The Time To Stick A Fork In Biden Is Rapidly Approaching

Biden had some more terrible news at dawn yesterday, or whenever he woke up. His numbers in California have collapsed. California, the state with 494 delegates. The only states with hauls anywhere near California are New York (320), Texas (261), Florida (248), Pennsylvania (210) and Illinois (184). Iowa only has 49 and prospects for win a significant number of them has dimmed considerably for Biden. And New Hampshire has even fewer-- 33, but Status Quo Joe had basically shut down his New Hampshire campaign and written the state off. He's pinning his hopes on the Southern Strategy: low info voters in the Southern states who aren't familiar with the racism that has fueled his career. South Carolina has 63 delegates and Biden feels he can win big there. Change Research put out yet another poll of Iowa likely Democratic caucus goers that shows Status Quo Joe's support dissolving. This one shows Bernie with 27%, Mayo with 19%, Biden with 18%, Elizabeth Warren with 15% and Klobuchar with 10%. Only the "kids" (literally voters under 65) back Bernie. He's winning every age group except 65 and older. Imagine what's going to happen when those voters-- who largely back Biden-- find out that he's spent his entire political career trying to cut Social Security and Medicare!

California has always been strong for Bernie. A private poll this week of San Fernando Valley Democratic primary voters shows Bernie running three times ahead of Biden! The L.A. Times report yesterday is clear: Bernie is "consolidating support from voters on the left, [and] has taken a clear lead in the race for California’s huge trove of Democratic convention delegates... propelled to the top in California by growing support from voters who label themselves 'very liberal'-- a shift that has come largely at the expense of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. That very liberal group makes up about 1 in 3 Democratic primary voters in the state. Along with strong support among Latinos and young voters, backing on the left is enough to give the Vermont senator support from 26% of voters likely to take part in the state’s March 3 Democratic primary."

• Bernie- 26%
• Elizabeth- 20%
• Status Quo Joe- 15%
• Mayo Pete- 7%
• Bloomberg- 6%
• Klobuchar- 5%
• Yang- 4%
• Steyer- 2%

Under state Democratic Party’s rules, the only candidates who can win any delegates are the ones who win 15% statewide or 15% in a congressional district. That eliminates Mayo, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Yang and Steyer and possibly Biden. He doesn't have to slide much to be out of the running. And, as we've seen in Iowa and New Hampshire, as voters get to know him, his numbers just keep going down-- never up.

Politico's Marc Caputo reported that Biden is now saying he doesn't need New Hampshire and his campaign "has been dark on New Hampshire television since the New Year. He has a smaller presence on the ground compared to his rivals, barely takes questions from voters, and he’s trailing in the polls here." Biden is counting on endorsements from conservative establishment politicians, not seeming to understand that no one cares about what they say. An old Florida amigo of Caputo's Biden SuperPAC head Steve Schale claims Biden is going to lose New Hampshire because the state "is home court for two top-tier candidates-- plus Gov. Patrick-- and the last three times a neighboring state candidate has competed in New Hampshire, they won." All sour grapes, he also whined that New Hampshire is "also a very expensive and inefficient state for communicating, given 80% of state is in the Boston media market." Schale is going to spend the sewer money he's collected from corporations and the very wealthy to try to save Biden in Nevada, which is a state that, if lost, could doom his campaign.

Biden’s fortress, however, is South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary, where he leads big because of strong black support. Schale summed it up this way: “Go to Nevada and South Carolina, play Moneyball on Super Tuesday-- lean in hard on the delegate map. If Bernie can’t start winning African-American voters, it looks a lot like 2016.”

...Sanders’s campaign, however, says Biden’s team is discounting the effect of Sanders picking up momentum if he starts winning early.

“If Biden comes in second in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, and it’s us against him, then he’s still viable,” a Sanders campaign adviser said. “But if he’s third or fourth in Iowa and third or fourth in New Hampshire, no one has ever, ever won the nomination coming out that weak in both those states. And then we go into Nevada and win the first three [early states]. Then what’s his argument? Sure, he’ll win South Carolina. But it’s the Saturday before Super Tuesday so it doesn’t impact things as much. Then you’ll see how weak he is. And he has no money.”

Biden’s campaign has, relative to the other top-tier candidates, struggled with fundraising. Campaign advisers say the campaign has to make tough choices about where to deploy limited resources and constantly assesses where to spend and how much-- suggesting he could shift gears to focus more on New Hampshire going forward.



...The energy level was low on Sunday when former Secretary of State John Kerry held a Biden event in the state’s biggest city, Manchester. Kerry won the city when he carried New Hampshire in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary but only two dozen people showed up, giving the former secretary of state a polite golf clap that lasted about four seconds following his 20-minute speech. One attendee, who said he was not yet a Biden supporter, joked afterward that he had just come for the free coffee.

Even some of Biden's biggest local backers admit he isn't their first choice. Instead, they are looking ahead at South Carolina to see who has both the best chance of winning the nomination and beating President Donald Trump.

Just before endorsing Biden earlier this month, Bill Shaheen, [a clueless, conservative douche bag and] a state party official who is married to Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, lamented that Michael Bennet wasn't doing better in the polls.

"I'm very strongly Michael Bennet-- there's a part of me that believes he's the person that America should choose," Shaheen said in an interview at a Bennet event. "But I also have to rule with my head, not my heart. You know, Bennet's got my heart."

Kamala Harris For President?-- Better Than Trump, Better Than Bloomberg

Martin Luther King Day-- Good Morning America... Kamala Harris announced what everyone knew was coming: another senator with no notable accomplishments to her name-- other than in her own mind-- is running for the nomination to take on Señor Trumpanzee. She's not part of our Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President series. Instead we've been writing posts like these three, warning people she's not the best candidate the Democratic Party can come up with-- at least not at this point in her career:

• Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You... Kamala Harris
• A Case For Kamala Harris-- And A Case Against Her Rent Relief Act
• Ready For Kamala?

The San Francisco Chronicle announced the news by reviewing this morning's announcement speech and noting that she "had no legislative experience before winning election in 2016 to the seat opened by former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s retirement, having spent her career in district attorney’s offices and the California Department of Justice. In Washington, she has been in the spotlight for her sharp questioning at hearings of Trump administration officials, some of whom have bristled at her pointed style. Her influence has been less noticeable in policy as a first-term member of the minority party. Harris’ record in the Senate has trended toward the progressive Democratic base. She has been an outspoken advocate of immigration, a reflection of her constituency in California and her life story as the child of two immigrants.

Harris was also the first Democrat to announce in 2017 that she would co-sponsor Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bill, which would make the federal government the single payer of health expenses. And she has introduced legislation that would offer relief for middle- and lower-income families in the form of tax credits.

Her prosecutor background could be a liability among progressives, however, as critics have mined her record for lines of attack, including whether she was complicit in policies that disproportionately harm communities of color.

Harris addressed both her experience level and her history as a prosecutor in the “Good Morning America” interview, saying she has “the unique experience of having been a leader in local government, state government and federal government.”

She also noted that as a prosecutor, she represented sexual assault victims and homeowners victimized by predatory lending firms, and acknowledged that the justice system “includes systemic racism” and needs reform.

“It’s a false choice to suggest that communities don’t want law enforcement. Most communities do; they don’t want excessive force. They don’t want racial profiling,” Harris said. “Our system of justice has been horribly flawed and it needs to be reformed.”

She added, “There’s a lot of work to do, but to suggest it’s one or other-- no, I don’t buy that.”

Also this morning, Marc Caputo decided to catch Politico readers up with the nascent campaign of Republican multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg, who plans to buy the Democratic Party and use it as a vehicle to get into the White House. Democrats are wondering how much? He's just the kind of candidate much of the party establishment would love to sell out to: White. Male. Old. A Wall Street billionaire. The party's grassroots? Not so much. Like none? Caputo makes Bloomberg's weak case that "unlike any of the other presidential hopefuls, Bloomberg plays a dominant leadership role on two of the top issues on the minds of progressives heading into the 2020 cycle: climate change and gun control. He’s spent a decade as the nation’s preeminent financier on those issues, buying considerable goodwill in progressive circles. If he runs, those familiar with his thinking say, they’ll be the pillars of his campaign." I can hear the Green New Deal activists laughing their asses off as Bloomberg scurries to figure out how to sell himself as the avatar for Climate Change, an absurd proposition, although one that will probably take hold among corporate media.

Note, although Team Bloomberg (Schumer/Clinton operative Howard Wolfson) insists their employer hasn’t made up his mind yet-- and that he’ll make an official announcement within a month-- he bragged all of last summer at Bohemian Grove, to anyone who would listen, that he's determined to replace Trump in the White House.

No successful presidential campaign has ever been anchored to those issues. But the politics surrounding climate change and gun control have changed dramatically in recent years, and nowhere more than in the Democratic Party. In a splintered field where the former New York mayor’s message would be reinforced by a theme of governing competence and private sector success, those close to him believe Bloomberg could find traction despite his seemingly awkward fit.

“He’s not going to be running to the far left like the other candidates are. He describes himself as fiscally moderate, fiscally conservative, but he’s clearly socially liberal and he’s a key driver of social policies,” said a top Bloomberg insider. “For Mike, it’s not ideologically driven, It’s pragmatic. People die from an excess of guns in America. People are dying and suffering and will continue to from the effects of climate change.”

Bloomberg is polling and collecting “data,” the source said, and climate change and guns are “going to drive Democrats to the polls.” The politics of climate change have been front and center with the opening of the new Congress as Democrats discuss making a “Green New Deal.”

...As the philanthropist and founder of an eponymous news and information company publicly mulls a presidential bid, Bloomberg is already acting like a major candidate, except he has a net worth estimated at $51 billion, a vast network of activists who have depended on him for years and a private plane that can take him wherever he wants to hold events with them and soak up free media coverage.

In the past four months, Bloomberg has visited 27 cities, dropping off checks with grateful activists and mayors who want to fight global warming or the gun lobby or both. Bloomberg has contributed so much to gun control and climate change groups that aides can’t give a precise figure of the total donated to all over the years, estimating it at “hundreds of millions”-- $110 million of which was given to the Sierra Club alone for its “Beyond Coal” effort [perhaps part of the money the Sierra Club used against AOC in their support of corrupt New York scumbag Joe Crowley in 2018?]

Bloomberg, meanwhile, has privately met with political players about a potential 2020 bid, as he did in Iowa where he ostensibly traveled in December to screen a new documentary he financed about climate change, “Paris to Pittsburgh,” and spoke to Moms Demand Action, a gun control group affiliated with Everytown. He’s also hired an aide just to handle press inquiries about a potential bid and this month re-released his book, Bloomberg by Bloomberg.

On Jan. 29, Bloomberg returns to New Hampshire for his second visit, after making scheduled appearances in Northern Virginia, Annapolis and Washington D.C., where he’s scheduled to speak Monday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration Breakfast with Rev. Al Sharpton.

It’s there, at a memorial for the civil rights icon with Sharpton, that the limits of Bloomberg’s progressive bonafides come into sharper focus. Sharpton, other black leaders and even federal courts have criticized the racially biased “stop-and-frisk” New York policing policies that Bloomberg embraced as mayor and that he recently stood behind as a necessary crime-fighting tool, despite evidence to the contrary. On his Iowa trip, protesters harangued him about stop and frisk and other issues.

Bloomberg insiders privately acknowledge stop and frisk is a liability in a Democratic primary. It’s not the only one.

At 76 years old, Bloomberg probably has one last chance to have a reasonable shot at the White House. And insiders are keenly aware that a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat will struggle in a party that’s drifted leftward. Also, the billionaire financial tycoon who saw Occupy Wall Street erupt in his city in 2011 when he was mayor will have some explaining to do to a party that’s concerned about wealth disparity.

But in a crowded Democratic primary where everyone moves left, the centrist, self-funding billionaire could have enough money and voters to sustain a long campaign that could last until the 2020 convention.

There’s also hope that, if Bloomberg runs, his activism on guns and climate will mute some of the incoming he would otherwise get from the left. So might the fact that he contributed an estimated $110 million to help 21 Democratic congressional candidates win in November.

“Bloomberg’s kind of money buys a lot of loyalty-- or at least silence,” said one top Florida Democrat. “Anyone else would be toast.”

It’s not that Bloomberg has merely purchased or rented support. Instead, Bloomberg has earned credibility by picking big fights long ago that weren’t so popular.

Climate change barely registered as an issue as recently as 2008 when Barack Obama he first ran for president. As an Illinois senator, Obama still had a measure of loyalty to the coal industry, and the jobs that came with it, in the south of the state. Since then, climate change has steadily risen in importance amid increased warnings from scientists, concerns about the intensity of killer storms and, especially for Democrats, President Trump’s labeling global warming a “hoax” and his decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords.

In reaction, Bloomberg help found a group called America’s Pledge to get cities, states, business and universities to meet climate change goals under the accords. He’s also the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, and chairs a financial task force and board concerning Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and Sustainability Accounting Standards for private enterprise.

The Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune, said Bloomberg has been “a leader on climate for 20 years.” And Heather Hargreaves, executive director of the NextGen America group funded by billionaire Tom Steyer, said Bloomberg has “obviously put his money where his mouth is.”

Hargreaves said that in 2008 even activists weren’t talking about climate change much. Now the major Democratic presidential hopefuls all have platforms.

The same is true of guns. When Bloomberg a decade ago started his first gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, taking on the National Rifle Association was considered political suicide. On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama would only go so far as to say he supported “some common-sense gun safety laws.”

“I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms,” Obama said. “I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

But today, all the major Democratic candidates and likely candidates for president, advocate for issues like an assault weapons ban or universal background checks, said Peter Ambler, executive director with Giffords' gun control group, which works in tandem with Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety.

Bloomberg was Part III in our Worst Democraps series and it's worth reading if you're interested in knowing why Bloomberg will never be the Democratic nominee for president no matter how much cash he spreads around among those who would sell their mothers and their souls--let alone their party and their country. I wonder if he'll offer Beto enough cash to run with him as a ticket.

Is Florida Salvageable For The Democrats In November-- One Democrat In Particular

Bill Nelson will be 76 in September

There are no guarantees in electoral politics, but right now the smart bet would be that the Democrats win a majority in the House, maybe even substantial majority. The Senate is a lot tougher. Winning back the Senate, means that the Democrats keep all the red state seats that Trump won that they hold and pick up 2 more, bringing their caucus to 51 and redicinging the Republicans' down to 49. Some of the Trump states look pretty safe for the Democratic incumbents: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, Montana, West Virginia, perhaps even Indiana and Missouri. Democrats even look competitive in 3 or 4 Republican-held Trump states: Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, possibly Texas. So what's missing from this picture? One purple state with a Democratic incumbent: Florida. Bill Nelson has held the seat for 18 years. Trump didn't wipe out Hillary the way he did in some of these other seats. He only won 4,617,886 (49.0%) to 4,504,975 (47.8%).

Last time Nelson ran (2012) he trounced Republican Connie Mack IV, 4,523,451 (55.2%) to 3,458,267 (42.2%). Nelson out-spent Mack $17,125,413 to $7,508,151. As of March 31 of this year Nelson had already raised $13,466,786 and his presumptive opponent, Governor Rick Scott hadn't started raising yet-- but is wealthy enough for it not to matter. He can self-fund whatever he needs to outspend Nelson.

Yesterday, Marc Caputo took a look at the Florida race for Politico and it didn't look good for the Democrats. Caputo starts with a bad omen: "Rick Scott’s Senate campaign has a Spanish-language web page. Sen. Bill Nelson’s doesn’t. Scott is advertising in Spanish. Nelson isn’t. Scott is learning Spanish and does interviews with Spanish-language media about once a week. Nelson isn’t and doesn’t. For Democrats who recognize protecting Nelson’s seat is essential to their hopes of winning a Senate majority this fall, the veteran senator’s lackluster outreach to one of the fastest-growing voting blocs in the nation’s largest swing state is causing alarm." And Caputo's report gets worse.

The depth of Nelson’s troubles-- and Scott’s advantage-- came into sharp focus last month in four focus groups conducted in Central Florida’s influential Puerto Rican community, where few knew who Nelson was, despite his three Senate terms and holding elected Florida office for 41 years.

“There’s a lot higher awareness of Rick Scott. He’s got much higher name recognition. And people associate him with trying to do something for Puerto Rico,” said Marcos Vilar, director for United for Progress PAC, which had the focus groups conducted for it by the polling firm Latino Decisions.

“Bill Nelson has very little name recognition,” Vilar said. “The people who know him don’t know what he’s done. They don’t know him in the community. They don’t see him out to the community as much.”

Party insiders and Latino activists -- in Washington, Miami, Orlando and Tallahassee-- fret that it’s a serious problem against Scott, who is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars out of his own pocket to knock off Nelson. They say the two-term Republican governor is running a robust campaign that’s “pandering” to Hispanics but drowning out Nelson’s support of issues important to the community-- from his clear support for comprehensive immigration reform to advocacy for Medicaid expansion to criticizing the Trump administration’s underwhelming response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

“At the end of the day, he can be great on all the issues but if people don’t know that that’s happening, it almost doesn’t matter,” said Mayra Macias, political director for the group Latino Victory and a former political director for the Florida Democratic Party. “There seems to be a disconnect between the outreach to the community and the policy work that he’s doing, the advocacy for our community-- he’s been spot-on on our issues.”

...The panic surrounding Scott’s possible inroads with Hispanic voters-- who account for about 15 percent of the voter rolls-- results from their role as part of the diverse coalition the Democratic Party relies on to win in Florida.

With the notable exception of GOP-voting older Cuban Americans, Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, but their turnout has tended to be abysmal in midterm elections-- which Democrats have consistently lost here. Nelson has been the exception, in part because he has faced historically weak opponents.

Recent polls show Scott leading Nelson largely on the strength of a $12 million ad campaign that’s about to grow to nearly $17 million spent between his campaign and his allies. Nelson, by comparison, was quiet on air until the Senate Majority PAC announced a $2.2 million ad campaign last month. The ad, a Nelson bio, did not have a Spanish-language version.

But all is not lost for Nelson when it comes to Puerto Rican voters, United for Progress PAC’s Vilar said.

In the PAC’s focus groups, one fact sharply turns sentiment against Scott: the governor’s association with President Donald Trump, whose handling of Hurricane Maria has earned him widespread condemnation by Puerto Ricans. The mere mention that Scott raised money for Trump’s election-- and that Trump encouraged Scott to run for Senate-- was a potent message. Vilar said the only subset of Puerto Ricans it didn’t work with were registered Republicans he observed in yet another focus group, in Tampa.

“In Orlando at least, it’s a very effective argument: a vote for Scott is a vote for Trump,” Vilar said. “It’s gold. Everyone in doubt completely flipped. For people leaning for Scott, Trump is toxic.”

...Asked about the differences between the Scott and Nelson campaigns, Roberto R. Tejera, a veteran political commentator and host of The Roberto Rodriguez Tejera Show on Actualidad Radio in Miami, joked: “Who is Bill Nelson?”

Another reporter for a national Spanish-language network couldn’t recall any recent high-profile Latino-focused Nelson events in South Florida either and said that Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio and even New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez are more active in Florida than Nelson in reaching out about Latin American issues of importance to the network’s viewers. “[Scott] also learned Spanish which is pretty amazing,” the reporter, who could not speak on the record under company policy, told Politico in a text message.

Scott, at the event for Colombian-American voters, said Nelson’s outreach was indicative of the Democrat’s campaign more broadly: “I haven’t seen him reach out in the last six years, either. I haven’t seen him around the state.”

Nelson’s campaign disputes that claim and pointed to more than two dozen dates when he met with Hispanic leaders and Puerto Rican officials, activists and evacuees. The list also includes two meetings with Venezuelans in Miami.

Nelson’s predicament doesn’t surprise Democrats familiar with Latino outreach in Senate campaigns and Nelson’s successful 2012 election, when he faced a weak opponent and rode President Obama’s coattails to an easy win while doing relatively little Hispanic-centric campaigning. At the time, some faulted Nelson for not doing enough and since then, they say, neither he nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has taken Latino outreach seriously enough. Two operatives said the DSCC has ignored repeated entreaties to fix the situation.

“You do things necessary to mobilize the community and to communicate,” said one Democrat who didn’t want to be identified for fear of political retribution. “And the fact you don’t have that in Florida set up, you don’t have that in DC set up-- it’s baffling. And people are taking notice.”

...Juan Escalante, an undocumented “DREAMer” from Venezuela who grew up in Florida and is now communications director for the immigrant-rights group America’s Voice in Washington, said Latino activists and Democratic insiders worry that the party is in denial about the effectiveness of Scott’s outreach and the relatively low-key campaigning by Nelson.

“When it comes down to it, Scott seems more willing to speak to Latino audiences-- going to where they are and speaking their language and showing a vested interest in what they care about,” said Escalante, criticizing Nelson for not embracing DREAMers and Latinos in the same way that former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid did.

“It’s rather unfortunate that we don’t have the senior senator of Florida embedding himself in that energy,” he said. “We may end up with a Rick Scott as a junior senator and a Marco Rubio as a senior senator. And I don’t want to see that.”

Why Doesn't Gwen Graham Just Switch Parties And Run As A "Moderate" Republican-- Which Is What She's Always Been?

Bipartisan love-- And #MeToo Graham

Gwen Graham is eating Patrick Murphy's lunch... again. When they served in Congress together, briefly thankfully, Murphy was always the second worst Florida Democrat-- in a delegation filled with garbage like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown, currently serving in a federal penitentiary on basic corruption charges. Murphy (a New Dem) and Graham (a Blue Dog) never rose beyond their "F" ProgressivePunch ratings, not ever. Murphy came up with a superficial gimmick torun as a team with one of the MSNBC Republicans, former congressman David Jolly-- still a Republican with all that baggage-- and a week later Gwen Graham's floundering gubernatorial campaign doesn't just steal the concept, she steals Jolly as well. Murphy's left on the dock sucking his thumb-- or Nicholas Mastroianni's... thumbs... unless Graham picks him as her running mate! (Murphy, not Mastroianni.)

Graham's first reaction to Murphy's proposal-- before he vaulted thread of her among her conservative Democratic base-- was insist that a bipartisan ticket wasn't legal in Florida. Marc Caputo had the story early Monday morning.

“I see my lieutenant governor selection as someone who’s going to be right by my side helping me get this state back on the right path,” Graham told the podcast’s host, Fernand Amandi. “And so Patrick would certainly fit that definition, as would David, as would all the other candidates for governor on the Democratic ticket at the moment. So it’s really going to be for me a thorough analysis of who can bring the most to help make the biggest difference in the state of Florida.”

Gillum’s campaign took note of Graham’s comments, pointing out that she’s now running as a progressive but had successfully run as a “very conservative Democrat” in a GOP-leaning Tallahassee-based House seat in 2014.

“It’s beyond frustrating that the self-described ‘very conservative’ Gwen Graham is already considering splitting the ticket to run with the GOP, especially with an energized Democratic base ready to vote Republicans out,” said one of Gillum’s top liberal surrogates, Orlando Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith. “This is exactly why we need Andrew Gillum-- the only unapologetic progressive running. Democrats will win by authentically standing up for our values-- not by becoming Republicans!”

Graham’s comments come as an outside group supporting African-American candidates, The Collective super PAC, announced it would spent as much as $782,000 on an ad campaign questioning Graham’s progressive bonafides. Graham has called the ad misleading and wants it taken down.

...While Graham’s centrist [Belwayspeak for "right-wing"] voting record might be a problem in a Democratic primary, her supporters say it makes her a better general election candidate in a swing state like Florida. And that’s where Jolly could be an advantage.

Being relatively well-known among Democratic political junkies because of his frequent appearances on MSNBC bashing President Donald Trump, Jolly’s addition to a centrist ticket could even be a plus in a primary, according to a recent survey conducted by Murphy’s pollster.

Almost as soon as the news broke that Murphy was considering a bid with Jolly, Graham’s campaign and her surrogates pushed back on the notion of a bipartisan ticket by claiming it wasn’t legal because of state laws requiring membership in a political party for a year before announcing a bid.

“They could not run as Democrats-- you have to be registered as a D for over year; Jolly is a Republican. They would have to run without a party-- not even sure that is legal. Do some work,” Don Hinkle, a Tallahassee attorney and Graham supporter, huffed on Twitter.

Hinkle noted that the statute concerning the pick of a gubernatorial candidate’s running mate mentions a “written statement of political party affiliation.” Graham’s campaign surrogates also spread the word that a bipartisan ticket wasn’t lawful.

But Florida election-law attorney Jason B. Blank, also a Democrat, said the law doesn’t specify that a gubernatorial candidate and his or her running mate have to be members of the same party.

“A bipartisan ticket is not expressly forbidden by Florida law,” Blank said. “I have found no prohibition in Florida statute or in the Florida constitution.”

And now that Graham has said Jolly could be a pick for her, she sees no prohibition either.

As the Democratic governor of another state told me this morning, laughing, "This is what candidates do when they don’t know what to do." Meanwhile Quentin James from the Collective SuperPAC, did an expose of Graham's hysterical slander against his organization for Monday night's Miami Herald Their ad, which is driving Graham bonkers, is below. "Instead of responding to the content of the advertisement," he points out, "Graham and establishment Democrats spent an entire week attacking my organization for highlighting her conservative voting record and her choice to stand with GOP leaders over President Obama."

Graham falsely labeled our organization a “dark” money group even though The Collective Super PAC reports its contributions and expenditures monthly to the Federal Elections Commission. All 13,000 individual contributions from more than 6,000 individuals can be found at FEC.gov. A host of groups of similar size and structure have worked on behalf of Gwen Graham throughout her career and were given a hospitable welcome. Now, because we’re simply seeking accountability, we’re being accused of doing something suspicious, illegal or unethical.


...And in true fashion-- and during the same week no less-- Graham has proven us right: She is considering standing with a Republican in 2018. Politico reports that, “Graham is considering Republican David Jolly as a Florida gubernatorial running mate.” It boggles the mind that she would even contemplate choosing a GOP running mate in the midst of a Democratic primary, but this is exactly what our advertisement points to-- Graham is not the progressive she claims to be.

Instead of launching baseless attacks on our organization, Graham and her allies should inform Floridians why she stood against President Obama 52 percent of the time, why she trashed Obamacare, why she voted with the big banks, why she voted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline-- twice-- and why she’s considering a Republican running mate?

Another State Legislative Win In Florida Last Night

Last night, the Dems chalked up another state legislative seat win in Florida. A couple of months ago, a friend of mine had pointed out that Florida had been one of the least susceptible states to the blue wave theory. The swing district win in the Coral Gables/Pinecrest/Cutler Bay district (HD 114) was the 4th Florida bellwether election since Trump narrowly won the state's 29 electoral votes, 4,617,886 (49.0%) to 4,504,975 (47.8%). Trump won 58 of Florida's 67 counties back then, all but Alachua, Broward, Gadsden, Hillsborough, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange, Osceola and Palm Beach counties). This morning Marc Caputo, Politico's Florida politics expert called those 4 wins "the best evidence yet that the GOP is in retreat heading into the midterm elections under an unpopular president. On Tuesday, in Florida’s 114th House District in Miami, Javier Fernandez beat Republican Andrew Vargas by about 4.1 percentage points, despite being outspent by at least 2-1 in a swing seat where voters split their tickets between both parties in the 2016 elections."

Whether the contested seats in Florida have been red or blue and regardless of which party won, what they show is an undeniable swing towards the Democrats and away from Trump and the Republican Party-- exactly what the Democrats need in November, in Florida and across the country.

Fernandez’s win follows a shocking February victory by Democrat Margaret Good in Florida’s 72nd House District, which voted for President Donald Trump. Democrats also won Florida’s 40th Senate District in Miami-Dade and St. Petersburg’s mayoral race. Those last two elections had Democratic-leaning electorates with significant minority populations, unlike the 72nd in Sarasota and, to a lesser degree, the 114th District.

The win was also big for Florida Democrats because they finally started to build a bench by electing their second Cuban-American Democrat from Miami-Dade County to the Florida Legislature, where the 42-year-old Fernandez will join state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez.

Cuban-Americans dominate the power structure in Florida’s most-populous county, though they’re overwhelmingly Republican. But as the older generation gives way to second- and third-generation Cuban-Americans, political observers have been predicting for years that more would become Democrats.

In 2016, the 114th chose Democrat Daisy Baez by 2 percentage points, but Sen. Marco Rubio-- who used to represent parts of the district-- won it by 4.3 percentage points. Trump, though, lost it by 14 points.

...By registration, Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 1 percentage point. But independents make up roughly 31 percent of the voters. And Tuesday’s election showed the swing voters of the swing district favored the Democrat.

Despite Trump’s unpopularity, Democrats didn’t play it up-- a sign, they say, that the atmosphere in the nation’s largest swing state is toxic for the GOP.

Still, Republicans say Trump’s approval ratings are slowly improving and they hope that one of his closest allies, Gov. Rick Scott, will be able to fight the headwinds in his race against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson thanks to the governor’s improving poll numbers and the unprecedented $5 million in TV ads that he’s already dropping.

But Juan Peñalosa, the executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said the wins show that Florida Democrats’ get-out-the-vote field program is working and that Republicans can’t keep up on the ground or when it comes to the message they’re delivering to voters.

“These wins are more than just Democrats having the ‘wind at our backs.’ We're winning because we are running smarter campaigns and speaking to the issues,” he said. “Voters are paying attention now and they are believing in our message, our plan and joining us in holding Republicans accountable by voting them out of office.”

Note on the maps how the Republican vote in the district has been creeping steadily downward since 2014.

Illegal Ballot Destruction In The Midst Of A Law Suit Means Wasserman Schultz Stole The FL-23 Primary Election Afterall

Donna Edwards became a member of Congress-- one of the best members of Congress-- in 2008. But, truth be told, her constituents elected her in 2006... only to see the victory snatched out of her hands on election night with last minute stuffed ballot boxes from corrupt conservative Al Wynn and his Machine. Donna got to work on the 2008 campaign the next day and after Donna eviscerated him in the primary-- 59% to 37%-- he resigned to become a corporate lobbyist.

Last year Tim Canova ran a similar grassroots progressive race against the female counterpart to Wynn-- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the same crook who, as DNC chair, was fired for fixing the primaries for Hillary Clinton. She fixed the election for Hillary; did she fix her own election against Canova? He always thought so but the media and DC establishment went bonkers when he mentioned it and nearly drove this good man out of politics with all their vitriol and venom. Polling was showing him ahead but on primary day Wasserman Schultz beat him 28,809 to 21,907 in a very low turnout election.

Friday, Marc Caputo broke the a story at Politico about how Brenda Snipes a crooked Wasserman Schultz crony and ally and the Broward County elections chief broke the law by destroying ballots cast in the tight primary election between Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova after Canova sued to get access to the ballots. Canova, according to Caputo "wanted to inspect the optical-scan ballots cast in his Aug. 30 primary race against Wasserman Schultz because he had concerns about the integrity of the elections office."

Under longstanding federal law, ballots cast in a congressional race aren’t supposed to be destroyed until 22 months after the election. And under state law, a public record sought in a court case is not supposed to be destroyed without a judge’s order.

Snipes’ office, however, destroyed the paper ballots in question in October-- in the middle of Canova’s lawsuit-- but says it’s lawful because the office made high-quality electronic copies. Canova’s legal team found out after the fact last month.

“The documents were not destroyed because they were maintained in an electronic format,” Snipes’ attorney, Burnadette Norris-Weeks, told Politico. “They have the documents... They did a two-day inspection of the ballots.”

But Canova, a Nova Southeastern University law professor, and his attorney say they wanted originals to make sure they weren’t tampered with. Digital copies can be altered, they said.

Seven election-law lawyers interviewed by Politico do not share Snipes' attorney's interpretation of the statute. Nor does the Department of Justice’s voting division, which is in charge of enforcing the federal law.

“If it’s a federal election, i.e., there is at least one federal candidate on the ballot, the custodian must keep the ballots for 22 months,” Brett Kappel, a Washington lawyer with Akerman LLP, said in an email to Politico. “State law may require a shorter time for retention, but federal law would pre-empt any such state law with regard to ballots cast for federal candidates.”

Kappel said evidence in an active court case should never be unilaterally destroyed. He said actual paper ballots are superior to imaged copies, and he pointed to the legal wrangling over Florida’s now-discarded punch-card ballots that were banned after the disputed 2000 presidential elections in Florida.

...Hans von Spakovsky, an elections expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the ballots must be preserved in paper form for 22 months. He said there’s a simple reason that original ballots are superior to an electronic image: “These electronic systems can be hacked.”

According to Snipes’ office, however, the ballot copies are of high quality for a review. Her attorney also dismissed Canova as a sore loser who’s trying to create a name for himself as he challenges Wasserman Schultz a second time.

“Mr. Canova lost this election,” she said. “He’s been all over Washington and has been trying to do a documentary because he’s upset he lost the election.”

In one hearing, Norris-Weeks insisted that she “certainly could get [a sworn statement] from Debbie Wasserman Schultz” to say that “she knows that they're preparing a documentary, and they're running all around talking to different people trying to do that.”

But Canova said the accusation was false.

“I’m not working on a documentary,” he said. “It is unfortunate that counsel for the Supervisor of Elections has to make things up to somehow justify the office’s illegal actions.”

Wasserman Schultz’s office declined to comment, but she has said she looks forward to again facing Canova, whom she beat by 13.6 percentage points last year.

Canova didn’t want to comment about his specific motivations for the suit, but acknowledged he has concerns about the race against Wasserman Schultz. Canova’s interest in the ballots was piqued by Lulu Friesdat, a documentary filmmaker and activist with a group called the Election Integrity network, which filed the first records request to inspect or copy the ballots in March.

A month later, Snipes’ office responded to the records request by saying it would cost $71,868.87 to sort and produce the ballots for inspection. Canova soon got involved with his attorney, Leonard Collins, and eventually they negotiated a price reduction that brought the cost down to about $3,000. But relations soured, and Canova sued in June.

Snipes’ office, meanwhile, is involved in two other lawsuits and has been plagued by errors and controversies over public records and paperwork.

One of the reasons Donald Trump is in the White House is because the Democratic Party was saddled with a corrupt party head, Wasserman Schultz, whose entire career, going back to her days in the Florida state legislature, have been marked with blatant and persistent corruption. She has long been the poster child of everything plaguing the Democratic Party. She has smeared and slimed Canova non-stop from the moment he dared to challenge here reelection. And now its getting closer and closer to the day when she will be, not just fired as the worst DNC chair in history but fired from Congress itself. Please consider helping Canova's campaign by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right. Meanwhile, this was the statement he issued after Caputo's explosive report yesterday:

In ordering the destruction of ballots, the Supervisor not only violated federal law requiring ballots be maintained for 22 months. Snipes also certified that the ballots were not subject to a pending lawsuit, which she knew was a complete falsehood given that Snipes had been personally served as the defendant in our lawsuit nearly three months earlier and even though we had already made public records requests and pre-trial discovery demands to inspect the ballots.

The ballot destruction raises serious questions:  Why engage in this blatant lawbreaking? To cover up something worse? What has the Supervisor of Elections been hiding? We demand state and federal investigations into the ballot destruction and prosecution of illegal wrongdoing.

Destruction of ballots prevents any reliable audit of the election results. We are left dependent on scanned ballot images created and sorted by scanning software that requires inspection by software experts. But the scanning software is considered proprietary software, owned and controlled by the private vendors, and often protected from independent inspection and analysis.

This destruction of ballots undermines people's faith and confidence in the integrity of our elections and this election in particular. To restore confidence, Congress must investigate and hold public hearings on the circumstances of my primary, including inspection and analysis of the scanned ballot images and the scanning software. Congress should also investigate the relationships between the vendors that control the electronic voting machines and software, their officers and directors, the Broward Supervisor of Elections office, Democratic party officials, and candidates for public office.

The Democratic Party will never be a real alternative to the Republican Party nor a welcoming home for good government reformers, with people like Wasserman Schultz exercising leadership roles in it. This person isn't even the lesser of two evils, which is all the Democrats can claim half the time anyway. She is what makes contemporary politics disgusting and she is the embodiment of what keeps decent people from wanting to get involved with politics.