The Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report punctures several Trump denials.

 

WASHINGTON POST

An exhaustive investigation led by members of the president own party portrays his 2016 campaign as posing counterintelligence risks through its myriad contacts with Russia, eager to exploit assistance from the Kremlin and seemingly determined to conceal the full extent of its conduct during a multiyear probe. The long-awaited report contains dozens of new findings that appear to show more direct links between Trump associates and Russian intelligence, Greg Miller, Karoun Demirjian and Ellen Nakashiima report. 

The report describes Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s receptivity to Russian outreach as a “grave counterintelligence threat” that made the campaign susceptible to “malign Russian influence.” The committee determined that Putin personally directed the hack-and-leak campaign and concludes that members of Trump’s transition team probably fell prey to Russian manipulation that they were too callow to recognize. Kremlin operatives “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report says. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

“In one of its most startling passages, the report concludes that one of Trump’s core claims of innocence cannot be credited. In written testimony to the team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump insisted that he could not recall ever discussing the WikiLeaks dumps with political adviser Roger Stone or any other associate. ‘Despite Trump’s recollection,’ the Senate report said, ‘the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.’

“The document describes Trump and associates of his campaign as often incapable of candor. It offers new proof that former national security adviser Michael Flynn lied about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, raises troubling questions about Manafort’s decision to squander a plea agreement with prosecutors by lying to Mueller’s team, and accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of ‘deceptive’ accounts of his meetings with a Russian oligarch in the Seychelles weeks before Trump was sworn into office. The overall portrait that emerges from the report’s 966 pages is of repeated encounters between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, but no formal collusion. The two sides shared the same objective — the defeat of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — and basked in one another’s admiration. But more because of ineptitude than any principled commitment to the sanctity of American democracy, the partnership was never consummated, the committee determined. …

“A Russian lawyer who met with Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower before the 2016 election also had more ‘significant connections’ to the Kremlin than has been previously reported, the Senate probe concludes. … The Intelligence Committee’s report notes that it had made referrals to the Justice Department ‘for potential criminal activity’ suspected during the course of its investigation. … Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort were among those flagged to federal prosecutors because the committee believed that their testimony was contradicted by information unearthed by Mueller. It is unclear whether the Justice Department took action on the referrals. …

“The document would read more like a harrowing historical account were it not for mounting evidence that many of the same forces of disruption are lining up for the 2020 election. … Attorney General William P. Barr has intervened in criminal cases against Trump allies Stone and Flynn. And Trump supporters on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), have reportedly accepted material from Russian-tied sources to discredit [Biden].” 

The report is the first to flatly identify Konstantin Kilimnik, [above] a longtime partner of Manafort, as a Russian intelligence officer. It cites evidence that that Kilimnik may have been directly involved in the Russian plot to break into a Democratic Party computer network and provide plundered files to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. His name is mentioned over 800 times, David Stern reports. Kilimnik started working with Manafort in the mid-2000s as his primary interpreter, when Manafort was hired to run the political campaigns of Viktor Yanukoych, a Kremlin-linked politician from eastern Ukraine. The report concludes that Kilimnik “likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort’s access to gain insight into the Campaign.” Kilimnik may also have been key in spreading the false narrative that the Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election. 

Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country.’ Michelle Obama unleashes on Trump accusing him of ‘utter lack of empathy’ and saying a second term ‘can and will be worse’ – then mocks him for saying ‘It is what it is’ about COVID crisis

 

Michelle Obama gives searing keynote: ‘We have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.’

Sanders warns 'authoritarianism has taken root in this country' as he begs his supporters to back Joe Biden to oust 'not normal' Donald Trump.“ The future of our democracy is at stake.”

Democrats opened the most extraordinary presidential nominating convention in recent history on Monday night with a program that spanned the gamut from democratic socialists to Republicans, from the relatives of George Floyd to family members of those killed by the coronavirus, in a two-hour event that was a striking departure from the traditional summer pageant of American democracy.

 

Capping the evening was an urgent plea from Michelle Obama. Breaking through the stilted online format, Mrs. Obama provided the emotional high point of the night as she confronted the president directly. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment.” In her withering assessment, she accused Trump of creating “chaos,” sowing “division” and governing “with a total and utter lack of empathy.”

Mrs. Obama, the former first lady, spoke emphatically into the camera and gave a scathing, point-by-point analysis of Mr. Trump’s presidency in an urgent summons for Democratic voters to cast ballots in any way they could, even if it meant waiting in long lines to do so.

She began by questioning the very legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, pointing out that he had lost the popular tally by “three million votes.”

She went on to attack the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and said that the strong economy Mr. Trump inherited from her husband four years ago was “in shambles.” She also said Mr. Trump’s divisive approach on race relations had emboldened “torch-bearing white supremacists,” and ripped him for a lack of “leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness.”

Mrs. Obama’s speech, which aired in the final hour, has been in the can for at least a week, according to people familiar with the matter. The speech was prerecorded because event planners did not want to risk running it live, in anticipation of opening-night technical glitches.

Mrs. Obama, reaching the end of her 20-minute time slot, cast the race not as merely the most important election of her lifetime, but as a last chance, of sorts, to redeem the nation from the steep moral, political and economic decline precipitated by Mr. Trump.

“So, if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election,” Mrs. Obama said. “If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

With no arena, and no loudspeaker to introduce the presenters, Democrats turned to an M.C. of sorts, the actress Eva Longoria, who kept the evening moving between prerecorded and live video presentations. A lineup of political luminaries delivered remarks in rapid-fire format and only a few of them — Mrs. Obama, for one, and Mr. Sanders — possessed the sheer star power to linger in the perception of the audience.

Perhaps the most searing critique of Mr. Trump came not from an elected official but from Kristin Urquiza, [above] a young woman whose father, a Trump supporter, died of the coronavirus. Speaking briefly and in raw terms about her loss, Ms. Urquiza said of her father, “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life.”

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Monday portrayed it as an imperative to defeat President Trump, offering a call for unity to progressive voters who supported him during the primary.

“Many of the ideas we fought for that just a few years ago were considered radical are now mainstream,” he said. “But let us be clear. If Donald Trump is re-elected, all the progress we have made will be in jeopardy....At its most basic,” he added, “this election is about preserving our democracy.” 

Cuomo accuses Trump of politicizing the coronavirus.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York unloaded on President Trump for his response to the coronavirus that savaged his state this spring, accusing the White House of first trying to “ignore” the crisis then fumbling the response by “trying to politicize it.”

New Yorkers, and viewers of cable news, have seen this performance before: His daily news briefings became must-see television, suddenly making Mr. Cuomo one of the most prominent Democrats in the country.

  Cuomo, whose initial actions during the pandemic have come under criticism, accused Mr. Trump of “learning absolutely nothing” from the lessons of the outbreak, and said Democrats wear masks “because we are smart.”

“Americans learned a critical lesson, how vulnerable we are when we are divided,” he said. “And how many lives can be lost when our government is incompetent. Donald Trump didn’t create the initial division. The division created Trump. He only made it worse,” he added.

James Clyburn, whose endorsement lifted Biden, calls him ‘as good a man as he is a leader.’

Mr. Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, recalled that endorsement in brief remarks from Charleston. Mr. Biden, he declared, “will always be an adopted son of South Carolina.”

“Joe Biden is as good a man as he is a leader,” Mr. Clyburn said. “I have said before and wish to reiterate tonight, we know Joe. But more importantly, Joe knows us.”

George Floyd’s brothers lead a moment of silence.

The Floyds’ presence underscored the message behind the protests — one of equality and the need to fight systemic racism, something Mr. Biden emphasized during a follow-up discussion with the parents of victims of police violence. The intensity of emotion evoked by the moment of silence, the speeches and the testimonials by parents heightened the sense of urgency in an online event that began in a smooth but somewhat antiseptic fashion.

While discussing police reform in a virtual round table, Biden himself echoed a police chief who said there are more good police than bad ones. “Most cops are good,” Biden said. “But the fact is the bad ones have to be identified and prosecuted and out, period.” While not perhaps a groundbreaking or terribly controversial statement, it was an interesting inclusion, given that it may not be a sentiment some on the left would like to see emphasized at this particular moment.

The National Polls: 2016 vs. 2020 Before the Conventions

 

Fewer undecideds, more party unity, and an independent shift

LARRY SABATO, CHRYSTAL BALL

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Several national pollsters conducted surveys on the eve of the convention season in both 2016 and 2020. We compared them to see how the race was different from four years ago.

— Compared to four years ago, the parties are more unified; Biden is leading with independents after Clinton and Trump were tied with them at this point; and more poll respondents support the major party candidates overall.

— In other words, there are fewer undecideds and fewer voters saying they will vote third party.

— Overall, this is probably good for Joe Biden given that he is leading, but Trump still has time to catch up, and unlike Biden, Trump doesn’t really need to win the popular vote to win the election.

2016 vs. 2020 in the national polls

As we enter the final day of the Democratic National Convention, it remains to be seen whether either of these virtual conventions will change the presidential race all that much. Joe Biden, the current polling leader, probably wouldn’t mind maintaining the status quo. Donald Trump, who has been behind, needs the race to change.

Overall, though, the contest has been relatively stable. As Alan Abramowitz pointed out in the Crystal Ball earlier this summer, the national polls have been more stable than they were four years ago. And as we headed into the conventions, it appeared that there were fewer voters up for grabs than four years ago. Given that Biden has been leading – just like Hillary Clinton was – we thought we’d look at some of polls from the pre-convention period and point out some differences between the state of the race last time before the conventions compared to now.

Table 1 shows a comparison between four major national pollsters that 1) Conducted polls before the start of the 2016 and 2020 conventions and 2) Made crosstab information about how both partisans and independents were supporting.

For details on the polls, see the notes and sources under the table. The “other” category in Table 1 combines respondents who were undecided or indicated they were not voting for a major-party candidate.

Table 1: 2016 and 2020 pre-convention polls

 

Notes: All polls are of registered voters. CNN’s poll was conducted by ORC in 2016 and SSRS in 2020. Marist’s 2016 media partner was McClatchy, and its partners are NPR and PBS NewsHour in 2020. CNN, Marist, and Pew polls used here in both 2016 and 2020 only named the major party candidates. The Monmouth polls in both 2016 and 2020 included the Libertarian and Green Party nominees by name. Columns may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

 

Sources: CNN 2016 poll of registered voters conducted by ORC, July 13-16; CNN 2020 poll of registered voters conducted by SSRS, Aug. 12-15. Marist 2016 poll of registered voters conducted in partnership with McClatchy, July 5-9; Marist 2020 poll of registered voters conducted in partnership with NPR and PBS NewsHour, Aug. 3-11; Monmouth 2016 poll of registered voters, July 14-16; Monmouth 2020 poll of registered voters, Aug. 6-10; Pew 2016 poll of registered voters, June 15-26; Pew 2020 poll of registered voters, July 27-Aug. 2.

There’s a lot to digest here, but there are three key takeaways that we see:

1. The parties are more unified: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump saw their command of their parties questioned at their respective nominating conventions. In Cleveland, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was booed off the stage after telling delegates to vote their conscience, a pointed non-endorsement of Trump. In Philadelphia, rambunctious Bernie Sanders backers made it clear that there was bad blood from the primary — and a WikiLeaks dump of internal Democratic National Committee emails days before the convention only fueled their discontent.

Still, the convention drama probably overstated party unity problems on both sides. As the average of the four national polls make clear, both Trump and Clinton were in the high 80s in party support. However, that is surpassed by the 95% support Biden is receiving among Democrats and the 93% support that Trump is receiving among Republicans. Convention polling bounces can sometimes reflect a party coming out more united than they were going in; by that standard, perhaps we shouldn’t expect much of a bounce for either candidate, because the parties are so unified already. Trump may have a little more room to grow if he can claw back a point or two of the self-identified Republicans who currently indicate they back Biden.

2. Biden is doing better with independents than Clinton: Independents in American politics can be a little deceiving, in that while they often make up a third or more of respondents in a national poll, many of them are hidden partisans who just happen to call themselves independents. Winning independents is also not necessarily decisive: Barack Obama was reelected in 2012, for instance, despite losing independents, at least according to the national exit poll. That said, independents can decide elections, and Donald Trump’s four-point advantage with them was one of the ingredients in his narrow victory.

In the 2016 polls, the independent vote was mixed: Clinton led, but only by a small two-point margin in aggregate, and more than a fifth of independents in these polls were not voting for Trump or Clinton. In the 2020 polls, Biden has a clear edge with independents in three of the four polls, and the fourth — CNN — is basically tied (it should be no shock, then, that CNN is also the closest of the four 2020 polls overall, with Biden leading by just four points). Note as well that the number of independents in the “other” category, just 10%, is about half that of 2016. And that leads to the final observation.

3. The major party candidates are attracting more support overall: Heading into the conventions, the electorate just seems more comfortable with their choices this time than in 2016, which is reflected in the smaller number of undecideds, third-party voters, and others that we’ve lumped into the “others” category. Overall, in the four 2020 surveys, just 6% of the voters are in the others category, and that might be even smaller had we not included Monmouth, which listed minor-party candidates as an option for voters (the other three polls did not in either year). Meanwhile, on average 13% of voters in the 2016 surveys were in the other category. Trump’s performance among late-deciding voters and voters who held an unfavorable view of each candidate helped him win the election. In general, there seem to be fewer of these kinds of voters this time.

One thing to watch: Does the number of “others” – essentially undecideds or third-party voters – go up, stay the same, or decrease? If Biden maintains the same lead, but the number of “others” rise, that could hypothetically mean that Trump is shaking lose some of his support and could capture it later. Likewise, if the number of undecideds stays the same or even falls, without a corresponding tightening of the race, Trump has an even smaller pool of non-Biden voters to convert.

Conclusion

If you’ve seen analysts — including us — assert that Biden’s lead going into the conventions was more solid than Clinton’s was four years ago, the data presented above illustrate why. Biden’s lead, at least in these polls, was bigger than Clinton’s, and there are a smaller pool of “others” for the two major party candidates to bring into the fold.

That said, the polls are still not at the point where we consider them strongly predictive of the eventual result, and there are all sorts of confounding factors, including turnout and the trajectory of the public health crisis.

We also know that national polls don’t tell the whole story. In 2016, the decisive state in the Electoral College — Wisconsin, a state we analyze in depth in this week’s Crystal Ball — voted about three points to the right of the nation. Trump doesn’t need to be leading national polls, or the eventual national popular vote, to win. But in all likelihood, he does need to get closer than the polls show right now, and the electorate may not be quite as fluid as it was in 2016. We will get a better sense of this after the dust settles from the conventions.

 

 

Stephen Miller

 

How Stephen Miller went from teen troll to Trump whisperer

Jean Guerrero’s new book, ‘Hatemonger,’ details the Trump aide’s early influences -- and how they shaped his work for the president.

WASHINGTON POST, CARLOS LOZADA

HATEMONGER: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda

By Jean Guerrero. William Morrow. 323 pp. $28.99

One of the few White House aides who has lasted the full term, Stephen Miller still wields influence over a policy arena that President Trump considers vital to his legacy. He is the “architect” of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, and his “mind meld” with the president has produced executive orders and rhetoric heavy on exclusion, cruelty and “prejudicial white patriotism,” journalist Jean Guerrero argues in “Hatemonger,” her timely study of this White House survivor.

She makes clear how right-wing and nationalistic media personalities provided Miller the platform and tactics to hone his political vision — and theirs — and continued shaping his views during his time as a Senate aide and as a Trump adviser. 

ATLANTIC Growing up in the so-called People’s Republic of Santa Monica as the son of well-off Jewish Democrats—his father was a lawyer and real-estate investor, his mother a homemaker—Miller was uninitiated in conservative thought. [Until he inadvertently came upon Guns & Ammo, which] led him to Wayne LaPierre’s book Guns, Crime, and Freedom, which he devoured, enraptured by the blunt force of the author’s prose. (“Clearly, the Warsaw ghetto stands in history as a shining example of the dangers of gun control.”) 

WASHINGTON POST, CARLOS LOZADA

Guerrero dwells on [these] years in Santa Monica, Calif., where he grew up crossing the Mexican border for family vacations, eating meals cooked by Latin American housekeepers and attending school with Mexican American children. His confrontations started early. “As a boy, Miller waged an ideological war on his dark-skinned classmates,” Guerrero writes. 

ATLANTIC  Miller’s youthful political reinvention was also a puckish reaction to his surroundings. In the beachside bubble of liberal affluence where he was raised, people saw themselves as proud citizens of a progressive utopia. There were festivals celebrating multiculturalism, and “racial-harmony retreats” for students. Yet there were also tensions around racial and class inequality. Jason Islas, a progressive activist who was friends with Miller when they were kids, says it was the kind of place where wealthy white liberals would “conspicuously celebrate diversity in very self-congratulatory ways”—and then avert their eyes from the problems in their own community.

WASHINGTON POST, CARLOS LOZADA

In the summer after middle school, he informed a classmate that they could no longer be friends because of the boy’s Latino heritage. At his liberal high school, Miller admonished Mexican American students to “speak only English.” He worried that a Chicano student group wanted to reclaim California. “Racism does not exist,” he told school district committee on equality. “It’s in your imagination.” He fought against bilingual education, Spanish-language school announcements and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. In his most infamous early moment, he argued at an assembly that students should not have to pick up after themselves “when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us.”

Miller was, in essence, a troll, triggering the libs long before anyone called it that. “He was born with an ability to bring out anger from people,” a former counselor at the high school tells Guerrero, “and he rejoiced in that, it made him powerful.”

Guerrero drops tantalizing suggestions about Miller’s motivations. For instance, he complained to a childhood friend that one of his Latina housekeepers was “kind of emotionally abusive,” and he fretted about being dropped off at school in a housekeeper’s “junky” car, which made him “look poor.” Guerrero is persuasive when she notes that Miller’s childhood was a time of right-wing, anti-immigrant ferment in California.

When Miller was in elementary school, Proposition 187 passed, prohibiting undocumented immigrants from accessing non-emergency state services, including public school. (It was later declared unconstitutional.) A teenage Miller, a fan of Rush Limbaugh’s 1992 book, “The Way Things Ought to Be,” started making radio appearances on the conservative “Larry Elder Show,” complaining about his high school. There he caught the attention of right-wing activist David Horowitz, [below] an ex-Marxist seeking to subvert the old lefty counterculture by teaching its tools to young right-wingers: how to attract media attention, stage controversial events and shame administrators who refused to “increase the scope of intellectual diversity” with conservative perspectives.

“In the 1970s, students started a political revolution on campus,” Miller wrote in an essay on Horowitz’s website, while still in high school. “Now is the time for a counter-revolution — one characterized by a devotion to this nation and its ideals.” He would become a Horowitz protege, and years later, Guerrero writes, the provocateur “would play a significant role in Trump’s campaign, with Miller as his vehicle.”

ATLANTIC : After 9/11, he emerged as a vociferous defender of the Bush administration, writing op-eds that compared students who opposed U.S. military actions to terrorists and concluding, “Osama Bin Laden would feel very welcome at Santa Monica High School.” During his junior year, he agitated for the school to lead regular recitals of the Pledge of Allegiance—and when his demand wasn’t met, he went on local talk radio to kick up some controversy. The tactic worked, and the school eventually acquiesced.

WASHINGTON POST, CARLOS LOZADA

As an undergraduate at Duke University, Miller invited Horowitz to speak on campus, and he organized an immigration debate featuring Peter Brimelow, author of “Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster.” The event was a “life-changing” experience for Miller, Guerrero writes, making him think more broadly about immigration, creating a framework for his initial instincts. In the 1995 book, Brimelow argued that the Statue of Liberty is not a symbol of immigration because the Emma Lazarus poem was only added to the pedestal years later; Miller would make the same argument in the White House press room in 2017.

After Miller graduated from Duke, Horowitz helped him get a job as press aide for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and later Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose restrictive views on immigration dovetailed with Miller’s. On Capitol Hill, Miller gained a reputation as “vindictive” and a “street fighter,” but he also immersed himself in the details of immigration policy, absorbing statistics from prominent restrictionist think tanks. It was through Sessions that Miller met Bannon, and the three discussed the possibilities of a populist nationalist movement built on White voters — the opposite of the lesson the GOP establishment had drawn from Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential defeat.

Horowitz lurked behind the scenes, encouraging Sessions and Miller to counter the Democrats’ emotional social-justice appeals with “an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language.” Fear, he argued, beats hope. Then Trump appeared, spouting crude versions of Miller’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Fear was in the air, and soon, thanks to Bannon’s intercession, Miller was in the Trump campaign.

Miller’s backstory has been well reported (Guerrero often cites McKay Coppins’s 2018 Atlantic profile), as has his role in developing Trump’s immigration policies (the 2019 book “Border Wars” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear details his efforts to exert total control over immigration policy by intimidating career Homeland Security officials). Guerrero’s contribution centers on how Miller’s early patrons retained their [influence.]

In May 2016, Miller emailed Horowitz, asking, “What are some ways the government and the oligarchs who rely on the government have ‘rigged’ the system against poor young blacks and hispanics?” Horowitz replied with multiple links, explaining that “the inner cities are war zones. . . . BLM [Black Lives Matter] makes criminals into martyrs.” The ideas soon appeared in a Trump campaign speech: “You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it is safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats,” the candidate declared.

Later, Miller asked for help again: “The boss is doing a speech on radical Islam. What would you say about Sharia Law?” Horowitz responded that Islamic law is incompatible with the Constitution, adding that “referring to it as ‘Radical Islam’ — though inaccurate — is a good and necessary idea.” When Trump gave a speech attacking Hillary Clinton for not criticizing “radical Islamic terrorism,” Horowitz noticed. “Great f---ing ground-breaking speech,” he emailed Miller. “I spent the last twenty years waiting for this.”

At times, even his mentors worried that Miller and Trump were overdoing things. Horowitz suggested that accusing Barack Obama of founding the Islamic State was a distraction to the campaign. And Elder, [above] who encouraged his old radio guest to emphasize the national security risks of immigration — “we lack the ability to vet Muslim immigrants,” he wrote Miller during the campaign — argued that Trump’s attack on the loyalties of an American judge of Mexican descent went too far. (Both Horowitz and Elder shared these email exchanges with Guerrero.)

In the White House, Miller has gravitated toward his own preferred messages, usually revolving around brutal, fearmongering imagery of dangerous, criminal immigrants. That “gut-punching emotion,” Guerrero writes, “spiraling up from the underbelly of conservative media and a shared obsession with violent fantasies,” is a signature element of Trump and Miller’s worldview.

The mutual reinforcement between Trump World and conservative media is a constant refrain in coverage of this presidency. In “Hatemonger,” Guerrero makes such connections plain. And so does Miller. After Horowitz congratulated him on Trump’s “ground-breaking” campaign speech, Miller responded: “Thanks! Keep sending ideas.”

Carlos Lozada is author of the forthcoming “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.”

 

Democratic convention will showcase Biden’s front-porch campaign.

 

Fresh polling appears to validate strategy

WASHINGTON POST

New York University historian Tim Naftali, the former director of the Richard Nixon presidential library, said candidates left behind front-porch campaigns because the expectations of voters changed. People wanted to see and interact with presidential contenders in person, especially as they became larger-than-life figures like Theodore Roosevelt. But he noted that the public expectations have changed again in the age of covid-19, seen partly by the low turnout at Trump’s June rally in Tulsa.

“Over the last few election cycles, politicians have stopped visiting most states. And when they have visited battleground states, they have had more staged events, including in airplane hangars,” Naftali said. “When local media markets mattered, that was enough. But with the increasing nationalization of media, how important are these local markets anymore? The Biden supporter does not want him to put on a show because of implications in a pandemic. They want Biden to be responsible. There’s more of a risk for President Trump because he needs to run the table. And that means he has to energize his entire base. And they may want the entertainment of a Trump visit. Certainly, the president derives great energy and motivation from these personal appearances.”

President Trump, first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, disembark from Marine One at the White House on Sunday. (Erin Scott/Reuters)

Biden’s decision to keep a low profile has also helped him keep the election a referendum on Trump’s performance. 

Trump, 74, takes far more questions from reporters than Biden, 77. The former vice president has not held a news conference since more than a week before he named Harris. The running mates will give their first joint interview to David Muir for a special that will air Sunday on ABC at 8 p.m.

 

Post-ABC poll shows Biden, Harris hold double-digit lead over Trump, Pence

 

WASHINGTON POST

As the two major political parties prepare to open their national conventions, the race for the White House tilts toward the Democrats, with former vice president Joe Biden holding a double-digit lead nationally over President Trump amid continuing disapproval of the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Democrats kick off their convention on Monday in a mood of cautious optimism, with Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), leading Trump and Vice President Pence by 53 percent to 41 percent among registered voters. The findings are identical among a larger sample of all voting-age adults.

Biden’s current national margin over Trump among voters is slightly smaller than the 15-point margin in a poll taken last month and slightly larger than a survey in May when he led by 10 points. In late March, as the pandemic was taking hold in the United States, Biden and Trump were separated by just two points, with the former vice president holding a statistically insignificant advantage.

Today, Biden and Harris lead by 54 percent to 43 percent among those who say they are absolutely certain to vote and who also report voting in 2016. A month ago, Biden’s lead of 15 points overall had narrowed to seven points among similarly committed 2016 voters. Biden now also leads by low double-digits among those who say they are following the election most closely. 

The president’s supporters are more eager than are Biden’s to cast ballots for him, with nearly 9 in 10 calling themselves enthusiastic and 65 percent saying they are “very enthusiastic.” Slightly more than 8 in 10 Biden supporters say they are enthusiastic about voting for him, with 48 percent saying they are “very enthusiastic.”

The motivations of the Trump and Biden supporters remain starkly different, with the president motivating both groups. Almost 3 in 4 who support Trump say they are casting an affirmative vote for the president, rather than to oppose Biden. Among those backing Biden, nearly 6 in 10 say they are voting mainly to oppose Trump rather than mainly to support the presumptive Democratic nominee.

A majority of Americans — 54 percent — say they approve of Biden’s selection of Harris as his running mate.A bare majority of independents — 52 percent — say they approve, while 29 percent disapprove of Biden’s decision. The poll also finds nearly 8 in 10 Black Americans approve of Harris’s selection as a running mate, including 50 percent who approve strongly. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic adults approve of Biden’s choice, compared with just under half of White adults.

 To win the presidency, a nominee needs to win 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state competition. Trump has indicated his confidence in a second electoral college victory, but at this point, Biden holds an advantage in many of the key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome in November. That advantage, however, is generally smaller than his national lead in multiple polls. In the Post-ABC poll, Biden has an edge of seven points in states that were decided by five points or fewer in 2016, 

Trump’s standing with Americans continues to be tied to perceptions of the pandemic and of the way he has dealt with it over a period of months. At present, 59 percent of Americans say they disapprove of his handling of the crisis, while 40 percent approve. That is statistically unchanged from last month. But it is sharply different from March, when 51 percent approved and 45 percent disapproved.

There is widespread disagreement that the coronavirus outbreak is under control — 85 percent of registered voters say it is either just “somewhat under control” or “not at all under control,” while 14 percent say the outbreak is “mostly” or “completely” under control. A clear majority of Americans are worried about their family contracting the coronavirus, a proportion largely unchanged from previous months, and most say the outbreak has had a severe impact on their communities’ economies.

Biden wins clear majority support among voters who are more worried about the coronavirus outbreak, as well as those who say the outbreak has had a severe economic impact on their community or their own finances. Among voters who are very or somewhat worried that a family member will become infected, 65 percent support Biden while 29 percent back Trump.

Nearly half of all registered voters — 49 percent — say the coronavirus outbreak is “not at all” under control. Biden leads 83 percent to 11 percent among registered voters who hold this view. Trump leads with 62 percent support among voters who say the outbreak is “somewhat” under control and receives 90 percent among the smaller share of voters who say the outbreak is mostly or completely under control in the United States.

When asked whether, if Biden were president, the nation’s response to the coronavirus outbreak would be better or worse than it has been under Trump, a plurality of Americans — 46 percent — say better and 24 percent say worse, with nearly all the rest saying it would be about the same.

Biden also scores positively on two other big issues, race relations and health care. By a margin of 26 points (46 percent to 20 percent), Americans say race relations would be better under a Biden presidency. On health care, the margin is net-positive for him by 13 points, 39 percent to 26 percent.

On the question of safety from crime, however, perceptions of what a Biden presidency could mean are not favorable, with 25 percent saying things would be better and 32 percent saying they would be worse. Trump’s campaign has made crime a major focus of its advertising and messages recently, using images of recent protests to assert that Biden and the Democrats are weak on the issue.

On the economy, which was Trump’s strongest asset before the pandemic disrupted it and drove tens of millions into joblessness, Americans are roughly divided three ways when asked whether things would be better or worse if Biden were president. Thirty-two percent say the economy would be better under Biden, 35 percent say worse and 30 percent say about the same.

Along with the pandemic, the state of the economy looms large in the election and Americans currently have a gloomy view. Slightly more than 2 in 3 give the economy negative ratings, including 1 in 3 saying the state of the economy is “poor.” These are the worst findings in nearly six years in Post-ABC polls.

Biden has a narrowly positive favorable rating, with 50 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable. That is a small improvement since May, when his rating was a net two points negative. But it is better standing than Hillary Clinton enjoyed four years ago, when her favorability was at 48 percent just after her July convention and fell to 41 percent later in August. Majorities rated her unfavorably through the rest of the campaign. Harris has the highest positive rating of the four candidates on the ballot this year,

Biden’s margin of voting support over Trump is built on stronger support among some groups of voters than Clinton achieved four years ago. He is winning independent voters by 17 points, for example, a group Trump narrowly won in 2016, according to network exit polls. 

Biden and Trump are tied among seniors, a group Trump carried four years ago, although Biden has lost the 10-point advantage he held in May. They are also roughly even among voters ages 40-64. But among voters under age 40, who historically turn out in lower percentages than older voters, Biden leads by 62 percent to 29 percent.

Among voters in the suburbs, a traditional electoral battleground, Biden has a narrow eight-point lead. Trump, who narrowly won suburban voters in 2016, has tried to appeal to them this year by holding himself out as the sole force preventing an influx of minority and poor residents. Still, suburban women currently favor Biden by 13 points, while suburban men are about evenly divided.

Biden leads by 20 points among White voters with college degrees while Trump leads by 22 points among White voters without college degrees. Four years ago, Trump won non-college White voters by more than 30 points.

Women back Biden by 56 percent to 40 percent, about the same as their margin for Clinton over Trump in 2016. Men currently favor him by half that margin — 51 percent to 43 percent — though they went for Trump in 2016, according to exit polls.

Black voters support Biden by 87 percent to 9 percent for Trump. That margin is just shy of Clinton’s winning margin among Black voters in 2016, and farther behind Barack Obama’s 95 percent support in 2008 and 93 percent support in 2012, with Biden as his running mate.

Homeless Midtown: What to do about growing disorder on the streets

DAILY NEWS 

As of last week, city officials report just seven active cases of coronavirus among Gotham’s homeless population, an accomplishment likely owing much to the city’s spring relocation of 9,500 single adults living in congregate shelters, where they couldn’t safely socially distance, into double-occupancy hotel rooms.

But the move — which makes more fiscal sense when you add in the fact that the feds are picking up 75% of the tab, and that tourist-starved lodging places are getting business — has had a side effect: residents and business owners report a sharp uptick in individuals abusing drugs, defecating, masturbating and attacking and threatening people on nearby streets.

No resident of a city with thousands of destitute and disturbed people has the right to post a “keep out” sign. But the rapid move and its results demand a stronger response.

First, officials should answer concerns that a few neighborhoods are bearing a disproportionate burden. A city map of the temporary homeless hotels shows Midtown and the UWS currently have 23 such hotels, the largest share by far.

To be sure, the majority of NYC’s hotel rooms are there, and many other neighborhoods have more than their share of other shelters. But analysis shouldn’t end there. The city must detail how many residents have been placed in each neighborhood, and where vacant hotel rooms exist.

Enforcement is imperative.

Quality of life offenses remain against the law, for good reason. If the NYPD is in hands-off mode for fear of a video going viral, the police commissioner has to disabuse his cops of their hesitancy — or the city must find other enforcers that will.

The House returns for a USPS vote

 

• VOX
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the chamber would return from its annual August recess early to address President Trump’s attacks on the US Postal Service, which threaten the country’s ability to conduct an election largely by mail. [Axios]
•  
• A bill to protect the agency, stymie further policy changes, and provide an infusion of emergency funding could come to a vote in the House by this weekend, though the Senate remains in recess. [AP / Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Daly]
• 
• And Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, [above] a Trump donor, is set to testify before the House Oversight Committee next Monday about a recent slew of changes he has pushed at the agency. [Politico / Daniel Lippman]
•  
• DeJoy has a strong incentive to appear: Over the weekend, Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper tweeted that the House “need[s] to subpoena the Postmaster General, and if he fails to appear, we should send the Sgt at Arms to arrest him.” [Twitter / Cameron Joseph]
•  
• Alarm over the plight of the Postal Service rose sharply late last week when the Washington Post reported that the agency had warned 46 states that voters could be disenfranchised by chronic, widespread mail delays. [Washington Post / Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage, and Christopher Ingraham]
•  
• Trump has been clear about why he opposes USPS funding. Last week, he told reporters that Democrats “need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” which, yes, is how mail-in voting works — Trump just seemingly doesn’t want it to happen. [Vox / Aaron Rupar]

49 People Shot In 72 Hours As Wave Of Gun Violence Continues In NYC

GOTHAMIST 

Forty-nine people were shot over the course of 72 hours in NYC between Thursday and Saturday, compared to eight shooting victims over the same time period last year, according to preliminary NYPD statistics sent to Gothamist Sunday morning.

Eight people were murdered—at least six by gun violence—compared to three homicides last year over those three days.

Those numbers do not yet reflect shootings on Sunday.

But about 2 a.m. Sunday, a 47-year-old was fatally shot in the head near Parkside and Ocean Avenues in Brooklyn at the entrance of Prospect Park.The man was the ninth person in NYC murdered since Thursday.

Those 49 shooting victims were shot in 38 separate incidents between August 13th and 15th, the police department said.

The number of shootings rose by nearly five times—from eight to 38—compared to the same dates last year.

All told, there have been 1,087 shooting victims across 888 incidents this year through August 15th, compared to 577 victims and 488 incidents last year. Homicides were up to 263 through Saturday, compared to 196 this time last year, police said Sunday.

Shootings have soared throughout the summer amid the COVID-19 health and economic crises, adding additional suffering to a pandemic that has killed more than 23,500 people in NYC.

Shooting incidents for last week were two-and-a-half times that of the same week in 2019, the Post reported. Last month, shootings rose 177 percent, from 88 in July 2019 to 244 in July 2020, according to crime statistics from the department released August 3rd.

In an attempt to quell the violence, the city has responded with more funding for cure violence groups and neighborhood policing. The cure violence groups function by placing community members on the ground who attempt to mediate violence before it happens and prevent retaliation after a shooting occurs.

But activists within anti-gun violence groups say the groups do not have adequate funding and a more well-rounded plan is needed to combat the rise in shootings, though such solutions aren't easy or quick. "I always say to folks, we have 36,000 police officers and about 300 cure violence workers," Ife Charles, the director of anti-violence projects and capacity building for Save Our Streets Bed-Stuy, said earlier this summer at a press conference with de Blasio.

Ten people in Brooklyn were charged with firearms possession in Brooklyn earlier this month, according to Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Seth D. DuCharme.

"The one tried and true way to reduce the rapid spike in gun violence we’ve experienced in Brooklyn this summer is to take the guns out of the hands of repeat offenders and take those offenders off of our streets," he said in a statement.

Trump tries to pin Postal Service funding woes on Democrats, as Pelosi eyes emergency action. Protesters demand postmaster general resign.

Nick Casselli, president of the American Postal Worker’s Union Local 89, in Darby, Pa., said he had been inundated with alarmed messages about delays in mail delivery.Credit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

NY TIMES

President Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of refusing to fund the United States Postal Service as he faced intense criticism from Democrats who say slowdowns in mail delivery, the removal of sorting machines and other changes are threatening the integrity of the general election.

Speaking at a news conference at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump also continued to rail against mail-in voting, calling it “a catastrophe.” But he did not directly say whether he supported the removal of mail-sorting machines and other changes made under the leadership of his postmaster general, Louis DeJoy.

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Mr. Trump said. “I can only tell you he’s a very smart man. He’ll be a great Postmaster General.”

Democrats have, in fact, pushed for a total of $10 billion for the Postal Service in talks with Republicans on the coronavirus response bill. That figure, which would include money to help with election mail, was down from a $25 billion plan in a House-passed coronavirus measure.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Democratic leadership have begun discussing bringing the chamber back early to address the issues with the Postal Service, a move that would cut short the annual summer recess. While the House is not scheduled to return for votes until Sept. 14, Democratic leaders could call lawmakers back in the next two weeks, two people familiar with the talks said on Saturday.


Among the legislative options under consideration include a measure put forward by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, that would prohibit agency leadership from enacting any operational changes that were in place before Jan. 1 or once the public health crisis subsides. Such changes would include ending overtime pay or any measures that would delay mail. Lawmakers are also discussing adding language to the bill that would ensure all ballot-related mail is considered First Class Mail and treated as such.

While Democrats have been fighting to include funding for the Postal Service in a coronavirus relief package, it is unlikely that Democrats would act on a standalone funding bill, said the two people, who asked for anonymity in order to disclose details of private discussions, because the current crisis the agency is facing is tied to policy, not funding.


About 100 people gathered in the wealthy residential neighborhood of Kalorama outside the apartment complex of the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, [above] a Republican megadonor and ally of President Trump who was appointed in May. Videos on social media showed them banging spoons on pots, blaring horns and chanting “resign,” with many in the group wearing masks and remaining socially distanced.
Critics say that changes enacted under Mr. DeJoy’s oversight, like cutting overtime pay for postal workers and removing mail-sorting machines, have slowed the delivery of mail and endangered vote-by-mail operations when millions of people are expected to exercise that option because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Postal Service sent letters in July to all 50 states and the District of Columbia cautioning them that it may not be able to meet their deadlines for delivering last-minute mail-in ballots. News reports about the letters on Friday intensified the criticism directed at the Postal Service and Mr. Trump by Democrats and voting rights advocates, who say the president is deliberately stoking unfounded concerns that voting by mail will lead to fraud and miscounts as a way to cast doubt about the outcome of the election.

In the letters, Thomas J. Marshall, the general counsel for the Postal Service, urged states to require that residents request ballots at least 15 days before an election — rather than the shorter periods currently allowed under the laws of many states.

He said 45 states faced the risk that their timetables could leave some voters unable to get their ballots postmarked by Election Day or received by election boards in time to be counted.

In response to the warning letters, some states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, have called for extensions on counting late-arriving ballots in the November election.

Mr. DeJoy, who has argued he is modernizing the Postal Service to make it more efficient, has become a target of criticism. Posts on social media showed protesters delivering fake absentee ballots to the entrance of Mr. DeJoy’s building on Saturday, cluttering the glass front doors with folded sheets of paper that read, “Save the post office. Save our democracy.”



Postal workers from small-town post offices to metropolitan distribution centers say they used to operate along a simple motto: Every piece, every day, meaning that they did not leave until all of the day’s mail went out the door. No more, they say.

Postal workers say drivers are being sent out according to set schedules, whether or not all of the morning’s mail is ready for them, and delivery trucks now have strict cutoff times for when they have to be gone. They say they are already short on staff because of quarantines and the coronavirus outbreak, and limits on working overtime are pushing them further behind.

“Mail is coming into the building faster than we can get it out,” said Mary DiMarco, who sorts bundles in a Miami postal center. “I’m concerned about ballots being handled. That they’re not going to be processed in time.”

“The decisions happened so rapidly — now we are seeing the effect of those decisions,” Mr. Freeman said. “People are coming in every day complaining about how long it’s taking them to receive everything: ‘What the heck is going on?’”

He said further delays had occurred after five mail-sorting machines in the major Cleveland-area distribution center were dismantled in recent days. Critics worried that political influence inside the Postal Service have focused on the removal of 671 sorting machines — about one-eighth of its devices — from facilities across the country.
The stakes in this year’s election are higher than ever. While nearly a quarter of Americans voted absentee or by mail in 2016, millions more are expected to mail their ballots this year because of the coronavirus crisis.

In Ohio, mail-in voting has been common for more than two decades, and a quarter of the state’s voters regularly cast their ballots by mail. But some postal workers say the recent changes in work rules have drastically slowed their ability to deliver mail, raising concerns that votes cast just several days before the election might not make it in time to be counted.

The Postal Service’s inspector general said Friday she had opened an investigation into complaints that leading Democrats have filed against the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and ally of President Trump, who has begun a series of cuts to the agency that Democrats say have slowed down the delivery of mail and endanger vote-by-mail operations.

“We are in receipt of the congressional request and are conducting a body of work to address concerns raised,” a spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service inspector general, Tammy L. Whitcomb, said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, Representative Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York and others last week requested the inspector general investigate “all recent staffing and policy changes put in place” by Mr. DeJoy.