a messianic figure fighting the so-called deep state and that he alone can be trusted. She has also made a series of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments in videos first reported on by Politico in June.
In one, Greene suggested that Black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party.” She also called liberal investor George Soros a Nazi and filmed a campaign ad depicting her cocking a semiautomatic rifle while warning antifa, a loose collection of activists who oppose fascism and have sometimes embraced property damage and violent protest in recent years, to “stay the hell out of northwest Georgia.” Facebook removed the ad from its website.
Seriously, our politics are beginning to draw unflattering comparisons to Wiemar Germany.
Trump is going to be dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming in January if Joe Biden and his Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) incompetents manage not to completely screw up the campaign:
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections. Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles. The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays — the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail — and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near. ……… Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called the reorganization “a deliberate sabotage” to the nation’s mail service and a “Trojan Horse.” ……… The structure displaces postal executives with decades of experience, moving some to new positions and others out of leadership roles entirely, including McAdams, Williams and chief commerce and business solutions officer Jacqueline Krage Strako, who previously held the title of executive vice president and chief customer and marketing officer. ……… Earlier Friday, congressional Democrats demanded an investigation of DeJoy’s cost-cutting initiatives, which postal workers blame for delivery slowdowns. A letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and seven other Democrats, including Connolly, urged Postal Service Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb to examine how DeJoy came to implement policies that prohibit postal workers from taking overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and how such delays specifically affect election mail.
This is a toxic mix election tampering and Trump’s vendetta against Amazon.
What’s more, he came in 3rd, despite out fundraising all of his opponents.
It’s unlikely that Marquita Bradshaw will win the general, this is Tennessee, after all, but it is clear that status quo Democrats are in a place that is not resonating with the voters.
I think that a lot of this comes down to Bernie Sanders energizing the base.
I don’t think that Sanders will run in 2024, but I would like to see AOC run.
She will be 35 in October of 2024, and so she would be constitutionally qualified:
A political novice, Marquita Bradshaw pulled out a surprising victory on Thursday to secure the Democratic nomination for Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race, paving the way for her to take on Bill Hagerty, the winner of a bitter Republican primary battle.
“The progressive movement is undeniable,” Bradshaw tweeted to her followers. “Thank you all so much for your support and this victory. It’s time to put hardworking people first.”
The Memphis Democrat faced four challengers: Robin Kimbrough, James Mackler, Gary Davis and Mark Pickrell. Bradshaw won the race with 35.5% of the vote. Kimbrough had 26.6% and Mackler had 23.8%. Davis and Pickrell trailed with each winning less than 10% of the vote.
………
Still, Bradshaw beat out a better-known and better-funded challenger. Previously, Mackler ran briefly in 2018 for former U.S. Sen. Bob Corker’s seat until former Gov. Phil Bredesen joined the race. He bowed out and endorsed Bredesen.
This time around, Mackler received Bredesen’s endorsement and had already been running a campaign aimed at the two leading Republican candidates. He had the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
………
Bradshaw is an organizer for and involved with local and statewide efforts of the environmental group Sierra Club. Through those efforts she has focused much of her attention on environmental justice, and how, she said, people of color are disproportionately impacted by environmental policy. It’s something she would focus on in the Senate.
“We started this campaign by listening to voters and taking in empirical data in order to shape policy,” she said. “We included them in that process and we got feedback. Moving forward, we can do this together.”
Since she announced her campaign, Bradshaw raised $8,420, according to her most recent Federal Election Commission filing. Comparatively, Mackler raised $2.1 million to run in the race. In that time, he has spent $1.5 million.
Needless to say, I expect that Bradshaw will be “Ghosted” by the DSCC, because controlling the Democratic caucus in the Senate is more important to Chuck Schumer and his Evil Minions™ than it is to control the Senate.
There are any number of reasons to vote for Joe Biden for President.
OK, that is not true. There ara any number of reasons to vote AGAINST Donald Trump.
I honestly cannot think of a reason to vote for Biden beyond, “Have you seen the other guy?”
That being said, describing this decision as the equivalent of break-up sex is just plain wrong for a number of reasons:
Making ANYTHING like sex with Joe Biden is not going to motivate anyone, except, perhaps Jill Biden. (Don’t make me quote Jules from Pulp Fiction)
How often do people have breakup sex anyway? My experience with my partners is that when they want to say goodbye, they don’t exchange bodily fluids.
The central thesis of the argument is that, once Trump is defeated, progressives will be given a pass on not supporting Dems in 2 years. Na ga na happen. The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will continue to blame every failure on the “left” while treating them like absolute crap.
The metaphor for how I think that “we” (for a suitably nebulous we) should deal with the 2020 election is “breakup sex”.
Our current relationship with the Democratic Party is intolerable. The people who run the institution do not share our values, at least not in any way that matches the urgency of the catastrophe our world has become. We’ve tried for two Presidential election cycles to reform the party from the inside, using the primary process, and not succeeded, both for reasons fair and foul. Yet the pathology of our first-past-the-post electoral system and the logic of Duverger’s tendency means it would harmful to do the natural thing and form our own political party. Under electoral systems like ours (which it should be among our highest priorities to change) splitting a broad coalition disempowers the entire coalition, handing elections and power to people whose interests and values are so far from our own we would never have been anywhere near a coalition with them. Within the Democratic Party our values are undermined, coopted, sacrificed on the alter of a cynical realism that the well-remunerated realists quietly prefer. If we split from the Democratic Party, we hand power to a coalition that is, at the moment, an unabashedly fascist death cult. Things are tough all over. This is intolerable. We have to find a way out.
I think there is a way out. A fair number of us, described sometimes as “Bernie or bust”, argue that we should withhold our support from the Democratic Party, despite electoral realities, unless they earn our support with candidates and platforms that represent us. Sometimes this is taken a principled stand, to be taken regardless of consequence. But often it is justified in game-theoretical terms: If institutional Democrats know that we are trapped, that we will always hold our noses and vote with them, then we will have no leverage in the party. We have to demonstrate a willingness to accept the short-term risk of spoiling elections in order, over the longer term, to gain bargaining power within the Democratic coalition so that our values and interests actually get represented.
There is a lot to be said for this view, but it is kneecapped when it is put into practice on individualized, atomized terms. Most of us, compelled by the logic of negative partisanship, hold our noses and vote for the “corporate Democrat” who we expect will betray us, but who will probably not murder us like the other guy might. Others vote for Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins, or don’t show up at the polls. The inconsistency dilutes the potential effectiveness of the strategy. If the goal is actually to wield power, our withholding or supplying votes must be a matter of coordinated, collective action rather than individualized expressive choice. We need a union that can credibly threaten to strike, not individuals some of whom rage quit.
So, breakup sex. I think, in this year of our lord 2020, we should actively, enthusiastically, passionately support the Democratic Party and the prototype institutional Democrat who leads its ticket. They always try to convince us that letting the other team win would be the end of the world, but this year the horde of rabid predators is pretty visible while they are crying wolf. As soon as the election has passed, I think we should form a distinct organization that would not be a political party in the sense of participating in our country’s deeply flawed public primary process, but that would, like a political party, sometimes moot its own candidates for public office and help get them placed on ballots (whether as organization representatives or notional independents). Sometimes is an important word in that description. Most of the time, it hopefully would not. The organization would simply endorse the Democratic party candidate, keeping whole the not-Republican coalition. But, if a high (supermajority) threshold of the membership decides that the Democrat would not represent our values effectively, that the risk of spoiling the election is acceptable given whoever the Republican would be and is outweighed by the possibility our better candidate might win, then we would run that candidate and organize on their behalf with energy and unconflicted enthusiasm. Defecting from the Democratic Party, when it makes sense, makes much more sense as a collective rather than individual choice.
No, just no.
It will never be the right time for the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) to support the left, and there will never be the right time for the left to hold the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) to account.
That is just how the game works.
The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will never respect the left. Nor will they respect a progressive agenda.
Still, with the primary defeats of faux Democrats like Eliot Engel, Lacy Clay, and Joseph Crowley, and the threat to corporate Democrat Richard Neal in Massachutts, it is entirely possible that they can come to fear their base, as the Republican Party Establishment does.
Bolivia has postponed its presidential election for a second time due to coronavirus, which will leave its unelected president Jeanine Añez in power through to the end of the year. The vote was due to take place on September 6. But with Covid-19 cases still rising in what is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, the top electoral court set a new date of October 18, with a second round, if needed, on November 29. The new government would take office in December. The court said that “there is a consensus that the [coronavirus] peak [in Bolivia] will come sometime between the end of July and the first days of September”. The decision is good news for Ms Añez, who had argued that Bolivians should not go to the polls until the worst had passed, and a blow to her main rival, Luis Arce, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party that held power under longtime president Evo Morales until last year. He has accused Ms Añez of using the pandemic to cling to power. ……… It seemed she would be in the job for a matter of weeks — just long enough to organise fresh elections and oversee a transition. But after repeatedly saying she had no intention of running for the presidency, she did a U-turn in January and threw her hat into the ring. The election was first scheduled for May but then pushed back due to the pandemic. ……… The last key poll before the pandemic suggested Ms Añez was third in voter intentions, behind Mr Arce and Carlos Mesa, a former president and the more centrist of the three candidates. Some polls since then have suggested Ms Añez had regained ground, but they have all been conducted online because of the lockdown. Earlier this month, the Bolivian right moved to block Mr Arce’s participation in the election, saying he had breached electoral rules by publishing an opinion poll during the campaign period. The case is before a court.
Bolivia’s right, and its center-right, believe that it is illegitimate (literally an affront to God) for the indigenous majority in the country to hold political power, so I would expect further lawfare, and further violence, against the MAS and the poor.
I’m pretty sure if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, ti would have gone the other way:
Oklahoma is poised to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income residents after voters narrowly approved State Question 802 on Tuesday.
………
State Question 802 passed by 6,488 votes, making Oklahoma the fifth state expand Medicaid through a ballot initiative.
The question will enshrine Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma’s constitution — effectively preventing Oklahoma’s GOP-controlled Legislature or Republican governor from limiting or undoing the expansion.
After nearly a decade of waiting on politicians to act, Oklahomans decided on Tuesday to take health care into their own hands, Yes on 802 campaign manager Amber England said in a statement.
“In the middle of a pandemic, Oklahomans stepped up and delivered life-saving care for nearly 200,000 of our neighbors, took action to keep our rural hospitals open, and brought our tax dollars home to protect jobs and boost our local economy,” she said.
The campaign for SQ 802 was launched after years of legislative inaction on Medicaid expansion. The Yes on 802 campaign turned in a record number of signatures to qualify the question for the ballot.
McGrath is a hot mess, her performance during the debates, her paralysis over policing protests, and her statements on policy had her almost losing the primary despite raising over $40 million.
Her performance has one longing for the inept Alison Lundergan Grimes who was trounced the last time that McConnell was up for reelection.
Still, with lots of money, I’m sure that the consultants will make bank on this, even if Moscow Mitch remains a cancer on the US Senate.
As to Hickenlooper, this is a man who equated climate change activism and Medicare for All to Stalinism, and demonstrated his fealty to the fossil fuel industry by literally drinking a glass of fracking fluid.
And then there are his ethical and rhetorical lapses. (He was fined by the state ethics commission)
Colorado has become fairly reliably blue on a statewide level, so Hickenlooper is likely to win, particularly since Corey Gardner is seriously wing-nutty, but, should he win, he will be an impediment to any and all progress on the major issues of the day.
Shumer’s “Great White Hopes” of the US Senate races this year are Amy McGrath in Kentucky and John Hickenlooper in Colorado, and things are not going well fore either of them.
The largest papers in the state endorsed her primary opponent Charles Booker, as has Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is part of the Democratic Party aristocracy in the state. (Useless, but all aristocracy is useless)
I’m thinking that her deer in the headlights performance when asked about police protests in the last debate which was lame beyond belief: (See vid)
Remember Amy McGrath? Maybe you do. In 2018, the Kentucky Democrat was briefly famous for a viral campaign ad and an ultimately doomed campaign to represent her state’s Sixth Congressional District. A moderate and a former Marine fighter pilot, McGrath is the apotheosis of a particular Democratic electoral strategy: to win in a conservative state, dispatch a veteran with lukewarm politics. That strategy didn’t put McGrath in the House in 2018. But two years later, Senate Democrats tried it again, pitting McGrath against a top prize: Mitch McConnell.
Now she might be lucky to win her primary race.
McGrath faces a robust challenge from Charles Booker, the youngest Black legislator in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Booker has run to her left, and while McGrath holds a major fundraising advantage, Booker is gaining significant momentum ahead of the primary on June 23. Two of the state’s largest newspapers have endorsed him, and on Tuesday, Booker earned another major supporter. Alison Lundergan Grimes, who challenged McConnell in 2014, endorsed him over McGrath.
— Alison Lundergan Grimes (@AlisonForKY) June 16, 2020
The Grimes endorsement might be the clearest sign yet that McGrath is in real trouble. Booker already had the backing of a number of progressive politicians and groups, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, but Grimes is no leftist. She’s firmly part of the Kentucky Democratic Establishment, which makes her endorsement something of a surprise — and an unignorable vote of no confidence in McGrath. The retired Marine is backed by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, but locals are less convinced.
Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in their battle for the majority in the U.S. Senate has suddenly been complicated by not one but two unforced errors from their star candidate in Colorado, former governor John Hickenlooper. But it’s not clear whether either or both are enough to turn the tide of the race in favor of Republicans. The two controversies:
An independent ethics commission in Colorado said Hickenlooper violated state law on gifts when he was governor in 2018 by accepting rides on a private jet and, separately, in a Maserati limousine.
He appeared to compare a job as a political scheduler to the slave trade, in 2014 comments that were unearthed Monday. His campaign immediately apologized for them. “Imagine an ancient slave ship,” he said, “with the guy with the whip, and you’re rowing. We elected officials are the ones that are rowing.”
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The first controversy carries a more immediate impact for Hickenlooper. The commission, which was set up as part of an anti-graft law Colorado voters approved more than a decade ago, fined him almost $3,000 for the luxury rides as he was traveling as governor. The commission also held him in contempt for not showing up for the first day of video hearings even though he was subpoenaed.
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Hickenlooper’s most immediate contest is a June 30 primary. He’s facing Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado House speaker, who has his supporters but is not seen as a major threat to Hickenlooper. Romanoff is campaigning on Hickenlooper’s left in support of Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal and has the support of some younger, liberal activists. (But no endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or his liberal allies in Congress.)
That may still be the case, given how late Hickenlooper’s ethics violation is coming in the primary and how much Hickenlooper has been billed as the best candidate to beat Gardner among Democrats. Romanoff is trying to leverage Hickenlooper’s ethics troubles to reverse that narrative. “He represents a threat we cannot afford,” Romanoff told The Washington Post recently.
I am not sure how much Romanoff is a long shot. Romanoff won the Democratic Party endorsement at the state convention, though that does not count for much in the primary.
DISTRICT 16 (northern parts of the Bronx and southern half of Westchester County, including Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and Rye): The current representative — Eliot Engel — has been in Congress since 1989, and his connections to the district seem to have frayed.
He was criticized for not returning home even as the coronavirus raged through communities he represents, particularly New Rochelle. When he did return for this race, he was caught on a hot mic pushing for a chance to speak during a protest rally, saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
His main challenger is Jamaal Bowman, an educator for more than 20 years and a fierce advocate for public schools. Mr. Bowman helped found a public middle school in the Bronx, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, and promises to work for all of the district, including sections he says have been neglected during Mr. Engel’s time in Congress.
Mr. Bowman says he wants to see the United States adopt a kind of Marshall Plan for climate change, jobs, housing and education. “We need political imagination,” he said. In a district that needs new energy, Mr. Bowman will bring it.
It’s important to remember that primary challenges are important even when they fail, and a relatively low success rate is a given.
Dan Lipinski has already been taken out this election cycle, and if Engel is taken down, it will put fear in the hearts of a lot of Democratic Party incumbents.
