Tonight we find out how much of a check the American people want to have on our Executive Branch. Or put it another way, how many of the 1000 legislative seats will the Dems gain from the last 10 years of losses? Will voters feel comfortable with the economy and overlook Trump? Will Trump’s divisiveness prevail and turn out his base?
Will we see our first women Native American Congressional Reps? First AA governor of FL and first female gov of GA? How well will the OR candidates perform in this cycle?
Of course, we hope there are no machine irregularities, but it’s anticipated that some will occur. And election lawyers will be on hand just in case.
In the Senate, Democrats are defending 26 seats while Republicans are only defending nine.
(those are predictions if they are filled in with red or blue, gold signifies toss-up)
In the gubernatorial races, there are 33 races, in which Dems could possibly pick up 9 of them.
(those are predictions if they are filled in with red or blue, gold signifies toss-up)
First polls close at 6ET in Indiana, VT and KY. Most in the MSM are saying to watch the 6th district in KY, but the bellwethers will be in VA 4 GOP races and FL 4 GOP races when the polls close at 7 ET.
Larry Sabato of Crystal Ball expects Dem pick-ups in the gubernatorial races, including Kansas.
Big races:
TX Sen – Beto vs Cruz
NV Sen – Rosen vs Heller
FL Sen – Sick Rott vs Nelson
AZ Sen – McSally vs Sinema
CA Sen – DeLeon vs Feinstein
MO Sen – Hawley vs McCaskill
TN Sen – Breesan vs Blackburn
VT Sen – Sanders vs a pack of Indies (well, not a big race, but it is Bernie’s re-up)
FL Gov – DeSantis vs Gillum
GA Gov – Kemp vs Abrams
MD Gov – Jealous vs Hogan
WI Gov – Evers vs Walker
IL Gov – Pritzker vs Rauner
AZ Gov – Garcia vs Ducey
ID Gov – Jordan vs Little
MI Gov – Whitmer vs Schulette
IA Gov – Hubbell vs Reynolds
Bernie gave his presentation last night, about 8:30 ET, according to his office.
He tries to conclude it on a positive note. Watch for yourself…there are ads that will pop up about every 3-5 min if you don’t have YT premium, but you can skip them within 5 seconds.
The past 6 months have been a rodeo. Like the contestants of the rodeo, they all start with great promise. We had a lot of newcomers as well as some seasoned ones aspiring to move into a more risk taking adventure. I enjoyed the primary diaries we all participated in. March 6th saw the first state primary for the general election, and from it, Beto O’Roarke emerged as the Democratic nominee for the US Senate from Texas. Yesterday’s NY-NY primary marked the end of the primary season. While our three preferred candidates didn’t win, we did see the beginning of …Continue reading →
Bernie Sanders returned Sunday to Michigan, the state that re-vamped his underdog 2016 presidential campaign, hoping to boost the candidacy of another long-shot progressive looking to score an upset.
Sanders joined Abdul El-Sayed, 33, for two rallies — the first at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit, and the second in the town of Ypsilanti, 30 minutes west of the Motor City.
Taking the stage Sunday afternoon in Detroit, El-Sayed — who is trying to capture the Democratic nomination in this year’s Michigan gubernatorial race — echoed Sanders’ populist rhetoric, asking the crowd: “Who here believes in democracy over corporate domination?”
“We’ve got a broken politics, our politics right now have been dominated by corporate interests,” El-Sayed told the crowd, saying both parties are to blame for the issues plaguing the current political system.
El-Sayed also trumpeted his plan to create a “Medicare-for-All” healthcare system that he dubs “Michicare.” He added that the state needs to “de-Devos” its education system, an ode to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
Sanders hearkened back to his upset victory in the state over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primaries.
“On the day before the presidential primaries here in Michigan, the polls had me 27 points behind,” Sanders told the crowd. “That was pretty good, because the poll the day before had me 36 points behind.
“Well, we won that election, and by the way, so will Abdul,” Sanders said.
Fox News continues to spread misinformation about the Mercatus Study. Here’s Bernie’s video which thoroughly debunks the myths about the Canadian health care system: Fox News is at it again. They can't accept what a right-wing think tank found: that Medicare for All will actually save our country trillions of dollars. pic.twitter.com/5HakZHBFEa — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 31, 2018 Tweets and news items of possible interest in the comments section. Hope you have a great day!
I think if you ask a lot of people this question you will get a lot of different answers, so what is it? I think I can best define it as the interweaving of these two main components: Actual people unbeholden to moneyed interests running for office using Bernies technique of policy first, positive, PAC free and people oriented campaigning, offering real solutions the people can actually get excited to vote for, to stimulate political activity. Large percentages of the population becoming politically interested with some becoming actually politically active, specifically due to these real solutions being offered and help …Continue reading →
More down below, please feel free to throw something in.
I hope you’re all having a great day!!
This is what I’m sipping on right now:
The story of Yuengling is the story of the American Spirit. It’s a tale of shared dreams, individual tenacity and an unwavering dedication to standards of quality. Like many American stories it starts amid the dreams of countless young immigrants looking for opportunity and emerges from the strength and will of one family determined to build their legacy in a new country. The story of America’s Oldest Brewery began when David G. Yuengling arrived from Wuerttemberg Germany to settle in the sleepy, coal-mining town of Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
The Yuengling story is not without its controversies, but right now I’m just enjoying the refreshing flavor thinking about some lovely people I know in Ohio who are the ones who introduced this brand to me. Plus, I’m grateful have been able to splurge a little on beer today, lol. 😉
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says that the Trump administration is not serious about creating comprehensive immigration reform policy and says that the president needs to make it clear that the United States is not a nation which tears children from their parents.
Sen. Bernie Sanders may not be endorsing his own son’s congressional bid, but he rallied on a hot Monday night in Maryland to fire up voters for Ben Jealous’ campaign for governor.
The senator, known for his reluctance to endorse politicians, joined the former NAACP president outside an early voting center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
“I am proud to be here because Ben is one of those leaders who is not going to be nibbling around the edges, but understands we have got to transform the economic and political life of this country,” Sanders said in a plaza outside the voting center as a crowd of supporters cheered. Jealous stood by his side.
Jealous has been tied in recent polls with Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker in Maryland’s Democratic primary to challenge popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1.
Jealous and Sanders share support for tuition-free college and expanding Medicare to all. Sanders also praised Jealous for supporting a $15 minimum wage and equal pay for equal work.
Sanders also said he wanted to see Jealous become governor to be a loud voice against President Donald Trump in nearby Washington, D.C.
“And when the president of the United States continues to do outrageous things, like separating children from their parents, I want Mr. Trump to hear Ben Jealous’ loud voice,” Sanders said as supporters, many of them young adults, cheered.
Over and over again, myRepublican colleagues and some of my Democratic colleagues have come down to the Senate floor to complain about the $21 trillion national debt.
Over and over again, our Republican friends tell us that we cannot possibly afford to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care as a right to every man, woman and child through a Medicare for All program.
We have been told that we cannot afford to make public colleges and universities tuition free, or to make sure that everyone in America has access to affordable housing, childcare, or a good job that pays a living wage with good benefits.
Even though over half of older Americans have no retirement savings we have been told we need to cut Social Security.
But, when it comes to spending $716 billion on the military - more than the next ten countries combined - all of a sudden there is a deafening silence from my Republican colleagues about the deficit.
Though Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., lost the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 (and he might not win the nod in 2020, should he decide to run) he’s going to emerge triumphant from this moment in Democratic politics anyway.
Just look at the other candidates expected to run for the Democratic nomination in 2020, all of whom are in some way seeking to curry favor with Sanders’ supporters and coalescing around the policies he backed — even though, in 2016, those ideas were derided as a pipe dream promulgated by an old man from Vermont who didn’t understand the real world.
The most obvious example of this shift has occurred is in health care policy: Sanders’ single-payer style “Medicare for All” plan was widely panned by Beltway pundits and prognosticators in 2016 as hopelessly idealistic and a political non-starter. Now, though, Sanders has 16 co-sponsors on a single-payer bill, including potential 2020 contenders Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. The Democratic establishment, too, has come around to the idea that pushing for a single-payer style system is the correct thing to do.
Beyond health care, Booker has rolled out a plan to implement a jobs guarantee, Gillibrand and Booker want to legalize marijuana and they, along with Harris, have sworn off corporate PAC money. That first one is more than even Sanders dared to call for back in 2016; the latter two are straight out of his playbook. Even Sanders’ push for labor law reform, a dream of activists that didn’t happen under the Obama administration (despite Democrats having 60 votes in the Senate), has garnered its fair share of backers.
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Even if you assume that establishment-types really do believe that moderation is the path toward big majorities, there’s little reason to think their case is a good one. Democrats have been decimated in the last few election cycles, up and down the ballot. But in 2016, Sanders won in places — like West Virginia, Montana and Idaho — in which Democrats are not typically successful. So it’s probably worth seeing if a different kind of Democrat taking a more progressive stance could break the GOP’s stranglehold in similar places. Nothing else Democrats have done has worked so, if the party had any sense, it’d get out of the way and let some candidates give it a whirl.
More Democrats will be running Sanders-style campaigns over the next few cycles regardless of what the party does, thanks to simple political reality and voters’ distaste for dictates from on high. The party’s power to decide for its voters is ebbing. And, for that, progressives — even ones that voted for Hillary Clinton — have Bernie to thank.
