51.5% Disapprove
44.9% Approve
Poll is out of likely voters. (April 10,2020)
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Good Sunday reading
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AP reports
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Yes…all that unsafe waiting in line got the Democrat into the WI Supreme Court position. 
A liberal challenger defeated the conservative incumbent for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a key race at the heart of Democratic accusations that Republicans risked voters’ health and safety by going forward with last week’s elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Jill Karofsky beat Daniel Kelly, whom then-Gov. Scott Walker (Republican) appointed to the state’s high court in 2016. Trump endorsed Kelly, and on Election Day urged Wisconsin voters “to get out and vote NOW” for the justice.
With 84 percent of returns counted, Karofsky led Kelly by about 91,000 votes, about 7 percentage points.
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Amash with a possible 3rd party run 
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This is a power excerpt from Obama’s endorsement today of Joe Biden (2.21 mins)
Obama comes out swinging…he’s been not saying anything, so I am glad he’s unleashing now.
video 
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Amy Klobuchar: The Right Way to Vote This November
If voting by mail is good enough for President Trump, it’s good enough for all Americans.
In a democracy, no one should be forced to choose between health and the right to vote.
Imagine if days before the November election you learn that your polling place has been closed, that your request for an absentee ballot has gone unfulfilled and that you have to risk a grave infection by standing in line — possibly for hours — to claim your stake in our democracy.
If that sounds outrageous to you, it should. But it’s exactly what happened in the Wisconsin election last week. First the Republican-controlled State Legislature blocked Gov. Tony Evers’s efforts to delay the election for public safety reasons, and then the United States Supreme Court reversed his order to extend the absentee ballot deadline.
In Milwaukee, which has the largest minority population in the state, the number of open polling places was shrunk to five from 180, as poll workers dropped out. In Green Bay, the number plunged to two from 31. Needless to say, the lines were hours long. Voters wore homemade face masks to protect themselves from contracting the coronavirus — if they were willing to risk voting at all.
And if you think there ought to be a better way, you’re not alone. I know of one person who, with an election approaching in his newly adopted state, simply requested an absentee ballot from the comfort of his own home — so he could vote safely and easily by mail.
His name? Donald Trump. His address? 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for all Americans.
I’m lead sponsor on a bill, with Senator Ron Wyden, that would require every state to allow its citizens to vote easily by mail. We are asking Congress to help states ramp this up in a big way, with funding for everything from workers to envelopes to postage.
My husband, John, just recovered from Covid-19. I know firsthand that it’s a brutal illness, even if, like him, you’re 52 and healthy — and for too many, it’s deadly. Public health officials have warned us that we simply don’t know how long it will last — or if there will be a second, third or fourth wave, once we reopen businesses and resume our lives. And many of those same experts will tell you that many Americans will still be at risk on Nov. 3, the date of the general election.
That is why we must reform our election systems, so that sheltering in place can also mean voting in place. And we must do it now, while we still have the time to preserve everyone’s ability to vote in November.
What we’re proposing is neither radical nor untried. About a quarter of voters already cast their ballots by mail. In fact, all states offer some form of it. Five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington — vote almost entirely by mail. And these are states that have elected Republicans and Democrats alike; there’s nothing partisan about full participation. At the same time, both Democratic and Republican governors and secretaries of state have recently taken actions to make voting by mail more accessible during this pandemic.
It’s troubling that many states still insist on making it hard to mail in a ballot. Sixteen states require voters to provide an excuse to obtain an absentee ballot (though several have lifted that requirement for their primary elections); six states also require more than one witness, or a notary, to validate a mail-in ballot. Imagine trying to drum up witnesses — much less a notary — in the thick of a public health crisis. We need to do away with the hurdles and the back flips once and for all.
In addition to providing reforms and necessary funding to states to ensure safe voting by mail, our legislation would require every state to offer at least 20 days of early voting at polling locations. This is so important in a pandemic because it shrinks the lines at the polls. It’s critical to those Americans who have disabilities, need language assistance or don’t have easy access to mailboxes even in the best of times.
Reform won’t come without a cost. We are pushing for ample funding to help states immediately prepare for mail voting, in addition to the $400 million Congress has already approved for that purpose, as well as for more early, in-person polling locations and protecting the health and safety of poll workers.
As we debate the next federal legislative relief package for Covid-19, here is what we know for sure: Failure to prepare for this pandemic has cost so much. Lives have been lost. Businesses large and small — representing lifetimes of hard work — now stand boarded up.
Yet there were so many signs it was coming.
November is coming, too. We need to make sure all of America doesn’t suffer what Wisconsin just did.
And if you want to know what it’s like to vote in a healthy, safe and secure way — from the comfort of your own home — just ask President Trump. He’s been doing it for years.
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Good.
The poll, conducted between April 1 and April 14 with a margin of error of 4%, shows that 43% of people surveyed approve of Trump’s job as president while 54% disapprove.
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article242092306.html
A new Gallup poll released on Thursday shows the biggest drop ever in ratings for President Donald Trump and reflects the consistent gender gap in approval between men and women.
The poll, conducted between April 1 and April 14 with a margin of error of 4%, shows that 43% of people surveyed approve of Trump’s job as president while 54% disapprove.
Gallup’s previous poll found that 49% of respondents approved of Trump’s job performance while 45% disapproved.
FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate of polling shows Trump with a 44% approval rating and 52% disapproval rating among likely or registered voters. Trump experienced a spike in approval in late March as the US began to grapple with a sudden increase in confirmed coronavirus cases — but that approval increase has since declined in April, the aggregate of polling shows.
Some pollsters called Trump’s uptick in approval rating a “rally-around-the-flag” event, or when a president receives a surge in support following a national crisis, as reported by NPR. Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, told NPR that Trump’s temporary increase in approval amid the coronavirus pandemic was not as pronounced as it has been for other presidents.
“We’re seeing although his numbers have inched up, it’s still roughly in his zone of support,” Miringoff said in late March. “Look, he’s not getting the rally-around-the-president [effect] that presidents in crisis have gotten.”
The latest Gallup poll also shows that a large percentage of women also disapprove of Trump compared to men. 37% of women approve of Trump and 60% disapprove while 49% of men approve and 47% disapprove.
A poll from TheHill/HarrisX showed an 18 point gender gap between men and women on Trump after he was acquitted from his Senate impeachment trial, according to The Hill. 58% of men approved and 42% disapproved while 40% of women approved and 60% disapproved.
And in January, a 7 News/Emerson College poll found a 19 point gap between how men and women view Trump — just 38% of women approved of his job as president while 57% of men said the same, according to Bloomberg.
It’s a gender gap that has remained since Trump was first elected into office.
In the 2016 presidential election, women voted for Clinton over Trump 54-42, according to the Pew Research Center, while men supported Trump over Clinton 53-41.
According to recent Real Clear Politics polling data, 11 national polls show that the majority of those surveyed disapprove of Trump. An average of 45.7% approve of Trump while 50.9% disapprove.
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Glad to see it is close in Iowa as well, and the 4 states to watch - Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina and very close as well, but Dems do have a chance of pulling off an upset.
With 200 days to go until Election Day, the Democrats’ path to a Senate majority currently hinges on four states: Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina, where Republican incumbents are fighting off challenges from well-funded Democratic opponents.
Democrats need to flip three or four seats, depending on which party wins the White House in November, to take control of the Senate. But one of their incumbents up for reelection this year, Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), is in serious political jeopardy, meaning that Democrats will likely have to take at least four Republican-held seats — and hold back GOP challenges in nearly a dozen other state
…
Democrats’ softest target may be in Colorado, where Sen. Cory Gardner ® is facing changing political headwinds and a challenge from John Hickenlooper, the state’s popular former Democratic governor and the prohibitive front-runner in a crowded primary field.
The party is also confident of defeating Sen. Martha McSally ® in Arizona. McSally already lost a bid against Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in 2018 and took office only after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey appointed her to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
And in Maine, Democrats have it out for Sen. Susan Collins ®, a four-term senator whose vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations touched off a flurry of anger from the left. She’s widely expected to face Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, the Democratic front-runner, in November.
Democrats are also looking to oust Sen. Thom Tillis ® in North Carolina. He’s set to face off against national Democrats’ candidate of choice, Cal Cunningham, in November, and recent polls suggest a tight race.
A survey from the Democrat-leaning firm Public Policy Polling released this week showed Cunningham leading Tillis by a 7-point margin, while a poll from the conservative Civitas Institute out last week put Tillis ahead by 4 points.
Outside groups on both sides of the aisle have poured money into all four states in recent months.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), booked a combined $43.7 million in fall ad reservations across the four battleground states late last month, along with another $32.6 million in Iowa and Kentucky.
And just this week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, invested some $33 million in advertising across seven states: Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Montana and North Carolina.
…
Consequently, Democrats are hoping to bring a handful of other states into play, including Iowa, where Democrats say Sen. Joni Ernst ® is increasingly vulnerable.
A Des Moines Register–Mediacom Iowa poll last month showed Ernst’s approval rating at 47 percent, down 10 points from a year ago. And while Ernst has outraised her top Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, over the past two quarters, Greenfield has kept the fundraising gap relatively tight. In the first quarter, for instance, she raised about $500,000 less than Ernst.
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Adam Schiff: Russia Is Still Interfering With US Elections—and Trump Is Covering It Up
The Intelligence Committee chair says the president is holding back information.
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Russian internet trolls are apparently switching strategies for 2020 U.S. elections
Russian internet trolls appear to be shifting strategy in their efforts to disrupt the 2020 U.S. elections, promoting politically divisive messages through phony social media accounts instead of creating propaganda themselves, cybersecurity experts say.
The Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency may be among those trying to circumvent protections put in place by companies including Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to find and remove fake content that hackers created to sow division among the American electorate in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Instead of creating content themselves, we see them amplifying content,” said John Hultquist, the director of intelligence analysis at FireEye Inc. “Then it’s not necessarily inauthentic, and that creates an opportunity for them to hide behind somebody else.”
Other hackers are breaking into computing devices and using them to open large numbers of social media accounts, according to Candid Wueest, a senior threat researcher at Symantec Corp. The hacked devices are used to create many legitimate-looking users as well as believable followers and likes for those fake users.
While covert efforts to amplify divisive content originated by others isn’t a new technique, hackers and trolls seem to be embracing it heavily in advance of the next U.S. presidential election.
Wueest said he observed a decrease in the creation of new content by fake accounts from 2017 to 2018 and a shift toward building massive followings that could be used as platforms for divisive messages in 2020.
FBI’s Concern
FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, said social media remains a primary avenue for foreign actors to influence U.S. elections, and the bureau is working with companies on the problem.
“What has continued virtually unabated and just intensifies during the election cycles is this malign foreign influence campaign, especially using social media,” Wray said. “That continues, and we’re gearing up for it to continue and grow again for 2020.”
Yet removing foreign influence campaigns remains a slippery task for social media companies.
Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said policing those efforts is “an incredibly hard balance.”
Companies must “identify ways to impose more friction on the bad actors and the behaviors that they’re using without simultaneously imposing friction on the meaningful public discussion,” Gleicher said.
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At least 7 new coronavirus cases appear to be related to Wisconsin’s election, Milwaukee health commissioner says
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Let’s build a war chest
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I want Biden/Harris. 
Who are you all hoping will the VP?
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