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🗳 2020 Primary Election

General Discussion
#204

Here comes some in-your-face heckling from former undocumented workers (Trump properties) to make some noise at what will be T’s re-announcing his bid for re-election in Orlando tomorrow.

Hasn’t this whole term been all about winning again…or rather staying “King?” :clown_face:

Undocumented immigrants canned from President Trump’s ritzy golf clubs in New York and New Jersey are crashing his 2020 campaign kickoff in Florida to shed light on what they consider his “cruelty and hypocrisy,” their attorney told the Daily News on Monday.

The five workers — who were axed along with scores of fellow undocumented Trump employees after The News and other outlets reported on their situation earlier this year — were set to travel to Orlando, Fla., Monday afternoon to hold a Tuesday morning press conference outside the Amway Center, where the president is expected to officially announce his reelection bid later in the day, said Anibal Romero, a lawyer for the immigrants.

“No one knows better than Trump himself that immigrants are hardworking individuals who support a multitude of industries across the country, including his restaurants, golf courses, wineries and hotels,” said Romero, who represents 44 undocumented immigrants who used to work at Trump properties.

“And no one knows better than the undoumented workers who worked for Trump, how urgent it is for Congress to pass humane and sensible immigration laws so that immigrants can continue contributing to their communities and to our nation, just like they did for Trump and his family.”

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#205

Lots of criticism of DNC chairman Tom Perez…

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#206

Valerie Jarrett has been talking about Obama’s ‘concern’ for what’s going on…ok, come on back in…it is a freakin’ mess.

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#207

GOP House members worried they won’t win the House back in 2020. :smirk:

The House GOP campaign arm is under fire from Republicans who are growing increasingly anxious about the party’s plan to win back the chamber in 2020.

Republicans still don’t have an answer to Democrats’ online fundraising behemoth ActBlue. GOP leaders are bickering behind closed doors. The head of recruitment has decided to retire. And some rank-and-file lawmakers are starting to express alarm about the party’s strategy as the campaign ramps up.

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#208

What Joe Biden said about having to work with Segregationists on legislation in the Senate was weird, unnecessary but mostly it was tone-deaf racist in this climate. I feel he needs to apologize, what do you guys think?

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#209

And look another contender former Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) enters the race. Wonder if there will ever be a debate stage for him, now that it’s overloaded and trying to winnow itself down.

Former congressman Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) announced Sunday that he is running for president, joining 23 earlier entrants in the presidential race.

Sestak made the announcement in a video posted to his campaign website.

“I’m Joe Sestak, and I wore the cloth of the nation for over 31 years in peace and war, from the Vietnam and Cold War eras to Afghanistan and Iraq and the emergence of China,” Sestak said in the video. “Born and raised in Pennsylvania, I grew up in this global canvas of service in the United States Navy.”

Sestak served two terms in the House, from 2007 to 2011.

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#210

This profile in the NYT does not surprise me about Sen Elizabeth Warren…the fact she is so competitive and so well informed gives me hope that she can raise the bar.

The rap on a being female candidate for a surprising number of people is well, that she is female because we are still in the stone ages in terms of letting the ‘lesser sex’ get into leadership roles. The more contrarian rap on her intellectual skills and her command of the issues is that she is probably not understood by the T base…

Side note: I had been reading from the book “The Insane Clown President” by Matt Taibbi/Rolling Stone* and many of the voters could not understand the depth of what Hillary had to say and called it BS. They might have anyway called it BS, because it was of course Hillary who in their eyes is the hated one. I just am aware of what low information voters count as who may be considered capable of leading.

Pg 283 excerpt
Many reporters, myself included, found themselves thinking about this film (Beavis and Butthead) when we heard voters saying they were literally incapable of understanding the world coming our of Hillary Clinton’s mouth.
“When T talks I actually understand what he is saying,” a young Pennsylvanian named Trent Gower told me at a Trump event a month ago.“But, like, when fricken’ Hillary Clinton talks, it just sound like a bunch of bullshit.”

“So these T voters had a comprehension problem. But we were just as bad. We couldn’t understand what they were saying to us.” We refused to accept every signal about whom they hated, and how much. Why? Because Trump’s voters were speaking a language that has been taboo in America for decades, if not forever."

  • I know Matt Taibbi believed that the Russian influence in the elections idea was overblown and false, and I do not agree with him on it, but I like his questioning mind on things…and am therefore quoting here.

She loved learning about the big topics of the day — Medicare, unions, nuclear disarmament. She began carrying around a large metal box with hundreds of index cards with quotes and facts written on them.

She was competitive and had extraordinary focus and self-discipline, spending hours after school each day practicing. Joe Pryor, a high school friend and debate teammate, remembers her “ruthlessness in preparation.” By the time they were juniors, he said, “she was just flat out better than me.”

…>

Her ferocious command of details on a debate stage once earned her a college scholarship. Now she is deploying that skill in town halls across the country and on Wednesday in the Democratic National Committee’s first debate for the 2020 election.

While her prowess in debate has remained a constant, her political views have not.

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#211

The first Democratic Debate is tonight, from 9 to 11pm ET

The field is so large that the Democratic National Committee and NBC News split it into two 10-person debates, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET on Wednesday and Thursday, airing on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo.

Up first on Wednesday night: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

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#212

I don’t how to cover this debate objectively, so I’m just going to post some fact check articles now. :woman_shrugging:t2: I’ll update this comment as I find them.

FYI, Julián Castro’s first name is pronounced “who-lee-AHN”.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/26/politics/democratic-debate-fact-check-night-1/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

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#213

I feel like he planned this one somehow :expressionless:

President Donald Trump’s initial reaction to the first 2020 Democratic presidential debate: "BORING!"

The presidential tweet landed as candidates on the debate stage in Miami were asked about the crisis at the southern U.S. border involving migrant children.

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#214

Yes…probably.
.
He likes playing the chilish imp…

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#215

Second night of debates fact-check round up.

FYI, Senator Harris’s first name, Kamala is pronounced “Comma-la”. Mayor Buttigieg is pronounced like “Buddha-Judge”.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/27/politics/democratic-debate-fact-check-night-2/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/28/fact-checking-first-democratic-debate-night/?utm_term=.3b5b3ae33343

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#216

Biden definitely was a lackluster debater…he was out-of-step, and was very much lacking in a firey approach, much less caught off balance on details. In the hand-raising portion of the debate, he was seen surveilling the group’s response and then responding. It does not surprise me that although he’s been in the top position in terms of polls, he is in no way guaranteed the nomination.

Some fall-out below…

Former Vice President Joe Biden lost one of his top fundraisers after controversial comments regarding his work with past segregationists and his flip flop on repealing the Hyde Amendment, CNBC has learned.

On June 20, Tom McInerney, a veteran San Francisco based lawyer, informed Biden’s team that he can no longer help him raise campaign cash to compete in the 2020 presidential election.

“I had actually let the campaign known I’d pulled back my support of Biden for now,” McInerney told CNBC. “I don’t think he did well last night,” he added, reflecting on Biden’s debate performance on Thursday night.

thread

But later - denial

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#217

@dragonfly9

Yeah, who knows what’s really going on there? Vice President Joe Biden is has a voting record that spans several decades and he’s running on a weird platform of a “return to normalcy”, whatever that is anymore. He’s going to be forever explaining that record in a time when Democrats are not looking back with nostalgia. It’s too bad, no matter the criticism and I have plenty of my own, Biden will remain a steady experienced leader who can get the votes in Congress. This just may not an easy race for him, he’s not a “change” candidate. Tough spot in this caucus. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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#218

Well put @Pet_Proletariat

His appeal has to be wide and he must ‘check’ a lot of boxes in terms of satisfying the next huge and consequential vote. But we want someone who can slay T on many levels - rhetorically, morally and with conviction. Tall order in this world of highly entrenched partisan politics.

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#219

Florida’s poll tax and Desantis’ ramming this through is just another voter-control device the R’s want to maintain power.

And then this lawsuit…

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#220

Interesting data set, polling before and after the debates to track support. Read more and view the graphs :point_down:

Among all 20 candidates, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro earned the highest scores for their debate performances relative to their favorability rating before they took the stage, according to the voters in our poll. Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker also rated well, but their scores were more in line with their pre-debate favorability. Meanwhile, voters didn’t exactly think Beto O’Rourke did badly on Night 1, but his grades were underwhelming given his popularity.

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#221

Here it comes, the political dirty tricks and maneuvering with fake websites parodying Dem candidates.

For much of the last three months, the most popular Joseph R. Biden Jr. website has been a slick little piece of disinformation that is designed to look like the former vice president’s official campaign page, yet is most definitely not pro-Biden.

From top to bottom, the website, JoeBiden.info, breezily mocks the candidate in terms that would warm the heart of any Bernie Sanders supporter: There are GIFs of Mr. Biden touching women and girls, and blurbs about his less-than-liberal policy positions, including his opposition to court-ordered busing in the 1970s and his support for the Iraq war. Pull quotes highlight some of his more famous verbal gaffes, like his description of his future boss, Barack Obama, as “articulate and bright and clean.” The introductory text declares, “Uncle Joe is back and ready to take a hands-on approach to America’s problems!”

All the site says about its creator is buried in the fine print at the bottom of the page. The site, it says, is a political parody built and paid for “BY AN American citizen FOR American citizens,” and not the work of any campaign or political action committee.

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#222

More tricks up their sleeves…

A company run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm brought down by a scandal over how it obtained Facebook users’ private data, has quietly been working for President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica’s efforts before its collapse. The company’s former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, leads the new firm, which also includes Cambridge Analytica’s former chief data scientist.

Oczkowski denied a link to the Trump campaign, but acknowledged that his new firm has agreed to do 2018 campaign work for the Republican National Committee. Oczkowski led the Cambridge Analytica data team which worked on Trump’s successful 2016 campaign.

The AP learned of Data Propria’s role in Trump’s re-election effort as a result of conversations held with political contacts and prospective clients in recent weeks by Oczkowski. In one such conversation, which took place in a public place and was overheard by two AP reporters, Oczkowski said he and and Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, were "doing the president’s work for 2020."

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#223

A fake Joe Biden campaign website is being run by an operative on President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, according to a new report Saturday.

The New York Times tracked down the owner of a site with the URL JoeBiden.info, a “parody” campaign website featuring out-of-context quotes from the former vice president and leading 2020 Democratic candidate. The site also includes GIFs of him touching women in ways that others alleged made them uncomfortable.

Patrick Mauldin is a digital media specialist who worked on messaging for Trump’s 2016 campaign and, according to the Times , has been working on the president’s re-election campaign. Along with his brother, Mauldin runs Vici Media Group, a Republican consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Mauldin acknowledged to the paper his role in creating the website, which he has used to spread disparaging and sometimes misleading content about Biden.

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