November 18, 2018

Let's hear it for ActBlue!

ActBlue, the Democrats’ Not-So-Secret Weapon

By Lisa Lerer

There have been a lot of Democratic winners this election cycle. Many are historic firsts. More than two dozen are veterans. And more than 100 are women.

But all have at least one thing in common: ActBlue.

The online giving platform emerged as the piggy bank of the Democratic resistance in the 2018 midterms, funneling nearly $1.6 billion in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes. That’s more than an 80 percent increase over what it brought in four years ago.

And while ActBlue wasn’t the sole source of small-dollar donors for Democrats, it was certainly a powerful one: The candidates, committees and organizations who used the platform — more than 14,500 of them — paid credit card transaction fees and, in turn, got to outsource their financial collections to tested, easy-to-use software. (The group, a nonprofit, funds its staff of about 100 through donations.)

[...]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/on-politics-actblue-democrats.html

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Y'all been hiding actblue from me; I never had it so easy and simple to donate before.

November 15, 2018

Republican group runs "protect Mueller" ad on Trump's favorite show

Republican group runs “protect Mueller” ad on Trump’s favorite show

Viewers of President Donald Trump’s favorite cable news network were in for a surprise on Wednesday morning. A Republican group aired what amounted to a negative Trump commercial — one that urged viewers to demand that the president’s openly anti-Mueller attorney general recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.

“We need an attorney general who doesn’t play politics,” the ad’s narrator says, urging viewers to call their members of Congress and “tell them that [acting attorney general Matthew] Whitaker must recuse himself from the Mueller investigation.”

Republicans for the Rule of Law, a political nonprofit, paid for the ad to run in Washington, DC, and New York City during Fox & Friends — a show the president regularly live-tweets.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/14/18094886/republicans-for-the-rule-of-law-fox-friends-whitaker-mueller

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Hair Furor will not be pleased.

November 14, 2018

The President's Coal Warrior

The President’s Coal Warrior

Inside EPA head Andrew Wheeler’s highly effective campaign to sacrifice public health in favor of the fossil-fuel industry

[by] Jeff Goodell November 13, 2018

If you could design the ideal character to assure the continuing domination of Big Coal and Big Oil in America and to reaffirm their faith in their God-given right to cook the climate in pursuit of profit, that character would look a lot like acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

[...]

But make no mistake, Wheeler is one of the most skilled regulatory hitmen the fossil-fuel industry has ever deployed. Compared to former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, his clownishly corrupt and incompetent predecessor, Wheeler is a no-nonsense professional, a man with vast experience in the dark corners of the Senate who can crawl through the most fetid lobbyist dungeons and emerge with the name of the right congressional staffer to call to tweak a bill that’s heading for the floor. Pruitt, on the other hand, who had come to Washington from the wilds of Oklahoma, was almost comically ineffective at rolling back the laws he made such a show of attacking as he embroiled himself in no fewer than 13 scandals during his 18-month tenure.

Wheeler won’t make the same mistakes. “Under Trump, the EPA’s mission is to deliver for the Republican Party’s fossil-fuel overlords,” Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse tells me in an e-mail. “Under Wheeler, I don’t think that will change.” What will change is his mission plan. “Wheeler is the embodiment of the anti-regulatory ‘deep state’ in Washington,” says Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Working Group. “His goal is not just to roll back the environmental progress made under President Obama, but to weaken and deconstruct the entire regulatory system at the EPA. He’s playing the long game. And that’s exactly what makes him so dangerous.”

[...]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/andrew-wheeler-epa-fossil-fuel-agenda-755332/amp/

November 14, 2018

One of Trump's Top EPA Officials Was Just Indicted on State Ethics Charges

One of Trump’s Top EPA Officials Was Just Indicted on State Ethics Charges

Russ Choma and Nick Schwellenbach November 13, 2018

A senior Environmental Protection Agency administrator responsible for nine southeastern states has been indicted by an Alabama grand jury on charges he conspired to violate ethics laws, reportedly in connection with a messy bribery scandal that has links to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and has roiled local politics.

The Alabama Ethics Commission announced Tuesday morning that a grand jury had indicted Onis “Trey” Glenn, the EPA official, and Willie Scott Phillips, his former business partner, on a variety of state ethics charges. The press release was short on details, but the charges include inappropriate solicitation or receiving of money or other items of value and allegations that Phillips violated rules against the “use of office for personal gain.” Glenn was indicted separately from Phillips on multiple counts of conspiracy or complicity.

[...]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/onis-glenn-epa-alabama-indictment/

November 14, 2018

Democrats were once invisible in state politics. Those days are over

Democrats were once invisible in state politics. Those days are over

Nancy MacLean

The long-term future of the United States will not be decided in the nation’s capital. It will be decided in the states – and that’s where the biggest story of the 2018 election is.

For years, Democratic Party leaders and funders focused on the federal level as the place to win major reform, and all but ignored state legislatures. Where the left was not paying attention, the extreme right stepped into the breach.

During President Obama’s time in office, his party lost over 900 state legislative seats. Over eight years, the Republican party won control over two-thirds of the nation’s state legislative chambers. From there, the political right attempted a slow-motion revolution to rig the rules of the political process so that a minority party, cowed by its largest donors, could hold on to power.

The components of that quiet yet epochal donor-driven power grab based in the states included gerrymandering with what one judge called “almost surgical precision”’; measures to destroy unions and suppress voting; organizing attorneys general to litigate against federal reforms from the Affordable Care Act to climate change protections; and more.

[...]

This election day, intense state-level organizing by Democrats secured stunning wins. Collectively, these wins constitute a promissory note toward long-term success. True, Democrats only won back about 40% of what they lost in the Tea Party waves of 2010 and 2012; there’s plenty more ground to make up. But last Tuesday staunched and reversed the bleeding.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/12/democrats-state-politics-midterms

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We need blue waves crashing into GOP strongholds for several more elections to fix this mess and make government work for all. Thanks to hard work by so many, they don't have to be tsunami level waves to keep advancing.

November 12, 2018

Pelosi: I am on a mission

Excerpts from the transcript of Nancy Pelosi's interview on CBS Face the Nation:

[...]

MARGARET BRENNAN: There are questions about what will happen when Bob Mueller wraps up his investigation, the report and the conclusions he comes to, and whether they will ever see the light of day, because we don't know if they're going to be shared with Congress. In a Democrat controlled House with subpoena power would you force that?

DEMOCRATIC LEADER PELOSI: Well we don't know if- if- the- what he will decide and what will be made public. But we do want the truth.

MARGARET BRENNAN: --The public has a right to know--

DEMOCRATIC LEADER PELOSI: The public has a right to know and no one is above the law in terms of our having access to that information.

[...]

MARGARET BRENNAN: No investigation for political purposes you say--

DEMOCRATIC LEADER PELOSI: --that's right--

MARGARET BRENNAN: A number of Republicans would say, "Come on." There's always a- a political upside or downside to moving forward with some of these investigations.

DEMOCRATIC LEADER PELOSI: Well if the Republicans would say that they're just projecting their own attitude toward investigations, which was very political. We are coming to do something that is very important for our country; a more open Congress with accountability to the public, with a seeking bipartisanship where we can find it, stand our ground where we can't.

[...]

MARGARET BRENNAN: When you said you're a transitional figure. Is that what you're transitioning towards? Handing off to these women?

DEMOCRATIC LEADER PELOSI: Well I've always considered myself a transitional figure. I am on a mission and that mission was to honor what we did with the Affordable Care Act. It-it stands with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid as pillars of economic, as well as health security for the American people. When we had the opportunity to do it we fought hard, and we won, and now we have to protect it, not just as a legislative matter, but as what it means in the lives of the American people. And so I-I think we're on a good path to- to protect it. It was the central issue in this campaign. And so many of the outside groups told their stories, walked their precincts, won their votes, for us to preserve and protect the Affordable Care Act and improve it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/transcript-house-minority-leader-nancy-pelosi-on-face-the-nation-november-11-2018/

I'd quote the whole thing if I had permission from CBS.

November 10, 2018

Amanpour interviews Congressman-elect Tom Malinowski (D flipped seat that was R since '81)

In Tuesday’s election, Democratic candidate Tom Malinowski beat his Republican rival in a seat the GOP had held since 1981. A former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under President Obama, Malinowski joins the program to discuss the midterms and President Trump’s foreign policy.

You can't really move around this country without hearing people on both sides of the aisle wherever they are talking about President Trump.

And yet, Leader Pelosi hoped, instructed, hoped that candidates would not focus on the daily Trump, would not get personal, would not get out of the box and sort of you know sort of diffuse the message there.

(Video and transcript at link)

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/congressman-elect-tom-malinowski-rlomln/

November 7, 2018

Thank you!

The Blue tsunami crashed into the artificial Red shoals and sandbags and still managed to be a big Blue wave. If not for the efforts of a lot of people, it wouldn't have been a ripple. Thanks to the GOTV efforts, the world will be significantly safer come January (assuming it survives the lame duck House and TrumPutin 'til then).

Democrats stepped up and stormed the Bastille (to mix metaphors a bit). Didn't get it all, but by the grace of hard work over long hours, Dotard's world has been changed!

My state is still blood red, but there is more blue in the land and hope for the future. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. The Repugs campaign against Democrats 24 / 7 / 365. We don't have talk radio and Fox, but we have voices and facts and, now, the House and more state offices.

November 7, 2018

Live results updated -- Guardian US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/nov/06/midterm-elections-2018-live-results-latest-winners-and-seats?CMP=results_blog

November 6, 2018

State poll opening and closing times

Ballotpedia.org has this:

https://ballotpedia.org/State_Poll_Opening_and_Closing_Times_%282018%29

Each state also has a link to "polling locations".