The post Growing Number of States Demanding 2020 Presidential Election State Audits first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

• A group named “Flag Officers 4 America” released a letter signed by 124 former military leaders.
• The letter questioned the 2020 election result and President Joe Biden’s physical and mental health.
• One serving Navy leader told Politico the letter was “disturbing and reckless.”
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More than 120 retired US military leaders have signed an open letter appearing to advance a false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged and questioning President Joe Biden’s mental capacity to serve.

“Without fair and honest elections that accurately reflect the ‘will of the people’ our Constitutional Republic is lost,” said the letter released Tuesday by “Flag Officers 4 America,” and signed by 124 former admirals and generals.

“The FBI and Supreme Court must act swiftly when election irregularities are surfaced and not ignore them as was done in 2020.”

On its website, Flag Officers 4 America says it is a collection of “retired military leaders who pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the US against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

In the letter, the signatories, many of whom have been out of active service for decades, also addressed concerns over Biden’s health.

“The mental and physical condition of the Commander in Chief cannot be ignored. He must be able to quickly make accurate national security decisions involving life and limb anywhere, day or night,” the letter said.

The Defense Department declined to comment.

Read more: A powerful group of anti-Trumpers is threatening to form a new party. Republicans fear it would doom the GOP and render it ‘not politically viable.’

Throughout the 2020 election campaign former President Donald Trump regularly cast doubts on Biden’s health and suitability to rule, calling him “Sleepy Joe” and saying in March 2020 that there was “something going on” with Biden’s mental abilities.

Earlier this month Biden’s personal doctor, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, released a report on the president’s health, in which he called him a “healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.”

Biden is the oldest serving US president in history, and the White House said this week that the president will undergo a full checkup this year.

Biden addresses a joint session of Congress on April 28. Melina Mara/The Washington Post via AP, Pool

In the Tuesday letter, the Flag Officers 4 America signatories also laid out what they deem to be the major threats facing the US, namely the rise of China, the rejoining of the Iran nuclear deal, immigration, and the ending of the Keystone Pipeline project.

The signatories also called for the removal of Section 230, a part of US law that shields tech companies from legal liability. Trump called for the section to be removed last year after Twitter flagged two of his tweets about mail-in voting.

“Our Nation is in deep peril,” the signatories wrote in the introduction to the letter.

“We are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776. The conflict is between supporters of Socialism and Marxism vs. supporters of Constitutional freedom and liberty.”

‘Gross and blatant partisan attack’

Several military experts told Politico the letter was an outright partisan attack and dangerous.

One serving Navy officer told Politico the letter was “disturbing and reckless” while Jim Golby, an expert in civil-military relations, told the outlet it was a “shameful effort to use their rank and the military’s reputation for such a gross and blatant partisan attack.”

The letter’s organizer, Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle, told Politico: “Retired generals and admirals normally do not engage in political actions, but the situation facing our nation today is dire. … We are facing threats greater than at any other time since our country was founded. To remain silent would be a dereliction of duty.”

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/former-generals-admirals-letter-question-election-biden-health-2021-5

The post More than 120 retired generals and admirals wrote to Biden appearing to back a false election conspiracy and questioning his mental health first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON – A Republican-led U.S. Senate committee authorized a subpoena on Wednesday for information in an investigation related to Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump’s main rival as he runs for re-election in November.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted 8-6, with every Republican voting yes, and every Democrat voting no, to approve a subpoena for documents related to work the younger Biden did for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

The subpoena was requested by the panel’s chairman, Senator Ron Johnson, for information from Blue Star Strategies, a public affairs firm that worked with Burisma. Johnson’s investigation intensified after Trump’s impeachment trial this year. He plans to issue a report in the coming months.

Trump was impeached on abuse-of-power and obstruction charges in the Democratic-led House of Representatives after he asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. He was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Democrats say Trump and his party are trying to shore up his re-election prospects by targeting Biden. They have also said Johnson’s actions could aid disinformation efforts by Russia as it seeks to influence the 2020 election, after U.S. intelligence determined Moscow sought boost Trump campaign in 2016.

“Senator Johnson should be working overtime to save American lives – but instead he’s just trying to save the President’s job,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden’s presidential campaign, noting the current health and economic crisis.

Senator Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict Trump of abuse of power, said in March he thought Johnson’s investigation of Hunter Biden appeared political. A no vote would have deadlocked the committee, but Romney joined other Republicans in approving the subpoena.

Senate Judiciary, led by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, is investigating surveillance warrants in the FBI’s probe of Russian meddling in 2016.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/usa/republican-led-us-senate-panel-backs-subpoena-hunter-biden-probe

The post Republican-Led US Senate Panel Backs Subpoena in Hunter Biden Probe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON – Two Republican-led Senate committees issued a politically charged report Wednesday alleging that the work Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son did in Ukraine constituted a conflict of interest for the Obama administration at a time when Biden was engaged in Ukraine policy as vice president.

But the report said it was ultimately “unclear” what impact Hunter Biden’s position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company had on Obama administration policy with regard to Ukraine. And it offered no evidence to support one of President Donald Trump’s more incendiary allegations — that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor as a way to protect his son.

Biden’s campaign immediately panned the report, released six weeks before the election, as an effort by an ally of Trump to damage his election opponent.

Trump has repeatedly drawn attention to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine even as his own administration has warned of a concerted Russian effort to denigrate Joe Biden and asserted that a Ukrainian lawmaker who is involved in spreading anti-Biden claims is an “active Russian agent.”

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, whose Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is one of the two panels that released the 87-page report, had acknowledged in interviews his goal of making the document public before the election, telling The Associated Press last month that the “American people deserve the truth” about his probe.

The investigation produced stark political divisions, with Democrats accusing Johnson of a politically motivated initiative at a time when they said the Homeland Security Committee should be focused on the coronavirus pandemic response and other, less partisan issues. Even before the report was released, the Biden campaign issued a detailed statement aiming to rebut point-by-point allegations that it said had long been debunked by media organizations as well as by U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

The Senate report examines Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine, where he held a paid seat on the board of gas company Burisma, and alleges that work posed a conflict of interest because Biden was vice president at the time and dealing with Ukraine policy.

It references a 2016 email from George Kent, the former acting deputy chief of mission at the Kyiv embassy, that described the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board as “very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.” Kent testified about his concerns during the impeachment proceedings against Trump last year.

Another State Department official, Amos Hochstein, is described in the report as having raised concerns directly to Biden because he was concerned that Russians were using his son’s role with the company to sow disinformation.

The report says that even though State Department officials regarded the head of the company, Mykola Zlokevsky, as corrupt, Biden did not confront him.

“What the Chairmen discovered during the course of this investigation is that the Obama administration knew that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” the report says.

“Moreover, this investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president’s son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch,” it adds.

Even so, the Republican senators acknowledge that the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on the board affected Ukraine policy is “unclear,” and the report does not describe how, if at all, specific policy decisions were influenced by Biden’s position.

Notably, the report makes limited mention of the claim by Trump and some supporters that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, as a way to stymie an investigation into Burisma’s owner. The allegations were central to the impeachment case against Trump after he asked Ukraine’s president in a telephone call last year to investigate the Bidens.

The report includes only six references, including in footnotes, to Shokin and does not expose new information about any role Biden may have had in his ouster.

The Biden campaign pointed to news reports and public statements showing there was no active investigation into Burisma at the time of Shokin’s ouster in 2016, and that the firing of Shokin was broadly sought by U.S. and European officials and reflected the official Obama administration policy.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, and Hunter Biden has denied using his influence with his father to aid Burisma. But Republicans who came to Trump’s defense in this year’s impeachment trial asked for further investigations of his activities. Johnson, a close ally of Trump, took the lead.

“As the coronavirus death toll climbs and Wisconsinites struggle with joblessness, Ron Johnson has wasted months diverting the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee away from any oversight of the catastrophically botched federal response to the pandemic, a threat Sen. Johnson has dismissed by saying that ‘death is an unavoidable part of life,'” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/usa/republican-senate-report-bidens-son-alleges-conflict-interest

The post Republican Senate Report on Biden’s Son Alleges Conflict of Interest first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Trump told Fox News’ Steve Hilton on Sunday that he would be open to completely decoupling the U.S. economy from China, before warning:  “If Biden is elected, China will own our country.”

“I don’t want to set the world on fire right now,” Trump said during an exclusive interview on “The Next Revolution.” 

TRUMP SAYS RELATIONSHIP WITH CHINA’S XI CHANGES SINCE COROANVIRUS,  CLAIMS TWO HAVEN’T SPOKEN IN ‘LONG TIME’

But “There has been no country that has ripped us off more than China…,” he continued. “We lose billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. We get nothing from China. Yes, we get some goods that we could produce ourselves….[but] we get nothing. All we do is lose money.”

Trump signed a landmark trade deal with China in January, easing tensions between the world’s two largest economies amid a trade war after accusations that China had for decades been manipulating its currency and stealing U.S. trade secrets.

Since the global coronavirus outbreak, however, Trump told Hilton that the deal is “longer the same to me” and raised the possibility of completely severing ties with the communist country.

“If they don’t treat us right, I would certainly do that,” he said.

The post Trump: If Biden is elected, ‘China will own our country’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

• Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race.
• He also won’t run for the Senate in 2020 against Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
• O’Rourke emerged as a promising young candidate who competed well in a difficult statewide race against Sen. Ted Cruz in a state that has long eluded Democrats.
  

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Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourkee will end his campaign for the presidency, The New York Times is reporting.

The ex-congressman was launched on to the national stage three years ago when he staged a competitive challenge to incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in a state that has long been firmly held in GOP hands. His near-miss in that campaign had many Texans and national Democrats speculating as to whether he would make a second run at the upper house of Congress, but the El Paso-based O’Rourke instead mounted a presidential campaign.

“My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee,” O’Rourke told The Times.

Despite early attention, O’Rourke was not able to capitalize on the early buzz and instead gradually fell in the polls.

He repeatedly cleared the threshold to appear on the televised debate stages but was unable to capitalize on that politically. The former congressman’s most prominent moments on the national stage came in the wake of a mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso, Texas.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/beto-orourke-dropping-out-of-2020-democratic-presidential-primary-2019-11

The post Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

But, illustrating the balancing act involved as the 2020 election cycle gets started, Democrats have adamantly denied that the document is an “impeachment resolution,” perhaps out of concern for how that label would play in more moderate swing districts.

The resolution directs the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees to “continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump.”

Republicans, however, have countered that there is no “existing” impeachment inquiry because the House has not voted to open one as it did during the Clinton and Nixon impeachments — and Tuesday’s resolution does not explicitly open the probe, either.

Fox News is told it’s possible that, based on the way the resolution is written, it’s possible that the legal rights the resolution affords to the president could be curbed unless there are Judiciary Committee hearings. That’s why the muscular role of the House Intelligence Committee is important in this resolution — it raises the question of whether the president would be able to question witnesses outside of Judiciary Committee proceedings, and who he would be able to question.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of Calif., leaves a secure area where Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper is testifying as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

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“The resolution put forward by Speaker Pelosi confirms that House Democrats’ impeachment has been an illegitimate sham from the start as it lacked any proper authorization by a House vote,” the White House said in a statement. “It continues this scam by allowing Chairman Schiff, who repeatedly lies to the American people, to hold a new round of hearings, still without any due process for the President.”

READ DEMS’ FULL RESOLUTION FORMALIZING IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

The statement continued:  “The White House is barred from participating at all, until after Chairman Schiff conducts two rounds of one-sided hearings to generate a biased report for the Judiciary Committee.  Even then, the White House’s rights remain undefined, unclear, and uncertain – because those rules still haven’t been written.  This resolution does nothing to change the fundamental fact that House Democrats refuse to provide basic due process rights to the Administration.”

The Democrats’ resolution specifies that ranking Republicans in the minority on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees (Reps. Doug Collins and Devin Nunes, respectively) will have the authority, with the concurrence of committee chairs in the majority, to subpoena witnesses and compel their testimony — a major demand that the White House and top Republicans had made in recent weeks.

If the chair does not consent, the minority can appeal to the full committee. It is common in other proceedings for committee chairs to essentially have veto authority over subpoenas sought by ranking minority members.

The resolution also authorizes the Intelligence Committee to conduct an “open hearing or hearings” in which minority Republicans have equal time to question witnesses.

And, after that hearing is concluded, “to allow for full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation described in the first section of this resolution within 72 hours after notice is given.”

GOP STORMS THE SECURE SCIF ON CAPITOL HILL TO PROTEST IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

The resolution further directs the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the other committees, to prepare a report on its findings to the Judiciary Committee, which would actually write any articles of impeachment. In response to GOP complaints about Democrats’ selective leaks of opening statements and depositions, the document also authorizes the public release of testimony transcripts, with only sensitive or classified information being redacted.

And, the resolution permits Republicans to submit written demands for testimony and other evidence, to cross-examine witnesses, and raise objections.

There is no timeline given for the impeachment inquiry to conclude. The House Rules Committee, which is the gateway for most measures in the House, will meet Wednesday at 3 p.m. ET to prepare the resolution for the House floor, including by adding additional procedures. The full House will debate and vote on the measure Thursday morning, with a vote expected by midday.

Just before the resolution was filed, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told Fox News flatly on Tuesday that “this is not an impeachment resolution.”

He did not answer when asked if he was concerned about the public perception of that term.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also insisted Monday night, “It’s not an impeachment resolution.”

At the same time, there were encouraging signs for Democrats that their approach would play well among moderates and influential members of the caucus. Freshman South Carolina Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham, who unexpectedly flipped a seat from red to blue last year, told Fox News he was “supportive” of the new resolution.

And California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez said the impeachment proceedings would not disrupt ongoing USMCA trade negotiations, which Gomez is handling at Pelosi’s request.

Four Democratic committee chairs — Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Eliot L. Engel, and Carolyn Maloney — said in a statement Tuesday that the “resolution provides rules for the format of open hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, including staff-led questioning of witnesses, and it authorizes the public release of deposition transcripts … [it] establishes procedures for the transfer of evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and it sets forth due process rights for the president and his counsel in the Judiciary Committee proceedings.”

They added: “The evidence we have already collected paints the picture of a president who abused his power by using multiple levers of government to press a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 election. Following in the footsteps of previous impeachment inquiries, the next phase will move from closed depositions to open hearings where the American people will learn firsthand about the president’s misconduct.”

“It’s not an impeachment resolution.”

— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

In terms of upcoming impeachment-related proceedings, State Department Ukraine experts Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson are expected to appear in closed session on Wednesday.

Timothy Morrison, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, is expected to appear in closed session on Thursday.

Robert Blair, Assistant to the President and Senior Adviser to the Acting Chief of Staff, is expected to appear in closed session on Friday.

The Committees will “renotice” a future date for top Defense Department official Kathryn Wheelbarger. The committees are in ongoing discussions with other witnesses and we look forward to their testimony.

Earlier in the day on Tuesday, the top Republicans on the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry blasted the investigation as “illegitimate” and a “sham,” signaling that the new procedures wouldn’t change their minds.

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Nunes, R-Calif., Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Michael McCaul, R-Texas, penned a letter to Rep. James McGovern, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, who announced his panel would take up an impeachment procedure resolution on Wednesday to “ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward.”

Nunes, Jordan and McCaul accused McGovern, D-Mass., of not giving enough time for Republican members to review the resolution ahead of the vote, and they continued to blast the inquiry as a whole.

Rep. Collins: House impeachment vote confirms everything they’ve been doing is wrong

Republican Rep. Doug Collins calls the upcoming House vote to formalize the Trump impeachment process a ‘sham’ to cover Democrats’ mishandling of the investigation.

“Under House rules, you championed at the beginning of this Congress, major legislation is required to be posted 72 hours in advance of a vote,” they wrote. “Yet, here, on the gravest and most solemn work the House can do, you are forcing the House to consider a resolution with text that is still not available two days before the vote.”

“Without text, we know nothing about the Democrats’ intended impeachment process. Your website describes the resolution as ‘directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigation,’” they continued. “Chairman Schiff does not need a resolution to continue leaking selective facts from his basement bunker.”

They added, “We can only assume, therefore, that this resolution is necessary to allow Democrats to subvert the ordinary legislative process.”

Still, the Democrats’ resolution appeared to address the White House’s complaints from earlier this month, when it vowed not to participate in the inquiry.

SCHIFF SAYS ‘WE’ DIDN’T TALK TO WHISTLEBLOWER — THEN BACKTRACKS

Democrats, the White House complained, had not permitted Republicans in the minority to issue subpoenas, contradicting the “standard, bipartisan practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential impeachment inquiries.”

The White House had argued: “In the history of our nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step.”

Fox News’ Chad Pergram and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-introduce-resolution-formalizing-impeachment-inquiry

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The post Hannity: Media rushes to judgment over whistleblower story first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

For years, presidential campaigns followed relatively predictable lines of trench warfare, with the outcome decided in a handful of battleground states.

But the era of the hardened electoral map — 40 of 50 states voted for the same party from 2000 to 2012 — may be coming to an end.

Interviews with more than two dozen politicians, consultants and activists throughout the country suggest that between Donald Trump’s sweep through the upper Midwest and the demographic shifts powering Democrats in the South and West, the field of competitive states stands to be dramatically reshaped in 2020.

Minnesota, which hasn’t gone for Republican for president in nearly a half-century, suddenly rates high on the GOP wish list. Arizona and Georgia, until recent years considered red-state locks, are undeniably within Democratic reach.

Democrats are engaged in shoot-the-moon speculation about Texas — the red citadel of the modern GOP — while Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, views Colorado as a target despite three consecutive Republican defeats there.

Then there is the class of states that Trump improbably pried free in 2016 after three decades of Republican futility: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The president has made early overtures to all of them — on Thursday, when Trump appears in Wilkes-Barre, he will be making his fifth trip to Pennsylvania in less than two years.

“You could have a dozen states — not five or six — but a dozen states that are of significant importance and highly competitive from both sides,” said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster who splits time between Los Angeles and Madison, Wisconsin.

Though the electoral map has shifted over time, Maslin said, the number of potential swing states in 2020 “may be at its peak … I think they’re all going to be pretty strongly competed for.”

Democrats have seized on early signals about a favorable climate awaiting them in the fall and extending into 2020. In the Midwest, following upset special election victories in Wisconsin this year, recent NBC News/Marist polls put Trump’s approval ratings in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin at a seemingly fatal level — below 40 percent.

In the South, where Democrats swept the 2017 Virginia elections, Doug Jones flipped an Alabama Senate seat to Democrats for the first time since 1994.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Jones’ victory “means we can win anywhere,” suggesting that even Texas, which Trump won by 9 percentage points, could be contested in 2020.

“If Beto [O’Rourke] can win or come really close” to defeating Sen. Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate race in Texas this year, Dean said, “Texas will be in play.”

David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, described electoral prospects for Democrats as “getting better.” Of the upcoming electoral map, he said, “I do think it’s broader.”

Yet conversations with Democratic leaders depict a party riven by conflict about how to proceed, with rifts between those focused on traditionally Democratic Midwestern states and those seeking to mine new ground in more diverse states that many in the party believe better represent the party’s future.

The uncertainty about where to compete in a general election against Trump has already forced a large field of potential Democratic candidates to widen their apertures.

In a Democratic presidential primary that is widely expected to be colored by candidates’ perceived electability in a match-up with Trump, trips by candidates to such states as Georgia and Arizona have drawn attention rivaling visits to the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire. When one likely candidate, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, announced last week that he will hold a September fundraiser to raise $1 million for state Democratic parties — ingratiating himself to Democrats outside of his home state — he listed 10 different states as beneficiaries.

In the 2020 primary, said former New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who ran for president in 2008, “This could be a race that ends up at the convention. I think it’ll go all the way, because everyone will want to see the candidates go through the entire process, not just who the early flavor of the months are.”

For Richardson and other longtime Democrats, the perils of an altered presidential map became apparent the night of Trump’s victory in 2016.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day a Republican would carry Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania,” said Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania and DNC chairman.

In 2020, Rendell said, “We should contest in Georgia and places like that, and maybe even Texas. But I think the first thing we’ve got to do is focus on taking back our traditional voters.” Echoing Richardson, Rendell said, “For us, there is no map that we can carry the Electoral College without Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”

Even in heavily Democratic, urban coastal states, the desire to select a nominee who can re-anchor the party in the Midwest hangs heavily over the pre-presidential campaign. In California, where at least three Democrats are mulling campaigns — Garcetti, Sen. Kamala Harris and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer — former Gov. Gray Davis said “ideally, our nominee would come from the Midwest, would espouse Midwestern values.”

“And if we don’t have a nominee from the Midwest, our candidate has to basically take up residence in the Midwest. Because I don’t care how charismatic, how persuasive our candidate is, if we cannot re-establish our trust in the Democratic brand in the Midwest, we will not capture the presidency,” Davis said. “Do they have to be from the Midwest? No. Would it help? Absolutely.”

But as Democrats prepare to confront Trump again in the upper Midwest, the evolution of the map is likely to force some hard decisions about which states to target. Four years after Barack Obama won Ohio and Iowa, for example, Hillary Clinton lost each by margins wide enough to raise serious questions about their competitiveness at the presidential level: Trump carried Ohio by 9 percentage points and Iowa by nearly 10 percentage points.

Comparing Trump’s performance in Iowa to Georgia — which Democrats lost by less than 6 percentage points — Sean Clegg, a senior adviser to Harris, said, “I think you can make a straight-faced argument that Georgia is more in play than Iowa as a long-term question.”

“You really look at the places that are growing demographically kind of in the Democrats’ direction,” he said, “and it’s Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina and Florida that show more potential to be states where you could also change the map for the future.”

As in Texas, where Democrats have been buoyed by O’Rourke’s unlikely run at Cruz and recent suburban gains, the party is putting stock for 2020 in the performance of Stacey Abrams in the gubernatorial race in Georgia. The election of a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, in North Carolina, has helped Democrats improve their fundraising and organizing operations in a state that Trump won by fewer than 4 percentage points.

“I do think there are some potential states that could come on the horizon in the South,” said Jaime Harrison, associate chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former South Carolina state party chair. “My theory has always been that the Democratic Party needs to stop writing off these states.”

In a presidential election, Harrison said, “the real key to all of this is how do you engage the African American community … The question is what can we do as a party, and then in 2020, what can our nominee do, in order to feel that those folks are engaged.”

Tom Perez, the DNC chairman, said recently that the “mission of the new DNC is to organize everywhere,” and Pepper said the right nominee can appeal to Democrats regardless of geography.

“I think with the right candidates, you can do very well in the Midwest,” Pepper said. “And I think with the changing demographics and changing politics these days, I think you can also … compete in Arizona, Georgia and a few other places.”

But many Democrats in states that Clinton narrowly lost remain infuriated by her attempt to expand into Arizona and Georgia — the feeling is especially acute in Wisconsin, where Clinton did not campaign at all in the general election. And the party’s effort to capitalize on its more urban, Obama coalition of young people, women, non-white voters and the college educated, has left many rural Democrats wondering at what cost in their own states.

In Minnesota, which Trump lost by only 1.5 percentage points — and where the president is already offering evidence he intends to compete aggressively there in 2020 — veteran Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan, who is running for lieutenant governor, lamented that messaging from national Democrats in recent months has focused so heavily on urban issues that “basically reading between the lines, [it] said, ‘Kiss rural America goodbye.’”

In part because of his relatively moderate positions on mining in his historically blue-collar, Iron Range district — which broke hard for Trump — Nolan doubted activists in his own party would have endorsed him had he run again for re-election.

He said, “It makes you wonder where the hell your party’s going.”

Matt Barron, a Massachusetts-based consultant who left the Democratic Party last year over his frustration with what he described as a lack of rural outreach, scoffed, “The coalition of the ascendant argument, this argument that demographic forces are just going to take our little surfboards and we’ll all be floating along the big wave … That’s great for maybe 2024 or 2028. I don’t know if it’s good for 2018 or 2020.”

In a recent trip to Nolan’s district in northeastern Minnesota, Trump made clear that his narrow loss there remained on his mind — and flatly asserted that he will win Minnesota in 2020.

“I hate to bring this up, but we came this close to winning the state of Minnesota,” Trump said to a crowd of thousands at a Duluth rally. “And in two and a half years, it’s going to be really, really easy, I think.”

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the influential American Conservative Union, said he expects Trump to compete not only in Minnesota, but in two Western states he lost in 2016: Colorado and Nevada.

“There’s always this game of who can expand the map, and where do you have to play defense, and obviously Trump just kind of threw all that on its head by winning states that nobody really anticipated — in the broader context — that he was going to be able to succeed in,” said Schlapp, a former political director for President George W. Bush. “I think the map is different now.”

For his part, Dean, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2004, predicted Democrats will reclaim Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2020, with a more difficult road in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Dean, who urged Democrats to select a nominee younger than 40 or 50 years old, said the real division within the Democratic Party is generational, not geographical. But he suggested a broader map would only help a younger nominee disinclined to “mousy-mouse around” in an attempt to appeal to narrow segments of the electorate.

“We see it as a zero-sum game,” the 69-year-old Dean said of his own generation. “They see it as an addition game, and I think that’s where we’re headed in this country.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/30/electoral-college-2020-trump-747648

The post ‘The map is different now’: Trump blows the 2020 race wide open first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.