Progressives (Liberals)

Priorities USA Action, a hybrid PAC meant to aid the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, declared Biden as the likely nominee and is gearing up to run ads in his support.

“The math is now clear. Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee for President and Priorities USA is going to do everything we can to help him defeat Donald Trump in November. I hope others will join us in the fight,” Guy Cecil, chairman of the PAC tweeted Tuesday night.

The aim of the super PAC was to spend $150 million on online and television ads before the party’s convention in Milwaukee in July and remain neutral until then. With the odds in Biden’s favor, Priorities USA will now be the largest outside group in the race, and will use some of that budget backing the former vice president.

The group has raised $20.3 million through January. Priorities USA’s mission is to defeat President Donald Trump. With Biden’s successive wins in the primaries, it will now spend on ads defending him as the GOP launches their attack.

Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders may be getting lots of media attention as the battle for their party’s presidential nomination heats up, but voters in Iowa appear to be solidly behind President Trump for November.

Trump leads Biden 51 percent to 41 percent and leads Sanders 53 percent to 41 percent in Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll results released Thursday..

Iowans supported Barack Obama for president in both 2008 and 2012 but were all in for Trump in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, backing the New York businessman by a greater margin than traditionally conservative states such as Texas, The Hill reported.

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It’s not the Electoral College by itself, but the state winner-take-all rule. In each of the 48 states that use this rule (Maine and Nebraska are the exceptions), the candidate who wins the most votes gets all of that state’s electors, whether the margin is one hundred votes or one hundred thousand.

The winner-take-all rule means that the states that matter to the campaigns are the handful of so-called battleground states — this year, they include Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida — where the electorate is evenly divided, and the result is too close to predict. Both major parties spend virtually all of their resources trying to win over the voters in these states and for good reason. Why waste time and money stumping for support that won’t translate into any extra electoral votes?

The problem is that only about 20 percent of Americans live in a battleground state. The other 80 percent might as well be invisible when it comes to choosing their leader. These hundred million or more voters live in “the land of the ignored,” a term I heard from Reed Hundt, who served as F.C.C. chairman under President Bill Clinton and now runs an organization that argues for the popular vote.

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If candidates knew that they needed the most votes in the country, rather than the most votes in a few key districts in a few battleground states, they would base their appeals on what voters wanted rather than on where they happened to live. This could lead to a less polarized electorate, as candidates press for policies with broad national support, from immigration and health-care reform to background gun checks and protecting the environment.

Ignoring voters is the opposite of what the president is supposed to do, as the only elected official in America whose job it is to represent everyone equally, wherever they live. This is why the winner-take-all rule is so destructive to our nation’s politics and culture. It deforms our political relationship to one another, creating a false picture of a country carved up into bright red and blue blocs, when in fact we are purple from coast to coast. It undermines policies with broad public support. It increases mistrust of government and decreases voter turnout. And it warps how presidential candidates campaign and how presidents govern.

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Joe Biden promises to put Beto O’Rourke in charge of gun control

Moments after former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke — who promised in a September debate to take away legally purchased assault rifles if elected — endorsed Joe Biden’s White House run, the former vice president promised to name the Texan as his point man on gun control.

“I want to make something clear, I’m going to guarantee you this is not the last you’ve seen of him,” Biden said Monday evening during a campaign rally in Dallas. “You’re going to take care of the gun problem with me. You’re going to be the one who leads this effort.”

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) turned down repeated requests from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to appear at events promoting the Vermont senator’s candidacy in recent weeks, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

After the Iowa caucuses, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir asked Ocasio-Cortez to stump for Sanders in New Hampshire, according to the sources. The campaign prepared a model schedule to highlight the kind of popular support she would expect if she attended, one of the people familiar with the talks said.

Ocasio-Cortez resisted the entreaties until a few days before the primary on Feb. 12. She ultimately spoke the day before the election at a Sanders rally in Durham, New Hampshire, where the rock band The Strokes performed.

“It was like pulling teeth to get her to New Hampshire,” said a second person who knew about the discussions.

Stuart Stevens believes that this process could be especially salutary for Republicans, who have grown reliant on older, whiter voters at the expense of a big-tent coalition. “I think it would help Republicans if they knew they had to campaign all over the country,” he said. Right now, the Republican Party “can exist and flourish as basically a whites-only party. I think that’s incredibly corrosive.”

“If you have to communicate with a broader swath of Americans, how could that possibly be bad for the country?” Mr. Benenson said. “You know what voters really hate? This is the lesson of the last election: They hate being ignored.”

Bobby Lewis
@revrrlewis
· 2h
On Fox & Friends, Jerry Falwell Jr claims people are "overreacting" to coronavirus, the national response is "their next attempt to get Trump," and the virus itself is a North Korean bioweapon.

Biden mocked President Donald Trump's position on China at a campaign rally last week saying “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man...they can’t even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west... guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”

Chang also took issue with Biden's characterization of Chinese leaders saying "he also said Chinese leaders are good folks, we know those same Chinese leaders are committing crimes against humanity. Locking up 1.1, maybe 3 million Uighurs, in concentration camp-like facilities where a not insubstantial number of them are dying. I just don’t understand why he made that comment."

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WFXR) — Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. announced on Friday morning that university officials are working to eliminate large gatherings, including convocations, but that students will return to campus after spring break.

While this is a fluid situation, Falwell says “this too shall pass,” and does not predict any major changes moving forward.

Unless everything changes in the next week, Falwell says that Liberty University will not follow the path of other schools who are switching to online classes. Furthermore, Falwell says that commencement will continue outdoors as planned to reward the students’ hard work. However, the school will implement modified safety measures to accommodate those with respiratory problems and older individuals.

China hints at denying Americans life-saving coronavirus drugs

In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge America into "the mighty sea of coronavirus."

Acosta’s story headlined, “Source: Trump is concerned about coming into contact with people infected with coronavirus,” cited a single source “close to” the president who said Trump is uneasy after coming into contact with a Brazilian official who tested positive for coronavirus. The Brazilian president also later tested positive for the virus."

“This is the most idiotic thing I've seen all week. And this week that's saying something,” Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor told Fox News. “Of course, ‘Trump is concerned about coming into contact with people infected with coronavirus.’ We all are. And we're all supposed to be. That's how you stop a virus, by being concerned about who you interact with and taking precautions.”

CNN managed to milk the one anonymous quote for as long as possible. Acosta also reported his scoop on-air throughout the day, including a segment during Anderson Cooper’s “AC360.”

“I know Jim Acosta hates Trump. But this is even stupid for one of the most ridiculous figures in the history of journalism. What's amazing is Acosta isn't even good at trolling Trump. All he does is embarrass CNN and further degrade the news industry,” Gainor said. “CNN is trying to hurt Trump and divide our country in a time of national crisis.”

DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News that Acosta’s story “clearly falls into the category of ‘this is not news’” and simply the latest example of CNN’s anti-Trump business model.

“That CNN and it's White House correspondent want to make a big deal out of a normal concern is just more indication of their wide-ranging agenda to pester the Trump administration,” McCall told Fox News.

The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
1h
The number of Covid-19 cases in the D.C. region is doubling every 48 hours