Welcome to the watch-what-they-do finale of the presidential campaign. Don’t pay attention to what the candidates and their aides are saying about their closing strategies. The best way to tell which states President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. think are in play is to track their campaign travel.
Trips are being announced just a few days in advance, and the operative word is tentative. Candidates will make last-minute adjustments to their schedules based on the latest information from overnight polls (or prodding from worried supporters).
Case in point: Mr. Biden paid a quick trip to Pennsylvania on Monday. This is one of the most contested states on the map, which the president narrowly won last time and where polls now show Mr. Biden ahead. Mr. Trump has traveled so often to the state in recent days that it seems only a matter of time until Pennsylvania starts hitting him up for its resident income tax.
Mr. Biden heads to Georgia on Tuesday and to Iowa later in the week, two states Mr. Trump won in 2016 that are on the edge of the Democrats-have-a-chance map. It’s an aggressive move. Should Mr. Biden lose next Tuesday, expect the second-guessing brigade to inspect his decision to play offense when perhaps the game called for defense, and to invoke the trip Hillary Clinton made to Arizona at the end of the 2016 campaign.
But he is also going to Tampa, signaling how important Florida is, and how Democrats have put the president on the defensive in a state that he needs to win. (If early returns show Mr. Biden winning Florida next week, watch Democrats begin to pop the champagne.) And he is also heading to Wisconsin, as he tries to nail down the three Rust Belt states — the other two are Pennsylvania and Michigan — that lifted Mr. Trump over the 270 electoral vote hurdle four years ago.
Mr. Trump is spending a lot of time on defense this week, heading to states that he won in 2016 and where he is struggling today: Arizona and, of course, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Assuming Mr. Trump can hold on to the rest of his 2016 map (and that may be a big assumption), he needs to hold just one of the three key Midwestern states to win re-election.
Interestingly, Mr. Trump is also going to Nevada, a state that Mrs. Clinton won in 2016. Nevada has not been extensively polled, and the surveys that have been done show a tight race there. Some clarity about the state of play in Nevada could come later Tuesday with the latest New York Times/Siena College Poll, which we expect to release around 1 p.m. Eastern.
There are seven days until Election Day. Here are the daily schedules of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates for Tuesday, Oct. 27. All times are Eastern time.
President Trump
2 p.m.: Holds a rally in Lansing, Mich.
5 p.m.: Holds a rally in West Salem, Wis.
8:30 p.m.: Holds a rally in Omaha.
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Afternoon: Speaks in Warm Springs, Ga.
Evening: Holds a drive-in rally in Atlanta.
Vice President Pence
12:30 p.m.: Holds a rally in Greensboro, N.C.
3:30 p.m.: Holds a rally in Greenville, S.C.
6:30 p.m. Holds a rally in Wilmington, N.C.
Senator Kamala Harris
Afternoon: Speaks at a voter mobilization event in Reno, Nev.
Evening: Speaks at a voter mobilization event in Las Vegas.
In a decision that could reverberate beyond Wisconsin, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that Wisconsin could not accept ballots that arrive after polls close on Election Day, rejecting an appeal by Democratic-aligned groups.
The ruling comes as President Trump has continued to attack the election’s integrity and has singled out mail-in voting in particular. In a tweet late Monday, sent as the decision was still coming down, Mr. Trump falsely declared, without citing any evidence, that there were “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd.” (Twitter quickly put a warning label on the tweet.)
The Trump campaign and Republican allies are seeking similar restrictions on ballot deadlines in other states. In Pennsylvania, Republicans filed a new lawsuit last week, seeking to similarly mandate that all ballots arrive by Election Day, a decision on which the Supreme Court was locked in a 4-to-4 tie this month. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed on Monday night, giving conservatives a 6-to-3 majority.
In August, the Postal Service recommended that all voters make sure to mail their ballots no later than Oct. 27 to ensure that they arrive on time to be counted.
Lester Pines, whose law firm, Pines Bach, represented Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, in the Wisconsin case, said he hoped there would be enough time to alert voters who have not returned their ballots. “Don’t mail them now,” Mr. Pines said. “Find a way to get them delivered to the various places where they can be delivered.”
Mr. Pines said one part of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion was “very disturbing,” adding that it seemed to imply that the court might be again taking up the Pennsylvania ruling that it had let stand on the 4-4 vote.
According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, 1,706,771 absentee ballots have been requested in Wisconsin, and 1,344,535 have been returned. More than 25 percent of those returned have come from two Democratic strongholds, Milwaukee and Dane County. Under state law, ballots must be received by Election Day.
Across the country, Democrats have been requesting absentee ballots at a greater rate than Republicans, and the trend is likely to hold in Wisconsin.
“As you know, more Republicans are going to vote in person, probably because of their preference to do so, and the president has been pushing that,” said Matt Batzel, the Wisconsin-based national executive director for American Majority Action, a conservative grass-roots political training organization. “Democrats have really staked their strategy on pushing absentee ballot requests and following up with those individuals. This ruling is deflating to that strategy.”
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin immediately announced on Twitter a voter education project to alert constituents that absentee ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 — and began fund-raising around the ruling. “We’re dialing up a huge voter education campaign,” tweeted Ben Wikler, the state party chairman.
The spring elections in Wisconsin were disrupted by a similar set of lawsuits seeking ballot deadline extensions to help alleviate delays in the Postal Service amid the pandemic, as the Supreme Court eventually allowed for a six-day extension provided that ballots had been postmarked by the election.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission estimated that roughly 79,000 additional ballots were counted in April as a result of that decision.
In 2016, Mr. Trump carried Wisconsin by about 23,000 votes.
A divided Senate voted on Monday night to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, capping a lightning-fast Senate approval that handed President Trump a victory days before the election and promised to tip the court to the right for years to come.
In a 52-to-48 vote, all but one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is battling for re-election, supported now-Justice Barrett, a 48-year-old appeals court judge and protégée of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Wasting no time, Mr. Trump held an unusual nighttime swearing-in ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, a month to the day after a mostly maskless Rose Garden event attended by multiple people who later tested positive for the coronavirus, including Mr. Trump and the first lady. Though more precautions were taken at the ceremony on Monday, masks were not worn by either Mr. Trump or Justice Barrett, both of whom have already had the virus.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who swore in his new colleague, wore no mask, either. None of the other seven justices attended.
Mr. Trump praised Justice Barrett’s “deep knowledge, tremendous poise and towering intellect,” calling her a suitable replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal stalwart who died last month and was her ideological polar opposite.
In her remarks, Justice Barrett seemed intent on sending the message that she would not simply do Mr. Trump’s bidding, using the words “independent” or “independence” three times, even though he has said explicitly that he wanted her seated before the election so she could lend her vote in case of a legal dispute over the balloting.
“A judge declares independence not only from the Congress and the president, but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her,” Justice Barrett said after being sworn in. “The oath I have solemnly taken tonight,” she added, “means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor and that I will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences.”
Neither Republicans nor Democrats seemed to believe that, instead commending or condemning her confirmation as a victory for conservatives and a defeat for liberals. Democrats immediately vowed on Monday night that there would be reprisals.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called on Democrats to expand the court if they won the presidency and took control of the Senate, an idea that the Democratic presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has so far refused to co-sign. Mr. Biden instead has said that he would set up a bipartisan commission to look at ways to overhaul the court.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, excoriated her Republican colleagues in a fund-raising email to her supporters that was sent minutes after the vote.
“They stole another Supreme Court seat just eight days before the end of the election, after tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots, and just 15 days before the Supreme Court will hear a case that could overturn the Affordable Care Act,” Ms. Warren wrote.
In a statement late Monday, the Biden campaign called the Barrett confirmation “rushed and unprecedented,” and issued a call to action based on the Affordable Care Act case.
“If you want to say no, this abuse of power doesn’t represent you — then turn out and vote,” the statement said.
Justices can begin work as soon as they are sworn in, meaning Justice Barrett could be at work as early as Tuesday. The court is confronting a host of issues concerning the election and Mr. Trump’s policies, including cases from North Carolina and Pennsylvania about whether deadlines for receiving mailed ballots may be extended. Under the court’s usual practices, Justice Barrett cannot participate in cases that have already been argued, though they could be argued again before the full court if the justices are deadlocked.
Next Monday, the court returns to the virtual bench for a two-week sitting to hear arguments by telephone.
Shortly after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court by Republican senators Monday night, Joseph R. Biden Jr. released a statement calling the move “rushed and unprecedented” and imploring Americans to “vote for the legacy of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Mr. Biden warned, as he has often done in the days since President Trump picked Judge Barrett to fill Justice Ginsburg’s seat just weeks before Election Day, that her addition to the nation’s highest court could lead to the Affordable Care Act being struck down.
“If you want to protect your health care, if you want your voice to be heard in Washington, if you want to say no, this abuse of power doesn’t represent you — then turn out and vote,” Mr. Biden wrote, urging people to cast ballots not just for president but for “Members of Congress, and candidates up and down the ticket who actually have a plan for health care.”
“Vote for the legacy of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” he continued. “She was proof that courage, conviction, and moral clarity can change not just the law, but also the world. Let us continue to be voices for justice in her name.”
Mr. Biden ended with a single word, one he repeated six times altogether in the statement: “Vote.”
The confirmation on Monday of Justice Amy Coney Barrett all but ensures a durable conservative majority on the Supreme Court for years to come and provides the capstone on the Trump administration’s broader effort to push the entire federal judiciary solidly to the right.
Its work has been so fast and so effective that there is only one vacancy now in the appellate courts: the seat left open by Justice Barrett’s promotion.
But President Trump and Republicans risk becoming victims of their own success. Without the specter of a liberal court to motivate conservative voters anymore, they may find themselves without the issue that played a crucial role in Mr. Trump’s unexpected victory four years ago and has fortified his political base throughout a tumultuous first term.
“It’s like the dog catching the car,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which handicaps elections and is forecasting a difficult environment for Republicans up and down the ballot.
On a larger level, there is the risk of getting complacent. Republicans feel satisfied that they appear to have prevailed in their decades-long quest to install more conservatives on the courts. Then there is the issue that the Barrett confirmation was uneventful and anticlimactic — not exactly the kind of spectacle that gets people marching in the streets.
Privately, Republicans have expressed some disappointment that there was very little of the partisan fury and indignation that erupted during the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in 2018. The Kavanaugh hearings included a sexual assault allegation against him from his high school years, and became a remarkably emotional and divisive culture war.
Though Justice Kavanaugh forcefully denied the charges, and his allies accused Democrats of a vicious smear campaign, Republicans also believe the hearings awakened their voters a few weeks before the midterm elections.
Strategists said they could not be as certain that conservative voters will view the court with the same urgency as they have before.
“Right now we’re fat and happy,” said Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, a group that strategizes with Republican senators and the White House on judicial confirmations. “We have the first true conservative majority on the Supreme Court in 80 years. The president has done such an outstanding job on judicial appointments that we are out of federal circuit seats to fill. So Republicans could be complacent while Democrats are fired up.”
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, said he did not think that would be the case.
“I think this nominee will be a political asset for our candidates around the country,” he said in an interview on Fox News on Monday night. “Not a liability but an asset.”
Politically endangered lawmakers about to face voters often find themselves tempering their instincts, breaking with their parties on tough votes to prove independence and placate constituents, and offering mealy-mouthed platitudes on the most divisive topics of the day.
Not Senator Doug Jones, Democrat of Alabama, who is facing re-election next week.
Considered his party’s most endangered incumbent, he has released TV ads featuring him using stark, stirring language to talk about the death of George Floyd in police custody and has promoted mask wearing.
He voted to impeach President Trump and declared on the Senate floor that “Black lives matter.” He has blasted as “shameful” Alabama’s law criminalizing abortion in almost all cases, and suggested raising the age requirement to purchase a gun from 18 to 21.
On Monday night, just over a week before Election Day, he joined the rest of his party in voting against Mr. Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
“These are all things a lot of people felt like wouldn’t be politically expedient for him,” said Chris England, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party. “I don’t think that’s necessarily something he concerns himself with.”
The odds that voters will return Mr. Jones to Washington and reject his Republican opponent, Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach who has pledged fealty to Mr. Trump, are even more unlikely than those he beat in 2017, when he jolted the political establishment with an unexpected victory over Roy S. Moore, who was accused of sexually assaulting and pursuing teenage girls.
But instead of tiptoeing around the Senate as so many politically embattled lawmakers past and present have done, skittering away from reporters when asked about hot-button issues or giving tortured explanations of tricky votes, Mr. Jones has appeared almost liberated by his predicament.
In an interview, Mr. Jones insisted that he was posed to beat the odds again in his deeply conservative state. But if he is facing his final curtain in the Senate, he is determined to do it his way.
Burgess Owens, a former professional football player running as a Republican in one of the country’s tightest House races, accepted more than $130,000 in contributions that were over the legal limit, raising questions in the final stretch of the election about his compliance with campaign finance laws.
Mr. Owens, a frequent commentator on Fox News who is challenging Representative Ben McAdams, Democrat of Utah, reported bringing in a staggering $2.5 million during the third quarter fund-raising period, one of the biggest hauls for a Republican congressional candidate.
But a review of his campaign’s financial disclosures showed that at least $135,500 — about 40 percent of the cash his campaign currently has on hand in the final stretch — was ineligible because the donors had contributed more than the legal limit.
Individuals may donate up to $2,800 to a federal candidate per election, according to limits published by the Federal Election Commission.
When campaigns receive donations from individuals that exceed those caps, officials must either refund the illegal contributions or reattribute them. The F.E.C. reached out to the campaign in August identifying one such excessive contribution, which the campaign refunded. But the campaign declined to say whether it had addressed the rest of the donations, or planned to.
“With over 50,000 donors and with many campaign donations made electronically, excess contributions can occur without the campaign’s knowledge,” Jesse Ranney, a spokesman for the campaign, said in a statement. “That is why the F.E.C. has processes in place to handle this situation.”
Such violations can come with fines in the tens of thousands of dollars, and can cast a cloud over campaigns. Representative Mia Love, the Republican who held the Utah district before Mr. McAdams, came under fire for accepting excessive contributions, as did Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, in her 2014 campaign.
But the issue could prove particularly thorny for Mr. Owens, who has touted his fund-raising abilities and is in a deadlocked race. A September poll showed Mr. McAdams with a slight lead, but strategists in both parties have since acknowledged that the race has tightened.
What little hope Americans had remaining that they would get a needed coronavirus relief package before the election was dashed late Monday when Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, adjourned the Senate for two weeks after its vote to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Already stalled for three months, prospects for a deal had largely faded, with Democrats, Senate Republicans and President Trump’s negotiators unable to come together on a deal to help keep struggling Americans afloat.
The first round of stimulus, which included beefed-up unemployment benefits, support to small businesses and $1,200 checks to individuals, was considered largely successful in staving off a worse economic calamity in the spring, with tens of millions of Americans relying on it to pay their bills, avoid evictions and keep their businesses running.
In a poll conducted this month by The New York Times and Siena College, a majority of likely voters said they supported a new $2 trillion stimulus package, while economists and the chair of the Federal Reserve have said an infusion of federal money would fuel an economic recovery now on shaky ground.
Mr. Trump abruptly pulled the plug on the talks early this month, only to reverse course in recent weeks. Without offering specifics, Mr. Trump said he had instructed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “go big or go home.”
That statement put him at odds with Mr. McConnell, who cautioned the president against striking a deal with House Democrats.
Senate Republicans did not want to spend more than $500 billion.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with Mr. Mnuchin for nearly an hour on Monday but failed to reach a deal, her deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, wrote on Twitter.
While both the House and Senate can be called back for a vote with 24 hours notice, that appeared unlikely with Election Day less than a week away.
The Senate will reconvene on Nov. 9 and could take up negotiations again. But, by then, the backdrop for negotiations could be vastly different, depending on what happens on Election Day.
Michael R. Bloomberg is funding a last-minute spending blitz to bolster former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Texas and Ohio, directing millions toward television advertising in two red states that have shifted away from President Trump in the general election.
A political adviser to Mr. Bloomberg said the billionaire former mayor of New York City would use his super PAC, Independence USA, to broadcast intensive ad campaigns in all television markets in both states. The cost of the two-state campaign is expected to total around $15 million.
Howard Wolfson, a close Bloomberg aide, said the former mayor had recently asked his team to run a round of polls to see whether Mr. Trump had unexpected vulnerabilities that could be exploited in the campaign’s closing weeks. Up to this point, Mr. Bloomberg’s activities in the general election have focused on Florida, where he has pledged to spend $100 million supporting Mr. Biden.
The Bloomberg team conducted polling in a number of states over the weekend and came away convinced that Texas and Ohio represented its best targets — narrowly divided electoral prizes where the war for television airtime is not already cluttered with heavy advertising on either side.
Should either Texas or Ohio slip into the Democratic column, it would most likely indicate not only a Trump defeat, but also one by a thumping margin. The two states have 56 Electoral College votes between them, and Mr. Trump’s campaign has never devised a path to victory that does not involve carrying both.
Oregon has an addiction problem. Pockets of rural poverty, chronic homelessness and cities with lots of young people have given the state one of the highest rates of substance abuse in the nation. Because there is so little money allocated to it, it is also one of the toughest places to get treatment.
A proposed solution on the ballot next week would bring one of the most radical drug-law overhauls in the nation’s history, eliminating criminal penalties for personal-use amounts of drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. Tax revenues from drug sales would be channeled toward drug treatment.
Supporters of the Oregon proposal, Measure 110, say the swirling, transformational forces of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the wave of social unrest over race, policing and incarceration — have highlighted a need for top-to-bottom change. Opponents say decriminalization courts disaster by normalizing drugs that carry the risk of deadly addiction.
Oregon is far from alone in stepping out onto new terrain. Legal marijuana, stalled for years in politically conservative states even as more left-leaning areas plowed ahead, has found a place on the ballot this year in Arizona, Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota.
National groups that have long dreamed of a federal overhaul of drug laws say that success in those states could bring Republican elected officials into Congress with constituents who have said yes to legalization, potentially tipping the balance in Washington.
If you still haven’t mailed your completed ballot, the U.S. Postal Service says today may be your last chance.
The agency’s general recommendation is that ballots be mailed at least a week before the deadline, which in more than half the states is Election Day on Nov. 3, one week from today. Some states will accept ballots by mail for a certain period afterward as long as they are postmarked before the election, while in Louisiana the deadline is Nov. 2. (Find the deadline for your state here.)
And think twice before using an express carrier like FedEx or UPS, which could run afoul of the different rules states have for voting by mail.
“If you have a mail ballot but you haven’t mailed it back yet, vote it today and return it in person if you can,” said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that seeks to increase voter participation and improve the efficiency of elections.
“Get your ballot back as soon as possible in a drop box, or an election office if at all possible,” he added. “Or alternatively, take it with you to an early voting location and drop it off there, or surrender it and cast an in-person ballot.”
Some states don’t accept ballots if they are delivered by a private carrier. And states generally require ballot envelopes to carry a postmark, which only the Postal Service can apply. (The rules are different for Americans voting from overseas, who are allowed to mail their ballots back by private carrier and even encouraged to at this late stage.)
Using an express carrier can also cost more. The Postal Service treats ballots as first-class mail, meaning they can be returned with a 55-cent “Forever Stamp.” In many cases, voters are able to return completed ballots in a prepaid envelope at no cost.
Both UPS and FedEx suggest that voters check the rules in their states.
"time" - Google News
October 27, 2020 at 08:52PM
https://ift.tt/3dZxv12
Live Trump vs Biden 2020 Presidential Election Updates - The New York Times
"time" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3f5iuuC
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Live Trump vs Biden 2020 Presidential Election Updates - The New York Times"
Post a Comment