| | |  | BY TIM ALBERTA AND RENUKA RAYASAM | MORE KINDLING FOR THE FIRE — We should have seen this coming. The latest October surprise roiling our politics — the feds announcing a foiled plot by Michigan militiamen to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — is actually not that surprising. It was only a few months ago when some of their comrades, heavily armed and dressed in paramilitary gear, stormed the state capital in Lansing to protest the sweeping executive power wielded by Whitmer in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. They stood above the legislative chamber, assault weapons slung over their shoulders, menacing the lawmakers below. They marched outside, surrounded by signs and chants calling Whitmer a tyrant, a fascist, an authoritarian who was starving families and turning freedom-loving workers into oppressed subjects of the state. Are we really shocked that a few of them acted on their rhetoric? We’ve seen a similar spark of protest in the past, especially in Michigan, which has a heavy militia presence in parts of the state. Some of the same actors took to the same capital in Lansing in 2010 to protest Democratic policies. But Tea Party arguments about stimulus spending and bank bailouts and health care policies feel like the good old days. America’s cultural and political tinder is drier than it was a decade ago, drier than it has been in decades, drier than it has been in some of our lifetimes. We can no longer ignore how this moment of civic turmoil — extreme political polarization, social alienation, economic inequality, racial hostility, a public health crisis, businesses closed by government edict — has created the ideal conditions for domestic terrorism. This is why it was so important for Chris Wallace, the Fox News anchor, to ask President Donald Trump during last week’s Cleveland debate whether he would denounce violent right-wing groups. This is why it was so stunning for Trump to not do so. Saying “sure” in response to Wallace, and then telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” does not qualify as a renunciation. It’s obviously true that the attempted kidnapping of an American governor has implications far beyond electoral handicapping. But it’s also true that the election is 26 days away — and that Trump, who’s already lagging far behind Joe Biden, just inherited another massive political problem. Had Trump taken the opportunity in Cleveland to forcefully and unequivocally condemn the recent wave of right-wing aggression, he might be insulated from much of the backlash that accompanied today’s Whitmer news. Voters might recall how just last week they heard the president deliver an unscripted smackdown of these troublemakers. They might dismiss this as a bizarre, isolated incident that reflects no broader concern. But Trump did nothing to give himself that benefit of the doubt. And now, in the home stretch of an election he’s already losing, he will be confronted with questions that are far more difficult to answer than the one Wallace posed in Cleveland. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Feels like the ’90s again: My hometown Atlanta Braves are headed to the NLCS for the first time in 19 years. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
| |
| | DON'T MISS A THING AT THE MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE : POLITICO's Ryan Heath and Ben White are teaming up to bring you exclusive coverage of the 23rd annual Milken Institute Global Conference featuring 4,000+ participants and 500 speakers from more than 70 countries. Don't miss out on insights from the most influential minds and thought leaders reinventing health, technology, philanthropy, industry and media. Subscribe to our special edition "Global Translations" newsletter for everything you need to know directly from #MIGlobal. | | | | | | 
Working in bipartisan pairs, canvassers process mail-in ballots in a warehouse at the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections headquarters in Glen Burnie, Md. | Getty Images | | | WATCHMEN — With the lifting of a decades-old consent decree, the Republican National Committee is now free to engage in poll watching, write Alex Isenstadt and Natasha Korecki. To that end, the campaign has established what it says is a 50,000-plus army of volunteer observers across an array of battleground states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where operations are already underway. The Trump deployment is the culmination of months of detailed planning, aggressive volunteer recruitment, and reconnaissance trips to key states. Trump has been personally briefed on the program, which is overseen by nearly two-dozen full time staffers. It underscores how — to the alarm of voting rights advocates and Democrats — Trump and his reelection effort have turned the idea of voter fraud and irregularities into a centerpiece of the campaign. The prospect of a prolonged vote-counting fight that will extend far beyond Nov. 3 appears very real.
| | GOOD FENCES — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell drew a stark contrast today between his handling of the coronavirus in the Senate and the approach taken by the White House, Marianne LeVine writes. “I actually haven’t been to the White House since August the 6th because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different than mine and what I insisted that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing,” the Kentucky Republican said during an event in northern Kentucky. McConnell, 78, added that he continues to speak frequently with Trump by phone. While McConnell, a polio survivor, did not rebuke the president directly, he has repeatedly called for wearing masks, both in floor speeches and at events.
| | THE NEW HOTSPOTS — Since Oct. 1, coronavirus has spread rapidly through the Dakotas, Montana and Wisconsin. Increases in incidence of positive cases have been grown more slowly on the West Coast and in Northeastern and Southwestern states. Patterson Clark ’s map explores the areas where cases are quickly rising.
| 
| | | VIRTUAL REALITY — It’s looking unlikely, but if Trump and Biden agree, the U.S. will have its first presidential debate conducted entirely over the internet one week from tonight. Nightly asked digital experts how they would design a virtual debate to take advantage of the unique properties of the medium. Below are their lightly edited responses. “I hope they do it! This is how the world has worked since quarantine. I would change only a couple rules. First, candidates are muted when the other one is initially responding to questions. Second, candidates are muted if they exceed the allotted time for each answer. Third, candidates are allowed to multitask on their laptops in any way they want, but the public gets to see a log of their screens — meaning everything they look up on Google and every message they receive or send.” — Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED “It’s actually no different than Kennedy/Nixon. It’s not a technology-based change; it’s a location-based change. If you tried to do anything more than side by side I think you would freak them both out. :)” — Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks “The most exciting or at least welcome innovation might well be a microphone cut off. Obviously you can do this in in-person debates too, but it seems even more obvious to do so in a virtual debate. That said, I think you want to be careful about having the technology limit the candidates’ expression of who they are, what their temperament is like. There’s a good argument to be made that the mics in both spaces should be live the whole time — if one candidate is going to mutter obscene comments or the Lord’s prayer while the other is speaking, we should be able to see and hear it. “Another thing to consider is how the candidates see each other. Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee at the Virtual Humans lab at Stanford found that even in virtual spaces, the relative size and position of people’s avatars have a significant effect on the way they interact with each other. For example, if you perceive the other to be small and lower down, you are likely to be more domineering. So a key question is how will the candidates see each other? The audience? “That said, the virtual format would emphasize words, not physical presence, a disadvantage for Trump, whose debate style relies heavily on his imposing size and threatening demeanor. There is no way to pull a stunt like hovering behind Hillary in a virtual debate. Ideally, the debate commission would outfit both candidates with identical set ups. “As for the audience, if it is a dispersed virtual group, they could be chosen from all over the country. It could include potentially everyone who wanted to be a part of it. Participation would be in the form of voting among mostly pre-written questions, with the opportunity for people in the audience to propose new questions, vote on them, and have a human moderator check them for appropriateness and balance with the rest of the evening (you don’t want it to be taken over by organized, aggressive partisans). “Adding more audience participation is, as with a traditional town hall, a way of getting to questions that the voters really care about, and giving people the sense that they are being listened to. There are certainly interesting things to be done with real-time feedback, etc., but they require a lot more setup and securing from organized groups of activists set on reshaping the conversation around their specific interests, or on irritating one candidate. It has been frustrating watching the live moderators not press the candidates to answer the question that is being asked; it’s tempting to think you can solve this with say, live feedback buttons. But it is not clear if that would be effective, and in this time of very partisan politics, it is hard to see a way to ensure the audience acts to make the debate better rather than just support their chosen candidate/harm the opponent.” — Judith Donath, author of “The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online”
| | SWING LOW — Instead of a presidential debate, the country might get a different kind of split screen next week: Trump speaking to supporters at a campaign rally and Biden speaking to an audience during an ABC News town hall. Neither forum seems geared toward swaying undecided voters. But that probably doesn’t matter much, campaigns reporter Zach Montellaro told the Nightly today. This year, said Zach, the undecided voter is as elusive — and less important — than ever. Zach points to a Fox News poll showing that just 3 percent of voters are undecided this year. (He adds the caveat that this is just one poll.) In a close race, those voters might swing the race. But in this year’s contest, Biden has maintained consistent wide leads over Trump. In October 2020, who are the undecideds, anyway? Zach goes down the list: Older voters, locked in. Younger voters, locked in. Whites, locked in. Black and Hispanic voters, locked in. Voters are ready to go to the polls. Turnout has been high throughout the primaries, even during the pandemic. A small subset of self-described moderate voters remain undecided — 9 percent, in the Fox News poll — but even the vast majority of them have landed on a candidate, splitting 56 percent for Biden and 32 percent for the president. SENIOR MOMENT — If there’s one group of voters Trump should, in theory, be able to count on, it’s senior citizens. And he’s trying: “To my favorite people in the world: The seniors!” Trump said in a video message he tweeted today. In 2016, exit polls showed that 52 percent of voters ages 65 and older supported Trump, writes Zack Stanton. This year, polling suggests they’ve lurched heavily against him. A CNN poll this week showed Trump winning over just 39 percent of the same age group, compared to 60 percent who support Biden — the latest in a series of polls showing seniors breaking in favor of Biden. What happened? Part of the reason is the coronavirus pandemic, a disruption that has left seniors uniquely vulnerable and isolated and without any clear plan to bring them back safely into society. REWINDING ON THE FLY — Wednesday’s debate between Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence looked and sounded pretty different from what went down between Trump and Biden last week, but the exchanges were still tense. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, national political reporter Laura Barrón-López breaks down the biggest takeaways from the vice presidential showdown.
| | | | Nightly asks you: What book, movie or TV show best captures your 2020 experience? Use our form and send us your answer, and we’ll feature select responses in our Friday edition.
| | 4 DISCUSS DEBATE 2 — On the latest edition of Four Square, Eugene Daniels, Tina Nguyen, Alex Thompson and Ryan Lizza discuss the fallout from Wednesday’s VP debate, the future of the rest of the presidential debates and Biden’s trouble with the issue of “court packing.”
| 
| | | | |
$12 million The amount Biden’s campaign raised Wednesday around the vice presidential debate, marking another watershed cash day for the already flush Democratic presidential ticket. (h/t national political reporter Elena Schneider) |
| | | ‘CERTAINLY HOPEFUL’ — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is paying close attention to the U.S. campaign and is prepared for an uncertain outcome after the Nov. 3 vote. “As we watch the American election unfold, we are of course going to be prepared for various eventualities,” he said today during a media briefing when asked about instability that could result from tight results. “We are certainly hopeful that all will proceed smoothly.” Canada is the United States’ biggest trading partner. The countries’ border has been closed to most travelers since March 21, with only limited personal travel allowed along with commercial traffic. Politicians on both sides of the border have pushed for it to reopen, but Canadian leaders want it to remain closed until the U.S. gets Covid-19 under control. While there is some pressure on the Canadian government to ease open the border, public opinion is decidedly behind the restrictions.
| |
| | HELP BUILD SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL HEALTH: POLITICO is a proud partner of the ninth annual Meridian Summit, focused on The Rise of Global Health Diplomacy. The virtual Meridian Summit will engage a global audience and the sharpest minds in diplomacy, business, government and beyond to build a more equitable economic recovery and save more lives. Join the conversation to help secure the future of our global health. | | | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
|
| | Follow us on Twitter | | | FOLLOW US | | |
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.