What has Trump done to this country?

[DIY-HP-LED]

Looks like Pence's crowd is crawling with corona too, I wonder how many cases they are hiding... Perhaps Pence should be self isolating and not running around crowds maskless? 10 days before election day would be an inconvenient time to be quarantined.
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Pence adviser Marty Obst tests positive for coronavirus

A top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

www.cnn.com

Pence adviser Marty Obst tests positive for coronavirus

(CNN)A top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence tested positive for coronavirus earlier this week, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Marty Obst serves as Pence's senior political adviser but is not a government employee.
Bloomberg News first reported the positive test.
Obst is not the first person in Pence's orbit to test positive for the virus. Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this year.
Obst and Pence's office did not immediately return CNN's request for comment.
It's not clear when Obst was last in close proximity to Pence.
The vice president, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, held a rally in Tallahassee, Florida, on Saturday evening.
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Pence to continue traveling despite aides testing positive for COVID-19

Marc Short is Pence's closest aide.

www.axios.com

Pence chief of staff Marc Short tests positive for coronavirus

Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, tested positive for the coronavirus Saturday and is quarantining, according to a White House statement.

Why it matters: Short is Pence's closest aide, and was one of the most powerful forces on the White House coronavirus task force.

Short is a key a public face of the administration — one of its more frequent advocates in the press and on television — and works closely with West Wing staff.
Earlier Saturday, Marty Obst, a top outside adviser to Pence, tested positive, ABC News and others reported. Obst is an outside adviser and not a government employee.
The big picture: Short joins a long list of top White House officials who have been hit by the virus — one of the biggest crises ever to hit a White House, and a central issue in the election, which is less than 10 days away.

Katie Miller, Pence's communications director, tested positive in May.
After President Trump tested positive in early October, longtime aide Stephen Miller tested positive, as did press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
A FEMA memo reported that 34 people were associated with the White House outbreak, ABC News reported.


Several Pence Aides Test Positive for Coronavirus

• Members of Vice President Mike Pence’s inner circle, including his chief of staff, tested positive for the virus, people briefed on the matter said.
• The development raised new questions about the safety protocols at the White House, where masks are not routinely worn.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

There's trouble for Trump in Texas and they count early too, but it would be close there.
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Texas' Early Votes Top 76% of Total 2016 Turnout as Dems Aim to Win State

With its 38 electoral votes—the second-largest of any state—Texas is a key prize in the November 3 election.

www.newsweek.com

Texas' Early Votes Top 76 Percent of Total 2016 Turnout as Dems Aim to Win State for First Time in 44 Years

The state of Texas has already surpassed 76 percent of its total turnout in the 2016 general election with the number of early votes, as the Democratic Party is aiming to win the state for the first time in 44 years.

With its 38 electoral votes—the second-largest of any state—Texas is a key prize in the November 3 election. Once a reliably red state, recent polling indicates that Democratic candidate Joe Biden has a shot at flipping Texas blue. If successful, 2020 would mark the first year Texas has voted for a Democratic president since Jimmy Carter pulled off a win in 1976.

The Lone Star State went to President Donald Trump in 2016, with the Republican securing a lead nine percentage points higher than Hillary Clinton—and that was still the smallest margin seen by a Republican candidate in recent years.

But polling website FiveThirtyEight has Trump beating Biden by less than 1 percentage point in its national average, down significantly from Trump's 3.9 percent lead in March. Two of the most recent polls had Biden either ahead or tied with Trump.

A Morning Consult survey conducted October 11 through 20 polled more than 3,000 likely voters in the state to find Biden leading Trump by one point—48 to 47 percent. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted between October 16 and 19 found the candidates tied, both receiving 47 percent of likely voters' support.

Texans are heading to the polls in what appears to be record numbers this year. Early voting began in the state on October 13, but as of October 23, approximately 6,857,259 ballots had already been cast either by mail or in-person, according to the Texas secretary of state. This represents 76.45 percent of the total 2016 voter turnout, which saw 8,969,226 ballots cast.

There are nearly 17 million registered voters this year in the state, with the number of early votes amounting to a 40.44 percent turnout so far. In 2016, Texas experienced just a 59.39 percent turnout of its 15 million registered voters.

Texas has seen the highest voter turnout among youth voters across the U.S., according to new data released by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University.

At least 493,314 early votes or absentee ballots have been cast in Texas among residents between the ages of 18 and 29. That number is likely to be even higher, as data is available only for 23 counties in the state according for 65 percent of the population, researchers noted.

The record numbers seen in Texas are reflective of a larger pattern across the U.S., as early voting indicates this year's turnout could be the highest in the country since 1908. More than 56 million Americans have already cast their ballots ahead of the November 3 election, evidence of just how much the coronavirus pandemic and divisive political climate have shaken up the cycle.

University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, who tracks early voting totals through the United States Elections Project, is predicting 150 million votes will be cast. This would be a turnout of 62.5 percent, as nearly 240 million American citizens are eligible to vote this year.

The nation hasn't seen turnout that high in a presidential election since 1908 when Republican William H. Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan. Taft won the popular vote and an electoral college landslide.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

We'll have to call this one the slow motion election, as we can almost watch it unfold over the next week. Looks like the republicans aren't waiting for election day to hit the bricks, they are breaking early, is panic setting in?

Republicans crash Florida early vote, eating into Democrats’ lead

Dueling appearances from President Trump and former President Obama kicked off statewide early voting in Florida.

www.politico.com

Republicans crash Florida early vote, eating into Democrats’ lead
Dueling appearances from President Trump and former President Obama kicked off statewide early voting in Florida.

Florida Republicans are pouring out of the trenches.

After weeks of Democrats outvoting them by mail, Republican voters stormed early voting precincts in person this week, taking large bites out of their opponents’ historic lead in pre-Election Day ballots.

The Democratic advantage was still huge as of Saturday morning: 387,000 ballots. But that’s a 21 percent reduction from Democrats’ high water mark, set three days prior. The election is in 10 days.

President Donald Trump was one of those GOP voters going to the polls, kicking off Florida’s statewide in-person early voting period Saturday by casting his ballot in West Palm Beach and livestreaming an event to urge supporters to show up and catch Democrats. Further south, in Miami, former President Barack Obama held a rally for his former vice president, Joe Biden, at Florida International University.

The split-screen schedule of the two presidents, each of whom carried Florida with different voter coalitions, shed light on the different strategies of the two campaigns in Trump’s must-win state, with the president trying to supersize older and white voter turnout and Obama seeking to boost young Black and Latino voting.

“One of the biggest shortcomings in 2016 was Hillary Clinton was unable to assemble the Obama coalition, especially among younger Black voters and especially among younger Black men. The Biden campaign has accurately identified that that’s a challenge they need to overcome this time,” said Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart.

“So Obama [going] there is probably one of the items on the checklist and why the Obama visit makes sense.”

According to TargetSmart’s analysis, Black voters aged 18 to 29 have cast 15.8 percent of the total ballots so far in Florida. That’s half a percentage point down from the same period in 2016. Bonier pointed out that the total vote of that group, along with nearly all other demographics in the state, is up in raw votes and that “it’s not as if the numbers are bad. There’s opportunity.”

Bonier pointed out that white voters without a college degree, Trump’s most loyal supporters, have a smaller share of the vote so far when compared to 10 days before the election in 2016.

But Republicans are expecting those white voters to show now that in-person early voting has started in every county. As for young Black voter turnout, it’s problematic for Biden that he’s not even matching Clinton’s 2016 totals, which still weren't enough for her, said Florida’s top Republican data analyst, Ryan Tyson.

“If they’re excited about matching Clinton turnout, I say, ‘please do,’” Tyson said. “The only turnout that can defeat Trump soundly is an Obama coalition turnout, a turnout of the ascendant electorate of young voters, especially African American and Latino. Biden isn’t getting that. That’s why they’re bringing Obama to Miami. It’s appropriate to call it a rescue mission by Obama.”

Overall, Black voter and Hispanic voter turnout as a share of the early and absentee vote is higher than at this stage in 2016. But that’s mainly due to voting by older, high-propensity voters, who were expected to turn out any way, Tyson said. Democrats have led the way in turning out far more of these reliable voters than Republicans, who have 401,000 more high-propensity voters itching to cast ballots in person.

Republicans’ advantage in high-propensity voters in 2016 helped Trump overcome a deficit of nearly 247,000 votes on Election Day morning and beat Hillary Clinton by less than 113,000 votes.

Democrats are turning out more low-propensity voters and newly registered voters than Republicans. But as shares of their party’s votes, the proportions are roughly the same as 2016, according to an analysis by Tyson, whose most recent 1,000-sample Florida poll has Trump with a 2-point lead that’s well within the survey’s error margin of 3.1 points. Many recent public polls have Biden marginally leading.

“All signs point to another 1-to-2 percent Florida election,” Tyson said, noting that more younger voters are turning out, but older voters are still casting more ballots.
more...

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Opinion | R.I.P., G.O.P. (Published 2020)

The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump.

www.nytimes.com

Opinion
R.I.P., G.O.P.
The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump.

Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican Party is among the most dismaying.

“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals.

Tomato, tomahto. However you characterize it, the Republican Party’s dissolution under Mr. Trump is bad for American democracy.

A healthy political system needs robust, competing parties to give citizens a choice of ideological, governing and policy visions. More specifically, center-right parties have long been crucial to the health of modern liberal democracies, according to the Harvard political scientist Daniel Ziblatt’s study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe. Among other benefits, a strong center right can co-opt more palatable aspects of the far right, isolating and draining energy from the more radical elements that threaten to destabilize the system.

Today’s G.O.P. does not come close to serving this function. It has instead allowed itself to be co-opted and radicalized by Trumpism. Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its governing vision is reactionary, a cross between obstructionism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the party platform, is whatever President Trump wants — which might not be so pathetic if Mr. Trump’s interests went beyond “Build a wall!”

“There is no philosophical underpinning for the Republican Party anymore,” the veteran strategist Reed Galen recently lamented to this board. A co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee run by current and former Republicans dedicated to defeating Mr. Trump and his enablers, Mr. Galen characterized the party as a self-serving, power-hungry gang.

With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes beyond the usual policy flip-flops — what happened to fiscal hawks anyway? — and political hypocrisy, though there have been plenty of both. Witness the scramble to fill a Supreme Court seat just weeks before Election Day by many of the same Senate Republicans who denied President Barack Obama his high court pick in 2016, claiming it would be wrong to fill a vacancy eight months out from that election.

Mr. Trump demands that his interests be placed above those of the nation. His presidency has been an extended exercise in defining deviancy down — and dragging the rest of his party down with him.

Having long preached “character” and “family values,” Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusations of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grabbing unsuspecting women — none of it matters. White evangelicals remain especially faithful adherents, in large part because Mr. Trump has appointed around 200 judges to the federal bench.

For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office. After losing a budget fight and shutting down the government in 2018-19, he declared a phony national emergency at the southern border so he could siphon money from the Pentagon for his border wall. He put a hold on nearly $400 million in Senate-approved aid to Ukraine — a move that played a central role in his impeachment.

Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. Impeachment offered the most searing example. Parroting the White House line that the entire process was illegitimate, the president’s enablers made clear they had his back no matter what. As Pete Wehner, who served as a speechwriter to the three previous Republican presidents, observed in The Atlantic: “Republicans, from beginning to end, sought not to ensure that justice be done or truth be revealed. Instead, they sought to ensure that Trump not be removed from office under any circumstances, defending him at all costs.”

The debasement goes beyond passive indulgence. Congressional bootlickers, channeling Mr. Trump’s rantings about the Deep State, have used their power to target those who dared to investigate him. Committee chairmen like Representative Devin Nunes and Senator Ron Johnson have conducted hearings aimed at smearing Mr. Trump’s political opponents and delegitimizing the special counsel’s Russia inquiry.

As head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Johnson pushed a corruption investigation of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter that he bragged would expose the former vice president’s “unfitness for office.” Instead, he wasted taxpayer money producing an 87-page rehash of unsubstantiated claims reeking of a Russian disinformation campaign. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, another Republican on the committee, criticized the inquiry as “a political exercise,” noting, “It’s not the legitimate role of government or Congress, or for taxpayer expense to be used in an effort to damage political opponents.”

Undeterred, last Sunday Mr. Johnson popped up on Fox News, engaging with the host over baseless rumors that the F.B.I. was investigating child pornography on a computer that allegedly had belonged to Hunter Biden. These vile claims are being peddled online by right-wing conspiracy mongers, including QAnon.

Not that congressional toadies are the only offenders. A parade of administration officials — some of whom were well respected before their Trumpian tour — have stood by, or pitched in, as the president has denigrated the F.B.I., federal prosecutors, intelligence agencies and the courts. They have failed to prioritize election security because the topic makes Mr. Trump insecure about his win in 2016. They have pushed the limits of the law and human decency to advance Mr. Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.

Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. They have watched him politicize masks, testing, the distribution of emergency equipment and pretty much everything else. Some echo his incendiary talk, fueling violence in their own communities. In the campaign’s closing weeks, as case numbers and hospitalizations climb and health officials warn of a rough winter, Mr. Trump is stepping up the attacks on his scientific advisers, deriding them as “idiots” and declaring Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert in infectious diseases, a “disaster.” Only a smattering of Republican officials has managed even a tepid defense of Dr. Fauci. Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ignorance, these so-called leaders are complicit in this national tragedy.

As Republican lawmakers grow increasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will lose re-election — possibly damaging their fortunes as well — some are scrambling to salvage their reputations by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogyny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about why, the occasional targeted criticism notwithstanding, he has enabled these deficiencies for so long.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too, has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, including deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the defense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposition private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump “because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”

Profiles in courage these are not.

Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on his party would fill a book. It has, in fact, filled several, as well as a slew of articles, social media posts and op-eds, written by conservatives both heartbroken and incensed over what has become of their party.

But many of these disillusioned Republicans also acknowledge that their team has been descending into white grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for decades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide. “He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party has become in the last 50 or so years,” the longtime party strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, “It Was All a Lie.”

The scars of Mr. Trump’s presidency will linger long after he leaves office. Some Republicans believe that, if those scars run only four years deep, rather than eight, their party can be nursed back to health. Others question whether there is anything left worth saving. Mr. Stevens’s prescription: “Burn it to the ground, and start over.”

 

[mysunnyboy]

Now pence the penis has covid in his office?
HAHAHA

 

[CunningCanuk]

Now pence the penis has covid in his office?
HAHAHA

They’re calling it the White House second wave.

 

[dandyrandy]

Gods will.

 

[Jimdamick]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-america-in-2024/2020/10/23/f7be173a-14a6-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html

 

[mysunnyboy]

If there’s no Covid and our cases come from testing too much, why aren’t all these test results negative?

I’m just trying to follow his logic.

 

[MickFoster]

They’re calling it the White House second wave.

I'm waiting in high expectation for the White House final wave.......when they're waving goodbye.

 

[captainmorgan]

If there’s no Covid and our cases come from testing too much, why aren’t all these test results negative?

I’m just trying to follow his logic.

It's worse than that. tRUmp is falsifying the data and under reporting the numbers to the public while also claiming that the reported numbers are being inflated by greedy doctors,nurses and hospitals.

 

[topcat]

Gods will.

Hell, yeah!

 

[mysunnyboy]

It's worse than that. tRUmp is falsifying the data and under reporting the numbers to the public while also claiming that the reported numbers are being inflated by greedy doctors,nurses and hospitals.

Here in Florida we have no idea how many aren’t being counted.

 

[captainmorgan]

They're opening FEMA hospitals again and Texas just requested hospital space from the military bases there, but tRUmp claims it's going away lol.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Here in Florida we have no idea how many aren’t being counted.

I understand the scientist who they fired for refusing to doctor the numbers has her own website that has more accurate information, she designed the Florida government website before she was fired.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

They're opening FEMA hospitals again and Texas just requested hospital space from the military bases there, but tRUmp claims it's going away lol.

9 days before an election with voting underway and it will be close in Texas, Donald and covid might have turned Texas blue.

 

[hanimmal]

My cellphone won't shut up. I am getting so many texts and random explicit messages, I really can't wait for the elections to be over and hopefully the Democrats have enough power to shut down the spam trying to con people into giving them any information,and every other scam Trump's troll army (foreign and domestic) is conducting.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Gods will.

There is no God, if there were in the classical sense, he would have burned Pence down to his shoe's with bolt of lightning and there would be a smoking crater where Donald once stood. God intervenes and solves America's most acute problem, Amen

A just God would smite that pair a mite hard.

 

[schuylaar]

Those things aggravate me.

it's hysterical and when i run out of stuff to watch? there are so many.

 

[schuylaar]

My cellphone won't shut up. I am getting so many texts and random explicit messages, I really can't wait for the elections to be over and hopefully the Democrats have enough power to shut down the spam trying to con people into giving them any information,and every other scam Trump's troll army (foreign and domestic) is conducting.

everyone wants your vote hanimmal.