Woman Says She Was Paid To Take Absentee Ballots in North Carolina

A woman said Monday that a Bladen County, N.C., Republican election official paid her to illegally collect absentee ballots from the November 6 midterm elections.

Absentee ballot witness Ginger Eason told WSOCTV, a local news station in Charlotte, that the official, McCrae Dowless, paid her between $75 and $100 to take completed absentee ballots from the voters. She said she took the ballots and then never mailed them, depriving the individuals of their legal right to vote in the election. read more

Democrats Will Investigate Trump Scandals, Including Russia

If they win a majority in November, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will re-open the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. They would like to investigate a lot of other things about Donald Trump also, including his family, his business associates and his cabinet members. But they will have to be selective in what they investigate, according to experts on the subject. read more

Washington Post: Democrats Have an 11 Point Lead in the Generic Ballot

Recently Republicans and the mainstream media have been promoting the narrative that Republicans are tightening the race for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. But a new Washington Post/ABC News poll contradicts this narrative, showing Democrats with a very strong 11 percentage point lead in the generic congressional ballot. And independent women voters favor Democrats by an astounding 33 percentage points. read more

Florida Democrats Ask For Voter Registration Extension Due to Hurricane

With Hurricane Michael on a path to devastate 300 miles of northwest Florida coastline tomorrow afternoon, Florida Democrats want the voter registration deadline extended.

Michael is bringing to Florida’s northern Gulf Coast its most serious hurricane threat in decades, and the National Hurricane Center has said the devastation caused by storm surges may be greater than anything residents there have ever seen before. The storm will make landfall Wednesday as a major category 3 hurricane. read more

Kavanaugh is Creating a Midterm Disaster for Republicans

Jeff Flake SCOTUS nominee

Maria Gallagher may be the symbol of this year’s midterm elections.

It was Gallagher who confronted Arizona Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator last week and said to him:

“Don’t look away from me. Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies.” read more

Trump in Trouble As Polls Show Dems Ahead in Key Senate Races

President Donald Trump’s chances of avoiding impeachment in the U.S. Senate are taking a turn for the worse as more polls show Democrats leading in key Senate races.

With public opinion strongly against Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Republicans are taking a great chance by forcing through a vote on his confirmation. Many voters — but especially women voters — are very unhappy at the way the GOP senators have discounted the claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. read more

Desperate GOP Is Abandoning Its Own Doomed Incumbents

This is something you rarely see in congressional elections: a national party abandoning its own incumbents with just weeks to go before the election takes place.

But that is exactly what the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) is doing to Republican candidates — including incumbents — right now. They are pulling the plug on spending for these candidates who are so far behind in the polls that they have decided they have no chance to win. read more

Nightmare for GOP: Many Trump Supporters Plan Not to Vote

This morning Bloomberg is reporting a nightmare scenario for the GOP’s prospects in the midterm elections. According to the business news service:

“A private survey conducted for the Republican National Committee and obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek contains alarming news for Republicans hoping to hold on to control of Congress in November: Most Trump supporters don’t believe there’s a threat that Democrats will win back the House. President Trump’s boasts that a “red wave” could increase Republican majorities appear to have lulled GOP voters into complacency, raising the question of whether they’ll turn up at the polls.” read more

With a Blue Tsunami, Democrats See a Chance For Senate Majority

With less than two months until the midterm elections Democrats find themselves in the surprising position of having a real chance of winning a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Because Senate Democrats have to defend so many seats this year in states won by Trump in 2016, Republicans have long thought they would increase their majority this year, but that doesn’t look likely now. read more

Nancy Pelosi Is Confident of Victory and Has Her Agenda Ready

Former Speaker of the House (and current Democratic House Leader) Nancy Pelosi of California is increasingly confident that there will be a Blue Wave election in November.

Pelosi made comments on Tuesday expressing her confidence after a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed voters by a margin of 14 percentage points favor Democrats over Republicans in the generic congressional ballot. The poll also said that 60 percent of voters wanted Democrats to take over Congress and hold President Donald Trump accountable for his actions. This large majority said they were not in favor of Republicans staying in power where they would further the president’s agenda. read more

Secret “Dark Money” Group is Spending Big to Help Democrats Take Back the House

Secret “dark money” nonprofits are working with a previously unknown organization that is spending millions of dollars helping Democratic congressional candidates in swing districts during this election cycle. The nonprofts are buying large numbers of TV and other ads attacking swing-seat House Republicans on such issues as affordable health care and tax breaks for billionaires. read more

Republican Rebellion on Immigration Threatens GOP

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are far from unified on many important policy issues.  First and foremost among these issues is immigration, especially when it comes to creating a workable U.S. policy on a path to citizenship and the treatment of “Dreamers” under the DACA program. And according to the Associated Press, immigration issues are threatening to tear apart the Republican Party. read more

New GOP Scheme To Stop Democratic Senators From Campaigning

Desperate times require desperate measures, and desperate Republicans in Congress are running scared.  Because they know they have no legislative accomplishments to help them win elections in November and because the president they blindly support has historically low approval ratings, they have resorted to a last-ditch desperation move which they insanely think will help them prevail in the midterms. read more

Blue Wave Requires Democrats To Have an Economic Message

First, the Republicans said they would win the 2018 midterm elections because they would “repeal and replace” Obamacare and everybody would be happy.  But that strategy didn’t work out so well, and most Americans are unhappy with the costs of healthcare, as well as the lack of universal coverage.  And most people still blame Republicans for this. read more

New Democratic Coalition Means Doom For Republicans

The results in Arizona’s special congressional election were a wake-up call for Republicans who have been used to hitting the snooze button in recent years.

An Arizona GOP polling expert, Mike Noble, said: “Republicans shouldn’t be hitting the alarm, they should be slamming it. This district isn’t supposed to be competitive, and so to see this margin, especially with the Republicans pouring in resources here — again, it’s a tough year.” read more

Ryan, McConnell Fight As GOP Election Strategy Crashes

Republicans are fighting among themselves again in the U.S. Congress, and this is a bad sign for their chances in November’s midterm elections.

Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) is pushing hard to get another misguided and harmful tax cut passed in the next few months.  For some reason he thinks this will fire up the Republican base of voters and will make it more likely that Republican candidates will win elections this year. read more

How Democrats Can Use Healthcare to Win Big in 2018 Midterms

Consider these separate but related news items:

  • The cost and availability of health care is the #1 issue that Americans care about right now, according to the Gallup poll.
  • The Gallup poll for the last year has been showing that Obamacare (ACA) is approved of by over half of American voters.
  • A new  HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that American voters are more focused on health care than any other issue.   Over 30 percent of voters polled said that health care was their top issue, which was more than twice as many as any other issue.
  • In a December Gallup poll nearly half of Americans support a government-run healthcare system, the highest number ever.  In fact, through Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans’ Administration, the federal government and the prison system, about 40% of Americans already receive their healthcare from government-run programs.  And most people like these programs and want to keep them.

Add all this together and you can’t help but reach an inescapable conclusion: If health care plays a prominent role in this year’s election, it could provide a huge advantage for Democrats. read more

Women’s Greatest Enemy Is Evangelical Women, Not Republican Men

Even shaky reason dictates that a robust women's electoral movement would cleanse Republican patriarchs from Congress, governorships, and state legislatures, and bring the Republican war on women to an abrupt and just end. However, that is certainly not the case and it is down to American women's greatest enemy and it is not Republican men per se, but the evangelical women electing them.

Joni Ernst Promises Americans a Very Painful Lesson If Elected

Ernst's treatise on government dependency revealed that not only is she a hard line devotee of tea party orthodoxy, she has a perverse vision of America's 20th Century as a monumental error; because like the Koch's she sees government for the people as an abomination that needs to be abolished once and for all.

Kansas Is a Portent of Republican Medicare Privatization Disaster

Democrats have a living, breathing example of privatizing Medicare, and frankly everything in the Path to Prosperity budget, that has done nothing Republicans promise and everything Democrats warned will come to pass. If he has accomplished nothing else, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has given Democrats and all of America a preview of precisely what a Republican Congress will do to America.