Georgia On My Mind, Con't

The races for Governor and Senator in Georgia are shaping up to have no small amount of ticket-splitting, if the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll is any indication.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock is slightly ahead of Republican Herschel Walker in the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of a race that could decide control of the Senate, while Gov. Brian Kemp has an apparent lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch for Georgia’s top office.

The AJC poll is the latest that suggests a split-ticket dynamic may be emerging in Georgia’s two marquee races, with a small but crucial bloc of voters indicating they’re willing to cross party lines to cast ballots for both the incumbents in the nationally watched contests.

In his second election against Abrams, Kemp leads the Democrat 48% to 43% with an additional 7% of likely voters who haven’t made up their minds. A statistically insignificant number of voters back Libertarian Shane Hazel and Al Bartell, an independent candidate.

Warnock edges Walker 46% to 43% in his bid for a full six-year term, with about 3% of voters indicating they’ll support Libertarian Chase Oliver. About 8% say they’re still undecided about the race, which is likely to be among the costliest in the nation.

“Both of these races are very close statistically,” said Trey Hood, a University of Georgia political scientist who conducted the poll.

“There’s a long way to go before the general election, but a trend is emerging with recent polls: Kemp is consistently polling ahead of Abrams and Warnock is polling ahead of Walker.”

 

And yes, one out of six Democrats in the state are willing to keep Republican Brad Raffensperger as Secretary of State over Democrat Bee Nguyen. So there's plenty of evidence that individual races matter, at least in Georgia, and that there's not monolithic, straight party ticket voting going on.

 

Vote like your country matters, folks.

Abrams, Elementary

In Georgia, the race for Governor between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams is suddenly all about who will for paying teachers more.

Democrat Stacey Abrams proposed raising the minimum salary for Georgia public school teachers to $50,000 a year if she’s elected governor, part of a four-year plan that would hike the pay of K-12 educators by $11,000.

Abrams said Sunday she would finance the estimated $412 million annual cost over each of the next four years by relying upon revenue from Georgia’s budget without increasing taxes or imposing new fees. She framed the $1.65 billion plan as essential to retain teachers and improve the state’s education system.

“When our pipeline is thinning and our exodus is increasing, we are losing the fight for our children’s future,” said Abrams. “We need a governor who does not see education as an election-year gimmick but sees our responsibility as a guarantee for the strongest future for our people.”

The Democrat’s proposal would more than double Gov. Brian Kemp’s pledge in 2018 to hike annual teacher pay by $5,000, a promise he made weeks before the election that became a central part of his appeal to a broader set of voters after a bruising primary.

At the time, Abrams derided the Republican’s proposal as a “gimmick” and said he couldn’t be trusted to carry it out. Kemp signed a record $30.2 billion budget earlier this year that included the final installment of the promised pay hike.

In a scathing response, Kemp’s campaign predicted that Abrams was understating the price tag of her proposal and asserted that she would have to levy new taxes to pay for it.

“Following the lead of her pals in the Biden administration, Stacey Abrams’ latest Hail Mary proposal for over $2 billion in new state spending annually joins an ever-growing pile of pie-in-the-sky plans that would make inflation worse and require higher taxes on Georgia families to pay for it all,” said Kemp spokesman Tate Mitchell.

Abrams rolled out her proposal in tandem with the endorsement from the Georgia Association of Educators, an influential advocacy group that represents roughly 23,000 teachers. Lisa Morgan, the association’s president, assailed a Republican-backed school policy overhaul that Kemp engineered.

“Adjusted for inflation, our educators are making less now than they did in 1999,” Morgan said outside the group’s headquarters, adding: “It’s not just about salaries. It’s about educators being treated as the professionals they are.”

 

So if I'm reading this right, Kemp used COVID relief money that Republicans voted against to raise minimum teacher salaries from $34k to $39k, and he wants a gold medal for it.

I can't imagine why Georgia, like just about every other red state who refuses to pay teachers more money because they don't want public education at all, continues to have a critical teacher shortage.

Please note Kemp's response is not that teachers shouldn't earn more than $39k, it's that somebody has to pay for it.

Here's an idea. Maybe move around some of those billions thrown at policing every year to buy surplus military gear to use against Georgians, particularly Black Georgians.

Again, just an idea.

The GOP Race To The Bottom, Con't

With his support from Donald Trump essentially the only thing keeping him even remotely close in today's Georgia gubernatorial primary, former GOP Sen. David Perdue needs something of a miracle to pull off the win against avowed Trump enemy GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.  But because these are Republicans we're talking about, Perdue's final actions before the vote indicate he has plead for intervention from below, rather than above.

Former Senator David Perdue ended his Trump-inspired campaign for governor of Georgia with a racist appeal to Republican primary voters on Monday, accusing Stacey Abrams, the Black woman who is the presumptive Democratic nominee, of “demeaning her own race” in how she has described the state’s problems.

Speaking to an overwhelmingly white crowd, Mr. Perdue trained his ire on Ms. Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor’s race to Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Mr. Perdue is vying to unseat in Tuesday’s primary.

Mr. Perdue’s remarks about Ms. Abrams transcended the typical Republican primary campaign fare about stolen elections and accusations of disloyalty to former President Donald J. Trump. In a state where segregationists once demonized civil rights leaders as unwanted interlopers, and where how to interpret the nation’s history of slavery and racism remains a contentious subject, Mr. Perdue cast Ms. Abrams as an outsider in a state that has been her home since high school.

“Did you all see what Stacey said this weekend?” Mr. Perdue said from the stage. “She said that Georgia is the worst place in the country to live. Hey, she ain’t from here. Let her go back to where she came from. She doesn’t like it here.”

Mr. Perdue also injected race into a 2018 remark Ms. Abrams made about her pledge to create jobs in the renewable energy sector.

“People shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality to make a living in Georgia,” she said in the closing weeks of her 2018 campaign. “Why not create renewable energy jobs? Because, I’m going to tell y’all a secret: Climate change is real.”

On Monday, Mr. Perdue said: “When she told Black farmers, ‘You don’t need to be on the farm,’ and she told Black workers in hospitality and all this, ‘You don’t need to be,’ she is demeaning her own race when it comes to that. I am really over this. She should never be considered material for governor of any state, much less our state where she hates to live.”

Mr. Perdue’s remarks came in response to comments Ms. Abrams made Saturday in which she dismissed Mr. Kemp’s regular line that under his stewardship, Georgia has become the best state in the nation to do business.

“I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live,” Ms. Abrams said. She added: “When you’re No. 48 for mental health, when you’re No. 1 for maternal mortality, when you have an incarceration rate that’s on the rise and wages that are on the decline, then you are not the No. 1 place to live.”

After concluding his remarks on Monday, Mr. Perdue ignored questions about his description of Ms. Abrams and his proposition that she was “demeaning” to Black people, and an aide hustled him off.

The Wisconsin-born Ms. Abrams spent most of her early childhood in Mississippi but moved to Georgia in high school. She graduated from Avondale High School in DeKalb County and Spelman College in Atlanta.

During an interview on MSNBC on Monday evening, Ms. Abrams declined to comment on Mr. Perdue’s remarks.

“Regardless of which Republican it is, I have yet to hear them articulate a plan for the future of Georgia,” she said.

 

I mean when you're down by more than 30 points in a Republican primary in a Southern state where a Black woman is running as the Democratic challenger in the general election, vile racism is actually something that will probably help him among Republicans. After all, this is the state that gave us Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It's a final roll of the blackened, bloody dice, and a nice reminder that all Republicans are terrible.

Last Call For The Cold Man's War

Republicans threaten people all the time, it's what they do, the question is how and when they make good on those threats, and who suffers - or dies - in the process. But I don't recall a sitting Republican governor threatening an entirely different state if a Democratic governor was elected there before.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday warned of a coming “Cold War” between Florida and Georgia if Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams wins the gubernatorial election in the latter state.

During a press conference in Gulf County, located in northwest Florida, DeSantis referenced the ongoing Masters golf tournament in Georgia, using it as an apparent segue into discussing the state’s elections.

DeSantis said he “really appreciates our Georgians” but that voters would have to “take care” of the 2022 election to prevent Abrams from winning.

“If Stacey Abrams is elected governor of Georgia, I just want to be honest, that will be a cold war between Florida and Georgia,” he said. “I can’t have [former Cuban communist leader Raul] Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster. So I hope you guys take care of that and we’ll end up in good shape.”

The Hill has reached out to DeSantis’s office for comment.

 

He can't have a Black woman as a neighboring state governor. What's he going to do, cut off orange juice shipments?

 

In all seriousness though, this is just more posturing and trolling because this is what you have to do in order to get ahead in GOP politics: threaten Democrats. Frankly, if both Abrams and DeSantis end up in office, I fully expect things to get much worse on the border than just words.

Ridin' Over Biden

President Biden will be in Georgia today to announce he's backing Chuck Schumer's plan to eliminate the filibuster for voting rights legislation, but the reality is that voting rights activists in the state simply don't give a single damn about what Biden has to say on the subject anymore.

SO MUCH FOR UNITY — Democratic leaders hoped to spend the week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day presenting a united front for voting rights legislation and blasting Republicans as undemocratic.

So much for that.

Multiple high-profile voting rights leaders are planning to skip President JOE BIDEN’s speech on the matter in Atlanta today, dismissing the address as too little too late. “We’re beyond speeches. We’re beyond events,” said LATOSHA BROWN, the leader of Black Voters Matter. (h/t Sam Gringlas from NPR’s Atlanta bureau)

“We do not need any more speeches, we don’t need any more platitudes,” former NAACP of Georgia President JAMES WOODALL told NYT’s Nick Corasaniti and Reid Epstein. “We don’t need any more photo ops. We need action, and that actually is in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as the Freedom to Vote Act — and we need that immediately.”

STACEY ABRAMS won’t be there either, citing a scheduling conflict.

At the same time, Democrats are facing growing doubts within their own ranks about nixing the filibuster to pass the voting bills. Burgess Everett reports that Sen. MARK KELLY (D-Ariz.) is undecided on what to do while Sen. JON TESTER (D-Mont.) admits he’s not crazy about a filibuster “carveout.” That’s aside from Sens. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA’s (D-Ariz.) long-stated opposition.

WHAT BIDEN WILL SAY TODAY — Look for him to crank up the heat on the party’s voting push, calling the next few days “a turning point in this nation,” and posing a question: “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice?”

“I know where I stand,” Biden will say, according to a preview shared with Playbook. “I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of [the] United States Senate stand?”

Biden, whose support for the filibuster has softened since taking office, is also expected to reiterate that he backs “changing the Senate rules to ensure it can work again … Because abuse of what was once a rarely used mechanism that is not in the Constitution has injured the body enormously, and its use to protect extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right is abhorrent.”

A White House aide says Biden will again invoke Jan. 6 and will “describe this as one of the rare moments in a country’s history when time stops and the essential is immediately ripped away from the trivial, and that we have to ensure Jan. 6 doesn’t mark the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance for our democracy.”

I don't see how treating Biden like garbage helps advance voting rights. I seriously thought Stacey Abrams had better judgment than to dismiss Biden with a "scheduling conflict" when she's sure as hell going to need him later this year for her campaign rallies for Governor. 

But apparently we're right back to 2010 when "Obama failed us" after passing historic legislation.

I absolutely understand the frustration and anger. But as Jonathan Capehart points out, the actual villain remains Mitch McConnell and the other 49 GOP senators blocking any and all voting rights legislation.

The reality though is that for all the righteous anger in the country, Schumer doesn't have the votes to change the rules. There are still Democrats who refuse to play ball, and it's not just Manchin and Sinema, but Kelly and Tester and even Jeanne Shaheen.

That's not Biden's failure, but it is a failure of the Democrats.

It might be the bridge too far this time. Capehart reminds us that we still have the vote in 2022 to punish Republicans across the country, but most Americans don't care to do so, or they outright support the GOP.

As I keep telling people, the Civil Rights era was an aberration of American history, and that era is now almost certainly over.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp failed to deliver the state into Donald Trump's win column, and then had the unmitigated gall to say that no, the elections for President and for both senators were not stolen. As such, Donald Trump now wants Kemp gone by any means necessary, even if that means voting in Democratic challenger and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams as governor of Georgia.

Donald Trump is escalating his fight against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, and state Republicans fear it will give Democrats a stronger foothold in the key swing state as next year's midterm elections loom. 

The former President's criticism of Kemp now includes hyping Democrat Stacey Abrams as a preferable alternative to the GOP governor, whose crime against Trump was staying out of his attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election returns. 

"Having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think," Trump said Saturday at his rally in Perry, adding later, "Stacey, would you like to take his place? It's OK with me." 

Party leaders worry a divided Georgia GOP next year could hand Democrats the governor's mansion and help them keep a Senate seat in a year when Republicans should do well. And the former President's quasi-endorsement of Abrams reveals the diffidence among party leaders about how to proceed. 

"I think the most notable part is the quiet of everyone in the GOP in Georgia," said Erick Erickson, an Atlanta-based talk radio host. "No one agrees with him. No one is endorsing it. But no one is vocally pushing back, either." 

At the same time, the battle in Georgia reveals the larger war for the party's future and what role Trump occupies in it. 

The former President is doing his part to try to shape this future in his own image in Georgia. He has endorsed a slate of Republican candidates for statewide office in competitive primaries. Several of these attended his rally in Perry last weekend, including Herschel Walker for US Senate, Burt Jones for lieutenant governor and Jody Hice for secretary of state. 

"I do not see how the governor can unite the party without reconciling with the former President," said one longtime Georgia Republican operative. "This is not a question of fairness. It is a question of reality. Kemp needs the party united in 2022." 

But other Republicans in Georgia say demanding total loyalty is a risky proposition for a decidedly purple state that Trump lost in 2020. And the stakes for the GOP are high, with the US Senate race in Georgia potentially determining which party holds the majority after next fall's midterms. 

"Trump could prevent Republicans in Georgia from riding a massive anti-Biden wave that could put them almost where they were pre-Trump," said a second Republican operative from Georgia. 

Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican and vocal critic of Trump's false claims about the 2020 election, wrote in a CNN op-ed last week that Trump threatens to "hijack our great state for his own selfish agenda." 

"It might make for good theater, but it is setting back the conservative movement. If we keep it up, we are looking at another four years of President Biden calling the shots," Duncan wrote.

 

So yes, Trump is both willing to load up his GOP endorsements based solely on loyalty to helping him steal elections, and he will punish those who do not by replacing them with Democrats. The Trump party is all Trump, all day, all the time, forever.

A Whole New Ballgame, Con't

Both Republicans and Democrats in Georgia believe Major League Baseball's decision to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta this summer over GOP Gov. Brian Kemp's voter suppression laws will politically profit them, but as with baseball, only one side gets to win the game in the end.

Brian Robinson, a GOP strategist skilled in explaining the state’s Republican base to a mainstream audience, predicted it could be a singular moment in the 2022 race.

“The Democrats in one week have united a fractured Georgia GOP, rallied Republicans to Brian Kemp at a time when many had abandoned him and appalled the same independent voters who broke heavily toward them last year,” he said, before invoking Kemp’s likely 2022 rival.

“Stacey Abrams couldn’t have done more for Brian Kemp’s reelection hopes if she’d written a $10 million check to his super PAC.”

There was one Republican who didn’t stick to the same GOP script on Friday: Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. In a statement, the former minor league pitcher said he disagreed with Commissioner Rob Manfred’s decision but respected the outcome.

Then Duncan repeated what he’s said since November: He criticized Trump for promoting lies about Georgia’s election, saying the post-election misinformation campaign “continues to manifest itself and divide our nation.”

“And now, misinformation surrounding Georgia’s new elections reform has furthered that divide – even reaching MLB baseball.”

To be clear, Duncan’s stance is no surprise. He was one of the first elected GOP leaders to loudly debunk the pro-Trump conspiracy theories, and it earned him the enmity of the former president. Earlier this year, he refused to preside over the vote on a previous, and more restrictive, proposal.

But Duncan’s comments raise even more questions about his chances in 2022, when he’s up for another term, and his plans to promote a “GOP 2.0.” As one senior Republican official posited, Duncan’s statement was a “weird way to announce you aren’t seeking re-election.”

State Democrats want to make Georgia the poster child for federal voting legislation that’s stalling in Congress, and party leaders hope the white-hot spotlight on the new law helps them build their case.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, facing another election next year, said Friday’s fallout only proves the federal overhaul is needed more urgently. And Abrams, the once-and-likely-future gubernatorial candidate, called on corporate and political leaders to support the voting expansions pending in Congress to “mitigate the harm” in Georgia.

Georgia Democrats also have their eye beyond the U.S. Capitol and the Gold Dome. That’s one of the reasons they’ve stepped up their criticism of the new law and urged major corporations to publicly oppose it even though it’s already in the books.

Dozens of restrictive voting measures are pending in other states, and the pressure campaign aims to force local lawmakers to think twice before passing those laws in other state legislatures, too.

In Texas, for one, legislation that would limit early voting hours and restrict mail-in voting is gaining traction, while Florida legislators could soon consider a measure that would curb the use of drop boxes.

Democrats shaped the national narrative of Georgia’s election measure early, in part because they capitalized on proposed measures that included more far-reaching restrictions that never reached a final vote.

As Duncan, the GOP lieutenant governor, put it: Republicans “fell into the trap set by the left and allowed them to make the bill into something that it’s not.”

Now Democrats have their own challenge: At the start of what could be a growing boycott movement, how do they avoid getting blamed for the economic backlash? 

 

That's what's going to determine the political fallout over this, but remember that Republicans are the one who should be blamed for the outcome of this. Whether they are is another thing entirely.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Georgia Republicans found out the hard way that Georgia isn't a red state, it's a purple state with decades of voter suppression where one-third of the population is Black, and current governor Brian Kemp knew exactly how to steal a close election against Stacey Abrams because he was Secretary of State. As a result, the GA GOP is introducing a massive new package of voter suppression measures targeting Black and brown voters to keep them from getting to the polls in 2022.

After Donald Trump failed to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Republicans in the state’s legislature are doing everything they can to make it more difficult for Democrats to win the next one.

On Thursday, with almost no public notice, Georgia House Republicans introduced a 48-page bill to significantly change voting procedures in the state in a way that particularly targets Black voters in the Atlanta metro area. This followed similar moves by the state Senate earlier in the week.

The House bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Barry Fleming, chair of a newly created Special Committee on Election Integrity, limits the weekend early-voting period to only one Saturday before the election. Fleming claimed the provision will provide “uniformity” in voting hours across the state, but in practice it will take away voting opportunities for large, heavily Democratic counties in Atlanta, like DeKalb and Fulton, which held early voting on multiple weekends in the runup to the 2020 election when many Black voters turned out.

It specifically eliminates early voting on Sundays, when Black churches traditionally hold “Souls to the Polls” get-out-the-vote drives. The January 5 runoffs were the first time that Democrats outnumbered Republicans during in-person early voting, and Black voters constituted a third of early voters. In the November general election, Black voters used early voting on weekends at a higher rate than whites in 43 of 50 of the state’s largest counties. Black voters make up roughly 30 percent of Georgia’s electorate, but comprised 36.7 percent of Sunday voters in 2020 and 36.4 percent of voters on early voting days Fleming wants to eliminate, according to Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams.

“This bill is Jim Crow with a suit and tie,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia.

When North Carolina Republicans eliminated Sunday voting in 2013 after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals called it “as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times” and struck it down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Republican leaders in Georgia notably stood up to Trump when he sought to overturn the presidential election results in the state, with GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defending the integrity of the system by holding three recounts that found no evidence of fraud. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans in the legislature from introducing bill after bill to limit voting options after Georgia turned blue, and Black voters showed up in record numbers during the January runoff to elect two Democratic senators.

The proposed reduction in early voting times in Georgia seems likely to make already-long lines in the state worse. Voters in Atlanta waited up to 11 hours to vote during the November general election, and during the June primary, voters in predominantly white areas waited six minutes to vote while voters in areas predominantly of people of color waited 51 minutes to vote.

Other provisions of the bill would add a voter-ID requirement for mail-in ballots, give voters less time to request mail-in ballots and election officials less time to send them out, throw out ballots that are cast in the wrong precinct, and restrict the use of mail-in ballot drop boxes.

The proposals “would have devastating consequences for voting rights in Georgia,” wrote a coalition of 28 voting rights groups led by Fair Fight Action, “and the people of Georgia have been blindsided by its release.”

Democrats were angry that the House bill was released at 1:53 p.m. on Thursday before a 3 p.m. hearing. “None of the Democrats had anything to say about it,” said state Rep. Rhonda Burnough, a Democrat from south Atlanta. “The public, people of color, didn’t have any opportunity to review or give an opinion.”

“There’s nothing more important fundamentally than a person’s right and the privilege of voting,” says Calvin Smyre, dean of the House and a longtime civil rights activist. “Something like this requires a lot of vetting.”

 

The Republican answer to the marketplace of ideas is "keep Black people from voting because they vote Democratic." There's basically no better example of structural racism than Republican voter suppression in states with large Black populations. They do it, because they would lose without doing it.

It's that simple.

Black Votes Matter.

The Tale Of Harrison's Ford

The good news is that current DNC chair Tom Perez isn't going to bother to run for a second term after the complete disaster Dems had in the House and Senate in 2020. The bad news is that the obvious replacement, Stacey Abrams, is running for Georgia Governor in 2022. I'd much rather see Abrams running the DNC, but that's not my choice to make. The worse news is that means the odds-on favorite to run the DNC after Perez is a guy who set fundraising records and all that money meant that he still lost to Lindsey Graham by ten points.

First, Joe Biden has to pick his Cabinet and his White House staff. But after that, there’s only one name on leading Democrats’ list for Democratic National Committee chair: Jaime Harrison, who lost a race for U.S. Senate in South Carolina last week.

If he’s named as chair, Harrison will inherit an organization in significantly better shape than it was when Tom Perez took over in 2017. Under Perez, the DNC has paid off its debt, rebuilt its infrastructure, and boosted employee morale. No one, though, expects that keeping Democrats organized will be easy, especially without a common political enemy in Donald Trump. The next chair will help decide the party’s messaging ahead of the 2022 midterms and play a big role in the fight over which states will hold the first presidential primaries in 2024.

Harrison became nationally known this year during his run against Senator Lindsey Graham, as he set fundraising records and became a cause for Democrats far beyond his state. Graham ultimately won by a much-wider-than-expected 10-point margin, boosted by South Carolina’s partisan lean and his role in confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. But the goodwill that Harrison built up and the coming vacancy at the top of the DNC—Perez confirmed to me yesterday that he won’t be running for another term—has many Democrats thinking that Harrison is a perfect fit for the role. “The timing just seems right, frankly,” said Trav Robertson, a friend of Harrison’s who is now in Harrison’s old role as South Carolina Democratic Party chair.

More than just timing is involved. Harrison has the support of James Clyburn, his mentor and former boss, who is the House Democratic whip and whose endorsement during the primary campaign helped power Biden to the nomination. Yesterday, Clyburn pointed out to me that he had supported Harrison when he ran for DNC chair in 2017, and said, “I think he’s better prepared than he was when I supported him the first time.”

Clyburn told me he hasn’t mentioned the DNC-chair race to Biden, but “all of Biden’s friends know what I feel about it.” A Biden spokesperson declined to comment.

Clyburn’s support, Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said, “means the train has left the station.” Kleeb, who’s from a very different part of the party—she’s the political-committee chair of the Bernie Sanders–aligned group Our Revolution—told me she’s happy to see that support go to Harrison. Like several others I spoke with, she pointed to Harrison’s record as a state-party chair as giving her confidence in the kind of leader he would be. She’s just hoping that as the party elects other officers, members will promote regional and ideological diversity. Kleeb, for example, told me she’s planning to run for vice chair of the DNC herself.

Via text message, Harrison declined to comment, though earlier this week he told The Washington Post that he’d take a “good look” at running if asked.

 

This is one of those things that I'd feel a lot better about if Harrison being in charge of Dem messaging didn't already directly result in a double-digit loss to one of the biggest enablers Trump had in his regime.

But Abrams is doing what Abrams needs to do, and that's go after Brian Kemp. And frankly, Harrison can't do much worse than Tom Perez or -- God help us -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The Battle Of Georgia

Biden won Georgia and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were able to force runoffs in January in large part thanks to the herculean efforts of Stacey Abrams and other voting rights activists working to overcome massive voter suppression. Now Abrams has her sights set on winning both runoffs, and she's going to have a cornucopia of resources to get the job done and win the Senate for the Dems.

Voting rights activist and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Sunday that Democrats are going to have unprecedented financial support for the two possible January Senate runoff elections in her state — contests that could also determine control of Congress.

Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are battling GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler for the seats. NBC News has not projected an outcome in the Ossoff-Perdue race, but Perdue's campaign said Friday that it's preparing for a runoff. The Senate currently shows Democrats and Republicans each in control of 48 seats, with four races still outstanding.

"This will be the first time we've had three things happen," Abrams said. "One, we've got Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock at the top of these tickets, working together to make certain that voters come back."

"Number two, we will have the investment and the resources that have never followed our runoffs in Georgia for Democrats," she continued. "And number three, this is going to be the determining factor of whether we have access to health care and access to justice in the United States. Those are two issues that will make certain that people turn out."

It appears the money is already flooding in to the Georgia contests. A spokesman for Abrams' group Fair Fight told NBC News that, in the past 48 hours, they have raised more than $3.6 million dollars.

 

And she's right. Ossoff and Warnock winning are the difference between being able to actually fix the problems in this country, and another two years of frustrating gridlock with Mitch McConnell blocking every piece of legislation he can. 

We'll get to that battle in 55 days or so, but the time to prepare is now, and Abrams is already on it.

Sunday Long Read: It's Still About Suppression

In Harper's Bazaar, Grammy award-winning musical artist, activist and Atlanta native Janelle Monáe interviews Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on her book, voter suppression and how Black America can overcome it in this week's Sunday Long Read.

JANELLE MONÁE: In your book Our Time Is Now, you write about what you call the New American Majority—the people of color, young people, moderates and progressives, who galvanized behind you and your race for governor of Georgia in 2018. You believe these folks are a key force in the upcoming federal elections. In the time between when you wrote the book and when it was published in June, we saw our country gripped by this pandemic. We’re all in the middle of Covid-19 right now, and we’re in a reckoning with racial justice and the stark and tragic effects of inequality. How do you feel this New American Majority has evolved or changed over the past six months?

STACEY ABRAMS: The full title of the book is Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, and I think that there has been nothing in our recent memory that has crystallized that subtitle more than the last six months. We are in a pitched battle driven by a public-health crisis, an economic collapse, and a reckoning with structural racism and systemic inequities, and the battle is not simply against those things. It is understanding that this New American Majority, because of how many of us there are and because of the proof points of our capacity, we have to know we’ve got the power to influence what happens next. We have to know we have a purpose, which has been revealed by what the pandemic has shown us about what is happening to Black and brown communities that are being decimated by Covid-19 and the economic inequities that are not only being visited upon our country writ large but upon those essential workers, who, by law or by practice, don’t have the ability to take care of themselves and have to stand on those front lines. And then a fair America—we have the right to demand equal justice under the law. We have the right to believe that Ahmaud Arbery should not have been murdered in the streets and that Rayshard Brooks should not have been killed by police. I wrote this book in 2019. I finished it up the first few days of 2020. I had no idea this is what was to come. But what I’ve learned from my parents and my grandparents and from the long sweep of history is that we have been waiting for this moment where our desires can be met with our capacity. That is this moment, and the New American Majority is how we do it.

JM: At one point in your book, you recount protesting emblems of the Confederacy while you were in college at Spelman [in Atlanta] in the early 1990s. I saw video footage of you burning the Confederate flag [at the time, the Georgia state flag contained a Confederate battle emblem]. How does it feel, 28 years later, to watch as names are finally being taken off buildings, flags are being burned, people are removing statues by themselves, and paintings depicting Confederate figures are coming down slowly but surely? Why do you think it took so long?

SA: In 2018, when I had the temerity to say that I did not believe in the public veneration of traitors to our country, which is what the Confederacy was, or that I didn’t believe that Stone Mountain should be a state monument—that we should have again a reckoning—I was vilified for it. And when I burned the Confederate flag, I had a permit for it, but when we burned that flag, it was because I grew up in Mississippi in the shadows of Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis, where I watched people celebrate a man who tried to keep my people enslaved. And that’s just wrong. So I am grateful that we’re having this moment. But again, it goes back to this inflection point, this demographic change. The New American Majority is not simply a title—it’s a capacity issue. There are enough of us now who have known this for years, but our voices have come together as a chorus and we’re loud enough to be heard. I think that’s why we’re seeing this action. But I don’t want to dismiss the fact that we had people like Bree Newsome, who scaled that pole and took down that flag. [In 2015, Newsome was arrested after removing a Confederate flag on the grounds of the South Carolina State House.] Even though people were trying to give [then Governor] Nikki Haley credit in South Carolina, it was Bree Newsome who risked her freedom to do that. So we have had people who’ve been fighting this battle. But I think for the first time people believe that the battle can be won.

JM: Let’s talk about voter suppression. You’ve described voter suppression as a means of denying people “the most profound currency of citizenship: power.” What does American power look like to you today? And what should it represent?

SA: In a democracy, our ability to select those who speak for us comes from the right to vote. That’s what we have to remember. We live in a representative democracy. We don’t ask everyone to vote on everything. We say, “Pick some folks and let them focus on it so you can go about your life.” But if you can’t choose representation that sees you, that hears you, and that speaks for you, then the democratic part doesn’t really work. So my mission has been to ensure that the representation part meets the democracy part. We have a president who does not want democracy to work. He is a wannabe authoritarian populist who believes that his edicts should be law, that his incompetence should be unchallenged, and that accountability is for others. We have this responsibility to fight back against voter suppression because suppression is all about maintaining power for a small cadre of folks who have been afraid of sharing it from the beginning of our country. This is a nation built on voter suppression. When we started, white men who owned land could vote. If you were Black, you were a slave. If you were a woman, you were supposed to be silent. If you were Native American, you were invisible. Then in 1790 we decided to shut the gates and say no one else can come in. So we’ve spent 230 years trying to reclaim the promise that was in our Declaration of Independence, this promise of equality. But we can only reclaim it if we have the power of the vote. I know it can sound like a slogan or a really pale solution to all of these challenges, but in a democracy, you can’t give up the power you have trying to get the power you want.

JM: In many ways, it seems like we’re in a moment that is demanding change. How do we take advantage of that opportunity to actually bring about change?

SA: One thing I’ve always loved about your music is that you’re a truth-teller, and I think that’s got to be the approach we take to leverage this moment: We’ve got to tell the truth about what’s happening and tell the truth about how we fix it. I become frustrated when I hear people, in response to protesters in the streets, saying, “Just go vote,” because that’s not the only answer. I was a protester in the streets, and I protested at the ballot box—my parents raised me to understand you have to do both. They were activists because they knew that was the only way they would get the right to vote. And once they had the right to vote, they took us with them to vote and to protest because they wanted us to understand that it’s not enough to say what you want—you’ve got to demand that it be made true. So we have to be willing to stop simplifying this by pretending that we can elect a savior who will change the world or change the country. It won’t happen. We can elect people, who, if we hold them accountable, can make progress. But we’ve got to connect the dots.

I'm a big fan of Stacey's politics and of Janelle's music.  It's excellent to see two Black women discuss politics like this and I find myself agreeing with the entire conversation, particularly Abrams's observations on white America putting the onus on Obama to be the savior in 2008.

When Obama responded with "We all have work ahead of us", something Black America was used to hearing and doing, but white America was not -- they thought merely electing Obama would "fix things" and they were off the hook for the results and it was Black America's responsibility now -- that's when white America turned on Obama and the Democrats in three straight federal elections. It was only because Mitt Romney was a terrible candidate and that Obama's charisma and the recovery was strong enough that he won in 2014 but Democrats across the country were wiped out in the backlash, leading to Trump.

That wasn't Black America's fault.  We didn't elect Trump. But it apparently falls upon us to save the country from him now.

It's About Suppression, Con't

In 2018, then Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, now Governor, alleged that Democrats hacked the state's election information database in order to "steal" the 2018 election in the state.  Today, the state's Republican attorney general closed the case because Democrats didn't do anything, and there was no evidence whatsoever to support Kemp's claims.

Georgia investigators found no evidence to support Gov. Brian Kemp’s allegation just before Election Day in 2018 that the Democratic Party tried to hack election information, according to a report released Tuesday by the attorney general’s office.

The attorney general’s office closed the case that Kemp had opened when he was secretary of state, overseeing the same election he was running for. Kemp made the hacking accusation two days before the election.

Kemp, a Republican, defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes.

No election information was damaged, stolen or lost, according to the attorney general’s report. Nor were any crimes committed by the person who reported vulnerabilities with Georgia’s election registration websites to the Democratic Party and an attorney who is suing the state.

Democratic Party of Georgia Chairwoman Nikema Williams said Kemp made “outright lies” to attack his political opponents and help his election.

“More than a year after the sitting secretary of state leveraged baseless accusations against his political opponents, we’re finally receiving closure on an ‘investigation’ that has been a sham from the start,” said Williams, a state senator from Atlanta. “As we have since well before these outright lies came to light in the first place, Georgia Democrats will continue to do everything in our power to fight back against voter suppression.

A spokeswoman for Kemp said his office did the right thing by asking law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and GBI, to investigate.

“We appreciate the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and attorney general’s office for investigating a failed cyber intrusion before the November 2018 election,” said Candice Broce, a spokeswoman for Kemp. “More importantly, we are grateful that the systems put in place by Brian Kemp as Georgia’s secretary of state kept voter data safe and secure.”

The report from the office of Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, found that there were some vulnerabilities with the state’s online voter registration systems. Those issues were corrected by contractors for the secretary of state’s office.

However, the vulnerabilities were different from those alleged by Richard Wright, the Georgia resident who called attention to them, according to the report. Wright had said that anyone could download state voter registration information and any voter's registration card.

Wright was wrong when he claimed that election systems weren't secure, Broce said. She said Wright refused to cooperate with the investigation.

“While the evidence in this case properly gave rise to concerns that were appropriately addressed by law enforcement, the investigation did not reveal any evidence to support the criminal prosecution of Mr. Wright,” according to a memo from Senior Assistant Attorney General Laura Pfister. “Therefore, I recommend closing the file at this time.”

The vulnerabilities under Kemp's run as Secretary of State get fixed, he gets to remain governor after alleging massive election fraud two days before the vote, and he gets away with it in a close race with Stacey Abrams.

If Abrams had ended up winning, bet your life Kemp would have "found evidence" that the Democrats had "hacked" the election.

It's About Suppression, Con't

A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of precinct closures in predominantly black areas of Georgia by GOP lawmakers and then Secretary of State Brian Kemp ahead of the 2018 elections found that the closures kept as many as 85,000 Georgians from voting last year.

The AJC mapped Georgia’s 7 million registered voters and compared how distance to their local precincts increased or decreased from 2012 to 2018. During that time, county election officials shut down 8% of Georgia’s polling places and relocated nearly 40% of the state’s precincts.

Most of the precinct closures and relocations occurred after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 ended federal oversight of local election decisions under the Voting Rights Act.

The AJC’s analysis, vetted by two nonpartisan statistics experts, showed a clear link between turnout and reduced voting access. The farther voters live from their precincts, the less likely they are to cast a ballot.

Precinct closures and longer distances likely prevented an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting ballots on Election Day last year, according to the AJC’s findings.

And the impact was greater on black voters than white ones, the AJC found. Black voters were 20% more likely to miss elections because of long distances.

Without those precinct relocations, overall Election Day turnout in last year’s midterm election likely would have been between 1.2% and 1.8% higher, the AJC estimated.

“Seems to me, they’re making it harder for us to vote,” said Coleman, who voted in the November election for governor but didn’t cast a ballot in the primary. “I hate that they closed that place down because it was more convenient. Maybe I wouldn’t miss elections if it was still open here.” 

The AJC’s analysis accounted for both large, rural precincts and small, urban precincts by measuring how far voters had to travel as a percentage of their precinct’s geographic area. Both groups were impacted, the AJC found.

The average Georgia voter’s distance to a polling place more than doubled from 2012 to 2018, according to the AJC’s analysis.

While the state made it easier to register to vote, they made it much harder to actually cast that ballot.  And even though Georgia's midterm election turnout was 57% in 2018, it could have been as high as 59 or 60% if the closed precincts had remained open.

The GOP plan is to get people in rural areas registered to vote and make it easier for them to vote, and to do just the opposite in urban counties and predominantly black ones.

Still, the AJC is careful to say that Kemp still would have won, even with the additional turnout, but the racial disparity still remains.

Once freed from federal oversight, precinct closures accelerated in areas previously covered by the Voting Rights Act. At least 1,688 polling places were shut down since 2012, according to the Leadership Conference Education Fund. The AJC reported last year that 214 of those precinct closures were in Georgia, third most of states previously covered by the act’s preclearance provision.

Before the ruling, voters of all races were barely affected by their distance to the polls, accounting for a 0.2% and 0.4% reduction in turnout, according to the AJC’s analysis of election data from 2012. The number of Georgia voters who missed elections because of distance more than quadrupled in 2018 compared to 2012, the AJC found.

Turnout by black voters would have been between 1.3% and 2.1% higher on Election Day in 2018 if they all lived near their polling places.

Overall, black voters are also significantly more likely to live farther from their precincts than white voters, the AJC found. About 30% of black voters must now travel across half of their precinct to reach their poll compared to less than 20% of white voters.

The AJC’s analysis shows the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling, said Donald Verrilli Jr., the U.S. solicitor general at the time of the court’s decision in 2013. The court’s majority said the Voting Rights Act covered states based on their history rather than on recent evidence of discrimination.

“This is exactly the kind of updated data the justices in the majority said was lacking,” Verrilli told the AJC. “Exactly the kind of data that suggests that the judgment of the majority of the court — the South has changed — may be in need of amendment. Maybe the South hasn’t changed as much as one would have hoped.”

Voter suppression through precinct closing may not have been the sole reason Kemp won, but it definitely helped.

Turkey Week: The Devils Came Out Of Georgia

In the Trump regime mob, you do what Don Arancio Trumpino says or you get replaced by someone who does.  It's one thing for that to happen in the White House and executive branch where Trump can hire and fire.  But now Trump's picking Senators and not every red state governor is going along with his "requests", and there's a price to be paid.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) warned Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Friday that he could face a primary challenger when running for reelection if he doesn’t select President Trump’s favored candidate for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Gaetz’s tweet Friday comes amid reports that Kemp is expected to announce that financial executive Kelly Loeffler will be chosen over Trump’s preferred selection of Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.).

“You are ignoring his request because you THINK you know better than @POTUS,” Gaetz tweeted. “If you substitute your judgement for the President’s, maybe you need a primary in 2022. Let’s see if you can win one w/o Trump.”

Gaetz in a follow-up tweet said Kemp would be "hurting Trump" if he does not select Collins.

“It’s not the establishment you are screwing with your donor-induced stubbornness,” Gaetz wrote. “You are hurting President Trump. You know this because he told you.”

Gaetz is a vocal supporter of Trump and his message underscores the dilemma Kemp will face if he follows through with selecting Loeffler.

Kemp’s upcoming decision to select a new senator comes after he met with Trump at the White House on Sunday, with the two reportedly having a disagreement regarding who should fill the seat set to be vacated by Isakson, who is stepping down at the end of the year due to health issues.

You know those quiet parts that you're not supposed to say in public when you're shaking down a governor in your own party?  The Trumpino mob never got to that part in Mobstering for Dummies. It doesn't help Kemp's case that his reason to select Kelly Loeffler is because Trump is absolute poison among white suburban women in the Peach State.

Her appointment would do little to tamp down the internal Republican fighting over the seat. Trump and his allies have repeatedly pressed the governor to tap Collins, and the two were still at odds over Loeffler’s appointment even after Kemp brought her to a secretive meeting with the president last week.

And it would come as no surprise to Republican insiders, who have labeled Loeffler the presumptive favorite ever since she submitted her application hours before a deadline imposed by Kemp.

Collins’ allies have aggressively pushed Kemp to appoint the congressman in recent weeks, describing the Gainesville Republican as a champion for conservative causes – and a bulwark of defense against impeachment proceedings headed for the U.S. Senate.

And Collins has helped energize his supporters by telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is “strongly” considering a run for the Senate seat in next year’s special election if he’s not picked.
Kemp, however, has surprised even his critics with his appointments to key posts, and he’s long seen the U.S. Senate opening as a chance to help the Georgia GOP win back female voters.

He’s also mindful that his selection would not only be on the ballot in 2020 to fill out the remaining two years of Isakson’s term but also potentially alongside Kemp in 2022 when the governor runs for a second term.

We could have a major fight on our hands for Georgia's two senate seats in 2020.  There are multiple Dems running for David Perdue's seat next year with Stacey Abrams passing on the race, and I'm sure many will look for Isakson's seat in the special election next fall.

Bonus Republican fail: Isakson was chair of the Senate Ethics Committee and literally no Republican senator wants the job.

The Misstatement Of The Union Address

Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post's fact-checking team tackled the Wall of lies in Donald Trump's SOTU speech last night, and it's pretty brutal stuff.  Some low-lights:

“Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in half a century. African American, Hispanic American and Asian American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.”

This is all in the past. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had increased to 4 percent in January. The unemployment rate in December had no longer been at a 49-year low, but an 18-year low. Now it was merely the best since the beginning of 2018.

The African American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 5.9 percent in May 2018, but had risen to 6.8 percent in January. The Hispanic American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 4.4 percent in 2018, but had risen to 4.9 percent in January. The Asian American statistic has been around for less than 20 years. And while it reached a low of 2.1 percent in May 2018, it rose to 3.2 percent rate in January.

“And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”

The United States has exported more energy than it has imported since 2015. Trump overstates the impact of his energy policy. 

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities.”

Trump appears to be echoing comments he heard from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Jan. 10, but this claim is wrong.

The El Paso Times, in a fact check, said some form of barrier has existed between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez for decades, though Trump appeared to be referring to fencing that was completed in mid-2009: “Looking broadly at the last 30 years, the rate of violent crime reached its peak in 1993, when more than 6,500 violent crimes were recorded. Between 1993 and 2006, the number of violent crimes fell by more than 34 percent and less than 2,700 violent crimes were reported. The border fence was authorized by [President George W.] Bush in 2006, but construction did not start until 2008. From 2006 to 2011 — two years before the fence was built to two years after — the violent crime rate in El Paso increased by 17 percent.”

The city had the third-lowest violent crime rate among 35 U.S. cities with a population over 500,000 in 2005, 2006 and 2007 — before construction of a 57-mile-long fence started in mid-2008. 

"We have spent more than $7 trillion dollars in the Middle East.”

Trump started making a version of this claim shortly after taking office, first saying $6 trillion but then quickly elevating it to $7 trillion. Trump acts as if the money has been spent, but he is referring to a Brown University study that included estimates of future obligations through 2056 for veterans’ care. The study combines data for both George W. Bush’s war in Iraq (2003) and the war in Afghanistan (2001), which is in Central/South Asia, not the Middle East. The cost of the combined wars will probably surpass $7 trillion by 2056, when interest on the debt is considered, almost four decades from now.

The guy actually managed to lie more this year than last.

Hopefully we won't have to hear from him again in January 2020, but there was never any chance of Trump actually practicing the "unity" he screamed about in his address when he spent the entire day attacking the Democrats before his televised rant.

For public consumption, President Trump planned to use his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to appeal for bipartisan unity. But at a private lunch for television anchors earlier in the day, he offered searing assessments of a host of Democrats.

Mr. Trump dismissed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as “dumb,” called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York a “nasty son of a bitch” and mocked Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, who he said “choked like a dog” at a news conference where he tried to explain a racist yearbook photo, according to multiple people in the room.

I'm so tired of this racist, misogynist buffoon. I'm even more tired of the people who voted for and enable him.

The Democratic party response from Stacey Abrams was much better.

In a brief speech lauded by Democrats, Abrams succeeded in elevating an event that is often awkward and anticlimactic by nature. With a measured tone and her trademark working-class anecdotes, Abrams outlined a raft of policy measures, from the potential of Medicaid expansion in combating infant mortality to the importance of gun control and immigration reform. But the high point of the speech was her strong and vocal stance on protecting voting rights. As the national face of the party for a few minutes on Tuesday, Abrams pushed the issue of the franchise closer to the heart of Democratic politics, and gave Democrats another rhetorical weapon against the Republican Party.

Abrams appeared on air shortly after President Donald Trump, who during his address to Congress appeared at times to seek bipartisan praise, while also sticking to his familiar stances on law enforcement, immigration, abortion, and foreign policy. During key moments when Trump talked about women’s suffrage, criminal justice reform, and cancer research, members of both parties cheered. But for much of his speech, he sounded like the president who staged countless political rallies last summer and fall. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards,” he said, admonishing Democrats for not agreeing to his demands for a border wall that led to the longest government shutdown in history. “Meanwhile, working-class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal immigration.”

While the president defended his border wall and recited stories of kidnapping and rape along the border, he made no reference to the financial pain suffered by federal employees during the government shutdown. In the moment, he seemed eager for applause and conciliation.

Abrams, by contrast, zeroed in on the workers’ pain. She recalled the time she spent distributing meals from food pantries to furloughed federal workers. Abrams called the impasse “a stunt engineered by the President of the United States, one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people—but our values.”

She also called the White House’s response to rampant gun violence “timid,” a barb that seemed designed to irritate Trump. Abrams lamented the lack of any new immigration reform, and promoted Medicaid expansion as a way to reduce overall mortality among vulnerable groups. She called for action on climate change, criticized the 2017 Republican tax cuts, and hoped for the appointment of “fair-minded judges.”

Still, it was Abrams’s call for a renewed focus on voting rights that seemed to distinguish her rebuttal. “None of these ambitions are possible without the bedrock guarantee of our right to vote,” she said.

And it is this right that Trump threatens the most.  Never forget that.