Author: PolitCens

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has gained a national following through his management of the coronavirus pandemic, is writing a book that looks back on his experiences, and includes leadership advice and a close look at his relationship with the administration of President Donald Trump.
Crown announced Tuesday that Cuomo’s “American Crisis” will be released Oct. 13, three weeks before Election Day, when Trump is expected to face presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The news comes the day after Cuomo addressed the Democratic National Convention and called the virus’ spread a metaphor for a country weakened by division. New York State has one of the lowest infection rates in the U.S., a welcome contrast to the spring, when it had one of the highest.
“In his own voice, Andrew Cuomo chronicles in ‘American Crisis’ the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic,” according to Crown, “sharing his personal reflections and the decision-making that shaped his policy, and offers his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government and the White House, as well as other state and local political and health officials.”
Cuomo had said last month that he was thinking of a book, commenting during a radio interview on WAMC that he wanted to document the “entire experience, because if we don’t learn from this then it will really compound the whole crisis that we’ve gone through.”
In an excerpt from “American Crisis” that Crown shared with The Associated Press, Cuomo emphasized the importance of confronting fear.
“The questions are what do you do with the fear and would you succumb to it,” he wrote. “I would not allow the fear to control me. The fear kept my adrenaline high and that was a positive. But I would not let the fear be a negative, and I would not spread it. Fear is a virus also.”
Financial terms for “American Crisis” were not disclosed. Cuomo was represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, whose other clients include former President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. Cuomo is also the author of “All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life,” which came out in 2014.
Cuomo, currently serving his third term, has been praised for his blunt, straightforward press conferences, and for a time was even mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. His style has differed notably from the more erratic approach of President Trump, a Republican with whom he has clashed often. Cuomo has said that Trump is “in denial” about the severity of the pandemic and has faulted him for ignoring advice from scientists. Trump has blamed Cuomo’s “poor management” for New York’s tens of thousands COVID-19 fatalities.
Cuomo has received some of his strongest criticism for the thousands of virus-related deaths at New York nursing homes. A recent AP investigation found that the state’s death toll of nursing home patients, already among the highest in the nation, could be significantly more than reported. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, only New York explicitly says that it counts just residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.
So far, Cuomo’s administration has declined to release the number. The governor has called criticism of nursing home deaths politically motivated.
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Democrats appealed for party unity Monday as they reached out to voters across the United States in the first night of a virtual convention that will name their nominee for the November election. Former Vice President Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, will get the party’s nod later this week, and as Mike O’Sullivan reports, the televised event is intended to generate excitement as the election campaign enters its final phase.
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U.S. Democrats open their national convention Monday night, a four-day virtual affair amid a coronavirus pandemic they hope will help push former Vice President Joe Biden to victory over President Donald Trump in the November election.FILE – Former Vice President Joe Biden.Former first lady Michelle Obama, progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, a Trump critic, are among those scheduled to make the case for the 77-year-old Biden on the convention’s first night.Months ago, Sanders was the last candidate standing in the way of Biden’s ascendant path to the Democratic presidential nomination.In a segment of Obama’s taped message released ahead of the gathering, she described Biden as “a profoundly decent man, guided by faith.In this image from video, former first lady Michelle Obama speaks during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 17, 2020.“He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic and lead our country,” Obama said. “And he listens. He will tell the truth and trust science. He will govern as someone who’s lived a life that the rest of us can recognize.”None of the speakers will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Democrats had planned to stage their quadrennial convention. Instead, they will appear in taped presentations or live online from their homes across the U.S. Technicians at television control panels will attempt to make it look like a convention of sorts to hold the attention of millions of voters.Watch the convention liveSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE PHOTO: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) takes the stage at the New Hampshire Democratic Party state convention in Manchester, New Hampshire, Sept. 7, 2019.An array of Democratic luminaries, including former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, is set to extol the virtues of Biden and his vice-presidential running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris — the first Black woman and first South Asian American on a national party ticket in the U.S.Plans call for Biden to accept the party’s nomination Thursday night in his third run for the White House over three decades. This will be his first time as the party’s nominee.The convention will be a political event unlike any ever seen by living Americans, conducted online without the traditional hoopla of conventioneers cheering their nominee.Biden will accept the nomination in his home state of Delaware, with only aides and political advisers present.Meanwhile, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are visiting several political battleground states this week to try to upstage the Democrats, including a stop Thursday by Trump near where Biden grew up in the northeastern city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.As Biden enters the pivotal week, national surveys continue to show him leading Trump, as he has for months in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. The aggregate compiled by RealClearPolitics shows Biden ahead by an average of nearly 8 percentage points, but less in key states that are expected to determine the overall outcome.U.S. presidential elections are not determined by the national popular vote but indirectly by the winners in each of the 50 states and the national capital of Washington, D.C., in the Electoral College.The biggest states, such as California with 55 electors and Texas with 38, hold the most sway in the Electoral College with a majority of the 270 of 538 electors needed to capture the presidency. Seven states and Washington, D.C., have the fewest — three electoral votes apiece.President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Aug. 17, 2020.In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes but won the presidency because he narrowly captured three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and their electoral votes.Polls show Biden ahead in all three of those states at the moment but by smaller margins than his overall national lead, giving Trump a plausible chance to pull ahead in the final weeks of the campaign, even if he again loses the popular vote.Biden defeated a large contingent of Democratic candidates, including Harris, whom he tapped last week as his running mate. She is the fourth woman to join a major national party ticket in the U.S. and would become the highest-ranking female leader in U.S. history if the Biden-Harris pairing wins.The three previous women on national party tickets — two vice-presidential candidates and Hillary Clinton four years ago — all lost.If Biden wins, he will be 78 on Inauguration Day in January, making him the oldest U.S. leader ever, topping Trump, who is 74.Biden has called himself “a bridge to the future,” and U.S. political analysts are predicting he might serve only one term. That would instantly make Harris a leading Democratic presidential contender in 2024.Democrats are showcasing an array of speakers, with each of the four convention nights organized around different themes: “We the People,” “Leadership Matters,” “A More Perfect Union” and “America’s Promise.”Former President Clinton, Biden’s wife, Jill, former Secretary of State John Kerry and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer are among the speakers Tuesday night.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, former President Obama and Harris are speaking Wednesday night. 
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The Democratic National Convention this year is entirely virtual, with speakers beamed in from locations around the country. But one small city that rarely gets national media attention is in the spotlight, presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden’s hometown. Esha Sarai reports from Wilmington, Delaware on how residents are anticipating all of the attention.Camera: Esha Sarai     Produced by: Esha Sarai
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On the day the Democratic Party began its virtual convention, the incumbent Republican president, Donald Trump, brought his campaign to the heart of the upper Midwest.  In campaign-style stops at airports in Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday — replicating the rock music soundtracks of his “Make America Great Again” political rallies — the president, speaking to invited clusters of supporters on the tarmacs, accused his presumptive election opponent of being a clueless puppet of “left-wing fascists.”  A victory by the opposition party in November, Trump warned, would mean open borders, economic collapse and other perceived calamities.  Supporters cheer as President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Wittman Airport in Oshkosh, Wis., Aug. 17, 2020.“In Joe Biden’s America, the protections of American citizenship will be stripped away, and your community will be left at the mercy of the mob,” the president told the outdoor audience at the airport in Mankato, Minnesota.  Trump was competitive in Minnesota in 2016; Hillary Clinton barely won the state.  “It is clear that to the extent that the president has a strategy, it is the old ploy to play up the fears of white middle class beset by protests, riots and changing demography,” Jennifer Delton, a history professor at Skidmore College, told VOA. “The George Floyd protests, the concurrent riots and resulting property damage, and continued calls to ‘defund’ police are all disturbing and uncomfortable realities” for many in Minnesota of the older baby boomer generation, regardless of their political leaning.   Minnesota was, for much of the 20th century, a bastion of the progressive liberal tradition out of which emerged two vice presidents from the Democratic Party: Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. But since the 1980s, that tradition has been challenged by a variety of conservatives.   “At the same time, the state has become incredibly diverse with strong, politically active Hmong and Somali communities,” Delton said.  President Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of supporters at Mankato Regional Airport in Mankato, Minn., Aug. 17, 2020.In addition to the airport visits in Minneapolis and Mankato in Minnesota and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the president is to go to the southwestern border city of Yuma in Arizona on Tuesday. Two days later he is scheduled to be near Biden’s boyhood home in the northeastern city of Scranton, Pennsylvania. That will occur the same day Biden makes his presidential nomination acceptance speech from neighboring Delaware.  In his successful 2016 campaign for the White House, Trump reveled in the cheers from sign-waving supporters at large public rallies. But both the Trump and Biden public campaigns have been sharply curtailed this year by the coronavirus pandemic and the need to keep their adherents socially distanced from each other.    The change, which Trump blames on China allowing the coronavirus to escape Wuhan, was lamented by the president Monday.  Because of the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus, the president said that when candidates give speeches now, “you have to stand two football fields away” from the audience.  A supporter watches as President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Wittman Airport in Oshkosh, Wis., Aug. 17, 2020.Trump attempted to stage an arena-sized rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, but the crowd that showed up was far short of his campaign’s expectations. One of the prominent attendees, former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, who did not wear a mask at the event, later died of COVID-19.  This week’s swing through the four states reflects the new reality of downsized events that are the antithesis of U.S. presidential campaigns of yesteryears.  Trump, who for months has been trailing Biden in national polls, is hoping to limit a further political fall-off generated by the virtual Democratic convention, where party luminaries for four days will extol Biden and pillory Trump’s 3½ years as president, particularly his handling of the pandemic and early-2020 predictions that the virus will disappear.  “The China plague will fade, but we will not forget,” Trump stated in Mankato on Monday.  The United States, with nearly 5.5 million coronavirus cases, also has the most reported COVID-19 deaths of any country –- more than 170,000.  The president prefers to dwell on other matters during his campaign-style events.  On Monday, he spoke about rebuilding the economy a second time after the pandemic hit.  “You know what that is?” Trump asked. “That’s right. That’s God testing me. He said, ‘You know, you did it once.’ And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one that could do it.’ He said, ‘That, you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’” Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
 
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Feminists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries fervently campaigned for women’s suffrage in the United States by organizing, petitioning and picketing.  One hundred years ago this month they were finally granted the right to vote through passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. From the time the amendment was introduced to Congress in 1878, it took more than 40 years for it to be passed and then ratified by three-quarters of the states. The fight to vote goes back to the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Held at Weslyan Methodist Church, the convention was attended by an estimated 300 people, including abolitionist Frederick Douglass. No women of color were present.  The church is now part of the Women’s Rights At the first women’s rights convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principle author of the Declaration of Sentiments, a document that called for equality with men, including the right to vote.Delegates included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the principle author of the Declaration of Sentiments, a document written at the convention calling for equality with men, including the right to vote.During the early 20th century, a new generation of women continued the struggle with protests, silent vigils, hunger strikes and parades. This parade took place by the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 1913.“They give speeches for women’s suffrage in public to rally male audiences and go into crowds of men at factory gates at lunchtime, and they often win them over,” DuBois said.  Renewed momentum, along with President Woodrow Wilson changing his stance and supporting the amendment in 1918, eventually led to its passage two years later.  A century later, many women still face voter suppression, says the League of Women Voters, including “forcing discriminatory voter ID and proof-of citizenship restrictions on eligible voters, reducing polling place hours in communities of color, and illegally purging voters from the rolls.” Inequalities like these and others may be alleviated through passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, proponents say, which was introduced to Congress in 1923, three years after women gained voting rights. The ERA was approved by the House of Representatives in 1971 and by the Senate in 1972. It was ratified by three-quarters of the states in January 2020 — years after the deadline.  Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, argues that if the deadline was removed, the amendment that says “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,” could become a part of the Constitution.  Like women who fought for voting rights, Smeal said, “the Equal Rights Amendment is very important because it establishes that all women must be treated equally under our Constitution.”   Among other things, she explains, it will end pay, education and insurance discrimination, and help prevent violence against women. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to upstage former Vice President Joe Biden’s nomination this week to be his Democratic opponent in the November election, campaigning in key battleground election states and blanketing many Americans’ computer screens with his political ads.Trump is visiting four states that could prove crucial for his chances to win a second four-year term in the White House, starting Monday with stops in the midwestern cities of Mankato, Minnesota and Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Then he is flying to the southwestern city of Yuma, Arizona on Tuesday and to near Biden’s boyhood home in the northeastern city of Scranton, Pennsylvania on Thursday, the same day Biden makes his presidential nomination acceptance speech to oppose Trump in the Nov. 3 national election.In his successful 2016 campaign for the White House, Trump reveled in the cheers from sign-waving supporters at large public rallies. But both the Trump and Biden public campaigns have been sharply curtailed this year by the coronavirus pandemic and the need to keep their adherents socially distanced from each other.Trump attempted to stage an arena-sized rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June, but the crowd that showed up was far short of Trump campaign expectations. His swing through the four states this week reflects the new reality of downsized events that are the antithesis of U.S. presidential campaigns of yesteryears.Although Forced to Meet Virtually From Across the Nation, Democrats Are United Against TrumpThe hoopla of a national convention will be missing in the face of the unchecked coronavirus pandemicSome of his events will be staged in airport hangars with crowds ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 people. They will be seated at health experts’ recommended socially distant spacing from each other.The U.S. leader, who for months has been trailing Biden in national polls, is hoping to limit a further political fall-off generated by the virtual Democratic convention, where party luminaries for four days will extol Biden and pillory Trump’s 3 ½-year presidency, particularly his handling of the pandemic and early-2020 predictions that the virus will disappear.With the U.S. coronavirus death toll now at a world-leading 170,000, Trump is focusing on other issues at his campaign stops, such as in Minnesota. It was the state where the death of George Floyd, a Black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis, spawned massive coast-to-coast protests against police abuse of minorities and racial injustice.  In Wisconsin, the U.S. leader is talking about job growth and trade, while in Arizona, he plans to emphasize security along the border with Mexico and his tough-on-immigration stance.In Scranton, on Thursday, an aide said Trump’s speech will review “Joe Biden’s four decades in public life” and contrast his record with Trump’s presidency.While Trump is appearing at the rallies, his campaign is spending as much as $10 million on digital political ads this week, taking over the banner of YouTube for 96 hours starting on Tuesday.Oddly, he is also buying ads on the home pages of the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and FoxNews.com, all of which at various times he has attacked as “fake news” for stories he does not like.Republicans are holding their scaled-down national convention next week, with Trump making his renomination acceptance speech August 27 from the White House.
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Feminists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries fervently campaigned for women’s suffrage in the United States by organizing, petitioning and picketing.  One hundred years ago this month they were finally granted the right to vote through passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. From the time the amendment was introduced to Congress in 1878, it took more than 40 years for it to be passed and then ratified by three-quarters of the states. The fight to vote goes back to the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Held at Weslyan Methodist Church, the convention was attended by an estimated 300 people, including abolitionist Frederick Douglass. No women of color were present.  The church is now part of the Women’s Rights At the first women’s rights convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principle author of the Declaration of Sentiments, a document that called for equality with men, including the right to vote.Delegates included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the principle author of the Declaration of Sentiments, a document written at the convention calling for equality with men, including the right to vote.During the early 20th century, a new generation of women continued the struggle with protests, silent vigils, hunger strikes and parades. This parade took place by the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 1913.“They give speeches for women’s suffrage in public to rally male audiences and go into crowds of men at factory gates at lunchtime, and they often win them over,” DuBois said.  Renewed momentum, along with President Woodrow Wilson changing his stance and supporting the amendment in 1918, eventually led to its passage two years later.  A century later, many women still face voter suppression, says the League of Women Voters, including “forcing discriminatory voter ID and proof-of citizenship restrictions on eligible voters, reducing polling place hours in communities of color, and illegally purging voters from the rolls.” Inequalities like these and others may be alleviated through passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, proponents say, which was introduced to Congress in 1923, three years after women gained voting rights. The ERA was approved by the House of Representatives in 1971 and by the Senate in 1972. It was ratified by three-quarters of the states in January 2020 — years after the deadline.  Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, argues that if the deadline was removed, the amendment that says “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,” could become a part of the Constitution.  Like women who fought for voting rights, Smeal said, “the Equal Rights Amendment is very important because it establishes that all women must be treated equally under our Constitution.”   Among other things, she explains, it will end pay, education and insurance discrimination, and help prevent violence against women. 
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