2023-2024 Presidential, senate, house, state and city election thread

[caltrek]

Harris Campaign Says It’s Raised $540 Million and Saw a Surge of Donations During the Democratic National Convention
by Aamer Madhani
August 25, 2024

Introduction:

(Time) Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign says it has now raised $540 million for its election battle against Republican nominee former President Donald Trump.

The campaign has had no problems getting supporters to open their wallets since President Joe Biden announced on July 21 he was ending his campaign and quickly endorsed Harris. The campaign said it saw a surge of donations during last week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Harris and her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, accepted their nominations.

“Just before Vice President Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night, we officially crossed the $500 million mark," campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote in a memo released by the campaign on Sunday. "Immediately after her speech, we saw our best fundraising hour since launch day.”

Trump has also proven to be a formidable fundraiser, but appears to be outpaced in her month-old campaign. Trump's campaign and its related affiliates announced earlier this month that they had raised $138.7 million in July — less than what Harris took in during her White House bid’s opening week. Trump’s campaign reported $327 million in cash on hand at the start of August.

Read more here: https://time.com/7014668/harris-campai ... rge-dnc/

[caltrek]

Crypto Corporations Dump $119 Million Into Attempt to Buy 2024 Elections
August 21, 2024

Introduction:

(Public Citizen via Common Dreams) Today, Public Citizen released a new report revealing that the cryptocurrency sector is exploiting the Citizens United ruling to an unprecedented degree, dwarfing direct corporate spending by Big Oil and other corporate sectors in the 2024 elections.

“That cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase and Ripple are able to spend over a hundred million dollars to silence crypto’s critics and elevate its backers embodies everything that is wrong with the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision,” said Rick Claypool, research director at Public Citizen and author of the report. “Corporations can’t vote. But the sole reason crypto is a hot-button topic in this election cycle is that crypto businesses are spending eye-popping sums to make themselves impossible to ignore.”

Top findings of the report, which analyzes federal election data provided by OpenSecrets.org, include:

• Crypto corporations are by far the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 as nearly half (48%) of all corporate money contributed during this year’s elections ($248 million so far) came from crypto backers.

• Direct corporate election spending at this scale is unprecedented. Crypto corporations’ total spending in the past three election cycles – $129 million – already amounts to 15% of all known corporate contributions since the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United.

• Since Citizens United, the crypto corporations are now second in total election-related spending, trailing only fossil fuel corporations, which have spent $176 million over the past 14 years, including $73 million from Koch Industries.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/ ... elections

[caltrek]

Convention Ratings Up from 2020, Down from 2016
by Sara Fischer
August 24, 2024

Introduction:

(Axios) Ratings for the RNC and DNC were up from the pandemic-era conventions in 2020, but they were down significantly from 2016, per Nielsen.

Why it matters: Even with all of this election cycle's unexpected twists and turns, nothing comes close to the ratings bonanzas that were set off during Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's first national contests.

Zoom in: Fewer viewers watched the RNC on average across all four nights this year (19.1 million) compared to the DNC (21.8 million).

• The highest-rated moment of the RNC was former President Trump's speech, which drew 28.4 million viewers from 10:45 to 11 p.m. ET, the point at which he recounted the assassination attempt against him.

• The highest-rated moment of the DNC was Vice President Harris' speech, which drew 28.9 million viewers from 10:31 p.m. to 11:11 p.m. ET.
The article goes on to include discussions of ratings for Fox and MSNBC

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2024/08/24/rnc-d ... -ratings

caltrek’s comment: I watched much of the conventions on C-Span, although at their conclusion I did switch to MSNBC for commentary.

[caltrek]

Retiring House Democrat Wades Into Bitter Fight for Her Seat
by Andrew Solender
August 25, 2024

Introduction:

(Axios) Retiring Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) filmed an ad attacking one of the Democratic primary candidates running to replace her.

Why it matters: It's a rare move by an outgoing incumbent that comes as the contest is growing particularly bitter ahead of the Sept. 10 election.

Driving the news: Kuster filmed an ad for Colin Van Ostern, a former Kuster operative and New Hampshire executive council member who was the Democratic nominee for governor in 2016 and ran for secretary of state in 2018.

• The spot goes after Maggie Goodlander, a former Biden administration Justice Department official and wife of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

• "The truth is, Maggie Goodlander hasn't lived in our district for decades, and she gave thousands to pro-life Republicans," Kuster says in the ad.

• She adds: "Let's send New Hampshire candidates to Washington, not the other way around."

What they're saying: "Colin Van Ostern's attacks suggesting that Maggie Goodlander won't fight for reproductive freedom is false, shameful, and out of bounds," a Goodlander campaign spokesperson said in a statement.

Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2024/08/25/kuste ... ampshire

Per ballotpedia (https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_H ... ire,_2024 ) the primary will be September 10, 2024.

[caltrek]

How Walz’s Midwestern Lutheranism Could be an Asset
by Jef Brumley
August 22, 2024

Introduction:

(Baptist News Global) The Mainline Protestant faith of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz could sway some white, conservative Midwesterners to support Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in November, author Diana Butler Bass said during a recent edition of the “The Convocation Unscripted” webinar.

Harris selected Walz, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as her running mate in the 2024 presidential election. The former high school teacher, football coach, congressman and National Guardsman accepted the nomination Aug. 21 during the Democratic National Convention.

“It’s worth noting that the ELCA is also the whitest of all of the Mainline denominations, which is saying a lot,” said Bass, an historian, speaker and writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times, and whose many books include the bestseller Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way and Presence.

Conclusion:

It also helps that Walz has declared his love of hunting to the extent that “Harris Walz” camouflaged hunting caps are currently for sale at KamalaHarris.com, said Du Mez, professor of gender, religion and politics at Calvin University in Michigan and author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne.

“This is exactly what the Democratic Party needs, and not just to win,” he added. “For too long, we’ve been fed these compartmentalized identities and these have been pushed and this is how polarization works. And you’re told if you listen to country music, if you have a gun, if you like to hunt, if you fill-in-the-blank, then you belong here and the other side despises you, and Walz completely blows that up.”

Read more here: https://baptistnews.com/article/how-wa ... an-asset/

[firestar464]

[Time_Traveller]

‘Georgia’s ours to lose’: Trump and Harris camps zero in on swing states

Sun 25 Aug 2024 18.26 BST

As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump brace themselves for what promises to be an ugly and bruising sprint to the finishing line in November, both presidential candidates’ campaigns are turning their sights back on the handful of desperately close swing states where the battle is likely to be decided.

Georgia is coming into view as a critical battleground for both leaders as they struggle to gain voters’ attention in an epochal election. On Wednesday, the vice-president will travel from the White House to southern Georgia to hold her first campaign event in the state with her recently anointed running mate and former high school football coach, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.

The duo will go on a bus tour of the region, attempting to reach out to diverse voting groups including rural areas where the former president is strong, as well as suburban and urban districts in Albany and Valdosta, where large Black communities are among their target demographics. On Thursday night, Harris is scheduled to cap the tour with a rally in Savannah, where she will talk to Georgians about the stakes of this election.

The intense focus on Georgia by the Democratic campaign underlines that they are not resting on their laurels after what most commentators have agreed was a pitch-perfect convention in Chicago last week. Despite the pronounced bounce in popularity that Harris has enjoyed since she dramatically switched with Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket five weeks ago, the race remains essentially neck and neck.

The latest poll tracker by 538 for Georgia puts Trump 0.6% ahead of Harris in Georgia, with Harris on 46.0% and Trump on 46.6%. That is bang in the middle of the margin of error – and suggests that the state is open territory for the two candidates.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... es-georgia

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[spryfusion]

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[weatheriscool]

[spryfusion]

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[weatheriscool]

That poll is trash. It is fucking impossible and even Biden would have gotten the popular vote simply because of califorina going 25+ for the democrat.

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

NYT- Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids

https://archive.ph/JDh8i

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

FAU/Main Street: Harris +4
Harris 49%
Trump 45%
Other 3%
Undecided 3%

Last poll was Harris +2

https://x.com/KevinWagnerPhD/status/1828432277354799586

[caltrek]

Kamala Harris 'Honeymoon' Continues but No Democratic National Convention Bump
by Ewan Palmer
August 27, 2024

Introduction:

(Newsweek) Vice President Kamala Harris is still enjoying a "honeymoon" period in the 2024 election, despite not increasing her lead over Donald Trump in the wake of speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

A Morning Consult survey of 7,818 registered voters conducted in the days after Harris spoke in Chicago showed the Democrat with a four-point lead over Trump [48 percent to 44].

While the four-point margin is still the joint largest lead Harris has enjoyed over Trump since she entered the 2024 race after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, there was not a boost in Morning Consult polls for Harris following her DNC speech on August 22.

However, the survey shows that the "media honeymoon" continues for Harris, with more voters [47 percent] once again saying they have heard mainly positive news stories about the vice president over the past week, compared to 32 percent who said they have heard mainly negative stories about her.

Read more here: https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris ... p-1944772

[caltrek]

...

More on that:

“The Democrats capture Nevada, while the Republicans take Arizona. The Republicans win the big prize of Pennsylvania, while the Democrats top them in Wisconsin and Michigan. The nation is waiting on Georgia. If Georgia goes red, it’s President Trump; if Georgia goes blue, it’s President Harris,” she (Rachek Maddow) wrote (in a New York Times opinion piece).

“Then, local news headlines start to circulate. There are reports of unspecified ‘problems’ in the vote in Fulton County. And in Gwinnett County. And in DeKalb, Coffee and Spalding Counties. Republican officials are refusing to certify the results in their counties,” she continued. “They say they are making ‘reasonable inquiries.’”

Maddow warned legal challenges would follow through courts, mixed with a “wave of disinformation, confusion and propaganda swells” and claims that something is “amiss” in the Georgia counties.

...the state election board approved a...rule earlier this month that gave election officials in each state county the option to delay or refuse certification to allow them to make a “reasonable inquiry” as to whether “the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election,” per the Times.

The rule “injects a new layer of murk into the legal waters” ahead of the election, Maddow argued, pointing to a report about how Republicans in Georgia delayed or refused certification at least seven times since 2020.

Read more here:https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... denialism/