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Jane Scilovati

Teacher Who Voted For Trump Takes Her Regrets Public In Union Ad Campaign

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

In 2016, Pennsylvania special education teacher Jane Scilovati voted for Donald Trump, because "I thought he was going to shake up the system." In 2020, she's so committed to not voting for Trump that she appears in an American Federation of Teachers ad against Trump.

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In Major Speech, Hillary Clinton Warns Of Four Top Threats To 2020 Election

In Major Speech, Hillary Clinton Warns Of Four Top Threats To 2020 Election

Hillary Clinton warned that American elections are under escalating assault from domestic and foreign forces threatening the right to vote on Tuesday in a far-ranging speech delivered at the In Defense of Democracy conference in Washington, D.C. (Video of her full speech is embedded below.)

“I really believe we are at a moment of national soul-searching,” said the 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate and ex-secretary of state at a forum on civic participation organized by the American Federation of Teachers. “We stand at a crossroads of our own, a crisis in democracy. Racist and white supremacist views are lifted up in the media and in the White House. Hard-fought-for civil rights are being stripped back. The rule of law is being undermined. The norms and institutions that provide the foundation of our democracy are under assault.”

In her speech, Clinton detailed how partisan Republicans have hijacked the rules that govern electoral participation to seize and hold power in a manner that echoes infamous authoritarian rulers. She pointed to a catalog of voter suppression laws newly resurrected in states dominated by Republicans. The impact of those tactics, she said, is magnified by online partisan propaganda and foreign intervention.

“We are witnessing a deliberate and ongoing effort to undermine the integrity of our elections, and to silence the voices of millions of Americans, particularly young people, the elderly, women, and people of color,” said Clinton. “And this isn’t just about 2016 or even 2018. It’s about 2019, 2020, and every election after that. Because as the teachers in this room know so well, if we don’t learn the lessons of the past, we are doomed to repeat history.”

Clinton called out the tactics used by Republican governors and legislatures, from stricter voter ID laws, voter roll purges, fewer voting options and backlogs in processing voter registrations to poor election administration. The result is to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and many other states.

Such tactics, she said, “were literally made up for the purpose of preventing certain people from actually being able to cast a vote that would be counted. We saw fewer voting places, long lines, and malfunctioning equipment, again, in certain places [where blue-leaning voters predominated]. … That is no accident. It is in service to their larger political goals of obtaining and keeping power.”

“Just think about what happened last week,” she went on, “when President Trump went to North Carolina on the eve of a special election—an election that had to be redone as a direct result of Republican cheating—he didn’t condemn that, of course. Instead, he claimed again that [pro-Clinton] voter fraud was rampant in 2016.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to process all of this because he lies so much. But let that sink in,” Clinton said. “The president of the United States is lying to Americans to delegitimize the democratic process. Yes, of course, it’s abhorrent. It’s delusional. But it’s also strategic. And that should bother every one of us.”

Four Warnings About 2020

Clinton spoke most fervently about the advice she is giving to Democratic presidential candidates. After answering their questions, said Clinton, she would end those conversations by citing four trends that would threaten their candidacies: voter suppression, hacking, fake news, and cybersecurity.

“Let me tell you what I think the biggest obstacle might very well turn out to be,” Clinton said, recounting her talks with 2020 Democratic hopefuls. “You can run the best campaign. You can have the best plans. You can get the nomination. You can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election for these four reasons: number one, voter suppression.”

“We saw what happened in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams should be governor of that state,” she said, referring to the 2018 election. “Registered voters were kept off the rolls. Their registrations just piled up in some back office with no intention to ever enroll them so that they could actually vote.”

Next, Clinton cited the Republican-run state of Wisconsin.

“We also saw what happened in 2016. Experts estimate that anywhere from 27,000 to 200,000 Wisconsin citizen voters, predominantly in Milwaukee, were turned away from the polls,” she continued. “They showed up, but maybe they didn’t have the correct form of identification. Maybe the name on their driver’s license included a middle name or an initial that wasn’t on their voter registration. But officials made every excuse in the book to prevent certain people from voting in that election.”

Purges—or preemptively removing otherwise eligible registered voters from rolls—was “another form of voter suppression,” she said, noting that 12 million voters were purged from 2012 to 2016.

“They were purged in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio, in Florida, in other places,” Clinton said, citing key presidential swing states. “And when you have a Republican-controlled state government, as we did in those states back in 2016, it’s practically impossible—in fact, I’ll say it is impossible—to fight back, let alone to stop, that very deliberate form of [voter] suppression.”

The second threat facing 2020 candidates, Clinton said, was hacking—or breaking into, stealing, and possibly manipulating data and other records. In 2016, Russian spies broke into Democratic National Committee computers and took strategy documents and also stole her senior staff’s emails. The action was this century’s version of the 1970s Watergate break-in of DNC offices by aides of then-president Richard Nixon, a Republican. Unlike Watergate, the stolen materials were published widely and became fodder for incessant attacks on her candidacy.

“I tell every candidate, ‘if you have not had your personal and campaign emails hacked, they will be. So will the emails of people working for you,’” Clinton said. “‘Your information will be stolen and then weaponized against you in the most pernicious ways. Remember Pizzagate? WikiLeaks?’”

Pizzagate referred to a right-wing conspiracy theory that she was running a human trafficking and child sex ring from a Washington pizza parlor, according to supposedly coded messages in the stolen emails. Far-right online media provoked a North Carolina man to drive to the District of Columbia and fire an assault rifle at the restaurant. WikiLeaks is where DNC and Clinton campaign documents stolen by Russian spies were published.

“Cybersecurity is an essential component of protecting our democracy, but it’s very difficult for campaigns on their own to be able to do that,” she said. “You need a national commitment to cybersecurity. And as many cyber experts have already told us, that [national defense] just doesn’t exist. And there is no real effort being made to install such a system that will protect voters.”

Clinton was referring to the refusal by the Trump White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to acknowledge Russian meddling in 2016, as detailed in the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and to take additional steps to secure computer systems managing America’s election infrastructure.

She cited academics who described how the “hacking, stealing, weaponizing information was so impactful [in 2016]. And it will be again. And we will have to hope that not only candidates, but the press and the public, will be able quickly to discredit what is being presented. And we won’t face the horrible kinds of outcomes we saw before, where people believed Pizzagate.”

Clinton continued with the third trend that she said would threaten any Democratic candidate: deliberately fake news posted online, especially on giant platforms such as Facebook that won’t delete it. She singled out deceptively edited videos called “deep fakes.”

“Remember what happened to Nancy Pelosi a few months ago?” she asked. “Somebody spliced words from different presentations, put them together and presented them as though it were real. And think how hard it was to convince the major tech platforms, who admitted it was fake, to take it down. Some did, but many did not. And their answer—in particular, Facebook’s answer—was, ‘Well, we’re going to let people decide for themselves.’ How can you decide for yourself when what is presented is blatantly false and manufactured?”

That trend has continued on Facebook, Clinton said, pointing to an uptick in Trump campaign misinformation—specifically, paid ads that “violate Facebook’s stated terms of service, [but] they’re still up.”

The final threat that 2020 candidates will face, according to Clinton, is “the lack of security in our election system itself,” she said. Russia’s attacks were wider than has been acknowledged, she said, citing the White House’s reluctant admission that voting systems in two Florida counties were breached before November 2016.

“We actually know that it is more, but they won’t admit that,” she said. “Rep. Stephanie Murphy [D-FL], gave an incredible statement the other day, saying, ‘I have been briefed, along with my Republican colleagues, about what actually happened in Florida, but I am prohibited from telling you.’ Think about that. A direct assault by a foreign adversary on a state’s election system—and citizens of that state and our country can’t know about it? Can’t know the details? How are we to protect ourselves?”

The Mueller Report said Russia had “interfered in the 2016 election in a sweeping and systematic fashion,” Clinton noted. “I don’t think ‘sweeping and systematic’ describes two counties in Florida.” She also cited election infrastructure—the voting and counting systems—as inadequately protected to counter current threats.

“In recent years we’ve seen practices that should concern us all: from remote access software installed in election management systems to ballot scanners that connect to the internet, opening them up to potential hacking,” Clinton said, quoting voting rights activists. “So this is a both-sides problem. It is a problem of a foreign adversary actually interfering, hacking, and it is a problem of our own decisions about what kinds of equipment and systems we are going to employ. Both of those deserve the most serious attention.”

All of these threats challenge the very basis of American elections, Clinton said, which starts with exercising the right to vote. But Republican Party leaders won’t place the national interest ahead of their party and its tactics to retain power. At the federal level, both McConnell and Trump were “abdicating their responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution,” she said, citing their oath of office.

A Deepening Crisis 

Today’s Republican Party leaders remind Clinton of history’s authoritarians, whose legacy she encountered as President Obama’s secretary of state.

“We used to have a phrase about authoritarian leaders who would be originally elected or appointed pursuant to the rules of election, like [Benito] Mussolini, like [Adolf] Hitler,” she said. “We would say about them that they believed in elections, all right—that they believed, ‘One and you’re done.’ Get in. Change the rules to perpetuate your own power, to grow your own authoritarian rule.”

The only response to these threats was reasserting the right to vote and taking back representative political power through voting, she said. While the task is formidable, Clinton said she feels encouraged because many people clearly saw the stakes.

“The right to vote powers every change we seek, every future we envision,” Clinton said. “Because the ability to choose who represents us, getting the accurate information we need to be informed, and protecting us from the weaponization of information and misinformation, they’re all critical to making sure we can get things done to make progress together.”

“I think it means everything,” she said of the right to vote and casting a ballot that is counted. “It’s why the forces of corruption and power, ideology, and dominance at home and abroad are trying to distort and undermine our values, our trust, and confidence in ourselves and in each other.”

IMAGE: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Photo by REUTERS/Chris Keane

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, The American Prospect, and many others.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

 

 

 

Poll: Distrust Over Trump And Tax Cuts Driving Democratic Midterm Wave

Poll: Distrust Over Trump And Tax Cuts Driving Democratic Midterm Wave




For Republicans, disaster seems to dominate every news cycle: Paul Ryan, the House Speaker and one of his party’s most prolific fundraisers, announces that he will not run for reelection (and the leading would-be GOP nominee in his district is an actual Nazi). Ryan’s retirement is only the latest of at least 40 Republican members who are doing likewise. Nonpartisan analysts continue to increase the odds in blue turnovers in usually safe red districts. The historically unpopular president has instigated a trade war that is alienating his own rural base.

And the tax cut that was expected to serve as the centerpiece of the Republican midterm campaign? A new poll from Democracy Corps and the American Federation of Teachers shows that in House battleground districts, relatively few people believe the benefits were distributed fairly or that the tax cut benefits them and their families — indeed, the more they learn, the more voters are motivated to vote for Democrats.

Conducted by Greenberg Quinlan & Rosner, the poll of 1000 voters showed a generic advantage for Democrats of 10 percentage points nationally and — albeit with a smaller sample — an advantage of 16 points in the battleground districts. That 16-point Democratic margin also shows up among voters with the highest level of interest in the midterm.

In a memo that accompanies the survey, pollster Stan Greenberg and AFT president Randi Weingarten say it shows that vigorous argument from Democrats on taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and infrastructure can wipe out any boost that Republicans hope to get from economic conditions. Driven by dislike of Donald Trump and his entire cabinet (Betsy DeVos is the most unpopular name polled), Democratic voter intensity is exceptionally strong — while Republican interest is waning.

Greenberg and Weingarten write:

The midterm election is starting to break against Donald Trump and the Republican Party in profound ways and running on the economy and the new tax cut helps further solidify advantages for Democrats. This is according to a new AFT-Democracy Corps national phone poll and deep focus group research on the economy, President Trump, the new tax cuts, and strategies for 2018.

The results of this AFT-Democracy Corps poll reflect the same conditions witnessed in the real world of special elections where Democrats have won: differential enthusiasm, but also some movement of Trump voters. Democrats hold a 10-point lead in the generic vote in this poll, produced by strong leads with people of color, millennial women, unmarried women, and college women. This poll also shows stunning new breakthroughs with seniors, where Democrats are ahead, and the white working class, which has now fractured along gender lines.

Big gaps in intensity and enthusiasm are an inescapable party of the story. Democrats’ strong disapproval of Trump exceeds Republicans’ strong approval of Trump by almost 30 points, and the generic margin grows to a stunning 16-points among the 50 percent of registered voters with the highest interest in the 2018 election…

Progressives should stop worrying that the passage of the tax cut shows the GOP is delivering on their signature promise. We now know from this poll that the tax cut is as much a voting issue for its opponents as it is for its supporters, for Democrats as for Republicans, for liberals as for conservatives…We have already seen evidence of this in races like the [Pennsylvania-18] special election where the Republicans pulled their tax cut ads.

Both their memo and the poll crosstabs are worth reading in full.

IMAGE: Donald Trump meets with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on Capitol Hill. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

 

Teachers Union Targets Education Secretary At National Convention

Teachers Union Targets Education Secretary At National Convention

By Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES -= A national teachers convention on Sunday called for President Barack Obama to put Education Secretary Arne Duncan on an “improvement plan” as a prelude to replacing him.

The action was taken by the American Federation of Teachers, which is meeting in Los Angeles. It represents another marker in the long-running erosion of relations between organizations that represent instructors and the Democratic president they helped to elect twice.

The union stopped short of calling for Duncan’s immediate departure — as had the National Education Association, at its meeting in Denver earlier this month. But the lesser step was no indication of greater regard.

Nate Goldbaum, a Chicago delegate, called Duncan “the man who is taking away all that we hold dear.”

He proposed calling for Duncan’s outright resignation, an idea that attracted strong support until an alternate proposal emerged from Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco.

Kelly offered the improvement-plan language to echo the union’s insistence on protecting due process for teachers who face discipline or dismissal. Union leaders said these rights are under assault.

More broadly, union activists and their allies have accused Duncan of allying with anti-union forces seeking to “privatize” public schools and pave the way for corporate interests to profit from public funding devoted to education.

Duncan’s department has pressured states and school districts to limit teacher job protections and to use student standardized test scores as a substantial portion of a teacher’s evaluation. The goal, Duncan has said, is to develop a higher-quality workforce by helping teachers improve while also making it easier to remove those who don’t.

Duncan has consistently defended himself as a friend of teachers, noting that he supports some form of tenure, while also wanting to make these job protections more difficult to achieve. Duncan applauded a June court ruling that struck down California’s tenure rules and some other teacher job protections.

The anger of the rank and file had the potential to put AFT President Randi Weingarten in an awkward position. She met with Duncan last week and has stressed keeping open channels of communication.

She called putting Duncan on an improvement plan a “constructive approach” with the appropriate symbolism. At the same time, the passion of delegates demonstrated the “sense of betrayal” many felt about Duncan and the administration, she said.

Photo: House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats via Flickr