Economic Storms Gather in Swing States

Abandoned factory.

As approval of the impeachment inquiry continues to rise, Donald Trump has continued his standard approach to everything: lie and and try to distract, even lying about knowing Rudi Giulian's newly arrested Russian cohorts. Meanwhile, his self-created trade wars are wreaking havoc on the economies of the swing states critical to Trump's re-election hopes: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Particularly hard hit are manufacturing - which Trump promised to restore - and, of course, farming which is being further damaged by climate change in the Mid-West, a phenomenon that Trump claims is a Chinese hoax. A piece in Politico looks at the growing economic storm clouds hanging over states that, if they reject Trump, could end in his defeat in 2020, assuming his isn't removed from office before then.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump shocked the world and won the White House in 2016 on bold promises to bring greatness back to the industrial Midwest.

But his promise now faces a brutal reality: The U.S. manufacturing sector is spiraling into recession, victimized by Trump’s trade wars and sagging confidence among corporate executives who have little idea how to plan for an uncertain economic future.

Unless Trump can ram his revised North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress and cut a deal with the Chinese to erase historically high tariffs, he may find it difficult to repeat wins in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that drove him into office in 2016 by the narrowest of margins.

“Manufacturing is in recession right now. This is what all the data show,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “And everywhere I go in the world, the fear I hear is that we are going to be driven deeper into recession because this is all about uncertainty caused by the trade war.”

Broad national gauges of manufacturing are already troubling, countering some of the president’s claims of success. The Institute for Supply Management manufacturing survey . . . . has shown a declining sector two months in a row, recently hitting a level not seen since the end of the Great Recession due to a sharp drop in new export orders. Respondents to the survey blamed a trade war that has reduced export demand and increased costs for parts used in manufacturing.

At the county and state level, the environment looks even darker for Trump.

The negative news on manufacturing comes as senior Chinese officials arrive in Washington for another round of talks aimed at reaching a deal with Trump that would reduce heavy tariffs that have imposed significant economic costs on both sides.

It’s unclear whether Trump would accept such a deal that could eliminate tariffs and relieve some of the pressure on the manufacturing sector, and he told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t think China was lowering expectations for a trade deal.

It’s not certain that even such a deal will reverse negative trends in the manufacturing sector, which overall is a small slice of the American economy but an important part of overall corporate profits. Manufacturing also supports all kinds of ancillary service-industry jobs that suffer whenever factory work declines.

Overall, the growth in manufacturing jobs — one of Trump’s biggest promises — has essentially vanished. After adding as many as 25,000 new manufacturing jobs per month last spring, the numbers began to decline as the trade war with China intensified. In September, the sector lost 2,000 jobs. That number could grow for October when striking GM workers are included.

“To the extent that the manufacturing slowdown continues unabated, which is likely unless there is a de-escalation in trade tensions, the electoral map could be more difficult for President Trump and Republicans in 2020,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a report this week.

The still-strong national employment numbers, with a jobless rate at a half-century low of 3.5 percent, can also tell a misleading political story. . . . But dig deeper and large numbers of the jobs are coming from uncontested states like California. States that make up Trump’s coalition are not doing quite as well.

“It’s an existential political risk,” said Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. “He won the election based on carrying Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and appealing to those voters who work in manufacturing or related industries. He promised he would bring manufacturing jobs back and his policies are doing the precise opposite. Jobs losses are mounting, particularly in those states.”

Trump’s trade battle with China has also slammed rural states where farmers have been unable to sell soybeans and other products into one of their biggest markets. Trump has responded by moving to dole out $30 billion in bailout money and praising “patriot farmers.” Many of the states hit by the drop in agriculture exports like Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas are solid Trump country. Others like Iowa could be a problem for the campaign.

Trump is also trying to make inroads in Minnesota, where he narrowly lost in 2016, and plans to hold a rally there Thursday night. But Minnesota is feeling pressure both in manufacturing and agriculture, as are states like Iowa and Pennsylvania.

And it’s not clear that even a quick and limited deal with the Chinese could reverse some of the major negative trends in manufacturing.

Ultimately, Trump’s reelection could come down to three states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where manufacturing trends are working against him and where he will need a sharp turnaround. “In those three key states, the economies are weakening. Unemployment is low but rising,” said Zandi. “If it continues to rise between now and Election Day it will be very difficult for him to recover. The trend lines don’t look good.”

The trend lines may not look good for Trump, but are a net positive if they end up removing the orange cancer from the White House. 

Black Voters Ponder the Best Odds Against Trump

Donald Trump was elected in no small part due to black voters in critical states - e.g., Wisconsin - to go to the polls and vote for Hillary Clinton. Blacks were not the only Democrats to elect Trump through their apathy and failure to vote, but due to Trump's racism and encouragement of white supremacists, blacks and other racial minorities have perhaps had the most to lose under the Trump/Pence regime. While many see the dire need of defeating Trump in 2020, the agreement seems to end there and views vary dramatically as to who will be the best possible standard bearer for the Democrats.  Whoever the nominee turns out to be, blacks, Hispanics, gays and everyone else needs to go to the polls and vote against Trump even if their favorite candidate does not win the nominee.  Too much is at stake to allow petulance like we saw with Sanders voters in 2016 to work to put Trump back in the White House.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the intra-party debate. Here are highlights:

More than a third of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for president are women. There are two black men, a Mexican American man, a Taiwanese American man and a gay man.

Yet, in the initial phase of the 2020 race, two straight white men have emerged as the fastest fundraisers, and another has jumped to a lead in recent polls, before even announcing his candidacy.

The rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), ex-congressman Beto O’Rourke and former vice president Joe Biden in a field with historic diversity has caused dismay among some Democrats, particularly African Americans and women hoping for a mold-breaking nominee who reflects the changing face of the party and the country.

Black voters, particularly black women, have the potential to play a decisive role in the Democratic Party’s attempt to defeat President Trump in 2020. An inability to earn their support has dealt severe blows to past candidates — most recently Sanders in the 2016 primaries and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton in the general election.

As 11 presidential hopefuls appeared this week at a Midtown Manhattan hotel for the National Action Network convention, frustration emerged over the standing of the nonwhite candidates. But there was also tension between some black voters who want a candidate reflecting the nation’s diversity and others who perceive the white men as potentially stronger against Trump.

Other Democrats said they view Biden, O’Rourke and Sanders as credible and compelling contenders best equipped to defeat Trump. The conflicting opinions revealed Democratic divisions touching on race, gender and identity that could shape the nomination fight.

“The old white guys have been in the political arena. They know what the job entails,” said Yvonne James, a 79-year-old New Yorker who carried a canvas bag at the convention with images of the Obamas and other “strong black men and women” stitched onto it. “So if it boils down to them or somebody who’s kind of new, let’s go with the experienced choice.”

Democratic voters have become more racially diverse over the past couple of decades, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study. In the midterm elections, a record number of women, predominantly Democrats, were elected to the House. Democrats expect African Americans — particularly women — to play a pivotal role in the 2020 primary race, beginning in South Carolina, the fourth contest in the lineup.

Those factors could complicate the path to the nomination for Biden, Sanders and O’Rourke. In addition to his past struggles with African Americans, Sanders has faced questions about his handling of sexual harassment claims in his 2016 campaign.

At least seven women have come forward publicly to say Biden made physical contact with them in past years in a way that made them uncomfortable, prompting him to promise to be more mindful of his interactions. Biden, who did not speak in New York, has signaled he will run for president but has not announced a decision.

While the former Texas congressman and Senate candidate received cheers, some in the audience expressed uncertainty, saying they were not as familiar with him.

At this early point in the presidential campaign, the strengths of the white male candidates have come sharply into focus. The Sanders campaign this week said that it raised $18.2 million in its first 41 days, outpacing competitors who announced their totals. O’Rourke’s campaign said it raised $9.4 million in 18 days during the first quarter of the year. Both have cultivated loyal armies of small-dollar donors. Harris came in second among candidates who have released fundraising tallies so far, raising $12 million over a longer period than either O’Rourke or Sanders was in the race.

It’s been 15 years since Democrats last nominated a white man for president, choosing John F. Kerry, who would go on to lose to George W. Bush in 2004. With so many strong alternatives this time, some Democrats say, they aren’t keen on doing that in 2020.

“That’s the American norm; people vote for what they know. But the old, safe norm is what got Trump in there. I think it’s time to shake up things a little bit,” said Tiffany James, the 37-year-old head of NAN’s South Carolina branch.

Some of Biden’s backers argued that he would provide the gravitas and experience needed to defeat Trump. But there was also some concern that his advanced age could be a liability. Biden is 76, and Sanders is 77. “The job of a president requires a lot of energy. A lot of legwork,” said retiree Jacob Azeke, 77, of New York.

 Personally, I view both Biden and Sanders as too old. As for the rest, I am still trying to figure out who I like and, more importantly, who can defeat Trump.

Democrats May Be Poised to Take Back Multiple Governorships

The Democrat goal: electing more Ralph Northams to governorship's across America. 

The far left of the Democrat Party - think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - has been taking it on the chin in many state level primaries where moderate, common sense approach Democrats have been winning the primary elections.  Elections, after all are about WINNING as opposed to anointing one's perfect candidate or staying home in a huff if one's preferred candidate doesn't win the Party nomination.  This concept was lost by many in 2016 and, as a result, we have the utterly foul and toxic Trump/Pence regime in the White House.  In the run up to the 2018 midterm elections - as was the case in Virginia in 2027 where the more moderate candidate won the primary and went on to win the general election - moderate Democrats who can appeal to independents and even moderate Republicans sickened by Trump's lies and moral bankruptcy  are winning gubernatorial nominations.  If they win in November, such successes could cause major problems for the GOP as Democrat governors are poised to block Republican gerrymandering of districts.  The long term impact could be significant.  Yes, Democrats need to retake control of Congress, but they also need to win back governorship's.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the Democrat opportunity.  Here are highlights:

The backlash against President Trump and the steady rightward journey of the Republican Party could sharply shift the distribution of political power in state capitals across the nation in this fall’s elections. And because reapportionment is coming, this could change the contours of American politics for more than a decade.

Strengthening that possibility is the success of pragmatic Democrats in gubernatorial primaries who are stressing issues that appeal simultaneously to the center and the left.

 

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Democrats chose Tony Evers, the state schools superintendent, to face two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker. In Minnesota, Democrats nominated Rep. Tim Walz to defend his party’s hold on the state’s governorship. Both Evers and Walz advance progressive priorities in areas such as education and health care but cannot be cast as ideologues.

Democratic gubernatorial nominees are similarly positioned in Ohio, Iowa and Michigan, all pickup opportunities.

At the same time, Trump’s dominance of the Republican primary electorate and the long-term flight of moderates from an increasingly conservative party have led to victories by right-wing candidates who may not be attractive to a broader electorate.

One of Tuesday’s headline results was the defeat of former governor Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota by Trump-supporting Jeff Johnson, a county commissioner who castigated Pawlenty for criticizing Trump toward the end of the 2016 campaign following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.

 

And in Kansas on Tuesday, Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer finally conceded the GOP primary race to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, after a week of tallying ballots. Kobach is a Trump loyalist with far-right views on immigration and restricting access to voting. Kobach’s victory greatly increases the chances of the Democrats’ nominee, state Sen. Laura Kelly. The Cook Political Report immediately reclassified the race as a toss-up in a traditionally Republican state.

 

Like many Democrats, Kelly is focusing on schools. It’s an issue with particular power in Kansas. Former governor Sam Brownback (R) — he left office before his term was out — had reduced education spending to pay for large tax cuts.

 

The program became so unpopular that it was rolled back on a bipartisan vote in the legislature, and Kelly has targeted the Brownback plan (she calls it his “big tax-cut experiment”) in her advertising. “Sam Brownback’s massive education cuts weren’t numbers on a spreadsheet,” she says. “They were an attack on who we are as Kansans.”

 

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, says Kansas offers a particularly dramatic example of what is happening in many other Republican-led states. “Everyone knows about the Trump effect, but the untold story is Republican governors going on ideological tears in their states,” Inslee said in a telephone interview. “You have a one-two punch to Republican prospects both from the White House and from the damage that’s been wrought out of the statehouses.”

11 of the Republicans’ 26 governorships at stake this year appear vulnerable. Illinois and New Mexico already lean Democratic, and seven others are toss-ups. These include the powerhouse states of Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The GOP will also have to struggle to hold on to Wisconsin and Georgia.

 

The governments elected this year will be key to drawing congressional and state legislative district lines after the 2020 Census. So even Republicans who demonstrated slavish loyalty to Trump to win primaries are likely to regret his presidency (and their own ideological enthusiasms) if 2018 leads to a statehouse catastrophe. They have been playing with fire, and it could consume them.

One can only hope that these pragmatic Democrats replicate the ground game used by Ralph Northam in 2017.  While defeating Republican gubernatorial candidates is the goal, defeating the by significant margins would be even sweeter - and would send terror through the GOP.

GOP Voter Suppression Laws May Have Won Wisconsin for Trump

With their aging white, heterosexual, conservative Christian voter base literally dying off, Republican efforts around the country have shifted increasingly towards disenfranchising voters who they believe will vote against their agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy, special rights for Christofascists, emboldening white supremacists, and taking from the poor to give to the rich.  This effort takes many forms, but a favored method is to pass so-called voter ID laws under the guise of fighting non-existent voter fraud.  Other efforts include wrongfully purging voters from voter records and here in Virginia making it difficult for convicted felons who have served their time to regain their voting rights.  Hand in hand with this, of curse, is the disproportionate prosecution of minorities under Virginia's often very low threshold felony laws.  Now, a study suggests that these efforts bore fruit last year when Wisconsin's efforts to disenfranchise voters may have thrown Wisconsin to Trump.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this disturbing situation which Republicans will no doubt seek to replicate in other states (Mother Jones also has coverage here).  Here are highlights: 

Close elections almost by definition conjure up countless explanations of what might have changed the result. As the fine voting-rights journalist Ari Berman notes, one of the more shocking and significant developments on November 8, 2016, was Donald Trump’s win in Wisconsin, a state that had not gone Republican in a presidential election since the 49-state Reagan landslide of 1984. Explanations were all over the place. . . .

Virtually no one, says Berman, talked about voter suppression, even though Scott Walker’s hyperpolarized state had enacted and fought successfully to preserve one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws, expected and designed to reduce minority turnout.

Yet there is evidence, both anecdotal and academic, that voter suppression efforts had a lot to do with a sharp reduction in minority and student voting in Wisconsin.

After the election, registered voters in Milwaukee County and Madison’s Dane County were surveyed about why they didn’t cast a ballot. Eleven percent cited the voter ID law and said they didn’t have an acceptable ID; of those, more than half said the law was the “main reason” they didn’t vote. According to the study’s author, University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer, that finding implies that between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting by the ID law. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” he says.

Trump carried the state by less than 23,000 votes.

Wisconsin’s voter ID law was designed to create complex hoops prospective voters had to jump through to secure an ID, particularly for those without driver’s licenses, and also for college students attending schools that did not issue the kind of IDs the law demanded. Berman found abundant evidence that election personnel in the state went beyond the letter of the law to discourage compliance.

And voter ID was just part of the arsenal of voter suppression techniques at the GOP’s disposal:

The voter ID law was one of 33 election changes passed in Wisconsin after Walker took office [in 2011], and it dovetailed with his signature push to dismantle unions, taking away his opponents’ most effective organizing tool. Wisconsin’s Legislature cut early voting from 30 days to 12, reduced early voting hours on nights and weekends, and restricted early voting to one location per county, hampering voters in large urban areas and sprawling rural ones. It also added new residency requirements for voter registration, eliminated staffers who led statewide registration drives, and made it harder to count absentee ballots.

It all added up, and for Republicans, it paid off handsomely in 2016.

One lesson of the Wisconsin saga is that control of the federal courts matters a great deal in vindicating voting rights and political representation; this is, after all, the state where a GOP gerrymander of the legislature was so overtly partisan that the U.S. Supreme Court may find it unconstitutional.

Republican-controlled statehouses have already passed more voting restrictions in 2017 than they did in 2016 and 2015 combined. Taken together, “there’s no doubt that these election changes affected the turnout among young voters, first-time voters, voters of color, and other members of the Obama coalition that overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton,” . . .

If you think of voting rights as a wonky “process” issue that’s less important than health care or the environment or avoiding war with North Korea, think again. It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t be dealing with a President Trump at all if voting rights were regarded as a fundamental right of citizenship that should be strongly and universally encouraged.

I only meet one of the GOP's preferred voter base of white, heterosexual, conservative Christians - Like author Anne Rice, I don't call myself Christian anymore given the hideousness that Christianity has taken on under the Christofascists.  What will the GOP try to come up with to disenfranchise people like me?  If Republicans win the Virginia statewide elections next month, expect a new wave of voter disenfranchisement in Virginia. Be very afraid. Get out and vote while you still can. 

How Racism Carried Trump to Victory

Trump supporters at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan

In some ways the ongoing Virginia 2017 statewide campaigns are a mirror of what happened in the 2016 presidential election with Republicans pandering to racists, religious extremists and aging, reactionary rural white populations, especially in Southwest Virginia and the southern tier of the state exclusive of the Hampton Roads region.  Meanwhile the Democrats are running inclusive forward looking campaigns.  Hopefully, Virginia's demographics will prevent GOP victories and hopefully Democrats will recognize the fact that ultimately the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest ultimately hinged on rural white racism and animosity toward non-whites.  It is far past time that the false meme that "economic uncertainty" is what flipped prior Obama voters to Trump in key states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  True, many in the mainstream media do not want to call these voters out for what they are: racist bigots who are outraged over their declining white privilege and by extension the fact that their backwardness is increasingly causing younger generations to migrate to liberal urban areas where employment opportunities exist and accepting communities abound.  But reluctance to speak the truth does not change the facts.  A column in the New York Times looks at the data that confirms racism and hatred towards immigrants were the key motivation for these Trump voters.  Here are excerpts:

What Democrats missed was the profound political impact recent immigration trends were having on the more rural parts of the once homogeneous Midwest — that the region had unexpectedly become a flash point in the nation’s partisan immigration wars.

In a Brookings essay published last month, John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center, a local think tank, writes that the region is experiencing a “steady stream of immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
As a result, Austin continues,

Immigration has become an unambiguous factor in this racially charged Midwestern landscape. While immigrant-rich states like Arizona, California, and Florida are often at the center of immigration policy discussions, the political debate about the role of immigrants burns hottest in the heartland.

Austin went on, in an email, to provide more detail about the power of immigration to move white voters into the Trump column:

The "rural” voters here are some farmers, but more likely, as in the hinterlands outside Flint, Monroe, Toledo, Erie, or Janesville, Wisconsin, they are mostly white, working class blue collar workers or retirees, many, sadly, who fled their small cities to escape blacks. They are anxious about the economic prospects for their future, their aging communities (the kids have fled), making folks mad. And now all these immigrants come and are changing the society!! Just as Macomb County, where working class white voters fled Detroit in advance of blacks, now sees nearby communities like Hamtramck becoming (in their view) a Bangladeshi bazaar — and they don’t like that. And they are easily fanned to blame those folks.

In February 2017, Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist, conducted four postelection focus groups with white voters who had cast ballots for Trump in Macomb County, Michigan, an area he has been studying since 1985. The participants were not Republicans. They were whites without college degrees who identified themselves as independents, as Democratic-leaning independents, or as Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008, 2012 or both.

Three developments are taking place in the rust belt simultaneously.

First, as recently as 2000, many of the key Midwestern counties that moved from blue to red in 2016 had very few minority residents. Since then, their immigrant populations began to increase at a rapid rate well above the national average. Second, at the same time that immigrants are moving in, younger native-born residents are leaving in droves to seek employment elsewhere, while the remaining white population is aging and is often hostile to change. It is the perfect formula for cultural conflict, and Trump proved to be the perfect candidate to exploit it. Finally, these changes are taking place in a region that Austin points out is home to “15 of the nation’s 25 major metro areas with the sharpest black-white segregation,” making it even more unreceptive to nonwhites than other sections of the country.

Arrayed on a diversity index, Michigan with an index of 42, Wisconsin at 35, Ohio at 36, and Pennsylvania at 41, all rank in the bottom twenty — i.e., the least diverse — of the fifty states. The diversity index for the entire country is substantially higher at 63. Examples of states with very high diversity indexes include California at 79; Nevada at 73; Texas at 70; and New York at 70.

A rapid rate of growth in the percentage of immigrants in communities that have in the past experienced little diversity is particularly explosive.

In other words, communities that are close to 100 percent white will react intensely to a modest increase in foreign-born residents, while highly diverse communities will shrug it off.

Exit poll data from 2016 shows how critical opposition to immigration in the Midwest was to Trump’s victory.

In Michigan, for instance, exit poll data showed that those who believe immigrants to the United States “hurt the county” voted three to one for Trump. Those who said illegal immigrants should be deported voted for Trump by better than five to one. The same pattern can be seen in exit poll data from Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which, while not part of the Midwest geographically, resembles it politically.

At the same time, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and, to a lesser extent, Pennsylvania, have each experienced a net out-migration of native-born residents. The effect of this exodus is twofold.

First, the people leaving tend to be younger and more open-minded, willing to risk moving to a faster growing section of the country. Second, those left behind tend to be older, more closed-minded and more set in their ways.

William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, emailed me:

These “left-behind” populations tend to be older and more backward rather than future oriented — less likely to embrace the nation’s new diversity and the emerging global economy. This was surely the case among 2016 voters in rural parts of swing states that helped to elect Trump as president.

Further compounding the rightward movement of these white voters is their animosity to nonwhites. . . . The task for Democrats is how to come up with a non-xenophobic, non-racist answer to this problem.

Many of these Trump voters pack the pews of their churches every Sunday and regularly feign piety and give lip service to "family values."  But do not be fooled.  They are not nice or moral people and their most certainly do not follow the Gospel of Christ.   Structuring a means to reach out to foul and morally deficient voters will not be an easy task for the Democrats.  One obvious effort that is needed is to educate minority voters that they MUST turn out and vote every Election Day because those who hate them will be turning out.

P.S., yes, I may be biased since many of these same voters hold animus towards LGBT citizens. 

Russian-Linked Facebook Ads Targeted Michigan and Wisconsin

While Der Trumpenführer continues to lie and claim that the entire Russiagate investigation is "fake news" and a "hoax,"  more and more information is unfolding that increasingly suggests that Trump won on November 8, 2016, for one reason: Russian assistance in the form of targeted (and false) social media ads aimed at harming Hillary Clinton and pushing Trump over the finish line.  Indeed, CNN is reporting that these Russian sourced ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin which Trump won by very small margins and as a result, prevailed in the Electoral College despite his 3 million vote loss in the popular vote.  One ultimate irony is that many who see themselves as the "real Americans" and super patriots voted for Vladimir Putin's chosen candidate.  If Putin sought to destabilize America internally and to lessen its influence in the world, Putin has certainly gotten his wish over the last none months.  Here are highlights from the CNN report (note that even GOP nutcase John Cornyn states we are looking at "just the tip of the iceberg"):

A number of Russian-linked Facebook ads specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states crucial to Donald Trump's victory last November, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

Some of the Russian ads appeared highly sophisticated in their targeting of key demographic groups in areas of the states that turned out to be pivotal, two of the sources said. The ads employed a series of divisive messages aimed at breaking through the clutter of campaign ads online, including promoting anti-Muslim messages, sources said. It has been unclear until now exactly which regions of the country were targeted by the ads. And while one source said that a large number of ads appeared in areas of the country that were not heavily contested in the elections, some clearly were geared at swaying public opinion in the most heavily contested battlegrounds. Michigan saw the closest presidential contest in the country -- Trump beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by about 10,700 votes out of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast. Wisconsin was also one of the tightest states, and Trump won there by only about 22,700 votes. Both states, which Trump carried by less than 1%, were key to his victory in the Electoral College. As part of their investigations, both special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees are seeking to determine whether the Russians received any help from Trump associates in where to target the ads. White House officials could not be reached for comment on this story. The President and senior White House officials have long insisted there was never any collusion with Russia, with Trump contending the matter is a "hoax." The focus on Michigan and Wisconsin also adds more evidence that the Russian group tied to the effort was employing a wide range of tactics potentially aimed at interfering in the election. In all, Facebook estimates the entire Russian effort was seen by 10 million people.  Facebook could still be weaponized again for the 2018 midterms Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN the panel was still assessing the full geographical breakdown of the Russian ads and whether there was any assistance from individuals associated with the Trump campaign. "Obviously, we're looking at any of the targeting of the ads, as well as any targeting of efforts to push out the fake or false news or negative accounts against Hillary Clinton, to see whether they demonstrate a sophistication that would be incompatible with not having access to data analytics from the campaign," Schiff said Tuesday evening. [S]ome of the ads were aimed at reaching voters who may be susceptible to anti-Muslim messages, even suggesting that Muslims were a threat to the American way of life. Such messaging could presumably appeal to voters attracted to Trump's hard-line stance against immigration and calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Lawmakers have only started to assess the scope of the data, and sources from both parties said the 3,000 ads touched on a range of polarizing topics, including the Second Amendment and civil rights issues. The ads were aimed at suppressing the votes and sowing discontent among the electorate, the sources said. Members from both parties said that there was a clear sophistication in the Russian ad campaign, and they said they were only just beginning to learn the full extent of the social media efforts. "It's consistent with everything else we've seen in terms of Russian active measures -- a combination of cyber, of propaganda and paid and social media," said Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican who sits on both the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary panels, both of which received the Facebook ads. "So, we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg."

I wonder how some of my "friends" who voted for Trump feel about having been played for fools by Vladimir Putin's operatives. 

Did Jared Kushner's Data Operation Assist Russians?

Paul Manafort may be indicted any day now, Facebook has been served with search warrants for specific foreign owned - read Russian - accounts and questions grow as to how Russians could so specifically target their anti-Hillary posts and fake news that sought to push voters to the Trump campaign.  One possible source of assistance to the Russians receiving growing scrutiny is Jared Kushner's data operation he created to assist in Der Trumpenführer's campaign efforts.  If this can be proven, obviously the charges that the campaign colluded with Russians who were in effect giving illegal contributions to the campaign, pretty boy Prince Jared could find himself in very serious trouble.   A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the growing focus on Kushner and his data operation.  Here are highlights:

The headlines were about Facebook admitting it had sold ad space to Russian groups trying to sway the 2016 presidential campaign. But investigators shrugged: they’d known or assumed for months that Facebook, as well as Twitter and other social-media platforms, were a tool used in the Kremlin’s campaign. “The only thing that’s surprising is that more revelations like this haven’t come out sooner,” said Congressman Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “And I expect that more will.”

Mapping the full Russian propaganda effort is important. Yet investigators in the House, Senate, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office are equally focused on a more explosive question: did any Americans help target the memes and fake news to crucial swing districts and wavering voter demographics?

“By Americans, you mean, like, the Trump campaign?” a source close to one of the investigations said with a dark laugh. Indeed: probers are intrigued by the role of Jared Kushner, the now-president’s son-in-law, who eagerly took credit for crafting the Trump campaign’s online efforts in a rare interview right after the 2016 election.

Kushner’s chat with Forbes has provided a veritable bakery’s worth of investigatory bread crumbs to follow. Brad Parscale, who Kushner hired to run the campaign’s San Antonio-based Internet operation, has agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee.

Bigger questions, however, revolve around Cambridge Analytica. It is unclear how Kushner first became aware of the data-mining firm, but one of its major investors is billionaire Trump backer Robert Mercer. Mercer was also a principal patron of Breitbart News and Steve Bannon, who was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica until he joined the Trump campaign. “I think the Russians had help,” said Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “I’ve always wondered if Cambridge Analytica was part of that.”

Senator Martin Heinrich is leading the charge to update American election laws so that the origins of political ads on social media are at least as transparent as those on TV and in print. Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, is also part of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is tracing Russia’s 2016 tactics. “Paul Manafort made an awful lot of money coming up with a game plan for how Russian interests could be pushed in Western countries and Western elections,” Heinrich said, . . . . . “Suddenly he finds himself in the middle of this campaign. If there is a person who I think is very sophisticated in this stuff, and runs in pretty dicey circles, that is the place where I would dig.”

(Kushner’s representatives declined to comment for this article. Manafort’s spokesman could not be reached.) Yet analysts scoff at the notion that the Russians figured out how to target African-Americans and women in decisive precincts in Wisconsin and Michigan all by themselves. . . . . And it’s not surprising that it took Facebook this long to figure out the ad buys. The Russians are excellent at covering their tracks. They’ll subcontract people in Macedonia or Albania or Cyprus and pay them via the dark Web. They always use locals to craft the campaign appropriately. My only question about 2016 is who exactly was helping them here.”

Or perhaps the chaotic Trump campaign unwittingly enlisted Russian-connected proxies who were eager to exploit any opening to damage Hillary Clinton’s run. It’s also plausible that Trump’s long-shot, anti-establishment bid was willing to take on assistance without asking too many questions. “Are we connecting the dots? I’m finding more dots,” said Quigley, who recently traveled to Prague and Budapest to learn more about the history of Russian influence campaigns. “I believe there was coordination, and I’m going to leave it at that for now.”

Clinton Camp Will Join Recount Push

Who knows where a recount in three key swing states - Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania - will lead, but at this point I support almost anything that could save the nation from the nightmare of a Donald Trump presidency.  The thought of Trump appointing Supreme Court justices even as he uses the office of the presidency to further enrich himself is stomach wrenching.  Given the unprecedented evidence of Russian efforts to influence the election in favor of Trump, if nothing else the recount will confirm that hacking did not occur.  The down side of that result, of course, is that the foulness and mindlessness of 25% of American's registered voters would be confirmed. The New York Times looks at the recount effort.  Here are excerpts:

The top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid said Saturday that the campaign would join a third-party candidate’s effort to seek a full recount in Wisconsin, and potentially two other states, though he said the campaign had seen no “actionable evidence” of vote hacking.

In a post on Medium, Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, described an intensive behind-the-scenes effort by the campaign to look for signs of Russian hacker activity or other irregularities in the vote count.

The essay suggested that the campaign was joining the recount effort with little expectation that it would change the result. But many of the campaign’s supporters, picking up on its frequent complaints of Russian interference in the election, have enthusiastically backed the recount effort led by Jill Stein, who was the Green Party candidate.

Ms. Stein filed for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday afternoon, about an hour before the deadline.

“Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

Should Ms. Stein pursue additional recounts, “we will take the same approach in those states as well,” he wrote. But he noted that the “number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.”

Mr. Trump issued a statement on Saturday calling the recount push “ridiculous” and “a scam by the Green Party.”

The Obama administration issued a statement to The New York Times on Friday in response to questions about intelligence findings related to Russian interference in the election. In the statement, it said it had concluded that the election had been free of interference.

The administration issued a second statement on Saturday saying that “the federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day.”

Now Mrs. Clinton finds herself in a difficult position of not wanting to lead the charge for a recount that Democrats believe will go nowhere, but also not wanting to abandon supporters who have donated to Ms. Stein’s last-ditch effort.

Mr. Elias’s post offered a revealing look at how much time and energy the campaign has spent in the past two weeks looking for evidence of Russian hacking or other irregularities, and how it has tried to keep those efforts secret.

“Since the day after the election, we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result,” Mr. Elias wrote.

“Most of those discussions have remained private, while at least one has unfortunately been the subject of leaks,” he wrote, a reference to conversations between Mr. Podesta and a group of experts that included J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist with deep experience in the vulnerabilities of voting systems.

Computer and Election Experts Urge Clinton to Challenge Election Results in 3 Swing States

Some may call it a case of grasping for straws, but a piece in New York Magazine reports that Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  Their analysis notes questionable results in electronic votes that suggest manipulation and/or hacking.  Do I believe it?  I'm not sure, but given the existential danger that a Trump/Pence regime poses to the nation, I hope that Clinton will demand a recount.   Here are article highlights:  

Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call. It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.

The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. According to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday. Whether Clinton will call for a recount remains unclear. The academics so far have only a circumstantial case that would require not just a recount but a forensic audit of voting machines. Also complicating matters, a senior Clinton adviser said, is that the White House, focused on a smooth transfer of power, does not want Clinton to challenge the election result.

Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri did not respond to a request for comment. But some Clinton allies are intent on pushing the issue. This afternoon, Huma Abedin’s sister Heba encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Justice Department to audit the 2016 vote. “Call the DOJ…and tell them you want the votes audited,” she wrote. “Even if it’s busy, keep calling.”

It would be nice to reverse the election results and perhaps save the nation from fascism.  It would also be nice to learn that a majority of voters in these three states had not voted for racism, hate and bigotry after all. 

Federal Court Strikes Down Wisconsin State Redistricting Plan

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Federal courts have struck down Virginia's GOP gerrymandered congressional districts.  The case challenging Virginia's state redistricting plan is still pending and, if the plan is struck down, could strike a major blow to GOP power in the Virginia General Assembly.  Similar challenges are pending in other states.  Today, Wisconsin's GOP gerrymandered redistricting was struck down and found to be unconstitutional.   The fear, of course, is that as Donald Trump potentially stacks the U.S. Supreme Court with right wing extremists, such victories could be overturned and the GOP agenda of effectively disenfranchising voters rejuvenated.  Here are highlights from the Wisconsin State Journal on today's ruling:

A panel of federal judges on Monday ruled that Wisconsin’s 2011 legislative redistricting plan, created by Republican leaders virtually in secret, is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

The map “was intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters … by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats,” wrote federal appeals court judge Kenneth Ripple, the senior judge on the three-judge panel, adding that “the discriminatory effect is not explained by the political geography of Wisconsin nor is it justified by a legitimate state interest.

“Consequently, Act 43 constitutes an unconstitutional political gerrymander,” Ripple wrote.

The 116-page decision, with a 40-page dissent from U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, was issued several months after the panel heard testimony in federal court in Madison. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb, the third judge on the panel, joined Ripple in the court’s 2-1 decision.

The panel did not say what should happen as a result of its ruling. Instead, the court ordered both sides to file briefs on an appropriate remedy within 30 days, with response briefs to follow 15 days later. 

The ruling comes nearly six months after the judges heard arguments in the case, brought by a group of state Democratic voters who have called the 2011 redistricting plan “one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history.”

The Democrats contend they have found a way to measure unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders designed to give a “large and durable” advantage in elections to one party — a measure the U.S. Supreme Court said was lacking in previous redistricting cases. The measure, called the efficiency gap, shows how cracking (breaking up blocs of Democratic voters) and packing (concentrating Democrats within certain districts) results in wasted votes — excess votes for the winners in safe districts and perpetually inadequate votes for the losers.

Lawyers for the Democrats said the 2011 plan, which changed boundaries for all of the state’s Congressional and state Senate and Assembly districts, was drawn specifically to disenfranchise Democratic voters.

In its ruling, the two-judge majority rejected the state’s contention that partisan scores determined by GOP map-makers were created simply to gain a historical understanding of voter behavior. The maps were created in a tightly controlled room at the Madison law office of Michael Best & Friedrich, and Democrats were not allowed to take part in the process.

“Their measure was only useful to them,” Ripple wrote, “and the exercise of calculating the composite was only worth the effort, if it helped them assess how Republican representatives in the newly created districts likely would fare in future elections.”

The new map secured a majority for Republicans by allocating votes in such a way that in any likely election scenario, the number of GOP seats wouldn’t drop below 50 percent.

Hopefully, Virginia's GOP gerrymandered redistricting meets a similar fate well in advance of the state elections in November 2017.