Daily Archives: October 27, 2020

VERONA, N.Y. Pushing further into Republican territory one week before Election Day, Democrats are poised to expand their majority in the House while Republicans, weighed down by President Trumps low standing in crucial battlegrounds, are scrambling to offset losses.

Bolstered by an enormous cash-on-hand advantage, a series of critical Republican recruitment failures and a wave of liberal enthusiasm, Democrats have fortified their grip on hard-fought seats won in 2018 that allowed them to seize control of the House. They have trained their firepower and huge campaign coffers on once-solid Republican footholds in affluent suburban districts, where many voters have become disillusioned with Mr. Trump.

That has left Republicans, who started the cycle hoping to retake the House by clawing back a number of the competitive districts they lost to Democrats in 2018, straining to meet a bleaker goal: limiting the reach of another Democratic sweep by winning largely rural, white working-class districts like this one in central New York where Mr. Trump is still popular. Depending on how successful those efforts are, Republican strategists, citing a national environment that has turned against them, privately forecast losing anywhere from a handful of seats to as many as 20.

That is starkly at odds with Mr. Trumps own prediction just days ago that Republicans would win back control of the House, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared delusional, echoing the private assessments of many in the presidents own party.

The Democrats green wave in 2018 has turned into a green tsunami in 2020, which combined with ongoing struggles with college-educated suburban voters, makes for an extremely challenging environment, said Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist who helped lead the partys failed effort in 2018 to protect its House majority, referring to the torrent of Democratic campaign cash. There are about a dozen 50-50 races across the country, and the most important factor in each is if the president can close strong in the final stretch.

The terrain for House Republicans was not supposed to be this grim. But Mr. Trumps stumbling response to the pandemic and inflammatory brand of politics have alienated critical segments of the electorate, particularly suburban voters and women, dragging down congressional Republicans and opening inroads for Democrats in districts that once would have been unfathomable.

I dont think too many people would have thought that at the beginning of this cycle, but we are playing deep into Trump country, Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, the chairwoman of House Democrats campaign arm, said, noting that a third of a billion dollars and strong recruits had yielded a good secret sauce.

Eyeing new opportunities in districts that have traditionally been conservative strongholds, Democrats have charged into suburbs across the country. In the Midwest, they are targeting Representatives Don Bacon of Nebraska, Ann Wagner of Missouri, and Rodney Davis of Illinois. They are also storming once ruby-red parts of Texas, positioning themselves in striking distance of picking up as many as five seats on the outskirts of Houston and Dallas.

Perhaps nowhere is the dynamic on starker display than outside Indianapolis, in a sea horse-shaped district held by Representative Susan W. Brooks, Republican of Indiana, who is retiring. The district, one of the states wealthiest and most educated, has been reliably conservative, sending Republicans to the House since the early 1990s and supporting Mr. Trump in 2016 by eight points.

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But this year, Democrats view the district as one of their best opportunities to flip a seat, betting that distaste for Mr. Trump will buoy support for their candidate, Christina Hale, a former member of the Indiana General Assembly who boasts of having worked to pass legislation with Vice President Mike Pence when he was the states governor.

People here are just so fatigued of all the drama and the constant news cycle, Ms. Hale said in an interview. Theyre just really looking for practical, competent, empathetic people to represent them in Washington and people that will collaborate across the aisle.

Two years ago, armed with similar brands and messages, Democrats won 31 districts where Mr. Trump had prevailed in 2016. Most of them are expected to cruise to re-election, capitalizing on their huge fund-raising hauls and weak Republican challengers.

If Republicans have any reason for optimism, it is in largely rural areas like New Yorks 22nd District, populated by mostly white voters who still strongly support the president. They are bullish about their chances in this race, where Claudia Tenney is seeking to reclaim her seat from Representative Anthony Brindisi, the Democrat who ousted her in 2018 after winning by fewer than 4,500 votes.

While Ms. Tenney described herself in an interview as independent, her campaign is gambling that Mr. Trumps presence on the ballot this year could help her edge past Mr. Brindisi on Election Day. All through the district, along roads that wind through farmland and tucked among elaborate Halloween displays, yard signs paid for by the Tenney campaign blare, in all capital letters, Trump Tenney a clear indication of how their fortunes are intertwined. (Mr. Trump on Tuesday also tweeted in support of Ms. Tenney.)

I just find it really hard to believe that hes not going to win this district by double digits, and I think his policies have done really well for our region, Ms. Tenney said of Mr. Trump. They would rather have a president and a leader whos going to stand up for them than get hung up on personality issues.

Oct. 27, 2020, 9:49 p.m. ET

But Mr. Brindisi, who has sought to build a platform rooted in health care and local constituency work and legislation, argued that Ms. Tenney lost in 2018 because she had failed to deliver on her promises to the district.

People dont want to turn back the clock. They want to continue to go forward, Mr. Brindisi said. At the end of the day, if I meet with people on the street in this district, what theyll tell me is, Anthony, I dont care if youre a Democrat or Republican, just get things done.

Elsewhere around the country, some challengers whom Republicans had promoted as strong recruits, like Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel who is running against Representative Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, have found themselves stunted by a dismal national environment and unable to get their attacks against centrist lawmakers to stick.

When you try and paint somebody thats clearly a moderate as super extreme, I just dont think it works, said A.J. Lenar, a Democratic ad maker and strategist who works with Mr. Cunningham and cut an ad poking fun at attempts to brand him a socialist.

Making matters worse for Republicans is the state of their fund-raising. Democrats in the most competitive races are sitting on a 5-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over their Republican challengers, and Democratic candidates overall were poised to spend nearly twice as much on television ads from Labor Day to Election Day, according to strategists tracking the buys. In New York, Democrats are outspending Republicans by $9 million on television in support of Representative Max Rose, who holds a Staten Island seat that Republicans believe is one of their best opportunities.

Some Republican candidates, including Ms. Tenney, were out-raised so handily that outside groups, like the Congressional Leadership Fund, a House Republican super PAC, have been forced to step in to carry out campaign fundamentals like advertising and phone calls, as well as get-out-the-vote programs. Ms. Tenney is among a group of Republican candidates this cycle who have run almost no ads themselves, leaving the super PAC to carry their entire television campaign.

Democrats giant cash advantage also means they can afford to play in longer-shot races in Alaska and Montana, forcing Republicans to sink millions into those at-large seats in an effort to build a firewall against a potential wave.

Even though his party appeared to be playing more defense than offense, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, argued in an interview that Republicans could still take back the House. Democrats in districts like New Yorks 22nd, which Mr. Brindisi flipped two years ago, appear to be on stronger footing than they actually are, he said, because of national polls that undercount conservatives an assertion few of his peers share.

But he acknowledged his prediction assumed Mr. Trump was as popular with voters in those districts as he was four years ago.

It really depends on if the president performs at or near 2016 levels, Mr. Emmer said. If not, it becomes a lot more difficult.

That is also the challenge for Victoria Spartz, the Republican state senator who is running against Ms. Hale in the suburbs of Indiana, where internal polls show support for Mr. Trump eroding. She has used her rags-to-riches story of emigrating from the Soviet Ukraine to emphasize her strong belief in limited government.

But Ms. Spartz is facing the same headwinds buffeting her party in districts around the nation. After prevailing in a crowded primary by flaunting her conservative credentials, she must now convince voters of her independence from Mr. Trump and Republicans.

I wish people would pay more attention and actually vote for the candidate, she said in an interview, not for the party.

Emily Cochrane reported from Verona, N.Y., and Catie Edmondson from Washington. Luke Broadwater contributed reporting from Washington.

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Democrats Are Poised to Expand House Majority in GOP Turf - The New York Times

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. When Representative Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat running for re-election in the conservative-leaning Richmond suburbs, arrived to debate her Republican opponent on a recent evening, she received a heroines welcome, loudly cheered by supporters on both sides of the street who held blue balloons and handmade signs praising her accomplishments.

There was no such warm welcome for Nick Freitas, the state delegate running to oust her, recalled Carol Catron, 52, a stay-at-home mom and a supporter of Ms. Spanberger, who was among those shouting We love Abigail! outside as the Republican walked in without making eye contact.

The scene in this Republican-leaning district, which voted heavily for President Trump four years ago, underscored how solidly Ms. Spanberger a first-term representative once thought to have an uphill climb to re-election has cemented her following among voters here and now has the advantage heading into Election Day.

Across the country, Democrats like Ms. Spanberger, a former C.I.A. officer who has cultivated a brand as a moderate unafraid to criticize her own party, are playing a pivotal role that has positioned Democrats to maintain control of the House and build their majority.

She and dozens of freshmen Democrats like her whose victories in Trump-friendly districts in 2018 handed the party control of the House and who were seen as the most vulnerable to defeat this year are leading their Republican challengers in polling and fund-raising headed into the elections final week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi likes to call this group of about 40 lawmakers most of them young, many women, and predominantly moderates her majority makers, while the House Democratic campaign arm calls them frontliners. And they have largely managed to buck intense Republican attempts to brand them as Ms. Pelosis minions, socialists or out-of-touch coastal elites.

We knew we had a lot of work to do when we got elected, and we got to work, says Representative Lauren Underwood, Democrat of Illinois and a registered nurse.

Republicans had hoped to pick off Ms. Underwood, who in 2018 won in the Chicago suburbs carried by Mr. Trump. But after she raised more than $7 million and Republicans nominated a perennially unsuccessful candidate to challenge her, national conservative groups decided against spending on advertising in the district.

In polling conducted by the House Democrats campaign arm, the frontliners are outperforming former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, the Democratic nominee, in their districts by an average of 8 percentage points, said Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In June, the Democratic frontline candidates had about $125 million cash on hand compared with just $25 million for their Republican challengers.

While each of the frontliners is running in a competitive district or a Republican stronghold Mr. Trump carried, only seven are in races that are still considered tossups, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

There arent very many of them left who are in genuine danger, said David Wasserman, the House editor of the newsletter.

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To be sure, there are still a handful who are at real risk of defeat. Representatives Kendra Horn in Oklahoma, Max Rose and Anthony Brindisi in New York, Ben McAdams in Utah, TJ Cox in California, Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico and Abby Finkenauer in Iowa are all struggling to head off Republican challengers.

Still, for a group that was initially seen as top targets and most likely to pay the steepest political price for Mr. Trumps impeachment they are outperforming expectations. Of the 58 changes he has made to House race rankings over the past three months, Mr. Wasserman said, many of them have benefited these Democratic freshmen.

Clearly the battlefield has shifted to Republican-held seats, Mr. Wasserman added. Republicans have not had enough money to prosecute the case against these freshmen Democrats.

After Democrats picked up 41 House seats in 2018, Republicans immediately vowed revenge, targeting more than 50 seats, including 13 districts that Mr. Trump carried by six percentage points or more, as their ticket to reclaiming the majority.

Polling showed voters in these districts viewed socialism negatively, so Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, embarked on a strategy to try to tie the freshmen Democrats to that label, predicting that their partys embrace of socialism is going to cost them their majority in the House.

Democrats were prepared for the onslaught, moving quickly and aggressively to protect the more than 40 members of their Frontline Program almost all freshmen through aggressive fund-raising, volunteer recruitment and online networking.

They rushed to build individual brands distinct from their partys, and hauled in campaign cash that scared off some potential challengers from the right. And Mr. Trumps sinking poll numbers in the suburbs has given them an even broader advantage in the closing months of the race.

Like Ms. Spanberger, several including Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst; Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Navy helicopter pilot are known for their robust national security credentials.

Ms. Sherrills race is not considered competitive. National conservative groups have shied away from challenging Ms. Slotkin again, after spending millions on unsuccessful attack ads against her two years ago, and recently decided to cut their advertising campaign against Mr. Golden. And this month, the Cook Political Report moved Ms. Spanberger out of its toss up category, judging that her district was leaning toward re-electing her.

Ms. Slotkin said she and other frontliners have had to labor far more intensively than many of their older Democrats colleagues, who hold safe seats in deep-blue districts.

It takes work for a Democrat to represent a majority-Republican district, Ms. Slotkin said. We came into Congress with a strong sense of what it took to win in tough districts and what it would take to keep the seats.

On a recent Wednesday, as Ms. Spanberger campaigned here with Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Senator Kamala Harris of California, the Democratic nominee for vice president, she relayed what she is up against.

Oct. 27, 2020, 9:49 p.m. ET

A voter recently approached Ms. Spanberger with fear in her voice asking if Democrats were really moving to defund the police, as Republicans were claiming. Ms. Spanberger assured the woman she and the majority of Democrats were not.

It really does make people scared, she said of the Republican line of attack.

In some ways, Ms. Spanberger and frontliners like her have served as brand ambassadors for the Democratic Party in red districts, pushing back against Republican attempts to caricature their party and, at times, openly criticizing their own leaders.

On a recent private call with Ms. Pelosi and Democratic colleagues, and confirmed in an interview with Ms. Spanberger, she blasted party leaders for failing to find agreement with Republicans on a new coronavirus stimulus deal, saying she wanted to do my goddamned job and come up with a solution for the American people.

It was a familiar spot for Ms. Spanberger, who rose to viral fame in 2018 after a debate with the Tea Party-aligned incumbent Republican, Representative Dave Brat, in which she chided him for repeatedly referring to Ms. Pelosi instead of her.

I question again whether Congressman Brat knows which Democrat in fact hes running against, Ms. Spanberger said then, as the crowd burst into applause. Abigail Spanberger is my name!

In this months debate, Mr. Freitas, a former Green Beret running as a strict fiscal conservative, attempted to tie her to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal firebrand from New York.

My opponent votes with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez almost 90 percent of the time and then comes back to the district and claims to be a moderate, Mr. Freitas said.

This time, Ms. Spanberger ignored her opponents comment altogether.

I dont fall in line with speaker when I dont want to, Ms. Spanberger said in an interview. I certainly disagree with colleagues, Alexandria among them. But thats fine. We dont have to agree.

Despite the success of the frontliners, Mr. Emmer said he was optimistic and saw a narrow path back to control of the House should Mr. Trump perform at or near 2016 levels. Mr. Emmer said he believed many polls were off because they were missing a significant number of Trump supporters who dont typically vote.

He noted that some of the frontliners were still in peril.

They claimed they were going to go to Washington to be moderate problem-solvers, Mr. Emmer says. They didnt do it.

But his argument does not appear to have resonated in dozens of crucial districts.

In Michigan, Representative Haley Stevens is favored to win re-election; in New York, Representative Antonio Delgados main rival dropped out of the race because he couldnt keep pace in fund-raising; and in California, Representative Katie Porter is a dominant favorite in a seat Republicans had held since the 1980s before she won it in 2018.

Ms. Stevens has pressed a pro-manufacturing agenda for her district dominated by the auto industry in the Detroit suburbs. She pushed for her party to come to an agreement with Republicans on the United States-Mexico trade deal early on, when it wasnt popular, she said, because she thought it would create jobs that my district would overwhelmingly benefit from.

Others carved out their own identities separate from the national party, said Ms. Porter, one of the few progressives in the group, who is known for breaking out a whiteboard during congressional hearings and dressing down witnesses accused of profiteering or corruption.

We didnt all fall out of the same playbook, she said. We established a level of credibility that were going to fight for you and were not going to be bought.

Back in Ms. Spanbergers district, Ms. Catron said having a counterbalance to Mr. Trump and Republicans was a big reason she supported her Democratic congresswoman.

Thank God we have the House, Ms. Catron said. Without it, I cant even imagine where wed be right now.

Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.

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Swing-District Democrats, Defying Predictions, Poised to Help Keep House - The New York Times

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Mary Ann Hegan is part of a voter migration she never anticipated.

The 72-year-old retiree from Laughlintown is among more than 486,000 Pennsylvania Democrats who have switched their registration to Republican since 2008. Moving the other way, Tim Gunter, 49, of Philipsburg is among 291,324 Republicans in the state to have become Democrats.

Although Democrats still hold a 700,000 voter registration edge statewide, Pennsylvania Republicans have done a better job recruiting party members since they helped elect President Trump in 2016. In the four years since, Democratic voter registration statewide declined by 10,000, standing at 4.2 million today. Conversely, Republicans registered a gain of 205,000 voters during that time, an increase that boosted GOP registration in Pennsylvania to 3.5 million.

In the interim, state records show registration fluctuated. But as it surged since the June primary, Republicans added 215,393 registered voters, while Democrats added 114,497.

Numbers like that are getting a lot of attention in what is considered a must-win swing state that Trump won by 44,000 votes, out of more than 6 million cast, in 2016.

Philip J. Harold, a political scientist at Robert Morris University in Moon, said Republican gains should be cause for excitement in the Trump campaign, where recent polls have had the president down by 4 to 6 points among likely voters.

It is highly significant. I think it indicates the race is a lot tighter than polls are showing. I think its a tossup, he said.

Changes in registration illustrate a very tangible enthusiasm gap that favors Trump, Harold said.

But everything hinges upon turnout. This is going to be a turnout election, he predicted.

Driving change

Trump is driving that on both sides of the aisle.

Both Hegan and Gunter cited Trump in their decision to switch parties.

Gunter, a lifelong Republican, grew up attending a conservative Protestant church in Central Pennsylvania. He remembers his grandmother telling him, You cant be a Democrat and a Christian.

He registered as a Republican at 18. As he grew older, however, he found himself studying issues and splitting his ticket. Three years ago, he said he decided he could no longer support a party that would not call out its president. He became a Democrat.

Even though I do not consider myself a Christian anymore, I do consider myself someone who cherishes family values and caring about everyone. I cant stand behind a party that refuses to call him on things that are horrible to people. He demeans people and talks down to people, Gunter said.

The married father of two adult children, Gunter who was laid off from his job with a bus company in State College when ridership plummeted during the pandemic has had a lot of time to study the upcoming election. He said he might not agree 100% with Biden, but sees him as a man of character who can lead America in the right direction.

In Laughlintown, Hegan and her husband, a Vietnam veteran and fellow former Democrat, also cites Trump as the motivating factor in her decision to switch parties this spring.

A lifelong Democrat, Hegan worked as a bartender in Ligonier until covid-19 health concerns prompted her to retire.

Hegan said she simply could not stomach how her fellow Democrats treated Trump.

I was ashamed to say I was a Democrat, Hegan said. Do I like Donald Trump as person? I absolutely do not. He is a blowhard, but he is what this country needed. He is smart. He is a businessman, and he had no ties to anyone. The Democratic Party has done nothing but try to get rid of him from the day he was elected.

They are not the party of the working man anymore like they were when my dad was alive, Hegan said. They want to get rid of fossil fuels. Do they know how many people that employs?

She attended Trumps airport rally near Latrobe with her 20-year-old grandson last month and came away certain she had made the right decision to become a Republican.

It was uplifting, she said.

Westmoreland red

Hegan was among 5,271 Westmoreland County Democrats who became Republicans during the first 10 months of 2020. They are part of an ongoing trend that has seen 22,597 Westmoreland Democrats become Republicans since 2008. Last year, that wave culminated in a Republican majority in a county that Democrats had ruled for more than half a century.

Although numbers like that suggest a motivated GOP, Paul S. Adams, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, said that may not necessarily be the case.

I dont know that Republicans have any more energy than Democrats this year new registrations may or may not be meaningful, it is hard to know if they are really motivated voters. The GOP did big registration drives, but those voters may not be strong likely voters, Adams said.

Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University in Southcentral Pennsylvania, said the numbers may reflect Democrats in Western and Northeastern Pennsylvania who had been voting Republican for years before switching.

If you look at how Pennsylvania has voted in the last several elections, to me the surprising thing was that Democrats had such a large margin over Republicans in voter registration. They had far more Republican state house members, and the state went for Trump in 2016, she said.

Even so, Dagnes sees the surge in GOP registration in Pennsylvania as a plus for the Trump campaign.

Those are definitely good numbers, but its really hard to hang your hat on voter registration, specifically because its a pretty complicated data point. The first thing I always go back to is voter registration does not connect one to one with how somebody votes, she said. And if you register folks to vote, can you get them to the polls on Election Day?

She said record voter registration in Pennsylvania and cross-party migration reflects how important the election has become to voters here.

The volume is up, and people are really furious, Dagnes said. They are really angry on both sides.

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Categories:Election | Local | Pennsylvania | Top Stories | Westmoreland

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Democrats still hold the edge, but Pennsylvania voter registration gains favor GOP - TribLIVE

With that pep talk and a friendly reminder to wear gloves and a mask, more than a dozen women hit the streets here this weekend for the first time in eight months, after being grounded by the pandemic as the Biden campaign made its organizing efforts entirely virtual.

"I can't tell you how excited I am to see full-bodied people," Eberly said. "You aren't just heads on Zoom."

The morning gathering in a driveway on Wedgewood Drive would have been entirely unremarkable during any other election season. But this year, it speaks to an anxiety-producing question being quietly raised by some veteran Democratic organizers: Can a virtual strategy replace an on-the-ground operation, typically the backbone of a winning Democratic campaign?

Trump has gone full speed ahead, with multiple rallies a day at the center of his game plan. Trump Victory, a joint operation of the campaign and the Republican National Committee, boasts of knocking on millions of doors, but it declined repeated CNN requests to observe its neighborhood efforts.

Advisers to Biden have embraced the contrast in their approach to campaigning during a pandemic, yet they ultimately gave the green light to socially distanced canvassing. They approved face-to-face, get-out-the-vote efforts for the final weeks of the race in more than a half-dozen key battleground states, including North Carolina, even as cases and hospitalizations rise.

North Carolina has more than 1.3 million new registered voters since 2016, which political strategists on both sides say makes organizing efforts even more important than in states with more static populations. Turnout, of course, holds the answer to the outcome of every election. But the methods of finding voters and getting them to the polls are being watched particularly closely this year, with much of the campaign being conducted virtually.

'They get to see me'

The Biden campaign's decision to return to on-the-ground get-out-the vote efforts was welcome news to Eberly and Scarlett Hollingsworth, her canvassing partner, both of whom spent much of the weekend knocking on doors in hopes of tracking down voters to ask about their plans to cast their ballots.

"I'm just so energized to be actually able to talk to voters face-to-face, because in the past that's always been how you judged how things were going," Eberly said. "Having been doing phone banking and other things digitally and virtually, I don't have that same sense this year."

Both women make clear that they supported the Biden team's decision to not allow door-knocking or face-to-face canvassing throughout the spring and summer in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. But they also said they wonder whether they've lost ground to Republicans, who revived their efforts months ago.

"The phone is great, but a lot of people don't answer numbers they don't really know," Hollingsworth said. "So you miss those conversations that you might have had at the door."

Helen Woods, who has invested hours talking with voters on the phone or through Zoom meetings for much of the year, said she was delighted when she learned she could grab a clipboard and start knocking on doors again in critical Charlotte neighborhoods.

"It's just wonderful to be able to actually see somebody, talk to somebody -- and they get to see me," Woods said, stopping to talk for a moment before setting off on her volunteer shift. "I think it's reassuring for them to see this little white-haired person coming to their door and saying it's OK to vote, and it's OK to be open about being Democratic."

Trump motivates both sides

In the stretch of the race, Trump remains the biggest motivating force of this campaign -- for supporters and opponents alike. He visited North Carolina twice in four days last week alone, including at an evening airport rally in Gastonia.

Four years ago, he won Gaston County, just west of Charlotte's Mecklenburg County, by more than 30 percentage points. To win the state again, he's trying to repeat -- or increase -- those margins.

"He energizes the crowd itself. It's just awesome," said Jim Gallagher, a Republican member of the Gastonia City Council who was on hand for the Trump rally last week. "I'm getting people calling me, asking me how they can help. These are people who have never done anything for a campaign.."

Jonathan Fletcher, chairman of the Gaston County Republican Party, said the President energizes his core supporters and attracts new ones by visiting his county. He said the Trump rallies are the best part of the campaign's get-out-the-vote efforts.

"Here and everywhere he goes -- that's the point of him going all of these places," Fletcher said. "If we can run up the score here, we're going to be able to balance out anything they can do in Mecklenburg."

Yet there is little question that Trump's presence also motivates his Democratic detractors. His visits draw considerable attention, as did one to the state on Sunday from Vice President Mike Pence, which only shined a brighter spotlight on the administration's handling of coronavirus.

Barack Obama narrowly carried the state in 2008, a victory that Democrats here still fondly remember. That winning campaign was built through traditional on-the-ground organizing efforts.

This time, Biden and Trump are locked in a tight race for the state's 15 electoral votes. For Trump, the state is critical in his path to winning 270 electoral votes. Biden has far more routes to the White House, but a North Carolina win would all but certainly block Trump's reelection.

For Biden and other Democratic candidates on the ballot, the level of turnout among Black voters is critical.

"There's plenty of people we know who vote in every election -- those people we're not going to worry about," said Terry Brown, a Democrat who is running for a Statehouse seat. "But the people who are on those fringes, we must make sure that we're speaking to them in a way to give them a reason to get out and vote.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, said she thinks about organization and turnout efforts every day and wonders if enough work is being done. She acknowledged the pandemic creates a set of unknowns for traditional political organizing, particularly among Black voters.

But she believes Democrats -- and Republicans and independents who have soured on the President -- have a bigger motivating force that will overtake any particular organizing effort.

"People are living through a very difficult time in their lives," Lyles said in an interview. "This time has been framed by Covid and the President's lack of response for it. And that's why I think people are going to come out to vote."

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Democrats make cautious return to in-person organizing in the final stretch of 2020 - CNN

When Jill Biden toured Texas this month in support of her husbands presidential bid, her first stop was in El Paso, a more than 80% Hispanic city. She spoke there in front of a sign that read, Vota Ahora, or Vote Now.

"For the first time in a long time, winning Texas is possible, she said.

The setting seemed to be a nod to a political reality that most Democrats in the state acknowledge: If they are going to turn Texas blue this year, they need the help of Latino voters.

This election, Latinos will be the nations largest racial or ethnic minority voting group with 32 million projected to be able to vote 13.3% of all eligible voters, according to the Pew Research Center. In Texas, they make up 30% of eligible voters. Projections indicate Hispanics could become the largest population group in Texas as soon as mid-2021.

Democrats have long cited the states shifting demographics as evidence that its future is blue. But attempts to take full advantage have so far fallen short. Latino voter turnout has traditionally been low in the state. The party has often seen President Donald Trumps rhetoric about immigration and people of color as an opening to win over and motivate more Latino voters to come support its candidates at the polls. But since the March presidential primary in Texas, Biden has struggled to make gains with those voters. And Republicans in the state have long argued that the states Latino population is less liberal than many Democrats believe.

A Dallas Morning News poll found in August that Biden was leading against Trump among registered Latino voters in Texas by about 9.5 percentage points a margin much narrower than the 27-point margin Hillary Clinton had with those voters in Texas in 2016, according to exit polls. In October, a University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll showed Biden with a 17-point lead among Latino voters in Texas.

Biden lost the Latino vote to Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Still, many in the party see hope for this November. Despite a pandemic that has disproportionately affected Hispanic and Latino communities in Texas, a University of Houston and Univision poll found that 90% of Texas Latino voters will or will probably vote in the 2020 presidential election. And 79% responded that it is more important to vote in this election than it was to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

The outreach is coming from all areas: Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, groups devoted specifically to reaching Latino voters and even the party itself. Abhi Rahman, communications director for Texas Democrats, said the state party has registered 1.5 million voters in Texas since 2016. He said of those new voters, many are young Latinos. A national Telemundo-Buzzfeed News survey of Latino voters found that 60% of Latino voters between the ages of 18 and 34 planned to vote for Biden.

Jolt Action, a voter advocacy group, has been trying to increase voter turnout among young Latino voters in Texas. According to a study it co-conducted, an annual average of nearly 210,000 Latinos already living in Texas will turn the eligible voting age of 18 each year from 2018 to 2028. Antonio Arellano, interim director for the group, said the 214,000 votes Democrat Beto ORourke needed to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 can now be found in the young Latino constituency.

The Latino electorate is young, so if you win them over, you dont just win them just for one election cycle, you win them for generations to come, Arellano said.

Jason Villalba, a former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives and president of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, said if Biden is able to replicate ORourkes success in turning out young Latino voters, he may have a chance of flipping the state. He said that much of the relative weakness Biden has shown with regard to Latino voters in Texas can be blamed on outreach and lack of name recognition in Texas compared with Clinton in 2016.

And he said Sanders won the demographic in the March primary because he employed much of the same engagement and infrastructure of ORourkes 2018 Senate campaign with young Latino voters.

Right before Super Tuesday, a poll from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found that 70% of Texas Latino voters between the ages of 18 and 29 said they had not been contacted by a campaign during the 2020 primaries.

Historically, the fact that Latinos havent voted is not their fault, Arellano said. Its that nobody has cared enough in activating them and speaking directly to them and mobilizing them.

Organizations like Jolt and MOVE Texas, a nonpartisan nonprofit that aims to empower underrepresented young people in Texas to engage in politics and advocacy, are trying to make up for what many campaigns havent done in the past, like knocking on doors in underrepresented communities and mailing voter registration forms to young Black and brown voters.

First-time voters need support. They need to know what are the registration rules and when are the deadlines and what is on the ballot, you know, just kind of bread and butter things, said Charlie Bonner, communications director for MOVE Texas. Many first-time voters need to be empowered with that information to actually take them from getting registered to voting, and campaigns aren't doing that again and again and again.

But while reaching new voters and getting them to the polls is always a challenge, it has become even more difficult during the pandemic. Groups like MOVE and Jolt say they are adjusting their strategies accordingly. Arellano said Jolt is mailing out literature on candidates, text banking, phone banking and pushing out targeted ads all to make sure that young Latino voters know that their community is under attack by the Trump administration.

The reason that you see Latinos discriminated against and targeted by this administration is because were the biggest threat to the status quo, Arellano said. We have now, in our hands, the opportunity to not just transform Texas, but with 38 electoral votes, to transform America.

During the 2016 election, Trump attacked unauthorized immigrants who crossed the border from Mexico to Texas, calling them rapists and animals at his rallies and in his speeches. The chant build that wall was shouted at nearly every one of his events, and his supporters feared that immigrants were going to take away American jobs, as Trump would tell them.

Among his actions in office, Trump has implemented a zero tolerance policy to require the arrest of any illegal immigrant crossing the border, which caused the separation of children from their families. He also expanded the size of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its "enforcement priorities" for deportation and attempted to end President Barack Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Henry R. Muoz III, founder of the Latino Victory Fund and former national finance chair for the Democratic National Committee, said these "attacks" will be the reason why Latinos will turn out in big numbers for Democrats this year despite the pandemic.

Theres a lot happening in Texas, and it is all trending away from anyone who would call you names, doesnt have your best interest at heart, would separate your families from each other, call you things like a liar or a rapist, Muoz said.

But Villalba said Democrats shouldnt be so sure that Latinos in Texas are going to mobilize or vote for Biden because of that and should be careful in assuming that a majority of them will vote for Democratic candidates.

Each weekend in the Rio Grande Valley, over 500 cars parade around neighborhoods with Latinos for Trump and Make America Great Again signs and flags, registering people to vote and encouraging others to show their support for the president. Organizer Eva America Arechia said she came up with the idea after attending the Trump boat parade on Lake Travis.

Were pro-law and pro-God. We want law and order, and we want God in our country, Arechia said of her Latino community. Were conservative people. We are going to have traditional values.

In 2018 a midterm election that many across the country saw as a backlash against Trump Republicans in Texas managed to win over a significant share of Latino voters. Thirty-five percent voted for Cruz, and 42% voted for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Ivan Andarza, a member of the Hispanic Republicans of Texas PAC board, believes Latinos are the reason Texas will remain red for years to come, since the Democratic party is moving in a more liberal direction.

They know that here, no matter where youre from or what your background is, you can make it if you work hard, and that message resonates, especially with Hispanics, Andarza said. We [Republicans] always hammer hard on that because that is how we are going to progress, through work, education very important, education is a great equalizer so that is very important to us. And in particular, this year, law and order is a big deal.

But Democrats say Republicans shouldnt be so sure that younger Latinos hold the same beliefs as their parents or grandparents.

South Texas, for instance, is home to several moderate Democratic elected officials. But two of the most prominent felt real pressure in the March primary. Progressive candidate Jessica Cisneros opposed U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, in the Democratic primary. Cuellar describes himself as a moderate centrist and is pro-gun, anti-abortion and anti-union.

The fact that we came up with 48.2% of the vote as a first-time 26-year-old candidate says a lot about where South Texas is heading, Cisneros said of her narrow loss to Cuellar, who won 51.84% of the vote.

Like Cuellar, longtime Texas state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville, who is an anti-abortion Democrat, faced a competitive primary in South Texas against progressive Sara Stapleton-Barrera. He won with 54% of the vote.

Seeing untapped potential in that region, Rahman said the Texas Democratic Party is investing in television ads targeting Latino communities in South Texas, running them in both English and Spanish. It also hired a Spanish press secretary on the ground there.

If we were to actually increase the voter turnout by 15[%] or 20%, kind of like in the last election cycle when Beto ran for Senate, he probably would have won if we turned out South Texas in even higher numbers, Cisneros said. And I think that was one of the messages from the last cycle that a lot of people are taking to heart, to make sure that we are investing in this area because I think one of the things, again, that we showed in our campaign was that voters are out there waiting to be engaged and be brought into the political process.

If Texas flips blue for Biden, Michelle Tremillo, executive director and co-founder of the Texas Organizing Project, said credit should be given to the organizations that have been mobilizing and reaching out to underrepresented communities despite his campaigns recent efforts in the state. Her organization, working in coalition with other organizations, has contacted 1.4 million voters in Harris County, Fort Bend County, Dallas County and Bexar County all counties crucial to the outcome of how Texas may decide the fate of the presidential election.

Texas will not have flipped overnight, Tremillo said. This is a decade worth of hard work on the behalf of several progressive organizations.

Disclosure: MOVE Texas, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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In Democrats' bid to flip Texas, maximizing the Latino vote is key - The Texas Tribune

ALBANY, N.Y. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren entered an unexpected clash on Tuesday with New York Democratic leaders over the fate of a progressive third party.

The dispute stems from a political flier paid for by the state party featuring Joseph R. Biden Jr., his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, and Senators Warren and Sanders, all smiling and pleading with New Yorkers to vote Democratic all the way!

But Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders said they were not consulted about the flier, and had they been, they would not have consented to the ad, which pushes voters to cast ballots on the Democratic Party line.

Both senators support the Biden-Harris ticket, but want ballots cast for the candidates on the Working Families Party line, which has backed them in the past.

Mr. Sanders accused the state Democratic Party, which is effectively controlled by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, of trying to sabotage the Working Families Party.

It is absolutely unacceptable for the New York Democratic Party, which just a few short months ago supported canceling the presidential primary, to now use my image in a push to punish the Working Families Party, Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said in a statement.

They never asked my permission and I wouldnt have given it if they had, he said. I believe New Yorkers should vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the Working Families Party line.

Keep up with Election 2020

That sentiment was echoed by Kristen Orthman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Warren, who said the Massachusetts senator didnt approve this ad and asked that digital versions of it be taken down.

Under state law, candidates in New York can collect votes on several different party lines, a system known as fusion voting. But under a new law adopted this year, political parties in New York have to earn 130,000 votes or 2 percent of the total vote every two years in order to automatically retain their ballot lines. Parties that do not reach that threshold would have to petition for their candidates to appear.

State Democratic officials acknowledged that they did not seek permission from either senator, or the Biden ticket, to use their images, but defended the $357,000 campaign, which also included digital advertisements using images of Senators Warren and Sanders.

My interaction with them is none, said Jay Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and a longtime ally of Mr. Cuomos. The entire piece simply speaks to voting for Democrats up and down the ballot.

My job is to get voters out to vote on the Democratic line, he added. And theres nothing wrong with that.

Mr. Jacobs said that the mailer and digital ads were meant to increase down-ballot voting for Democrats, some of whom do not appear on the Working Families line.

I dont see how Elizabeth Warren would be upset with that, he said. And I dont see how, frankly, Bernie Sanders would be upset with that.

Mr. Cuomos unpleasant history with the Working Families Party dates back several years, including a fraught nomination process in 2014. It reached a low point in 2018, when the W.F.P., which had been founded in the late 1990s and backed by various labor groups, chose to support Cynthia Nixon, the actress, in her challenge to Mr. Cuomo in the Democratic primary.

Oct. 27, 2020, 9:49 p.m. ET

Some of those labor supporters fled, and Mr. Cuomo won the September primary easily after spending more than $20 million. He was subsequently elected to a third term, as the W.F.P. capitulated and gave the governor its line, where he received more than 114,000 votes.

In 2019, Mr. Cuomo announced the formation of a new commission to look into public financing of campaigns, albeit with an unusual caveat: The panel could also examine ballot eligibility levels for third parties, such as the W.F.P.

Third-party leaders feared that the governor intended to threaten their existence, and two parties the Working Families Party and the Conservative Party sued to challenge the commissions authority. The parties fears were soon realized: In November 2019, the commission voted to increase the eligibility levels.

The parties won their lawsuit earlier this year, but the commissions recommendations still went forward after being incorporated into this years budget deal.

In recent weeks, a roster of progressive lawmakers including Senator Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have called on voters to cast ballots for Mr. Biden on the W.F.P. line: Row D. They note that those votes count the same, to beat Trump.

That message was voiced again on Tuesday at a Lower Manhattan rally attended by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, and an array of state legislators.

Mr. Williams, who was Ms. Nixons running mate in 2018, was critical of the state party, saying it would not have moved where it is as quickly as it did if it wasnt for the Working Families.

There are only a few people who dont want you to vote on the Working Families line, Mr. Williams said. Conservatives, Republicans and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Mr. Cuomo has steadfastly denied any ulterior motives regarding the W.F.P., and on Tuesday, Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, discounted Mr. Williamss remarks, noting the governors good poll numbers with liberal voters.

The governor is the proud head of the New York Democratic Party and makes no apologies for that, Mr. Azzopardi said. But maybe the public advocate should find a better bogyman for his silly conspiracy.

Mr. Jacobs said he found it striking that with a week to go in the most consequential election in our history, the W.F.P. is worried about itself.

The W.F.P. has a self-image problem, said Mr. Jacobs. Everythings about them.

Juliana Kim contributed reporting from New York.

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Sanders and Warren Accuse N.Y. Democrats of False Advertising - The New York Times

These Republicans of the 1860s werent angels. Their motives were not uniformly pure. And they didnt always agree with each other. But in response to decades of anti-democratic incitement by white politicians from slaveholding states, who represented roughly just 25 percent of the countrys population in 1860, Republicans in the age of Lincoln and Grant united to make the rules work for the majority, even when doing so required rewriting the rules wholesale.

Its the playbook Democrats today should follow if they win the White House and the Congress next week.

For several decades now, modern Republicans have used every tool at their disposalvoter suppression, gerrymandering, court packing at all levels, midnight bills to curb the powers of incoming Democratic governors, parliamentary chicanery that applies different rules to presidents of each partyto ram a minoritarian agenda down the majoritys throat. How else, after all, could a party that has lost the popular vote in six of the past seven electionsand which will likely lose the eighth, already in progresswield so much power?

If a Biden administration and the Democratic Congress are to have any chance of leveraging the authority that voters may confer on themif they truly want to enact and protect a popular, majoritarian agendathey should look to an earlier generation of politicians that understood the uses of power and the ends to which it could be applied. That generation didnt quiver in the face of established procedure and precedentand neither should Democrats today.

Slavery was first and foremost a violent crime against African Americans. But it also eroded the countrys political and social fabric. In the three decades preceding the Civil War, pro-slavery Southerners and their supporters in the North had degraded democratic institutions and flouted the rights of everyone elsewhite and Blackin the service of preserving the Peculiar Institution. They imposed a gag rule in the 1830s, barring antislavery Northern congressmen from presenting abolitionist petitions in the House. They remanded that the Post Office bar the delivery of abolitionist literature. They crafted a highly unpopular Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 that required Northerners to be actively complicit in detaining Black persons accused of being runaway slaves, at penalty of trial and imprisonment. In the 1850s, after they nullified the Missouri Compromise that barred slavery in certain Western territories, they deployed violence and election fraud with impunity to ram a pro-slavery state constitution through the Kansas territorial Legislature. When Charles Sumner, the fiery Masachussetts politician, dared deliver an antislavery address in the U.S. Senate, a Southern congressman beat him nearly to death.

When, in a culminating moment, 11 Southern states decided to secede rather than accept the outcome of a free and fair election, Republicans finally enjoyed an opportunity to reinvigorate democratic institutions long been under assault by the Slave Power and pursue a bold economic and social agenda that established a foundation for the postwar world.

From 1861 to 1865, during the Civil War years, Republicans used their majorities to pass legislation authorizing the seizure of rebels land and slaves; the Homestead Act, granting federal land to American families who agreed to settle and improve it; the Land Grant College Act, which conferred on each state federal acreage to support the cost of establishing public universities; legislation funding the construction of a transcontinental railroad, which promised to draw homesteaders into a national market, but which alsotragicallyset in motion the violent destruction of Native American communities everywhere the iron tracks took root; and laws abolishing slavery in Washington, D.C., and the territoriesand, later, everywhere in the United States. In effect, the Civil War Republicans fundamentally altered the character of American life.

Despite their supermajorities in Congress and hold on the White House, Republicans left little to chance.

Fearing the federal judiciary, whose membership skewed conservative and pro-slavery, might invalidate their legislative agenda or limit President Abraham Lincolns ability to prosecute the war, in 1863, Republicans added a 10th seat to the Supreme Court.

There was strong precedent for doing so. As the country admitted new territories as states, it required additional federal circuit courts. In 1807 and 1837 Congress had enlarged the Supreme Court to keep the number of justices on par with the number of appellate courts, a practice that reflected the justices dual function as chief circuit judges. During the Civil War, with the population of California and other Western states growing at a steady clip, Republicans saw an opportunity to justify the creation of a new circuit and, thus, a 10th seat on the high court. But principle converged closely with politics. The court was scheduled to consider a case challenging the Unions blockade of the Confederacy; if the justices ruled against Lincoln, their decision threatened to cripple the war effort. They intended to pad their slim majority.

The governing party also restructured the shape of the circuit courts to dilute the influence of pro-slavery judges and create new vacancies for Lincoln to fill, with the advice and consent of the Republcan-controlled Senate.

In other ways, too, Lincoln and his congressional allies threw sharp elbows. In 1864, the president introduced his Ten Percent Plan, which extended an offer of amnesty to all Southerners who would pledge allegiance to the United States and invited any state that could muster up enough such loyal men, equal to 10 percent of those who had voted in 1860, to form a new state government and send representatives to Congress. Radicals introduced their own plan, which required a 50 percent threshold and a stronger, iron-clad oath that few Confederates could meet, but Lincoln pocket vetoed their bill. He wanted a lower bar for readmission, not because he was soft on treason, but to foster political dissent and chaos behind enemy lines. He also wanted to create (on paper, at least) newly reconstituted Southern statesled by men loyal to the Unionthat could cast Electoral College votes for the Republican ticket and help ratify the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Ultimately, the reconstituted but hardly reconstructed states of Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansaswhich were readmitted under Lincolns termsapproved the abolition amendment before the presidents death

In the same way, when the western counties of Virginialargely populated by white yeoman farmers who held the states slaveholding elite in bitter contemptdeclared their independence from the Confederacy, congressional Republicans passed legislation, which Lincoln signed, admitting them as the new state West Virginia in 1863. A year later, they made the sparsely populated Nevada territory a state. Thus the party gained four new U.S. senators, a reliable slate of presidential electors and a support for a broad assault on slavery.

Lincolns death complicated matters. In what was surely his worst decision in public life, the president had replaced Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, a reliable antislavery politician, with Andrew Johnson, a deeply insecure white supremacist from Tennessee who had remained loyal to the Union, but whose sympathies lay with his native South. The next four years witnessed acrimonious conflict between a revanchist, racist president and a Republican supermajority that repeatedly overrode his vetoes and governed over his head.

Between Lincolns death in April 1865 and the opening session of the new Congress that December, Johnson unilaterally readmitted Southern states and invited them to hold elections. This, despite their widespread enactment of Black Codes that reintroduced slavery in all but nameimpressing free Black children into apprenticeships, proscribing the right of Black persons to free expression and assembly, barring ex-slaves from owning guns and compelling them to sign labor contracts that bound them to their former owners. Adding insult to injury, the Southern states sent a slate of prominent ex-Confederates to Congress, including Alexander Stephens, the former Confederate vice president who arrived in Washington that winter as a senator-elect from Georgia. In Johnsons mind, the war was over and slavery dead, at least on paper; the rebellious states should be welcomed back to their prior relationship with the federal government immediately.

But congressional Republicans viewed matters otherwise. They saw an unreconstructed minority refusing to accept its defeat. On December 4, 1865, amid widespread anticipation of the impending political crisis, the newly arrived members of the 39th Congress descended on the Capitol for the opening session. At noon, the House clerk, Edward McPherson, a former two-term congressman and protg of Thaddeus Stevens, stepped up to the rostrum and gaveled the House into session. Stevens, the radical leader, if not dictator, of the House, by one members estimation, served as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, a position akin in the 1860s to majority leader. An uncompromising opponent of slavery and unforgiving foe of slaveholders, he cut an austere figure. Stevens instructed McPherson to skip the names of the Southern members-elect as he read the roll call. When a Northern Democrat rose to intercede on behalf of Congressman-elect Horace Maynard of Tennessee, Stevens replied tartly that all motions were out of order pending election of a new speaker. I cannot yield to any gentleman who does not belong to this bodywho is an outsider, he remarked. The House flat-out refused to accept the credentials of the Southern members-elect, as did the Senate. The non-congressmen packed up their bags and went home.

Over the next 3 years, the Republican Congress overrode Johnsons vetoes to enact legislation enshrining civil rights for freedmen and splicing the former Confederate states into five military districts. Until Southern states accepted the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and the 14th Amendment, establishing a broad swath of civil rights for all natural born citizens, including freedmenand until they established new state governments on the basis of universal male suffragethey would remain under martial law and go unrepresented in Washington.

Republicans invoked a number of justifications for their procedural and policy measures. Stevens held that the Confederate states were conquered provinces whose citizens had forfeited their citizenship rights. Charles Sumner, the radical senator from Massachusetts, held that Southerners had committed state suicide. But most Republicans hung their hats on a section of the Constitution that guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government. If loyal white persons and Black freedmen were denied their right to property, free expression and assemblyif elections were marred by fraud, violence and disenfranchisementCongress had an obligation to intervene on their behalf.

Governing in opposition to Johnson, the Republican supermajorities in Congress bent the system as far as it would go. Fearing the new president might pack the judiciary with loyalists, in 1866 they once again changed the composition of the Supreme Court, eliminating three seats by means of attrition. The next three vacancies would go unfilled until the number of justices fell to seven, thus depriving Johnson of the power to appoint anyone to the bench. (In 1869, after Republican Ulysses S. Grant assumed the presidency, they reset the number of justices at nine, where it remains today.) They passed a constitutionally dubious act barring Johnson from dismissing Cabinet officials without congressional approval, a measure intended to protect radical War Secretary Edwin Stanton, who effectively administered the Armys occupation of former Southern states.

In 1867, Republicans admitted another reliable western stateNebraska (1867)and in so doing, gained new senators and electoral votes. Beginning in the 1870s after Johnson left office, but as their hold on power began to slip, they granted statehood to a trove of thinly populated but (at the time) reliably Republican territories: Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. They did so out of concern that the very rebels who had, in recent memory, raised arms against their country would soon regain control of the federal government.

Remarkably, these bare-knuckle mean and ends were broadly popular. In 1866, the GOP swept off-year elections, bolstering its capacity to govern over Johnsons head. Equally of note, the partya hotchpotch coalition of former Whigs, Democrats, Free Soilers and Know Nothings, which had been a party for only 10 yearsremained fundamentally unified. Despite their pronounced differences over policy and politics, moderates like Henry Raymond and William Pitt Fessenden worked in lockstep with radicals like Stevens and Sumner. With the exception of Andrew Johnsons impeachment trial, in which several moderates broke ranks and voted to acquit the president, on every critical votethe Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Freedmens Bureau Bill, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitutionthe alliance held.

For many years, Americans remembered Reconstruction as a failed experiment, at besta Tragic Era, at worst, an Angry Scar. Its violent overthrow by white Southerners betrayed the early economic and political advancements of millions of freedmen who, for a brief moment in time, experienced self-government and a free labor economy, until the onset of Jim Crow stamped out their gains.

Since the 1960s, however, historians have acknowledged the era for its more lasting, if gradual, revolution. The Reconstruction amendments not only forged a basis for civil rights legislation in the 1960s, and for the legalization of abortion and marriage equality in subsequent decades. From the 1920s onward, the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights and extend its federal guarantees to the states. If youre glad that the state of Texas or Florida is bound to respect your rights to free expression, speech and religionyour right not to incriminate yourself or face unlawful search and seizureyou have the Reconstruction-era Republicans to thank.

To be sure, were not living in the shadow of a Civil War. As bad as things are, theyre nowhere near as violent or divisive. But the parallels to our own era are striking. For well over a decade, Republican politicians at the state and federal levels have feverishly assaulted democratic norms and processes to advance a hard-hitting minoritarian agendathe abolition of reproductive rights, dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, deregulation of environmental and safety standards, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americansthat is deeply unpopular. They know its unpopular. Which is why theyve made it harder for people to vote; manipulated Senate rules to hold judicial seats vacant under Barack Obama, only to fill them under Donald Trump; incited domestic terrorists and extremistsProud Boys, QAnon fanatics, the Klan and neo-Nazisto meet lawful political assembly with violence. The president has openly flirted with nullifying the election if he doesnt like the results. Indeed, the pro-slavery zealots of 1860 could hardly have done it better.

Democrats, should they earn a governing majority, may soon have an opportunity to restore and improve the institutions that a minoritarian party has broken piece by piece over so many years. If so, the lessons of the Reconstruction era are clear: You cant achieve the ends if you dont embrace the means.

To pass elements of the "Green New Deal" or protect and expand the ACA, Democrats might need to dismantle the filibuster, an anti-majoritarian instrument that threatens to scuttle the expressed will of the voters. They might have to unpack the federal courts and expand the Supreme Court by four seats, thus returning to the original standard of one justice per circuit. Theyll surely want to admit new statesWashington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, perhaps other territoriesto the Union, not just because doing so will enlarge the Senate and Electoral College, but because it extends democratic rights to disenfranchised Americans who live in those place. They might even consider expanding the size of the House of Representatives to recalibrate the ratio of those governing to those being governed.

Taking a cue from Thaddeus Stevens, Democratic majorities in the House and Senate should refuse to seat members-elect whose claim to sit in Congress is compromised. In close congressional elections, if uncounted ballots lay piled up in U.S. Postal Service sorting centers, or hundreds of people were unable to vote due to 12-hour-long lines and the arbitrary rejection of absentee ballots, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer can and should invoke the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government. Make the offending states hold new electionsthis time, properly.

If the Supreme Courtwith Amy Coney Barrett newly installedcancels out a narrow but clear Joe Biden victory by ordering officials in Pennsylvania to throw out ballots that were postmarked before, but arrived after, the election, Congress should accept the competing slate of electors that the governor, a Democrat, certifies. If state officials in Georgia repeat their egregious efforts to suppress the votes of Black citizens, the House and Senate should throw out Georgias entire slate of presidential electors. They should take these measures even if Biden wins the requisite 270 electoral votes elsewhere, to send a clear message: The era of minoritarian rule is over.

Biden, should he occupy the Oval Office, should appoint judges who support a reinvigoration of the Reconstruction amendments, particularly the 14th Amendments clause stipulating that the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. Intended by its framers to create a robust federal guarantee of civil rights, the clause fell into disuse in later decades, the victim of an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court that willfully abnegated its purpose. As historian Eric Foner argued in his recent book The Second Founding, there is no reason why it shouldnt be excavated. A rising generation of 14th Amendment originalists might use it to address all manner of issues, from cash bail and police excesses to environmental standards.

Few politicians in American history have understood the uses and ends of power as well as the congressional Republicans of the 1860s. Faced with an existential threat to American democracy, they stared down a violet and revanchist minority and summoned authority earned at the polls to expand the very meaning of citizenship. If next weeks elections go their way, thats the lesson Democrats should take away.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of military districts comprising the former Confederate States.

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How Democrats Can Learn Hardball From the Republicans of 1861 - POLITICO

Jamal Collins took the trouble to vote four years ago even though, like a lot of people in Cleveland, he didnt imagine it would change very much.

Eight years of deflated hopes for Barack Obama had left the African American teacher wondering if any president could really make that much difference to the lives and livelihoods Collins saw around him. He even thought there might be an upside to the election of Donald Trump.

Im kinda glad it happened, Collins said a few weeks after the new president moved into the White House. It really is an eye-opener on whats really going on. The real truth about America. The real truth that theres still a lot of racism. People voted for this sort of stuff.

A lot of people in Cleveland chose not to vote. Driven by disillusionment with Obama and dislike for Hillary Clinton, turnout fell in the overwhelmingly Democratic city where nearly half the population is black, as it did in others across the midwest, helping to usher Trump to victory.

This year, Collins sees it differently.

Trumps presidency, the last four years, have been absolutely horrible. Trump blew life back into white supremacy. Him being so open and unapologetic about the stuff he says, and things that hes done, really gave that power, he said.

Plus coronavirus, because now we have tens of thousands of people, especially in the black community, really suffering from Covid-19. We have an economy decimated to almost the proportions of the depression. The loss of jobs and loss of wealth is worse than Ive ever seen before.

Collins will be voting for Biden and encouraging anyone else he can to do the same because the election hangs in good part on the turnout in major midwestern cities. Trump decisively won Ohio four years ago after the state had voted twice for Obama. But with the president holding a lead of just 1% in the aggregate of recent polls, the result in Ohio may come down to just a few thousand votes in Cleveland.

Four years ago, Clinton won nearly 50,000 fewer votes than Obama in Cuyahoga county, which includes Cleveland and its small satellite cities, in part because so many Democrats stayed home.

In neighbouring Michigan, Democratic turnout in Detroit fell by about 60,000 votes in 2016. Trump took the state with a majority of just 10,704 votes. Similarly, the drop in turnout between presidential elections in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was more than double the number of votes just 23,000 that Trump won the state by.

Those victories were key to the president winning the electoral college and taking the White House.

The Democrats have reason to hope Biden can turn that around on 3 November. More than 8m people have registered to vote in Ohio, the second highest on record after Obamas 2008 race. The number registering as Democrats has surged 20% in the state this year while Republicans have fallen 6% although they still have a slight lead in total registrations. Little more than half of the electorate are independents.

Two-thirds of the drop in Republican voters is in Cuyahoga county. Those retreating from Trump include blue collar workers and white women living in the Cleveland suburbs.

Voting for him was a big mistake, said a shop assistant, Lynn, who is married to a factory worker, after a campaign worker knocked on her door. We both didnt like Hillary and thought Trump would be good for bringing jobs back. I lost it with him that first year. I realised he was completely unfit to be president. But my husband hung on, believing in him until Covid. Were both voting Biden just to get him out. I dont know what Biden will do but at this point I dont care.

Like others who once backed Trump and have turned away she did not want to be identified because we have some crazy neighbours around here.

Lynn is among about 2.5m Ohioans who applied for absentee ballots, double the number in 2016. Nearly one quarter of the electorate has already voted in Cuyahoga county, whether by post or in person.

What were seeing right now is astronomical volumes of people voting by mail, said Erika Anthony of Cleveland Votes, a nonpartisan get out the vote group. Weirdly, despite the fact that every sort of tactic that we normally would be deploying to get people to vote has been compromised because of the pandemic, I will say theres been an increased excitement when we are engaging with residents, potential voters.

But for all that, less than half of the population of Cleveland registered to vote. Some in the city have never been to the polls. Others turned out for Obama but not since.

Voter apathy is a real thing, said Anthony. If Im a black person particularly, I really am not seeing anything thats demonstrating to me that democracy is working for me.

Cleveland is among the most racially segregated cities in the country and one in three residents lives below the poverty line. It struggled through the Obama years, never really recovering from the 2001 recession or the national economic collapse seven years later. Then came coronavirus.

Amanda King, an African American volunteer working to register voters in Cleveland said some voters are more motivated to turn out this year.

I think that among young and educated voters, theres a feeling that this is our duty to vote in this election because its consequential. It feels more pressing than the Trump-Hillary election, she said. I think for some people, their bubble has been burst. After the Obama presidency they were thinking were a progressive society, things are great. And then this four years of Trump has really made some people come to the realisation that our country is not the democracy that it could be or should be.

But King, who runs an art collective, and who helped curate City Champions, the Guardians week-long focus on the city last year, said she met far less enthusiasm in one of the citys poorest neighbourhoods, Hough, where she visited barbershops, a popular gathering place for discussion among African American men.

When I do voter registration in Hough, which is a majority black neighbourhood that has been disinvested from, redlined, a lot of that population is functionally illiterate, its a very different response over there. Theres a lot of people who are not interested and who dont believe in electoral politics, she said.

Many of their arguments were that whether its Trump, whether its Obama, whether its Bush, whether its Clinton, theyve never cared about me. Me choosing them as leadership has never changed the conditions in which Im living. And you look at that neighbourhood, and you look at those statistics, and you say, youre damn right. I understand that frustration.

King said dire predictions for four more years of Trump are doing little to galvanise people in neighbourhoods like Hough.

That might work for white women who voted for Trump last time but thats not going to work necessarily for the people on the fence. You cant say to someone who has nothing, to someone who is constantly in a state of struggle, well this guy is gonna make it worse. Theres no more fear to be had. Theyre not selling greatness here, theyre selling well, its worse or worse, she said.

Im thinking that theres a lot of barbershops around the midwest where this conversation is happening. It scares me because I know that we need to turn out for this election.

Detroit and Milwaukee also saw a drop in voting in African American neighbourhoods in 2016 that local activists in part attributed to a lack of interest because Obama was not on the ballot or disillusionment because he was able to achieve less than they had hoped, in part because of Republican obstruction.

Collins grew up in overwhelmingly black East Cleveland where his father worked for General Electric and his mother was a bus driver.

People feel like their vote is not going to make a difference. And people may be too concerned with other stuff thats going on right in front of their face versus getting into politics. They dont trust politicians, never have, he said. Up until Obama, there were never a lot of people voting around here because I dont think they really saw them making a change.

Collins, who teaches at a school and a community centre, said coronavirus forced his classes online but some of young people he teaches dont have computers. Others lack decent internet connections. They might rely on their phones for social media but that doesnt work for interactive lessons.

These are the kinds of problems a lot of their families are focused on, not voting, he said.

Democratic politicians remain confident but have a different concern.

Kent Smith is running unopposed for re-election as a state representative in Euclid, a majority black small city within Cuyahoga county that is effectively a suburb of Cleveland. He is less worried about turnout than whether the votes get counted.

I really think that in 2020, because of the global pandemic and the change in how people are voting, its really going to be turnout versus the number of votes that are ruled ineligible, he said.

Smith said a combination of voters not being used to filling out postal ballots a common error is to put the date instead of date of birth and efforts by Ohios Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, to throw roadblocks in the way of voting by post which is more favoured by Democrats, has raised concerns of large numbers of ballots being discounted.

Projections of turnout are healthy for the Democrats. Its a matter of how many of those votes will actually count, said Smith.

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Many midwest Democrats stayed home in 2016. Will they turn out for Biden? - The Guardian

After Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed Monday evening, we got a sneak peek at both the stylistic and substantive rift that could come to dominate the Democratic Party in 2021 and 2022, should they win the Senate and the White House. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

ONE WEEK until Election Day. 45 DAYS until government funding runs dry. 85 DAYS until Inauguration Day.

THE MCCONNELL COURT: Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL has used DONALD TRUMPS presidency to orchestrate a complete overhaul of the federal judiciary. After Monday nights confirmation of AMY CONEY BARRETT to the Supreme Court, TRUMP has appointed one third of the nations highest court. And, according to SEUNG MIN KIM of the WaPo, TRUMP has appointed 220 judges.

-- NYT front: BARRETT SWORN IN TO SUPREME COURT AFTER A 52-48 VOTE: A Scalia Protge Tilts a Bench Remade by Trump Further to the Right

AFTER BARRETT was confirmed Monday evening, we got a sneak peek at both the stylistic and substantive rift that could come to dominate the Democratic Party in 2021 and 2022, should they win the Senate and the White House.

CHUCK SCHUMER, the Democratic Senate leader from New York who is up for reelection in 2022, said this while leaving the Capitol, per the Hill pool: I have two words for McConnells speech: very defensive. ON THE SENATE FLOOR, SCHUMER looked over to the Republican side of the chamber and said, You will have forfeited the right to tell us how to run the majority. The American people will never forget this blatant act of bad faith. (FWIW: We didnt think MCCONNELL sounded defensive at all, but rather gleeful. Also, who thought Republicans had the right to tell Democrats how to run their majority in the first place?)

COMPARE THAT to Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.). AOC tweeted this: Expand the court. Republicans do this because they dont believe Dems have the stones to play hardball like they do. And for a long time theyve been correct. But do not let them bully the public into thinking their bulldozing is normal but a response isnt. There is a legal process for expansion.

THIS KIND OF rift should not be overlooked, because it will come to dominate governance should Washington turn all blue. AOC is seen as one of SCHUMERS top potential primary challengers. The simplicity and bare-knuckled nature of her message could resonate among a Democratic base thats looking for knife fights, not senatorial process arguments. While SCHUMER and JOE BIDEN say changing the size of the court is on the table, the left is screaming that it should play by the same rules as the GOP -- which is to say Democrats should not worry about tradition and instead blow up what they consider the quaint processes that govern official Washington.

AND IT CANNOT BE IGNORED that its much easier to shout from the House than govern and lead the Senate. But there will be a hell of a lot of shouting coming from whats expected to be a large and loud Democratic majority in 2021.

THE POLITICO TICK TOCK TODAYS MUST READ: BURGESS EVERETT and MARIANNE LEVINE: How the Senate GOPs right turn paved the way for Barrett: One day after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, President Donald Trump told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that lots of people thought Barbara Lagoa would be the best pick for the Supreme Court. After all, the Cuban American judge from Florida could give a huge political boost to the president in a key swing state.

McConnell had a rebuttal: Pick Amy Coney Barrett instead, according to GOP leadership and White House aides. McConnell argued Barrett, an ardent social conservative, would have the best chance of uniting the party and if Trump even thought of picking someone else, he needed to call McConnell and give him a chance to change the presidents mind.

-- WAPOS PAUL KANE: Angry Democrats try to focus on health care as they watch Barrett confirmation

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE TRUMP is running a campaign in a parallel universe, detached from the issues of the day. DURING THREE RALLIES Monday:

-- HE MENTIONED BARRETT three times, each time seemingly in passing. And HE DIDNT ONCE talk about the standoff over stimulus, or rail on Speaker NANCY PELOSI for her negotiating tactics.

Good Tuesday morning.

SPOTTED: Tucker Carlson and Tony Bobulinski eating at the Waldorf in Los Angeles on Monday evening. Carlson is interviewing Bobulinski on his show tonight.

A message from the Partnership for Americas Health Care Future:

When it comes to health care, lowering costs is voters highest priority but the public option could force the average worker to pay $2,500 more a year in payroll taxes in addition to the cost of their current coverage. Get the facts.

POLITICO SCOOP -- Medicare and Medicaid to cover early Covid vaccine, by Dan Diamond and Adam Cancryn: The Trump administration this week will announce a plan to cover the out-of-pocket costs of Covid-19 vaccines for millions of Americans who receive Medicare or Medicaid, said four people with knowledge of the pending announcement.

Under the planned rule, Medicare and Medicaid will now cover vaccines that receive emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, the people said, which is a change from current policy. The regulations, which have been under development for weeks, are likely to be announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Tuesday or Wednesday. At least two Covid-19 vaccine developers have said they plan to apply for an emergency use authorization before the end of the year. POLITICO

CORONAVIRUS RAGING -- Worst place, worst time: Trump faces virus spike in Midwest, by APs Tom Beaumont in Oshkosh, Wis.: [N]ow the virus is getting worse in states that the president needs the most, at the least opportune time. New infections are raging in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the upper Midwest. In Iowa, polls suggest Trump is in a toss-up race with Biden after carrying the state by 9.4 percentage points four years ago.

Trumps pandemic response threatens his hold on Wisconsin, where he won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, said Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin. Approval of his handling of COVID is the next-strongest predictor of vote choice, behind voters party affiliation and their overall approval of Trumps performance as president, Franklin said. And its not just a fluke of a single survey.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sunday that among U.S. states, Wisconsin had the third highest rate of new cases for the previous seven days. Iowa was 10th.

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NANCY COOK: Trumps closing argument: Forget about Covid

MARKET WATCH -- Stocks Slide on Coronavirus Uptick, Fading Stimulus Hopes, by WSJs Anna Hirtenstein and Paul Vigna

-- BEN WHITE: Why Wall Street is banking on a blue wave: President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression the likes of which youve never seen will engulf the nation. But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win with a much different take on what the results will mean.

Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a blue wave election, in which Democrats also seize the Senate, will produce an economy-juicing blast of fresh fiscal stimulus of $3 trillion or more that carries the U.S. past the coronavirus crisis and into a more normal environment for markets.

Far from panicking at the prospect of a Biden win, Wall Street CEOs, traders and investment managers now mostly say they would be fine with a change in the White House that reduces the Trump noise, lowers the threat of further trade wars and ensures a continuation of the government spending theyve seen in recent years.

NYT, A19: Swing-District Democrats, Defying Predictions, Poised to Help Keep House, by Luke Broadwater in Henrico County, Va.

ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: In Georgia, a Senate GOP firewall is under attack by resurgent Democrats, by Greg Bluestein and Patricia Murphy: In a fight to keep control of the U.S. Senate, national Republicans viewed Georgias twin contests as part of a last-ditch firewall. With a week until Election Day, resurgent Democrats are chipping away at that foundation.

The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Jon Ossoff deadlocked with Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who was once heavily favored to win a second term. And Democrat Raphael Warnock, a pastor and first-time candidate, is the clear front-runner in the chaotic special election for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loefflers seat.

The two Democrats are leveraging President Donald Trumps struggling poll numbers, and Warnock is taking advantage of the bitter internal rift between Loeffler and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, her most formidable Republican opponent in the 21-candidate race. The poll pegged Collins at 21% and Loeffler at 20% with roughly 15% of Republican voters undecided in that race.

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The public option could raise the average workers taxes by $2,500/year in addition to the cost of their current coverage. Get the facts.

COURT WATCH ... JOSH GERSTEIN: In Wisconsin decision, Supreme Court foreshadows election night cliffhanger: As a divided Supreme Court on Monday resolved a fight over absentee voting rules in Wisconsin, the justices exchanged warnings about a troublesome scenario: the possibility that next weeks presidential election leads to days or even weeks of legal maneuvering and uncertainty about the winner.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh conjured up the specter of such a protracted battle as he argued in favor of allowing states to maintain firm deadlines requiring absentee ballots to be received by election officials on Election Day.

Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election, Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion released Monday night. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter. POLITICO

MEANWHILE -- Twitter labels Trump post about mail ballots as disputed and misleading, by Myah Ward

TRUMPS TUESDAY -- The president will leave the White House at 12:30 p.m. en route to Lansing, Mich. He will arrive at the Capital Region International Airport at 2:25 p.m. and give a campaign speech. Trump will depart at 4 p.m. en route to West Salem, Wis. He will arrive at MotorSports Management Company at 4:40 p.m. CDT and will speak at a campaign rally. Afterward, he will travel to Omaha, Neb. He will arrive at Eppley Airfield at 7:50 p.m. and give another campaign speech. Afterward, he will travel to Las Vegas. He will arrive at 9:50 p.m. PDT and spend the night.

ON THE TRAIL BIDEN will travel to Warm Springs, Ga., and deliver a campaign speech in the afternoon. He will also attend a drive-in event in Atlanta focused on early voting. JILL BIDEN will travel to Bangor, Maine, for a GOTV rally. Sen. KAMALA HARRIS (D-Calif.) will travel to Reno, Nev., and Las Vegas to participate in early voter mobilization events.

PHOTO DU JOUR: A firefighter battles the Silverado Fire, a fast-moving wildfire that forced evacuation orders for 60,000 people in Southern California on Monday, Oct. 26. | Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

LAURA BARRN-LPEZ and HOLLY OTTERBEIN in Bethlehem, Pa.: The demographic that could tip Pennsylvania: For 17 years, La Mega, a Spanish language radio station serving Lehigh Valleys rapidly growing Puerto Rican population, has been playing it safe. Sure, they criticized Donald Trump when he called Mexicans rapists back in 2015. But theyve never endorsed a presidential candidate. We [didnt] want to get anybody upset, said Victor Martinez, owner of the station and host of the morning show El Relajo de la Maana, or The Morning Commotion.

This year is different: La Mega is firmly behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden. And its not stopping at an endorsement. The station is educating listeners on how to vote safely in the pandemic, how to find ride-share options to the polls and even showing up at campaign events. Bidens running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, recently appeared on the show. We are all in this year, Martinez said. Were not leaving anything behind. Puerto Ricans are not happy with Trump.

With a week left until the election, Biden, Trump and their surrogates are spending much of the little face time they have left in Pennsylvania, sometimes specifically courting Latino voters. Though Latinos make up only roughly 6 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania, they could prove pivotal to Bidens chances in a close contest. In 2016, Trump won the state by less than 1 point and both campaigns are girding for another nail-biter. POLITICO

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American families cant afford the public option. Learn why.

ADELSON WATCH -- Adelsons Las Vegas Sands Exploring $6 Billion Sale of Vegas Casinos, by Bloombergs Gillian Tan and Christopher Palmeri: Sheldon Adelsons Las Vegas Sands Corp. is exploring the sale of its casinos in Las Vegas, according to people with knowledge of the matter, a move that would leave the mogul focused on Asia and mark his exit, for now, from the U.S. gambling industry.

The worlds largest casino company, Sands is working with an adviser to solicit interest for the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, the Palazzo and the Sands Expo Convention Center, which together may fetch $6 billion or more, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the talks are private. The properties are all connected along the citys famous strip.

BOOK CLUB -- Retired Lt. Col. ALEXANDER VINDMAN will publish a memoir next spring, currently titled Here, Right Matters: An American Story, about his family story, his career and his experience in the Trump administration and impeachment process. Harper has the North American rights. The cover

MEDIAWATCH -- BuzzFeed Expects to Break Even This Year, Thanks to Heavy Cost Cuts, by WSJs Lukas Alpert: [The] belt-tightening is part of a greater reckoning for the once-highflying digital media startup, whose board had become increasingly frustrated with slowing growth and persistent losses in recent years, the people said. Over the past two years, the company has reduced costs by as much as $80 million, they said.

Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at [emailprotected].

WHITE HOUSE ARRIVAL LOUNGE -- Jayme Chandler is now director of correspondence at the White Houses Office of Presidential Personnel. She most recently was coalitions coordinator for the Trump campaign.

TRANSITION -- John Coghlan is now deputy assistant A.G. for the federal program branch of the civil division. He previously was an associate counsel in the White House counsels office.

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Judy Smith, founder and CEO of Smith & Co. A trend she thinks doesnt get enough attention: The effect that the pandemic has had on women and the alarming rate at which they are leaving the workforce can have an impact on generations to come. This is an issue that we need to make sure we continue to pay attention to and figure out how we can support women and help address these challenges. Playbook Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) is 47 Matt Drudge is 54 Vanity Fairs Michael Calderone Teal Baker (h/t Heather Podesta) NYTs Ali Watkins Nina Easton Richard Clarke, CEO of Good Harbor, is 7-0 Stuart Roy, president of Strategic Action Public Affairs (h/t Blain Rethmeier) Phil Anderson, president and founder of Navigators Global Jon Doggett, CEO of the National Corn Growers Association Chris Vlasto is 54 Mike McCurry, of counsel at Public Strategies Washington and distinguished professor of public theology at Wesley Theological Seminary, is 66 (h/t Jon Haber) Jackie Bray Jonathan Sender Gretchen Lee Salter (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) Clark Reid of the Office of Inspector General at Commerce Will Ris

Zoe Chace of This American Life Lora Ries, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation Lori Otto Punke, president of the Washington Council on International Trade and founder of LOP Strategies (h/ts Stewart Verdery) Sara Latham (h/t Brynne, Elrod, Hornbrook) Red Balloon Securitys Andrew Taub is 31 Kenneth Katzman Zo Zeigler Christina Mountz Donnelly, senior associate at the Glover Park Group (h/t Mike Feldman) Emily Vander Weele, manager at Weber Shandwick ... Chrissy Terrell Murray, director of corporate comms and PR for Gannett/USA Today Network The Economists Tom Nuttall Greg Gorman Ed Dippold ... Jennifer Mandel Abbey Shilling Victoria Hargis ... George Landrith ... Leslie Churchwell Nicholas Roosevelt

A message from the Partnership for Americas Health Care Future:

During this critical time, access to affordable, high-quality health care is more important than ever, but creating the public option could result in higher taxes or premiums for American families. In fact, a recent study finds the public option would become the third most expensive government program behind Medicare and Social Security, both of which are already at risk for those who rely on them.

Lets build on and improve whats working where private coverage, Medicare and Medicaid work together, not start over with a one-size-fits-all government health insurance system like the public option. Learn more.

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POLITICO Playbook: The rift that could dominate the Democratic Party next year - Politico