Author: PolitCens

Seventy-four former Republican national security officials say they are voting for Democrat Joe Biden for president because they believe Donald Trump is engaging “in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as president.” Most of those who signed the letter, released Thursday by the advocacy group Defending Democracy Together, put their names on a similar statement in 2016, which also warned against electing Trump. Thursday’s statement outlines 10 reasons why the signers believe Trump must not be reelected in November, including allegations that he has “gravely damaged America’s role as a world leader … undermined confidence in our presidential elections … aligned himself with dictators…” and “attacked and vilified immigrants to our country.” “While some of us hold policy positions that differ from those of Joe Biden and his party, the time to debate those policy differences will come later. For now, it is imperative that we stop Trump’s assault on our nation’s values and institutions and reinstate the moral foundations of our democracy,” the letter stated. Signatories to the letter include Republican stalwarts who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, and Trump himself. They include former deputy and assistant secretaries of state, U.S. trade representatives, members of Congress and senior Pentagon officials. The White House has not yet responded to the statement. Trump and his supporters will get the chance to defend his record of nearly four years at next week’s virtual Republican National Convention, where he will be nominated for a second term.  The virtual Democratic National Convention, scheduled to conclude Thursday evening with Biden’s formal acceptance of the party’s presidential nomination, has included some Republicans, including former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, voicing their support for a Biden presidency.
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Joe Biden is poised to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency Thursday night and plans to tell American voters why after nearly a half-century on the country’s political scene he should be chosen to lead the effort to oust Republican President Donald Trump after one term in the White House. Biden’s speech, from an event center in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, is coming on the fourth and final night of the virtual Democratic National Convention, a collection of taped and live presentations extolling Biden and assailing Trump’s 3½-year presidency. Watch Live: The Democratic National Convention*/

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Trump and Republicans will have a rejoinder at their virtual four-day national convention starting Monday. But Trump, in a visit Thursday to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, near Biden’s boyhood home of Scranton, forecast the coming Republican attacks. “If you want a vision of your life under [a] Biden presidency, think of the smoldering ruins in Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland, the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago, and imagine the mayhem coming to your town and every single town in America,” Trump told supporters hours ahead of the Biden speech. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Old Forge, Pa., Aug. 20, 2020.Democrats were forced to abandon their planned convention with thousands of people jammed into a basketball arena in the Midwestern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, because of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, which has killed a world-leading total of 174,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Biden, if he wins the November 3 election and is inaugurated next January, would be 78, the oldest-ever U.S. president, topping Trump, who is 74. But Biden bested two dozen other Democrats, all but one of them younger than him, to win his party’s nomination on his third run for the presidency, after failed attempts in 1988 and 2008. He was a U.S. senator for 36 years and served another eight as second in command to President Barack Obama before Trump won the presidency in 2016. FILE – Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, sign documents for receiving the Democratic nomination for President and Vice President of the United States in Wilmington, Aug. 14, 2020.Months ago, Biden promised to choose a woman as his vice presidential running mate. He tapped California Senator Kamala Harris last week after a weekslong vetting process of numerous possibilities. Harris was a historic choice in U.S. political annals, the first Black woman and South Asian American on a national party ticket in the U.S. Several of the Democrats Biden defeated in the string of party primaries and caucuses earlier this year, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, gave convention speeches this week supporting the ticket. In this image from video, Andrew Yang speaks during the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 20, 2020.One of them, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, told viewers on the last night of the convention, “I have gotten to know both Joe and Kamala on the trail over the past year – the way you really get to know a person when the cameras are off, the crowds are gone, and it’s just you and them.FILE – Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., speaks on the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in this Feb. 5, 2020, file image from video.“They understand the problems we face,” Yang said. “They are parents and patriots who want the best for our country. And if we give them the chance, they will fight for us and our families every single day.” Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, in her prepared remarks, said, “Just think of what we’ve heard these past four days. That’s the America we will be with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the White House. A nation that plans. A nation that builds. A nation that builds back.” On previous nights, Biden advocates, most notably former President Obama and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, assailed Trump as a failed U.S. leader, while some prominent Republicans also voiced their support for Biden, including former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. By U.S. political norms, attacks from a U.S. leader on his successor are rare. But Obama delivered a searing assessment of Trump on Wednesday night, saying he “has shown no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”  FILE – In this image from video, former President Barack Obama delivers a speech, taped in Philadelphia, during the third night of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2020.Obama, speaking from a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, celebrating America’s founding in the 1700s, warned that Trump’s reelection could undermine democracy. Obama said he had hoped Trump would take the job of president seriously and “discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”  But Obama said, “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe. One-hundred-seventy-thousand Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone, while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.” After excerpts of Obama’s comments were released ahead of his nighttime address, Trump responded, criticizing Obama as having been ineffective and putting U.S. democracy in danger.  “When I listen to that and I see the horror that he’s left us, the stupidity of the transactions that he made. Look what we’re doing. We have our great border wall. We have security,” Trump said at a news conference. “Look how bad he was, how ineffective he was.”  Numerous speakers at the Democratic conclave have praised Biden’s decency and common man approach to public life, saying he possesses empathy for the problems of others that they said Trump has been incapable of showing. They noted that Biden has overcome major losses in his life, including the deaths of his first wife and young daughter in a 1972 car accident and more recently, in 2015, the death of his eldest son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, from brain cancer. 
  
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Joe Biden formally accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency Thursday evening in a speech that is expected to lay out his vision for the country as he seeks to defeat President Donald Trump in the November 3 election.  
 
Biden’s speech on the fourth and final night of the Democratic National Convention comes after nearly 50 years in public office and two failed attempts for the White House in 1988 and 2008.
 
The speech will be the culmination of a nominating convention that was held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. The convention has featured some of the party’s highest-profile figures and even prominent Republicans who praised Biden in video speeches and issued urgent appeals to voters to end what they called Trump’s chaotic presidency.
 
The 77-year-old former senator and vice president during the Obama administration will deliver the speech in an event center in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. While the center will be mostly empty, Biden’s speech will be delivered before his largest audience since the pandemic forced him off the campaign trail in March.  
 
U.S. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close Biden ally, said the speech would likely focus on unifying a divided country.
 
“He recognizes this isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s not about Joe Biden. It’s about us, and it’s about who’s going to move us forward in a way that reminds us of the best in America, not the worst,” Coons said.
 
Biden’s speech comes one day after Senator Kamala Harris of California made history in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination to appear alongside Biden as the vice-presidential candidate on the November ballot. Harris urged people to fight for “the America we know is possible.”  
 
Harris, 55, a former prosecutor, is the fourth woman to be on a major U.S. party’s national ticket, but the first Black woman and first South Asian American. Her mother was a breast cancer scientist who emigrated from India. She died in 2009. Harris’ father, an economist, came to the U.S. from Jamaica.Senator from California and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks on the third day of the Democratic National Convention, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, Aug. 19, 2020.Addressing the third night of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Harris sharply criticized President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the economy, saying his “failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods.”  Trump has continued to defend his administration’s response.
 
Earlier in the evening, former president Barack Obama delivered a blistering attack on Trump, his successor, saying Trump was treating the presidency like “one more reality show” and jeopardizing the democracy with inept leadership and an authoritarian style.
 
Responding to the speech the next day, White House adviser Stephen Miller called Obama “one of the worst presidents, if not the worst president, in U.S. history.”
 
In accepting the number two spot on the Democratic ticket, Senator Harris spoke of a nation with “complexities and imperfections,” and the need to put in the work to address its flaws, such as combatting racism and realizing “the promise of equal justice under the law.”
 
“Make no mistake, the road ahead is not easy. We will stumble. We may fall short. But I pledge to you that we will act boldly and deal with our challenges honestly. We will speak truths, and we will act with the same faith in you that we ask you to place in us,” Harris said.
 Historic nomination
 
Biden’s choice of a Black woman of Asian America descent as his running mate broke the mold of traditional political ticket making and has excited many minorities and women in the party who were lukewarm or opposed to the 77-year-old white Biden leading the party into the fall election.  
 
Harris pledged that a Biden-Harris administration would work to “build an economy that doesn’t leave anyone behind,” take steps to end the coronavirus pandemic, and build a community that is “strong and decent, just and kind.”Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, sign required documents for accepting the Democratic nomination for president and vice president of the United States in Wilmington, Aug. 14, 2020.”We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work,” Harris said. “A president who will bring all of us together — Black, White, Latino, Asian, Indigenous — to achieve the future we collectively want. We must elect Joe Biden.”
 
Harris also made reference to her birth at a hospital in Oakland, California, seemingly a reference to a baseless “birther” theory stoked last week by President Trump that Harris wasn’t qualified to be vice president because both of her parents were immigrants.  
 
Meanwhile, Obama delivered a speech taped in historic Philadelphia saying that for nearly four years Trump “has shown no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”In this image from video, former President Barack Obama delivers a speech, taped in Philadelphia, during the third night of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)Obama warned that Trump’s reelection could undermine democracy and said he had hoped Trump would take the job of president seriously and “discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.”“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t,” Obama said. “And the consequences of that failure are severe.  One-hundred-seventy-thousand Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone, while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.”Obama’s speech was extraordinary because former presidents rarely publicly criticize a sitting president.  
 
After excerpts of Obama’s comments were released earlier Wednesday, Trump responded, criticizing Obama as having been ineffective and putting U.S. democracy in danger.  
 
“When I listen to that and I see the horror that he’s left us, the stupidity of the transactions that he made. Look what we’re doing. We have our great border wall. We have security,” Trump said at an afternoon press conference. “Look how bad he was, how ineffective he was.”‘Setting an example’
 
Many who spoke emphasized Biden’s character and fortitude in overcoming major losses in his life, including the deaths of his first wife and young daughter in a 1972 car accident and more recently, in 2015, the death of one of his grown sons, former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden, from brain cancer.
 
Obama said Biden knows the true strength of the United States “comes from setting an example the world wants to follow,” and that Biden and Harris have plans to get the coronavirus pandemic under control, expand medical coverage, rescue the U.S. economy and “restore our standing in the world.”In this image from video, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the third night of the Democratic National Convention Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in her 2016 bid for president, urged people to turn out to vote as she advocated for Biden and Harris in her convention address Wednesday.“This is the team to pull our nation back from the brink, but they can’t do it without us,” Clinton said. “This can’t be another woulda, coulda, shoulda election. If you vote by mail, request your ballot now, and send it back right away. If you vote in person, do it early. Most of all, no matter what, vote.”
 
Trump has been making campaign stops and holding news conferences during Biden’s week in the political spotlight, traveling to several political battleground states.  
 
On Thursday, he is visiting near Biden’s boyhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Republicans are staging their virtual national convention next week, starting Monday and culminating with Trump’s renomination acceptance speech at the White House Aug. 27. 
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A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by President Donald Trump that sought to block enforcement of a grand jury subpoena for eight years of his personal and corporate tax records.U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero said granting the relief Trump sought would be an “undue expansion” of presidential immunity.Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump, told Reuters the president would appeal the ruling and seek to delay enforcement of the subpoena.The subpoena is related to an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. In a court filing last month, Vance said his investigation was tied to “alleged insurance and bank fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers,” among other things.A spokesman for Vance declined comment.Trump, who is campaigning for re-election in November, has fought efforts by lawmakers and prosecutors to obtain his tax records, which should shed light on his financial dealings. He has also defied decades of precedent as a presidential candidate by refusing to release tax returns. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is taking his reelection campaign Thursday to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, a town less than nine kilometers from Joe Biden’s birthplace, hours before Biden formally accepts the Democratic nomination for president.Trump’s campaign said his speech in the Keystone State would address what it calls “a half century of Joe Biden failing America.”Trump’s visit to the battleground state comes as recent opinion polls have him trailing Biden.  Biden will deliver his acceptance speech hours later from his home in Wilmington, Delaware as the four-day virtual Democratic National Convention nears an end.Trump has been making campaign stops and holding news conferences during Biden’s week in the political spotlight, traveling to several political battleground states.  Republicans are staging their virtual national convention next week, starting Monday and culminating with Trump’s renomination acceptance speech at the White House on August 27. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by less than one percentage point, or 44,000 votes. But Trump, who has since clashed with Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor over efforts to reopen its economy in the midst of the pandemic, has trailed Biden, whose campaign is working to recapture the state that Democrats won from 1992 through 2016. Polls indicate Biden, the former vice president in the Obama administration, is well-positioned to win Pennsylvania with his deep roots in Scranton and his appeal to white working-class and Black voters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said that Trump has “put the health of countless families across the Keystone State in danger and plunged the strong economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden administration into a tailspin.”Trump’s campaign is concerned about losing support among suburban voters, particularly women, in the areas around Philadelphia. The campaign hopes to offset the loss by pushing for high voter turnout among rural and exurban voters.  
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Former Navy pilot Scott Franklin has ousted Rep. Ross Spano, making the Florida congressman dogged by ethics investigations the eighth incumbent House member to be defeated in party primaries this year.Tuesday’s contests were shaped by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 2.3 million people casting mail-in ballots.That compares to fewer than 1.3 million in the 2016 primary. Unlike 2016, when there were primaries for U.S. Senate that helped drive up turnout, there were no statewide races on the August 2020 ballot.This year also has been tough on House incumbents. The eight defeats double 2018’s total and are the most since 1974 to lose in a year when the nation’s congressional districts hadn’t just been redrawn to reflect a new census, which happens every 10 years.The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating Spano for alleged campaign finance violations. The House Ethics Committee was looking into allegations that Spano borrowed more than $100,000 from two friends and then loaned the money to his campaign. But it paused the review when the criminal investigation began.Franklin said he contested the nomination in Spano’s district because he was fearful Democrats might capitalize on allegations against the incumbent to flip the seat in November.”Politically, ideologically we’re pretty close on the issues, but with the ethics and the investigations hanging over him it just really made the seat vulnerable, and that was my concern,” Franklin said.The district sits east of Tampa in central Florida and has traditionally voted Republican. Franklin, a businessman and Lakeland city commissioner, now faces Democrat Alan Cohn, a former television journalist who had raised about $600,000 for the race as of July 29.In north Florida, Kat Cammack won a crowded Republican primary to replace her former boss, outgoing Republican U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho.The 32-year-old Cammack owns a political consulting firm and previously served as Yoho’s deputy chief of staff and his former campaign manager. She prominently featured her connection to Yoho during the campaign.Cammack won in a Republican field of 10 candidates in the firmly Republican district that runs from Ocala to just south of Jacksonville.”It’s a very humbling experience winning a 10-way primary,” she said. “It’s a sign that there’s a next generation of conservatives coming up and we’re ready to start a new squad on Capitol Hill.”Florida will also elect a new member of Congress in a strongly Republican district in southwest Florida, where U.S. Rep. Francis Rooney is stepping down after two terms. Nine Republicans faced off in the primary to replace him in a race that was too close to call Wednesday. Mail-in ballots from overseas voters, such as those in the military, can be returned up to 10 days after election night, and they could narrow the margin and prompt an automatic recount of ballots.In Broward County, Sheriff Gregory Tony claimed victory in the Democratic primary over his predecessor, who was fired after the Parkland massacre. Tony replaced Scott Israel in 2019 after Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed Israel over his handling of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead.In a Palm Beach County congressional district, far right conservative Laura Loomer won the Republican primary to face Democratic U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel. The district is firmly Democratic, and Frankel has been a political fixture there for decades.While President Donald Trump has raised questions about the potential for fraud in voting by mail, he later walked back his comments, at least as far as Florida was concerned, and requested a mail-in ballot of his own.Democrats now have the registration edge in Florida, but independents can, as usual, make all the difference. As of June 30, Florida had nearly 4.9 million active Republican voters and more than 5.1 million active Democratic voters.The state has nearly 3.8 million voters who either are not registered with a party or are registered with a minor party.James Collins, 69, a retiree in Fort Lauderdale, said that because he was “a bit apprehensive because of the pandemic,” he went to his polling station early in the morning Tuesday, donning vinyl gloves and a face mask.”No one was there except the poll workers. It was very quick,” Collins said. 
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Nick Zingarelli relished Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention this week, especially when the former first lady used President Donald Trump’s own words — “It is what it is” — to sum up Democrats’ disappointment in his presidency.
But the moment on the first night of the first virtual convention was bittersweet for Zingarelli. A line that good deserved a thunderous applause from a crowded convention hall, he thought.
“Not having that response — yeah, there was something that was taken away from that,” said Zingarelli, a 41-year-old lawyer from suburban St. Louis. “But it’s the best that we can do in this environment.”
In other words, it is what it is.
Many Americans who have tuned in to Democrats’ experiment in socially distanced political theater have come away with similar reactions. They believe that a traditional nominating convention — a boisterous and quirky affair staged for a packed audience of hyped-up political activists — had to be sacrificed for safety and public health. But its replacement — a mashup of homemade videos, slickly produced montages and speeches with no applause — takes some getting used to.In this Aug. 18, 2020, image provided by Genevieve Williams, Williams poses for a selfie in Neosho, Mo. (Genevieve Williams via AP)Millions of people are still watching Democrats’ four-day celebration of their presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
They are at home watching on TV and computer screens, or passing around clips of the highlights the day after. Some were in their cars at drive-in movie-style viewing stations Democrats set up in a few states. Some have tried for a social experience by jumping on a Zoom watch party.
Zingarelli organized a video conference for 25 attendees on Monday night and said the communal experience was lively.
“My wife and I were sitting side by side, rocking our Joe Biden aviators from the dollar store, just promoting the fun, and my wife was making signs,” Zingarelli, an ardent Biden supporter, said.
Through two nights, television viewership is sharply down from the 2016 convention. Monday’s first night reached 19.7 million viewers, the second night 19.2 million; the audience was around 25 million four years ago, the Nielsen company said. It’s hard to judge how much is due to the format, since people in general are watching less TV than they did four years ago.
The Biden campaign says an additional 10.2 million streamed the first night. Although that couldn’t be independently verified, this year’s programs appears tailor-made for that format, easily consumed in snippets and bites. The speeches have been shorter and less formal than the behind-the-podium oratory of conventions past.
The new virtual format has spawned some creative reimagining of old traditions — including a new roll call vote quickly embraced as a success. Viewers praised the montage of clips featuring delegates announcing their states’ vote tallies from state landmarks and scenic landscapes.
Laura DeGroff Simoes of Concord, New Hampshire, who voted in the Democratic primary but considers herself an independent, said it’s a welcome change that offered a glimpses of the places homebound Americans miss.
“There was much more diversity represented, there were different languages. I loved seeing the backdrop of where people were from,” said Simoes, who watched on TV alongside her husband and two sons.
Lynn Hart, a South Dakota farmer who is both Black and a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, would have been in Milwaukee, the original site of the convention, as a first-time delegate. While disappointed about the change, he said there have been perks. The video conference format allows him to network with other Democrats while moving seamlessly between a lineup of meetings.
“I can sit here in my shorts, T-shirt or my pajamas and pick and choose who I listen to,” he said.
But some delegates missed the in-person action.
Jackie Craig, a Minnesota delegate, watched from her home — sometimes from a closet so she wouldn’t distract the rest of the family. A self-described “obnoxious extrovert,” she said it was a “little deflating” missing the in-person experience.
“I would have been like one of those dogs who wags its tail so hard it probably passed out,” Craig, 49, said.Republicans watching too
Republicans are watching, too. Carol Wessel Boyer of Troy, Missouri, has been active in GOP politics for decades and knows the kind of bounce conventions can give to a candidate. She doesn’t see the virtual DNC generating that sort of excitement, and doesn’t expect the Republican version will, either.
“They’re just not going to get the enthusiasm you normally pick up from a convention,” Boyer said. “It’s hard to get excited about something virtually.”
Republicans will get their shot next week. President Donald Trump is due to give his nomination acceptance speech at the White House. But GOP convention planners have said little else little about the details of their programming or format.
Nanda Nunnelly served as a delegate at the 2016 convention in Philadelphia, and she’s a delegate again. This time, she’s been watching with another delegate, Genevieve Williams, from Williams’ home in Neosho, Missouri.
Nunnelly, 53, says they miss the crowds, drama and excitement — not just from the soaring speeches and historic moments, but at the parties afterward.
“Now, it was just like, you’re on a high note and, ‘OK, let’s go to bed now,'” she said.
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