Democratic presidential nomination

Bill Taylor testifies that Trump wanted aid to Ukraine withheld in exchange for investigations against Biden

by Aaron Camp

AUTHOR’S NOTE #1: A charge(e) d’affaires is a person who heads a diplomatic embassy in the absence of an ambassador, or in vacancy of an ambassadorship. The masculine singular form is charge d’affaires, the feminine singular form is chargee d’affaires, and the plural form is charges d’affaires.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #2: The author of this blog post is supporting Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but has no official role in the Warren campaign or any other active presidential campaign.

William Brockenbrough “Bill” Taylor Jr., the U.S. charge d’affaires to Ukraine, testified to Congress earlier today that he had been told that President Donald Trump would withold military aid to Ukraine until the Ukraininan government publicly launched criminal investigations, including one into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, that could aid Trump’s re-election campaign:

The Top US diplomat in Ukraine Bill Taylor testified Tuesday that he had been told President Donald Trump would withhold military aid to the country until it publicly declared investigations that could help his reelection chances would be launched — including into former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a copy of Taylor’s opening statement obtained by CNN.

“During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election,” according to the testimony.

Sondland told Taylor he’d also made a mistake earlier by telling the Ukrainian officials that a White House meeting with Zelensky “was dependent on a public announcement of the investigations,” Taylor said.

“In fact, Ambassador Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,” Taylor testified.

Source

Ambassador Sondland refers to Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. President Zelensky refers to Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine.

Let me be absolutely clear about Taylor’s testimony. Taylor testified under oath to Congress that the sitting President of the United States engaged in an absolutely flagrant abuse of power. For the President to withhold aid to a foreign country in an effort to coerce a foreign government into investigating political opponents here at home is shockingly corrupt and a disgusting misuse of the U.S. foreign policy powers. These corrupt actions by Trump undermine America’s reputation at home and abroad.

As I’ve stated before, Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from the office of the Presidency. The work of the Congressional impeachment inquiry is very important to building the case for Trump’s removal from office via an impeachment trial.

Monmouth poll: Warren and Bernie TIED FOR THE LEAD, Biden in THIRD place!

by Aaron Camp

In a recent Monmouth University poll of voters who self-identify as Democratic voters or Democratic-leaning voters, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are tied for the lead, with Joe Biden also within the poll’s margin of error of first place.

According to the poll, which is of a sample of 298 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters conducted using scientific polling methods and conducted from August 16 to August 20, Warren and Sanders were each at 20%, with Biden in a very close third place at 19%. With a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7%, that means that Warren, Sanders, and Biden are all within the polling margin of error for first place among Democratic voters. The poll represents a significant drop in support for Biden compared to the previous Monmouth University national poll, which had Biden with a fairly comfortable lead against divided opposition. The poll also represents a modest increase in support for both Warren and Sanders. Warren had the highest net favorable rating among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters of any of the Democratic presidential candidates, at +52 net favorability (65% favorable, 13% unfavorable).

It is important to note that the most recent Monmouth national poll is a significant outlier compared to previous Monmouth polls, especially in regards to Biden’s support, which had been around 30%, plus or minus three percentage points, in five previous Monmouth national polls dating back to January of this year. The steady surge in Warren’s support over the last four Monmouth polls, on the other hand, is not an outlier: according to a Democratic presidential nomination polling tracker by The Economist, there has been a steady surge in support for Warren, with Warren surging from the mid-to-high single digits in the first three months of this year to around 18%. As of the publishing of this blog post, The Economist‘s polling tracker does not include the most recent Monmouth poll.

Megan Rapinoe leads Donald Trump in hypothetical general election matchup for President

by Aaron Camp

The pollster Public Policy Polling (PPP) recently polled a nationwide sample of registered voters about a hypothetical general election matchup of Republican President Donald Trump against Megan Rapinoe, a member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team that recently won the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Although Rapinoe’s political party affiliation, if any, is not publicly known, the poll assumes a hypothetical scenario in which Rapinoe were to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and be nominated by the Democratic Party. A PDF file of the poll data can be found here.

The poll found Rapinoe leading Trump by one percentage point (42% for Rapinoe, 41% for Trump), with a relatively large number of undecided voters (17% for “not sure”). For comparison, Hillary Clinton got a 48% plurality of the national popular vote in 2016 to Trump’s 46%, yet Trump won a majority of the Electoral College that actually elects the President in 2016.

The undecided voters in the PPP poll appear to lean towards Rapinoe in a hypothetical 2020 matchup against Trump: the poll crosstabs show that 24% of those who self-identified as having voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election were undecided in a hypothetical Trump vs. Rapinoe matchup in 2020, whereas only 3% of those who self-identified as having voted for Donald Trump were undecided in a hypothetical Trump vs. Rapinoe matchup in 2020. The poll also showed that 16% of self-identified Republicans and 8% of self-identified Trump 2016 voters would vote for Rapinoe if she were the Democratic nominee against Trump in 2020. Additionally, Trump’s approval rating in the poll is 42%, and Trump’s disapproval rating is 52%; the Trump approval/disapproval portion of the poll was included in the FiveThirtyEight Trump approval/disapproval poll aggregator.

While Rapinoe would be legally old enough to run for President next year, I seriously doubt that Rapinoe would even consider running for president. However, the poll, aside from one crosstab that goes against conventional political wisdom (the crosstab showing Trump performing worse among male voters than female voters, most polling has shown Trump performing far worse among female voters than male voters), is very good for illustrating how narrow Trump’s path to re-election is. As it stands now, Trump would have to win over a fairly substantial amount of support of voters who currently disapprove of his performance in office in order to win re-election, meaning that Trump would likely lose re-election unless there is a noticeable increase in his approval rating for one reason or another and/or Democrats nominate a very controversial candidate.

From a polling standpoint, Kamala was the overall winner of the first Democratic debate

by Aaron Camp

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author of this blog post is a supporter of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, but is not officially involved with the Warren campaign.

The pollster Morning Consult and Nate Silver’s predominantly election analysis and sports analysis-centric website FiveThirtyEight teamed up over the course of the two-night first Democratic presidential debate, held two days ago and yesterday, to poll likely Democratic primary or caucus participants in three waves: before the first night of the debate, between nights of the debate, and after the second night of the debate. Here’s the polling methodology information for each wave polled:

…The first wave of the poll was in the field from June 19 to June 26 among 7,150 registered voters who say they are likely to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus. It has a margin of error of +/- 1 percentage point using the 2016 Democratic primary electorate as the true population.

The second wave of the poll was conducted from June 26 to June 27 among 2,041 respondents who previously responded to the first wave; it has a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points. Of those respondents, 1,134 watched the first debate.

The third wave of the poll was conducted from June 27 to June 28 among 1,399 respondents who previously responded to the first wave, including 428 who responded to both the first and second waves; it has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. Of those respondents, 97 watched the first debate, 89 watched the second debate and 757 watched both debates.

Source

Of the 25 candidates currently seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, 20 of them participated on one of the two nights of the debate. The left-most two columns below denote which candidates qualified for the debate and which candidates participated on which night, while the right-most column below denotes the candidates who failed to qualify for the debate and, thus, were not allowed to appear on either night.

First night (6/26)

  • Cory Booker
  • Julian Castro
  • Bill de Blasio
  • John Delaney
  • Tulsi Gabbard
  • Jay Inslee
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Beto O’Rourke
  • Tim Ryan
  • Elizabeth Warren

Second night (6/27)

  • Michael Bennet
  • Joe Biden
  • Pete Buttigieg
  • Kirsten Gillibrand
  • Kamala Harris
  • John Hickenlooper
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Eric Swalwell
  • Marianne Williamson
  • Andrew Yang

Both nights of the debate were televised in English on most, if not all, NBC affiliates and on MSNBC, and in Spanish on Telemundo.

Did not qualify

  • Steve Bullock
  • Mike Gravel
  • Wayne Messam
  • Seth Moulton
  • Joe Sestak

Based on the polling data, there was a clear overall winner of the first debate: Kamala Harris, who participated in the second night of the debate. Kamala more than doubled her support as a result of her debate performance: 16.6% of respondents to the third wave of the poll stated that they support Kamala, representing a 10.3% increase from the second wave of the poll and an 8.7% net increase from the first wave of the poll. Based on the third wave of the poll, Kamala is now within the polling margin of error for second place with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Kamala’s debate performance included a memorable debate over segregation and school busing-related issues against Joe Biden, who also participated in the second night of the debate.

Joe Biden was, at least arguably, the overall loser of the first debate, although he remains the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, at least for now. Biden lost nearly a quarter of his support as a result of the debate, falling from 41.5% before the first night to 35.4% between nights to 31.5% after the second night. Out of the 20 candidates who participated in the debate, only Biden saw a drop in his favorable rating, with Biden’s favorable rating falling from 76.5% to 75.6%, representing a drop in favorability of 0.9%.

Only two candidates saw a drop in their unfavorable rating: Bernie Sanders, who participated in the second night of the debate, and Elizabeth Warren, who participated in the first night of the debate. Warren saw the largest drop in her unfavorable rating, with her unfavorable rating falling 1.0% from 13.5% to 12.5%. Bernie saw a nominal drop in his unfavorable rating, with his unfavorable rating falling 0.1% from 17.6% to 17.5%.

Most candidates saw both their favorable rating and their unfavorable rating rise as Democratic voters got to learn about them and learn more about them. Candidates that saw a much larger increase in their favorable rating than their unfavorable rating include Julian Castro and Cory Booker, who participated in the first night of the debate, as well as Kamala, who participated in the second night of the debate. Candidates that saw a much larger increase in their unfavorable rating than their favorable rating include Beto O’Rourke, who participated in the first night of the debate, and Marianne Williamson, who participated in the second night of the debate.

Trump’s Kristallnacht moment

by Aaron Camp

Last night, Donald Trump, in a move not associated with traditional federal law enforcement practices, publicly announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was going to “begin the process of removing” millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States:

This was strongly criticized by multiple candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in next year’s presidential election (this is not an endorsement of any of the candidates whose tweets are posted below):

Let me begin by stating that it is not normal practice in the United States for a planned, large-scale law enforcement raid of any kind to be publicly announced by the President before it happens. Although I am not a law enforcement official of any kind, and I do not claim to be a law enforcement official of any kind, in a typical law enforcement raid planned well in advance, it’s not typical to publicly announce the planned raid to the public, since that would give the suspects more than enough time to flee law enforcement and any threat of arrest. However, Trump’s planned undocumented immigrant roundup is not a typical law enforcement raid and is a lot more political in nature.

As I type this blog post, the hashtag #Kristallnacht is trending on Twitter. That’s a reference to Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany in which the Nazis destroyed synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses and buildings. Kristallnacht foreshadowed the horrific genocide known as the Holocaust, in which approximately six million Jews were killed en masse by the Nazi regime.

What Trump has announced is, for all intents and purposes, his Kristallnacht moment. While Trump claims that he’s going to remove undocumented immigrants from this country, if no country takes the people that he’s removing, who will? I fear that this policy will inevitably lead to a very large number of people placed into concentration camps. I know that the corporate media, which has enabled Trump’s entire political career, is going to avoid using the term “concentration camp” to describe the facilities that the undocumented immigrants will likely be placed (they’ll use terms like “detention center”), but they’re concentration camps. Also, I don’t compare the behavior of politicians in my own country to the acts of the German Third Reich unless there is a proper historical comparison, so for me to compare Trump’s planned undocumented immigrant raid to Kristallnacht is not a comparison I take lightly.

Furthermore, Trump’s planned undocumented immigrant raid is fundamentally against American values. NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who was repeatedly voted the most popular driver of NASCAR’s top division and won its single most prestigious race, the Daytona 500, twice, once said that “America is created by immigrants.”. To a significant extent, he’s right. In fact, the earliest colonizers of what is now the United States of America were undocumented immigrants. After all, they didn’t provide immigration papers to the Native Americans who lived in what is now the United States of America long before any non-indigenous people did. America has a long history of its government committing horrific human rights abuses, including, but not limited to, the Trail of Tears and World War II-era internment of Japanese-Americans. However, human rights abuse should never be a core American value and is not something that the American people should celebrate. We, the American people, must speak up against Trump’s proposed raid against undocumented immigrants before it’s too late.

Elizabeth Warren gets ridiculously easy draw for first debate

by Aaron Camp

The draw to determine which candidates debate on the first night and which candidates debate on the second night of the first Democratic presidential primary/caucus debate has been held, and a lot of the discussion about it has focused on Elizabeth Warren being the only one of the five candidates who, based on current opinion polling, are largely seen as having a reasonable chance of winning the Democratic nomination, to get a debate spot in the “orange” debate, with Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris all being drawn into the “purple” debate:

It’s not clear whether NBC, which holds the broadcast rights to the debate, will air the orange or purple debate on the first night. Warren being the only candidate who is currently polling consistently at several percent or higher (in fact, one poll had Warren within a typical polling margin of error of taking the lead in California, a delegate-rich state that moved its primary from to March for 2020) has already resulted in a lot of chatter on social media, which was summarized by The Nation magazine’s Joan Walsh:

I’m a Warren supporter, for full disclosure, but I’m of the opinion that Warren got a very favorable draw. I do understand the argument that the “orange” debate will probably get lower TV ratings due to Warren being well ahead of the candidates that she’s debating against in polling, although the “orange” debate is going to be about as close to an infomercial for Warren’s campaign as she could ask for from a debate. The position that Warren is in is analogous to a golfer with a morning tee time having favorable weather conditions early in the final round of a major golf tournament while the leaders, with afternoon tee times, having to play in poor weather conditions later in the day. Warren doesn’t have to go negative at all in her debate, whereas Bernie is probably going to force Biden, Buttigieg, and Kamala to, at the very least, go negative on Bernie in response to Bernie’s inevitable criticisms of his debate opponents. This is going to help Warren greatly.

Joe Biden completely misreads the American political landscape

by Aaron Camp

At a recent campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, Joe Biden referred to Donald Trump’s presidency as an aberration:

As Joseph R. Biden Jr. made his way across Iowa on his first trip as a 2020 presidential candidate, the former vice president repeatedly returned to one term — aberration — when he referred to the Trump presidency.

“Limit it to four years,” Mr. Biden pleaded with a ballroom crowd of 600 in the eastern Iowa city of Dubuque. “History will treat this administration’s time as an aberration.”

“This is not the Republican Party,” he added, citing his relationships with “my Republican friends in the House and Senate.”

There is no disagreement among Democrats about the urgency of defeating Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden’s singular focus on the president as the source of the nation’s ills, while extending an olive branch to Republicans, has exposed a significant fault line in the Democratic primary.

Source

While Trump’s presidency is repulsive and a complete and total disgrace to America, Trump’s presidency is, sadly, not an aberration at all.

If Trump’s presidency were an aberration, he would be in serious danger of losing the Republican nomination to a candidate who would be perceived as more in line with what would be expected of a standard-bearer of the Republican Party. That is not the case at all. While Trump doesn’t have majority support of the entire American electorate, he’s in serious danger of losing the general election to whoever wins the Democratic nomination, and there are some Republicans who are at least occasionally willing to criticize Trump or otherwise refuse to side with Trump on one issue or another, the vast majority of Republicans are completely on board with Trump’s brand of far-right fascist political ideology, and there is virtually zero chance of Trump losing the Republican nomination. The standard-bearer of the Republican Party is Donald Trump, and the modern Republican Party is too far-right and too supportive of white supremacist political ideology to be willing to compromise with even centrist Democrats like Biden, let alone a progressive.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden’s political mentality is, more so than his political ideology, way out of line with the polarized nature of modern American politics. Biden’s misread of the American political landscape is not as bad as, for example, Joe Crowley completely misreading the Democratic primary electorate in the 14th Congressional District of New York, which led to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory over Crowley last year, but it’s a serious misread of the American political landscape by Biden.

Despite not much media attention, Elizabeth Warren surges into 2nd nationally in at least one poll

by Aaron Camp

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post, written by the administrator of this blog, was originally published to DailyKos. The original version of this blog post is available here.

Even with Joe Biden’s entry to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination being the subject of most of the media coverage of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in recent days, Elizabeth Warren has surged ahead of Bernie Sanders and into a distant second place in the most recent Quinnipiac opinion poll. Biden leads the Democratic primary field with 38% support nationally, indicative of a trend backed by a couple of other polls showing Biden surging from around 30% or so to nearly 40% since his campaign launch late last week, making Biden a clear, but not prohibitive, frontrunner. Warren is at 12%, tripling her support from the previous Qunnipiac poll that was taken a month ago. Bernie is in third place at 11%, a drop of eight points from the previous Quinnipiac poll.

If the race for the Democratic presidential nomination ends up becoming effectively a two-way race between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, that would provide what would likely be the single biggest contrast in a contested Democratic nomination contest since the Dixiecrat era. Biden is seen as a centrist candidate in a field of candidates in which most of his opposition is trying to appeal to progressive voters and is seen as representing the Democratic Party’s less-than-progressive past, whereas Warren is one of the most progressive candidates, if not the most progressive candidate, in the race, and at least arguably the most progressive candidate with a reasonable chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

Call fascism what it is

by Aaron Camp

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post is not an endorsement of any presidential candidate by the author of this blog post.

At an event in Iowa, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke compared Donald Trump’s rhetoric degrading immigrants to this country to the rhetoric used by infamous former German dictator Adolf Hitler to degrade Jewish people and others despised by Hitler:

I have absolutely no problem with the idea of Democratic presidential candidates making valid comparisons between Trump and other fascist dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, etc.. In fact, I think that it’s absolutely vital that Democrats call fascism what it is and actively oppose all 14 points of fascism.